2022 letter on life in China
danwang.co
danwang.co
They can not protest, but that seems to signify a severe drop in confidence in the government.
As a reference, in the West, child births exploded in COVID.
If you want to talk sometimes, let me know. I'm interested about what's it like there at the moment ( and you can practice your English in the mean time).
Ps. Just mentioning, as everywhere, CCP could be monitoring here. It's a popular site...
Casualization != correlation. People banged a lot back then as they were stuck in home with money in their pockets and nothing to do outside, and getting cheap loans for real estate was not a problem, so having kids didn't seem like a bad decision, not because they had more confidence in their government. Though during covid and lockdowns a lot of couples also broke up.
This trend has rapidly came to a halt in 2022 to 2203, with the war in Ukraine, inflation, high mortgage rates, insane energy bills, high food prices, exploding costs of rents and buying real estate, unavailable housing, longer waiting times in the healthcare system and a shortage of staff, layoffs, hiring freezes or stagnating wages in the private sector, etc.
With the way things happened last in the last 12 months, average people really lost hope in the government, the economy and in the future and aren't rushing to have kids at all.
Though I'm only talking about Europe, not "the west". Maybe things might be different elsewhere like US, Canada or Australia.
Couples decided in COVID to go for the first kid ( or subsequent). The ones that banged for boredom still use protection... Having a kid is a choice here, not something that just happens. People have protection ;)
You're just affirming my statement.
Since the war in Ukraine ( after COVID) it dropped, it comes from insecurity.
So, those in China are insecure too, for the reason I stated.
Note : i didn't verify numbers, just explained the sentiment.
https://www.humanfertility.org/Data/STFF
Also, something else caused overall fertility drop rate in 2022, but that is another topic.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/more-natality-data-from-o...
I was aware of the raised limit ( one - child policy -> 2 and now 3), fyi.
I would guess that their last child wasn't born in the last years, but eg. Before or at the start of COVID? ( Raw guess)
If I'm understanding it correctly, it means that the social pressure decreased too?
Did they really? Looks to me like they've remained static at extremely low levels. The decline since 2009 has been arrested, but that actually happened around 2018, and they haven't really recovered even to replacement rate.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fert...
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/fer...
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/fertility-...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/surprising-new-evidence-of-a-mode...
As for changing China from within, I can empathize fully [1].
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/01/russia-child...
Japan is a country where each generation is poorer than the generation before. In China, you can give your kids a better life than the one you had.
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/life-after-covid-the...
[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/locked-down-in-shang...
I think we ignore it right now, but there s a little migration wave towards China that goes beyond "rich executive parachuted in Shanghai branch", and while we re far from democracy or any kind of "Chinese dream", well, I think I ended up much much better in China than I would have in the US...
China is frigging great, the people are amazing, and we all will build this country despite the communists and the americans doing all they can to fuck it up :D Come back!
On one hand, being convinced you made all the right decisions is great for your happiness.
On the other hand, as a fellow European who emigrated, and who has faced no issues due “religiosity, lack of safety or pessimism” in the US, I still have no clue if I would have “ended up better” in China or the US.
Yeaah, Russians were doing a good job building the country despite their government, but oppressive dictatorships have a way of manifesting themselves in your life, even if you don't manifest in theirs.
-- Pericles
Covid, China's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the way Hong Kong's separate systems were overridden were all factors, plus propaganda-supported anti-European racism for two people I know who lived in "smaller" cities.
150 RMB is $21.71 now, but it used to be almost $25 at that time's exchange rate
In comparison, I got some of the best cocktails I've ever had at a bar in Dali for 65 RMB
Ya, totally agree. But there are nice things to do around Lijiang, at least (mountains, gorges). And I have fond memories drinking with Chinese friends there. You aren't going to get great drinks in tourist towns anyways, not like the fancy bars in Beijing/Shanghai.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g303781-d12429...
this bar in Dali is the best one I've been to in China
> Whereas Beijing is hit hard by every domestic outbreak, Shanghai hasn’t had many cases while being the least restrictive city in the country. It’s hard for us fresh arrivals not to smirk at our friends in the north each time we read about new restrictions in Beijing.
I can't help but feel a sense of betrayal in his words. He's very clear in these notes that he feels China is creatively stunted, top-heavy, repressive, yet is still capable of great things. The end of zero-covid was an abrupt end to such a prokect.
Very, very well done.
- Factories are quickly moving out of China. Judging by the recent -40% export collapse from Hong Kong https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/Hong-Kong-exports-post..., where Hong Kong serves as the main hub to transport stuff out of China, at least 40% of factory outputs have moved out of China. A few apple suppliers have confirmed the fact https://fortune.com/2023/02/28/airpods-maker-goertek-apple-s.... Unlike the majority consensus on hacker news that "it's too hard to move out of China", almost half the factories that were in China in 2022 had already left. The factories that left and went to Southeast Asia are mainly from the Guangdong and Shenzhen regions.
- Apple, a China laggard, has finally decided to pull the string and move itself and all its related supply chain out of China. Tesla is building its next big factory in Mexico. Samsung has completely left China. Dell is asking all of its suppliers to move out of China. The list of technology multinationals leaving is increasing day by day. The age of China's hold on technological supply chain is over.
- There's about 80% reduction in retail activities in China, 50% reduction in home prices, and 80% reduction in labor demands. Judging from on the ground testimonials from social media in China, such as https://www.youtube.com/@realchina, https://www.youtube.com/@baixingzhengxiang, https://www.youtube.com/@XMKZG666, https://www.youtube.com/@ZGQSL (need to understand mandarin to view). There are millions of unemployed young men walking the city streets, and millions that have gave up and returned to the country side to farm. There are people with entire savings lost in real estate and small business. It's a very volatile situation.
- China's unwavering decision to be friends with Russia with "no limit" is slow changing into "directly giving military aids". US and EU is threatening sanctions on China for this, something that most on this board would consider impossible a year ago.
maybe climate changes makes lots of hotter countries unlivable.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64563855
US-China trade hits record high despite rising tensions
Trade between the US and China hit a record high last year even as their diplomatic relations deteriorated.
Imports and exports between the two countries totalled $690.6bn (£572.6bn) in 2022, official figures show.
But my point is that contrary to the rhetorics and the politics, western countries hasn't stopped trading with China, actually the opposite has happened.
Factory work is not going to come back to the west in a big way. Labor costs would make goods more expensive than customers would be willing to pay.
When there are no more humans willing to do the work for cheap, which will happen when the third world catches up with the first world, everyone (including third-world factories) will pivot to robotics and automation as much as possible.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-feb-manufacturing...
China's factory activity stuns with fastest growth in a decade
BEIJING, March 1 (Reuters) - China's manufacturing activity expanded at the fastest pace in more than a decade in February, an official index showed on Wednesday, smashing expectations as production zoomed after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions late last year.
The manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) shot up to 52.6 from 50.1 in January, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics, above the 50-point mark that separates expansion and contraction in activity. The PMI far exceeded an analyst forecast of 50.5 and was the highest reading since April 2012.
This is a government that just raised the retirement age from 60 to 65, proclaimed that one can take on a mortgage at age 70 and let the heirs inherit the mortgage, and do not issue passports freely. Where its banks has delayed its customers from paying off mortgage in full, and from withdrawing large amount of cash. Does that sound like a healthy economy?
Again, watch online testimonials from average citizens, and you will see entirely empty malls in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oApzG9ycwkw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBpybdnYVEs
Hong Kong exports post biggest plunge in 70 years https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/Hong-Kong-exports-post...
- CHIP act in mid 2022 from Biden that spurred Apple to finally drag its immoral lazy feet
- Russia invasion of Ukraine, and Chinese proclamation of friendship with no limits shortly after
- covid lockdowns in China in early 2022 that shut down factories
- increasing electric rationing every year in China that shut down factories
- Foxconn factory riots
- very loud geopolitical risks that C level execs can no longer pretend not to hear
- can't move money out of China. 'I can't get my money out': Billionaire investor Mark Mobius says China is restricting flows of capital out of the country. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/mark-mobius-...
This has been true for 10+ years
Whatever the US is doing with sanctions is still much looser than China's controls on capital, and they've made it an explicit point that they would rather keep capital controls and the ability to suddenly put in even more draconian ones, than to become a global reserve currency.
HK (and China) export always plunges in the month with the Lunar New Year Holiday. In 2022, that would be February, but in 2023, it's January, hence the large decrease. In fact, HK export this Lunar New Year is the third highest ever, only standing behind 2021 and 2022.
It will be interesting to see if the US decides to do to China for those that CHina did to the US for practically ... everything. Essentially take the technology from them with "partnerships" (you see CATL proposing and building factories in EU and US now) that will effectively onshore whatever advantages they have there.
For perspective, this is rather common outside China too. Working in a factory is hard work and factories often have severe age limits. China's demographic problems mean that its time as a factory hub was always going to be limited.
Just like COVID. We are told there’s very few COVID deaths, but we don’t know how many deaths there are and no one talks about the days long queues for cremation.
In the mean time, you could also visit China, talk to people, and ask them whether they prefer the China today or the China from 30 years ago.
Just think about how weird that is. I increasingly believe that such hypocrisy simply indicates bad faith.
You feel like it’s your right to defend your country but it’s strange you want to defend your country and not your people. Majority of people here opening admit the faults in their own countries yet when it comes to China you pop out your red scarf and make sure your family back home don’t get a call. But you call that weird and hypocrisy.
shrug
Edit: as a side note my original message was criticism of the CCP, not China.
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No I am not defending China from "any form of criticism". I am defending China from your criticism because I think yours is unjust and/or wrong. Big difference.
There are legit points of criticisms. But you are not raising them. Instead, what you are raising is the sort of stereotypical hysterical character assassination that's propagated by mainstream Anglo media. That I will gladly oppose.
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I have had many many conversations with people about China, and by now it's clear that the mantra "I am only against the CCP, not the people" is blatantly disingenuous. We are in a Cold War with the Anglo MSM spouting anti-China hysteria day by day, creating an atmosphere which implicates common Chinese people and other common Asian people as potential CCP spies. This hysteria also contributes to popular support for a war against China. But as anti-Asian attacks in many countries reach a high, I don't see many of these supposed "loving the people and only hating the CCP" figures speak up about that. It's abubdantly clear that we common people are, in such figures' eyes, merely good enough as cannon fodder in a holy war against the CCP. It doesn't matter that the common people are implicated and yet the mantra "loving the people" goes on.
Your comments are the very manifestation of this disingenuity. Apparently your "love" for the people only covers those who agree with you.
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The Chinese people are not China the country? This sort of rethoric is just like "love people hate CCP" mantra: sounds nice in theory, but rings hollow in practice and doesn't stand up to scrutiny. US sanctions against China hurt common Chinese people. US escalating military tensions in SCS and developing consent for war, hurts people. Who stands up for that? Not the HN crowd that's for sure.
Meanwhile,the CCP has 95M members, or 5% of the population. Pretty much everybody has a releative that's a party member. But the Anglo media and govt coalitions are pushing the idea that anybody who has the slightest "links to the CCP" is a threat. This has ruined the lives of a great many American Chinese engineers and scientists. Who stands up for that?
I'll give you the answer in case you didn't get the hint. For all its faults, the Chinese state is the only entity that actually protects Chinese people. They are flawed, but they are all we have.
When a war occurs with China because of this hysteric environment, Chinese people become cannon fodder. So, no sir: defending China and criticizing this anti-China hysteria is defending the people.
They've already taken a side with a country determined to wipe the identity of tens of millions of people from the earth and do so with tanks, shells and hundreds of thousands of armed men. What is there to defend there? How many tens of thousands of people must be murdered for their soil for China to disavow it's unlimited friendship?
Anti-Asian discrimination cost Chinese restaurants $7.4 billion during the pandemic's first year, new study finds https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/977098
A majority of Americans (55%) support limiting Chinese students studying in the U.S. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/03/04/most-americans...
Nearly 90% of the defendants charged with spying are of Chinese heritage. This includes citizens with connections to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and long-standing Chinese diaspora communities in Southeast Asia https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/02/1040656/china-in...
The environment is pushing the idea that there's a commie under every bed, so they're massively charging many innocent people, and you deny this is hysteria and even look the other way?!
Now you are even engaging in whataboutism for the 2nd time, right after having accused me of doing it.
For all your talk about being only against the CCP, you sure show that you don't care about the people. You're blatantly denying anti-Asian racism that's flared up as a result of all this hysteria.
"Olaf Scholz suggested that Germany received bilateral assurances from China that it won't supply Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine.
EU Commission President von der Leyen said she had seen "no evidence" of Chinese considerations to send arms."
https://www.politico.eu/article/china-ukraine-war-russia-wea...
So you're essentially saying that it's okay to attack Asians in the west even though China has not actually supplied weapons to Russia!?!?!
You seem to care alot more about how Chinese people are perceived abroad than you are at home. While covid coming from China caused increased racism against Asian people in the west, it pales in comparison to the human rights violations that occur on a daily basis in China.
Tho I guess welding people into their homes, separating children, killing animals, genocide against an entire ethnic population, social credit system, millions of homes forclosed, banks stealing money and destorying peoples lives, etc. It's all fake western news.
We know this is all fake because harvard released a paper detailing the results of a survey done by a chinese company in a country where all research and surveys must be reviewed by the CCP before being released told us that 98% of the country loves the CCP.
How does flooding the media with such claims improve human rights in China? They achieve no positive effects for anyone in China: sanctions and war only hurt people. They are also spectacularly effective at making the lives of Asians in the west miserable.
Yet you keep myopically focusing on these claims, heedless of the actual harm they do to innocent people, just so that you can feel like you're being virtuous for raising these claims. You are not actually supporting human rights, you are abusing the very concept to feel good about yourself.
Look, I don't know why you keep replying to me. No one buys your propaganda and conspiracy theories and whataboutism. You can keep getting upset all you want but it doesn't change the fact you're doing nothing more than attempting to protect the CCP.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786906 (Feb 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34227145 (Jan 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665289 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29407968 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28590539 (Sept 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22893867 (April 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22880789 (April 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827321 (April 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827309 (April 2020)
I hate to ban you, because you've been here a long time and you've posted good things. But this kind of abuse is simply not ok, and if we don't ban accounts that break the rules this badly—not to mention ignore this many warnings—we might as well ban nobody.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
While everyone would love this to be true, I've been hearing this shit for a decade.
I'll believe it when there are Islamic dronelords rampaging through the hinterlands of Sinkiang province, neo-steppe cyberwarriors laying waste to Peking, and Elon Musk has a territorial concession over Shenzhen.
That's what a proper true-blue "China collapse" scenario looks like in the 21st century, accept no substitutes.
Please speak for yourself only. Also, not everyone want bad things for others because of some hatred guided by politicians. PRC is no worse than the US - just different.
> There are people with entire savings lost in real estate and small business. It's a very volatile situation.
The same could be said of NYC or Switzerland in the previous couple of years too.
If I had to put money on which EV company becomes the next major car company of the world, I would almost certainly bet that it's going to be a Chinese one.
So sure, while a stagnant industry that is no longer growing may leave and that sucks, but the next huge growth industry is firmly entrenched in China and dependent on Chinese companies.
Tales of China's demise are grossly exaggerated.
> If I had to put money on which EV company becomes the next major car company of the world, I would almost certainly bet that it's going to be a Chinese one.
Do you mean WM motor? one of the most promising startup https://www.autonews.com/china/wm-motor-pay-cuts-layoffs-sig... where at least 20 percent of WM Motor’s workforce has been laid off since November?
or Didi/Li auto venture? https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas... which declared bankruptcy?
or Nio, whose stock was as high as $62, now below $10?
or BYD, whose stock has been offloaded by Warren Buffet by 1/3 since august of last year?
or China's car industry as a whole https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/automoti..., whose production dropped 35% and sales dropped 34% in January 2023?
And why would a Chinese car company not be sanctioned/outlawed relating to the CHIP act, or something similar out of Europe?
> or BYD, whose stock has been offloaded by Warren Buffet by 1/3 since august of last year?
Arguing that a company would fail because Warren Buffet no longer holds their stock seems a bit weak. Berkshire Hathaway doesn't hold a lot of stocks, but you wouldn't say most public companies are doomed to fail. And Berkshire doesn't hold any Telsa stock either.
In any case you might want to revisit your assumptions: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/15/charlie-munger-says-byd-is-f...
That makes no sense whatsoever: all the Teslas (Model 3/Y) produced in the Shanghai plant are meant to be sold in China. Without the Shanghai factory, Tesla wouldn't have much of a Chinese business, BUT it wouldn't affect at all its production capacity for the rest of the world.
The only EVs made in China that are being sold in the USA ATM are the Volvo/Polestar EVs made in Luqiao. There is a huge tax on that (into the USA from China, likewise for cars coming into China from the USA), even BYD opened a factory in california to get around that for their EV bus production (and Tesla's Shanghai plant exists for preferential tax treatment in China, which is a no brainer business move).
https://insideevs.com/news/630002/china-tesla-ev-sales-decem...
People have been saying this 1949.
Wealth is a headwind against bad policy. Rich nations can survive many, many bad policies simply because they are rich. The policies it takes to get rich, stay rich, and continue to grow into the future all vary, and the transition is difficult to manage.
I think the relevant question is: are China's current policies pushing the country in the right direction? I don't see how they are.
Jack Ma shows how dangerous it is to be truly successful, so the next generation will at best be more conservative in what they pursue, and at worst won't even try. Given Western money won't be investing any more - the ability to realise capital gains is growing more difficult - and the CCP steals the wealth of potential investors, not being able to pursue big bests is probably inevitable anyway.
China has AWFUL demographics that are getting worse - their population is projected to be 650M by 2100 - and worse it is aging fast, with > 50% post retirement age in the next decade to 3.
On top of that, the CCP has re-emerged as the only force in China. CCP officials see stealing the wealth of other's as their right - a twist on the old joke to "the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's fortunes to steal".
Minimal foreign investment, killing internal investment by stealing the wealth of anyone rich, rising wages, awful demographics and a polity determined to remain isolationist (with few to any friends) and knock down the high achievers sounds like a recipe for imminent (in the decades sense) collapse to me. Not to levels of Sub-Saharan Africa, but even just with their population decline, China's GDP is going to fall in absolute terms, even if their GDP PPP per capita can be improved.
The scary thing is a Nuclear China in decline is likely to become increasingly erratic. Hopefully, the war in Ukraine gave China some pause, but having gone from starvation to world's largest economy in a generation, I'm not sure China is equipped for stagnation, let alone decline. I feel bad rooting for a likely vicious and brutal CCP internal crackdown over invasions of their neighbours, but that seems to me the lesser of two possible evils.
There's a conceptual gap that can and should be opened up. "Successful", even "fantastically successful" doesn't mean that you get to start throwing your weight around the state and social order.
It's fundamentally about being bound by the same rules and expectations as everyone else. He shouldn't be able to use his wealth and connections to try to steer the course of the state, or buy his way out of a situation he doesn't like. That sounds pretty damn wholesome and egalitarian to me.
Personally, I have a fair bit of faith in their government, because they have the economic and political levers to rapidly pivot to where the Next Big Thing is. Look at their dominance in solar manufacturing. You can argue it's low value, not innovative, whatever, but they certainly found a way to take over a significant industry that has global impact. Could the West even supply their demand without China's current market share?
I have to wonder if being a single-party state also helps keep their political discourse sane. There's no need to pander to an extremist base to make a candidacy viable, and there's the chance to say what needs to be said without risk of electoral backlash.
In 1960, something like 30 million people starved.
GDP up until the 80's was like that of a small US state.
The evaluation of Mao's legacy seems somewhat emotional, short-sighted and ahistorical given that modern state formation, for example in Europe, was almost always preceded by catastrophic violence.
And of course the rise of China in the following decades invalidates the claim that China 'declined terminally', unless we're literally inverting the meaning of the word 'terminal'.
Sorry for getting emotional about 30 million people killed by by a brutal, dictatorial government.
Thanks for putting it in perspective! /s
No different than our perspective on Napoleon. Incredibly brutal, brought war to Europe, but also implemented the civic code, arguably the most influential legal document in history.
By your logic the 6 million killed in the Holocaust shouldn't be such a big deal either.
Mao despite his failures is the foundational figure of modern China. He's not Hitler, who brought ruin not just to the Jewish population but to Germany as well. Mao still matters in China, Hitler doesn't in Germany. It's historically impoverished to grasp for Hitler analogies and having a reflexive panic attack every time Mao is up for discussion. Same with Stalin. Both still have significant influence in Russia and China, among the people as well as leaders and understanding why that is makes some sense.
Earlier you said "The Qing conquest killed 30 million, so did the Taiping Rebellion. 40 million died during the Three Kingdom wars, in 200 AD! About half the population at the time."
I'm not sure how one could interpret that as anything other "no big deal Mao killed a lot of people, lots of people have died in other empires".
And you're somehow conflating their legacy with the death toll. Those are separate things. Mao's brutal rule can be condemned while at the same time acknowledging his influence on China today.
And I would argue that Hitler had a massive influence on what Germany is today. Look at its role in the EU and its policy towards other countries and conflicts.
Am I reading this correctly? As in to have the modern Europe, you'd have needed WW2?
Same is true for America really. The country transformed twice, once through civil war and then into a superpower with a modern state during World War II. Military competition and war both internal and external are by far the strongest drivers of modernization.
Interestingly if you check wikipedia it appears that China had major famines every decade or up until that particular one, and nothing since then.
...And they would have been right until the 1980s. "If only Taiwan were unified with the mainland in the 1950s, they also could have experienced the horrors of the cultural revolution" is not great marketing for reunification.
Western comments on the Cultural Revolution is one-sided and myopic. The Great Famine was a failure to recover. It was also the last famine: famines were a regularly occurring event even before PRC. And Taiwan also wasn't a great place back then.
The USA was actually on China's side about supporting Pol Pot, with Vietnam against. Things are definitely blurred in history.
Apple got shaken down by the Chinese government right before Covid. If they didn't finally pull the plug after that, I would have to question whether anybody was awake at the helm.
Is there a citation for that? If so then I have missed it.
The system you are talking about was Jiang's faction. Every few years one or the other faction becomes dominant. Now it's Xi's faction. Nothing has changed, it is business as usual.
I propose that the media and HN stop reporting on China, and that the US stops sanctioning China. This frees up mind space and resources to focus on domestic problems such as climate change, income inequality, housing, improving democracy, etc. After all China is in decline anyway so no point in worrying about them, right?
I don't think so. It boomed epically from Deng Xiaoping opening up to Xi closing down a bit again. But Xi won't be there forever and the place will muddle through. Maybe a temporary relative decline for a decade or so.
This is pretty contradictory. If you're friend with no limit, military aid should be clearly on the table. There are in fact hard limits.
China is extremely hesitant to send military aid and have been his entire time. I don't think they will send anything noteworthy personally, but it's more than plausible I'm wrong here.
I'm vaguely optimistic that a Ukranian move to get Crimea within fire control will in fact make the war come to a relatively fast end. Ukraine simply needs to recreate the conditions that led to Russia's flight from Kherson in Crimea. Such a loss will be far more devastating. At that point something needs to give. Fingers crossed for the spring.
And really, China is backing Putin to a certain degree, not Russia. If Putin's regime falls, the next power structure has a choice:
1) ally with Europe and apologize to the newly empowered Ukraine that is just a couple hundred miles from Moscow (and now has a modern, well-trained Western military of substantial capability), and where all your elites want to travel and live in
2) ally with China who are thousands of miles away, where most significant economic activity is across deserts and mountains, and none of your elites want to visit
He didn't attend the protests except to spectate, and he writes in English.
I'm not sure that he's a Chinese citizen. Far easier to deny a new visa if they don't like him.
The people who get disappeared are people who organize protests or try to sue the government. Not people who just attend protests. People who distribute VPNs, not mere users of VPNs. And ethnic minorities.
What's left works by limping along but another privilege gone each time reinforces that the future may not be better than the past. An internal struggle in the party for power has "wrecked the joint" for everyone else.
I think they've made a mistake. It may not wreak havoc now but future cohorts may be less willing to be part of a one party state that breaks its internal promise so severely.
The long term excess deaths will echo in education, economic and defence outcomes. Claiming victim status or launching out to reclaim Taiwan may well happen, but also may not work: people have a strong "fool me twice" reaction, and the diaspora talk to people at home, Great firewall or not.
There's not a lot the state can do about it.
The idea of fringe cities and hill towns in the provinces as "pressure relief valves" the central authorities accept in some sense, reminded me of Ira Levin's "this perfect day" and the hidden maps to sanctuary islands for the rebellious.
If I were in the party, I'd be very worried about "quiet quitting". They sort of caused it.
>I acknowledge that my views may be too colored by the resentments of Shanghainese around me; and that I might be wrongfooted in my assessments.
And despite being one of the better writers in the expat bubble, also self aware enough to acknowledge PRC like any other country has their (regional) bubbles whose experiences he may not be privy too.
Tight controls to control outcomes will inevitably destroy creativity and thus economic growth. This will backfire enormously.
So China will fall back mit because it’s lacks intelligent and capable people, but because it won’t let these people do what they want to do freely.
And no it is not beautiful it is actually fucking disgusting.
> ... and I share the government’s hostility towards video games ...
Yikes!
Video games and TikTok aren't even the worst of it. The progressive American agenda in drugs is towards decriminalization. States like Oregon are at the vanguard of this (https://w.wiki/6Qcq), and the impact years later is widely seen as contributing to an epidemic of crime, homelessness, and bad health outcomes. China is the leading source of the worst synthetic drugs like fentanyl and meth (https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-and-synthetic-drugs...).
Of course, the correct response is to not go the totalitarian control route, but to retain the flexibility and creativity that American independence fosters, invest in positive countermeasures (CHIPs act investment in manufacturing employment, drug treatment and diversion), and heavily regulate industries prone to create negative externalities.
Please come to china and evaluate their efficacy, you will never go back :)
the word 'legible' doesn't appear here once
What happened here isn't a case of the government going insane. What happened here is the case of the government making a hypothesis and then being completely wrong about the hypothesis.
China isn't the only country that has been wrong. Parts of the US was definitely wrong about the pandemic in the initial stages and they suffered for it as a result.
If omnicron turned out to be as lethal as ebola or equivalent than China took the right action. That is really all there is too it. They took appropriate action for a coming disaster and they turned out to be wrong about the disaster.
The interesting thing here is not the fact that China was wrong. The interesting thing is that if China was right, then China is literally the only first world country with the capability to execute these drastic measures at a massive scale. From these massive lock downs to the creation of hospitals to deal with the fallout in mere weeks... illustrates the true controversies between authoritarian and democratic governments.
As a US citizen I grew up indoctrinated on freedom and democracy. But the truth is actually not so black and white. Either way I know which government I'd rather be under if a zombie outbreak broke out.
They persisted with covid 0 well into mid-late 22. It was very clear 2 and a half years into the pandemic that covid was not ebola.
Hard-line initially is defensible, rationalizable.
Later not so much.
The other conclusions seem off too. Other Asian and South Pacific countries demonstrated their willingness to lock down and turn more authoritarian in the face of an unknown threat. They pivoted though.
It was not clear what omicron was.
Anyway I don't entirely blame them for maintaining the hardline even well past the advent of conflicting evidence. This is actually normal human behavior. People cannot flip their opinions and beliefs in the exact instant they are presented with opposing evidence. Humans just don't work this way. There's no individual or government that will reverse a policy and admit a mistake instantly. Literally not one. It's not right, but I don't expect any other form of behavior from a human or humans running an organization.
>The other conclusions seem off too. Other Asian and South Pacific countries demonstrated their willingness to lock down and turn more authoritarian in the face of an unknown threat. They pivoted though.
Naw not at the scale of China. It's easy for a small island to execute lockdown. It's extremely hard for a landmass as large as china to execute the same thing.
The rest seems internally inconsistent with where you were initially. I think it's because you might have stretched the kernel of wisdom, "authoritarianism may have some benefit in the kind of disaster which is only mitigated by authoritarianism" a bit further than it goes on its own merits.
They screwed up by doubling down. Your main point would actually be a lot easier to defend if you separated it from the overextended Chinese implementation.
Relax the US took 10 years to apologize to the Japanese people they threw into internment camps. That was a bigger fuck up than the china covid lock downs.
>The rest seems internally inconsistent with where you were initially. I think it's because you might have stretched the kernel of wisdom, "authoritarianism may have some benefit in the kind of disaster which is only mitigated by authoritarianism" a bit further than it goes on its own merits.
Internally inconsistent? No it's not. And you didn't point out where too. Just a vague, "seems inconsistent".
It's also not really a stretch. Part of the speed and efficiency in China's response comes from central control. Part of Americas dying infrastructure comes from lack of centralized control, too many Nimbys, different motives and conflicting opinions.
>They screwed up by doubling down. Your main point would actually be a lot easier to defend if you separated it from the overextended Chinese implementation.
Yeah they screwed up. But my point still stands. Also it's not the biggest fuck up. Not by a long shot. Take a look at the US blowing up the nordstream pipelines. Holy shit a literal act of war/terrorism on an allied country. The US is no stranger to dark shit and huge fuck ups on a scale equivalent if not worse than china.
I wouldn't count on China ever admitting they messed up. That's just not how it's done there. Hands will be waved, stories will be spun and they'll talk like it was a perfect strategy.
"Saving face" is very real in Asian cultures. If you can avoid ever admitting a mistake or fault, you do it. I saw it a lot while living there.
I will agree with you that from my own experience that this does effect the Chinese more than other people in general. But my argument here is simply that the Chinese had a superior response to other democratic countries when handling covid.
The response ended up being from certain perspectives, mistaken, and the slow reversal of the response while, wrong, is something that governments (including rival governments) also do similarly.
That's it.
A good example of the differences are apologies by Western governments for past wrongs. Doing so can actually increase social standing among the population. Admitting guilt and wrongdoing can be seen as a redeeming quality.
But I do agree that not admitting fault is a pretty universal human thing. I think "saving face" has more to do with the social pressures around it.
I'm chinese. I understand what you're talking about it, More than you. But you are taking it too far. The concept is exactly the same as the the universal thing about not admitting fault. It is exactly the same.
The main difference is the concept has been crystallized into the language and is more prevalent. It is not anything more than that.
It's likely someone who was natively born in China is trying to explain the concept to you without fully understanding western culture. He likely thinks western culture is some sort of pristine culture with no concept at all of "not wanting to admit fault" and was trying to explain it to you thinking that the concept was completely absent from your background. No, this is wrong.
I'm a creature of both worlds. Deep insight into western culture by virtue of being born in the states and deep insight into east asian culture by virtue of being born of the chinese race, having family who is chinese and also having friends who are all chinese.
The duality of my origins make my insight more calibrated in this regard.
Perhaps you know you're wrong and you're trying to save face?
When you look at Chinese people "saving face", when you look at the Chinese government "saving face" keep in mind that sometimes you're looking at a mirror. We're not that different. I think you mistook a popular Chinese idiom for some Chinese cultural quirk.
It's pretty obvious that in countries like China the idea that the government can "never be wrong, never show weakness" is different than the Western approach.
The western government does the same shit. Their reach just isn't as far as the Chinese government in its ability to completely lock down the media. Instead the US government typically does what they call "a cover up".
Both governments launch massive amounts of propaganda, both would take a loong time to admit thier mistakes if given enough pressure. The only difference is, in china no one is allowed to deliver pressure.
Do they apologize for their own past doings or does one US faction throw another faction under the bus through a half-hearted apology?
It seems most of the US population considers an apology worthless at this point, atleast if it's not attached to financial compensation which is the case for the majority of mistakes or crimes. They are just considered political lip service.
Oh, and Nord stream 2 was not the US. At least there's no credible proof or semblance of one.
You have to be really lying to yourself to believe that. Look at the twinkle in bidens eye when he says it: https://youtu.be/OS4O8rGRLf8?t=82
This coupled with: https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the...
It's unmistakable. The US did it and everybody in Germany and Europe knows it. The US was meanwhile over-concerned with their first major F-35 kill ever: Balloon gate.
> European countries did much better than china regarding covid. US did protlly because of many internal issues which seem to be unadressable.
The US did poorly because of lack of centralized control and abundance of karens and the male counterpart. China had the superior response in terms of infrastructure adaption.
My hypothesis is that China stuck with it so long because: 1) their vaccine wasn't that good and they refused superior mRNA vaccines and 2) their ego was all wrapped up in the "glory of the Chinese way" of dealing with Covid and letting it run rampant was tantamount to admitting their policy was wrong.
China just decided they weren't going to use it. It literally wasn't allowed.
If China had used a mix of mRNA and other vaccines I might see the argument they had a lack of supply.
There were definitely supply problems in the US in the beginning.
And before China opened up millions of doses were being destroyed by countries who bought too much.
China absolutely could have gotten mRNA vaccines. Hell, Hong Kong had them.
So like i said, they could have gotten access to some mRNA vaccines, they choose not to.
Hong Kong has 7 million people… 7 million != 1.3 billion.
I agree that the politically, China didn't want to use Western vaccines.
BioNTech and Fosun Pharma are setting up a 50-50 joint venture to make and sell the COVID mRNA shot in China, with manufacturing capacity to produce up to 1 billion doses a year, Fosun said in a filing (PDF) to the Hong Kong Exchange on Sunday.
https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/biontech-fosun-ph...
They choose not to use it.
That, coupled with the fact that the Chinese population have resisted getting vaccinated meant that it was never a viable strategy to purchase billions of doses and open up. The only option they had was COVID-0 style strategies.
They didnt.
Instead they used their home grown vaccine which had terrible efficacy.
Supply being one problem and uptake being the other. Meant China never had a proper “opening up” option presented.
And yes HK couldn’t produce or purchase the billions of doses required to vaccinate the mainland. I’m saying that too
They didnt.
I think you don’t really understand the problem.
The fact that it wasn't done is deliberate from both sides.
If the Chinese vaccine manufacturers wanted an FDA review, they can pay a fee and get it.
They also had a low trust society in western medicine, there never got effective uptake of any of the vaccines.
It meant they didn’t have the options that countries like Taiwan and Australia had, where high vaccine uptake allowed lockdowns to be loosened.
You're missing Dan's references to the two notable previous cases of the Chinese state adopting batshit insane policies and persisting with them for years, namely the Great Leap Forward ("their pots for backyard steel furnaces") and the Cultural Revolution ("out of their schools for class struggle"). Both were calamitous, directly leading to millions of deaths, and accomplished nothing at all of use.
But what does this have to do with the Chinese response to covid? My comment is specific to the example I quoted in the specific post.
I think there's a bit a team mentality going on here. Pick a team. Team China or Team USA and the opposing side is a villain.
What's really going on here is not a team situation. Just two different fruits: Apples and Oranges. Both can and Have gone rotten at times.
Democracies generally have a harder time doing this, because they have checks and balances that prevent going to extremes (welding people into their homes etc) and the governments responsible will eventually get voted out if public opinion turns against them.
I know. But that's separate from my point. Dan is not wrong about China.
Additionally I would argue every government acts this way. It's human nature. When someone fucks up big time it takes them awhile to voluntary face that fuck up. Governments are no different.
I mentioned this somewhere else but the US one time threw the entire japanese population in the states into internment camps. It took them 10 years to apologize. The internment camp thing is an epic fuck up. Epic. And it took 10 years the government to admit they were wrong.
>Democracies generally have a harder time doing this, because they have checks and balances that prevent going to extremes (welding people into their homes etc) and the governments responsible will eventually get voted out if public opinion turns against them.
This is garbage. Democracies are no strangers to dark dark shit. Again as I mentioned in a sibling comment on this thread, the US recently blew up the nordstream oil pipelines. Literal act of terrorism against an allied country. Germany is clamming up because they don't want to start WW3.
Not to mention the CIA torture program or the CIA program of SELLING crack cocaine to americans to finance their foreign operations.
Literally throw a dart and it will land on some atrocity conducted by the US, there are tons and tons of shit you can dig up. It's no different for China. Just apples and oranges.
Humans aren't white knights, and operate in areas that are morally grey. This aspect of humanity is reflected in governments, independent of centralized or democratic organization.
It's no coincidence that the three bloodiest mass murderers of the 20th century -- Hitler, Stalin and Mao -- were all dictators, and while the US has done and continues to do a whole lot of repugnant shit, nothing comes close to any of these three.
I judge morals by actions not by labels. If a country dropped a nuclear bomb on hiroshima slaughtering millions of innocent civilians. I don't judge that country based off of a label of "democracy", I judge it based off of action.
If a country kills millions of people by letting them starve to death than that country is ALSO judged.
Not only do I not Judge a country based off of a label. But I don't hold any loyalties to ANY country. I don't join teams or take sides. I judge dispassionately with ZERO patriotism. Patriotism is bias. You should not hold it for a country or for a philosophy. If democracy has issues I judge it, it communism has issues I also judge it.
This idea of the ludicrousy of asking the question: "Are you with a straight face arguing that autocracies are morally equivalent to democracies" is raw garbage. I don't take sides. EVER. And I hold all things equal until I look at evidence and form conclusions from that ONLY.
>It's no coincidence that the three bloodiest mass murderers of the 20th century -- Hitler, Stalin and Mao -- were all dictators, and while the US has done and continues to do a whole lot of repugnant shit, nothing comes close to any of these three.
It's not a competition. The point for why I pointed out atrocities in America was to sort of tone down the bias against China. To help people see that there are negative aspects of both countries and to help eliminate this idea that a democratic country is some kind of paragon for moral goodness. It is not.
Many Americans are blinded by the current cold war rivalry that they are unable to see the things that China got right. China EXCELS and is SUPERIOR then the west in many areas. One of these areas is large scale response and organization to potential threats LIKE the pandemic.
The US and other western countries blocked Chinese emergency imports of food that wouldve saved those people. I've never heard of China willfully allowing people to starve to death but the democratic US has done just that to it's own indigenous population, children in Iraq, and countless other countries.
It's the same everywhere.
Even now, you need to wear a mask in public transit, and just to come into the country you need to take a COVID test before your flight. You get a COVID test after touching down.
But for what? That's an unnecessary expense for the traveler since nobody does free COVID tests. My girlfriend paid $140 in the US for one, I paid $50 in Korea (it would have been $80 in the airport, but I wasn't at the airport at the time)
When the restrictions were lifted and the cases skyrocketed, it was because people hadn't taken Sinovac. Chinese don't trust chinese vaccines. Everyone was flocking to macau to take foreign vaccines
The country removed restrictions when everyone already had the virus, by December I knew nobody in China who didn't already get it
A smart authoritarian government will have these "free" zones as a pressure release valve:
- Most active dissidents jailed
- Active dissidents allowed to flee the country
- Somewhat active ones allowed to "flee the regime to the free-thinking zones far from government control"
If there was a genuine insurgency, as in Xinjiang and Tibet, the central government does get involved and stomps down hard.
天 (and probably meaning heaven where the gods live).
天 looks a bit like the picture postcards of Mount Fuji from various angles.
Let's say you're a teacher with known dissident tendencies. Boom. Suddenly the only place you can get work is one of these remote regions with lax control. Yes there is less government there, and you can even start a book club or something to read and discuss banned literature, and no one will bother you.
But try and get out because you're tired of rural life... and no place in the "mainland" will acept you. Or will only offer you menial jobs and unskilled labor.
This was a very widely and well-used tactic in the USSR. Can't see why China (or any other authoritatian state) wouldn't do the same. Especially China with their current state of surveillance tech.