8 ms·

I just assume the ccp default mode is to cover up, even when there is nothing to cover up. When legitimacy derives from competence rather than from election, yo

I just assume the ccp default mode is to cover up, even when there is nothing to cover up. When legitimacy derives from competence rather than from election, you better never have any high profile incompetence.

duxup 6y ago
That's been a problem even internally in China where local government hides things from those up the chain and then things get out of hand.
- fiftyfifty 6y ago
  This is the kind of behavior you see in organizations where the penalty for making mistakes is overly severe, the only recourse for people is to lie and cover-up the truth at all costs. This is how projects at some companies continue despite being way behind schedule and overbudget until eventually the weight of the truth brings everything crashing down.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Everybody will always have a motive to prevent others from discovering their failures. A democratically elected politician has just as much reason to want their failures covered up as a CCP member does. The reason governments like the CCP have such a hard time dealing with that issue is that their entire system is set up so that you have one party, with no opposition, all working in concert to conceal the truth from the people. The “voters” have no mechanism to scrutinize their government, and no alternative to “vote” for if they don’t like what they’re doing. A natural consequence of this is that the opacity the CCP relies on to protect itself from scrutiny, also prevents central committee members from being able to effectively scrutinize the system themselves. A good story is always made available for public consumption, but what’s known internally is equally controlled by individual political actors trying to protect their own interests.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      This is also why dictatorship always have corruption. They cannot have transparency which means there will be corruption. Of course democracies are just as vulnerable to all the bad stuff as they are run by humans, but transparency is at least possible. Sadly we see national security being used as reason to avoid transparency, and of course corruption follows.
      - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        > Sadly we see national security being used as reason to avoid transparency, and of course corruption follows. Man it took forever for someone to make this point. There's a lot of bad Chinese Gov behavior that US Gov players absolutely aspire to.
        AmericanChopper 6y ago
        Any organisation, or group, or person who’s granted any power will tend towards trying to accumulate more power. So while your comment is a bit hyperbolic, it’s true of the US government in the same way it’s true of every other government. For any grossly authoritarian policy you see the US government implement, you’ll typically find equivalent policies in Canada and the EU and the UK and Australia... It’s not a new thing. The (paraphrased) quote “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” is at least a couple hundred of years old. In practice however it’s not a very simple proposition at all. People typically agree with endlessly granting government additional powers when it’s for a policy they agree with. The difference between the US (or France, or Germany, or the UK...) and China however, is that we actually have some mechanisms for holding our government to account (however flawed they might be). Whereas Chinese citizens have none at all.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    The old story of the Chinese general Chen Shen comes to mind: Apparently he was running late due to rainstorms and the penalty for appearing this late to the Qin emperor was execution. Since that’s the same penalty for open rebellion, he decided he might as well try that too. And that was the beginning of the end of the Qin dynasty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Sheng_Wu_Guang_uprising https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Sheng_Wu_Guang_uprising If the penalty for lying and being caught is the same league as screwing up, people are going to cover up problems.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      > And that was the beginning of the end of the Qin dynasty. Not what I was expecting, but still a really interesting story.
    - gnulinux 6y ago
      That's a fascinating story thanks for sharing.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ljm 6y ago
      The English idiom for this is "I'd rather be hanged for a sheep than a lamb." That is to say, if the punishment for any kind of crime is death, no matter how serious or how trivial, you might as well go ahead and commit the much more serious one and try and cover that up instead. Either way you're fucked, so why not go all in?
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  It’s how all centrally planned systems work. Avoiding accountability for failure is always the most optimal strategy, which inevitably ends up involving concealing failure. It was one of the defining characteristics of the soviet system. You can even see it play out in large companies (which essentially operate as miniature planned economies), where political actors promote bad ideas, and then somehow end up rewarded after they fail. The only difference being that companies in a free market (usually) have to suffer the consequences of their failures, and politicians in a democratic system can (usually) be replaced if they fall out of favor.
- vimy 6y ago
  That’s exactly what happened with covid-19. By the time Beijing knew about it things were already out of control.
  - fma 6y ago
    Yeah...the irony is Beijing blames Wuhan for not being transparent. And here's Beijing doing the same.
    - baq 6y ago
      No irony here. The axiom is party doesn’t make mistakes, the only possible consequence is others are to blame.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  A madman with a gun is only ever told things that stop him from pulling the trigger. This is true of any hierarchical power structure, but is especially bad in overtly authoritarian ones.
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    If we accept your premise about madmen, then this > This is true of any hierarchical power structure is only true if everyone in the hierarchy is a madman.
- petre 6y ago
  It's exactly like in Chernobyl's case, only the Soviets couldn't cover up the cause and got their act together when everybody found out.
  - tim333 6y ago
    I'm often reminded of Chernobyl by the Wuhan stuff.
Der_Einzige 6y ago
You're being down-voted but this is exactly what my friends who live in China have told me. People were also downvoting big time back in March when I and others were saying that the numbers China was quoting were made the heck up. Suddenly the western media realizes that's true[1] yet we don't see a mass back-lash against China as a result... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55481397 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55481397
- starpilot 6y ago
  In Trump circles, the narrative has been "FUCK CHINA FOR THIS VIRUS" since day 1. Seriously, this has their mantra the entire pandemic. Everything from being a lab virus to lying about numbers are what they've discussed. Really funny to see them on the same page with some Chinese.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Although disagree with almost everything about trump, I think he was in some way right about China. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Chinese people though. Also, I don’t think he went about it in an effective way at all, it seems like the ccp was betting on him just going away after a while and just suffering the pain for a while.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
      What you mention deserves to be repeated. The chinese people and the CCP are not the same thing, just as the national security apparatus of the US... and US citizens are separate too. its natural to catch flak, but it happens to both sides. The saudi arabia govt is friendly to our govt, but the vast majority of their population thinks its totally OK to blow up US citizens. Iranian leadership is constantly at odds with the US military leadershp, but iranians themselves welcome tourists from the US with open arms , love US culture and movies, and want americans to visit.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

duxup 6y ago

That's been a problem even internally in China where local government hides things from those up the chain and then things get out of hand.

fiftyfifty 6y ago
This is the kind of behavior you see in organizations where the penalty for making mistakes is overly severe, the only recourse for people is to lie and cover-up the truth at all costs. This is how projects at some companies continue despite being way behind schedule and overbudget until eventually the weight of the truth brings everything crashing down.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Everybody will always have a motive to prevent others from discovering their failures. A democratically elected politician has just as much reason to want their failures covered up as a CCP member does. The reason governments like the CCP have such a hard time dealing with that issue is that their entire system is set up so that you have one party, with no opposition, all working in concert to conceal the truth from the people. The “voters” have no mechanism to scrutinize their government, and no alternative to “vote” for if they don’t like what they’re doing. A natural consequence of this is that the opacity the CCP relies on to protect itself from scrutiny, also prevents central committee members from being able to effectively scrutinize the system themselves. A good story is always made available for public consumption, but what’s known internally is equally controlled by individual political actors trying to protect their own interests.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    This is also why dictatorship always have corruption. They cannot have transparency which means there will be corruption. Of course democracies are just as vulnerable to all the bad stuff as they are run by humans, but transparency is at least possible. Sadly we see national security being used as reason to avoid transparency, and of course corruption follows.
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      > Sadly we see national security being used as reason to avoid transparency, and of course corruption follows. Man it took forever for someone to make this point. There's a lot of bad Chinese Gov behavior that US Gov players absolutely aspire to.
      - AmericanChopper 6y ago
        Any organisation, or group, or person who’s granted any power will tend towards trying to accumulate more power. So while your comment is a bit hyperbolic, it’s true of the US government in the same way it’s true of every other government. For any grossly authoritarian policy you see the US government implement, you’ll typically find equivalent policies in Canada and the EU and the UK and Australia... It’s not a new thing. The (paraphrased) quote “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” is at least a couple hundred of years old. In practice however it’s not a very simple proposition at all. People typically agree with endlessly granting government additional powers when it’s for a policy they agree with. The difference between the US (or France, or Germany, or the UK...) and China however, is that we actually have some mechanisms for holding our government to account (however flawed they might be). Whereas Chinese citizens have none at all.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  The old story of the Chinese general Chen Shen comes to mind: Apparently he was running late due to rainstorms and the penalty for appearing this late to the Qin emperor was execution. Since that’s the same penalty for open rebellion, he decided he might as well try that too. And that was the beginning of the end of the Qin dynasty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Sheng_Wu_Guang_uprising https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Sheng_Wu_Guang_uprising If the penalty for lying and being caught is the same league as screwing up, people are going to cover up problems.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    > And that was the beginning of the end of the Qin dynasty. Not what I was expecting, but still a really interesting story.
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    That's a fascinating story thanks for sharing.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ljm 6y ago
    The English idiom for this is "I'd rather be hanged for a sheep than a lamb." That is to say, if the punishment for any kind of crime is death, no matter how serious or how trivial, you might as well go ahead and commit the much more serious one and try and cover that up instead. Either way you're fucked, so why not go all in?
AmericanChopper 6y ago
It’s how all centrally planned systems work. Avoiding accountability for failure is always the most optimal strategy, which inevitably ends up involving concealing failure. It was one of the defining characteristics of the soviet system. You can even see it play out in large companies (which essentially operate as miniature planned economies), where political actors promote bad ideas, and then somehow end up rewarded after they fail. The only difference being that companies in a free market (usually) have to suffer the consequences of their failures, and politicians in a democratic system can (usually) be replaced if they fall out of favor.
vimy 6y ago
That’s exactly what happened with covid-19. By the time Beijing knew about it things were already out of control.
- fma 6y ago
  Yeah...the irony is Beijing blames Wuhan for not being transparent. And here's Beijing doing the same.
  - baq 6y ago
    No irony here. The axiom is party doesn’t make mistakes, the only possible consequence is others are to blame.
alasdair_ 6y ago
A madman with a gun is only ever told things that stop him from pulling the trigger. This is true of any hierarchical power structure, but is especially bad in overtly authoritarian ones.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  If we accept your premise about madmen, then this > This is true of any hierarchical power structure is only true if everyone in the hierarchy is a madman.
petre 6y ago
It's exactly like in Chernobyl's case, only the Soviets couldn't cover up the cause and got their act together when everybody found out.
- tim333 6y ago
  I'm often reminded of Chernobyl by the Wuhan stuff.

Der_Einzige 6y ago

You're being down-voted but this is exactly what my friends who live in China have told me. People were also downvoting big time back in March when I and others were saying that the numbers China was quoting were made the heck up. Suddenly the western media realizes that's true[1] yet we don't see a mass back-lash against China as a result... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55481397 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55481397

starpilot 6y ago
In Trump circles, the narrative has been "FUCK CHINA FOR THIS VIRUS" since day 1. Seriously, this has their mantra the entire pandemic. Everything from being a lab virus to lying about numbers are what they've discussed. Really funny to see them on the same page with some Chinese.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Although disagree with almost everything about trump, I think he was in some way right about China. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Chinese people though. Also, I don’t think he went about it in an effective way at all, it seems like the ccp was betting on him just going away after a while and just suffering the pain for a while.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    What you mention deserves to be repeated. The chinese people and the CCP are not the same thing, just as the national security apparatus of the US... and US citizens are separate too. its natural to catch flak, but it happens to both sides. The saudi arabia govt is friendly to our govt, but the vast majority of their population thinks its totally OK to blow up US citizens. Iranian leadership is constantly at odds with the US military leadershp, but iranians themselves welcome tourists from the US with open arms , love US culture and movies, and want americans to visit.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]