3 ms·

Your perception of China is 10-20 years out of date. > controls its people and stifles their freedoms on every possible level This is not at all the reality i

Your perception of China is 10-20 years out of date. > controls its people and stifles their freedoms on every possible level This is not at all the reality in China today. China is free enough: don’t talk too much about politics on social media, and don’t protest, and you’ll (probably) be just fine. The biggest lesson I’ve taken from my years living in China is that you don’t need Freedom for people to prosper collectively (though I’m still convinced you need a free press as a check against power). Not everyone here is happy with single party government, but the vast majority are ok with it. There’s no revolt coming. The bottom 50% of China are having their best string of decades in two thousand years. Freedom is great, but so is eating, and so is the promise of a much better life for your kids. China’s getting its innovation game together too, they just need some time. I don’t see soft power happening any time soon though.

kirse 6y ago
Freedom is great, but so is eating, and so is the promise of a much better life for your kids. Thanks for the reasonable insight, you make some good points, especially that one which touches on the importance of hope. My question then is "how much leash is enough" if the dog is still under control of its authority? Even if the leash is 100ft. long, does the dog really experience freedom to explore the outer limits with the collar still tugging around its neck? The greater the freedom (or maybe the perception of freedom ala Viktor Frankl), the greater the depths of hope and willingness to persevere through suffering, which is often a necessity at the blistering edges of innovation. Then again, many of the world's early "innovations" were completed on the backs of controlled slave labor. Ignoring any jokes about "wage slavery", maybe you are right that a loosely-enslaved China is enough to achieve the controlling party's objectives, but I would still view that as a Pyrrhic victory.
- physicles 6y ago
  Thanks for being open-minded and having a dialog. I wouldn't call China loosely-enslaved; Chinese certainly don't see themselves as working for the Party, but for themselves, or for a prosperous China as a whole. Even though the information environment here is completely controlled, life really does feel free for the most part. Is it really a Pyrrhic victory when a Chinese middle class family can have a comfortable, genuinely happy life? How is that family's happiness different from that of a family of westerners that comes here and lives happily for many years, as many of my friends have done? But more to your point, it's true that America has some special sauce that 1) drives innovation faster than anywhere else in the world, and 2) attracts people to settle there from all over the world. But we see that Freedom is neither sufficient to become an innovation powerhouse (look at much of Europe) nor is it necessary (see Korea and Taiwan in the 70s and early 80s, which back then were very much not Free). If you want to point to something as the reason why China is less innovative than the US on the whole, I'd point to the emphasis of rote memorization in the school system, and to the fact that college is kind of a joke, at least for the techies I've talked to. But that will slowly change, and even now China has a vibrant startup ecosystem. The Party knows that for its long-term survival it must align its own interests with those of the people. And right now, to quote Singaporean academic Kishore Mahbubani in a recent Sinica podcast, "the primary goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to revive Chinese civilization." Of course, the party will insist that this be done on its own terms. Human rights issues need not be addressed here because in practice they do not factor in. The US especially emphasizes these things because it loves to have the moral high ground (and I believe it does), but that unfortunately does very little to slow the rate at which the US, with its ineffective strategy over the last two decades, is ceding the geopolitical high ground.

kirse 6y ago

Freedom is great, but so is eating, and so is the promise of a much better life for your kids. Thanks for the reasonable insight, you make some good points, especially that one which touches on the importance of hope. My question then is "how much leash is enough" if the dog is still under control of its authority? Even if the leash is 100ft. long, does the dog really experience freedom to explore the outer limits with the collar still tugging around its neck? The greater the freedom (or maybe the perception of freedom ala Viktor Frankl), the greater the depths of hope and willingness to persevere through suffering, which is often a necessity at the blistering edges of innovation. Then again, many of the world's early "innovations" were completed on the backs of controlled slave labor. Ignoring any jokes about "wage slavery", maybe you are right that a loosely-enslaved China is enough to achieve the controlling party's objectives, but I would still view that as a Pyrrhic victory.

physicles 6y ago
Thanks for being open-minded and having a dialog. I wouldn't call China loosely-enslaved; Chinese certainly don't see themselves as working for the Party, but for themselves, or for a prosperous China as a whole. Even though the information environment here is completely controlled, life really does feel free for the most part. Is it really a Pyrrhic victory when a Chinese middle class family can have a comfortable, genuinely happy life? How is that family's happiness different from that of a family of westerners that comes here and lives happily for many years, as many of my friends have done? But more to your point, it's true that America has some special sauce that 1) drives innovation faster than anywhere else in the world, and 2) attracts people to settle there from all over the world. But we see that Freedom is neither sufficient to become an innovation powerhouse (look at much of Europe) nor is it necessary (see Korea and Taiwan in the 70s and early 80s, which back then were very much not Free). If you want to point to something as the reason why China is less innovative than the US on the whole, I'd point to the emphasis of rote memorization in the school system, and to the fact that college is kind of a joke, at least for the techies I've talked to. But that will slowly change, and even now China has a vibrant startup ecosystem. The Party knows that for its long-term survival it must align its own interests with those of the people. And right now, to quote Singaporean academic Kishore Mahbubani in a recent Sinica podcast, "the primary goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to revive Chinese civilization." Of course, the party will insist that this be done on its own terms. Human rights issues need not be addressed here because in practice they do not factor in. The US especially emphasizes these things because it loves to have the moral high ground (and I believe it does), but that unfortunately does very little to slow the rate at which the US, with its ineffective strategy over the last two decades, is ceding the geopolitical high ground.