zlacker

>>lazycr+(OP)
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground".

My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them.

Which is exactly what this issue is about.

That's not to say we have compelling evidence that this was a lab virus, either. I think, for me, it's a, "we don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if it was a lab virus".

>>ttz+rc
I just assume the ccp default mode is to cover up, even when there is nothing to cover up. When legitimacy derives from competence rather than from election, you better never have any high profile incompetence.

>>IIAOPS+Tt
That's been a problem even internally in China where local government hides things from those up the chain and then things get out of hand.

>>duxup+Fv
This is the kind of behavior you see in organizations where the penalty for making mistakes is overly severe, the only recourse for people is to lie and cover-up the truth at all costs. This is how projects at some companies continue despite being way behind schedule and overbudget until eventually the weight of the truth brings everything crashing down.

>>fiftyf+pT
Everybody will always have a motive to prevent others from discovering their failures. A democratically elected politician has just as much reason to want their failures covered up as a CCP member does. The reason governments like the CCP have such a hard time dealing with that issue is that their entire system is set up so that you have one party, with no opposition, all working in concert to conceal the truth from the people. The “voters” have no mechanism to scrutinize their government, and no alternative to “vote” for if they don’t like what they’re doing. A natural consequence of this is that the opacity the CCP relies on to protect itself from scrutiny, also prevents central committee members from being able to effectively scrutinize the system themselves. A good story is always made available for public consumption, but what’s known internally is equally controlled by individual political actors trying to protect their own interests.

>>Americ+BV
This is also why dictatorship always have corruption. They cannot have transparency which means there will be corruption.

Of course democracies are just as vulnerable to all the bad stuff as they are run by humans, but transparency is at least possible. Sadly we see national security being used as reason to avoid transparency, and of course corruption follows.

>>kmonse+tX
> Sadly we see national security being used as reason to avoid transparency, and of course corruption follows.

Man it took forever for someone to make this point. There's a lot of bad Chinese Gov behavior that US Gov players absolutely aspire to.

>>WarOnP+ue1
Any organisation, or group, or person who’s granted any power will tend towards trying to accumulate more power. So while your comment is a bit hyperbolic, it’s true of the US government in the same way it’s true of every other government. For any grossly authoritarian policy you see the US government implement, you’ll typically find equivalent policies in Canada and the EU and the UK and Australia...

It’s not a new thing. The (paraphrased) quote “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” is at least a couple hundred of years old. In practice however it’s not a very simple proposition at all. People typically agree with endlessly granting government additional powers when it’s for a policy they agree with.

The difference between the US (or France, or Germany, or the UK...) and China however, is that we actually have some mechanisms for holding our government to account (however flawed they might be). Whereas Chinese citizens have none at all.