Terrifying. I saw it for myself last year in Shanghai and elsewhere (including Xinjiang).

This is what awaits the rest of us if we don’t push back. All governments want to do this, deep down. And China will soon be selling them off-the-peg kits. If we live in democracies, we need to quit the nihilism and cynicism, we need to realize what power we still have and get more involved in politics while there’s still time.

Bird laments that the decline of traditional travel writing erodes a more humanistic understanding of the country, insights that cannot be replicated by digital snapshots.

So true.

The publication history on China guidebooks confirms this decline: DK Eyewitness’ last China guide appeared in 2021, Fodor’s in 2019, Rough Guides and Insight Guides in 2017, and Frommer’s as far back as 2012.

Really sad.

For this not to be the case would be the real surprise. Look how much, say, Britain has been influenced by the Anglosphere’s cultural imperium, the USA, a country only 5 times bigger in population. China has sixty-two times more Chinese speakers than Taiwan and is also right next door.

Very perilous and worrying.

PS: FTA:

“After Hong Kong and Macau were taken over [by China], people there still enjoyed freedom of speech. So I don’t think freedom of speech is something that worries me,” she said.

Dear dear dear.

Around a third.

Better source: 30%

Now as far as China goes, I think we need to stop thinking of China as adversarial (even though it may be) and just think of it as a country out for its own interests that is not aligned with us. That does not make China our enemy, and it especially does not mean we cannot ethically consume Chinese goods.

Indeed. I’d go further and say that it’s downright ethical to consume Chinese goods if those goods are solar panels and EVs and the alternative is the climate-destroying 19th-century technology that the West can’t let go of. None of this excuses totalitarian Chinese politics. But it’s entirely on us that we’ve fallen behind so badly.

Have had the same thought.

Hilarious. I heard that the East Asian phenomenon of empty hipster coffee shops is evidence of a related cultural trait. Specifically, the kids of rich people making themselves busy by running an unviable business.

In 1995, Ismail Serageldin, the former vice president of the World Bank, famously said: “If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water - unless we change our approach to managing this precious and vital resource.”

[…]

“I’m not saying there’s not going to be a water war one day. Maybe there will be. But what I will say is we have a record of 800 water treaties between people who don’t like each other, and we have very little record of actual violence across borders, specifically over water,” says Wolf.

Very interesting! Let’s hope he’s right.

Schadenfreude is tempting. It’s all becoming a bit of a soap opera. This too:

In June 2024, Filipino soldiers used their “bare hands” to fight off Chinese coast guard personnel armed with swords, spears and knives in the area. The skirmish led to one Filipino soldier losing his thumb, Manila said.

But this might all end badly.

This is from a month ago but it’s still good news. Whatever the undoubted ulterior motives, at least somebody is still taking the climate crisis seriously.

There is no expectation that everyone has to agree with you, either offline or online.

Egregious straw man, obviously I don’t think that.

enormous misunderstanding what [downvotes] are

Says who? You? What if it were you “misunderstanding” this? I know your version is the majority one, but there are plenty of people who agree with me that downvoting is toxic, hence the existence of downvote-free instances.

A downvote is softer than a negative comment, and if you think a downvote is a slap in the face, how should I interpret your negative comment? A kick in the face?

The big difference, to bore you with what you must already know, is that a downvote affects in most default configs the visibility of the comment. So it’s effectively a mild form of censorship, which IMO is not “softer” than a negative reply. And it’s certainly not better than than a constructive negative reply, which, believe it or not, is possible to do.

The best argument I have seen for your case is that downvoting provides an off-ramp for potentially sterile conflict. I.e. people hit the downvote button instead of replying with rage. That’s a decent pragmatic argument. But whatever reason I personally manage to control my rage at other people’s “wrong” opinions, so I don’t think it’s too much to ask them to do the same.

on somewhat of a crusade against downvotes

It’s true. For me, to downvote an opinion (and this is what the vast majority of downvoting is) is the virtual equivalent of slapping someone in the face, or telling them to shut up. We don’t do it in person, we shouldn’t do it virtually.

This was an interesting read. It begins with what looks like a bunch of AI-generated boilerplate about China’s amazing economic stats, mixed with occasional one-liners of heavy-handed propagandizing:

Chinese economic development and US capital accumulation

US imperialism cannot tolerate such threats to its monopoly power

Then turns into a (slightly) more subtle analysis, with a tacit admission that Chinese communism is a fraud:

There have been significant defeats for the Chinese working class under this system, with the reemergence of private healthcare and education being emblematic of deepening inequality from the 1990s.

And concludes with what appears to be a warning that the Chinese “bourgeoisie” is getting uppity and wants to make its country into a new imperium to take over the USA’s role of oppressing the world’s poor.

Interesting, not entirely without insights, but still. All this is in the name of defending “revolutionary communism”, an ideology that gave us nothing but a century of poverty, oppression and bloodshed. Ultimately, the source lacks credibility.

So you admit that you didn’t bother even reading the article and just responded to the headline (which I didn’t write). Well, personally I did actually read the article. All of it. Some I agreed with, some less so, in any case it was interesting and I still recommend it.

The statement is unfalsifiable. And the article expresses an opinion. That opinion is generally deeply hostile to the Chinese government. But still you find a way to comb its every phrase looking for some shred of “evidence” of wrongthink. This behavior is typical of an authoritarian mindset.

Let’s be honest, I could post an article about Sichuanese cuisine, or C-pop, and you’d get upset and say it was pro-Beijing.

Sorry to target you specifically but personally I’m getting tired of this idea that social media means zero-click drive-by comments (or more likely upvoting and downvoting) of headlines based on vibes and emotions alone. It adds no value. Who cares that you agree or don’t agree - or that I agree or don’t agree - with some headline? It’s a waste of time for everyone concerned.

OK sure, but you did actually read the article, rather than just respond to the headline, right?

But there is probably more to the politburo’s statement than meets the eye. The statement said that specialised bodies that exist within the party’s central committee, which includes the powerful commissions that Xi’s loyalists now hold, should focus on “guidance and coordination over major initiatives” and to “avoid taking over others’ functions or overstepping boundaries”“.

Hilariously abstruse. But this is good news. Contrary to the ignorant takes this will generate in the West, the Chinese authoritarian model has not always been straightforwardly despotic. That’s the reason it sometimes works. Maybe it was in the geopolitical “interest” of the West for Xi to go full Mao and crash his country, but it’s not in the interest of everyone else.

Amazing. Was about to share this too.

Makes a nice change from the boring drumbeat of knee-jerk negativity usually found in this “community”. Thanks.