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Comment by pwarner | Hacker News Reader

I'm not advocating their system, but here's one pro for China obviously.

China doesn't have flip-flopping like this with its attendant massive waste. Instead it has endemic corruption which siphons off funds all over the place, perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

Yet somehow they've managed to eliminate extreme poverty and challenge the U.S. in GDP. Sounds like cope to me. They couldn't do that with extreme corruption like we tolerate in U.S. allies.

They "eliminated" extreme poverty caused by communist control in the first place, by going to a capitalist system.

There were tons of economic low-hanging fruits by building out large infrastructure projects, which corruption happily siphoned off of.

The ROI of these infra projects have been gone for a while, yet they continued. Also it's been stealing intellectual property, trade dumping, exporting deflation. Soaking up the manufacturing oxygen of everyone else through subsidies, elite capture, then using the leverage gained and veiled threats against others to force them to yield resources, market access and political control.

More cope.

"They eliminated poverty... but at WHAT COST? They did good things but they trampled on the intellectual property of our beloved billionares? *sob*"

The "good thing" they did, is stopping their actions which causes millions to starve. Which lead to people getting themselves out of poverty.

Yeah, and whilst getting themselves out of poverty they built 50,000km of high speed rail.

By racking up debt of epic proportions, with no return on investment in sight.

All the while going into a demographic death spiral. Partly cause by the draconian 1-child policy, which attempted to fix the pronatalist policies of Mao.

"debt"? You mean the balancing item from money creation? Question: To which bank does the government owe the liabilities created when it creates the money? (clue: the government owns it).

Nothing is really stopping other countries from doing the same, to be honest. People are just scared to give legitimacy to what China has done for their citizens in a very short amount of time, because that would be against their own beliefs and morals.

I'm not saying China is the best and whatever, just saying they've proven every "China is about to fall" headline that has been circulating around for the past 15 years. Maybe we should learn some things from them.

Debt is not fundamentally bad. But the financing has to be justified by positive return, be it in the service itself that makes money back to pay off the debt, or as a public good, returns in the form societal benefit as a result of the service.

When you have massive buildups with no hope of returns, it's a a bad financial decision and the public carries the debt burden.

What is this debt? You didn't answer my question. Who's buying it and what choice do they have, and to whom is it owed ultimately?

>But the financing has to be justified by positive return

Pure BS

I’m not sure, because for every “China debt bad”, we see millions of people getting urbanized and living in upgraded environments.

Emm... and what prevents the USA from doing all the same things?

China benefited greatly from the US-led globalism order that's been going on since WWII.

Another way of saying it is China took the most advantage. And it has gone way overboard in taking advantage. So the backlash is expected and necessary.

Part of fixing things involve doing things that seem like it's destroying the order that the US created itself.

Labour laws, for starters.

The conditions the average Chinese works in are abysmal, even from the American point of view.

Well, then you basically know what to do. Rescind those laws and become competitive again.

>They "eliminated" extreme poverty caused by communist control in the first place, by going to a capitalist system.

Not a fan of CCP but pretending like there was no extreme poverty in China before CCP is insane position.

Why not?

China is literally going through an "anticorruption" purge of the PLA right now. Zhang Youxia et al. The corruption in China has a very different shape than in the US.

(not sure what you mean by "corruption we tolerate in US allies"?)

Do you know who the U.S. allies with and funds? Every right wing dictator and criminal gang on the planet. We just don't like independent nations and left wing factions.

There is extreme corruption in the U.S. as well, but we've legalized it so it disappears in statistics.

> perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

This is notably an area where the US is massively crippled. States can manage many year projects easier, but the federal government must conceal all such projects behind defense spending. Even that is wildly mismanaged (see: all the canceled naval purchases over the last two decades, and we still have an outdated, if large, navy)

One of the reasons why "democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others".

There are countless examples of democracies with endemic corruption. Democracy is not a cure to it.

Its not a cure, but if offers ways in which to cure corruption and allows people to challenge it.

> Instead it has endemic corruption which siphons off funds all over the place, perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

We also have endemic corruption siphoning off funds all over the place, ESPECIALLY in the big projects that have the attention of the current administration.

From the business perspective, endemic corruption is preferable. Generally speaking, on societies like that, you know exactly how much you need to pay to which people to get things moving, so it can be budgeted for predictably.

The disadvantage in their system, is if the the leadership makes a wrong decision, it will stick for much longer than 4 years, and it won't be challenged.

Now, recently, they had a very good run. This must be admitted and even celebrated.

But the aforementioned flaw is still very much present.

Dictatorships work as long as they're benevolent, much like democracies work as long as they aren't bought.

It depends what you mean by work. Technology - among a myriad of other things - enables the worst dictators to stay in power, even if the country as a whole doesn't work.

Work in my post was "work for the people".

You can have a functional democracy and still do long term planning, the problem is the current US government. Its not a fundamental flaw in democracy.

>You can have a functional democracy and still do long term planning

Sure, but that's contingent on

1) the voters being well educated and not easily brainwashed by various types of propaganda pushing them to vote against their own interests (see the Germans being anti-nuclear and pro-Russian gas since the 80s) and >

2) the voters being trusted and having an actual ownership in the country so that their votes affect them directly and also having a say in how their country is run, because if whoever gets voted into power just does the opposite of what the voters want "for their own good", then you're not a democracy anymore, you're just a well functioning state (if that).

Other than Switzerland, and maybe Denmark, I don't know any democracies that constantly function well and aren't plagued with issues.

Populism is always a danger, but the current US administration is all about spite, no matter the cost. It is uniquely, outstandingly bad. Lots of places have working democracies that have managed to do long term planning.

Quite the opposite, a working, independent justice system guarantees rule of law and long term stability.

Also, China can lobby indirectly through media manipulation, and relatively cheaply disrupt our already clunky-feeling Democratic governmental processes.

It's a double edge sword. If the Boss has decided that the country should do X, it's much harder to make him reverse course if it's a bad direction. Zero covid and return to good old communism are two recent examples. For all their flaws and ineffectiveness, democracies are self correcting.

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