I'm encouraged by how many people say they have mixed feelings about this. Hopefully that's an indication that they're able to see news from China outside of the monopolar propaganda view--that everything that the CPC does is evil; Or authoritarianism is evil per se--that's so common in the West (not that HN exclusively represents the West it does not but its anglophone nature correlated with its silicon valley roots severely biased it towards that type of thinking and perspective).
I think people recognize the efficiency--that they, China can actually pull something like this off; if they mandate that they're going to restrict this then it doesn't get mired in debate and bogged down in Parliament to eventually passes as a watered down concession representing everybody's possible interest group; rather if they say they're going to do something they just go ahead and they execute on that--and I think people can admire that.
And certainly probably nobody else in the world can do this at that kind of scale.
So I think ultimately that sets China up for great success by evolving a system of government because they can afford to run the experiments.
Other countries they can't afford to run the experiments: first off, they don't have the data or the scale to do so; second they don't have the ability to do so; and third they're not able to conjure the political will to be able to run an experiment.
But if China wants to run an experiment and figure out if this policy is going to work or what the effects are going to be--if it's going to help or not--they can afford to do that and they can iterate quickly. And that's what they do.
So in the long term China has a better, more scientific approach to figuring out a system of governance for their people. and this is not some slap dash theory I'm just pulling out of thin air and predicting what the future of China would look like in some fantasy: this is how the CPC have run things for the last 70 years.
Contrast with the West and liberal Democratic systems we have in the West: because we cannot move so quickly, we have to--to some extent--assume what we're doing is right prima facie and so a lot of our rhetoric reflects that. Our political rhetoric about ourselves reflects our sense of moral or procedural superiority to the rest of the world. we constantly remind ourselves you know of the superiority of our system even while acknowledging its flaws. instead of being able to implement policies, at scale, and collect data and move quickly we commission studies, and design intricate theories, and funnel money to think tanks, and often these policy manufacturing initiatives are partisan dalliances with foregone conclusions serving the interests of some of the number of competing groups.
But we cannot iterate as quickly are effectively as China can. But interestingly there's no real reason why we can't. If you consider the scale of our so-called Western civilization stretching from the EU to all of the anglophone world and even South America we should be able to run policy experiments. But consistently we do not. So we fret away the hours theorizing, debating and raising ginormous elections while the world keeps on turning.
so ultimately in the long game even if we started out ahead with a better system--even if--China is going to be able to create a better system in the long term because they can run more experiments more quickly, more efficiently, with bigger scale and they're going to have bigger data. so they can iterate more quickly they can analyze the bigger data that they have and they can come up with the optimal policies to drive their nation and their people forward.
one danger for the West is as China gets deeper into that approach the choices they make are going to seem more and more perplexing to people in the west because the choices are based on a set of assumptions and knowledge that we simply don't have in the west: because we haven't been able to run those experiments we don't have the benefit of that experience. so we're not going to understand China or how they make these choices. and I think that's dangerous for the West politically because we'll fall further behind but it's also dangerous you know culturally and individually because there'll be an increasing empathy Gap between people from different systems which will I suppose in the online world get reduced to a binary polarization of zero nuance and zero understanding which we see the beginnings of today very clearly.
so China is playing a high-risk high reward strategy to some extent. (And it's funny because I think there's a stereotype in the west where people often think of Chinese as very risk averse people. But if you look at the way that China has run its government it's calculating but they take a lot of risks. And you want to push that stereotype further you know a lot of Chinese people start businesses so I feel that stereotype is wrong: the Chinese culture embraces risk.)
If it's not clear what I'm talking about with the term experiments here, it's policy experiments. We are not able to run policy experiments in the west because everything gets bogged down; we can't execute on a plan and the short-term need to appeal to the lowest common denominator and people's sentimental or emotional nature or to their amygdala--their fear--this kind of pragmatic political necessity in our Western liberal Democratic systems distorts the discourse and the issues of democratic politics away from something substantial and towards something that's pretty ephemeral, often insubstantial and even petty.
What kind of future are we creating for ourselves and for our culture and for the legions of people who have sacrificed throughout our history with this kind of behavior?
And I think this abuse of our position is especially egregious when compounded with the lack of empathy and understanding towards the different system that the Chinese are doing when if we could look at it clearly I think we would have much to learn. At least much to give us pause and reflect about our own flaws but instead what you see happening is people look at this different system and instead of reflecting on themselves, they puff themselves up with--an almost seemingly reactionary or even compensatory-- pride about how good their own is, using some fabricated pretense of the evil bogeyman Other and how righteous they are themselves. you might dismiss this as simply the reaction of the common person but that reaction is very important in politics and that drives the discourse and ultimately constrains the thinking and the policy of the nations that comprise the west.
So China can afford to run the experiments and they can afford to think long-term. So who's going to win in like 200 years? it doesn't have to come down to a military conflict. they just have to win at everything else. And then who's going to be the more likely primary aggressor? The side that's on top or the side that's embittered and feeling their foregone place in the world has been stolen and with the history of amassing enormous military power and utilizing it sometimes seemingly haphazardly?
I think the Western system really has to evolve if we are really going to back up our grandiose self-important rhetoric and self-congratulatory triumphal political narratives about ourselves with real results. And I think the core of that is our governance system. It has to be flexible enough to prosecute our interest in a changing world we can't outsource that adaptability solely to the military because while necessary it overly constrains our strategy. We need a flexible government as the core of everything. that's one thing that I've learned by watching and thinking about China over the last 10 years. And I think in order to start doing that there needs to be a correction to the narrative of how Western culture thinks about and talks about china. That's what I'm trying to achieve with this comment: contribute to that correction.
I think people recognize the efficiency--that they, China can actually pull something like this off; if they mandate that they're going to restrict this then it doesn't get mired in debate and bogged down in Parliament to eventually passes as a watered down concession representing everybody's possible interest group; rather if they say they're going to do something they just go ahead and they execute on that--and I think people can admire that.
And certainly probably nobody else in the world can do this at that kind of scale.
So I think ultimately that sets China up for great success by evolving a system of government because they can afford to run the experiments.
Other countries they can't afford to run the experiments: first off, they don't have the data or the scale to do so; second they don't have the ability to do so; and third they're not able to conjure the political will to be able to run an experiment.
But if China wants to run an experiment and figure out if this policy is going to work or what the effects are going to be--if it's going to help or not--they can afford to do that and they can iterate quickly. And that's what they do.
So in the long term China has a better, more scientific approach to figuring out a system of governance for their people. and this is not some slap dash theory I'm just pulling out of thin air and predicting what the future of China would look like in some fantasy: this is how the CPC have run things for the last 70 years.
Contrast with the West and liberal Democratic systems we have in the West: because we cannot move so quickly, we have to--to some extent--assume what we're doing is right prima facie and so a lot of our rhetoric reflects that. Our political rhetoric about ourselves reflects our sense of moral or procedural superiority to the rest of the world. we constantly remind ourselves you know of the superiority of our system even while acknowledging its flaws. instead of being able to implement policies, at scale, and collect data and move quickly we commission studies, and design intricate theories, and funnel money to think tanks, and often these policy manufacturing initiatives are partisan dalliances with foregone conclusions serving the interests of some of the number of competing groups.
But we cannot iterate as quickly are effectively as China can. But interestingly there's no real reason why we can't. If you consider the scale of our so-called Western civilization stretching from the EU to all of the anglophone world and even South America we should be able to run policy experiments. But consistently we do not. So we fret away the hours theorizing, debating and raising ginormous elections while the world keeps on turning.
so ultimately in the long game even if we started out ahead with a better system--even if--China is going to be able to create a better system in the long term because they can run more experiments more quickly, more efficiently, with bigger scale and they're going to have bigger data. so they can iterate more quickly they can analyze the bigger data that they have and they can come up with the optimal policies to drive their nation and their people forward.
one danger for the West is as China gets deeper into that approach the choices they make are going to seem more and more perplexing to people in the west because the choices are based on a set of assumptions and knowledge that we simply don't have in the west: because we haven't been able to run those experiments we don't have the benefit of that experience. so we're not going to understand China or how they make these choices. and I think that's dangerous for the West politically because we'll fall further behind but it's also dangerous you know culturally and individually because there'll be an increasing empathy Gap between people from different systems which will I suppose in the online world get reduced to a binary polarization of zero nuance and zero understanding which we see the beginnings of today very clearly.
so China is playing a high-risk high reward strategy to some extent. (And it's funny because I think there's a stereotype in the west where people often think of Chinese as very risk averse people. But if you look at the way that China has run its government it's calculating but they take a lot of risks. And you want to push that stereotype further you know a lot of Chinese people start businesses so I feel that stereotype is wrong: the Chinese culture embraces risk.)
If it's not clear what I'm talking about with the term experiments here, it's policy experiments. We are not able to run policy experiments in the west because everything gets bogged down; we can't execute on a plan and the short-term need to appeal to the lowest common denominator and people's sentimental or emotional nature or to their amygdala--their fear--this kind of pragmatic political necessity in our Western liberal Democratic systems distorts the discourse and the issues of democratic politics away from something substantial and towards something that's pretty ephemeral, often insubstantial and even petty.
What kind of future are we creating for ourselves and for our culture and for the legions of people who have sacrificed throughout our history with this kind of behavior?
And I think this abuse of our position is especially egregious when compounded with the lack of empathy and understanding towards the different system that the Chinese are doing when if we could look at it clearly I think we would have much to learn. At least much to give us pause and reflect about our own flaws but instead what you see happening is people look at this different system and instead of reflecting on themselves, they puff themselves up with--an almost seemingly reactionary or even compensatory-- pride about how good their own is, using some fabricated pretense of the evil bogeyman Other and how righteous they are themselves. you might dismiss this as simply the reaction of the common person but that reaction is very important in politics and that drives the discourse and ultimately constrains the thinking and the policy of the nations that comprise the west.
So China can afford to run the experiments and they can afford to think long-term. So who's going to win in like 200 years? it doesn't have to come down to a military conflict. they just have to win at everything else. And then who's going to be the more likely primary aggressor? The side that's on top or the side that's embittered and feeling their foregone place in the world has been stolen and with the history of amassing enormous military power and utilizing it sometimes seemingly haphazardly?
I think the Western system really has to evolve if we are really going to back up our grandiose self-important rhetoric and self-congratulatory triumphal political narratives about ourselves with real results. And I think the core of that is our governance system. It has to be flexible enough to prosecute our interest in a changing world we can't outsource that adaptability solely to the military because while necessary it overly constrains our strategy. We need a flexible government as the core of everything. that's one thing that I've learned by watching and thinking about China over the last 10 years. And I think in order to start doing that there needs to be a correction to the narrative of how Western culture thinks about and talks about china. That's what I'm trying to achieve with this comment: contribute to that correction.