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The Last Real Calvinist's avatar

I'm no China expert, but I was just up in Shenzhen today, and I've lived next door to the PRC for the past 35 years, and have been there many many times, so I'll make a couple of comments.

First, I'd say you're on the right track, Steve. Perceptions of China in the USA and other western countries seem to vacillate wildly, between a grim 1980s greyscape with everyone in Mao jackets, to an invincible futuristic surveillance state run by impossibly prescient and cunning planners who know exactly how many times everybody in the country has tried to watch Apple TV using a VPN.

The truth seems to be way more complicated, and maybe more boring. China has a lot of the same problems as other industrial to (increasingly) post-industrial countries. And they're maybe not quite the juggernaut of totalitarianism they're portrayed as in surprisingly bipartisan circles in the USA.

For example, I recommend this DM article, which is unusually well-written and informative. It suggests that the PRC's social credit system is really quite different -- mostly far less powerful and extensive -- than most people assume: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14312543/china-social-credit-score-incorrect-behaviour.html

It rings true to me.

What China does have is a lot of really impressive new infrastructure. How much it's all going to pay off, with a population that's now falling, is an interesting question. More on this later; I've got to get some sleep now.

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Bill Price's avatar

When I lived in China I traveled out to the hinterlands on one occasion to visit some of the interesting parts of the interior and west of the country.

Just flying out there was amazing because of the view. The evidence of human habitation was everywhere but the infrastructure at the time (late 90s) was very primitive. It's the opposite of the western US where we have nice highways and Interstates cutting through uninhabited wilderness.

This is why central control is tenuous, and also explains the enormous investment in infrastructure since then.

But it goes beyond roads and railways. Culturally China is much less homogeneous than Americans realize. I came across lots of people who were speaking languages that were not any form of Chinese, and even local dialects of Chinese differ from town to town (the difference between Beijing and Tianjin Chinese was immediately noticeable).

Even in neighborhoods there are always myriad little schemes going on, plots, intrigues, scams, ad-hoc commercial enterprises -- you name it. The idea that Beijing exercises total control has always seemed ludicrous to me having seen how little control they exercise a few streets down from Zhongnanhai.

But the ability to navigate this chaos is a great advantage vis-à-vis the West, especially in terms of intelligence, influence and infiltration. The Chinese "spy," for example, is likely some guy who fled China to the US due to some local scheme gone wrong, then through random opportunistic connections a higher-up hears he's working at Long Beach and puts him to work in *his* scheme in return for paying off his debt.

Yes, China is Chinatown -- times a million.

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