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You might be conflating justifying the ostensible purpose of a policy with justifying its likely effects, and perhaps justifying its means.

I think reducing inequality is great. But do you think Mr. Xi's initiative will meaningfully reduce inequality, or will it mostly be used to bolster Mr. Xi politically?

Do you have any worries about Mr. Xi keeping companies on a tight leash with the threat of regulatory hassles if they don't appease him? I think it is a mistake to view these coerced donations as independent from Mr. Xi curtailing the independence of tech companies. Mr. Xi views keeping party leadership over all forms of work in China as essential to the survival of his politically repressive regime (see a summary of "Xi_Jinping_Thought."). No doubt having the headline cause making the tech companies submit being reducing inequality is more politically palatable than, say, further crushing criticism of the government, although reduced corporate independence seems likely to lead to that too.

s/Mr. Xi/Dr. Xi/

Most people in my life with a Phd choose to go by "Mr" as opposed to "Dr". All major news organizations I just checked, including Bloomberg, WSJ, and the BBC, call him "Mr. Xi" and not "Dr. Xi". Do you any evidence he chooses to go by "Dr" as opposed to "Mr"? Because otherwise, I am inclined to assume all the major news sources have it right.

Yeah, but then again most Western news organisations call Xi the President of China.

[Hint: the Chinese language has a word for President - which they use for Biden, Macron, etc. They don't use it for Xi].

I checked gov.cn, and see it using "Mr. Xi" and "President". For example: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t11...

But maybe I'm not really understand your point. Are you saying there is another English word that would better describe Xi than President, or that English should add one? Are you thinking "President" is insufficient to capture his power, and something like "Dictator" would be better? That has such negative consolidations that I would be hesitant to use it.

> I checked gov.cn, and see it using "Mr. Xi" and "President".

Yip, mainstream media gets it wrong. :)

Here you go: https://qz.com/1112638/xi-jinping-title-xi-jinping-is-not-th...

But yeah, its not a big point to squabble over.

Xi has three titles: general secretary of the CCP, president of China, and another chairman title related to the military (chairman of the CCP is reserved for Mao). The presidency is mainly a ceremonial one that used to be a separate role, most of his power stems from being general secretary of the communist party, so that’s what they use in the Chinese press. Because the Chinese know this wouldn’t translate well into the west, they use the Presidency title in their English press oriented toward foreigners.

I think the initiative will serve both to reduce inequality and bolster Xi; to what degree each is yet to be seen, I can only speculate.

I do understand (and agree) with the fact that chances are Xi is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart but mostly due to self-interest to strengthen his position. However, if we separate the person from the action I still believe this measure will potentially benefit more people than it hurts and is in my opinion a positive one. Companies should always come second to people, and not just when it comes to monetary policies, but also environmental, etc.

>that's lacking empathy, not realising that soooo many people wouldn't be able to afford a system like that, or if they did they would have to give up a bunch of other things instead.

I think this is a valid criticism, but I would like to note that there's a massive gap between what sites make off of me from ads vs. what they are requesting I pay to get rid of ads. So if there was truly a drop-in replacement for ads that came at the same cost as what the advertisers would otherwise be paying for my eyeballs, that'd be great. That's not the choice consumers are being given though.

Oh I definitely agree that is the case for certain sites, which will ask you for an outrageous fee and they may not even fully disable ads and/or tracking.

But even in the fair payment scenario you're suggesting, how many people do you reckon would be able to afford paying per whatever metric ,e.g., video watched, article read, MB downloaded, search queried, etc. for all/most sites they currently use like facebook, google, youtube, reddit, tiktok...? And how many would be willing?

On top of that, how would the Internet change as a result of that? Imagine in this hypothetical new setting someone who wants to make a decision about what film/series to watch: currently they may check all of imdb, letterbox, metacritic, rottentomatoes, justwatch, etc. Would they still do that if all those sites required some sort of payment (let's assume they may be different, some may require subscription, another charges per query... the point is they would all cost money to use)? I'm not so sure, and I don't think I'd like that Internet any more than the one we currently have.

It's not always directly pointed out but I think quite a few people would like a system that is either/or. Either I pay you a reasonable amount to not show me ads or you give me the product for free and serve up ads. Similar to how some mobile apps and games have an in app purchase option to disable ads.

>"There may be some policies/actions from the Chinese government I don't like but certainly not that one, I think it's laudable to take measures to shrink the gap between rich and poor and raise the standard of living for everyone before having some tiny percentage of the population living like kings."

That take on 'common prosperity' is very optimistic; most policy realists think that 'common prosperity' is just a tactical component of Jinping's strategy to centralize power in the central government (and Communist party).