China is very well managed. San Francisco, where I live is perhaps the worst managed place on earth. The way the Chinese are able to complete infrastructure is something we should seriously study, in addition to how they operate their government to support such projects.
In San Francisco for example, we are undertaking a street repair of 19th street that will take an estimated 2 years. My best guess is that it will actually take a decade to complete, like the van ness project. This is simply a modification of a sewer system and a street re-pavement - nothing new. China could complete this in a week.
The west is slow and we are in decline. China is growing fast.
I agree it is amazing how well you can manage things when you can "reconcile" any worker complaints, very quickly. When those who are known to oppose or object to your plans are "reassigned" to a post in the Gobi.
And who of course would object when doing so would ding your "social credit" score and restrict your right to do things like travel, or access the internet.
I agree that single party states run very well, after all when you don't have to worry about pesky freedoms or rights it's amazing what you can accomplish.
Next up President Xi Jinping has a 99% approval rating. How does China produce such beloved politicians?
It baffles me how Americans can say, (paraphrasing), "on one hand it is illegal for Chinese journalists to report on public project failures, but on the other hand, I haven't heard of any public project failures."
Americans know very well that their public sector fails to execute projects on time and on budget. They just don’t think the tradeoffs to convert to the Chinese system are worth it, nor are the benefits of the Chinese system exclusive to that system.
It was written to agree with the parent, not disagree. Yes, that does break from the normal comment thread cadence of agreement on odd layers and disagreement on even layers. ;)
China moves fast at the expense of the environment, safety, individual rights, etc. I do agree though, balance is important; The U.S. seems to have excessive regulation and burdensome bureaucracy in many domains (public infra) and regulatory capture in others (Boeing's relationship with FAA/NTSB).
They sacrifice minorities to satisfy majority, and they have the power to determine who is majority without voting. Sometimes the minority eventually get benefit, but most of the time their voice is no where to be heard.
I hear this all the time but is it true? It sounds like saying "we don't want to compete, because we are just better" - meanwhile we are being left in the dust.
When I visited China, China feels like America. I'd argue China has embraced capitalism and we are moving in the opposite direction.
> I'd argue China has embraced capitalism and we are moving in the opposite direction.
The CCP has embraced capitalism when it's convenient for them. What they haven't embraced is a consistent rule of law or anything approaching a democratic government, which are the basis of every other functioning, stable nation on Earth.
China has more people living in it than the US, the EU, the post-Soviet states, and Brazil —- combined. Does it really matter what “every other functioning, stable nation on Earth” does, when it’s patently obvious that China will be calling the shots from here on out, thanks to everything that the Trump presidency did to internationalism?
> China has more people living in it than the US, the EU, the post-Soviet states, and Brazil —- combined.
Until the next famine, which is imminent. Even in good times, China does not produce nearly enough food for internal consumption. Add to that the numerous famines in 2020, plus underpaying farmers, and you get a perfect storm in 2021.
> it’s patently obvious that China will be calling the shots from here on out
No, the CCP is a parasite that relies on the rest of the world.
> thanks to everything that the Trump presidency did to internationalism
Trump is excellent when it comes to foreign policy that benefits the US. As an American, the last thing I care about is fickle "internationalism."
Yeah, it does matter. Fortunately (for those of us who aren't members of the CCP), control over domestic and international affairs isn't decided by sheer headcount.
Also, I think it's likely that Trump has made leaders in the the West realize how much they rely on each other, and ties will be quickly re-strengthened under Biden.
> China moves fast at the expense of the environment, safety, individual rights, etc.
A dire contrast with the west which since the industrial revolution grew up so fast by respecting human rights, the environment, other nations, international law. The lack of self-awareness of people like you genuinely scares me. You vote people who has the power to erase the planet with nukes and you consider yourselves superior to other races/nations. Truly hair-rising stuff.
You prefer a system where dictators and authoritarians concentrate power and the populace has no means of even airing concerns, much less reigning in dangerous leaders???
Sounds like America to me.From BLM to massive espionage by the NSA with no repercussion, from the mortgage crisis to Abu Ghraib, from the "suicide" of Epstein to nationals being killing by drones, to Mexican kids being held in jails alone. The average American citizen has as much to fear from their government than the average Chinese, that's why the unwarranted feeling of superiority is so scaring.
> A dire contrast with the west which since the industrial revolution grew up so fast by respecting human rights, the environment, other nations, international law.
Well, no, exactly like the West that did many of the same things as China at a similar stages in their development, with similar results (there's a difference between the hybrid of state capitalism and corporatism with central elites in practical control of "democratic centralism" in modern China and peak private capitalism with capitalist control of notionally democratic institutions in the early industrial West, but there are also lots of similarities), and very much like what lots of Western countries did later under slightly different systems than peak private capitalism that are also similar to China's current system (e.g., fascist corporatism)
Which is exactly why "how China can do what they do" isn't at all a mystery or place the West needs to go to learn lessons. Its not that the West has never done the kind of things that China has done, but that its been there and moved on. Certainly not completely, and certainly with deep remaining problems. But a few pretty prestige projects for the elites and those willing to knuckle under for them aren't worth the cost of reversing progress on those fronts.
"The West wrecked the environment and everything else in the process of industrialization, so we [Chinese] are entitled to do it too," is a truly disturbing line and this isn't the first time I've actually heard before.
Aren't people supposed to do better knowing how much people in the past screwed up? Isn't that what progress is all about? Learning from your mistakes?
> "The West wrecked the environment and everything else in the process of industrialization, so we [Chinese] are entitled to do it too," is a truly disturbing line and this isn't the first time I've actually heard before.
Because it's not terrifying. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. What's terrifying is nations like India and continents like Africa haven't followed and developed. Instead there are nearly 1 billion indians and africans without electricity, plumbing, etc.
> Aren't people supposed to do better knowing how much people in the past screwed up?
Well, china didn't invade australia, canada, US, etc and wipe out the people and steal their land and destroy other people's environment to enrich themselves. So maybe they learned something. The hypocritical hubris is not going to do us any good. Over the long term, it's gonna be our undoing.
Or maybe, there is no other option. In order to make an omelette you gotta break some eggs. And in order to develop, you have to suffer through some environmental degradation.
Not only are the chinese entitled to it, so are the indians, africans, middle easterners, etc. Are they all supposed to languish in poverty while they wait for some magic development process to appear.
While a privileged virtue signaler can comfortable whine about the environment, the millions of people living in poverty don't have the luxury.
Well said. All the pretty talk about "human rights", "democracy" and "environment protection" and stuffs, they serve nothing more than nice-sounding justifications/facade for western superiority and the current world order: "We are more developed than you, and you are destined to do cheap manufacturing work or simply export raw materials for us, because you are simply inferior in all those abstract moral aspects. So just stay in your place while we keep reaping the maximum rewards at the top of the food chain".
If one is serious, it isn't hard to take a look at how the industrial revolution happened over the past hundreds of years to understand how the West reached its current status in the first place, going through exactly similar stages. Development is a hard, long-winding process, and one doesn't magically get there overnight. There was an interesting study that looked at the corruption level in the US in the 1800s and found it to be 8 times more than the corruption level of 1990s/2000s China. When countries like Norway were poor before they discovered oil, it was not like they were exactly the model paradise of equality, green economy and "human rights" at all, while China now has the ambition to lead the green economy by 2050.
As you said, one could simply look at a third-world African country. Are people there objectively suffering from more human rights abuses, more poverty, more environmental pollution, than people in China? Is the supposed parliamentary democracy working there?
The West talks all the time about how they're supposed to help those countries develop by implanting all its system, while eventually all it does is to make it easy for the multinational western capitalists to reap the rewards. Nobody helps anybody else develop at its own expense for no reason. This is just how politics naturally works. China took advantage of the manufacturing boom to get out of poverty, which of course benefited the West a lot along the way as well, but China always also had a clear determination to grow out of such a "world factory" role, which the West clearly didn't foresee nor wanted to see. Thus the tension nowadays.
China is pushing a lot of policies in Africa nowadays and of course it's also largely out of China's own geopolitical needs, but maybe some of its infrastructure projects actually benefit the population more than some previous foreign investments, or maybe some of them don't. The point is, in the end you have to look at what actually benefits the common folks the most, instead of all the hypocritical gesturing and varnishing talks on the surface.
Hmm, I'm not sure if the comment you're replying to is the best example of "lack of self-awareness" or "consider yourselves superior" as they also somewhat mentioned "balance is important". Discussions on this topic seem to always descend into inflammable territory. Though I agree that there are definitely tons of people out there who fit your description, that's for sure.
A lot of the "environment, safety, human rights" stuffs originate from official propaganda by western state apparatus which want to contain China/feel threatened by China's progress, so they want to reassure themselves of their superiority and contain every country in their designated place in the food chain with a certain narrative, just like how China does official propaganda to paint the west in a bad light on issues such as COVID containment and affirm its own superiority. But people who unquestioningly gobble up such propaganda are definitely aplenty out there (I would guess the desire to feel superior/justified against an unknown threat/"others" could even be part of human nature, which however is what education and rational thinking are exactly supposed to allow us do better at).
Authoritarian regimes are often highly efficient, whether they are doing the right thing or not. The ability to unilaterally squash any dissent is a very powerful thing.
How you can conclude that the US is in decline because a street repair in a single city takes longer than it probably should is beyond me.
I would argue the opposite is usually true. Setting aside China, authoritarian regimes are usually NOT known for being efficient or well-run.
I am not American, but I came back from my visits to China with a similar feeling to the grandparent comment. The West tends to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "Authoritarian regime, I can't hear you!" at the mere suggestion that China does certain things better and there may be something to learn there.
> I would argue the opposite is usually true. Setting aside China, authoritarian regimes are usually NOT known for being efficient or well-run.
well run != efficient
Authoritarian regimes are highly efficient at accomplishing what the people in charge want to do, long term consequences be damned. Frequently, the people in charge are primarily focused on retaining or even acquiring more power and wealth, which is generally not well aligned with what most people would consider a well run nation.
> I am not American, but I came back from my visits to China with a similar feeling to the grandparent comment. The West tends to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "Authoritarian regime, I can't hear you!" at the mere suggestion that China does certain things better and there may be something to learn there.
The issue here is that there isn't an agreement on what "better" means. Social harmony at the expense of individual freedoms isn't better. Technological advancement that is based on IP theft isn't better. Infrastructure improvement that causes long term harm to the global environment isn't better.
I agree with your points about what is and isn't "better", but that is not what I am arguing.
Are you saying there are no lessons the West can learn from China's infrastructure projects without resorting to authoritarianism, IP theft, or environmental harm? That there is no way to pick apart and separate some positive learnings from the negatives?
Are you saying THIS is the best we can do as a Western democracy?
To me, this kind of paralysis on infrastructure projects is not "better" by any definition you use. It's not an intentional tradeoff between infrastructure and environmental protection, or between public development and property rights. It's just indecision, waste, and stagnation.
Every time a comparison to China's infrastructure comes up, the knee jerk reaction is to point out that it's an authoritarian regime so of course they can force through any infrastructure project they want. Which is fair enough, but it drowns out any discussion asking "Hey, CAN we do any better in the West than we are doing right now? Is what we have good enough?"
> Are you saying there are no lessons the West can learn from China's infrastructure projects without resorting to authoritarianism, IP theft, or environmental harm? That there is no way to pick apart and separate some positive learnings from the negatives?
Not at all. Every nation can always learn from others, or at least be motivated by the accomplishments of others to improve internally.
> Are you saying THIS is the best we can do as a Western democracy?
Maybe? Again, it depends on what your definition of "best" is. If not enough people in Toronto think it's important enough to have a robust public transit system, then it doesn't happen. I'm very confident Toronto has the resources required to complete an ambitious project if desired.
> To me, this kind of paralysis on infrastructure projects is not "better" by any definition you use. It's not an intentional tradeoff between infrastructure and environmental protection, or between public development and property rights. It's just indecision, waste, and stagnation.
If the project isn't a good use of resources, indecision and inaction is the better outcome.
> Every time a comparison to China's infrastructure comes up, the knee jerk reaction is to point out that it's an authoritarian regime so of course they can force through any infrastructure project they want. Which is fair enough, but it drowns out any discussion asking "Hey, CAN we do any better in the West than we are doing right now? Is what we have good enough?"
Unlike in China, these discussions already happen regularly, and the key difference between the status quo in China and the West is the decision making process, so that's where the conversation is focused.
>Maybe? Again, it depends on what your definition of "best" is. If not enough people in Toronto think it's important enough to have a robust public transit system, then it doesn't happen. I'm very confident Toronto has the resources required to complete an ambitious project if desired.
>If the project isn't a good use of resources, indecision and inaction is the better outcome.
I wish I shared your confidence, but this suggests otherwise:
I find it difficult to accept that this is the best outcome by any metric I can think of.
>Unlike in China, these discussions already happen regularly, and the key difference between the status quo in China and the West is the decision making process, so that's where the conversation is focused.
Is it? The conversation is focused on how China is authoritarian, not on how the Western (I really should say North American) decision-making process often leads to poor outcomes and stagnation when it comes to public projects.
This IS getting pretty far off-topic from the actual article, so I'll stop here.
> I wish I shared your confidence, but this suggests otherwise:
That's a pretty recent poll (on the timeline you provided in the earlier article), so maybe it's a sign that a more comprehensive transit system will be built soon.
> I find it difficult to accept that this is the best outcome by any metric I can think of.
It's definitely not optimal if you support public transit. The western model is more concerned with preventing tyranny than efficiency or optimal outcomes, for better or worse. This could very easily be one of the times where "worse" is the case. I'd still prefer it over an authoritarian system.
> Is it? The conversation is focused on how China is authoritarian, not on how the Western (I really should say North American) decision-making process often leads to poor outcomes and stagnation when it comes to public projects.
It seems to have expanded quite a bit beyond that (not between you and I, just generally), which seems pretty common for these types of topics.
> This IS getting pretty far off-topic from the actual article, so I'll stop here.
The west is slow and we are in decline. China is growing fast.
The West and China have different goals.
China's goal is to grow fast at all costs.
To use your street example, the West makes a great effort to listen to the views of all the people affected by the project, including people who live near and work near the project. The West will also do a study to make sure the environmental impact is acceptable. The West will also do a survey to make sure nothing of any historical or archaeological importance isn't affected. The West will put the project out to multiple bidders and make sure that minority-owned companies are represented in the project. Depending on the project, there may also be other studies and considerations.
China just does the project, and if it's done wrong or harms anyone, too bad. Get out of the way.
I'd invite you to travel to China and experience their high speed rail system. Its a huge accomplishment that our society isn't capable of producing. That question is worth exploration.
> Have you ever considered what freedoms we already lack due to our barbaric car-centric society?
Barbaric is a fun word, but one that would be easy to twist the other way. In one system you get to be crammed into a little train car with dozens of other people, in the other system you have some privacy and personal space and a seat...
Again, pros and cons all over the place... the US doesn't have good trains because it built other systems instead due to the point in time in which many of its cities developed, and they are "good enough" that most people would see little benefit from ripping it all up to replace it with trains.
It's worth noting too that "they make the trains run on time" is literally a cliche about certain types of government at this point, not some unique accomplishment.
Barbarism isn't some perceived discomfort (have you even been on a train?) with having to share a room with your fellow citizen for an hour or two. 35000 people dying in car accidents every year in America is barbarism. Destroying the planet so you can enjoy some "privacy and personal space" while (hopefully) attentively directing your 3000 pound death machine down the road is barbarism.
> In one system you get to be crammed into a little train car with dozens of other people, in the other system you have some privacy and personal space and a seat...
If you have enough money for both options, then it's not surprising that the option which costs at least an order of magnitude more provides a slightly more comfortable seat.
A society where in many regions every adult must wield a 3000 pound death machine to simply participate is indeed barbaric. I'm not sure what other term I should be using to describe a society that almost openly celebrates the way it is destroying the planet.
If the only words in your toolbox are "barbaric," "death machine," and "destroying," don't be surprised when people don't take you seriously and stop engaging with you.
Being factual and a little more subtle goes a long way.
I've been very surprised about the vitrol on HN towards cars, which I also experienced recently when I posted some very basic facts about deaths caused by cars vs other means and have seen in some other threads.
I live in an urban area and enjoy not having to drive long distances (or at all) to run errands, but I don't see them as an extenstential threat to humanity as many posters here apparently do.
Fortunately, there are many non-authoritarian countries with working train systems. It is funny how Americans choose the worst countries to look up to for relatively mild accomplishments. Maybe because it would hurt our pride to talk about the successes of other countries without the safety blanket of thinking that we still wouldn't want to live there. Maybe out of a perverse sense of intellectual stimulation ("bad yet good, mmm how sophisticated."). It might also be that everyone imagines themselves as the powerful, decisive officials, without realizing that only a few people can occupy those spots; statistically, they should expect to be the peons. But whatever the reason it is funny whenever it happens.
China built 16,000 miles of High Speed Rail in 10 years. California in the same period of time completed about 35 miles of high speed rail. I want to know how they could do this.
Maybe you could look at other countries with high per-capita rail building projects. Japan has an okay system. The UK is better in that way than the US. Europe is filled with rail. The US is really the only rich country I can think of that doesn't have a workable passenger rail system.
> I pointed out how well they do infrastructure, related to the article.
And then you projected that all of western civilization is in decline because the US hasn't prioritized high speed rail. Among other things, this completely ignores the countries within the "West" that have high speed rail as well.
That's what people are taking issue with, not that you pointed out that China has high speed rail.
You could read a number of books on this subject. The China Dream, On China, or Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? The Economist is a good magazine, with almost weekly updates on this topic.
We've been surpassed in PPP, Global Trade, Industrial Output etc. China's steel production is 1 billion tons a year, the US 80 million tons. They poured as much concrete in the last 10 years as we poured in the 20th century. In just a few years we will be surpassed by GDP and witin 25 years China's GDP will be double the United States.
Okay, that's not decline, and not all of those figures are facts. Also, you seem obsessed with quantity of infrastructure built, which isn't really a great metric for measuring what you're claiming is happening.
The other poster with the analogy about a child's height is 100% accurate.
China has 20 times the land area and 35 times the population of California, and you're comparing apples to oranges comparing a nation-state entity with a sub-nation-state entity that was stymied by conflict with the superior government. And you are comparing actual construction time in China with something else in California (but what, I'm not sure, because 10 years is too short if you are looking at it from public project initial very-partial financing approval with Prop 1A, and too long of you are looking at start of construction in 2015.)
Once upon a time, the American consensus was also generally comfortable with destroying neighborhoods wholesale to build freeways and other infrastructure in the name of progress. Now it takes forever or never for fear of triggering a voter uprising. But, these rules came from a place: there are vast swaths of major cities that have been destroyed. Some are not a meaningful loss and others came at the cost of people who lacked the funding and support to effectively pushback. Why Dodger Stadium is in Chavez Ravine is a sad story and is part of the reason why there's a literal school buried under the parking lot.
China doesn't care. You do what you're told. If you complain too much, you disappear; if the project has an atrocious safety record, they are not reported and no such records exist (or blame a low-level official); if an entire neighborhood was destroyed without compensation, shut up and deal with it. You can get what you want, just how many bodies are you willing to bury to get it?
You really don't need to destroy neighborhoods to build trains.
You need to destroy neighborhoods to built road infrastructure, though. This is because "I/O operations" on high-speed roads with massive bandwidth à-la-USA requires ungodly amounts of space.
If the infrastructure that was built was not horribly inefficient due to an almost ideological opposition to mass transit, there wouldn't have been neighbourhoods destroyed wholesale, and the precedent leading to the gargantuan opposition we see right now would simply not be present.
I censor myself on wechat just so I can take high speed trains lol
Its actually not that hard and Chinese content platforms are a breath of fresh air
Me thinks you would be surprised at what works
The state there takes a paternal approach, like a literal parent, or teacher or school principle (or unit commander, or HR department). It isn’t that unrelatable, we all grew up in similar restrictions. When everyone agrees that is what the role of the state is, nobody is trying to be a freedom fighter to alter that
>Its actually not that hard and Chinese content platforms are a breath of fresh air
That's sort of like saying Chinese politics is a breath of fresh air because you don't have to worry about picking a side and hearing the various parties arguing with each other.
they have a heavily neutered internet and it is a pleasant experience
its a walled garden, at the country level, do you want a sticker because of your awareness of Beijing?
there is simply a life beyond imagining it as oppressive all the time, when the reality is that you just hang out in communities in your niche and you dont have to worry about it being randomly politicized. A large part of the mindshare in the west is trying to figure out how to do that, checking out the other internet is probably good for your mental health
At the same time it's worth it to consider why they manage to get it done quickly and efficiently, and we struggle to get it done at all. I don't believe a free society would (or should) fundamentally be completely incapable of building a high-speed train.
Freedom is not a binary variable. The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, but how many people feel comfortable to freely speak their mind at one of the corporate training courses on diversity and inclusion for example? People everywhere are smart and learn that if if you know what's good for you, there are some things you should say and some things you shouldn't. The set of things you should or shouldn't say may be different in China than in the US, but the curtailment of freedom is present in both places and different only in a matter of degree.
>The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, but how many people feel comfortable to freely speak their mind at one of the corporate training courses on diversity and inclusion for example?
You clearly misunderstand what the First Amendment is about. It's a restraint on government, not a restraint on everyone else.
Around 1865 we reached the conclusion that it is the duty of the Government to protect some people from having their freedom taken away by some other people. Since then the Constitution started imposing restraints not only on the ability of the Government to curtail your freedom, but also the ability of your fellow citizens to do so. And this is a good thing.
But lately we started regressing. I'm talking about the cancel culture.
Do you think that if one day a person were to be physically tarred and feathered by a crowd of puritans because of some perceived transgression, that is ok? But then if the tarring and feathering is in the digital world, and much more permanent (nothing is forgotten on the internet), is that ok?
The end result is that people learn there are some things you can say, some things you can't, and some things you must say.
Well sure, when you can use Uighur slave labor for your infrastructure and kill their entire family if they speak up, you can have some nice things...I guess...
The Americans produced the Interstate system 50 years ago, . The problem is that the American system in 2020 has become stuck due to the rise in partisanship and the elimination of pork-barrel horse trading.
The Chinese state can produce projects, but how valuable they are is often up for question; the Urumqi high speed line doesn't even make enough money to pay for the electricity to run the trains. https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee...
I'd love to travel to China and check out their high speed rail system and everything they've built in general, but I'm afraid of their police state and being kept from coming back.
These are two ends of a very broad spectrum: On one end it's bulldoze everything (including human rights) and get 'er done. On the other end is spend decades and $billions doing endless studies and analyses, barely getting anything done.
There is a middle ground where projects are ethically and considerately done in a reasonable amount of time, at a reasonable cost. This doesn't seem to be happening in either SF or China, but I can imagine it's happening in many places around the world.
Sounds more like a fantasy than truth. Germany is now infamous for nonsensical bureaucracy, see e.g. the Brandenburg airport project, where incompetence and downright corruption was comically rampant.
I do meet Americans who moved to Europe but they also have to contend with various dissatisfaction. A dysfunctional and Kafka-esque bureaucracy is one of them, and the high tax + mediocre income + unfriendly laws on share grants, as well as a way too "socialist" system which doesn't recognize individual contribution much, is another huge factor that have led many people to reconsider their choices. If they have some particular reason, e.g. chronic medical condition, have a family and want more work-life balance etc., then sure, Europe might work better for them. But for a young single person Europe is actually nowhere that good at all.
I think eventually people just have to understand that there is no paradise on earth. Every place has its set of unique strengths and weaknesses and characteristics formed by their culture and history that are not replaceable. Romanticizing an "exotic" place too much will invariably lead to deviation from the reality and disillusionment in the end. Similarly, demonizing a place, be it China or the US, will also be very one-sided and biased. Only clear-headed objectivity will benefit you the most.
Trust me, the reason that it takes two years to do sewer repairs is not because painstaking effort is taken to consult all stakeholders. That's just an excuse.
In my city, the reason why this happens is because municipal officials are corrupt, incompetent, and not held accountable. It has nothing to do with what you said.
Wait, do you want to seriously study the way that China is able to do the prestige projects you point to, or do you want to ignore the historical patterns that provide evidence of what the reason is that they are able to do them?
The comments you have attracted are hilarious. It's not worth even attempting to initiate dialogue with such type of people.
Here is the Chinese high speed rail built in the last decade, it is not propaganda, it's literally something you can buy a ticket for and travel on at 350 km/h right now. I truly worry for Americans incapable of seeing what is happening in the rest of the world.
Yes, I feel fortunate that I can say such things without being cloth-sacked away.
I'm not exactly pro-prison, but so far I haven't heard any alternatives that I believe would work as a solution to violent crime. I'm open to suggestions. It is certainly the case that the U.S. has too many laws.
> Here is the Chinese high speed rail built in the last decade, it is not propaganda, it's literally something you can buy a ticket for and travel on at 350 km/h right now.
Yeah, its nice. Authoritarian regimes usually have some nice prestige projects to show, which is really nice if you are a foreigner they are trying to impress, or a local that is in favor with the regime. Not so much if you are out-of-favor, whether because you opposed the particular approach they took for the prestige project or for some unrelated reason.
But, as much as I like HSR and wish the US would do it, emulating China -- whose ability to do it isn't a mystery needing study, but well-understood -- isn't a cost worth paying for it.
I don't see anyone claiming China didn't build high speed rail. I do see a number of people questioning the parent poster's metric for evaluating the future of China and the west, when many countries in the west also have high speed rail systems and that focus on one measurement of success is probably at least a little myopic.
A positive spin on this is that everyday people are so wealthy, savvy, and time-rich that they spontaneously organize and campaign to shut down infrastructure projects they don't like.
When it's keeping the "other" out it's gross, but when they are shutting down pointless vanity projects like a sculpture park no one wants maybe that's democracy as advertised.
I agree with the general point, but let me provide a counter:
Before I moved to San Francisco, I lived in Beijing for 9 years, the last 3 of those in an apartment in the Sanlitun area of Beijing, within 3 mins walk of a Bentley dealership, Lotus dealership, a craft brewery etc.
When we moved in, a school down the street had construction going on, and was surrounded with scaffolding and then some signage or whatever. The sidewalk was completely blocked off, making it difficult for pedestrians to pass.
Over a year later, they finally finished construction and the updated building was revealed. They'd extended the building to take over the sidewalk completely. You'd think that, if this was intended, then they'd build a new sidewalk and narrow the car lanes a bit. But, no, pedestrians have to walk into the road to go around this school.
This construction was both slow and bad. I admit it's not typical: the nearby Holiday Inn went from zero to operational within a few months.
In rural Arkansas, we have the freedom to do a lot of crazy things like criticise our government. We also have blazing fast & stable FTTH for $50/month, some of the cleanest and tastiest water I've ever put in my mouth (which comes from our well), and our food is of excellent quality because there are many local small farmers who are ethical and stable. There is just enough work in the way of tech businesses a short drive away to make this life style possible.
Maybe a change of scenery is in order for you. I can't imaging living in a hellscape like San Fran. I'm in a veritable paradise as far as I can tell. There are problems, but we are working on them, and we generally have the freedom to do so on our own terms without nanny government holding our hand.
Whenever I see complaints of “I live in X, X is a mess”, I’m much more likely to listen than when I hear “I live in X, Y is a mess” — the former implies someone has valid critiques that come from their lived experiences, and yet they still choose to live there, for whatever reason. The latter more often than not just speaks to ignorance — it’s easy to dismiss something on hearsay.
This goes both ways. I’m from Dallas and live in Los Angeles. Both cities have their own share of problems (and their own great qualities) — and yet both are much more likely to quickly dismiss the other as lost causes than take a deep look at their own issues.
It’s fine to have a preference, obviously, but don’t let your preference cloud your judgement: many would say the exact same thing about rural Arkansas — and for many, it probably wouldn’t be a paradise, based on any number of politics, orientations, race, socioeconomic status, or even just where your friends and family are! — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t for you.
Just curious, but are you White? No need to answer, but I do see some bimodality in the opinions expressed by people I trust about AR, so I guess if you're not it'll provide some downward pressure on that certainty.
because in the US it is all about political power, all projects are not about solving the issue being worked on but how to reward the most people that will contribute to your and your parties political power. the amount of money being directed towards friends and fellow politicians is staggering.
An example in Atlanta was a politician friends with those of the same party works in another county but serves on advisement boards for the city as a sole employee of those boards netting him hundreds of thousands a year. It only came to light because he screwed up the taxes. This is wide spread, as in nation wide. All those committees and such are mostly there to reward each other, family, and friends.
China just eliminated having any competing political power. They have factions within but all serve the same top.
> The way the Chinese are able to complete infrastructure is something we should seriously study, in addition to how they operate their government to support such projects.
Why? I mean, its not news that top-down authoritarianism is very good at doing whatever the top decides needs done without considering anyone else's concerns or interests, this isn't something that needs study.
And there are no shortages of places practicing that to decamp to if that is your preference for style of government.
However, before we go asking the commies how to run governments, there are perhaps some other, less authoritarian, countries who also get things done that we might look at?
I wonder if their concentration camp er.. Re-education camp guests share a similar admiration for how well run they are. Or political prisoners for how efficiently they were reported and disappeared.
Regarding those sibling comments that try to explain away Chinas efficiency with its authoritarianism: consider other, democratic Asian nations like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, if you prefer. They offer just as much to learn, e.g. in how they handle infrastructure projects, technological advancements in the public sphere, or pandemic prevention. We westerners would be smart to question our perceived superiority from time to time.
If China is so well managed, why are they so poor [1], so corrupt [2] , have up to 1M people in jail due purely to their ethnicity, and every citizen monitored at all times for a thought or statement tantamount to 'wrongthink'?
China is not 'well managed', rather, they can 'move quickly and build things of questionable quality' in some places, not others.
The ability to build some material things very quickly is definitely useful and creates some utility, but it's not tantamount to 'well managed'.
SF has busses, trains and a subway that run, it's far from perfect, but what they suffer from is 'too much money'.
LOL. China is able to move very fast, but the idea that it's a well-oiled machine functioning in perfect harmony is a ridiculous fiction.
Construction projects in China cut every corner possible. When something fails catastrophically, they'll throw a low-level official under the bus. At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this.
>Construction projects in China cut every corner possible.
Construction quality satisfies fast, cheap, good like everywhere else. As someone who worked adjacent to construction industry in both China and North America, the difference is China has the "fast" option available, whereas NA is mostly cheap + good, and frequently just cheap. It's less about being well managed, but having all the options and managing appropriately. Tons of capital projects in China and related prestige developments aging well. The latter surprisingly so considering how many retardley ambitious (almost unworkable) starchitect designs were built. Sure, lot's of uninhabited commodity projects falling into disrepair but abandoned bubble subdivisions don't fair much better. Difference is China builds more, so more catastrophic failures. Question is, it worth the cost? Deng wanted poor China to develop fast. So China ChaBuDuo's as deliberate development strategy and manages accordingly.
>When something fails catastrophically, they'll throw a low-level official under the bus. At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this.
Chinese Aviation and HSR safety? Public accident -> regulate + execute those responsible = about safest aviation and HSR in the world. Surmise the same with food and vaccination safety, but effects of those scandal stake longer to determine. Regardless, incentives seem to align with state interests to me. On building stock specifically, there's no interest high quality commodity construction. Why would there be? Current 60% urbanization rate, goal 70%, realistically 80-90%. That's 140-420M people who needs apartments. Queue current 65M empty condos and ghost city memes.
Obviously it's not perfect, but it has more tools to address some serious problems that's stumping the west, especially beyond political cycle timescales. Curious if west would try deleveraging or could successfully regulate FAANG. Too many things west can't do, but should. Also too many things CCP can do and shouldn't.
Any civil engineers here that can explain why “simply” might not apply?
I have watched some sewer modifications[1] here in Christchurch (earthquake damage, Insituform product), and it looked incredibly complicated and I didn’t see how they reconnected each home’s connection to the main.
A typical metaphor for software engineering is rebuilding a plane while it is running. What is an appropriate metaphor when you are fixing old pipes that carry human excrement and the system mostly keeps working while it’s being done...
I'm biased as heck because I'm a westernized Chinese, and I am impressed with the rapid development everytime I visit China. In my mind, being pragmatic wins. When I visited SF recently, I was constantly wary of dangers and mentally ill people, though less as I went to Silicon Valley. There is something that feels immediately wrong and backwards that no amount of whataboutism and armchair debates about the harms of authoritarianism can persuade, because I face reality every time I go outside.
You know, I used to think this. Then I discovered how quickly Caltrans was able to fix that tank truck destruction of the highway in the East Bay. And then I looked at the stuff and realized something: America doesn't actually need the infrastructure. It's all a jobs program. Because when America needs it, it comes fast as fuck. But the truth is that America doesn't need it. You don't need high-speed rail (planes are better). You don't need that road to be resurfaced (the loss of life and property over the period in question is minuscule). You don't need the Central Railway. You don't need more interstates. It's okay to allow some bridges to fall killing some people.
Almost all American infrastructure is either a vanity project, a jobs project, or a political quid pro quo operation to an ally to get some other thing done.
The problem is that once you get really used to this mode of operating, you kind of forget that there are sometimes things that really do matter. I think America has a picture of the things she already knows of: crucial highway collapses? gotta fix now! But the ability to recognize new crises goes away without novel crises.
So America can't build ventilators in an emergency, can't train nurses in an emergency, can't do anything new. But I think America can deal with the old things just fine if she wants to.
> One last beat from a Zhihu commentator discussing the importance of studying official behavior as a matter of science: “the behavior of officials is a scientific discipline, it should be studied professionally as a scientific subject, just as understanding sexual chemistry is a scientific subject. Chinese people are generally too embarrassed to openly discuss matters of sexual harmony, and likewise are too ashamed to investigate the logic behind official actions.”
If you're not allowed to conclude that the whole system has to go, then it is impossible to have any credibility in saying that the whole system doesn't have to go.
In this context of the zhihu commentary, the comments are made actually by the CCP official wannabe. They not only do not want to destroy the system, they are the most ardent supporters.
I come across a lot of such people online. The same bureaucratic disease of any established government.
As a Chinese national and frequent Zhihu user, this comment is probably satire...
I would also like to say the idea that this system has to be changed/replaced is generally agreed upon.
Have not heard about this. What ideas are floating around for the replacement?
I don't see what's wrong with the Zhihu comment... Sure the comparison with sex is a bit weird, but "the behavior of officials is a scientific discipline, it should be studied professionally as a scientific subject" sounds exactly like what all social sciences are doing when studying and researching political systems, so I don't see the problem there?
Also not sure what you exactly mean with "generally agreed upon" and "has to be changed/replaced". There could be varying degrees of interpretation, but I don't think by far that a radical change is a "general consensus" throughout the nation. Many do see that the system has been working for the country so far and are taking note.
The articles title is way beyond the scope of the content, I.e. the content is about 3 major issues observed in the ranks of CCP & China's government officials. It does not go through the whole official promotion system.
> but also serves as an implicit suggestion of the superiority of the Chinese system in contrast to western democratic systems.
This is clearly a wrong impression. The superiority is always in the context of being for China. Without that quote, it becomes a challenge to US hegemony. Although, it should be mentioned that, no superpower can convince the old one to peacefully transfer the power.
Once I accompanied a domestic delegation to visit the United States. After dinner, we asked the waiter for an invoice, but the waiter did not know what an invoice was, so we talked to the boss and explained to him that we need an invoice so that we can be reimbursed back in China. The restaurant boss listened to us with great bewilderment. He asked, “Aren't you eating for yourselves, so why are you having the government pay for it?”
When travelling on business, asking for a receipt to be reimbursed is very normal. Perhaps the problem was asking for an "invoice" instead of a "receipt"?
I understood this to mean that they did not pay and asked for a bill to be paid later by mail by their party office. Restaurants expect immediate payment, and he was accustomed to being billed later, not reimbursements on out-of-pocket expenses.
That makes sense, but the confusion is understandable because "invoice" is usually a pre-payment document quoting the amount owed for the services rendered, and a receipt is a post-payment document acknowledging the amount paid.
Most should, when I've asked for an itemized receipt I've almost always been asked if I want the alcohol separate and a few times have been offered to replace the alcohol items with appetizers/sides on the receipt because they know lots of places won't reimburse alcohol.
They probably asked (conceptually) for a "fapiao", which is a very formal invoice in China but required for reimbursement [0] and is a government-acknowledged piece of paper declaring that a sales transaction really happened. Asking for one there would require the restaurant to log revenue live with the tax bureau. I discovered this by mistakenly asking for one in China, thinking it was just a receipt. I was led to the office of the restaurant, where they printed it onto half an A4 paper with carbon copies, e-verification serial number, and QR code. There are even more fascinating patterns that emerge from the incentives here--business don't like declaring revenue, so these sometimes have scratch-to-win lottery tickets built in, so to encourage everyone to request one (thus preventing tax evasion) [1].
The less formal option is a "shouju" but doesn't work for official business reimbursement.
There are Western businesses that really do want an invoice, not a receipt. But since most governments don't go to the length China does to make an invoice functionally better than a receipt I don't see the point in this.
What is the difference between an invoice and a receipt? I thought a receipt is just an invoice with the payment method and amount resulting in a zero balance.
What was described to me was that accounting at that specific business wanted a longer form A4 paper description of the incurred costs for reimbursement instead of merely a receipt. How this differed in any important way is beyond me.
The second link makes for interesting reading and is an in-depth example of the law of unintended consequences. I was particularly surprised to learn that fapiao (essentially tax receipts) are a way people and companies seek to manage their taxation, that this has led to companies imposing quotas on their staff for collecting fapiao (from any transactions at all), and that this drives demand in a gray market in discounted fapiao.
This reminded me of an interesting scheme I encountered in North Macedonia last year. The government now allows citizens to claim a 15% refund on VAT up to a cap of about 500 USD per year[1].
The only way to get this refund is to ensure that you are issued a 'fiscal receipt'[2] for your purchases. These have a little QR code which you can scan into an app on your phone.
Of course, the whole point of the system is to ensure that retailers actually declare revenue and therefore pay tax on it. I wonder if similar systems exist in more countries?
In Croatia, where the VAT is 25%, the solution was: every customer has to be given a receipt without asking for one and the customer has to take the receipt and carry it out of the store.
It is a case of lost in translation. Chinese use "invoice" for "receipt" because they use the same official form for actual invoices, I think, as a way of cracking down on tax avoidance. China has one of the highest sales tax at the retail level, including VAT and various fees; so high in fact the actual rate is a state secret. You can imagine the pressure on retailers, particularly, small shop owners, to avoid paying it. The government therefore introduced a system of official invoices that everybody including all retailers must use, and from carbon copy of invoices tax collectors can calculate sales amount and thereby tax owed.
That is my understanding, anyway. I have been out of the country for so long, it must have changed a lot. Most of it must be electronic now, I imagine. I still remember a shop owner's audible complaints when I asked for an invoice around the time the system was initially introduced.
State secrets in China are not same as classified information in the West. State secrets mean: do not broadcast to average Chinese. It is a censorship tool, it is meant to protect the government from its citizens.
You gave an excellent example. Tax rates are NOT on receipts in China. That would put pressure on the government to lower tax.
An average Chinese citizen is only aware of income tax, they don’t realize that they are paying taxes and fees for something say when buying a bag of sugar or salt.
These pesky hidden taxes that are regular headline news (e.g. when things are (proposed to be) reclassified) and legally required to be listed on each receipt and invoice are indeed so well-hidden from the unsuspecting populace...
Many people know the precise rates; it is just that common people do not, which is the whole point. VAT rate is public and I think uniform across the country. Local governments impose various fees and they are not widely known to the public. Relevant accountants and officials know all about the rates but they are not supposed to broadcast it.
I saw a clip of Chinese news broadcast giving shocking rates on Youtube, like a quarter to a third, but unfortunately I cannot find it now. There is little public information about effective sales tax rate. However, people do realize it. High taxes is one reason Chinese tourists buy a lot when overseas; they could see the price difference.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I meant as the rate of final price.
It has been a while so it is a little fuzzy, but I recall the broadcaster said up to 50% of pre-tax price. The official VAT rate is like 17% now, I think (just googled it). So it is other fees imposed by local governments that are onerous.
Actually it's 13% now, adjusted from 16% which is previously 17%. And it's the basic rate which means it's the highest level rate and there're several levels smaller than 13%. Seems that you have leaved China for at least 10 years.
There are high taxes for luxury products, a sports car can have import tax of 100%. Tax is complicated, there is VAT 17%, import tax varies depending on goods. I believe where you are at will have variable import tax on goods as well, you just never need to learn. If Chinese tourists don't know about the high import tax, why would they buy them overseas. It would be a common knowledge to be honest.
Well it certainly is not a state secret. Just google 'China business tax reform' It was a hot topic back 2, 3 years ago because businesses complained about the high tax rate.
Average Chinese may not think about paying tax for each sale because it's not printed on the receipt. But the price they pay do include all the taxes incurred to the business.
It's been a while, I remember that the receipts I got from IKEA and 711 do print the exact tax applied to this sale.
> Average Chinese may not think about paying tax for each sale because it's not printed on the receipt. But the price they pay do include all the taxes incurred to the business.
Sure, if you're shopping at IKEA or 7-11 (notably, large-scale foreign businesses).
If you're shopping at the local corner store or restaurant, they're not declaring sales unless you specifically ask for a fapiao (and even then, half of them will lie and say their machine is broken).
JD used to include fapiao in the delivery too. Now It's using E-Fapiao.
> If you're shopping at the local corner store or restaurant, they're not declaring sales unless you specifically ask for a fapiao (and even then, half of them will lie and say their machine is broken).
Yeah. I agree. Though it's bit extreme to say `half of them`.
kinda interesting see people use "authoritarian" as if it's all the reasons China succeed (in term of infra, econ, and general well-being), and therefore nothing to see and learn.
If authoritarian government is by default this effective and easy to success, why most of them failed?
I'm going to focus on this specific kind of authoritarian government, the Leninist one-party state.
The main reason why it lasted so long in China is because it is now operating in the economic system and condition it was designed to work under.
Indeed, this system of governance was designed by Lenin and his cronies precisely to operate under and regulate State Capitalism. It's not designed to work with a planned economy, or with a completely capitalist economy, or with an agrarian economy, but explicitly with State Capitalism (see: NEP).
Secondly, it's not actually supposed to last. This kind of government was designed to last more or less 70 years under the correct economic system, it wasn't designed to last forever.
China happens to be a case of the government system operating in exactly the correst economic system during the period where its supposed to work.
The rest of it is just typical "democratic" centralism, self-criticism, a strong ideological backing, and the ability for flexibility and reactivity at the local level, as well as a good dose of fear.
Some interesting ideas here. Though I'm not sure if any system is "supposed to last" forever, even if it would have been the intention of the originator. The "western democracy" systems in their current forms have also not existed for more than a century, and it's hard to predict what will happen/evolve in the future.
Also maybe the exact definition of "state capitalism" could still be somehow controversial. People would describe the system in China especially in the past 3 decades or so as very much wild west capitalism. Private companies competed for survival and market shares like crazy without much regulation at all. Regulations have only been picking up in the recent 5 years or so. Sure there are state enterprises especially in more inland regions, but they are not really the most important drivers of China's economy boom, especially in manufacturing and exports.
Authoritarian governments survived for hundreds of years (or more, each) before the 20th century. I'd say the 20th century was unique because of the British empire, the world wars, and so many countries moving towards democracy.
The 'contract officials' are 'doomed' because they have to chose between competing senior officials, many of which will be upset?
Then why would anyone take the job?
He literally says they are 'coveted' while at the same time '99% chance of failure'?
And he indicated that some don't accept bribes. But then, randomly, they might accept one for which they could get caught?
How about just don't take bribes? Seriously.
I really enjoyed reading this however, I wish there was more real data to analyze as often, it's hard to really ascertain how much of these things are really true or just things that even people with experience and insight happen to believe.
The introduction frames the following translation as focusing on
> various “failures of democracy” that, if left unchecked, could lead to the weakening of the Chinese political system. Not only does his analysis argue the importance of having more senior officials rather than the rank-and-file party cadres select competent officials, but also serves as an implicit suggestion of the superiority of the Chinese system in contrast to western democratic systems.
I believe that is a misinterpretation caused by misunderstanding "failures of democracy" as referring to "failures of Western democracy". However, as an academic affiliated with the Central Party School, Wang Dongjing can safely be assumed to be using official terminology, in which China is defined as a democratic country. So all references to "democracy" in the article should be understood to refer to the system of leadership selection implemented in China. In particular, the "failures of democracy" he talks about are specifically "failures of leadership selection in China".
That is also very noticeable when he talks about the difference between "majority of the minority and the majority of the majority". In his example of minority selection, all 20 superior officials are corrupt, blocking the young official's promotion for not doing them a favor. Then later he says that "in our society, the good guys are in the majority and the bad guys are in the minority" and "if under the guidance of democratic centralism, we elect those who have the support of the majority of the people and entrust them with important tasks, then the bureaucratic culture will change greatly. In this way, there will be no market for those who are political ‘social climbers’, who only seek to curry favors with others but don’t seek to accomplish anything."
I.e. he is arguing explicitly against having senior officials decide on promotions and wants rank-and-file cadres to get a vote instead.
Just because he is affiliated with the Central Party School, it should not be assumed that he wants to paint a rosy picture of the government. On the contrary, it is kind of their raison d'être to be aware of the government's shortcomings, so that they can educate future cadres to improve the system. (Though I don't think posting such criticism publicly was part of the job description.)
That just seems phenomenally stupid. Even if you think you're in good graces with the party, you shouldn't leave that much gold in one place for easy seizure. Park it in an offshore bank account, west coast real estate, or bitcoin for goodness sakes!
This story makes me want to tell one of my own. I have visited the PRC a few times. On one of those times, my wife and I visited a cousin of hers in Beijing. This cousin had a factory and was well connected. He wanted us to do something for him, so he invited us to drinks and dinner at a fine restaurant (in a private banquet room). Turns out that one of his buddies was the Chief of Police and he was there too. We had fun trying to drink each other under the table, and as the evening came to a close I slipped downstairs so that I could pay for everything. (I didn't want to be obligated to any of these people.) When I approached the restaurant staff and expressed my intention to pay, they were horror stricken. Apparently the Police Chief was sponsoring the meal, which means the restaurant was giving it to him and everyone else for "free". I had not truly realized the extent of corruption in China until that moment.
In theory the free meal was on him, right? The rich business guy could easily pay for the meal out of his pocket, and the police chief actually choose to use his power (as suggested) to get a free dinner. I am not saying it is not true. Just stating the fact. Rather than doing nothing, he actually used his power for food.
Imagine what he wanted from the rich businessman that he wanted to pay or used his power for food.
There is no free lunch, might not be even for the restaurant people too. My guess is the restaurant people were having their own motivations why they allow them to eat for free.
In a corrupt society. Corruption begets corruption. Eventually money is just a means to trade things/services, if you have money going around that doesn't account for things/services, very likely there is tons of cheat/corrupt economy. Imagine this like a kind of inflation, on top of existing inflation.
For Beijing, what you described above is highly unlikely to be true. Not saying such corruptions do not exist in Beijing, corruptions exist everywhere in places like Beijing, just pointing out that you won't be able to notice them like the way how you described.
You are basically suggesting that the restaurant intentionally let a first time visitor (you) who they didn't know & trust to know the special relationship they have with the "chief of police". Why would they do that? A revenge to get rid of the guy?
It is also pretty strange to have "chief of police" accepting such high risk and low value "free meal" as gift. As a corrupted official, will you feel comfortable walking into a restaurant fitted with security cameras to enjoy your "free meal"? Sounds like a failed IQ test to me.
This happened in 2001 when there was less surveillance. Although the hotel we were staying at (foreigners only) had cameras everywhere, including one on the ceiling just outside our door.
The restaurant staff did not betray any information to me. That is why they were horrified. It put them in a diffiuclt position. I assume that they would not accept my money because of the risk that it might flow back to the chief that I had paid.
Yep 2001 is pretty much night and day compared to how things work now. Not sure when was the last time you were in China but the impression you get would surely be very different.
Also I didn't totally understand your point, since the host paying for the meal is the only right thing to do in the Chinese culture. Of course, when it was in 2001, the police chief probably covered the meal using public money, if by corruption this is what you mean. (By no means would the restaurant be asked to just give out food for free.) As someone also pointed out, this has become much harder after Xi's crackdown on such spending.
My impression was that the Chief did not cover the meal at all, except through his influence. The restaurant was "gifting" the meal to him in exchange for something. Perhaps it was "protection", or perhaps it was a "get out of jail free" card related to other corruption.
This exact scenario with police was prevalent in NYC and Los Angeles in prior times. It didn’t stop there, of course. Everything old is new again.
I personally experienced a modern anecdote of this while I worked for a public works
project in northern CA. This project was estimated to bring a significant amount of economic activity to the area so we were all “bribed”.
if they sees him as the guest, it would be shocked to see he is asking to pay. The host of dinner won't be happy if they allow guests to pay. Part of culture. I won't read too much into it, especially in Beijing. Of course, in rural areas, the chief could be king. Still, many times they have to pay for the meals, the only difference is that they are allowed to have a tab. The corruption is not taking free meals from restaurants, it is actually using government funds to pay for these meals. He will go to jail if the restaurant owner reports him if he does not pay for many times.
I can imagine that It's far cheaper to make friend with the police chief by giving him a free meal. Just in case the restaurant need special attention from the chief for situations like local gangs ask for protection money(probably very rare) or fight with drunken eaters. You never know.
It's still norm to bribe local officials so they will go easy on the businesses, such as speedy things up when dealing with the local gov, not enforcing laws when the business wants to pay less taxes.. etc.
They were "horror stricken" because the guest asked to pay, which was something totally unimaginable in terms of Chinese customs (not to mention the guest was a foreigner), especially in 2001. If the host didn't pay for a meal he'd lose all his face for all future interactions. Don't know what impression the OP got out of it but it sounded like you/the OP got some misunderstanding out of it.
In India this is so common that it's not even considered any thing out of the usual, let alone cause a realization.
I have tons of personal anecdotes which would make this post a hell lot longer. But for feelers, these days your ordinary mid level bribe making government employee is worth around 500 crores. For the western readers, that is in the ball park of $60 to $70 million. Higher up the hierarchy, the assistants to ruling party ministers, top bureaucracy, district level administration, or head of government organizations average twice to thrice that easily. The politicians themselves are likely in the ballpark of a few billion dollars worth.
The bribe market in India is so hot, you need to pay bribes, to get posted to positions where you can make more bribe. There's an entire corruption economy. So immense that it would dwarf anything real you could make working hard. Most of these people have regular meets and hire top lawyers to work around legally. They also pay-up the hierarchy for protection.
By the way it's not just some evil cabals meeting underground. Parents explicitly aspire their kids get these jobs. People spend bulk of their 20's just on entrance examinations, just for this.
The scale of corruption economy in India is just so mind boggling, it would be hard to explain any non-Indian just really how immense and all pervasive it is.
Your numbers seem wrong. I’m sure corruption is rampant but an “ordinary mid level bribe making government employee” being worth $60 to $70 million (more than CEOs of large US public companies) is impossible.
As a broad simplification, this is how the Roman Empire worked. Of course, in the Ronan Empire incentives were generally aligned, since the person doing the taxation also had to do the defending — if you were incompetent at the latter, you’d be dead soon enough.
The problem with this system in modern times is that incentives are unaligned to objectives.
The West tolerates corruption with one or two layers of indirection. Revolving door, speaking fees, campaign contributions, nonprofit donations. These kinds of corruption are not banned by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but direct graft is.
Corruption really interferes with the proper functioning of markets. Does indirection lessen the effect?
It would hard to imagine a society without corruption. But as an Indian, with my experience staying in California for a few years the overall corruption is just no way comparable to the Asian third world countries like India.
If US were to be as corrupt as India, imagine the DMV employees asking for a $500 bribe just for a State Id Card. Or asking for bribes for as little as a $50 bribe to even issue a form at the Social Security Office.
But this kind of direct corruption is so uncivilized. Look how shocked the civilized world is at this atrocious practice. Don't they know they can't maintain the facade of law abiding democratic society if they can't even hide their corruption properly.
Yeah, this was pretty much the norm. But these past 4 years, this kind of "using public money for private events" are much less common. There is much much tight curb on "dinners" "using government owned cars" "red pockets gifts". And there is a lot of auditing, approvals, and documentation for doing anything. Source: my cousin works in a governmental department. His co-worker was fired for hosting a expensive dinner for potential collaboration partner. Before, people wanted to get a government position for the "nice Perks". Nowadays, government position is no longer that "you can do whatever you want job". There are actually tons of rules for government jobs. Ex: My brother is not allowed to purchase a drink more than 8% alcohol content if the meal is sponsored by government money and there is amount cap per meal. He is mid ranked. And people can report evidence of corruption rules breaking so he is very careful with the rules.
Yep the introduction written by Jordan Schneider was really confusing and seemed to want to portray the crackdown by Xi solely as something to weed out dissidents. That might have been some part of it especially in high-profile cases, but in general the drive to crack down corruption and make the officialdom more service-minded is definitely genuine, and people have been taking positive note of this. A lot of previous officials have simply resigned and gone into the private sector in order to make more money as a result as well.
Yup. My sister in law is from, and lives, in a south-East Asian country and she had an interesting story.
She needed to register for her identity card so she went to her local police station and filled out the forms. Gets a call a week later - “oh sorry, one of the forms was filled out incorrectly, can you come back and fill it out again?”. Sure, no problem.
A week later “oh, one of the forms filled out was the wrong form. I have the right one now, can you come fill it out?”. Well this is silly, but ok.
A week later “it turns out you need a form from the district as well, please fill that out and bring it in”. This is stupid, but she does it.
A week later “oh, that form had the wrong stamp on it, you need to fill out a new form and get the right stamp”.
A this point it was obvious - she went to police station, explained that the stamp was the correct one and oh, yeah, by the way, I know you’re working hard so let me give you some coffee money ($10 USD in local currency).
The article is not intended as a highlight of whatever sort of "corruption" of the political system though. I think the Substack author Jordan Schneider also somehow missed the point/misled with his introduction. It's intended more as an objective description of how the officialdom works, and how they should deepen the reforms based on such objective understandings. There are some interesting studies that compared levels of corruption between the US and China, especially during 19th century when US was still rapidly developing. Even now we all see how corrupt some US police/politicians in small places could be. I don't think the conclusion "I had not truly realized the extent of corruption in China until that moment." was a fair conclusion especially in the context of this article.
I think you'll find pretty big pockets of tech companies with a CCP promotion dynamic. You're usually better off being the "good man" who doesn't really do anything. Doing things has the potential to offend someone.
‘ Once I accompanied a domestic delegation to visit the United States. After dinner, we asked the waiter for an invoice, but the waiter did not know what an invoice was, so we talked to the boss and explained to him that we need an invoice so that we can be reimbursed back in China. The restaurant boss listened to us with great bewilderment. He asked, “Aren't you eating for yourselves, so why are you having the government pay for it?” ‘
So fake. Don’t people in US require an invoice for reimbursement for business meal?
The article is actually quite interesting and objective. The introduction by Jordan Schneider reads confusing though. The purpose of Wang was to illustrate how the officialdom work and how to deepen reforms based on such objective understandings of the system. They don't seem to have much relation with what Jordan Schneider wrote at the beginning e.g. corruption here.
217 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadAlso I wonder how much of this could be applied to western democracies as well
In San Francisco for example, we are undertaking a street repair of 19th street that will take an estimated 2 years. My best guess is that it will actually take a decade to complete, like the van ness project. This is simply a modification of a sewer system and a street re-pavement - nothing new. China could complete this in a week.
The west is slow and we are in decline. China is growing fast.
And who of course would object when doing so would ding your "social credit" score and restrict your right to do things like travel, or access the internet.
I agree that single party states run very well, after all when you don't have to worry about pesky freedoms or rights it's amazing what you can accomplish.
Next up President Xi Jinping has a 99% approval rating. How does China produce such beloved politicians?
Americans know very well that their public sector fails to execute projects on time and on budget. They just don’t think the tradeoffs to convert to the Chinese system are worth it, nor are the benefits of the Chinese system exclusive to that system.
It was written to agree with the parent, not disagree. Yes, that does break from the normal comment thread cadence of agreement on odd layers and disagreement on even layers. ;)
When I visited China, China feels like America. I'd argue China has embraced capitalism and we are moving in the opposite direction.
The CCP has embraced capitalism when it's convenient for them. What they haven't embraced is a consistent rule of law or anything approaching a democratic government, which are the basis of every other functioning, stable nation on Earth.
Until the next famine, which is imminent. Even in good times, China does not produce nearly enough food for internal consumption. Add to that the numerous famines in 2020, plus underpaying farmers, and you get a perfect storm in 2021.
> it’s patently obvious that China will be calling the shots from here on out
No, the CCP is a parasite that relies on the rest of the world.
> thanks to everything that the Trump presidency did to internationalism
Trump is excellent when it comes to foreign policy that benefits the US. As an American, the last thing I care about is fickle "internationalism."
Also, I think it's likely that Trump has made leaders in the the West realize how much they rely on each other, and ties will be quickly re-strengthened under Biden.
A dire contrast with the west which since the industrial revolution grew up so fast by respecting human rights, the environment, other nations, international law. The lack of self-awareness of people like you genuinely scares me. You vote people who has the power to erase the planet with nukes and you consider yourselves superior to other races/nations. Truly hair-rising stuff.
Well, no, exactly like the West that did many of the same things as China at a similar stages in their development, with similar results (there's a difference between the hybrid of state capitalism and corporatism with central elites in practical control of "democratic centralism" in modern China and peak private capitalism with capitalist control of notionally democratic institutions in the early industrial West, but there are also lots of similarities), and very much like what lots of Western countries did later under slightly different systems than peak private capitalism that are also similar to China's current system (e.g., fascist corporatism)
Which is exactly why "how China can do what they do" isn't at all a mystery or place the West needs to go to learn lessons. Its not that the West has never done the kind of things that China has done, but that its been there and moved on. Certainly not completely, and certainly with deep remaining problems. But a few pretty prestige projects for the elites and those willing to knuckle under for them aren't worth the cost of reversing progress on those fronts.
Aren't people supposed to do better knowing how much people in the past screwed up? Isn't that what progress is all about? Learning from your mistakes?
Because it's not terrifying. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. What's terrifying is nations like India and continents like Africa haven't followed and developed. Instead there are nearly 1 billion indians and africans without electricity, plumbing, etc.
> Aren't people supposed to do better knowing how much people in the past screwed up?
Well, china didn't invade australia, canada, US, etc and wipe out the people and steal their land and destroy other people's environment to enrich themselves. So maybe they learned something. The hypocritical hubris is not going to do us any good. Over the long term, it's gonna be our undoing.
Or maybe, there is no other option. In order to make an omelette you gotta break some eggs. And in order to develop, you have to suffer through some environmental degradation.
Not only are the chinese entitled to it, so are the indians, africans, middle easterners, etc. Are they all supposed to languish in poverty while they wait for some magic development process to appear.
While a privileged virtue signaler can comfortable whine about the environment, the millions of people living in poverty don't have the luxury.
If one is serious, it isn't hard to take a look at how the industrial revolution happened over the past hundreds of years to understand how the West reached its current status in the first place, going through exactly similar stages. Development is a hard, long-winding process, and one doesn't magically get there overnight. There was an interesting study that looked at the corruption level in the US in the 1800s and found it to be 8 times more than the corruption level of 1990s/2000s China. When countries like Norway were poor before they discovered oil, it was not like they were exactly the model paradise of equality, green economy and "human rights" at all, while China now has the ambition to lead the green economy by 2050.
As you said, one could simply look at a third-world African country. Are people there objectively suffering from more human rights abuses, more poverty, more environmental pollution, than people in China? Is the supposed parliamentary democracy working there?
The West talks all the time about how they're supposed to help those countries develop by implanting all its system, while eventually all it does is to make it easy for the multinational western capitalists to reap the rewards. Nobody helps anybody else develop at its own expense for no reason. This is just how politics naturally works. China took advantage of the manufacturing boom to get out of poverty, which of course benefited the West a lot along the way as well, but China always also had a clear determination to grow out of such a "world factory" role, which the West clearly didn't foresee nor wanted to see. Thus the tension nowadays.
China is pushing a lot of policies in Africa nowadays and of course it's also largely out of China's own geopolitical needs, but maybe some of its infrastructure projects actually benefit the population more than some previous foreign investments, or maybe some of them don't. The point is, in the end you have to look at what actually benefits the common folks the most, instead of all the hypocritical gesturing and varnishing talks on the surface.
A lot of the "environment, safety, human rights" stuffs originate from official propaganda by western state apparatus which want to contain China/feel threatened by China's progress, so they want to reassure themselves of their superiority and contain every country in their designated place in the food chain with a certain narrative, just like how China does official propaganda to paint the west in a bad light on issues such as COVID containment and affirm its own superiority. But people who unquestioningly gobble up such propaganda are definitely aplenty out there (I would guess the desire to feel superior/justified against an unknown threat/"others" could even be part of human nature, which however is what education and rational thinking are exactly supposed to allow us do better at).
How you can conclude that the US is in decline because a street repair in a single city takes longer than it probably should is beyond me.
I would argue the opposite is usually true. Setting aside China, authoritarian regimes are usually NOT known for being efficient or well-run.
I am not American, but I came back from my visits to China with a similar feeling to the grandparent comment. The West tends to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "Authoritarian regime, I can't hear you!" at the mere suggestion that China does certain things better and there may be something to learn there.
well run != efficient
Authoritarian regimes are highly efficient at accomplishing what the people in charge want to do, long term consequences be damned. Frequently, the people in charge are primarily focused on retaining or even acquiring more power and wealth, which is generally not well aligned with what most people would consider a well run nation.
> I am not American, but I came back from my visits to China with a similar feeling to the grandparent comment. The West tends to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "Authoritarian regime, I can't hear you!" at the mere suggestion that China does certain things better and there may be something to learn there.
The issue here is that there isn't an agreement on what "better" means. Social harmony at the expense of individual freedoms isn't better. Technological advancement that is based on IP theft isn't better. Infrastructure improvement that causes long term harm to the global environment isn't better.
Are you saying there are no lessons the West can learn from China's infrastructure projects without resorting to authoritarianism, IP theft, or environmental harm? That there is no way to pick apart and separate some positive learnings from the negatives?
Are you saying THIS is the best we can do as a Western democracy?
https://torontolife.com/city/transportation/tortured-history...
To me, this kind of paralysis on infrastructure projects is not "better" by any definition you use. It's not an intentional tradeoff between infrastructure and environmental protection, or between public development and property rights. It's just indecision, waste, and stagnation.
Every time a comparison to China's infrastructure comes up, the knee jerk reaction is to point out that it's an authoritarian regime so of course they can force through any infrastructure project they want. Which is fair enough, but it drowns out any discussion asking "Hey, CAN we do any better in the West than we are doing right now? Is what we have good enough?"
Not at all. Every nation can always learn from others, or at least be motivated by the accomplishments of others to improve internally.
> Are you saying THIS is the best we can do as a Western democracy?
Maybe? Again, it depends on what your definition of "best" is. If not enough people in Toronto think it's important enough to have a robust public transit system, then it doesn't happen. I'm very confident Toronto has the resources required to complete an ambitious project if desired.
> To me, this kind of paralysis on infrastructure projects is not "better" by any definition you use. It's not an intentional tradeoff between infrastructure and environmental protection, or between public development and property rights. It's just indecision, waste, and stagnation.
If the project isn't a good use of resources, indecision and inaction is the better outcome.
> Every time a comparison to China's infrastructure comes up, the knee jerk reaction is to point out that it's an authoritarian regime so of course they can force through any infrastructure project they want. Which is fair enough, but it drowns out any discussion asking "Hey, CAN we do any better in the West than we are doing right now? Is what we have good enough?"
Unlike in China, these discussions already happen regularly, and the key difference between the status quo in China and the West is the decision making process, so that's where the conversation is focused.
I wish I shared your confidence, but this suggests otherwise:
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/09/26/transit-the-number-1-...
I find it difficult to accept that this is the best outcome by any metric I can think of.
>Unlike in China, these discussions already happen regularly, and the key difference between the status quo in China and the West is the decision making process, so that's where the conversation is focused.
Is it? The conversation is focused on how China is authoritarian, not on how the Western (I really should say North American) decision-making process often leads to poor outcomes and stagnation when it comes to public projects.
This IS getting pretty far off-topic from the actual article, so I'll stop here.
That's a pretty recent poll (on the timeline you provided in the earlier article), so maybe it's a sign that a more comprehensive transit system will be built soon.
> I find it difficult to accept that this is the best outcome by any metric I can think of.
It's definitely not optimal if you support public transit. The western model is more concerned with preventing tyranny than efficiency or optimal outcomes, for better or worse. This could very easily be one of the times where "worse" is the case. I'd still prefer it over an authoritarian system.
> Is it? The conversation is focused on how China is authoritarian, not on how the Western (I really should say North American) decision-making process often leads to poor outcomes and stagnation when it comes to public projects.
It seems to have expanded quite a bit beyond that (not between you and I, just generally), which seems pretty common for these types of topics.
> This IS getting pretty far off-topic from the actual article, so I'll stop here.
Fair enough, thanks for the discussion.
The West and China have different goals.
China's goal is to grow fast at all costs.
To use your street example, the West makes a great effort to listen to the views of all the people affected by the project, including people who live near and work near the project. The West will also do a study to make sure the environmental impact is acceptable. The West will also do a survey to make sure nothing of any historical or archaeological importance isn't affected. The West will put the project out to multiple bidders and make sure that minority-owned companies are represented in the project. Depending on the project, there may also be other studies and considerations.
China just does the project, and if it's done wrong or harms anyone, too bad. Get out of the way.
Different systems. Different philosophies.
One isn't better because it's "fast."
Barbaric is a fun word, but one that would be easy to twist the other way. In one system you get to be crammed into a little train car with dozens of other people, in the other system you have some privacy and personal space and a seat...
Again, pros and cons all over the place... the US doesn't have good trains because it built other systems instead due to the point in time in which many of its cities developed, and they are "good enough" that most people would see little benefit from ripping it all up to replace it with trains.
It's worth noting too that "they make the trains run on time" is literally a cliche about certain types of government at this point, not some unique accomplishment.
If you have enough money for both options, then it's not surprising that the option which costs at least an order of magnitude more provides a slightly more comfortable seat.
If you consider car-centric society barbaric, you've never experience barbarism, or understand what the word even means. Hyperbole is not helpful.
Being factual and a little more subtle goes a long way.
I live in an urban area and enjoy not having to drive long distances (or at all) to run errands, but I don't see them as an extenstential threat to humanity as many posters here apparently do.
I still haven't figured it out.
And then you projected that all of western civilization is in decline because the US hasn't prioritized high speed rail. Among other things, this completely ignores the countries within the "West" that have high speed rail as well.
That's what people are taking issue with, not that you pointed out that China has high speed rail.
We've been surpassed in PPP, Global Trade, Industrial Output etc. China's steel production is 1 billion tons a year, the US 80 million tons. They poured as much concrete in the last 10 years as we poured in the 20th century. In just a few years we will be surpassed by GDP and witin 25 years China's GDP will be double the United States.
China's rise is not disputed.
The other poster with the analogy about a child's height is 100% accurate.
China doesn't care. You do what you're told. If you complain too much, you disappear; if the project has an atrocious safety record, they are not reported and no such records exist (or blame a low-level official); if an entire neighborhood was destroyed without compensation, shut up and deal with it. You can get what you want, just how many bodies are you willing to bury to get it?
You need to destroy neighborhoods to built road infrastructure, though. This is because "I/O operations" on high-speed roads with massive bandwidth à-la-USA requires ungodly amounts of space.
Here is the infrastructure needed for high-speed rail : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/FXD1-J00..., plus one train station per city. The switches can be built outside.
Here is the infrastructure needed for traditional highways: https://i0.wp.com/usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sit...
If the infrastructure that was built was not horribly inefficient due to an almost ideological opposition to mass transit, there wouldn't have been neighbourhoods destroyed wholesale, and the precedent leading to the gargantuan opposition we see right now would simply not be present.
Its actually not that hard and Chinese content platforms are a breath of fresh air
Me thinks you would be surprised at what works
The state there takes a paternal approach, like a literal parent, or teacher or school principle (or unit commander, or HR department). It isn’t that unrelatable, we all grew up in similar restrictions. When everyone agrees that is what the role of the state is, nobody is trying to be a freedom fighter to alter that
That's sort of like saying Chinese politics is a breath of fresh air because you don't have to worry about picking a side and hearing the various parties arguing with each other.
they have a heavily neutered internet and it is a pleasant experience
its a walled garden, at the country level, do you want a sticker because of your awareness of Beijing?
there is simply a life beyond imagining it as oppressive all the time, when the reality is that you just hang out in communities in your niche and you dont have to worry about it being randomly politicized. A large part of the mindshare in the west is trying to figure out how to do that, checking out the other internet is probably good for your mental health
I guess Hong Kong's problem is they just haven't experienced China's rail system yet. /s
You clearly misunderstand what the First Amendment is about. It's a restraint on government, not a restraint on everyone else.
Around 1865 we reached the conclusion that it is the duty of the Government to protect some people from having their freedom taken away by some other people. Since then the Constitution started imposing restraints not only on the ability of the Government to curtail your freedom, but also the ability of your fellow citizens to do so. And this is a good thing.
But lately we started regressing. I'm talking about the cancel culture.
Do you think that if one day a person were to be physically tarred and feathered by a crowd of puritans because of some perceived transgression, that is ok? But then if the tarring and feathering is in the digital world, and much more permanent (nothing is forgotten on the internet), is that ok?
The end result is that people learn there are some things you can say, some things you can't, and some things you must say.
/s
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/25/chinese-rail-c...
China executes at scale, but does not necessarily execute good things at scale.
Feel free to invite me. But it's not necessary. I've been on China's high speed rail system.
Its a huge accomplishment that our society isn't capable of producing.
I've also been on the one in Japan, Korea, Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium.
The Chinese state can produce projects, but how valuable they are is often up for question; the Urumqi high speed line doesn't even make enough money to pay for the electricity to run the trains. https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee...
America's problem isn't with building new roads, it's with maintaining them.
Building new is easy. Let's see how China fares in 50 years when it has to maintain an aging infrastructure.
There is a middle ground where projects are ethically and considerately done in a reasonable amount of time, at a reasonable cost. This doesn't seem to be happening in either SF or China, but I can imagine it's happening in many places around the world.
The middle ground is also the middle between US and China, something like Germany.
I do meet Americans who moved to Europe but they also have to contend with various dissatisfaction. A dysfunctional and Kafka-esque bureaucracy is one of them, and the high tax + mediocre income + unfriendly laws on share grants, as well as a way too "socialist" system which doesn't recognize individual contribution much, is another huge factor that have led many people to reconsider their choices. If they have some particular reason, e.g. chronic medical condition, have a family and want more work-life balance etc., then sure, Europe might work better for them. But for a young single person Europe is actually nowhere that good at all.
I think eventually people just have to understand that there is no paradise on earth. Every place has its set of unique strengths and weaknesses and characteristics formed by their culture and history that are not replaceable. Romanticizing an "exotic" place too much will invariably lead to deviation from the reality and disillusionment in the end. Similarly, demonizing a place, be it China or the US, will also be very one-sided and biased. Only clear-headed objectivity will benefit you the most.
In my city, the reason why this happens is because municipal officials are corrupt, incompetent, and not held accountable. It has nothing to do with what you said.
The city has a lot of difficult problems to solve, but it sure does do some horribly wrong things with the simpler problems.
It’s not like the city budget has doubled in the last 10 years.
I heard that Italian fascists made the trains run on time, too.
Here is the Chinese high speed rail built in the last decade, it is not propaganda, it's literally something you can buy a ticket for and travel on at 350 km/h right now. I truly worry for Americans incapable of seeing what is happening in the rest of the world.
https://image5.sixthtone.com/image/5/4/861.gif
I'm not exactly pro-prison, but so far I haven't heard any alternatives that I believe would work as a solution to violent crime. I'm open to suggestions. It is certainly the case that the U.S. has too many laws.
Yeah, its nice. Authoritarian regimes usually have some nice prestige projects to show, which is really nice if you are a foreigner they are trying to impress, or a local that is in favor with the regime. Not so much if you are out-of-favor, whether because you opposed the particular approach they took for the prestige project or for some unrelated reason.
But, as much as I like HSR and wish the US would do it, emulating China -- whose ability to do it isn't a mystery needing study, but well-understood -- isn't a cost worth paying for it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Spe...
When it's keeping the "other" out it's gross, but when they are shutting down pointless vanity projects like a sculpture park no one wants maybe that's democracy as advertised.
Before I moved to San Francisco, I lived in Beijing for 9 years, the last 3 of those in an apartment in the Sanlitun area of Beijing, within 3 mins walk of a Bentley dealership, Lotus dealership, a craft brewery etc.
When we moved in, a school down the street had construction going on, and was surrounded with scaffolding and then some signage or whatever. The sidewalk was completely blocked off, making it difficult for pedestrians to pass.
Over a year later, they finally finished construction and the updated building was revealed. They'd extended the building to take over the sidewalk completely. You'd think that, if this was intended, then they'd build a new sidewalk and narrow the car lanes a bit. But, no, pedestrians have to walk into the road to go around this school.
This construction was both slow and bad. I admit it's not typical: the nearby Holiday Inn went from zero to operational within a few months.
Maybe a change of scenery is in order for you. I can't imaging living in a hellscape like San Fran. I'm in a veritable paradise as far as I can tell. There are problems, but we are working on them, and we generally have the freedom to do so on our own terms without nanny government holding our hand.
This goes both ways. I’m from Dallas and live in Los Angeles. Both cities have their own share of problems (and their own great qualities) — and yet both are much more likely to quickly dismiss the other as lost causes than take a deep look at their own issues.
It’s fine to have a preference, obviously, but don’t let your preference cloud your judgement: many would say the exact same thing about rural Arkansas — and for many, it probably wouldn’t be a paradise, based on any number of politics, orientations, race, socioeconomic status, or even just where your friends and family are! — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t for you.
An example in Atlanta was a politician friends with those of the same party works in another county but serves on advisement boards for the city as a sole employee of those boards netting him hundreds of thousands a year. It only came to light because he screwed up the taxes. This is wide spread, as in nation wide. All those committees and such are mostly there to reward each other, family, and friends.
China just eliminated having any competing political power. They have factions within but all serve the same top.
Example of gaming the system https://www.ajc.com/politics/fulton-da-howard-fined-by-state...
Why? I mean, its not news that top-down authoritarianism is very good at doing whatever the top decides needs done without considering anyone else's concerns or interests, this isn't something that needs study.
And there are no shortages of places practicing that to decamp to if that is your preference for style of government.
However, before we go asking the commies how to run governments, there are perhaps some other, less authoritarian, countries who also get things done that we might look at?
There’s an interesting story with Deng Xiaoping and Lee Kwan Yew behind this.
I wonder.
China is not 'well managed', rather, they can 'move quickly and build things of questionable quality' in some places, not others.
The ability to build some material things very quickly is definitely useful and creates some utility, but it's not tantamount to 'well managed'.
SF has busses, trains and a subway that run, it's far from perfect, but what they suffer from is 'too much money'.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/#:~:text=Gr....
[2] https://www.transparency.org/en/
LOL. China is able to move very fast, but the idea that it's a well-oiled machine functioning in perfect harmony is a ridiculous fiction.
Construction projects in China cut every corner possible. When something fails catastrophically, they'll throw a low-level official under the bus. At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this.
See: "The Chabuduo Mindset" https://www.chinaexpatsociety.com/culture/the-chabuduo-minds...
> The west is slow and we are in decline. China is growing fast.
Yes, and this should terrify everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E
> At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this.
Exactly like the USSR and Chernobyl.
Construction quality satisfies fast, cheap, good like everywhere else. As someone who worked adjacent to construction industry in both China and North America, the difference is China has the "fast" option available, whereas NA is mostly cheap + good, and frequently just cheap. It's less about being well managed, but having all the options and managing appropriately. Tons of capital projects in China and related prestige developments aging well. The latter surprisingly so considering how many retardley ambitious (almost unworkable) starchitect designs were built. Sure, lot's of uninhabited commodity projects falling into disrepair but abandoned bubble subdivisions don't fair much better. Difference is China builds more, so more catastrophic failures. Question is, it worth the cost? Deng wanted poor China to develop fast. So China ChaBuDuo's as deliberate development strategy and manages accordingly.
>When something fails catastrophically, they'll throw a low-level official under the bus. At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this.
Chinese Aviation and HSR safety? Public accident -> regulate + execute those responsible = about safest aviation and HSR in the world. Surmise the same with food and vaccination safety, but effects of those scandal stake longer to determine. Regardless, incentives seem to align with state interests to me. On building stock specifically, there's no interest high quality commodity construction. Why would there be? Current 60% urbanization rate, goal 70%, realistically 80-90%. That's 140-420M people who needs apartments. Queue current 65M empty condos and ghost city memes.
Obviously it's not perfect, but it has more tools to address some serious problems that's stumping the west, especially beyond political cycle timescales. Curious if west would try deleveraging or could successfully regulate FAANG. Too many things west can't do, but should. Also too many things CCP can do and shouldn't.
Any civil engineers here that can explain why “simply” might not apply?
I have watched some sewer modifications[1] here in Christchurch (earthquake damage, Insituform product), and it looked incredibly complicated and I didn’t see how they reconnected each home’s connection to the main.
A typical metaphor for software engineering is rebuilding a plane while it is running. What is an appropriate metaphor when you are fixing old pipes that carry human excrement and the system mostly keeps working while it’s being done...
[1] https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/rehabl.pdf
Almost all American infrastructure is either a vanity project, a jobs project, or a political quid pro quo operation to an ally to get some other thing done.
The problem is that once you get really used to this mode of operating, you kind of forget that there are sometimes things that really do matter. I think America has a picture of the things she already knows of: crucial highway collapses? gotta fix now! But the ability to recognize new crises goes away without novel crises.
So America can't build ventilators in an emergency, can't train nurses in an emergency, can't do anything new. But I think America can deal with the old things just fine if she wants to.
If you're not allowed to conclude that the whole system has to go, then it is impossible to have any credibility in saying that the whole system doesn't have to go.
I come across a lot of such people online. The same bureaucratic disease of any established government.
I would also like to say the idea that this system has to be changed/replaced is generally agreed upon.
As a Chinese national and frequent Zhihu user, this comment is probably satire... I would also like to say the idea that this system has to be changed/replaced is generally agreed upon.
Have not heard about this. What ideas are floating around for the replacement?
Also not sure what you exactly mean with "generally agreed upon" and "has to be changed/replaced". There could be varying degrees of interpretation, but I don't think by far that a radical change is a "general consensus" throughout the nation. Many do see that the system has been working for the country so far and are taking note.
> but also serves as an implicit suggestion of the superiority of the Chinese system in contrast to western democratic systems.
This is clearly a wrong impression. The superiority is always in the context of being for China. Without that quote, it becomes a challenge to US hegemony. Although, it should be mentioned that, no superpower can convince the old one to peacefully transfer the power.
Once I accompanied a domestic delegation to visit the United States. After dinner, we asked the waiter for an invoice, but the waiter did not know what an invoice was, so we talked to the boss and explained to him that we need an invoice so that we can be reimbursed back in China. The restaurant boss listened to us with great bewilderment. He asked, “Aren't you eating for yourselves, so why are you having the government pay for it?”
When travelling on business, asking for a receipt to be reimbursed is very normal. Perhaps the problem was asking for an "invoice" instead of a "receipt"?
However, I just tried Google translate, and it gave me “invoice”. Well, I think we’ve found the culprit.
The less formal option is a "shouju" but doesn't work for official business reimbursement.
0: https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2019/08/29/what-is-a-fapia...
1: https://www.globalfromasia.com/fapiao/
The only way to get this refund is to ensure that you are issued a 'fiscal receipt'[2] for your purchases. These have a little QR code which you can scan into an app on your phone.
Of course, the whole point of the system is to ensure that retailers actually declare revenue and therefore pay tax on it. I wonder if similar systems exist in more countries?
[1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-07/02/c_138190143.htm
[2] https://www.geneko.rs/en/products/fiscal-products-and-soluti...
Stores who don't comply get massive fines.
To be honest, I really liked the idea as I feel like it could help the average person with personal budgeting.
[1] https://guidetotaipei.com/article/taiwan-receipt-lottery-統一發...
That is my understanding, anyway. I have been out of the country for so long, it must have changed a lot. Most of it must be electronic now, I imagine. I still remember a shop owner's audible complaints when I asked for an invoice around the time the system was initially introduced.
At least in the US those kinds of taxes are declared on receipts themselves.
You gave an excellent example. Tax rates are NOT on receipts in China. That would put pressure on the government to lower tax.
How do the private companies know how much taxes to pay then? Or all shops state-run?
I saw a clip of Chinese news broadcast giving shocking rates on Youtube, like a quarter to a third, but unfortunately I cannot find it now. There is little public information about effective sales tax rate. However, people do realize it. High taxes is one reason Chinese tourists buy a lot when overseas; they could see the price difference.
20-25% VAT is pretty common in Europe, so while that's high I wouldn't go so far as shocking.
It has been a while so it is a little fuzzy, but I recall the broadcaster said up to 50% of pre-tax price. The official VAT rate is like 17% now, I think (just googled it). So it is other fees imposed by local governments that are onerous.
Average Chinese may not think about paying tax for each sale because it's not printed on the receipt. But the price they pay do include all the taxes incurred to the business.
It's been a while, I remember that the receipts I got from IKEA and 711 do print the exact tax applied to this sale.
Sure, if you're shopping at IKEA or 7-11 (notably, large-scale foreign businesses).
If you're shopping at the local corner store or restaurant, they're not declaring sales unless you specifically ask for a fapiao (and even then, half of them will lie and say their machine is broken).
> If you're shopping at the local corner store or restaurant, they're not declaring sales unless you specifically ask for a fapiao (and even then, half of them will lie and say their machine is broken).
Yeah. I agree. Though it's bit extreme to say `half of them`.
If authoritarian government is by default this effective and easy to success, why most of them failed?
Because the decision makers will inevitably make very large mistakes, and generally don't have the ability (or capacity) to course correct.
The western system is far from efficient, but it generally lands on the right solution in the long term.
The main reason why it lasted so long in China is because it is now operating in the economic system and condition it was designed to work under.
Indeed, this system of governance was designed by Lenin and his cronies precisely to operate under and regulate State Capitalism. It's not designed to work with a planned economy, or with a completely capitalist economy, or with an agrarian economy, but explicitly with State Capitalism (see: NEP).
Secondly, it's not actually supposed to last. This kind of government was designed to last more or less 70 years under the correct economic system, it wasn't designed to last forever.
China happens to be a case of the government system operating in exactly the correst economic system during the period where its supposed to work.
The rest of it is just typical "democratic" centralism, self-criticism, a strong ideological backing, and the ability for flexibility and reactivity at the local level, as well as a good dose of fear.
Also maybe the exact definition of "state capitalism" could still be somehow controversial. People would describe the system in China especially in the past 3 decades or so as very much wild west capitalism. Private companies competed for survival and market shares like crazy without much regulation at all. Regulations have only been picking up in the recent 5 years or so. Sure there are state enterprises especially in more inland regions, but they are not really the most important drivers of China's economy boom, especially in manufacturing and exports.
The 'contract officials' are 'doomed' because they have to chose between competing senior officials, many of which will be upset?
Then why would anyone take the job?
He literally says they are 'coveted' while at the same time '99% chance of failure'?
And he indicated that some don't accept bribes. But then, randomly, they might accept one for which they could get caught?
How about just don't take bribes? Seriously.
I really enjoyed reading this however, I wish there was more real data to analyze as often, it's hard to really ascertain how much of these things are really true or just things that even people with experience and insight happen to believe.
People, who are from poor provinces, would really prefer to get the job even if it means bribing.
however, the official cadre, in next para, refers to all the official cadres regardless of their priority being money or doing a good job
> various “failures of democracy” that, if left unchecked, could lead to the weakening of the Chinese political system. Not only does his analysis argue the importance of having more senior officials rather than the rank-and-file party cadres select competent officials, but also serves as an implicit suggestion of the superiority of the Chinese system in contrast to western democratic systems.
I believe that is a misinterpretation caused by misunderstanding "failures of democracy" as referring to "failures of Western democracy". However, as an academic affiliated with the Central Party School, Wang Dongjing can safely be assumed to be using official terminology, in which China is defined as a democratic country. So all references to "democracy" in the article should be understood to refer to the system of leadership selection implemented in China. In particular, the "failures of democracy" he talks about are specifically "failures of leadership selection in China".
That is also very noticeable when he talks about the difference between "majority of the minority and the majority of the majority". In his example of minority selection, all 20 superior officials are corrupt, blocking the young official's promotion for not doing them a favor. Then later he says that "in our society, the good guys are in the majority and the bad guys are in the minority" and "if under the guidance of democratic centralism, we elect those who have the support of the majority of the people and entrust them with important tasks, then the bureaucratic culture will change greatly. In this way, there will be no market for those who are political ‘social climbers’, who only seek to curry favors with others but don’t seek to accomplish anything."
I.e. he is arguing explicitly against having senior officials decide on promotions and wants rank-and-file cadres to get a vote instead.
Just because he is affiliated with the Central Party School, it should not be assumed that he wants to paint a rosy picture of the government. On the contrary, it is kind of their raison d'être to be aware of the government's shortcomings, so that they can educate future cadres to improve the system. (Though I don't think posting such criticism publicly was part of the job description.)
> Thirteen and a half tonnes of gold worth up to £520million is found in a corrupt Chinese official's home
When I read it, I thought to myself somebody ended up on the wrong side of the party. Hm, I wonder where all of that gold went?
1. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7528217/13-5-tonnes...
There is no free lunch, might not be even for the restaurant people too. My guess is the restaurant people were having their own motivations why they allow them to eat for free.
In a corrupt society. Corruption begets corruption. Eventually money is just a means to trade things/services, if you have money going around that doesn't account for things/services, very likely there is tons of cheat/corrupt economy. Imagine this like a kind of inflation, on top of existing inflation.
You are basically suggesting that the restaurant intentionally let a first time visitor (you) who they didn't know & trust to know the special relationship they have with the "chief of police". Why would they do that? A revenge to get rid of the guy?
It is also pretty strange to have "chief of police" accepting such high risk and low value "free meal" as gift. As a corrupted official, will you feel comfortable walking into a restaurant fitted with security cameras to enjoy your "free meal"? Sounds like a failed IQ test to me.
The restaurant staff did not betray any information to me. That is why they were horrified. It put them in a diffiuclt position. I assume that they would not accept my money because of the risk that it might flow back to the chief that I had paid.
Also I didn't totally understand your point, since the host paying for the meal is the only right thing to do in the Chinese culture. Of course, when it was in 2001, the police chief probably covered the meal using public money, if by corruption this is what you mean. (By no means would the restaurant be asked to just give out food for free.) As someone also pointed out, this has become much harder after Xi's crackdown on such spending.
I personally experienced a modern anecdote of this while I worked for a public works project in northern CA. This project was estimated to bring a significant amount of economic activity to the area so we were all “bribed”.
Even now in the US it’s a lot about who you know.
Compare with:
> When I approached the restaurant staff and expressed my intention to pay, they were horror stricken
Here they instead fear something bad would happen, if they don't pay (offer the food for free)?
It's still norm to bribe local officials so they will go easy on the businesses, such as speedy things up when dealing with the local gov, not enforcing laws when the business wants to pay less taxes.. etc.
I have tons of personal anecdotes which would make this post a hell lot longer. But for feelers, these days your ordinary mid level bribe making government employee is worth around 500 crores. For the western readers, that is in the ball park of $60 to $70 million. Higher up the hierarchy, the assistants to ruling party ministers, top bureaucracy, district level administration, or head of government organizations average twice to thrice that easily. The politicians themselves are likely in the ballpark of a few billion dollars worth.
The bribe market in India is so hot, you need to pay bribes, to get posted to positions where you can make more bribe. There's an entire corruption economy. So immense that it would dwarf anything real you could make working hard. Most of these people have regular meets and hire top lawyers to work around legally. They also pay-up the hierarchy for protection.
By the way it's not just some evil cabals meeting underground. Parents explicitly aspire their kids get these jobs. People spend bulk of their 20's just on entrance examinations, just for this.
The scale of corruption economy in India is just so mind boggling, it would be hard to explain any non-Indian just really how immense and all pervasive it is.
When it comes to illegal territory money the Forbes wealth lists are just a gigantic joke.
The problem with this system in modern times is that incentives are unaligned to objectives.
Corruption really interferes with the proper functioning of markets. Does indirection lessen the effect?
If US were to be as corrupt as India, imagine the DMV employees asking for a $500 bribe just for a State Id Card. Or asking for bribes for as little as a $50 bribe to even issue a form at the Social Security Office.
That's like just the beginning of it.
She needed to register for her identity card so she went to her local police station and filled out the forms. Gets a call a week later - “oh sorry, one of the forms was filled out incorrectly, can you come back and fill it out again?”. Sure, no problem.
A week later “oh, one of the forms filled out was the wrong form. I have the right one now, can you come fill it out?”. Well this is silly, but ok.
A week later “it turns out you need a form from the district as well, please fill that out and bring it in”. This is stupid, but she does it.
A week later “oh, that form had the wrong stamp on it, you need to fill out a new form and get the right stamp”.
A this point it was obvious - she went to police station, explained that the stamp was the correct one and oh, yeah, by the way, I know you’re working hard so let me give you some coffee money ($10 USD in local currency).
She had the identity document the next day.
So fake. Don’t people in US require an invoice for reimbursement for business meal?