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Comment by mushbino | Hacker News Reader

>Xi Jinping has weaved a “Chinese Dream.” He has promised Chinese a better life. Growing paychecks aside, the Chinese are not living it. Urban China is a society of miserable egoists who feel manipulated by forces beyond their own control.

Lots of opinions here without anything backing them up. 93% of Chinese citizens approve of their central government. It's been steadily growing year over year. Westerners love having opinions on how other countries are doing contrary to the facts.

https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/why-chinese-peo...

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I think it can be simultaneously true that Chinese (or rather urban Chinese) feel manipulated by forces beyond their own control, and that most of them approve of their central government. The fact that the central government is trying to reign in these forces might contribute to that approval.

> 93% of Chinese citizens approve of their central government.

I have doubts about both this assertion and the source provided.

was this a rigorous assesment? is this a reputable source?

I think you might want to read this recent study:

https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7...

I don't think that there exists any regime which will save the chinese people from overworking and overcompeting themselves.

You can give a person money and power but you can't force them to be laid back altruists.

So the "not living it" part is not relevant, but neither are Xi's "measures".

>> 93% of Chinese citizens approve of their central government.

In a communist/dictatorship regime there is little room for a different opinion.

Anecdotally, most of the Chinese people I've met in the West are quite apathetic politically and at least tacitly support the CCP. It's not like Iran or Zimbabwe where everyone who leaves takes immense pride in hating the government back home.

(Of course, there's some selection bias here on both fronts; the people I'm meeting in Australia are wealthy enough to be able to move overseas).

I work with lots of Chinese nationals in the US and they all support their government and the progress they've made. It seems that only the western narrative on China is the only acceptable and valid one.

Also nearly 100 million members of the Communist Party -- roughly 1/3 the size of the entire U.S.

You don't generally join the party because you believe so strongly in communism. You join it for the improved job prospects.

So people in the west do the same, improving your social network nothing wrong with it.

Nothing wrong with joining a political party, empowering the single-party state, for better job prospects?

Nothing wrong with acting contrary to your believes in order to get ahead of someone honest?

Nothing wrong with it? What is right with it!?

There's a single party in the US, and people here seem fine with it. In fact, because that party has two factions, we call it "freedom."

A single party state is not an inherently evil thing. I think you can make a pretty strong argument that history has shown more negatives vs positives of single party states, but that’s not the same thing.

Acting contrary to your beliefs, not theirs necessarily, and since when is people joining a group for the purposes of mutual benefit (and yes, competition against outgroup members) dishonest?

There’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong with any of these behaviors, and I’m sure that there are many instances of behaviors you support in other circumstances.

> A single party state is not an inherently evil thing.

There’s different kinds of single party states: first, a transitory single party state that “single party” because the current political climate leaves only one party currently competitive but where other parties are not structurally prevented from competing, and thus factionalism within the dominant party will lead to the single party condition being short-lived (e.g., the U.S. during Democratic-Republican single-party rule in the 1810s-1820s.) This, while it can have problematic aspects, is not inherently evil or inconsistent with democratic governance.

On the other extreme are systems where the dominant party has a structural (possibly in-law) monopoly or at least privileged status. As systems of public governnance, these are inherently evil.

I don't think changing that to two-party makes any difference, when the parties just switch which one is in power.

I'm not saying there's something wrong with it -- my point is strictly limited to the claim that the size of the Communist Party is not related to the strength of support for communism in China.

(Though it's not all about improving your social network. You will still enjoy improved job prospects even if you have no relevant network.)

Ok, let's very conservatively estimate that 20% of them are deeply committed to China's ideological Marxism. That's 20 million people united.

To downplay the importance of scale here is a bit misguided.

What makes that estimate "conservative"?

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