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WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Is there any speculation or published reason on why Pelosi is even visiting Taiwan now? Not sure if this fits here or in a US Pol thread.

There was a mention about "In the face of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) accelerating aggression" but I'm not sure if that's pointing to a specific event.

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WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


khwarezm posted:

Has the Ukrainian situation emboldened (everybody's doing it!) or tempered (modern warfare is actually really hard!) the PRC's aggression towards Taiwan?

It would be hard to decouple it from everything else going on but I would definitely expect the Ukrainian situation itself to have emboldened PRC ambitions while the US is occupied elsewhere.

However, the current global economic downturn is probably the number 1 priority for the Chinese government.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


How are u posted:

It could very easily be achieved if the CCP eats a small slice of humble pie, faces reality, takes the L, and allows a free and independent people to remain free and independent by recognizing what the rest of the world already recognizes, officially.

I don't know how you define easily but that certainly is not easy.

In practice, I feel like having the PRC get over its weird hangup on Taiwan and treating it as a rival independent nation is probably a tiny bit worse for the Taiwanese than the situation is today (though certainly more "normal").

You're still going to get the political, economic, and military pressure and all that regardless of what happens because of geography. There's no world where Canada or Mexico can risk substantially pissing off the US, that's Taiwan.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Franks Happy Place posted:

It's something common in China that is also widely hated in Taiwan/HK/Singapore... much like simplified characters. The joke is that trying to appeal to Taiwanese using something they dislike and consider "foreign" is dumb, hth

Also, extremely specific jokes you don't get because you lack the cultural context aren't automatically racist.

That seems wrong for Singapore at least? Singapore is way more influenced by the mainland and uses simplified for most official things as far as I know.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Stringent posted:

sorry i truncated the quote for space.

i saw this the other day, do you think this evaluation is legit or is this just sensationalism?

https://twitter.com/japantimes/status/1555742957415849985?s=21&t=1oUOpryJPhOD29Cj96Vnvw

quote:

The shortage illustrates the limits of Taipei’s reliance on purchases of U.S. military hardware to deter the threat of invasion by Beijing, which claims the island as its own territory. Taiwan will need to add at least 100 more pilots by 2026 to operate the 66 more advanced Lockheed Martin F-16Vs that President Tsai Ing-wen agreed to buy two years ago.

The Air Force only netted 21 new F-16 pilots from 2011 to 2019, according to data compiled by the Taiwan People’s Party.

Yeah its sensationalist based on the premise above but the worries are not completely unwarranted, pilots take a lot of time to train effectively but the military can lower the bar like it already has to get more recruits through the pipeline (allowing more hours on sims vs actual flight for example). Taiwan has been developing a lot of training equipment like https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/taiwan-touts-new-air-force-advanced-training-jets-abilities-2022-07-06/ to combat this exact thing.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


fart simpson posted:

it really feels like in the long term, only china or america have the possibility to "win" the conflict over taiwan. taiwan itself feels destined to lose almost no matter what happens

Define win and long term. I'm not really sure what sort of American "win" in Taiwan you're stating even looks like.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


fart simpson posted:

if any sort of war breaks out and the PLA loses, or china suffers things like economic damage, severe loss of status and power, things like that, that would be an american win. if there's turmoil on the mainland over it, that could be a win for america. if taiwan ends up being a permanent forward base for american military projection like south korea or japan are, america wins. things of that nature.

and by long term, i think all of this will potentially be playing out over the rest of this century

I ultimately think the US to win in those scenarios you postulated it would have to retain global hegemony, so it would have to achieve those aims without suffering severe economic damage that would let the balance of power shift elsewhere.

My view is if open conflict were to break out, you would basically see the relative decline in global power for both parties. I definitely don't think the US would consider that a win at all (after all, the avenues for this outcome are wide open).

Are you saying that the other outcomes wouldn't be possible without Taiwan being in the mix? Internal turmoil over the economy in China breaking out before the Taiwan question is openly answered seems at least plausible? If Taiwan is a poison pill to the PRC after being taken over (public unrest followed by open revolt) would that really be a "win" for the PRC?

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


ronya posted:

Before the current straits crisis, commentary on Taiwanese preparations noted a conflict between Taipei and Washington DC on whether Taiwan should focus on asymmetric warfare options rather than advanced weapon platforms (e.g. typical coverage).

Glibly summarising: an invasion scenario a la Ukraine favours preparations for asymmetric warfare. A "grey zone" confrontation scenario where the PRC harasses Taiwan with measures short of war favours high-tech advanced weapons. To quote:

What I'd like to know, however, is what the mil experts interpret the current confrontation as - a simulation of the former, or a sample of the latter? I've been poking around but I don't feel like I've found any good commentary or overviews.

Neither? Not a military expert but just giving my 2 cents.

The existence of advanced weapons platforms should be treated as a fleet in being situation which disincentivizes certain actions. Their existence dictates that PRC military strategy accounts for their existence or suffer the consequences. The existence of a F16 air fleet might mean that the PRC has to bombard airfields from afar before committing elements of their fleet as an example. You're not going to see this come into play during the current exercises because the PRC would know not to show their entire hands. They're not going to dry run how they would invade Taiwan as a show of force. I would expect military analysts to be reviewing the actions very closely to glean some insight into the philosophies of the PRC military and their potential angles of attack.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Franks Happy Place posted:

I think the imminent collapse of the CCP narrative has been mostly wishful Western bullshit to this point, but uuuuuuuuh I don't think I ever saw anything like this in my entire time in China, and imo I would characterize this as "buck wild Cool Zone poo poo"

https://twitter.com/eefjerammeloo/status/1596583242555355137?t=ctSi80n2ferB5XANoPW9bw&s=19

(Again not saying this is a revolution in the making, but this level of public dissent is pretty unprecedented since '89)

This isn't the Chinese national anthem as far as I can tell? It sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale instead.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Charlz Guybon posted:

So, how do they propose overcoming this problem and crushing all dissent?

Nothing really new as far as I can tell, typical strong man/cult of personality stuff where all mistakes will have designated scapegoats for punishment but the guys at the top can never fail, only be failed.

The Party is sacrosanct and above criticism.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


The FT posted an opinion piece of US - China relations:
https://www.ft.com/content/bc6685c1-6f17-4e9e-aaaa-922083c06e70

And it kinda raised an interesting question - is there a real "end game" to US-China relations?

I would say that if we look at pre WWII history, countries were typically always in active competition and conflict with each other, and that is probably what US/China relations are supposed to look like and to think otherwise would be a giant recency bias and that Europe being comfortable as semi-permanent partners to the US being the historical oddity.

But is there even a model for China coming into its own as a partner/participant in the US led world order? Is that ever a possibility for any developing country?

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Warbadger posted:

Do you really think China isn't/hasn't been a major participant in the world?

I'm not sure where you're getting that I don't think China has been a major participant in the world?

Also don't want to make it seem like I think the US is solely responsible for the rift, the sphere of influence China wants is inherently imperialistic.

Just wondering if people have some baseline expectation of peaceful coexistence.

Edit: this is also partially from my perspective that US/China relations have steadily gotten much worse since Trump/Covid despite almost nothing else major happening

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Mar 9, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


ronya posted:

The drive to monopolise key primary resources is no longer a factor. So neither is entirely a great analogy.

I'm not sure I buy that, I would assume the Chinese ambitions around the South China Sea for example is a resource grab. Otherwise you would be arguing that those efforts are just a dick waving exercise.

eSports Chaebol posted:

Honestly I think a lot of it is embarrassment too at being duped by the fact that China apparently only liberalized economically in order to grow their economy. And they didn't instead to liberalize politically at all. And now they want to rein it in? And this was the plan all along? And they telegraphed it openly for decades? A real oopsie there.

I think that's kinda what I was asking. Is a liberal democratic China that wants the same thing as much of an issue for the US? There are plenty of countries that are notionally democratic but still kind of assholes on the global stage. Is there something offensive about the Chinese one party rule that makes them an ideological rival especially if its not a model being exported? Is the post Ukraine world where the world believes economic ties doesn't curb autocratic tendencies a world where the US and its allies embargo everybody who doesn't want to play ball?

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-china-america-pressure-interview/

Macron goes to China to negotiate about Ukraine and ends up repeating Chinese talking points, real good job there buddy.

Not an unexpected outcome, wonder if China has plans to become economically closer to the EU as US relations worsen.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


I could be missing some nuance but I don't see a substantive difference in the stuff being reported.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


I'm not a follower of chess but isn't this not super legit since the tournament is only happening because Magnus is stepping down? Seems pretty niche. Might be news if he wins it.

Saw this article pop up on my feed about the recent military exercises around Taiwan:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3217184/what-mainland-chinas-latest-taiwan-drills-tell-us-about-its-military-capabilities

Is this really the first time the J-15 has been witnessed performing carrier ops? Seems surprising for an airframe that has been around for a while.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Rabelais D posted:

The point is he said what he meant.

Edit: not sure if he was speaking in English originally, but he probably was talking about 素质?

Chinese version I think is here:
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/fyrbt_673021/202304/t20230419_11061802.shtml

Still seems pretty clear cut to be "quality" 质量 and "talent" 人才.

edit: I don't think this would be considered a gaffe in Chinese, since he's trying to point out China's advantage in education and this is just some artistic introduction.

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Apr 20, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


I think it would still be fair to say that the echos of the Cultural Revolution has made a lot of Chinese media output unappetizing for export. There are a lot of films that are excessively formulaic, patriotic, good vs evil stuff that was very popular that people from outside the mainland wouldn't enjoy.

I mean the decline of Hong Kong cinema probably has the same roots in Chinese government leaning on the creative process.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Silver2195 posted:

Yeah, I think general authoritarianism and associated censorship has more to do with it than the Cultural Revolution specifically. Inasmuch as there’s a connection, it’s more a reaction against the Cultural Revolution than a continuation of it.

That is basically the legacy of the Cultural Revolution though? Conformation to Maoist thought, suppression of dissent, the KGB style informing on neighbors and watching them get thrown into gulags. I'm not sure how you separate authoritarianism and censorship from its worst expressions during the Cultural Revolution.

And to expand on that, the influence is on Chinese consumption habits, look at the top grossing films in China to see what I'm talking about :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_China

There are films that are absurdly popular that wouldn't have seen the light of the day anywhere else, talking pure propaganda stuff like Wolf Warrior or My People, My Country which are enjoyed because they are feel good films that cater specifically to the Chinese people without any broad appeal.

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 21:14 on May 5, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Glah posted:

Authoritarianism comes in many forms and the evolution of post-cultural revolution Chinese establishment was decidedly anti-Maoist. Like the red guards railed against Deng Xiaoping and he was purged during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution ended when forces opposing Maoist thought seized the power and Deng became the de facto leader of China. That's not to say that for example Xi Jinping isn't authoritarian. But he most definitely isn't a maoist authoritarian nor would he support radical and extremist thing like Cultural Revolution in any way.

I would say that this is missing the forest for the trees. The internal struggles of the party don't matter - what matters is the continuity of the party and the use of force and censorship to achieve those goals.

I'll concede that authoritarianism and censorship if defined separately made a bigger impact, but it still feels all connected to me.

And that's not to say there are 0 Chinese cultural exports. Some movies like Hero, Crouching Tiger, cpop is making strides with kpop, science fiction like Three Body Problem, games like Genshin, etc etc. Stuff is crossing the border, just not in big quantities because of the difference in preferences.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Glah posted:

Well then it becomes a question of the effects of authoritarianism in general and not Cultural Revolution as a particular reason for Chinese challenges in cultural exports. Unless you are saying that Cultural Revolution is the reason China is authoritarian today which I'm not sure if I agree with.

Because the defining traits of Cultural Revolution (upending the party structures, attacking the traditional culture and bourgeoise 'thought', purging of everyone in authority position, roving bands of red guards acting out Chinese Mad Max) were straight up challenged in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese cinema etc., not embraced. And that was of course possible because the establishment was now anti-maoist made up from people who felt the brunt of Cultural Revolution.

I am saying that modern Chinese authoritarianism still has its roots in the Cultural Revolution and there never was a break that you are claiming.

One concrete example is the Little Red Book that everybody had to carry during the Cultural Revolution. My parents shared stories about having nightmares about losing that book and getting picked up by the police. This was de-emphasized but never denounced. People still give the book as gifts and it's even the name for a social network. The Little Red Book is still very much a part of Chinese culture. I feel people are saying the end of the Cultural Revolution was a break from Mao when China never really broke from Mao. Likewise, people never really forgot about the oppression and death squads, it just became a part of life under the Party. The worst parts were toned down but the specter is still floating over everything.

url posted:

:/

Ang Lee is Taiwanese 🇹🇼

Film was literally funded in part by the China Film Group Corporation which is owned by the Party.

Unless you're saying it took somebody from Taiwan and other foreign stakeholders to make it an international success, then no argument there.

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 22:00 on May 5, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Glah posted:

Yeah personally I think that as long as China was under the control of Communist Party, it would be authoritarian regardless of Cultural Revolution happening or not.

But I'm not sure what you mean by "break" that I'm claiming? I'm not saying that China became non-authoritarian after cultural revolution. I'm saying that other anti-maoist but still authoritarian people took control. And that is heavily reflected in for example Chinese cinema.

Because were Cultural Revolution's legacy affecting cinema in a way that forced movie makers to conform to Maoist thought and censoring everything else and that was the reason Chinese cultural exports were lacking, then it would be strange that there'd be tons of classical Chinese movies challenging Cultural Revolution and not many movies that actually espoused maoist thought and ideas of radical cultural revolution in post-Mao era...

I'm saying anti-maoist people taking over didn't really change anything about the legacy of the Cultural Revolution which is immense pressure to conform and keep your head down. I'm not sure how many movies overtly challenges the Cultural Revolution, most of the films I've seen are about regular people persevering through their indomitable will rather than a challenge to the state (unless 3 degrees removed and snuck past the censor boards). If you have some examples, I would check them out, I'm not an expert on Chinese cinema or anything.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Glah posted:

Farewell My Concubine is the most approachable of the bunch in my opinion and IIRC it was a big hit abroad too. It follows a troupe in Chinese Opera (what's up with all these troupes lol) from 1920's to 1980's and really gives an interesting portrayal of changes in Chinese society in 20th century in addition to good character drama.

I've seen that one and I would say that's about the limit to the portrayal of the cultural revolution and it faced a lot of controversy. You got our brave heroes persevering and the movie at best acknowledging the excesses of the period. I don't think I've ever seen a treatment where the bad guy is a member of the party and gets his comeuppance without a healthy dose of personal failures or being saved by an opposing member of the party. I would almost cite that as a counterexample of the Chinese government allowing the Counter Revolution to be challenged.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Glah posted:

While the portrayal of the Cultural Revolution is ancillary to the character drama in the movie and for example the denunciation scene is more about red guards breaking the humanity of the main characters and them starting to attack each other after that, I have an extremely hard time seeing that this scene doesn't challenge Cultural Revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_5ryh9ND68

In my opinion it goes way beyond just acknowledging excess of the period and full on says that the period broke the main characters and destroyed their humanity and ability to empathize with each other.

EDIT: But now we are veering to the area of subjectivity and how we interpret art and themes it raises so I do think there's room for different interpretations of the scene here...

Subjective views on the scene aside, can we agree that the censors took action and that negative depictions of the Cultural Revolution were very much not a thing that is broadly supported?

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/04/movies/china-bans-one-of-its-own-films-cannes-festival-gave-it-top-prize.html

quote:

The ban already is having a chilling effect on other productions. Mr. Chen, the director, said he had put aside plans to film "Life and Death in Shanghai." The book, by Nien Cheng, describes the sufferings of one family during the Cultural Revolution.

To counter:

Glah posted:

then it would be strange that there'd be tons of classical Chinese movies challenging Cultural Revolution and not many movies that actually espoused maoist thought and ideas of radical cultural revolution in post-Mao era...

There are films that depict the Cultural Revolution because the period was super lovely and formative for a lot of people. There are less films than there otherwise would be because overly harsh criticism of that period is not seen favorably by the government. I am not aware of a film that openly displays the cultural revolution as the baddies except in the aforementioned historical fiction genre:

quote:

most of the films I've seen are about regular people persevering through their indomitable will rather than a challenge to the state (unless 3 degrees removed and snuck past the censor boards)

Like I'm thinking an Inglorious Bastards movie where the Red Guard replaced the Nazis, I can't see a movie like that existing.

Edit:
And to wrap up my original point since I think the film derail was very interesting, it's getting away from what I wanted to express:
1. Cultural Revolution is a big deal to the Chinese public consciousness
2. Government never fully repudiated the event and allowed the public consciousness to move past it and recover
3. Chinese public consciousness changes how Chinese people prefer their media, which in effect makes a lot of it unappealing for foreign audiences

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 23:33 on May 5, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Glah posted:

That's really been my point, I don't see causal relationship between cultural revolution and current day Chinese mediascape that could explain their lack of success.

That is absolutely fair, this is just my personal view on why mainstream Chinese media is so "safe" as to be boring to me. And repression is just one factor of why that is and there's probably thousands more.

But the original question is also kind of a gotcha, because there are a lot of big countries with less cultural influence than expected, like what's the big cultural cross over from India or hell even Germany in the last 10 years. Media heavily dominated by the US and Japan and Korea media being popular is kind of an outlier really.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


ronya posted:

It's a gamble! You can't just look at the successes - a good number of films with well-known names also stumble at the box office. Park Chan-Wook's name is on The Handmaiden, but it's also on The Truth Beneath. Boon Joon-Ho has Snowpiercer and Parasite but also Okja.

Sustaining these gambles requires a domestic industry that subsists on a stable of predictable money makers to inculcate talent and the production ecosystem.

That aside, Squid Game's themes would be unworkable in China. The Glory would work only if rewritten so that the police successfully intervene. Censorship doesn't just hit the doomed failures; East Asian tiger state film censors have a long history of saying "ok but could we only have, like, the good films though" without much success.

I think you got it backwards. Media and art is inherently a sort of numbers game, you need volume so that diamonds emerge from the crap. When the Hong Kong film industry was big, it was making a lot of money from crap, which gave rise to the gems.

But fundamentally, that means the crap being produced is also deemed enjoyable by the masses elsewhere, which in turn leads to the gems being created and exported as well. The problem isn't that authoritarianism and censorship is making bland, lowest common denominator art, its that the kind of bland, lowest common denominator art isn't palatable for others.

To put it another way: Grave of the Fireflies wouldn't have found a large part of its audience without DBZ.

Likewise, I agree that the popularity of stuff like Genshin could open the door for other media as well.

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 20:02 on May 6, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


You also can't get blood from a stone though. I have to say I'm not buying the argument that China is doing anything overtly sinister, they made bad investments and are trying their best to recover as much of it as they can. The whole situation reads like the typical Chinese government direction as of late, set a broad goal, let some underlings figure out how to implement it, take credit for success and cast off/ignore the failures.

There will probably be some shady deals where some debt gets exchanged for rights and state assets but I don't imagine there's a grand plan behind all this.

I mean, what would the IMF do with Chinese cooperation? The same take a haircut on some loans, impose austerity measures and rules? Nothing good happens either way.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Financial Times article on Ant Group, another way for the government to put Jack Ma in his place:

https://www.ft.com/content/295813d8-edd5-4eaa-8251-70a141209847

quote:

Jack Ma’s Ant Group has launched a share buyback plan that values the fintech giant at nearly 70 per cent below its proposed initial public offering price in 2020.

The company offered to repurchase up to $6bn in shares at a valuation of $78.5bn, a day after Chinese financial regulators fined the company nearly $1bn to conclude a years-long campaign of scrutiny.

Chinese financial regulators on Friday slapped Ant with an Rmb7.1bn fine ($984mn). Their “rectification” campaign forced Ant to transfer half of its profitable lending business to outside investors, while assets at its flagship money market fund have halved from their peak. The government has also sought control over its vast trove of user data.

Ant’s restructuring began in November 2020 after Ma criticised regulators and the country’s state-owned banks in a speech just days before the fintech group’s planned listing.

What sort of law/excuse would be used to allow the government to control over a fintech company's user data? I'm not sure if these proceedings even have the veneer of law & order or if its just purely vindictive.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Yeah I dunno about immigration in China because even internal immigration to the Tier 1 cities is difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou

I think giving foreigners status in places they actually want to live (the big cities) is gonna piss off a lot of internal migrants who would want those spots. So that's another issue that will have to be addressed before they can systematically work to attract other foreigners.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Koramei posted:

I don’t understand why people are being so dismissive at the suggestion Chinese attitudes towards immigration can change. If anything i think its far likelier they can bail themselves out that way than Korea or Japan can; centralized information control will move opinions quickly if the CCP decides it’s in their interest. And as climate issues worsen in many parts of the world i think there will be more than enough willing migrants to fill demand.

I think on a long enough time scale anything can happen, but I don't think the CCP can just one day go we want immigration and then get it. Maybe they can implement the Saudi Arabia model where they attract a ton of temporary migrant workers with no hope of ever becoming long term citizens?

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


khwarezm posted:

I know people are going to laugh at me for this but China is nominally a socialist country still interested in worldwide communism, its a far cry from Nazi Germany, and the PRC puts considerable rhetorical weight on the idea that they are kinder in impoverished countries than traditional western Imperialists and treat them with more respect.

I would be interested about why you consider China a nominally socialist country interested in world wide communism.

I'm not really interested in the idea of China somehow being "nicer" to the countries it invests in because it is still largely a relationship based on give/take. You're not going to argue that a bank is "nicer" because it charges less interest. There's no objective measure of nice and it's kinda hard to ascribe any altruism to the system as a whole. I'm not really going to be thankful to a bank for repossessing my car because they didn't shoot me.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


I think it shows an interesting lack of self awareness for a writer to complain about writers being preoccupied with the financial industry other than "real economy" when "real economy" in this case is measured by GDP. which itself is sorta a flawed metric for a country's productivity that everybody continues to use anyway. Interesting read anyway.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


ronya posted:

English translation of the Central Economic Work Conference readout:

https://www.gingerriver.com/p/full-text-and-analysis-chinas-central

So, window guidance and real estate bailout; not much surprising. "Housing is for living in, not for speculation" language was caveated in 2022 with reasonable-financing-needs; this year the former idiom has vanished entirely.

A long time ago as a cheeky undergrad I remarked (facetiously) in a macro tutorial that if we took expectations seriously then governments should consider exerting actual control over the actual mechanisms of expectations of media sentiment and such: censorship as a central bank policy instrument. It seems that contemporary China really believes it.

I wouldn't necessarily call it censorship - media management and messaging is a key component of government function. You're not going to get very far for long without engagement and support. Heavy handed media management does end up being censorship, but public opinion guidance in general isn't.

At some fundamental level, the government has to be able to communicate with the public and change their minds on any number of topics and there's no reason that economics would be outside of that.

I mean we know how China would implement it in a heavy handed way, but yeah.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


I think there's a lot of politics going on that makes it hard to get an accurate grasp of the full story.

Looking at a relatively prominent example: Kangbashi

Initially reported as a ghost town in 2009 it had a population of supposedly 30k.

Forbes from 2016 cites it as a success when the population bounced to 100,000.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadesh...sh=15641d492327

quote:

The original plan for Ordos Kangbashi called for a new district for a million people by 2023, roughly 20 years after construction began. However, Kangbashi’s original concept was scaled down to a city for 500,000 during its early phases of development, and later on to 300,000 due to a slowdown caused by a crash in coal prices — Ordos’s main commodity and economic lifeblood.

Now in 2020 the population is 118,000 according to this link from wikipedia:
http://www.citypopulation.de/en/china/neimenggu/admin/

So I would say of Kangbashi:
- did it eventually become a habitable city? yes
- did it meet expectations? probably not

I think there's a deeper question about whether building infrastructure where it can potentially sit underutilized for a decade+ an interesting one, but that gets drowned out by people trying to say yay/no to the whole thing. Is a 1/3 occupancy rate normal or is it excessive?

At the same time, when you read something like this:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/China-s-largest-ghost-city-booms-again-thanks-to-education-fever

You have to wonder how much of that demand was just being siphoned from existing areas that could've been developed more cheaply.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Eric Cantonese posted:

I'm sure someone here will chime in about a biased source, but it seems like the PRC might be leaning to a more austere approach, if anything. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/business/china-economy-safety-net.html

If the PRC took over and started dismantling that system, there'd definitely be discontent.

That article definitely seems like a hit job scant on details. From the experience of my relatives in Shanghai, they seem pretty happy with their healthcare coverage and some of them vastly prefer the experience in China over the US in terms of appointment availability and general wait times (hey, our healthcare system sucked, who knew).

Doesn't account for other areas of China of course.

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Heithinn Grasida posted:

I’m not an expert, but China does not have universal healthcare or strong social support systems. You are very much hosed in Shanghai, for example, if you get really sick and don’t have money or a your own insurance plan. I have heard of subsidized insurance plans in the countryside (农医保) that make healthcare affordable there, but a quick Baidu search also turns up a video on the first page of about people who don’t want to sign up for it because of “shenanigans” (猫腻, a word I just learned). I wouldn’t trust a random video, but from what I’ve heard of countryside politics, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn corruption is rampant.

In terms of the actual experience of healthcare, wait times are short, but to many people I know the system feels grinding and dehumanizing. There is no primary care — you diagnose yourself and register to see a doctor based on your perceived symptoms. Individual doctors can be good, but the hospital system itself is a byzantine and impersonal bureaucracy. There are also straight up fake clinics which charge ludicrous prices to see unlicensed doctors to people who don’t know better. And that’s not even mentioning TCM. I know someone who had a subcutaneous infection who got told she was bitten by a “poison mosquito” and needed herbal compresses as treatment, when she clearly needed antibiotics. She went to a standard hospital and didn’t specifically ask to see a TCM doctor.

There is wide availability of quality medical care in Shanghai, but it is not an ideal system.

Yeah, that is definitely true. You do end up screwed if you get really sick and can't work. As I understand it though, most Chinese people are only on government insurance without any supplemental products.

This article has a good explanation of things I think:
https://www.theactuarymagazine.org/hdhl-medical-insurance-in-china-part-1/

As for TCM, that's a whole other can of worms. Most people will still swear by it, so yeah, not surprised there.

WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jan 17, 2024

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


V. Illych L. posted:

this is a bit of a digression to my main point, though, which is that within a heavily financialised world economy where "political risk" is a well-understood and very important term, information management is a huge deal and so it makes sense that governments use whatever tools they can to try and manage information. apparently ridiculous stuff like this level of blunt censorship can be rationalised given the rather peculiar but often quite effective chinese constitutional arrangment

I think I've made a similar point in this thread before, that info management in regards to the economy is something that is critical. But there are tools besides censorship and lying/omitting statistics. It can easily be subtle actions like cherry picking which statistics are reported.

Then again, if you expand the concept past actions that China is doing, which is mostly notable for how clumsy it is, you'll find that governments have been engaging in these actions pretty much forever. Like would we consider Biden selling Bidenomics something in this vein? What about the funding and pushing of pieces on the vibecession? If the government likes the way a certain piece of info is presented in the public, could it decide to amplify it? There's so much room in the gray area, but China's decision to just go mask off isn't new either I guess.

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WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Kavros posted:

... no.

but i'm curious how you personally make the connection.

I guess to me the ruling government advocating for itself (ie job growth is high, we're doing good, rah rah) is what would be in the space of "info management."

It's just the tool in this case is something we all consider above board (it doesn't really make sense to say a government can't say good things about itself). Just that as the hand gets heavier and heavier on the scale you end up with censorship. Like if step 1 on the ladder is the government puts out a press release saying the economy is doing good. One step more would be using connections and access and what have you to spread that as a headline. Then say having friendly experts write puff pieces and editorials. Then having a propaganda arm really spreading the story. Then having your propaganda arm control what anybody can write about the economy.

I guess just telling your story is technically "information management" right?

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