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> It's that it is possible to resuscitate dormant or shrinking sectors. It is possible to re-industrialise quickly. China managed to go from peasantry in the

• paleotrope 3mo ago
  It's probably obvious to say, but I think a nation's most important resource is people. And if you can just order them around and kill the dissenters and not care about what individuals want, then you can achieve quite a bit, be it industrialization or war or agricultural surplus.
  • abirch 3mo ago
    I'm not saying that the economy or markets are everything; however, if you don't have dissidents you don't as much friction. If China wants to move your mother's grave for a factory, there's not a lot you can do. Whereas in democracies you can try to draw it out with legal action, etc.
    • Vasbarlog 3mo ago
      That’s not true at all. China is known for its “nail houses” for example. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...
      • bmacho 3mo ago
        Among all these pictures there is exactly 1, the first one that would be an example of someone living in an important place, a middle of a road, and refusing to move. And the occupied place isn't very important to the state, but rather only to a couple of residents. All others just show that demolitions have started, and there are houses not yet demolished. 0/1.4 billions of people is actually convincing the other way you intended.
        • pessimizer 3mo ago
          This reply doesn't make a lick of sense. You're just making things up off the top of your head. The point is that China doesn't "just crush" dissenters. This is ignorant Western fantasy which is used by people to justify the dismantling of their own rights. China needs a Bill of Rights like the US's, and most of the US populace needs to stop being such a sucker for nearly century-old propaganda that it doesn't burn its own treasure in service of elite-propagated paranoia.
          • deleted 3mo ago
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    • Telemakhos 3mo ago
      The phenomenon of "nail houses" testifies against the notion that the Chinese government will expropriate whatever land it wants, although nail houses aren't graves. Graves are less of a concern, because the dead by law must be buried in public cemeteries: isolated rural burials are uncommon.
      • wahern 3mo ago
        While the photos of nail houses tell a story of state-tolerated individual defiance, the reality is actually the opposite: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/6194/1/Driven_to_swim_with_the_tide_Urban_redevelopment_and_community_participation_in_China.pdf https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/6194/1/Driven_to_... Nail houses always lose. They have their services and access cut-off by private developers without any recourse to the courts. The nail houses exist only for the duration of arbitration proceedings over compensation for the property. FMV value is usually determined by prices before the area was considered for development, which in poor areas is a pittance. But in arbitration the villagers are merely postponing the inevitable. Also, IIRC, nail houses are rare as outside cities private ownership of property was not common, at least into the early 2000s. (Not sure how common it is now.) And they only became a thing circa 2004 when China amended their constitution to require legal process for expropriation, but that process provides much fewer protections than it does in, e.g., the US.
    • BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
      • abirch 3mo ago
        Yes, eminent domain is there. In the case you linked to, it started in 1998 and took until 2005 for the Supreme Court. Sure new cases may happen faster, but it still takes year with due process and the courts.
  • jingpostmedia 3mo ago
    [flagged]
  • majormajor 3mo ago
    There are many more countries with violent governments that don't tolerate dissenters than there are ones that have the technological success of China. Most of them are much less strategic about what they drive for. But a "more free" state could certainly be more strategic as well about aims, goals, and definition of success; the US has done it before to various extents, for instance. The claim has often been that it'll eventually collapse like in the Soviet Union—because "not caring about what individuals want—has been believed to be a major limiting factor, not an advantage. But it hasn't yet.
• frobisher 3mo ago
  > [to your comment] Unfortunately it seems that often Western governments serve narrow interest groups (sometimes overseas) over their own people. In other words, open systems that have been usurped by these interest groups, including the military-industrial complex, to your point. It is a pity, because values of the Enlightenment can be truly beautiful, and are often in fact embodied by the people themselves - just not their economic and governmental systems. > [to the article more broadly] If one presumes certain material wealth is in support of the people, then hopefully fixing the underlying resource allocation system away from interest groups can, as evidenced, lead to these industries being reborn. But the core issue to fix is the underlying systems I think. How? Well, it's tough, but perhaps some garbage collection on structures that don't actually serve the nation(s).
• one33seven 3mo ago
  Not despite heave state intervention. Because of it!
  • ifwinterco 3mo ago
    Was going to say this. The right form of state intervention can be hugely beneficial
    • JKCalhoun 3mo ago
      The U.S. will have to come around to that. I'm not sure how low it has to sink relative to China , but there will come a time when it will be seen as the obvious strategy. Perhaps Great Depression II will be the spark as Great Depression I was the spark for the limited socialism in the U.S.
      • GolfPopper 3mo ago
        My own best guess is that the U.S. will never come around, but its successor states probably will.
    • peterfirefly 3mo ago
      http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#SECTION_G006 http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#SECTION_G006
  • bluGill 3mo ago
    State intervention has a reasonably good history of getting what the state pushes for. It just has a poor history in everything else the state needs/wants but doesn't realize and so doesn't push for. Also people often miss what the state is pushing for (for example: most of the people pushing transit are really interested in expensive contracts to push money to their friends - any transit that results is a side effect they don't care about. If you are interested in transit most of the people who appear on your side are a long term negative even if you must work with them)
  • cucumber3732842 3mo ago
• A_D_E_P_T 3mo ago
  > despite heavy state intervention in the economy Arguably because of state intervention in the economy. They give generous cash subsidies across various industrial sectors -- and as "investors" they have a remarkably light touch! Their standard modus operandi is to subsidize a number of competing ventures per sector (which number could be somewhere in the dozens or hundreds) and have competition take care of the rest. This is always good for the consumer, good where the perception of fairness is (internally) concerned, and good for the government's position of power. They don't build monopolies, nor are most firms left to scramble for multiple successive rounds of VC funding. America prefers protectionism and tax credits; a markedly inferior overall strategy. We know this from the past five decades of economic history. Subsidies to high-value and growing technological industry are the best way to go from poor to rich, and the best way to go from "not producing much" to "producing everything we want."
  • deleted 3mo ago
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  • oblio 3mo ago
    > Arguably because of state intervention in the economy. More than that. It's the closest thing we have to a successful economic experiment replicated multiple times in real life. It's the Japanese model. Meiji Japan, post-WW2 Japan. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China more or less followed the same pattern.
    • Mainan_Tagonist 3mo ago
      On the topic of economic development, David Landes is worth reading, both the Unbound Prometheus and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations provide a solid understanding of the reasons behind the development of Western Europe over the past 500 years. The 5 Dragons (Taiwan, South Korea, HK, Singapore, Japan) followed pretty much the same recipes that made Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland industrial powerhouses in their days.
• mc32 3mo ago
  In some ways China acts more like WWII Germany than SU Marxist Leninism or Maoist China. Private enterprise exists and encouraged but the state ultimately dictates what happens and has party members in leadership positions in those companies.
  • pessimizer 3mo ago
    The heads of tech companies in the US are no less embedded in government than the heads of tech companies in China.
    • mc32 3mo ago
      I’ll accept that there is a gamut but to say they are the same, I disagree. The state in China has ultimate say in how a company operates over there. Here that can happen during war time. And yes during the Biden Admin the feds had “embeds” on media companies who would flag stories they did not like (covid as well as negative laptop stories), but overall it’s not in the same ballpark. My main point though is that the government-industry relationship in China in many ways mimics the one in Nazi germany more than a continuity of the Maoist industry-government relationship where 5-year plans were part of the plan and it was much more unidirectional.
• palmotea 3mo ago
  > And it is hard to get a read on exactly what is going on in that country but that seems to be despite heavy state intervention in the economy and without the benefits of political free speech. It's because the free market is not perfect (as is often claimed). "Central planning" has been debunked (at least with 20th century technology), but it's become pretty clear that state control + markets > markets alone. > Which is to say, policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster and we are well due some political remove-the-spec-from-your-own-eye reflection on our industrial strategy. And, frankly, the endless reign of military terror that the middle east is subjected to doesn't seem to help. Keeping the military at home has been a massive win for China, all of that money went into investments instead of pointless murder. I think the "keeping the military at home" has been a marginal reason. The real reason is Chinese government can redirect resources to where they're needed, and they've got a long-term vision for what they want to do.
• pessimizer 3mo ago
  > China managed to go from peasantry in the grip of communism Communism is what brought China out of peasantry. They were literally peasants for a couple thousand years, then they became Communists at which their standard of living started to improve and never stopped. Admittedly the Communism became a lot less Communist, but to paint Communism something that existed at the same time or even as a contributor to peasantry was weird. > policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster The US adopted socialist policies after shattering the organized left, pouring money into the safety net, elevating unions, and subsidizing housing, health care, education and technological innovation. In the late-70s to the early-80s it gradually stopped, and that's why we have what we have now. > It is enough to make you wonder if it is the politicians or the voters who are more evil and incompetent. What?