China question

[TrustTheProcess]

Hey y'all.

I was chatting with one of my professors and I asked him if he thought that it is inevitable that China will have more privatization and become more democratic as the material conditions continue to improve. 

He said that it is possible, but he thinks that with things like AI facial recognition and government control of education, communication, and media, it is very possible that China can remain authoritarian for a very long time by crushing any potential mobilization efforts to seriously reform the government in that direction. 

 

Wondering what your thoughts were. 

[commie]

Education is government controlled everywhere. And what authoritarian regime has ever needed anything like AI? The teacher's in denial.

As to the original question, nothing is inevitable.

[Opo]

I have high hopes for zoomers. 

[Raze]

China will remain authoritarian. What they are doing to the Uighur population is most likely a trial run for what they will do to control their own citizens. 

To add onto that, the chinese population has become extremely nationalistic and actively ask their government to censor things they don't like and attack people who criticize the government themselves. In addition their social credit system has created a society that encourages obeying.  For example, the chinese MMA fighter Xu Xiadong won several matches with other martial artists who claimed to have magic powers, basically exposing them as frauds, and for that he got harassed non stop and his social credit was docked so low he was barred from his gym and can barely afford living expenses and travel. It's hard enough to make a government stop being authoritarian when everyone hates them, but how can it happen when a significant chunk or majority of the population supports it?

Edited October 6, 2020 by Raze

[TrustTheProcess]

1 hour ago, commie said:

Education is government controlled everywhere. And what authoritarian regime has ever needed anything like AI? The teacher's in denial.

As to the original question, nothing is inevitable.

Yes, education is government controlled, but government controlled education in sweden as compared to education designed to serve the interest of the chinese communist party looks very different. 

Also,  AI was never used by authoritarians in the past because it was not invented... If China refines its ai to watch the citizens every move and persecute dissenters immediately, it will be much harder for any sort of opposition to proliferate. 

1 hour ago, Raze said:

It's hard enough to make a government stop being authoritarian when everyone hates them, but how can it happen when a significant chunk or majority of the population supports it?

Right! it is a different level of indoctrination. Stage blue is fascinating. I do think my intuition says that eventually, people will wake up as the material conditions improve though... but it may be a long time before that happens given the reasoning above^^^

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, commie said:

Education is government controlled everywhere.

It depends on how you define "controlled". I work in higher education and the government does not control the content of what I teach. 

[commie]

16 minutes ago, louhad said:

Also,  AI was never used by authoritarians in the past because it was not invented... If China refines its ai to watch the citizens every move and persecute dissenters immediately, it will be much harder for any sort of opposition to proliferate.

What the CP fears isn't liberal fantasies but mass movements (or "mass incidents"). Past authoritarian government had ways of watching and persecuting dissenters, all useless even though they typically worked very well. Regimes fall when they can't persecute their opposition because the people becomes the opposition.

2 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

It depends on how you define "controlled". I work in higher education and the government does not control the content of what I teach.

:-)

Edited October 6, 2020 by commie

[TrustTheProcess]

7 minutes ago, commie said:

What the CP fears isn't liberal fantasies but mass movements (or "mass incidents"). Past authoritarian government had ways of watching and persecuting dissenters, all useless even though they typically worked very well. Regimes fall when they can't persecute their opposition because the people becomes the opposition.

lol, so you don't think China could use ai tech to diffuse any mass movements and to take opposition leaders out before they have the chance to gain momentum? I don't think you are understanding the level of surveillance that can be possible using ai.

[erik8lrl]

Every country stands for something. For America is freedom, but for China is stability and unity. Most people in the west have little to no understanding of Chinese history, culture, and politics. China today will do anything to maintain the stability and growth of the country. In their perspective, collective survival and growth far out weight the individuals. Their goal is quite simple, to have a country where everyone lives a peaceful and happy life. To them, democracy requires many things to be met to work effectively, and it might not work effectively due to the sheer size of the population, which is why they have a centralized democratic system, to prevent people with less education to vote. You have to understand when the country was first founded, most of its people were poor and uneducated farmers and workers. If democracy were established, it would lead to a very nationalistic leader's election since they just when through a long period of humiliation through the wars. However, present-day China is becoming more and more open. After a few generations of more education, and especially the newer generations, people are becoming more and more educated to become more active in politics. The better universities in China now have uncensored internet, and normal people are very much aware of the censorship. The main purpose of censorship is only to protect less-educated citizens from believing in false media and destabilization campaigns from the west. You basically won't see any positive news about China in the West, brainwashing people to have illogical fear and hatred towards China. How many people in the west actually understand the political system in China and its origin? Most people's understanding is still stuck in the cultural revolution era. Censorship is there to prevent people from creating internal conflicts in the country and stay on the path of growth and education. This is also why VPN is not illegal, and access to uncensored internet is available to people who are more educated because if you can use a VPN, you at least are educated enough to have the ability to judge what's false and true. Eventually, I believe, as the older generation dies and the younger, more educated generation becomes more mature, the country will naturally become more democratic and socialistic. It won't be a system like America with the one-person-one-vote system, but I think it will be a different system that will uniquely work for China. The current system has worked very well for China; they might keep the single-party system similar to Singapore. The good thing with their current political system is that it is not bound by ideology. Yes, they are called the Chinese Communist Party, but in reality, they only hold the goal of Communism (more so socialism nowadays) but not in practice. In practice, they only care about results and will do anything as long as it can solve problems. This caused their political system to be constantly changing, and they can have long term plans for the country(They likely have planned the next 30-40 years already). Present-day China is very capitalistic, and it's becoming more and more so. This is also why the system is very effective for China because they are less focused on ideologies and believes, and more so on results. I think as people become more educated, and all the poverties are eliminated, a very democratic and socialistic society will eventually happen in the next 30-40 years or so. Hopefully, the process will be more peaceful, with people changing the political system from within instead of through a rebellion or protesting because most Chinese people are very happy with the government, and they are very nationalistic and patriotic. The CCP actually consists of over 90 million Chinese people from all areas of society. So most people have families who are party members. 

Also, media and news are controlled by the State, but they are mostly far more objective and factual than the media in the west, in my experience. No lies or ideology wars, just plain information presented to you. It is actually illegal to spread misinformation in China. You can go to jail for it.

Yes, there are cameras and facial recognition everywhere, but it also brought the crime rate down to basically 0. It's impossible to escape justice here, so people naturally become more benevolent. It's probably one of the safest countries on earth right now. 

[erik8lrl]

@Raze

Most reports from the west about Xinjiang are either not true or heavily exaggerated. Check the sources before you believe anything.

[erik8lrl]

The only way to truly know what China is like is to visit and see for yourself. 

[erik8lrl]

@Raze

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by erik8lrl

[erik8lrl]

 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by erik8lrl

[Opo]

@erik8lrl what are your thoughts on this? 

 

[erik8lrl]

@Opo Yes, they are re-educating them, from becoming terrorists and believing in Islamic extremisms. It is difficult because you never know who the extremists are and who are just normal Muslims. So they put them through re-education to find those extremists. Plus, a large population of the Muslim community in Xinjiang doesn't speak Chinese, which prevents them from doing business around the country and getting out of poverty. So the re-education also will teach them Chinese so that they can make a better living. Are Muslims vanishing in China? No. CCP doesn't care what religion you believe in, as long as you don't kill other people or try to destabilize the country because of it. There are other Muslim Provence in China, and Muslims are all over the country. Muslim-friendly restaurants are all over the place. There are 56 different ethnic minorities, all with their own culture and beliefs in China. To have equality for all of them, there are many policies that benefit them only. Just a few examples, ethnic minorities can have more children than Han Chinese, who can only have two. They also get free marks when taking the national college exams, which makes them get into the best universities much easier than Han Chinese. The reporter of that video doesn't seem to know the history of Xinjiang and China that well; she is merely judging from an outside perspective without any context. For example, the school's fence and walls are there to protect the kids from terrorist attacks. This issue is far more complicated than it seems on the surface. Because there are terrorists, there are extremists, and there are separatists (who want independence for Xinjiang) and mixtures of all three. And all three are created from ignorance. Xinjiang has progressed so much in the past 20 years, it is now very modern with great culture, and most people live a much happier and better life, free from poverty. Aside from the extremists, who don't speak Chinese, they have lots of kids that are not educated, and they are very poor. They, of course, they are very easy to misinform and mislead. Because Xinjiang is so close to other countries with a lot of Islamic extremisms and often do business with each other, they are easily influenced. It's also not impossible that the US is trying to use Xinjiang as a destabilization campaign.  So far, it's not really working aside from the negative press image on China. Censorship on anything positive about China is very heavy on Youtube, Google, and Facebook. They all get demonetized and de-ranked. In fact, the whole reason why Facebook is banned in China is that many years ago, there was a terrorist attack in Xinjiang organized by an extremist group on Facebook that leads to the death of many. The Chinese government asked Facebook to ban such groups as a part of national law that you can't have hate or terrorist groups. Facebook didn't do so, so they broke the law and thus were not allowed to do business in China. Even today, you can go on Facebook and search for China hate group, you will find many. But yeah, don't believe what I say, go to Xinjiang yourself and see with your own eyes what life is like there. Go to those "concentration camps" and see what's really going on.        

[Forestluv]

3 hours ago, erik8lrl said:

The only way to truly know what China is like is to visit and see for yourself. 

What parts of China have you visited? 

[erik8lrl]

@Forestluv I've been across the entire country. 

[Forestluv]

6 minutes ago, erik8lrl said:

@Forestluv I've been across the entire country. 

Nice. I hope to visit someday.

[erik8lrl]

@Forestluv You should! I would say the only downside of living in China is that most people are very materialistic. Naturally, because China has gone through so much growth in the past 50 years that people are still catching up consciously. Similar to anywhere else tho, very spiritual and conscious people are rare to find. But other than that, it's not a bad place to visit.

Here are some good places to visit:

 

 

[PurpleTree]

27 minutes ago, erik8lrl said:

@Forestluv I've been across the entire country. 

 

Are you Chinese if you don't mind me asking?