As much as we hate hearing about it, only the Chinese people have the power to make changes to this regime. Having met many Chinese students abroad, I'd say they are OK with this happening. Either they are apathic, or supportive of their totalitarian regime.
No one with power has done anything about it. No one with power wants to do anything about it. Instead we have world leaders praise China for its boldness in the coronavirus lockdowns, politicians and pundits who fantasize — let me use Thomas Friedman's words here — "What if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions ..." China has power. They envy it. They want it. They want us to be less free and more like that. It's more common than not. Your political party is not immune. If you're lucky, they're struggling to engage with the idea of China as a Major Geopolitical Risk (and it makes them somewhat uncomfortable to admit even that) or they're trying to be tough on China as a general play for Economic Protectionism, an excuse to serve the self-interest of a narrow slice of their constituency. (America First!!! Let's pay $900k/yr/job to save $100k/yr jobs in the steel industry!!! This is the only road to prosperity!!!)
You chide GP poster for his cynicism, essentially. Why shouldn't we all be cynical? I'm sorry, you're late to the show and probably missed out on the shock factor by a good decade or so, possibly longer.
I logged in to say basically this, but I will expand on this a little.
There is a steady push in US to limit the rights of its citizens. It worked to an extent and had an interesting catalyst in the form of pandemic, but it seems that people who tried to use it expand power overshot a little, because pushback was significant and is now part of midterm fight.
I absolutely agree on your take on China.
It is important to understand that gradient of comfort, awareness and consequence. And how that also couples with unawareness, denial. In the same or different people. In this latter regard, its the same as how you would be on any range of topics. Some topics will trigger a hyper nationalistic response from you, others you accept as unchangeable, some would be totally off limits for you to feel comfortable talking about (ie. regime change outside of the prescribed methods) but this last section is a much broader range for a Chinese citizen to feel off limits talking about and the consequences extend beyond them to their family.
Polling people for their thoughts is usually unreliable anyways because people can say anything: it costs nothing. It’s the same line of reasoning on why asking users directly how they would change a product yields crappy results.
That tells you basically nothing.
Some wealthy Chinese have a designated family member move to hedge their wealth preservation bets while galavanting around in a western country. I don't think trends in that metric reveal anything except how many are willing to play that game.
If you were to take this argument: It is nearly impossible to get an honest current thought from a Chinese citizen about that... and therefore Chinese must not served/satisfied by their government.
So the inverse of that would be "it is possible to get an honest current thought from a Chinese citizen." So since that is not something I can prove or disprove your claim tells basically nothing as well. This is because even an actual Chinese person telling you their honest thought cannot prove to you, by your standards, to have given you their honest opinion because you make hand wavy arguments that their true opinions are being suppressed already.
You've already disqualified any potential rebuttal because saying "that tells you nothing" can be literally applied to any data or stats thrown at you... because your whole argument is that the data/stats/opinions of Chinese people cannot be trusted.
> Some wealthy Chinese have a designated family member move to hedge their wealth preservation bets while galavanting around in a western country. I don't think trends in that metric reveal anything except how many are willing to play that game.
You can literally apply this as a counter argument to anything. I could claim that Americans' satisfaction with their lives is just a select few that you happened to talk to that are rich and galavanting around. The only way to counter this would be to catalogue every single person and of course also audit that every person was accounted for because any survey covering people can be discredited by saying that it didn't count everybody or that answers were given under duress.
The reality is that not even 20 years ago most Chinese who left did not have plans of returning, but given improving conditions the rate of repatriation is increasing. After the revolution people tried to escape, but that's not the case anymore. Rather than automatically discrediting any Chinese or stats that go against your pre-determined narrative, which is not something people can argue against, present evidence that can actually be proved/disproved.
Not the Americans exploiting cheaper labor in China and making China rich ?
> I would be shocked if it was Iceland or Norway doing that.
I would be shocked if you weren’t wearing made in China / Vietnam shoes or clothing.
No. Some of us have principal and is willing to pay more as to not support China, especially if we are going to speak about how evil it is to support the regime.
What makes you think they have any power at all? This is not what history teaches us about totalitarian regimes.
The needs and wants of a foreigner for the Chinese government will be vastly different from those of a citizen of China. For example we are primarily concerned with human rights, their cooperation in global politics, and other things that concern us as non citizens. But to a citizen they want jobs, food, a stable local economy. These are things China historically did not have, and which can at least be partially credited to the government for providing. By our metrics, yes they do poorly, but then our wants for the Chinese government are pretty much completely detached from that of a local citizen.
This is of course orthogonal to both the topic at hand and reality. The Chinese are quite content with their government and abuse of low-status criminals virtually never causes political turmoil. (not even in bleeding heart democracies)
Also as a sidenote, it's not a totalitarian but an autocratic country. As William Gibson once remarked about Singapore, it's on its path to be Disneyland with the death penalty.
Okay, the government is also "people" in some way. But the "people" who can currently enact change are the ones who benefit from the current government, and it's silly to expect that they have a sudden synchronized change of mind.
For the billions of masses, they don't stand a chance against an organized military response. We've had a taste of that in China itself in 1984, as well as in events leading up to South Korea's Gwangju Massacre.
Parent's "only they can help themselves" quip is just a way of absolving any responsibility: "it's not my problem". I'm not saying whether we can do anything or not, but this kind of statements kill any rational thought towards solving the problem before it's even concieved.
People in power can be responsive to the people or irresponsive in both autocracies and democracies. The Chinese government is extremely responsive to popular opinion, even if its unelected. In that sense it's no different than a big company, which isn't governed by its customers but accountable to them.
The important question isn't, "is it my problem", it's "is it a problem". The Chinese are not children and we're not their parents. Believe it or not they have rational thought in China as well. Using our rational thought means taking seriously the notion that the Chinese do not want our political system, that they by and large if not support at least tolerate their state, and that it's not our problem to solve, because it is not a problem.
You might reconsider that after reading about the Gwangju uprising https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,3506.0.html?P...
TL;DR: an entire province's will was to oust the government, it ended in a massacre.
Without examples of popular will causing an overthrow of an established, well-organized authoritarian state, I'm going to remain unconvinced that it's possible, or that there's any meaningful accountability to the people from the government - after all, who'll judge or stop them unless they implode?
> they by and large if not support at least tolerate their state,
Of course they are rational, like it's rational to submit yourself to an overwhelming power you can't fight, rather than die trying. That doesn't mean that it's not a problem that would benefit from external help. Quite the contrary, just ask the people who lost their organs.
I take issue with the idea that a victimized society is responsible for its own state or that it can pull itself by the boot straps only if it wanted. If it was true, we would not have had totalitarian states at all.
The point is there is no problem. You'll continue to be popular in your own circles assuming the Chinese people are victimized, but nobody actually from there will care a whit for your paternalism. Frankly if people are going to keep opining on China there is zero excuse to be unaware of the numerous polls and studies (from respected Western organizations) on Chinese approval of their government.
How do you reconcile "Ukraine deserves self-determinism" with "we must enforce Western ideals on the rest of the world"? Moreover, how can you speak so brazenly on the heels of the utter failure of doing exactly what you preach in Afghanistan?
Also, you ignored the Gwangju one which had an entire city of hundreds of thousands. Or should I mention Hong Kong? At least that failed more peacefully.
I think you're not understanding what it means to live in a regime that tries to police your thoughts. Supporting it means nothing because it's the only way to survive.
As for reconcillation, I say: give them a real voice without fear of prosecution. It's not the case in China today.
The failure in Afghanistan is an example of jumping to conclusions and shortcuts in thinking, just like the grandparent did. I don't know how you managed to equate being thoughtful with invading though.
I would say it's also not clear that they want it.
Some of them are opposing to the regime, but it is possible that the majority of them is pleased for how things are going, also because things have improved a lot for the average Chinese folk over the past couple of decades.
For many aspects China is not more totalitarian or violent than many other countries, it can in fact be considered an average country in that regards, where 1.2 billion people live. that's more than US + Europe combined (almost two times that)
It is very possible that that's one of the few ways to run such a large country efficiently.
Smaller countries like North Korea for example could probably benefit from a liberal democracy and could be run in such a system, but could China?
And would Chinese people want it?
I think it's an open question.
There is a habit of deferring an opinion to someone that appears closer to the topic - from people that believe they are being inclusive and sensitive - but on the topic of China doing that is completely incompatible. For immigrants, residents and citizens in the west with Chinese heritage this only conveniently plays on a widespread identity and racial ignorance that happens to privilege their opinions, but reduces the rest of our ability to understand and potentially shape policy. As it is a very narrow lens that already matches our opinion of imagining daily woe and oppression from every resident in China, but is simply not accurate.