I don't think China will let the default occur. It would look terrible for them and IMO the government will do anything to save face. I would even go so far as to say that there are many within the politburo who cannot conceive of a scenario in which China is ever in a negative light.
As things are looking right now, China is going to let them default. I don't know why you focus so much on "saving face" or even think that they can't conceive a bad scenario. They aren't dumb cartoon villains.
They've worried about the property market for years now and they talked multiple times in the past about countermeasures. Bailing out big companies is against socialism, and their new wave of policies lately have shown that they're still very much in support of socialism. They don't want to let big companies get away with bad behavior, because that will signal to other companies that as long as they get big enough, they can take unreasonable risks and someone else will clean up the mess for them. There's a reason why since 2012, they've put a lid on debt-fulled growth: because they're transitioning the economy to healthier growth, not just more growth. This is why China is now at ~6% growth instead of 8%.
I think it's likely that they'll save suppliers, as well as normal citizen who as disadvantaged by the Evergrande default. In return, they'll screw over Evergrande's shareholders and investors. To the government, only the people matter.
You're omitting the actual socialist solution here which is to nationalize Evergrande. That does mean that shareholders take the maximum haircut, but the stock has already crashed and that is already baked in. The executives of Evergrande will also take the maximum haircut, so there's no moral hazard there.
And Evergrande's balance sheet is massive and there's real value there, it isn't like its all worthless speculation and by nationalizing it the government likely stands to make a massive profit long-term by continuing operations.
This won't be done under the American model where the government makes massive bailout loans to private corporations to keep them going and executives still survive.
The question of what to do about Evergrande's debts is where it gets stick, but wiping the debt out via nationalization and maximal refusal of China to honor those debts is pretty unlikely. Because China is concerned about the "normal citizen" they can easily do the math and see how the contagion effect of that would destroy the financial system and land hardest on the "normal citizen", so they won't do that. They also don't want to make a decision with geopolitical implications and detonate the global financial system through cascading defaults. That isn't good for anyone and China would be blamed for it (and right after the pandemic that started in China this is one they'll certainly want to avoid).
Due to moral hazard concerns they'll probably enforce some kind of haircut so everyone feels a bit of pain, but it won't look like a complete default.
When I see the Sacklers laughing all the way to the bank despite having probably caused more American deaths than Hitler, Tojo and Bin Laden combined, there is something to be said about the Chinese method.
letting a somewhat private company fail may end up making the central authorities look good. They can then start the "look what capitalism did to you, we're in charge of your life now." propaganda machine.
If they don't want to be seen in a negative light, they can start by freeing Tibet, the Uighurs, and Hong Kong, or at least take the jackboot a little bit off of their necks.
Also stopping the expansionism in the South China Sea and ridiculous claims to own Taiwan....
IOW, if they can't conceive of it, they are pretty far removed from reality
>>I fail to imagine how any of the things you mentioned could be seen in a positive light by Chinese people.
(not sure if you reversed the meaning here, assuming you intended to say that these things are seen in a positive light by the ppl)
Since the Chinese people are kept in the dark on such things, and not trusted with knowledge of even recent history (e.g., Tienanmen massacre, Great Firewall, constant censorship), they cannot be said to have any view at all of the reality. That is different from having an actual positive view.
>>Why would the care about opinions of the people/states that already hate China and want it to fail?
This is a completely bogus and strawman argument.
I, and everyone I know wants the Chinese, and all people, to succeed, and enjoy prosperous self-determination. Even if it is out of self-interest, e.g., avoiding the disastrous knock-on effects of China failing, no one wants China to fail.
What people DO want is for the CCP to stop behaving as a herd of authoritarian despots at home and abroad. Wanting authoritarian despotism to stop is NOT the same thing as wanting failure.
What is sad is the the CCP is so detached from reality that they cannot see that they could be very successful by stopping these behaviors. It is like they can't stop making the same mistakes as the 1958 Smash Sparrows/Four Pests campaign, thinking that they are improving things, but actually creating a disaster (famine in this case). Let's hope these disasters don't also kill 20 million people.
They aren't demands, but suggestions if the CCP wants to be viewed positively. But yes, for an expansionist authoritarian regime, stopping being so expansionist and dialing back the authoritarianism might be seen as big demands
>>Do you have any leverage? Many people wanted Russia to stop pestering their neighbors and the world.
Personally, none but the ability to speak out. At the business and government level, plenty. Especially about the Russia regime, they are a classic authoritarian state, who pushes until they get pushback. The problem is that western countries always want "good relations" so they let a lot of things slide in the interest of "good relations", so the authoritarian goes further. Pretty soon, the authoritarian is using chemical weapons to murder people on your soil in broad daylight, or putting armies on the soil of neighboring countries to annex them and shooting down commercial airliners, while you are basically waving a finger back at them. Pushback hard and early, and it seems excessive and "bad relations" politically, but if it goes on for too long, and the choice becomes capitulation to the authoritarians or a big war.
So yes, individually, we are unimportant, but we must do what we can to promote self-determination and hope we can convince our governments to follow through.
> Since the Chinese people are kept in the dark on such things, and not trusted with knowledge of even recent history (e.g., Tienanmen massacre, Great Firewall, constant censorship), they cannot be said to have any view at all of the reality. That is different from having an actual positive view.
Tiananmen is pretty well known. Hop on any Cab in big city, and ask the driver, and they'll acknowledge overtly or covertly that they know it. And some might even boast stories they know about that.
Great Firewall is also well known. GFW as a name is an invention of the netizens. As the thing was never publically shared.
constant censorship... Dont get me start on this! Deleting posts on Chinese online spaces are a Norm. Not only everyone knows that, they joke it daily or even every hour... The culture of "heihua 黑话" (speaking something in a different form that correlates through background cultural/semantic linkages like sleepy joe is nicknamed the sleeping emperor 睡王） is not only popular on public forums, they are regularly practiced in private chat.
Chinese citizens, on a relative scale, are much better informed about their society and the world, than US citizens. I haven't lived in EU, so cannot comment on that.
As a Chinese myself, with many connections to actual Chinese living in and outside of China, I can assure you, the Chinese people aren't "kept in the dark" on such things. Many are quite well-informed about what's going on. Yes there is censorship, but that works quite differently from how many on Hacker News imagine it.
> I, and everyone I know wants the Chinese, and all people, to succeed, and enjoy prosperous self-determination.
You can't believe how many times I've encountered a phrase similar to this one. But 9 out of 10 times, upon closer examination, they're just empty words at best, blatant lies at worst.
If you're shocked by what I said above (i.e. you're thinking "wtf is he blabbering about?"), allow me to explain.
Chinese have different primary values. The things they value most are unity and collectivism. "Freedom" as the ultimate virtue is a western ideology. The Chinese have the concept of "too much freedom", i.e. a lack of social responsibility. "$WESTERN_COUNTRY is too free" is a literal phrase that I've heard from Chinese students in Europe several times. I've witnessed with my own eyes early 2020 how people in China largely voluntarily (without coercion) followed government advice on social distancing and wearing masks. Chinese now watch with amazement how people in the west refuse to social distance and refuse to wear masks under the guise of "freedom".
You should read this essay by a Chinese national: "How [Chinese] liberals lost of a generation of young Chinese" — https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g
Google Translate does a decent enough job (note: phrases like "year 18" mean 2018)
This essay says that for a long time time, the CCP was unpopular in China. So much that CCP members don't care mentioning their membership because that might raise eyebrows. There has always been propaganda and censorship, but censorship can merely silence, not change, what people feel in their hearts. The mainstream opinion was that western liberal democracy is better.
However there's been a remarkable change the past 10 years or so. Party popularity has been soaring, and people are now increasingly confident that China's own system is better. Why? Because people found out the government actually does a pretty good job. Many people visited foreign countries and found out that western democracies aren't as good as they thought. They've witnessed the anti-corruption campaigns that have been going on since the early 2010s, are bearing fruit. Life in many Chinese cities is becoming increasingly better.
A major change occurred in 2020. People thought China would collapse because of COVID, and they thought western democracies would be able to control the virus, because of freedom of information. That's the narrative that Chinese liberals sold. But then they witnessed the opposite: western countries failed to control the virus and the Chinese government did a great job. This completely discredited Chinese liberals. Now, Chinese are more proud of their own government than ever.
This increase in satisfaction isn't merely opinion. A 15-year study by Harvard has shown this trend of increasing satisfaction as well. In the last year of the study, 2016, Harvard measure 92% satisfaction rate with the central government. Another study in 2020 by York University measured 98%, and the study concluded that this major bump was caused by China's good handling of COVID.
Kishore Mahbubani is an ex-Singapore diplomat, ex-UN Security Council head. He says the following about China: the past 30 years are literally the best out of 3000 years. Chinese have got more freedom and more prosperity than they have ever had in their history. Why wouldn't they be happy about this?
Back to your "I support the Chinese people [and only hate their government]". The Chinese people support their government. So where does that leave you?
Most people that I tell this story to, will immediately label me a "propagandist", "CCP shill", etc. I hope you're not one of them, because those people are the very embodiment of how they're blatantly lying about "supporting the Chinese people": they only support Chinese people until Chinese people disagree with them.
We definitely agree about China's handling of the virus compared to western countries and especially the USA. As far as I can tell, the initial CCP reaction was to suppress information about the virus, but when that became impossible, they did (and are still doing as necessary) real proper lockdowns, vaccinations, etc., and they have a much better handle on it.
What you observe in the west related to the virus is true disfunction both at a societal and political level. Politically, you have one party that can no longer win and is attempting to implement autocracy, and so is weaponizing disinformation and populism. And you have the usual herd of people who detest any kind of control, think of public health measures as a personal affront, and are happy to spread any bad information that supports their biases. A truly toxic combination.
I'm not surprised to find that the 2016 election and subsequent events has soured many on the benefits of western democracy. We have yet to see if that becomes a historical fluke, or if this democracy falls.
On censorship, I'm not surprised that it is common knowledge that everyone is being censored - it would probably be hard to go very long without seeing evidence of manipulation, and then wondering about it. So the real question is, how successful is the censorship - do the people commonly know everything that the CCP tries to keep from them, or do they just know that their feed is incomplete, but have no good way of completing it?
E.g., do they know the real story of Tibet being overrun, or do they just accept the fragmentary stories about some historical period when a previous dynasty had some authority over that area? Do they know the whole story about the Uhigur concentration camps, or just that there is some reeducation? Do they know how many people died by bulldozers in Tianmen, or just that something bad happened?
If they know the whole story and still support the CCP, I'd certainly need to reevaluate. If not, then the support is built upon a very weak basis.
And yes, I almost always find it necessary to make a distinction between a people and their government. This is necessary in all but the highest-functioning democracies (and the USA is not one right now - I can tell you very directly that 60% of the USA were extremely distraught at how their govt did not represent them in the 2017-21 administration, and I'm sure that 30% will tell you the same today.)
Thank you for being open-minded. Not many are like that today so I applaud that.
I agree with a lot of what you say. There are some things that I think deserve a different perspective. What I'm going to say may sound shocking or ridiculous. That's because mainstream reporting on China is so distorted and negative nowadays that anything that deviates from the mainstream narrative sounds ridiculous. Please hear me out.
The "information supression" narrative is greatly distorted. I assert that it's not so much "deliberate information suppression", but rather "nobody had any idea what's going on, so it was chaotic and nobody knew what the best course of actions were".
You're probably thinking about Li Wenliang, the eye doctor who later died from COVID. The first doctor that discovered that something was wrong, is Zhang Jixian, not Li Wenliang. A few days before Li noticed anything, Zhang started an investigation and escalation process which on December 31 led to escalation to WHO.
Li Wenliang heard about Zhang's investigation and also felt that something was wrong, and so he warned friends in a private social media group about "there being SARS in the hospital". Li Wenliang is in fact not a whistleblower: he never intended to tell the public, nor did he (or anyone else for that matter) know what exactly it was. His social media messages then somehow leaked out to the public. Li Wenliang was never arrested or jailed, as the mainstream media claims. The police reprimanded him for "spreading rumors" and he had to sign an NDA. That's it, nothing else happened. He could go back to work immediately after.
What happened to Li was not even that consequential in the bigger scheme of things. Because Zhang was never censored or suppressed. Unlike Li, Zhang followed official procedure from the beginning, he kept working, and his work resulted in escalation to the national CDC as well as to the WHO within days. The timeline is very telling:
- Li's post leaked around the same day, when Zhang already escalated and when the media already reported
- Police reprimanded Li on January 1
Is the police's treatment of Li right? I make no big judgement on this, but I'll add some perspective. Back then not much was known about COVID (transmission rate, fatality, etc). But Li said that it was SARS — a much more deadly disease than COVID. His messages could have caused widespread panic. If panic in itself isn't bad enough, consider this: if people started moving out of Wuhan en masse, then it would have spread COVID to the entire country, making lockdown impossible.
Anyway, my opinion on whether the police's treatment of Li is right, isn't that important. Because Li took the case to the judge, and the judge ruled in Li's favor, saying that the police's treatment was inappropriate. The police then apologized.
Think about how weird the previous paragraph is, from the perspective of mainstream reporting about China. Isn't China totalitarian state where everything is tightly controlled, where citizen have no freedoms and are at the mercy of the government? How could a judge possibly judge in favor of a citizen and against the police??? This is already proof that China is very different from what many westerners think. But I digress.
It's a tragedy that Li later died from COVID, and many Chinese are angry about this fact. The Wuhan government screwed up big time initially, no doubt about it. They were hesitant because they had no idea whether it was really bad, and they'd rather err on the side of believing that everything was fine until there was enough evidence to the contrary. We now know that that was a mistake.
But Chinese are also angry about how the situation is misrepresented in western mainstream media. None of the above important facts are reported by western mainstream media — they all go with the simple "Li was jailed and censored" story. I'm among one of those angry people. Many Chinese climb over the firewall, and become shocked at all the bullshit stories that western mainstream media writes about China. Many are then shocked into becoming very pro-China.
This is perhaps the biggest irony. Many westerners believe that Chinese become "enlightened" if only they can escape censorship and read the "free flow of information". In fact, for many Chinese, the effect is opposite. Western mainstream media misinformation about China is very big, so big that most westerners don't even know that they're being propagandized themselves. Bad western mainstream media reporting on China is better pro-China propaganda than any actual Chinese propaganda (which is usually pretty bad; you should watch them).
FYI, there are also US intelligence reports that corroborate that no Chinese government official had good knowledge about COVID back then.
>>>...but rather "nobody had any idea what's going on, so it was chaotic and nobody knew what the best course of actions were".
Yes, THIS is very plausible, along with an instinct to downplay it.
The misrepresentation by the western media is a big problem for me, and as you describe it, it makes sense that it is better pro-CCP propaganda than anything CCP can brew at home. When others depict you as being universally bad, anyone would get angry or dismissive .
So, when you describe it, I totally understand how someone punching through the firewall and seeing that would be offended - I would be too. What a horrible second-order effect on people that are not even thought to be the audience.
So, yes as far as the COVID-19 issues go, I've got healthy respect for the CCP internal response (excluding the apparent stonewalling questions related to the origins, again, I've only got limited info here).
And yes, I understand that the CCP's task of trying to control every bit of info is virtually impossible, even with scaleable AIs searching for trends, etc. Hard to catch the rubber ducks and Winnie The Pooh memes at the beginning.
And there is no doubt that when an autocracy makes good decisions, it is far faster and more effective than democratic decisions. The recent announcement about not building any more coal plants abroad is such a good decision, and they can just do it immediately, and if the coal plant constructors are screwed, or compensated, they can deal with it as they wish. Such a decision here would drag on for years.
That said, power, corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and major concentrations of power lead to bad things. There is still the issues of suppression of internal information about bad actions on occupied peoples (Tibet, Uhigurs, HK), and expansionism (Taiwan, 9-dashed line, island mil bases in international waters, etc.). Are these actively and openly discussed in the press and parlors in China?
In the US, it is really ugly right now. We have many problems in our past from the near-genocide of the Native Americans to slavery, dating back to before our founding and continuing. These are openly argued everywhere, and a major party has now devolved to the point of all but fully open White Supremacists who are trying to implement minority authoritarian rule. This will be hammered out, and will either result in a better society, or we will fall from democracy into autocracy.
It is messy as hell, but at least all the info is out there for anyone to pickup (actually, there's too much noise, a major part of our problem is deliberate desinformation spread by RUS and local political operatives as well as the usual crackpots). But, unless we have a constitutional crisis coup d'etat where the electoral process is subverted, there is no doubt that, because all the opposition is know, the government is legitimately supported by the people.
I still question whether, even with apparent support, the CCP can say the same thing. They took their ruling position by force, and then maintain it by both force and shall we say information management. You describe definite situations where the information management is very flawed or nonexistent at best, but how widespread is that failure? Can the Chinese people really be said to know the full extent of the CCP's activities, and have an option to not support them?
(& BTW, thank you very much for your detailed discussion, I'm learning a lot, and I hope providing good questions and some info)
The existence of censorship is pretty well-known among Chinese. You saw it as much in that Weixin article that I sent you.
But I believe the role of censorship is mischaracterized because westerners reason from their own history, experience and values, not from the Chinese perspective. Whereas from the western perspective censorship and information control are mortal sins, from the Chinese perspective it's a lot more complicated, considered both good and bad.
There are 3 aspects of Chinese culture that tie into this view:
1. Talk is considered cheap, what you do is more important
2. Respect for authority
3. Outcome legitimacy vs procedural legitimacy
Aspect 1: You see this by the fact that Chinese tend to be much more humble than e.g. Americans — Chinese don't talk about how great they are, they put down their heads and do the job. This characteristic reflects all the way back to the government: in general, the Chinese government is bad at explaining and marketing themselves, and they tend to focus on execution. Hence why Chinese propaganda is so horrendously bad, especially from the western perspective.
Aspect 2: One does not talk bad about one's parents and boss. Not talking bad about the government is an extension of that. Chinese view the relationship between employee-boss and citizen-government as analogous to child-parent. Not exactly the same, but similar enough as far as respect for authority goes. It's not just a matter of "CCP punishes dissent" (a statement which by itself is also mischaracterized).
Aspect 3: We in the west focus on the process of government selection as a measure of legitimacy. To Chinese, whether the government actually delivers good results that benefit the people, is considered the right measure of legitimacy. A voted-in government that does not deliver is considered illegitimate. A dictator that took power by force, but works for the interest of the people, is considered legitimate.
When combining all 3 aspects, censorship and information control are not considered a sin. They are tools. The outcome of using these tools matters much more.
The mainstream western view is that Chinese censorship is meant to suppress dissent and to glorify the party. But research by Harvard shows that this is not true: "How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression"
https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-...
This paper states that censorship's main role is to cool down controversies and to suppress collective action, no matter whether those controversies/collective actions are pro- or anti-government. In fact, the paper is very clear about the fact that anti-government messages are not censored as long as they don't cause a stir, while pro-government messages are censored if they become too popular and run the risk of getting a life of its own.
Why does censorship behave like this? Consider that as little as 30 years ago, the past 150 years or so have been absolutely horrendous. Foreign imperial powers walked all over China, looting the country (gunboat diplomacy), literally putting people on drugs (Opium Wars), stealing territory, and in case of the Japanese during WW2, even mass killing and raping. There was poverty, famine and political instability which lasted well until the late 60s. This chaos has raged on for so long, it has become collective memory. Some of it is still in living memory: my grandma (who is still alive) told me tales of fleeing from the Japanese.
Thus to Chinese, social stability and freedom from poverty matter more than anything else. When you are poor, you are not free, no matter how much you can vote. After the Cultural Revolution, people became tired of revolution.
By and large, the Chinese people view unity as an important goal to pursue. On the one hand, it's part of people's identity as Chinese: Chinese history has always tended towards unity. On a more practical level, both ancient and modern Chinese history has shown that times of disunity are chaotic and are correlated with all manners of bad outcomes: wars, famines, corruption. More recently they've learned that being disunited means weakness: the inability to resist foreign imperial powers who are out to exploit China. People are tired of all those bad outcomes that have plagued China for so long.
The government views censorship as a tool to aid in unity and social stability. There are positive outcomes of censorship that are never mentioned in the west:
- Censorship is used to suppress incitement of ethnic hatred. In the US after 9/11, racist attacks against Muslims or anyone Middle-Eastern-looking spiked. In China, there have been many major terrorist attacks by ETIM. Terrorists set off bombs, walked around with machetes, drove cars into crowds — killing innocent Han and Uyghurs alike. This information was censored in order to prevent Han from hating on innocent Uyghurs. Only recently has censorship on this information been lifted.
- Censorship is also used in the context of China's foreign policy of non-interference. Here's a concrete example. One of the prominent pushers of the Uyghur genocide narrative, is Adrien Zenz. There are many critics of Adrien Zenz's work. One such critic is Jerry Grey, an Australian who has been living in China for over a decade and who has visited Xinjiang many times. He published an article in Chinese media, criticizing Zenz's research methodology as being unsound, and inviting Zenz to come over to Xinjiang to take a look for himself (Zenz has never visited Xinjiang). His article was censored because according to China's foreign policy, it's not China's place to encourage others to change their minds. https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/131872917977329664...
Whether censorship succeeds in this goal is a whole different discussion. I personally think that the people who head the censorship department are too old, too conservative/careful and too out-of-touch with modern society.
In the context of western mainstream media misinformation about China, there are Chinese who, after climbing the firewall, have gained an appreciation for censorship and the firewall. They hypothesize that one of the reasons why the firewall exists, is because the Chinese government knows it cannot compete with foreign propaganda, which is much more sophisticated. The Chinese government is neither good at explaining themselves nor good at selling themselves with pretty rhetoric. Which means that the firewall is a defensive measure, rather than an offensive measure meant to punish/attack the citizen.
>>censorship's main role is to cool down controversies and to suppress collective action, no matter whether those controversies/collective actions are pro- or anti-government. ... while pro-government messages are censored if they become too popular and run the risk of getting a life of its own.
This really strikes me as a key element. I've noticed anti-govt sentiments expressed within/from China, and the apparent paradox of them being allowed to exist, and also noted that the main thrust of CCP action was against movements, not comments. It makes sense, both as a practical need to focus the work of managing society, and strategically, that they see that they cannot allow any other movement to grow, hence suppression/management starting at organized religion, and anything else that gets viral or organized. In this sense, it is easily seen as a defensive measure, both internally and externally, trying to prevent anything from growing to another concentration of power.
Interesting perspective on the collective motivating trauma. It almost seems that for the Chinese, it was poverty and being overrun by outside forces, for the westerners, especially Americans, it was excessive govt -- the US was literally founded by those escaping govt persecution. So the core motivating fears are at the opposite end of the spectrum.
I like your distinction on the process/results legitimacy/illegitimacy views; it certainly shows how Chinese can see their govt as legitimate. and the CCP has largely delivered increasing prosperity for the last decades. However, when the govt fails to deliver, how does that get fixed? In (functioning) democracies, a govt that fails to deliver even a little bit gets voted out. In China, it seems the only choice would be to endure a non-delivering govt, or a new revolution...
Churchill's comment comes to mind: "Democracy is the worst form of govt, except for all others.". The best, while it lasts, is a benign dictatorship where the leader is successfully working for the people. The problem is that nothing guarantees the success or motivation.
How do they plan to ensure succession and that the party works for the people, successfully? It seems that the anti-corruption push might be a good thing, but from here, I have no idea if that was genuinely rooting out corruption, or consolidating power, or both. (They certainly seem to have little control of shadow banking, etc., which could be an existential threat).
Also interesting and a bit funny that the Party sees that it can't compete with western media. Not surprising, but not evident from here either until you mentioned it (I'd be pretty intimidated too). Considering that the firewall is generally known and accepted, how easy and common is it to evade it? Can everyone do it trivially, or does it take a lot of effort? What are typical penalties and how, and how often, are they enforced? What is the result - is discussion of yesterday's Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, etc. common, occasional, or all underground, or does no one care about them?
(part 2) So, back to your question of how to ensure that the system keeps working for the people. The answer is two-fold:
1. Meritocracy. Many believe that proving yourself for 30 years is a better way to select for a good leader (and prevent the selection of a bad leader) than voting through popularity.
2. Active solicitation and being responsive to protests (!)
This latter probably sounds very surprising. Consider this: freedom is expression is not necessarily correlated with results. In many western countries, we talk about all sorts of things, but politicians don't deliver.
The inverse is also true: censorship does not necessarily correlate with not delivery results. China censors from time to time, but at the same time they actively listen to (and address) grievances. In the past 15 years or so, they've developed a robust monitoring & feedback system to find social issues and address grievances. They make extensive use of polls. They monitor social media. There are official channels for sending feedback. Both the feedback and the replies by government officials are published for the public for read. There are 16000 (!) protests in China each year — not to protest against the government, but to ask the government to address their grievances. Censorship happens in parallel to all of this. See also:
- Expat Cyrus Janssen, who has lived in China for many years: speaks about how the government listens to protests and is very active in addressing grievances. He gives concrete examples of recent social issues that have been addressed as a result of widespread protests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqcScSCTgbM
Another concrete example: there were large-scale protests in Guangdong in 2019 over the a crematorium plans. This raged on for days. In the end, the government gave in to the demands of the protesters. Very few people were arrested, and of the arrested people a few were quickly released. https://mothership.sg/2019/12/news-china-protests-wenlou-hua...
What happens if a bad president does get elected? It'll certainly be harder to oust him than in western democracies, but it's not impossible. The president is not elected by the NPC, but it's elected by the Central Committee. This is one of the highest political bodies, consisting of other high officials that climbed their way up through the meritocracy ladder. The president can be voted out by this body, just not directly by the people. Furthermore the president doesn't make decisions by himself, but together with other top officials, so it's not accurate to say that the president is a dictator.
Neither the western system nor the Chinese system are perfect. Each one has its own merits and problems. Many western countries are suffering from decreased trust nowadays. Despite the fact that the government can be replaced, many social issues are never solved. In China one can say that the opposite is true: you can't replace the president but social issues are solved all the time.
With regards to your comment on power & corruption: there is the issue of regulatory capture and state capture by entrenched interests. These interests can't be voted out, but they are a big reason why government changes so often yet few things get resolved. It doesn't appear that democracy have a good answer to this yet.
The Chinese government is also worried about capture by entrenched interests. Xi Jingping's anti-corruption campaign is both a real campaign to root out corruption (with great results), as well as a power-consolidation move. This latter does not have to be a bad if you consider that it's necessary in order to defeat entrenched interests which hold the country back. Chinese leadership believes that entrenched interests which do not work for the benfit of the people is one of the reasons why the Soviet Union failed. See this analysis by Kevin Tellier, expert on China matters: https://twitter.com/kevtellier/status/1441774309652025346
The Chinese system is also constantly evolving. The CCP, and the system from 30 years ago, is very different from how they are today. There are constantly new reforms. For example the whole meritocracy thing is relatively new: it was introduced in the 90s. The monitoring & feedback system only really took off in the past 15 years or so. These are key aspects that are often overlooked by China watchers.
I'd say the Chinese system and western systems can learn a lot from each other. And China is learning from the west all the time. Unfortunately it seems the other way around doesn't happen that much because many people don't see China for what it is, but only for what they think it is.
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Regarding VPNs: yes it's easy. Every time I visit China I buy a VPN subscription before I enter the country. It works fine even though connectivity can be flaky. On my last visit in early 2020 I even setup my own Wireguard server.
I haven't figured out how to get a VPN working after you enter China, but it's evidently pretty easy if I look at how many people from China are on Twitter, Youtube and Quora. There are various vloggers in China that publish to Youtube.
Here's what I understand about the legality of VPN. The Dutch have a "gedoogbeleid" against soft drugs, which means that soft drugs are officially illegal, but the government chooses not to enforce punishment against owning soft drugs. I believe China's position regarding VPN is similar. From time to time they close down VPN providers but by and large they don't go after VPN users.
I've heard of a story where a police officer notices that a citizen has a VPN installed on his phone. The police officer then confiscated his phone. Later on, that officer's superior apologized to the citizen and gave back his phone, saying that his junior is new and doesn't understand China's laws very well yet.
If someone is arrested for VPN'ing then it's usually tied to something else, such as high-level political dissent. From what I understand, you don't get arrested just for dissent: you'll have to be on the level of Julian Assange in order to really get in trouble.
Businesses can apply for a VPN license if they need to avoid the firewall in order to do business with foreign countries.
(Part 1) Okay this is complicated to explain to a western perspective so I have to split my answer in multiple parts.
First, about China's political system. China is often described as totalitarian or a dictatorship. And certainly there is less political freedom than in many western countries. But "totalitarian/dictatorship" doesn't accurately describe it: it's better described as a political meritocracy. China's system has:
- representation
- voting (in a hierarchical manner)
- consultation of the people (this one has become very big nowadays)
- multiple parties (though CCP leads the pack, the other parties aren't empty zombies either)
This interview with professor Daniel A. Bell, dean at School of Political Science and Public Administration of Shandong University, explains how the system works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ZzlPoapB4 (full disclosure: interview by CGTN, Chinese state media)
At 13:30 he explains why it makes no sense to lump China together with the likes of North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
An important distinction between the Chinese system and western systems, is that there is no separation of powers ala Trias Politica, in which different bodies and parties limit each others' power. Instead, the Chinese system is much more about collaboration, while at the same time the CCP stays firmly in power. A forced unity, if you will.
China's voting system is hierarchical. People vote for a representative at the village level. Those representatives vote for even higher levels. Here is a first-hand account by David Fishman, who is an expert on China's energy sector. https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/14283977611420180... During his holidays he met a village leader who has 90% election approval rating because he works hard for the benefit of his village. This thread describes how that village leader works, and how this village leader's attitude differs from higher-level governors that tend to be careerists. Fishman also says that in the next village, local democracy has unfortunately not resulted in a good representative.
Voting bubbles up to the top legislative body, the National People's Congress (NPC). This body makes national laws. Here is a good explanation video by Einar Tangen, political commentator who advised US, South Korean and Chinese governments (again full disclosure: he's hosted by CGTN): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CpiLcLOTSg
The NPC actively consults lower levels, all the way down to the village level. For example, all new proposals are published through newspapers and people are solicted for opinions.
See also this thread: https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/120804266113685094...
There are 8 parties in China. But their relationship is not antagonistic, i.e. they don't fight for which party gets in power. The voting system selects representatives (people), not parties. The NPC consists of people from multiple parties, though in practice the CCP is the biggest party.
Government officials (including the president) are not selected through voting, but through meritocracy. They are promoted to a higher level (e.g. city -> provincial) based on how well they perform against KPIs. Promotion comes with relocation so that you get to experience (and must prove yourself in) different contexts: governing Shanghai is very different from governing the province of Guangdong.
This ties in with the "talk is cheap" concept: rather than selecting based on popularity, people would rather see that you prove yourself for 30 years and that you're not full of shit. Xi Jingping began as a village official, he literally had to work in poop (installing a methane tank in a village) early in his multi-decade career. Here are two interesting threads which describe the promotion process: https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/130578464126202675... (a general description) and https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/130699111582069555... (a case study of Hu Chunhua's career, who's the vice premier)
This is why Fishman talks about "careerists". Sometimes the interests of the province-level governor's career conflict with the interests of the local village.
So the NPC is similar to a parliament. Unlike western parliaments, the NPC's role is not to keep the power of the executive body in check, i.e. they can't oust the president (formally they can but there are technicalities why in practice they can't). Instead, the executive body and the legislative body collaborate more closely than in western systems. In western systems, politicians make proposals as an expression of ideology, and politicians do not have to be qualified in terms of skill or experience. It's the bureaucrats' jobs to implement new ideas. In the Chinese system, politicians consult bureaucrats a lot more, and decisions are made in collaboration rather than "thrown over the wall".
As I said, the CCP is the largest party and the NPC can't oust the CCP president. But that doesn't mean the CCP deprives non-CCP members from having a say. They have a body called the CPPCC (Political Consultative Conference) through which they actively consult non-CCP members (so people who either belong to other parties, or don't have an affiliation with any party) for political advice. Even though it "merely" has an advisory role and does not have binding powers, the CCP actively makes use of this body for advice on major political and social issues.
This is a lot of good information you provided and makes a good case for the CCP perhaps being legitimate, or perhaps least-illegitimate govt available given Chinese realities. I'll read up on the references you provided. Like anything, it is not universally bad, and there are many good things it does, and the meritocracy sounds great as you describe it. And the cooperation between the bureaucracy and politicians also sounds way more effective than things are often done in the west.
Yet the 8 parties with a non-adversarial relationship sounds like standard authoritarian controlled opposition.
Plus, there remain many problems both internally and on the international stage.
Internally, you make clear that the goal isn't 100% censorship, but only suppressing anything that might become a movement of it's own, even if apparently favorable to the CCP. And suppressing news that might turn to racist acts against Uyghurs is not a bad thing to do. Yet we still have 'forced reeducation' of a million of them. We still have the 6 year-old Panchin Lama and his family being disappeared 3 days after being recognized by Buddhist religious authorities, and a new CCP-appointed person announced, along with many actions to dilute Tibetean Buddhism. This is straight-up cultural genocide, designed to wipe out a culture in a generation.
We also have many wholly unjustified claims of sovereignity in international waters, islands, and Taiwan, for example. They blatantly violate the Hong Kong transfer agreements only a few years after they start.
You need only skim the Human Rights Watch reports [1] to see a litany of problems, all systematic, and not one-offs. Not to mention efforts to silence people abroad [2].
They say "don't interfere in our internal affairs" which sounds fine, except that they are actively attempting to annex and eliminate their neighbors.
And sure, if they've done so many good works, maybe they could win an election. But since they never put it to the test, I'm still not sure I could call it legitimate.
If they didn't have the systematic internal human rights oppression, and systematic international expansionism, I could see it as a legit alternative... but there are these core systematic problems underlying all the good stuff.
(Part 2) Man, I wish I could edit comments older than a few hours. I don't think I've explained the second half of my previous comment (about Tiananmen) in the best way.
I believe Tiananmen is better characterized as follows:
- The economic reforms in the late 1970s towards more privatization and more market economy, resulted in economic disruptions. Food prices and unemployment surged. People were unhappy.
- Young people (students) bought into the idea that the problems are caused by a lack of western liberal democracy. They started protesting, but they didn't understand how governance worked so their demands were very messy.
- The leadership still remembered the 1960s Cultural Revolution, during which the government was effectively overthrown and there was anarchy everywhere. As the protests raged on without clear demands and without clear conclusion, and also becoming increasingly chaotic, the leadership feared a new Cultural Revolution.
- The leadership all had military backgrounds (out of necessity, because of WW2, Vietnam War, Korean War). They didn't know how to properly deal with civilian protests. China also had no organization to deal with civilian unrest (no riot police) and no riot gear (like rubber bullets).
- Later on the protests became increasingly violent. Civilians attacked and killed soldiers and set tanks on fire. Having no riot police, the government sent in the military.
- Rather than "tanks rolling over people" and "soldiers firing into crowds", I believe the militarily primary tried to disperse the crowds rather than attacking them. But in some places fights still broke out and people (from both sides) were killed.
The documentary shows that some of the protest leaders were pretty disingenuous, undemocratic even (despite calling for democracy).
The person that Daniel Dumbrill interviewed corroborates the naitivity of many protesters back then.
Glad to see that you're genuinely interested in this topic! I'll also take a look at your articles.
I think "least-illegitimate" is key here. There is a philosophy that states that only the actually available options matter, not the theoretically ideal options that never were available in the first place.
This ties in with what you said about the CCP taking their ruling position by force. Historically speaking, how the CCP got into power (and how they are composed) is as close to democracy as you get, especially considering the available options.
The CCP got into power after the Chinese civil war of 1927-1949. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century, the KMT (Nationalist Party) got into power. But they were both corrupt and incompetent, and their loyalists consisted mostly of the tiny elite, so people revolted. The vast majority of the (poor and rural) population supported the communists. So it's not so much that the CCP took their position by force: they got into their position because they had the overwhelming support of the populace.
There were no further options other than Qing (weak, corrupt, incompetent), KMT (slightly less weak, still corrupt & incompetent), the various warlords because China fractured into pieces (each one corrupt and brutal) and the CCP (weak but got support of the majority). The CCP was regarded as the least corrupt because it was the most grass-roots movement. It was a peasant army.
My father-in-law explained it to me like this: 200 years ago, people were at the mercy of an emperor, who ruled by hereditary monarchy. 150 years ago, people were at the mercy of foreign imperialists, who exploited China for their own benefit. Today, the CCP rules, but the CCP consists of normal people and not a dynasty or foreigners, and therefore we have democracy.
That last sentence deserves more explanation. The CCP has 95 million members. That's about 5% of the population. This scale means that — even outside the NPC framework — there is a certain amount of people's representation just through party membership. Most party members are normal people who have a normal job outside party membership. For example teacher, factory worker, doctor. Pretty much everybody has a relative that's a party member. Party members are expected to work for the greater good. During the COVID epidemic in 2020, many frontline workers were party members. Not few of them either got sick or died.
The CCP just can't be compared to parties in western systems, it's conceptually very different. I think the name "party" is a misnomer: it's more like the fabric of the entire society. You say that it's necessary to make a distinction between people and government. But in the Chinese case, just by the sheer size of party membership, this distinction is truly very difficult to determine.
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Regarding your question about whether people know about Tiananmen and what they think: I have a radical statement to make.
The 1989 Tiananmen protests succeeded.
Not in the sense of overthrowing the government, but in the sense that the government realized that something big was going on and that people were unhappy. In response, they accelerated economic reforms and got more serious about improving people's lives. That succeeded.
This ties in a bit with what I previously said about "censorship doesn't mean that the government won't deliver". I've heard somebody explain censorship of 1989 as follows: the government is ashamed of themselves and that's why they'd rather not talk about it. But they'd still quietly do their job and address the grievances.
The Tiananmen event isn't talked about much in Chinese society. That's because, in contrast to the west, it's not known as a big scandal. A lot of the protesters have moved on, exactly because it succeeded per my above definition. Some of them regretted taking part and thought they were too naive. Nowadays, the location of Tiananmen is a popular tourist spot. People don't primarily associate the location with the 1989 event.
And the reason why it's not a big scandal is because it wasn't a massacre. There were fights yes, there were people that got injured or died yes, but it wasn't "tanks rolling over people" and "soldiers firing into crowds".
You know the famous Tank Man photo, right? Western mainstream media usually only shows that photo, or a short clip, with the implication that the man died because he was ran over. Well here's the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk
The man was never run over! The tank was trying to avoid him. The man even climbed on the tank, had a conversation with the soldier, and then the man left. Nothing happened to him. Imagine doing the same thing in a western country: you'd be shot before you even approach the tank.
This is such a huge contrast with how western mainstream media characterizes 1989, that I question their entire narrative. Leaked cables confirm that there was no massacre in the sense of the mainstream characterization of the event: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142...
There were still people killed outside the square. But it looked more like a riot that got out of hand, rather than "government one-sidedly massacres innocent people". For example, prior to the crackdown, people attacked and lynched soldiers. There are photos of burned tanks and burned soldiers.
This documentary analyzes the mainstream reporting of the event and critizes how it's characterized. The interesting thing is that his critique is based solely on western sources. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idv8Ne0xeTo
When I look at this documentary, I see that there was a lot of disingenuity in the protests — many protesters didn't know what they were doing and what they were asking, and blindly followed idealistic talking points with no regard for practical concerns, which is why from time to time I hear stories about former protesters being ashamed of how naive they were. It also looked like that the government exercised restraint as much as they could and knew how to, back at the time. The protests raged on for many days but got increasingly tense. The government tried multiple times to cool down the protesters.
