[keiferski]

This is a false equivalency. China is a totalitarian state that quite literally controls information; Japan and the US are not in any real sense. About six months ago, on a different HN topic, I said this about China's claim that foreigners committed crimes and thus couldn't leave the country:

I call it “crying wolf in reverse”: The problem with being a totalitarian state that falsely imprisons people on a regular basis is that you’ve lost all moral authority when it comes to arresting people for actual crimes. If you’ve falsified evidence, conducted show trials and made a mockery of rule of law before, why should anyone believe you when you say it’s a real crime this time?

We're seeing a similar situation with regards to their Covid-19 reporting. Is it necessarily inaccurate? No, but lying about everything else doesn't exactly lend us to trust you this time.

[danans]

> This is a false equivalency. China is a totalitarian state that quite literally controls information; Japan and the US are not in any real sense.

This is true, but what makes both the US and China (and many other countries at the moment) similar is they are controlled by governments with strong nationalist tendencies. Any state has the ability to control these stats by limiting the availability of testing. A nationalist-leaning state has an even stronger incentive to do so, because it leans even more heavily on the thesis that its nation is essentially different than others. This however, runs into the reality that this virus doesn't differentiate based on our cultural construct of nations.

Until a few days ago, you saw this most markedly in India, which just recently made a sudden U-turn in its denial of the problem.

In China's case, nationalism is coordinated with its totalitarianism, which as you point out makes it different. The Chinese response should be scrutinized for its initial failures as much as its later successes.

The saving grace in the US is that even though we have leadership incentivized by nationalist and self-preservatory urges to minimize the true magnitude of the problem, hospitals and state/local officials can publicly express that they are seeing a large number of likely cases that they can't test for, and publicly demand more testing and treatment capacity from federal authorities.

That is pretty much the dynamic that has been happening in the US for nearly a month - exemplified in the public war of words between state governors in initially affected states (CA, NY, MI, etc) and the Administration. And at this point, it's abundantly clear that the tide of truth is on the side of those state governors and public health officials. This is why military hospital ships are now showing up in Los Angeles and New York.

[tinus_hn]

For what it’s worth, the Japanese justice system has an over 99% conviction rate.

[jdtang13]

This 99% number does not mean what people think it means. The Japanese prosecution system is a pipeline that strongly filters out unlikely-to-be-convicted cases from the very beginning. Long before you are convicted, you might not even be arrested, or your case gets dismissed earlier in the pipeline. Here is a video, with references, from a relatively trustworthy source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINAk2xl8Bc

[maallooc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkoQjIBA_3U&feature=youtu.be

Yeah, I see. So, was the victim from the Nabari wine case vindicated? How about the Ashikaga murder case? Or the imperial bank poisoning case?

[keiferski]

Sure, absolutely the Japanese justice system has some serious problems, just as the American one does. But let's not pretend that they're remotely comparable to the CCP.

[sosborn]

> unlikely-to-be-convicted cases

Unfortunately this doesn't mean what people might think it means. "Unlikely-to-be-convicted" doesn't mean much when the police have so many tools available to force confessions, whether the person is guilty or not.

*Not comparing to CCP

[duxup]

Assuming that is accurate, do they just perhaps take a different approach to who they bother to prosecute?

Justice systems are really hard to compare considering the different circumstances.

[Krasnol]

Yeah and you're guilty until proven otherwise practically.

This in a system that still has a death penalty is quite unsettling.

[jbay808]

If you're going to parrot this factoid without context, please see the rebuttal here:

https://youtu.be/OINAk2xl8Bc

[jldugger]

Whats that number like in the US? Is it also 99%?

[maallooc]

95%

[tiborsaas]

> China is a totalitarian state that quite literally controls information; Japan and the US are not in any real sense.

The US has a long history of spreading misinformation and lies too. Japan also tried to cover up its WW2 crimes.

Point is, all governments want to control information to a certain degree.

[keiferski]

As I said, this is a false equivalence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

These “information control” done by the US and China are in no way comparable and any suggestion that they are is pure whataboutism. We are discussing this on a website based in the US, where freedom of speech is more-or-less guaranteed. Try doing the same in China and see how the CCP reacts.

For another example of this, consider that the American president often complains (rightly or wrongly, not commenting on its validity) that the media is against him, misinterprets his statements, etc.

Can you imagine such a situation in China? It is almost absurd to contemplate: an independent media that is overly harsh on Xi or the ruling party. Such a state of affairs should make it obvious that the intensity of censorship is a level of magnitude greater under the CCP.

[ksk]

And yet most Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

The US lies differently than China. But the lies work all the same.

[dirtyid]

The comparison is about government manufactured misinformation, not media transparency. US government absolutely puts out comparable propaganda as China.

[lyricaljoke]

I call it “crying wolf in reverse”

Isn't that just normal "crying wolf"?