What’s the awful everything else? China has consistently some of the highest government satisfaction rates in the world
As a Spaniard, it’s hard to conceive 90+% of the population being satisfied with the central government, everyone here hates our government and politicians.
Are you sure you’re speaking for Chinese people when you criticize whatever “everything else” you refer to?
So 1.4 billion Chinese are essentially suffering Stockholm Syndrome from the evil Chinese Government, and their satisfaction rates have nothing to do with the consistently increasing living standards?
As a Spaniard, you should ask your parents and/or grandparents if in Franco’s day they would really tell their real opinions about their government to some random person doing a poll.
Government satisfaction data in an autocracy is always going to be poluted because people fear their words might reach the ears of somebody in a position of authority and them being punished in some way for being critical of the government, so they keep it to themselves and share it at most with family and close friends.
(And this is before we even count the effects from people’s main information sources being highly controlled in such regimes, so literally they might think other countries are shitholes compared to theirs because that’s what newspapes and TV tell them. Even though people are quite a lot more cynical about the “news” in such regimes - one of the Soviet times jokes was “There is no pravda [truth] in the Pravda [the newspaper], there is no izvestia [news] in the Izvestia [another newspaper]” - such total control in aggregate still pushes public opinion to be better than otherwise).
People have no such need to keep their mouth shut in Democracies. Further, I would even say that in Democracies people are incentivised to be loudly critical - those who support a different political party than the one in power tend to be loudly critical purelly out of tribalism, same as they would criticize the other team in a footbal match even if that team was playing well.
All this to say that we don’t really know how much people in China are satisfied or not with the authorities there because smart people living in a autocratic regime know better than to voice criticism of those in power, which polutes the data, whilst in Democracies political clubism also probably polutes the data but in the opposite direction.
In a field of shit, pointing at a specific turd and shouting “Look at that shit” is at best redundant, at worst sleazy propagandistic and hipocrite bollocks.
China’s present day level of support for atrocity is nothing compared with most of the West’s active support (diplomatic, economic and even with weapons) for the the present day equivalent of the Nazis committing a Genocide in Gaza.
Even what Russia is doing in Ukraine (with the support of China) is nowhere close to that shit if measured in terms of civilian casualties as a percentage of the population (even if including military casualties, it’s still well below the levels of bloodshed in Gaza).
We would need to go back to the time of Mao to find China supporting atrocities at such a level.
That “atrocities” flag is best waved from the top of the moral high ground, not from the top of a pile of Palestinian children’s bones.
What’s the awful everything else? China has consistently some of the highest government satisfaction rates in the world
As a Spaniard, it’s hard to conceive 90+% of the population being satisfied with the central government, everyone here hates our government and politicians.
Are you sure you’re speaking for Chinese people when you criticize whatever “everything else” you refer to?
“When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds soon follow”
John Dean
So 1.4 billion Chinese are essentially suffering Stockholm Syndrome from the evil Chinese Government, and their satisfaction rates have nothing to do with the consistently increasing living standards?
As a Spaniard, you should ask your parents and/or grandparents if in Franco’s day they would really tell their real opinions about their government to some random person doing a poll.
Government satisfaction data in an autocracy is always going to be poluted because people fear their words might reach the ears of somebody in a position of authority and them being punished in some way for being critical of the government, so they keep it to themselves and share it at most with family and close friends.
(And this is before we even count the effects from people’s main information sources being highly controlled in such regimes, so literally they might think other countries are shitholes compared to theirs because that’s what newspapes and TV tell them. Even though people are quite a lot more cynical about the “news” in such regimes - one of the Soviet times jokes was “There is no pravda [truth] in the Pravda [the newspaper], there is no izvestia [news] in the Izvestia [another newspaper]” - such total control in aggregate still pushes public opinion to be better than otherwise).
People have no such need to keep their mouth shut in Democracies. Further, I would even say that in Democracies people are incentivised to be loudly critical - those who support a different political party than the one in power tend to be loudly critical purelly out of tribalism, same as they would criticize the other team in a footbal match even if that team was playing well.
All this to say that we don’t really know how much people in China are satisfied or not with the authorities there because smart people living in a autocratic regime know better than to voice criticism of those in power, which polutes the data, whilst in Democracies political clubism also probably polutes the data but in the opposite direction.
It’s great being comfortable while your government is committing atrocities. Cozy cozy!
In a field of shit, pointing at a specific turd and shouting “Look at that shit” is at best redundant, at worst sleazy propagandistic and hipocrite bollocks.
China’s present day level of support for atrocity is nothing compared with most of the West’s active support (diplomatic, economic and even with weapons) for the the present day equivalent of the Nazis committing a Genocide in Gaza.
Even what Russia is doing in Ukraine (with the support of China) is nowhere close to that shit if measured in terms of civilian casualties as a percentage of the population (even if including military casualties, it’s still well below the levels of bloodshed in Gaza).
We would need to go back to the time of Mao to find China supporting atrocities at such a level.
That “atrocities” flag is best waved from the top of the moral high ground, not from the top of a pile of Palestinian children’s bones.
Waiting for the day someone finds a government who doesn’t commit atrocities.