Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by roenxi » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

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…

It is difficult to name a country that has "defeated" COVID. This video is from one of the best responses if you believe the lies the Chinese government pumps out about their COVID case counts. The situation today remains the same as the situation in March 2020 - anyone who doesn't die quickly of other causes is going to get COVID. The only surprise the entire way through the pandemic is they managed to rush a vaccine into mass production in ~12 months rather than a couple of years (very much a record!).

Even with that good news the damage from the lockdowns may not have been worth it, the world is re-emerging into a rather unstable environment with a lot of nervous people that looks ripe for WWIII. It is debatable whether the government interventions were actually a good idea, we don't have the full picture of what the costs were. I'd still rather have seen them pushing out honest, current information and then letting individuals make decisions for better or worse.

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

#72

Post by woutr_be » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:42 AM UTC

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.

Out of experience in Hong Kong, this is exactly what happened. People weren't afraid of testing positive, they were afraid of being taken away to a poorly maintained quarantine facility for two weeks. Even your close contacts would be quarantined for two weeks, making it so that many people (unsurprisingly) lied about who they met, or where they went.

For people, who live paycheck to paycheck, this would essentially destroy their livelihoods. They would be out of money (since they won't get paid for weeks), could potentially not feed their families, and are at risk of losing their jobs.

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

#73

Post by jollybean » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

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 think the opposite: that China is a powder keg ready to go off at any moment - and the leaders know it very well and are generally pretty afraid of things blowing up.

There are a lot of protests in China we don't hear about.

Something about Chinese (in China) ... leads me to think they go big on memes. They revolt unlike anything we know of.

Do you remember the video form Feb 2020 in Wuhan? The madness, hospitals flooded?

Imagine all over China.

As long as the economy is steaming forward, people will look the other way.

But as soon as that starts to slow down, then I think it's going to get hot.

Edit, for my naysayers:

"The number of workers' strikes rose to a record level in 2015. The China Labor Bulletin mentioned 2,509 strikes and protests by workers and employees in China."

That's just labour disputes and doesn't include disputes concerning appropriated land, safety issues with products - i.e. the kinds of things where there's some tolerance for dissent. [1] And note that it's increasing every year.

Especially due to the power of Social Media, if China didn't have censorship the CCP would be out within months. They are well aware of this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China

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

#74

Post by jnsaff2 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:53 AM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #67

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.

More like totalitarianism, that all well known communist systems have also been more or less totalitarian is something to think about tho.

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

#75

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

AustrianChina wrote: post #66

thaumasiotes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That's not really relevant to who takes the blame, is it?

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

#76

Post by alephnan » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:03 AM UTC

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…

> They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship

China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades.

> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.

Since we’re talking counter evidence:

- Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship - Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizens to be model minorities, and most of the orderliness or Japan is because of cultural reasons. Additionally, people are expected to not make mistakes.

America does have other ways it recognizes and adapts to human flaws: by embracing the free market. Adam Smith’s wealth of nations mentioned it not out of altruism, but selfishness that everyone thrives.

It’s not entirely attributable to democracy. In fact, many are arguing to remove the electoral college. A popular vote would be more Democratic in the Ancient Greek sense no? But our founder fathers designed America against that, to prevent tyranny of the masses.

> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.

This is not uniquely America or contemporary. Any great past civilization accounted for this if it lasted for a long time.

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

#77

Post by earthbee » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:05 AM UTC

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…

They did take it down, and people reuploaded it, flipped or rotated or with minor edits, and those got deleted too, and more people uploaded it, and those got deleted, and even more reuploaded it

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

#78

Post by bobthepanda » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #51

langsoul-com wrote: post #44

Numbers from China always seem outrageous, 400 million views? It's lik there's too many zeroes added.

It's a big country.

That's like a third of the population of China.

To put that in perspective, the fastest video on Youtube to reach 500M was Adele's Hello in 34 days, and that was the entire global internet.

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

#79

Post by throwaway4good » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:11 AM UTC

For context - Shanghai is reporting around 50 COVID deaths per day at the moment:

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393...

Shanghai adds 51 new deaths from Covid-19, takes total toll to 138 amid rise in symptomatic cases

City reports rise in new symptomatic cases to 2,472, while total new infections amounted to 19,455 in the previous 24 hours, a slight decline

Local health authorities in Beijing say the virus has been spreading undetected in the city for about a week

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

#80

Post by throwawaytucker » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:13 AM UTC

jnsaff2 wrote: post #74

rapsey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More like totalitarianism, that all well known communist systems have also been more or less totalitarian is something to think about tho.

This is not an accident. In 1888 (long before any socialist or communist country existed to validate the theory), the American socialist Benjamin tucker predicted that the Marxist form of socialism and it's derivates would necessarily lead to totalitarianism, with some eerily prescient predictions born out by the experiences in Venezuela, Cuba, china, USSR, etc.

If anyone claims that state socialism will have any other outcome (assuming they believe in science the process of prediction and confirmation) then it's on them to explicitly explain what, exactly, in their proposed implementation diverges from Tucker's model that would make their vision of state socialism turn out differently.