6 ms·

China, behind the surface, is very anarchic, bejing can make rules all it wants but the local government beyond surface placation won't honor the spirit and res

China, behind the surface, is very anarchic, bejing can make rules all it wants but the local government beyond surface placation won't honor the spirit and restart production of all kind of stuff. Which is fascinating, cause as soon as party rule is threatened, that very same principle ceases to apply.

Melting_Harps 3y ago
> China, behind the surface, is very anarchic, bejing can make rules all it wants but the local government beyond surface placation won't honor the spirit and restart production of all kind of stuff. While I concede that populations with livable-experience spanning millennia tends to drive Societies in that direction. I think it's more accepting a certain amount of tolerable corruption: China is incredibly corrupt, and will go to great lengths to window dress in order to appear to be either compliant or at least effectively operating within acceptable parameters. This is a common attribute of totalitarian regimes, wherein your proximity to power is what ultimately dictated the level of severity with which you will be punished, my first experience with this was with food: specifically that of organically grown food and came ot a head during the baby formula poisoning event which led to a black-market in HK. Then we saw this first hand how the CCP dealt with Bitcoin, and its continual 'banning' despite Bitmain being led not just by a Chinese national, and then a very member of the CCP itself, but even exchanges like Hubei thrived in this time and held on to a majority of the hash rate. Long story short: Bitcoin is now banned but there are still a significant amount of miners in mainland despite all the theatrics. There is nothing Anarchic about it, its blatant favoritism that coincides with all class based structures that congruently emerge within a State: despite all the rhetoric of equality within Socialist/Communist doctrine would lead you to believe it makes you wonder if this isn't EXACTLY what they all lead to. I'm sympathetic to the class inequality of Socialism, and even see the (often misinformed) tenets of Marxism tries to remedy and it's long-term aims but... it's theoretical and practical applications wildly differ from the former and the only result that remains constant is that lots of people end up dying in starvation, pointless wars and land/ecosystems are often destroyed for generations in the process: this came very apparent to me outside of ideological purview during my apprenticeship in horticulture in E. European countries that I visited and then once more when I was living near a hotspot of the collapse of Yugoslavia. They were taking out mines and other un-exploded ordinance from what was my community's front yard less than a Km away from a park near a marina where mothers walked with strollers around Marina and Promenade and about ~2Km from my very home. >Which is fascinating, cause as soon as party rule is threatened, that very same principle ceases to apply. Fascinating isn't the term you want to use here, and I take it you have no one in Tibet, Xinjiang or Hong Kong, because of you did you would see this from an entirely different lens, and nothing is fascinating about it unless you enjoy pointless Human misery/death/subjugation. It's almost like the application of Law is circumstantial and based on a litany of factors that create an insular ruling class that have no qualm with erasing History by force: even the norms of genocide (HK is mainly Han) ethno-cleansing (Xinjiang) fall apart but are not off the table in order for the CCP to cement it's rule at all costs in ways that actually matter. The only real experiment of Anarchism that was remotely allowed to stand in China was Kowloon's walled city [0], and to no one's surprise the CCP has been doing everything to hide it's 'shame' and 'colonized' past ever since the uprising in 2019, forcing everyone out and bulldozing the area under 'renovation' and offering the HongKongers little to nothing in return in the process. 0: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city
- t0suj4 3y ago
  I've heard from a law student in China that the law is a tool to control the masses. Assuming that is true, ignoring the law is simply taking things under control and bribery is the cost of doing business.
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    >I've heard from a law student in China that the law is a tool to control the masses. // How is that different to other countries? In the UK, for example, the Tory party have been enacting laws to make it difficult to legally protest.
    - t0suj4 3y ago
      It depends on how the lawmakers see it and how far the enforcers are willing to go. Not everyone is willing to shoot lead into a large gathering of people the less of them the better. If you're lucky the judges will overturn the law and keep their jobs.
    - jokethrowaway 3y ago
      It's not - we're mostly better than China but the crimes our governments commit against us are of the same type. They steal our freedom and profits via taxes. Taxes in China are not even that high for european standard, but they do infringe more on their citizens liberty. On the other side, western societies are doing more of that too, between covid, gdpr, and the incoming cyber resiliance act
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      Because in most western nations the government itself is bound by laws. There’s a huge philosophical difference between the way Chinese view law and we do.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    If you agree with "ignorantia juris non excusat" then student from China is right. Our governments adds tons of new laws every year and only few remove. We have about 2 millions laws, rules and regulations (Czechia). And we still believe that we live in free society.
yafinder 3y ago
Any sufficiently big country is very anarchic in that sense. US and India are made of literal states. Russia resembles a medieval feudal structure. UK is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it all would be about 5% population of China. An idea that someone or something could govern such a huge amount of people directly and controlling all aspects of life and economy looks absurd to me.
- notjoemama 3y ago
  You should spend some time on YouTube watching videos about China and North Korea. It’s not absurd at all and the psychological mechanisms are well known to anyone who’s spent time reviewing how controlling a population works. Just a minimal cursory review reveals how fear and a rigid hierarchy are all that’s needed.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    By watching YouTube and made conclusions like this you literary fulfill your description of manipulated society.
  - yafinder 3y ago
    I was born in the USSR, so, with all due respect, I think I know more about the internal mechanics of undemocratic states than a person who watched YouTube.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      I would go even farther, that someone recommending to watch youtube for such a topic is either joking, never been around the block, or literally copy-and-pasting from somewhere else. Though to be fair, the vast vast majority of HN comments regarding more complex topics are not coming from first hand sources, or those who've had serious discussions with people who've had that first hand experience.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
The regime exists only because the people believe in the regime. If the people armed themselves and coordinated, they would outnumber policemen and soldiers. This is true in China, but it's true everywhere else. It's true in the west. If people stop complying we would get way more power and overall reduce inequality between the few rich and powerful and politically connect and you everyday Joe. For the same principle, Russia could never control Ukraine without support, the romans couldn't control their provinces without local approval.
- hardware2win 3y ago
  >If people stop complying we would get way more power and overall reduce inequality between the few rich and powerful and politically connect and you everyday Joe. I dont believe it Inequality would be even worse and upward mobility would be reduced, at least in the west.
  - WitCanStain 3y ago
    Why do you believe this?
  - notjoemama 3y ago
    That’s … not how it works. The US had built strong unions in multiple areas of work because people didn’t comply with what was expected of them. This is part of why its middle class became large and monetarily strong. We’re people to band together in defiance of the expectations of the wealthy and political class, they could wrestle power back and rebalance the system. It’s history. Go read it.
    - hardware2win 3y ago
      Unions are quite different than armed response >If the people armed themselves and coordinated, they would outnumber policemen and soldiers. It feels like chaos would emerge, no true leaderships, gangs, mafias everywhere
      - 3y ago

Melting_Harps 3y ago

> China, behind the surface, is very anarchic, bejing can make rules all it wants but the local government beyond surface placation won't honor the spirit and restart production of all kind of stuff. While I concede that populations with livable-experience spanning millennia tends to drive Societies in that direction. I think it's more accepting a certain amount of tolerable corruption: China is incredibly corrupt, and will go to great lengths to window dress in order to appear to be either compliant or at least effectively operating within acceptable parameters. This is a common attribute of totalitarian regimes, wherein your proximity to power is what ultimately dictated the level of severity with which you will be punished, my first experience with this was with food: specifically that of organically grown food and came ot a head during the baby formula poisoning event which led to a black-market in HK. Then we saw this first hand how the CCP dealt with Bitcoin, and its continual 'banning' despite Bitmain being led not just by a Chinese national, and then a very member of the CCP itself, but even exchanges like Hubei thrived in this time and held on to a majority of the hash rate. Long story short: Bitcoin is now banned but there are still a significant amount of miners in mainland despite all the theatrics. There is nothing Anarchic about it, its blatant favoritism that coincides with all class based structures that congruently emerge within a State: despite all the rhetoric of equality within Socialist/Communist doctrine would lead you to believe it makes you wonder if this isn't EXACTLY what they all lead to. I'm sympathetic to the class inequality of Socialism, and even see the (often misinformed) tenets of Marxism tries to remedy and it's long-term aims but... it's theoretical and practical applications wildly differ from the former and the only result that remains constant is that lots of people end up dying in starvation, pointless wars and land/ecosystems are often destroyed for generations in the process: this came very apparent to me outside of ideological purview during my apprenticeship in horticulture in E. European countries that I visited and then once more when I was living near a hotspot of the collapse of Yugoslavia. They were taking out mines and other un-exploded ordinance from what was my community's front yard less than a Km away from a park near a marina where mothers walked with strollers around Marina and Promenade and about ~2Km from my very home. >Which is fascinating, cause as soon as party rule is threatened, that very same principle ceases to apply. Fascinating isn't the term you want to use here, and I take it you have no one in Tibet, Xinjiang or Hong Kong, because of you did you would see this from an entirely different lens, and nothing is fascinating about it unless you enjoy pointless Human misery/death/subjugation. It's almost like the application of Law is circumstantial and based on a litany of factors that create an insular ruling class that have no qualm with erasing History by force: even the norms of genocide (HK is mainly Han) ethno-cleansing (Xinjiang) fall apart but are not off the table in order for the CCP to cement it's rule at all costs in ways that actually matter. The only real experiment of Anarchism that was remotely allowed to stand in China was Kowloon's walled city [0], and to no one's surprise the CCP has been doing everything to hide it's 'shame' and 'colonized' past ever since the uprising in 2019, forcing everyone out and bulldozing the area under 'renovation' and offering the HongKongers little to nothing in return in the process. 0: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city

t0suj4 3y ago
I've heard from a law student in China that the law is a tool to control the masses. Assuming that is true, ignoring the law is simply taking things under control and bribery is the cost of doing business.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  >I've heard from a law student in China that the law is a tool to control the masses. // How is that different to other countries? In the UK, for example, the Tory party have been enacting laws to make it difficult to legally protest.
  - t0suj4 3y ago
    It depends on how the lawmakers see it and how far the enforcers are willing to go. Not everyone is willing to shoot lead into a large gathering of people the less of them the better. If you're lucky the judges will overturn the law and keep their jobs.
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    It's not - we're mostly better than China but the crimes our governments commit against us are of the same type. They steal our freedom and profits via taxes. Taxes in China are not even that high for european standard, but they do infringe more on their citizens liberty. On the other side, western societies are doing more of that too, between covid, gdpr, and the incoming cyber resiliance act
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Because in most western nations the government itself is bound by laws. There’s a huge philosophical difference between the way Chinese view law and we do.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  If you agree with "ignorantia juris non excusat" then student from China is right. Our governments adds tons of new laws every year and only few remove. We have about 2 millions laws, rules and regulations (Czechia). And we still believe that we live in free society.

yafinder 3y ago

Any sufficiently big country is very anarchic in that sense. US and India are made of literal states. Russia resembles a medieval feudal structure. UK is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it all would be about 5% population of China. An idea that someone or something could govern such a huge amount of people directly and controlling all aspects of life and economy looks absurd to me.

notjoemama 3y ago
You should spend some time on YouTube watching videos about China and North Korea. It’s not absurd at all and the psychological mechanisms are well known to anyone who’s spent time reviewing how controlling a population works. Just a minimal cursory review reveals how fear and a rigid hierarchy are all that’s needed.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  By watching YouTube and made conclusions like this you literary fulfill your description of manipulated society.
- yafinder 3y ago
  I was born in the USSR, so, with all due respect, I think I know more about the internal mechanics of undemocratic states than a person who watched YouTube.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    I would go even farther, that someone recommending to watch youtube for such a topic is either joking, never been around the block, or literally copy-and-pasting from somewhere else. Though to be fair, the vast vast majority of HN comments regarding more complex topics are not coming from first hand sources, or those who've had serious discussions with people who've had that first hand experience.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

The regime exists only because the people believe in the regime. If the people armed themselves and coordinated, they would outnumber policemen and soldiers. This is true in China, but it's true everywhere else. It's true in the west. If people stop complying we would get way more power and overall reduce inequality between the few rich and powerful and politically connect and you everyday Joe. For the same principle, Russia could never control Ukraine without support, the romans couldn't control their provinces without local approval.

hardware2win 3y ago
>If people stop complying we would get way more power and overall reduce inequality between the few rich and powerful and politically connect and you everyday Joe. I dont believe it Inequality would be even worse and upward mobility would be reduced, at least in the west.
- WitCanStain 3y ago
  Why do you believe this?
- notjoemama 3y ago
  That’s … not how it works. The US had built strong unions in multiple areas of work because people didn’t comply with what was expected of them. This is part of why its middle class became large and monetarily strong. We’re people to band together in defiance of the expectations of the wealthy and political class, they could wrestle power back and rebalance the system. It’s history. Go read it.
  - hardware2win 3y ago
    Unions are quite different than armed response >If the people armed themselves and coordinated, they would outnumber policemen and soldiers. It feels like chaos would emerge, no true leaderships, gangs, mafias everywhere
    - 3y ago