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I've lived there and can say from experience China just makes stuff up. The local governments are responsible for reporting to higher ups and they don't want to

I've lived there and can say from experience China just makes stuff up. The local governments are responsible for reporting to higher ups and they don't want to miss targets, so they straight up lie. In reality it's a house of cards. You can lie about a 2% change once, and twice, and three times, but soon your lies compound and it's clear you didn't reduce emissions by the rate you reported. Only time will prove me correct about this. They do this with air quality regularly. Chinese official numbers of PM2.5 are regularly 30-50% lower than what the US embassy reports.

smacktoward 7y ago
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted on this, it’s a common problem in authoritarian governments of all stripes. Nobody gets promoted from Apparatchik to Senior Apparatchik by pushing back on the quotas set for them.
- Dirlewanger 7y ago
  It's hard for people to accept the fact that modern Chinese society is rotten to the core. You don't hear people describing China as "the government's horrible, but the people are nice", you hear "the government's horrible, and so are the people". I've heard this from a lot of exasperated Chinese expats.
  - dang 7y ago
    This comment breaks the site guidelines. Please don't take HN threads further into name-calling and nationalistic flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: apart from all the other times we've had to ask you this, I just noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20518968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20518968, which is egregious and a bannable offence. I actually just banned you, but since your other recent comments haven't been that bad, decided to reverse that for the time being. Would you please review the site guidelines and use this site as intended from now on?
  - smallgovt 7y ago
    Your idea will get more traction if you describe the behavior as rotten to the core instead of the person. After all, you are projecting your value system onto another set of people who have different values. Neither of your value systems are true.
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      >Neither of your value systems are true. Not believing there is any “true” value system is in itself just another value system (or religion), and asserting as such is just as annoying - often more so.
    - reallydude 7y ago
      > rotten to the core https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10132391/Riot-after-Chinese-teachers-try-to-stop-pupils-cheating.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/101323... Dishonesty is so pervasive, it's considered integral to success in every strata. A Chinese citizen getting arrested for misconduct elicits commentary of "they are unlucky" not "that's good for society".

smacktoward 7y ago

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted on this, it’s a common problem in authoritarian governments of all stripes. Nobody gets promoted from Apparatchik to Senior Apparatchik by pushing back on the quotas set for them.

Dirlewanger 7y ago
It's hard for people to accept the fact that modern Chinese society is rotten to the core. You don't hear people describing China as "the government's horrible, but the people are nice", you hear "the government's horrible, and so are the people". I've heard this from a lot of exasperated Chinese expats.
- dang 7y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines. Please don't take HN threads further into name-calling and nationalistic flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: apart from all the other times we've had to ask you this, I just noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20518968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20518968, which is egregious and a bannable offence. I actually just banned you, but since your other recent comments haven't been that bad, decided to reverse that for the time being. Would you please review the site guidelines and use this site as intended from now on?
- smallgovt 7y ago
  Your idea will get more traction if you describe the behavior as rotten to the core instead of the person. After all, you are projecting your value system onto another set of people who have different values. Neither of your value systems are true.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    >Neither of your value systems are true. Not believing there is any “true” value system is in itself just another value system (or religion), and asserting as such is just as annoying - often more so.
  - reallydude 7y ago
    > rotten to the core https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10132391/Riot-after-Chinese-teachers-try-to-stop-pupils-cheating.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/101323... Dishonesty is so pervasive, it's considered integral to success in every strata. A Chinese citizen getting arrested for misconduct elicits commentary of "they are unlucky" not "that's good for society".