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> 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
by 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 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 3y agoIOW 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
- mannerheim 3y agoAnd? Was there anything I said that was strictly wrong?
- DiogenesKynikos 3y 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 3y agoAh, the videos of Shanghai I saw on Weibo last year must have been part of a CIA psyop, then.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
- mannerheim 3y agoI said it was the authentic Chinese experience. Would you say the twenty some million denizens of Shanghai had an inauthentic experience?