> worse off for everyone with a Chinese hegemony, except for the Chinese politburo
Thanks for representing 1.4 billion Chinese, being a westerner surely gives you such right to assume that we Chinese are all being repressed. well done!
>being a westerner surely gives you such right to assume that we Chinese are all being repressed.
You're free to oppress yourselves. You're even free to believe that your slavery is freedom.
But I have no doubt in my mind that China and its vision of the ideal society would be repressive to me and negatively affect my way of life.
See, I like being divisive and value the ability of a society to be disrupted in favor of bigger and better things. For example, we value the ability to petition and protest our government or society when it does something bad because that way we get progress.
The Chinese way to respond to a social grievance, whether you like/know/acknowledge it or not, is to just murder everyone and deny anything ever happened. Granted, that's also known to happen in America-backed dictatorships, but at least they don't do it at home.
And that's the culture you export- encouraging harmony, monotony, and social conservatism ("don't rock the boat") in countries they support rather than free thought, diversity, and innovation. I'd hate for the remaining 5/6ths of the planet to be under the boot of an immutable society in love with its own stagnation and mediocrity.
Something you have to keep in mind is that China is a much, much, more populated place than the USA in a smaller land mass.
I think recent times are showing an issue with protest. In a democracy, if the 'side' that 'loses' (democracy is ideally a collective decision of individuals trying to come to the objectively best decision, not a team sport trying to beat the other team - the founding fathers feared parties for good reason) decides to try to disrupt society in response, that simply doesn't work.
I think the true value in protest were sides managing to illustrate to others that support for views, that did not seem popular, did indeed have substantial support. The civil rights protests are a good example. The status quo of America was 'separate but equal'. Clearly many did not really believe this, but it can be difficult to express views that run contrary to the perceived majority of a society. Protest enabled these people to unify and others to feel more comfortable "coming out", as it were. In today's society, the internet serves this purpose. You can find and organize support nationally, and even internationally, for any view. This is a reason that I think having a completely free and open internet is crucial.
The Vietnam War is a good example of protests that were not useful, even though they did have a good overlap with the civil rights protests. Many people vehemently opposed the war, but many also supported it. So it turned into the sort of protest that is not about enabling people to come out (as it was already completely acceptable within society to support or oppose the war) but simply because one side was upset that they were not getting their way. There was lots of chaos caused, lots of social disruption, and it changed absolutely nothing.
Imagine the issues the US is having today, and then multiply our population by well over 400% with a proportional (if not exponential) increase in mutual antagonism. I think we're already starting to reach the breaking point of our political systems. So I think simply assuming our system and its status quo suddenly strapped onto a population 400% larger, without massive changes, is not really reasonable.
Of course, it's a pointless metric and it fails to capture that China, too, is for the most part a wasteland devoid of human life and it still has about five times the USA's average density.
> under the boot of an immutable society in love with its own stagnation
China is rapidly leading in solar panel production, implementing CRISPR tech, super computers, and now building a modern Silk Road. Perhaps they are stagnating on the human rights front, but they are not stagnating in tech and economic growth.
Actually, I think you misunderstand how the Hukou system works.
You're allowed to physically go anywhere and visit as a tourist. It's just that if you want to to permanently move to another city, you have to do a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork. In reality, people move around all the time, but it's rate-limited, and it's easier to go from a dense place to a less dense place.
As a point of comparison, consider the housing crisis in San Francisco. One could facetiously argue that political forces limiting the housing supply creates a similar effect.
>You're allowed to physically go anywhere and visit as a tourist. It's just that if you want to to permanently move to another city, you have to do a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork.
what about moving from a rural town to to a major city permanently? or even just being able to legally work in a major city as someone who isnt able to get the proper clearance?
However, except for marrying or (sometimes) after graduation from college, you are not allowed to change your Hukou. Many (most?) of the people living and working in the 'supercites' of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Beijing do not have Hukou residency. Even being born there does not confer the right, if your parents do not have residency.
Lack of Hukou prevents purchase of real-estate, and high-school education for children, but for the last 2 years it has been possible to get state healthcare. This leads to much higher costs of living which prevents the poor from moving to the cities en masse.
China has done some work to soften the system a little and there have been recurrent talks of abolishing it altogether. Hopefully it goes into the dustbin of history one day.
Oh, that is interesting. You mean it is illegal for me to live/work in other Chinese cities? The problem is several members of immediate family have been doing that for 20 years, e.g, my parents, are they going to be detained soon?
why do you think that I'm talking about you? the phrasing of my post even says "imagine", indicating that I'm assuming it doesn't apply to you. imagine yourself as someone who wasn't lucky enough to be born into the "right" citizenship
furthermore, you're describing urban-to-urban movement in your post for some reason...you're either being very disingenuous in that regard because the main issue with the hukou system is that it blocks rural-to-urban, or i know more about it than you do...
Thanks for representing 1.4 billion Chinese, being a westerner surely gives you such right to assume that we Chinese are all being repressed. well done!