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Comment by okc | Hacker News Reader

Security and crime: Doublespeak.

Wages and medicine: actually more inequality than ever.

Life expectancy: scraping the barrel.

These aren't concrete things. If they were we could, like you say, measure them properly. But even in the best conditions your anlysis would be linking your values to your methods.

My point: measuring stuff like this in a 60 year old regime based on self perpetuation and social control is not improvement its indoctrination.

For example: are wages higher by mean, mode or median.

Or more simply does less crime measure the improvement of a country. I can think of several pertinent examples of regimes and dictators who were quite sucsesfull with crime.

Higher life expectancy.. Well that's quite an easy one to improve when you stop starving everyone.

I'm not saying all my points are 100% kosher. I'm saying improvement is a very subjective term reaking of contradiction when not simplified or taken out of context.

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> Higher life expectancy.. Well that's quite an easy one to improve when you stop starving everyone.

If that's the only reason, then why is the quality of life so much better in China than in India, the world's largest democracy?

For example,

- Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is 64.4 years.

- The infant mortality rate is fifty per thousand in India, compared with just seventeen in China.

- The mortality rate for children under five is sixty-six per thousand for Indians and nineteen for the Chinese.

- Maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 live births in India and thirty-eight in China.

- Only 66 percent of Indian children are immunized with triple vaccine (diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus), as opposed to 97 percent in China.

- The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China.

- China’s adult literacy rate is 94 percent, compared with India’s 74 percent.

- India's literacy rate for women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four is still not much above 80 percent, whereas in China it is 99 percent.

Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/05/12/quality-life-indi...

No its not the only reason I have! as I made clear - it wasn't the reason at all. You reply is meaningless without context.

It was one example of many providing a point that statistics are misleading.

Especially in describing quality of life under a controlling reigeme. Yes some things improve in some way. No - that's not improvement.

Its like saying if you sent me to prison my life expectancy, security, and perhaps even literacy might improve. Would I count being in prison an improvement? No.

Not unless of course you think I'm guilty, incapable, and need controlling.

Edit: typo.

So, this is all about perspective then?

Somehow not seeing your family members starve or die in childbirth isn't an improvement if they don't have other things you deem important?

> Its like saying if you sent me to prison my life expectancy, security, and perhaps even literacy might improve. Would I count being in prison an improvement? No.

Let's say I consider this prison to be an improvement to me dying of hunger, then would you be able to accept my perspective? Or would you consider me brainwashed?

Just curious, but do you perceive living in China to be the same as living in North Korea?

Yes, its all about perspective. Perspective based in reality. Context.

Take your childbirth example: mortality rate may have improved. This statement is great without context – of course thats improvement right?

Now take the context of forced sterilisation and forced abortion by local corrupt government meeting birth quotas. Thats perspective.

What do you base your perspective on?

(In response to your question on N.Korea, I don't know anything about North Korea so of course not!)

>Let's say I consider this prison to be an improvement to me dying of hunger, then would you be able to accept my perspective? Or would you consider me brainwashed?

I would consider you in prison. I would also point out that the prison (government) created the great famine (that made you hungry). Do you really believe that is improvement?

I can see where you're coming from, and I suppose it's our different life experiences that cause us to have different perspectives.

I grew up extremely poor and despite being upper-middle class now, I know my past influences how I see things.

Also, my experience working in China and with other Mainland Chinese just paint a different picture than what people tend to see in the Western media. (I'll add that I made it a point to avoid the expat bubble, so perhaps my perspective there is different from other expats as well.)

> I would also point out that the prison (government) created the great famine (that made you hungry).

Just to clarify, the government that created the great famine (Mao) is very different than the one that started to feed the people (Deng)

In fact, the Mao tried to have Deng assassinated several times.

So yeah, I would say it's an improvement since the CCP is now saying the Cultural Revolution was wrong.

I guess I see it as progress. If you take a look at countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, all three were dictatorships until the 90s, when their quality of life improved enough for them to turn to democracies.

So I guess we'll just have to see where the Chinese people take themselves.

We probably agree on a lot. Our radical different positions are only really evident in the subtleties of semantics.

I think thats dangerous for China. People get tortured, killed and have no voice. Things may improve for the masses but if it isn't for the minority then its not really improvement.

Your last sentence:

"So I guess we'll just have to see where the Chinese people take themselves"

is the kind of subtle difference in semantics that divides us. You think China is ruled and directed by its people. Censorship, propaganda, history and injustice suggest otherwise.

The dangerous part is looking at the winners in Chinese society and saying - look! its improving! - whilst the losers are getting a tougher time as ever. You say you grew up extremely poor, so I feel like that might resonate with you.

I rephrase your last sentence as: so I guess we'll just have to see where the Chinese peoples totalitarian government take them. A small matter of semantics, yet a matter of life and death.

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