I know! The US should just resign itself to being a provider or raw materials to the Chinese party-state, so we can focus on China achieving those glorious common goals!
China is rising to fight common perils such as "'Western constitutional democracy'; others included promoting 'universal values' of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation." (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...)
More seriously now: your perspective is embarrassingly naive, and forgets, many, many significant areas of difference between the US and China. China's leadership, now, is committed to am authoritarian, autocratic path. No amount of progress in "space exploration" is worth throwing support behind that kind of government.
You do realize that they're closer to being a dictatorship now than they've been for decades? Xi has purged most of his rivals and has recently abolished term limits for his positions, so he could rule indefinitely.
So making their president "president for life" doesn't count as a dictatorship now?
A truer dichotomy would be between a rigid semi-dictatorship and quasi-democracy... given that even China has token democracy at some levels despite now essentially having a rubber stamped dictator, and many western states are a long way from true democracy - the voting system in the US hardly allows representative democracy and special interest groups are adept at manipulating voting blocs very effectively, and is 2 party democracy really democracy? Other countries do better jobs (ie Australia’s preferential voting, germany’s Proportional representation) but you can argue that till the cows come home
The double standard in many places, even by regulation and law.
I am still hopeful they will open up more in the future, nearly 20 years since the joining of WTO.
> That’s a false dichotomy. China is ostensibly commmunist but free market is alive and well (with heavy doses of state directed influence, but so as in other western countries, witness the military industrial complex)
"Freedom" does not mean only the "free market." China is certainly against many things Westerners would consider necessary for freedom:
> Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society.
> These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...
The Chinese communist party literally opposed to constitutional democracy (meaning checks on its power), human rights and accurate, nonpartisan history.
Can I buy a porn magazine, a bag of weed, and assault rifle in China? Hell, the party chairman is now chairman for life.
China is no longer about communism any more than the U.S. is about the Enlightenment. China today is about Gilded Age-type capitalism with a strain of collectivism running through it.
Every Chinese today is caught up in a mad scramble for personal enrichment, often at the expense of his fellow man. Most American Marxists would shrink back in horror at the capitalist fever that grips the average Chinese. Even most of those on America's political right do not have the stomach for the level of Gordon Gecko-ness that animates many Chinese. While many on the American right prefer to retreat to dens, family, and countryside, Chinese capitalists are busily trying to get rich any way they can (ethically or otherwise).
The Chinese Communist Party functions the same way Chinese government has functioned for thousands of years. Anyone can join, if he can pass the necessary tests. Passing tests to gain a coveted spot in the government has been a national priority since before Confucius's day, 2.5 millennia ago, and continues to be today.
China does not have legally enshrined freedom of speech. But at a societal level, the 'real' freedom of speech is greater than what I've experienced in America. In America, you must very carefully watch your words, lest you offend any of a number of easily offended groups. You won't go to jail for it (unlike certain parts of Western Europe - Germany and Britain, for instance), but you will lose friends and you may lose your job. The result is that while speech may be legal in America, it ends up stifled nevertheless. Large chunks of American society no longer value free speech, and there is actual debate in many corners of the country about whether certain speech ('hate speech') should be outlawed. In China, so long as you do not loudly criticize or subvert the Chinese government, you are free to speak your mind - and won't be harassed by the government OR be James Damore'd / Donglegate'd out of a job.
As for the "10s of millions dead", there's extremely good reason to be skeptical of these claims.[1] They become harder and harder to swallow the more older, Mao-era Chinese you talk with - most of whom, no matter where in the countryside they hail from, know of no one who died of starvation or malnutrition. The press is the propaganda arm of a nation's powerful - whether in China or America. Don't believe it just because they tell you to.
[1] http://www.unz.com/article/mao-reconsidered-part-two-whose-f...
From what I gather, this is unfortunately true.
> The Chinese Communist Party functions the same way Chinese government has functioned for thousands of years. Anyone can join, if he can pass the necessary tests. Passing tests to gain a coveted spot in the government has been a national priority since before Confucius's day, 2.5 millennia ago, and continues to be today.
Nah. I don't think you have to pass any tests. You get into the party if you or your parents have the right connections or are willing to bribe the right people.
> China does not have legally enshrined freedom of speech. But at a societal level, the 'real' freedom of speech is greater than what I've experienced in America. In America, you must very carefully watch your words, lest you offend any of a number of easily offended groups.
China doesn't have "real" freedom of speech because you can voice your personal prejudices with fewer social repercussions. China is literally throwing defense lawyers in jail because they have the temerity to defend their clients against the government prosecutors! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... There is no "real" freedom of speech in China in any way.
Try to organize a protest march against Xi Jinping in China and let me know if you still think that "the 'real' freedom of speech is greater in China."
Firstly, are the people of the USA freer than the people of China? I find that quite an easy question to answer.
Secondly, a harder one. Are the people of Chile freer of less free than they would have counterfactually been if the USSR had come to dominate Latin America (and won the Cold War into the bargain)?
To your second point: I don't know, yet in my opinion it should be left to the people of that country to decide what they want for themselves, don't you think? -_- "Democracy!", scream the US patriots, yet meddling and overthrowing democratically elected rulers when it doesn't align with their interests, under the flimsy excuse of "they didn't make the right choice, we know better, with our dictator they will be more free than with their choice". Just doesn't sit right with me.
>These examples are on a governmental scale, but the same thing happens in industries where startups are fighting to compete against entrenched competitors.
And if they win, they become the new entrenched competitors and abuse their market position just the same, because that's exactly what they were "competing" for in the first place.
>Innovation, technological advancement, and a higher standard of living for all spring forth from competition and necessity.
I think the best way to drive technological advancement and standards of living would be an economic system that actually values those things directly.
No contradiction there, the competition comes from the other country. It's the same in companies competing domestically too. Within the company, resources are shared and divided in a top-down approach, everyone working to a common goal, using the company's funds to do so. Externally, companies compete with other companies.
I once heard the saying that companies are communistic internally and capitalistic externally.
This pattern seems to stem or be consistent with how humans cooperate and compete, according to Realistic Conflict Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic_conflict_theory
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That said, companies competing have overall done a lot less harm than nations competing. At least companies can't declare war on each other, collect taxes, or execute/incarcerate people.
That's what they try to achieve, but they fail to do so, because the labour relationships are still fundamentally transactional.
Workers aren't working for the common goals of the company, they're working for their salary. And since the primary goal of the company is profit, they are fundamentally in conflict with the goals of the company.
The goal of the employee is thus to seem valuable, and get promotions. Sometimes that means working harder, but often it means making sub-optimal decisions for their own benefit. This isn't always conscious or intentional, but nonetheless, it's what people end up doing, and it leads to a lot of inefficiency: Workers not mentioning difficulties for fear of looking incompetent. Managers insisting on impossible deadlines and so on.
Competition pushes systems to be more efficient, but the problem is it never stops pushing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inte...