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So there is a question that has been gnawing at me for the longest time: is PRC... Good? I mean:
I mean, there are obviously some tough things to get over (the whole free speech thing, how they handled COVID with safetyism that would make many in the West blush, all the other usual stuff), but genuinely, honestly... Following the news from China for a few years, I really can't help but envy the Chinese. Take down the communist iconography and I think that many on the right would see it similarly to Japan.
Excluding city states, it has the fourth lowest birth rate in the world, probably about 0.9 right now and falling fast.
They've got a few decades left, but before long China is gonna be the world's largest nursing home.
They've got a large reserve of the undeveloped hinterland population plus the lack of a democracy means less of an issue with total boomer hijack creating the void that Western civilization is currently disappearing into. The average Chinese boomer has way less power to enforce their will onto the general population.
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I live in the region and have been to China a bunch of times recently.
It's not a perfect society but also seems to be less keenly attuned to shooting itself in the foot than most Western countries at this point, and conditions on the ground have improved a ton in recent years. I personally much prefer going to China to Japan for a bunch of reasons, as controversial as some people will inevitably find that. There's a reasonably competent system in place with longterm goals that doesn't get easily derailed by ridiculous screeching or idpol.
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Go live there for a while, travel the country and then come to the same conclusion as pretty much every other foreigner, which is "No, god no, absolutely not".
People here have touched on the topic of the PRCs moral bankruptcy and how unpleasant the culture is, but I'm going to focus on something a little more mundane and say that if the PRC becomes ascendant and starts trying to export soft power via cultural exports, you will weep and beg for the woke media to return to save you.
It is my firm belief that Chinese opera should be classified as a form of torture and America missed a trick by not staging mandatory performances at Guantanamo. Lion dances are great though, I'm fine with them exporting that.
My riff on this for years has been how poorly Chinese cultural and political export industry goes. It's like an early model AI trying to write a birthday card for your mum. The words and sentiment are there. But it just feels like 15 degrees off somehow.
Their political engagement with the west is just cringe. When they try to pressure western countries it just comes off as the third born child turning 25 and finally standing up for themselves at the family barbecue. Everybody stands there quietly for a moment until big sis sniggers behind her hand and a smiling dad tells everybody to settle down.
Chinese news, from serious journalism to state mandated military propaganda is like something you'd read in a sci fi novel. "How can people take this seriously lol?"
Cultural export from China is crazily uncharismatic. And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community. Nobody likes china, nobody outside of china knows what's going on in china, and nobody in china knows what's going on inside china either.
For all their economic progress, China have been totally unable to evolve in that cultural sphere. They can do the Peter Theil style "import all the good business ideas and scale them" but because they're locked in on maintaining their own cultural identity, which the CCP guards with an iron fist, they just cannot import Hollywood or Reddit. Because if they did, they'd feel the cascading oblivion of Western culture. A culture that would endanger the CCP more and more every day.
The result is a pretty ghastly and stagnant cultural climate that's stuck in, at best, the 90s.
But they have fast trains at least.
China is the big replicator. Their biggest cultural exports are Arknights, Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, all exploitative online games with anime art, nothing original. However, they can simply make a hundred more gachas and export the one that is exceptionally good.
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The US is losing its luster very quickly in Europe.. Hard to expect better elsewhere.
Do you actually believe this? Hollywood and Reddit, in 2026, really, that's the all-crushing maw of the cultural singularity, the engine powering Cthulhu's inexorable march of progress?
That's not really how the youth feels. Watch some streamers man.
Very much of this confident American commentary is just totally divorced from current reality. Their games are crushing it, their social media is extremely popular, their products are winning real respect. You're declining on literally every metric and don't even know it yet. You engage with the funny state propaganda staffed by the failsons of officials and assorted dregs of the Chinese society and think that's the spearpoint. It's the rear end.
USA has far more interests in playing world police, anyways. If anything China's fairly deliberate about not taking over any of the 'USA must feed the entire world and defend it and yaddayaddayadda' roles that have developed over the last few decades.
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The Western media's been nosediving in quality since the rise of wokeness, though. I'd prefer 20 year old Western highlights against current China stuff, but right now it's essentially Tiktok noise v Tiktok noise for a lot of casual media. I watched more decent quality Chinese films last year than I did Western ones, albeit maybe 2025 was just a bad year for Western Film.
The Chinese system isn't perfect but reigns in antisocial random battle encounters on public transport and seems to be trending in the right direction.
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On the other hand Chinese cartoons and mobile games are ascendant and while still niche are quite competitive with Japanese ones.
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One of the cognitive biases that irritates me most in the Western thinking is «ideological similarity = moral good». Democracies are good if you're democratic, nationalisms are good if you're nationalist, Putin is good if you're Based, and the whole nonsense about the Judeo-Christian Tradition of course. It's probably an outgrowth of the Western European/Hajnal Line selection for participation in non-clannish moral communities – parishes, religions, nation states. Regardless of its historical adaptability in the parochial intra-European context, it's facile. Ideological similarity can help in alliance-building due to the shared conceptual language, but it can also create conflict if the ideology points you towards the same scarce resource rather than some mega-project. Different branches of Communism are mortal enemies because each wants to remake the world in their idiosyncratic manner, even as they are infinitely more similar to each other than to non-Communisms. And nationalisms are the primary example. The meta-level rule is just «my people first», for whatever definition of «people»; it's not even an ideology in the proper sense but an intellectual framework for advanced tribalism. What interests do a Han Chinese nationalist and a MAGA Heritage American have in common? They both want their people to have more resources and power to deny resources to the other tribe. Some rational win-win cooperation is possible, and common knowledge about incentives may help reaching the equilibrium, but ultimately it's a natural foundation for a zero-sum game. Ideally, you want others to cooperate unconditionally and be free to defect.
That said, I do think that the PRC is basically good. Or rather, they have a holistic notion of "good" that leads to a meaningfully healthier civilization, which is at once competitive and not very aggressive. Among all else, they have
Now, it's not like the Chinese people have an infallible internal compass pointing to goodness; what is and what isn't seen as «superior behavior» is contingent on the social consensus. But the consensus isn't totally deluded or hypocritical either, and crucially, it can be steered by the elite that has skin in the game and wants to stay elite for generations to come.
It's a rare, strong and valuable package. It also has a plethora of failures not shared with the Western civilization and/or others, which may (or may not) be intrinsic to their system and impossible to ameliorate without compromising the strong parts.
I view it as an experiment among other experiments. Thus far it has been impressive, but research continues. It'll probably be good for the Han Chinese in the long run. Whether it'll be good for the rest of us… well, they'll definitely solve change on their own, for one thing. Just no way around it at this point, they have made solar dirt cheap, they're making battery storage dirt cheap, they've bulldozed through the European degrowth bullshit by proving that you can have both economic growth and low carbon emissions. Their own emissions have been stagnant for like 2 years now despite ≈6% annual electricity consumption growth, exports to the developing world have high double digit CAGR, it's a self-reinforcing loop with no discernible limit. Anthropogenic climate change used to be a big deal politically, Westerners are still debating kooky conspiracy theories at the behest of the fossil lobby, but soon people will realize we won't need to bother anymore, renewables simply make more economic sense.
That's one thing. There are more things. You can solve many problems with an insanely productive large scale economy. Mainly they'll be solving their problems, though. They don't have any moral commitment to international charity.
P.S. I have to say, while some skepticism on China is warranted, takes like @Amadan's here are very blackpilling.
Just how uncurious do you have to be to remain so ignorant of the 2nd biggest nation on the planet that makes half of all your shit, that has been the only state to retaliate and fight you back just in the course of this year's tariff insanity, your supposed arch-nemesis, the oldest surviving continuous civilization etc. etc.? As far as I'm concerned, Han Chinese are the closest thing we have to an alien species (maximally distinct and consequential of all non-Western groups), and China is the main story of the world's development over the last two millenia, only briefly deposed by the European diaspora; it's crazy interesting, but it's relegated to the same basket as Russia (the last European empire, mainly distinguished by its backwardness and large near-Arctic possessions) and «Gulf States» (…come on now). I've been saying on this forum for years that Based Russia is an embarrassing LARP cooked up by the likes of Surkov, that we're fake and gay corrupt atheists with some talent for theatricality (shared by yours truly) and bog standard nationalist-authoritarian schticks. I love my people, there are some very cool things about us, but it's just not a big deal. How can you not notice that, say, they can routinely create a new industrial equipment plant in 1 year? Or that they're The Only Country that has drastically increased its share in high-quality research in many critical fields? That it's no longer just «catching up»? From the fresh NBER review:
And it's all like this. Russia? Saudi Arabia? Really? Where does one get the chutzpah to look down on this? How is this psychologically possible? Is this just because the US has barred imports of high-tier branded Chinese goods like EVs and Huawei phones, and the industrial stuff they do export and dominate in (from advanced chemistry batteries to John Deere parts) gets wrapped into American-branded shells, so the only thing you see is dolls, baby strollers and crappy cheap plastic and chinesium tools from ebay?
I feign the bafflement, to be clear. Theirs is a highly illegible and uncharismatic culture, their advertisement smells fake and gauche, all those drone shots of LED-lit skyscrapers and tiktok reels with high-pitched alien music. It's very easy to appreciate intellectually but it's not in-your-face amazing like the US or Europe or Japan used to be. Still, I am blackpilled with the lack of intellectual… hunger among the Western commentariat.
Westerners enormously overrate the value of their taste and gut feeling. The Chinese don't really need to hide strength&bide time; their natural low charisma and Western preoccupation with signals isomorphic to reproductive value indicators did all the work for them.
It's darkly flattering how very seriously, in comparison, my own people had been taken during the Cold War — with all our grinding poverty, our low trust and laziness, our dysfunctional empire of subsidized third worlders, our bonkers suicidal economic system, and our petty, unvirtuous leadership. Essentially just because we can write, sing, dance, fuck well. Because we can pose and flex to make Americans cast Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago and imagine themselves scrappy underdogs, while being precisely the opposite.
So I'm trying to use our theatrical virtues to correct the record.
The level of ignorance well-educated Americans have about China is honestly baffling, especially considering how many Chinese nationals literally live among them, how easy it is now for anyone with enough curiosity to see at least what Chinese social media is actually like, and how the civilian and bureaucrats pretend to take China seriously. A few weeks ago Scott Alexander in his open thread, quoted someone claiming that China has a whopping 50% youth unemployment rate (to his credit, he did acknowledge that he hadn’t verified the number). And of course during any discussions you get the usual “social credit score” or “cook the book” talk points. If people wants to talk about overproduction or involution or demographics or the pathological striver culture or the weak cultural output, I’m all for discussion. But using those recycled talk points from ten years ago is all so tiresome.
I sometimes wonder whether Americans today have roughly the same level of understanding of China as people had of the Soviets back in the day. Or maybe Russia being (at least in our Oriental mental map) Western meant it was better understood? Genuinely not sure. Don’t you want to know your enemy, if thats what we are?
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Would you happen to have a citation/link on Confucius's doctrine of shame/virtue? Would be very interesting for me to compare to the Greeks.
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Are China's economic fundamentals sound? Do they not have a problem with cooked books and all the usual problems of a command economy that can make everything look like it's absolutely splendid until it's not? Do they not have their own demographic issues?
I am not "incurious" or saying I don't think China is a first world power. Of course it is. I am not "looking down" on them. Their technological progress, and their prodigious transformation since the days of the Cultural Revolution, is truly impressive. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of rot underneath. Or that they have already become the future hegemon, however much they may intend it.
There is a lot of ruin in a country, as they say- the West, and the US, are arguably coasting now until our own wheels come off, and China may be able to coast longer. Who knows? But it bemuses me that people who are quick to point out all the rot eating away at the West, despite us still being, in most respects, in a much superior position (which I do think is near a tipping point), take every piece of knob-slobbering news about Sino-ascendancy and their roaring economy and industrial output at face value. Because, good gosh, at least they aren't "woke."
They do but atleast they're producing physical goods instead of a weird vibe-based service model that inflates the fuck out of the value of basic requirements for living. The Chinese are largely housed (since the government decided to batter the fuck out of the upper-middle class by reigning in their property appreciation), the demographic issue is there but the Chinese elderly don't have the same ability to distort the economic system by demanding massive accommodation and they seem to be somewhat trying to maintain a society that actually builds things.
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Absolutely. The world's strongest talent pipeline, the world's most competitive market, the world's best infrastructure. Some things like capital markets need major work, but they are simply the least bullshit large economy on Earth.
It's not really a command economy, their state plans are guidelines. What does happen is, for example, suboptimal investment due to provinces rushing to fill the quotas and creating unproductive competition. The cooking is not a big contributor at this point.
The US has no experience dealing with a competent adversary, so I understand reaching for a cached example, but it's laughable to compare them and their problems to the Soviets. Soviets exported… crude oil and timber, so I guess they were about as advanced an economy as Canada. Chinese export, for example, humanoid robots to work at Airbus and Texas Instruments. Is this all a big Potemkin village? Is everyone in the West just bribed (with money created by deficit spending probably) to purchase inferior goods and help Xi save face? Maybe, but then that means that Western economies and societies are inferior in another way, if they're vulnerable to such tactics. Personally I think it's mostly about productivity.
The nature of the rot is what is in question. I will not deny stuff like oppressing Christians (though I will say that the specific Christians oppressed last time were revealed to be the Zion Church, with family members in American anti-China think tanks, and are obviously part of the US-Zionist intelligence network; more grassroots Christians also sometimes get stomped on). I could write about involution, or about the insanity of LGFVs, or cratering fertility and nearly South Korean gender animosity. But those are specifically Chinese issues. They are largely immune to «generic Communist» strains of rot because they are not generic Communists, have a completely unique system and can only be properly understood as their own civilization.
China's barely communist by the definition of other systems. Even Mao's historical status inside China is in a weird spot where he's praised but also essentially nobody agrees with the cultural revolution and the worst excesses of his reign. I'd also rather have too heavyhanded handling of religious issues than the current Western meme of 'let the Islamists do whatever'
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I mean China is one of the world's most morally bankrupt societies, they lie all the time to everyone (foreign and domestic), they have the most stealing of any country (primarily in the form IP theft), don't really believe in international treaties and society, engage in genocide, oppress their population, clearly want to steal Taiwan (jury is out on how bad they'll be about this) and during a time when we are realizing how much we've fucked the environment they refuse to do anything but worsen the problem.*
What they have (at least superficially, it isn't totally clear) is strength.
That's enough for some people, I'm not sure it is for me.
*I don't think any of these are controversial but please let me know if so.
I think your points e.g. about not believing in international treaties or China worsening environmental problems, are obviously nonsense at least in comparison to the US (how anyone can still say this with a straight face after everything that happened last year is both interesting and sad), and not really worthy of discussion especially considering how you responded to others arguments below. And of course saying that our society is the most morally bankrupt is just silly considering how (unfortunately) exposed Americans are to other low trust immigrant societies. But it is hard to argue that the average Chinese person is less morally bankrupt than the average American. I know what my preference would be if I ever had to choose.
It’s pretty apparent that China, as of this year, is still a fairly low trust society, despite how much progress it has made (and despite how safe, clean, and orderly the major cities are). There is a genuine mistrust between people, which is reflected in the hypercompetitive, striver culture. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, and competition with others is seen as a zero sum game. This kind of mentality is quite common among Chinese people, and it’s sorta reflected in web novels, one of the few semi-successful Chinese cultural output in the West. Of course also reflected in the toxic work cultures in Chinese companies overseas (eg tiktok).
I remember a few weeks ago there was a discussion about how high-trust societies were built, and how impossible that now feels. I think Chinese society may actually be building one right now, through harsh and draconian laws, and through education. From my experience, my generation is certainly more trusting than my parents, which is a low bar considering how the Cultural Revolution and the purges destroyed the good and the noble and turned everyone else into cynical non-believers. Like many things, I think our society is moving in the right direction although still deeply flawed and feels hopeless at times. I don’t think Americans feel the same way about their own society.
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The "IP theft" thing seems like a forced/propagandistic framing of something that only really amounts to "they are different from us", because it's using the non-central fallacy to associate a nearly universal among humans moral principle (no taking someone else's exhaustible goods) with something quite different and more narrowly distributed (no copying ideas).
Going down this route just will result in us relitigating multiple decades of standard internet piracy arguments, but you need to acknowledge that at least "the notion of intellectual property is fake and gay corporate propaganda that Western culture was successfully brainwashed into believing" is at least a view that exists and therefore nonchalantly using it as an argument that Chinese society is "morally bankrupt" is a form of petitio principii.
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A few things in order.
The common Scientific argument for this belief is the famous civic honesty study where the Chinese returned lost wallets at the lowest rate among all samples including clear shitholes, 7%. The authors decided to exclude Japan (a famously Based and Honorary Aryan society) from the study because the Japanese had similarly low return rates due to idiosyncrasy of their policy around lost items.
In the study design adapted to local customs (eg including WeChat rather than email contact in the wallet – the Chinese don't use email), the return rates jump to 59%, which is around Canadian result in the original study.
It's just bog standard biased research, confirmation of prior belief. Western sociology is pretty hollow once you look at it closely, both in its woke «Science has Spoken» and based «forbidden knowledge» branches.
This has become a self-reinforcing belief because the more impressive results they get, the less it is trusted. As a matter of fact I think Americans lie more at this point. For example, Chinese infrastructure definitely gets built, we can see it from space. Is there graft? Certainly, and much of it is likely not even needed. But graft is not the main story. Americans meanwhile just collectively appropriate vast sums, do nothing of value and lie to themselves that it's mere «inefficiency». Chinese products, especially high-end ones, work well enough to drive dozens of countries into trade deficit, Chinese scientists are sought after in the most ruthlessly competitive companies, Chinese commitments are fulfilled, concrete Chinese threats are followed by promised retaliations (unlike American ones). Where's the lie? They certainly lie at times, but probably no more than your typical developed nation. And importantly, they have improved a lot in just a few years, many travelers like Molson note it. Even a Georgetown China hawk Fedasuyk writes: «If the pessimists are right about American decline, if we really are headed toward some kind of Pax Sinica, it won’t be because of how many EVs roll off the line at a BYD factory — it will be because China has rediscovered something we’ve lost: How to make people feel part of something larger than themselves; how to take pride in historical achievement; how to sustain the promise of a national project worth contributing to.» Like, you can dismiss it as more Potemkin village, of course. But it's getting very solipsistic.
«IP theft» was overwhelmingly done in the form of legal joint ventures, though there's too much noise written on this. Extraordinary estimates of lost value are premised on the false assumption that Western IP proprietors would have been able to produce at anywhere near Chinese scale. Currently they produce enough IP of their own to force Macron to beg for reverse tech transfer via JVs in France. I guess they've ran out of things to steal.
Does anyone? Americans are are currently trying to annex a piece of an ally they're treaty-bound to defend. What «society»? On the object level, over the last two decades they've done more to help developing countries with BRI than the entire West did in five, they are the ones building roads and power plants in Africa. Their model is transactional but much more powerful than hopeless charity.
For a very relaxed definition of genocide, I guess. «Cultural genocide» or something. Feels quaint after Gaza. More seriously it's just coercive modernization of a premodern people, and Uighur situation is arguably improved relative to pre-genocide times.
They deny their population certain political rights standard in the West, in exchange for improvement in life expectancy (already on par with the US), purchasing power and overall dignity of existence. Even in the last few years where real wage growth has been slow, they continually get more and better goods and infrastructure, with eg households consuming 8% more electricity year on year and already above the EU median. It's a very paternalistic form of oppression and I believe one preferable to something like Russia or the United Kingdom.
Yes they've made it very clear, have been very consistent on this, and forced roughly everyone to stop recognizing Taiwan as a nation. I would prefer nations that strongly disapprove of that to recognize Taiwan again. From their perspective it's an unfinished civil war, which is a legitimate cause for annexation. Given that the ruling party of Taiwan has discredited itself with bad governance and petty tyranny and the pro-Mainland KMT is likely to win, and considering abusive American treatment of Taiwan and better life/jobs opportunities in the coastal cities of the Mainland, they are increasingly likely to get reunification by peaceful means. I will concede that the insistence on getting ready to use force is immoral.
They are single-handedly solving climate change. They have driven costs of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines through the floor and continue to drive them lower. They've upgraded their coal fleet to pollute less, they're investing a lot in reforestation and cleaning up in regions with rare earth extraction etc. They pollute a lot becuse they do a lot of stuff, but they are in fact pretty sincere about ecology.
I have put vastly more effort into this than you did, but admittedly it's also mostly assertions that can be dismissed (I could support every one with a citation if I cared though). Just irritated at how easily people in rather mediocre societies can rattle off some half-baked condemnations.
Also to a large degree the inability of a Western country or Western-adjacent one to deal with issues of Islam in a sensible, structured form of oppression like China handled the Uyghur is why you end up with massive shitfests like Gaza. Israel has been sufficiently handcuffed from actually reshaping Palestinian society (and the Gazaites are just another level of insane death cultists) that it produces forever wars and lingering issues.
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You wrote more but that does not mean I'm convinced about most of your points:
RE: Lying - The West typically attempts to have objective reliable processes outputted by the government and corporate sectors that represents various things. China does not. For a recent and important example consider COVID policies, statistics, and information.
RE: IP Theft - I don't believe your statements on this are factually accurate.
RE: International Society - The U.S., Western Europe, and the weaker countries all at least pretend. China acts like the other "evil" countries. That is not good company.
RE: Genocide - Meh, I'm not particular excited about this one but the genocide people seem to argue that it counts.
RE: Oppression - You can get disappeared just as easily in China as Russia. You can get welded into your home during COVID. From the rich to the poor nobody has any rights unless they are an in favor party elite, all it takes is to get noticed. To add to the angst is an anarcho-tyranical element, petty corruption is everywhere and the country just sweeps through areas every once and awhile to execute or imprison anyone misbehaving. The superficial competence of the regime makes it worse not better.
RE: Taiwan - In the case of Russia/Ukraine the national pride aspect is somewhat countered by other somewhat compelling reasons such as the ports and agriculture. In the case of China/Taiwan it seems to primarily out of imperial angst, as the high tech industries that give Taiwan are fragile and would likely not survive kinetic action. If some democratic process occurs obviously it will be a bit different.
RE: The environment - While China does contribute to some renewables I challenge you to find a reputable source indicating Chinese is better for the environment than the West. This perception is not driven by mere propaganda effort.
I repeat, "the West" routinely does corrupt shit that people in China get executed for. Virtually the entire American MIC would get the lethal injection in China, it's just legal and accepted. Being forthright about your vices is kind of a virtue, but only so long as people are not deceived that vice is actually okay.
What about COVID? They had wrong priorities, but broadly competent execution and thus very low deaths for the entire period of the lockdowns until Omicron. Maybe some data had been fudged at the margins. The denial is, again, circular.
What about statistics? For example they are often accused of distorting their GDP growth; the Fed thinks it's about accurate, just smoothed for whatever internal accounting reasons. They have significantly more honest accounting of manufacturing productivity, and accordingly higher productivity, both in units per worker and output per dollar of cost, which is to be expected seeing as how they clobber everyone in the global market. Tons of «Western objective reliable processes» is Eagle Burger Freedom Institute for Democracy inventing a contrived composite index to rank countries or companies from best to worst, it's so far divorced from base layer of reality that I have no idea who needs that. I don't know what you mean by «information».
Regarding pretense: «China has stated its position on multiple occasions on Greenland. The international law underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is the foundation of the current international order and must be upheld. We urge the U.S. to stop using the so-called “China threat” as a pretext for itself to seek selfish gains.» I have no idea what you mean, they «pretend» as much as anyone, and they also don't bomb random countries or kidnap their presidents (they totally could stage coups in Africa for their benefit at this point, they do not). Your morality and idea of good and evil are comically self-serving.
We've just had a Chinese person explain that this is wrong, the petty corruption is pretty much gone, why do you believe you have a better clue as to the state of their corruption or how «superficial» the competence is? I think Xi is a true believer in anti-corruption because he's a child of true believers, has been a true believer all his life, became Chairman on the anti-corruption agenda at the peak of Chinese corruption scandals, purges loyalists who've been growing corrupt, and by all visible indicators corruption is down. It's not anarcho-tyranical, there's no anarchy to speak of, at worst there's tyranny. You're just rehashing tropes 10-15 years old.
Other tropes about disappearances etc. are also unsubstantiated.
They do not "while contribute to some renewables". They are the only player in town., eg “in 2023 China produced 98% of solar wafers, 92% of cells and 85% of panels globally”. They carry the entire renewables revolution, pretty much single-handedly, for the last decade, they are the ones who kept investing in it and made it economical rather than a boutique graft opportunity for Europeans, and now they're exporting cleantech for higher value than the US exports fossils. This was a conscious choice, they could have just kept scaling coal consumption.. It's largely strategic but also ecologically minded.
Whether «the West» is broadly good or bad is uninteresting because the West is largely made up of two parts: deindustrializing decaying states like the UK and most of the EU, and major fossil producers like the US/Canada/Norway/Australia. Someone needs to have industry to produce all the goods our industrial civilizaiton relies on. This someone happens to China. In light of this fact they've done pretty well on developing towards a more ecologically friendly regime.
Basically, the question for me isn't whether they're good or bad in some absolute sense. The question is how responsibly have they acted in their particular circumstances, which is, starting (say, after the death of Mao – I won't get into the merits of Maoism now; his power was a product of his key role in the creation of the state itself and unfortunately he couldn't have been dislodged earlier) with a very large, very poor and very angry population, in possession of little resource endowment but massive military potential, and facing an ideologically hostile West committed to convert or destroy them in the long run. What did they prioritize, and how did they execute? The standard for such situations is very, very low. In this context, I say they've acted with nearly unprecedented prudence and restraint for a major power, and produced unexpectedly good results: reduction of poverty at home, exporting deflation abroad, bailing you guys out in 2008, maintaining the economic viability of dozens of small states now, and not going on a conquest spree, even as they've been the largest industrial power with the largest army for many years now.
Morally, it is comparable to the rise of the United States.
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They did a bunch to get up to speed but now that relative parity has been achieved there's inherently less need to delve into such behaviors. If anybody but the Chinese was capable of manufacturing at scale, this would be a bigger issue, but alas the West has largely abandoned 'actually making things' and the South is the South.
They are absolutely still engaged in state sponsored industrial espionage, and in a way that is pretty much unmatched given the way the state and companies over lap.
They still engage in a lackadaisical approach to international copyright (not that I am that mad about it).
Still continue to basically ban foreign competitors of various tech things and then make their own version.
One of the biggest ethical problems of the country is also its strength - state power and totally unfair business practices.
Certain you can do that, and you can get away with it if you are China but it is deeply unethical.
I don't understand how this is bad. Had they not done this, there would just be Google China, Meta China and so on instead of locally grown Tencent and Alibaba. Imagine being a major power and wanting to decouple from America for whatever reason in the future and you basically can't because all government and corporate infra is ran on Microsoft Teams and AWS. You just can't let that happen. This is Europe's reality right now by the way
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Based China. Intellectual property is not real property.
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Meh. They're atleast productive and have some sort of longterm vision about this stuff. 'Genocide' is a tad strong about the Uyghur but they seem to be the only non-Islamic country to actually figure out how to moderate a population instead of creating a longterm cancer. They're improving some of their behavior on the environmental issues, most of Tier 1 China is shockingly clean and non-polluted.
Well the prompt was "good." If it was something else like "most likely to get us off planet" I might have a different answer, but I do think in terms of "goodness" they are pretty damn shit.
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Not even close. We have India (and the similar Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc.), every Arab country, Africa, etc. which are in a whole different league.
Nearly every right winger will agree that international rules based order is just a fantasy.
I haven't looked into it personally, but most Chinese living overseas with access to western media will still say this is false. Not sure if it's CCP pre-brainwashing in action or they just know more about the situation, but they clearly don't find the western narrative convincing.
True. Though no worse than e.g. UK.
Sure. USA clearly wants to steal Greenland too.
I'd argue that's Trump, rather than the USA, whereas Taiwan seems to be a popular acquisition with the rank and file (or at least the rank and file Party Members).
You have a system where people choose who represents them by voting, and you accept the rules of that system. You don’t get to shrug off the consequences or pin the responsibility on “the other side” when it’s convenient. Trump represents your country. He is your country.
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The Chinese tech sector is second rate, and only survives on the absolute impenetrable protectionism that the government provides. Besides tiktok, no matter the big tech, China's is inferior. Weibo is worse than Twitter, Taobao is worse than Amazon, Baidu is worse than Google, Wechat is worse than WhatsApp etc. And Chinese online advertising is so scummy that it makes godawful western advertising industry look like a bunch of saints.
Rideshare and meal delivery are better in china because they aren't tech companies, they're delivery companies and taxi services, and have a far lower cost of labor in china.
You don't know how bad things really are, because none of the shit that happens there is allowed to viral on chinese media, and also won't get translated into English. Of course it's unfortunate that in the west half of the elected officials serve the enemy, but that's kind of a natural consequence of half the population voting for the enemy.
Japan's tech industry is in shambles though. Galapagos is over and Japan is basically standardizing along the lines of every other western aligned country.
Have you extensively compared these yourself? They're engineered in different ways to suit different tastes but unilaterally proclaiming Wechat worse than Whatsapp is tricky when there's a ton more stuff running through Wechat and it's kind of developed its own niche.
Yes I've used wechat and it's extremely scuffed. The fact that there's a mobile wallet on there has zero bearing on the messaging functionality. And "mini-apps" that westerners gush about are just webviews with an injected payment api.
Western messaging apps- imessage, whatsapp, telegram, discord, etc all have tons of polish on their mobile apps.
What should also be telling is that literally zero people use wechat who don't also have someone currently residing in the PRC in their circle. If wechat was good, there would at least be a community somewhere that uses it.
It being a pain in the ass to verify your account as not a spammer as a foreigner is part of that, which admittedly might be a chicken and the egg situation of 'It's hard to verify since there's no large independent foreign userbase and it's hard to have a large foreign userbase when you get kicked off for not verifying'
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Above all else, I just want to be a good Catholic. And America is one of the best places in the world to be a Catholic, while China is one of the worst. If you have other priorities and China comes out on top, you can try immigrating.
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Other than being a totalitarian police state with no civil rights except those the government pretends to provisionally grant you, and most of its meritocracy and probably its economic numbers being as fake and gay as ours, sure, China is great.
Look, this gets trotted out fairly regularly about a lot of places that are on the surface technocratic modern states with a glitzy veneer where, as long as you are not a dissident, a minority or outsider, or basically anyone disfavored by the state, things are pretty fine. People say similar things about the Gulf states. I remember a few years ago, a lot of "based" trads were saying similar things about Russia: sure, maybe its kind of a little bit corrupt and run by oligarchs and Putin is a dictator who has people who displease him thrown out of ninth floor windows, but he cosplays as a Christian and they don't put up with woke nonsense.
We don't hear that quite so much since the beginning of the Ukraine war, but you still see a little of it here from our Russophiles, who mostly still love Russia because it's not globohomo woke. Leftists put Ukrainian flags in their profiles, therefore invading Ukraine might be... good?
Even the USSR and Nazi Germany were kind of okay for a lot of the population most of the time, and if the thing you hate above all else is anything that Western leftists like, then you can make a case that they were... good because they didn't have pride parades or hordes of imported Africans, I guess.
But I think very few people moaning about how awful things are in the West would actually find they prefer living in China. Unless you are the sort of person who can keep your head down and eat shit your entire life. People angry about having to sit through DEI sessions really underestimate the level of shit-eating that's required in places like China.
It's not quite your point, but it's fairly incontrovertible that today's Russia is the best Russia there's ever been. And it's even quite liberal by historical standards.
What you don't have is fair elections or genuine political competition, combined with somewhere between 40 - 200 political murders over the last 20+ years. But name one Tzar or Bolshevik with a better track record.
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Can you describe what you're talking about? This is a genuine question; I don't have any direct knowledge of what living in China is like. If I were to guess I would assume a certain amount of obsequiousness towards the Xi and/or the CCP is required but I imagine this feeling a lot more tolerable than being forced to pray at the alter of DEI (I sort of picture it as being similar to having to recite the pledge of allegiance or something).
Of course if you're a Uighur living in Xinjiang I'm sure the situation is quite different.
The most salient difference is that I’m the us if you get tired of praying at the alter of DEI, there is in fact a political process, repeated every 2-4 years which enables you to select new leadership. Totalitarian states are so centralized that dramatic change can only really happens after the leader dies. What if China’s next leader is more like Mao?
It’s also my understanding that China doesn’t even permit free movement for most people (people can move but are not automatically entitled to receive public benefits), https://www.citymonitor.ai/analysis/china-theres-no-freedom-movement-even-between-country-and-city-2697/
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Well, I need to disclaim that I have not personally lived in China. But:
Obsequiousness towards the state is the big one, but it's also a very socially conformist society. Uighurs and Tibetans are oppressed, yes, but it's also not a great place to be a Christian (my understanding is that you can pray and go to church, but evangelizing is highly frowned on and anything that smacks of "activism" will get you slapped down in a hurry). The things you cannot talk about except in a state-approved way are numerous-- Tienmen square, Taiwan, anything critical of the government. There is a reason they have the "Great Internet Wall of China" that, while very porous and easy to bypass via VPN, is still a crime which can get you in trouble if caught. If you find yourself in legal trouble, forget about any of the due processes you are accustomed to in the West.
It's honestly baffling to me that anyone would say "China seems fine, better than being forced to pray at the altar of DEI." I mean, even if you are in the wokest of woke companies, no one is forced to "pray at the altar of DEI." You may be risking your career if you share your spiciest takes about HBD or male/female differences, but you cannot literally be arrested. Meanwhile in the street or here on the Internet you can call the president a retard, a corrupt tool of oligarchs, a Zionist agent, a pedophile, or anything else, and nobody can arrest you for that either, and you're highly unlikely to be fired even if you said it publicly on X. Try doing that in China. (I believe they also persecute you for "hate speech" in China as well: they may not care much about "DEI" as such, but start posting about how much you hate Jews or blacks or women and eventually you will attract negative attention with an actual government impact on your life.)
Our 2nd Amendment enthusiasts have many valid complaints about the breaches of their Constitutional rights, but you don't have even a shadow of those rights in China. Right now the USA is in turmoil over protesters versus ICE agents. I think some of the folks in this forum would not be unhappy if the National Guard starting machine-gunning protesters in the streets, but most people, even those who are strongly pro-ICE, agree that annoying purple-haired lesbians should be allowed to protest in a non-vehicular-homicidal way. In China, machine guns and tanks would be a real possibility. And not just for your annoying purple-haired lesbians.
Do they have to "worship at the altar of DEI"? Well, their version of DEI is called the social credit score. Would you like the government tracking everything you do and say and whether it is "anti-social" enough to start limiting your access to services, travel, credit, and being put under increased monitoring by the state? That seems better, really?
Again, for the average Chinese person, most of this is probably invisible, and for the affluent, life in the big cities is fine. Chinese have their own forums and social media and their versions of 4chan and the like. But all the stories we share here, about people being persecuted in various ways for wrongthink? Multiply that by an order of magnitude in China. Try being a "normie" Chinese with a few problems, some grievances about the system, or in a bit of legal and/or financial trouble. Try being a real wrongthinker.
I'll take (often dramatically, hyperbolically, catastrophically overstated) DEI bullshit over that.
The religiosity has been loosened a fair bit in the last decade or two, but you're also definitely not allowed to be obnoxiously proselytizing and there's been a certain slow surge back towards it. 'Traditional Chinese Religion' has probably been preserved better over in parts of Southeast Asia amongst the Chinese diaspora due to a lack of cultural revolution plus different cultural pressures. Malaysia, for instance, has a roughly 30% Chinese population in a Muslim majority country who have held strongly to a lot of their Chinese cultural markers partly out of a desire to actively stand out from the Malay ethnics.
Social credit score doesn't function like how you think it does, plus atleast stops all of the relentless own goaling of Western society where social defectors can essentially run around doing whatever they like for an unlimited amount of time. I'm personally willing to take the tradeoff of occasional oppression of protestors in exchange for cracking down on homeless and drug users in some sort of functional way.
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You have to pray at the altar of DEI and also communism in China too, it's just that they aren't true believers so everyone is just going through the motions. Certainly it's worse in the west where the DEI overlords believe their own nonsense, but the number of times you have to swear fealty to evil in china will still be a lot.
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So China literally has a "department of propaganda*" (at least, according to an individual I know who lived in China for about 8 months). They'd come by every month and everyone would have to line up and take photos that presented China as a good place to live/work in. The individual in question was in a place that was specifically foreigner-focused (as in, I think they had native Chinese people running the place, but all of the people there were from foreign countries).
*Not a euphemism - they literally called themselves that in English.
Being very focussed on propaganda was fairly priced in to my view of the country. What you're describing does sound fairly excessive though.
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