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Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

austrianchina.substack.com

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Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#61

Post by consumer451 »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #42
udev wrote: post #28

One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship…

"For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions." which is why all democracies defeated COVID with the three-week lockdown in which no one left home unless they had to and took proper precautions to ensure that they did not dare transmit any disease to anyone else No, I would say that modern democracies and enshrine human imperfections i…

I think about these issues a lot in my spare time. I am curious if you have any favorite modifications/alternatives to democracies.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#62

Post by refurb »

kalleboo wrote: post #6
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #4

I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.

I dunno, one of the stronger sentiments seems to be "the Shanghai government is fucking this up, we need the central government to take over and fix this".

Precisely. It's all "spin", every government does it, China is an expert at it.

Things go well: CCP success story and demonstration of superiority of China (note, not the Party, because "the people and the party are ONE")

Things go poorly: Local government incompetence, foreign interference, reactionary saboteurs "picking fights and quarrels"

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#63

Post by AustrianChina »

fma wrote: post #54

So...how can we trust the writings of the author? Can the data be validated elsewhere? A video posted 8PM with ...11PM it has 30 million views...midnight 100 million, 1:05AM, 300 million. There were 200 million WeChat users up between 12AM and 1:05AM who viewed it? And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later? I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit b…

Thanks for catching this typo. It should read 12:30 am.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#64

Post by AustrianChina »

alanwong wrote: post #57
ncann wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the part that stood out to me, doesn't seem plausible that a random account on substack knows so much about behind the scene stuffs. Even things like the 400m number (or any number in there actually), where did those numbers come from? I don't even know what the original platform of the video was, which I assumed was not Youtube?

It's largely translated from a Chinese social media post [1] that's been floating around without clear attribution. [1] https://twitter.com/syhily/status/1517868079648104449

Yes, this is the source.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#65

Post by leohonexus »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #9
hongsy wrote: post #2

What really grates at people’s nerves? Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes.…

Very interesting. Not doubting the severity of the situation, but I'm curious where you get this info – you seem to have knowledge of the inside baseball (like emergency meetings held by CCP admins) and I don't know how to trust that it's accurate.

A lot of it is public information though, if you know where to look.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#66

Post by AustrianChina »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #49
usernomdeguerre wrote: post #18

One aspect of this that i'm hoping a more informed person can comment on: Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? From what I previously read Shanghai was discussed as a factional stronghold not wholly subservient to the national government (to Xi). That being the case i've been curious if these draconian measures have been imposed from the nation…

> Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? To the terminology question, Shanghai is a city (市) and not a province (省). However, it is one of four cities that have a special status formally equal to that of provinces. (Imagine if New York City was torn out of the several states it's technically in and made into its own state.) Practically, Shanghai…

The Shanghai government was completed sidelined, and the health department top officials replaced by people brought in by Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan. She even attempted to replace Shanghai's health code management software with her own, but that attempt was just abandoned. This article tells the story:

https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/when-the-commissar-came...

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#67

Post by rapsey »

udev wrote: post #28

One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship…

This is communism in a nutshell. The government decides the people are forced to follow. Even if it results in millions dead.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#68

Post by kalleboo »

user_named wrote: post #52
kalleboo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, one of the stronger sentiments seems to be "the Shanghai government is fucking this up, we need the central government to take over and fix this".

Shanghai gov did fuck up. Now Beijing gov is fucking up.

Yeah the outcome of Beijing will be more important than Shanghai

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#69

Post by Salgat »

karpierz wrote: post #37
udev wrote: post #28

One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship…

I doubt their model is that people are perfect. I think their model assumes that if they set strong enough incentives, the human-error will only be a second order effect and can be safely ignored. I don't know how well they've estimated the political price for some of these incentives, and whether they have the political capital to expend to maintain this lockdown for much longer.

Their model is that you are assumed to be right, and when you're not, you save face by still acting like you're right. They're in too deep and they can't admit their policy is wrong since it admits that the west's approach is superior.
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