Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes.
One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people.
Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people.
They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration.
They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship (hunger, lack of medication, being separated from children in hospital, being separated from sick parents, etc).
Of course none of that is true.
For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
We have to compensate for human imperfection, the same way a good engineer takes into consideration the imperfection of the materials, imperfection of signals, numerical imperfections in algorithms, etc.
I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating.
>One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people.
This is absolutely not unique to China. How many times have we heard "if only everyone did this or that, the measures would have worked!" coming from official authorities here in the west? I know it happened a lot where I live, and It honestly surprised me how almost every measure was based on that crappy assumption.
I think the opposite: that China is a powder keg ready to go off at any moment - and the leaders know it very well and are generally pretty afraid of things blowing up.
There are a lot of protests in China we don't hear about.
Something about Chinese (in China) ... leads me to think they go big on memes. They revolt unlike anything we know of.
Do you remember the video form Feb 2020 in Wuhan? The madness, hospitals flooded?
Imagine all over China.
As long as the economy is steaming forward, people will look the other way.
But as soon as that starts to slow down, then I think it's going to get hot.
Edit, for my naysayers:
"The number of workers' strikes rose to a record level in 2015. The China Labor Bulletin mentioned 2,509 strikes and protests by workers and employees in China."
That's just labour disputes and doesn't include disputes concerning appropriated land, safety issues with products - i.e. the kinds of things where there's some tolerance for dissent. [1] And note that it's increasing every year.
Especially due to the power of Social Media, if China didn't have censorship the CCP would be out within months. They are well aware of this.
I doubt their model is that people are perfect. I think their model assumes that if they set strong enough incentives, the human-error will only be a second order effect and can be safely ignored. I don't know how well they've estimated the political price for some of these incentives, and whether they have the political capital to expend to maintain this lockdown for much longer.
I like to use an analogy where every country is represented by a couple of people in a bar. China is the group who plans their consumptions two months in advance and sticks to its plan. America is the group that gets into a brawl in one moment, and in the next, builds a functional rocket in the parking lot.
> If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
> I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating.
Probably it will take at least one year and a half - two years, at least that's how long it took the Western authorities to somehow change their discourse. Some people around the Western parts of the world still believe in mask mandates, to say nothing of the vaccine mandates if you want to visit their country (Greece, for example).
Thankfully all this China situation will have eased up the censorship reflex present in some Western media/social platforms, now it's again cool and super ok to complain about the lockdowns and to call them authoritarian because it's the evil Chinese that are implementing them. When us, the West, were doing them it was "for democracy" and for the greater good (for "the demos"). When the streets of NYC or London were empty because of lockdowns it was a civic thing, when the streets of Shanghai are empty (as The Economist was decrying in one of the its latest issues) is because the Chinese authorities want the worst for their people.
> leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people
Only androids that are physically unable to empathise would make such an assumption. That's literally the definition of android from Philip K. Dick, and the basis of cyberpunk stories like Blade Runner. In this case the androids are the Communist Party of China and are trying to contain a virus with no knowledge or understanding how tens of millions of citizens would react to being locked in their tiny homes risking starvation.
At least the current evidences (excluding Shanghai) has shown that the virus can be contained. Yes, there are cases, but cities have managed to contain it and people are normally back to normal after two weeks semi-lockdown. Of course, with Shanghai keeps having new cases, things may change.
The government is pushing for old people to get vaccination. Old generation in China are not getting vaccinations because they worry it may have side effects. As far as I have heard, the government is pushing it by linking some money (old people get some government money for special occasions) with the vaccination.
Overall, the country will have to accept the fact that the virus will spread, especially if they want to open borders. The current strategy is to contain it as much as you can. Once it open up, it will have a peak similar to Hong Kong, maybe hundred of thousands of old people will die.
"For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions."
<Sarcasm>which is why all democracies defeated COVID with the three-week lockdown in which no one left home unless they had to and took proper precautions to ensure that they did not dare transmit any disease to anyone else</sarcasm>
No, I would say that modern democracies and enshrine human imperfections into the process in order to further the will to power that exists in those seeking office.
> They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship
China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades.
> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
Since we’re talking counter evidence:
- Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship
- Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizens to be model minorities, and most of the orderliness or Japan is because of cultural reasons. Additionally, people are expected to not make mistakes.
America does have other ways it recognizes and adapts to human flaws: by embracing the free market. Adam Smith’s wealth of nations mentioned it not out of altruism, but selfishness that everyone thrives.
It’s not entirely attributable to democracy. In fact, many are arguing to remove the electoral college. A popular vote would be more Democratic in the Ancient Greek sense no? But our founder fathers designed America against that, to prevent tyranny of the masses.
> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
This is not uniquely America or contemporary. Any great past civilization accounted for this if it lasted for a long time.
The secret police apparently got to the author of the video:
- "“However, I don’t wish this video to be distributed in the directions I don’t want,” he added. “I hope everyone stops sharing, or please asking people you know to stop sharing.”"
How did this article get the view "behind the curtain"? Conference calls of the Beijing network surveillance office are hardly public knowledge?
Together with the imprecise writing ("All the alerts went red") the articles claims are hard to take at face value.
So...how can we trust the writings of the author? Can the data be validated elsewhere? A video posted 8PM with ...11PM it has 30 million views...midnight 100 million, 1:05AM, 300 million. There were 200 million WeChat users up between 12AM and 1:05AM who viewed it?
And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later?
I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit breakers much earlier than at 400 million, and if things go 'red' I wouldn't wait till after lunch the next day to convene a meeting. But, that's just me.
> At this time the public opinion control system warning was triggered, and manual intervention began. ... manual intervention could not keep up with the speed of retweeting and posting. All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort.
How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.
One aspect of this that i'm hoping a more informed person can comment on:
Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? From what I previously read Shanghai was discussed as a factional stronghold not wholly subservient to the national government (to Xi). That being the case i've been curious if these draconian measures have been imposed from the national level meant to weaken that faction's provincial support?
Given the numbers of deaths being so low and not having read about overwhelmed hospitals, these almost seem like own-goals by the chinese government? But a factional dispute would explain it, in my mind. Does anyone have any better data?
I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.
These same draconian measures were how China supposedly weathered the initial spread of COVID well if those reports are to be believed, and even if you don't it's the party line. Given that, it would seem more likely that they'll double down since "this worked before."
Along these same lines, crushing dissenters is also something the government has much experience with, and has also "worked before" in the worst ways. I don't hold out much hope in terms of anti-government movements taking root and actually effecting change.
Is xi Jinping’s grip on power really that strong? Is there no chance the CCP can vote to remove him and change course? I doubt all of them feel great about returning to a new Mao-like era when the more economically free system was clearly pleasant enough.
I dunno, one of the stronger sentiments seems to be "the Shanghai government is fucking this up, we need the central government to take over and fix this".
What bothers me in the past few days is to make sense of what’s happening in Shanghai. There are quite a bit of rumors, but nothing makes sense. However, now I think that I have arrived at a reasonable explanation of what happened.
First, let’s establish some facts:
1. Once you have more than 10k cases in a city with Omicron (R0 ~ 9), true zero-covid policy (as opposed to zero-covid in-face policy, a.k.a. Hong Kong) will cause big human suffering no matter what. There are limitations on what an organization can do.
2. Xi is not a smart person, but he has a big picture in mind and is ruthless. He doesn’t mind being hated in one place, as long as he maintains the power.
3. There are no success stories under CCP to fight one faction against another with street movements. CCP is allergic to any instability, especially after the Cultural Revolution. That is why 1989 can only be ended in that particular way.
If you only looked at the symptomatic cases in Shanghai, it can be argued that the dynamic zeroing policy is working, and there is no exponential growth.
With these facts in mind, it doesn’t make sense if Shanghai Clique wants to use the Shanghai situation as ammunition against Xi. The dissatisfaction of Shanghai people will only translate into street movement, a.k.a: instability. If it is a way to prove zero-covid policy doesn’t work, anywhere else is much better to start, and you want it to be nation-wide. For example, Beijing is a much better place to start and Xi would lose face big time.
What’s more plausible, is the following:
Shanghai encountered an outbreak of Omicron, and they chose to weather through this with a combination of under-testing and natural immunity (Shanghai has the highest vaccination rate in China and it shows from the asymptomatic cases). Xi & his people saw an opening to expel Shanghai Clique once for all, and start to implement the most strict zero-covid policy in Shanghai.
So far, the reaction has been what they were expecting. People are revolting, which in turn fueled hatred against Shanghainese in other parts of China. Further instability in Shanghai ensured, and that can only help him to consolidate power more just before the Conference. Remember, Xi’s base is never the middle-class from big cities.
What Shanghai Clique can do:
Contrary to other rumors, there are limited options Shanghai Clique has. Street movements (like Colour Revolution) would guarantee a failure, and further erosion of their power. However, they can leverage Jiang’s influence by having him visit Fangcang. He enjoyed great respect from the old generation of Shanghai. However, this is a tricky balance because aligning themselves as sympathizers to street movements is a sure way to lose power within CCP (like Zhao in 1989).
I can confirm that this was being shared Friday and Saturday and a lot of people cross posted screenshots of deleted videos to their Instagram stories.
Honestly, this video is sad, but it's incredibly tame compared to criticisms of western Governments you see every day online. China even with their firewall can't stop people sharing this kind of thing widely. Everyone knows all their "official" figures around Covid are made up. I think they are backing the wrong horse on this occasion and their strategy could backfire bigtime. I don't think the other countries will have much sympathy if there is widespread hunger and unrest in China. Will be interesting to see what happens.
It is crazy that CCP is again on the course of self destruction.
Maybe this sort of self destruction is inevitable for every single major power. It is just a matter if one can correct the wrong and change course before it is too late.
USA ditched Trump by election. Putin is doing shit to Russia.
It is happening in China now.
Chinese people can put up with CCP because we have been through too much disasters. A stable and somehow rational one-party rule is NOT so bad as long as stability is maintained and people's private space is respected to an acceptable level.
Shanghai is right now at the edge of breaking this unwritten agreement between CCP and the people. If this goes on for a few more weeks, there will be social unrest.
Just a note, the English subtitling in the video embedded in this post is pretty inaccurate in places. Not in a malicious way, I think the translator just isn't very skilled at English. If you haven't seen the video before I would suggest this version which should be easier to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_thLXNHY8
Does anyone understand why China is willing to implement these extremely draconian lockdown measures, but not to mandate vaccination? As I understand it the main reason why the virus is still so dangerous there is due to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population. I'm not saying I personally support forced vaccination, but I'm surprised that the CCP doesn't, given they're willing to forcibly detain people who test positive.
Home made vaccine isn't as effective against variants as thought, so mandatory vaccinations would expose its ineffectiveness. Importing Western made mrna vax (Moderna, Pfizer) runs contrary to years of CCP propaganda where China has outsmarted capitalist Western ideas. China's response has been nationalist in nature, a "China strong, rally around the CCP" world where they painted themselves as the only ones in the world who had it figured out.
Xi is also up for a historic 3rd term after removing most of the checks on his power. The thrust of his campaign has been give more power to Xi, because authoritarianism solves your problems.
Anything that runs contrary to these narratives is not going to happen, even if it benefits the nation.
Peter Zeihan says that they never secured a supply of mRNA vaccine. Instead, (partly because of national pride) they created their own non-mRNA vaccine, which does not work as well.
I can also add that because of this, people in other cities do not see the wechat moments posts of people in Shanghai. May have been relaxed by now but has been the case.
My guess is there's too much money on the table for those in the western establishment (corporate media and government) to call a spade a spade. If official criticism of China becomes too strong then the public might start asking for the sort of economic sanctions that would hurt western business interests as well. Basically, a manifestation of that old theory about international trade preempting wars.
Some in the west certainly have labelled it that. There's quite a number of humanitarian crises going on at the moment, as have been over the past few years (and basically forever). Western leaders don't get up in the morning and recite lists of them.
The lockdowns might be useful from a strategic perspective for western leaders (ie undermining faith in Chinese leadership within Shanghai residents), while also actively calling it a humanitarian crisis would hurt the relationship with China which is already extremely fragile because of Russia/Ukraine (ie official criticism of the Chinese government may result in additional support for Russia).
My western biased understanding of China has me convinced this is at least mostly true. I am confused, though, about the calculation of what percentage of Chinese netizens saw the video.
[+] [-] hongsy|3 years ago|reply
Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes.
https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/tragedy-and-hope-in-sha...
[+] [-] udev|3 years ago|reply
Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people.
They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration.
They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship (hunger, lack of medication, being separated from children in hospital, being separated from sick parents, etc).
Of course none of that is true.
For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
We have to compensate for human imperfection, the same way a good engineer takes into consideration the imperfection of the materials, imperfection of signals, numerical imperfections in algorithms, etc.
I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating.
[+] [-] mardifoufs|3 years ago|reply
This is absolutely not unique to China. How many times have we heard "if only everyone did this or that, the measures would have worked!" coming from official authorities here in the west? I know it happened a lot where I live, and It honestly surprised me how almost every measure was based on that crappy assumption.
[+] [-] jollybean|3 years ago|reply
There are a lot of protests in China we don't hear about.
Something about Chinese (in China) ... leads me to think they go big on memes. They revolt unlike anything we know of.
Do you remember the video form Feb 2020 in Wuhan? The madness, hospitals flooded?
Imagine all over China.
As long as the economy is steaming forward, people will look the other way.
But as soon as that starts to slow down, then I think it's going to get hot.
Edit, for my naysayers:
"The number of workers' strikes rose to a record level in 2015. The China Labor Bulletin mentioned 2,509 strikes and protests by workers and employees in China."
That's just labour disputes and doesn't include disputes concerning appropriated land, safety issues with products - i.e. the kinds of things where there's some tolerance for dissent. [1] And note that it's increasing every year.
Especially due to the power of Social Media, if China didn't have censorship the CCP would be out within months. They are well aware of this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China
[+] [-] karpierz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Victerius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|3 years ago|reply
‘Just 15 days to stop the spread!’
‘The lockdowns should be stricter, look at how well it works in China!’
‘If you are against lockdowns, you’re killing grandma and you should be locked up!’
[+] [-] Thorrez|3 years ago|reply
Federalist No. 51, James Madison
[+] [-] paganel|3 years ago|reply
Probably it will take at least one year and a half - two years, at least that's how long it took the Western authorities to somehow change their discourse. Some people around the Western parts of the world still believe in mask mandates, to say nothing of the vaccine mandates if you want to visit their country (Greece, for example).
Thankfully all this China situation will have eased up the censorship reflex present in some Western media/social platforms, now it's again cool and super ok to complain about the lockdowns and to call them authoritarian because it's the evil Chinese that are implementing them. When us, the West, were doing them it was "for democracy" and for the greater good (for "the demos"). When the streets of NYC or London were empty because of lockdowns it was a civic thing, when the streets of Shanghai are empty (as The Economist was decrying in one of the its latest issues) is because the Chinese authorities want the worst for their people.
[+] [-] rapsey|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sph|3 years ago|reply
Only androids that are physically unable to empathise would make such an assumption. That's literally the definition of android from Philip K. Dick, and the basis of cyberpunk stories like Blade Runner. In this case the androids are the Communist Party of China and are trying to contain a virus with no knowledge or understanding how tens of millions of citizens would react to being locked in their tiny homes risking starvation.
[+] [-] powerapple|3 years ago|reply
The government is pushing for old people to get vaccination. Old generation in China are not getting vaccinations because they worry it may have side effects. As far as I have heard, the government is pushing it by linking some money (old people get some government money for special occasions) with the vaccination.
Overall, the country will have to accept the fact that the virus will spread, especially if they want to open borders. The current strategy is to contain it as much as you can. Once it open up, it will have a peak similar to Hong Kong, maybe hundred of thousands of old people will die.
[+] [-] readthenotes1|3 years ago|reply
<Sarcasm>which is why all democracies defeated COVID with the three-week lockdown in which no one left home unless they had to and took proper precautions to ensure that they did not dare transmit any disease to anyone else</sarcasm>
No, I would say that modern democracies and enshrine human imperfections into the process in order to further the will to power that exists in those seeking office.
[+] [-] alephnan|3 years ago|reply
China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades.
> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
Since we’re talking counter evidence:
- Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship - Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizens to be model minorities, and most of the orderliness or Japan is because of cultural reasons. Additionally, people are expected to not make mistakes.
America does have other ways it recognizes and adapts to human flaws: by embracing the free market. Adam Smith’s wealth of nations mentioned it not out of altruism, but selfishness that everyone thrives.
It’s not entirely attributable to democracy. In fact, many are arguing to remove the electoral college. A popular vote would be more Democratic in the Ancient Greek sense no? But our founder fathers designed America against that, to prevent tyranny of the masses.
> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
This is not uniquely America or contemporary. Any great past civilization accounted for this if it lasted for a long time.
[+] [-] perihelions|3 years ago|reply
- "“However, I don’t wish this video to be distributed in the directions I don’t want,” he added. “I hope everyone stops sharing, or please asking people you know to stop sharing.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april...
[+] [-] nielsole|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fma|3 years ago|reply
And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later?
I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit breakers much earlier than at 400 million, and if things go 'red' I wouldn't wait till after lunch the next day to convene a meeting. But, that's just me.
[+] [-] wodenokoto|3 years ago|reply
How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.
[+] [-] usernomdeguerre|3 years ago|reply
Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? From what I previously read Shanghai was discussed as a factional stronghold not wholly subservient to the national government (to Xi). That being the case i've been curious if these draconian measures have been imposed from the national level meant to weaken that faction's provincial support?
Given the numbers of deaths being so low and not having read about overwhelmed hospitals, these almost seem like own-goals by the chinese government? But a factional dispute would explain it, in my mind. Does anyone have any better data?
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BeefWellington|3 years ago|reply
Along these same lines, crushing dissenters is also something the government has much experience with, and has also "worked before" in the worst ways. I don't hold out much hope in terms of anti-government movements taking root and actually effecting change.
[+] [-] etaioinshrdlu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whoevercares|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liuliu|3 years ago|reply
---
What bothers me in the past few days is to make sense of what’s happening in Shanghai. There are quite a bit of rumors, but nothing makes sense. However, now I think that I have arrived at a reasonable explanation of what happened.
First, let’s establish some facts:
1. Once you have more than 10k cases in a city with Omicron (R0 ~ 9), true zero-covid policy (as opposed to zero-covid in-face policy, a.k.a. Hong Kong) will cause big human suffering no matter what. There are limitations on what an organization can do.
2. Xi is not a smart person, but he has a big picture in mind and is ruthless. He doesn’t mind being hated in one place, as long as he maintains the power.
3. There are no success stories under CCP to fight one faction against another with street movements. CCP is allergic to any instability, especially after the Cultural Revolution. That is why 1989 can only be ended in that particular way. If you only looked at the symptomatic cases in Shanghai, it can be argued that the dynamic zeroing policy is working, and there is no exponential growth.
With these facts in mind, it doesn’t make sense if Shanghai Clique wants to use the Shanghai situation as ammunition against Xi. The dissatisfaction of Shanghai people will only translate into street movement, a.k.a: instability. If it is a way to prove zero-covid policy doesn’t work, anywhere else is much better to start, and you want it to be nation-wide. For example, Beijing is a much better place to start and Xi would lose face big time.
What’s more plausible, is the following:
Shanghai encountered an outbreak of Omicron, and they chose to weather through this with a combination of under-testing and natural immunity (Shanghai has the highest vaccination rate in China and it shows from the asymptomatic cases). Xi & his people saw an opening to expel Shanghai Clique once for all, and start to implement the most strict zero-covid policy in Shanghai.
So far, the reaction has been what they were expecting. People are revolting, which in turn fueled hatred against Shanghainese in other parts of China. Further instability in Shanghai ensured, and that can only help him to consolidate power more just before the Conference. Remember, Xi’s base is never the middle-class from big cities.
What Shanghai Clique can do:
Contrary to other rumors, there are limited options Shanghai Clique has. Street movements (like Colour Revolution) would guarantee a failure, and further erosion of their power. However, they can leverage Jiang’s influence by having him visit Fangcang. He enjoyed great respect from the old generation of Shanghai. However, this is a tricky balance because aligning themselves as sympathizers to street movements is a sure way to lose power within CCP (like Zhao in 1989).
[+] [-] tfcata|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] effrtg3|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway4good|3 years ago|reply
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393...
Shanghai adds 51 new deaths from Covid-19, takes total toll to 138 amid rise in symptomatic cases
City reports rise in new symptomatic cases to 2,472, while total new infections amounted to 19,455 in the previous 24 hours, a slight decline
Local health authorities in Beijing say the virus has been spreading undetected in the city for about a week
[+] [-] user_named|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thorin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fqye|3 years ago|reply
It is crazy that CCP is again on the course of self destruction.
Maybe this sort of self destruction is inevitable for every single major power. It is just a matter if one can correct the wrong and change course before it is too late.
USA ditched Trump by election. Putin is doing shit to Russia.
It is happening in China now.
Chinese people can put up with CCP because we have been through too much disasters. A stable and somehow rational one-party rule is NOT so bad as long as stability is maintained and people's private space is respected to an acceptable level.
Shanghai is right now at the edge of breaking this unwritten agreement between CCP and the people. If this goes on for a few more weeks, there will be social unrest.
I am not optimistic about it.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] resfirestar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempestn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|3 years ago|reply
Xi is also up for a historic 3rd term after removing most of the checks on his power. The thrust of his campaign has been give more power to Xi, because authoritarianism solves your problems.
Anything that runs contrary to these narratives is not going to happen, even if it benefits the nation.
[+] [-] hollerith|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user_named|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] langsoul-com|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robonerd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robonerd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kube-system|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jollybean|3 years ago|reply
It's one form of response to a deadly disease.
If people were literally starving in the streets, then yes, but that's not what's happening.
It's 'very authoritarian' - but we already all know that.
[+] [-] laverya|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Closi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|3 years ago|reply
In a despotic country that could be a constant thing.
[+] [-] StopDarkPattern|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SixDouble5321|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rishabhd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usrn|3 years ago|reply