A friend of mine worked in China for many years, but after several months of being locked in their apartment block and tested every 72 hours they chose to leave China.
I honestly couldn't imagine people in the West putting up with that, however I'm yet to fully understand why Chinese people continue to suffer the rules without riot.
They do not riot, because they, too, understand, that the capacity of hospitals is quite low comparable to the density of people.
The other points: You can't just leave the country without being a foreigner. Chinese people need a Visa for the countries they want to enter.
The social score / if you participate in riots, you for sure will get identified.
The fear being hurt.
No other possibility, because the Chinese officials are really hard in that terms and they don't care if one get hurt.
No other possibility, because the doors are locked by the officials. No one can go to riot.
They use an app to track one's location and track whether one's in "red area". If so, you lose. Everyone have this app. Without app you can't even buy things on the market.
And of course, the CCP. They have a high membership rate. You can't do some jobs like teacher/professor without being a CCP member. So, they're full on the line of party, because they really believe in that. My exgirlfriend entered the party on her 18th, because her father was a doctor at a military hospital. Being a non member gives you some disadvantages in some parts of live (indirectly, but there are some).
So, you have to speak the language (me do) and have to have lived there for a while (me did) to understand why they're doing it and why they're is not much withstanding of the people.
One of my girlfriends (haha) just arrived two weeks ago in europe. She says it's crazy over there. No end of the 0-covid in sight... Her flight was cancelled 8h before flight because of lockdown of the airport. She had to rebuy the tickets, go to Shanghai and start off there.. But she does not criticize or get angry when talking about this. Her family is still there. She is just happy to be in Europe, because of me and main purpose studying - not because of the measures.
But, yes. It's crazy.
Maybe it's just something about being an American, but even while I was in the Army I had a "fuck you" attitude about most everything that the brass (i.e. the leadership, if "brass" doesn't translate) made us do. Now that I'm a "civilian" again I still retain this attitude. A lot of important business leaders do too. I'm not really sure if this is a feature of American culture or not, but it's certainly a truism that has existed for a loooooong time.
If you're blasted with propaganda constantly, if the means and mode of productions are set up in a certain way which encourages certain behaviour, it becomes very difficult for people to even realise there are other possibilities.
This is a feature of every society, including in the West. We have a strong individualist "fuck you, I've got mine" tendency, but just like China and Russia, there is a large portion of the population that also lauds the people who exploit us because they are seen as something to aspire to.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather live in the West, but personally I see many similarities when you look at the life of an average person.
I agree with this point:
> We have a strong individualist "fuck you, I've got mine" tendency, but just like China and Russia, there is a large portion of the population that also lauds the people who exploit us because they are seen as something to aspire to.
There's a problem when "fuck you" is taken to scale and is the operative means for running a government. It's a hard problem to solve, since I want a responsible and competent republic to maintain a reserve of "fuck you" people because, and let's be honest here, they're the ones who fight wars.
The consequences are where the biggest difference lie. Look what happened to Jintao a week ago. You are truly never safe issuing criticism in China.
You can have some immigrant like Elon Musk tweet insults to the president and people complain but nothing happens. You can have companies create new businesses directly in violation of laws (Uber, AirBnB). There are very few sacred cows and we tend to root for the underdog.
From living in Asia, deference plays a big role in social relations - deference to parents, deference to elders and definitely deference to authority/government. And it’s often not for a rational reason but just because “you should respect your elders”.
I hear lots of people say it’s “well they are more group oriented and think about what’s best for everyone” but one look at the piles of trash randomly dropped or people shoving to the front of lines makes me think it’s not that.
It’s more of acceptance that what the government says is how it will be. They’ll bitch about it, happily break rules if they can get away with it, but if the government comes in and says “dont do that or you’ll be punished” they won’t push back and will defer to the governments authority.
Main reason is family first. The ccp will threaten your loved ones, if you do not comply. And family is all you got to rely on, as social network, as thrustworthy people, as pension plan, as everything in a culture optimized to pitch man vs man.
Its a mob, threatening the citizens. All the cultural factors amplify the mobs power, and no nobody believes the texts of the ccp. Its just that the don is always right.
You can't study at a university without your membership card. Just in case why you wondered why everybody you meet is a CCP member.
But all the other schools run by privates, it's not an big issue.
:)
https://www.thestatesman.com/world/tibetans-march-on-streets... (note that the protestors are by and large Chinese, not Tibetan)
Of the remaining privileged minority, many are choosing to GTFO.
Had a co-worker who also moved back to Singapore after spending many years living in Shanghai. They gave her 4 eggs and a bag of lettuce to last for 1 week, thankfully the apartment block she lived in had a person sneak in every few days with groceries for the building because the local authories didn't care. Being woken up at 5am daily for mandatory testing.
Xi said that they will end lockdowns in 2024, the same year they will come out with their MRNA vaccines. I dont know why they arent buying western vaccines though. Trade restrictions? Xi's pride?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosun_International
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID%...
The biggest COVID problem in Hong Kong (and also to a large extend in China) I gather is that the vaccination rate among the elderly was the lowest, which is a reversal from most other countries. That creates huge problems for hospitals, as the elderly are massively over-represented in COVID hospitalisations. It's not completely known why the elderly vaccination rate is relatively low, but I suspect misinformation and conspiracy stories (which proliferate just as much on the Chinese social media platforms as here on Facebook) is a significant contributor.
2 reasons.
1) Because while they bought MRNA vaccines for themselves (top CCP officials) they want their own local made vaccines to appear good. In China when you have vaccines for kids and such, people who have money pay to use western versions of the vaccines, while those who can't afford use the free local ones. This is mainly due to the issues with fake vaccines in the past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/world/asia/china-vaccines...
2) Xi and the CCP are trying to save face, they cannot admit to the number of cases, deaths, or that zero covid is hurting the economy and failing spectacularly. They have spent 3 years trying to convince the world they were right and that they are the success story while everyone else is a failure.
Internally they have the benefit of controlling 100% of the media so they can control the narrative. But videos and such leak out of China and those can't be scrubbed, they rely on the spreading of their own propaganda on Twitter and Youtube to discredit anyone who talks negatively about China. Any video that shows a door being welded shut with people inside, or a person being put in a box, or dogs being killed in the streets, this is all "western propaganda". It sucks that the CCP giving China a bad name when majority of people there just want to live their lives and are good people.
Xi's project was Xiongan New Area and its an epic failure. Essentially his baby, is slowly being swept under the rug and pretending it doesn't exist. Since 100% of the media in China is state owned and controlled, when things fail like this they just pretend its either going well or it never happened.
A demonstration risks not only destabilision of this myth, it risks bloodshed and massacres because stability was won after so much pain.
To be Chinese in a certain way is to work against chaos. As much as to be British is to maintain the dignity of individual persons.
It's kind of hard to find a western equivalent which uses the hard lessons of history. Maybe something like the rule of law?
Edit: the ellipses are because there are other possible outcomes, just that.
I am not blaming the Chinese people. I am blaming the present (well, last 70 years at least) mode of government.
Read Soljenitsin or Ginzburg or Nadiezda Mandelstam and you wil see what totalitarian Communism is capable of.
More edit: I would be totally scared as well, by the way.
Was the French Ancient Regime a liberal government letting people choose their lawyers?
Was the French Revolution bloodless?
I can also see those people struggling to understand the American style of fierce individualism that creates so much pain and interpersonal conflict for seemingly little gain.
I can also see those people struggling to understand the American style of fierce individualism that creates so much pain and interpersonal conflict for seemingly little gain.
Fierce individualism in some aspect, maybe. But don't forget that the state is extremely powerful in enforcing and reinforcing certain patterns of living.
The government here even outwardly admitted that there was no scientific proof or support for curfews, and yet nothing happened, and they just got re-elected a month ago with a crushing majority.