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They ran a low-tech version of this playbook in Tibet in the 50s. That erasure feels pretty complete now. Tibet is like some mix of history and dated fashion now. Fading along with Richard Gere. The refugees in India are basically 3rd gen immigrants with no live ties.
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Anyone who thinks China represents an alternative future for the world is indulging in pure wishful thinking. They are merely reproducing the worst of the West’s past, with better technology, and bigger bribes for the rest of the world to just look away.
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Did China ever have anything like even a brief historical period of liberal pluralism and open intellectual culture? This civilizational insistence on stability by any means necessary seems kinda insane. Especially for such a huge population.
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I sometimes think China is 1.5 billion people trapped by a shared language, while India is 1.2 billion people protected by the lack of one. There’s a strong correlation between linguistic monocultures and repressive polities.
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Only a designer could admire China’s governance model. It’s an aesthetocracy. Everyone I know who admires the “Chinese way” is an aesthete in some way.
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Yes, many. The “civilizational insistence on stability” is a CCP propaganda aim, they want ppl to think that it’s the “culture” that prizes stability, not the authoritarian regime currently ruling it
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Doubt it. Think China's equilibriums are either repressive control or all out war. Imo, the land mass is too continuously flat for pluralism without war.