4 ms·

That's not a cultural thing, it's a universal human/organizational thing.

acdha 6y ago
It’s certainly widespread but the cultural component is important to how strong the reaction is. China certainly isn’t alone in having it but the political stakes are a powerful amplifier.
- refenestrator 6y ago
  The cultural component is just flavor. Who suffered consequences for getting Iraq wrong, or the financial crisis? Fortune passes everywhere.
  - acdha 6y ago
    Okay, think about that one a bit: in the U.S., power shifted peacefully and a bunch of Republicans left the Bush administration to the private sector and academia because we have a strong tradition of not pursuing political opponents. That is not true of China’s system and not having separate power hierarchies means that you can’t just say, pull a Katrina, and fail upwards into a well-paid private job with no impact on your family. Nobody’s kids are being banned from going to Yale because their dad was publicly shown as incompetent or dishonest. The more that isn’t true, the more it’s unsurprising to see people have the instinct to reach for political damage control when the problem is still raging.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- WildParser 6y ago
  I don't know about China, but the whole science around COVID seems to have a really strong cultural component that before was totally unfamiliar to me. When looking at some German Epidemiologist blog I found something like: "Next thing on the list is to proof that government measures worked" I would have expected something like: "I'm looking at data - and want to find out what helps"
- agumonkey 6y ago
  yeah I agree that political context acts as an amplifier.. every country have it's own flavor but China like USSR is still fond of secrecy and murder..
ergocoder 6y ago
Every time when there's a question about China's bad behaviour, someone will point out that it happens everywhere. Yes, but in a vastly different degree, China goes to an extreme of making it political and look good. In US, most leaks don't look good. Sure, US tries to make some problems look good, but they don't try very hard (or there's more balance in how an issue is investigated with multiple different parties).
tweetle_beetle 6y ago
That is true, but the difference is the lack of accountability, which is cultural/societal/political - there are virtually no external forces to counter a potentially dishonest official narrative. A one party state means that there is no pressure from political opponents (political battles inside the party will never trump the party itself). And there is no pressure from journalists - China has the worst score for press freedom [1] (bar Eritreaa, Turkmenistan and North Korea) with a downward trend over the last decade. If there's no one to hold your feet to the fire, there's little incentive to self-incriminate. [1] https://rsf.org/en/china https://rsf.org/en/china
- refenestrator 6y ago
  In theory that might be true, and it's the way they teach it in American civics class. In practice, Xi went on an 'anti-corruption campaign' that purged all his political enemies from power as his first initiative. The exact opposite of what your theory predicts, and actually a stronger cyclical purge than our typical repubs->dems->repubs one.
  - tweetle_beetle 6y ago
    The campaign was a unique event in decades of party history and the Wikipedia page for the campaign lists 4 different theories for political motives. I'm not sure you can view it as a sign of a culture of healthy accountability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under_Xi_Jinping#Political_motives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...
    - refenestrator 6y ago
      The point remains that they have politics. It's not some lockstep monolith. As far as which culture has more healthy accountability.. plenty of corruption to go around on all sides, the comparison would be pretty nuanced. I'd say that China has a lot more low-level corruption, as a bigger % of their economy, what with large swaths of the country being pretty third-world, but also more accountability for senior people who fuck up badly. They executed a baby food exec who poisoned kids, while nobody saw a day in jail for poisoning the city of Flint. Rick Snyder probably has a nice lobbyist job. Or, look at Covid -- the mayor of Wuhan and governor of Hubei were sacked over their poor initial handling. Is NY gonna elect a Republican over it? TX elect a Democrat? No way in either case. Maybe we have less accountability in some ways specifically due to the 2-party system's polarization. Arguably Trump lost over it, but the guy literally got covid, right before the election, after downplaying it for 6 months and still got the 2nd most votes in history.

It’s certainly widespread but the cultural component is important to how strong the reaction is. China certainly isn’t alone in having it but the political stakes are a powerful amplifier.

refenestrator 6y ago
The cultural component is just flavor. Who suffered consequences for getting Iraq wrong, or the financial crisis? Fortune passes everywhere.
- acdha 6y ago
  Okay, think about that one a bit: in the U.S., power shifted peacefully and a bunch of Republicans left the Bush administration to the private sector and academia because we have a strong tradition of not pursuing political opponents. That is not true of China’s system and not having separate power hierarchies means that you can’t just say, pull a Katrina, and fail upwards into a well-paid private job with no impact on your family. Nobody’s kids are being banned from going to Yale because their dad was publicly shown as incompetent or dishonest. The more that isn’t true, the more it’s unsurprising to see people have the instinct to reach for political damage control when the problem is still raging.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
WildParser 6y ago
I don't know about China, but the whole science around COVID seems to have a really strong cultural component that before was totally unfamiliar to me. When looking at some German Epidemiologist blog I found something like: "Next thing on the list is to proof that government measures worked" I would have expected something like: "I'm looking at data - and want to find out what helps"
agumonkey 6y ago
yeah I agree that political context acts as an amplifier.. every country have it's own flavor but China like USSR is still fond of secrecy and murder..

ergocoder 6y ago

Every time when there's a question about China's bad behaviour, someone will point out that it happens everywhere. Yes, but in a vastly different degree, China goes to an extreme of making it political and look good. In US, most leaks don't look good. Sure, US tries to make some problems look good, but they don't try very hard (or there's more balance in how an issue is investigated with multiple different parties).

tweetle_beetle 6y ago

That is true, but the difference is the lack of accountability, which is cultural/societal/political - there are virtually no external forces to counter a potentially dishonest official narrative. A one party state means that there is no pressure from political opponents (political battles inside the party will never trump the party itself). And there is no pressure from journalists - China has the worst score for press freedom [1] (bar Eritreaa, Turkmenistan and North Korea) with a downward trend over the last decade. If there's no one to hold your feet to the fire, there's little incentive to self-incriminate. [1] https://rsf.org/en/china https://rsf.org/en/china

refenestrator 6y ago
In theory that might be true, and it's the way they teach it in American civics class. In practice, Xi went on an 'anti-corruption campaign' that purged all his political enemies from power as his first initiative. The exact opposite of what your theory predicts, and actually a stronger cyclical purge than our typical repubs->dems->repubs one.
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  The campaign was a unique event in decades of party history and the Wikipedia page for the campaign lists 4 different theories for political motives. I'm not sure you can view it as a sign of a culture of healthy accountability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under_Xi_Jinping#Political_motives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...
  - refenestrator 6y ago
    The point remains that they have politics. It's not some lockstep monolith. As far as which culture has more healthy accountability.. plenty of corruption to go around on all sides, the comparison would be pretty nuanced. I'd say that China has a lot more low-level corruption, as a bigger % of their economy, what with large swaths of the country being pretty third-world, but also more accountability for senior people who fuck up badly. They executed a baby food exec who poisoned kids, while nobody saw a day in jail for poisoning the city of Flint. Rick Snyder probably has a nice lobbyist job. Or, look at Covid -- the mayor of Wuhan and governor of Hubei were sacked over their poor initial handling. Is NY gonna elect a Republican over it? TX elect a Democrat? No way in either case. Maybe we have less accountability in some ways specifically due to the 2-party system's polarization. Arguably Trump lost over it, but the guy literally got covid, right before the election, after downplaying it for 6 months and still got the 2nd most votes in history.