Hacker News Reader

Comment by zanny | Hacker News Reader

The CCP is not interested in progress, its interested in maintaining permanent, absolute power at any cost.

That's not really true. Progress and upward economic development increase the faith of the public and the Communist Party rank-and-file in the Communist Party leadership. The Communist Party leadership has a strong incentive to promote growth.

I think that it is really true. The CCP's implicit bargain is that it delivers perpetually increasing growth and economic prosperity to the average person (compared to last year), and the average person keeps their mouth shut.

That bargain breaks down when growth stops accelerating, and obviously you can't have accelerating growth forever. The CCP's real overarching goal is to "maintain social stability," and that is exactly as dystopian as it sounds, if not more so.

And stifling discussion is a big part of that; this sort of comment would definitely ding your 'score'.

One of the points of Xi's new dictatorship, is precisely that China can't keep the growth engines going any longer as is. They had to take on $40 trillion in debt over the last eight years to keep faking growth. Every year they 'grow' their GDP by $600 or $700 billion, they have to take on $3 to $4 trillion in new debt to do it. Their total debt to GDP ratio is now nearly the worst of any country, and it's expected to get worse by another ~75% in just the next five years.

I think Xi knows the economic party is over and that there are going to be extremely bad social consequences to that coming up. The dictatorship is meant to possess the power necessary to put down those consequences in any way they deem necessary.

> the Communist Party leadership has a strong incentive to promote growth

But Xi Jinping does not.

Yes he does. Growth makes people wealthier, which makes them happy with the government. If China's growth stops, you better believe there will be serious civil unrest.

My point isn't that Xi Jinping doesn't want growth. It's that he doesn't want growth as badly, nor on the same time horizons, as the CCP. If he has to cause permanent harm to China's productive potential to hold on to power for a few more years, history suggests he will. This is the reason dictatorships trash countries and why Deng Xiaoping wisely implemented term limits.

We agree then. His primary goal is likely to be to hold on to power. Growth is definitely only something he wants in service of that prime directive.

Oh, on the contrary. His legitimacy is directly related to his ability to have stability, and that stability comes from employment. When you are a state-run economy, you make sure everyone is employed, even if it's not profitable, because that's how you keep them from going all Tienamen Square on the leadership. So they spend a lot, and they loan a ton, to prop up their growth numbers. The CCP subsidizes growth by dumping goods in several markets and looking the other way at companies stealing intellectual property. They are willing to loan money at such low rates (one belt one road) because they see more of a return usually then what they normally do with money.

> and that stability comes from employment.

and suppressing freedom of expression

How so? Isn’t unprecedented growth and prosperity the bedrock which supports the Communist Party? Wouldn’t continued growth then be an affirmation of Xi’s policies? What’s in it for him if the economy stagnates or recesses?

He does want growth.

Otherwise he wont have power... I mean, the dictator is not stupid.

I don't understand why you're referring to the Chinese Communist Party as a single entity. There's multiple groups within it vying for power, each with their own agendas and visions for China's future.

Actually for CCP, a major source of legitimacy comes from making economical progress all the time.

CPC. Not interested in progress? Hahaha. Ok. Keep living under that rock. Compared to other nations Chinese are much more interested in progress. And hence it developed in the last seven decades. And I think you should consider that every state is interested in maintaining power. That is the nature of state.

Like every other country, they want a healthy economy, which requires innovation.

China's proposed social credit system would be counterproductive to innovation, i.e. the cost may be too high.

People have been hoping for this link between freedom and economic development for years about China. It turns out that it's just wishful thinking. China is much richer and no more free than it was decades ago.

China has benefited from external IP/technology "inspiration" which is about to result in new trade barriers with the US. If their future growth depends on homegrown (instead of foreign) innovation, they could experiment with freedom within economic development zones.

Actually, that's not a surprise; throughout history, dictatorships often failed when economic conditions where dire, see the Eastern block, while economic prosperity always consolidated strongmen - Hitler and Putin for example.

But the social changes technology and development produce are far reaching, and usually well correlated on the long term with a democratic society. It's hard to care about liberty when you don't have food on the table, and a lower educated and poor person is much more likely to accept authoritarianism as an acceptable compromise.

I'm very hopeful for China's future and Hong Kong's peaceful resistance is a model that wil spread.

The eras of growth have been the most free in the history of China. People allowed to own land, allowed employment of their choice, allowed to move, and allowed to start private enterprises. There is a one-to-one correlation between how much people are allowed to do and ... what they do.

>most free

>People allowed to own land

Not sure the mental gymnastics you have to go through to convince yourself private ownership of land == freedom

American by chance?

If you own land you can do what you want with it.

There's an easy solution to this: create a two-tier society in which the wealthy, highly educated, and highly productive / inventive are permitted to exist under relative freedom in "economic development zones" or similar while the rest of the population is kept under totalitarian rule.

In other words create comparatively free theme parks for the professional class.

Interestingly, in 19884 the government do the opposite. The workforce have some leeway (booze and sex) while the middle class (the one that could see through the party lies and revolt) is under permanent surveillance.

Not too far off from the rural/urban divide in America. New York City is a great place for a person with an upper middle class backgrobud to become a millionaire. Yet in the Southern Tier of upstate NY you have people who have lived for decades without electricity at home. There is straight-up Hunger Games poverty up here and it’s rarely reported on by the big newspapers downstate that would rather talk about tech and Trump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com