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In China, an App About Xi Is Impossible to Ignore – Even If You Try
- j16sdiz 8y agoJust wait the score include in the social credit
- duxup 8y agoIt might not need to, employers are already using the scores.
- sgjohnson 8y agoWell, the regime knows that with increased economic liberty, the complete political control is not sustainable. Which is why they came up with the social credit system and this. It’s a desperation move. The Chinese aren’t stupid. The regime will fall sooner or later. They always do.
- xuki 8y agoThe west have been saying this for decades, and China just keep going, it's scary.
- sgjohnson 8y agoIt can’t keep happening forever. China has got an enormous debt and capital retention policy. Rich Chinese are running away from China despite their strict capital controls, and the money that they run away with occasionally comes from the Chinese government. It’s a timebomb. And you can’t have a capitalist economy while having a communist government. It’s a non sequitur.
- whoevercares 8y agoThey have been running away for years. In fact, many of their children are running back.
- mikeash 8y agoYou can have a capitalist economy with a non-democratic government. China’s government isn’t very communist these days.
- sgjohnson 8y agoYes, but again, you can’t have a capitalist economy with a government that wants to control your every move and the way you think.
- manfredo 8y agoSingapore has done pretty well, and they're definitely a democracy in name only. More of a "benevolent dictatorship". I suppose the Singaporean government doesn't try to control "your every move and way you think" but they do crack down hard on people that criticize the government in a substantial manner. A city-state probably has a much different kind of ruler-ruled relationship than one of the largest countries on the planet, though.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> You can have a capitalist economy with a non-democratic government. It's possible, but vanishingly rare, outside the sense in which non-Leninist/Maoist socialists describe Leninist/Maoist regimes as “state capitalist”, but while there is a case that that is a legitimate label, it mostly relies on “state capitalism” being a different-but-related system to traditional capitalism (which one might label “private capitalism”.) > China’s government isn’t very communist these days. China’s economic system is more like the form of corporatism found in fascism (whether the political system is otherwise fascist is a discussion for a different time) than either communism or capitalism, though if one subscribed to the idea that traditional Leninist/Maoist systems are “state capitalism”, that form of corporatism could be seen as a hybrid capitalism that shares elements of both state and private capitalism, but again that requires a broader-than-standard definition of capitalism, where the standard definition is specifically private capitalism.
- mikeash 8y ago
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- A2017U1 8y ago> enormous debt 253%, 105% and 48% debt to gdp in the world's 3 biggest economies. Guess who's who. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-t... https://tradingeconomics.com/china/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/china/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to-gdp
- ericd 8y agoYou should probably include private sector debt, not just public. I've seen figures that range from 266% to over 500%, depending on whether you include shadow banking and correct the official GDP figures for inaccuracies that researchers have uncovered.
- chongli 8y agoIt took the West centuries to achieve what China has done in a few decades. The change has been so rapid that Chinese culture hasn't caught up to it. Wait a few more generations and we'll see what happens. The capital flight is only the tip of the iceberg.
- abecedarius 8y agoIn antiquity, the package of democracy and economic growth seemed to be outcompeting the other systems for a substantial period. (https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10423.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10423.html) It's folly to think victory is inevitable when history includes the opposite.
- dqpb 8y agoTrump should make an app. You score points by being the best MAGA centipede-army shit-posting internet troll.
- duxup 8y ago>Schools are shaming students with low app scores. Government offices are holding study sessions and forcing workers who fall behind to write reports criticizing themselves. Private companies, hoping to curry favor with party officials, are ranking employees based on their use of the app and awarding top performers the title of “star learner.” >Many employers now require workers to submit daily screenshots documenting how many points they have earned. That is some scary stuff. They don't need to integrate it into the social credit system if employers use it and give them the same results.
- emmelaich 8y ago> forcing workers who fall behind to write reports criticizing themselves The struggle session returns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session Scary indeed. Imagine a China as tightly controlled as NK but far far more powerful.
- Razengan 8y agoCould we hinder them by not making the tools that enable them to do that?
- crowbahr 8y agoWhat control does the west have over their tools? They write the software themselves. They make the devices themselves. The West has 0 leverage.
- Razengan 8y agoWell, in TFA, the app in question is distributed via Apple’s & Google's app stores.
- est31 8y agoIf Apple took that app down, they'd disappear in the blink of an eye. Doesn't make it right to keep it up but they have no power whatsoever. It's the basic dilemma in any authoritarian society: do you want to protect your values or yourself. Choose one, and often you get neither. Being able to protect both is a luxury.
- whatshisface 8y agoAmerica will learn a lesson from this. Let's hope the lesson is "never do this," not "hey, it works."
- kome 8y agocredit score is already a reality in the US, and to my european perspective, that's already aberrant: it's a systematic violation of privacy, and often it's used in fields that have nothing to do with credit, like renting or for hiring. Chinese gov is just perfecting the tool.
- viraptor 8y agoCredit scores exist and are checked in (most of?) Europe as well. Why do you think it's a US thing? It's true that it's not as pervasive, but the bigger the city, the bigger impact it has on renting and other activities.
- duxup 8y agoCredit scores are nothing like the social credit system. I feel like people try so hard to find parallels they minimize systems that are far more evil.
- caprese 8y agoI always get basically ostracized for pointing out that China even copied our No-Fly List, now I’m being mostly facetious criticizing the fact we have one and making fun of how China copies things But Its met with a weird “but hey OUR version was good!” because only people named Muhammad would get accidentally found on the list My world is a lot more collaborative so all parties can be criticized, I dont live in a world where I have to choose sides
- linkregister 8y agoWhere on HN do you see anyone supporting the No Fly List's extremely poor execution? Or even the list's existence at all?
- rorykoehler 8y ago>“President Xi has a dream of great renaissance,” he said. “When young people are strong, the nation is strong.” Ironic that the very existence of this phenomenon is a show of weakness.
- whoevercares 8y agoEnlighten us why?
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- nabla9 8y agoUh. Gamified propaganda app where the score partially determines your score in real life. We know in the west that new ways to communicate have unseen negative consequences. I think there is real danger that stressing people like this backfires spectacularly against Xi at some point.
- whatshisface 8y agoNorth Korea is a relatively stable situation despite sharing many things with China's present direction. I don't expect anybody to revolt, instead the leaders will prioritize power over economic growth in every decision until there is no economy and barely enough agriculture to feed the army.
- whoevercares 8y agotai niubi le
- libpcap 8y ago>Many employers now require workers to submit daily screenshots documenting how many points they have earned. What a hassle.
- Rexxar 8y agoCould this have a negative impact on productivity if people spend too many time on it ?
- qlk1123 8y agoFrom the aspect of psychological warfare(1), however, it is hard for Chinese to "feel" this is weird or dystopian, given all the inconvenience. One does complain about the party or Xi if he has guts, but at the end of the day, he may still believe the policies are necessary for national security. This sounds just like an example of biased sample fallacy, so I ask you to do this experiment with your Chinese friends. See if they criticize CCP or Xi and what their judgement about the policies are. (1) As the frontier of democracy, Taiwan suffers from all kinds of attack from China every day, from physical to cyber ones. To counter that, a retired military officer wrote a series of blogs(2) to mentor all Taiwanese the right ways to fight psychological warfare against China. The main donts is exactly "don't criticize CCP or Xi ... it has no or even negative effects." (2) The title of the series is somehow pessimistic: "Lost without a Fight: On Cross-Strait Psychological Warfare." All written in Traditional Chinese: https://www.thenewslens.com/article/105952 https://www.thenewslens.com/article/105952
- jhallenworld 8y ago>The app makes the party’s messages difficult to ignore, awarding points only when an article has been read completely and a video has been watched for at least three minutes. What's funny is that you need to do similar things when working in large US corporations. In some you have aggravating HR training videos, in others you have actual personality cults.
- abecedarius 8y agoSo Snow Crash's toilet paper memo is real life now. (https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html) Somehow I didn't expect that to be one of the first bits to be realized.
- linkregister 8y agoThis isn't because anyone in the company necessarily cares, it's to ensure they've taken appropriate measures to demonstrate that you've received the training. Then when an employee breaks the law, e.g. sexual harassment, then the company avoids liability. I'm sure there are companies where what you say is true, but it is certainly not the norm in most U.S. firms.
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- iliketosleep 8y agoSome Chinese have already found a way to circumvent this app, by downloading a program from Github that will automatically watch the videos and complete the quizzes for them. It no secret, and ironically comes up as the first search result on google when you type in the app name (xuexiqiangguo). For those who search it, the name of the github repo does indeed start with the letter "f". Chinese readers will enjoy the comments in the Issues section - there's some interesting debate and also shows evidence of the cat and mouse game that people are playing with authorities.
- samblr 8y agoSaid link : https://github.com/fuck-xuexiqiangguo/Fuck-XueXiQiangGuo/issues https://github.com/fuck-xuexiqiangguo/Fuck-XueXiQiangGuo/iss...
- iliketosleep 8y agoYes, that's the one.
- _bxg1 8y agoThis kind of thing gives me hope. China's communist party is ignorant and terrifying, but to a great extent its people seem unwilling to simply roll over for authoritarianism, and display ingenuity in their efforts to circumvent it. Westerners would be wise to help those people out in any way possible, through technology or otherwise.
- AFascistWorld 8y agoMost of these people just want some slack, there's a reason their jobs are the most sought after in China, easy and often with high benefits, some even allocate cheap condo that can save them hundreds of thousands of dollars if the city is big. In essence they are the ones the party needs to somewhat pander to, coz the party relies on them.
- iliketosleep 8y agoPeople didn't mind the authoritarianism so much when the government took a pragmatic approach to governance and people's lives were improving. But now they've gone back to putting ideology at the forefront, like Mao did. People in Western countries can help by pressuring large corporations and governments not to pander to China.
- mikeash 8y ago“The state-run news media teems with glowing reviews of the app, including stories about diligent hospital workers and kindergarten teachers who open Study the Great Nation as soon as they awaken, even before they drink water or go to the bathroom.” How many Americans check Facebook or Twitter before they get out of bed on the morning? It’s interesting to see how things are framed when they come out of China. Maybe this app is as bad as it seems, but things like the above quote make me wonder.
- jorblumesea 8y agoHow many Americans are forced by the government to check Twitter or Facebook? Is Twitter or Facebook 100% pro government information? The article made it clear that this is a form of forced brainwashing. It's really not even close to equivalent.
- mikeash 8y agoThe whole thing certainly is not equivalent, but I’m picking out this particular paragraph because it describes something that many of us do as if it were nefarious. How many of the other things described are like that? How much of this article is reporting the facts, and how much is it painting a picture?
- jorblumesea 8y ago> How many of the other things described are like that? How many western news media devices track your participation and score it to report to the government? Do you feel pressure to open up Twitter and say good things about the govt? Not really sure what your point is, there's no western equivalent for this app and making any kind of comparison to any social media network is silly. It sounds like this app itself is nefarious in its intent and scope, and should be described in such terms.
- the_fonz 8y agoIf the sentiment you express in Western social media is political and outside of the manufactured consent, you are very likely to be put on one of the many American watchlists with millions of other people and systematically-harassed at US borders. This sucks but is the way Western, corporate, imperialist, inverted totalitarianism works.
- thinkloop 8y agoIt seems the authorities are clamping down: "We're sorry, but this URL is not supported by outline.com"
- thatmagic 8y agoAs I know, this situation is just happened around the members of civil servant and staff in the state-owned enterprise by now. Others just use it for free online courses.
- woodandsteel 8y agoEven if you are right, that's an enormous number of people.
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- ttflee 8y agoAfter recent updates that hided detailed scores and ranks from other member in the same 'group', unsurprisingly, the competition for higher score ranks stopped.
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- jessaustin 8y agoI had thought they would call it the "Little Red Smartphone App".
- steveneo 8y agoReally disgusting. China is on the road to 1984. A fact is, Xi only has a middle school degree...
- mshahi8210 8y agoThis is scary. In India, we too have similar app based on our Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, and the app is called as Namo App. On the other hand, The DTH providers have also launched a dedicated channel on him, known as Namo TV.
- plibither8 8y agoThis is completely different from the NaMo app. The use of the Chinese app is compulsary for many to teach themselves about Xi's ideology and propaganda. They gamify this by scoring the "player" and placing them on a leaderboard. The scores they receive on this app most probably are and will directly or indirectly affect their actual social credit scores. That is dystopic. The NaMo app/television channel is just mode of communicate to the larger mass regarding the party's ideas and news updates.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoChina is maybe jumping the shark, stuff like this has to be a material productivity and motivation killer. The 'central control' thing seemed to be working there for a while for a few decades, I wonder if we're seeing the end of the 'golden leap' what with lower growth, problems abroad, and internal shenanigans like this. I also wonder how many Chinese actually 'get this' program, and how many see through it for what it is. It's one thing to have bits of propaganda into film and TV, it's another thing altogether to force people to do some 'daily shenanigan'.
- chaostheory 8y agoEven after all these years, China still has a penchant for emperors
- aaron695 8y agoHun Sen the authoritarian leader in Cambodia also has his own app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kh.gov.samdechhunsen.spm https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kh.gov.samdech... I guess most dictators do? Taking it to the next level of making the populace play is interesting, but apps for dictators is interesting in itself. Xuexi Qiangguo apk - https://partyoa.xuexi.cn/app/download?app=xuexi&client=android https://partyoa.xuexi.cn/app/download?app=xuexi&client=andro... https://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/%E5%AD%A6%E4%B9%A0%E5%BC%BA%E5%9B%BD/id1426355645?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/%E5%AD%A6%E4%B9%A0%E5%BC%BA%...
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- baybal2 8y agoThe little red book 2.0. Times change fast...
- tibbydudeza 8y agoA modern take on Mao's little red book and the Red Guards. This is not going to end well.