Should we try to be more like China going forward?

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus pandemic, had the most tourists of any Chinese city during a public holiday in October.

I came across this headline and it felt a bit like stepping into an alternate reality. I knew they got things under control in Wuhan, and wasn't surprised to hear they completed a mass testing program for 11m people in just 10 days, but the idea that people are flocking there in droves now is completely nuts.

Obviously they're leading the way in economic growth once more, they have better control of the virus than any other country, and in general they're better prepared for dealing with situations like this.

Are there aspects of their success that we should try to emulate, and if so, what sacrifices should we be willing to make to enable that?

Penna · Oct 19, 2020

Well, I suspect all European countries would love to emulate what they've done - but the devil is in the detail, as always. People there complied (and continue to comply) with very strict measures partly because the Chinese government doesn't give them any choice. The rights of individuals aren't paramount, not by a long shot. It's all about the good of the nation as a whole.

I recall that in the early stages, people were actually locked into their homes in Wuhan. I can't see any situation where that would happen in the UK, for instance. Mass testing would be fantastic, but most European countries simply can't organise something on that scale.

calodo2003 · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus pandemic, had the most tourists of any Chinese city during a public holiday in October.

I came across this headline and it felt a bit like stepping into an alternate reality. I knew they got things under control in Wuhan, and wasn't surprised to hear they completed a mass testing program for 11m people in just 10 days, but the idea that people are flocking there in droves now is completely nuts.

Obviously they're leading the way in economic growth once more, they have better control of the virus than any other country, and in general they're better prepared for dealing with situations like this.

Are there aspects of their success that we should try to emulate, and if so, what sacrifices should we be willing to make to enable that?

We absolutely should. We should look at the long game rather than being saddled by short term issues.

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Penna said:
Well, I suspect all European countries would love to emulate what they've done - but the devil is in the detail, as always. People there complied (and continue to comply) with very strict measures partly because the Chinese government doesn't give them any choice. The rights of individuals aren't paramount, not by a long shot. It's all about the good of the nation as a whole.

I recall that in the early stages, people were actually locked into their homes in Wuhan. I can't see any situation where that would happen in the UK, for instance. Mass testing would be fantastic, but most European countries simply can't organise something on that scale.

Undoubtedly it's not possible now, but the question is should be designing a society that contains more of these elements going forward? The pandemic is a specific case, and the contrasting results are quite striking, but there's a lot of global problems on the horizon that might benefit from the same kind of organisation and priorities. It would appear that people in Chinese hotspots suffered more severely in the short-term, but in the long-term the wider region suffered less overall, and for a shorter period. If that was replicable for a number of major problems we're expecting in the future - including the likelihood of more severe pandemics - it then at least becomes worth asking the question whether those sacrifices are in society's best interests.

Vooon · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus pandemic, had the most tourists of any Chinese city during a public holiday in October.

I came across this headline and it felt a bit like stepping into an alternate reality. I knew they got things under control in Wuhan, and wasn't surprised to hear they completed a mass testing program for 11m people in just 10 days, but the idea that people are flocking there in droves now is completely nuts.

Obviously they're leading the way in economic growth once more, they have better control of the virus than any other country, and in general they're better prepared for dealing with situations like this.

Are there aspects of their success that we should try to emulate, and if so, what sacrifices should we be willing to make to enable that?

I think there's a general agreement among a lot of academics that the numbers you get from China on their economic growth always are inflated and don't actually reflect reality. It's been like that for years and since they've got 100% control it's difficult to know for sure what the real numbers are. You basically can't trust Chinese authorities.

Regarding their succes against the pandemic I think it's important to remember that the authorities also repressed the doctors who warned against the virus at a very early stage. If they had listened and not stayed true to the oppressive regime we might have avoided this mess. I would challenge the assumption that they were better prepared, they utterly failed to react in a rational manner in my opinion. The extreme measures they took in Wuhan were also possible because of the character of the Chinese regime, but maybe some of the more civilsed measures could be emulated - mass testing for instance.

If there's a big lesson to learn here it would be a generally better readiness, investment in the health sector and clear well developed plans on how deal with pandemics.

Tarrou · Oct 19, 2020

the main reason they controlled the pandemic is because they have near totalitarian control over their people

why would we want to emulate that?

Germany did well too and also have a democracy and no internment camps

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Vooon said:
I think there's a general agreement among a lot of academics that the numbers you get from China on their economic growth always are inflated and don't actually reflect reality. It's been like that for years and since they've got 100% control it's difficult to know for sure what the real numbers are. You basically can't trust Chinese authorities.

Regarding their succes against the pandemic I think it's important to remember that the authorities also repressed the doctors who warned against the virus at a very early stage. If they had listened and not stayed true to the oppressive regime we might have avoided this mess. I would challenge the assumption that they were better prepared, they utterly failed to react in a rational manner in my opinion. The extreme measures they took in Wuhan were also possible because of the character of the Chinese regime, but maybe some of the more civilsed measures could be emulated - mass testing for instance.

If there's a big lesson to learn here it would be a generally better readiness, investment in the health sector and clear well developed plans on how deal with pandemics.

Yeah no doubt they're inflated but you would assume they're inflated to the same degree, with the main story being that they're back to pre-pandemic levels. And reports on the ground and from Chinese citizens would broadly echo the idea that things are getting back to normal, with the exception of additional preventative measures and sharp local responses. That's incredible given the situation almost everywhere else.

Tarrou said:
the main reason they controlled the pandemic is because they have near totalitarian control over their people

why would we want to emulate that?

Germany did well too and also have a democracy and no internment camps

Because individualism can be found at the centre of many severe global risks we expect to encounter in the next century or so, and democracies have struggled to combat some of those problems because of or in spite of that? It's surely worth questioning how important the individual is when faced up against existential risks. Unless we as a bunch of individuals come to the conclusion that we don't care about the very existence of future generations...which is a view almost no-one shares, at least openly. Most people's views exist somewhere between those extremes.

berbatrick · Oct 19, 2020

They've also announced ambitious (for a country with so much of the world's manufacturing) carbon targets. If they suceed it will be monumental.

Illiberal capitalism, strong nationalism, minority opression, tech-driven surveillance, an extreme work culture - many countries are heading to that model in many ways already (but probably without the govt capacity that they showed during the pandemic).

SalfordRed18 · Oct 19, 2020

Not for me Clive.

Skills · Oct 19, 2020

It's a slippery slope. We've already seen what damage authoritarian governments can do in Europe just less than a 100 years ago.

What I do think is, if you want to achieve a lot - dictatorships can make a bigger impact, than democracies. Democracies keep everything pretty much the same. But a visionary leader who's got the power to make big change, can have a much bigger impact in a smaller time scale. But the fact is, most of the guys who gain that power are corrupt psychopaths who are only there for their own gain.

Sky1981 · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus pandemic, had the most tourists of any Chinese city during a public holiday in October.

I came across this headline and it felt a bit like stepping into an alternate reality. I knew they got things under control in Wuhan, and wasn't surprised to hear they completed a mass testing program for 11m people in just 10 days, but the idea that people are flocking there in droves now is completely nuts.

Obviously they're leading the way in economic growth once more, they have better control of the virus than any other country, and in general they're better prepared for dealing with situations like this.

Are there aspects of their success that we should try to emulate, and if so, what sacrifices should we be willing to make to enable that?

Their success (so far) is not a ground breaking secret. It's not only china, but most East Asian + Singapore, has a comparable success. It's just a combination of methodically efficient government and an obedient citizen. Having endless resources/money and manpower helps to be fair. If any country follows the corona handbook as rigid as the East Asians results are similiar (see Germany)

It's no magic that high level state decision and policy shouldn't be left to citizens to dictate (cough... I'm looking at you Brexit), it's like giving your 5 years and 7 years children equal vote on adult matter. Extreme conditions requires extreme policy, if US/Europe started to emply martial law / curfew and let the military "no bullshit" efficiency take over it'll be much better. It's like giving your children freedom not to take their medicines when they're having a fever, it's not freedom but stupidity. The Western Government not taking radical actions and having the tenacity to play the bad cop to safe their children is the crux of the matter. American government knows what to do, they just don't want to ruin their election. It's like daddy wants to play the good cop and give their toddler ice cream when mum screamed at her to take her medicine.

Now, in times of crisis (war/famine/virus outbreak) nations of the past has taken that individual freedom and acts as the manager for the greater good. Taxes taken from rich cities to develop rural / remote area is a fine example of government acting as distributor. It's not dictatorship, it's what any sane government would do.

Sky1981 · Oct 19, 2020

Skills said:
It's a slippery slope. We've already seen what damage authoritarian governments can do in Europe just less than a 100 years ago.

What I do think is, if you want to achieve a lot - dictatorships can make a bigger impact, than democracies. Democracies keep everything pretty much the same. But a visionary leader who's got the power to make big change, can have a much bigger impact in a smaller time scale. But the fact is, most of the guys who gain that power are corrupt psychopaths who are only there for their own gain.

China isn't dictatorial perse. If Xi goes mad with power one day he can be ousted the next day and the next Xi in line is ready to replace him.

The PRC sole power doesn't reside in Xi, he's just the mascot. The actual power lies in a group of powerful people, the committee that has a shortlist of 10s of the next Xi in line. Somewhere along the secret meeting they vote on who's the next Xi that can do their bidding. That's why it lasted. The dictators of the past are real dictators that based their power on their sole being of existence, hence it's easy to topple along with the leader, while China just keep on producing the next line of able president without problems.

It's almost identical in many other nation, they just looks more democratic because instead of a group of powerful people they have several parties you can elect. Take the US, you either choose democrats/republicans, no matter who you choose they'll still defend Israel, they still spend on military, majority of the US policy is independent of the president. The Country still functions with Rep/Democrat as POTUS (Trump is an outlier to be fair, the US doesn't normally goes cuckoo)

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Sky1981 said:
Their success (so far) is not a ground breaking secret. It's not only china, but most East Asian + Singapore, has a comparable success. It's just a combination of methodically efficient government and an obedient citizen. Having endless resources/money and manpower helps to be fair. If any country follows the corona handbook as rigid as the East Asians results are similiar (see Germany)

It's no magic that high level state decision and policy shouldn't be left to citizens to dictate (cough... I'm looking at you Brexit), it's like giving your 5 years and 7 years children equal vote on adult matter. Extreme conditions requires extreme policy, if US/Europe started to emply martial law / curfew and let the military "no bullshit" efficiency take over it'll be much better. It's like giving your children freedom not to take their medicines when they're having a fever, it's not freedom but stupidity. The Western Government not taking radical actions and having the tenacity to play the bad cop to safe their children is the crux of the matter. American government knows what to do, they just don't want to ruin their election. It's like daddy wants to play the good cop and give their toddler ice cream when mum screamed at her to take her medicine.

Now, in times of crisis (war/famine/virus outbreak) nations of the past has taken that individual freedom and acts as the manager for the greater good. Taxes taken from rich cities to develop rural / remote area is a fine example of government acting as distributor. It's not dictatorship, it's what any sane government would do.

China had one of the worst outbreaks, totally incomparable to Singapore, Korea, Japan. It had a health and economic crisis neither of them had to face, in large part because they got the heads up from China. In spite of that, Korea have suffered a 5% drop in GDP and Japan almost 10%, and I don't know the figures for Singapore but due to the nature of their economy I'm sure it's much worse than China. The only countries that have had similar outbreaks are still struggling with the health crisis and barely recovering economically.

Their success is not a secret but no other country has came close to replicating it. That's worthy of discussion.

VP · Oct 19, 2020

How sure are we about the Chinese recovery? Their economic growth figures are notoriously unreliable. And the COVID numbers just seem too good to be true. After all, it was the regime's data suppression (and implicit support for dodgy eating habits) that has got us in this mess.

Vooon · Oct 19, 2020

Skills said:
It's a slippery slope. We've already seen what damage authoritarian governments can do in Europe just less than a 100 years ago.

What I do think is, if you want to achieve a lot - dictatorships can make a bigger impact, than democracies. Democracies keep everything pretty much the same. But a visionary leader who's got the power to make big change, can have a much bigger impact in a smaller time scale. But the fact is, most of the guys who gain that power are corrupt psychopaths who are only there for their own gain.

This. The key word for any authoritarian regime is hubris. At some point it will always hit with a vengeance and expose the dynamics which develops inside oppressive regimes where dissent and healthy discussion usually is frowned upon.

Vooon · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
China had one of the worst outbreaks, totally incomparable to Singapore, Korea, Japan. It had a health and economic crisis neither of them had to face, in large part because they got the heads up from China. In spite of that, Korea have suffered a 5% drop in GDP and Japan almost 10%, and I don't know the figures for Singapore but due to the nature of their economy I'm sure it's much worse than China. The only countries that have had similar outbreaks are still struggling with the health crisis and barely recovering economically.

Their success is not a secret but no other country has came close to replicating it. That's worthy of discussion.

Again I would point to that article I linked to in my other reply. It's not possible to verify the numbers coming out of China, ergo those number are most likely not correct.

Hound Dog · Oct 19, 2020

I cannot believe that there are still people who think this could have been stopped had they listened to the whistleblowers.

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Vooon said:
Again I would point to that article I linked to in my other reply. It's not possible to verify the numbers coming out of China, ergo those number are most likely not correct.

Yeah, the point isn't whether the numbers are accurate, but whether they indicate the right direction. And import sales from China provided by Western countries, along with consumer spending signals from China's domestic markets, tell the same story. China has recovered to a degree that is incomparable to any other country that faced the same magnitude of issues. The city that faced the first outbreak is now welcoming more foreign visitors than any Western city in a given week.

Dante · Oct 19, 2020

Easier said than done.

Chinese society - for whatever reason - is better suited to accepting Big Brother-style authoritarianism. It's probably a consequence of the way the cultural revolution was executed.

Countries like Iran have tried to become authoritarian but with much less success. I'm being deliberately glib when I say this, but maybe if they'd been more brutal about re-engineering society, they could have had a better chance.

Which leads to the question of how we might do achieve the same thing over here. We can't even convince everybody to wear masks during a deadly pandemic right now. If you want to change public attitudes that drastically, it'd take an exceptionally bloody revolution.

Sky1981 · Oct 19, 2020

VP said:
How sure are we about the Chinese recovery? Their economic growth figures are notoriously unreliable. And the COVID numbers just seem too good to be true. After all, it was the regime's data suppression (and implicit support for dodgy eating habits) that has got us in this mess.

You can make up articles, you can make up opinion, you can think they're lying. I'm not taking numbers seriously, nobody knows what's what and who's who anymore, like trump says... the less you test the less your number is.

But you can't fake a country wide lock down and unlocking, citizens of Wuhan aren't robots, they can see if it's safe to go outside, they can see among themselves how far is the progress. This is something you can't fake / propagandized. And again Wuhan isn't actually Baghdad, it's a home of many expats and foreign journalist, you can't fake something like this

Dante · Oct 19, 2020

China's wealth is being built on a kind of neo-Mercantilism.

That's not a model mature economies in the West can follow. Our middle classes are already too big.

Pogue Mahone · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
China had one of the worst outbreaks, totally incomparable to Singapore, Korea, Japan. It had a health and economic crisis neither of them had to face, in large part because they got the heads up from China. In spite of that, Korea have suffered a 5% drop in GDP and Japan almost 10%, and I don't know the figures for Singapore but due to the nature of their economy I'm sure it's much worse than China. The only countries that have had similar outbreaks are still struggling with the health crisis and barely recovering economically.

Their success is not a secret but no other country has came close to replicating it. That's worthy of discussion.

OP is holding up China for the exemplary way it dealt with the virus, now you’re saying it had a much worse outbreak than other countries in the region? Obviously being at the epicentre will have inflated its numbers but all outbreaks start at the same size and China’s early secrecy meant that its neighbours had to deal with a similarly mysterious disease early on in the pandemic.

I know you’re just being devil’s advocate but if you’re looking for a country to emulate why not go with South Korea? They did have a GDP drop but at least those numbers are transparent and the virus was squashed without welding the doors shut in housing blocks. That 5% drop in Korea’s GDP certainly seems a very tenuous basis on which to decide that China’s the gold standard society in the region.

Tarrou · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
Yeah no doubt they're inflated but you would assume they're inflated to the same degree, with the main story being that they're back to pre-pandemic levels. And reports on the ground and from Chinese citizens would broadly echo the idea that things are getting back to normal, with the exception of additional preventative measures and sharp local responses. That's incredible given the situation almost everywhere else.

Because individualism can be found at the centre of many severe global risks we expect to encounter in the next century or so, and democracies have struggled to combat some of those problems because of or in spite of that? It's surely worth questioning how important the individual is when faced up against existential risks. Unless we as a bunch of individuals come to the conclusion that we don't care about the very existence of future generations...which is a view almost no-one shares, at least openly. Most people's views exist somewhere between those extremes.

I struggle to imagine how those global risks would decrease

Would we even be aware of them? If the entire world lived under totalitarian control would we have even heard of climate change? Or a pandemic?

Then we'd have a whole bunch of new threats like the increased chances of war, or being shunted off to a death camp because we had the wrong colour skin

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Pogue Mahone said:
OP is holding up China for the exemplary way it dealt with the virus, now you’re saying it had a much worse outbreak than other countries in the region? Obviously being at the epicentre will have inflated its numbers but all outbreaks start at the same size, initial and China’s early secrecy meant that its neighbours had to deal with a similarly mysterious disease early on in the pandemic.

I know you’re just being devil’s advocate but if you’re looking for a country to emulate why not go with South Korea? They did have a GDP drop but at least those numbers are transparent and the virus was squashed without welding the doors shut in housing blocks. It certainly seems a very tenuous basis on which to decide that China’s the gold standard society in the region.

It had the initial outbreak which was out of control. Maybe it's more appropriate to say that China did worse, then better. I don't know how much blame you want to attribute to the national government and its system, how much you want to attribute to the local government, and how much you want to attribute it to the surprise element.

But as far as I can tell it is a factual statement that it's neighbouring countries were not faced with the problem of getting an out of control situation under control. I think we have evidence in Europe that keeping things under control when they're just problematic is very, very different to bringing things back to under control - quite a few have managed the former but failed with the latter. So I wouldn't assume that Korea or Germany would have been able to recover from such a dire situation, and the only countries that have faced a similarly dire situation have managed it terribly in comparison.

There's open questions in there, these things aren't definitive, but it doesn't seem to be an outlandish statement to say they've dealt with the situation better than anyone else based on what we know so far. And as I understand it, the expectation is that Korea will continue to struggle with the health and economic challenges over the next year more than China. The gap is expected to grow because their approach has been more effective.

Tarrou said:
I struggle to imagine how those global risks would decrease

Would we even be aware of them? If the entire world lived under totalitarian control would we have even heard of climate change? Or a pandemic?

Then we'd have a whole bunch of new threats like the increased chances of war, or being shunted off to a death camp because we had the wrong colour skin

Do you not think that China are plotting a better course to deal with the most salient existential risk of our time?

Pogue Mahone · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
It had the initial outbreak which was out of control. Maybe it's more appropriate to say that China did worse, then better. I don't know how much blame you want to attribute to the national government and its system, how much you want to attribute to the local government, and how much you want to attribute it to the surprise element.

But as far as I can tell it is a factual statement that it's neighbouring countries were not faced with the problem of getting an out of control situation under control. I think we have evidence in Europe that keeping things under control when they're just problematic is very, very different to bringing things back to under control - quite a few have managed the former but failed with the latter. So I wouldn't assume that Korea or Germany would have been able to recover from such a dire situation, and the only countries that have faced a similarly dire situation have managed it terribly in comparison.

There's open questions in there, these things aren't definitive, but it doesn't seem to be an outlandish statement to say they've dealt with the situation better than anyone else based on what we know so far. And as I understand it, the expectation is that Korea will continue to struggle with the health and economic challenges over the next year more than China. The gap is expected to grow because their approach has been more effective.

Is that right? I wasn’t aware of that. Where did you read it?

UnrelatedPsuedo · Oct 19, 2020

For all the Nazi comments thrown at America and Trump, “Should we be more like China” is a stunning question to read.

No. We should not.

Tarrou · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
Do you not think that China are plotting a better course to deal with the most salient existential risk of our time?

Are you talking about climate change or the pandemic?

In a vacuum sure they handled the pandemic much better than the UK - but I don't think we could do the same without opening ourselves up to other problems. This is just one narrow issue and other countries have handled it really well without locking people in their own houses.

On climate change, thats a whole other issue so I won't derail the thread. That would be an interesting topic to discuss as well.

FireballXL5 · Oct 19, 2020

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/china-and-tibet

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/china

feck that shit.

Classical Mechanic · Oct 19, 2020

Penna said:
Well, I suspect all European countries would love to emulate what they've done - but the devil is in the detail, as always. People there complied (and continue to comply) with very strict measures partly because the Chinese government doesn't give them any choice. The rights of individuals aren't paramount, not by a long shot. It's all about the good of the nation as a whole.

I recall that in the early stages, people were actually locked into their homes in Wuhan. I can't see any situation where that would happen in the UK, for instance. Mass testing would be fantastic, but most European countries simply can't organise something on that scale.

Brwned said:
Undoubtedly it's not possible now, but the question is should be designing a society that contains more of these elements going forward? The pandemic is a specific case, and the contrasting results are quite striking, but there's a lot of global problems on the horizon that might benefit from the same kind of organisation and priorities. It would appear that people in Chinese hotspots suffered more severely in the short-term, but in the long-term the wider region suffered less overall, and for a shorter period. If that was replicable for a number of major problems we're expecting in the future - including the likelihood of more severe pandemics - it then at least becomes worth asking the question whether those sacrifices are in society's best interests.

Heard on either Times Radio or BBC 4 that they're still locking people with the virus and suspected of having it in hotels to contain the spread. Those detained aren't allow to leave until they've been cleared by the government. Can't remember who was claiming that though.

Revan · Oct 19, 2020

Sky1981 said:
Their success (so far) is not a ground breaking secret. It's not only china, but most East Asian + Singapore, has a comparable success. It's just a combination of methodically efficient government and an obedient citizen. Having endless resources/money and manpower helps to be fair. If any country follows the corona handbook as rigid as the East Asians results are similiar (see Germany)

It's no magic that high level state decision and policy shouldn't be left to citizens to dictate (cough... I'm looking at you Brexit), it's like giving your 5 years and 7 years children equal vote on adult matter. Extreme conditions requires extreme policy, if US/Europe started to emply martial law / curfew and let the military "no bullshit" efficiency take over it'll be much better. It's like giving your children freedom not to take their medicines when they're having a fever, it's not freedom but stupidity. The Western Government not taking radical actions and having the tenacity to play the bad cop to safe their children is the crux of the matter. American government knows what to do, they just don't want to ruin their election. It's like daddy wants to play the good cop and give their toddler ice cream when mum screamed at her to take her medicine.

Now, in times of crisis (war/famine/virus outbreak) nations of the past has taken that individual freedom and acts as the manager for the greater good. Taxes taken from rich cities to develop rural / remote area is a fine example of government acting as distributor. It's not dictatorship, it's what any sane government would do.

Second time I saw Germany mentioned here as an example of success. While it has done well relatively speaking, it hasn’t done nowhere as well as Eastern Asian countries, or China in particular, despite being hit months later. It already has 10k deaths (which for capita is 30 times higher than China).

Honestly, the only Western country who has done really well is New Zealand.

OleBoiii · Oct 19, 2020

China is literally my nightmare.

berbatrick · Oct 19, 2020

Revan said:
Second time I saw Germany mentioned here as an example of success. While it has done well relatively speaking, it hasn’t done nowhere as well as Eastern Asian countries, or China in particular, despite being hit months later. It already has 10k deaths (which for capita is 30 times higher than China).

Honestly, the only Western country who has done really well is New Zealand.

Aus/NZ success (which is comparable) surely has to do with geography.

2cents · Oct 19, 2020

This is an interesting question because it’s similar to what non-Western peoples spent a lot of time asking themselves during the 19th and early 20th centuries with regard to the West. With the great difference I suppose being that while they were concerned with freeing themselves from Western dominance, you are suggesting adopting a supposedly uniquely Chinese approach to problem-solving on a global scale.

There are obviously certain policies and approaches to global problems that we (speaking as a Western European) should be looking at and seeing how best to adapt to our own situations. The question for us is (as it was for the non-Westerners of a century ago) how far can we go without losing touch with who we are and the forces/traditions upon which our common identities are built? To actually become “like the Chinese” would require unburdening ourselves of our history to a degree that would seem to me to require violent upheaval on a revolutionary scale.

Brwned · Oct 19, 2020

Pogue Mahone said:
Is that right? I wasn’t aware of that. Where did you read it?

China has many fewer daily cases and they are always localised to a degree that Korea's aren't, so the health effects (while minor) will be felt longer by a wider group of people. That's the figures that we have now and the trend is very consistent. Korea still have over 100 cases a day, almost every day. That's significantly more than they had between April and July and and comparable to March, while China's rarely been in double digits since. Restrictions were re-introduced in some places as that rise came back. And largely because of that, there has been a full recovery in much fewer local economies than in China, and overall growth is rebounding slower. So while they're being lauded as the second-best performer, their economy is still expected to contract, while China's isn't.

Tarrou said:
Are you talking about climate change or the pandemic?

In a vacuum sure they handled the pandemic much better than the UK - but I don't think we could do the same without opening ourselves up to other problems. This is just one narrow issue and other countries have handled it really well without locking people in their own houses.

On climate change, thats a whole other issue so I won't derail the thread. That would be an interesting topic to discuss as well.

Yeah I meant climate change!

nimic · Oct 19, 2020

Penna · Oct 19, 2020

Brwned said:
Because individualism can be found at the centre of many severe global risks we expect to encounter in the next century or so, and democracies have struggled to combat some of those problems because of or in spite of that? It's surely worth questioning how important the individual is when faced up against existential risks. Unless we as a bunch of individuals come to the conclusion that we don't care about the very existence of future generations...which is a view almost no-one shares, at least openly. Most people's views exist somewhere between those extremes.

I agree with you, but it's almost a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Society (in the West at least) has changed so much in the last 50 years. I don't know how you'd dial that back, the sense of having an absolute right to individual freedom (within the confines of the law, which isn't that confining in most Western democracies).

Making significant personal sacrifices for the good of "the others" may be a thing of the past for a lot of folk. If we had a world war again for a righteous cause (as in the last world war), do you think hundred of thousands of people would sign up/be conscripted without protest?

harms · Oct 19, 2020

calodo2003 said:
We absolutely should. We should look at the long game rather than being saddled by short term issues.

I’d argue that emulating what China does would mean solving short-term issues with no concern for long-term consequences, especially concerning people’s right to personal freedom.

horsechoker · Oct 19, 2020

Which formation do China play?

Sky1981 · Oct 19, 2020

Dante said:
Easier said than done.

Chinese society - for whatever reason - is better suited to accepting Big Brother-style authoritarianism. It's probably a consequence of the way the cultural revolution was executed.

Countries like Iran have tried to become authoritarian but with much less success. I'm being glib when I say this, but maybe if they'd been more brutal about re-engineering society, they could have had a better chance.

Which leads to the question of how we might do achieve the same thing over here. We can't even convince everybody to wear masks during a deadly pandemic right now. If you want to change public attitudes that drastically, it'd take an exceptionally bloody revolution.

Penna said:
I agree with you, but it's almost a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Society (in the West at least) has changed so much in the last 50 years. I don't know how you'd dial that back, the sense of having an absolute right to individual freedom (within the confines of the law, which isn't that confining in most Western democracies).

Making significant personal sacrifices for the good of "the others" may be a thing of the past for a lot of folk. If we had a world war again for a righteous cause (as in the last world war), do you think hundred of thousands of people would sign up/be conscripted without protest?

It's not only China. Most Asian nations are like that. Actually I think the whole world operates similarly. It's human nature to gravitates towards being lead and told what to do since the dawn of men. Man choose a leader by default, and tends to listen to him, until they stop to. Many countries in Asia still functions with local laws / custom to control the population. Village elder style and village decision style still plays a large part.

I think the wrong thing about all this is that "How they see being told to wear a mask for the greater good as an attack on their freedom". I think it's not the democracy that's wrong, but the corruption of Americans ideologically. For years they've been fed with "FREEDOM" narratives for political gain (cough... selling guns), it just happened to backfire during COVID.

I'd argue that German/China/Korean/etc are the norm, it's UK / USA that's out of the norm for the past 50 years. Put aside the "but it's china argument", is what the Chinese on COVIDS any different than what the responsible western nation does? Lockdowns/testing/mandatory safety protocols. It's not like they shoot any one outside their house.

This is not an attack on freedom, this is not an attack of privacy, for one people to so vehemently against a simple logical rational decision taken by the authority in times of an outbreak is a faulty of their ideology.

harms · Oct 19, 2020

Basically, if you want to make a thread on it, I’d post a video about Uyghur camps next to this one in the OP.

Should we try to be more like China going forward?

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