6 ms·

China has a lot of retail politics, it's just in the context of a single-party system. They're able to do a lot of things quickly, but principal–agent problems

China has a lot of retail politics, it's just in the context of a single-party system. They're able to do a lot of things quickly, but principal–agent problems remain and there is a ton of corruption. Local party cadres are under a ton of pressure and frequently use overly large carrots and sticks to get stuff done. This isn't very efficient. You don't need to be super efficient when you're a developing country, but China is solidly middle-income. The things you need to do to go from 0 to 1 will eventually hurt you, and from their slowing GDP growth it's clear that it's already doing that.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
In terms of corruption the US is no different.
- ha470 7y ago
  Having lived in both India and China for some time, I can assure you that the scale and magnitude is completely different.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    I agree. The corruption in china is more explicit. While the corruption in the US goes through more official channels. It's harder to perceive in the united states. I would argue the net effect is similar though: The more money you have the more influence you have.
    - alehul 7y ago
      When someone says "the scale and magnitude is completely different," they aren't referring to "explicit." I know plenty of people from China who have talked about the crazy levels of corruption there. Some are related to those in power, and they've said it very much goes through 'official channels.'
      - crimsonalucard 7y ago
        That's what I mean. From another angle, the corruption is the same it's just more visible in China. People in general know about the corruption in China. How obvious is the corruption in america? Not obvious at all it's sort of ephermal. How corrupt was dick cheney?
        analognoise 7y ago
        You know about his corruption. You are able to say bad things about a man who reportedly had a "kill squad" online, without ending up "missing" or being"re-educated", and you think the levels of corruption are the same in China and the US? ... seriously? /Edit: America isn't perfect, I'll give whoever that. But the defeatist equivalence shit has to stop. We are working on it. We won't stop working on it. We can always do better. Pick up a shovel and help, rather than "lol we're as bad as {place} because {thing}."
        crimsonalucard 7y ago
        Then why isn't Dick Cheney arrested? It's known in a vague sense, not in a more definitive sense like it's known in China. In China it's like we all know. In the US things like Dark Money and bribery and lobbying and monopolies are all a sort of an ephermal fact rather than a fact of life like it is in China. My argument is underneath all that the US and China are the same in terms of the volume of corruption.
        wnscooke 7y ago
        People don’t seem to understand this difference you highlight. They could try going to China and saying the same things publicly.... _then_ they’d realize how different the two places are.
        analognoise 7y ago
        I just assume the people who are saying they're the same are either 1) Russian trolls or 2) very naive. There aren't really any other options.
- sgregnt 7y ago
  Strong opinions require strong evidence. CPI index (corruption perception index) places USA on 22nd place while China is way down on the 89th place.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - soperj 7y ago
    Depends where you are in China. Hong Kong is 14th on that same list.
    - alehul 7y ago
      You mean the autonomous territory of Hong Kong? We'll see if Hong Kong stays at 14th as it loses said autonomy to authoritarian China. :)
      - soperj 7y ago
        What's it a territory of?
        alehul 7y ago
        Assuming you're genuine: China, since 1997! It was really the last remnant of the British Empire according to historians. Some of the Hong Kong population (younger especially) wants to be an independent state, but China wants to integrate it, and is slowly sapping it of its famous liberal policies and freedoms.
- Latteland 7y ago
  The US isn't in the same league. We have independent and trustworthy federal police (the fbi). They are under attack by the president but they are more trustworthy than I ever realized in general. I don't see political investigations of opponents of the govt, like happens commonly in China. I don't see endemic corruption.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    ^ I totally agree with your take, but I think it's worth noting that we really could lose these things. I'm hopeful the current administration is an aberration and we'll return to some degree of normalcy in the future, regardless of which party is in power. But if we don't, institutions like the FBI will eventually erode as well.
  - factsaresacred 7y ago
    > They are under attack by the president Individuals within the FBI that were revealed to have intent to plot against/subvert the President were criticized in tweets. The FBI is not under attack.
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      He literally called the Mueller investigation a coup the other day, which it was not.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  If you believe corruption is only binary, then yes. If you believe corruption is a degree, then they are pretty far off in scale. The Chinese government doesn’t believe in rule of law or checks and balances, leaving lots of room for unchecked abuses.
- throw2016 7y ago
  These issues need discussion in a neutral venue. China is not a model of anything but given the intense debate in the US about the systemic corruption of the lobbying system pointing fingers at others as if corruption is somehow unique to 'other countries' seems cognitive dissonance. Political corruption is the single biggest source of corruption in most countries which is done officially in the US. Just because you make something 'legal' doesn't suddenly make it any less corrupt. The 2008 banking crisis revealed massive levels of fraud, collusion and corruption in the banking system and the bailouts with 'too big to fail' betray something even more deep seated and systemic. There is a huge problem of revolving doors across industries with regulators getting hired by the companies they were regulating and politicians getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches. There is a well documented history of corruption in banking, real estate, pharma, energy and multiple other sectors and we have even seen this entering education. Most commentators know about the widespread corruption in their countries but there is weird dissonance and finger pointing making any kind of informed discussion impossible.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    Yeah I agree. Adding to that, there's a sort of nationalistic competition driving the bias as well. The united states was top dog in terms of GDP, the trend towards china unseating that throne in the coming years drives a lot of this dissonance. What in your opinion is a neutral venue? I like the technical expertise here but opinions are definitely not neutral.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      A neutral opinion seems a contradiction in terms. Is your opinion neutral? What distinguishes it from the rest of the opinions here?
      - crimsonalucard 7y ago
        The bias on this forum is largely American european or western. How do I know this? Language. You'd obviously get a different flavor of bias on a chinese forum. Can you imagine yourself claiming your own country to be more corrupt than another? If not then how can you imagine a prideful chinese person doing the same? Bias colors every corner of this forum just like it would color a chinese forum. I would say I am less biased on this topic than the average person on HN. How can I say that though when bias can color my judgement on my own bias? How can anyone say such a thing due to this recursive fact? I believe the method around this problem is not to use your own judgement to judge bias in your own judgement but to look at external factors surrounding your circumstance and use probabilistic causative connections between those external factors and possible bias to determine a persons' overall level of bias. For example, an African living in the congo will have less bias on a China vs. America debate than a chinese person, an icelander will be less biased than a new yorker for the same debate. The external factor in the previous examples is race and location. So for me I come from a more different background. I am chinese and american. I hold no nationalistic pride for either country and I could see my self living in either country if need be. It's apples and oranges to me, literally. Racially though, I'm chinese so from circumstance my bias would be equal to an chinese born american but less than an american born white guy or an asian born mongoloid. Overall I'm probably more biased than the african. In short, I am less biased than most people on this forum because of my background. So a neutral venue would be like people who talk about this stuff but are mostly from like singapore.
baybal2 7y ago
> China has a lot of retail politics, it's just in the context of a single-party system. I'll tell you a communist joke: "Any party member has a primal fear of an election with more than one candidate" Why? "Because it means that one of choices is wrong" I my opinion, that is only nominally a joke, and the joke tells a lot about CPCs internal arrangement: pick a wrong side even once, an you are a toast, and you are better off supporting status-quo

crimsonalucard 7y ago

In terms of corruption the US is no different.

ha470 7y ago
Having lived in both India and China for some time, I can assure you that the scale and magnitude is completely different.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  I agree. The corruption in china is more explicit. While the corruption in the US goes through more official channels. It's harder to perceive in the united states. I would argue the net effect is similar though: The more money you have the more influence you have.
  - alehul 7y ago
    When someone says "the scale and magnitude is completely different," they aren't referring to "explicit." I know plenty of people from China who have talked about the crazy levels of corruption there. Some are related to those in power, and they've said it very much goes through 'official channels.'
    - crimsonalucard 7y ago
      That's what I mean. From another angle, the corruption is the same it's just more visible in China. People in general know about the corruption in China. How obvious is the corruption in america? Not obvious at all it's sort of ephermal. How corrupt was dick cheney?
      - analognoise 7y ago
        You know about his corruption. You are able to say bad things about a man who reportedly had a "kill squad" online, without ending up "missing" or being"re-educated", and you think the levels of corruption are the same in China and the US? ... seriously? /Edit: America isn't perfect, I'll give whoever that. But the defeatist equivalence shit has to stop. We are working on it. We won't stop working on it. We can always do better. Pick up a shovel and help, rather than "lol we're as bad as {place} because {thing}."
        crimsonalucard 7y ago
        Then why isn't Dick Cheney arrested? It's known in a vague sense, not in a more definitive sense like it's known in China. In China it's like we all know. In the US things like Dark Money and bribery and lobbying and monopolies are all a sort of an ephermal fact rather than a fact of life like it is in China. My argument is underneath all that the US and China are the same in terms of the volume of corruption.
        wnscooke 7y ago
        People don’t seem to understand this difference you highlight. They could try going to China and saying the same things publicly.... _then_ they’d realize how different the two places are.
        analognoise 7y ago
        I just assume the people who are saying they're the same are either 1) Russian trolls or 2) very naive. There aren't really any other options.
sgregnt 7y ago
Strong opinions require strong evidence. CPI index (corruption perception index) places USA on 22nd place while China is way down on the 89th place.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- soperj 7y ago
  Depends where you are in China. Hong Kong is 14th on that same list.
  - alehul 7y ago
    You mean the autonomous territory of Hong Kong? We'll see if Hong Kong stays at 14th as it loses said autonomy to authoritarian China. :)
    - soperj 7y ago
      What's it a territory of?
      - alehul 7y ago
        Assuming you're genuine: China, since 1997! It was really the last remnant of the British Empire according to historians. Some of the Hong Kong population (younger especially) wants to be an independent state, but China wants to integrate it, and is slowly sapping it of its famous liberal policies and freedoms.
Latteland 7y ago
The US isn't in the same league. We have independent and trustworthy federal police (the fbi). They are under attack by the president but they are more trustworthy than I ever realized in general. I don't see political investigations of opponents of the govt, like happens commonly in China. I don't see endemic corruption.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  ^ I totally agree with your take, but I think it's worth noting that we really could lose these things. I'm hopeful the current administration is an aberration and we'll return to some degree of normalcy in the future, regardless of which party is in power. But if we don't, institutions like the FBI will eventually erode as well.
- factsaresacred 7y ago
  > They are under attack by the president Individuals within the FBI that were revealed to have intent to plot against/subvert the President were criticized in tweets. The FBI is not under attack.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    He literally called the Mueller investigation a coup the other day, which it was not.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
If you believe corruption is only binary, then yes. If you believe corruption is a degree, then they are pretty far off in scale. The Chinese government doesn’t believe in rule of law or checks and balances, leaving lots of room for unchecked abuses.
throw2016 7y ago
These issues need discussion in a neutral venue. China is not a model of anything but given the intense debate in the US about the systemic corruption of the lobbying system pointing fingers at others as if corruption is somehow unique to 'other countries' seems cognitive dissonance. Political corruption is the single biggest source of corruption in most countries which is done officially in the US. Just because you make something 'legal' doesn't suddenly make it any less corrupt. The 2008 banking crisis revealed massive levels of fraud, collusion and corruption in the banking system and the bailouts with 'too big to fail' betray something even more deep seated and systemic. There is a huge problem of revolving doors across industries with regulators getting hired by the companies they were regulating and politicians getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches. There is a well documented history of corruption in banking, real estate, pharma, energy and multiple other sectors and we have even seen this entering education. Most commentators know about the widespread corruption in their countries but there is weird dissonance and finger pointing making any kind of informed discussion impossible.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Yeah I agree. Adding to that, there's a sort of nationalistic competition driving the bias as well. The united states was top dog in terms of GDP, the trend towards china unseating that throne in the coming years drives a lot of this dissonance. What in your opinion is a neutral venue? I like the technical expertise here but opinions are definitely not neutral.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    A neutral opinion seems a contradiction in terms. Is your opinion neutral? What distinguishes it from the rest of the opinions here?
    - crimsonalucard 7y ago
      The bias on this forum is largely American european or western. How do I know this? Language. You'd obviously get a different flavor of bias on a chinese forum. Can you imagine yourself claiming your own country to be more corrupt than another? If not then how can you imagine a prideful chinese person doing the same? Bias colors every corner of this forum just like it would color a chinese forum. I would say I am less biased on this topic than the average person on HN. How can I say that though when bias can color my judgement on my own bias? How can anyone say such a thing due to this recursive fact? I believe the method around this problem is not to use your own judgement to judge bias in your own judgement but to look at external factors surrounding your circumstance and use probabilistic causative connections between those external factors and possible bias to determine a persons' overall level of bias. For example, an African living in the congo will have less bias on a China vs. America debate than a chinese person, an icelander will be less biased than a new yorker for the same debate. The external factor in the previous examples is race and location. So for me I come from a more different background. I am chinese and american. I hold no nationalistic pride for either country and I could see my self living in either country if need be. It's apples and oranges to me, literally. Racially though, I'm chinese so from circumstance my bias would be equal to an chinese born american but less than an american born white guy or an asian born mongoloid. Overall I'm probably more biased than the african. In short, I am less biased than most people on this forum because of my background. So a neutral venue would be like people who talk about this stuff but are mostly from like singapore.

baybal2 7y ago

> China has a lot of retail politics, it's just in the context of a single-party system. I'll tell you a communist joke: "Any party member has a primal fear of an election with more than one candidate" Why? "Because it means that one of choices is wrong" I my opinion, that is only nominally a joke, and the joke tells a lot about CPCs internal arrangement: pick a wrong side even once, an you are a toast, and you are better off supporting status-quo