this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024

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Beijing refuses to admit its economy has broken down — and that's one reason officials are failing at fixing it, researchers say (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/world

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I find that to be a tricky thought experiment.

Can you run a country in a way that peppers the general population with "all is well" propaganda thoroughly and still manages to capture all the necessary information to make properly informed decisions at some high level?

You'd need some "elite" layer of people who get to see unfiltered, honest information, but how would you even collect that information if even local, low-level government actors are subject to (and meant to believe) the propaganda?

Basically what I'm asking is: if I ignored moral concerns, is there a world where keeping the majority ignorant could actually lead to more efficiency than letting knowledge of the state of things spread?

[–] Dead_or_Alive 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The answer is no. Xi has killed or has displaced not only anyone who posed a threat to him, but he has done the same to anyone who could possibly be a threat. There is no one left at any level of government who can exercise independent thought and action. He has also killed the messenger so many times that bad news just doesn’t get put before him. Xi wasn’t aware of rolling blackouts in Beijing in 2022 until US diplomats asking him about it.

Balloon gate is another example of how the Chinese government is breaking down. A few weeks before Blinken was supposed to travel to Beijing to try and de-escalate the economic war with China they launched that stupid balloon. Not only was it an intelligence coup for the US but it killed any kind of initiative to tone down the economic war for at least 6 months. A functioning government doesn’t do that. They don’t let their intelligence services launch over flights of nations they are trying to negotiate with.

Xi might be the smartest guy in China but one man can’t make all critical decisions to save a complex economy like theirs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Xi might be the smartest guy in China

He's just another mediocre autocrat. Chinese history is filled with idiots like him. Most don't die in their sleep.

[–] Dead_or_Alive 1 points 10 months ago

It was a rhetorical statement… Authoritarians are fundamentally flawed people.

[–] SlopppyEngineer 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Sounds like the whole "let's keep the invasion secret" the Russians tried to do. It certainly wasn't more efficient. People on the ground were acting on the "training mission" and were not prepared for what really happened.

[–] ArbiterXero 17 points 10 months ago

That’s a great example of what goes wrong, and it was amazing to get the news on it.

“By the way, you’re now an invading force, surprise!”

It has a very “zap Brannigan” feel to it

[–] PoorYorick 2 points 10 months ago

I would imagine it would take a multi-level caste system, and generations of reinforcement combined with a prescribed dogmatic belief in processes (Think Warhammer 40k Adeptus Mechanicus).

Even then I dont think it would be a terribly agile organization and my guess is that it would react to external changes very very slowly as all the information would have to slowly filter up through the various castes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

if I ignored moral concerns, is there a world where keeping the majority ignorant could actually lead to more efficiency than letting knowledge of the state of things spread?

No, because systems and complexity and chaos theory: To be a good regulator of a system you need to be a model of that system and a small elite can't model the lower ranks, no matter how much GPUs you give them to run ML^1^ software on, as humans not to speak of societies are chaotic systems and there are no closed-form solutions to those.

Which is why hierarchical power is a completely bonkers idea that'll never work out and the only way out is to develop horizontal structures of organisation. That is, become an anarchist, the only political theory mathematically proven (see above) to even have a chance of working out.

^1^ Pun not intended but accepted.

[–] jaxxed 1 points 10 months ago

Politics I a competitive sport. Your opponents would out you ... unless you do what Xi does.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For a moment I thought his name tag in the picture was a juice box.

[–] marx2k 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For a moment I read your comment as "for a moment I thought his name tag in the picture was juice box" as in his name is "juice box". I ended up clicking on the pic and realized what you meant.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Aren't we all just confused and dazed muppets bumping into each other in the twilight of our world? I wish his name was juice box.

[–] w2tpmf 3 points 10 months ago

What kind of defeatist mentality is that? Come on. We can totally make this a thing.

Dictator Juice Box!

[–] Num10ck 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

reality has a way of reasserting itself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Reality is just an invention by Western colonialists to make the Best Country look bad!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Sounds awfully familiar... Time for some glasnost and perestroika?

[–] Gradually_Adjusting 7 points 10 months ago

The WTO protests were prescient. China as it exists was never going to be reformed by economic inclusion.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While the stock markets have tanked, with losses widening earlier this week to some $7 trillion from their peaks in 2021, economic statistics are not all uniformly gloomy.

Despite this, Beijing didn't quite fix its fundamental problems and was instead pulling other moves like wooing foreign investment and threatening those critical of its flailing economy.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on New Year's Eve that the country's economy is "more resilient and dynamic than before," even as he acknowledged that some businesses were having a "tough time."

Rhodium Group's researchers aren't quite sure about the rosy narrative of China's economy, calling it a "politicized picture of economic activity."

Even though Beijing claimed China outperformed its GDP growth target of 5%, authorities were still in "a running battle to roll out extraordinary support measures," Rhodium wrote.

At the end of the day, official Chinese statistics haven't "conceded this reality" of a loss in market confidence and economic troubles, they wrote.

The original article contains 457 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] zarathustra0 4 points 10 months ago

Sounds like Britain for the past 15 years.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Surely China's gonna collapse any minute now... Lmao

[–] NIB 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It isnt about China collapsing, the West didnt collapse in 2008, it is about understanding reality and taking measures to deal with issues. China used construction similarly to how people in the West used the stock market. As a speculative investment scheme. And similarly to stocks, there were some underlying issues that caused a massive bubble(on top of your typical capitalism issues).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I know lol, I'm just being bitter and sarcastic

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Lol you guys literally do just that for the US every day who you laughing at?

The West will fall.... one day... soon? -you

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Inshallah

Granted I don't expect it within my lifetime

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago

Funny, they were saying the same thing about America last year. Obviously our propaganda is right tho