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That's ridiculous.China is the one in irreversible decline. Most people in the West get to enjoy freedom and access to utilities money cant buy in China. 1) F

That's ridiculous.China is the one in irreversible decline. Most people in the West get to enjoy freedom and access to utilities money cant buy in China. 1) For once most people in the west have access to safe and good tap water.Chinese urban dwellers dont. 2) Most people in the west live in places with significantly better air quality than chinese. 3) Most people in the west get to enjoy freedoms chinese cant even talk about 4) West is attracting young people from all around the world. Chinese middle class will demand the same standard of living like people in the West and CCP will be unable to give it to them.

newdude116 5y ago
1. Well, maybe in Europe. tap water in the US isn't especially good. 2. Air quality is improving fast. 3. The the right to unaffordable health care? 4) Obviously you have never lived in China. Sorry to break the news to you. Yes, China is attracting young people from all over the world too.
- EdwinLarkin 5y ago
  1. At least it's drinkable and not poisoned like in China. 2. No it is not. Have not you seen the dystopian reality of Beijing from last month? 3. Chinese healthcare is hazard on its own. 4. I have. China is not attracting anyone on a comparable level like the EU or the US. Also you dont get to stay and work in China even if you married someone from there.
  - newdude116 5y ago
    2.? Are you serious? This was a sandstorm, a very natural phenomenon. In fact, I love sandstorms since they remind me of my best times in Beijing. 3. They have clinics that would make most western clinics cry. Yes, they charge like western clinics too. But I have been for a minor thing in a normal Chinese hospital, a friend of mine had his appendix removed and another US friend of mine got a major surgery in a Chinese military hospital. 4. Don't know where you have been. Shanghai and Beijing is full of young and ambitious people from all over the world. They look for the future, not for the past. I was an immigrant in the US myself (also have an US passport now). The US was always closed for me. Zero opportunities. In China it is a brand new world. Opportunities, ambition, money. I consider it my home.
    - EdwinLarkin 5y ago
      Very natural phenomenon that is caused by Chinese deforestation and exploitation of the country. >4. Don't know where you have been. Shanghai and Beijing is full of young and ambitious people from all over the world. They look for the future, not for the past. I was an immigrant in the US myself (also have an US passport now). The US was always closed for me. Zero opportunities. In China it is a brand new world. Opportunities, ambition, money. I consider it my home. How much does CCP pay these days? Do you get sponsored tours to Chongqing ?
      - newdude116 5y ago
        The gobi desert should be very old. You may have a point that it is growing, but: "The Gobi Desert is expanding through desertification, most rapidly on the southern edge into China, which is seeing 3,600 km2 (1,390 sq mi) of grassland overtaken every year. Dust storms have increased in frequency in the past 20 years, causing further damage to China's agriculture economy. However in some areas desertification has been slowed or reversed.[15] The expansion of the Gobi is attributed mostly to human activities, locally driven by deforestation, overgrazing, and depletion of water resources, as well as to climate change.[15] China has tried various plans to slow the expansion of the desert, which have met with some success.[17] The Three-North Shelter Forest Program (or "Green Great Wall") was a Chinese government tree-planting project begun in 1978 and set to continue through 2050. The goal of the program is to reverse desertification by planting aspen and other fast-growing trees on some 36.5 million hectares across some 551 counties in 12 provinces of northern China.[18][19]" "How much does CCP pay these days? Do you get sponsored tours to Chongqing ?" No idea. They pay nothing to me. But I would happily take a passport. I going to get permanent residence rights through marriage. Otherwise I would attempt to become a HK citizen, since you cant get a mainland passport and the green card option is not very tempting on current legislation.
    - derivagral 5y ago
      Regarding #2, I was in Shanghai and Beijing in late 2019. I had a lot of discomfort first landing in Beijing; Shanghai's haze was not as bad but it still shows up in pictures. I imagine this is what the USA's coal country used to feel like when it was in active swing.
endisneigh 5y ago
This is factually untrue. By pretty much every imaginable metric China has improved for nearly everyone (in China) for the past 50 years. Is this also true in the USA? I don't think China is superior to the USA, but to say China is in a "irreversible decline" is ridiculous. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/jmgx/jjxs/t124869.htm https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/jmgx/jjxs/t124869.htm https://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-economic-growth-history/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-economic-growth-histo... https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-relations-china https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-relations-china
- jorblumesea 5y ago
  I don't think "irreversible decline" meaning the raw metrics get worse. I think here it means the structure and ideology of the CCP means they will never be able to deliver what the West can deliver, especially on the personal freedoms front. Maybe decline is the wrong word, and collision course is a better one. As China globalizes and becomes more exposed to the outside world, they will start to wonder why they can't vote on things like environmental regulation, or why the local factory pollutes their river but they have little say in that process. In this sense, this is the decline. It's the CCP being undermined by their own economic liberalization.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- EdwinLarkin 5y ago
  It is factually true. Chinese have access to poisoned shitty water that everyone has to boil first and that's not only because of that chi bullshit. Meanwhile I have access to delicious spring water from Alps. China has achieved only superficial changes that will bite them in the ass in the future.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    Do you seriously believe China is worse now then it was 50 years ago?
ISL 5y ago
It is my impression, given the repressive approaches taken in Hong Kong and Tiananmen, that any aggrieved group in China may have great difficulty communicating views in an efficacious way.
mvanaltvorst 5y ago
>Chinese middle class will demand the same standard of living like people in the West Will they? As far as I know censorship has been amazingly successful
ericmcer 5y ago
I think that’s one area they are not considering, in a globalized world being “cool” is actually tremendously valuable.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  I'd agree, with the caveat that cool only ever means powerful, and that's the dynamic I think the article indicates is changing.
Daho0n 5y ago
Your examples says nothing about the rise (or decline) of the west. Only about how it is right now. That is missing the point. Those stats you mention seen over time show that the west is at best at a standstill while PRC have risen meteoric. The middle-class in PRC were pretty much nonexistent some decades ago in PRC. They did get the better standard of living and it is still becoming better. It doesn't go as fast as it once did but far better than the west.
throwaway20875 5y ago
This is cope. We've had numerous examples of third world style infrastructure failures (Flint water, Texas power outages) within the US that will likely continue. We have under invested in infrastructure for decades, while China has done quite the opposite. Freedoms are increasingly becoming an illusion in the West. Saying something unpopular or taboo on the internet (even if it were years ago) is likely to cut you off from both your income and healthcare (as healthcare is tied to your employment). All not to mention the simmering social unrest caused by insane income inequality, the levels of both private and public debt, and the likelihood of the dollar losing its reserve status in the next few decades. Things do not look good for the US.
- vict7 5y ago
  Why do I get the feeling that 'unpopular' is just a euphemism for 'racist' here. You're saying you want to cancel cancel culture? Like look, I'll give you that there exist an incredibly small fraction of people that actually embody the spectre you are trying to conjure here. We have so so many more pressing issues in this country than fear of wokeness--like the rise of domestic white-supremacist terrorism.
  - throwaway20875 5y ago
    Can you share any data points on the rise of domestic white supremacist terrorism? I'm genuinely interested in what kind of threat this poses.
    - objectivetruth 5y ago
      The same computer and Internet connection that you used to post this message of "genuine interest" will also allow you to -- independently -- search for tons of actual US government reports and independent academic studies of US white supremacist terrorism, the arrests made, deaths and injuries caused, etc. In fact, I'd bet you can find 100 of those papers before you can find a single peer-reviewed study demonstrating any macroeconomic impact of "somebody said something racist on the Internet and everybody yelled at them!"
hohohmm 5y ago
You must be seriously disconnected from reality, both ways, to say something like this, like disconnected on a cyberpunk level. It's funny to even give the slightest thought of trying to rebunk some of those points lol.
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
1 & 2) For once most people in the west have access to safe and good tap water.Chinese urban dwellers dont. Most people in the west live in places with significantly better air quality than chinese. ... As a frequent visitor to China I can tell you its a mixed bag. Many areas enjoy western levels of water and air quality. Many areas do not. What is lost in environmental quality is offset by an unprecedented ability to escape poverty, an academic meritocracy (albeit testing based), and rising income and wealth levels the West cannot presently match. 3) Most people in the west get to enjoy freedoms chinese cant even talk about ... In absolute terms a large number of Chinese ethnicities and religions are seriously repressed and abused. In aggregate however, the Chinese system catapulted so many of its citizens out of poverty and into the middle class you will find as much (if not more) national pride at China's rise than you will contempt. I sadly observe that certain freedoms may prove to be overrated compared to others, along the lines of Maslow. 4) West is attracting young people from all around the world. ... The West needs a reversal of the balance of payments. The West needs good paying middle class jobs. The West needs to re-domesticate much of its supply chain. The West needs to prepare for high intensity war in order to deter/prevent it. This laundry list of Western needs is incompatible with the expectations of today's 'young people' who are oblivious to these existential threats, great power decline and the relative unimportance of their priorities to their actual survival.
k_sze 5y ago
How many Mainland Chinese do you actually know? Have you talked to them? My in-laws are all Mainland Chinese. They have access to safe and good tap water, either back in their home town literally in the mountains or in a big city like Wuhan. Air quality is not great, I'll give you that. But it's also not the worst, at least not in every measure. E.g. many big cities in China had lower NO2 levels than other big cities in other country, in 2016, and those numbers come from NASA: https://airquality.gsfc.nasa.gov/no2/world/east-asia/wuhan https://airquality.gsfc.nasa.gov/no2/world/east-asia/wuhan The majority of the people in China don't care about the kind of freedom you talk about. As a nation, they seem to have a very singular goal: follow the Party, make progress, and beat the rest of the world. China is also attracting lots of young people from other parts of the world. There are quite a few twitter accounts of Laowais who seem to enjoy life in China because they've seen past the values of the West.
- skywal_l 5y ago
  > they've seen past the values of the West Interesting. What would you consider are the values of the West? And, in your opinion, what are the values of the Chinese society? And don't you think there are overlaps and so, which one? No retorical questions, I am truly interesting in your answer.
  - k_sze 5y ago
    Or maybe I should put it another way: they've seen past the priorities of values of the West. I think that, as civilisations, we all aspire to mostly the same values. We just have very different priorities. For the Chinese, it's economic progress over freedom. (In fact, they are mostly free to say whatever they want as long as they don't try to rally and secede or topple the government. As a point of anecdatum, I discuss politics with my brother-in-law over WeChat. We don't always agree with the official narrative. Neither of us has been censored or arrested.)
    - skywal_l 5y ago
      > For the Chinese, it's economic progress over freedom. And do you think that this is the case because of some sort of permanence in chinese culture or is it just a transient artefact of the economic situation? Is Chinese middle class really a known variable? If you look at the west, the current doxa was not always focused on human rights and individual freedom. The same drive to economic progress has actually dominated much of its history since the renaissance and it can be argued that it was the main engine to political progress. My grand parent main political goal was mainly to ensure they would have enough to go by once they get old. Don't you think that, as chinese middle class's economic situation evolves, its priority might not also change? I think what's going to happen in china in the next 20 years are going to have as much impact on the world than the colonization of the new world by europeans 500 years ago. And chinese middle class will be at the center of it. > We don't always agree with the official narrative. Neither of us has been censored or arrested.) And if the chinese government were to do something that you consider truly horrible, would you consider that expressing your opinion openly and publicly would be considered "to rally and secede"? Again I am not trying to trigger you, I am just trying to understand a collective state of mind on which, I believed, we are poorly informed in the west.

newdude116 5y ago

1. Well, maybe in Europe. tap water in the US isn't especially good. 2. Air quality is improving fast. 3. The the right to unaffordable health care? 4) Obviously you have never lived in China. Sorry to break the news to you. Yes, China is attracting young people from all over the world too.

EdwinLarkin 5y ago
1. At least it's drinkable and not poisoned like in China. 2. No it is not. Have not you seen the dystopian reality of Beijing from last month? 3. Chinese healthcare is hazard on its own. 4. I have. China is not attracting anyone on a comparable level like the EU or the US. Also you dont get to stay and work in China even if you married someone from there.
- newdude116 5y ago
  2.? Are you serious? This was a sandstorm, a very natural phenomenon. In fact, I love sandstorms since they remind me of my best times in Beijing. 3. They have clinics that would make most western clinics cry. Yes, they charge like western clinics too. But I have been for a minor thing in a normal Chinese hospital, a friend of mine had his appendix removed and another US friend of mine got a major surgery in a Chinese military hospital. 4. Don't know where you have been. Shanghai and Beijing is full of young and ambitious people from all over the world. They look for the future, not for the past. I was an immigrant in the US myself (also have an US passport now). The US was always closed for me. Zero opportunities. In China it is a brand new world. Opportunities, ambition, money. I consider it my home.
  - EdwinLarkin 5y ago
    Very natural phenomenon that is caused by Chinese deforestation and exploitation of the country. >4. Don't know where you have been. Shanghai and Beijing is full of young and ambitious people from all over the world. They look for the future, not for the past. I was an immigrant in the US myself (also have an US passport now). The US was always closed for me. Zero opportunities. In China it is a brand new world. Opportunities, ambition, money. I consider it my home. How much does CCP pay these days? Do you get sponsored tours to Chongqing ?
    - newdude116 5y ago
      The gobi desert should be very old. You may have a point that it is growing, but: "The Gobi Desert is expanding through desertification, most rapidly on the southern edge into China, which is seeing 3,600 km2 (1,390 sq mi) of grassland overtaken every year. Dust storms have increased in frequency in the past 20 years, causing further damage to China's agriculture economy. However in some areas desertification has been slowed or reversed.[15] The expansion of the Gobi is attributed mostly to human activities, locally driven by deforestation, overgrazing, and depletion of water resources, as well as to climate change.[15] China has tried various plans to slow the expansion of the desert, which have met with some success.[17] The Three-North Shelter Forest Program (or "Green Great Wall") was a Chinese government tree-planting project begun in 1978 and set to continue through 2050. The goal of the program is to reverse desertification by planting aspen and other fast-growing trees on some 36.5 million hectares across some 551 counties in 12 provinces of northern China.[18][19]" "How much does CCP pay these days? Do you get sponsored tours to Chongqing ?" No idea. They pay nothing to me. But I would happily take a passport. I going to get permanent residence rights through marriage. Otherwise I would attempt to become a HK citizen, since you cant get a mainland passport and the green card option is not very tempting on current legislation.
  - derivagral 5y ago
    Regarding #2, I was in Shanghai and Beijing in late 2019. I had a lot of discomfort first landing in Beijing; Shanghai's haze was not as bad but it still shows up in pictures. I imagine this is what the USA's coal country used to feel like when it was in active swing.

endisneigh 5y ago

This is factually untrue. By pretty much every imaginable metric China has improved for nearly everyone (in China) for the past 50 years. Is this also true in the USA? I don't think China is superior to the USA, but to say China is in a "irreversible decline" is ridiculous. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/jmgx/jjxs/t124869.htm https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/jmgx/jjxs/t124869.htm https://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-economic-growth-history/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-economic-growth-histo... https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-relations-china https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-relations-china

jorblumesea 5y ago
I don't think "irreversible decline" meaning the raw metrics get worse. I think here it means the structure and ideology of the CCP means they will never be able to deliver what the West can deliver, especially on the personal freedoms front. Maybe decline is the wrong word, and collision course is a better one. As China globalizes and becomes more exposed to the outside world, they will start to wonder why they can't vote on things like environmental regulation, or why the local factory pollutes their river but they have little say in that process. In this sense, this is the decline. It's the CCP being undermined by their own economic liberalization.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
EdwinLarkin 5y ago
It is factually true. Chinese have access to poisoned shitty water that everyone has to boil first and that's not only because of that chi bullshit. Meanwhile I have access to delicious spring water from Alps. China has achieved only superficial changes that will bite them in the ass in the future.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Do you seriously believe China is worse now then it was 50 years ago?

ISL 5y ago

It is my impression, given the repressive approaches taken in Hong Kong and Tiananmen, that any aggrieved group in China may have great difficulty communicating views in an efficacious way.

mvanaltvorst 5y ago

>Chinese middle class will demand the same standard of living like people in the West Will they? As far as I know censorship has been amazingly successful

ericmcer 5y ago

I think that’s one area they are not considering, in a globalized world being “cool” is actually tremendously valuable.

motohagiography 5y ago
I'd agree, with the caveat that cool only ever means powerful, and that's the dynamic I think the article indicates is changing.

Daho0n 5y ago

Your examples says nothing about the rise (or decline) of the west. Only about how it is right now. That is missing the point. Those stats you mention seen over time show that the west is at best at a standstill while PRC have risen meteoric. The middle-class in PRC were pretty much nonexistent some decades ago in PRC. They did get the better standard of living and it is still becoming better. It doesn't go as fast as it once did but far better than the west.

throwaway20875 5y ago

This is cope. We've had numerous examples of third world style infrastructure failures (Flint water, Texas power outages) within the US that will likely continue. We have under invested in infrastructure for decades, while China has done quite the opposite. Freedoms are increasingly becoming an illusion in the West. Saying something unpopular or taboo on the internet (even if it were years ago) is likely to cut you off from both your income and healthcare (as healthcare is tied to your employment). All not to mention the simmering social unrest caused by insane income inequality, the levels of both private and public debt, and the likelihood of the dollar losing its reserve status in the next few decades. Things do not look good for the US.

vict7 5y ago
Why do I get the feeling that 'unpopular' is just a euphemism for 'racist' here. You're saying you want to cancel cancel culture? Like look, I'll give you that there exist an incredibly small fraction of people that actually embody the spectre you are trying to conjure here. We have so so many more pressing issues in this country than fear of wokeness--like the rise of domestic white-supremacist terrorism.
- throwaway20875 5y ago
  Can you share any data points on the rise of domestic white supremacist terrorism? I'm genuinely interested in what kind of threat this poses.
  - objectivetruth 5y ago
    The same computer and Internet connection that you used to post this message of "genuine interest" will also allow you to -- independently -- search for tons of actual US government reports and independent academic studies of US white supremacist terrorism, the arrests made, deaths and injuries caused, etc. In fact, I'd bet you can find 100 of those papers before you can find a single peer-reviewed study demonstrating any macroeconomic impact of "somebody said something racist on the Internet and everybody yelled at them!"

hohohmm 5y ago

You must be seriously disconnected from reality, both ways, to say something like this, like disconnected on a cyberpunk level. It's funny to even give the slightest thought of trying to rebunk some of those points lol.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

1 & 2) For once most people in the west have access to safe and good tap water.Chinese urban dwellers dont. Most people in the west live in places with significantly better air quality than chinese. ... As a frequent visitor to China I can tell you its a mixed bag. Many areas enjoy western levels of water and air quality. Many areas do not. What is lost in environmental quality is offset by an unprecedented ability to escape poverty, an academic meritocracy (albeit testing based), and rising income and wealth levels the West cannot presently match. 3) Most people in the west get to enjoy freedoms chinese cant even talk about ... In absolute terms a large number of Chinese ethnicities and religions are seriously repressed and abused. In aggregate however, the Chinese system catapulted so many of its citizens out of poverty and into the middle class you will find as much (if not more) national pride at China's rise than you will contempt. I sadly observe that certain freedoms may prove to be overrated compared to others, along the lines of Maslow. 4) West is attracting young people from all around the world. ... The West needs a reversal of the balance of payments. The West needs good paying middle class jobs. The West needs to re-domesticate much of its supply chain. The West needs to prepare for high intensity war in order to deter/prevent it. This laundry list of Western needs is incompatible with the expectations of today's 'young people' who are oblivious to these existential threats, great power decline and the relative unimportance of their priorities to their actual survival.

k_sze 5y ago

How many Mainland Chinese do you actually know? Have you talked to them? My in-laws are all Mainland Chinese. They have access to safe and good tap water, either back in their home town literally in the mountains or in a big city like Wuhan. Air quality is not great, I'll give you that. But it's also not the worst, at least not in every measure. E.g. many big cities in China had lower NO2 levels than other big cities in other country, in 2016, and those numbers come from NASA: https://airquality.gsfc.nasa.gov/no2/world/east-asia/wuhan https://airquality.gsfc.nasa.gov/no2/world/east-asia/wuhan The majority of the people in China don't care about the kind of freedom you talk about. As a nation, they seem to have a very singular goal: follow the Party, make progress, and beat the rest of the world. China is also attracting lots of young people from other parts of the world. There are quite a few twitter accounts of Laowais who seem to enjoy life in China because they've seen past the values of the West.

skywal_l 5y ago
> they've seen past the values of the West Interesting. What would you consider are the values of the West? And, in your opinion, what are the values of the Chinese society? And don't you think there are overlaps and so, which one? No retorical questions, I am truly interesting in your answer.
- k_sze 5y ago
  Or maybe I should put it another way: they've seen past the priorities of values of the West. I think that, as civilisations, we all aspire to mostly the same values. We just have very different priorities. For the Chinese, it's economic progress over freedom. (In fact, they are mostly free to say whatever they want as long as they don't try to rally and secede or topple the government. As a point of anecdatum, I discuss politics with my brother-in-law over WeChat. We don't always agree with the official narrative. Neither of us has been censored or arrested.)
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    > For the Chinese, it's economic progress over freedom. And do you think that this is the case because of some sort of permanence in chinese culture or is it just a transient artefact of the economic situation? Is Chinese middle class really a known variable? If you look at the west, the current doxa was not always focused on human rights and individual freedom. The same drive to economic progress has actually dominated much of its history since the renaissance and it can be argued that it was the main engine to political progress. My grand parent main political goal was mainly to ensure they would have enough to go by once they get old. Don't you think that, as chinese middle class's economic situation evolves, its priority might not also change? I think what's going to happen in china in the next 20 years are going to have as much impact on the world than the colonization of the new world by europeans 500 years ago. And chinese middle class will be at the center of it. > We don't always agree with the official narrative. Neither of us has been censored or arrested.) And if the chinese government were to do something that you consider truly horrible, would you consider that expressing your opinion openly and publicly would be considered "to rally and secede"? Again I am not trying to trigger you, I am just trying to understand a collective state of mind on which, I believed, we are poorly informed in the west.