[HN Gopher] Xi Jinping's War on Spontaneous Order
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Xi Jinping's War on Spontaneous Order
Author : jseliger
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-09-28 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scholars-stage.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (scholars-stage.org)
| okareaman wrote:
| I'm part of the addiction recovery community, so I read it as Xi
| is doing an intervention on addictive and self-destructive
| aspects of capitalism. The author repeated twice the sentence "An
| outside force is needed to halt the madness. Xi Jinping has
| decided to be that force." Sounds like a healthy intervention to
| me.
| mushbino wrote:
| >Xi Jinping has weaved a "Chinese Dream." He has promised Chinese
| a better life. Growing paychecks aside, the Chinese are not
| living it. Urban China is a society of miserable egoists who feel
| manipulated by forces beyond their own control.
|
| Lots of opinions here without anything backing them up. 93% of
| Chinese citizens approve of their central government. It's been
| steadily growing year over year. Westerners love having opinions
| on how other countries are doing contrary to the facts.
|
| https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/why-chinese-peo...
| thefounder wrote:
| >> 93% of Chinese citizens approve of their central government.
|
| In a communist/dictatorship regime there is little room for a
| different opinion.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I don't think that there exists any regime which will save the
| chinese people from overworking and overcompeting themselves.
|
| You can give a person money and power but you can't force them
| to be laid back altruists.
|
| So the "not living it" part is not relevant, but neither are
| Xi's "measures".
| droptablemain wrote:
| Also nearly 100 million members of the Communist Party --
| roughly 1/3 the size of the entire U.S.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You don't generally join the party because you believe so
| strongly in communism. You join it for the improved job
| prospects.
| dragonelite wrote:
| So people in the west do the same, improving your social
| network nothing wrong with it.
| erulabs wrote:
| Nothing wrong with joining a political party, empowering
| the single-party state, for better job prospects?
|
| Nothing wrong with acting contrary to your believes in
| order to get ahead of someone honest?
|
| Nothing wrong with it? What is right with it!?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| There's a single party in the US, and people here seem
| fine with it. In fact, because that party has two
| factions, we call it "freedom."
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm not saying there's something wrong with it -- my
| point is strictly limited to the claim that the size of
| the Communist Party is not related to the strength of
| support for communism in China.
|
| (Though it's not all about improving your social network.
| You will still enjoy improved job prospects even if you
| have no relevant network.)
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| I think it can be simultaneously true that Chinese (or rather
| urban Chinese) feel manipulated by forces beyond their own
| control, and that most of them approve of their central
| government. The fact that the central government is trying to
| reign in these forces might contribute to that approval.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| > 93% of Chinese citizens approve of their central government.
|
| I have doubts about both this assertion and the source
| provided.
|
| was this a rigorous assesment? is this a reputable source?
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| smart, we should also implement controls in the west, we can't
| rely on companies inside the capitalism system to do what is
| right for the people at large, if companies can get away with
| selling heroin to children, they will do so. The big problem
| these days is (software) companies essentially hijacking the
| primitive brain centers for pleasure, fear, attention etc... and
| commoditizing them.
| jayspell wrote:
| Who would we give these controls to? Would this be the
| government? Hard pass on that. I do believe in controls, but
| those controls are best left to the individual. I don't need a
| bureaucrat telling my kids they can't play video games 8 hours
| a day, that's my responsibility. I don't need a government
| agency dictating I can't invest in risky real estate ventures,
| it's my fault if I invest and lose my money. I don't disagree
| that control is needed, just the level at which it is applied.
| I will admit to being conflicted. I don't like the idea of
| legalized herion, though I did support marijuana legalization
| initially.
| Bayart wrote:
| Controls should be exerted on companies and institutions, not
| people. Case in point : the government has no place telling
| you how long your kids can play, but you might need the
| government to get rid of highly damaging practices like loot
| boxes.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| > I don't need a bureaucrat telling my kids they can't play
| video games 8 hours a day, that's my responsibility.
|
| Just like the Covid restrictions have shown, trying to appeal
| to the responsibility of the individual doesn't seem to be
| the winning move for governments.
| hillsboroughman wrote:
| I dont know if anyone read this:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/27/china-to-limit...
|
| A lot of the big drives that Xi is on seem to be simply to reduce
| cost per child for a family so they will have more children.
| Thats why they want to go after the after-school tuition
| industry. They want to go after the housing industry and now this
| Texas style restriction on reproductive rights. Of course
| everything Xi does is not motivated by a single objective. But
| the Chinese are laser focused right now on creating conditions
| which would increase their population.
| hillsboroughman wrote:
| On a side note, it wouldn't do to assume the Chinese behavior is
| fundamentally irrational.
| droptablemain wrote:
| "The extent to which Xi's reading of classical Marxist texts has
| inspired this campaign is not clear."
|
| It seems the article's author has not read Xi Jinping's multi-
| volume series "The Governance of China," which very clearly lays
| China's path toward building a "moderately prosperous socialist
| nation" using fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist thought adapted to
| China's material conditions -- i.e. "Socialism with Chinese
| Characteristics."
|
| It's not a big secret. You can buy an English translation on
| Amazon or even get a free copy from your local embassy/consulate.
| rmah wrote:
| While I know nothing about Tanner Greer, the author of that
| article, it would not surprise me in the least if he had not
| read Xi's books. The intro callout is from Kevin Rudd, former
| prime minister of Australia. While I'd give his opinions some
| weight, I'd hardly consider him an expert on the inner workings
| of the CCP. And the book highlighted in the article "Marxism
| and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom" was written by Andrzej
| Walicki, that wikipedia describes as a prof at Notre Dame who
| "specialized in philosophy of sociopolitics, history of Polish
| and Russian philosophy, Marxism and liberal thought".
|
| I can't recall who it was, but I recall viewing a lecture by a
| china-scholar maybe 10 years ago who was ranting about how the
| fall of the soviet union had spurred many economic-socio-
| political academic types to switch to china. And how most of
| them could not read chinese so could not read original sources.
| And how many of them had never visited china. Or communicated
| with any chinese officials, much less citizens. But that didn't
| stop them from pontificating about what china was like, what
| china would do and what china was thinking. I don't know if
| it's just me, but both western political leadership and media
| just seem... less than knowledgeable about China.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I think the problem is a bit like when you're reading western
| accademic's take on what some USSR marxist, or some Chinese
| marxist is saying. There's a good chance the accademic has
| read a bit of marx, maybe even most of marx, but it's just
| nothing in comparison to the degree of inculcation you get by
| actually _being_ a marxist surrounded by other marxists.
|
| Everything that's influential in China is like that. You
| don't learn it in school in the west, it's deep and difficult
| and takes a lifetime to learn (for instance, if you try to
| get into eastern philosophy, even with prior philosophy
| training, it's pretty hard). The history, even the parts of
| Chinese history europeans had a hand in, is not taught or
| generally remembered. So the ignorance becomes so compounded
| and pervasive that you get the situation where even domain
| experts end up having quite limited expertise, because
| they're missing deep proficiency in one of the many
| traditions that makes modern China make sense.
|
| It's a bit like when you hear a non-programmer talk about
| programming. No matter how clever they are, it's always sort
| of immediately obvious.
| yorwba wrote:
| > There's a good chance the accademic has read a bit of
| marx, maybe even most of marx, but it's just nothing in
| comparison to the degree of inculcation you get by actually
| being a marxist surrounded by other marxists.
|
| Tanner Greer actually has an entire article on the
| necessity and difficulty of immersing oneself in the
| discourse: https://scholars-stage.org/the-education-china-
| hands-need-bu...
|
| He's also definitely read "Governance of China", the book
| series droptablemain suggests he should read (he references
| it occasionally https://scholars-
| stage.org/?s=Governance%20of%20China ) Suffice to say he
| knows his stuff.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| It's also available online:
| https://www.xuexi.cn/d6399cd070074625b24eb5952a5ea64c/b7dd5b...
|
| Amusingly, the book's website has a "how to buy" button that...
| links directly to the Amazon product page:
| http://www.china.org.cn/china/node_7214554.htm What, the Party
| can't run its own shipping operation?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Now, this sounds like generic Marxist theology, likely writen
| by some nameless drone ghost writer.
|
| Stalin had "Marxism in a specific country", Khruschev (or was
| it Brezhnev?) had "socialism with human face".
| droptablemain wrote:
| Stalin had "socialism in one country," and yes, that has
| significant material and historical meaning, as opposed to
| being generic fluff.
|
| Because it was generally believed that building socialism
| required a number of successful workers' revolutions around
| the world. But basically every revolution at the time failed,
| other than the Bolshevik revolution. So they found themselves
| in an awkward position. Hence the strategy and policy of
| Stalin to build "socialism in one country."
|
| This is one of the major breaks between Stalin and Trotsky.
| eunos wrote:
| likely by Wang Huning
| neaden wrote:
| I guess the question is how much of that is post-facto
| justification vs actual motivation.
| nickff wrote:
| My view is that Xi Jinping is basically practicing the
| classic technique of re-interpreting accepted texts to mean
| what you want, as a way of making your point while appearing
| to 'stay the course'. I think Strauss described and practiced
| this very well in "Persecution and the Art of Writing".[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_and_the_Art_of_
| Wri...
| droptablemain wrote:
| Regardless of whether the method has some origin in classic
| technique, it is indeed a strategy that the vast majority
| of AES (actually existing socialism) states have done.
| That's why Soviet ideology was Marxism-Leninism
| vs...well...Marxism.
|
| The Sandanistas, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. have done this as
| well. Also the Bolivarian socialists.
| _jal wrote:
| Every power structure does it. SCOTUS justices reach
| diametrically opposite conclusions through the same
| 'technique'.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| In practical terms what China is doing right now is not so
| different from the NEP of Lenin.
| thriftwy wrote:
| My favourite point when dealing with USSR sympathiers is
| that Chinese success is owed to 40 years of NEP, which was
| shut down in the USSR and doomed it.
|
| (And this is due to Soviet distrust of its own Russian
| population, and also due to habit of siphoning money out of
| consumer economy)
|
| Edit: The thing is, USSR was doomed after winning WW2.
|
| It had to compete with the rest of the world economically
| without having adequate economy. USA just had to choose the
| relevant weapon (consumer economy) to win this one.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not so clear that the shut-down of the NEP doomed
| the USSR. The argument that without Stalin's focus on
| heavy industry the USSR would have lost WW2 is a good
| one.
|
| Naturally the NEP developed light industry much more
| strongly than Stalin has and neglected the heavy industry
| necessary to win WW2 relatively.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| But Lenin viewed the NEP as a compromise with capitalism to
| gain time awaiting the world revolution, a dangerous one
| because it breed a new capitalist class out of peasants.
| Simultaneously with the NEP, Bolsheviks tried to help the
| world revolution (the policy of the third international
| before Stalin). China is not trying to foster any
| revolution, they have 100 billionaries as parliament
| members! China policy seems one of restoration of
| capitalism, not of compromise.
| civilized wrote:
| What exactly does "moderately prosperous" mean here?
| eunos wrote:
| A quora answer said that it resembled post WW2 US. Strong
| middle class with less inequality.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| As someone who's lived in Shanghai for over a decade the
| idea of describing China as having less inequality than the
| US is hilarious. China isn't that poor. People were very
| close to equal in 1970 or 1980. They were poor in Tianjin.
| They were poor in Shanghai, They were poor in Hefei. Now
| large portions of the counytry are as well off as Poland
| and there are significant numbers of very wealthy people.
|
| China is not poor enough to be equal. It's not Chad. It's
| developing rapidly economically.
|
| It also does not resemble post WW2 USA in the pay
| structure. That artificially compressed pay structure, with
| doctors only earning 3 times what people in low level
| manufacturing make, requires a level of labor scarcity
| China still hasn't reached after 40 years of economic
| growth.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I think it means GDP PPP per capita of like 21 000$
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > This talk of peaceful development needs to be taken
| seriously. So I set about combing through my two English
| volumes of Xi Jinping's _Governance of China_ looking for the
| phrase and sentiments similar to it. Occasionally I would
| consult the Chinese edition of the same books when I wanted to
| see how a certain phrase or idea was conveyed in the original.
| I then tried to think of major events in the years since Volume
| II was published where Xi would have had cause to touch on
| these themes, and eventually realized that the most important
| certainly would have been the 2018 Central Conference on Work
| Relating to Foreign Affairs, which gathered together the
| politburo, the heads of the intelligence, united front, and
| foreign affairs bureaucracies, and all of China's ambassadors
| under one roof to learn about "Xi Jinping Thought on Foreign
| Work." Xi's speech at that event has not yet been published,
| but I spent some time going through the Xinhua read-outs of it,
| as well as reading Yang Jiechi's two lengthy precis of XJP
| Thought on Foreign Work for Qiushi.
|
| https://scholars-stage.org/xi-jinping-and-the-laws-of-histor...
| tlss wrote:
| > The first time an angel heard the devil's laughter, he was
| dumbfounded. That happened at a feast in a crowded room, where
| the devil's laughter, which is terribly contagious, spread from
| one person to another. The angel clearly understood that such
| laughter was directed against God and against the dignity of His
| works. He knew that he must react swiftly somehow, but felt weak
| and defenseless. Unable to come up with anything of his own, he
| aped adversary. Opening his mouth, he emitted broken, spasmodic
| sounds in the higher reaches of his vocal range (a bit like the
| sound made on the street of a seaside town by Michelle and
| Gabrielle), but giving them an opposite meaning: whereas the
| devil's laughter denoted the absurdity of things, the angel on
| the contrary meant to rejoice over how well ordered, wisely
| conceived, good and meaningful everything here below was.
|
| > The angel and the devil faced each other and, mouths wide open,
| emitted nearly the same sounds, but each one's noises expressed
| the absolute opposite of the other's. And seeing the angel laugh,
| the devil laughed all the more, all the harder, and all the more
| blatantly, because the laughing angel was infinitely comical.
|
| > Laughable laughter is disastrous. Even so, the angels have
| gained something from it. They have tricked us with a semantic
| imposture. Their imitation of laughter and (the devil's) original
| laughter are both called by the same name. Nowadays, we don't
| even realize that the same external display serves two absolutely
| opposed internal attitude. There are two laughters, and we have
| no word to tell one from the other.
|
| -- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
| scarmig wrote:
| > He has promised Chinese a better life. Growing paychecks aside,
| the Chinese are not living it.
|
| I mean... growing paychecks instead of stagnation would do a
| whole lot to arrest the instability that Western liberal
| democracies are experiencing.
| beebmam wrote:
| Paychecks are rising in the US, certainly. Just not very
| equally.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Wages are only going up if you are at the very top. The
| bottom half is not going up.
|
| https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2020/09/1.
| ..
| mimikatz wrote:
| This is a rough claim to make today. There a "fight" for
| 15, now most places are paying 15 for labor and Amazon
| warehouses are pushing 25. In the last year its pretty
| clear ages have gone up for the bottom half and by a large
| margin.
| [deleted]
| simonh wrote:
| As against in China?
| dragonelite wrote:
| But paychecks have no been outrunning inflation or follow
| productivity increase at least here in western Europe.
|
| My paychecks if lucky grows like 2~3% but my house value
| rises with like 10~18% so do my taxes I need to pay for
| owning a house.
| strict9 wrote:
| Securities, property, crypto and other related assets are the
| real rising stars.
|
| The rise of paychecks against that backdrop is very small. In
| the context of everything else that's increasing in price, it
| feels like a wash.
| adflux wrote:
| Yup, thank the Federal Reserve. Elites profit the most from
| generous quantitative easing, aka "printer go brrr".
| Meanwhile you'll be paying double for a house.
| throwaway34241 wrote:
| The Fed's mandate includes keeping unemployment low, and
| its main tool for that (lowering interest rates) has the
| side effect of inflating asset prices. But what else can
| they do? The alternative (fiscal policy) is congress's
| responsibility and outside their control. If congress
| decided to take action they would adjust accordingly, in
| the mean time they are doing what they are officially
| tasked with with the tools that they have, even if that
| may not be ideal.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Yes, all taxation is theft, but inflation is a tax that
| is especially bad since it is regressive (affects the
| poor most), extra-judicial (no one voted to authorize
| it), and hidden (or at least disguised).
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Increase can only be considered against inflation. They
| aren't really.
| nemothekid wrote:
| This kind of reads like western propaganda trying to carry water
| desperately for capitalism. I forgot what part of communism meant
| you couldn't have semiconductor factories (Regardless, China's
| largest semiconductors are state owned so I don't know why he
| brings this up).
|
| A much more rational view I've come to understand is the CCP now
| has very wealthy leaders from the private sector who are now
| getting more active in politics. This is standard - once a
| business grows large enough, business risk from the state grows
| larger and it becomes important to be able to influence the
| state. China will now have to balance the needs of the public and
| private sectors and I imagine the old guys aren't as keen to let
| the private sector do what it wants. The common prosperity
| initiative is now a tool that Xi can wield against more
| capitalist upstarts in the CCP.
| [deleted]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I wouldn't understate the Marxist aspects of Chinese politics
| today which the author seems to tend towards. The technological
| determinism that guides Chinese politics is still very
| authentically Marxist. However he's right that there is a
| significant dose of what looks more like Confucianism than
| Communism in the reforms.
|
| If one looks at the kind of intellectual work that is popular in
| China today next to Marx there is also Carl Schmitt or Strauss. A
| lot of state capacity in China is directed towards rebuilding
| Chinese civilization, the industrialism or hard-technology focus
| of Chinese politics has a distinct nationalist, Conservative
| bent.
| rackjack wrote:
| There can only be the state. Anything that threatens the state's
| dominance in people's minds and lives must be subjugated to the
| state. That's the point of a totalitarian regime.
| guardiangod wrote:
| >Each targets an industry that seems to strip people of their
| agency and rob them of their dignity. Each seems to hijack
| healthy behavior with a set of short term incentives whose end
| results are self destructive and degrading.
|
| >One does not wish to waste a child's youth away on 18 hours of
| evening cram school a week, but to do otherwise is to risk
| falling behind. It is a classic arms race problem: no player can
| stop the game from the inside, even though all players would
| benefit from a cap on the game. An outside force is needed to
| halt the madness. Xi Jinping has decided to be that force.
|
| I feel the author's logic is flawed here. In the previous
| paragraph, he wrote-
|
| >Xi Jinping is not reigning in capitalism writ large; Beijing is
| not scrapping market mechanisms altogether. Semiconductor
| foundries, agricultural conglomerates, and Christmas light
| factories (to choose three examples of hundreds) have been
| untouched by Xi's 'common prosperity' agenda. It is a very select
| slice of Chinese capitalism that is being "reigned in."
|
| You mean, working in 'agricultural conglomerates' or being
| factory workers making 50 RMB a day, is not 'hijack healthy
| behavior with a set of short term incentives whose end results
| are self destructive and degrading.'? (short term benefit for the
| factory owners to the detriment of the society and workers.)
|
| The author took a winded way to try to distinguish the reason why
| certain industries are targeted, but really there is no need- the
| PRC literally tells you why themselves: 'Fictitious Economy' vs
| 'Real Economy' .
|
| (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-cabinet-says-it-w...)
|
| In Xi's eyes, anything that can't be physically grasp and control
| by the party belongs to 'Fictitious Economy' , hence the move to
| squash meal delivery (self-organized proto-union),
| k-pop/entertainment (voluntary idol worship), cram school
| (corruption and private source of education), and real estate
| (mass bubble speculation). Real Economy is output that the party
| can allocate and mobilize. The populace must lie down and accept
| whatever the party provides.
|
| No need to invoke fancy Marxism philosophies.
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(page generated 2021-09-28 23:01 UTC)