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Comment by gentleman11 | Hacker News Reader

Imagine living somewhere like China and not liking it. It would be hellish, you couldn’t even talk about it without a police visit or your boss passing trouble along to you. A giant human spirit grinder

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This did not get to the bottom, the police will visit all your family members actually. You will simply give up and shut up as the cops will harass/threaten your family members. It's a common practice for many years and it's getting 10X worse under Xi, who is said to be the designer of "Culture Revolution 2.0" these days, who already painted every other countries(especially USA) to be enemies(except for North Korea, Russia, Iran and Taliban).

On a related note, we have here in the US a sudden wave of "culture revolution 3.0" with its proponents using the very same tactics. It's well known that Xi is preparing to enter the chip manufacturing business in 10 years, and since US is the only real opponent, Xi wisely chose to disarm us with the adapted version of "culture revolution". For this reason, I believe, he'll massively increase investments in pushing this movement in the coming years.

xi wasted tens of $ billions in chip manufacturing subsidies. In that field you cant buy success

I meant Xi is going to take TSMC, so he's technically going to "enter the chipmaking business".

There's no way TSMC equipment would survive an invasion in any meaningful way. For obvious reasons.

> On a related note, we have here in the US a sudden wave of "culture revolution 3.0" with its proponents using the very same tactics

What on Earth are you talking about?

Watch this interview with Yuri Bezmenov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8

Then think about all the "Culture War" problems we are dealing with in American for the past ~10 years.

Convincing your bosses that every time America shoots itself in the foot you were the one who did it must be a very cushy job indeed.

I've never understood why people support the escalating US-China conflict since it's so easy to just keep focusing on win-win collaborations but your comment gave me an insight.

Please let me know if this is wrong, but I think this is the argument:

1. The US is a better leader than China because it is a significantly better place. Notable US problems that cause lots of suffering are significantly less severe than notable Chinese problems.

2. As a result, the US government should put a lot of effort into making sure that China doesn't become too powerful. It is ok for the US to publish articles that are less reliable than those on Iraq WMDs because if China becomes too powerful, the world will be far worse. In particular, China should not become powerful enough to project its values on other countries as much as the US does. China also should not be able to non-democratically reform international, democratically-decided rules such as International Maritime Law.

For most people in the US, it would take heaps of evidence and learning could to even make them doubt that US might not be a significantly better place than China (Note that I'm not arguing that the US is not far better). On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.

I personally can't buy into this argument though because I lack the confidence in my personal philosophy to know what a "better life" truly is. However, many people in the US have a more stable philosophical foundation and could never be convinced that the US is not a significantly better place than China.

> On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.

Are you refering to military conflict? My guess would be that the Chinese people are very misled about the military prowess of their country. It seems like a weekly occurrence that a PRC military propaganda video is shown to actually use footage of foreign military exercises.

On the other hand, the US military (one might argue government as a whole) seems to be slipping in basic competencies. The navy has had three very public ship navigation errors in four years, and continues to be absolutely clueless about drones. ("UFOs") The air force has a new fighter which is still not functioning at design capabilities, and the withdrawl from Afghanistan was less organized than the 1970s withdrawl from Saigon. At least in the US the failures are public and might inspire change.

Chinese people don't believe the US system is inferior solely based on improvements in their own country. I think this discredits them. Chinese students study English and America in school, many have come as exchange students, they consume American media - they are comparing things firsthand in a way that Americans mostly refuse to do.

Believe it or not, Western ideals used to have a good amount of traction in China. I suggest this translated firsthand account of how American values lost their luster: https://mp-weixin-qq-com.translate.goog/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkg...

Nice anecdote, I tried to speak more to the point that I think that most US citizens are right to support the US escalating the conflict against China. Their values align with their actions.

Furthermore, people that think they can convince US citizens that they should not escalate the conflict are focusing on a lost cause. This does not mean no discourse should happen, but people should understand that differences in opinions are due to very big differences in values.

I did not look much into why a Chinese citizen would support China escalating the conflict against the US nor have I done much research on how China builds up anti-US sentiment.

What evidence would you present to me - an American - that the US is not a significantly better place than China?

My assumptions:

1. Hedonism is "fairly correct". In a well-fed and low-violence society, the pleasure/pain axis explains >40% of what every human cares about, especially chronic pleasure/pain.

- 1a. Both the US and China are low-violence and well-fed.

2. Obesity is responsible for a high amount of pain. Furthermore, there are few things in society that don't kill you which are worse that obesity.

- 2a. People don't die that much in societies like China.

3. Modern entertainment is a good painkiller. However, obese people that consume it still experience great amounts of pain throughout the day. Entertainment that distracts people from fixing the chronic pain they feel is a negative to society.

With these assumptions, the US doesn't look like a significantly better place than China. In theory, the freedom enabled by the US allows people to do well on the pain/pleasure axis. In practice, the US enables companies to do things that lead people into greater chronic pain.

Note that I think that Taiwan could be a significantly better place than China by this logic.

Those are definitely good quality of life indicators.

Every country can do better. The US should do better at a lot of things and poverty, inequality, and racism are for sure big drivers of things like childbirth death rate, lack of education and more!

But to OP's comment, there is no way in hell you can convince me or even a significant minority of Americans that China is better on the whole or even on a minor slice.

Lol even life expectancy and health seems like a lot of people here don't care about and are perfectly happy to guzzle cola and sit in front of a tv lmfao.

In terms of do better, China's list is ginormous and some of the things on it - like not building interment and forced 'integration' for millions of their citizens - are so extremely opposite of the values most here hold that it far outweighs any good weights on this 'better than' scale. It feels farcical to say otherwise.

I commented an open ended question in the first place is because these one off comments similar to OP feel to me exactly like what the article shows are active campaigns to interact on social networks like HN. But pointing that out without proof (impossible for me to get) is against HN ethics. I'm guilting of doing it though this is a moral and emotional issue for me.

Plus we americans are pretty self confident and often beligerantly arrogant. Makes it hard to convince people anything beyond american exceptionalism even on obviously nice things. Like that historical pamphlet comparing French lifestyle during the war that was posted here a long time ago. Yes they can value family and well being over working, that's horrible and un american ;) !

Imagine living somewhere like China where it's gotten to the bad state it is in now - when 5-6 years ago there was a real trajectory away from where it is now, and the world (including myself) was cheering on China.

Plenty people who have lived under communist regimes can tell you a lot what it feels like. In a way, you learn to live with it. You can talk about it with your family, your close friends. But not with colleagues - as you can't be certain who is and who isn't a spy. You need to be careful not to get involved in any provocation. If you have kids, you need to be extra careful - also about them. When you think about it, it's a bit tragic: normally you worry about your kid taking crack, but you'll probably notice that. But in a totalitarian regime, your kid can go to jail not for dealing drugs, but for being a sensitive, honest individual, naively believing they can change their country to be a better place. But most of the time it's not jail but things like being expelled from the university, losing your job (and not being able to find a new one), and similar forms of harassment to your family. But deaths were not uncommon, even after the Stalinist regime ended.

This is very well written. Thank you. Did you live under such a regime yourself?

I'm sometimes thinking about the bigger picture, and wondering what will happen in hundreds of years? Will Western country end up more and more divided, and will China become more and more united and like-minded? One variable that seems to indicate to the contrary is that transparency is a huge factor in allowing a society to improve itself, and China is becoming more and more opaque.

> Imagine living somewhere like China and not liking it

Imagine living somewhere in the West, and not liking Facebook.

> A giant human spirit grinder

Yes, you could call it that.

Have you watched any of the interviews conducted on the street in China on the Asian Boss YouTube channel?

> Have you watched any of the interviews conducted on the street in China on the Asian Boss YouTube channel?

Why should anyone care about "man on the street" interviews on some Youtube channel? I mean, it's not like someone in a repressive country is going to open up with all their complaints about their repressive government to some rando with a camera.

Plus, Youtube is easy to manipulate (in some ways) if you have the resources of a government: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/technology/ch....

True. But you also just made the assertion un-falsifiable.

> True. But you also just made the assertion un-falsifiable.

How so? Even if a quiet dissident won't open up to some obnoxious youtuber creating content, they may express their true feelings in other ways. My main point is you have to be pretty careful with what you "learn" from Youtube, and "have you seen this rando youtuber" (with the implication they should change your mind) is not a very strong response.

But people do open up with their criticisms of various government policies to some rando with a camera. That's my point.

Also Asian Boss is a channel run from outside China that does similar interviews in a range of different countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh88g_EKlqw Pedestrians Being Dumb for 10 Minutes Straight. I guess this is the finest america have to offer?

What is the largest country in South America? ... Africa

Can you name a book? ... ummmmmmm

How many stars on the American flag? ... 32

You are confusing China with North Korea.

Most people going to China to make money don't come there wearing pink glasses. It's a Faustian bargain. Eat your soul for money, and an opportunity to run a factory without being sued by everybody on the day 1.

The remaining minority is unfortunately a big problem, and higher up on the status ladder the bigger. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-...

Such people come with real delusions. Either delusions of grandeur, or delusions of being so smart that they think they will trick communists, people who grew giving their whole lives to intrigue, and insane political culture which makes GOP look like kindergarteners.

The worst kind are ones who come there with genuine believe, and gravity towards fascism. A foul wish for "an orderly society" where they think they will be made into elites https://beyondinfinity.com.au/project-dragonfly-is-google-he...

I call both types "ones stupid enough to survive." Were they not, they would've been crushed long ago.

> that they think they will trick communists, people who grew giving their whole lives to intrigue

Please don't do that here.

Why?

Because we enjoy HN as one of the few places on the internet where meaningful discussion can still occur, which is what comments like yours ("communists grow giving their whole lives to intrigue") undermine. The world is a lot more nuanced.

There is nothing nuanced about what mafia-like organisations, which includes communist parties, turn to. They consume their members with life of fear, and strife. One wrong word to the boss, or something allowing others to set you up, and you are killed.

It's cutthroat, it's one sided, and is exactly as boringly simple as the history textbook tells. I lived in communist hellholes for 18 years of my life, and I will not be entertaining a wish of people wanting to rewrite these textbooks to say that black is white.

It's a bad tendency I see more, and more: people drawing nuance when there is none, for a want of being "nuanced," "sophisticated," "succinct"

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