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It's more nuanced than believing China can do no wrong. I have family (edit: living in mainland) that will admit personally that Xi Jinping is probably crazy a

by dmoy 7y ago

It's more nuanced than believing China can do no wrong. I have family (edit: living in mainland) that will admit personally that Xi Jinping is probably crazy and bad for things (maybe I shouldn't put that in writing?). But at the same time, there's a lot of faith given to the government that's increased literacy from 50-98%, increased GDP per capita from $100/yr to $10k/yr, built all the infrastructure, etc etc, in like less than 50 years, without major armed conflict. Remember that prior to 1950, China had a couple centuries spotted with wars, rebellions, etc that killed tens and tens of millions of people. Stability and prosperity buys a lot of good will. Edit: because I just threw out numbers without comparison, the $100-$10k growth in 50 years is comparable to the period in the US from literally before the US was a country (pre 1800s) to about 1950 ish. That's how long it took the US to get from $100-$10k (real) per capita GDP. China did it in 50 years. US didn't have literacy rates below 50% since like before 1850 (actually it looks like already 70% literacy by 1850?), and only got to 98% literacy by ~1960. Growth, stability, and prosperity doesn't excuse things, but it does explain why people are maybe more forgiving than we are looking in.

whatshisface 7y ago
>Stability and prosperity buys a lot of good will. The other side of this is that if hard times ever come, there will be no true believers in the system around to hold things together until the situation improves.
- dmoy 7y ago
  I personally agree. If the gravy train of growth ever stops, I think it could very quickly get very, very scary. On the other hand, if the gravy train just coasts a bit and slows down gradually, after prosperity increases another say 4x, and is accompanied by gradual relaxation in liberties and other measures of quality of life (looking at you, Beijing air quality), then maybe it'll be ok. Nobody can predict how it will pan out imo.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Indeed, this was and to a certain extent is a major problem for the Qing dynasty (the last one), which consisted of widely-hated foreigners who had conquered China. The Japanese have a certain ability to resist cultural messages from the West by looking to the legitimacy of the Emperor, which notionally goes back 2600 years. The Chinese have a long cultural tradition to draw on in a similar manner, but it's much more challenging when the legitimacy you're trying to invoke petered out in the 17th century. Vowing to maintain the traditions that obtained under the despised invaders just isn't as moving of a message. More recently, the Soviet Union also fell apart after everybody stopped believing in it... but was that a bad thing?
- MagnumOpus 7y ago
  > if hard times ever come, there will be no true believers That is where brain washing and xenophobia come in. Just like in Russia, the CCP is already preparing for the hard times by blaming ills on the Other. I.e. the US (especially around trade war, and military alliances in the pac rim), Japan (reviving WW2 resentment), Western Europe (propaganda around "century of humiliation"), Taiwan, HK and so on. The strategy is to create brainless followers who will reject foreign media output just because it comes from "the enemy".
aianus 7y ago
If their values are stability and prosperity then why do they look down on Western governance which has resulted in both more stability and greater prosperity than China?
- dmoy 7y ago
  It's kind of like (and this is a terrible metaphor/analogy, so sorry) why some companies have a higher market cap but lower revenue and profit. Trajectory matters. I don't know why you get downvoted for asking that, it's an eminently reasonable question to ask. Also most Chinese I've talked to don't look down on Western governments or structure of government, they just don't have any particular motivation for thinking it's better for them. I can't say what the average person in mainland actually thinks, of course.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  Because successful western governance is predicated from stability and prosperity developed through state capitalism. Not the other way around. Almost everywhere western governance model has been applied without first developing domestic industries via state directed mercantilism, the country either fails or stays poor. You need an authoritarian government phase to rapidly build a base. China is following the proven Asian Tiger model, it just takes longer to uplift 1.4b people, if that's possible at all. Almost every rich western country today behaved like China during their industrial revolution. Also they're not blind, every Chinese can look to Indian and know democracy + huge population either doesn't work or doesn't work fast enough.
  - aianus 7y ago
    > Almost every rich western country today behaved like China during their industrial revolution I'm not a historian so please correct me if I'm wrong but the US gained independence, democracy, and the rule of law well before the industrial revolution. I'm pretty sure 90%+ of the population were still subsistence farmers back then. Outside of the world wars I'm not sure the US ever practiced state capitalism either. They didn't even have a central bank until 1913.
malandrew 7y ago
It's not as hard to do it in 50 years when you're starting with the sum total of knowledge available 50 years ago. Doing it in 150 years, starting 220 years ago is far more challenging and impressive. Otherwise, I agree with the rest of what you wrote.
- em500 7y ago
  Perhaps the more apt comparison is democratic India, which had the same sum total of knowledge available 50 years ago and was at similar poverty level. Yet authoritarian China ended up roughly 3 to 5 times richer today. Even if all you need to do is catch-up growth, rapid implementation is far from given. It's not the idea but the execution that matters, as techies would say.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    If you look at GDP per capita figures for China vs. India, they were mostly comparable until about 1990 (India was actually slightly in the lead): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=1990&locations=CN-IN&start=1960 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=1990... After 1990, China really took off: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CN-IN&start=1990 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... Of course China didn't suddenly turn authoritarian in 1990, so this is not a democracy vs. authoritarianism issue. Rather, it's that the authoritarian decided to change the way they were doing things. (Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening up".)
    - em500 7y ago
      > Of course China didn't suddenly turn authoritarian in 1990, so this is not a democracy vs. authoritarianism issue. Given the development of India, we might conclude that a democratic/non-authoritarian government is neither sufficient nor necessary to gain a good standard of living.
- dmoy 7y ago
  Oh for sure, it's way easier. Especially with certain... methods... of IP transfer. The fact that china relinquished communist economic models in favor of capitalism most certainly helped a lot too.
monkeycantype 7y ago
I'm always surprised to hear that the government, rather than the people of China are credited with the recent lift in quality of life in China. It was Deng Xiaoping's decision to reduce government control of the economy and people's lives, giving Chinese people greater freedom to make their own decisions that has unleashed some of China's potential. We shouldn't be surprised if China becomes the wealthiest nation in the world. We should expect a nation with China's cultural and intellectual wealth can draw competent leaders that govern with competence, what should be surprising is that it was once so brutally and chaotically governed that it was ever poor.

by dmoy 7y ago

whatshisface 7y ago

>Stability and prosperity buys a lot of good will. The other side of this is that if hard times ever come, there will be no true believers in the system around to hold things together until the situation improves.

dmoy 7y ago
I personally agree. If the gravy train of growth ever stops, I think it could very quickly get very, very scary. On the other hand, if the gravy train just coasts a bit and slows down gradually, after prosperity increases another say 4x, and is accompanied by gradual relaxation in liberties and other measures of quality of life (looking at you, Beijing air quality), then maybe it'll be ok. Nobody can predict how it will pan out imo.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
Indeed, this was and to a certain extent is a major problem for the Qing dynasty (the last one), which consisted of widely-hated foreigners who had conquered China. The Japanese have a certain ability to resist cultural messages from the West by looking to the legitimacy of the Emperor, which notionally goes back 2600 years. The Chinese have a long cultural tradition to draw on in a similar manner, but it's much more challenging when the legitimacy you're trying to invoke petered out in the 17th century. Vowing to maintain the traditions that obtained under the despised invaders just isn't as moving of a message. More recently, the Soviet Union also fell apart after everybody stopped believing in it... but was that a bad thing?
MagnumOpus 7y ago
> if hard times ever come, there will be no true believers That is where brain washing and xenophobia come in. Just like in Russia, the CCP is already preparing for the hard times by blaming ills on the Other. I.e. the US (especially around trade war, and military alliances in the pac rim), Japan (reviving WW2 resentment), Western Europe (propaganda around "century of humiliation"), Taiwan, HK and so on. The strategy is to create brainless followers who will reject foreign media output just because it comes from "the enemy".

aianus 7y ago

If their values are stability and prosperity then why do they look down on Western governance which has resulted in both more stability and greater prosperity than China?

dmoy 7y ago
It's kind of like (and this is a terrible metaphor/analogy, so sorry) why some companies have a higher market cap but lower revenue and profit. Trajectory matters. I don't know why you get downvoted for asking that, it's an eminently reasonable question to ask. Also most Chinese I've talked to don't look down on Western governments or structure of government, they just don't have any particular motivation for thinking it's better for them. I can't say what the average person in mainland actually thinks, of course.
dirtyid 7y ago
Because successful western governance is predicated from stability and prosperity developed through state capitalism. Not the other way around. Almost everywhere western governance model has been applied without first developing domestic industries via state directed mercantilism, the country either fails or stays poor. You need an authoritarian government phase to rapidly build a base. China is following the proven Asian Tiger model, it just takes longer to uplift 1.4b people, if that's possible at all. Almost every rich western country today behaved like China during their industrial revolution. Also they're not blind, every Chinese can look to Indian and know democracy + huge population either doesn't work or doesn't work fast enough.
- aianus 7y ago
  > Almost every rich western country today behaved like China during their industrial revolution I'm not a historian so please correct me if I'm wrong but the US gained independence, democracy, and the rule of law well before the industrial revolution. I'm pretty sure 90%+ of the population were still subsistence farmers back then. Outside of the world wars I'm not sure the US ever practiced state capitalism either. They didn't even have a central bank until 1913.

malandrew 7y ago

It's not as hard to do it in 50 years when you're starting with the sum total of knowledge available 50 years ago. Doing it in 150 years, starting 220 years ago is far more challenging and impressive. Otherwise, I agree with the rest of what you wrote.

em500 7y ago
Perhaps the more apt comparison is democratic India, which had the same sum total of knowledge available 50 years ago and was at similar poverty level. Yet authoritarian China ended up roughly 3 to 5 times richer today. Even if all you need to do is catch-up growth, rapid implementation is far from given. It's not the idea but the execution that matters, as techies would say.
- yorwba 7y ago
  If you look at GDP per capita figures for China vs. India, they were mostly comparable until about 1990 (India was actually slightly in the lead): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=1990&locations=CN-IN&start=1960 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=1990... After 1990, China really took off: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CN-IN&start=1990 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... Of course China didn't suddenly turn authoritarian in 1990, so this is not a democracy vs. authoritarianism issue. Rather, it's that the authoritarian decided to change the way they were doing things. (Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening up".)
  - em500 7y ago
    > Of course China didn't suddenly turn authoritarian in 1990, so this is not a democracy vs. authoritarianism issue. Given the development of India, we might conclude that a democratic/non-authoritarian government is neither sufficient nor necessary to gain a good standard of living.
dmoy 7y ago
Oh for sure, it's way easier. Especially with certain... methods... of IP transfer. The fact that china relinquished communist economic models in favor of capitalism most certainly helped a lot too.

monkeycantype 7y ago

I'm always surprised to hear that the government, rather than the people of China are credited with the recent lift in quality of life in China. It was Deng Xiaoping's decision to reduce government control of the economy and people's lives, giving Chinese people greater freedom to make their own decisions that has unleashed some of China's potential. We shouldn't be surprised if China becomes the wealthiest nation in the world. We should expect a nation with China's cultural and intellectual wealth can draw competent leaders that govern with competence, what should be surprising is that it was once so brutally and chaotically governed that it was ever poor.