11 ms·

On the Party and the Princlings

46 points by finite_jest 5y ago

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
" A friend of mine once described the exodus of well-to-do Chinese studying in the West as a safety valve for the communist system " This. Love it or leave it. Its brilliant social engineering to get the most dangerous elements the appearance of choice... towards their own exile. The CCP is not the first communist ruling class to implement it, but they certainly seem to have perfected it.
joe_the_user 5y ago
I'm no friend of the Chinese Party/bureaucracy/plutocracy but it seems like someone looking at the West with even slightly jaundiced eyes would see just another kind of machinery for allowing a tiny minority to accumulate wealth. China's "sell" is you should trade free expression for a bit of sanity and stability. I'm not a fan of that approach but again, the West currently isn't doing a good selling it's approach.
- rektide 5y ago
  > would see just another kind of machinery for allowing a tiny minority to accumulate wealth. This article is not about a tiny minority's accumulation of wealth. This article is about the massive accumulation of wealth by attaching oneself to a pre-destined Princeling. It's about there being old gerontocratic lines of power, long established, that sometimes rise and fall, but which are the and the only means towards wealth accumulation, the only means to power. There's no parallel here. I fully am disgusted by the West, by how much we let wealth accumulate unchecked, by how much speech & political power wealth buys. It's vile & gross. But there's no vast stasis power, there's no systematic exploitation via governance that this article so eloquently writes up. The concerns you write seem petty to me, small, versus the vast indignity & inequity that the stasis, insular, carefully self-maintaining exploitative Chinese world that is described here puts upon it's regular citizens. Where your are born in the West is HUGELY important. Granted, yes. But the system is not inherently oppressive, resistive to outsiders & upstarts. The West wants your initiative, your gumption, wants collaborative buy in, understands that gain is mutual. The west does reward initiative, gumption, starting things. The odds are not good- if one is not already born independently wealthy- but one can absolutely get ahead, make stuff happen, just by virtue of doing good, trying hard, one's own success & merits. That alone is super exceptionally contrasting. And there's few valent powers that be hovering around actively putting you in your place. Where-as in China one's fate seems utterly purely completely determined by one's friends, by who they saddle their wagon to. We're seeing such vulgar bold signs that the Jack Ma's & other tech-origin business-folk in China are simply not permitted, will be brought to heel.
  - breakyerself 5y ago
    I think China is probably worse. I'll give you that. I think you underestimate how much birth is destiny in the USA. You'd be amazed at how many rags to riches stories in the US are just attempts to be relatable by people who actually come from extreme privilege. Even a lot of successful musicians and actors are only able to attain success because of a safety net in the form a wealthy parents.
    - vinceguidry 5y ago
      Here, it is possible to move oneself from working class to upper-middle class by working in the software industry. Our children have free rein to move to the upper class if they're up to the task. In Asia, it appears to only be possible to move up a small rung or two per generation, maybe more if you're lucky enough to win the university lottery. Class mobility is still unparalleled in the West.
      - throwaway2331 5y ago
        Granted a bachelors in C.S. (or to less effect in any other major). Granted x2 you have the funding available to pay for it (much less the time and energy if you have to work to pay for it -- i.e. your parents did not finance your tuition, much less your living costs) Granted x3 you actually have the mental ability to program at all (it is incredible how much this is taken for granted. No, you cannot just "teach" anyone anywhere off the street to understand programming). Without the first, you're "relegated" (tongue-in-cheek) to: learning it in your off-time/going to a bootcamp and hustling hard to break into a first role at a most-certainly shitty-place-to-work at an under-market salary (think $60-70k for "mid-level"). If you do not have a low-performance job or a free place to stay, this is very difficult (bills, and the low-skilled work required to pay them, are exhausting). If you can make it past that insanely high hurdle (see: your circumstances and luck are right), then yes: you too can join the upper middle class if your birth, and all the dominoes that fell after, are "up to the task." N.B. it becomes vastly more difficult to learn anything at all when you're exhausted after a 10 hour day working (with or without a commute) a depressing job and wondering if you'll have any money left at the end of the month. Those weekends really do nothing at all except leave time to catch up on chores. Unparalleled? Only on the surface, granted a robust social safety net. Without someone or something to take off the immense pressure of surviving alone, the most likely outcome is a downward-spiral into poor habits: substance abuse, poor diet, free-time spent in idleness to "recharge," poor sleep, etc. that all compound one another, and speed-up the fall into an inescapable pit of being permanently working class. Once in, to leave is an exception that is always hailed as proof of possibility (sweeping under the rug, how low the real probability is). In this case, one could still semi-honestly say "class mobility" is still alive; but that would only apply to the offspring of our hypothetical working-class stiff (hopefully, who becomes a social safety net for these children -- but I'm not holding my breath).
- seibelj 5y ago
  The West, at the very least, allows people on prime time TV to insult even the highest-ranking leaders in the most dirty and savage ways imagined. This is cathartic. That China doesn’t allow this is a sign of deep insecurity. If you think both sides have a conspiracy of elites that manipulate everything for their own ends, at least in the US we can have TV hosts point it out without fear of torture. Is that not proof of moral superiority?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    In a word, no. As you say yourself, it's a measure of relative security. US elites know their position can rarely be threatened by what is said in TV. We see the response to actual threats in the treatment of people who reveal the mechanisms of authority, most symbolically Edward Snowden.
    - duxup 5y ago
      Im confused as to how you think this plays out. Do US elites somehow prevent news of things that threaten them from being discussed? I don’t think so, and I think many fall because of it.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Jeffrey Epstein fell. Bill Gates lost his wife over his long-standing, deep involvement with Epstein. That is very, very carefully never, ever mentioned on TV. Bill Clinton, likewise.
        duxup 5y ago
        Lots of “elite” fall in the west, the freedoms and government are how that happens. We’re talking about it now.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        The actual elites in the US very, very rarely fall. The remaining Koch brother is as secure as ever, Trump or no, Jan 6 or no. Even Trump is knocking around loose, protected by Secret Service guards. That is what makes events around Epstein and his circle notable. And, no one will ever say on TV that Gates was in bed with Epstein going back three decades. I have no way to learn the extent of the Koch's engagement. Gates maintains just as high a profile as before.
- duxup 5y ago
  Seems dramatically different to me. Humans are tribal and will form a network anywhere, but the freedoms and the way the government works is significantly different to me. I grow weary of the “this is just like the west” mantra every time these things come up.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Median and Average standard of living in 'The West' is the highest in the world by most (definitely not all) measures, which is why migrants favour moving to 'The West'. The 'Billionaire Point System' of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos may be a bit off, but remember that they are actually 'true innovators' changing the system at least slightly for the better at scale. If Amazon didn't exist, we may not have a collective replacement for it, and I wonder what 'The Cloud' would even look like if AWS didn't really get it going. Frankly, the most 'odd' thing are billionaire Athletes and Crypto Traders. The system is not entirely equal, but I wouldn't say it's rigged either. "China's "sell" is you should trade free expression for a bit of sanity and stability. " ? No, Hong Kong under the English - was a 'trade' of freedoms for prosperity. Mainlanders don't get any stability, wealth, rule of law, or freedom. What you might get is an apartment and maybe a car, where your parents could not, but I think the argument could be made that they would have that were they to liberalize. If China in the last 20 years, went the direction of Korea and Japan did in the 1970s and 1980s, which is to say loosen up and liberalize after 'post war rebuild', then they might be that much wealthier. It's getting harder and harder to commit that the CCP is essential or necessary for growth. I guess we'll start to find out in the next 20 years.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ngc248 5y ago
  >>> 'm not a fan of that approach but again, the West currently isn't doing a good selling it's approach. All CCP sells is perception. They are masters at that since they control everything. The west sure has problems, but it is better to live free, coz once you trade freedom, sanity and stability sure won't be in your hands anymore.
wolverine876 5y ago
> American optimism in the early aughts was rooted in a our collective failure to grasp the sociology of 21st century China. Such perspectives, in the OP and elsewhere, implicitly assume an inevitable history leading to this moment. It assumes the current 'common wisdom' is somehow Truth, maybe arrived at through the errors of the past, and not an equally myopic misconception that will, in 20 years, be the errors of someone else's past. It also denies agency, as if the current situation was and the future is inevitable. I wonder: Is it similar to (IIRC) communism's heavy theoretical reliance on an inevitable force of history?
roenxi 5y ago
I think what really stands to be underlined, in response to this article, is that this person is using literally 2 books to draw conclusions about the communist party. This level of opacity from an organisation that controls 1 billion people are claims to have either the largest or second largest national economy globally is quite startling. Is this the state of knowledge? Compare that to the scrutiny every single important US politicians gets. Kavenaugh was literally bringing out his childhood diary and grilled about his conduct from 1982; large parts of the debate on that are part of the public record for anyone to look up. There are radical differences of approach here.
- chrchang523 5y ago
  If you look at the rest of Tanner Greer's blog, you would quickly learn that he has read a lot of other material about China, and has also spent time on the ground there.

46 points by finite_jest 5y ago

" A friend of mine once described the exodus of well-to-do Chinese studying in the West as a safety valve for the communist system " This. Love it or leave it. Its brilliant social engineering to get the most dangerous elements the appearance of choice... towards their own exile. The CCP is not the first communist ruling class to implement it, but they certainly seem to have perfected it.

joe_the_user 5y ago

I'm no friend of the Chinese Party/bureaucracy/plutocracy but it seems like someone looking at the West with even slightly jaundiced eyes would see just another kind of machinery for allowing a tiny minority to accumulate wealth. China's "sell" is you should trade free expression for a bit of sanity and stability. I'm not a fan of that approach but again, the West currently isn't doing a good selling it's approach.

rektide 5y ago
> would see just another kind of machinery for allowing a tiny minority to accumulate wealth. This article is not about a tiny minority's accumulation of wealth. This article is about the massive accumulation of wealth by attaching oneself to a pre-destined Princeling. It's about there being old gerontocratic lines of power, long established, that sometimes rise and fall, but which are the and the only means towards wealth accumulation, the only means to power. There's no parallel here. I fully am disgusted by the West, by how much we let wealth accumulate unchecked, by how much speech & political power wealth buys. It's vile & gross. But there's no vast stasis power, there's no systematic exploitation via governance that this article so eloquently writes up. The concerns you write seem petty to me, small, versus the vast indignity & inequity that the stasis, insular, carefully self-maintaining exploitative Chinese world that is described here puts upon it's regular citizens. Where your are born in the West is HUGELY important. Granted, yes. But the system is not inherently oppressive, resistive to outsiders & upstarts. The West wants your initiative, your gumption, wants collaborative buy in, understands that gain is mutual. The west does reward initiative, gumption, starting things. The odds are not good- if one is not already born independently wealthy- but one can absolutely get ahead, make stuff happen, just by virtue of doing good, trying hard, one's own success & merits. That alone is super exceptionally contrasting. And there's few valent powers that be hovering around actively putting you in your place. Where-as in China one's fate seems utterly purely completely determined by one's friends, by who they saddle their wagon to. We're seeing such vulgar bold signs that the Jack Ma's & other tech-origin business-folk in China are simply not permitted, will be brought to heel.
- breakyerself 5y ago
  I think China is probably worse. I'll give you that. I think you underestimate how much birth is destiny in the USA. You'd be amazed at how many rags to riches stories in the US are just attempts to be relatable by people who actually come from extreme privilege. Even a lot of successful musicians and actors are only able to attain success because of a safety net in the form a wealthy parents.
  - vinceguidry 5y ago
    Here, it is possible to move oneself from working class to upper-middle class by working in the software industry. Our children have free rein to move to the upper class if they're up to the task. In Asia, it appears to only be possible to move up a small rung or two per generation, maybe more if you're lucky enough to win the university lottery. Class mobility is still unparalleled in the West.
    - throwaway2331 5y ago
      Granted a bachelors in C.S. (or to less effect in any other major). Granted x2 you have the funding available to pay for it (much less the time and energy if you have to work to pay for it -- i.e. your parents did not finance your tuition, much less your living costs) Granted x3 you actually have the mental ability to program at all (it is incredible how much this is taken for granted. No, you cannot just "teach" anyone anywhere off the street to understand programming). Without the first, you're "relegated" (tongue-in-cheek) to: learning it in your off-time/going to a bootcamp and hustling hard to break into a first role at a most-certainly shitty-place-to-work at an under-market salary (think $60-70k for "mid-level"). If you do not have a low-performance job or a free place to stay, this is very difficult (bills, and the low-skilled work required to pay them, are exhausting). If you can make it past that insanely high hurdle (see: your circumstances and luck are right), then yes: you too can join the upper middle class if your birth, and all the dominoes that fell after, are "up to the task." N.B. it becomes vastly more difficult to learn anything at all when you're exhausted after a 10 hour day working (with or without a commute) a depressing job and wondering if you'll have any money left at the end of the month. Those weekends really do nothing at all except leave time to catch up on chores. Unparalleled? Only on the surface, granted a robust social safety net. Without someone or something to take off the immense pressure of surviving alone, the most likely outcome is a downward-spiral into poor habits: substance abuse, poor diet, free-time spent in idleness to "recharge," poor sleep, etc. that all compound one another, and speed-up the fall into an inescapable pit of being permanently working class. Once in, to leave is an exception that is always hailed as proof of possibility (sweeping under the rug, how low the real probability is). In this case, one could still semi-honestly say "class mobility" is still alive; but that would only apply to the offspring of our hypothetical working-class stiff (hopefully, who becomes a social safety net for these children -- but I'm not holding my breath).
seibelj 5y ago
The West, at the very least, allows people on prime time TV to insult even the highest-ranking leaders in the most dirty and savage ways imagined. This is cathartic. That China doesn’t allow this is a sign of deep insecurity. If you think both sides have a conspiracy of elites that manipulate everything for their own ends, at least in the US we can have TV hosts point it out without fear of torture. Is that not proof of moral superiority?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  In a word, no. As you say yourself, it's a measure of relative security. US elites know their position can rarely be threatened by what is said in TV. We see the response to actual threats in the treatment of people who reveal the mechanisms of authority, most symbolically Edward Snowden.
  - duxup 5y ago
    Im confused as to how you think this plays out. Do US elites somehow prevent news of things that threaten them from being discussed? I don’t think so, and I think many fall because of it.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Jeffrey Epstein fell. Bill Gates lost his wife over his long-standing, deep involvement with Epstein. That is very, very carefully never, ever mentioned on TV. Bill Clinton, likewise.
      - duxup 5y ago
        Lots of “elite” fall in the west, the freedoms and government are how that happens. We’re talking about it now.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        The actual elites in the US very, very rarely fall. The remaining Koch brother is as secure as ever, Trump or no, Jan 6 or no. Even Trump is knocking around loose, protected by Secret Service guards. That is what makes events around Epstein and his circle notable. And, no one will ever say on TV that Gates was in bed with Epstein going back three decades. I have no way to learn the extent of the Koch's engagement. Gates maintains just as high a profile as before.
duxup 5y ago
Seems dramatically different to me. Humans are tribal and will form a network anywhere, but the freedoms and the way the government works is significantly different to me. I grow weary of the “this is just like the west” mantra every time these things come up.
jollybean 5y ago
Median and Average standard of living in 'The West' is the highest in the world by most (definitely not all) measures, which is why migrants favour moving to 'The West'. The 'Billionaire Point System' of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos may be a bit off, but remember that they are actually 'true innovators' changing the system at least slightly for the better at scale. If Amazon didn't exist, we may not have a collective replacement for it, and I wonder what 'The Cloud' would even look like if AWS didn't really get it going. Frankly, the most 'odd' thing are billionaire Athletes and Crypto Traders. The system is not entirely equal, but I wouldn't say it's rigged either. "China's "sell" is you should trade free expression for a bit of sanity and stability. " ? No, Hong Kong under the English - was a 'trade' of freedoms for prosperity. Mainlanders don't get any stability, wealth, rule of law, or freedom. What you might get is an apartment and maybe a car, where your parents could not, but I think the argument could be made that they would have that were they to liberalize. If China in the last 20 years, went the direction of Korea and Japan did in the 1970s and 1980s, which is to say loosen up and liberalize after 'post war rebuild', then they might be that much wealthier. It's getting harder and harder to commit that the CCP is essential or necessary for growth. I guess we'll start to find out in the next 20 years.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ngc248 5y ago
>>> 'm not a fan of that approach but again, the West currently isn't doing a good selling it's approach. All CCP sells is perception. They are masters at that since they control everything. The west sure has problems, but it is better to live free, coz once you trade freedom, sanity and stability sure won't be in your hands anymore.

wolverine876 5y ago

> American optimism in the early aughts was rooted in a our collective failure to grasp the sociology of 21st century China. Such perspectives, in the OP and elsewhere, implicitly assume an inevitable history leading to this moment. It assumes the current 'common wisdom' is somehow Truth, maybe arrived at through the errors of the past, and not an equally myopic misconception that will, in 20 years, be the errors of someone else's past. It also denies agency, as if the current situation was and the future is inevitable. I wonder: Is it similar to (IIRC) communism's heavy theoretical reliance on an inevitable force of history?

roenxi 5y ago

I think what really stands to be underlined, in response to this article, is that this person is using literally 2 books to draw conclusions about the communist party. This level of opacity from an organisation that controls 1 billion people are claims to have either the largest or second largest national economy globally is quite startling. Is this the state of knowledge? Compare that to the scrutiny every single important US politicians gets. Kavenaugh was literally bringing out his childhood diary and grilled about his conduct from 1982; large parts of the debate on that are part of the public record for anyone to look up. There are radical differences of approach here.

chrchang523 5y ago
If you look at the rest of Tanner Greer's blog, you would quickly learn that he has read a lot of other material about China, and has also spent time on the ground there.