[tablespoon]

I think you're broadly correct. With regard to China, a lot of people's understanding is driven in large part by wishful thinking, which is a serious weakness and vulnerability.

> Sure lots of people disagree with the party, but that doesn't that they want a western liberal democracy. So lots of people will speak in favor of a benevolent elite and against populism or what they see as western chaos or oppression. When people are against the government, they aren't wishing for a different government system, just less corrupt or more benevolent authoritarians.

I think it's important to note those views are in large part created an reinforced a deliberate propaganda program. For instance, I believe one of the ideas the Chinese government pushes is the Chinese people "aren't ready" for democracy (while carefully preventing anything that could make them ready). When educated Chinese people were better exposed to ideas about liberal democracy, they were very clear that they wanted it (e.g. 80s leading up to Tiananmen Square, the Liberal Studies curriculum in Hong Kong), but the government has learned from those episodes and has taken action to get the ideological results it desires.

[dillondoyle]

+1. When you take what you're saying with the parent above you, Xi is also pulling all the state media strings to play up the less-corrupt benevolence thing - using it to consolidate power. Check out this recent good article about their extrajudicial 'repatriations' which has examples of the bragging in their government controlled media about it (kidnappings).

It's both trying to show less corruption and simultaneously scaring everyone away from dissent. Gross but seems powerful.

https://www.propublica.org/article/operation-fox-hunt-how-ch...

[jjaammee]

That's maybe true when young people in China first learned western democracy ideas. Nowadays I think most of educated Chinese believe democracy is not suitable for China. They didn't get the whole picture of western world, but who does nowadays. They see signs of culture revolution in western social movements and rejected those wholeheartedly.

[tablespoon]

> Nowadays I think most of educated Chinese believe democracy is not suitable for China.

Isn't that exactly 1) what the Communist Party wants them to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote?

[bllguo]

I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.

[lmm]

Can they? The US government has very limited "hard" control over what information is published, e.g. there are no banned books in the US and it would be impractical for the government to try to impose any such ban, in stark contrast to the PRC.

[bllguo]

the methods are clearly not as explicit and the US tolerates more diversity of thought on a lot of topics, but it absolutely exerts control over ideas it deems important. it's pretty hard to come out of our education system thinking poorly of ancient greece and rome, the liberal tradition, etc.

also note that the bar for success is a lot lower when up to 49% dissent is acceptable

[tablespoon]

>>> I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.

>> I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.

> Can they? The US government has very limited "hard" control over what information is published, e.g. there are no banned books in the US and it would be impractical for the government to try to impose any such ban, in stark contrast to the PRC.

Yeah, the massive amount of information control in China has no parallel in the US:

1. Almost all media is state-owned, and those that aren't are required to follow state directives about what and what not to cover (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/directives-from-the-mini...)

2. Huge numbers of people employed to implement social media censorship (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firew...: "A considerable amount of censorship is conducted through the manual deletion of posts, and an estimated 100,000 people are employed by both the government and private companies to do just this.")

3. Ditto for books and other publications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mainl...: apropos quote "In 2021, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China announced a ban on books in school libraries that engage in 'Western veneration'").

4. Requirements that every single website account, network connection, and phone number be traceable to an particular individual's ID (typically implemented by requiring phone number validation). This encourages self-censorship (https://www.lawfareblog.com/shrinking-anonymity-chinese-cybe...).

5. The actual 50 cent party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

6. Etc.

Sure you can mad-lib a Western country into my comment, but the comparison is facile.

[em500]

Assume for the moment that you're American, liberal, white collar and live in one of the more affluent blue coastal states. Now imagine that 75% of your countrymen are rabbid red state Trump supporters, of low education, get most of their news and information from low quality Facebook shares, and are clearly misinformed about the world in many ways. Now imagine that the Federal government is much more powerful than the States, and that representative democratic policy will mostly reflect the will of Trump True-believers, the people fully supportive of the Capitol riots. How principled are you really about the rule of democracy?

Now I'm not suggesting that this is a good analogy for the Chinese situation, nor that this is how highly education urban Chinese think about democracy (though I do know a few who do seem to think that way). What I am suggesting is that democracy is not always and everywhere the slam dunk win that some Western liberals appear to think it is.

I write this as a second generation immigrant raised since elementary school with Western democratic values. I do believe that despite some flows it is the best system for most of Europe and the US. My parents fled the madness of the Mao CCP regime, and they've probably seen the worst side of the CCP. Yet they are ambivalent whether a US-style democracy today would be superior for the Chinese citizens to the current CCP.

[tablespoon]

> Assume for the moment that you're American, liberal, white collar and live in one of the more affluent blue coastal states. Now imagine that 75% of your countrymen are rabbid red state Trump supporters, of low education....How principled are you really about the rule of democracy?

Though implicit in that fantasy is that, without democracy, the blue-state liberal gets to impose his will on the Trumpers. Something that can keep someone like that committed to democracy is (for instance) the thought that the alternative is could actually be a never-ending dictatorship of Mitch McConnell, beating humanity with its chin waddle forever.

> Now I'm not suggesting that this is a good analogy for the Chinese situation, nor that this is how highly education urban Chinese think about democracy (though I do know a few who do seem to think that way). What I am suggesting is that democracy is not always and everywhere the slam dunk win that some Western liberals appear to think it is.

Are you saying that educated urban Chinese are hesitant about democracy because they get to vicariously impose their will (or something close enough to it) on the rabble via the CCP?

[em500]

> Though implicit in that fantasy is that, without democracy, the blue-state liberal gets to impose his will on the Trumpers. Something that can keep someone like that committed to democracy is (for instance) the thought that the alternative is could actually be a never-ending dictatorship of Mitch McConnell, beating humanity with its chin waddle forever.

Right. I don't think it's a given that democracy is demonstrably superior to meritocracy or even aristocracy or enlightened despotism in delivering better outcomes for the majority of people (working definition, GDP/capita, or some honest measure of life satisfaction).

> Are you saying that educated urban Chinese are hesitant about democracy because they get to vicariously impose their will (or something close enough to it) on the rabble via the CCP?

I'm saying that I do know some educated urban Chinese who seemed to believe that, at least the post-Mao CCP leadership probably did a better job than a counterfactual popular elected leadership. I have no idea how representative those few opinions are of the general Chinese urban population. I don't know the country or politics well enough to agree or dispute such views either, but I can certainly see where they're coming from. Mobocracy by the uneducated masses was also one of the largest worries of the American Founding Fathers if I recall my history correctly. Bear in mind that the urbanization rate in China ("blue states" from the educated Chinese perspective) barely reached 30% until 2000 or so. And some Chinese friends summarized Mao-China as basically mob-rule by the peasants.

[beaunative]

The concern I have with China, right now, is that I suspect liberal democracy in China will be in favor of someone like Donald Trump, who will then have the power to turn it into dictatorship and this time 70% of the population will vote in favor of the Chinese Trump. Or likely a civil war would break out.

The ideological difference within China is not anything less then that of America. The gay marriage issue along could leave the country 80% to 20%, with the liberals on the 20% side. Yet in a authoritorian state like China, I don't think I've heard anything amount to hate crimes like that in the US, A lot of them would be scared to come out, but no one would be murdering them just for their identity. I think the issue with electoral democracy is that every issue is public, in constant debate, and people's political identity became so important to some that they are willing to kill.

People, expats especially, who live in affluent areas of China often lack the knowledge necessary to understand the less-developed areas of China. Like how people in California lack understandings of Alabama.

[bllguo]

> When educated Chinese people were better exposed to ideas about liberal democracy, they were very clear that they wanted it

This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.

[tablespoon]

> This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.

I'm not saying "no exposure," I'm saying they were "better exposed" in the past. You can even see changes like that happening in Hong Kong now, under the new crackdown on civil liberties. For instance, the government is now tinkering with the curriculum of a "Liberal Studies" course in Hong Kong to make it more "patriotic."

> I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.

Would you trade Donald Trump, Joe Biden, the Democrats, and Repubicans for Xi Jinping and the CCP (and everything that entails)?

[refenestrator]

Educated Chinese generally speak some English, they are way more exposed to our system/culture than we are to theirs.

[bllguo]

my experience is obviously anecdotal but interactions with Western-educated Chinese immigrants, many of whom left in the 80s and 90s, suggest that "democracy is the best" is not some universal wisdom that people will naturally converge to

If it were solely between these two choices? I'm not exactly ecstatic about these options, but I would. The fact that someone like Trump could come to power here - a fact that we, amazingly, seem to be trying to sweep under the rug - says this system is a complete failure and is just waiting to be exploited further.

[tablespoon]

> The fact that someone like Trump could come to power here - a fact that we, amazingly, seem to be trying to sweep under the rug - says this system is a complete failure....

That's unhelpful hyperbole. Trump was an idiot with charisma, but by way of comparison, he caused nowhere near the damage to the US that Mao did to China.

[bllguo]

the fact that a conman with ties to organized crime and indebted to foreign governments could ever assume the highest political office in this country is a complete disgrace. he was _voted_ in!

it scares me to think about what a more devious version of him could have accomplished. i think he would have caused untold amounts more damage if he were empowered to do so - credit to the US system neutering him then, I suppose I must concede that

i think it is disingenuous to bring up mao in comparison anyway, china today is vastly different politically

[fighterpilot]

Sure, liberal democracies have had many recent failures, but they're still the most prosperous societies on a per-capita basis by a gigantic margin. If an authoritarian or non-democratic country can achieve over $40,000 GDP per capita, then we can revisit.

[dirtyid]

If you go by PPP, top 5 per capita territories are Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Qatar, Macau. That's 3/5 non democracies. Rank 6-10 is Switzerland, Norawy, US, Brunei, HK. 5/10 non democracies.

Many systems can become prosperous if relatively small and sufficiently aligned to US foreign policy to preserve the hegemony. Democracies that don't will get crushed / contained inspite of "democratic peace". The real disruption of PRC's rise is an alternate system that could create a prosperous or even moderately wealthy society, despite US supremency.

[bllguo]

that's true. but none of this is happening in a vacuum. liberal democracies are also the ones trying to change or destroy non-democratic regimes by force. imo you can sum up everything evil China is accused of, and it would not come close to what we pulled in South America, the Middle East, and Asia

I'm all for a fair comparison. And as someone who currently benefits from Western ideals of personal liberties, I'd be happy to see it proven that they are superior. But let's make it fair

[quickthrowman]

> imo you can sum up everything evil China is accused of, and it would not come close to what we pulled in South America, the Middle East, and Asia

I know you said Asia and that includes China, but Western countries (and Japan) did similar things to China in the 19th and 20th centuries:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation