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That is essentially the thesis of American foreign policy in Asia since the 1980s. The results have been mixed; yes, they have a huge, prosperous middle class
by blisterpeanuts 6y ago
That is essentially the thesis of American foreign policy in Asia since the 1980s. The results have been mixed; yes, they have a huge, prosperous middle class now, yet the government remains about as authoritarian as it ever was.
Now, with technology, in fact things are getting worse. Everyone is required to have a cell phone, everyone is spied upon, a "social score" is maintained and if your score dips below a certain threshold, you may not travel etc.
If the EU thinks that making more trade deals with China is going to temper any of these, they're naive indeed.
- onethought 6y agoOver in the land of the free. Are the police not trawling through Facebook imagery and chat messages to arrest the “insurrectionists”? Is the spying ok when it’s sponsored by Facebook?
- brainfish 6y agoOh, is today Whataboutism day?
- onethought 6y agoThe racism/double standard (which is what it is) hurled at china for things that everyone is doing, but it's some how bad in china, then excusing pointing this out as "whataboutism" is pretty disgusting.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoWell, I don't disagree with you. We're becoming more like China every day. Social scoring, speech codes, nonpersons, government-inspired mob violence.
- onethought 6y agoI can't help but feel this isn't related to political idealism... There is some kind of "well we can... so why not?" and implementing it, and the second/third order effects of doing it are sometimes hard to envision. Like "lets build a chat system (and store it all in a centralised location)" doesn't feel as nefarious as like a Manhattan Project, but ramifications are quite dramatic.