That's not to say that data reported by other countries is completely accurate or free of political manipulation. But there's a enormous difference between China and democratic countries.
This has not been really true for at least a decade.
Well they might attempt to play with statistics, there are definitely foreign investigative reports that are able to verify most numbers, especially when it comes to exports.
And most of those foreign numbers are very close to what China reports.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-31/who-accused-of-suppre...
If that's the case, then you should be able to provide tons of evidence. It's difficult to "hide" or "manipulate" data in a country the size of china that is tied to the global trading system.
> But there's a enormous difference between China and democratic countries.
"Democratic countries". Like russia? Or venezuela? Oh, let me guess, democratic countries you don't like are not "democratic countries". Right.
You are just repeating the standard anti-china propaganda. It's the same of nonsense over and over again.
"None of china's data can be trusted. They are lying and they are about to collapse". Followed by, "Oh my god china is an existential threat. They are going to overtake us. Deep seek, rare earth minerals blah blah blah".
Make up your mind.
not very tied, actually, precisely because of heavy government interventions
> "Democratic countries". Like russia? Or venezuela? Oh, let me guess, democratic countries you don't like are not "democratic countries". Right.
I think that we can agree that democratic countries are countries where there is a choice and you see changes of government caused by free elections. That's not the case for Russia or Venezuela but it is (still) the case for most of the Western world
> You are just repeating the standard anti-china propaganda. It's the same of nonsense over and over again. > "None of china's data can be trusted. They are lying and they are about to collapse". Followed by, "Oh my god china is an existential threat. They are going to overtake us. Deep seek, rare earth minerals blah blah blah". > Make up your mind.
Who said that? Only you
https://merics.org/en/report/increasing-challenge-obtaining-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-16/china-is-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-16/china-is-...
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/05/censored-statistics-de...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-is-hiding-mo...
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/09/05/the-chinese-au...
https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-07-17-w...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/health/covid-origins-who....
Standard communist playbook: as soon as something is embarrassing (like the youth unemployment rate in China), declare it a state secret. The fact that it's getting hard to find something they're not hiding is not a good sign.
The list of things they're hiding is getting pretty damn long: internal trade statistics, housing sales, population numbers (first in the "ghost cities", then border regions, now all of China), disease statistics (they suddenly classified COVID statistics, now everything), unemployment rate (started with unemployed miners, then youth, now everything), immigration/emigration policies, economic growth, how they're treating various ethnic groups (Nepalese, Uyghurs, ...)
A big question a lot of people are starting to ask: is the data the government itself is operating on still accurate? Because, of course, in Soviet Russia and other communist states it wasn't. Such states made very large, often disastrous, decisions based on fictitious data, so odds seem good the same is unfolding in China.
It’s clear you didn’t read your links because this one concludes with:
> "Scholars in China and at the UN have analyzed these and other data. Not a single person has 'discovered' such a huge discrepancy." ... "China has had at least three censuses since the start of the millennium, and there has been no evidence that more than 100 million people are overreported in China," Wang said.
Then the bubble popped in 1992 and Japan has been struggling ever since. The same thing will inevitably happen to China although it may take a while. Central planning is great at creating the illusion of growth but when you probe deeper you find the actual fair market value generated is much less.
Actually, no. The CPC generally argues this is the case, but it is largely incorrect. Japan responded to the Plaza accords by attempting to massively increase stimulus and preserve the structure (significant industrial, limited service/consumption economy) they started.
In contrast, (West) Germany kept the stimulus relatively low and rotated into higher productivity enterprises and R&D and had a substantially lessened impact. See this (https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/125961733.pdf)
The whole "US destroyed Japan with the Plaza accords" is basically CPC propaganda.
China will have its own issues, but I would guess they look more like the 1992 sterling crisis where China cannot hold its yuan peg as it continues to have trade expansion without corresponding foreign exchange growth.
The US is in serious trouble. If you don't believe trump has already done irreversible damage, he will soon.
For now. China is on a timer, though. Demographic collapse will be pretty extreme.
Americans are both having more children and large numbers of immigrants.
I’d be curious what your definition of democracy is. Mine is the will of the people is happening and it’s systematic and institutional. That for example doesn’t happen in America and never has as evidenced by the constitution
The US is absolutely not the gold standard for democracy. In fact the GOP's goal seems to be to become a single party dictatorship much like the CCP is.
Democracy mean that all citizen inherently have equal legitimacy and capacity to exert political power.
For true démocraties you either need random choice of citizens who decide, or votes by all citizen.
We currently have a bunch of oligarchies around the world bending the laws in ridiculous manners to answer to those with power (currently mostly, but not necessarily, the very rich).
You only need to study the past of our "démocraties" when violent and deadly répression of popular upheaval to the benefit of industry barons was a regular thing.
Nowadays you get more of these things in slightly indirect ways, ergonomic social and cultural violence. Also, a brief mention of the Epstein files make it pretty obvious that the people's will does not really matter.
And do not think one second this is unique to America. A few years ago in France you had the Europe referendum, a rare moment of democracy, where the people voted "the wrong way" according to the néolibérals in power, and thus they proceeded to simply ignore said vote.
The founders of our various political systems made it pretty clear they despised democracy in the first place. The word became popular relatively recently...
Democracy is a radical idea. I don't even think many people in this forum actually want democracy. They will think plumbers, or nurses, of people of the "opposite party" are subhumans unfit to decide for the good of the people.
Not hanging a portrait of an insane murderous tyrant in the middle of your capital city? Has there been any other person who was directly responsible for a higher number of deaths in China than him?
Do you think a country can be both fascist and democratic at the same time?
20 years ago you couldn’t see in Shanghai. Trump pulled back the clean air act, it’s not hard to see a trend. It’s also not hard to buy a ticket and see it yourself.
By "own" you mean 70 year leases with ??? renewal conditions?
> Urban land use rights in Mainland China were typically granted for fixed terms: 70 years for residential, 50 years for office or industrial, and 40 years for commercial purposes. As these terms approach expiration, the question of renewal becomes paramount. The legal framework, primarily the Property Law and the Urban Real Estate Administration Law, provides a general outline but leaves specific implementation to local governments.
> Mainland China’s Property Law (Article 149) and The Civil Code of Mainland China (Article 359) guarantee automatic residential land use right renewals but provides no specific arrangement in respect of non-residential terms. Currently, without detailed implementation guidelines, local governments devise varied approaches, skewing valuations and unsettling investors. This uncertainty hinders market efficiency.
https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/greater-china/insights/b...
But yeah, you could argue that you have to pay property taxes in USA and if you don't, you'll eventually lose your land
No. There isn't. It's just that we've gotten sick of the bullshit and lies from the anti-china propagandists like you.
> Yes, you can build things faster and have smooth 5% YoY growth if you don’t have property rights and manipulate the statistics
If they can build things faster, what need is there to manipulate the statistics? If the chinese don't have property rights, then how come they own so much property?
When you and your kind spout such nonsense over and over again, people tend to get sick of it.
A lot to unpack here. You completely blipped over the part about “no property rights” which is pretty clear when you look at, for example, how their rail construction projects go. Choochoo, rail is coming through, time to move this village, no eminent domain payments necessary.
> If the chinese don't have property rights, then how come they own so much property?
If ownership of a half-finished concrete shell by a bankrupt construction firm on the 33rd floor is counted as “owning property”, then the statistics will look pretty good.
Better than exterminating the natives to build railroads? Using your logic we don't have property rights in the US either.
> no eminent domain payments necessary.
Doesn't explain nail houses though.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-house...
> If ownership of a half-finished concrete shell by a bankrupt construction firm on the 33rd floor is counted as “owning property”, then the statistics will look pretty good.
Yes. 1.4 billion people live in half-finished concrete shells.
Come up with something better. You guys are getting boring repeating the same nonsense over and over again.
—
China is not individualist in a selfish way like the west. Collectivism is a good concept.
Thank god their property rights are not barbaric like the west.
I guess my point is rights and freedoms are unequally held, regardless of a nation’s stated values and laws. What makes/made the US great is not that things happening in China couldn’t happen here. It’s that we (used to?) aspire to greater ideals about individual freedom even if it isn’t present for all. CCP and I think Chinese citizens are under no such illusion, and in some cases reject the individual for the collective. (I’m hedging a bit since my understanding is limited second-hand anecdotes from Chinese American friends).
That's why China ends up with cases like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkePxUA6UE8
Now, there are those they believe the difference in freedom is worth that technological advancement. I’m not so sure.
COVID was a great example of this. China was able to slow the virus spreading faster than the US since they were literally locking people into their homes. In the US, this didn’t happen because of the rights we have.
Yes. There is. Obviously both are happening simultaneously because the world is complicated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Criticism_and_The...
> Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City and destroyed traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. The projects contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League Baseball teams to relocate to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively, and precipitated the decline of public transport from disinvestment and neglect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_S...
Here's one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561895
There's a whole sector of articles about how racism fueled the highway boom in American cities, when those people affected had lot less right to vote. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-... It's still happening https://apnews.com/article/environment-houston-pollution-71c... But the average HN reader probably does not live in such a neighborhood nor know anyone who does.
The differnece today in the US is not that they dont bulldoze its that before they bulldoze there is years of political battle.
I follow various groups around the US that try to fight highway expansions and the almost always lose in the end.
So there really isnt much moral high ground here.
Having a nuanced view of a complex topic is probably essential for proper understanding.
I’d never want to live under Trump's censorship, lack of civil rights, the weird errors caused by centralized economic control
I have a feeling however, that since the leftist priorities these days are so ridiculous to the regular voter that you'll just get another republican president
You are weirdly naive about thinking Trump has any respect for democracy and that his camp isn't going to do everything possible to maintain power at all cost.
And yeah, credit where credit is due, I think no observer seriously doubts the great feat China pulled off in such a short period of time, even if the stats are not reliable. People travel there, Jobs warned about this years ago.
And between US, Russia and Israel, China is the least obnoxious villain in my news feed. They somehow conquer the world without cringe overdrive and the undignified post-pretending social media executive memefare. China does not make me wanna drive a dining fork into my frontal lobe, it’s more like the cough that doesn’t go away.
Listen, I am not at all celebrating Chinese politics as absolute, their grave human rights violations, minority suppression, the Uyghur genocide or imperialist ambitions. I am not even saying they are the least, in fact they are probably the most dangerous. But they contribute little to the erosion of political dignity in my reality.
Anyway, it got me thinking that mostly the freedoms we are afforded, which are very precious to me, seem to come at great cost. A cost people under countries like China would rather bear when the affordances are clean streets, no or little homelessness and the freedom to consume luxury assets.
Every time I visit the US (frequently) I'm just assaulted by its continual, very visible rot. Cities like Seattle and Los Angeles are just fundamentally unsafe places to walk around in. The huge climb of school shootings over the last decade should have everyone alarmed. Americans appear to be stuck in the race to the bottom of who can be the greatest victim and the truly extreme painting of the Left or Right depending on which side you're on because people would rather obsess and come into conflict over what gender they can identify as or race guilt (or its opposite if you're a minority) rather than unite over common class struggles that are eating the country alive.
I think most people would rather pick comfort and safety over the freedom to say what you want and a right to privacy. I'm not sure I blame them when the alternative is getting sexually assaulted trying to walk to your car in LA (speaking from many many second-hand stories of American friends) or having your kid shot and killed in school.
You dont need China dictatorship to not have dirty fucked up public places.
They have high speed rail connecting the whole country, and lots of other stuff which is real and not a number in a spreadsheet. They crashed their housing sector by building too much.
We like China's progress. But let's keep it real.
Between the ones who apparently can’t fathom a world where other countries are as economically successful as the USA and see it as a threat and the ones who are fascinated by its authoritarian policies, it’s really hard to have a dispassionate conversation involving China.