Do you think the person denying a bank loan, hiring, approving jobs, etc. is going to check and verify that what the person did is wrong? Or can this at any moment be used against anyone.
If the government wants to punish someone it should be through the courts and through a fine or some sort of government restriction, not enforced by the public sector.
We have this in the US with terrorists watch lists and no fly lists.
Imagine someone standing outside one of these shadow court houses protesting the fact they're being harassed and persecuted without due process.
> it should be through the courts and through a fine or some sort of government restriction, not enforced by the public sector. Legal system in China is weak and probably doesn't have enough capacity to handle such large volume of court fights. Any major city in China can have tens of millions of people.
TBH I think restriction on taking high-speed transportation is quite genius, better than fine, and only China is able to do that because there's no boundary between public sector and government there. Fine can be easily got over by rich people, and may incentivize over-enforcement.
Government and laws in China is fundamentally different from Western ones, also quite different from those depicted in Western fictions about authoritarianism. Don't blindly assume government can impose whatever they want onto the people, social unrest can cause disaster and CCP doesn't have another party to blame.
I see absolutely no evidence that this is true.
> social unrest can cause disaster
I believe that’s what the re-education camps are for.
When people say things like "US is a republic, not a democracy", they're using the archaic definition of "democracy" from 200 years ago. Modern English has a different definition.
But it's usually redundant, because all modern democracies are representative. Some have more direct democracy features than others (e.g. Switzerland, or some western US states with their public initiative process), but they're still fundamentally representative.
“Republic” alone is correct, but overly nonspecific; essentially any government that isn't a hereditary monarchy or similar system where government power isn't private and heritable is a republic.
> The definition of republic is 2000 years old.
Well, sure, there is a definition that old (older, actually), but the one you seem to be using (the colloquial American one referring specifically to a system of elected representatives) is much newer, peculiar to American non-technical usage, and equivalent to “democratic republic” and very close to “representative democracy” (differing only in that the latter can coexist with constitutional monarchy.)
There are many countries in the world that fulfill all these criteria without being republics. Canada would be the closest example - they have a constitution that limits democratic decision making, and they have people elect representatives rather than deciding on issues directly. But they're not a republic, solely because they have a monarch.
And what I’m trying to get at as one definition of democracy is the idea that policy should track majority preferences, totally aside from any structural features of the system that might make that likely. For example, someone arguing that a certain bill should pass because a majority of citizens support it is making an argument from this idea. That argument in itself is totally aside from whether the legislature is even elected by the citizens.
After a little thought, I'm not so sure.
Could such a system prevent scientists and doctors claiming, on behalf of their employer, that there's no connection between smoking and health, or that there's no anthropogenic climate change, or that there's no asbestos in the baby powder? Then there's the countless pseudo scientific cures and remedies. Could it do better than the system we have?
Clearly, it could be abused, but so can the system we have and it is being, heavily.
Which produces the more honest result?
Who might be more honest - a government funded body, or a commercial entity making profit off one particular answer?
How do you think they'd be punished in China under this system? Maybe they can't ride a train anymore, or forced into dingy second rate establishments, or refused certain services. I wonder how that will work when facial recognition hits big.
And to answer your question, trusting the government is always foolish.
Always cracks me up when people think corporations are full of evil people but noble government would never be similarly evil.
The government very much works like a business does: there are worker-bees, managers, committees, higher people in charge, crooks and thieves, power-abusers and criminals. On the other hand, the private sector is literally made up of competing groups and individuals who are looking for success when the market is fair.
The same problems above exist in some businesses as well. The benefit with the private sector is, when we find corruption we can destroy contract, sue, and find a competitor. You can't do that with the government.
It's perfectly possible to trust an independent body set up, and funded, by government whilst entirely distrusting party politics and the government of the day. I have yet to lose trust of, for example, the BSI Kitemark. Nor trading standards despite governments occasionally limiting their funding, and thus their effectiveness. Despite being funded by the state they are not the government. (Actually I think BSI is self-funded these days, but the point stands)
Professional bodies, such as those for lawyers, doctors etc, frequently attract criticism for being to lenient. The market clearly heavily weights where the money is. Government action is one of very few opportunities to balance that.
Now, I don't know enough from the article about how this will be set up, or which government agencies are being granted this role. Nor do we know how it will work - Party Members punishing errant scientists is clearly very wrong, an independent body of scientists "striking off" an errant scientist may be a very good thing. Little different to a doctor being struck off, but perhaps freer from commercial influence. We can assume, but we don't know. Hence my original question.
Harsher, further reaching penalties for faking peer review, falsifying data or CVs seems a reasonable goal, that might just work. The devil, as mentioned above, is in the unknown details.
I'd rather a situation where scientists are given freedom to publish what they produce, than fear excommunication for challenging the current theories and conventional science.
If you want a system where scientists aren't bought as mouthpieces by industry, instead find a way where they can get paid and fund their research without commercial interference.
This comment raised a reasonable, and frankly, quite meaningful, question about the prospect of this new system.
I can't help but feel this is some reddit-grade "downvote because I don't agree" voting.
To be honest, I downvoted because I disagree, yes. But more to the point, I find it so dangerously ridiculous AND the same sad “whataboutism” that always gets commented in response to whatever China’s latest human rights atrocity is. It annoys me. Yes, I could post a long substantive comment explaining why I think this is the road to civilization’s ruin, but I don’t always have the time :)
Also, if you think that HN doesn’t downvote based on agreement, you must not post anything controversial often. I can almost always predict how my comments are going to perform within a few points.
What about someone that publish a study that says that second hand smoke is not dangerous (except at ridicule high levels)? IIRC the evidence against second hand smoke is not conclusive. What about third hand smoke? That is just ridiculous.
What about pronuclear research, that compares the danger of nuclear contamination and the reduction of CO2 emission?
The real question is who is in charge of deciding what is good science and what is bad science. The president? The Nobel committee? The UN? The consensus? Who organize the pools to decide what is the consensus? Do they use secret ballots or everyone vote is published for enabling public shamming?
If someone publish article against homeopathy who will vote? The homeopathy specialists or the corporate allopathy drones payed by big pharma?