China has become more and more authoritarian under Xi, its GDP growth stats may be dodgy, and recently its housing bubble has popped big-style. It could go the way of Japan. I agree with your last sentence, all the same.
I don’t want to single this out but tangible proof of a net increase in ‘authoritarian’ decision making, compared to say a decade ago, has never been posted on HN, as far as I know.
Most of the in depth analysis I’ve seen suggests that although enforcement actions have become stricter over the past decade, the actual number of new laws and regulations has gone down.
And more importantly, the number of contradictory laws and regulations (between central authorities, and between the centre and provinces) has gone way way down.
So there’s much less leeway to punish on a whim or trap someone in a double bind, compared to a decade ago. Which suggests a net decrease, if anything.
Since they pretty much all have party cards already. And the moment they give it up means they’re kicked out from any decision making, from what I understand.
Yes internal factions within the party can arbitrarily punish each other for made up reasons all day long, every day of the year.
So in a sense it was already authoritarian without limit.
But that’s not new, nor different from any other big political party.
Then they would just be a citizen who might formerly have been some bigshot, i.e. the second case.
It still doesn’t seem to make sense to discuss any increases relative to the first case, since in 2012 it was already unlimitedly authoritarian.
To be more precise in wording, the net increase, or decrease, in net negative authoritarian decision making is what matters for me and probably most HN readers.
Since this increase, or decrease, may be positive and negative to varying degrees for various people and factions, it’s practically impossible to tell if it’s net negative for the class as a whole.
> imprisonment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_cam...
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison...As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.
> seizure of assets
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...
In the United States, civil forfeiture (also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture)[1] is a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from people who are suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing...To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity.
> death
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Un...
> go after normal people unless they speak out actively against the government
Yes, the U.S., Europe, and all well-governed democracies aren't perfect, but they're much better than China in that regard.
A litmus test: U.S. and European citizens are free to challenge their leaders, e.g., the recent glut of anti-establishment parties garnering more votes in the EU. Some of these guys are loons, yet they're free to challenge the status quo because that's part of democracy.
Remind me where Xi Jinping and Putin's political opponents end up again? In jail or dead.
Both Russia and China developed since 2000 from one to the other, and I wonder what the end game will be. In Russian case, the development led to re-establishment of the imperial idea and an attempt to conquer formerly held lands by force; that is something that the oligarchs wouldn't start, but a neo-Tsar absolutely did.
Communist China used to be way less externally aggressive than Russia / USSR, but I don't like the current military gestures by Xi. Not at all.
I guess that is possible, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t that naturally be their goal? To concentrate power and authority in one place, or person, that they can more readily manipulate.
States can endure a lot of mismanagement. Look at North Korea for instance. What we won't know is when we hit the breaking point.
What is happening in Russia may lead to an eventual collapse, though unlikely. There are some signs of a loss of monopoly on violence as the system is pushed to its breaking point. Hopefully that won't happen, but it's a scary possibility nonetheless.