However, the implications are still ominous.
I'm curious, how did China develop into such a police state? Anyone able to point me to some reading on the subject?
The key to Communism in the Maoist approach was absolute central control and the sweeping away of all obstacles; if you stood in the way of, objected to, or even were insufficiently enthusiastic about its plans you would be murdered.
Economic control was gradually loosened in the latter half of the 20th century, but political control remains tight.
Even ancient Imperial China was very much like this. To the point where China basically had no such thing as a legal system in the Western sense! The only kind of dispute resolution was mutually-assured destruction via criminal-like prosecution, basically "If I think you've been trying to cheat me out of something, I can get government goons to beat you up, for theft or whatever." And the government goons often beat up both disputants, for good measure. It's surprising that they even managed to build a halfway-functioning society and keep it going for thousands of years, out of such crudities.
In modern times the traditions of the past remain even after the natural barriers of communication time and mobilization speed have been eradicated by modern technology. The rules of the past become a part of the culture, language, and customs of the people, even after they are theoretically obsolete. Finally, there is a natural fear of retribution you see when a minority oppresses the majority for a long time. The minority doesn't want to be treated as they treated the majority for so long, and are terrified that if they give an inch they'll find themselves hanging from a pole just like so many of their victims.
It's an alternative civilization!
The last 30 years we've seen it develop at a rate that is obviously impossible given the experience of all other countries. Yet this, very different, country does it.
It's good to have diversity in governance systems and be able to see the different outcomes, even from systems everyone "knows" shouldn't work.
I've been lucky not to experience this myself, but I imagine it is bad to experience the "different outcomes" firsthand when the governance system -- novel as it might appear from a distance -- has foundations in violent suppression of individual freedom.
China was one of the poorest countries on earth in the 1980s.
Then again, when some lunatic American colonists tried an alternative system of governance everyone knew was absurd and evil, it worked out surprisingly well.
I guess what I most of all am arguing against is unified world government.
Kind of ridiculous hyperbole here; there may have been the usual establishment bootlickers saying that, but the US was hardly the first Republic in the world.
No poison gas, no aerial strategic bombing, no blitzkrieg, dive bombers or machine guns. But 20-70 million people dead nevertheless.
Look at the previous century and how quickly they modernized.
As for other examples of extreme growth this century. Look at South Korea, Taiwan, the USSR etc... China shows a difference in scale due to population size, but it's growth rate was certainly not unprecedented.
Are you sure they did? At the time republicanism was in vogue because Roman classicalism was currently in fashion. However these same men (particularly Hamilton) spoke very negatively about democracy, considering it a road to tyranny.
So at the time, democracy was considered absurd and perhaps evil. But were republics? The UK had an experience with republicanism before America, under Cromwell (that left a bad taste in the mouths of many monarchists) but even so it changed the way a lot of people thought. John Locke for instance predates the American revolution.
For the United States, many land owners were concerned with these radical ideas of free people and a republic, e.g. breaking away from autocracy, because they believed that people would be inherently prone to chaos and violence.
For China, the opposite is true. People are concerned about the autocratic dictatorship that subdues personal freedom to the goal of the PRC and state, as they believe human progress, kindness and trust will be stifled and ultimately destroyed in such a system.
I find it quite interesting.
It takes a particular kind of cruelty to see the world from the eye of effectiveness only, and that thinking propagates through society.
No surprise that Chinese have been found to be the least honest and least trustworthy society in many experiments and studies, e.g.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/scie...
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-...
We are embedded in society, always. One should be careful thinking only about effectiveness and efficiency, and not individual dignity. There's a feedback.
China was a communist military dictatorship. All resources went to the military, while millions starved to death.
Not only was China poor on an African level. It had a communist command economy. Compare to how the former Soviet block countries have floundered in the same period, despite starting from a higher economic level.
Maybe South Korea and Taiwan are comparable, I don't know. China's rise is still by its size the biggest event in world history the last 30 years. And no one in 1989 would have predicted it.
In a world like today, are you blaming people moving to other regions just to get jobs? Because that is what happens in China and else where in the world. It has nothing to with “getting rid of minorities”.
When you say individual freedom, I think you really mean individual political freedom. Excluding Xinjian, China has probably more freedom in day-to-day life for individuals than, say, America because it has less violent crime, less imprisonment, and lower regulatory barriers to doing business. It might be that it can only achieve these good things by restricting political freedom.
Even when they do restrict individual freedom, like with the one child policy, and internal travel restrictions, that has the aim of making the overall society better. There's a trade-off between individual freedom and survival and growth of the society. Too much freedom is anarchy and too little is totalitarianism. Where is the sweet spot?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we had to ask you this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989263). We ban accounts that repeatedly violate the site guidelines, so please don't do this.
This sort of thing has had a lot of pushback lately from well meaning but IMHO misguided folks who complain about "cultural appropriation".
You aren't asked to forget your cultural traditions, you're asked to bring your neighbors into them. To share the culture. But also to admit that the edges are probably going to be sanded off and you're going to see people from outside of your group participating.
That's what I said. Other developing countries have grown just as fast or faster. The difference is that China happens to have the largest population in the world.
>Not only was China poor on an African level. It had a communist command economy. Compare to how the former Soviet block countries have floundered in the same period, despite starting from a higher economic level.
China voluntarily introduced capitalism in a controlled fashion. Former Soviet countries were the remnants of a collapsed nation. They aren't particularly comparable during the time period you're looking at.