6 ms·

I'd propose that a free press is not a binary thing. Sure, by definition, if all we care about is government censorship and intimidation, China's press is not f

by z2 10y ago

I'd propose that a free press is not a binary thing. Sure, by definition, if all we care about is government censorship and intimidation, China's press is not free. But if we want to see the root issue of good quality, comprehensive, bias-free news, most media (at least in the US according to the following study) fails the test [0]. That said, are you suggesting that highly-correlated, anecdotal evidence of having more wealth, better quality social services, and not currently suffering in a retrogressive cultural revolution can't be trusted because there is no free press to tell people that their quality of living is definitely trending upwards? 0: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/2637/MeasureMediaBias.pdf https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/26...

marcosdumay 10y ago
It is certainly not a binary thing. But as the saying goes, a big enough quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference. The US government can not lie too much about the US wealth. Somebody would immediately call the lie, and people would become mad. Even here at Brazil, that scales way lower on press freedom, the government can not lie about any objective measure of wealth (but has extensive lies about subjective ones). The Chinese government seems to lie about their numbers every single time - everybody just discounts them by now, but there is no reason to assume the official numbers have even the correct signal. And yes, I'm saying exactly that. People there have no way of knowing if for anybody they see progressing in life there isn't a dozen other having their life ruined, because those later dozen are invisible.
- PakG1 10y ago
  People there have no way of knowing if for anybody they see progressing in life there isn't a dozen other having their life ruined, because those later dozen are invisible. If you want to make claims, you better have evidence to back it up. Because what people experience in China is a significant increase of quality of life at all levels. Yes, the income inequality is huge. Yes, a huge amount of wealth is generated by capitalists on the backs of factory workers. That doesn't mean that the poor are worse off than they were before. Lifting tide truly lifts all boats in China. Yes, there are significant suspicions that China lies about its numbers. That doesn't change the seeing eye test that people in China are way better off than they were 10 years ago. I know a girl who moved to Shenzhen at 16 years old to join a factory. She's approaching 30 now, just finished her university degree, and has a career in advertising. She started out as an uneducated country girl. Her story is common. Those who never make it out of the factory? Fact of the matter is, their quality of life is still better than if they did something else. The book Factory Girls by Leslie Chang is an incredibly insightful look into the lives of these people. An incompetent government turns its potential into garbage. See Argentina, Brazil, India, and others. Each of those countries could be so much farther than they are, but they shot themselves in the foot due to corruption, poor economic planning, and poor infrastructure planning. China started at the same starting line as many of them. I remember attending the Asia Pacific AmCham thingy in Beijing in 2010. The big story was how India was the future poised for becoming the big story. Here we are seven years later with India still treading water in the same place it was before due to political deadlock and corruption. But as the saying goes, a big enough quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference. As such, it's possible to verify whether or not things are working. Whether or not things will last, that's a completely different story that's yet to be told. I'll admit my own prediction is that China's problems are too big for any human institution to solve, it will likely implode. But that's neither here nor there regarding this topic if we're comparing past to present, given the complexity of their problems.
  - muglug 10y ago
    Quality of life has risen all around the world. That alone is not a solid argument of a government's soundness. That same system of government killed more than 30 million people during the Chinese famine.
    - PakG1 10y ago
      What do I have to do to get you to understand that I give respect to today's Chinese government, not Mao's Chinese government? Even inside China, all the Chinese people I know acknowledge that Mao had crazy and stupid ideas, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    > That doesn't mean that the poor are worse off than they were before How do you know? Honest question. Who's done and published those statistics?
    - PakG1 10y ago
      Seeing Eye Test. I go and volunteer regularly in remote poor villages in multiple provinces to help run little camps for kids, including orphans, in my spare time. I talk with these people. I listen to what they tell me. I see how they live.

by z2 10y ago

marcosdumay 10y ago

It is certainly not a binary thing. But as the saying goes, a big enough quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference. The US government can not lie too much about the US wealth. Somebody would immediately call the lie, and people would become mad. Even here at Brazil, that scales way lower on press freedom, the government can not lie about any objective measure of wealth (but has extensive lies about subjective ones). The Chinese government seems to lie about their numbers every single time - everybody just discounts them by now, but there is no reason to assume the official numbers have even the correct signal. And yes, I'm saying exactly that. People there have no way of knowing if for anybody they see progressing in life there isn't a dozen other having their life ruined, because those later dozen are invisible.

PakG1 10y ago
People there have no way of knowing if for anybody they see progressing in life there isn't a dozen other having their life ruined, because those later dozen are invisible. If you want to make claims, you better have evidence to back it up. Because what people experience in China is a significant increase of quality of life at all levels. Yes, the income inequality is huge. Yes, a huge amount of wealth is generated by capitalists on the backs of factory workers. That doesn't mean that the poor are worse off than they were before. Lifting tide truly lifts all boats in China. Yes, there are significant suspicions that China lies about its numbers. That doesn't change the seeing eye test that people in China are way better off than they were 10 years ago. I know a girl who moved to Shenzhen at 16 years old to join a factory. She's approaching 30 now, just finished her university degree, and has a career in advertising. She started out as an uneducated country girl. Her story is common. Those who never make it out of the factory? Fact of the matter is, their quality of life is still better than if they did something else. The book Factory Girls by Leslie Chang is an incredibly insightful look into the lives of these people. An incompetent government turns its potential into garbage. See Argentina, Brazil, India, and others. Each of those countries could be so much farther than they are, but they shot themselves in the foot due to corruption, poor economic planning, and poor infrastructure planning. China started at the same starting line as many of them. I remember attending the Asia Pacific AmCham thingy in Beijing in 2010. The big story was how India was the future poised for becoming the big story. Here we are seven years later with India still treading water in the same place it was before due to political deadlock and corruption. But as the saying goes, a big enough quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference. As such, it's possible to verify whether or not things are working. Whether or not things will last, that's a completely different story that's yet to be told. I'll admit my own prediction is that China's problems are too big for any human institution to solve, it will likely implode. But that's neither here nor there regarding this topic if we're comparing past to present, given the complexity of their problems.
- muglug 10y ago
  Quality of life has risen all around the world. That alone is not a solid argument of a government's soundness. That same system of government killed more than 30 million people during the Chinese famine.
  - PakG1 10y ago
    What do I have to do to get you to understand that I give respect to today's Chinese government, not Mao's Chinese government? Even inside China, all the Chinese people I know acknowledge that Mao had crazy and stupid ideas, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
- euyyn 10y ago
  > That doesn't mean that the poor are worse off than they were before How do you know? Honest question. Who's done and published those statistics?
  - PakG1 10y ago
    Seeing Eye Test. I go and volunteer regularly in remote poor villages in multiple provinces to help run little camps for kids, including orphans, in my spare time. I talk with these people. I listen to what they tell me. I see how they live.