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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

One thing China does well. Put people that damage their society or economy behind bars.

In China, "harmed society or the economy" is very very often the excuse used to put political enemies into prison.

So? It works. Their economy is starting to lap the West one. Maybe cutting a little bit off the top works regardless of who exactly is being cut?

It sounds appealing when you imagine that nobody you like would ever be cut, but that's not how the Chinese system works. I would guess that at some point in the past you've laughed at memes making fun of political leaders; in China, this is not allowed, because the authorities believe that posting mean things about the system or its leadership damages the trust in government which is required for a healthy society.

You won't scare me into compassion for people so different than me that they might as well not be carbon based.

Just want to be clear here: you appear to be saying that you support a regime putting people in prison that a regime doesn't like, on made-up charges, with the excuse of "harmed society or the economy" - have I got that right?

Reality is the same behind the polite facades both in the East and the West. The problem with the West is that being rich mostly excludes you from being put in prison for being not liked by the powerful. Excuses are also irrelevant.

You can put people behind bars on made-up charges in USA as well, if they interfere with powerful enough interests. Just not the rich enough people. China doesn't make that exception. Is that worse or better?

Yeah, like Jack Ma (of alibaba) who disappeared for months, and got his company's IPO canceled, all because he criticized the government's financial regulations a bit too much? Trump wishes he has as much ability to put people behind bars as Xi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#During_tech_crackdown

While that is bad, so is unregulated crypto, sports betting, prediction markets, gutting of consumer financial protection, etc we are getting now.

Read about Joseph Nacchio sometime.

Is that true or is it just people that challenge the power of the current Communist Party leadership that get punished?

There is this recent example https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/20/evergrande-...

Which seems exactly like the sort of thing an authoritarian regime would do to placate the masses. Make an example of some big boss, but conveniently fail to fix or even acknowledge the issues that led to the crisis in the first place. In the example of the property bubble, it's domestic financial repression making real estate the only option for savings, and local governments being hooked (heh) on land sales to fund their budgets. The whole system was designed to pump up property prices and drive a bubble.

That's a cop out. You can do both. Do you really think they haven't tried to fix the issues? There's no reason why they wouldn't. They try to fix the issues and rightly jail the CEO. To act as if he was just an unknowing cog in the system is nonsensical.

>That's a cop out. You can do both. Do you really think they haven't tried to fix the issues? There's no reason why they wouldn't.

Except you know, all the incentives for keeping the current system in place. Financial repression still exists. Same with the local government funding model. Also the government's intervention was arguably what led to the crisis, by abruptly disrupting real estate companies' cashflow. The problem needed to be solved, but in typical CCP fashion, rash decisions made the situation worse. Same as with the one child policy.

Finally, what makes you think meta "haven't tried to fix the issues"? They're trying very hard with age verification :^)

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