Well the life of the average Chinese citizen has improved substantially in the last 30 years, no Western country can really say that.
No one is saying that authoritarian governments are good, but opposition to efficient governments just makes life worse for everyone.
Or, for that matter, the Nazi economic "miracle". In their case, they started from the wreckage of WW1 and the Weimar Republic, but they used knowledge and corporate organization that predated both to rebuild, while letting their ideology and leadership take credit.
As far as that, I don't see how hiring foreign advisors somehow make your own economic achievements worthless - anyone can do that, and it's stupid to expect everyone to reinvent the wheel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
As far as that, I don't see how hiring foreign advisors somehow make your own economic achievements worthless
Because there were no "own economic achievements" in this case. The USSR claimed to pioneer a new and superior economic system to the capitalist West, but their greatest period of growth and improvement was accomplished through Western direction.
They imported technical experts from the West to help them design and build things until they figured out how to do it themselves. That is orthogonal to the economic system.
It certainly hasn't solved violent oppression of minorities, though admittedly it's more industrious and organized in that field than any Western government.
I'm not imagining anything. For one, China has been able to deal with the pandemic much better than the average Western government, beyond that there is the issue of infrastructure development such as high-speed rail, internet connectivity, etc.., as well as the issue of staying away from major wars, and so on. That's not to say it's overall any better, but that Western governments do everything better is simply false.
>It certainly hasn't solved violent oppression of minorities, though admittedly it's more industrious and organized in that field than any Western government.
Since you're making the comparison, I don't think the Western massacre of around 150 million minorities for it's development nor the murder of 1 million+ people in the Middle East for a recent example, or the millions in penal labour, is anything that the Chinese have to envy. Murder and opression works just as well in "free" governments, thank you - it's just exported, for the most part.
Ah, a shift of goalposts from "many problems we aren't able to solve" to "better than the average". Meanwhile, Western and heavily Western-influenced countries like New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan have done much better than China regarding COVID, without all the authoritarianism.
"as well as the issue of staying away from major wars"
Give or take at least eleven million war deaths in WW2 and the Korean war. (And, pointedly, excluding the larger Chinese government democides of its own people.) If we take that to a round century, we get another three million dead or so. You really are cribbing from the same bizarre talking points as the other guy in this thread, aren't you?
"I don't think the Western massacre of around 150 million minorities for it's development"
Ah, but there's the problem. You're comparing centuries of history of the West--which would be comparable to the wars and imperial abuses inflicted on its neighbors by China over centuries of its history--to what China is doing right now with a system of concentration camps. That's not just tu quoque, it's downright sleazy, especially when you cite "millions in penal labour" as a defense of the PRC.
(It's also telling that you keep referring to "the West" when you clearly mean "the US".)
The West has implemented NATO and thus offloaded most of it's foreign intervention to the US in exchange for other concessions.
>Give or take at least eleven million war deaths in WW2 and the Korean war. (And, pointedly, excluding the larger Chinese government democides of its own people.) If we take that to a round century, we get another three million dead or so. You really are cribbing from the same bizarre talking points as the other guy in this thread, aren't you?
China was in a defensive position in WW2, they didn't have a choice. As for democides, sure, those are pretty bad, do you want to compare them to the atrocities of the third Reich or does that also not count as the West? I kept West to West.
>Ah, but there's the problem. You're comparing centuries of history of the West--which would be comparable to the wars and imperial abuses inflicted on its neighbors by China over centuries of its history--to what China is doing right now with a system of concentration camps. That's not just tu quoque, it's downright sleazy, especially when you cite "millions in penal labour" as a defense of the PRC.
No, I compared the million of deaths in less than 20 years to that, after you made the comparison in the other comment. I'm not a making a defence, I'm responding to your whataboutism in kind. Just as easily I could have read the above comment as defense of the murder of a million people in the Middle East by comparing it to mere reeducation camps, which is downright sleazy, but I didn't, because I assumed you were arguing in good faith.
From someone who lives literally anywhere outside of the West, including Muslim countries, the atrocities of the PRC are very comparable to those of the West.
People keep thinking that only authoritarian government commit attrocities, while their own governments commit warcrimes at the same time. What cognitive dissonance.
The built environment of the U.S. has changed remarkably little in the past 40 years, and we are paying for this stasis today with our housing crisis from not building enough housing supply, our congested and crumbling roadways, our lack of transit infrastructure investment (NYC subway has been frozen in time for almost a century practically, and all we can celebrate elsewhere are a handful of light rail lines that usually sit in traffic with the cars), we've voted to defund our schools, and have refused to expand our public healthcare system to those younger than 65 as originally planned in order to protect private insurance industries.
The only improvement the west has made in the last 40 years was figuring out how to move a greater proportion of its wealth into the hands of the few, and iPhones I guess.
Even ignoring the phrasing that could be read as claiming no major wars since the medieval era, we don't have to go so far back. I mean, sure, the Cultural Revolution killed more Chinese people than WW2 and the Korean war did combined, but that's still eleven million or so Chinese people dead in those conflicts.
> they haven't been involved in any major wars and yet still dictate policy in the region.
As far as I know, the last major war China fought in was when they invaded Vietnam in 1979 after Vietnam had invaded Cambodia (Chinese ally) to get rid of the Khmer Rouge (the same regime that killed everyone who wore glasses because they may have been reading too much)...