Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 198 posts

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#171

Post by astebbin »

throwaway27373 wrote: post #161
propman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the West the media is not state run. The Chinese government decides what to run and clearly that is propaganda. In America the media is controlled by 2 political parties and they are either pro or anti government. The media in the West can run any content they wish and it is up to the free market to determine if they can survive. You can listen to whatever viewpoint or angle. CNN, Fox, Huffpo, Brietbart everyo…

China wields formal control where in the US this is achieves via peer pressure and social manipulation/control. Anytime something shocking is revealed reporters end up losing thier jobs, sometimes be suicided or at worst end up like Assange.

What absolute falsehoods. Ask Woodward and Bernstein if they got "suicided." America has not yet fallen to China or Russia's level of cynical censorship acceptance.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#172

Post by pcr0 »

cheapsteak wrote: post #156
jon_richards wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked it up, but I've heard from a local that if you are displaced by a government project you will "be rich". In his eyes it was similar to winning the lottery, if less extreme.

It does depend on the area I remember coming across a few blocks of old densely packed single-family brick buildings in Shanghai that were about to be torn down. Each building had a large hand written banner above their entrance, half of them praising the communist party for its compassion or saying long live Chairman Mao (my interpretation was that they were hoping for mercy for being such loyal party members), the…

I think the idea was that hanging pictures of Chairman Mao all over their building would make the government look bad if they knocked it down.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#173

Post by pcr0 »

Animats wrote: post #116
vorg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading." Can't see it -- blocked in mainland China.

SCMP is blocked? I thought SCMP had been bought by a pro-mainland owner and was now taking pro-mainland government positions.

Yeah, but they still have some editorial freedom. Their reporting skews pro-mainland but there are quite a few anti-mainland articles as well.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#174

Post by myrandomcomment »

narrowrail wrote: post #101
thablackbull wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are apparently using data from Global Trade Alerts http://www.globaltradealert.org/ I good intro would be their 19th Global Trade Alert Report http://www.globaltradealert.org/gta-analysis/global-trade-pl...

Not to be pedantic (It's an unfortunate consequence of nuance), but just so you know, there is no country called "America." We have north, central, and south American continents with many countries; the U.S is one country in North America.

The name of the country is "United States of America" or you could say America as a shorted version, so there really is a county called America. If you said America to most people in the world they are pretty much going think the USA. BTW, you in your post used the other shorted version "U.S.". Not to be padantic or anything :)

There is no other country on the American continents with America in its name.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#175

Post by pcr0 »

aswanson wrote: post #66

It's interesting that a country of China's size works without any history of widespread religious belief.

China's history was mostly shaped by the "three teachings" of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, combined with a lot of folklore.

Religion was never allowed to gain any significant power by Chinese emperors. They often taxed then destroyed monasteries/churches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Anti-Buddhist_Persecutio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#176

Post by myrandomcomment »

johansch wrote: post #121
marcell wrote: post #77

I'm struck by China's ability to attempt large, ambitious projects like this, compared to America's inability to do, well, anything really. The largest infrastructure project I'm aware of in the USA is California's High Speed Rail (~$60B+), was approved a decade ago and is barely making any progress. The federal government is in complete gridlock. The most ambitious legislation passed in the last decade, the ACA, cau…

Dictatorship does make it easier to get things done. It seems like you americans are getting there, though.

Right, because all of Trumps excetive orders have been followed. The courts did not shoot them down or anything......

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#177

Post by cma »

propman wrote: post #48
thablackbull wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive. America is an incredibly protectionist country as well if you aren't aware. http://www.eulerhermes.com/economic-research/publications/Pa... In the past 3 years, America has introduced far more protectionist measures than other countries.

LOL nothing compared to China. China partners with startups, steals their IP and then escapes back to the homeland and no course of legal action. They get all the access to the West's markets and then give almost no access to their own. Their companies are all backed by the government and it's rigged in their favor. They cheat constantly, check out the EU scandal where they smuggle goods into London don't pay equal t…

>China partners with startups, steals their IP and then escapes back to the homeland and no course of legal action.

Where have I heard of something like that in US history class?

> He learned of the American interest in developing similar machines, and he was also aware of British laws against exporting the designs. He therefore memorized as much as he could and departed for New York in 1789. Some people of Belper called him "Slater the Traitor", as they considered his move a betrayal of the town where many earned their living at Strutt's mills.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#178

Post by dang »

astebbin wrote: post #171
throwaway27373 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China wields formal control where in the US this is achieves via peer pressure and social manipulation/control. Anytime something shocking is revealed reporters end up losing thier jobs, sometimes be suicided or at worst end up like Assange.

What absolute falsehoods. Ask Woodward and Bernstein if they got "suicided." America has not yet fallen to China or Russia's level of cynical censorship acceptance.

It looks like your account has been HN primarily for political arguments lately. Would you please not do that? It's an abuse of the site.

HN is for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, and political argument—especially the flamewar kind, which it inexorably degrades to—is destructive of that.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#179

Post by mdpopescu »

thablackbull wrote: post #94
propman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm I don't think you are getting the fundamental logic here. America has pushed propaganda, but they also allow movies that make America look bad: botched CIA missions true or not, slavery, different look at revered historical figures, greedy American leaders/FBI/CIA or whatever. They don't purposefully stop what makes America look bad. China does, there is a huge difference in that. Secondly, the government itself…

What you're witnessing is manufactured consent[1]. There is no need for the crude methods of propaganda here because it's not even necessary. Compare that with China; people there are fully conscious of government propaganda. From the SMH article, they expected the west to be a land of freedom and democratization of ideas, but what they end up finding is that it more or less is the same thing. > [2] "A lot of them ar…

> When they realise that the media here is just as one-track mind about these things

Yes. When I got access to the internet, 25 years ago or so (only a few years after we got rid of communism in Romania), I was shocked to discover this about the US. In Romania, we had state propaganda and we knew it about what it was. It was everywhere and nobody believed it.

In the US, state propaganda is also everywhere, but everyone accepts it as fact. ("America is the greatest country in the world", "the US government would never do something like that", "we leave nobody behind", "we defend freedom"... I could probably come up with dozens of obviously false things that all Americans believe.)

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#180

Post by noisy_boy »

contingencies wrote: post #140

From about 2005-2008 I used to live and own a house on the Laos and Burma borders of far south-western China and still often travel in the area. Laos is simply poor, being a landlocked mountainous country with minimal infrastructure or education surrounded by larger and more powerful neighbors. In the last 16 years, Laos has begun to get some better roads (largely with foreign investment), mobile telecommunications,…

There are repercussions of China's aggressive market hunting. Taking an example of Northern Laos, the Chinese have been buying farmlands and converting them into Banana farms. Lots of farmers have sold their land for good money. If you don't sell you land, you'll be a fool because a) the size of land isn't that big so you are dependent on your neighbours good will for letting the water flow into your patch b) the neighbours already sold their's to the Chinese. The Chinese also very cleverly opened a casino. So, now you have villages full of farmers who go to the casino and gamble the money back to the same people (because as the saying goes, the house always wins) who bought their lands. Lao women who used to work in their farms now work in these casinos. Drug abuse has always been a problem in Laos but with this inflow of cash, it has been exacerbated.

One might say, the Lao government is equally responsible - which is not entirely false. If a chinese company tried to buy an Indian farmer's land, there would be outrage but Laos is a tiny country so no real comparison. Anyway, the net result is a social impact that is far from the carrot of "economic growth".

Post reply on HN