as a Chinese raised in China myself, this happens pretty regularly since years ago. I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. China has too much to lose right now.
Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.
Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational.
There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China, despite all the negative press, has done plenty of rational things in order to get toe to toe with the US as both a military and economic rival.
I think the negative connotation associated with the word dictator paints anyone labeled with it in a biased light. Not saying anything bad or good about pooh bear in general. Whatever that man is, him being a dictator is not a causal origin of his current character.
People, including leaders, are influenced by those around them.
A sane leader has advisors, which they trust to provide rational arguments, which sometimes may differ from their own.
A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions. So, there is no one to provide a counter argument to the dictator's own viewpoints and makes them believe in their supreme power. This is what makes them dangerous and act irrationally.
Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
You say this asa if it's axiomatically true. It's not. This can happen. But it can also not happen.
>Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
In another thread, I have cited multiple historical and modern examples of where what you described did not happen. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281
a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship.
decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside.
of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.
Singapore is the first one that comes to mind.
See: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship
Additionally monarchies are essentially old forms of dictatorship with slightly different customs and titles. It's one and the same and plenty of good kingdoms exist. I have PLENTY of examples:
The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt;
The Byzantine Emperors;
The Habsburg Monarchy in its various incarnations;
The Capetian Kings of France;
The Tsars;
The Tang, Ming and Qing - my three favorite Chinese dynasties;
The Incas.
Tibet it also an example. A little iffy this one, it's actually not benevolent but the West has definitely painted them as such to use as propaganda against China. Chinas actions against Tibet were quite horrific and wrong but even still... Tibet was not an example of a benevolent dictatorship... more of an example how a dictatorship can be PERCIEVED as benevolent and how your perceptions can be easily influenced. Tibet and China is an example of evil acting on evil to simplify the situation, but again I want to emphasize that the actual reality is not so black and white.
You may also want to look into the term enlightened absolutism.
Also China is an example of a benevolent dictatorship despite all the bad things they've done (TBH China is more of a mixed bag, and by mixed bag I mean both benevolent and self interested at the same time... but then again so is the US).
You cannot deny that the rise of China has been unprecedented. The amount of people lifted out of poverty at such a velocity has never been seen before in the history of human civilization. That is benevolence. While of course what is happening in Xinjiang is not benevolence; blinding yourself to the good because of the bad is irrational. You must acknowledge both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps can't be bothered to look for atrocities they've committed before 2010...
US has its share of bad stuff, too, but I never said they're benevolent. They're a democracy, which means the winner of a beauty contest is in power instead of somebody who took forcefully or has been gifted it. No good options here, but at least in the contest somebody actually wins.
Lifting an entire population out of poverty and into a 1st world status is benevolence at an unprecedented scale. It cannot be ignored.
Or perhaps you've bought on to the Chinese propaganda to justify Tibet's invasion, subsequent occupation and genocide of Tibetans by China.
And, China benevolent, oh please...
Just copying what I wrote earlier. This is benevolence on a scale huge scale.
You cannot pick and choose to define bullies and human rights' abusers as benevolent just because they benefited their preferred section of society.
Right just like how the US enslaved black people and put the Japanese in internment camps, slaughtered millions of civilians with nuclear bombs in world war 2, displaced entire societies of pacific islanders because of the same testing of nuclear bombs, killed thousands of Chinese Americans building railroad tracks...
The US has it's fair share of atrocities. Many of them on par with China if not Worse. Do these atrocities define a nation? No. No they do not. However they remain a part of the nations identity permanently.
It is the same with China. The atrocities do not define a nation that is far more complex then the black and white characterization you seem so adamant about maintaining. The benevolence of lifting an entire civilization out of poverty into first world status isn't just a "preferred section" of society. China is the most populous country in the world with 18.47% of all humans living in that country. It is a major achievement and more people would be suffering in the world right now if China didn't exist.
What's the preferred section of society in the US? White people? Come on man. You may not want to call China Benevolent but looking at the US and other countries, China is no more and no less benevolent then the other places.
The main point here is that "dictatorship" doesn't necessarily automatically mean a horrible regime of hitler level evil. Just like how it's hard to call the US purely good or purely evil it is the same with China.
Lack of constructive feedback paired with that all your thoughts including irrational ones are amplified through the echo chamber.
It's easy to get caught up with weird ideas (and the more power you have the weirder it might get because you have to solve more complex problems and have much more vast capabilities). If you don't have external feedback you need to be much more resilient to irrationality than under normal circumstances.
In fact there are multitudes of successful "dictatorships" throughout history. I cite many in another reply in this thread:
I'm not offended
I do like to argue. A better way to put it, is I like to talk to people and convince people on a viewpoint I truly believe in while at the same time I'm open to learning as well.
Whether someone agrees with me or not doesn't correlate with whether I'm right. That is the point. And I am right and you are wrong.
You view international politics from the microcosm of US news. The entire population of Asia which outnumbers the US population by a huge number has a more nuanced and complicated view of the situation.
Dismissing China as evil or putin as crazy is an oversimplification.
Think bigger.
I think you're wrong, I think you're angry, I think you're arguing in bad faith, and I believe multiple people/instances have been provided and you have yet to prove anything other than insolence when it comes to being "right".
Honestly, I don't even think you know what you're arguing anymore because you're all over the place. I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed? The original question is what makes dictators more irrational. If you can't understand the many answers you recieved, that is your problem, not mine. I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.
I didn't delete any comment. This is a lie. If you want to engage in conversation with me do it on good faith. Do not LIE.
>The fact that you asked such a silly question about dictators and than refuse to learn from any of the multiple answers shows that you are not open to honest or intellectual debate
Your post was flagged. And died. This happens when multiple people disagree and are offended by your post. I still chose to engage with you even though your post had offensive intent.
Additionally the amount of karma on my original post is 5. So 5+ more people agree with me. I'm assuming everyone who disagrees with me down voted.
If anything you're the one no one is siding with.
>I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed?
You never made the claim but your attitude made it seem like this was what you think. If I'm wrong then I take it back. Logically speaking though, you believe dictators are irrational. Which is equivalent to crazy. So essentially you think Russia and China are crazy because both countries are basically dictatorships. That is a logical deduction from what you implied.
So my statement still stands. China and Russia are examples of dictatorships that are much more complicated then the singular label of irrational. That's all.
> I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.
Why. You obviously don't like me. What's the purpose of wishing me a wonderful day after such accusations? Also what's the purpose of disengaging in the conversation? You said something with offensive intent, I'm still here. What's making you leave? Are you emotional?
We should only be worried about an attack if the the effects on commerce and military retaliation becomes negligible. That's when China will strike.
The CCP understands (or at least was predicting back with Jiang and Hu) that eventually China will democratize. Taiwan is a democracy right now. Democratic countries almost never re-unite into a single country. I can only name one instance of this happening in the last 70 years, and in some ways East Germany wasn't really a democracy yet.
The CCP knows that Taiwanese reunification will never really happen peacefully. Leaders will talk about it, they'll negotiate a bit, but then it won't happen because the status-quo is always more attractive. They know that their only chance at national reunification is now or in the next 10 years or so.
It's now or never. It has to happen by force or it will never happen. If China swallows Taiwan and then democratizes, that can be managed - a restive province can be placated and bought-off. But if China democratizes before reunification, then Taiwan is separate forever.
I do agree that to China, Taiwan isn't about TSMC. TSMC is the reason why the US cares about Taiwan but not the reason why China cares about it. If it was the main reasoning why doesn't China go after the Dutch? The dutch have ASML, which manufactures the more critical components involved with EUV lithography. But China never made a single move against ASML.
There is deep history between Taiwan and China, and it is this history that is the main reason why China eyes Taiwan. Think of it like if California rebelled and became a separate country from the US 50 years ago. How would the rest of the US think about California?
I agree completely. But if you're in the CCP, and a Chinese patriot, you understand that that makes peaceful Taiwanese reunification even less likely. Also, as long as Taiwan is defacto-independent, there's a terrible risk that they will declare themselves officially-independent. That would be a humiliating loss of face for the CCP and at the very least would probably precipitate a power struggle within the party.
There is deep history between Taiwan and China, and it is this history that is the main reason why China eyes Taiwan. Think of it like if California rebelled and became a separate country from the US 50 years ago. How would the rest of the US think about California?
Again, I completely agree.
Jokes aside, if that were to happen, the rest of the US wouldn't think "they belong with us whether they like it or not." It would take a significant government propaganda campaign to get Americans to be okay with forcibly reuniting a state like that.
They're fine burning the rest of the world's supply chain down as long as it leaves them a monopoly.
If I was Taiwan, or in other words a shareholder or OWNER of TSMC, I wouldn't want something I own being destroyed. I would rather fold into the new regime and keep my original ownership.
Makes sense.