> No it isn't actually true. Roughly 80% of Chinese people are happy with the direction the country is going vs 40% in the USA.
This doesn't really have much do with superior governance though, does it? It has a lot do with the country's recent history.
a) It help government approval tremendously when you can censor bad news and disproportionately cover positive news.
b) It's also really difficult to assess how much credit the Chinese government actually deserves for China's economic success. Every other old-world power that has embraced capitalism has achieved similar success. China has also had the benefit of playing their economic catch-up from 1980-present, starting from an essentially pre-20th century economy. Is there really some amazing government wizardry (that couldn't be replicated by any of the governments of developed countries) in achieving immense growth by applying highly advanced (relative to yours) foreign technology to your gigantic populace through a market system?
Is censorship, stoking nationalism, and violation of human rights really the magic formula? I'm really skeptical there.
c) It's easy to overlook the immense inequality in China, both in economic terms and in terms of human rights. If you're a Han Chinese living in a first-tier city, you likely have a very different experience with the government that a Uighur or Tibetan. The CCP, to stay in power, really only needs the support of the Han population (they make up 90% of the population). This distorts incentives for treatment of minority groups significantly. If it's good for Han, it's good for the CCP.
On the other hand, the whole "censor the bad news" thing means that Han Chinese don't necessarily hear about how minority ethnic groups in Xinjiang or Tibet are treated... removing the historically most powerful feedback mechanism for improving the treatment of the oppressed. Which, obviously, is the dominant ethnic group being aware of the plight of minority groups, feeling human sympathy, and calling for change.
Worse still, as China's sphere of influence grows and yet the censorship remains, the same dynamic will occur--the CCP is incentivized to keep the Han Chinese population happy, and the Han population feels none of the guilt that a population with a free press provides when reporting on the its government's less-than-acceptable actions elsewhere.
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I'm happy for the Chinese people and their economic success and progress so far, but it's dangerous to overpraise the its government model given the misaligned incentives that exist. I understand that rapid change can be dangerous and believe steady progress may be preferable, but that's a very different position than promoting China's governmental model as something to be praised and replicated.
I'm still on the fence if it is superior governance (corruption is common). Although the same could be said of the USA's economy. Most of the growth in the USA is just random luck from the end of world war 2 and then riding the wave of growth without screwing it up (much).
The point I was trying to make is don't expect a revolution any time soon. They are fairly happy since life is generally improving for "most" Chinese people.
This doesn't really have much do with superior governance though, does it? It has a lot do with the country's recent history.
a) It help government approval tremendously when you can censor bad news and disproportionately cover positive news.
b) It's also really difficult to assess how much credit the Chinese government actually deserves for China's economic success. Every other old-world power that has embraced capitalism has achieved similar success. China has also had the benefit of playing their economic catch-up from 1980-present, starting from an essentially pre-20th century economy. Is there really some amazing government wizardry (that couldn't be replicated by any of the governments of developed countries) in achieving immense growth by applying highly advanced (relative to yours) foreign technology to your gigantic populace through a market system?
Is censorship, stoking nationalism, and violation of human rights really the magic formula? I'm really skeptical there.
c) It's easy to overlook the immense inequality in China, both in economic terms and in terms of human rights. If you're a Han Chinese living in a first-tier city, you likely have a very different experience with the government that a Uighur or Tibetan. The CCP, to stay in power, really only needs the support of the Han population (they make up 90% of the population). This distorts incentives for treatment of minority groups significantly. If it's good for Han, it's good for the CCP.
On the other hand, the whole "censor the bad news" thing means that Han Chinese don't necessarily hear about how minority ethnic groups in Xinjiang or Tibet are treated... removing the historically most powerful feedback mechanism for improving the treatment of the oppressed. Which, obviously, is the dominant ethnic group being aware of the plight of minority groups, feeling human sympathy, and calling for change.
Worse still, as China's sphere of influence grows and yet the censorship remains, the same dynamic will occur--the CCP is incentivized to keep the Han Chinese population happy, and the Han population feels none of the guilt that a population with a free press provides when reporting on the its government's less-than-acceptable actions elsewhere.
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I'm happy for the Chinese people and their economic success and progress so far, but it's dangerous to overpraise the its government model given the misaligned incentives that exist. I understand that rapid change can be dangerous and believe steady progress may be preferable, but that's a very different position than promoting China's governmental model as something to be praised and replicated.