alt Hacker News>Lack of action due to the expectation of long timelines is one of the sins of the lawyerly society.
>But American problems seem more fixable to me than Chinese problems.
China has stayed on trajectory of improving life of its society for a long time. USA has been in decline all that time and decent accelerated after Cold War with Russia ended.
All of China's growth comes from its internal resource. Growth in the USA had been driven by exploiting other countries.
>I made clear in my book that I am drawn to pluralism as well as a broader conception of human flourishing than one that could be delivered by the Communist Party.
Pluralism had been eradicated in the western society. I can't speak freely in Canada. People get cancelled or jailed for speaking their mind in UK. US is not too far behind in that.
There is no meaningful pluralism in the West. They never make a long term plan they can follow for many years.
China has monolithic ( more so ) society with shared culture, language(s) and national identity that runs deep to the gene level. They don't don't allow foreign influence to erode it. It's much easier to make progress when people share the same long term vision and goals.
CPC is doing just fine leading the country into the future. Sure, it has a monopoly on power, but it also owns its mistakes and fixes them. Multiparty systems of the USA and the rest of the West are just two curtains on the stage, and when you draw the curtains you see the same people attending the same party.
Elected officials aim to earn as much as they can in their short stay in power. After all, they only have a few years before they get replaced, better make use of the short time you got.
China IMO has a much brighter outlook for the future
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> USA has been in decline all that time and decent accelerated after Cold War with Russia ended.
Exactly when do you believe this decline started? I have some major concerns about the current trajectory of the USA, but it seems like nonsense to say that the US has been in decline since well before the Cold War ended.
> I can't speak freely in Canada
I wonder what it is that you want to say but can’t.
Comparing China positively against western nations and then griping about limits on freedom of speech in western nations seems suspect regardless.
> Elected officials aim to earn as much as they can in their short stay in power.
That’s true. Unelected officials can stay in power and accrue wealth for much longer than elected officials.
China has very limited internal natural resources. Much of their growth has been enabled by massive imports of raw materials including soybeans, fertilizer, fossil fuels, iron ore, copper ore, etc. Their prosperity and even their survival is heavily dependent on the post-WWII global free trade system. Ironically, China's expansionist foreign policy is one of several factors now causing that system to fray. In another decade they might find it's not so easy to import soybeans from Brazil and crude oil from Saudi Arabia and ores from Australia.
I share your concerns over effective loss of freedom of expression in western countries. In the USA at least cancel culture seems to be dying out and people no longer feel as obligated to be politically correct or self-censor. But the UK may be permanently lost.