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> How could you possibly know this? Research by Harvard, York University, Democracy Perception Index, more. Or you could... go visit China, talk to Chinese pe

> How could you possibly know this? Research by Harvard, York University, Democracy Perception Index, more. Or you could... go visit China, talk to Chinese people. The majority of them support the government. And I haven't even brought up my own friends and family as anecdotal evidence. But let me turn this around. If you're so convinced that all satisfaction is fake and a result of coercion, then how do you possibly prove that western European countries are not dictatorships? You could always argue that elections are fake, and that all their citizen who says that their country is a democracy only say so under coercion. One can always rationalize this to the point where the notion becomes unfalsifiable. You should check out the talks of Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat. He has seen the Soviet Union, he has seen what a dictatorship looks like, and what's going on in China looks nothing like that. The past 40 years, the freedom of the Chinese people have exploded. 40 years ago you couldn't choose what clothes to wear, what to study, where to live, where to work. All of that has changed. Millions of Chinese travel abroad every year, and they all return to China. Why would they do that if China is such a miserable place? Why would a "dictatorship" allow its citizen to travel abroad where they are exposed to democracy? The answer is twofold: China isn't a dictatorship, and you can't reason about all countries using this dictatorship-vs-democracy dichotomy. These are the best 30 years out of 3000 years for Chinese people, Chinese people have been freer than they have ever been in Chinese history. Western analysis projects a Stalinist communism dictatorship on China but this projection is wrong and doesn't fit. China has authoritarian elements, yes, but it is still very far removed from the typical dictatorship that people imagine. Case in point: the recent Covid protests. Western media has been writing for several years now about how "all-powerful dictator-for-life Xi Jingping" made up an anti-Covid apparatus merely for his own entertainment and to show off power and to control people. Then suddenly there were protests. Did they sent in the tanks? No, they... lifted the 0-covid measures! Seriously, does this sound like what a power-hungry dictator would do? Maybe, just maybe, everything you think you know about China is wrong, and all the shallow China analyses you have read in the news are all wrong. In this "dictatorship" there are 15000 (!) protests a year, and often the protesters get what they want.

oblio 4y ago
> The answer is twofold: China isn't a dictatorship, and you can't reason about all countries using this dictatorship-vs-democracy dichotomy. Can I complain about the man in charge? If I go to social media and I post that I hate the bear, what happens? :-) For comparison purposes, on a daily basis, Klaus Iohannis (the Romanian president) can fill his fridge with meat, as we say in Romanian (I'll let you figure out from which body part that meat comes from :-))) ). * * * Oh, to note. I hope you're right and those material freedoms cover more non-material freedoms and that China will especially have a friendly policy towards its neighbors. I'm not optimistic at the moment.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  The ability to criticize the president is not what's important here, and in fact a focus on that as being some sort of golden metric is also another hurdle in properly understanding China. This is part of the typical "dictatorship-vs-democracy" dichotomy thought that I'm criticizing for not being a good fit for China. Concretely: yes in China there is censorship, and yes you can't just criticize the president. However, you can criticize policy. Not only can you, people do: as I've said before, there are 15000 protests in China every year, and often times the government gives in to protesters. The 0-covid protests resulting in lifting of 0-covid measures being a big recent one. In contrast, in many western countries you certainly have the freedom to complain about more things, but your ability to get policy changes is almost non-existant. Not so in China: policy changes happen all the time as a result of protests, even if there are topics that are more taboo than in the west. Material vs non-material freedom is also not the point (even though it's somewhat relevant). There are classes of immaterial freedom in China that the west doesn't even recognize as freedom. For example, the sheer safety in China grants one a huge amount of freedom of movement. A female Australian acquaintance once told me that she thought that political freedom and freedom of speech are the most important things. But once she visited China and experienced how safe the streets were, and how she could walk around during the night without escort, she realized that she valued freedom of movement much more. To understand China one must move away from the dichotomy. China should be understood using entirely separate paradigms, on its own terms, not the terms that the west (in its relation/history with the Soviet Union) tries to project on China.

oblio 4y ago

> The answer is twofold: China isn't a dictatorship, and you can't reason about all countries using this dictatorship-vs-democracy dichotomy. Can I complain about the man in charge? If I go to social media and I post that I hate the bear, what happens? :-) For comparison purposes, on a daily basis, Klaus Iohannis (the Romanian president) can fill his fridge with meat, as we say in Romanian (I'll let you figure out from which body part that meat comes from :-))) ). * * * Oh, to note. I hope you're right and those material freedoms cover more non-material freedoms and that China will especially have a friendly policy towards its neighbors. I'm not optimistic at the moment.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
The ability to criticize the president is not what's important here, and in fact a focus on that as being some sort of golden metric is also another hurdle in properly understanding China. This is part of the typical "dictatorship-vs-democracy" dichotomy thought that I'm criticizing for not being a good fit for China. Concretely: yes in China there is censorship, and yes you can't just criticize the president. However, you can criticize policy. Not only can you, people do: as I've said before, there are 15000 protests in China every year, and often times the government gives in to protesters. The 0-covid protests resulting in lifting of 0-covid measures being a big recent one. In contrast, in many western countries you certainly have the freedom to complain about more things, but your ability to get policy changes is almost non-existant. Not so in China: policy changes happen all the time as a result of protests, even if there are topics that are more taboo than in the west. Material vs non-material freedom is also not the point (even though it's somewhat relevant). There are classes of immaterial freedom in China that the west doesn't even recognize as freedom. For example, the sheer safety in China grants one a huge amount of freedom of movement. A female Australian acquaintance once told me that she thought that political freedom and freedom of speech are the most important things. But once she visited China and experienced how safe the streets were, and how she could walk around during the night without escort, she realized that she valued freedom of movement much more. To understand China one must move away from the dichotomy. China should be understood using entirely separate paradigms, on its own terms, not the terms that the west (in its relation/history with the Soviet Union) tries to project on China.