[throwusawayus]

at all levels ? there must be limits to this approach right ???

otherwise this way of thinking gets terrifying fast and rapidly descends into conspiracy theory land

example: "need to find a socially-acceptable solution to a demographic time bomb caused by decades of one child policy, while still maintaining ethnic homogeneity ? perform gain-of-function research to develop a vector that disproportionately harms the elderly"

to be absolutely clear, I don't believe this was actually the case in 2019 at all - but as an no-limits "end justifies the means" thought exercise - it is easy to arrive at inhuman dystopian nightmares

[stathibus]

It should surprise nobody that an authoritarian, centrally planned, and massively resource-rich country can perform infrastructure miracles. You don't have to stoop to conspiracy theories to understand this.

[chii]

> can perform infrastructure miracles.

Some of the infrastructure has lead to extra economic benefit beyond just the infrastructure stimulus. But other infrastructure might not - and i would call them economic waste (but not political waste).

Have a look at the train projects described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk

The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve a political purpose, rather than an actual productivity increase. Perhaps their leadership thought it was worth the spend, but this sort of spending would unlikely work in the US imho.

[lazide]

We literally did that with the US highway system, it was just right after WW2.

Same goals, same trade offs, same sometimes major wins, sometimes pointless spending.

[ggm]

Rail > Road for freight, and efficiency. America underfunded rail and the Eisenhower highway initiative demanded it, to justify the investment.

Chinese new year, more people travel in China than the whole of the USA, homecoming notwithstanding. It's mass transposition, there and back again.

They need trains. I've used them shanghai to Beijing, great service. I wish I'd been able to use the maglev in shanghai

[FredPret]

With freight, if you consider all factors, road is much more efficient for all but bulk loads or edge cases.

You can make more economical runs per month with trucks than with trains, meaning you get to have less stock on hand as a buffer on both ends.

This has many knock-on efficiencies - fewer resources tied up in goods, lower insurance expense, lower warehousing cost, and above all: a more flexible and responsive supply chain.

[unmole]

China expanded high speed rail that can't be used for freight. It makes perfect sense to connect megalopolises with such a network. But when you start building out to Podunk provincial towns when the passengers can't afford the high prices, they'll continue to take the bus. Meanwhile your shining example for modernity and progress turns into a debt bomb.

[eushebdbsh]

>China expanded high speed rail that can't be used for freight.

building out passenger rail frees up capacity for freight on old rail :)

this is actually a big reason HS2 in bongland is (was) getting built

[seanmcdirmid]

The maglev in Shanghai isn’t very usable: it doesn’t go to the city center, just somewhere remote in pudong. It is fast, but if you need to get to the airport from somewhere except one or two places in Shanghai a taxi would do better. But definitely ride it once.

[dotancohen]

  > The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve a political
  > purpose, rather than an actual productivity increase. Perhaps their leadership thought
  > it was worth the spend, but this sort of spending would unlikely work in the US imho.

You might want to read a bit about the Space Launch System, a well-known political jobs program that many consider a hindrance in advancing the art of space flight.

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html

[secondaryacct]

Yes at all levels, do you want me to tell you what we do to kill a virus ? :D

For natality dont just think today, think 50 years ago when the goal was to reduce it: forced abortion, abandonning your newborn at the nearest wet market (high volume of people) was very common. It's harder to force people to copulate, but I trust our overlords to find a way ahah

The virus however, I m more of the opinion that to fix SARS we decided to import thousands of vietnamese bats to study or such thing and fucked up one way or another. I dont think it was made to kill old people, it was a crazy large scale risky project to prevent the next SARS - the end justifies the means, but this time the means were very costly to foreigners. We dont care yet, or at least we managed to pretend our costs were still low enough not to execute every single person involved, as one should have done if millions of Chinese had died.

[Robotbeat]

China’s ZeroCovid policy worked pretty well, but it’s failing with Omicron. And unfortunately, the nonMRNA domestic vaccines aren’t terribly effective. So it’s possible millions of Chinese people will still die. (I hope not.)

[secondaryacct]

You're right, I think we dont prepare for the worst case. Im in HK and just today our dear leader said nobody could have predicted 2 millions HKers would be contaminated (5000 deaths).

Well, let s give her that but then the central gov, surely NOW they can predict 25% of China being contaminated ? How are they preparing ?

[Retric]

> demographic time bomb

China actually solved the excess men problem problem via ethnic cleansing.

Send men to reeducation camps while you import surplus men from another location to eliminate a minority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

It’s even more disturbing when you read up on the details, and consider the elderly aren’t yet a problem.

[ashwagary]

>China actually solved the excess men problem problem via ethnic cleansing.

How would the US behave if it had Wahhabist extremists near one of its borders? We've only seen how the US responded to some 6000 miles away in Afghanistan, most of them were brutally executed, not deradicalized or reeducated.

[kortilla]

“Here’s an unrelated thing an unrelated country did, therefore it’s okay.”

[makomk]

The US did not, in fact, brutally execute most of the population of Afghanistan. Remember, it's the Ugyur population as a whole that China has "deradicalized or reeducated" - not just active terrorists, not even religious extremists, but everyone.

[savingsPossible]

Are the Ugyurs comparable to Wahhabists?

Also, does the US uniformly target Wahhabists ?

[ashwagary]

The Uyghurs being targeted for deradicalization are Wahhabist (an offshoot of Salafism) that have a lot in common with, and in many cases directly trained by, Al Qaeda.

Granted, the net may be slightly larger than it needs to be due to China's high population density and the resulting fact that terroristic acts have a high human cost... but it's nowhere near the scale of our (US) net across Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan.

The vast majority of muslim communities in China have nothing to do with this kind of extremist ideology, don't commit acts of mass terror, and are not part of these deradicalization programs.

[seanmcdirmid]

The net worth a cast really broadly, and a Uighur doesn't have to be a Wahhabist to be labeled as needing re-education through labor, just expressing dissent is good enough. China has already done this with the rest of its population, even many Han were subject to these camps. The party has a lot of practice here and is only doing what it knows.

[ashwagary]

>many Han were subject to these camps.

Any source you can provide for this claim?

I've only seen evidence of these programs in certain Western parts of the country, mainly Xinjiang.

[throwusawayus]

i agree that is disturbing but it is not what i was referring to, sorry I meant excess old people - age demographics - not excess men.

based on projections china's population peaked ~last year. it is a shrinking population from here, and while this will be a huge problem in most of the world (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735230 discussed recently) but it is happening MUCH sooner in china, and at an unprecedented scale.

it is an existential threat and i am sure their government sees this, and it is scary to think what an "ends justify the means" way of thinking leads to with this problem

[Retric]

Yes, my point was that’s a looming problem but not currently an issue so we can only guess how their going to solve it. But, the options considered are anything up to including say romanticizing elderly suicide.

[jokethrowaway]

If we're lucky they'll pioneer growing babies entirely in vitro, no humans needed besides their DNA (which is branch of research I'd really like to see but morals in the West prevent that)

[mensetmanusman]

That is a good joke.

[droptablemain]

China is dealing with terrorism in a far more graceful way than the U.S. ever has. They're doing it with education and jobs.

[tsol]

Forcibly re-education and forced jobs(read: labor) is more accurate. Graceful isn't the right word. They're certainly more efficient, but their efforts are not without vast international condemnation. As much as I deplore the US response to terrorism, China's response isn't exactly a breath of fresh air

[bllguo]

what do you propose? because this all just sounds so naive. obviously the methods are horrible but there is no feel-good response to terrorism. can you really blame a nation for taking a zero-tolerance approach?

"international condemnation" is hardly a meaningful metric. It comes from 1. countries that have done and are doing far worse (slaughter, invasion, fomenting regime change), 2. countries that are sitting there wringing their hands as internal strife mounts over the increasing culture clash, and 3. countries that are lucky enough not to have these problems.

[ericmay]

> what do you propose?

I propose they just leave them alone.

[droptablemain]

Your solution to fundamentalist terrorism is to "just leave them alone?" My goodness, why has no one tried this brilliant strategy before?

[Retric]

Forced abortions are a little more than just education and jobs.

[FredPret]

Jobs in a concentration camp though

[misslibby]

Suppose you are an elite that wants to control the global economy, and you hit upon the idea that a "Great Reset" would be necessary.

How do you build a reset button? A "mild" pandemic seems like an interesting approach.

Also not saying this was the case at all. However, it is a fact that gain of function research was being conducted, sponsored by the USA.

Oh, and if the modern biotech solution fails, WW3 might do the trick the traditional way.

[technobabbler]

Man, this shadowy cabal was so good, they started a global pandemic that brought the world economy under its control, made everyone fall in line behind pandemic mandates, shut up all dissent and turned everyone into zombies who now work three times as hard.

That's exactly what happened, right?

[misslibby]

It kind of happened? Many countries established new levels of censorship and control. People installed tracking apps and got used to constant surveillance. All sorts of things. But not good enough, hence the need for WW3.

Anyway, not saying it was or is a master plan. Just saying that if you were hypothetically thinking about a reset button, a pandemic would be a clever approach, and within technological reach.

"The Great Reset" was the official motive of the World Economic Forum. They absolutely do want a reset.