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Comment by jacktribe | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to understand CCP's reasoning for these draconian measures. Even if you haven't seen the Twitter videos showing bags of live cats and dogs being being beaten to death with sticks, the children separated from their parents, the alarms on the doors, the economic numbers, you can tell that this does't make any sense.

Some theories:

- Strip people of absolutely all rights, make them feel helpless. Later gradually restore some rights so that they feel like they've gained freedoms, but not all.

- Keep very low COVID numbers on paper, say the west is unsafe and ban travel, preventing the outflow of money from China to the west.

- Crush the economy and nationalize private companies even further than they are now. Perhaps even nationalize foreign companies that operate in China (see Russia).

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Or by Occam's razor, I would say the goverment simply screws up (so badly) at their top-down approach at this stage.

The problem is that the reasoning at the top isn't anything near what the drones implementing said policy at the bottom are doing.

There's like a hundred layers of people between Xi and the dudes beating dogs. It's like a game of telephone where some medical experts speculate about animal reservoirs, and somebody in the mayor's circle hears about it, and next thing you know they're giving covid tests to chickens. It's the same incentive problem as the Great Leap Forward in the 50s, failure is punished, so if there's even a hint that letting some cats go free will come back to bite you, why take that risk?

In some ways China's decision making is actually quite decentralized, in that the sheer mass of bureaucrats making decisions and carrying out actions is incredibly high. The center passes out a generalized order like "lockdown and limit covid spread" and leaves the implementation details to the next level. By the time it gets to your apartment community you're stuck with some uncle/auntie who spent their school years heckling teachers during the cultural revolution trying to make public health decisions.

TL;DR when China does something stupid and illogical it's not always because there's a nefarious plan. The system is just broken and causing suffering for no reason.

People here in Venezuela used the same excuse, "Oh Chavez doesn't know about it", it being corruption etc, as if there weren't hundreds of reports/testimonies appearing in newspapers/etc every single day.

What's next, Xi doesn't know about the organ farms? Hah.

What the parent comment said was that not every little detail is decided at the top.

Chavez knew the country was corrupted but do you think he was behind every clerc or doctor that asked for a bribe?

Dictators are not superior beings able to manage a country : they are just good at keeping hold and at hiding their mistakes.

> he was behind every clerc or doctor that asked for a bribe?

Yes he was, he purposely allowed corruption to flourish, communism 101.

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