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Eh, I'm reminded of the Orwell quote:quote:A French journalist said to me once that the monarchy was one of the things that have saved Britain from Fascism. What he meant was that modern people can’t get along without drums, flags and loyalty parades, and that it is better that they should tie their leader-worship on to some figure who has no real power. In a dictatorship the power and the glory belong to the same person. Every society expects to some degree some sort of ritual demonstration of shared values and community. The things to watch out for are: To what degree is the ritual centralised or decentralised? Is the ritual an inclusive or exclusive exercise? Does the ritual promote certain worrying behaviours (are we all dressing up in jackboots and marching down streets?)? If we don't participate in the ritual will we get dragged off to a concentration camp?
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Oct 12, 2021 14:57
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Alchenar posted:Eh, I'm reminded of the Orwell quote: Every poo poo society. Oh wait the independence day ball 
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Oct 12, 2021 17:00
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Every poo poo society. Oh wait the independence day ball If you don't think your society has something like this then you've just internalised it as normal. But obviously 'every year we have a big party and some fireworks' is right on the benign end of the spectrum.
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Oct 12, 2021 17:16
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Alchenar posted:Eh, I'm reminded of the Orwell quote: If you zoom out from that, Europe's concepts of legalism and how even top authority figures are somehow accountable to someone else comes from the separation of church and state (and the relative power of both), where the Pope says what's right and wrong and the Pope's organization officiates important parts of people's lives, but the Pope isn't gonna protect people from attack and there's a secular ruler who has control over secular matters. And the clashing authorities meant that people could go to one authority if the other authority was acting up. And that became the framework for where non-noble authorities would crop up and add in new theories of legitimacy coming from democracy and stuff. Alchenar posted:* as long as it is through a state approved institution and explicitly acknowledges the primacy of the CCP as the sole source of legitimate authority in China. Also that the place you live in is definitely China now and forever. To be fair, most governments require people follow them and acknowledge their power. The nuance comes in how much they intrinsically distrust people or how much they require people to "prove" their loyalty. And whether the government takes the moral authority of religion as an intrinsic challenge and affront to their power, because if the government feels the need to gently caress around with people's religion and religious practices, that's inherently invasive and it's gonna cause problems.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:11
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SlothfulCobra posted:
In this particular instance the nuance is that there's a big difference between a state requiring people to acknowledge it as the legitimate source of power in a territory and a political party requiring the same. Deliberately muddying that distinction is in the interests of parties who want to skip over the detail of what precise kind of loyalty is being demanded and whether the entity demanding it is really justified in doing so.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:29
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Alchenar posted:In this particular instance the nuance is that there's a big difference between a state requiring people to acknowledge it as the legitimate source of power in a territory and a political party requiring the same. Can you expand on this? Why does it matter whether a sovereign state demands legitimacy or whether the party running the state demands legitimacy?
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Oct 12, 2021 18:36
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Also, curious on what people think about the financial meltdown currently underway in China.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:37
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LimburgLimbo posted:Yeah I mean if there’s one thing America hates it’s a chance to use its expensive weapons. They want to use expensive weapons to protect things they care about (like the stability of the world's oil market) with a minimum of military casualties against enemies who cannot fight back on equal terms from a conventional warfare standpoint. No scenario for fighting to protect Taiwan matches that set of criteria.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:45
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Also, curious on what people think about the financial meltdown currently underway in China. Yeah I’m just not sure about it honestly. It’s hard to get a read on it since some weird stuff keeps coming out.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:59
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Can you expand on this? Why does it matter whether a sovereign state demands legitimacy or whether the party running the state demands legitimacy? Its the fundamental difference between democracy/autocracy, liberalism/illiberalism, right? In a single party state where the ruling party says they have sole legitimacy to rule, you can't be loyal to the state and at the same time disagree with the party, because loyalty to the party is conflated with loyalty to the state. There's not a concept of a "loyal opposition".
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Oct 12, 2021 18:59
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Epicurius posted:Its the fundamental difference between democracy/autocracy, liberalism/illiberalism, right? In a single party state where the ruling party says they have sole legitimacy to rule, you can't be loyal to the state and at the same time disagree with the party, because loyalty to the party is conflated with loyalty to the state. There's not a concept of a "loyal opposition". See, I think the fundamental difference is who controls the government: the governed or an elite group of anointed rulers who exist above the law (i.e. the Epstein crew).
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Oct 12, 2021 19:11
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MarcusSA posted:Yeah I’m just not sure about it honestly. It’s hard to get a read on it since some weird stuff keeps coming out. https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1447517460593364998 This is one of the more reasonable takes. China has for many years fuelled growth through debt-based infrastructure spending. That debt finally catching up with the major property developers is a big problem but it isn't one that will or should lead to any kind of systemic collapse (particularly given the Government can intervene in any way it wants to and has obvious incentives to do so). What's going to have to happen is a pretty painful adjustment period with a lot of forcible wealth and debt transfer, and hopefully an acceptance that future growth will have to be more constrained.
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Oct 12, 2021 19:19
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Alchenar posted:https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1447517460593364998 I also highly recommend following Michael Pettis. His blog has been going over Chinese financial markets for well over a decade now and contains excellent analysis that avoids being too wonkish while still going over the issues in great detail.
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Oct 12, 2021 21:08
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Pettis does have a drum that he likes to beat, and has been beating for a while: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-17358. The tl;dr is that in his view Chinese households have to spend more, save less, and in particular, send less of those savings to provincial and municipal governments in the form of state-bank-backed debt "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop" is a terribly easy prediction, in a way, but that Chinese households want to sock away immense shares of their income despite 0% depositor rates for the past decade is hardly unique to China - much of East Asia has stupendous household savings rates, and have responded to increased wealth, aging societies, and high-but-slowing growth by.... saving even more, as a phenomenon fulfilled by every country from Korea to Malaysia. Would China be all that different? ronya fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 01:27
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Also, curious on what people think about the financial meltdown currently underway in China. Not an economist by any means though my schooling exposed me to some aspects of it. I think it is too early to call it a meltdown. That is premature as of right now. We have no idea how the CCP will respond. It is exceptionally unlikely that the CCP will allow Evergrande to go down the tubes and start a chain reaction with other real estate developers. The pathway to prosperity for many Chinese in the past two decades has been through speculative real estate purchasing. Extended families pool money together to buy housing, any new housing development they can get their hands on, as the ticket to wealth as they repeatedly buy, flip, and buy again as a means to build out their portfolios. It makes the insane Canadian housing market look like a senior's retirement home. Here in Canada, you get seed money from your parents or from your inheritance thanks to grannie going 6 feet under. In China, especially the coastal areas, you get seed money from your entire extended family and friends to plow into the market. If a chain reaction goes off and multiple developers start to go offline with god knows how much money from the average person being stuck in highrise condos that will never be finished.....man, not even invading Taiwan is going to distract people from the mammoth loss of wealth that is going to occur. I suspect the CCP will step in very quickly should things start to slide downhill. Unlike the West, an autocratic government can wield the hammer much faster and with much more accuracy with respect to putting in a firebreak and keep the disaster contained. ronya posted:Pettis does have a drum that he likes to beat, and has been beating for a while: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-17358. The tl;dr is that in his view Chinese households have to spend more, save less, and in particular, send less of those savings to provincial and municipal governments in the form of state-bank-backed debt The scary part with believing that is that 70% of China's wealth is apparently stuck in real estate. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cwe.12361 A real estate market that looks suspiciously like big pink bubblegum about to explode on a teenager's face. The vast majority of housing purchased in the 5 years (80+% I can dig for the source if you want), is apparently from individuals who already own a home - effectively making them 2nd or even 3rd home properties. It is clear that these are investments, not actual homes that people live in. Apparently, there is enough unsold housing for 90 million people. Unlike the West, where the stock market has been the primary form of wealth investment, in China it is overwhelmingly property. Much of that is of terrible construction (a phenomenon called tofu housing) but it gets bought, built, and resold over and over again as part of the investment cycle in China. What happens when this bubble pops (and it looks suspiciously like it might)? It might make the 2008 financial crash look like a gentle summer breeze from the perspective of Chinese investors, homeowners, and loaners. Already, Evergrande's default and unbuilt properties have bankrupted not just the buyers of those unfinished properties, but their entire family network that went all-in with them. They might bail out Evergrande or build a firebreak to ensure Evergrande goes down alone without dragging down other developers, but how long can this go on? Keep in mind, that within 10 years, the demographics of China will put the large bulk of their population past their primes and the music might stop with everyone scrambling to find a seat. No one has a crystal ball but I find it hard to believe China, or any other East Asian country, is immune to asset bubbles. I mean, just ask the Japanese how long it took to climb out of their pit when everyone thought their economy was the miracle of the world in the 80s. Oh wait, they are still trying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades. Moderately related is this article with respect to what I was talking about earlier with how Xi, by monopolizing power, now has to keep everything and everyone under his control and that an economic downturn, which may occur given the deep fissures in the Chinese economy, could result in a more militarist bent and put Taiwan at risk. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/10/evergrande-china-us/620360/ Though I am at complete odds with the conclusion that the article reaches, it gives a good high-level overview of the problems that China is facing and what Xi has done to the economy since taking over from Hu Jintao. I find the conclusion to be hilariously nonsensical though. TLDR: China might already be at its peak economically, but maybe not in the political or militaristic sense as it might use the next 10 years before its demographics bomb goes off to secure a lasting future for China before it and its people literally get too old to do anything about it. Their conclusion is that since they are going downhill in the next 10 years anyway, we shouldn't be so scared. IMO, it is exactly because they have 10 years left that we should be very scared. The fact that an autocrat is now in power and is publicly telling everyone in the CCP that he isn't leaving should be doubly scary. Like any aging animal backed into a cage, Xi and by extension the PLA might lash out erratically in a bid to stave off a decline in the way that makes Trump and MAGA look like a field trip. 2025-2030 literally will be the most dangerous time in East Asia should Xi stay in power within the CCP. Their military will be at their peak from the massive injections of cash during the past 10 years; they will be technologically on par with the US in the East Asian theatre (next-gen US military hardware not slated to go online before 2030); the leveling of economic growth exposing structural problems may be too obvious to paper over like they have done before. Now is literally the best time to make a coherent "contain China" policy a reality and keep a clamp down on them. To be fair to the US, it looks like the pivot has already occurred under Trump and is accelerating now with the US-UK-Aus alliance. The Japanese are also getting serious and putting more military hardware into action (first carriers since WW 2) and thanks to inept Chinese diplomacy, everyone in the South China Sea hates them because they were bullies over the Spratleys and their idotic nine dash line.
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Oct 13, 2021 03:15
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Herstory Begins Now posted:That is an incredibly bleak article, holy gently caress. I think all the pro-CCP useful idiots in the comments disturb me even more. I don't think they even read the article, they're acting like this is some victory for China and actually proves there was no genocide. E: but bro Taiwan is a settler state. stfu E1: quote:On a government sponsored tour, officials took us to meet Mamatjan Ahat, a truck driver, who declared he was back to drinking and smoking because he had recanted religion and extremism after a stint at one of Xinjiang’s infamous “training centers”. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 04:43
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Yeah that article is carefully written to seem plausibly loosely maybe a little outwardly positive, but the whole thing is just a mountain of red flags of convos taking place in sight of monitors and all the cheerful 'they're doing traditional dances for tourists! their culture is fine!' pictures are all from 6 and 7 months ago, too. I don't think there's a single positive statement in that entire piece without some pretty horrific qualifier on it. quote:But there is no doubt about who rules, and evidence of the terror of the last four years is everywhere. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 05:12
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MikeC posted:The scary part with believing that is that 70% of China's wealth is apparently stuck in real estate. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cwe.12361 A real estate market that looks suspiciously like big pink bubblegum about to explode on a teenager's face. The vast majority of housing purchased in the 5 years (80+% I can dig for the source if you want), is apparently from individuals who already own a home - effectively making them 2nd or even 3rd home properties. It is clear that these are investments, not actual homes that people live in. Apparently, there is enough unsold housing for 90 million people. Unlike the West, where the stock market has been the primary form of wealth investment, in China it is overwhelmingly property. Much of that is of terrible construction (a phenomenon called tofu housing) but it gets bought, built, and resold over and over again as part of the investment cycle in China. Real estate bubbles are not unprecedented in East or Southeast Asia but the magnitudes this time are a little mind-boggling, yes... Without overweighting demographic headwinds too much, if China does not find an alternative source of rapid developing-world growth, it's hard to see how it arrives in 2031 as a country which is that much older and now very hard-pressed to pay for that many more retirements, never mind regional adventurism. Confrontation is a policy for the young. In 2031 China's average age will be in the 50s. My hot take forecast is that foreseeable-future China will have a few metropolitan agglomerations at a lower-end-developed world economic outlook (Shanghai and Beijing compare respectably to Poland or Portugal), with attendant middle classes and middle-class politics to match (to wit: crime, consumer regulation, cost of living, and conservation). Political energy will be disproportionately oriented toward satisfying their demands: in particular, by drawing in the young from other regions to staff labour-intensive service industries like healthcare and hospitality. Other regions of China will grind down to 4-6% even whilst juggling an even harsher aging curve. Portugal would be going nowhere fast if it had three Indonesias bolted onto it... ronya fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 05:24
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Solution to elderly people: the One Grandparent Policy. You only get to keep one.
America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 05:28
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MikeC posted:Not an economist by any means though my schooling exposed me to some aspects of it. I think it is too early to call it a meltdown. That is premature as of right now. We have no idea how the CCP will respond. It is exceptionally unlikely that the CCP will allow Evergrande to go down the tubes and start a chain reaction with other real estate developers. The pathway to prosperity for many Chinese in the past two decades has been through speculative real estate purchasing. Extended families pool money together to buy housing, any new housing development they can get their hands on, as the ticket to wealth as they repeatedly buy, flip, and buy again as a means to build out their portfolios. It makes the insane Canadian housing market look like a senior's retirement home. Here in Canada, you get seed money from your parents or from your inheritance thanks to grannie going 6 feet under. In China, especially the coastal areas, you get seed money from your entire extended family and friends to plow into the market. If a chain reaction goes off and multiple developers start to go offline with god knows how much money from the average person being stuck in highrise condos that will never be finished.....man, not even invading Taiwan is going to distract people from the mammoth loss of wealth that is going to occur. Throw India into the  mix, too.My own prediction is that PRC can stop an immediate financial crisis and probably even reform some of the financial sector better than what we saw in 2008. However, as you pointed out, some of the issues seem to run much deeper. Your description of Chinese real estate investment aligns 100% with my personal experience, too. Additionally, investors don't even seem to rent out the units they buy. Returns depend entirely on capital gains, so investment assumes insane valuation expansion. I don't know how much it's reflected in statistics and actual behavior, but there is also more cultural aversion to living in a second-hand home. It's almost like trading in Rai stones. And goddamn, how much of the Xi factor could have been avoided if only the handsome Chad Bo Xilai had not bullied him growing up.
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Oct 13, 2021 05:33
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no hay camino posted:Solution to elderly people: the One Grandparent Policy. You only get to keep one. Let's not forget that the retirement age for men is 60 and for women is 55, so the economic impact might even be more outsized than expected.
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Oct 13, 2021 05:37
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no hay camino posted:I think all the pro-CCP useful idiots in the comments disturb me even more. I don't think they even read the article, they're acting like this is some victory for China and actually proves there was no genocide. Anecdotal - Australian here who decided to do a trip a 3 week trip to China ~6 years ago which included the major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu but also some really touristy but beautiful places like Guilin, Zhangjiajie, Leshan and Jiuzhaigou. I also spent 5 days in Tibet - in Lhasa and Shigatse. It was a vastly different vibe from the previous places I had visited. It's advised you leave Tibet out of your travel itinerary to get a visa, and then a tour company organises a Tibet permit for you. Pretty sure my Permit and passport was looked at 3 or 4 times by airport crew before being able to get to the gate. There were government checkpoints on the highway before entering Lhasa to check your passport. A policeman was stationed on the tour bus which was only allowed to drive at 40km/25miles an hour. Painfully slow on the highway which just made the 4 hour drive to Shigatse blow out by another 2 hours. The cop was said to be for 'safety reasons', but was clearly there to monitor and be a presence to the Tibetan bus driver and tour guide. Tourists who decided to ask politically sensitive questions got non-answers by the tour guide as the tour company could be shut down and the tour guide including the bus driver can be imprisoned, even if the bus driver is incapable of speaking English. The town center of Lhasa had several checkpoints and metal detectors to get to the main square where the monastery was located. Heavily armed soldiers with riot shields just off to the sides monitoring people praying and doing their shopping. Chinese flags hung off every building - which was not seen on that scale in any of the other 6 cities I had visited. It was clear I was in a city that was occupied by an foreign force. Of course in all the monasteries visited (some still in ruins from the Cultural Revolution), all pictures of the Dalai Lama were forbidden, and I only saw one in a temple in Mongolia that follows the same Tibetan religion a week later. After visiting Tibet, I'm not surprised what has happened in Xinjiang. Xinjiang will follow the same trajectory as Tibet when China decides that they've 'pacified' the population enough to be able to open it up to international tourists. As an aside, I also recall asking a tour guide in the south of China what other countries she had visited. She said a few and also Taiwan before stopping and 'correcting' herself that Taiwan was part of China. It was amusing to me that it would even slip out in the first place, so I wonder what the general mainland population really thinks on the Taiwan issue. Putrid Dog fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 08:25
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Putrid Dog posted:There were government checkpoints on the highway before entering Lhasa to check your passport. uh you understand this sounds like parody right
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Oct 13, 2021 09:04
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Yeah I'm not sure of any tour guide or company that is going to answer any political question with anything but a non answer, theoretical threat of secret prison or no.
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Oct 13, 2021 11:21
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A big flaming stink posted:uh Do you find it doubtful? If so, why?
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Oct 13, 2021 13:20
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Do you find it doubtful? If so, why? for starters, how on earth would the poster know about the threat of imprisonment in the first place?
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Oct 13, 2021 13:42
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I'm pretty sure that whenever I bring up genocide with the waffle house waitress she nervously changes the topic because Seal Team 6 will burst through the windows and canoe her whole family. No, I will not provide any proof of this, we live in an authoritarian state. That's all the proof I need. It can't possibly be because genocide is an uncomfortable topic to broach with strangers from a completely different culture.
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Oct 13, 2021 14:00
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A big flaming stink posted:for starters, how on earth would the poster know about the threat of imprisonment in the first place? It was from the tour guide themselves in order to make some other tourists stop asking questions about the dalai lama such as their opinion of him. Who, while a religious figure in Tibet is also a deeply political one. Asking questions around historical facts and events was fine.
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Oct 13, 2021 14:26
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Putrid Dog posted:It was from the tour guide themselves in order to make some other tourists stop asking questions about the dalai lama such as their opinion of him. Who, while a religious figure in Tibet is also a deeply political one. yeah uh he just wanted you to leave him alone lmao
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Oct 13, 2021 14:38
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Putrid Dog posted:It was from the tour guide themselves in order to make some other tourists stop asking questions about the dalai lama such as their opinion of him. Who, while a religious figure in Tibet is also a deeply political one. Ah so it was not only an inappropriate political question but also a personal and religious one lol
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Oct 13, 2021 14:42
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Yes, China has certainly never shown any tendency to throw people in jail on the slightest pretext, or as a warning to others. Certainly never on matters of politics or religion. That goon must have come here just to make up a random anecdote impugning noble China's honour 
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Oct 13, 2021 14:49
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Tour guides, a profession notoriously dominated by private and quiet individuals.
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Oct 13, 2021 14:49
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Yes, China has certainly never shown any tendency to throw people in jail on the slightest pretext, or as a warning to others. Strawmans this egregious used to be bannable here. China can be doing all that stuff and Putrid Dog can also be a hilariously awkward goon. Two things can be bad at once.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:04
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Starks posted:Strawmans this egregious used to be bannable here. Really can’t tell if you are being serious or not about this. If you are lol because it’s absolutely true and not sure how you can deny / doubt it.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:18
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What should be bannable is making GBS threads on someone who's come to relay an interesting personal experience that's relevant to the thread purely because it's inconvenient for your ideological slant.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:26
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Alchenar posted:What should be bannable is making GBS threads on someone who's come to relay an interesting personal experience that's relevant to the thread purely because it's inconvenient for your ideological slant. And they even started the post off with Putrid Dog posted:Anecdotal
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Oct 13, 2021 15:29
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Putrid Dog posted:Anecdotal - Thanks for sharing your experience. With so much misinformation and disinformation out on the internet I find personal accounts to be helpful and interesting.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:48
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Putrid Dog posted:After visiting Tibet, I'm not surprised what has happened in Xinjiang. Xinjiang will follow the same trajectory as Tibet when China decides that they've 'pacified' the population enough to be able to open it up to international tourists. Weirdly, I've heard from some people that it's kind of the other way around, that Tibet, at least for now, has been afforded a lot more autonomy and cultural freedom than Xinjiang, even if there's not political freedom and the government's potential disapproval is the elephant in the room that everybody has to navigate around. Maybe there's genuinely less worries of terrorism from the Dalai Lama disavowing terrorism on his end, or maybe China got influenced by some of the "muslims = terrorists" sentiment that was sweeping the western world in the aughts. Or maybe the practices involved with Islam are a lot more different from the Han "normal" than Tibet's peculiarities. Herstory Begins Now posted:Yeah that article is carefully written to seem plausibly loosely maybe a little outwardly positive, but the whole thing is just a mountain of red flags of convos taking place in sight of monitors and all the cheerful 'they're doing traditional dances for tourists! their culture is fine!' pictures are all from 6 and 7 months ago, too. I think the thing that stuck out to me was the beard on that man in traditional Uighur dress.
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Oct 13, 2021 18:24
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Alchenar posted:Tour guides, a profession notoriously dominated by private and quiet individuals. Anyone who has to regularly handle customers especially in the service/hospitality industry has learned how to politely avoid sensitive topics like politics and religion. It’s literally part of the job. The Chinese handling of Tibet may be a largely academic question to people like us, but it can be a deeply personal question to those living in Tibet.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:51
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Cpt_Obvious posted:
Well, i'd hope so.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:53
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