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Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

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Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#71

Post by laughinghan »

onion2k wrote: post #58
Iv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the political system in Chine does not collapse everyone should worry too. Because they are very quickly becoming the #1 economic power in the world and I really do not want to see them spreading their views on authoritarianism and citizens control. I am of a boring old school of thought that thinks democracy is a pretty cool system and that it should be preserved. I really hope the Chinese political system collap…

...I really do not want to see them spreading their views on authoritarianism and citizens control. Western nations have plenty of authoritarianism already. It's just more insidious and under the surface. For example, here in the UK there are CCTV cameras everywhere [1]. They're all linked up so the police can remotely follow citizens around towns, along roads, down motorways, etc. Every bus and train has CCTV on it.…

Two things can be bad without being close to equal or even comparable.

The UK's pervasive mass surveillance is definitely bad, but you can, for example, campaign and vote against them, right? Do you feel like pervasive CCTV limits who you can vote for or what books you can read? That's not a strawman, that's literally what it's like in China right now.

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#72

Post by laughinghan »

missosoup wrote: post #16
onion2k wrote: post #2

If the political system in China collapses everyone should worry. That would likely result in a global economic crash the likes of which the world has never seen.

If the alternative is China going unchecked and eating the world. I'll take the economic crash. I grew up in poverty and I'd rather go back to poverty than live under a dystopian surveillance dictatorship.

It sounds to me like you're saying that you'd rather go back to poverty than live in 1984.

The more salient question, though, is whether you'd rather go back to poverty than live in Singapore?

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#73

Post by laughinghan »

newfriend wrote: post #53
StudentStuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation for that last paragraph? All I've seen is a shrinking coal industry leaving workers unpaid for their last month on the job[1], 25% tariffs slapped on our hardware imports [2] (causing a 30% drop in our sales) and kids being killed by Customs and Border Protection [3]. None of this is good for the USA or my fellow American 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/us/kentucky-coal-miners.h... 2 - https://www.for…

Unchecked IP and currency abuse by China, and unfettered illegal immigration are also "not good for the USA or my fellow American." > kids being killed by Customs and Border Protection Are you actually trying to claim that CBP is deliberately killing children?

Economic growth for 8 straight years of the last 7 years of the Obama administration and the first year of the Trump administration were good for the USA and our fellow Americans.

Is killing children okay if it's not deliberate?

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#74

Post by Iv »

onion2k wrote: post #58
Iv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the political system in Chine does not collapse everyone should worry too. Because they are very quickly becoming the #1 economic power in the world and I really do not want to see them spreading their views on authoritarianism and citizens control. I am of a boring old school of thought that thinks democracy is a pretty cool system and that it should be preserved. I really hope the Chinese political system collap…

...I really do not want to see them spreading their views on authoritarianism and citizens control. Western nations have plenty of authoritarianism already. It's just more insidious and under the surface. For example, here in the UK there are CCTV cameras everywhere [1]. They're all linked up so the police can remotely follow citizens around towns, along roads, down motorways, etc. Every bus and train has CCTV on it.…

I knew some would whatabout.

Yes, of course there is plenty of other sources of authoritarianism. What does it have to do with the fact that China is promoting a pretty horrible system of it?

At least in UK and USA is it legal to be against those.

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#75

Post by Iv »

StreamBright wrote: post #52
Iv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the political system in Chine does not collapse everyone should worry too. Because they are very quickly becoming the #1 economic power in the world and I really do not want to see them spreading their views on authoritarianism and citizens control. I am of a boring old school of thought that thinks democracy is a pretty cool system and that it should be preserved. I really hope the Chinese political system collap…

The majority of recorded human history China was the #1 economic power though.

And?

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#76

Post by bakuninsbart »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #57
Animats wrote: post #42

The increase in pork prices is due to a swine fever epidemic that started in Liaoning province.[1] SCMP has a reasonably good article. China's huge boom is starting to level off. Down from 10%/yr to 7% a year. The US is under 3%/yr. That happened to all the "Asian tigers", as they caught up to the developed world. Its a long way from a recession. [1] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3020488/c...

The problem in China is that they're likely to get old before they get rich. China's GDP per capita is still only a quarter (or less) of Japan, Singapore or South Korea: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/japan

This is a really serious risk, but it is also important to consider that China isn't reallly one country. - Even internal migration is restricted.

If you look at cities like Shanghai, Nanjing or Beijing, there's a subtantial minority already basically living with western living standards. That number is still growing quickly.

Furthermore, China has little problem letting old people work longer - or potentially even implement pretty brutal policies regarding the elderly.

So while China is growing old very quickly, and this will slow down progress, I do not believe it will lead to a halting of progress.

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#77

Post by laughinghan »

franklingu wrote: post #31

Just another article of predicting that China is going to collapse -- these kind of articles have been popping up since 1991. China is just another big country with a lot of problems. So is US. Even if China is really going to collapse, what is in it for average people in the US or other countries? To prove that the democracy you believe is correct -- even if that means nearly all the people in the world will suffer…

Why 1991? Surely such articles predate 1991.

I'm not sure why you think writers at Bloomberg, a Wall Street-oriented outlet, represent average people in the US.

I'm also not sure why you think anyone would want China to collapse in order to "prove democracy correct", as if to win a bet. Democracy is a means to an end. "Average people" think that in China, though many people are doing great under the current system, there are also people not doing great, average people just like them, who are being oppressed, harassed for reading banned books, punished for criticizing party officials, put into re-education labor camps, even having their organs harvested, and they want that to stop. If China stopped all that tomorrow without collapsing, most people would be ecstatic about that. But they won't, and average people believe the best way to permanently stop that kind of thing is for everyone to get a voice and a vote in their government—indeed, for a hundred flowers to bloom, or 百花齐放, if you will.

Re: Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices

#80

Post by tarsinge »

As a French the amount of (bad) news regarding China on American websites I browse (hn, reddit, newspapers websites...) is really disturbing compared to home. I try to think rationally but the coincidence with the trade war is hard to ignore. As an outsider it looks like nothing has changed (China is a communist country, fresh news!) but suddenly the media is all over it.

The media pattern now is so obvious every time there are geopolitical tensions to justify a conflict that it's hard to ignore (please remember Irak).

I'm not a geopolitical expert, I really like Americans (obviously, otherwise I would not be on this site), but I don't understand how nobody notice this pattern, especially here.

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