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The reason the China model is working in China is because their economy is booming. As soon as it slows down, which it will, they're going to be in for chaos. T

The reason the China model is working in China is because their economy is booming. As soon as it slows down, which it will, they're going to be in for chaos. This is also very historically precedented, where China has always gone through dynastic cycles of flourish, stagnate, decline, chaos, reset. China isn't doing well because of their model, they're doing well because of their economy. Their success is in spite of their governmental model, except in as much as having a dictatorship that can, for example, meaningfully deter corporate malfeasance, or do other such things that can help contribute to their economic growth. That part other countries could certainly take a thing or two from - instead, they just seem to want the censorship and surveillance.

TFNA 2mo ago
Disagree. I think with modern tech China has built a surveillance panopticon that will continue to ensure social harmony through any economic downturn, and this is precisely the model that is appealing to so many other countries now.
- detourdog 2mo ago
  Also scarcity isn’t what it once was. The biggest internal social problems were often scarcity induced.
- somenameforme 2mo ago
  Mass surveillance is nothing new. The USSR had an absurdly wide surveillance net paired with endless on-the-ground informants making people terrified to speak pretty much anywhere, yet as soon as things started slowing down the entire system collapsed with a shocking rapidity, because these things don't create social harmony, they create a dystopic nightmare that people want to overthrow. However, people are willing to tolerate dystopia when real wages are skyrocketing, your nation is doing wild things (like radically advancing human spaceflight), and more. But as soon as all of this slows down you're left with the same uninspiring directionless stagnation that plagues all nations eventually, and a dystopic social system on top.
  - ethbr1 2mo ago
    > yet as soon as things started slowing down the entire system collapsed with a shocking rapidity, because these things don't create social harmony, they create a dystopic nightmare that people want to overthrow. Different read: command economies collapse because they invariably have higher levels of corruption and inefficiency. Both of those are tolerable during boom times of economic growth, and China has kicked the can down the road by pursuing intermittent corruption purges. Ultimately though, when things start to slow down, the system attempts to conceal the slowdown, which causes even more economic dysfunction, which eventually paralyzes the whole system and leads to collapse. Making a command economy work sustainably means solving the "People lie to avoid consequences of bad news" problem.
    - somenameforme 2mo ago
      China isn't a command economy. Internally they're more capitalist than the US in many ways, particularly with regards to healthy competition. It's a big part of the reason they're able to bring the prices on basically everything down to absurdly low levels. Even politically they're paradoxical in that they're a dictatorship but also quite decentralized. For each instance each 'region' down to a few thousand or so people has a local representative who has meaningful political power. It'd be like if the House of Representatives had actually continued growing with population, as was initially envisioned. There's really quite a lot to learn from China in things that they're doing right, but stagnating Western powers only seem able to see what they want to see - the censorship, surveillance, and propaganda apparatuses which are largely uninspired and more likely to cause their downfall rather than meaningfully contributing to their rise.
      - ethbr1 2mo ago
        > more capitalist than the US in many ways, particularly with regards to healthy competition. I'd argue that the US and Europe are bad benchmarks, given the entrenched quasi-monopolies the governments refuse to break up. But we'll see how that goes for China. It's still early days for their capitalistic ambitions, and tensions between party and corporations are starting to show (Jack Ma et al.). Personally, I think the more destructive moment is going to be after they have large national champions competing globally. Is the CCP going to have the discipline to let an Alibaba, BYD, or SAIC be supplanted, if an external or internal more efficient competitor starts growing? Or will they become too big to fail and intertwine with government?

TFNA 2mo ago

Disagree. I think with modern tech China has built a surveillance panopticon that will continue to ensure social harmony through any economic downturn, and this is precisely the model that is appealing to so many other countries now.

detourdog 2mo ago
Also scarcity isn’t what it once was. The biggest internal social problems were often scarcity induced.
somenameforme 2mo ago
Mass surveillance is nothing new. The USSR had an absurdly wide surveillance net paired with endless on-the-ground informants making people terrified to speak pretty much anywhere, yet as soon as things started slowing down the entire system collapsed with a shocking rapidity, because these things don't create social harmony, they create a dystopic nightmare that people want to overthrow. However, people are willing to tolerate dystopia when real wages are skyrocketing, your nation is doing wild things (like radically advancing human spaceflight), and more. But as soon as all of this slows down you're left with the same uninspiring directionless stagnation that plagues all nations eventually, and a dystopic social system on top.
- ethbr1 2mo ago
  > yet as soon as things started slowing down the entire system collapsed with a shocking rapidity, because these things don't create social harmony, they create a dystopic nightmare that people want to overthrow. Different read: command economies collapse because they invariably have higher levels of corruption and inefficiency. Both of those are tolerable during boom times of economic growth, and China has kicked the can down the road by pursuing intermittent corruption purges. Ultimately though, when things start to slow down, the system attempts to conceal the slowdown, which causes even more economic dysfunction, which eventually paralyzes the whole system and leads to collapse. Making a command economy work sustainably means solving the "People lie to avoid consequences of bad news" problem.
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    China isn't a command economy. Internally they're more capitalist than the US in many ways, particularly with regards to healthy competition. It's a big part of the reason they're able to bring the prices on basically everything down to absurdly low levels. Even politically they're paradoxical in that they're a dictatorship but also quite decentralized. For each instance each 'region' down to a few thousand or so people has a local representative who has meaningful political power. It'd be like if the House of Representatives had actually continued growing with population, as was initially envisioned. There's really quite a lot to learn from China in things that they're doing right, but stagnating Western powers only seem able to see what they want to see - the censorship, surveillance, and propaganda apparatuses which are largely uninspired and more likely to cause their downfall rather than meaningfully contributing to their rise.
    - ethbr1 2mo ago
      > more capitalist than the US in many ways, particularly with regards to healthy competition. I'd argue that the US and Europe are bad benchmarks, given the entrenched quasi-monopolies the governments refuse to break up. But we'll see how that goes for China. It's still early days for their capitalistic ambitions, and tensions between party and corporations are starting to show (Jack Ma et al.). Personally, I think the more destructive moment is going to be after they have large national champions competing globally. Is the CCP going to have the discipline to let an Alibaba, BYD, or SAIC be supplanted, if an external or internal more efficient competitor starts growing? Or will they become too big to fail and intertwine with government?