China Successfully Crushes All Dissent

[Kozmos]

Bottom line...if we reach a point where worldwide government is provided by a single authoritarian structure, what source would you rather that structure grew out of; the Chinese government or the US government?

I'd like my Big Brother invisible or near-as such and only interested in my money, so the US.

 

[Akka]

I think that we in the west underestimate how alright authoritarianism can be with the right authoritarians. When a Chinese dictator says "this is for the greatest good of the nation" the nation has more inclination to believe them; maybe because as @warpus says the culture is more collectivist, but also maybe because the leader in question is drawn from that culture and might be a telling the truth instead of just covering while lining his own pockets as greedily as possible.

Yeah, because China has so few problems with officials and corruption that the most groundbreaking focus of said president was about fighting it.

It's good to be critical of one's own "group", but it becomes a liability when it ends up with glamourizing the "others".

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Those are two extremes. Why not settle for something a bit more moderate? Maybe the European approach..

You think the European approach is really that different from the US approach? Personally, I consider the US approach to be exactly the same as the European approach, just wedded to greater capabilities.

 

[warpus]

You think the European approach is really that different from the US approach?

Yeah, you guys have big problems with $$ and outside interests running your system. Not that Europe doesn't, but they are a lot more locked down with the regulations and what not

Picking between the U.S. and China in this case is a bit like picking between Trump and Hilary - both bad options. There are better options out there

 

[Arwon]

Bottom line...if we reach a point where worldwide government is provided by a single authoritarian structure, what source would you rather that structure grew out of; the Chinese government or the US government?

Almost anything else tbh.

 

[Broken_Erika]

What about Venezuela or Pakistan?

Almost anything else tbh

Oh, Right......

 

[Arwon]

If we're gonna have a global autocratic state which maintains the merest window-dressing of electoral democracy, let's at least have it grow out of an existing state which has, like, functional healthcare, and doesn't panic-shoot random innocent people based on race quite so often.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Almost anything else tbh.

Well, to produce a world wide government you almost have to assume a starting point in a major economic and military power, so I limited the choices. Besides, I was mostly just further illuminating my point that fretting over some human rights backsliding in China while the USA is abandoning all pretense of not making a headlong rush down the drain seems...distracted...so that binary choice served my purpose.

 

[Hrothbern]

Bottom line...if we reach a point where worldwide government is provided by a single authoritarian structure, what source would you rather that structure grew out of; the Chinese government or the US government?

More serious on the choice between China and US: China is almost alien in culture and US incomparable closer to (Western) European culture.

You think the European approach is really that different from the US approach? Personally, I consider the US approach to be exactly the same as the European approach, just wedded to greater capabilities.

Wedded to greater capabilities... in economical resources sense..... nice geographic natural borders... yes.
But exactly the same kind ?

In * soundbytes:
* In Continental Europe we have imo a marriage of convenience with Capital & Free Market.
It is more about an Open Market, about Free Fair Trade and including some uncomfortable feelings. A tool as part of society under control of society. More ingrained like the medieval guild and Hanseatic trade. Anglosaxon Capital Economy thinking mostly "still" seen as detrimental for our traditional values of an inclusive economy, where social cohesion and from there social security is seen as important.
"still" because the neo-liberal disease is contagious and spreading here.

* The gap between UK and Continental Europe in that respect is already tremendous big !
Are you people in US aware of that gap ?

* In US the marriage with Capital & Free Market, the faith in it, is intrinsic part of society.

* The US development since the 70ies-80ies, where I see that the traditional industrial Capitalism of the old North is now being infected by the authoritarian and American nationalism culture of the old South is a nasty cocktail, rooting out traditional social remains of European cultural elements in US.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

@Hrothbern

You point out that China is "almost alien," then seem to argue that my statement about the US and Europe being comparably the same is wrong. Dunno quite what to make of that.

To get back to the point I was trying to make...

No individual produced from US, or European, culture that said "if given authoritarian powers I would rule with the long term good of the people as a primary objective" could possibly be taken seriously. The culture is too focused on dog eat dog individualism to produce a leader that could be expected to do anything with such authority other than aggrandize and enrich themselves. If you are stuck with a dictatorship and have to hope for a benevolent dictator, look to the east.

 

[Kaitzilla]

In China, all land is owned by the State.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_law

People can only lease the land for a few decades to use, and then have to renew the lease.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/19...operty-regime-wenzhou-lease-renewal-problems/

This dilemma, while sharp, has been no less predictable than the Y2K problem. Although the Party did not abolish private ownership of urban land when it took power in 1949, it gradually restricted the rights of owners over the years. In 1982, the law finally caught up with reality when China formally nationalized all urban land. Since the early 1990s, however, urban land has been available for sale in the form of long-term leaseholds, or “land use rights” (LURs), which last up to 70 years on residential land and for shorter periods for industrial and commercial land. This system allowed the state on the one hand to obtain the economy-wide benefits of market allocation of land as well as the revenues from leasehold sales, while on the other hand to maintain that the principle of state ownership of land had not been compromised: after all, buyers got “merely” leaseholds of several decades, not ultimate ownership. The original rule about what would happen when the leasehold expired was unambiguous: the land would go back to the landlord, i.e., the state. If leaseholders wanted to extend the lease, they would have to pay for it.

The rule was clear enough as written, but leaseholders naturally didn’t like it. A widespread belief grew up that the rules around renewal were unclear and unfair. The picture was further muddied by China’s 2007 Property Law, which proclaimed that residential LURs would be renewed “automatically” — but without specifying whether that also meant “without charge.”

A prominent member of the drafting team later admitted that the team had simply punted on the issue because it was too nettlesome. To specify that a fee need be paid would have angered current LUR holders — a vast and politically important interest group (probably 80 to 90 percent of urban families). But to specify that no fee need be paid would have meant overturning a sacred tenet of Chinese socialism: that private land ownership is anathema. After all, a 70-year leasehold that continually renews itself automatically and without charge is no longer a leasehold; it is a permanent right to the land, indistinguishable in practice from the kind of outright ownership (called fee simple) that most homeowners in common-law countries like the United States take for granted.

This tends to make eminent domain complaints in the USA looks like a joke.
The government officials make big money $$$ doing this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_evictions_in_China

43 percent of villages surveyed across China report being the victims of land grabs,[2] and from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, an estimated 40 million Chinese peasants were affected by land requisitions.[7] Since 2005, surveys have indicated a steady increase in the number of forced evictions in China, with local government appropriating the land of approximately 4 million rural Chinese citizens annually.[2]

Forced evictions with inadequate compensation occur frequently in both urban and rural contexts, with even fewer legal protections for rural citizens. In most instances, the land is then sold to private developers at an average cost of 40 times higher per acre than the government paid to the villagers.[2]

Although forced evictions occur throughout China in both rural and urban environments, there are several notable examples in which hundreds of thousands of people were evicted. From 1993 to 2003, 2.5 million people were evicted in the city of Shanghai.[8] In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, many of Beijing's densely populated neighborhoods were torn down in order to make way for new developments and infrastructure projects. The Center on Housing Rights and Evictions estimated that 1.5 million people in and around Beijing were forced from their homes, often with inadequate compensation. Chinese authorities maintained only 6,000 families were relocated, and that all received proper compensation.[9]

From 1995 to 2005, an average of 86,754 people were evicted annually in connection to the Three Gorges Dam,[8] totaling an estimated 1.4 million people.[10] Recalcitrant residents in the city of Chongqing had their water and electricity turned off in order to force them to move; the residents said they had not yet left because proper resettlement hadn't been arranged.[11]

Wow, what a mess.
They should do like the US and pretend people own their land until they don't pay their yearly property taxes.
That is the best fiction.

China also seems to still have problems with intellectual property.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/07/22/in-china-why-piracy-is-here-to-stay/#29eebc808006

Cheap knock-offs is sort of a thing in China. They call it the shanzhai -- imitation and piracy of name brands, be it Gears of War for PlayStation or the latest Adobe Photoshop.

In China, said Tom Doctoroff, author of the book "What Chinese Want" and a China marketing guru at J. Walter Thompson, managing a fake Apple store, or any kind of fake this or that, is heralded as good ole fashion entrepreneurship.

"When it comes to innovation, the Chinese won't deliver," he told me in a phone interview back in mid-May. "China is the total flip-side of the U.S. Piracy goes back to the China world view that individual rights don't matter. The courts have never evolved to protect innovative individuals. There is still very much the ethos that economic growth has to be managed, so individual and intellectual property, where the spoils go to one entity or one person, is not a cultural value," he said.

Embracing Big Brother might be a solution to the crazy corruption problems, but when world growth for the last 10 years has been fueled mainly by Chinese corporate debt growth, I'm alarmed.
China is just too big to ignore any longer.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up-china-s-debt-bubble-bloomberg-economics

China isn’t the U.S. before the housing market collapse; households are relatively lightly leveraged. Nor is it Greece going into its sovereign debt crisis; government debt is low. Borrowing is mainly on corporate balance sheets: Chinese corporate debt was 163 percent of GDP in mid-2017, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Banks are the main enablers. The PBOC, the central bank, aims to have the bond market play a larger role in financing debt, reasoning that credit is allocated more efficiently in transparent, liquid markets.

Holy moly