Alex Lo is spot on: ‘Beijing enjoys greater legitimacy than any western state’.
Two points:
(A) I speak from experience, of visiting China regularly, at least pre-pandemic. I speak Chinese, usually travel on my own and Chinese folks are warm and chatty, So I have talked with many of the laobaixing — 老百姓, the “old hundred names”, your “average Zhou’s”, the “broad masses of the Chinese people”.
(B) Same time, I’ve heard many commenters in the West, on all sides of politics, tell me that Chinese are living in a “hellhole”, that it’s a “police state”, that all thinking is suppressed.
BUT, Because of (A) I can say of (B): it is simply not true.
A “hellhole”?? No,
In the forty-four years since Deng Xiaoping opened up the economy in 1977, average wages have increased 14% each and every year. The “wonder of compounding”, as Warren Buffet calls it, means that average incomes in China have massively increased — If you earned 100 a month in 1976, by 2020 you earned 31,920. More than 300 times as much! Truly the wonder of compounding.
As a result, nearly half the Chinese population are Middle Class.
This has happened at the same time as real wages in the West have stagnated: cue discontent and regular rioting. Just as flat real wages make unhappy, rising real wages make happy.
Thus: China ain’t no hellhole. There are plenty of places in China I’d rather live, than some places in the US (south Chicago, west Baltimore, bits of LA…)
A “police state”?? No.
China has fewer police per million than the US, or the average in the West. When you walk around the streets in China you hardly ever see a policeperson. That’s the reality and not the sign of a police state. It’s true that if you go after Xi Jinping, or any central leader, and you do so publicly, you’re going to be nabbed. And that’s not nice; no one thinks so. But that’s not the concern of your average Zhou.
All “thinking suppressed”?? No.
The average Zhou that I meet, the ones in restaurants, in pubs, at the hotel, on the bus, are more than willing to talk about anything, including grumbles about politicians that one hears anywhere in the West. Often just as acerbic. The difference, we all know, is that if you go public, of you try to get heard in social media, grumbling about Xi Jinping, you’re going to be in strife. But these too are not the concerns of your average Zhou. And, little known outside China: if you want to get around the Great Firewall, you can easily get a VPN to do so. And, there’s plenty of “Digital Disobedience”.
When I was big boss of my organisation, way back in the aughts, with 300 staff in the region, I ran an internal poll of our staff across Asia, all in the same business. Our offices in China came up best in terms of Optimism and Inventiveness. That’s not scientific, sure, definitely not peer reviewed, but not meaningless either. By my own unscientific poll our offices in China were more optimistic, more open to new ideas and more inventive than our offices in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam.
So, China all good, then? Of course not. I still hate Xi Jinping. Mainly because he’s ruthless and aggressive, at home and abroad, and has increased global tensions. If he’s not a tyrant, he’s tyrant-adjacent. Then again, he’s leading a nation of 1.4 billion, and I run a house with one dog. What do I know?
Well, at least this: the suppression of Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang is horrid. I’m in favour of more pressure on Beijing, including boycott of the Winter Olympics (though many of the commenters at that site are in the “know-nothing-of-China” category). This might harden Beijing’s line against the Uygurs, but can doing nothing be right? What is happening there seems to be the grossest oppression of human rights, if not outright genocide.
And there’s the rest of the ongoing litany, which Xi has only increased: censorship, jailing of dissidents, arbitrary arrests of political opponents, aggression in the South China Seas, use of Belt and Road initiatives to gain footholds across the the region, sabres rattling against Taiwan. Google, FB, Twitter, blogger, all are blocked in China. Oh, and the National Security Law in Hong Kong…
But the people? Happy campers. Back to Alex:
Two points:
(A) I speak from experience, of visiting China regularly, at least pre-pandemic. I speak Chinese, usually travel on my own and Chinese folks are warm and chatty, So I have talked with many of the laobaixing — 老百姓, the “old hundred names”, your “average Zhou’s”, the “broad masses of the Chinese people”.
(B) Same time, I’ve heard many commenters in the West, on all sides of politics, tell me that Chinese are living in a “hellhole”, that it’s a “police state”, that all thinking is suppressed.
BUT, Because of (A) I can say of (B): it is simply not true.
A “hellhole”?? No,
In the forty-four years since Deng Xiaoping opened up the economy in 1977, average wages have increased 14% each and every year. The “wonder of compounding”, as Warren Buffet calls it, means that average incomes in China have massively increased — If you earned 100 a month in 1976, by 2020 you earned 31,920. More than 300 times as much! Truly the wonder of compounding.
As a result, nearly half the Chinese population are Middle Class.
This has happened at the same time as real wages in the West have stagnated: cue discontent and regular rioting. Just as flat real wages make unhappy, rising real wages make happy.
Thus: China ain’t no hellhole. There are plenty of places in China I’d rather live, than some places in the US (south Chicago, west Baltimore, bits of LA…)
A “police state”?? No.
China has fewer police per million than the US, or the average in the West. When you walk around the streets in China you hardly ever see a policeperson. That’s the reality and not the sign of a police state. It’s true that if you go after Xi Jinping, or any central leader, and you do so publicly, you’re going to be nabbed. And that’s not nice; no one thinks so. But that’s not the concern of your average Zhou.
All “thinking suppressed”?? No.
The average Zhou that I meet, the ones in restaurants, in pubs, at the hotel, on the bus, are more than willing to talk about anything, including grumbles about politicians that one hears anywhere in the West. Often just as acerbic. The difference, we all know, is that if you go public, of you try to get heard in social media, grumbling about Xi Jinping, you’re going to be in strife. But these too are not the concerns of your average Zhou. And, little known outside China: if you want to get around the Great Firewall, you can easily get a VPN to do so. And, there’s plenty of “Digital Disobedience”.
When I was big boss of my organisation, way back in the aughts, with 300 staff in the region, I ran an internal poll of our staff across Asia, all in the same business. Our offices in China came up best in terms of Optimism and Inventiveness. That’s not scientific, sure, definitely not peer reviewed, but not meaningless either. By my own unscientific poll our offices in China were more optimistic, more open to new ideas and more inventive than our offices in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam.
So, China all good, then? Of course not. I still hate Xi Jinping. Mainly because he’s ruthless and aggressive, at home and abroad, and has increased global tensions. If he’s not a tyrant, he’s tyrant-adjacent. Then again, he’s leading a nation of 1.4 billion, and I run a house with one dog. What do I know?
Well, at least this: the suppression of Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang is horrid. I’m in favour of more pressure on Beijing, including boycott of the Winter Olympics (though many of the commenters at that site are in the “know-nothing-of-China” category). This might harden Beijing’s line against the Uygurs, but can doing nothing be right? What is happening there seems to be the grossest oppression of human rights, if not outright genocide.
And there’s the rest of the ongoing litany, which Xi has only increased: censorship, jailing of dissidents, arbitrary arrests of political opponents, aggression in the South China Seas, use of Belt and Road initiatives to gain footholds across the the region, sabres rattling against Taiwan. Google, FB, Twitter, blogger, all are blocked in China. Oh, and the National Security Law in Hong Kong…
But the people? Happy campers. Back to Alex:
Most Americans think with its democracy, the United States has the best form of government. China, with its one-party dictatorial state, communist or otherwise, has the worst form. This is China’s Achilles' heel and will spell the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In reality, from the Chinese people’s perspective and theirs alone, their government today enjoys greater legitimacy and popularity than any American or Western government with respect to their own citizens.
Consider the latest “Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time” produced by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Based on eight surveys conducted between 2003 and 2016, and face-to-face interviews with more than 31,000 Chinese urban and rural residents, the satisfaction of the Chinese people with the central government was as high as 93.1 per cent in 2016, and that of the other three-level governments – provinces, cities and counties – was more than 70 per cent. By 2016, the Chinese government as a whole was more popular than at any time in the previous 20 years. [Related]
But by an almost universal (mis)understanding, the US government represents the people and their interests while the Chinese government doesn’t. It’s this unshakeable presupposition that leads many outsiders to distinguish between the communist state and the Chinese people. It turns on the all-important question of political legitimacy and explains why top US officials nowadays don’t refer to the Chinese government but the Chinese Communist Party.
…
You are free to hate and despise the Chinese state all you want, but if you think it will collapse by its own weight because it lacks legitimacy or popular support, you will always be surprised and never understand your enemy.
