PRC forces the video game Plague Inc off the Apple Store

[dead0man]

link

The pandemic simulation game Plague Inc. has been taken down from Apple’s App Store in China — after finding renewed popularity due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Sales of Plague Inc. recently surged, particularly in China, eight years after its release, amid concerns over the coronavirus officially called Covid-19. The app reportedly topped the charts for premium iOS games in China and also climbed up in the rankings in other countries such as the U.S. and U.K. as well.

Developer Ndemic Creations also flagged the app’s recognition from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical organizations around the world as an educational tool for people who want to learn more about how diseases spread.

The Cyberspace Administration of China found Plague Inc. to include content that is illegal in the country, according to Ndemic Creations, resulting in the game’s removal from the Chinese App Store.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

As has been noted elsewhere, there will probably be some weird growth of admiration for authoritarian regimes as the result of this crisis (I saw a twitter screenshot where someone was quoted as saying "Thank God this didn't start in India") so it's important that there is some push-back against the narrative that unfree societies are somehow better at emergency management simply because they have less civil liberties.

[All Along The Watchtower]

As has been noted elsewhere, there will probably be some weird growth of admiration for authoritarian regimes as the result of this crisis

Which is ironic, because the "model" authoritarian regime of Xi Jinping (China Ascendant, America in Decline) absolutely ed this up from the beginning.

[dead0man]

As has been noted elsewhere, there will probably be some weird growth of admiration for authoritarian regimes as the result of this crisis

Which is ironic, because the "model" authoritarian regime of Xi Jinping (China Ascendant, America in Decline) absolutely ed this up from the beginning.

yeah, but eventually they responded in extremely heavy handed ways, after a month or two of lying about it to everyone and punishing people who tried to tell the truth about it at at time when it still could have possibly been contained...but yeah, other than that the authoritarians were perfect!

[All Along The Watchtower]

As has been noted elsewhere, there will probably be some weird growth of admiration for authoritarian regimes as the result of this crisis

Which is ironic, because the "model" authoritarian regime of Xi Jinping (China Ascendant, America in Decline) absolutely ed this up from the beginning.

yeah, but eventually they responded in extremely heavy handed ways, after a month or two of lying about it to everyone and punishing people who tried to tell the truth about it at at time when it still could have possibly been contained...but yeah, other than that the authoritarians were perfect!

screw this liberal democracy thing, civil liberties are overrated anyway, time to make the police powers of the state more expansive and enforcement more stringent, that's never gone wrong

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

When Super Columbine Masscare RPG! and 9/11 Pilot Aviation Simulator are allowed on the Google Play Store, then sure, America can complain about this.

[John Dule]

When Columbine Simulator and 9/11 Pilot Aviation Simulator are allowed on the Google Play Store, then sure, America can complain about this.

Plague Inc is not based on any real event and it existed years before the Coronavirus outbreak. The US government also did not intervene to prevent any of the things you mentioned in your edited post.

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

Plague Inc is not based on any real event and it existed years before the Coronavirus outbreak.

Sure, and I'm not supportive of banning anything from app stores. I love the game Pandemic myself. But if it's being used to make light of something that's killed, you have to admit that it's essentially the same motivation to ban sh**t that exists in the case of either of those, the tons of songs that were banned after 9/11, and loads of backlashes to video games on the basis of modded or otherwise inaccessible content.

My issue lies - and I know, as a libertarian, that you'd have a principled and relatively reasonable response to this, and I respect that - in the fact that this is portrayed as a case of evil censorship unique to "authoritarian" states. The same thing exists in the United States, but it is primarily enforced usually through private enterprise or the FCC. There are ways around this in both cases - I can assure you that anyone who wants to play Plague Inc in China will be able to find an APK.

[dead0man]

When Super Columbine Masscare RPG! and 9/11 Pilot Aviation Simulator are allowed on the Google Play Store, then sure, America can complain about this.

you say that as if the two cases are in some way the same....you understand that Google does not equal the US Federal govt right?  Any American can get those games, without having to do anything at all illegal.  The fact that that makes no difference to you, a defender of sh**t regimes, is not a surprise at all.

[dead0man]

in the fact that this is portrayed as a case of evil censorship unique to "authoritarian" states. The same thing exists in the United States, but it is primarily enforced usually through private enterprise or the FCC.

yeah, the PRC and USA are pretty much the exact same when it comes to censorship <biggest rolleyes in the world>


The only question left now is:are you lying or are you stupid?  Maybe some combination of the two?

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

yeah, the PRC and USA are pretty much the exact same when it comes to censorship <biggest rolleyes in the world>


The only question left now is:are you lying or are you stupid?  Maybe some combination of the two?

Lol, be as snarky as you want from your isolated little corner of the world. The point of this thread is evidently just to further the perception of ignorant Americans who know nothing of the rest of the world that China and many other places across the world really are some terrifying totalitarian regimes where people are getting run over by tanks for playing some silly game.

I'd make many real criticisms of the Chinese government just as I would of the United States. But rather than sitting and complaining about things beyond my scope of knowledge or experience on the internet, I have actually helped people get access to uncensored information.

And, none of that's illegal by the way. Western media would have you think people are getting cops at their house for posting Winnie the Pooh gifs on WeChat. That's simply not the case, and there are just as many ignorant people in China with similar views about life in the West. VPNs are legal. Educated Chinese people are on average pretty well informed about Western culture and viewpoints. The same for educated Westerners and Chinese discourse is not the case whatsoever.

[dead0man]

Student Jailed for 6 Months For Tweets Sent in US Showing President as Winnie The Pooh

and from The Diplomat (whatever that is)

Chinese citizens’ risk of being detained or imprisoned for accessing or sharing information online has increased considerably in recent years. During the past year alone, several new categories of individuals were targeted with legal and extralegal reprisals for their online activity. These included users of Twitter, which is blocked in China but still accessible via circumvention tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs). Numerous Twitter users were harassed, detained, interrogated by police, and forced to delete their past posts. Some users and sellers of VPNs faced similar reprisals, although on a smaller scale.

Ordinary users of WeChat increasingly faced detention and prosecution. Among others who were jailed during 2019, the moderator of a popular WeChat account that shared news from outside China was sentenced in July to two years in prison; a professor from Guangdong Province was jailed for three and a half years after posting images related to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement; and a 22-year-old Tibetan monk from Sichuan Province was arrested for expressing concern over Beijing’s policies that are reducing use of the Tibetan language. Several activists who operated websites about civil society and human rights issues also faced pretrial detention and long prison sentences. The most prominent was Huang Qi, founder of the human rights website 64 Tianwang, who was sentenced in July to 12 years in prison for “intentionally leaking state secrets.”

much more at link

[dead0man]

and then there is this

link goes to Freedom House

Overview
Conditions for internet users in China continued to deteriorate, confirming the country’s status as the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom for the fourth consecutive year. The level of internet freedom in China also reached its lowest point since the inception of the Freedom on the Net report a decade ago. Censorship and surveillance were pushed to unprecedented extremes as the government enhanced its information controls, including in the lead-up to the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and in response to persistent antigovernment protests in Hong Kong. The growing crackdown affected tens of millions of internet and mobile phone users, resulting in heightened self-censorship and a reduction in space for online mobilization. Chinese citizens’ risk of being detained or imprisoned for accessing or sharing information online has increased considerably over the past several years. Rapid advances in surveillance technology and greater police access to user data have helped facilitate the rise in arrests and prosecutions.

China’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent years. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is tightening its control over the state bureaucracy, the media, religious groups, universities, businesses, and civil society associations, and it has undermined its own already modest rule-of-law reforms. The CCP leader and state president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated personal power to a degree not seen in China for decades, but his actions have also triggered rising discontent among elites within and outside the party. The country’s budding human rights movements continue to seek avenues for protecting basic rights despite intensified restrictions.

[John Dule]

yeah, the PRC and USA are pretty much the exact same when it comes to censorship <biggest rolleyes in the world>


The only question left now is:are you lying or are you stupid?  Maybe some combination of the two?

Lol, be as snarky as you want from your isolated little corner of the world. The point of this thread is evidently just to further the perception of ignorant Americans who know nothing of the rest of the world that China and many other places across the world really are some terrifying totalitarian regimes where people are getting run over by tanks for playing some silly game.

I'd make many real criticisms of the Chinese government just as I would of the United States. But rather than sitting and complaining about things beyond my scope of knowledge or experience on the internet, I have actually helped people get access to uncensored information.

And, none of that's illegal by the way. Western media would have you think people are getting cops at their house for posting Winnie the Pooh gifs on WeChat. That's simply not the case, and there are just as many ignorant people in China with similar views about life in the West. VPNs are legal. Educated Chinese people are on average pretty well informed about Western culture and viewpoints. The same for educated Westerners and Chinese discourse is not the case whatsoever.

Ok. Let's have a talk about what I, as an "ignorant American," know of the Chinese government. I mean, you're right. I have never lived in China and my experiences with the CCP's rule are limited. All I can really rely on are my friends from China, or my other friends who've actually been there and experienced the CCP firsthand.

My girlfriend was born in China and spent the first 15 years of her life there. Her school taught revisionist history and fired teachers who went off-script from the CCP's narrative of Chinese history. Her parents are not party members, so they are occasionally forced to go to Marxist reading sessions to ensure that they are not subversives. When her grandparents were growing up during the Cultural Revolution, they were forced to kill their own teacher. We use WeChat to talk to one another, but I have found my account deactivated whenever I send her something that even vaguely criticizes or makes fun of the CCP. I have to be careful about what I send her because I don't want her to be harassed by government officials when she goes home to visit her parents.

My roommate in my Junior year of college was a Chinese exchange student; he became one of my closest friends and we still keep in contact. Though I liked him a lot, he was completely brainwashed by the CCP and followed the party line lockstep. He genuinely believed that nobody but Xi Jinping could possibly do the job of leading China, and that nobody else wanted the job anyway. He routinely used tired arguments of cultural relativism to explain away the differences between our systems, even as he showed genuine fear when we discussed things that the CCP would rather we didn't talk about. This included Tiananmen Square, the crimes of Mao, and Deng Xiaoping's reforms-- he insisted on calling China's system "Communism with Chinese aspects" despite all evidence to the contrary, because it was what he'd been told from birth. His mixture of blind loyalty and subconscious paranoia is pretty much par for the course for those living in a surveillance state. He, like other victims of authoritarian regimes around the world, is in serious need of psychological help.

My other roommate during Junior year went to Hong Kong during the protests last summer. He saw protesters getting beaten, gassed, and arrested for trying to preserve a semblance of democracy in their city. The Hong Kong police are not officially part of the CCP, but they do its bidding, and they engaged in absolutely brutal tactics to quell the protesters. The extradition law was 100% the product of mainland meddling in Hong Kong, and sadly the strong response to it will probably only end up postponing the inevitable.

So no, I don't know everything about the CCP... but I've heard enough to make a judgement. The Communist Party of China is an evil organization that has subjugated and attempted to brainwash a great nation-- a nation that deserves far, far better than the leaders they have right now. The CCP has tried to keep the populace placated through vague platitudes, historical scrubbing, and GDP growth (the product, of course, of pro-market reforms). However, it will not last forever. The Party has built itself up as a benevolent power that genuinely wants the best for the Chinese people. It has expertly used the humiliations suffered by China in the past as a springboard to create national unity and a sense of collective sacrifice. In doing so, it has assumed paternalistic responsibility over its citizens, claiming credit for their higher standard of living and powerhouse economy. But the good times will have to end someday (they may even be ending now), and when that happens, the veil will be lifted. In a democracy, there are built-in mechanisms to cope with social upheaval and dissatisfaction with the government. In a country like China, the only available mechanism is revolution. I sincerely hope I live to see that day come. The Communist Party must be destroyed if China is to flourish.

Stop playing apologist for a regime that is currently engaged in a literal genocide and start engaging with reality. You might like it.

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

my presence was requested, so i will make a big effortpost here in the declining days of the lockdown:

My girlfriend was born in China and spent the first 15 years of her life there. Her school taught revisionist history and fired teachers who went off-script from the CCP's narrative of Chinese history. Her parents are not party members, so they are occasionally forced to go to Marxist reading sessions to ensure that they are not subversives. When her grandparents were growing up during the Cultural Revolution, they were forced to kill their own teacher. We use WeChat to talk to one another, but I have found my account deactivated whenever I send her something that even vaguely criticizes or makes fun of the CCP. I have to be careful about what I send her because I don't want her to be harassed by government officials when she goes home to visit her parents.

My roommate in my Junior year of college was a Chinese exchange student; he became one of my closest friends and we still keep in contact. Though I liked him a lot, he was completely brainwashed by the CCP and followed the party line lockstep. He genuinely believed that nobody but Xi Jinping could possibly do the job of leading China, and that nobody else wanted the job anyway. He routinely used tired arguments of cultural relativism to explain away the differences between our systems, even as he showed genuine fear when we discussed things that the CCP would rather we didn't talk about. This included Tiananmen Square, the crimes of Mao, and Deng Xiaoping's reforms-- he insisted on calling China's system "Communism with Chinese aspects" despite all evidence to the contrary, because it was what he'd been told from birth. His mixture of blind loyalty and subconscious paranoia is pretty much par for the course for those living in a surveillance state. He, like other victims of authoritarian regimes around the world, is in serious need of psychological help.

My other roommate during Junior year went to Hong Kong during the protests last summer. He saw protesters getting beaten, gassed, and arrested for trying to preserve a semblance of democracy in their city. The Hong Kong police are not officially part of the CCP, but they do its bidding, and they engaged in absolutely brutal tactics to quell the protesters. The extradition law was 100% the product of mainland meddling in Hong Kong, and sadly the strong response to it will probably only end up postponing the inevitable.

So no, I don't know everything about the CCP... but I've heard enough to make a judgement. The Communist Party of China is an evil organization that has subjugated and attempted to brainwash a great nation-- a nation that deserves far, far better than the leaders they have right now. The CCP has tried to keep the populace placated through vague platitudes, historical scrubbing, and GDP growth (the product, of course, of pro-market reforms). However, it will not last forever. The Party has built itself up as a benevolent power that genuinely wants the best for the Chinese people. It has expertly used the humiliations suffered by China in the past as a springboard to create national unity and a sense of collective sacrifice. In doing so, it has assumed paternalistic responsibility over its citizens, claiming credit for their higher standard of living and powerhouse economy. But the good times will have to end someday (they may even be ending now), and when that happens, the veil will be lifted. In a democracy, there are built-in mechanisms to cope with social upheaval and dissatisfaction with the government. In a country like China, the only available mechanism is revolution. I sincerely hope I live to see that day come. The Communist Party must be destroyed if China is to flourish.

Stop playing apologist for a regime that is currently engaged in a literal genocide and start engaging with reality. You might like it.

Okay, so you had/have a Chinese girlfriend and had a Chinese roommate in college. I lived with a bunch of Chinese people and heard varied opinions towards the government. Those are two things we have in common it turns out, and the second, especially, was a big factor in why I originally to China - that roommate (who is now in the US military) really put the thought in my mind. We still talk most days. He generally enjoys the Western way of life, but having experienced a good deal of poverty, sees downsides to it too. He hates the Hong Kong protests with a passion. Why? He sees it as a geopolitical intrusion of the United States into China. He is critical of what he perceives as racism on the part of Hong Kongers towards mainlanders. There is some evidence for that taking place, not enough in my estimation to say it is the primary factor in the protests. That US media attitudes towards China play a big role is undeniable. That Hong Kong has greater freedom of the press, especially for international media outlets is also true. If you genuinely believe that a "free market of ideas" will lead to truth, or even pragmatically beneficial ideas - then I think that's a reasonable reason to be concerned about what's happening in Hong Kong. I don't really believe that. Western media has its biases, it has its own vested interests - and I get why the firewall is in place. That's a very destabilizing factor, especially in countries without much as much media presence. It isn't really possible to go from a free media environment to a controlled one. So I think the HK battle is not good for China regardless of what happens. Integration would probably be a net economic negative for China and I think the government would delay integration another 50 years before considering opening up that issue. The extradition law was not that significant in itself - if a law which was literally just put in place to allow a murderer/rapist to be punished (which it was: and that case took place in Taiwan, ironically enough) was not enough to allow further integration between HK and the mainland, it's hard to imagine that any kind of political integration beyond what already exists will be possible in the near future. That's unfortunate, because further integration between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is probably the best chance Hong Kongers have of improving their lot in life.

It sounds like your roommate was a massive Wumao. I cannot say I am friends with any serious Wumaos. One of my coworkers lived in a Western country for several years and was anti-CCP for most of his life, coming from a background of dissidents. He is still a very Western guy in his attitudes and ardently dislikes communism - but, to paraphrase a long discussion of his journey: "I was very anti-CCP for most of my life, but they've brought results. Things are better than they ever have been. People are economically secure and have a good amount of autonomy in their personal lives." That is largely the result of pro-market reforms (which, it's worth mentioning, were opposed by many of the TS protesters. It wasn't a pro-liberal democracy movement, in general, nor a peaceful time on either side.), but China is still a country with a massive state sector, and especially in recent years under Xi a huge focus on poverty alleviation programs. It is a fairly pragmatic state. I wouldn't call it a socialist ate, but some form of authoritarian form of "social democracy" fits the bill. People of various viewpoints towards economics within China are still somehow able to get behind it on the basis of results.

I don't understand why you are so willing to dismiss any support for the Chinese government by Chinese people, even with a relativistic understanding, as "brainwashing." Yes, I get it, we all get it - there is a kind of political correctness here that prevents people from saying things which contradict the rule of the CCP. There's a point of political dissent which is not tolerated within the West either. There are many theoretical issues with this system, but it's a fact, and even the journal "American Affairs" is willing to concede that people have trust in government in China that is not just the result of brainwashing or something like that. It is genuinely the result of governmental responsiveness. How is governmental responsiveness even a factor in the Chinese system, which is not institutionally democratic? There was an immigration law recently which people reacted to strongly, against the government, on Weibo. There was some censorship of more extreme opinions, but people submitted their opinions to the government through official means, and the law was not passed in the form it was presented. There are ways for the public to participate in the legal process, and people are getting more and more aware of this. It is an active form of civil participation, and while it has its limits, it's generating a lot more identification with the state in average Chinese people than liberal democratic elections presently are. Protests against local governments happen a lot more frequently. The central government is well-aware of the fact that allowing protests against local governments allows for a form of political competition as would exist in a liberal democracy, and will often side with local protesters as a means of righting wrongs while saving face.

China is about the last country a revolution is going to take place in. By pretty much any measure of optimism or trust in government, it's doing better than the Western world. This is not from a lack of knowledge. People know full well that there is more political freedom in the West. There is an interesting fact of how authoritarian states work - which is that they don't really care that much what you, personally, are doing. Yes, dissidents get heavy-handed treatment sometimes. That's only likely to affect you if what you're doing is somehow significant, if you're a journalist or some other big shot with a stake in the dirty game of politics. The average person could not care less about this. And why should they? It genuinely is a dirty game, and often one with Western money involved. If you look at, say, Russia (another country I spent some time in), a country with institutional democracy and an authoritarian culture - where the modus operandi is just to extrajudicially assassinate the sorts of people who are believed to be caught up with foreign powers - China's approach is probably a lot less bloody. But in both cases it is reasonable to be weary of American influence, and many people are aware of that. Many people who might genuinely want a change in government, in either country, are dissuaded from joining the dissident movement by the fact that it is transparently compromised by Western interests. But far fewer people want a dissident movement in China, because the government has genuinely done a better job of maintaining favor with with people than any other major power.

As for the WeChat stuff... foreign accounts get closed a lot. They don't generally monitor private chats, only group ones, and group chats do sometimes get shut down when there is a lot of anti-government sentiment. I've had many very... open... conversations about issues with Chinese people. There are just a few subjects which I wouldn't touch on over text, and there are subjects I wouldn't touch in with my name attached to them in the West either, if I wanted to feel safe in my job. Much of the difference in political systems that Westerners would take to demonstrate "tyranny," conjuring images of a state where people genuinely don't experience personal freedom and autonomy, are basically just abstract formalities, removed from the direct lived experience of the vast majority of people.

I don't really think the firewall, or anything like that, can or should last forever. A big purpose of it initially was to allow Chinese tech startups to develop to such a level as to be able to withstand Western competition. I think if the firewall came down tomorrow, it wouldn't make a big difference. People post things from the other side on every major Chinese site and anyone who cares enough can already access Western media easily enough. But China is a huge country, it has its own media, and its own narrative. Compare Quora, which is not blocked in China (neither is this site, actually), to Reddit - and you see a vast difference in opinions towards China. Educated Chinese people are far, far more aware of the Western narrative towards China than any Westerner is of the Chinese narrative. If you saw an influx of Chinese users on every Western site, you'd see a massive cultural conflict in values, and you'd see a massive backlash from Chinese people against precisely the dismissal of "relativistic" justifications of the Chinese system that Westerners tend to make. Liberal democracy isn't "the end of history" that it is believed to be in much of the West. My issue with threads like this is precisely that. This absolutist feeling of superiority, belief in some unrealistic concept of "totalitarianism" that is believed to exist in places you don't know. I want to tie that to a concrete reality. The concrete reality is that if you want Plague Inc in China, you have to download the APK online or pay a few bucks a month for a VPN to download a foreign app store. Pointing to that as some kind of hellish totalitarian reality is deflection from the massive issues growing in the West. Concretely, Chinese people are more content with the situation here than Westerners are, and for good reason - and no Orientalist caricature of the country and all its issues is more worth talking about than that concrete reality.

[urutzizu]

How is governmental responsiveness even a factor in the Chinese system, which is not institutionally democratic? There was an immigration law recently which people reacted to strongly, against the government, on Weibo.

I think that this is an Important point here - and not just concerning Issues like the Immigration law that might be perceived as say "less contentious" - during the height of the Hong Kong protests there was a lot of criticism, even scathing (especially when Lam withdrew the bill), of the central government on weibo. But the thing was, well, it was exclusively Anger about the Government being not forceful enough with "these Hanjian".

That's perhaps something to keep in mind when people in the west want China to become a democracy, to have free elections, I don't quite think you would not like how those elections would invariably turn out: If there were free elections in China tomorrow, and a government genuinely had to act how the people felt, then almost certainly the Ultranationalist party wins by a landslide, Martial law is declared in Hong Kong tomorrow, and Taiwan is invaded in a weeks time. The CCP cultivates nationalism to an extent in order to strengthen its internal legitimacy, yes, but it also keeps a lid on it in order to be able to act internationally (which is why China excels at soft power).

Perhaps the best case scenario would be what Turkey is now - imagine a Erdogan-esque Bo Xilai, just with 20x the economic, military power and nuclear weapons, at the hands of the ascending next world hegemon.

And that's the saddest part of the whole decoupling that is taking place right now between the US and China. The loss of cultural exchanges, the numbers of international students, of visitors steadily decreasing. It had the potential not to convert, but at least to show the one side how the other sides people really felt about issues and values. And this thread shows how many people in the US really don't understand at all how the average Chinese person thinks.

Anyway great post, Dashushu.

[dead0man]

so you're saying the people are worse than the govt....eeeks, that's not good

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

I think that this is an Important point here - and not just concerning Issues like the Immigration law that might be perceived as say "less contentious" - during the height of the Hong Kong protests there was a lot of criticism, even scathing (especially when Lam withdrew the bill), of the central government on weibo. But the thing was, well, it was exclusively Anger about the Government being not forceful enough with "these Hanjian".

That's perhaps something to keep in mind when people in the west want China to become a democracy, to have free elections, I don't quite think you would not like how those elections would invariably turn out: If there were free elections in China tomorrow, and a government genuinely had to act how the people felt, then almost certainly the Ultranationalist party wins by a landslide, Martial law is declared in Hong Kong tomorrow, and Taiwan is invaded in a weeks time. The CCP cultivates nationalism to an extent in order to strengthen its internal legitimacy, yes, but it also keeps a lid on it in order to be able to act internationally (which is why China excels at soft power).

Perhaps the best case scenario would be what Turkey is now - imagine a Erdogan-esque Bo Xilai, just with 20x the economic, military power and nuclear weapons, at the hands of the ascending next world hegemon.

And that's the saddest part of the whole decoupling that is taking place right now between the US and China. The loss of cultural exchanges, the numbers of international students, of visitors steadily decreasing. It had the potential not to convert, but at least to show the one side how the other sides people really felt about issues and values. And this thread shows how many people in the US really don't understand at all how the average Chinese person thinks.

Anyway great post, Dashushu.

Yes, the extent to which the CCP - and I think Putin's political clique too, to a lesser extent, represent relatively moderating forces - is vastly misunderstood in the West. The examples you gave were the most definitive in China.

This is a tangent, but: the situation in Russia is a little different in that the "Western-backed" opposition is suppressed but still given a platform. Aleksei Navalnyy is the typical representative of this. A few years ago he was engaged in Russian ethnic nationalist marches with a goal of mass deportation of ethnic central Asian immigrants. He attempts to appear "pro-Ukraine" in a sense to appeal to the liberal pro-Western audience, but speaks of Ukraine in pretty clearly irredentist terms. In 2008 during the Russo-Georgian War he referred to Georgian people as "rodents." I am not sure to what extent his genuine views can be classified as either liberal democratic or turbonationalistic (perhaps they genuinely have changed over time) - but it's undeniable that there is some kind of "crossover appeal." I've noticed that very much of the "liberal" or "pro-Western" Russian crowd is... not really "liberal" in the sense Westerners would expect. There is a surprising amount of crossover between turbonationalists who believe Putin is turning Russia into a Muslim country and liberals.

I have a really good friend from my time in Russia whose family is half non-ethnic Russian. She is... I guess left-wing in her viewpoints, but more in a Western way than a typically Russian way, since she spent a lot of time living in a European country. She is relatively negative towards Putin (or at least the general system of corruption that he represents to many), but somehow even more negative towards the opposition. This is very understandable when the primary popular opposition candidate openly talks about wanting to exterminate your ethnic group and is applauded for it.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I think you have touched on a very general point: Western intervention in foreign cultures very frequently misses the core context of the political situation there. Much as democratic rebels fought side by side with Islamists in Syria, literal neo-nazis often find themselves marching alongside Russian liberals, and in China: there is no consolidated opposition, but I imagine that Maoists, nationalists, and liberals would all somehow play a role. When these movements succeed, it is usually not the liberals who end up winning out.

(A side note: If you're familiar with Chinese politics this is gonna be fairly identifying information but I live in a city where Bo is still quite popular and a lot of his connections are still politically prominent. I've heard the story told from that side primarily, but I really don't have any insights as to what forces he really represented in Chinese politics besides another being would-be leader that didn't pan out.)

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

so you're saying the people are worse than the govt....eeeks, that's not good

Can you imagine what the United States government would do if it blindly followed every public outrage? It would be a very ugly picture, especially in a country with issues of ethnic/racial tension. I think that can be a good argument in favor of either minarchism or a very centralized state depending on how you frame it. Neither of those represent pure democracy anyway.

But it's worth asking where these outrages come from, and why.

[John Dule]

Okay, so you had/have a Chinese girlfriend and had a Chinese roommate in college. I lived with a bunch of Chinese people and heard varied opinions towards the government. Those are two things we have in common it turns out, and the second, especially, was a big factor in why I originally to China - that roommate (who is now in the US military) really put the thought in my mind. We still talk most days. He generally enjoys the Western way of life, but having experienced a good deal of poverty, sees downsides to it too. He hates the Hong Kong protests with a passion. Why? He sees it as a geopolitical intrusion of the United States into China. He is critical of what he perceives as racism on the part of Hong Kongers towards mainlanders. There is some evidence for that taking place, not enough in my estimation to say it is the primary factor in the protests. That US media attitudes towards China play a big role is undeniable. That Hong Kong has greater freedom of the press, especially for international media outlets is also true. If you genuinely believe that a "free market of ideas" will lead to truth, or even pragmatically beneficial ideas - then I think that's a reasonable reason to be concerned about what's happening in Hong Kong. I don't really believe that. Western media has its biases, it has its own vested interests - and I get why the firewall is in place. That's a very destabilizing factor, especially in countries without much as much media presence. It isn't really possible to go from a free media environment to a controlled one. So I think the HK battle is not good for China regardless of what happens. Integration would probably be a net economic negative for China and I think the government would delay integration another 50 years before considering opening up that issue. The extradition law was not that significant in itself - if a law which was literally just put in place to allow a murderer/rapist to be punished (which it was: and that case took place in Taiwan, ironically enough) was not enough to allow further integration between HK and the mainland, it's hard to imagine that any kind of political integration beyond what already exists will be possible in the near future. That's unfortunate, because further integration between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is probably the best chance Hong Kongers have of improving their lot in life.

This is what I'm talking about when I say that you're an apologist for totalitarianism-- you can't offer up a serious defense of the CCP without falling back on headlines from The People's Daily and acting like they merit serious consideration as arguments. The idea that the Hong Kong riots were orchestrated by the US, for example, is a conspiracy theory that was actively pushed by the Chinese government in order to pin the blame on the West. There is no evidence for this whatsoever and the burden is not on me to prove that. This is what authoritarian governments always do when unrest begins within their borders; they point fingers at "foreign agitators" in an attempt to get their people to rally around the flag. It's a shameless attempt to distract from the actual causes of the protests. And apparently, it's worked on you. The Chinese government can imprison people with impunity-- and has done so to ethnic minorities in the west-- and yet your biggest concern is whether or not the New York Times gives Xi Jinping a fair shake. Truly unbelievable. At the same time, you act as though the extradition law was only aimed at murderers and other serious criminals, as if the Chinese government wouldn't jump at the chance to round up as many Liu Xiaobos as possible. If anyone reading this seriously thinks that the CCP only targets lawbreakers and criminals with their arrests, torturing, and imprisonment without trial, then I seriously suggest that you look into what happened to him (as well as the thousands of other dissidents that are perpetually rotting away in Chinese prisons).

It sounds like your roommate was a massive Wumao. I cannot say I am friends with any serious Wumaos. One of my coworkers lived in a Western country for several years and was anti-CCP for most of his life, coming from a background of dissidents. He is still a very Western guy in his attitudes and ardently dislikes communism - but, to paraphrase a long discussion of his journey: "I was very anti-CCP for most of my life, but they've brought results. Things are better than they ever have been. People are economically secure and have a good amount of autonomy in their personal lives." That is largely the result of pro-market reforms (which, it's worth mentioning, were opposed by many of the TS protesters. It wasn't a pro-liberal democracy movement, in general, nor a peaceful time on either side.), but China is still a country with a massive state sector, and especially in recent years under Xi a huge focus on poverty alleviation programs. It is a fairly pragmatic state. I wouldn't call it a socialist ate, but some form of authoritarian form of "social democracy" fits the bill. People of various viewpoints towards economics within China are still somehow able to get behind it on the basis of results.

Yes, the CCP has hitched its wagon to the mule of economic success, and it has ridden very far in doing so. However, the idea that it is a "social democracy" in any sense is absolutely laughable; China is completely undemocratic, and you can't argue that it is by simply naming instances in which the government did something that the people wanted (as you do later in this post). Obviously all governments have to capitulate to the will of the people sometimes; this was the case in the Soviet Union and even in religious oligarchical dictatorships dating back to the ancient world. That is not the same as being a democracy. The advantage of an actual democracy is that when the economy stops working for the public, people still have a reason to have faith in the institutions because they have legitimacy outside of their capacity to produce economic growth. If you live by the market, you die by the market. Do not think for a second that the growth of the last 30 years can be sustained forever.

I don't understand why you are so willing to dismiss any support for the Chinese government by Chinese people, even with a relativistic understanding, as "brainwashing." Yes, I get it, we all get it - there is a kind of political correctness here that prevents people from saying things which contradict the rule of the CCP. There's a point of political dissent which is not tolerated within the West either. There are many theoretical issues with this system, but it's a fact, and even the journal "American Affairs" is willing to concede that people have trust in government in China that is not just the result of brainwashing or something like that. It is genuinely the result of governmental responsiveness. How is governmental responsiveness even a factor in the Chinese system, which is not institutionally democratic? There was an immigration law recently which people reacted to strongly, against the government, on Weibo. There was some censorship of more extreme opinions, but people submitted their opinions to the government through official means, and the law was not passed in the form it was presented. There are ways for the public to participate in the legal process, and people are getting more and more aware of this. It is an active form of civil participation, and while it has its limits, it's generating a lot more identification with the state in average Chinese people than liberal democratic elections presently are. Protests against local governments happen a lot more frequently. The central government is well-aware of the fact that allowing protests against local governments allows for a form of political competition as would exist in a liberal democracy, and will often side with local protesters as a means of righting wrongs while saving face.

This argument, as I alluded to earlier, is complete and utter sophistry. The idea that China's government is somehow a "social democracy" because its government often responds to the needs of its people makes about as much sense as saying that Iran is democratic because it occasionally meets the needs of its citizenry. Again, every government is going to have to act on the interests of its people in one way or another; the only counterexample would be a nation that is essentially a slave state or a penitentiary. The fact that your proof of this is "One time people didn't like a law, so the government altered it" demonstrates just how much you're stretching the definition of political participation. Was the Roman occupation of Judaea "democratic" because they allowed the masses to call for a prisoner to be pardoned? No. It was merely a way of placating a public that would be tearing them to pieces if they weren't carefully watched over.

China is about the last country a revolution is going to take place in. By pretty much any measure of optimism or trust in government, it's doing better than the Western world. This is not from a lack of knowledge. People know full well that there is more political freedom in the West. There is an interesting fact of how authoritarian states work - which is that they don't really care that much what you, personally, are doing. Yes, dissidents get heavy-handed treatment sometimes. That's only likely to affect you if what you're doing is somehow significant, if you're a journalist or some other big shot with a stake in the dirty game of politics. The average person could not care less about this. And why should they? It genuinely is a dirty game, and often one with Western money involved. If you look at, say, Russia (another country I spent some time in), a country with institutional democracy and an authoritarian culture - where the modus operandi is just to extrajudicially assassinate the sorts of people who are believed to be caught up with foreign powers - China's approach is probably a lot less bloody. But in both cases it is reasonable to be weary of American influence, and many people are aware of that. Many people who might genuinely want a change in government, in either country, are dissuaded from joining the dissident movement by the fact that it is transparently compromised by Western interests. But far fewer people want a dissident movement in China, because the government has genuinely done a better job of maintaining favor with with people than any other major power.

This portion of your post completely misunderstands why revolutions happen where they do. Who carried out the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia? It wasn't the poorest of the poor; it wasn't oppressed farmers and lowly serfs. It was led by an educated class of people ascending to political power. Who orchestrated the American Revolution? Was it the slaves? No, it was the emergent merchant and political class of educated elites in the New World-- the "new rich", so to speak. Time and time again, revolutions are brought about by an emerging middle class that feels its voice is not being heard in the political sphere, and that its political/social status does not match its economic status. It is easy for these types of people to be complacent in China right now-- their incentives are aligned with those of the governing elite, and the economy is still working for them. If this stops being the case, then yes, China is ripe ground for major political upheaval. People will start to care as soon as the CCP is no longer able (or willing) to placate them.

And as for "western interests" intruding in China... see, this is why I said that loyalty to the CCP requires cognitive dissonance. Marx was a westerner. Lenin was a westerner. Hegel was a westerner. The communist thinkers revered by the CCP are westerners. Communism is a western ideology. So you can stop b*tching about "western influence in China." That's what the CCP fundamentally is.

As for the WeChat stuff... foreign accounts get closed a lot. They don't generally monitor private chats, only group ones, and group chats do sometimes get shut down when there is a lot of anti-government sentiment. I've had many very... open... conversations about issues with Chinese people. There are just a few subjects which I wouldn't touch on over text, and there are subjects I wouldn't touch in with my name attached to them in the West either, if I wanted to feel safe in my job. Much of the difference in political systems that Westerners would take to demonstrate "tyranny," conjuring images of a state where people genuinely don't experience personal freedom and autonomy, are basically just abstract formalities, removed from the direct lived experience of the vast majority of people.

This is one of my favorite bits of whataboutism to come out of repressive authoritarian regimes-- the idea that social pressure is the same as political pressure, and that there is no fundamental difference between the government censoring you and regular citizens telling you not to use the "N" word in your Facebook posts. The difference, as I'm sure you understand, is that the government has a monopoly on force and can use its power to imprison you, strip you of your rights, restrict your movement, and infringe upon your personal autonomy in a way that things like peer pressure fundamentally cannot. Losing your job does not equate to being put in a prison cell; nobody owes you gainful employment, but you are owed a basic recognition of your ownership of your own life in a civilized society. This is not even philosophy, it's basic self-preservation. Would you like to give the government free rein to torture you if they wrongly suspect you of anti-state activity? Do you want to give bureaucrats the license to throw you in jail if you say something they don't like? If not, then you don't seem to possess human survival instincts.

I don't really think the firewall, or anything like that, can or should last forever. A big purpose of it initially was to allow Chinese tech startups to develop to such a level as to be able to withstand Western competition. I think if the firewall came down tomorrow, it wouldn't make a big difference. People post things from the other side on every major Chinese site and anyone who cares enough can already access Western media easily enough. But China is a huge country, it has its own media, and its own narrative. Compare Quora, which is not blocked in China (neither is this site, actually), to Reddit - and you see a vast difference in opinions towards China. Educated Chinese people are far, far more aware of the Western narrative towards China than any Westerner is of the Chinese narrative. If you saw an influx of Chinese users on every Western site, you'd see a massive cultural conflict in values, and you'd see a massive backlash from Chinese people against precisely the dismissal of "relativistic" justifications of the Chinese system that Westerners tend to make. Liberal democracy isn't "the end of history" that it is believed to be in much of the West. My issue with threads like this is precisely that. This absolutist feeling of superiority, belief in some unrealistic concept of "totalitarianism" that is believed to exist in places you don't know. I want to tie that to a concrete reality. The concrete reality is that if you want Plague Inc in China, you have to download the APK online or pay a few bucks a month for a VPN to download a foreign app store. Pointing to that as some kind of hellish totalitarian reality is deflection from the massive issues growing in the West. Concretely, Chinese people are more content with the situation here than Westerners are, and for good reason - and no Orientalist caricature of the country and all its issues is more worth talking about than that concrete reality.

Lol, this is not about Plague Inc anymore-- you made it about something much bigger than that. No, I don't think that liberal democracy is the "end of history," as it's still much too authoritarian for me. However, it is objectively superior to all other systems that exist in the world presently, and no amount of tired whataboutisms and authoritarian apologies will change that. Sorry, but telling me that people who've been indoctrinated from birth about the superiority of the Chinese system would probably not appreciate my comments here doesn't mean much to me. Again, you might as well say this:

"North Koreans are very aware of Western bias towards their government. If North Koreans were allowed to access the internet, there would probably be a massive backlash from them against portrayals of their system as 'murderous' or 'evil.' Consequently, Kim Jong Un actually has a lot of support from North Koreans, and they don't consider themselves 'brainwashed'-- in fact, if a free and fair election was held in North Korea today, Kim would win in a landslide!"

Like I said, it doesn't mean much.

[KaiserDave]

Low effort post as here, as I'd just be repeating John's arguments.

....


Imagine being a CCP apologist

[lfromnj]

Holy sh**t, when Dule effort posts he effort posts.

Also two questions
Would America be better if we added Chinese authoritarianism?
Would China be better if we got rid of the authoritarianism?