[xir78]

A few years ago I couldn’t tell you the name of a Chinese company off the top of my head, now I can not only rattle of a list, they’re companies I’ve worked with or have significant investments in companies in the US. I also have a roster of WeChat contacts.

I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong), and laugh at how freaked people are about an insignificant Trump compared to a truly vicious government.

[ksec]

>about an insignificant Trump compared to a truly vicious government

Which is true. But most US citizen doesn't realize how their system, while extremely bureaucratic in nature, protect real bad things from happening.

There both have upside and downside. Only History will tell.

[agumonkey]

I dearly thought he bureaucratic system would have ejected current president though. It didn't protect much IMO.

[linkmotif]

If it makes sense, would you please elaborate the connection between these two thoughts?

[clacke2]

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

[lloeki]

> Laissez donc la Chine dormir, car lorsque la Chine s'éveillera le monde entier tremblera

> Let China thusly slumber, for when China wakes up the world will shiver

— Napoleon 1er

[herbst]

Why is this particularly a reason to worry? I for one welcome a well needed fresh wind in our global ecosystem.

[tenpies]

Because as much as people love to hate on the West and its faults, it is also the most tolerant system and allows for the most freedom in every category.

The Chinese do not value things like freedom or tolerance very much, especially if they conflict with order. The value of the individual is also extremely low, whereas the West held the individual as the most valuable thing until just recently when group identities became incredibly important for the sake of skin-deep diversity. It will be interesting to see how that continues to creep into Western culture.

[moltar]

Just a reminder that slavery was abolished in 1865, 153 years ago.

And recently, lots of laws have been passed restricting freedom.

NSA has been watching your every move.

The west only has freedom on paper.

And countries change and adapt.

[mieseratte]

> The west only has freedom on paper.

Let me know when they start black-bagging dissidents for speaking up a bit too much.

There are festering problems regarding surveillance in the West, and the prison system is a bit much here in the US, but "freedom on paper" is a load of BS.

[coldtea]

Well, those that lose their 1st place might not welcome it as much...

[latch]

1. Like many countries, China has long been relevant. Like many countries, China has long been gaining relevance.

2. Because they shouldn't

If instead of treating global economy as a zero-sum game, and if we backed off from the fear mongering and admitted that China's economic growth has largely (and unsurprisingly) been to most people's benefits, then we'd welcome the competition and innovation and productivity that China has and will continue to provide.

[ben_w]

Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above.

(+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.

[coldtea]

>Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above.

The hypocrisy of a country that props constant wars all around the globe, has bombed/invaded 3-4 countries in the last 20 years alone, and constant meddling and manipulations of other governments for its "interests", that had segregation up to the 70s, the worlds largest prison populations by a huge margin, with routine police shootings in the 10x of any other country, pointing the finger to another country for "religious persecution" and "discrimination against sexual preferences" (which itself until 2000 or so had laws declaring "illegal" in many states, and even now has a good 40% or more of the population considering them immoral and believing in all kinds of Bible crap), never ceases to amaze...

[mcv]

I agree that the United States' run as the world's biggest superpower has been far from perfect. I criticise the US a lot. And I actually consider China to be one of the few countries that is not governed by amateurs. China gets a lot of things right.

The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that. Whenever the US hurts these freedoms, they get criticised, even by their own people, and they eventually back down.

The fact that the US promises freedom but constantly breaks that promise makes them hypocrites, but it also always has the option that they will get back to their promise. China does not see the point of freedom at all, and considers it dangerous. And that's terrifying.

If we're going to have a superpower, I would love a China that respects freedom in that role. They would be better at it than the US. But current China is not that China.

As flawed as the US is, they at least have that going for them (pre-Trump US, at least). Though ideally, the EU would step up. They don't seem to want to, though.

[smaddox]

That would be hypocrisy... if a county could critisize. However, a citizen of such a country can critisize both countries without being a hypocrite.

[ben_w]

I am not an American.

I am criticising American states for criminalising a sexuality that my own country never legalised.

I am also appalled by my own country’s behaviour in the colonial era.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Can you imagine China having a government shutdown?

[chvid]

Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.

[cabalamat]

China may be different. Their planned social credit reputation system, coupled with ubiquitous surveillance, may make it impossible for public opinion in China to force the Chinese government to liberalise.

In the past, the West has had a massive advantage because: (1) their econpomic system was better than everyone else's, and (2) in order to modernise, other cultures have had to adopt some of the West's characteristics, including a greater level of freedom of speech/thought than in other societies. The combination meant that the West had few serious ideological competitors.

But if China becomes the world's biggest economy, if it continues to increase its economy so its per capita GDP is the same as in the USA and western Europe, and it does this while still being an autocracy, things will get very very serious.

The future may well be a jackboot stamping on a human face forever.

[rayiner]

Many of the rights we consider intrinsic to modern society, due process, etc., didn’t arise in Europe in respond to the rise of a middle class. In the Anglo tradition, they date back 800 years to the Magna Carta.

[Chris2048]

Europe had similar cultures to begin with, there's high correlation between European cultures such that you can't assume that i a universal norm.

[ben_w]

> Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.

Which is why I said “religious” and “sexual preference”.

Jews were widely discriminated against even a few years after WW2; Muslims are a current whipping-boy; I’m not sure if Catholic-vs-Protestant is as big a divide in Northern Ireland as it looks from the outside, but it does look big; In the USA, Atheists are almost as disliked as Muslims.

Then there’s sexual preference. You’re fine if you’re gay (finally!), but not so much if you’re into BDSM or have any fetishes more complicated than underwear. Also, I have a friend whose sexuality was previously legal, but which was outlawed in half of Europe and half of the USA this century. I invite you to guess what that might be.

[org3432]

Turns out economics, like rational thought on what's best, doesn't naturally prevail.

[richard___]

Telling that you've been downvoted.

[romanovcode]

Yeah, and Snowden had so fun time and didn't had to flee and hide from U.S. for the rest of his life at all!

[anthonybsd]

There is a world of a difference between spilling out state secrets, a crime in any Western democracy and simply voicing your displeasure with the government. False equivalence much?

[iforgotpassword]

Ah yes, a topic about China and the top comment is some American spreading the usual fud about how China is the pure evil, like it has been engrained into their brains from the day they were born. Sad to see hn is no better than reddit these days.

[xir78]

You should actually go to China, go to Taiwan too to compare, and talk to people who had to leave and were granted refuge status in Canada. You might have a more nuanced understanding than “American fud”.

Normally fud isn’t well documented: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Falun_Gong

[coldtea]

Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on...

[dash2]

China did not have the power before. Who knows how it will act when it does? It's treatment of Tibet, invaded in 1948 and still occupied, is not encouraging.

[oblio]

It used to have this power and it turned all the countries in its neighborhood into tributary states. Which, all things considered, was not that bad, since it was overall a peaceful and stable relationship.

Hard to say how Communist China as a superpower will differ from Imperial China, though...

[eyeinthepyramid]

If you look at how Communist China treats minority populations as a blueprint, it's not encouraging.

[jcranmer]

> Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on...

Korea and Vietnam would beg to differ.

[freeflight]

> Korea and Vietnam would beg to differ.

It takes two to tango. In that regard, it feels kinda dishonest to frame these conflicts solely as "Evil China/Communism doing its thing".

[bluntfang]

Korea and Vietnam are pretty regional, not global, but I think your point still stands.