5 ms·
apparently China decision to ban US tech company and build their own counterpart is seen as Genius after 20 years
by tonyhart7 2mo ago
apparently China decision to ban US tech company and build their own counterpart is seen as Genius after 20 years
- arkh 2mo agoOne of the advantages of an autocracy: you don't need people's approval every 5 years so you can plan for decades. When you're right it is awesome. When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for.
- tonyhart7 2mo agoYou can badmouth about China all you want but at least they are consistent where they stand while US flip flopping about invading middle east (like usual) or Greenland
- hvb2 2mo agoI don't think he was badmouthing China at all. He's basically using different words to make the exact same point you're trying to make. When there's no real accountability, in a reasonable timeframe, it's much easier to plan long term. It's the same within companies. When the CEO assumes he'll be around for 5 years, should he shoot for the 10 year goal and reduce outcomes in the early years? Or does he just optimize for the next 5 years, thereby neglecting the long term goal?
- tonyhart7 2mo ago"When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for." he is implying that China bad action can be solved by PL red Army
- fc417fc802 2mo agoHe's not implying, he stated it directly. If you think he's wrong then tell me - what do you believe would happen there in the event of widespread social unrest or grievances against the sitting government?
- tonyhart7 2mo agoThey used to be, but after millions of people died, they realized that they had to do better. The rest is history.
- close04 2mo agoGP isn't "badmouthing" China, that description applies to every non-democratic country, one leader with the power, not the people. Autocracies are great in the hands of a competent leader who plans the economy long term, and the grows of the country for the benefit of the country and society (look up "benevolent dictators"). They are not afraid of long term plans, or pleasing the population in the short term. He can break some eggs now to feed the whole country tomorrow. This is not something a democratic leader can afford. They live in 4-5 years cycles to please an electorate who looks for immediate benefits. In the hands of an incompetent and abusive leader autocracy is a nightmare that's supported only by fear and violence against the people. These are most dictatorships. Society suffers but can't do anything for fear of being steamrolled by the army. China is straddling a middle ground where the country grew by leaps and bounds, faster than anything else in history probably, but they also use a heavy hand to do this.
- Hikikomori 2mo agoOr you get trump, autocrat corruption without the planning.
- ithkuil 2mo agoYou can get those in a democracy too! The real difference is how can you get rid of those
- close04 2mo ago> Or you get That "or" is described one paragraph down. It's the most common type of autocracy actually because it's the easiest to pull off. Incompetent and corrupt leader, access to an army, biggest temptation is for easy profit. Democracies are very susceptible to this type of leader in the short term. They start as populists and for a while it's easy to fool people into electing them. Until pockets and bellies start to stay empty. When popular support vanishes the army might step in to take that role and it turns into an autocracy. Successful planned economies need first and foremost a competent leader who's not tempted by short term personal gain but mainly long term gains for the country. They're rare as hen's teeth.
- villish 2mo agoDid you forget about what happened with Hong Kong?
- pepperoni_pizza 2mo agoHe's probably forbidden from speaking about it.
- pjc50 2mo agoThe eradication of democracy in HK is extremely sad, but unfortunately it was only ever leased from China and the UK did not have a sound basis in international law for not handing it back.
- Lio 2mo ago> it was only ever leased from China Only part of Hong Kong, the New Territories, was leased from China. Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded to the UK in perpetuality. The UK didn't have to give them back but it also didn't have a reliable fresh water supply for such a large city that didn't depend on mainland China.
- throw4r53w4 2mo agoCeded at gunpoint. When might makes right, it makes sense China would try to get it back when strong enough.
- Lio 2mo agoThe same is true for Vladivostok but Xi seems pretty relaxed about that.
- HexDecOctBin 2mo agoAh, so international law matters? In that case, surely China will follow the verdict of the South China Sea Arbitration?
- lava_pidgeon 2mo agoThat's selection bias. China was "lucky" to had the best strategy. But what about the dictatorships who stocked to the wrong strategy. Though it is still interesting to research about Industry politics. In Europe almost all economics looked trapped into the capitalism Vs socialism trap.
- SiempreViernes 2mo agoThe actual reality of how China works is much more complicated than this "select from a dropdown menu" system you are implying. For one thing it's made up of fairly autonomous provinces that all compete between each others, for another the actual strategy has been heavily relying on extensive local experimentation to find growth models that can be applied nationally.
- corimaith 2mo agoNah he's correct, local government compete on implementation details, not overall strategy that is monopolize by the central government. Which has the same pitfalls (-see zero-covid or the debt crisis owing to gdp targets)
- whatever1 2mo agoAlso if any of the local governors / entrepreneurs cross a line they just disappear to focus on reading. Some of them might reappear after a decade having thoroughly understood the textbooks. For example Jack Ma reappeared after his successful re-education.
- tonyhart7 2mo agoChina is the only country that can control their billionaire while US is the other way around
- mono442 2mo agoChina doesn't have a debt crisis.
- m4rtink 2mo agoIt also makes feedback illegal, so corruption and bad decisions get unfixed, untill both not only eat any gains but make the whole thing collapse.
- tonyhart7 2mo agoYeah but China have death penalty for corruption while Trump literally selling subscription for faster tweet access
- accurrent 2mo agoIts complicated... You can't function without feedback. Imagine you have a pothole, a 0 feedback society would tell you that the contractor the government selected is perfect and there are no pot holes in ba sing se. If you actually go to china you would find that roads are genuinely pothole-free. Obviously there are feedback channels. You can't run a country with zero feedback. China knows this and they monitor a lot of things. There are channels (like they have online petition platforms, 12345 hotline - organised demonstrations are not allowed). Theres also a whole industry around gathering metrics from citizen surveys and online studies. Every government program is measured carefully and methodically. Is it democratic in the western sense? no. Will you get killed for reporting a pothole or flaw? Absolutely not.
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago> One of the advantages of an autocracy: you don't need people's approval every 5 years so you can plan for decades. This is a funny thing to say about a system known for its regular issuance of 5-year plans. They have festivals and everything.
- alansaber 2mo agoCertain fundamental technologies are national security. If you proport to be a superpower you can't have your nation be fully reliant on say the Mac OS. Same with agricultural imports, IC development, dot dot dot
- corimaith 2mo agoNo it's more of the US tolerating asymmetric trade. The whole point of that trade article was that Japan couldn't afford to loose the US market.
- accurrent 2mo agoGovernment ban is part of the reason, but cultural differences are also important. There are other countries where Google is not the defacto search engine: South Korea, Japan, Russia, etc. Similarly if your were to look into food delivery companies/ridehailing you would also find many countries where Uber has completely failed.
- OroPla 2mo agoGoogle results have gotten so bad, I have to wonder if it is still the defacto search engine anywhere or whether the numbers are simply made up.
- fc417fc802 2mo agoAt least speaking for myself I haven't interacted with traditional google results for a while because their AI is similarly free on the front page and does a remarkably good job of filtering and summarizing the search results I would otherwise have had to spend 30 minutes trawling through.
- matheusmoreira 2mo agoI envy China's ability to not only plan but actually execute plans greater than 4 years. It makes democracies look bad.
- ang_cire 2mo agoUnfortunately, imo this is one issue masquerading as another: the real barrier to much of the US' societal progress is that we're an incredibly low trust society. When you talk to e.g. Republicans about policies like universal healthcare or mass transit, what you realize is that they're not opposed to the policies themselves, they're just convinced that it will benefit others more than themselves. A lot of people chock that up as them being hateful (which is an easy and sometimes true explanation, as right-wing politicians and media stoke this to capture them as voters), but the core of the problem is that they are often convinced that any system structured like this will be denied to them when they try to access it (and if you've been obtaining medical care via patient-hostile private insurance your entire, it's probably hard to imagine otherwise). And it sucks because this low-trust social system ruins things even in low-level shitty ways, like people cutting in line, or destroying free neighborhood food pantries or libraries, or driving like assholes. "Someone else will exploit it if I don't" is both a justification used by some people for their own shitty behavior, AND something that turns people against anything not being forcibly controlled or structured to prevent that exploitation (I.e. anything communal or democratized). This is why the myth of the "welfare queen" was so easy for Fox to sell. Authoritarianism also heavily degrades societal trust, though it's certainly not the only thing that does this. Capitalism does as well, because it offers the same incentives to exploit (the aforementioned "do it or have it be done to you"). They're both systems that live and die on the Prisoner's Dilemma.