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No, you learn a lot about how illiberal governments treat foreign visitors from wealthy western countries, and how they leverage their power to control what you

No, you learn a lot about how illiberal governments treat foreign visitors from wealthy western countries, and how they leverage their power to control what you as a tourist see and hear. The first country you list is the DPRK, who are famed for carefully stage-managing any visit by western tourists. If you want an honest view of those places, you have to speak with people who aren’t risking their lives or livelihoods if they tell you the truth.

janalsncm 3y ago
North Korea is an exception, since it’s pretty hard to talk to actual locals. Having lived in one of those illiberal countries for a while (China) I could clearly see how the US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening, and took every opportunity to highlight the negatives. It is to the point where every positive, interesting, or beautiful thing is reflexively shot down and dismissed.
- mannerheim 3y ago
  Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    With sufficient repetition, propaganda embeds itself into a person’s core belief system. This makes it self-replicating in ways that no state alone has the resources to accomplish. Very quickly when people travel (even if within their own country), they realize that their worldview has been shaped by what others want them to see. Maybe it is a benign travel ad that crops out the favela in the background, maybe it is genuinely lovely people colored as backwards or belligerent. There’s a reason someone has chosen to post that video or show you that picture.
    - mannerheim 3y ago
      Oh, I've been to China many times. Enough times to appreciate not having been born there. Western media about China, while somewhat one-sided, isn't particularly unfair in my experience.
      - janalsncm 3y ago
        You and I must have different definitions of “unfair” if being one-sided isn’t at odds with fairness.
        mannerheim 3y ago
        For example, I could say that Mao ordered the killing of all of China's sparrows, leading to a massive famine. Is it one-sided to not mention that this was under the mistaken belief that the sparrows were eating all of the food? Maybe. I don't think it's unfair, though. It was idiotic and it had disastrous consequences. One could also mention that the one-child policy was kept in place for years after China's looming demographic issues became apparent, and the silliness of replacing it first with a two-child, and then a three-child policy before its abolition. Perhaps it would be one-sided to not mention the massive bureaucracy of the family planning commission consisting of millions of workers at both the central and local government levels who would have to find other work without it (of which I even have family who used to coerce women into getting abortions), but I don't think that makes it any better. Or ghost cities, which appear in Western media, but rarely mentioning that most of the apartments in these cities end up getting bought because of a real estate bubble in which Chinese citizens pour their savings into buying empty apartments in empty cities. It is 'one-sided' perhaps to not mention that the apartments have owners, but it is factually true that they are empty and the ghost cities exist. Is Western media sometimes unfair? Sure. The BRI gets painted as a debt trap, but the reality is the projects really are intended to be profitable. Will travelling to China help with that? I don't see why, since the BRI is investment in countries outside of China. The biggest misconception most Westerners have, though, is that they are under the illusion that the Chinese are yearning to be free from their oppressive government. And perhaps that is the 'distortion' you are thinking of. Is this a result of the media? Perhaps. But in my opinion, it is a factor of Westerners implicitly believing that all people are just like them, when in reality tyranny is only possible because the people who live under it accept it. Every nation gets the government it deserves.
  - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
    This is exhibit A of how the media in the US and Europe misrepresent China. The fact that you think this is how things were perfectly illustrates the problem. If zero-CoVID had really meant endless lockdowns, Chinese people wouldn't have put up with the policy for nearly 3 years. There were lockdowns in China, but they were limited in time, and before mid-2022, they were relatively rare (as in, nobody I knew was subject to one after CoVID was eliminated in China in March-April 2020). For most of 2020-21, life in China was more normal than in the US and Europe.
    - mannerheim 3y ago
      > endless lockdowns Didn't say that. It's a fact that some parts of China were locked down for months, and that people were going hungry because they couldn't get food. That was all over Chinese social media.
      - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
        Some tiny border towns were. Long lockdowns of major cities were very rare: Shanghai (2 months), Xi'an (a few weeks), and then the list gets pretty thin. There were sporadic lockdowns, but nothing like what one would imagine if, say, CNN were one's only source of information.
        mannerheim 3y ago
        IOW nothing I said was wrong.
        DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
        > Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten. That's the bailey, the wide-ranging generalization about China as dystopian hellhole that you want to make. When you get pushback, you retreat to the defensible motte of: Well, there were some lockdowns for limited time periods in some places in China. The second the coast is clear, you go back to occupying the bailey. Motte-and-bailey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
- badpun 3y ago
  > US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening The media I follow generally acknowledge that Chinese adopting capitalism led to the greatest increase of standard of living in entire human history (in terms of how quick it was and how many people were affected). That's not downplaying.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    That is a fairly simplified view which is very convenient for particular Western political interests but I don’t see it as a reflection of reality. The Chinese have “capitalism” with significant public investment in infrastructure and education. Bullet trains can take you everywhere on the cheap. Few foreign companies have been successful due in some part to protectionism (but also failed business models). Their markets are highly regulated, preventing mergers and IPOs of large companies. Ant Group for example. Jack Ma was severely punished for even suggesting that bank regulators ease up. They also have strict data regulations. On the other hand, workers’ rights are a lot more curtailed. A lot of tech works 996, and unionization is pretty rare. Getting 2 days off per week isn’t the norm like in the US. And forget about OSHA. So in that sense they are almost hyper-capitalist. The point is, I don’t think it fits cleanly into the ideologies that many would like to apply to them.
    - badpun 3y ago
      The question is if the regulation and intervention is for the greater good, or is it because someone in the CCP took a bribe or saw an opportunity to steal the company from the rightful owner.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    There’s always the kind of article that suggests that Chinese academic achievements are not that impressive because for some reason Chinese graduate students are just some kind of robotized academics incapable of independent thought, creativity and are just ver good order followers, which is something that everyone who has actually worked with Chinese folks know it is a stupid generalization.

janalsncm 3y ago

North Korea is an exception, since it’s pretty hard to talk to actual locals. Having lived in one of those illiberal countries for a while (China) I could clearly see how the US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening, and took every opportunity to highlight the negatives. It is to the point where every positive, interesting, or beautiful thing is reflexively shot down and dismissed.

mannerheim 3y ago
Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  With sufficient repetition, propaganda embeds itself into a person’s core belief system. This makes it self-replicating in ways that no state alone has the resources to accomplish. Very quickly when people travel (even if within their own country), they realize that their worldview has been shaped by what others want them to see. Maybe it is a benign travel ad that crops out the favela in the background, maybe it is genuinely lovely people colored as backwards or belligerent. There’s a reason someone has chosen to post that video or show you that picture.
  - mannerheim 3y ago
    Oh, I've been to China many times. Enough times to appreciate not having been born there. Western media about China, while somewhat one-sided, isn't particularly unfair in my experience.
    - janalsncm 3y ago
      You and I must have different definitions of “unfair” if being one-sided isn’t at odds with fairness.
      - mannerheim 3y ago
        For example, I could say that Mao ordered the killing of all of China's sparrows, leading to a massive famine. Is it one-sided to not mention that this was under the mistaken belief that the sparrows were eating all of the food? Maybe. I don't think it's unfair, though. It was idiotic and it had disastrous consequences. One could also mention that the one-child policy was kept in place for years after China's looming demographic issues became apparent, and the silliness of replacing it first with a two-child, and then a three-child policy before its abolition. Perhaps it would be one-sided to not mention the massive bureaucracy of the family planning commission consisting of millions of workers at both the central and local government levels who would have to find other work without it (of which I even have family who used to coerce women into getting abortions), but I don't think that makes it any better. Or ghost cities, which appear in Western media, but rarely mentioning that most of the apartments in these cities end up getting bought because of a real estate bubble in which Chinese citizens pour their savings into buying empty apartments in empty cities. It is 'one-sided' perhaps to not mention that the apartments have owners, but it is factually true that they are empty and the ghost cities exist. Is Western media sometimes unfair? Sure. The BRI gets painted as a debt trap, but the reality is the projects really are intended to be profitable. Will travelling to China help with that? I don't see why, since the BRI is investment in countries outside of China. The biggest misconception most Westerners have, though, is that they are under the illusion that the Chinese are yearning to be free from their oppressive government. And perhaps that is the 'distortion' you are thinking of. Is this a result of the media? Perhaps. But in my opinion, it is a factor of Westerners implicitly believing that all people are just like them, when in reality tyranny is only possible because the people who live under it accept it. Every nation gets the government it deserves.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  This is exhibit A of how the media in the US and Europe misrepresent China. The fact that you think this is how things were perfectly illustrates the problem. If zero-CoVID had really meant endless lockdowns, Chinese people wouldn't have put up with the policy for nearly 3 years. There were lockdowns in China, but they were limited in time, and before mid-2022, they were relatively rare (as in, nobody I knew was subject to one after CoVID was eliminated in China in March-April 2020). For most of 2020-21, life in China was more normal than in the US and Europe.
  - mannerheim 3y ago
    > endless lockdowns Didn't say that. It's a fact that some parts of China were locked down for months, and that people were going hungry because they couldn't get food. That was all over Chinese social media.
    - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
      Some tiny border towns were. Long lockdowns of major cities were very rare: Shanghai (2 months), Xi'an (a few weeks), and then the list gets pretty thin. There were sporadic lockdowns, but nothing like what one would imagine if, say, CNN were one's only source of information.
      - mannerheim 3y ago
        IOW nothing I said was wrong.
        DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
        > Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten. That's the bailey, the wide-ranging generalization about China as dystopian hellhole that you want to make. When you get pushback, you retreat to the defensible motte of: Well, there were some lockdowns for limited time periods in some places in China. The second the coast is clear, you go back to occupying the bailey. Motte-and-bailey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
badpun 3y ago
> US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening The media I follow generally acknowledge that Chinese adopting capitalism led to the greatest increase of standard of living in entire human history (in terms of how quick it was and how many people were affected). That's not downplaying.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  That is a fairly simplified view which is very convenient for particular Western political interests but I don’t see it as a reflection of reality. The Chinese have “capitalism” with significant public investment in infrastructure and education. Bullet trains can take you everywhere on the cheap. Few foreign companies have been successful due in some part to protectionism (but also failed business models). Their markets are highly regulated, preventing mergers and IPOs of large companies. Ant Group for example. Jack Ma was severely punished for even suggesting that bank regulators ease up. They also have strict data regulations. On the other hand, workers’ rights are a lot more curtailed. A lot of tech works 996, and unionization is pretty rare. Getting 2 days off per week isn’t the norm like in the US. And forget about OSHA. So in that sense they are almost hyper-capitalist. The point is, I don’t think it fits cleanly into the ideologies that many would like to apply to them.
  - badpun 3y ago
    The question is if the regulation and intervention is for the greater good, or is it because someone in the CCP took a bribe or saw an opportunity to steal the company from the rightful owner.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  There’s always the kind of article that suggests that Chinese academic achievements are not that impressive because for some reason Chinese graduate students are just some kind of robotized academics incapable of independent thought, creativity and are just ver good order followers, which is something that everyone who has actually worked with Chinese folks know it is a stupid generalization.