7 ms·

The article is avoiding the elephant in the room: the lack of openness and information access is merely a consequence of having an illegitimate regime where eve

The article is avoiding the elephant in the room: the lack of openness and information access is merely a consequence of having an illegitimate regime where everything is ruled by coercion, corruption, and political connections. While you're there, if some company dumps chemicals in your backyard, somebody with a badge hounds you, or your employer refuses to pay you, good luck getting your day in court. They'd be doing this knowing they have rank and/or connections and you don't. There is no real rule of law in China. That makes it hard to be an attractive destination, regardless of how "hot" the local IT sector wants to look to the rest of the world. Especially these days, where a quiet but massive purge is under way, and the regime's current propaganda is to push a heavily racialist/manifest-destiny style narrative, as a "welcomed immigrant" not having Youtube access would be the least of your worries.

__derek__ 10y ago
What's striking about this description is that a number of would-be Western leaders seem to be looking at the situation and saying, "Wow, that looks great. I want my own."
- vtange 10y ago
  But can you blame them? For years China's mantra to the West was, "Look at how great our economy's doing! Look at how divided and problematic democracies can be, they are not even that much better than China on human rights! The 21st century is not for idealistic democracies but for China."
  - AJ007 10y ago
    Same story about Japan in the 80s, and quite honestly I think they did a far better job at managing their investment driven growth boom. China looks like a total disaster in comparison, and I'm pretty sure they are close to the end of their boom.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    > But can you blame them? Yes.
  - yvsong 10y ago
    I wonder how many have studied Herr Führer's record on German economy. The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism.
    - allendoerfer 10y ago
      Without those, we would also not have been on the moon.
    - kmicklas 10y ago
      > The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism. That's a bit misleading cause fascism is just inherently bad while communism has had some implementation problems.
      - woodandsteel 10y ago
        I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states, and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is basically an unworkable system. See, for instance, Hayek's argument on information and economic decision-making. In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened. Instead communism has always been installed through violence on the part of a small group or imposed from without, and usually in states that were not economically advanced.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states, and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is basically an unworkable system. All of those have been Leninism or its descendants, which break strongly from Marxism. Starting with the required starting conditions. > In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened. It's happened in basically all of the countries that were capitalist at the time, where capitalism (that is, the 19th century system that Marx was pointing to) has been overthrown (largely, through democratic means) due to opposition from the working class and replaced with the modern mixed economy which retains some of the basic structures of capitalism, but many features of socialism applied to directly to mitigate the effects of capitalism which can critics from the time the system was named have targeted. (Many of those sytems even call themselves socialist, and the rest of them are labelled that way by their capitalist critics.)
- mtgx 10y ago
  UK, especially, seems to want to rebuild itself in China's image (total surveillance from multiple levels of the government, censorship, etc).
1_2__3 10y ago
I'd say that's one of two elephants in the room, the other being rampant racism.
novaleaf 10y ago
> a consequence of having an illegitimate regime I'm not sure how you can claim that, unless you consider anything other than Direct Democracy to be illegitimate.

__derek__ 10y ago

What's striking about this description is that a number of would-be Western leaders seem to be looking at the situation and saying, "Wow, that looks great. I want my own."

vtange 10y ago
But can you blame them? For years China's mantra to the West was, "Look at how great our economy's doing! Look at how divided and problematic democracies can be, they are not even that much better than China on human rights! The 21st century is not for idealistic democracies but for China."
- AJ007 10y ago
  Same story about Japan in the 80s, and quite honestly I think they did a far better job at managing their investment driven growth boom. China looks like a total disaster in comparison, and I'm pretty sure they are close to the end of their boom.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > But can you blame them? Yes.
- yvsong 10y ago
  I wonder how many have studied Herr Führer's record on German economy. The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    Without those, we would also not have been on the moon.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    > The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism. That's a bit misleading cause fascism is just inherently bad while communism has had some implementation problems.
    - woodandsteel 10y ago
      I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states, and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is basically an unworkable system. See, for instance, Hayek's argument on information and economic decision-making. In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened. Instead communism has always been installed through violence on the part of a small group or imposed from without, and usually in states that were not economically advanced.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states, and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is basically an unworkable system. All of those have been Leninism or its descendants, which break strongly from Marxism. Starting with the required starting conditions. > In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened. It's happened in basically all of the countries that were capitalist at the time, where capitalism (that is, the 19th century system that Marx was pointing to) has been overthrown (largely, through democratic means) due to opposition from the working class and replaced with the modern mixed economy which retains some of the basic structures of capitalism, but many features of socialism applied to directly to mitigate the effects of capitalism which can critics from the time the system was named have targeted. (Many of those sytems even call themselves socialist, and the rest of them are labelled that way by their capitalist critics.)
mtgx 10y ago
UK, especially, seems to want to rebuild itself in China's image (total surveillance from multiple levels of the government, censorship, etc).

1_2__3 10y ago

I'd say that's one of two elephants in the room, the other being rampant racism.

novaleaf 10y ago

> a consequence of having an illegitimate regime I'm not sure how you can claim that, unless you consider anything other than Direct Democracy to be illegitimate.