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Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of poverty is a huge win for human rights. When you're poo

Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of poverty is a huge win for human rights. When you're poor, you're not free. Having grown up with dirty streets and beggars, you can't possibly imagine how big a deal it is for me to see my hometown transforming into a modern metropolis, and how my grandparents-in-law (in a different city, in a rural area) finaly have... Wait for it... A fscking toilet instead of a hole in the ground, as well as free health insurance. To me and millions of Chinese, these matters much more than being able to vote for the president. A recent study by the Democracy Perception Index shows that Chinese feel that their country is democratic. But this is ludicrous, how can this be? It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. It's not just propaganda; this result is consistent with earlier studies by Harvard and York University, as well as by my own experience on the ground. https://latana.com/democracy-perception-index/ https://latana.com/democracy-perception-index/ The concept of 民主 is much more in line with the 19th century definition of democracy, when the concept was brought to China. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that (in the west) democracy became synonymous with electorialism. So, not commenting on any other countries. But in case of China, Chinese view democracy and human rights differently. I think we should let them.

azinman2 4y ago
[flagged]
madrox 4y ago
> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. I'm going to be thinking about this sentence for the rest of my life
- MrLeap 4y ago
  That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if the nature of America's representative democracy lowers the threshold by which our elected officials actually have to do a good job / serve the will of the people. They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN" Do our officials receive less psychic pressure? Does the Chinese government work harder to align the populous' desires with their actions? Pretty fascinating rabbit holes.
  - mrslave 4y ago
    Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think[0] Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all. [0] https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/ https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
    - astrange 4y ago
      That study is false. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
  - danielheath 4y ago
    The way the US electoral system chooses representatives is terrible. Other countries have better methods, but change is very, very hard.
    - throwaway2037 4y ago
      I assume you are talking about a parliamentary system? Yes, I also prefer it. It is even better if there is a good mix of parties in power -- Germany, Netherlands, etc. It seems like 5-10 parties in parliament forces a good amount of compromise, which results in the most progress possible. I prefer what is loosely termed as a "weak prime minister" where the coalition is multi-party, over a "strong prime minister" where no coalition is required. (Please ignore the scenario of a _constant_ super majority, like Singapore's "People's Action Party".)
      - jimmydorry 4y ago
        GP is probably referring to the electoral system itself: "first past the post" [1]. Essentially a winner take all style of voting which enforces a two-party system. E.g. In such a system, if a state has 50 seats and a party manages to win 24 of them (while the second place only wins 23 seats), that first party gets all 50 seats of representation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
- stackbutterflow 4y ago
  Except they have no recourse when the party doesn't work for their best interest. It has been repeated a lot in the past decade because overall things improved but recently the population of Shanghai was put under a terrible lockdown, the government didn't have their best interest at heart and what happened? Nothing, because they can't change anything and because the party doesn't care about their best interest. The party only cares about itself. Making the populace happy is a lever amongst many they use to stay in power but when their interest and the people's interest doesn't align they have other, brutal means to enforce their policy.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    Nothing happened in Shanghai? No, people complained and the government made changes in policy. People complained and they fired corrupt or incompetent officials who screwed things up. Yes the Shanghai mess was gigantic. But even so, by and large, the Chinese people are supportive of lockdowns even if they protest against specific logistical problems, fuck ups and the overall strain placed on their lives. The Chinese government doesn't lock down because they are an evil oppressive regime, they lock down because the public is at large still very supportive of lockdowns as a measure (especially given the fact that vaccination rates in China are relatively low, and that Chinese people fear COVID much more than people in the west do). If they don't lock down and they let millions of people die through COVID, that's when you will see mass protests and riots. That "they don't have recourse" is false, this is a stereotype. Protests are commonplace in China. There are literally thousands of protests every year, and often the government is responsive to such protests. Not every single protest is respected, but many are. The Chinese government performs a lot of polls and surveys to elicit feedback and to gauge satisfaction. There's a reason why hard data from a decade of research has shown that Chinese people increasingly believe that the government represent their interest well. All this stereotyping of the party "only caring about itself" doesn't even make sense when you consider that the party consists of 95M people, or about 5% of the population. Everybody has some extended family member that's a party member. That's a big amount of representation. I'd say most of the ideas about China come from some sort of reasoning on what a stereotypical authoritarian regime looks like, as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Is China actually authoritarian? From a western perspective, I guess so. But even so, what's underappreciated is that China is a very atypical "authoritarian" regime with a lot more grassroots representation and feedback than one might expect from a stereotypical authoritarian regime. Making the populace happy being a lever to stay in power — sure, agreed. That's not a bad thing, that's how it's supposed to work in China — the party derives legitimacy from doing good work, and if they stop doing good work then all hell will break lose and the country will plunge into a civil war, as China has seen time and again in the past 2000 years. The government knows this, the people know this, thus the government knows it better do a good job, or else their heads will roll.
striking 4y ago
I don't totally disagree with you here. There's certainly something to be said about systems that make people happier than no system at all or the wrong system entirely, e.g. the soft power of surveillance being better than a total lack of enforcement of certain rules or heavy-handed and expensive policing efforts that don't work or make people any more free. That being said, I think there are limits to this philosophy. It's pretty clear by now that not everyone in China is getting a fair shake, to the extent that perhaps it is time for other countries to evaluate their relationships with the output of those in China who are experiencing something that goes beyond the pale in terms of human rights violations i.e. the Uyghur population and the work that they are being "voluntold" for as well as the "re-education" they are experiencing. I think that for as much sense as it makes for China to do whatever it does, it makes sense for Western countries to do something about the obvious misalignment of values between the two groups. The West not accepting / becoming dependent on economic conditions that result from violations of their views on human rights or democracy is a very reasonable action to take from an ethical and moral standpoint, just as an example.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  There may be limits to that philosophy (or any philosophy for that matter). There are no doubt inequalities in China. I just don't think the Xinjiang issue is representative of the problem you're thinking of, because the issue is heavily politicized by western mainstream media and governments, leaving out or mispresenting important facts (as is usually the case with China reporting), and/or representing allegations as final and proven facts even in the absence of evidence.
mschuster91 4y ago
> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. And here is the crux of China's zero-covid policy. Follow the Western lead and run covid run its course? That would be millions of deaths even with Omicron being not as deadly, simply because Sinovax is nowhere near as effective as the mRNA vaccines are. It's too late (and politically unwise, given how CCP propaganda praised its selfmade vaccine) to mass-rollout mRNA vaccines, so the only option that prevents millions of deaths (and so, keeps the "social contract" of freedoms vs. wealth) is to brutally suppress Covid. The interesting thing will be when the Chinese public deems the zero-covid policy "not good enough"...
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Actually, Sinovac work as well as Pfizer when it comes to preventing hospitilization and death, but requires sufficient boosters. This is shown by this research paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v... The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media. What is true however is that Chinese population has less immunity against omicron due to lower vaccination rates, especially among the elderly. For one, the Chinese don't see vaccination as really necessary because lockdowns work. Second, the Chinese worry a lot more about vaccine side effects. Here in the Netherlands, vaccines are sold as "100% safe, everyone should get it", whereas in China doctors would recommend against getting a vaccine if you have another medical problem such as heart problems. My other grandparents in law choose not to get vaccinated because they have many other health problems due to old age. Finally, the Chinese public is by and large very supportive of lockdowns despite the Shanghai mess. Rather than "don't lock down" they now just believe "lock down earlier, don't turn into the next Shanghai".
  - oivey 4y ago
    > The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media. This isn’t true, and if you look at table 2 in the paper you link it is obvious. With equal dosing, SinoVac is less effective than Pfizer in basically all categories. SinoVac doesn’t start to have _any_ protection against mild/moderate disease until 3 doses, and even then, it’s significantly worse than Pfizer. It’s hard to know how that relates to disease transmission, but it’s probably fair to guess that less protection against mild/moderate disease means increased viral loads and faster disease spread.
Matl 4y ago
> Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. > When you're poor, you're not free. I appreciate someone 'qualified' making this point. Whenever I tried to argue this in the past, I inherently got dismissed as being in a privileged European position not knowing what I am talking about, (even as an Eastern European), so thanks for your post.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Happy to hear this.
eddieplan9 4y ago
Why the false dichotomy? Does political freedom automatically contradict with economic prosperity for some reason now? Born and raised in China, I fail to see how the last 10 years of erosion in freedom has yielded any better results economically. Please don’t buy the government propaganda that legitimizes everything from stupid to evil as a price that has to be paid to raise people out of poverty.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Nowhere did I say that economic freedom and political freedom are mutually exclusive. What I do protest however is the idea that only political freedom can be considered a legitimate form of freedom. I am making the case that: - economic freedom is an equally valid form of freedom. - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most. As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in China": this is the mainstream western narrative, but the Chinese people don't view it that way. By and large, they view China as way better off now than 10 years ago. All the data and on the ground talks show this. What else is there it argue about? It sounds like you are like me, born and raised in China but having lived in the west for a long time. If you live in the west and all you hear is liberal thought and western ideas on political freedom, then after a while it seems like that is all there is that matters. But I am saying no: what we think here don't matter at all, what the people there think is all that matters. We here can consider China's government illegitimate for whatever reason, but that doesn't make them illegitimate. The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate, for whatever reason they want, even reasons that we don't agree with.
  - dwallin 4y ago
    - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most. This is only possible peacefully if you have political freedom.
  - makoz 4y ago
    > As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in China ... the Chinese people don't view it that way Really? My girlfriend and her friends would strongly disagree with that statement. From my understanding they grew up in a time when internet in China was a lot younger and they actually had an ability to discuss political discussions, or items that highlight the government in a negative manner. Now everything that isn't the government's view is incredibly censored/filtered online. It might hard to not see the erosion of freedom when it's being prevented from being communicated online. Fwiw I'm not disagreeing with your statement on economic freedom and I find the amount of people lifted out of poverty and the growth China has gone through in the last few decades to be incredible but it seems a bit disingenuous to say certain "freedoms" haven't been eroded in the last 10 years comparatively.
imbnwa 4y ago
This is interesting to read, I'm curious how this diverges/converges from the observation that: In the West the words for referring to someone formally are words that used to refer to the nobility exclusively (Mister, Misses in English comes from 'Master, Mistress', Monsieur, Madamme in French, Señor, Señora in Spanish, derive from 'My Lord, My Lady' respectively). So in the West, the cultural transformation was more than mere equality of political voice, but more, that 'we are all nobles', and (domestic?) political history in the West is the ever expanding circle of this inherent nobleness of all (arguably right down to trends in current American social issues). 'Rights' was something that, in the West, was first contested between the nobility and the King, then in the modern period between the wealthy merchant class and the nobility/royalty. James Madison, one of the American Revolution leaders, writes explicitly about how the masses are incapable of the requirements of absolute democracy. So there's definitely something to it when you point out that 'Democracy' in the West wasn't immediately interested in conferring a voice onto every Tom, Dick, and Harry (we'll just set aside the status of women and slaves) You might be off about 'latter half of the 20th century' bringing electorialism to bear, rather the late 19th century/early 20th century was when, finally, the proletariat started demanding its rights, e.g. The Mexican Civil War that saw the establishment of collective farming lands, the struggle of labor and unions in America and Europe to secure worker's conditions backed by the threat of socialism (which, from Marx himself, is about endignity [ennoblement] of everyone's time), all of which, funny enough, have been desolving since the 90s (NAFTA eradicatd collective farming in Mexico). Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation), in stark contrast to what you're describing is the history of this idea in China, where, dare I say, the idea of ennoblement stops at a hard boundary unlike in the West. P.S. I don't know a Chinese language so it may be that the words for formally addressing someone also share this genealogy of descending from terms formerly meant exclusively for nobility.
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  > Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation) This was a hard concept for my Thai wife to grasp at first. I described it this way. In America, each person represents their own kingdom. The government exists to serve (and be subservient) and protect us to keep the peace. I always try to remind myself that government by the people, for the people means that the balance of power lies solely with the people.
oezi 4y ago
This is all fine and good until the Chinese government is leading China down a path of aggression abroad or to a genocide such as in Xinjiang. As a German believe me if I tell you that being under a totalitarian regime can backfire pretty quickly. It took Hitler only 6 years. Putin took longer but hundreds of thousands are dead for just this year alone.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  The Chinese lived (well, far from all did...) 27 years under Mao. They know about murderous totalitarian regimes! The Mao background may also mean they appreciate even minor progress more than us.
markvdb 4y ago
I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close. Yes, the Chinese state has made some remarkable positive material achievements for most Chinese. No, it does an absolutely shit job for many of them. Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above. What would it take for a national government to get more passable results on the veil of ignorance test? Try the thought experiment! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
- lmm 4y ago
  > I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close. What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)? > Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above. Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable.
  - markvdb 4y ago
    > Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable. I am deliberately applying an individual level test to the social level. This is not fuzzy utopian everything-should-be-perfect idealism though. Think of it as an extensive test suite to run against a government's policies. > What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)? EHARDFAIL: active lgbti+ prosecution.
picsao 4y ago

azinman2 4y ago

[flagged]

madrox 4y ago

MrLeap 4y ago
That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if the nature of America's representative democracy lowers the threshold by which our elected officials actually have to do a good job / serve the will of the people. They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN" Do our officials receive less psychic pressure? Does the Chinese government work harder to align the populous' desires with their actions? Pretty fascinating rabbit holes.
- mrslave 4y ago
  Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think[0] Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all. [0] https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/ https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
  - astrange 4y ago
    That study is false. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
- danielheath 4y ago
  The way the US electoral system chooses representatives is terrible. Other countries have better methods, but change is very, very hard.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    I assume you are talking about a parliamentary system? Yes, I also prefer it. It is even better if there is a good mix of parties in power -- Germany, Netherlands, etc. It seems like 5-10 parties in parliament forces a good amount of compromise, which results in the most progress possible. I prefer what is loosely termed as a "weak prime minister" where the coalition is multi-party, over a "strong prime minister" where no coalition is required. (Please ignore the scenario of a _constant_ super majority, like Singapore's "People's Action Party".)
    - jimmydorry 4y ago
      GP is probably referring to the electoral system itself: "first past the post" [1]. Essentially a winner take all style of voting which enforces a two-party system. E.g. In such a system, if a state has 50 seats and a party manages to win 24 of them (while the second place only wins 23 seats), that first party gets all 50 seats of representation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
stackbutterflow 4y ago
Except they have no recourse when the party doesn't work for their best interest. It has been repeated a lot in the past decade because overall things improved but recently the population of Shanghai was put under a terrible lockdown, the government didn't have their best interest at heart and what happened? Nothing, because they can't change anything and because the party doesn't care about their best interest. The party only cares about itself. Making the populace happy is a lever amongst many they use to stay in power but when their interest and the people's interest doesn't align they have other, brutal means to enforce their policy.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Nothing happened in Shanghai? No, people complained and the government made changes in policy. People complained and they fired corrupt or incompetent officials who screwed things up. Yes the Shanghai mess was gigantic. But even so, by and large, the Chinese people are supportive of lockdowns even if they protest against specific logistical problems, fuck ups and the overall strain placed on their lives. The Chinese government doesn't lock down because they are an evil oppressive regime, they lock down because the public is at large still very supportive of lockdowns as a measure (especially given the fact that vaccination rates in China are relatively low, and that Chinese people fear COVID much more than people in the west do). If they don't lock down and they let millions of people die through COVID, that's when you will see mass protests and riots. That "they don't have recourse" is false, this is a stereotype. Protests are commonplace in China. There are literally thousands of protests every year, and often the government is responsive to such protests. Not every single protest is respected, but many are. The Chinese government performs a lot of polls and surveys to elicit feedback and to gauge satisfaction. There's a reason why hard data from a decade of research has shown that Chinese people increasingly believe that the government represent their interest well. All this stereotyping of the party "only caring about itself" doesn't even make sense when you consider that the party consists of 95M people, or about 5% of the population. Everybody has some extended family member that's a party member. That's a big amount of representation. I'd say most of the ideas about China come from some sort of reasoning on what a stereotypical authoritarian regime looks like, as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Is China actually authoritarian? From a western perspective, I guess so. But even so, what's underappreciated is that China is a very atypical "authoritarian" regime with a lot more grassroots representation and feedback than one might expect from a stereotypical authoritarian regime. Making the populace happy being a lever to stay in power — sure, agreed. That's not a bad thing, that's how it's supposed to work in China — the party derives legitimacy from doing good work, and if they stop doing good work then all hell will break lose and the country will plunge into a civil war, as China has seen time and again in the past 2000 years. The government knows this, the people know this, thus the government knows it better do a good job, or else their heads will roll.

striking 4y ago

I don't totally disagree with you here. There's certainly something to be said about systems that make people happier than no system at all or the wrong system entirely, e.g. the soft power of surveillance being better than a total lack of enforcement of certain rules or heavy-handed and expensive policing efforts that don't work or make people any more free. That being said, I think there are limits to this philosophy. It's pretty clear by now that not everyone in China is getting a fair shake, to the extent that perhaps it is time for other countries to evaluate their relationships with the output of those in China who are experiencing something that goes beyond the pale in terms of human rights violations i.e. the Uyghur population and the work that they are being "voluntold" for as well as the "re-education" they are experiencing. I think that for as much sense as it makes for China to do whatever it does, it makes sense for Western countries to do something about the obvious misalignment of values between the two groups. The West not accepting / becoming dependent on economic conditions that result from violations of their views on human rights or democracy is a very reasonable action to take from an ethical and moral standpoint, just as an example.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
There may be limits to that philosophy (or any philosophy for that matter). There are no doubt inequalities in China. I just don't think the Xinjiang issue is representative of the problem you're thinking of, because the issue is heavily politicized by western mainstream media and governments, leaving out or mispresenting important facts (as is usually the case with China reporting), and/or representing allegations as final and proven facts even in the absence of evidence.

mschuster91 4y ago

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. And here is the crux of China's zero-covid policy. Follow the Western lead and run covid run its course? That would be millions of deaths even with Omicron being not as deadly, simply because Sinovax is nowhere near as effective as the mRNA vaccines are. It's too late (and politically unwise, given how CCP propaganda praised its selfmade vaccine) to mass-rollout mRNA vaccines, so the only option that prevents millions of deaths (and so, keeps the "social contract" of freedoms vs. wealth) is to brutally suppress Covid. The interesting thing will be when the Chinese public deems the zero-covid policy "not good enough"...

FooBarWidget 4y ago
Actually, Sinovac work as well as Pfizer when it comes to preventing hospitilization and death, but requires sufficient boosters. This is shown by this research paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v... The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media. What is true however is that Chinese population has less immunity against omicron due to lower vaccination rates, especially among the elderly. For one, the Chinese don't see vaccination as really necessary because lockdowns work. Second, the Chinese worry a lot more about vaccine side effects. Here in the Netherlands, vaccines are sold as "100% safe, everyone should get it", whereas in China doctors would recommend against getting a vaccine if you have another medical problem such as heart problems. My other grandparents in law choose not to get vaccinated because they have many other health problems due to old age. Finally, the Chinese public is by and large very supportive of lockdowns despite the Shanghai mess. Rather than "don't lock down" they now just believe "lock down earlier, don't turn into the next Shanghai".
- oivey 4y ago
  > The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media. This isn’t true, and if you look at table 2 in the paper you link it is obvious. With equal dosing, SinoVac is less effective than Pfizer in basically all categories. SinoVac doesn’t start to have _any_ protection against mild/moderate disease until 3 doses, and even then, it’s significantly worse than Pfizer. It’s hard to know how that relates to disease transmission, but it’s probably fair to guess that less protection against mild/moderate disease means increased viral loads and faster disease spread.

Matl 4y ago

> Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. > When you're poor, you're not free. I appreciate someone 'qualified' making this point. Whenever I tried to argue this in the past, I inherently got dismissed as being in a privileged European position not knowing what I am talking about, (even as an Eastern European), so thanks for your post.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
Happy to hear this.

eddieplan9 4y ago

Why the false dichotomy? Does political freedom automatically contradict with economic prosperity for some reason now? Born and raised in China, I fail to see how the last 10 years of erosion in freedom has yielded any better results economically. Please don’t buy the government propaganda that legitimizes everything from stupid to evil as a price that has to be paid to raise people out of poverty.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
Nowhere did I say that economic freedom and political freedom are mutually exclusive. What I do protest however is the idea that only political freedom can be considered a legitimate form of freedom. I am making the case that: - economic freedom is an equally valid form of freedom. - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most. As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in China": this is the mainstream western narrative, but the Chinese people don't view it that way. By and large, they view China as way better off now than 10 years ago. All the data and on the ground talks show this. What else is there it argue about? It sounds like you are like me, born and raised in China but having lived in the west for a long time. If you live in the west and all you hear is liberal thought and western ideas on political freedom, then after a while it seems like that is all there is that matters. But I am saying no: what we think here don't matter at all, what the people there think is all that matters. We here can consider China's government illegitimate for whatever reason, but that doesn't make them illegitimate. The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate, for whatever reason they want, even reasons that we don't agree with.
- dwallin 4y ago
  - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most. This is only possible peacefully if you have political freedom.
- makoz 4y ago
  > As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in China ... the Chinese people don't view it that way Really? My girlfriend and her friends would strongly disagree with that statement. From my understanding they grew up in a time when internet in China was a lot younger and they actually had an ability to discuss political discussions, or items that highlight the government in a negative manner. Now everything that isn't the government's view is incredibly censored/filtered online. It might hard to not see the erosion of freedom when it's being prevented from being communicated online. Fwiw I'm not disagreeing with your statement on economic freedom and I find the amount of people lifted out of poverty and the growth China has gone through in the last few decades to be incredible but it seems a bit disingenuous to say certain "freedoms" haven't been eroded in the last 10 years comparatively.

imbnwa 4y ago

This is interesting to read, I'm curious how this diverges/converges from the observation that: In the West the words for referring to someone formally are words that used to refer to the nobility exclusively (Mister, Misses in English comes from 'Master, Mistress', Monsieur, Madamme in French, Señor, Señora in Spanish, derive from 'My Lord, My Lady' respectively). So in the West, the cultural transformation was more than mere equality of political voice, but more, that 'we are all nobles', and (domestic?) political history in the West is the ever expanding circle of this inherent nobleness of all (arguably right down to trends in current American social issues). 'Rights' was something that, in the West, was first contested between the nobility and the King, then in the modern period between the wealthy merchant class and the nobility/royalty. James Madison, one of the American Revolution leaders, writes explicitly about how the masses are incapable of the requirements of absolute democracy. So there's definitely something to it when you point out that 'Democracy' in the West wasn't immediately interested in conferring a voice onto every Tom, Dick, and Harry (we'll just set aside the status of women and slaves) You might be off about 'latter half of the 20th century' bringing electorialism to bear, rather the late 19th century/early 20th century was when, finally, the proletariat started demanding its rights, e.g. The Mexican Civil War that saw the establishment of collective farming lands, the struggle of labor and unions in America and Europe to secure worker's conditions backed by the threat of socialism (which, from Marx himself, is about endignity [ennoblement] of everyone's time), all of which, funny enough, have been desolving since the 90s (NAFTA eradicatd collective farming in Mexico). Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation), in stark contrast to what you're describing is the history of this idea in China, where, dare I say, the idea of ennoblement stops at a hard boundary unlike in the West. P.S. I don't know a Chinese language so it may be that the words for formally addressing someone also share this genealogy of descending from terms formerly meant exclusively for nobility.

nickstinemates 4y ago
> Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation) This was a hard concept for my Thai wife to grasp at first. I described it this way. In America, each person represents their own kingdom. The government exists to serve (and be subservient) and protect us to keep the peace. I always try to remind myself that government by the people, for the people means that the balance of power lies solely with the people.

oezi 4y ago

This is all fine and good until the Chinese government is leading China down a path of aggression abroad or to a genocide such as in Xinjiang. As a German believe me if I tell you that being under a totalitarian regime can backfire pretty quickly. It took Hitler only 6 years. Putin took longer but hundreds of thousands are dead for just this year alone.

BurningFrog 4y ago
The Chinese lived (well, far from all did...) 27 years under Mao. They know about murderous totalitarian regimes! The Mao background may also mean they appreciate even minor progress more than us.

markvdb 4y ago

I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close. Yes, the Chinese state has made some remarkable positive material achievements for most Chinese. No, it does an absolutely shit job for many of them. Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above. What would it take for a national government to get more passable results on the veil of ignorance test? Try the thought experiment! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

lmm 4y ago
> I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close. What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)? > Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above. Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable.
- markvdb 4y ago
  > Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable. I am deliberately applying an individual level test to the social level. This is not fuzzy utopian everything-should-be-perfect idealism though. Think of it as an extensive test suite to run against a government's policies. > What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)? EHARDFAIL: active lgbti+ prosecution.

picsao 4y ago