Hacker News Reader

Comment by keepsimple | Hacker News Reader

As a Chinese grew up in China and have been living in US in recent years, I am already used to how US media reports about China. The bottom line: I have not seen _any_ US media reporting China truthfully. NPR is usually the worst, but others not much better.

What happens is that, because of untruthful reporting in US media, people in US does not know or understand what's going on in China. It seems a miracle that such a big country grew like crazy in 30 years without democracy. But if you how much average Chinese invest in their education and how hard they work, you will not be surprised.

The only real problem China is facing is its political system, not its economy. Compared to improving the political system, the economy is much, much easier.

View on HN

Americans and westerners who live or have lived in China are typically more critical about china than those that haven’t. We are the ones who notice the empty buildings and districts, and that mall in Beijing that is never going to attract any stores, or why the apartment buildings we live in is half empty but has a thriving ant tribe in the basement.

If anything, reporting on China by western sources doesn’t get anywhere near the actual situation in China because westeners would never believe it was that crazy. News on China by China already leaves a pretty bad impression.

>the empty buildings and districts, and that mall in Beijing that is never going to attract any stores, or why the apartment buildings we live in is half empty but has a thriving ant tribe in the basement.

>would never believe it was that crazy.

That doesn't sound crazy at all, as I've seen plenty of all that in the US...

China builds useless buildings/cities because it raises the GDP and because it's often the only viable way to raise funds for local governments. The Chinese people invest in useless buildings because it is often the only viable way to invest your savings.

Some of the useless buildings built for buildings sake will potentially be filled as people move from rural areas, but a lot won't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5SE47Xjx2Q

The American equivalent is useless military hardware, including sometimes hardware the Pentagon says it doesn't even need.

Both approaches are wasteful but which is more so is debatable. Our military Keynesianism throws off R&D dividends that apply to civilian use cases, but people could live in those cities.

A lot of the empty cities/buildings/apartments are way overpriced due to speculation, so the people who want to live in them can't because they're way too expensive and the people who afford to live in them don't want to. That won't change unless housing prices crash, which would be devastating to a lot of ordinary Chinese who have their savings invested in the housing market.

More people are buying their second and third home than are buying their first.

We have some of that problem too. The use of housing as a financial instrument is a plague from the pit of hell.

A lot of those empty cities (well, districts actually) don't have jobs anyways, so no one actually wants to live in them. In fact, the only reliable way the Chinese government has in getting people to live in them is to move government offices to the area (so civil servants have to live there at least), and then there are problems as the speculators have already come in. This is kind of what the government is trying to avoid in Xiong'an by disallowing speculators (good luck with that).

At this point, there is no way for the housing market to crash gracefully. Maybe in 2011, but not in 2018. The amount of leverage offered up by Chinese banks this time means that most speculators can't simply wait out a downturn.

I'm sure most militaries of the world have similar pork.

Rather than generalising about all non-Chinese reporting about China you could comment specifically about what you think is misleading or untruthful about this specific article, that might be more enlightening.

That's odd because I've read/heard a lot of reporting that describes China in broadly the same terms you just did, including on NPR. The New York Times just did a series on the rise of China and how it defied all expectations in the west.

Can you point to examples of untruthful reporting on China from mainstream publications? Sounds to me that you came here with an expectation of how the US media reports on China and you've gone out of your way to have it confirmed, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

> What happens is that, because of untruthful reporting in US media, people in US does not know or understand what's going on in China.

So, in your view:

1. what's the real story about what's going on in China that's being missed in "untruthful" articles like this, and

2. who's reporting that story "truthfully"?

I also would like to hear answers to these questions, but I suspect OP is another ethno-nationalist that perceives grievance against them for any and all actions.

The number one take away I have from interactions with all too many Chinese nationals, unfortunately.

> but I suspect OP is another ethno-nationalist that perceives grievance against them for any and all actions.

It might be more subtle than that. I know some Chinese nationals who report that their culture is to defend the in-group against criticisms in front of an out-group even if they themselves think the criticisms are true. To not do so is a kind of betrayal. This applies to groups as small as a family up to the whole country.

For instance, that cultural attitude were at least part of the fuel for this controversy: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40013486

It does make it difficult to have open conversations about many topics until you're pretty close.

> The only real problem China is facing is its political system, not its economy.

This how thread is about how that is changing. Also, most don't think politics and economics are separate.

> I have not seen _any_ US media reporting China truthfully

What are they getting wrong?

You can't separate the political system from the economy, the two are deeply intwined in all countries.

Democracy isnt required for prosperity, as China has shown. Prosperity doesn't give you freedom though.

We've yet to see whether world-leading levels of per capita prosperity are achievable without freedom. At a minimum, freedom offers a strong competitive edge.

> We've yet to see whether world-leading levels of per capita prosperity are achievable without freedom.

Look no further than The World Factbook by CIA:

2 QATAR

13 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

15 KUWAIT

22 SAUDI ARABIA

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Autocracies don't last as governments, not forever.

Give details.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com