[woutr_be]

Look, I've spoken to this to my friends in China about this before, and I can understand that to them it's okay, they've seen their lives improve over the past 10 years. And I understand why they feel that way, they've never known anything else.

But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.

[roenxi]

China has a long cultural history of being relatively more wealthy than everyone else. But in absolute terms though they've just had a huge amount of technological progress dropped on them. Something like 3+ generations in of progress in Europe compressed into a fraction of a generation in China. And they look like they are regaining their traditional place as a world leading power.

India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well, on the basis that it presided over the fastest leap forward in living standards in human history. I'd still rather live in Europe, India or America though.

[coldtea]

>India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance

I doubt it. If anything India's system is less effective, equally or more corrupt, and downright barbarous in some social aspects (e.g. castes). Plus the rampant inequality which is much worse than China.

[101404]

Democracy and rule of law usually start to have an advantage over authoritarianism when you surpass an annual GDP per capita of about 5000 USD.

So, on the long term, I am optimistic that India will catch up. Especially now that the USA is moving away from China as "work bench".

I hope we here in Europe will follow that policy, too. It just makes much more sense to support an emerging democracy than to support a facist regime.

[random314]

> Democracy and rule of law usually start to have an advantage over authoritarianism when you surpass an annual GDP per capita of about 5000 USD.

Singapore disagrees.

[roenxi]

In what sense? Singapore is a democracy. They have a high GDP per capita. They have a very strong rule of law and little corruption. I wouldn't necessarily want to live there but it is one of many democratic countries that looks like a much better bet to live in than China.

[random314]

https://thediplomat.com/2015/02/soft-repression-the-struggle...

They simply bankrupt the opposition through lawsuits and void their candidacy. That is not a functioning democracy.

[kazagistar]

Have you not been following the news where India just elected a facist leadership and had numerous deadly race riots supported by their government? Try checking your ideology with reality sometimes.

[derefr]

There is a difference, I would think, between a country going through a "bad period" of preferring totalitarianism, usually in response to pressures of economic and social inequality (e.g. Germany in the early 1900s; several middle-eastern and central-american countries today); and a country whose populace maintain deeply-held beliefs that have caused them to maintain a totalitarian leadership style over decades/centuries with no sign of changing (China.)

Though, I mean, part of that difference is that the rest of the world feels uncomfortable with sudden shifts like India's, and so usually gets together to trade-sanction the problem away so that things will go back to the way they were (which might cause the country to lash out, at which point it becomes a World War); while, on the other hand, the international community is so used to "the way things are" with countries like China, that they don't do anything.

[101404]

Please be less racist.

[blackrock]

The coronavirus disagrees with you.

[101404]

No, it doesn't.

See, I have the better argument!

[goatinaboat]

I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well

Indeed, in the 50’s and 60’s it seemed plausible that the economies of North Korea, Cuba, Russia, the DDR were all going to surpass their Western counterparts before long. The wheels started to come off in the 70’s and by the 90’s it was all over for them.

[orestarod]

But these countries were isolated from the world in terms of technology, economy and influence. China, on the other hand, is a country the West depends on both for production and profit, and has not closed off itself to anything that can help it stay on top. From a state of pariah, it rose to superpower status, and there is no real competitor to take its wheels off - the western companies and governments are the first to rush and make business with China, instead of beating it at its game like they did with the rest of the communist countries.

[goatinaboat]

But these countries were isolated from the world

Do you not realise just how large the Communist world was back then? The USSR alone was vast. Now China and North Korea are all that’s left.

[pimple20]

Snowden basically told the Western world how much access to their online data governments have, but people don't seem to care. Yet, they care that China does it for some reason