[itmayno]

The native citizens will come to HN and offer some rationalization. The non citizens will offer others. The reason is very simple. The dictator is paranoid about losing control and getting killed. Simple as that.

Long version: when you are facing internal party conflicts, alliance between US-UK-Japan-Australia-India-Taiwan-South Korea-EU which accounts for 90% of worlds wealth and war power 10x the magnitude and is against you, floods that gets worse every year, extreme heatwave that will eventually make Shanghai unlivable, delta Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, supply chain moving out, internal resistance from Hong Kong and tibet and xinjiang, and young generation lying flat. You are paranoid as hell and afraid to lose control so as to not get killed.

[dash2]

This is the basic story that Acemoglu and Robinson tell: ultimately, inclusive political institutions (their rather fluffy term for liberal democracy) will win because they allow for creative destruction and renewal in the economy. Dictatorship never creates lasting economic growth, because the dictator is supported by the status quo elites, who eventually become dinosaurs.

I'm not sure I believe it, but it's a bold prediction and worth thinking about.

[logimame]

And the alliance countries you've listed are also suffering from those exact same problems (climate change, Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, deindustrialization, widespread unrest, a hopeless young generation). And debatably, some of them have much worse on some fronts than China.

I do think that every country in this world, whether it be the US, China, or my country, are experiencing the same effects from the current configuration of global capitalism (environmental destruction, extreme inequality, housing crisis, cutthroat job competition, long working hours, alienation, depression), and the only thing it's different is how state governments are responding to the crisis. Out of all the governments in the world, China seems ahead of some Western countries in a few aspects (as a one-party state being able to control and crack down on a lot of things and enable strict policies against over-financialization and deindustrialization). However, I still do think that China's strong state measures are only a stopgap measure for the more fundamental political and philosophical problems that the entire world has right now.

[itmayno]

Sure some countries have some of the same problems, I don’t disagree. However, the magnitude of the problem is 10x worse for China. Remember that China is still extremely poor - 600M lives on $100/month. And another 500M lives on $1000/month. All this is the party’s doing, and the people won’t forget it. So when things goes bad like it is now for China, it will go really bad for its dictator.

Also other countries prob don’t have the problem of “what if the dictator was killed or dies early, and civil war and political struggle ensues”

[scarmig]

The 500M who live on $1k/month is a point of pride for the CCP; it's one of the legitimizers (probably the primary one) for its rule. China from 1980 onwards has produced the largest and most rapid wealth generation process in history.

Now, you can come up with counterfactuals about why it would have happened anyway, and that's a pretty reasonable position to take. But acting like the $1k/month figure is somehow damning of the CCP totally misunderstands the domestic situation in China.

[itmayno]

I like how you conveniently gloss over the $100/month folks.

And the $1k/month folks are still having a hard time buying a $300k house to get married and have children, while taking care of the elderly parents. Meanwhile they know about the party princelings driving around in lamborghinis and buying fendi bags to show on social media. Oh yeah, the $100/month folks know too. And they know about the yearly flooding that kills.

You think people struggling now is going to remember the bad times before? Nope. That’s not how human natures like envy, anger and disgust works.

[ghomrassen]

'Poverty alleviation' is one of their current blockbuster initiatives that gets massive air time. TV shows, documentaries, news reports, all focused on how committed the government is to fighting it.

How much is actually happening? Fuck knows. The government controls the press and the metrics coming out.

[bigbillheck]

> All this is the party’s doing, and the people won’t forget it.

By at least one metric, the PRC has managed to eliminate 'extreme poverty' (even Brookings agrees: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2021/01/25...)

[logimame]

In counterpoint, many people in the US will never forget when the political leaders have transformed an mainly industrial country which gave stable jobs for their households, into a deindustrialized husk of a country led by greedy bankers, rentiers, and scammers. All this is the two parties of the US's doing, and the people won't forget it.

We've seen plenty how democratic countries can go through civil war and political struggle, this isn't something that only happens to dictatorships. And I am just so tired of the dichotomies most people have in their minds for the current form of state governments, both China and the US's political systems are complex and nuanced enough that you can't really call it communism/capitalism or dictatorship/democracy anymore. I was just comparing about which government is actually more competent than the other for dealing with the current problems in the world. One seems just a little bit more competent than the other, but that's as far as it can get.

[desert_boi]

Not quite the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance.