[free_rms]

I didn't get that from it at all. The theme of the last book is a conflict between values and survival. What's the point of survival if you sacrifice all values to do so?

Liu is Chinese just like most of HN are American so there will be different default stances on international politics, but the books did not read as jingoistic to me.

[newen]

Most Americans are under the impression that Chinese citizens secretly hate their government but can’t speak up due to the authoritarian tendencies of the ruling CCP. Of course, any news that contradict this feeling can be ascribed to CCP propaganda. And of course, when asked to examine the source of this feeling, it can never be American propaganda but cold hard facts.

[actuator]

It doesn't have to be most actually, just the ability to let out what even few are thinking.

Look at what's happening in India. An elected government on a clear majority, passed new laws and some section of people which are not happy with it, have held the government to ransom through protests. There seems to be international civil society support for the protests as it seems like the powerless going against an all powerful government.

Without going into the merits of the protests in this particular example, just the fact that even a small section is able to express themselves is a good thing. One can always argue that this can become counter productive, but I guess that's better than people suffering silently.

Having said this, I don't doubt that the majority of people in PRC, at least Han Chinese are massively better off in the last 40 years.

[Udik]

I agree on the principle: being able to openly protest is better than not. Once this has been said, there is a big difference between a tyrannical government that keeps people in poverty and an authoritarian one that has brought many hundreds of millions to a western standard of life and made the country a credible competitor to the only other world super-power.

I perfectly understand a Chinese being proud of their country, their government and their CCP- as much as Americans are proud of their country despite their 2 million imprisoned people, dual-party system that allows no competition, police violence, decades of wars waged around the world and support for dictatorships and coups to overthrow democratically elected leaders. Things could certainly be even better and hopefully with time they will be- but this attitude of fixating on one aspect to justify a black-and-white view of the world- in which your side is the good one- is damn stupid.

[roca]

It is good to be proud of China's economic achievements. It is not good to be proud of totalitarianism, the genocide of the Uighurs, religious persecution, etc.

[newen]

I’m just trying to explain the dynamics of typical HN comments regarding Chinese citizens, where the usually American commenter writes under the assumption that the Chinese citizen is held under this brutal dictatorship and must use any and all opportunity to speak up and/or oppose this brutal dictatorship. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon in American politics and it’s interesting to think about.

[Udik]

What's even more interesting is that, despite being a recent phenomenon, everybody seems convinced it's absolutely normal to think in these terms. And yet I am sure than only four or five years ago people were talking about China in an entirely different way.

[roca]

Five years ago it was easy to believe that China was on a trajectory of increasing freedom. Then Xi's change in direction really took hold: the abuse of the Uighurs happened and became known, religious persecution increased, democracy was ended in Hong Kong, Xi made himself dictator for life, etc. It is entirely reasonable for people to talk about China in a different way now.

[free_rms]

What's happening in India is that farmers were/are going to be screwed, and they're really mad about it.

What has happened in China is that a billion farmers are massively, undescribably better off. You literally cannot describe it to the average American, their scale for lifestyle doesn't go that low.

[actuator]

> What has happened in China is that a billion farmers are massively, undescribably better off.

After Great Leap forward? Cultural Revolution? What about the farmers of the marginalized communities in Tibet and Xinjiang. I am not saying all that gets printed in Western press is true but it is not all fabricated up as well. There was an actual cost to getting here, which might not have happened in a democratic setup.

> What's happening in India is that farmers were/are going to be screwed, and they're really mad about it.

From news reports it seems only a section of farmers, as the protests are concentrated in few areas. But as I said in the comment above I don't want to go into the merits/demerits of it, as looking from outside we both will not have the complete info. You can call them capitalist interests but most of the expert opinion from a farming/economics standpoint within the country and outside seems to support the laws.

[bohadi]

Yes, there is a price and a sacrifice. India is choosing different trade-offs.

Others' progress is our progress too.

[free_rms]

Can you name the dates and major events within the Great Leap forward or Cultural Revolution without googling and reading wikipedia?

I'm not trying to assert authority here but you could look at the last 500 years, the last 200, 100, years, the last 50 years.. cherrypicking a 25 year period that happened between 70-45 years ago is kinda weird if you're after understanding rather than scoring points.

[smsm42]

In the same vein, why should we be obsessing about mere 12 years of German history, and one guy (who isn't even a German but an Austrian!) instead of looking back at hundreds of years of European history and ignoring that unfortunate, but ultimately minor, incident? I mean, if we're about understanding, not scoring points.

[woshicoolbe]

I am a Chinese living in Europe. Almost all the articles in media I read in Western media on China are negative. They only talk about HK, Uyghurs. But China has many exciting things happening and very dynamic. But in another hand, I saw the western media just criticize everything, it's like the whole world only has negative things happening. I personally don't hate the Chinese government. The people's living standard is hugely improved these two decades, and my friends in China are mostly happy about their life.

[cromwellian]

The press isn’t just supposed to report government propaganda of how everything is going great because invariable while some people are benefitting, others are suffering.

Be it the civilians in Yemen being starved by a Saudi-led American backed proxy war, or the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Yes, China has raised a huge number of people out of poverty, mostly thanks to Deng inviting in foreign investment, but Xi is turning China into a surveillance state, using a few terrorist events to justify large scale oppression in Xinjiang, and the CCP is on balance, a corrupt inner circle of grifters getting rich off the economic rise. How does China’s parliament delegates have 100 billionaires in it?

Xi’s family net worth has widely been reported to be hundreds of millions. How did they earn it?

I’m not willing to give my own government a pass for the good things they’ve done (eg Obama on healthcare) and excuse the bad things they’ve done (extrajudicial drone killings)

And I don’t think giving a free pass on massive Corruption, an oppressive police state in Xinjiang, etc is justified because the economy is good.

So invariably someone’s going to claim I’m just getting my info from bias western media, but I’ll just tell you I have traveled all over Xinjiang and speak passable Mandarin, in addition to having lived in China for a while. You can quite clearly see the overwhelming security apparatus in Xinjiang on every street corner and road, and I don’t need CNN to tell what my eyes see.

Like White people dismissing the conditions of Black people in the US, it’s really easy for Han Chinese to think the Uyghur minority concerns are blown out of proportion. I had many Han friends tell me not to go to Xinjiang, that it was far too dangerous. The reality is, I never once felt threatened by Uyghurs, they were incredibly friendly and hospitable. I was more nervous from soldiers with rifles everywhere, and constant road checkpoints demanding my photo and passport every few kilometers.

If you live in a Tier-1/Tier-2/Tier-3 city, it's really easy to dismiss the complaints of minority provinces or rural poor, especially when the one view of what's happening you get comes from state media.

I love China, am hopeful by its steady rise, and the world will be a better place with another advanced wealthy civilization of a billion people, and hopefully the whole 7 billion people on the planet can be uplifted. But it is not going to be served by a corrupt authoritarian government of grifters getting more and more control and power over of a large fraction of the world's economy and people.

Are the foreign press wrong to worry about China building massive dams and threatening India's water supply for example? Pakistan, China, and India are involved in a 3 way war over fresh water that affects 2+ billion people, and all of them have nuclear weapons.

The press should be looking at things that are harmful, not just saying "Good job government". FDR did a lot of good things for the US, but he also locked up 100,000+ Japanese in camps. The founding fathers did a lot of good in writing the US Constitution, but they also owned slaves. Criticism of government is a good thing.

[fspeech]

Focusing on the negatives of your own country is fine because the readers have the ability to judge for themselves. Focusing only on the negatives of a foreign country is not unless the goal is to agitate the populace for conflict and war.

Take your imagined trilateral water war as an example, have you looked into how minor the supply is to India? Have you considered the fact that damming for electricity has little effect on total volume of flow? Otoh, when US dammed the Colorado the water was diverted for agriculture and urban consumption. The river basically dried up before reaching Mexico.

[cromwellian]

>"Focusing only on the negatives of a foreign country is not unless the goal is to agitate the populace for conflict and war."

Western news media news is designed for western audience consumption. Pointing out the suffering of people in other countries is something that people with empathy want to know about. For example, when Western media points out the suffering of Palestinians, we hear that this is because of anti-Israel bias. The reality is, most people aren't opposed to Israel, they're concerned with the suffering imposed by the occupation, and the ancillary effects on their own national interest due to regional instability. The goal of the media isn't conflict and war, it's awareness and political change. If there's a genocide happening, I want to know about it. If the US backed Saudi proxy war in Yemen is destroying huge number of lives because of American made weapons or policy, I want to know about it, and if a large US trading partner is locking people in Xinjiang and even manufacturing with slave labor, I'd rather buy my products somewhere else.

>"Take your imagined trilateral water war as an example, have you looked into how minor the supply is to India?".

Of course, have you? There are 130 million people who live in the Brahmaputra basin. And 1 billion downstream of the Hindu Kush. You don't think India is concerned about the dams going up in Kashmir and the Tibetan Plateau? "damming for electricity has little effect on total volume of flow" you're talking past damns, the concern is over future mega dams.

>"Otoh, when US dammed the Colorado the water was diverted for agriculture and urban consumption. The river basically dried up before reaching Mexico."

Yeah, and that was bad for both the environment, and for Mexico, which is exactly why people are concerned about China's activity, not just for geo-political reasons and the 1+ billion people dependent on the Tibetan plateau water supply, but the environmental damage that could result as well. Your own example shows exactly why those dependent on Tibetan and Hindu Kush supplies should be concerned about dam building, in which they have little say over.

By all means, use past US transgressions as a road map for why we should be concerned. Take Belt and Road Initiative. Sucker someone into taking a large loan, make them use the loaned money to buy from your own country's companies, and then when the debtor can't pay, seize concessions. The US played this out extremely well all over the world (see _Confessions of an Economic Hitman_ https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins...), and it's being repeated: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...

It's because of how awful the US's policy was in doing the same thing in South America and Africa that I'm concerned now about what I see happening now, essentially neo-colonialism.

However, the real issue I sense, is that a lot of 五毛 and 玻璃心 don't want to hear any criticism, even if it's legitimate, because of elevated nationalism dialed up by Xi over the years. And it is this rising nationalism, in the US with Trump, in Europe (e.g. in Hungary), and in China that we should be worried about. We've managed to temporarily put down Trumpism here, but Xi made himself President for life, and authoritarianism combined with rising nationalism and economic power is not a good recipe, if the 20th century taught us anything.

[fspeech]

The point I was responding to was whether the western audience is well served if the media only focus on the negative side of the China story. It is not the same as the local paper's focus on crimes and tragedies. My main concern is that my boys don't get conscripted into serving in a future war promoted by people who don't paint a realistic picture of the world, on both what China is and on how much power the West (or anyone else) has over China.

P.S. As for the Brahmaputra river, according to Indian officials: "Out of five major tributaries of Brahmaputra, only three come from China, rest are from Arunachal Pradesh. Of the total water entering (Brahmaputra), only 7% is contributed by precipitation in China." https://www.livemint.com/Politics/jksr4ft6Jn5wjvJAEGwD5L/Ind...

[cambalache]

You are correct but you are missing the key ingredient. Western media criticizes western and non-western governments all the same (to different degrees of course).But in other realms (things like cinema, sports, music,literature, videogames) the western people, their way of life, their worldview, and their history are lionized and romanticized while the non-western side of history is still presented as barbaric, brutish and retrograde. So not only Putin,Xi,Bolsonaro or Modi suck but the people "over there" are gangsters, killers, terrorists and the enemies to conquer and defeat. You need to be moved into tears by the story of a little kid from Kansas who went to Vietnam or Iraq though.

[kbenson]

> I didn't get that from it at all. The theme of the last book is a conflict between values and survival. What's the point of survival if you sacrifice all values to do so?

That always seemed like a trite argument of those who want to justify their own behavior, and is a cop out in a story.

The point of survival is that values change, and can return, but survival is absolute. You fight until there is no other option, then you surrender with the hope that hat you can work towards that goal again in the future.

Similarly, the correct choice between slavery and death is slavery, as slavery contains the chance of freedom but death does not. That's not to say the correct choice between slavery and a chance of death is the same thing. But people like to speak in absolutes without this nuance in a way that leads to interesting thought patterns in others that hear it and parrot it.

[free_rms]

I don't know if you read the books but there are some pretty severe consequences.

[kbenson]

Oh, I've read the first two, I was responding to that statement as it's usually applied in conversation or argument. The discussion and exploration of it is worthwhile. It's common use as a "call to arms" less so.

[free_rms]

The third book is good, almost as good as the second imo. Manages to become completely insane while still feeling believable at each step.

[kbenson]

It's on my TODO list, I just had a bunch of stuff jump in front of it. I thoroughly enjoyed the first and second books. :)