i think you'd (well really anyone in this thread) would really enjoy reading this https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jun.../dp/0679746323

Don't think I'll read it. I've read a lot of the stories mentioned in the synopses.

That reminds me.

Xi Jinping's official title "zhuxi" (主席) is the same title Mao used. It used to be translated as "Chairman." Chairman is almost certainly a better translation. The Chinese characters mean literally "master" and "seat."

This page explains a lot of what I am saying:
https://qz.com/1112638/xi-jinping-ti...dent-of-china/

I really can't stress enough of how scary Xi is. He's an even more unapologetic autocrat than Putin and he's been lavishing himself with titles that even Mao and Deng didn't have. He's even taking a page out of Chinese emperors' playbooks deifying his father. See this: https://www.ft.com/content/c4a9fdc8-...2-5946bae86e6d

I'm not sure Xi is the most terrifying aspect of Chinese government, though he is scary enough. That Chinese expats (if what I see on WeChat, CCTV in Flushing, and hear in person are any guide) who have spent years studying/working in the US/Europe are still drinking the CCP kool-aid is at least just as scary.

Try talking to American expats living in China, Their attitudes might surprise you as well. China is not the insecure party here and Xi has turned the country into an international powerhouse seemingly overnight. You think they are gonna buy into nuance free tropes created by the west when they've lived in and experienced the truth of both realities? Go against chinese tradition and spirit in favor of supporting democracy that spawned Trump and his world genius. Its a hard sell. People are living and enjoying their lives in china and their paternalistic traditions translate well into easy acceptance of their paternalistic govt. At least they are seeing something in exchange for not openly challenging policy, which seems to be working for the vast majority of them. We don't challenge govt here we get ripped off more

now I'm confused, I thought you were chinese expat? it seems logical given you live in flushing and watch 新闻联播

you absolutely should read that book though, they are a bit too loose with their style (ie giving dialogue or inner thoughts to something that they only know basic information about) and never point out where such and such info or insight came from but it's an absolutely amazing book and a great read even if you aren't interested in china

i first got pretty concerned about Xi when he detained this guy

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...A1O15420140225

and then really concerned when he got a life sentence

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/w...tism-case.html

people fail to understand that there are legit terrorist attacks in china perpetrated by uighurs who got training in camps in afghanistan and that these attacks don't get much attention in the west because china censors the images, that the truck driver playing GTA in nice, france was basically a copy cat of the most common form of uighur attacks in China

i remember when the attacks were happening very regularly you would constantly see these images people were posting online and within a week or so they'd all be taken down

i think china made a huge mistake in handling those attacks, they confiscated and cleaned up the recordings and images of them because they didn't want the success to inspire more as it's been demonstratably proven that media attention to any issue spurs and encourages more people to take up the cause as well

the downside of this is that there aren't the visceral images available for people to see online and then sympathize with what's going on and understand the mindset

but a guy who's a college professor in the capital, regardless of what his political desires or leanings may be, he is not a terrorist. he may have been involved in planning a rebellion or separatist activities, i honestly don't know, but he was a moderate through and through and when he was detained that spoke to me that they were going to be overdoing it to "better be safe than sorry"

but, if he was indeed guilty and/or a terrorist, they sure as hell should have made a big deal of the evidence and pushed it out there

happy thanksgiving everyone

I am not Chinese. I do speak Mandarin but my reading/writing is about (charitably speaking) high school level. An oversimplified, but mostly accurate, view of my motivations would suggest I learned enough Mandarin to get Chinese girls and money. I live near Flushing because rent is (relatively) cheap and it’s easy for me to commute to midtown Manhattan via 7 express.

What I have been seeing (since Xi came to power and Macau died almost overnight especially) was not what I bargained for.

yeah, macau was like a slush fund for me, when low on cash from my broke ass journalism days i'd request a few weeks off and take a flight or train down there and just run it up... would be one or two non-mainlanders at the table

these days it's a table of 9 swedes and brits waiting for doctor from India to sit down... totally different than it was 10-15 years ago

It might surprise you, but the people who are objecting to China's actions in this thread are actually not objecting to people being well off or an increase in wealth among Chinese citizens.

Nobody has said "China is horrible, so many of their citizens now enjoy a far better lifestyle!"

You don't need big macroscopic views of culture or political tradition either. Uighurs are in concentration camps regardless if China has a collective culture, journalists are jailed and tortured for free expression regardless if China has paternalistic government, surveillance has reached dystopic proportions regardless if the Chinese middle-class has surged in wealth and the CCP has increased authoritative tendencies regardless if China wields more geopolitical power.

And the message isn't unimportant. If you apologists had your way, China could continue down all these paths unimpeded and CCP officials could smile all the way to the bank. But maybe, just maybe, if enough barriers are in the way, Chinese pragmatism can win the day and less people could be subjected to atrocities.

Im not a china apologist as I am not a fan of any current gov't that inherently suppresses human expression. I think journalism is one of those sacred professions and It angers me hearing about scientists, journalists NGO workers being killed. The concentration camps are no laughing matter either. The Chinese are heavy handed on anything that may cause disruption or loss of face and are proactive about stopping it immediately. No one is going to escape mass surveillance in the future, and we here in the US are still the best and at it by lightyears. That being said the social credit aspect of the surveillance is very interesting to me. Imagine if we could all vote on undesirable behaviors like letting your dog **** on the sidewalk or neighbors lawn and not picking it up the offender would be assessed a social credit demerit that penalizes antisocial and toxic behavior that does not benefit society. At least the surveillance is used for something positive as well serving the obvious intelligence gathering/counter terrorism aspect. I would rank Saudi Arabia with China US/Turkey/Israel/Russia/Iran/pakistan and maybe even now India on the list of countries deserving of derision for their actions around the globe. I can also find positive things to say about each country and their cultures. I am not an apologist for bad actors or bad actions in any circumstance

Calling you an apologist was bad form and for that am I am sorry.

But I can't agree on the surveillance issue. Having big brother looking over you and judging is not a good way to live. You are also hinging your entire worth on the honesty of the system and the few people who manage it.

And I don't think having your neighbors do the judging is any better. Do we really want to determine a person's value in the same way we score movies on IMDB or do Yelp reviews? It seems to me like such a system would be detrimental to societal development and ripe for abuse. You also risk get concentrated conservatism, arbitrary judgments and people living in genuine fear of challenging the status quo. Some of our most important rights and laws (both in China and outside it) have come from people doing just that.

Not to mention that China has already developed a sub-caste of people who live in the shadows of the social credit system. And it's rarely a result of being "a bad person".

That social credit system. Oh my god. An MBA student at a top program was tone deaf enough to write giving higher scores to people who buy Chinese brands in her proposal to develop luxury apparel brands in China. She sent it to me for review.

The proposal was actually well written and the business case was strong but I was like: you can’t present this in an American classroom. Just no.

I actually had to argue with her. At one point she was like what’s wrong with using social credit to find love interests?

Nothing too extreme like little things.. Volunteering, voting, not speeding. I wouldnt want to punish anyone for not participating. I think alot about how we could implement that sort of thing in a a peer to peer way but like you said it would be ripe with abuse and unfair assessments from vindictive people.

Those traffic light speeding cameras were a thing for a while, instead of getting a ticket at every intersection you go through at appropriate speed is a mark that you can use for a little prize / Free donated items /game tickets at the end of the year becuase you were a model citizen. Incentives for good behavior that helps people and makes them safe. On the flip side if you speed through the intersection twice your license and passport are revoked for 3 years, reinstatement subject to review


Ohhh and you register your dogs sample wit the feces task force robot who will detect and test any unnatended droppings and assess demerits based on weight and consistency. The robot is trusted and bias free.

The white paper said it could track your Didi (Chinese Uber) rides and rare you based on where you go. I don’t know if they implemented this. They also plan (WeChat already does this) to score based on people you interact with. (So don’t friend or send money to the newly elected pro-Democracy Hong Kongers if you don’t want to find yourself stranded.)

But I do know they banned millions of Chinese people from buying train and plane tickets.

That’s plenty draconian in my book.

And I am quite okay with registering dog feces. I wish my apartment building would do it.

I guess you could say he committed hate speech



Not sure about the credibility of this but...

American who lived in China from 2013 until last June chiming in here.

I had a very comfortable life. I taught HS economics in a dual diploma program (Chinese HS partnered with American HS) for kids planning to attend US universities. I earned roughly the average US public school teacher salary annually with a fraction of the daily workload (four classes a day and regularly would go home to watch US sports or practice piano mid-morning and would rarely not be home by 4:15 pm) with about four months off a year plus half my classes ending two months early (seniors doing AP tests then graduating).

Of course no skill losers like me who could earn an income that is several times what a local recent college graduate would often make with all the free time in the world would have a pretty good time and have some good things to say and be willing to forge a stupidly nuanced take about CCP not being that bad.

Meanwhile, millions of Uighurs are in concentration camps where they are subject to torture, rape, sterilization and slaughter. My first year teaching economics I taught at a school in Suzhou that featured several Uighur students from Xinjiang on scholarship. Needless to say, I regularly think about them and where they might be now.

Judging China by the experiences of western expats is like judging pre-revolution Cuba from the perspectives of mobsters.

Man the stuff being described in the last few posts sounds just like that Black Mirror episode where everyone has a score that goes up and down based on your interactions with other people. I had no idea this was really a thing, jesus christ

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

My current hot take is that it wasn't just the west but also Chinese leadership in the 1980s that believed that by the time we got to 2019 China would be a largely democratic nation and thus "one country, two systems" would work itself out fine.

The only fitting word I can find to describe it is "dystopian".

Half a billion security cameras hooked up to an advanced deep learning network and big data technology coupled with face recognition algorithms to monitor citizen movement. Data from banks, purchases, judicial system and social media are collected and thrown into the blender, and the system outputs your number and value as a citizen in the other end.

It reads like someone read "1984" and went "huh, that sounds pretty good!"

Fall low on a score and you can be denied purchases and services, won't get a job and won't qualify for assistance programs. You'll also be listed publicly so people can look you up and particularly "bad" individuals and their information can also be published explicitly.

In addition there is the multitude of citizens which don't qualify for the program to begin with. Many 2nd children from the time of China's "one child policy" struggle to qualify for example. Apparently being born is also very bad.

I'll also go out on a limb and predict that the system is already corrupt and is being abused actively. China's corruption problem is fairly well known and lack of transparency is a big problem with their government.

They are already putting up social credit scores on dating web sites.

The New China Scare: Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger

Fareed Zakaria in Foreign Affairs. Long, but interesting. Seemed useful to me if only for some of the background info.

i think you're confusing this with sesame credit which is how you signal to hotties you're wealthy, in fact, alipay, one of the biggest online payment providers has a dating function within itself for this very reason

imagine if you could voluntarily prove wealth on your paypal app and then paypal would introduce you to ladies

much of the social credit score stuff is overblown and exaggerated if not just straight up confused with something else and often fabricated

i'm not defending it, but we do the same exact thing, we just call it a sexual offender list, nobody who hasn't done something seriously messed up is being denied rail tickets and if they did, those guys can always ride the bus

My understanding is the people banned from riding trains generally owe money from civil judgements against them.

it's all kind of things but the gyst of it is that people are combining elements and assuming correlation

yes they have a social credit system

no it is not taken seriously

no, you won't be banned from buying plane tickets because that one night you got drunk and went streaking through the quad

you gotta understand that china has a very tolerant attitude towards non-violent crime

it's so prevalent that when elderly people make withdrawals from a bank, the teller has to go through a checklist of questions and try to suss out if it's a scam and then try to convince them not to withdraw as a result

there is literally an entire industry of scamming and this is largely done outside of the legal system

someone stole your bike, you're on your own

someone impersonated your landlord over text messages and got you to transfer rent money to a new account, the police will laugh at you for being a dumbass

this is the heart of social credit, it's a way to punish scammers, people who don't pay debts and that guy who goes streaking, not once but weekly

police in china are baby sitters and mediators, you can actually go on youtube and find people slapping traffic cops and then going back in their car and driving away and they don't suffer consequences

for these petty crimes, the chinese view it very much so as a "lol take care of yourself" and social credit score is intended to get people to stop slapping traffic cops or urintating in public

it's never going to impact 99.9999% of the population and certainly won't impact someone without having done something serious or repeatedly done it and refused to stop

if you blast loud music every night in america the police knock on your door and it ties up the court system

in china, if you blast loud music every night nothing happens except for having neighbors hate you and take out their own revenge etc etc so social credit is meant to combat this issue - it's not enough of something for them to handle legally so they're searching for other forms of nudging it

main problem behind it is it hasn't been properly explained and we hear about it both from anti-chinese viewpoints... toss in that it could feasibly be used as part of a dystopian nightmare and i agree, it is a slippery slope, but it's their preferred system to deal with minor issues

name one american who hasn't been tied up in some legal case under the age of 50 and it'll be nearly impossible, it's the opposite for chinese

again, this is not a defense of china or the social credit system or how it could potentially be abused, i'm just shining background on it because you should understand it's origin and context because most people think it's something else entirely

also, you won't be able to find anyone in China who takes it seriously, it's often the punchline of many jokes - maybe this will change, but it's viewed very insiginificantly and nobody views it seriously - the only people with strong opinions on it are those who can't buy tickets and those who are glad that dickweed in apartment 13C who throws his trash in the stairwell and blasts music until 3am every night has to ride to bus to visit his parents

I actually did a night in lock-up for fighting a security cop who had violently yanked my arm as I tried to cross the street at a crosswalk during a marathon (there was no one around and I didn't even see the guy before he came at me). Definitely one of my least proud moments and prompted me seeking help once I got back to the US.

I was held for 24 hours and then released without a charge. Lost my job, but if this had happened in the US I would definitely have been in a lot more trouble.

Yup, exactly how it works, if there's been fighting they just throw them in lock up to let them cool off then usually have them sign an apology and let em go, maybe they'll act as an arbiter for some payment of medical but that's it.

Things like assault aren't worthy of tying up courts in their minds.

This isn't a communist thing, most of this "take care of yourself and don't get beaten up, robbed, or scammed" is the honest viewpoint of Chinese where you take a lot of personal responsibility to ensure bad things don't happen. China is probably one of the safest countries in the world and yet people are extremely paranoid about home invasion, often getting cages outside their doors and windows and for every business and hosting complex to hire 24 hour security guards despite that there has never been because if they get robbed

The reason why they have so much needless security is that they view it as their personal responsibility, cops are the minions who fill out paperwork, not the people who will stop your house from getting robbed.



I've witnessed stuff like this regularly. Cops are literally viewed as baby sitters and the people treat them horribly... It's nothing like the west where cops have this aura of authority and respect.

I can't stress enough. Cops in China only become real cops when there is rape and murder and for everything else they are like guidance school counselors trying to get the two parties involved to stop quarrelling and Cole to an agreement

The Soviets invaded half of Europe, and the tactic was almost always the same: Strong military presence, sponsor local communist party, set up secret police, arrest political opponents, declare communist state and "dictarship of the proletariat", transfer those who object to concentration camps, make the country a slave state to the Soviet Union.

McCarthyism was the unjust persecution of American citizens based on untrue allegations, to conflate it with the very fact-based, very true assessment of the threat of the Soviet Union is horrible writing.

This author misses the mark completely.