[otikik]

> good to see the totalitarian tyrant Xi wrecking China just as his inspiration Mao did back in the day

This affects real people who just found themselves on this situation and have no power to change it. Gleefully calling the situation “good” is callous and insensitive.

[safety1st]

I didn't read the parent as approving of totalitarianism or the damage that arises from it. Unfortunately the memories of Western elites seem to be very short when it comes to Chinese atrocities. The silver lining to the very dark cloud of current events is that it's increasingly hard for them to ignore how evil the Chinese system and its rulers are.

I was alive before we handed all our manufacturing capacity over to China and we got along just fine. I was alive while it was happening, too, and I remember it being sold to the public as the first step toward an inevitable transition to liberal democracy in China. All those lies are now completely unmasked. China lied, the MNCs lied, Western governments lied. Never forget all the lies we were told. Never forgive either.

[nobodyandproud]

> I was alive before we handed all our manufacturing capacity over to China and we got along just fine. I was alive while it was happening, too, and I remember it being sold to the public as the first step toward an inevitable transition to liberal democracy in China. All those lies are now completely unmasked.

I don’t think it was lies.

It was before my time, but the kitchen debate between Nixon and Kruschev was very ideological and I think the belief that market reforms would liberalize China, was genuine.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/1959-07-24.pdf

Some of the arguments used by Nixon haven’t stood the test of time:

Khrushchev: We have steel workers and peasants who can afford to spend $14,000 for a house. Your American houses are built to last only 20 years so builders could sell new houses at the end. We build firmly. We build for our children and grandchildren.

Nixon: American houses last for more than 20 years, but, even so, after twenty years, many Americans want a new house or a new kitchen. Their kitchen is obsolete by that time....The American system is designed to take advantage of new inventions and new techniques.

Planned obsolescence of course, introducing a raft of global problems.

If communism failed (and I believe it unambiguously has), Americans were blind to the limits of a market system:

Nixon: … Diversity, the right to choose, the fact that we have 1,000 builders building 1,000 different houses is the most important thing. We don’t have one decision made at the top by one government official. This is the difference.

It turns out that a central party or dictators can allow a market system, while maintaining an iron grip on powers.

[judge2020]

Countries and their citizens will go through turmoil and strife regardless of how people halfway around the world react to it. Using this to show the inefficiencies of CCP management is just commentary on how China's dictatorship system hardly works when your entire cabinet/advisory board is full of yesmen.

[coffeebeqn]

> have no power to change it

Who are these people? The one and a half billion Chinese are powerless to rise up? No government can subjugate a billion people. Their state is powerful but it only works because the citizenry are decently happy with their lives getting better over the last decades

[jeswin]

> Their state is powerful but it only works because the citizenry are decently happy with their lives getting better over the last decades

China has had a billion for more than 40 years now; the only signficant challenge to the CCP's dictatorship was at Tiananmen in 1989. Communism has developed fairly sophisticated tools to help retain control; all the way up from textbooks in schools to violence as needed.

[coffeebeqn]

I know. But if you look at the standard of living for the average Chinese over the last 40 years it is no surprise that there hasn’t been any major upheaval. Especially coming off of Mao’s deranged dark ages-level rule.

It’s really been more of a technocracy for most of that time. Deng for example was no Mao or Xi

[pirate787]

Yeah its also nothing like the horrors of Mao's Cultural Revolution and the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward.

[mensetmanusman]

People always have the power, but it requires the sacrifice your life for change, we are lucky we had our ancestors do that.