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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. I
by DiogenesKynikos 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoSome 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 4y agoIOW nothing I said was wrong.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y 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
- mannerheim 4y agoAnd? Was there anything I said that was strictly wrong?
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoYes. The "authentic Chinese experience" is not living in a cage without food. The "authentic Chinese experience" is living in a massive, bustling city with great cuisine, terrible traffic jams and awesome public transit.
- mannerheim 4y agoAh, the videos of Shanghai I saw on Weibo last year must have been part of a CIA psyop, then.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoThat's an extreme outlier within China, and it was for a limited period of time. People were not kept in cages: they lived in their apartments. It was difficult to order food at first, but people managed, and the initial supply problems were alleviated.
- mannerheim 4y agoTruly their experience must have been an inauthentic one, then. > People were not kept in cages What a hilarious nitpick at an obvious turn of phrase. Do you think I actually meant to say people were literally kept in little cells with bars?
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoEverything you said was ridiculous hyperbole. That's not a "nitpick." You took the most extreme thing that ever happened anywhere in China during the pandemic, wildly exaggerated it, and then presented it as normal life in China.