[montblanc]

Not everything is measured by economic success. Liberal democracy is a value in of itself not just for financial gain. Could be that the Chinese system is better economically, who knows. But to me it sounds very alien to live there - I wouldn't want to. They don't align with most of my values. Now, present America which is fast becoming eaten by radicals may also become not aligned with my values at some point (at that point Europe will be the last standing), but for now it's better for people who appreciate liberal democracy.

[kiba]

It's hard to know if the information we get out of China is reasonably accurate, for a given value of 'reasonably accurate'.

It seems that the Chinese has problem with rampant cheating by both authorities and corporations, leading to many projects that seems impressive at first but are of questionable quality.

[montblanc]

For sure. The lack of transparency is a given in an authoritarian regime and I'm sure there are consequences. Isn't Covid a good example? Chinese scientists who tried to ring the alarm where harassed or worse when the whole outbreak was beginning. Kinda reminds me of what happened in Chernobyl.

[marderfarker2]

You also have to be aware of the language barrier/lack of voices from within China who can give you context of what is happening. News that you hear about China are mostly written by western media who has little to no clue about what actually happened (remember the Bloomberg report on the spy chip?). I would exercise caution when reading anything online, especially at this very low SNR climate.

Key to peace and tolerance is understanding, unfortunately China is like a blackbox to most, and people tend to get angry at things they don’t understand.

[montblanc]

> lack of voices from within China

Whose fault is that? China only has one voice as a policy. I'll take Western media's reporting over what the Chinese party is saying more often than not. The media has its own problems but still.