amadeus
Serenity now
That’s an area that I don’t cover: areas that aren’t covered.
[RD] Chinese Economic Struggles
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Remorseless1
Emperor
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After a widespread and heavy-handed crackdown on Chinese tech companies and tech engineers this past spring, Xi promised his new plans will lead to a technology revolution in the future. Seems contradictory to me.
Interestingly, Xi opened his speech by claiming the CCP brought order to a "chaotic" Hong Kong and pledged peaceful reunification with Taiwan ( although he also said a military solution also exists). He defended his zero-Covid policy that has brought much economic dislocation to millions of ordinary Chinese citizens.
I'm not sure Xi's programs will work...
Interestingly, Xi opened his speech by claiming the CCP brought order to a "chaotic" Hong Kong and pledged peaceful reunification with Taiwan ( although he also said a military solution also exists). He defended his zero-Covid policy that has brought much economic dislocation to millions of ordinary Chinese citizens.
I'm not sure Xi's programs will work...
I expect they will work, but just not in the way or with the goals Xi is expecting. If we look back at the plans of national leaders, what they implemented and the results, I wonder how well they match up. Globalization has made national efforts far more difficult to predict. Xi's internal focus on control and stability does not align well with China's global position. We do know that in a democratic situation with shorter term leadership, we tend to get chaos over time, but in theory, an authoritarian regime should have more consistent results, but global events usually interfere.
Zardnaar
Deity
Looks legit kevhe is essentially for the status quo with Taiwan as last mg as they don't declear independence.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I think we have found far more stability and continuity of economic plans with democracies, meanwhile China keeps changing abruptly and suddenly on a dime.
amadeus
Serenity now
Bear with me here because I’m barely getting the words out.
There’s often a belief that authoritarian regimes have some greater degree of efficient long-term planning because they are not beholden to public opinion.
I would say this might be true but that is ultimately outweighed by something that elected governments do not face: having to forcibly retain power, and it is this latter factor that throws the monkey wrench in the gears when it comes to long-term strategy.
Even operating under the assumption they will 100% of the time make the right decisions, it doesn’t matter unless they retain political control.
Chaotic or not I’d sooner buy bonds denominated in $ and £ before I’d get ones in yuan or rubles.
I certainly am not an advocate of authoritarian economic policy. One leader rule can be efficient, but one leader driving economic policy is prone to failure. Mao was a disaster. They did much better after him until Xi began to apply his vision of China. macro policy does not always offset micro action that screw thigs up. Xi's third term plus covid plus Trump seem to have screwed China over and Xi is facing the chickens of his last five years coming home to roost.Bear with me here because I’m barely getting the words out.
There’s often a belief that authoritarian regimes have some greater degree of efficient long-term planning because they are not beholden to public opinion.
I would say this might be true but that is ultimately outweighed by something that elected governments do not face: having to forcibly retain power, and it is this latter factor that throws the monkey wrench in the gears when it comes to long-term strategy.
Even operating under the assumption they will 100% of the time make the right decisions, it doesn’t matter unless they retain political control.
Chaotic or not I’d sooner buy bonds denominated in $ and £ before I’d get ones in yuan or rubles.
Zardnaar
Deity
If I was authoritarian leader think I would employ a few people whose job it is to disagree with me.
In private if you're sensitive about public perception.
In private if you're sensitive about public perception.
Snowygerry
Deity
Like the ancients ?
en.wikipedia.org
In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".[11] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.
Memento mori - Wikipedia
In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".[11] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.
Zardnaar
Deity
Like the ancients ?
Memento mori - Wikipedia
In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".[11] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.
Not the worst idea. Hubris and tunnel vision the downfall of many a tyrant.
All I want to do is make mushy peas illegal.
Verbose
Deity
You just need people to report things properly like they really are. Provided you trust them... and this kind of leader either has, or else develops, issues there.
An independent judiciary, good laws, and respect for them is what the ancient Greek would have advised against tyranny. If there are laws restraining the ruler, and the people respect the laws more than they fear the ruler, then you're on to something actually good.
That's not Russia, or China, these days.
Xi Pushes State Deeper Into Daily Life
Tracking in China grows during pandemic
BY BRIAN SPEGELE
SHANGHAI—In many parts of Xi Jinping’s China, state surveillance and Covid-19 controls begin the moment you step out the door in the morning.
The day might start with a government-mandated Covid test from workers in white hazmat suits. Without proof of a negative result, public spaces are off limits, including office buildings, grocery stores and parks.
Surveillance cameras keep watch over the city streets. In a cab on the way to work, the driver requires you to scan a QR code for a government database tracking people’s movements. Scan again when stopping by Starbucks for coffee and then again at the office. If the database shows you’ve crossed paths with someone infected by the virus, you’ll likely be forced into quarantine. It may be in a hotel room, at a converted convention center, or if lucky, at home with an alarm installed on the front door.
The Chinese state has stretched far deeper into citizens’ lives since Mr. Xi took power in 2012. Covid has pushed the controls to entirely new levels. Such measures are increasingly testing the faith of Chinese citizens in a government that is no longer delivering the supercharged economic growth that underpinned popular support for decades.
Tracking in China grows during pandemic
BY BRIAN SPEGELE
SHANGHAI—In many parts of Xi Jinping’s China, state surveillance and Covid-19 controls begin the moment you step out the door in the morning.
The day might start with a government-mandated Covid test from workers in white hazmat suits. Without proof of a negative result, public spaces are off limits, including office buildings, grocery stores and parks.
Surveillance cameras keep watch over the city streets. In a cab on the way to work, the driver requires you to scan a QR code for a government database tracking people’s movements. Scan again when stopping by Starbucks for coffee and then again at the office. If the database shows you’ve crossed paths with someone infected by the virus, you’ll likely be forced into quarantine. It may be in a hotel room, at a converted convention center, or if lucky, at home with an alarm installed on the front door.
The Chinese state has stretched far deeper into citizens’ lives since Mr. Xi took power in 2012. Covid has pushed the controls to entirely new levels. Such measures are increasingly testing the faith of Chinese citizens in a government that is no longer delivering the supercharged economic growth that underpinned popular support for decades.
When Mr. Xi took office, he set in motion a campaign to put the Communist Party back at the center of public life. Beijing increased censorship of social media, expanded surveillance and cracked down on private enterprise. He is expected to secure a third term as the country’s leader following the party’s twice-a-decade congress this week, after a steady drive to consolidate power. In a rare public protest last week, two banners appeared on a bridge in Beijing ahead of the congress. Slogans on the banners included “We Want Freedom, Not Lockdowns” and “Depose the Traitorous Dictator Xi Jinping.” Police quickly arrived and the banners were taken down. “I trust them less, definitely,” said Krissy Gu, who runs a fitness and dance studio and has endured two extended lockdowns since the beginning of 2020, including the earliest one in the city of Wuhan in 2020 and one in Shanghai this spring that lasted two months. The government had initially said it would last four days. Ms. Gu went to graduate school in Boston and stayed in the U.S. for several years, then returned to China in 2017. “I just felt like I could do all the things I wanted to do” in China, she said. She launched her studio in downtown Shanghai and got involved with local theater.
She is considering leaving China again, this time for a Ph.D. in Europe. “This year is my first time to start to think about me as a citizen and the relationship with the government,” she said. “I think it has happened to a lot of people.”
The State Council Information Office, which handles press inquiries for senior leaders, and Shanghai’s government didn’t respond to requests for comment. The surveillance extends far beyond Covid. Chinese authorities combine data from biometric tools such as facial recognition with ID numbers and behavioral data collected by tech companies to identify actions they consider threatening to social order. In the far northwestern region of Xinjiang, faces, voices and physical movements are tracked in real time using cameras and other surveillance tools powered by artificial intelligence as part of a campaign to forcibly assimilate ethnic Uyghurs and other minority groups.
Crackdown
The increasing intrusions into daily life build on growing frustration over an economic slowdown, brought on in part by Covid lockdowns, that has made it harder to find jobs. Mr. Xi has cracked down on technology and education companies in an effort to rein in private sector risk-taking and assert greater state control over the economy. As of August, the urban youth unemployment rate sat at 18.7%, according to government statistics. In China’s beleaguered property market, government restrictions on developers’ borrowing have helped spark falling prices. Over the summer, a movement to boycott paying mortgages on stalled real-estate projects spread to numerous cities. Consumer confidence measured by the National Bureau of Statistics hit a new level of pessimism in April, and has since remained depressed as pandemic controls have endured.
Public opinion will likely start to rebound whenever China eases Covid controls, especially if the economy strengthens as a result. Economists expect output to grow around 3% this year, missing the government’s 5.5% target. Some are reconsidering when China’s economy will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest, or if it ever will. The government has given little information about how its Covid policy might evolve going forward. In the case of a 6-year-old boy who recently tested positive for Covid days after landing in Shanghai on a domestic flight, the government first placed 400 of the boy’s close contacts into quarantine. Then officials began tracking down secondary contacts—people who had come into contact with others deemed to be close to the boy.
Authorities descended on an IKEA after determining that a close contact of the boy had also visited the store, then left. Verified video footage showed people attempting to escape as security officers tried to barricade shoppers inside.
The government tested 83,000 people in connection with the boy’s case. No one besides the boy tested positive, according to the city government.
China’s government says its approach to Covid has saved lives, and many Chinese support the controls. Official statistics say about 5,200 people in mainland China have died of Covid, compared with more than 1 million in the U.S. Mr. Xi has labeled his effort against Covid as a “People’s War,” a phrase that harks back to the Mao era’s revolutionary fervor.
Top, a man tries to break out of a quarantine fence in Shanghai in June. Right, Covid testing on the street in Shanghai on Oct. 12.
ALEX PLAVEVSKI/ EPA/ SHUTTERSTOCK ( 2)
The lowest rungs of China’s government have been handed far more authority to control their neighborhoods. Government workers and volunteers monitor Covid-19 risks and report on residents’ activities.
Prior to Mr. Xi, the government had gradually retreated from people’s lives beginning in the late 1970s, allowing them to take up more private pursuits. Many foreign executives until recently saw China’s leadership as pragmatic above all else.
“Now ideology is trumping the economy,” the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said recently when it released its latest position paper on the country.
Tracking public opinion in China is notoriously difficult. The government jails critics and academic freedom has eroded. On social media, posts critical of the government are frequently suppressed or deleted.
Before Covid-19 and even through the early days of the pandemic, some Western scholars found through surveys that Chinese were broadly supportive of the government, and that their satisfaction levels had grown in the previous two decades.
Mr. Xi won support from many Chinese after taking office for a wide-ranging anticorpecially ruption campaign and efforts to reduce poverty. These initiatives, and Chinese state media’s depiction of a decadent and decaying U.S., fostered greater nationalism. Much of the recent frustration has been directed at local officials rather than at the central government. In southwestern Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions, anger crescendoed in recent weeks. A bus transporting residents into forced quarantine crashed in the middle of the night, killing 27 people and injuring 20 others. A local official expressed remorse, but was met with cynicism. A protest formed online. “We’re all on the bus,” many users wrote. A mother of two young children said she was on a different bus that night, forced into quarantine after her 4-year-old tested positive, only to be later cleared of the virus.
“I’m extremely sad and indignant,” she later wrote on the Chinese platform Zhihu. “Apart from empathy, I lament even more that our freedom and our lives might merely hinge on another person’s careless decision.”
Police calls
When Mr. Xi took power, a growing high-speed rail system whisked travelers around the country. Today, carrying a large suitcase can prompt questions about a person’s movements. A business traveler upon arriving home can expect calls from the police about where they’ve been. Like many Chinese from the provinces, Yuan Yuyu dreamed of launching a career in Beijing. A college graduate with a computer- programming degree, Ms. Yuan landed a job in the capital and booked a train ticket there in early 2020.
When the pandemic hit, Ms. Yuan said her ticket was suddenly canceled due to travel restrictions. Her job offer dried up. She stayed in her home city in Shaanxi province and found work at a company that makes pre-packed roujiamo, a local specialty food similar to a hamburger. She began dating a man who shared her love of travel, and they decided to get married in the groom’s hometown of Xi’an this spring. But the nearby city where they lived wouldn’t let them leave due to the Covid controls.
A day before the wedding, their city lifted the restrictions and the couple rushed to Xi’an for the ceremony. They awoke in the morning to find that Xi’an had banned public gatherings. A few family members gathered at Ms. Yuan’s in-laws’ apartment instead.
She’s now hunkering down at home, too wary to go anywhere. “You never know if you’ll get locked down in some random place,” she said. “It’s a big problem.” ‘You never know if you’ll get locked down in some random place.’
This is why I use Tik Tok so much. I want to provide revenue for their Artificial Intelligence development, plus data they can use to train their monitoring software with. I mean, if my hedonism can help oppress people, I'm in!
Remorseless1
Emperor
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Sounds like the bad old days of Mao. We do indeed live in interesting times.Xi Pushes State Deeper Into Daily Life
Tracking in China grows during pandemic
BY BRIAN SPEGELE
SHANGHAI—In many parts of Xi Jinping’s China, state surveillance and Covid-19 controls begin the moment you step out the door in the morning.
The day might start with a government-mandated Covid test from workers in white hazmat suits. Without proof of a negative result, public spaces are off limits, including office buildings, grocery stores and parks.
Surveillance cameras keep watch over the city streets. In a cab on the way to work, the driver requires you to scan a QR code for a government database tracking people’s movements. Scan again when stopping by Starbucks for coffee and then again at the office. If the database shows you’ve crossed paths with someone infected by the virus, you’ll likely be forced into quarantine. It may be in a hotel room, at a converted convention center, or if lucky, at home with an alarm installed on the front door.
The Chinese state has stretched far deeper into citizens’ lives since Mr. Xi took power in 2012. Covid has pushed the controls to entirely new levels. Such measures are increasingly testing the faith of Chinese citizens in a government that is no longer delivering the supercharged economic growth that underpinned popular support for decades.
Lexicus
Deity
I'm just a simple country hyper chicken, but it seems to me that the reason the US has over 1 million deaths from covid could be related to the reasons that its media reports on bog-standard pandemic control measures like contact tracing and mandatory quarantines as totalitarian evil
Remorseless1
Emperor
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If you watch Fox or listen to Alex Jones, then yes, the media believes such measures are fascist. Now, the rest of the media pushed those measures hard. It wasn't the media, it was one Donald John Trump who dismissed rational public health measures and pushed crap treatments instead. He mocked people who wore masks, did nothing to promote vaccinations, and generally led his cadre to refuse any and all advice from public health officials.
Yes, and that the pandemic was fake news and bleach was a cool cure and "muh freedum" and masks are useless. A perfect storm of stupidity.
In any case, China is now facing its own dilemma of how to open.
Lexicus
Deity
The tone of that WSJ piece seems to want the reader to treat mandatory quarantine in the event of contact with a known covid case as something unreasonable, but I think that if we had done that starting January 2020 we'd be in much better shape now.
It's a hard path to see. You either stop it in a way where the restrictions eventually end, or you get proper vaccination and then open up populations slowly enough such that the healthcare system doesn't break down.
As an aside, Canada has thousands of non-covid19 excess deaths despite being a very rich nation and liberal supports for lockdowns. So, if China has 'only thousands' of Covid19 deaths, then we're back into my early prediction of lockdown deaths being greater than Covid19 deaths. I mean, obviously I have no data on China, but I'd also not bet that their lockdowns are gentler than Canada's slowdown.
As an aside, Canada has thousands of non-covid19 excess deaths despite being a very rich nation and liberal supports for lockdowns. So, if China has 'only thousands' of Covid19 deaths, then we're back into my early prediction of lockdown deaths being greater than Covid19 deaths. I mean, obviously I have no data on China, but I'd also not bet that their lockdowns are gentler than Canada's slowdown.
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