Exactly. To say that you're unhappy is frowned upon. I'd assume in China it's both politically and also socially steming from confucianism, (i.e. against upsetting the harmony).
I mean, yeah, being against those in power isn't a good idea in authoritarian regimes. At the same time, people describe living in former east germany as the most easy-going / carefree time of their life. Being taken care of as long as you do as your told isn't all bad and probably was the default state of the smaller communities in the past. Whish we would find ways to achieve this without the authoritarian aspects.
People made the best of the situation they had. There is a reason the links above happened, though, and it wasn't because the system people lived in was easy-going and carefree. Keep in mind that the transitional years, after the governmental collapse, but before western institutions stepped in, were worse than regular life when the eastern systems were functional. Balance that against the thought that the eastern system was unsustainable, and had the west not been able to step in when it did, the results would have been far worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine for an example of what happened in a centralized system that didn't have outside assistance when things collapsed.
> Keep in mind that the transitional years, after the governmental collapse, but before western institutions stepped in, were worse than regular life when the eastern systems were functional.
Are you talking about the post war years? Yeah, those generally were pretty hard, especially with the east not having a Marshall Plan. Lots of political change necessarily did make a lot of people unhappy. But I'd be surprised if you'd find many stories of people emigrating in the latter years cause they couldn't make ends meet.
Or do you mean the reunification years? Cause I hardly remember "western institutions stepping in and saving the day" ever mentioned when the days of the Treuhand are brought up. The more common narrative is "west stepped in, destroyed all our industry and left us with little prospects to these days" or some more grounded version of that.
But yeah, while a good king might be the best form of government, the necessity to get rid of the bad ones (=worst possible gov) makes authoritarian systems not very desirable. At the same time is it a good idea to non the less find ways to integrate the strengths of those societies into our own as well.
>Or do you mean the reunification years? Cause I hardly remember "western institutions stepping in and saving the day" ever mentioned when the days of the Treuhand are brought up. The more common narrative is "west stepped in, destroyed all our industry and left us with little prospects to these days" or some more grounded version of that.
It's a convenient narrative, but it isn't, IMO, a correct one. Yes, the Treuhand had to decide quite literally which businesses got to live, and which didn't. Never before had an entire country been converted from a planned economy to a market one. There was no road map to follow. Decades of land and property seizure by both the Nazis & the Soviets made untangling actual ownership rights a Sisyphean task.
But at the same time this transition was occuring, billions and billions of Marks/Euros were and are invested in bringing the East up to the same levels of development. What do you think would have happened with the same governmental collapse, if the Treuhandanstalt hadn't existed? Honest question.
I imagine that if English is not your first language, it would be easy to miss this, since the joke plays on multiple meanings for the phrase "can't complain".
Usually, in this context, "Can't complain" means "life is good".
However, in this joke, the secondary meaning of "Can't complain" indicates that "You can't complain about life in soviet Russia, because if you do complain, you get in big trouble".
Basically, this indicates that life in soviet Russia was NOT good.