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cambalache

It seems to me that China can only make wrong in your eyes.

If it takes time to act it is because the system causes this failure.

If the government acts swiftly, it is because they are in panic.

If it does not solve the situation, of course because they have a terrible oppressive culture.

If the problem is fixed. Of course, because these are one of the few advantages of having an authoritarian system.

No matter what China does, you will say something bad.

I know this makes me sound like CCP shill, but I am not. I only want to read an assessment made with the same level of rigour and sympathy, if, instead of China was Denmark or Australia.

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This is the first comment I've made on this forum about China, so whoever you're speaking to is clearly not me but a collective "you" instead. Responding as myself, I simply added balance to the comment above me. Many people are making the exact same argument the person I responded to is making, and while that argument isn't false, it's clearly misleading.

China does get credit for responding to the situation as they did after the central government got involved. However, we must remember that the situation would likely not have occurred in the first place if the people speaking out about it early on weren't punished, which wouldn't happen in most western countries as local governments have way less power and way less incentives to make that kind of thing happen. This situation is a good example of the problems of their authoritarian system, and a good reminder of why we value (or why we should value) the things we value in the West, like free speech.

> However, we must remember that the situation would likely not have occurred in the first place if the people speaking out about it early on weren't punished, which wouldn't happen in most western countries as local governments have way less power and way less incentives to make that kind of thing happen.

I'm not saying the Chinese government doesn't have problems, nor am I saying free speech is bad, but I have no idea how you could come to this conclusion that free speech would somehow limit the spread of this disease. We have free speech in the US and that's literally led to the rise of anti inoculation advocacy.

Anti-vaccination advocacy exists because some kids do get problems from vaccines. I'm not an anti-vaxxer but it's an inherent feature of how vaccines work that a very small percentage of kids will have some serious things happen as a result of being vaccinated. When you have a big population and the Internet, this small percentage of parents will logically come together to cope with their problems. The fact that those people exist and they can talk about it is evidence that our system is working, not that it isn't.

That is a very charitable portrait of the anti-vaccination movement. No, they aren't parents of vaccine-allergic children banding together "to cope with their problems". They are people spreading serious misinformation about vaccines, advocating that they are risky and best forgone, and causing real damage by doing so. I think silencing these people is wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that their speech is clearly making the world a worse place.

... and also the widely held belief that anti-vaxing is quackery. I’d argue that free speech actually combats this type of mindset, rather than encourage it. Maybe the Chinese govt. can use it’s authoritarian tools to dispel the bullshit beliefs behind traditional medicine and bizarre “bush-meat” consumption in China that likely caused this mess.

Unfortunately, they've been using this to promote traditional Chinese medicine instead, and this may well come from the top: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/01/asia/chinese-traditional-...

Restricted spread of information caused about of month of delay for proper action, as facts were concealed and suppressed by local authorities. If proper action could have been taken in mid-December instead of mid-January, then the spread of the infection could be heavily limited back before it had grown to such large scale as it has now.

Exactly. I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called 40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv recordings.

Check out this video for the banquet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kft21UdBFI

> I'm not saying the Chinese government doesn't have problems, nor am I saying free speech is bad, but I have no idea how you could come to this conclusion that free speech would somehow limit the spread of this disease.

In this particular instance, early warning would have gained precious days if not weeks to study and respond to the disease. In an emergency, every second counts, but the saving face mentality of the Communist Party cost weeks.

> We have free speech in the US and that's literally led to the rise of anti inoculation advocacy.

Even if you were right, that would have absolutely no bearing on the situation at hand.

How would the situation have played out in the west? The symptoms are flu-like. Would the situation have been contained on the theory that people will self-diagnose after watching the evening news or hearing about it over Facebook?

Also, if any situation explodes, would the west be as capable in quarantining a huge urban population or building a quick hospital?

Would emergency aid be tossed around like a political game?

Considering the rapid efficient response to Katrina in New Orleans and the Hurricane Dorian in Puerto Rico (catastrophes which, unlike a new virus, are completely unpredictable in their timing of appearance and scope of impact) it's pretty clear that the US would have rapidly deployed infrastructure and supplies exactly where they needed to prevent any casualties.

Please add /s ?

I think the point is that the Chinese government didn't act swiftly, arrested people who initially spread information about the disease in Wuhan, failed to contain the situation, and has now allowed it to become a global problem.

Due to the way China's government has lied in the past, I am hesitant to believe their numbers or their narrative until it can be confirmed by outside parties.

Then does the fact that they're responding much more quickly and much more heavily this time mean nothing at all?

You say "didn't act swiftly". What is swift to you? A month went by since the first case before they started getting their act together, true, but how quickly do you think other nations could have acted? Compared to SARS, where it took them months, 1 month is a major improvement. It's still not good enough because the virus is that ruthless, but Rome isn't built in one day. I have reason to believe that they've learned a great deal from how SARS was handled, and that they'll respond even better in a future outbreak event.

Are there any government whose narrative you trust? It seems to me that never trusting anything a governments because they have once [0] lied is a little extreme. In fact, I'm not sure I can name a country whose government hasn't lied in recent times.

This would then extend to academia as well, since most research is in some way funded by the state.

[0]: I know they have lied more than once. I'm not sure what a more appropriate word would have been.

I would trust the CDC’s numbers because I know of no incentive for them to lie and their numbers have generally been truthful in the past. In addition, any doctor at the CDC is free to say “these numbers are fraudulent” publicly without worrying they will be arrested.

I would not trust a political party’s economy numbers without external verification, however, because a party has an incentive to lie.

> because they have once [0] lied is a little extreme

But it is not that they have once lied that it is a problem. It is instead, that just right now, a couple weeks ago, china was arresting journalists for this stuff.

If you want to say that we should ignore bad behavior from 20 years ago, because it is no longer relevant, thats fine. But we are not talking about stuff from 20 years ago. We are instead talking about behavior that china does all the time, right now.

> Are there any government whose narrative you trust?

I can only speak for my country (France), but the precedent of the AIDS epidemic and particularly that of contaminated blood transfusion makes it pretty clear that any government official caught having lied in such a situation would be in deep trouble. And I'm pretty sure they're all keenly aware of that.

The reason people don't trust governments is because of a constant, never-ending stream of lies. They didn't lie once. They hardly ever not lie. This applies to China, the US, and other governments. A more appropriate phrase is "continually lying" rather than "once lied." The difference is huge enough that you don't even have an argument to stand on. And for the record, I wouldn't trust then even if they did literally only lie once. And neither would most people as most people value trust. One lie or a million, either way the trust is broken. The insane thing is that so many people trust governments even when they continuously prove over and over and over again that they can't be trusted. Lying continuously is only one of many ways they do that. Trusting governments is illogical, unreasonable, and frankly bordering on insane. What other person or entity that constantly lies and breaks trust would be trusted?

Denmark is nothing like china besides being a country. If china wants to be compared favorably to other contries, the need to act favorible to most countries. Full stop.

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