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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17833301 and marked it off-topic.

Wow that's a nice hijack of the topic ...

KMT is actually doing very poor at the time when they are ruling the whole China, which is something our (P.R.C) text book love to talk about. And it's the main reason of why many people are actually the fan of CCP at that time ... Just so you know.

Sadly we didn't end up with a two-party government like the U.S. did, so we have to argue with each other about who is the rightful government of the China all along.

This reads as if you paid absolutely no attention to what this person was saying.

Note that the KMT did not always do well by it's people either. Note the White Terror. Nevertheless still a far cry from the Great Leap Forward.

Would Taiwan have democracy if its government weren't forced to excile?

> if the current Taiwanese gov. still ruled China?

Did the current Taiwanese government ever rule China?

unfortunately, for a very-short-time :(

maybe you can even say it mostly didn't happen

Technically, no. The ruling DP party was formed locally and never ruled in China. The institution itself also bears little in common with the previous nationalist regime.

Follwing the civil war Taiwan was under three decades of martial law and the government was effectively an autocracy ruled by presidential decrees and led by a minority of migrants from the mainland. Without US support they would not have survived that long to see development and liberalisation.

The problem is: governing an island with 20 million people is very different from governing 1.3 billion people. I mean , Beijing alone have 20 million population. PRC did lots of bad things yes, but I believe all countries have organ-trafficking, corruption, 'wrong' economic policies.

Organ trafficking in the US is essentially unheard of. Stuff like that only happens if the government turns a blind eye to it (or encourages it, like with falun gong).

>I mean, look at Taiwan... it has nothing (no land, no diplomatic ties, etc). Yet it has a lot (decent economy for avg. joe, democracy, etc).

Whereas China is not successful? It entered the top 5 of global economies from huge poverty in the 20th century, is now #2, and is poised to become #1 in the not so distant future. And this starting from developing world conditions, and a long time of colonial abuse.

Wikipedia "Until 2015, China was the world's fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over 30 years.".

And from WTO: " According to data from the World Bank the global economy will expand by $6.5 trillion between 2017 and 2019. America’s GDP is expected to account for 17.9% of this growth. China’s, however, is predicted to account for almost double this, at 35.2%."

>- centries of wrong economic policy (until pretty recent radical change)

Actually the change that propelled them to #2 (and eventually #1) is over 3 decades old.

And China doesn't have "centuries of wrong economic policy". In fact for centuries (before communism) it was a hugely advanced economy (and the world's #1 e.g. in the Ming era).

>- can't vote - if the party loves a corrupt official, then what can you do?

You get to suffer them. But isn't the case in China that they are overly harsh on corruption? (Something like executing thousands officials each year)?

Of course those really friendly with the top tier will get off free, but then again, elsewhere they get bonuses and 1 trillion government bailouts for destroying the economy, so there's that.

>- a lot of human-rights violations

Well, from the Guantanamo to invading countries at will, it doesn't look right for other major countries either, e.g.: https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/unite..., https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/29/us-turning-its-back-huma... . So this is more of a case of the pot calling the kettle black than a real differentiation. At least China fucks its own citizens and/or neighbors they have beefs with, not everybody around. Besides is the case with Tibet that much different than e.g. taking by war several states from Mexico? Or getting Hawaii?

>- helping north Korea to make a nuke... right next to beijing!

So, like some countries that arm and befriend all kinds of dictators and repressive regimes, and are OK with their nuke programs but scold others for theirs?

>well have a look at Taiwan! it's smaller than China with the same ethnicity but Taiwan packs a punch without shady stuff China does (eg. stealing IPs, trafficking bodyparts, etc)

Yeah, but it was a Cold War darling, specifically pampered to act as a counter to China (e.g. getting US Aid up until the 60s), and then getting favorable business and investment. Meanwhile China had lost time in communist power struggles and civil war. Post 1980s though...

Besides, Taiwan itself was under martial law for decades, with government propaganda, restriction of print, restriction of political expression, etc:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Taiwan

So, not exactly a paragon of democracy at the time either.

People look at the recent actions of the PRC while ignoring the vast past economic harm 1949-1960. Set your house on fire and the rebuilding process looks like real progress.

They have done ok recently. That said they have made slower progress than many countries which spread out the boom times from industrialization. Which is why they are still beyond Taiwan even though Taiwan’s recent progress is relatively slow their boom was extremely fast.

In context China was a much larger share of the worlds economy in 1700 which more or less represents it’s share of global population and resources it’s currently slightly below the global average per capital GDP which is a reasonable threshold for good governance. https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-chinese-economy-1...

>People look at the recent actions of the PRC while ignoring the vast past economic harm 1949-1960. Set your house on fire and the rebuilding process looks like real progress.

Sure, but when the house becomes the #2 most expensive property on the planet (and poised to #1), it's not a rebuilding success comparative the previous burn anymore. Especially if before the fire the house was in poor condition to begin with.

#2 is kind of meaningless when they are the #1 largest country by population and most countries are tiny by comparison. It’s like comparing the value of houses when one has as much land as Texas and you include that in the ‘house’ price.

In nominal terms they are 72 per person adjust for PPP and they are #79 which which not bad. It’s the next 30 years when things get interesting. http://statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-projected-gd...

>#2 is kind of meaningless when they are the #1 largest country by population and most countries are tiny by comparison.

That would be meaningless if having a citizen was an asset of more or less standard economic worth regardless of country.

But countries can have 10x or 100x as many citizens as others without having the 10x or 100x the same GDP -- in fact they could do much much worse than the other country.

Compare e.g. Nigeria with Japan or Ireland.

I can see that argument for a new country, but the PRC has had ~70 years to shape it's citizens into productive members of society. AKA people retiring year old today where completely educated under communist rule. So, what it has today is an outgrowth of what it was teaching people 60+ years ago down to today. Look at how quickly Japan or Taiwan etc industrialized and the farmers to factory workers to researchers transition can be very quick.

The direct comparison between Nigeria and Japan or Ireland is relevant simply because of how incompetent past Nigerian governments have been.

Wait, so it’s a bad thing that they have more people? How does it make them any less powerful?

PPP is metric, good for comparing certain things. I wouldn’t think that, for the purposes of determining which is the greater power, less population would be more beneficial as long as the total economic output is greater.

I don’t think total ‘power’ is a useful metric for comparing countries leadership. An incompetent farmer with 10x the land will likely grow more food than a competent one. That says little about who you should seek advice from.

>An incompetent farmer with 10x the land will likely grow more food than a competent one.

Would they? An incompetent farmer could very easily produce nothing even with 10x the land too.

In this analogy growing food like GDP is the easy part. A successful harvest aka what people actually care about is harder.

I don't want to sound like I am dumping on China. The US/etc housing boom was a boost to GDP largely due to low interest rates, but because the assets where poorly allocated the long term value creation was well below what the economic activity suggested. Building something is a critical first step, building something useful that's worth the maintenance and replacement costs is vastly more difficult.