[doodly]

“ Today, at least 270 Chinese diplomats in 126 countries are active on Twitter and Facebook. Together with Chinese state media, they control 449 accounts on Twitter and Facebook, which posted nearly 950,000 times between June and February. These messages were liked over 350 million times and replied to and shared more than 27 million times, according to the Oxford Internet Institute and AP’s analysis.”

If the world’s democratic nations fail to react to China’s growing popularity, we’re going to see more and more of our countrymen slip into anti-enlightenment ways of thinking. This is ironic because enlightenment ideals would have assumed opening economic ties with China should have led to democratic ideals in China, but that didn’t pan out.

US military might isn’t going to draw down China’s anti-democratic interests. China’s economic power is actually beating our democratic ideals. Being anti-China isn’t going to help. The rise of China as the world’s greatest economic superpower seems inevitable. The best solution will be a global effort to stream South Park directly to the Chinese people. Laughing at the absurdity of the situation is the best way to promote anti-authoritarian thinking.

[loa_in_]

As with all dictatorships, a statistical good dictator is better than statistical democracy (economically and long-term for the people). But the problems caused by a statistical malicious dictatorship could get out of hand, and for the whole world outside as well.

[thedudeabides5]

And even when you get a “enlightened despot” you still run into problems with their spoiled kids...

Or have we not decided who comes next in Russia and China?

[the_dune_13]

> statistical good dictator

There were many more dictators / kings / leaders than proper democracies. Even they are often diluted into autocracy. There might more examples but percentage wise democracies are winning in the long term.

[loa_in_]

> Even they are often diluted into autocracy.

That doesn't make them necessarily bad leaders

> percentage wise democracies are winning in the long term

Democracies are the most stable of governments. I assume you mean they're winning in that case. But as far as the decision-making in the government goes democracies tend to be slow to respond and tend to prefer non-complex and low-risk solutions. Autocracies "do as they please", which can take them to great heights (or great lows, depending on the person in charge). Note though "tending to" doesn't mean those are constrained from making big steps, that's only a general observation.

[jollybean]

"Autocracies "do as they please", which can take them to great height"

History informs that by and large, autocracies are exceedingly slow and inneficient, and tend to perform well only in periods of post-trauma with acute nationalism and oversight/economic aid from friendly partners. And when there was some kind of civilization there previously.

The reconstruction of Japan and Korea after WW2/Korean War were exemplary of this but they had a lot of key favourable conditions.

One could argue that China's recent development is frankly just a delayed post-WW2 kind of rejuvenation but they'll get diminishing marginal returns on authoritarianism as leaping ahead of other systems is much harder than doing the obvious of building new bridges and roads.

And over the last 6 years China has increased centralized control even further.

[underseacables]

I believe Vladimir Putin referred to that as “a managed democracy“

[op03]

> "China's growing popularity"

People who think the Like count determines the future need to just ask Obama and Trump how many Likes they collected and whether all that work translated into any actual outcomes.

[doodly]

I think popularity was the wrong word. More than anything I am concerned at how democracies are catering to Chinese audiences, ignoring the Chinese government’s authoritarianism because economics trumps democratic values. Maybe acquiescence would have been a more appropriate word.

[bingbong70]

There may be fake fans but unpopular opinion, I'm one of the real non-Chinese fans.

Many of their posts point out tremendous hypocrisy in the west's interactions with developing countries. As a citizen of the west, these criticisms are valid.

>This is ironic because enlightenment ideals would have assumed opening economic ties with China should have led to democratic ideals in China, but that didn’t pan out.

The idea that the west opened up with the goal of treating the Chinese equally, is on the surface true, but in reality misleading.... There is a lot of covert/overt activity that is primarily meant to result in regime change, something that I expect would be a negative outcome for the poorer people in China at this stage in development.

Many in the west are prescribing that a country forget the recent past and take the actions of its major foreign adversaries (read mass criminals that voluntarily positioned themselves that way) as good faith... I don't think they have the luxury of doing that.

The leaders are in power to do what's most beneficial for their population (domestic hyper-development) while avoiding an outcome that rhymes with 'century of opium'...serving western interests is a very low priority, as it should be.

This is the century of 'Don't trust, only verify' and I too feel the employed cautious approach is a requirement.

[jollybean]

"The leaders are in power to do what's most beneficial for their population (domestic hyper-development) "

Their goal is 'Neo Han Imperial China', a 'Global Power' / 'Centre of the Earth' and to make most states in their direct influence (including Japan) vassals or lesser powers, which they view as their 'normal' place in history.

They'll literally grab massive swaths of what the rest of the world regards as either international waters or domestic territory of other nations, and declare them as sovereign - right as everyone watches. Nobody will do anything about it as the maps are redrawn along with history.

At the same time, they'll declare 'something something aboriginals in USA' while they put 100's of thousands people in jail on the basis of their ethnicity (Uighurs), move millions of Han into Tibet to secure control, and use every means to force Taiwan to fall just like Hong Kong.

And that's without any discussion of internal controls.

Authoritarianism aside, there is some degree of legitimacy in their own governance, after all, it's their own, however - the spillover effects are real and their ambitions lie far outside their borders.

[bingbong70]

There are multiple ways to characterize every point you are making.

China has a long history of being the victim of foreign attacks using these routes, everything you mention is a defensive strategy to protect trade, borders, and the population from international attacks. The sabre rattling in the west doesn't help but only accelerates the push in this direction.

Han global supremacy sounds like a projection of western history rather than a reality. Reconnecting trade routes and rebuilding infrastructure in the destroyed empires of Asian history has many positive outcomes for the whole region. I don't we can wave away the feelings of billions of people pulled out of poverty by Chinese economic action.

>'something something aboriginals in USA'

I don't think we should compare the genocide/robbery of ~100 million natives in the Americas to the Uyghur/Turkic extremism/terrorism/separatism issue in Western China being solved without a military conflict. The brand of Islam (Saudi Wahabism) they now practice and the military training they received from ISIS/AlQ in US controlled parts of Syria/Iraq was/is part of a US strategy to destabilize China for the purpose of regime change. To now call it 'Xinjiang/Uyghur genocide' as many do, rather than a US intelligence led operation to disrupt trade/infrastructure expansion into western Asia is a dishonest characterization.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-chin...

[jollybean]

Aboriginals died mostly by disease, and then over the span of 100's of years, most of it pre-Enlightenment, compare to Qing Dynasty policies and wars at your leisure.

This kind of bad moral relativism is at the heart of Chinese logic and it just doesn't hold up.

Thankfully the US holds the 5th Fleet in the Gulf and ensure trade, mostly Oil is free for everyone including China who are by far the greatest recipients of Oil. The same thing for Suez, Panama Canal, Red sea and other parts of the world. The peace between Egypt and Isreal is pinned down by the US otherwise.

Given a choice between having China take your land/sea, or, having the US patrol it so that either sovereignty is protected - or international waters are kept open - which deal do you think nations will take? Even with having to put up with an ugly US diplomatic corps now and again, everyone will take Option B, it's perennially going to be better than Option A.

There's no excuse for doing what's going on in Xinjiang, and arguably Tibet as well, not in 21st century.

[bingbong70]

Disease was purposely spread in the Americas as part of a biological warfare operation (the quotes from military leaders are easy to find)...

> “I will try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is a pity to appose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniards’ method, and hunt them with English dogs, supported by Rangers and some light horse, who would, I think, effectively extirpate or remove that vermin.” — Col. Henry Bouquet, 13 July, 1763

> ”You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Exorable Race. I should be very glad your scheme for hunting them down by Dogs could take effect, but England is at too great a distance to think of that at present.” — Gen. Jeffery Amherst, 16 July 1763

...Which is part of the reason I believe covid may have been dropped in China by our allies. We have a long history of doing this to our economic competitors, China does not.

China also doesn't have a history of sending regime change operatives into countries, completely decimating them and killing millions of innocent foreign civilians. We follow this pattern almost every decade. The idea that the Chinese are a threat at your border and the US are not, is comical (as we see in the case of Xinjiang).

You seem to know nothing about Xinjiang other than what you are fed through media by CIA assets (Zenz, NED, Radio Free Asia). US/Turkey assisted extremists are being branded genocide victims to stop the belt and road project, unfortunately the ISIS/AlQ trained ones are also given Turkish passports and exported to other places in the world with the aid of and under the blind eye of the US.

The US killed the most innocent Muslim civilians in the past 2 decades and you really believe they care about the Muslims in Xinjiang? If the US was actually interested in stopping Uyghur extremism, you would see a large % of the population dead, instead we get 0 mass murder and the Chinese training civilians so economic prosperity leaves little room for extremism...

~3+ million dead innocent Iraqi/Syrian/Yemeni civilians would rather have had the Chinese approach than a guaranteed death sentence from the US, I expect.

[bingbong70]

An expansion on the terrorist training ground the CIA created in Syria which tens of thousands of Uyghurs attended (not commonly known in the US).

> "CIA trained and funded rebel groups, some ended up fighting alongside Al-Nusra (Al-Qaida in Syria). US weapons also ended up with Al-Nusra."

> "Turkey, a NATO member, trained their own rebel groups and also made sure to allow every jihadi to pass into Syria."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27343879