[19eightyfour]

not assuming anything. just looking at the results. from poverty to riches in 70 years, civil harmony and > 1bn people, clearly the proof the party doesn't know what they're doing.

the truth is the PRC is ruled by technocratic geniuses. Even their critics admit as much. most of them are engineers. you SV Cali republic folks ought to be eyeing this as a model of development + progress can be done right at scale.

but i get there's years of propaganda to see through to get to that point.

[barkxyz]

The results? China has not yet achieved the wealth of liberal democracies in the West and taken decades or centuries longer to get there. Moreover, Taiwan, South Korea and (earlier) Japan have enjoyed similar economic booms whilst (or subsequently) enjoying democracy.

Honest question: how do these data points fit into your theory?

[19eightyfour]

Firstly, tho, the economic success of these three countries is on many fronts a direct result of China's rise, while their own policies have kept them back on some fronts, economic integration with China has helped grow them.

Second, these other countries are smaller. It's easier to administer a smaller country. You next next level social organization and governance to guide over 1bn from poor to rich.

And specifically, Japan copied a Western economic model wholesale, and is stagnating. Their loss of national mojo, and lower fertility paint bleak outlook. They still hold their inflexible idealism, which no longer really works for them, while Chinese are far more flexible, pragmatic and entrepreneurial, culturally, by nature. Their dynamism couldn't be farther apart. China wins hands down. Plus, militarily, they depend on US. China has independent command of the world's largest standing army. Japan's more exposed to future risks.

S K is a success. I respect and admire. Also grew prosperity from conflict in short time. But it's a bit player economically. Its economic drivers are more fragile, and overly concentrated, than China, politically it's beholden to US alliance despite new leadership, and it's hobbled, culturally and sociological by its division. China is stronger.

Taiwan is a great country to stay in, it's very comfortable and they have great social infrastructure, far more than compared to China. It's, in some ways, a model for what aspects of China may trend towards. But it's also a lesson. Policy stagnation, fabricated protectionism against the "Chinese bogeyman", a result of willful exploitation of historical ignorance, where the Chinese mainland is blamed incorrectly for the abuses of the initial KMT under CKS after they fled the civil war, wasted decades of opportunity of economic integration with skyrocketing China, while democratic leaders spent this as political capital on bickering, that seriously retarded growth, and gave the people an unnecessary persistent suspicion and chip on their shoulders. Things are changing rapidly now, but they'll never recover those decades of lost growth that resulted from those policy blunders. Also on average the people are far more laid back and lazy than the average mainlander, less ambitious, and more likely to blame their economic stagnation on other nations success rather than taking responsibility and working to create improvements themselves. While the mainland would compete, the Taiwanese will complain. Their generous welfare state has already created a much acknowledged culture of dependence which plunders dynamism and productivity. I wouldn't say China beats Taiwan, but China has made the most of their many opportunities, while Taiwan has missed many.

So these three countries have exhibited the familiar failures of our Western democracies that China has avoided: economic and policy stagnation, welfare dependent suppressed productivity, lack of focus and direction, are just some of the symptoms.

As much as they are each successes, they're not as successful as China has been with a very different model.

It's not just economic policy and single party rule, China cultivates national pride and controls information in a way that has worked for increasing productivity. This concept is anathema to western liberal orthodoxy because it's incorrectly seen as an affront to personal liberty. But personal liberty doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is contingent upon the state (no time nor inclination to refute the anticipated W liberal objections to this now,we simply see things differently as we're on different sides), and when control of information and cultivation of national attitudes leads to greater personal freedoms, the Western intellectual ideal view is left looking sterile, ineffective, dishonest, contrived, impractical, unhelpful and naive.

As to comparing the wealth of nations of China vs WLDs, it's on a different timescale, but, China has grown faster (look at GDP) and more, and discount the future value with a cool headed view of Western and Eastern trajectories, and maybe you'll see they're on the same page. They'll probably exceed US eventually in raw terms. But even if they never did, the Chinese have a wealth of national pride, cultural and value coherence and civil harmony, that constitutes significant civil wealth.

Also, their system is more honest. The Chinese are open about their propoganda, information control, and single party rule. But in the democracy, the state needs to pretend the citizens have more say then they do, while persisting a deep executive branch behind the changing set pieces of democratic theatre, that is overtly lied about and itself rendered ineffective with regard to the greater good of the people, and limited from taking bold across to advanced their long term interests, because of its need for secrecy. It's a self crippled system that leads to it being less accountable to the citizens well-being, and more inclined to fight only for its own equilibrium, than an honest single party state with a more transparent and honest interface to the population, like China. Unfortunately in WLDs this has led to a runaway and in some aspects irresponsible growth of secret security and intelligence apparatus because of its dislocation from the overt rhythms of the front-of-stage state, necessitating the prolonging or fabrication of conditions to pretend to justify its existence and continued expenditure of resources, such as terrorism, civil conflict and division, and constant war. It would seem WLDs are incentivized in ways that doesn't work for their people.

My view is we need to run the experiment on both systems, the Chinese and the American. And that they both have significant opportunities for improvement and can learn from each other. Even if West exceeds China now in fiscal wealth (tho probably not in net present value considering discounted future returns), China exceeds West in civil wealth. Obviously less learning will occur the more each pretends the other is stupid or bad.

[barkxyz]

Thanks for the honest and detailed response. It definitely makes it easier to engage with an opposing view :-)

Firstly regarding the size of China. I do take the point that this makes administration easier. A counterpoint is that it also makes internal markets smaller. China's protectionist approach to the internet for instance likely wouldn't work in Taiwan. I'm unclear of the effect of protectionism in general here. It certainly seems to have worked well for China so far but what will happen if or when these markets are really opened up to foreign competition?

The effect of China's rise on the Asian tigers is almost certainly true. Although you could make the same argument for China benefiting from economic integration with the West. I don't think it diminishes either achievement.

I think I certainly disagree with the notion that the Chinese system is more honest. Chinese media very much gives me the opposite impression. The Great Firewall (protectionist reasons aside) doesn't speak to a "transparent and honest interface to the population" nor the state controlled media. That said, I can align with some of the things you say about democracy in the West. We would certainly do well not to delude ourselves into thinking that the West is free and China is not - though I have no doubts about which society I would choose to live in.

Lastly and most importantly for your argument, I really think its too early to say that China has avoided the stagnation that has afflicted the Asian tigers or WLDs. China's GDP per capita is only around a quarter of Japan's. I think if China were at half or three quarters of that figure and still achieving such impressive growth, I would be more convinced. Until then, we need to compare it to much more distant points in those countries' histories, when they were still posting spectacular growth figures (and in the case of Japan, also predicted to surpass the USA). The experiment needs more time to run in my opinion.

[19eightyfour]

China has more skill to be able to run a larger system than places that only know how to run smaller systems. So they have socio-political governing ideas that work at scale, and they've produced consistent results. It's probably because they've been doing stable bureaucracies for 5000 years.

Yes smaller markets are harder to run protectionism on. So it's harder to have an economic policy direction independent of other countries. But that doesn't mean you can't make skillful policy and trade engagements with other big players, and benefit as much as possible from their growth. I don't think this East Asian set has done that, and I think they've let partisan politics and historical resentments get in the way of this. Swapped long term prosperity and regionalism for short term political capital, incentivized by a democratic system.

You're right about trade. It's a nothing point. Since everything is basically equal. Even if China had an asymmetric relationship where it "contributed more" in its trade with the East Asian set, and in its trade with the West, ( and I'm not saying it does have that ) that still doesn't really speak to the differences in any of those traders political systems. So it's totally useless of me to bring that up here when we're evaluating different socio-political systems. Good catch. I think I just raised it to say "you can't judge their success on their Western merits alone, you have to see their interconnection with the China model" but as you correctly point out, that's two way street. It doesn't matter where the trade money comes from, it matters what you choose to do with it. And that's where I think China has more skilfully used their opportunities, as a result of their model, by focusing heavily on infrastructure and long term projects, than the East Asian "WLD" set. You got to play to the short term in a democracy. And in a changing, globalized world, that might be the wrong set of incentives to best serve your population's well being. Too limiting. You're playing the global economy and local long term prosperity with both hands tied behind your back. In the Chinese model they're more free to act in their citizens best interests. Everyone is envious of that. Europe acknowledges this advantage openly. But does nothing. So European.

In terms of living in a society, for me the ideal is to have the option to live in whichever and move between them. They all ( or both, considering USA and China as the two biggest examples of the different models ) have their benefits and challenges. Differences are fun. No one system offers everything. In terms of honesty, what I mean is that they are honest about their censorship and control. Whereas censorship and information control in the West is necessarily secret to preserve the stagecraft of "moral supremacy" and freedom. Yes, controlling information is not honest, but you can be honest that you do it, which is what they are. This is important to me. In the West the spies just lie to your face, and shadow you, in China, they openly harass you in the street and put you under house arrest. A system of control that hides in the shadows is one harder for the average individual to comprehend. One that is out in the open is easier for people to understand. Notice how Chinese citizens routinely circumvent censors activities? The transparency and openness make this possible, and this is just one example. To me, that is the Chinese state showing its citizens respect. In the West, or a Western style East Asian state, the average citizen doesn't know who is watching, what their policy or agenda is, nor what they are doing. To me, that is the Western model showing contempt for the individual it pretends to protect the freedoms of. I sort of see it like, if your partner betrays you would you rather it be an honest open relationship or secret betrayals behind your back? At least the Chinese sec intel apparatus are honest about how they try to control. And Westerners criticize China's human rights and praise their own credibility to do so. Ha. 5D doublethink masters. That kind of dishonesty is just not my style. It's too inefficient. Just be straight up. Own what you do. Stop being such a coward and lying about everything. Is how I see it. This is just one aspect of the transparent and honest interface to the population. But enough for now from me.

Sure the experiment still has longer to run. Maybe you're right and China will have the same stagnation once its economy moves beyond the current hyper growth period or becomes a net importer. It's a good point about Japan. I didn't know it was predicted to surpass USA at some point in the past as well. I guess personally I just find a country that can provide a pretty-much first-world-standard of living ( in the cities, anyway, for a price ), and develop so quickly with so many people, more interesting and inspiring than those that already are stagnating. A country where people are still charging forward, optimistic about the future, rather than bickering over welfare benefits. So, in a sense, I'm pinning my hopes for proof of civilizational advance on the success of the Chinese experiment. I hope they keep winning, so I'm cheering them on. I see a lot of signs to say they will, and I like to counter the ignorance and negative propos about them, but you're right that we don't know yet what path their road will take.

Even if the economy stagnates the same, I'm inclined to think the Chinese will have more social harmony. I'm comfortable with how much I've conveyed about that already, but to summarise it's really based on a culture that I see promotes harmony and values-based-nationalism ( even tho they it is tied to ethnicity currently ), and I hope that is successful in avoiding the painful and wasteful division and fabricated conflict along exaggerated identity politics / tribalistic differences, that I feel is so destructive to social fabric ( and productivity, optimism, focus ) in the West. So while I say they will have more social harmony, clearly I am an optimist and I probably just hope they do, because I hope their system has success where I see the Western one has failed, and lead to a divided society, indulging in policy stagnation and civil ideological conflict.

When you say, "protectionism in general here", do you mean the USA?

[barkxyz]

When I referred to "protectionism in general here" I was thinking mostly of its consequences for developing countries during and after their rise to prosperity. I'm afraid my history isn't really good enough to say whether this applies to the USA in the last few centuries :-) I imagine it's quite possible that it does.

I definitely get where you're coming from with optimism for China and can align with it to some extent. I do think we need to be a little careful about giving the CCP or the political structure too much credit for China's achievements when the ingenuity and hard work of the citizens seems to be the much greater part of the explanation to me. OTOH I agree they've made some good decisions along the way - infrastructure in particular. Time will tell I guess.

Whatever the outcome politically I certainly hope the Chinese people carry on along the path towards prosperity.