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Comment by game_the0ry | Hacker News Reader

When the west opened trade to China, policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west. Instead, the west is becoming more like China. [1, 2, 3]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/ready-for-your-e...

[3] (countless more examples, especially recently...)

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China is becoming more liberal in the classical sense (more money accruing to regular "new money" entrepreneurs instead of to oligarchs); they just haven't hit the "borgeoisie-funded revolt against the aristocracy" phase of liberalization yet. Give them 50 years.

They hit it in the 90s, except it failed hard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

... That really wasn't what the Tienanmen Square Protests were about, at all.

The protest were a massive mixture of different ideologies, but the dominant ones were democratic politics, and communist economics, opposing the trend towards oligarchic/autocratic rule and liberalized economy.

And now look at what they got.

Now they got to be the second biggest economy soon to be the biggest in terms of nominal GDP. Pretty sure they will surpass us in the next decade.

They boiled the frog with the bourgeoisie. For a long time, there were workarounds if you're generally smart and educated. Nowadays its a hacker level operation to get on a VPN.

And even if you do get a VPN, the inconvenience and network effects push everyone towards censored Chinese alternatives like Weibo and Youku anyway. One thing I've seen working is western countries investing in high-quality media that caters to Chinese audiences. It's an uphill battle but it seems like a promising way for us to bridge the divide.

Everyone I know uses the Trojan-gfw protocol. Very reliable

What aristocracy? And over half the Chinese economy is state-run.

CCP leadership

I feel like there is some difference between the aristocracy and a bunch of dictators and autocrats.

Can't put my finger on it exactly however...

That is not an aristocracy.

In what way are they not?

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2012-mapping-chinas-red-n...

The CPC has nearly 100 million members. A hundred or so people who followed in the footsteps of their parents who were prominent party members in the past, does not make an "aristocracy." To compare this to a dynasty like the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds or the Astors is just beyond ridiculous.

> And over half the Chinese economy is state-run.

Yes? That number is decreasing, is the point.

> What aristocracy?

The owners of those public-invested private companies. The state didn't decide to buy a majority stake in company A over company B because company A was meritocratically superior; the state had a personal connection to the ownership of company A.

> Yes? That number is decreasing, is the point.

This is factually incorrect, or perhaps more generously: out of date. SOE market capitalization as a percentage of the total has been increasing for about two years now, and the CPC has stated their intention that SOEs will play a bigger role in the economy going forward.

> The owners of those public-invested private companies. The state didn't decide to buy a majority stake in company A over company B because company A was meritocratically superior; the state had a personal connection to the ownership of company A.

[Citation needed]

You're in a pipe dream. All the money accrued can and always will feed the ever bigger oligarchs and spreading their power around the world, effectively why the west are more like china in the question. It's already made sure systemically there will never be a "bourgeoisie" united strong enough in china, not in another 500 years. And soon not in the west either.

Well, yes, money always feeds oligarchs along with the regular business owners.

The key thing to notice is that, in realpolitik terms, an "oligarch" is only aristocracy — rather than haute bourgeoisie — if they have a collegial relationship with the state. I.e. if their interests inherently align with the state's interests (or they can personally negotiate such alignment) such that that they have no reason to act against the state.

But if you have enough oligarchs who don't have such relationships with the state — disenfranchised oligarchs — then they will inevitably plot to manipulate the petite bourgeoisie and proletariat together into organizing a revolt; and will then — critically — sit back and collectively withhold their support from the state for implementing any suppression of said revolt.

(Look at what's happening in Russia right now. You think they'd have such shitty military equipment if the oligarch owners of their defense contractors believed in Putin and wanted him to stay in power?)

Every successful "populist" revolt/revolution in political history, has had an underlying set of disenfranchised oligarchs, who could have aided in the suppression of the revolt, but instead chose to stand by (or "work to rule") and let it happen, because the revolution would inevitably put them in a better, more powerful position.

Why does every politically-stable country — whether democracy, constitutional monarchy, etc. — have a senate? Because a senate is a body made up of (representatives of) oligarchs whose interests don't inherently align with the state, where the job of everyone in the room is to negotiate a group equilibrium between state interests and industrial interests that both the state and the oligarchs can be happy-enough with that the oligarchs will stop undermining state power.

China has a legislature (the NPC), but insofar as it is only a rubber-stamp — it cannot control the Party – seats there are worthless as an "enfranchisement" for oligarchs. They want a real hand in power.

China, obviously, makes friends with oligarchs whenever it can. But certain oligarchs' power bases are just inherently misaligned with Chinese state interests — in a way that a real senate body would solve, but which cannot otherwise be resolved peacefully.

For example: why did China push both Jack Ma out of ownership of Alibaba Group, and Colin Huang out of his chairman position of Pinduoduo, at around the same time? Well, both of these companies now own petit borgeoisie wealth-creation engines — AliExpress and Temu. But Temu didn't exist yet when Huang was ousted. And AliExpress (via Alibaba Group) is majority foreign-owned, while PDD is a domestic private company (and thereby likely implicitly highly state-invested.)

My interpretation of those facts: the state wanted to replace AliExpress — a company proven to both support foreign interference and the empowerment of local petit-bourgeoisie interests (that could eventually lead to destabilization of power) — with another company the state could control indefinitely: one that seemingly serves the same market function, but with tricks (profit-margin caps, distributor-set sale prices) that mean that Temu is not an engine of wealth-creation for the middle class in practice. (It tricks you into thinking that it is, and continues that illusion for the first few months, "going easy" on new sellers to get them to quit other channels, before coming down on you.)

Ma wouldn't stand for just giving up on the forward momentum of an entire business venture, so he was ousted. Huang wasn't interested in his B2B agrobusiness company being pivoted to focus on replacing AliExpress — so he was ousted too. China's replacement board seats of Alibaba acted to cut off new investment into AliExpress; while China's replacement board seats of PDD Holdings acted to get the company going toward building Temu.

Yes, you could describe this as 'making sure systemically there will never be a "bourgeoisie" united strong enough in china'. But you can also describe it as disenfranchising some very rich people. Dumb move, tbh.

Or consider: every blockchain/cryptocurrency company in China. Again often foreign-funded, again usually highly successful — but at something that China just can't square with (enabling capital flight out of China, minimizing the state's economic hold over other oligarchs.) In a functioning/long-term-stable China, the Chinese cryptocurrency industry would form an industry body with a lobby, get that lobby represented in the senate, and then that lobby's interests would get carefully negotiated against state interests. In the China we have, these companies are just quashed... despite each shutdown generating new disenfranchised oligarchs by the dozens.

> policy experts assumed China would become more liberal

No one actually thinks that, it's just the line they use to justify themselves to the public. Like how Saudi Arabia has been promising amazing "reforms" for the better part of a decade.

Back in the 90s, we really were that arrogant. Policy makers believed history was over and we had won.

We had just done it to Russia successfully (short-term). Why not China?

Bold to claim that anything that happened in Russia in the 90s could be called a "success." If that's what was in store for China then good on the CPC and President Xi for averting it. The "integration" of Russia into the global capitalist system was an utter disaster from both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective.

Russian GDP tripled from 1988 to 2008. They were doing all right until Putin went full dictator.

I'm not sure the average Russian would agree that the precipitous drop in life expectancy in the 90s, the rampant child prostitution, etc., along with what our idea of "democracy" for them turned out to be - you want to talk about election interference let's start with Russia in 1996 - was worth selling off their natural resources so a few oligarchs could get rich.

That’s why I picked 1988.

Bruh, you just admitted to cherry-picking the date

I cherrypicked "before the fall of the USSR". I could have shown a 4x increase in GDP if I picked the lowest numbers.

Again, all you're really saying here is "mass death and misery in the wake of the fall of the USSR was worth it because a handful of criminals got insanely rich" which is exactly the sort of demented take I'd expect from a community bound together by their worship of Mammon, but for those with conscience I must report you're not making a strong argument in favor of the Larry Summers, Shock Therapy approach.

Which mean what? You should've picked ~2000, the 90s saw significant decline (of course you're only looking at GDP which not something we have reliable figures for from the 80s).

My phrasing was "had done it to Russia successfully". That doesn't imply success for ordinary Russians.

China also adopted capitalism, in some ways more extreme and enthusiastically than anywhere else in the world.

There's a reason both the USSR and China started doing reforms in the 80s: neither system was working well, leading to stagnation at best and outright absurdities and poverty at worst. In both cases, the economic reforms mostly worked out well.

There are a bunch of differences between Russia and China: China never seriously attempted to introduce democracy and has had a fairly stable political system since the late 70s, whereas in Russia the entire communist political system collapsed and was replaced (which is always tricky business). China also never experienced a breakup similar to the breakup of the USSR, didn't have "let's sell off all state properties to my friends for peanuts" kind of corruption, had quite a different make-up (before the reforms most of China was rural and profoundly poor), and probably a few other differences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...

It does work to an extent. I doubt Saudi Arabia would have let women drive if it hadn't been for the influence of the wider world.

What isn't going to happen is the leadership suddenly deciding they love democracy and giving up power.

That was genuinely assumed to work and arguably did somewhat happen initially until Xi got to power.

Saudi Arabia did inch along a tiny bit with some reforms, it only took a younger dictator to coup his father.

Usually that's the biggest problem worldwide, the old hold on to old ways to their deaths and prevent any kind of change. And this is a newer phenomena in human history because modern medicine has extended lifespans far beyond the days of old.

It worked mostly fine for most of Eastern Europe after 1990 (with a couple of notable exceptions, like Russia). We tend to focus on the few black sheep where it didn't work, maybe because in hindsight the cases where it worked look so "obvious".

Your example for how the US is becoming more like China is… a crackdown on copyrights? Haha

Google’s “web integrity API” is a system to prevent use of software not authorized by a centralized, unelected authority. Even Google’s deceitful claims about it aren’t about copyright, but auth and anti-cheat.

> policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west.

There are many flavors of liberalism and yes 2023 China is more liberal than 1980 China.

If you could explain 2023 China to Deng Xiaoping in 1980 he'd think China would be a degenerate state.

The fethism with political liberalism above all needs to stop

Yup, Deng literally invaded Vietnam and rolled tanks over dissidents. In Lee Kuan Yew's Biography he recounts talking to Deng shortly after Tiananmen, and Deng by LKY's account just said straight to his face "if I had to kill a hundred thousand students to restore order, I would have done it".

I genuinely have to laugh when people tend to say things like "I wish China was as liberal as it was back under Deng", people have concocted some serious alt-history if they think China today isn't more liberal than it was decades ago

I'm convinced that what make a nation is perceived as liberal is a function of its relative power and subservience to the west instead of its inherent liberal value

Especially the word democracy in the geopolitical context, that's what western politicians mean. E.g, spread democracy, this country should be more democratic, etc.

> if I had to kill a hundred thousand students to restore order, I would have done it

Deng was only being blatantly honest.

How many people died due do US involvement to "restore order"? [1]

I know from experience what happened to Greece and Argentina and I wouldn't call it an accomplishment nor something that made the World a better place.

There are no reasons to consider "being liberal" a goal, it's just one of the options, doesn't mean it's the best or the only one.

Of course the US cannot afford to not be hyper-liberal (meaning in reality hyper-capitalistic-run-by-greedy-corporations) because it would kill their economy, even though it could benefit a large squat of the population that, for one reason or another, is being considered a burden for the society by the "liberals" whose only solution is "throw money at the problem and hide it under the carpet".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Worldcoin is a terrible example imo, it's beyond DOA. Much like the rest of crypto, no one will seriously use it, unless we're talking speculation. I think that the riots in HK, the united front against Russia, etc. clearly show that the rest of the world believes free markets are the way to do things and it's just a matter of time (probably when Putin + Jinping bite the dust) until China/Russia also adopt more (classical) liberal stances.

If you're hinting at authoritarianism, Trump has been repudiated by most, and the Republican party is in shambles right now (which is how such a weak Democrat was able to win). I don't really see the doomer point of view.

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