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biccat wrote:

Melissia wrote:Once more, two mutually exclusive statements. Unless that's your idea of "effective" regulations, in which case I don't think we'll ever agree.

Either you're not understanding the point being made or you're using a completely different definition of "regulations" than that which is commonly understood.

The problem in China isn't the law, it's the rule of law.

Thankyou.

China has no problems enforcing draconian laws. Hence is legalism is 'effective'.

Good example, arresting a dissident on grounds of $2.4M in unpaid taxes. As far as dictatoships go China has some imagination behind its totalitarianism. They might as well have just dumped the victim in a gulag and denied all knowledge of him just like the good ole days of Mao. They used to but now the use a twisted rule of law.

Is it effective? Damn right. China gets away with doing stuff other nations simply cannot, cue the internet controls; And can even push its agenda beyond its borders in spite of foreign pressure; an agenda often based on its own perverted sense of 'justice'. For an example of this look at the reaction to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo. Back in the days of the Soviet Union threats like that are shrugged off or bullied away. China reacts differently and frequently tips its diplomacy with quasi legal rhetoric.

Orlanth wrote:China has no problems enforcing draconian laws.

And yet they either have no regulation or aren't enforcing it, thus people are leaving the country for a place which does have better regulation / actually bothers to enforce it.

Orlanth wrote: As far as dictatoships go China has some imagination behind its totalitarianism.

China isn't a dictatorship. It is totalitarian, but its not a dictatorship. A minor thing, but when you work with this terminology every day its gets at you when its misused.

Orlanth wrote:
For an example of this look at the reaction to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo. Back in the days of the Soviet Union threats like that are shrugged off or bullied away. China reacts differently and frequently tips its diplomacy with quasi legal rhetoric.

Well, it isn't quasi legal, generally they have the right of the law, especially international law, its simply that Western nations tend not to like the light they shine on the holes in the rule of law.

Jackie Chan for President of China.




Wait for it...





Win.

Has been done the past 2 years.

kids with rich chinese parents driving ferraris.
works in a gas station because there is nothing to do.

This gives me a thought.
With so much debt owned by the Chinese, a rival political faction in China would have a lot of friends in Washington if they made assurances regarding American debt payments.

I found the article interesting I have been following Mr. Ai's story but have never heard of the other gentleman. You have got to love that irony, it takes a blind man to stand up and point out serious injustices in the country.

KingCracker wrote:I have to agree with Melissia on that one. You cant make an argument without even bothering to read the damn thing. I think could be a good thing for their country. Sure revolutions can be a pretty disastrous thing, but maybe if we are lucky, America wont have to pay back those loans

Agree.
Besides I think China will fall pretty badly. Its economy is 100% fake based on a bubble.
Look at food prices for example, tied to oil prices. A chinese family spends something like 60% of their income compared to a US family who spends a lot less. Who do you think will take to the streets if the global economy crashes or oil prices go up?

The same things are happening in Egypt on a smaller scale, a small increase in oil prices have thousands of families all of a sudden depending on food handouts.

As for the chinese demographics its a pure disaster. You have a country with over a billion people but only 60 million, about the size of france, earn western standard income, the rest are piss poor.
What country is more sensitive when it comes to economical fluctuations or when a serious trade war hits the global scene?

(edit: added this)

With so much debt owned by the Chinese, a rival political faction in China would have a lot of friends in Washington if they made assurances regarding American debt payments.

Nope, the biggest holders of the US debt are actually the US citizens themselves. Besides debt per see is a bad indicator of coming doom and gloom. Some european countries have bigger GDP debt then the US and the debt of Japan is around 2.5 times as high as the US one plus they are burdened with a really sad demographic and somehow they are still kicking.

Pyriel- wrote:

With so much debt owned by the Chinese, a rival political faction in China would have a lot of friends in Washington if they made assurances regarding American debt payments.

Nope, the biggest holders of the US debt are actually the US citizens themselves. Besides debt per see is a bad indicator of coming doom and gloom. Some european countries have bigger GDP debt then the US and the debt of Japan is around 2.5 times as high as the US one plus they are burdened with a really sad demographic and somehow they are still kicking.

The Chinese owe $1.6 trillion of US debt. Defaulting on your own citizens would cause havok, negotiating with Beijing to eliminate debt would save the US $32bn/year at 2% interest, as well as, obviously, the debt itself.

Probably yes but it still doesnt remove the fact that the US citizens themselves owe the majority of the debt.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote: As far as dictatoships go China has some imagination behind its totalitarianism.

China isn't a dictatorship. It is totalitarian, but its not a dictatorship. A minor thing, but when you work with this terminology every day its gets at you when its misused.

Ok dogma. How would you define China? Also why is it not a dictatorship? Its a single party state with a centralised leadership and no recourse for the people and possibly also the leadership to curtail the people at the top of the pyramid. Is it based on the idea that dictator equals single leader? I cannot personally accept that, noone can work alone even Stalin had to share power to some degree or other.

This is not a challenge by the way. If I am possibly mislabeling the Chinese government it pays for me to be more aware of alternative definitions.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
For an example of this look at the reaction to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo. Back in the days of the Soviet Union threats like that are shrugged off or bullied away. China reacts differently and frequently tips its diplomacy with quasi legal rhetoric.

Well, it isn't quasi legal, generally they have the right of the law, especially international law, its simply that Western nations tend not to like the light they shine on the holes in the rule of law.

'Holes' are subject to opinion, and while the opinion is forced from an occidental point of view a lot of the time a broad moral global concensus can occasionally be found. Is that the fruit of western media or human morality, who can say.

Orlanth wrote:
Ok dogma. How would you define China? Also why is it not a dictatorship?

Its a single party state with a centralised leadership and no recourse for the people and possibly also the leadership to curtail the people at the top of the pyramid. Is it based on the idea that dictator equals single leader? I cannot personally accept that, noone can work alone even Stalin had to share power to some degree or other.

This is not a challenge by the way. If I am possibly mislabeling the Chinese government it pays for me to be more aware of alternative definitions.

Pyriel- wrote:
Besides I think China will fall pretty badly. Its economy is 100% fake based on a bubble.

I hope for the sake of the world economy this does not happen, although based on practically any future forecasts you care to read it won't.

The country is undergoing massive change, in social, industrial and economical terms. These are changes which have taken place in a far shorter time frame than they did in the West, and so have created much more of an unstable situation.

Still, money talks and I think it is pretty interesting the parallels than can be drawn between the situation now and the US/Europe in the early twentieth century. At that time, European leaders travelled to the biggest emerging economy at that time (the US), cap in hand and asked for money. The US knew it would need a large market for it's products and so helped out. Now European leaders are going to China instead and doing the same thing, a hundred years later.

I still think we have to give China time to come to terms with itself, and accept some form of 'moral' relativism, rather than judging it by the standards of a Western yardstick in terms of how they should be behaving. South Korea went through a similar tumultuous time (a dictatorship and state run economy) which made the country one of the richest in the world, culminating in the eventual flowering of a democracy and greater liberty once that had been achieved. So too Japan. I think China has learned something from the failure of the Soviet Union, where Gorbachev and his changes (Perestroika and Glasnost), despite the best of intentions, made too much happen too fast. The end result was the potential for democracy falling on its bum, and the country being raped of its wealth by a handful of individuals. I am sure we would all rather China did not follow suit, the changes to society are coming but they will do so gradually, and no doubt more likely from a result of a position of economic strength and stability which will come when the inevitable plateua of their economic growth starts to near.

I see a lot of comments on this board, and I think it at least in part stems from fear of the changes that are taking place in the world today in terms of geopolitics. We are seeing a broadening of power within the world, a challenge to the unilateral dominance that the US has enjoyed for the past 20 years, and the economic dominion which has existed since at least the 2nd world war. Reading comments in the news now amongst posturing American politicians with regard to China, again it is interesting to draw parallels between them and the kind that were coming out of the UK (or most likely a lot of Europe) in the early twentieth century.
It is creating an uncertain (and for anyone who is a student of politics and history, intriguing) situation, and it will be very interesting to see how things develop over the next 10-15 years or so.

Makes me greatful to live in a country where I can talk gak on the goverment, and rest easy.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Ok dogma. How would you define China? Also why is it not a dictatorship?

Its a single party state with a centralised leadership and no recourse for the people and possibly also the leadership to curtail the people at the top of the pyramid. Is it based on the idea that dictator equals single leader? I cannot personally accept that, noone can work alone even Stalin had to share power to some degree or other.

This is not a challenge by the way. If I am possibly mislabeling the Chinese government it pays for me to be more aware of alternative definitions.

Dictatorships require dictators, China has no dictator (Jiang wasn't forced from office) so it is not a dictatorship. It is totalitarian, but in terms of classification it sits in that body of states that defies Western classification; to some extent by intention.

Ok, would you consider the Soviet Union a dictatorship?
China and the Soviets have a lot in common regarding the upper structures of its leadership.

Like the Soviet Union the political structure of China is subdivided into three bodies working on the principle of the political triangle. Party, State Council and Army. This neatly mirrors the Party, KGB and Party triumvirate of the Soviet Union. All three bodies are ruled by a single supreme leader.

The effective government is led by a table of less than a dozen persons, normally older males: the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. This mirrors the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union. To some extent both bodies were nominally democratic at that level though both are/were subservient to a single supreme leader.

I doubt the Chinese made thier system to break western classification, it would be a poor reason for choosing a government structure and I have no reason to believe China is run that badly. Besides China is big enough to fit into its own category as needed, yet no category seems to exist other than 'communist state' which is a woefully inadequate definition. However I can entirely believe that China obfuscates a lot of its higher echelons of government and in all likelihood far more successfully than most western governments and their analysts would like to admit.

Huffy wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Necroshea wrote:Come now, the way you finished the post it looked as though you did a TLDR section, as many people do. No need to get harsh because someone doesn't want to read a wall of text.

If one doesn't want tor read, then why would one argue in the first place?

Some people love arguing....
and it was an interesting read, though I don't expect too much to change in China in the short run

Oh no they don't....oh wait! aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Heres hoping the revolution starts tonight

Orlanth wrote:
Ok, would you consider the Soviet Union a dictatorship?

Under Stalin, yes. Otherwise, no. Dictatorships need dictators.

Orlanth wrote:
China and the Soviets have a lot in common regarding the upper structures of its leadership.

No, not really. Almost nothing, in fact.

Orlanth wrote:
Like the Soviet Union the political structure of China is subdivided into three bodies working on the principle of the political triangle. Party, State Council and Army.

This neatly mirrors the Party, KGB and Party triumvirate of the Soviet Union. All three bodies are ruled by a single supreme leader.

No, it really doesn't. First off, the NPC actually holds elections. Whether or not you think they're valid is not important, the point is that the Russian Communist Party did no such thing. Additionally, the NPC does not hold a role comparable to that of the KGB, it is either ineffectual, or openly heavy-handed; never surreptitious.

You're reaching to make this comparison.

Orlanth wrote:
The effective government is led by a table of less than a dozen persons, normally older males: the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. This mirrors the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union. To some extent both bodies were nominally democratic at that level though both are/were subservient to a single supreme leader.

That's not indicative of a dictatorship.

Orlanth wrote:
I doubt the Chinese made thier system to break western classification, it would be a poor reason for choosing a government structure and I have no reason to believe China is run that badly. Besides China is big enough to fit into its own category as needed, yet no category seems to exist other than 'communist state' which is a woefully inadequate definition. However I can entirely believe that China obfuscates a lot of its higher echelons of government and in all likelihood far more successfully than most western governments and their analysts would like to admit.

I'm sorry, but China isn't that difficult to understand. It is an authoritarian, corporatist, single-party democracy wherein power is congregated within the Communist Party. There is no secret regarding the power structures of modern China, they aren't hidden. There are, however, Western citizens who cry "Conspiracy!" like certain figures of fable cried "Wolf!"

Pacific wrote:

Pyriel- wrote:
Besides I think China will fall pretty badly. Its economy is 100% fake based on a bubble.

I hope for the sake of the world economy this does not happen, although based on practically any future forecasts you care to read it won't.

The country is undergoing massive change, in social, industrial and economical terms. These are changes which have taken place in a far shorter time frame than they did in the West, and so have created much more of an unstable situation.

Still, money talks and I think it is pretty interesting the parallels than can be drawn between the situation now and the US/Europe in the early twentieth century. At that time, European leaders travelled to the biggest emerging economy at that time (the US), cap in hand and asked for money. The US knew it would need a large market for it's products and so helped out. Now European leaders are going to China instead and doing the same thing, a hundred years later.

I still think we have to give China time to come to terms with itself, and accept some form of 'moral' relativism, rather than judging it by the standards of a Western yardstick in terms of how they should be behaving. South Korea went through a similar tumultuous time (a dictatorship and state run economy) which made the country one of the richest in the world, culminating in the eventual flowering of a democracy and greater liberty once that had been achieved. So too Japan. I think China has learned something from the failure of the Soviet Union, where Gorbachev and his changes (Perestroika and Glasnost), despite the best of intentions, made too much happen too fast. The end result was the potential for democracy falling on its bum, and the country being raped of its wealth by a handful of individuals. I am sure we would all rather China did not follow suit, the changes to society are coming but they will do so gradually, and no doubt more likely from a result of a position of economic strength and stability which will come when the inevitable plateua of their economic growth starts to near.

I see a lot of comments on this board, and I think it at least in part stems from fear of the changes that are taking place in the world today in terms of geopolitics. We are seeing a broadening of power within the world, a challenge to the unilateral dominance that the US has enjoyed for the past 20 years, and the economic dominion which has existed since at least the 2nd world war. Reading comments in the news now amongst posturing American politicians with regard to China, again it is interesting to draw parallels between them and the kind that were coming out of the UK (or most likely a lot of Europe) in the early twentieth century.
It is creating an uncertain (and for anyone who is a student of politics and history, intriguing) situation, and it will be very interesting to see how things develop over the next 10-15 years or so.

I agree but I dont think the changes coming Chinas way will be any good regarding its internal economy.
With a billion starvation-salary people are starting to demand and get better wages and with the rest of the globe no longer as rich as to keep up throwing money their way I see it more or less as a bubble based economy. Already there are entire newly built towns empty and ghostlike with nobody being able to afford living in them, like multiple failed saudi super projects on a grand scale.

Again, who depends more on whom?
The west needs a cheap labour and if china cannot be part of that things will crash but also get back up as they have done multiple times already, if the west no longer can support Chinas bubble on the other hand, well, a billion people directly risking starvation in a country whos internal security budget is actually bigger then their defense/military one just to keep the dissidents of today at bay makes me in no way doubt who will turn up the loosing part of such a mutual economic crash.

If this happens the only way china can prevail or at least keep the game up is by basically starting world war 3 by invading eastern russia which by the way imo will start there if it ever will due to chinas gigantic demands for energy.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Like the Soviet Union the political structure of China is subdivided into three bodies working on the principle of the political triangle. Party, State Council and Army.

This neatly mirrors the Party, KGB and Party triumvirate of the Soviet Union. All three bodies are ruled by a single supreme leader.

No, it really doesn't. First off, the NPC actually holds elections. Whether or not you think they're valid is not important, the point is that the Russian Communist Party did no such thing. Additionally, the NPC does not hold a role comparable to that of the KGB, it is either ineffectual, or openly heavy-handed; never surreptitious.

You're reaching to make this comparison.

Whether the KGB and State Council/NPC hold similar roles are irrelevant. The point remains that China is run along similar lines of a politcal triangle. There are not three main bodies by accident, its an excercise in realpolitik two can joine to curb the third if the third becomes too powerful.
This power structure is common to single party states and rare elsewhere as it is based around checking power in a single party system where there is no recourse for the people to check power. The political triangle still existed at a level below a dictator, it existed in Stalins Soviet Union, and under Mao.
Do you consider Mao a dictator?

Also the Soviets did hold single candidate elections, just as China does, and North Korea. I am not sure if Cuba bothered with that charade.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
The effective government is led by a table of less than a dozen persons, normally older males: the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. This mirrors the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union. To some extent both bodies were nominally democratic at that level though both are/were subservient to a single supreme leader.

That's not indicative of a dictatorship.

Then please tell us what is. The Soviet Union under Stalin and the Soviet Union sans Stalin were in essense the same thing, just less purges. The government structure remained similar. Is you definition of dictatorship based on the level to which a supreme leader in a totalitarian state based on their harshness?
If Brezhnev was not a dictator but had the same toolbox as Stalin how would he be defined?

dogma wrote:
I'm sorry, but China isn't that difficult to understand. It is an authoritarian, corporatist, single-party democracy wherein power is congregated within the Communist Party. There is no secret regarding the power structures of modern China, they aren't hidden. There are, however, Western citizens who cry "Conspiracy!" like certain figures of fable cried "Wolf!"

What conspiracy? Also while we can check off your list of communist, corporatist and authoratarian, they must come together to form a government type, and if no such classification exists then one needs to be coined to account for China.
I draw the line at democracy, a single party state that often holds single candidate lists is not a democracy no matter how you cut it.

As far as the power structures, we can see what they are called, if we could not something would be desperately wrong. My comment was more about how they can conceal what they are doing, China drops suprises on the rest of the world with a frequency that ought to be considered alarming.

Orlanth wrote:The point remains that China is run along similar lines of a politcal triangle. There are not three main bodies by accident, its an excercise in realpolitik two can joine to curb the third if the third becomes too powerful.
This power structure is common to single party states and rare elsewhere as it is based around checking power in a single party system where there is no recourse for the people to check power. The political triangle still existed at a level below a dictator, it existed in Stalins Soviet Union, and under Mao.

It also exists in the United States. The political triangle is no more a hallmark of dictatorships than the separation of powers is indicative of democracy.

Orlanth wrote:
Do you consider Mao a dictator?

Yes.

Orlanth wrote:
Also the Soviets did hold single candidate elections, just as China does, and North Korea. I am not sure if Cuba bothered with that charade.

You're correct, regarding the presence of elections, I was recalling single-candidate status and mistook it for the presence or absence of elections.

China's elections are not single candidate, they are reminiscent of Mexican elections under the PRI.

Orlanth wrote:
Then please tell us what is. The Soviet Union under Stalin and the Soviet Union sans Stalin were in essense the same thing, just less purges. The government structure remained similar.

It did, but the political structure of Soviet Russia was not dictatorial. Soviet dictators (Stalin) had to exercise extra-systemic power in order to concentrate their authority.

Orlanth wrote:
If Brezhnev was not a dictator but had the same toolbox as Stalin how would he be defined?

But he didn't have the same toolbox, at least not meaningfully so. I mean, he could have ordered purges, just as anyone (politician or not) can order purges, but he would not have garnered support for them.

Orlanth wrote:
What conspiracy? Also while we can check off your list of communist, corporatist and authoratarian, they must come together to form a government type, and if no such classification exists then one needs to be coined to account for China.

They have: communist, corporatist, authoritarianism.

Orlanth wrote:
I draw the line at democracy, a single party state that often holds single candidate lists is not a democracy no matter how you cut it.

Sure it is, they allow popular elections for multiple candidates (the lists are not single candidate by policy). Democracy does not entail the ability to choose any possible person as a leader.

Orlanth wrote:
China drops suprises on the rest of the world with a frequency that ought to be considered alarming.

No, they're quite open about what they're going to do, its simply that many analysts don't want to believe state proclamations.