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Powerful ad. My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes

• rossenberg79 8y ago
  As westerners I feel this is natural to think, and makes sense to us, but having been in China several times I'm not so sure. The value systems in Asia are far different, and people are much more collective where as we are a more individualist society with different thoughts about individual freedom. I doubt China could have become as strong as it is today without it's long history of authoritarian regimes, and I feel that many in China believe this to be true. The growing dissent may not be a sign of what's to come but may simply be the growing pains of a totalitarian regime moving into the 21st century. I do not agree with Chinese government but I never underestimate it. There are some smart people working to keep over a billion people under control and productive, and I'm sure they will ultimately find a way that keeps them like that, and can be accepted by it's citizens.
  • spectramax 8y ago
    This is not a very compelling argument - "They're different from us, therefore we are not in a position to comment." There is a tremendous understanding, analysis and comprehension of totalitarianism in the west. Even in popular culture, say 1984 by George Orwell.
    • jononor 8y ago
      The argument was not that they are different, but that they are more collectively minded and put less value in "individual freedom". Totalitarianism seems an obviously bad thing wrt to individual freedom, but if that is not so important, it may not matter as much as we westerners think it should.
      • mirimir 8y ago
        Well, maybe they're "more collectively minded" because they've been living under totalitarian regimes for millennia. And even if we accept (which I do) that some Western-style society is better, getting there would be hugely nontrivial. In particular, getting there would arguably involve considerable chaos. And so it's not that hard for those in control to play on people's fears about that. After all, Westerners have tried to impose democracy on China before, and it didn't work out very well. Back in the 60s, China was on track to be North Korea times 10^4 to 10^6. But Kissinger managed to convince Nixon to intervene in a constructive and noninvasive way. That clearly has worked, so what we need is arguably to stay on that track. On the other hand, isolating South Africa arguably did hasten the end of Apartheid. And if China undertakes full-on genocide against the Uyghurs, that may be the only moral path. But orders of magnitude more dangerous. And when we add global climate change to the mix, it'll be insane.
        • AvocadoPanic 8y ago
          South Africa really the best example of a 'successful' intervention?
          • mirimir 8y ago
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  • yongjik 8y ago
    As a Korean I absolutely disagree. Korea has embraced Chinese philosophy in the past, sometimes to such a degree that it was more Confucian than China itself. Yet South Koreans are as zealous about democracy as any western nation. In fact, there was a time when our own dictator and his followers used exactly the same argument, saying that "Western Democracy" does not fit Asia's unique culture, and we should instead implement "Korean Style Democracy", i.e., authoritarianism. I view them as traitors of our own country and our own culture. In fact, one of the core tenets of Confucianism is that the monarch is not an absolute ruler but is bound by moral duty. As a classical Confucian text says: 君者舟也, 庶人者水也, 水則載舟, 水則覆舟. "The monarch is a boat, and people are the water. Water floats the boat, but water also sinks the boat."
    • why_only_15 8y ago
      That's a fantastic quote. Thanks for sharing it.
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  • true_religion 8y ago
    > As westerners Are the actions of the current Chinese dictatorship praised or at least scene as normal by Koreans, Japanese, or Taiwanese? No. The culture of repression, and a hair trigger to stamp out any unfavorable comment on a regime is a sign of bad governance. Where will it end? Ten years ago, it was safe to criticize the actions of the regime, so long as you accepted that the government as a whole legitimate. Now you can no longer criticize the top-level, as its just one man. Will this trickle down till no one can speak ill of the government at all, lest they be seen as speaking ill of its dictator?
• dontbenebby 8y ago
  >My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes in the past. Isn't that what happened in the referenced photo? And the regime murdered the protesters and put in place a draconian censorship system to avoid it happening again.
  • arcticbull 8y ago
    Yes, although, the thing about failure and success is that you can have an unbounded number of failures but you only need one success.
• paulsutter 8y ago
  It’s tempting to think we have x-ray vision into the true narrative of world events, but isn’t that a little naive?
• fpoling 8y ago
  Totalitarian regime in North Korea seems pretty stable after 70 years. Ancient Egypt was extremely totalitarian regime yet its worst period lasted centuries.
  • pmlnr 8y ago
    Don't compare 3000BC to internet times.
    • kibwen 8y ago
      You're right, once science has advanced to the point where human lifetimes can be arbitrarily extended, totalitarian regimes will never need to experience the trauma of power transfer, and will continue without end forever.
      • vbezhenar 8y ago
        Another factor is surveillance. Government state in first-world countries can spy over every citizen right now with millions of video cameras and cellphones, finding outliers with big data technologies and AI algorithms. So-called terrorists. Third-world countries don't possess those technologies yet, but they are coming and probably will rent software (so first-world countries will have even more data outside of their borders). I can't imagine how someone would organize protests under real totalitarian control, when every step is recorded and you can't hide. They will be arrested pretty soon. So 21-century will allow totalitarian regimes to thrive, unless they are not friends with closer supercountry, in that case of course they will be overthrown and replaced with loyal ones.
• jccalhoun 8y ago
  Honestly, the few times I've tried to bring it up with Chinese students at USA universities they have all been blasé about it. They have all been, "that's just the way it is." That could be because they just don't want to talk about it. Or because they are mostly from rich families and so they really don't care. Or only kids from loyal families are allowed to go to school overseas.
  • dforrestwilson 8y ago
    I have asked many as well. I believe it is partly cultural pressure to conform, but mostly because they all have family back in China still and care about what happens to them. I have also heard, but have not been able to verify, that any Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party.
    • helloindia 8y ago
      "Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party." . The chinese international students in US, have to become member of the Chinese Students Association. The association is a front for the Chinese govt via their Embassy to monitor the students. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/14/exclusive-chinese-government-gave-money-to-georgetown-chinese-student-group-washington-china-communist-party-influence/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/14/exclusive-chinese-gover...
    • yogenpro 8y ago
      > that any Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party Not true. Being a Chinese student who studied in the US in the past, I never joined, or was asked to join the Communist Party. In fact, the majority of Chinese students in the US that I know are not Communist Party members. A passport (and a valid visa) is all you need to go abroad.
  • nitrogen 8y ago
    I wonder if a comparison to how US students would react to mentions of Kent State or Rodney King or OWS would be enlightening. There's obviously a big difference in severity, but given student opposition to some of the fubdamentals of freedom of speech in recent years, maybe we can learn what cultural differences and commonalities drive state- and self-censorship and thus better address the root problems.
• Veen 8y ago
  The West is the outlier here. Most of the world has lived under dictatorships for most of history. China is a millenia-old civilization that has never been a democracy. The current regime may fall, but it is not written in the universe that it will progress towards anything resembling a Western democracy. If I were playing the odds, I'd put money on democracy failing in the west rather than it rising in China in the next century.
  • lvs 8y ago
    The West was never a democracy until it suddenly was one. Heads rolled.
    • Zuider 8y ago
      Heads rolled in France, but that lead to the totalitarian Jacobin regime. Across the channel in Britain, democracy had been growing slowly since the signing of the Magna Carta began the process of subjecting power to the rule of law, divesting the monarch of the claim to absolute power and distributing that power among institutions such as parliament.
    • vl 8y ago
      "Never" is an overstatement, since both Rome and Greece had some forms of democracy.
  • Symmetry 8y ago
    That's true but most of the people who have lived have been relatively poor and ignorant. Empirically, there seems to be a transition point in development where democracy goes from making a country less stable to making it more stable and I've actually forgotten exactly what the level was but China will be past it soon if it isn't already. I really have to re-read Wars, Guns, and Votes.
    • Faark 8y ago
      > Empirically, there seems to be a transition point in development where democracy goes from making a country less stable to making it more stable Even if that was the case for now (lets say e.g. reading or education made the masses harder to oppress), this doesn't mean other developments cannot outperform those effects in a different direction. Especially social media is a recent invention that seems to put a lot of power into the hands of very few. So far they don't seem to wield that power to drastically shape politics of our societies. At least not intentionally. But keeping it this way will be hard, since they either do something to prevent headlines like "A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military" or have them attract the wrong kind of investor. Actually, the latter is probably impossible to avoid long-term, if the US broadcasting industry is something to go by. The rising political divide in the US is an interesting upcoming case study. I don't see a lot that could revert course, so it will probably end as an anecdote for "less stable". The current US existing for that long is still a remarkable achievement. But we better use the knowledge we gain, since technological progress has made it unacceptable to have our societal systems become unstable every once in a while and needing to be reset violently.
• walshemj 8y ago
  The fall of Ceaușescu or going back further Robespierre being two examples
• rdtsc 8y ago
  > My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes in the past. I think the 1989 incident was such an event. It almost boiled over. But what happened is that regime learned from its mistakes and it learned to control its temperature better i.e. introduced market economy. They've sort of made this pact with the people "you don't ask us about what happened in 1989, but in exchange you get to participate in world's capitalist economy". Another sad realization could be that capitalism and democracy don't really have to coexist. It seemed for a while that democracy would follow after enough prosperity and market economy took over. But it hasn't happened in China. And we might be surprised that capitalism might even work better under a totalitarian regime.
• eridius 8y ago
  *great people