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The biggest sign for me is how the Chinese government threatened to charge medical workers with espionage if they speak about what happened during the early sta

The biggest sign for me is how the Chinese government threatened to charge medical workers with espionage if they speak about what happened during the early stages of the outbreak. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chinas-authorities-issue-gag-order-about-virus-to-doctors-in-wuhan.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chin... Consider the following: How can a medical worker speaking about their own experience working at a hospital in any way constitute espionage? If found guilty of espionage, by law they can be executed. Anyone who speaks up can be killed.

bsder 5y ago
The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China for anything which might upset the hoi-polloi. Trying to predict what China will execute people for is like reading entrails.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  > The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some Chinese guy? It makes as much sense to attribute a Standard Operating Procedure to "China" as it does to attribute something like that to "America", or to say "Americans think...", which is not very much at all, because America, like all societies of more than one person, is a pluralist society. China is 1.3 billion people. If you treat it as a collection of different interests and points of view, your analyses and predictions will have more cogency.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some Chinese guy? We call this deflecting. And it's a rhetorical device used when you are on the wrong side of the argument. And the answer is "All Of The Above". All parts of the Chinese government leaders see very little problem with executing those who might upset their status quo.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    What you said does not make sense at all. All Chinese government branches are directly under the command of the CCP. Even China's top court rejects the idea of juridical independence [1]. To say China is equivalent to U.S is totally ignorant. 1 . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-top-judge-warns-courts-on-judicial-independence-idUSKBN14Z07B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-t...
    - wombatmobile 5y ago
      I haven't said China is the same as USA. I’ve said China is a huge set of different interests. Can you see the difference between those two propositions? Apparently not, if you’re quoting one western account of one Chinese guys statement, and imaging that represents all of China monolithically.
      - temp8964 5y ago
        Lol. You can imagine whatever you want, at the end of the day, CCP makes the final call.
      - totalZero 5y ago
        China is more monolithic than the USA because uniformity is what their culture is structured to establish. In the West, we have an underlying belief that dissent and debate result in better decisions and more circumspect awareness of complicated situations. We tolerate insolence, dissent, and other unpleasant behaviors specifically because we know they serve a purpose. That doesn't happen with a top-down ("democratic centralist") system. The vast majority of people have absolutely no power to change the course of decisions. Political offices do not turn over from party to party in a way that shakes up underlying corruption. The police enforce political assertions in addition to the laws of the land. Your argument boils down to "there are many many people in China, so they must be ideologically and behaviorally diverse." Or, "as X approaches infinity, the number of viewpoints also approaches infinity." It's just not true for human behavior in an authoritarian collectivist society.
        5y ago
  - totalZero 5y ago
    The fundamental underpinnings of China's government and way of life are entirely different from what we Westerners are accustomed to. The simple fact that there are more individuals involved does not prove plurality of thought, because the organizational structure actively punishes dissent and silences critics. Not every society of more than one person is pluralistic. Extrinsic forces and incentives make a major impact on human behavior.
  - emmelaich 5y ago
    Baotao Xiao's paper from Feb 2020 titled "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" was removed after publication. Apparently it was available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128 too but not there now. I found it here: https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...
whydoibother 5y ago
Do you have any other source on this? Searching around showed nothing.

bsder 5y ago

The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China for anything which might upset the hoi-polloi. Trying to predict what China will execute people for is like reading entrails.

wombatmobile 5y ago
> The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some Chinese guy? It makes as much sense to attribute a Standard Operating Procedure to "China" as it does to attribute something like that to "America", or to say "Americans think...", which is not very much at all, because America, like all societies of more than one person, is a pluralist society. China is 1.3 billion people. If you treat it as a collection of different interests and points of view, your analyses and predictions will have more cogency.
- bsder 5y ago
  > When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some Chinese guy? We call this deflecting. And it's a rhetorical device used when you are on the wrong side of the argument. And the answer is "All Of The Above". All parts of the Chinese government leaders see very little problem with executing those who might upset their status quo.
- temp8964 5y ago
  What you said does not make sense at all. All Chinese government branches are directly under the command of the CCP. Even China's top court rejects the idea of juridical independence [1]. To say China is equivalent to U.S is totally ignorant. 1 . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-top-judge-warns-courts-on-judicial-independence-idUSKBN14Z07B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-t...
  - wombatmobile 5y ago
    I haven't said China is the same as USA. I’ve said China is a huge set of different interests. Can you see the difference between those two propositions? Apparently not, if you’re quoting one western account of one Chinese guys statement, and imaging that represents all of China monolithically.
    - temp8964 5y ago
      Lol. You can imagine whatever you want, at the end of the day, CCP makes the final call.
    - totalZero 5y ago
      China is more monolithic than the USA because uniformity is what their culture is structured to establish. In the West, we have an underlying belief that dissent and debate result in better decisions and more circumspect awareness of complicated situations. We tolerate insolence, dissent, and other unpleasant behaviors specifically because we know they serve a purpose. That doesn't happen with a top-down ("democratic centralist") system. The vast majority of people have absolutely no power to change the course of decisions. Political offices do not turn over from party to party in a way that shakes up underlying corruption. The police enforce political assertions in addition to the laws of the land. Your argument boils down to "there are many many people in China, so they must be ideologically and behaviorally diverse." Or, "as X approaches infinity, the number of viewpoints also approaches infinity." It's just not true for human behavior in an authoritarian collectivist society.
      - 5y ago
- totalZero 5y ago
  The fundamental underpinnings of China's government and way of life are entirely different from what we Westerners are accustomed to. The simple fact that there are more individuals involved does not prove plurality of thought, because the organizational structure actively punishes dissent and silences critics. Not every society of more than one person is pluralistic. Extrinsic forces and incentives make a major impact on human behavior.
- emmelaich 5y ago
  Baotao Xiao's paper from Feb 2020 titled "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" was removed after publication. Apparently it was available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128 too but not there now. I found it here: https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...

whydoibother 5y ago

Do you have any other source on this? Searching around showed nothing.