The Chinese government doesn’t believe in rule of law or checks and balances, leaving lots of room for unchecked abuses.
The 2008 banking crisis revealed massive levels of fraud, collusion and corruption in the banking system and the bailouts with 'too big to fail' betray something even more deep seated and systemic. There is a huge problem of revolving doors across industries with regulators getting hired by the companies they were regulating and politicians getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches. There is a well documented history of corruption in banking, real estate, pharma, energy and multiple other sectors and we have even seen this entering education.
Most commentators know about the widespread corruption in their countries but there is weird dissonance and finger pointing making any kind of informed discussion impossible.
What in your opinion is a neutral venue? I like the technical expertise here but opinions are definitely not neutral.
I would say I am less biased on this topic than the average person on HN. How can I say that though when bias can color my judgement on my own bias? How can anyone say such a thing due to this recursive fact?
I believe the method around this problem is not to use your own judgement to judge bias in your own judgement but to look at external factors surrounding your circumstance and use probabilistic causative connections between those external factors and possible bias to determine a persons' overall level of bias. For example, an African living in the congo will have less bias on a China vs. America debate than a chinese person, an icelander will be less biased than a new yorker for the same debate. The external factor in the previous examples is race and location.
So for me I come from a more different background. I am chinese and american. I hold no nationalistic pride for either country and I could see my self living in either country if need be. It's apples and oranges to me, literally. Racially though, I'm chinese so from circumstance my bias would be equal to an chinese born american but less than an american born white guy or an asian born mongoloid. Overall I'm probably more biased than the african.
In short, I am less biased than most people on this forum because of my background. So a neutral venue would be like people who talk about this stuff but are mostly from like singapore.
I know plenty of people from China who have talked about the crazy levels of corruption there. Some are related to those in power, and they've said it very much goes through 'official channels.'
How corrupt was dick cheney?
... seriously?
/Edit: America isn't perfect, I'll give whoever that. But the defeatist equivalence shit has to stop. We are working on it. We won't stop working on it. We can always do better. Pick up a shovel and help, rather than "lol we're as bad as {place} because {thing}."
In the US things like Dark Money and bribery and lobbying and monopolies are all a sort of an ephermal fact rather than a fact of life like it is in China.
My argument is underneath all that the US and China are the same in terms of the volume of corruption.
China is just an extension of this from what you normally do to tip toe around your boss to the government. Yes it's bad, yes it's a negative. And Yes it's at a whole different level than America.
However, Does it prevent you from living a happy life in China? Does it prevent you from becoming rich and powerful? Does it prevent you from talking shit about the government with your friends? Does it prevent you from pursuing the equivalent of the American Dream in China? No it doesn't. China has problems just as America does but to think that you're living under total oppression is an exaggeration at best.
Take a look at this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2236746/Road-built-... An elderly couple refuses to move and the government bends to their will. Would an evil despotic controlling government allow this to happen? Would you imagine this kind of behavior being allowed in North Korea? Yes there is no talking shit about the big boss in China, but you need to open your eyes, it's nowhere near as bad as you think. This is not stalinist russia.
Definitely if your job and your intentions are against the will of the government you're gonna have a hard time. But for most people they'll be fine.
However the topic at hand is corruption. Not freedoms. If you were talking about freedoms, than yes, America is more free. My argument is China and the United States are equally corrupt.
> it's nowhere near as bad as you think > However, Does it prevent you from living a happy life in China? Does it prevent you from becoming rich and powerful? Does it prevent you from talking shit about the government with your friends? Does it prevent you from pursuing the equivalent of the American Dream in China? No it doesn't. > This is not stalinist russia
This is an extremely naive and ridiculous belief. Depending upon your definition of "happy life", if that involves having to suck up and follow orders given by the government, then sure go ahead. But don't pretend as if China and every other socialist/communist country will let average joes be happy. They have re-education camps for people who don't follow, camps for certain religions, a social credit system blocking millions from traveling/renting and what not.
Not fighting back when things are starting to get worse is exactly how things exaggerate to the point of no return. I would recommend you watch a documentary on how Stalin came to power and how things got worse. Look at Venezuela now vs 20 years ago and you have proof.
I'm assuming you haven't been to China otherwise you wouldn't be saying these things.
You cannot claim the following are anywhere close to how things are in US. Or will you claim these are all fake propaganda being spread by western countries? It's almost ironic that defending China's practices yet China doesn't even allow Google and most social media sites in the country without a VPN. If this stuff happens in US, media would be having a field day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/720608802/reporters-notebook-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...
Also, we are not supposed to engage in political debates on HN so I am going to stop here.
Individuals within the FBI that were revealed to have intent to plot against/subvert the President were criticized in tweets.
The FBI is not under attack.
CPI index (corruption perception index) places USA on 22nd place while China is way down on the 89th place.
It was really the last remnant of the British Empire according to historians. Some of the Hong Kong population (younger especially) wants to be an independent state, but China wants to integrate it, and is slowly sapping it of its famous liberal policies and freedoms.