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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

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Chinese government in general doesn't just "get" a factory. They need to compensate private owners too if they need to use their land. But the state owns every piece of the land (it's a bit more complicated than that, especially not true for rural where collective ownership is a big thing).

IMO, labelling governments as "authoritarian" sometimes gives an inaccurate outlook. The government is not a single person that just orders other people around and magically gets nods everywhere. It's an organization and you can expect all kinds of messy and chaotic stuffs in it.

I have lived under both "kinds" of governments and I feel the democratic ones have a lot of "authoritarian" elements in it too, especially nowadays when national security touches everything. And surprisingly it is way more effective than the "authoritarian" government I lived in.

Liberal governments also implement unpleasant decisions, for example: paying subsidies for solar panels, electric vehicles, banning good old cheap lightbulbs, banning cheap plastic bags, cheap cars etc.

Those are the subject of political agitprop but they’re not really unpopular: each of those will have large, usually majority, popular support if you ask people about them outside of political contexts. For example, “cheap” incandescent light bulbs cost far more over a given time period – even my Republican family members all switched because they’re not going to pay more just to spite environmentalists, especially since incandescent bulbs need to be replaced far more frequently.

You can still buy old lightbulbs, they are sold as heaters.

This factory is being built by BYD, not the government, and not a state-owned enterprise.

It's being built because BYD anticipates massive growth in demand for electric vehicles, not because of some arbitrary mandate.

BYD is known for its ruthless price-cutting and drive for efficiency, so they're a very bad example to illustrate government bloat.

There is a mandate, several interconnected mandates actually.

They're not arbitrary though, and many nations have them. China just seems to be translating that into action better.

https://www.globalpolicywatch.com/2021/06/chinas-14th-five-y...

There's a mandate for the government to support the development of the EV industry, and there are targets, but this factory is being built because BYD decided it makes economic sense for them, based on anticipated demand.

The Chinese government is doing many things that increase demand, make it easy to scale up production, etc. For example, many Chinese cities are making it difficult to register new internal-combustion-engine vehicles. I'm also sure the local government has rolled out the red carpet for BYD in terms of permits, tax incentives, and so on.

That's different from the government issuing a command, "Build us the largest EV factory in the world, regardless of economic viability!" That's how the previous comment came across.

> Basically, Chinese government wants a bigass factory and they will get a bigass factory because literally fuck you.

And what's the difference from the US government when it wants a bigass factory?

Isn't the difference that the US also wanted China to build bigass factories? They got too good at that.

No, it's when an authoritarian government wants something they'll get it. And by get it I mean "they'll take your house, ignore any local environment concerns and possibly just demolish entire villages and generational livelihoods".

Everyone seems to have some "oh how great it is they just get things done" as though they haven't diligently turned up to complain about some development application of the local council.

Yeah, sunshine and rainbows I suppose provided you're thousands of miles away.

From my visits to China, lI've come to conclude that Chinese people have more property rights than Westerners .

I saw roads built around houses because villagers refused to sell.

Eminent domain doesn't seem to exist there

Details matter. Chinese have more in some areas, less in others. China also sometimes does things just for a show, so maybe that villager was allowed to now sell so they could off how progressive they were - while they take lots of other property. China also has a corruption problem (as does all countries!), maybe that villager belonged to the CCP and so had extra rights.

Until we get down to details it is hard to say who as more rights. And even when we have to weigh rights, if you don't care about a right does it matter that you don't have it?

many, many chinese people WANT their property to get eminent domained, because they can get well compensated for it. sometimes it's even above market rates or they'll be given multiple apartments (that they can then rent out) in exchange for giving up property that will be developed. a lot of older housing stock that the owners dont even live in is being held on to and not sold just because these people are hoping they get bought out for a big development project which is better than actually selling the place

Sure, but OP is talking about the case where someone doesn't want it. This might be a tiny minority or it might be a large number of people - I don't know.

If they want to give up something they have for the money that's being offered, that's called selling.

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