←back to thread

293 points doener | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.648s | source
Show context
room271 ◴[] No.23831071[source]
This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope they do so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the Chinese people themselves. And let us work to improve our example and unity too in countries where we do have these things, however imperfectly.
replies(8): >>23831103 #>>23831210 #>>23831233 #>>23831363 #>>23831375 #>>23831513 #>>23831600 #>>23833329 #
free_rms ◴[] No.23831513[source]
Different != Improper.

They're not perfect, but over the last 30 years they lifted half a billion out of poverty and didn't wage war all over the world.

Not everything needs to be wrapped in our style of propaganda, sometimes it can be wrapped in other brands instead.

replies(1): >>23831568 #
HideousKojima ◴[] No.23831568[source]
Percentagewise, China hasn't done any better than South Korea or Taiwan at lifting their populace out of poverty. So I don't see how that comes anywhere close to excusing China's human rights abuses. And while SK and Taiwan only became democracies relatively recently, their human rights abuses even before then pale in comparison to what China is currently doing to Uighurs, Tibetans, and religious minorities in general. So yes, if anything improper is putting things too lightly.
replies(2): >>23831625 #>>23837494 #
free_rms ◴[] No.23831625[source]
I think you're understating the human rights impact of going from third world to first world living standards. You like having your teeth?
replies(1): >>23831798 #
HideousKojima ◴[] No.23831798[source]
No, I'm saying that similar countries were able to lift their populations out of poverty without creating concentration camps for millions of political dissidents and religious minorities in the process. China's economic success isn't tied to its authoritarian regime, and it's actually pretty easy to argue that they would have lifted even more of their population out of poverty even faster if they hadn't had harebrained/genocidal schemes like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and communism in general. China didn't begin to see any significant economic success until after they abandoned most of their communist policies and began liberalizing markets in the late 80's and early 90's.
replies(2): >>23834563 #>>23836916 #
1. chrischen ◴[] No.23836916[source]
I lifted myself out of poverty. You canmt exactly compare myself (population of 1) with the efforts to move a country of over 1 billion people out of poverty. It's not as if I have somehow figured this out and can scale this up to 1 billion people.