Hacker News Reader

Comment by hcarvalhoalves | Hacker News Reader

Well, that's interesting. I wouldn't think of China as a prime example of an Orwellian state, but rather something out of Huxley's mind.

China is capitalist, industrial, workers are salaried, the culture is material-focused, and more than half of the population is non-religious. Politically alienated rather than politically manipulated. Censorship is not based on hate speech, but justified as a way to protect the internal market, a capitalist and pragmatic view.

That's "Brave New World" to me.

A prime example of Orwellian state in my opinion would be DPRK, or Cuba, or what Venezuela is turning into. Two major points of "1984" are a population kept poor and hate speech.

View on HN

North Korea is close to Orwell's vision, but misses the utter humiliation of "airstrip 1". In the England of 1984 defeat has been total - in the way defeat was total in Germany in 1948.

Newspeak is another element of the vision that has not quite been realised in reality. An interesting reference/contrast is Marian in Iain M. Banks' novels, a language designed by machines to free the mind! Note, the last part of 1984 is a deconstruction of Newspeak that must have been written by a scholar in a liberated future, this is referenced powerfully (for me) by Margaret Atwood in "The Handmaiden's Tale"

There is hope.

China has its Orwellian moments, just read the newspaper or watch the news inside the country, as do cuba and Venezuela, but none of those are Orwellian states. Spot on a about North Korea, Kim Sung Il must have read 1984 and used it as a template. Note, however, that North Korea is hardly the poorest state.

Outside poorest central asia and sub-saharan africa, North Korea is the poorest.

Certainly was in 90-s. Now it's getting better thanks to small business, trade with China and limited agri reforms,

There are probably some countries in SE Asia that are poorer (New Guinea, Myanmar, Laos, maybe even Cambodia). If DPRK reunited with ROK (under the ROK government, of course), it would probably only take a generation or so to catch up to ROK. They have a culture of high literacy and industry, only their government is holding them back (less developed countries have much less to work with).

Even ex-DDR still did not catch up with the rest of Germany - and one generation did pass. And they were just 3x poorer, where DPRK is more like 15x poorer than ROK.

I doubt that SE countries you listed lost 100k+ people due to hunger (in 90-s and 00-s anyway). Sure they are poor, but they can handle it better than command economy. They're used to be poor, not shocked by it.

There are just SE countries that haven't been rich and have or are are going through their fair share of poor governance. My only point was that there are plenty of other ways to be poor, even poorer. Now I have to get back to my view screen in my beijing apartment, 大哥 is watching.

I'm no expert on the subject, but I believe the way you describe China applies more for modern times, starting maybe with economic expansion under Deng Xiaping. Before that, China might have been closer to what was described in 1984.

>A prime example of Orwellian state in my opinion would be DPRK, or Cuba

Prime example would be all western states where the electorate votes against it's own interests.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverte...

It was a lot more Orwellian in the 1950s-70s. Surveillance-wise Internet censorship and mobile devices are bringing the telesceen closer to reality these days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com