Hacker News Reader

Comment by Liftyee | Hacker News Reader

I have a cognitive dissonance between valuing freedom and privacy and China's level of development (because of/in spite of limited freedom).

My hopes for China fall into 2 main camps: - Measured increases in personal freedom. Restricting information serves to slow the viral spread of minority/non-mainstream opinions (i.e. limiting the reach of a vocal minority), but keeping the population from being exposed to "bad" information is only beneficial as long as the government is "good".

- Acknowledge/continue working on current issues (demographic issues, housing market, domestic consumption). The worst that can happen to a country is that they trick themselves with their own lies (a common trope in many films featuring non-Western countries).

Interested in hearing thoughts/rebuttals/additions on this.

Disclaimer: I am ethnically Chinese but grew up outside the country.

View on HN

I feel like democratic nations have a similar issue in that information players often have a big advantage and ordinary people have no chance in getting a correct story. Personally I feel overwhelmed with how much a person has to keep up with just to cast a few votes correctly every now and them.

At the very least, democracy is a comprehensive strategy and multiple policies must in place simultaneously to approach the leading cases of success that we see in current times, such as decades of great education.

Democracy isn't really about the people having a say. Especially not having to be correct. That's window dressing on the core advantage, which is regime change without bloodshed. Under other systems of government, prominent supporters of the old regime generally lost their lives or were exiled.

Regime change without bloodshed changes the incentives for rulers enough that it's worth them building anad preserving things rather than just extracting as much as possible for themselves and their families and supporters. There's the chance they can come back.

I'm not really sure that regime change in China will mean bloodshed either, TBH. Of course we shall see how this prediction unfolds when Xi Jingping is succeeded.

If you widen "bloodshed" to include long duration imprisonment and mysterious disappearance from public view, I think China falls in the "other regimes" category.

In San Francisco, renters always vote for more lottery-based low income housing which add cost and regulation to new buildings instead of decreasing regulation to build more. Even in a democracy, leaders have a way of convincing people to vote opposite of what they truly want.

  Disclaimer: I am ethnically Chinese but grew up outside the country.

Let me ask you an interesting question. What do you consider as freedom? The ability to own a gun or the ability to walk outside without ever having the chance of randomly shot dead?

Because most Chinese people believe the latter is freedom while most Americans believe the former is freedom. Since most people on HN are Americans, freedom is defined as the former here.

European here: There are sooooo many other freedoms you aren't considering at all. Typical American exceptionalism. "American values are the only values". I am saying so with a gentle snobbish roll of the eyes.

Your statement is quite ironic if you didn't mean any sarcasm. :)

Yeah criticizing the dominant culture when you're not the the dominant culture is kinda the definition of snobbish. And calling it American Exceptionalism is missing the mechanism behind it completely. Every hegemonic culture sees themselves as exceptional. And Europeans did too back when we could get away with it. Dominant cultures don't care when they project onto others.

Let's start with the Freedom House index [1]

    Finland 100/100
    .....
    United States 84/100
    .....
    China 9/100
    ......
    Turkmenistan 1/100

Before claiming a hidden agenda or conflicts of interest of those behind the organization, first evaluate their methodology [2]. You may even agree with the methodology but argue that the actual numbers were calculated incorrectly

> the ability to walk outside without ever having the chance of randomly shot dead

This is a good measure of risk perception, and you can even use it as one of the freedom scores. The problem is that it is hard to measure. For example, consider if this measure is based on a poll: if an act of terrorism occurs just before the poll is taken, the score will definitely drop. However, in countries where such news is heavily suppressed (e.g., the former USSR), the scores may appear perfect.

[1] https://freedomhouse.org/country/scores

[2] https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-world/freedom-world...

  The problem is that it is hard to measure.

I feel it almost every day for myself and for my family in the US. I don't feel it at all when I visit China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. Does that help?

I recently saw someone say that in the US, you have freedom of speech but nothing changes. In China, you don't have freedom of speech but things change.

> I feel it almost every day for myself and for my family in the US

Based on your use of the word 'fill,' the Gallup World Poll seems like a more appropriate ranking because it comes directly from the people. Even your dissatisfaction as a resident of the US is likely reflected in their analysis [1]. However, the situation in China is somewhat more complicated at present. Telephone and face-to-face interviews were permitted until 2023 [2], but the 2023 survey already relied only on web interviews, which correlates with reports of Gallup withdrawing from China [3]. This likely brings us back to the question of different faces of freedom - specifically, the ability to conduct surveys or polls without being accused of distorting the country’s image.

Both Freedom House and Gallup methodologies may be flawed, but without them or similar we would have to rely solely on anecdotal evidence, which is insufficient imho

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/660440/land-free-fewer-american...

[2] https://www.gallup.com/file/services/177797/World_Poll_Datas...

[3] https://archive.ph/v5F9a (US consultancy Gallup withdraws from China (FT))

My point, in case it wasn't obvious, is that freedom is not the same to everyone. Being able to own a gun will give you a higher score but having a chance of being shot randomly just by stepping outside is the opposite of freedom.

We have freedom and safety when we are able to carry a gun and make a walk as we please whenever we want with very low risk for our life, and we can also chose not to hold a gun and not to make a walk at moment defined by other without any change in threat for our life.

I think a lot of that dissonance comes from the adversarial framing that is always pushed about China. That it's China vs the US or China vs the west. Americans especially have grown up with the idea that communist china is terrible and capitalist America is good for many decades. The reality demands a far more nuanced view of government and economy. As well as facing hard truths about values like freedom. Not to mention reckoning with the western individualist mindset.

If anything this should open our eyes that there are more paths in front of us to take than a simple dichotomy.

Agree that reality is always more nuanced than the simple views pushed by news and the (mainstream) internet.

Unfortunately oversimplified, pre-digested informational slop is easy to convey and satisfying to ingest. Nuanced viewpoints take flak from both sides of people who have absorbed the former kind of information.

It is definitely interesting (annoying?) how it is often taken as a given that China is an enemy of the US rather than a competitor in the global scene with values both in common and in disagreement. Perhaps there is some colonial/empire-building projection going on, or the US wants to keep being the only country to meddle in other countries' politics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com