alt Hacker NewsIf there was one critical miscalculation the West (particularly the US) made in the last 40 years, it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms. There was a mistaking of capitalism for human rights. While it is a human right to own property and use it to rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced.
If investment was the key to liberalization, we would have seen far greater investment behind the then-fallen Iron Curtain, where countries had actively turned their backs on command economies. The cynic in me thinks that capital didn't like just how that had turned out. If a country's people could either violently (Romania) or peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such totalitarian systems of politics and economics, they could also reject methods of accumulating capital that might run afoul of their values.
China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism. People were free to try new things that could create economic expansion, but only in a way that served the needs of the state. Anything else would be handled with the same totalitarian methods that political dissidents and class enemies were once handled with under Mao. While this has ebbed and flowed over the years, it essentially remains the system in place.
Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.
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"Lai is a victim of this miscalculation."; I don't think Lai miscalculated, he knew what was coming and fought it anyway.
"Authority comes from submission"; sure someone can threaten you with physical coercion, but they can't make you want to submit. I would strongly suspect that Jimmy knew what was coming, but the point isn't "winning" in the "hollywood" sense, but rather that he did the right thing even. I would suspect not even in spite of the cost, but because of the cost.
Are principles that don't cost you anything even principles?
The weird thing is China is absolutely jam packed with small companies. Go to a trade show and you'll find dozens of companies selling basically the same products with minor variations. It's absolutely cutthroat.
In the US we tend to see small companies get gobbled up by huge incumbents regularly, but in China the situation is much more in flux and it's not always obvious who the winners are going to be. It's the opposite of what you would expect from a command economy, at least in the tech and consumer product sectors.
I think it started out that way before Xi. But they soon realized they can actually overtake the US if they play it right. At least until the Chinese demand higher wages relative to the world, it’s going to be nearly impossible to compete against China in manufacturing. Likely at least another 15-20 years.
Miscalculation on what level? I think you are right concerning the methods as during the “last-stand” at hk poly technic, tanks were assembling in Futian Shenzhen (sat images.. what was this site again)
So far you're right but the tide can always turn. China has massively overbuilt housing supply, which is the kind of mistake that a freer economy couldn't make. China's failed birth policies (1 child until 2015!) are another example.
My opinion is still that capitalism (Western style) will win. Not because markets are never wrong but because the scope for fucking up is so much less. Markets can't decide "families can have only one child" or "we need to build 90 million units of housing" (that now sits empty). An accumulation of fuck-ups in this vein is inevitable when you have a small group of people making these kinds of decisions. In the long run, it will be fatal.
The West failed in its goals but the flip side is they unintentionally made it possible to pull 750 million people out of poverty. Probably the greatest western foreign policy victory ever.
> Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.
I don't think it was a miscalculation. Greed always ran deep in the West too.
> If a country's people could either violently (Romania) or peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such totalitarian systems of politics
It's not always possible. It works in some countries but not in others. For instance, it seems not possible in Russia.
> China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism. People were free to try new things that could create economic expansion, but only in a way that served the needs of the state.
I somewhat agree, as the sinomarxist theorem and strategem is about that (and the sinomarxists also managed to bring out many people out of poverty too), but your analysis is not entirely correct either as China has many superrich now, which is a perversion in the system. So Xi also lies here. Because how can there be so many super-superrich? This is a master-slave situation, just like in other capitalistic countries. So why then the lie about sinomarxism? They just sell it like an ideology now, not unlike the Juche crap in North Korea.
China hasn't become a Western capitalist democracy, but it has changed enormously for the better from the genocidal tyranny of the Mao era, and my guess is that it will keep changing.
One "first principles" way to think about it is that money is power, and as the Chinese middle class grows bigger and richer, it will have more and more of the power. I expect it will want similar things as the middle class in other countries.
This may take any number of decades, which unfortunately makes this a hard theory to falsify.
> it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms
China now _is_ far more liberal than in the 80-s. But it's also not even close to the Western democracies.
> China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism.
Not really. "State capitalism" really is misleading. China is fiercely capitalistic, far more than any modern Western country. The ruling party has an unspoken agreement with the population: you stay out of politics, and they stay out of your business.
But I don't think this is sustainable. Russia had a similar social compact, and it had been broken after the Ukrainian invasion. There was too much power concentrated in one person, and it just never works.
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> it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms...
That's a rewriting of history and a common misconception I've seen repeated ad nauseam both on HN and (what I assume is it's origin) Reddit.
The West (primarily the US and then-West Germany) began investing in China in the 1970s to 1989 explicitly as a bulwark against the USSR [0] due to the Sino-Soviet Split. The "economic democratization" argument was a 1990s-era framing to reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO [1] along with to reduce the sanctions enforced following the Tienanmen Square massacre [2].
George HW Bush as well as Clinton's NSC Asia Director Kenneth Lieberthal were both massive Chinaphiles, and played a major role in cementing the position China is in today.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-needs...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-tianan...
> While it is a human right to own property and use it to rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced.
I'd argue that communism is the only system of government that guarantees property for all. That's somewhat a core tenant that every member in a communist society collectively owns everything.
Capitalism is optimized to reduce or eliminate property access. For example, a free market capitalist has no problems with a very rich individual buying a city and perpetually renting the property to it's employees at rates above their salary, putting them in perpetual debt to that individual. They own nothing and can't escape their circumstances. Nor can their children.
Capitalism with minimal or no regulation naturally devolves into feudalism.
Did big businesses in the West really think “investing” in China would lead to “freedom” and such? Isn’t that framing a bit naive?
They went to China because it was cheaper. They went there in detriment of their countrymen that went without jobs, in detriment of the environment (what with all the shipping boom that followed), even in detriment of their own countries, since this would stifle development and industrialization. And they KNEW that technology transfer would follow, because China had made it clear.
No one forced them to do it. They did it knowingly in the name of short and medium-term profit. I’m not even judging if that is bad (I do THINK it’s bad overall, but I’m not arguing it here). I’m just pointing out what happened.
So now the West must not be surprised. And they aren’t! They just need to craft narratives that will paint them in good light.