Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

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> China thinks in terms of decades and their population is very culturally disciplined. They will endure years of economic downturns if necessary. Historically they have.

I think this is a lie that somehow gets propagated in the West. They are not somehow smart and forward thinking, they are stuck within a dictatorship.

Over a span of 3 years from 1959 15-55 million people died in China [1]. It wasn't because of a natural disaster. It wasn't because of a war. It's wasn't because of a disease. It was purely because the leadership was trying to achieve the same ambitions as they do today.

Nothing changed, it is still the same party and CCP will go to the same lengths to try to achieve it again. The result in 1961 was a -27.3% growth [2].

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China#Annual...

I don't see how any of this refutes the claim that the Chinese population has a much greater pain threshold than the US. If anything, you're only bolstering the claim.

> I don't see how any of this refutes the claim that the Chinese population has a much greater pain threshold than the US.

I was more combatting the point that China has some super smart decade+ forward thinking leadership. Whereas the reality is that the same political party is still willing to sacrifice tens of millions of Chinese people for negative economic growth.

The resilience of course is another thing. The main reasons they have a higher pain threshold is that for many the quality of living never really changed drastically and there is a heightened sense of nationalism. More generally, on a personal level Asians try to "save face", meaning they could be starving to death and still smiling to not let their enemy see their pain.

I still maintain that they can't hold out, and that the CCP has been very quietly entering into negotiations with the US [1]. There was already an exceptionally difficult property market situation threatening stability, and now their entire supply chain is being disrupted on every level. The pressure they are under is immense.

It's a really shallow analysis to claim nothing has changed in China since Mao, specially politically.

If nothing has changed, and they've proven they won't change their government after 15-55 million people died, why would they do so now?

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