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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

You are sharing the official written policy, but the reality on the ground is very different in China. Most business happens under the table. Corruption and bribes are commonplace in every transaction. Books are all fudged to a high degree. Millions of people who put up large deposits and made monthly payments for under construction houses to developers like Evergrande are never getting anything back, and laws aren't going to help them. The central government has a tight grasp on maintaining its control but not much else. That's just how things work in China.

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I don't mean to burst your bubble, but... this picture of a "house of cards"-economy, with "swindles all the way down", riddled Swiss-cheese-style with corruption, while indeed a Western populist idyll visage of China these days (a sort of Western-denialists wet dream of impending Chinese doom), is inaccurate, and I think, dangerous for folks in the West to believe, if they truly hope to compete with "their biggest strategic adversary."

Surely there is corruption, failure and incompetence, but if it was on the scale that comments like this yearn for, China would look more like Cambodia, or Myanmar, or even Thailand, than China.

The simple truth is China would not have been able to achieve the scale of productivity and growth that it has (and if you doubt the scale, you must travel there in earnest, you will leave mind-expanded, if not fully blown), if it were truly like you merely wish it were. Sorry, but truth ain't always easy to hear.

> Sorry, but truth ain't always easy to hear.

It's copeium. The alternative is to admit that there could be another system, authoritarian, non-democratic, where there is no freedom, yet it's successful and have a chance to be the biggest economy in the world in a few decades. At this point, it's all about ideology.

It's completely copium. It's kind of dumb. Already the biggest in the world a few years ago by some metrics, but in GDP terms maybe 10 - 15 years. But the strange thing is that still so much room to grow beyond that. 5 to 6x times as many people as US, to achieve a comparable standard of living to US would produce a truly enormous economy.

I don't think China should be "world ruler" by any means (they're not ready and not international enough, and that Chinese culture is not respecting of other people enough at all, and that's not OK, but we can't expect them to develop themselves too quickly because they have a lot on their plate) but I think people should want China to be successful. To want them to be a giant failure is just dumb.

And smart people will be learning from China right now, not drinking copium while being a pendejo over China-crash-porn. It's all so ridiculous and sad. How can you say you're from "the best/ better" system if that's your reaction to a new contender? It makes you look like a bitter loser. Ugh...

Granted there will be downvotes to espousing this correct view, so part of the problem is people in the West need to work through their anger/fear issues on China before they can see it clearly. We're not there yet. And we can't hope to really compete until we can see it clearly, so...get to work people, do the inner work to have some clear sight!!

> The simple truth is China would not have been able to achieve the scale of productivity and growth that it has

In plan economy, controlled corruption is a feature not a bug

Can you explain more? What's the theory or practice behind corruption adding benefit to the extent that you want to work it in?

It lets entrepreneurs bypass bureaucracy

Good point. Makes sense. Doesn't that mean West will need to either: loosen regulations, or permit corruption to, if it's going to compete?

Maybe the whole "VC industry" is essentially a form of "organized corruption" ha! sometimes I guess I think so... :) haha

You appear to assume all of china's cities are either Tier1 or Tier5. That's not how it works in any country. Obviously, the higher tier cities look nice. But that doesn't apply to the entire country. You take one step into a lower tier city and you end up in what looks very similar to Indonesia or Malaysia.

That's not necessarily all the main government's fault either. The scale of the country means control is incredibly difficult. Which also happens to be part of the motivation behind the Social Credit Score that everyone brings up.

Honestly, it's actually quite surprising how similar the city tier dynamic appears to the relationship between Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia.

Can you give some examples of these “lower tier” cities on the mainland? Also where would cities in Taiwan and Hong Kong occur on these scales? Also in the US, UK and Australia?

I thought I was treating it as an overall. I’m not sure I follow but it’s interesting. Anyway, the scale is massive and impressive. No?

My point.

Thanks for chiming in three days later I guess

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

You can find the Chinese city "tier" classification system on wikipedia. It's not an official scale, but used commonly due to just how massive and varied the country is. Looks like the scale I remember isn't the standard, since apparently the most common one is ~4 tiers.

As for why I brought up the generalization; corruption is variable within a country. Corruption in China is rife, in part because of the population size. I am fairly sure you have heard of Tofu Dreg construction. That kind of corruption is barely noticeable in cities close to administration centers. (Such as Tier 1 cities. It gets cracked down on very quickly) The same does not apply elsewhere.

I just don't want to be too unfair to china with this. Most countries have corruption outside of the major cities and administration centers.

Any sources on this?

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