[jjb123]

We made those same moves 100 years earlier, with liberty intact. If North Korea made this relative progress over the next 30 years (and 70 years after South Korea), this same argument would suggest there’s something we should copy there.

[sudosysgen]

Yes, in 160 years, as opposed to 30, and then solved many problems we aren't able to solve.

No one is saying that authoritarian governments are good, but opposition to efficient governments just makes life worse for everyone.

[mc32]

Any country in a retrograde economy has the benefit of existing modern technology to adopt as well as the absence of legacy encumbrances, making it easier to play catch-up.

[sudosysgen]

And yet, efficient government involvement seems to yield much better results than other countries with "retrograde economies".

[Semiapies]

It's similar to the "miracle" of Soviet industrialization. The USSR hired scads of advisors from Western companies to direct their efforts, then chest-thumped about socialism.

Or, for that matter, the Nazi economic "miracle". In their case, they started from the wreckage of WW1 and the Weimar Republic, but they used knowledge and corporate organization that predated both to rebuild, while letting their ideology and leadership take credit.

[sudosysgen]

There was no Nazi economic miracle - it was built on debt and was unsustainable, which is why it's discounted. Not because somehow it used existing expertise, of course it did, that's entirely normal.

As far as that, I don't see how hiring foreign advisors somehow make your own economic achievements worthless - anyone can do that, and it's stupid to expect everyone to reinvent the wheel.

[Semiapies]

There was no Nazi economic miracle

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

As far as that, I don't see how hiring foreign advisors somehow make your own economic achievements worthless

Because there were no "own economic achievements" in this case. The USSR claimed to pioneer a new and superior economic system to the capitalist West, but their greatest period of growth and improvement was accomplished through Western direction.

[sudosysgen]

It wasn't through Western direction - they did not implement free capital market, which was the "Western direction".

They imported technical experts from the West to help them design and build things until they figured out how to do it themselves. That is orthogonal to the economic system.

[Semiapies]

What problems do you imagine that the Chinese government has solved which Western governments haven't?

It certainly hasn't solved violent oppression of minorities, though admittedly it's more industrious and organized in that field than any Western government.

[sudosysgen]

>What problems do you imagine that the Chinese government has solved which Western governments haven't?

I'm not imagining anything. For one, China has been able to deal with the pandemic much better than the average Western government, beyond that there is the issue of infrastructure development such as high-speed rail, internet connectivity, etc.., as well as the issue of staying away from major wars, and so on. That's not to say it's overall any better, but that Western governments do everything better is simply false.

>It certainly hasn't solved violent oppression of minorities, though admittedly it's more industrious and organized in that field than any Western government.

Since you're making the comparison, I don't think the Western massacre of around 150 million minorities for it's development nor the murder of 1 million+ people in the Middle East for a recent example, or the millions in penal labour, is anything that the Chinese have to envy. Murder and opression works just as well in "free" governments, thank you - it's just exported, for the most part.

[Semiapies]

"For one, China has been able to deal with the pandemic much better than the average Western government"

Ah, a shift of goalposts from "many problems we aren't able to solve" to "better than the average". Meanwhile, Western and heavily Western-influenced countries like New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan have done much better than China regarding COVID, without all the authoritarianism.

"as well as the issue of staying away from major wars"

Give or take at least eleven million war deaths in WW2 and the Korean war. (And, pointedly, excluding the larger Chinese government democides of its own people.) If we take that to a round century, we get another three million dead or so. You really are cribbing from the same bizarre talking points as the other guy in this thread, aren't you?

"I don't think the Western massacre of around 150 million minorities for it's development"

Ah, but there's the problem. You're comparing centuries of history of the West--which would be comparable to the wars and imperial abuses inflicted on its neighbors by China over centuries of its history--to what China is doing right now with a system of concentration camps. That's not just tu quoque, it's downright sleazy, especially when you cite "millions in penal labour" as a defense of the PRC.

(It's also telling that you keep referring to "the West" when you clearly mean "the US".)

[sudosysgen]

>(It's also telling that you keep referring to "the West" when you clearly mean "the US".)

The West has implemented NATO and thus offloaded most of it's foreign intervention to the US in exchange for other concessions.

>Give or take at least eleven million war deaths in WW2 and the Korean war. (And, pointedly, excluding the larger Chinese government democides of its own people.) If we take that to a round century, we get another three million dead or so. You really are cribbing from the same bizarre talking points as the other guy in this thread, aren't you?

China was in a defensive position in WW2, they didn't have a choice. As for democides, sure, those are pretty bad, do you want to compare them to the atrocities of the third Reich or does that also not count as the West? I kept West to West.

>Ah, but there's the problem. You're comparing centuries of history of the West--which would be comparable to the wars and imperial abuses inflicted on its neighbors by China over centuries of its history--to what China is doing right now with a system of concentration camps. That's not just tu quoque, it's downright sleazy, especially when you cite "millions in penal labour" as a defense of the PRC.

No, I compared the million of deaths in less than 20 years to that, after you made the comparison in the other comment. I'm not a making a defence, I'm responding to your whataboutism in kind. Just as easily I could have read the above comment as defense of the murder of a million people in the Middle East by comparing it to mere reeducation camps, which is downright sleazy, but I didn't, because I assumed you were arguing in good faith.

From someone who lives literally anywhere outside of the West, including Muslim countries, the atrocities of the PRC are very comparable to those of the West.

People keep thinking that only authoritarian government commit attrocities, while their own governments commit warcrimes at the same time. What cognitive dissonance.

[andrepd]

Better that it took 200 or 300 and we have advanced liberties instead of a totalitarian state. There's no amount of prosperity that pays for a dystopian state like China.

[sudosysgen]

We certainly did not have liberties much beyond modern day China, back in those days you risked your life by unionising.

[metalens]

I'd like to add that those moves we (assuming you're referring to the US) made 100 years earlier were not made with liberty intact. A lot of our progress was built on the back of slavery and racial discrimination at scale in housing, education, transportation, jobs, etc.

[mc32]

Slavery isn’t in dispute, nor segregation, however I’d posit that those elements dragged down society and the economy rather than strengthened it (it was detrimental to progress). Same as serf slavery in Czarist Russia before liberalization, it dragged down their economy immensely.

[Semiapies]

Also, the genuine improvements of the last 40-50 years in China come from abandoning communism in the economic arena and embracing markets. Just, you know, without politically liberalizing.