The antifreeze toothpaste people didn’t get away with it, nor did the 3000 pigs in the river people, and nor did that one group of executives who were in charge of a fertilizer/chemical plant that was one of the largest industrial catastrophes in the world let alone China.
If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance. You can’t buy your way out if you do something so spectacular that you cause the government to lose face.
You might as well go jump off a building or a bridge cause you’re done for.
> nor did the 3000 pigs in the river people, and nor did that one group of executives who were in charge of a fertilizer/chemical plant
What about the bridge falling down people, or the overpromised scam apartment people, or the tunnel that flooded people, or the police officers that blocked view of the flowers left for the folks who died in the tunnel that flooded people, or the opened the dam to flood the farmers during the rainy season people, or the fake drains people, or the fake fire hydrants people, or the lead paint in the kids school food people, or the covered up the lead paint in the kids school food doctors, or the barricaded an apartment that was burning during covid people, or the apartments with styrofoam instead of concrete that collapsed in venezuela earthquake people...?
I haven't heard of many of these but the ones I have were state actors covering up things the state itself did or enabled. that's a different category from private executives getting punished when they embarrass Beijing.
i looked it up and at least the evergrande ceo seems to have bern fined to the point where he had to declare bankruptcy (as of a few months ago, my information is old), so i guess he did find some justice (i think hes not very bright and was likely lied to by his underlings -- many such cases, so it is nice that the buck stopped there but the root cause was not fixed afaict)
Evergrande was a credit crunch similar to Silicon Valley Bank, they were funding development of projects by selling the units before they're built, they got ahead of themselves and then a pullback in housing prices exposed them.
It sucks extra bad for the people who took out a mortgage for a home that didn't get finished, but it does seem like more of a screwup than corruption.
? Everyone in the party is incolved in similar crimes. The only thing they are guilty off in addition is a lack of loyalty to emperor xi. Incompetence and criminal corruption, that you can edit out of history, but intrigue is unforgivable.
Are you sure?
Do you have an example of substantial disaster or scandal that resulted in loss of life and loss of face for China, but perpetuators got away?
For UK I have: Grenfell tower scandal (over 100 dead, no one in prison), infected blood scandal (thousands dead, no one in prison), postmaster scandal (thousands falsely imprisoned , no perpetrator in prison), etc.
Well but the point was, that these are wiped from the internet. Sure it’s convenient, but I wouldn’t put it past the Chinese government - I’m sure they have erased quite a bit of uncomfortable facts.
If it leaks into independent medias, they probably will have a hard time erasing it. If they erase it before it makes it to any independent media, they have a good chance it will never surface again. At least that’s how I imagine it.
They ran a rolling internment program for a few years, holding people against their will in mandatory patriotism camp for months at a time.
That's bad and wrong but you need to be killing people to call it genocide. It's been a master class in propaganda on this topic, look up the name Adrian Zenz and see how often he gets uncritically quoted.
It's never meant only that, but that's not the argument. We decided that a long time ago.
Genocide refers to a People (race, kind, tribe, family, etc.), not individual people. The group is a concept, and 'killing' it doesn't have to involve the biological death of the group members. That's part of what the linked resolution is trying to say.
For example, you could go sterilize every member of an ethnic group, without killing - causing the biological death of - any of them. None of them will be able to have children, and as they die of old age, the group disappears. That's genocide.
Another example would be to forcibly separate all the members of the group and prevent them from engaging in the lifestyle associated with membership in the group (e.g. style of dress, music, food, language, worship, etc.). Over time, perhaps generations, the people basically give up trying to do any of these things if they even remember what they were. They have no group cohesion, so the group has essentially disappeared. No need to directly cause any biological death. The argument is that if this is done intentionally, it is also genocide.
Genocide as a concept is about ending the group, not specifically the individual members. It's definitely true that you can end a group by killing all its members, though.
Ok but none of those things came even close to happening in this case. The arguments are all, like, it was in pursuit of genocide, because I say so, so if one guy died in detention then it's a genocide.
Well there are allegations of mass detentions, forced labor, destruction of religious sites, suppression of language, separation of children into Chinese-controlled boarding schools, coercive birth control, and sterilization.
You agreed with me that genocide is more expansive than "we're directly killing people". For the sake of argument, let's assume the allegations are true: what would you call that?
But the allegations aren't true for the most part. Some are out-of-context true, like if you have too many kids they sterilize you, that was true across China for decades and going away now. But then the limit on kids for minorities was HIGHER than it was for Han Chinese until recently. So were they self genociding?
Taking an angle like "well, lets assume these things are true, THEN can we accuse China of genocide" is basically what the media did for 5 years on this topic.
Was, yes. That policy ended in 2017 I think, which I don't know if I call that recent. Post-2017 some evidence pieced together by a journalist suggested that IUDs and forced sterilizations were higher in Xinjiang than the rest of the country, and went up when the rest of the country went down. But you're right, their population has not evaporated.
My point about the assumption was to get you to agree that if these things are happening, we know that it constitutes genocide. At this point I don't care if you agree or not.
They stopped being higher because the limit was raised from 2-3 for Han, not because it went down for minorities. It happened in 2021.
And it's very easy for me to believe that rates of childbirth and hence violations are higher for subsistence farmer populations than urban workers, because that's true everywhere. Uyghur population grew a ton between 2010-2020, 3 kids per couple is net growth.
Lastly, no, there's no such thing as a "technical" genocide on a points system without some massive crimes against humanity that would drop anyone's jaw, and those things are hard to hide. It's not like you make a couple of technical errors and, oops, genocide even though the population is substantially fine and economic reforms are working.
So beeing unable to keep up, because your culture holds you back that is a genocide? Like somebody develops machines, that marginalize your existence until you fade away, that is a genocide?
No I believe it requires intent (possibly systemic in nature) on the part of the perpetrator. If the quakers end up disappearing and it turns out to be primarily due to their refusal to adopt modern technology that's not genocide as I understand it so long as everyone else was at worst indifferent to their plight.
It doesn't cheapen the word. If discrimination is intentional and has the effect of minimizing and eventually eliminating the target ethnic group, then you have the same result as if you lined up everyone in that group and shot them.
The word is attached to the intended outcome, not the specific actions taken to achieve it.
You're omitting so much, such as torture and ethnic cleansing and massive levels of abuse. Any genocidal concentration camp could be called 'an internment camp'. Anyone reading this, just look up coverage in credible sources.
I really haven’t written anything about Uyghurs specifically. I only corrected your mistaken assumption that genocide must necessarily involve the killing or physical extermination of people. It doesn't even require to be successful at its mission - it's the intent when taking any of the specified actions that counts, such as causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing destructive conditions of life, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children. If those acts are committed with intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part, it might be considered a genocide.
So “Uyghur restaurants still exist” or “Uyghur people still exist” does not answer the legal question. The relevant question is whether the group’s cultural, religious, familial, or biological continuity is being targeted as a group. It's enough to do this in a single village.
This may sound like a grammar nitpick, but I think it points to the actual issue: “the people still exist and are fine” does not answer the genocide question.
Genocide is not simply about whether “the people” — individual members of a group — still exist. It is about whether a people — a protected group as such — is being targeted for destruction, in whole or in part.
So the relevant question is not merely whether “the people still exist and are fine,” but whether a people still exists as a people, and whether it is fine culturally, religiously, socially, biologically, and institutionally.
In this particular case, I don’t claim to have enough information to make a final judgment. But the fact that so little independent journalism and investigation is possible must be blamed on the CCP and cannot be treated as counterevidence. Unlike individual human beings in a court of law, governments that suppress a free press and block independent investigations should not receive the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion.
I'm saying all of the people still exist and their lives were never in danger. There were some dozens executed for actual terror/separatism charges, maybe some of those cases were bad, but it was not a threat to "the people".
The fact that the argument has to lean into technicalities and attributed unspoken intentions rather than actual horrors should say everything.
There are people saying all the Jews were still alive in Germany. For a matter of fact, I've recently been to a jewish restaurant. The owners seemed fine.
And those people are cranks because we have tons of evidence of the holocaust.
Conversely, in this case, Adrian Zenz is a crank because for a decade he's been unable to put up any. In an era where every single person carries a high def video camera in their pocket. It's a faith-based accusation.
What if a culture is genocidal and hellbent in removing all minorities from its surroundings? Like nazis driving everything away in a wave of conquest? Is extinction of this genocide? Look at the minority histograms of the middle east for example
> Brother, I eat at a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan pretty regularly.
Honest question here;
is it a traditional Uyghur owned and managed restaurant freely frequented by local Uyghurs as a living expression of past and ongoing Uyghur culture, or
is it more a Disney "themed Uyghur restaurant" with the same relationship to Uyghur culture as Outback Steakhouse has to actual IRL Australian food and culture (ie three tenths of f-all).
It's run by a family from there, they speak dialect among themselves which is very much not Wuhanhua. The food is only slightly xinjiang actually, its a stretch noodle shop with a couple of lamb dishes.
But even if it were the latter.. even that would go against the narrative of total cultural hostility?
In context, and I'm not just thinking of Uyghur culture in China here, the presence of {X}-like restaurants can mean a lot of things.
Majority culture "celebrating" / "allowing" minority culture restaurants, clubs, bars, etc happens in many different ways with many differing meanings, complicated layers even.
Black Harlem in New York went through stages of being an outpost of US black culture(s) (from US North and South, urban, rural, "African"), a hip place for hip white people, birth place for new takes on old culture, etc. All that while the attitude of majority culture in the US fluxed a few times wrt black minority culture.
TLDR; It's hard to get a read on what a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan means either way in the greater China attitude toward the re-education of the Uyghur.
Ok, can I step back a bit and call out some big picture differences?
The legacy of slavery in America is a key component of the microwave background radiation there, the story seeps into default assumptions of everything.
China just.. doesn't have that. They had slavery amongst themselves in the olden days like everyone else but no master race chattel slavery period. There's definitely racism on the black/white scale here but it mostly goes with perceived income/status of the black/white foreigner (most blacks here are from africa), its not some core piece of the national story.
Additionally, minorities here have mostly always been loosely governed people at the empire's periphery, rather than integrated and persecuted in the core. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_regions_of_China). The Xinjiang camps were an exceptional case after some terror attacks, and they're over now.
I think the equivalent core narrative here would be being victims of colonialism during the century of humiliation, which puts them if anything on the same side as domestic minorities.
and those annoying Australians are claiming the CCP are using "powerful resources in Beijing’s ongoing efforts to reshape the global narrative on Xinjiang, influence political elites abroad" - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cultivating-friendly-forces/ (July 2026)
/r/AskHistorians adopts a practice of waiting 20 years before attempting to write a reasonable balanced history on current events .. so give things another 16 years and we'll see, I guess.
Yeah, ASPI and Adrian Zenz are the sources for basically every allegation in Xinjiang besides just quoting what the government itself said they're doing. Their evidence is typically "sources".
Meanwhile all of Ukraine and Gaza have been on youtube the whole time, everyone has a cell phone, why do we go back to the same 2 ideological think tanks with rumor-tier evidence every time on this issue? Seriously. Find any article and cite crawl, it's always either ASPI or Zenz at the bottom, citing each other or "sources".
If someone accused the US government of a secret genocide for 7 straight years with this caliber of evidence they would rightfully considered cranks. Especially if everyone was still alive.
To be fair, Gregory Stanton has had the US listed as problematic for awhile now and he's considered a top authority on the topic. Of course his reports are based on the definition from the UN Genocide Convention which you don't seem to hold in high regard.
I would suggest that the strict etymology of a word doesn't really matter much in geopolitics, at least not as much as legal definitions arrived at via international consensus.
I mean, I wouldn't consider him a top authority. It's an overly lawyerly approach to US treatment of groups that are clearly not actually being genocided (presently, native americans were). So I disagree on the same grounds as China, you need some mass casualties at minimum before getting into the legal nitty gritty. Maybe mass sterilization could also suffice.
I actually restrained myself from pointing out that the standards used against China in this thread would fit just fine against US treatment of minorities, it seemed too facile.
Now, western actions in the middle east on the other hand, we have mass casualties so legal arguments are on the table. I wonder if they said anything incensed and dumb that would indicate genocidal intent.
I agree that scale is often overlooked in these discussions. The real value of current legal definitions isn't just in identifying the industrialized murder of a population, but in recognizing the warning behaviors that precede it. It's crucial to identify when a situation starts moving in that direction.
Ok but this case is over and moving in the other direction.
The middle east on the other hand.. there are a whole group of US establishment natsec people who hold that obviously China committed genocide to the tune of hundreds while obviously Israel did not to the tune of nearly 100,000 and millions displaced. Because we have all of these lawyerly definitions, you see.
As human beings we have got to have a sniff test here.
Now, if it has moved in the other direction since 2022, I don't see anything countering that either and I certainly can't speak to the current state of things and will believe you (mostly because I have no intention of looking deeper currently). I will say that's a strong indicator that the process of being called out on the international stage worked though.
I'll definitely grant that international pressure helped. Even if there were never any possible chance of genocide, internment camps are still bad! It's good that they are over.
I feel like genocide legal debates skip over the human harm into some binary "is it genocide" thing, like detention or the first 90k deaths were ok but now you're really a bad guy.
Except there was no intent to destroy, literally all other points 2.X that follows is irrelevant. There's reason plurality of UN takes PRC position that they indented to deradicalize / reeducate, aka not genocide. Which is obvious except to useful idiots on Pompeo propaganda because reducing PRC minorities by 1 is bad for Xi's hagiography. Now the gets to bask in the glory of speed running histories most successful war on terror with minimal bloodshed by sinicizing restive frontier region. Basically Obama should hand over his Nobel Peace Prize to Xi.
No, it would be "cultural genocide", which bluntly is empty label - there's a reason no international framework exits for something prosaic like enforcing common language and culture on minorities - because it's nation building 101. And regardless that's not even what PRC did, they didn't turn Uyghurs into non Muslims, they Sinicized them back to traditional Uyghur + state Islam and excised strains of extremist Wahhabism which was recent import. You know how western minorities mostly speak the dominant language, aka melting pot, that's what PRC minority policy is moving towards, away from soviet autonomous multicultural oblast model which was too hands off leading to minorities getting to restive/handsy with terrorism/separatism.
German jews btw overwhelmingly spoke German, were deeply assimilated, patriotic of course. XJ would be like if German Jews who spoke only Yiddish and stuck in their minority enclaves, carried out 100s of terrorist attacks, got reeducated to speak both German, and Yiddish, reform religion to be less extremist, and doing it in <10 years / single generation. Not only would it have not been genocide, it would have been exemplar model to emulate for domestic serenity. Which is broadly what XJ securitization was, the most successful deradicalization and integration program in human history. Not unique to human history... again integration = nation building 101 stuff, it was just technologic mediated speedrun, in that sense parallels Germans.
I wish there was an investigation but the CCP blockaded any inquiries, going so far as removing the computers and not cooperating with international authorities. /s
You're assuming that this guy was actually being prosecuted for crimes or that this guy lacked loyalty to Xi Jinping. A tremendous number of top generals and leadership has been wiped out in a short time and not necessarily refilled, and it's not because China has a huge disloyalty problem.
> You're assuming that this guy was actually being prosecuted for crimes or that this guy lacked loyalty to Xi Jinping
That's not an "or" question, imo. If you threaten the king by having too much power, too many allies, or too keen a mind, you get moved off the board. Disloyalty and risk of disloyalty are both abhorrent to autocrats.
Given that they've already carried out a Stalinist purge within the military ranks, I'm leaning towards the former. Xi might very well be positioning for a Taiwanese invasion.
> it's not because China has a huge disloyalty problem.
Why not? Dictators often purge anyone who is a threat, often because they form a possibly competitive power structure (regardless of their intent), and often because of paranoid perceived disloyalty, and for actual disloyalty.
And corruption is the cover story they commonly use - it's vague, general, the public sees enough gov't corruption to believe it and to hate it. Trials are not needed. Off the top of my head, Putin in Russia, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, ...
"If you get caught". Do the math on how many get caught per capita. Its like worrying about a random coconut falling on your head.
Fighting corruption in unequal societies is not possible because ambitious people born without wealth and status, and constantly bombarded with signals from birth that wealth and status is a sign of success, will do whatever it takea to get it.
The Law doesnt reduce corruption. Its just a story like Religion that allows people to cope with a reality they dont control.
China is as corrupt or more corrupt as anywhere else. You can absolutely buy your way out, or otherwise wrangle something. Zero tolerance death penalty for this sort of thing is a sign of extreme desperation - the fact that there are any such scandals despite the penalty is telling.
In the 90s and 00s when I was a kid, being a crook had real consequences here too. Not the death penalty per second, but the die in prison penalty left and right.
When John Meriweather and the rest of LTCM nearly blew up the market they didn't get a bailout, and the taxpayer didn't fund the hole in the balance sheet. The New York Fed organized private money and leaned on all their counterparties to get it done, but they didn't backstop it. Meriweather and the Sheik and Scholes and the rest were wiped out, they worked it off for a couple of years for salary and then skunk away in shame (we had shame back then). Took it like men near as I can tell. I admire John Meriweather a great deal in spite of the scandal.
President Clinton was impeached and very nearly removed from office for (ultimately) consenting but untoward involvement with a young woman (they got him on lying about it technically, but the political will was there because the country was furious about the skirt chasing.
Enron. Accounting that went from aggressive to sketchy to fraudulent (most of it would pass with flying colors today). Hard time. Skilling, Fastow I think just got out like five years ago (don't take my word for the date). Ken Lay IIRC died before they locked him up which saved him dying inside.
Madoff, died in prison. Ebbers, I think he died in prison too.
When Microsoft was gearing up to strangle the web in its crib the Justice Department pulled guys off of terrorists and human traffickers to go take a pipe to Gates until he backed off, he was allowed to keep Microsoft intact by letting the web happen, the Feds weren't asking, he decided to not fuck around and find out.
Consequences for serious fucking bad shit for people who are our leaders work. A people gets exactly what it demands from it's leaders and that's exactly what a people deserves.
Right now we're choosing to settle for a lot less, China is demanding more. Which is why we're getting our asses kicked.
This comes and goes in seasons. At the turn of the last century the broligarchs of the time (they called them robber barons then) had the game stitched up worse than today. They owned the state legislatures (who elected the senators at that time) lock, stock, and barrel. They bought laws as they pleased.
The mores of the time caused them to be a little more circumspect about their pornographic rapine of the body politic, but they squeezed just as hard and their fists were stronger. Children died working in factories, diseases of poverty claimed entire city quarters, Pinkertons shot striking workers flat dead and walked away like ICE with a brisk stride before they'd even holstered their weapon the way I read it.
Just like today they paid no tax of any kind. And we're heading back there at speed. The typical person is closer to being in an Amazon warehouse where someone has died or the subject of an OSHA report that Instacart hushed up than they were five years ago, things are getting worse for most everyone.
But a few things broke the public's way, a couple of muckracking journalists tee'd it up, Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, you get one class traitor in the White House, and in less than thirty years the robber barons had lost it all, the economy goes into hyperdrive, the working man goes to sleep every night knowing, not hoping, that his children will live far better than him.
This one comes back around too, and the endless vulgarity and corruption on every surface that can render a photo or a sentence? That's not organic someone is paying for all that, it ebbs and flows too. I'm optimistic we can have cool R-rated movies and no banned books without hustler culture Instagram and celebrity yachting YouTube being crammed into every eligible impression.
The PRC is lapping us in everything from solar panels to electric cars to broad-based robotics and AI in real goods heavy industry.
Their power grid runs at a huge margin of excess capacity and they easily bring more online because they can still do infrastructure projects.
They are rapidly overtaking the United States in domestic, sovereign, and secure semiconductor fabrication. They're a couple of nodes behind but Kirin SoCs and multi-terraweight LLM inference on Aspire look pretty hot shit to me and no one can yank them around like a dog on a leash that it'll get turned off.
Government is dramatically more participatory than the western caricature. It is substantially at the local and regional level that it is directly participatory (so, the size of the whole US). At the very top it is representative in the sense that a party guy in Beijing is considered incompetent (they care about that) if the needs of the region are not on the agenda. When's the last time you called your congressman and got change?
Innovation is plural, research is open, the university system is in the loop, the public benefits.
Real wages are going up.
The PRC gets jumped in with Putin's Kremlin by lazy Americans who don't talk to Chinese people.
It's not the Kremlin. It's JFK in a Chairman Mao hat.
That's a bunch of words, but if we didn't know before LLMs and before the Internet, we know now: words are cheap and valueless without other properties. What distinguishes those words from propaganda? Why should someone believe it's true?
Throwing insults at people who disagree or question you makes it less likely there is substance to the words.
I disagree that they are verifiable, not being factual statements. But if you think so, then verify them. I'm not going around HN verifying the claims in everyone else's comments.
If you can't be bothered to verify claims then don't cast doubt.
The EV claims are the most trivially verifiable, the rest go down from there. Some of them have more nuance but you did not engage with that. Don't worry, reality will catch up eventually, you being convinced is strictly optional.
> If you can't be bothered to verify claims then don't cast doubt.
It's the opposite: If you post claims then others will absolutely cast doubt and it's up to you to verify them. No way other people should do it for you (that's also very inefficient - you already know how to verify them and also it's redundant for everyone else to do it). Even better, you'll see people cite their claims before anyone asks.
In any serious field, you don't make claims and then require others to verify them. Imagine a scientist or courtroom lawyer doing that. It's up to you and if you don't, then it's nonsense by default.
It's a comment section, and those are common sense observations about the Chinese economy. Like I said, you don't need to be convinced, it will continue happening whether you agree or not.
They're not commonsense - most disagree with what I know - and just saying they are is just stuff. Saying it will continue to happen isn't evidence. Just saying things doesn't mean anything.
> It's a comment section
Not just any comment section; HN plays by different rules. Look at how others interact. Just spouting claims doesn't get you far.
I didn't mean to call you lazy, I hadn't seen any evidence that you see Beijing and Moscow as undifferentiated other, which is the habit of thought I did call lazy.
You are awfully contrarian for someone whose response to an argument is "that's not proven to my satisfaction" and when asked what citations would satisfy you replies "it's not my job to define what citations I will and won't admit".
You do you king, but it's not exactly the incandescent childlike wonder of the perpetual student's mind.
I'll wager your mind was made up before we started having a conversation.
I agree, and there's clearly a Sinophile side here: I wish people would engage in a substantive discussion instead of attacking others, this time as 'uncurious'. As I've pointed out, anything but engage on substance.
It's also not like the West doesn't impose extremely harsh punishments on the top financial crimes. You can go away for life if you steal enough money.
For UK I have: Grenfell tower scandal (over 100 dead, no one in prison), infected blood scandal (thousands dead, no one in prison), postmaster scandal (thousands falsely imprisoned , no perpetrator in prison), no Eipstein clients are I. Prison to this day, Covid procurement was corrupt, no one went to prison
And finally no one went to prison for the global financial crisis, which was caused by fraud
I certainly don't want him sent somewhere violent, but the life in prison for financial crimes is generally less harsh, when comparing experiences not reasons for imposition, than life in prison for other things.
Also, just off the top of my head I would expect many people getting life in prison for other things are younger than people getting life in prison for financial crimes, since financial crime tends to happen between mid 30s to mid 40s and violent crime tends to happen in teens and twenties. Assuming that the reason for skewing financial crime higher, because needing business connections and experience to pull off, holds with the size of crime without an stats to back me up I will say my naive expectation is the financial crimes that earn you life in prison would tend to be in the 50s, while the violent crimes mainly remain teens and twenties.
Obviously I don't mind anyone proving me wrong by going and doing the actual statistics work that I can't be bothered to do. I just have suppositions that I have not bothered to confirm as they do not significantly impact my life whether correct or incorrect.
I suppose it is only non-violent on the surface. What if the stolen money could have been used to strengthen the healthcare system or improve citizens’ lives in other ways?
Shkreli's investors straight up testified they didn't feel victimized and that they would invest with him again. He didn't lose them any money or have any actual damages to people for the crime he was convicted of. I don't think he'd go to jail for what he did there in China, or even probably Singapore.
If you're thinking of the pharmacy drug price jacking thing, the thing he did that physically harmed many people, he wasn't convicted for that.
It's not right, but that's how you get convicted of these crimes in Asia. If you make your investors money, everyone is happy, it's incredibly, incredibly incredibly unlikely you'll be convicted for defrauding them. In fact in the USA it's extremely rare to get convicted of defrauding a person that got the returns they want and have no interest in pressing charges.
Now maybe if you hurt someone else in the process you'll get convicted, but that's not what happened in Shkreli's fraud conviction, the only people he was accused of harming were the investors who said weren't harmed and had no damages or interest in prosecution.
What happened to Shkreli was a most extreme anomaly practically worldwide.
I don't agree. If this sleazeball had done this in China, there's a good probability that with enough complaints he'd seen a pretty swift reckoning.
IMO, the Chinese government has a pretty good ear for the happiness of their population.
It depends on how the complaints are voiced. Karen-like entitled complaints are definitely not working there. Often, legit complaints also do not work, but sometimes they do.
I'm curious if this particular guy is actually going to be executed or the sentence being commuted to life without parole, like in other cases. Looks like it's not.
>> It's also not like the West doesn't impose extremely harsh punishments on the top financial crimes. You can go away for life if you steal enough money.
While I am all for holding especially c corp and politicians accountable, similar sentences are a tragedy for me because there is no legal system I would trust, and I don't believe in death sentences as a crime punishment.
if trump ordered someone to be shot for accepting bribes we would find this idea a lot less appealing
anyone who spent a lot of time in that part of the world will tell you this stuff can basically be made up
the western method to do this is to plant csa material on a person and then publicly announce they've been caught with it. not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on your 2 acre lot, or a usb stick that has been planted in your car
your entire family and social network will immediately cut you off and very few consider these things can be fabricated
not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on your 2 acre lot, or a usb stick that has been planted in your car
That's because that's not how the laws worked in the U.S., nor have the laws ever worked that way. If that was actually how the laws worked, a lot of enemies of each administration would get tarred with this, instead of literally none of them.
Only if the CCP doesn't like you or decides that it doesn't like you because you are more valuable as an enemy. Otherwise it's no big deal because politics in a communist country does not get done without bribes in one form or another. Honest players are not to be found in a communist country. Government is like open source. The more open you are, the less likely there is going to be shenanigans.
> If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance.
LOL. Bribery is basically required in China for anyone with a medium sized business. Otherwise, you'll be indefinitely blocked by a bureaucrat who has no incentive to help you. Departments in municipal governments are often underfunded and bribery makes up for a significant portion of their effective payroll.
Facilitation payment are usually considered the less egregious kinds of bribery, some may be considered acceptable in a culture, and there can be a whole etiquette to it.
In some countries, doctors or surgeons are severely underpaid and it would be customary for a well off citizen to bring them a gift or a cash summ before an important surgery.
That’s quite different from Kickbacks (rampant in UK leaseholds by the way), etc.
Just because it's considered acceptable doesn't mean that you can't get in trouble for it down the line if you get the wrong people upset. "Acceptable" bribery goes far beyond giving a gift to your underpaid doctor. What I meant by funding payroll is that it's pretty common to basically "donate" to a hospital and then afterwards your kid magically has a job there.
What those who fetishize China's punishment of billionaires need to understand that what allows for this punishment is also what allows for even more blatant corruption. Rule of law is just something that doesn't exist. You may think that the US no longer has rule of law under Trump, and while that's true to a certain extent, for the most part people act with a rule of law mindset because that's what they are familiar with.
I am just saying that it would be good if we could have more precise discussion about corruption because different types of it are not equal, and we have more precise terminology.
I’ve lived in 2 out of 3 of those countries and I can assure you people get away with fraud and corruption all the time.
If you’re well connected (or making the right people rich) they are happy to overlook it. But if you bite off too much and they need a head to roll they will find one (usually someone lower level).
I mean look at the number of military leader simply dismissed in China for massive corruption. They get a fat pension and go away quietly and the small guy pays with his life.
Not sure I’d be expounding the greatness of that system.
CCDI has disciplined like 7m+ officials by now, flies and tigers (low and high), _you_ only hear about the juiciest tigers. 100+ provincial/ministerial officials gets investigated per year. It's a wide anti corruption program, lazy but easy back of envelop calc, there's ~100m CCP members, need to be CCP to be in politics and business, so 7/100 ~7% of those classes including top level, which feels like reasonable amount given historic corruption rates. Anecdotally, petty level corruption essentially gone, corrupt/graft industrial complex (banquets/gifts etc it was entire service sector withing broader luxury) went out of business 10 years ago. Not saying corruption gone - it's evolved to your normal financial vehicle engineering like in west.
Yes -- and even a spectacular punishment does not establish the guilt of the recipient.
Some may be innocent (framed) or only partially guilty (scapegoat.) Other may have been known to be guilty all along and has only recently fallen out of favor.
The thing they have zero tolerance for is the embarrassment, not the corruption, pollution, crime, or other abuse. You can do whatever you can get away with so long as you don't cause embarrassment or shame.
That's one of the big cultural differences that people from the West don't really get - that "saving face" is one of the core concepts that Eastern societies are built on - not the actual things that, when discovered, cause you to lose face (e.g. corruption).
Ah, the old “only western people have morals, everyone else just cares about how it looks” argument. And where did you get this super objective assessment that eastern peoples only care about “saving face”? Couldn’t be a stereotype popularized by western people to feel better about themselves could it? The racists always come out in full force under any post showing an eastern country doing something better than the US in particular.
> Ah, the old “only western people have morals, everyone else just cares about how it looks” argument.
That's not even remotely close to what I said. You should read the comment you're responding before responding with ignorant and blatantly manipulative falsehoods.
> And where did you get this super objective assessment that eastern peoples only care about “saving face”?
Again - never said anything like that. Learn to read.
> The racists
Actually, learn to think. This has absolutely nothing to do with race, as anyone who has passed high school can tell you. This claim is straight-up objectively false.
The second you start slinging the word "racist" around you immediately prove that you have zero valid points to give and are just trying to cry your way into acceptance. Which correlates with the rest of this post.
This is either a troll post, written by a middle-schooler, or blatant propaganda.
I'm not the guy who responded to you, but “only western people have morals, everyone else just cares about how it looks” is pretty much what you tried to imply.
And before you start on me, yes - I'm able to "think", and no, I'm not a "troll"
If its not what you wanted to imply, then perhaps you'd be better served at owning up & clarifying, rather than insulting others who merely pointed out what you originally wrote.
And on a general note (not specifically or only you), I'm somewhat amused (in a morbid sense) at the sheer predictability of some of the "oh no, don't you dare try to impugn any moral superiority to that lot over there, vs us westerners" reactions.
Refreshing to see how even after a multi year ongoing genocide, kidnappings other countries presidents, and triple-tap bombing little girls elementary schools, westerners still feel they own the "moral high ground" (wherever that is anymore ...)
Ahhh, the propagandist's classic tactic - when unable to muster even the feeblest possible response to an argument, just make up things and pretend that the other party said them.
Fact: I said nothing of the sort. You are lying.
> owning up
I have nothing to own up to because I said nothing of the sort, and anyone with basic reading skills can see that.
> clarifying
I was exactly as clear as I needed to be. I do not need to provide every single possible hedge on my statements. It is ok to not be perfectly clear and disclaim every negative, and this is now normal, sane, socially well-adjusted people behave.
It is completely unacceptable (and more than a little psychotic) to take that ambiguity and interpret it in the worst possible way.
It is downright evil to then defend that malicious misinterpretation instead of apologizing.
You are straight-up lying about my own words. Yes, you are both, and thank you for conclusively discrediting your own position instead of responding with something that'd actually require effort to dispute (such as a logical argument based on facts).
Saving face is certainly A Thing, but China has also had a strict legalistic tradition extending back about 2500 years. There's rather more to Chinese public life and philosophy than 'Confucius say' and the CCP.
You got it. I'm not saying that saving face is the only cultural priority - just that it's a much greater one than in most Western cultures - and most Westerners don't understand that, and that leads to misunderstanding of the mindset and rationale for actions and decisions.
I buy the whole thing that some cultures give more weight to face-saving than others. I would classify my supposedly western country (Chile) as one that gives it more weight than, for example, Germany. Even then, this just sounds like a kneejerk "you cannot trust these dastardly orientals".
Face saving is a thing in the US, to the point that it's a common plot point prestige TV (e.g most of The Wire). It's an accepted fact in political campaign with spin doctors. The 30K in credit card debt to keep up appearances is also face culture. The hustle culture, etc.
You don't need to be racist, you just can be skeptic of the claims of an autocratic government.
Nowhere did I say that Western countries don't care about saving face - it's just not a deeply embedded cultural priority that is nearly as valued as it is in many Eastern cultures (including, relevantly, China).
How is the existence of a PR/spin industry, the fact that many Americans live way beyond their means, or the proliferation of influencers whose job is to show a specific story not evidence of a society that values appearances and will do a lot to protect face?
> a society that values appearances and will do a lot to protect face
Read my comment again, carefully, and you'll understand that your response is unrelated to my point.
Also: all of these things exist in large, industrialized Eastern nations too. You've clearly never lived in any of those places or even had tangential exposure to their culture. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that - just understand that you are exactly the kind of person who is going to have the hardest time understanding the cultural difference - which is part of my point.
There's no "in my estimation" - this is a well-researched topic and the vast majority of sociologists agree that there is a major cultural difference between the two, starting with the fact that "keeping up with the Joneses" is an individual act of pride vs "saving face" in China not only involves individual pride of an objectively greater magnitude, but also a collective pride that is rare in Western cultures and almost unheard of in highly individualistic cultures like the United States.
For understanding this better - you can try to read the Wikipedia page on the concept of face ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) ), but part of my point is that academic/intellectual understanding is a really poor substitute for experience in this domain, and reading a page allows for intellectual disagreement that is literally inconsistent with reality - experience forces you to directly confront that reality.
I'd suggest watching a few hundred hours of media from several different Eastern cultures (I personally like a mix between Japanese, Korean, and Chinese television shows - they each have their own memetics and charm and can be highly enjoyable - but most forms of media should give you the same experience as long as it's diverse enough).
You clearly have both zero exposure to any sort of Eastern culture, and you also didn't read any of the sources in that Wikipedia page - and instead of doing either of those (because you know that if you do, you'll be proven wrong and/or have to content with cognitive dissonance), you're trying to catch me with a gotcha. It's clear you're not operating in good faith - any person genuinely trying to understand would do one of those things, and you're not.
> Maybe you’re picking and choosing media to reinforce your inner biases?
You think that I chose to watch thousands of hours of media, not for entertainment, but specifically to deluse myself into a very specific and niche bias that the vast majority of people don't even have a mental framework to conceptualize and never comes up in casual conversation or has any relevance to my daily life? Congratulations, that's one of the most insane accusations I've ever seen on the internet.
I am pointing out the whole ‘losing face’ thing exists in the west too.
If you cause certain people to lose face, you will get China-like response.
In fact it’s a core conservative value and you can observe it in interactions with police - if a victim embarrasses the police they will prosecute the victim instead of the perpetrator
> I am pointing out the whole ‘losing face’ thing exists in the west too.
Yes, in the sense that a bicycle and a Formula F1 are both wheeled modes of transportation.
I never said that western cultures don't have the concept of pride - just that it's categorically different in eastern cultures.
This is both extremely well academically supported[1] and immediately obvious to anyone who has nontrivial exposure to most eastern cultures (including, specifically, Chinese culture).
Furthermore, the punishment of Chelsea manning is clearly irrelevant for multiple different reasons:
1. Specific instances are not reflective of a general pattern
2. Manning and Assange were instances of leakers of classified information, which is a separate category from merely "losing face"
3. There's a consistent pattern of the US government prosecuting leakers of classified information[2] even when there's zero media exposure, which conclusively disproves the "its just saving face" theory
yeah since when does "saving face" not happen in the West? Isn't there a war in europe that's been going on for four-ish years now that essentially a face-saving operation that has killed nearly a million?
There was a great essay I read a few years ago that I can't locate, about how much of Western society is driven by the threat or actualization of humiliation. The Black Freedom Struggle (all incarnations) was won (inasmuch as it was won) not really through moral appeals or the imposition of practical reality, as much as through the humiliation of the slaver/segregationist position on the global stage and in the media.
You want to win? Make them look stupid in such a way that continuing to fight makes them look even more stupid. Pain doesn't stop people, practical futility doesn't stop people; but, faced with the prospect of being considered persona non grata or a laughing stock or just robbed of their dignity, whether they win or lose, that is when people will call the match and walk off.
I would say it’s worse in the West, as we have generalized the concept across society to the point where our politicians (and even our militaries) are only able to fight symbolically. Actual ground truth has become secondary.
See also: oil futures, politicians who feud over “vibes” instead of tangible policy, constant symbolic strikes in war with no results, etc.
Yeah it’s pretty funny how worked up the CCP get when they’re called out. “How dare you accuse us of launching a spy balloon?”. Whereas Russia hits you with the “oh those aren’t FSB agents, just lovers on vacation ;)”
Yes, and if you think it's not feasible, you failed the critical thinking test. Balloons have the ability to observe signals that satellites do not. It's that simple.
One of the problems with absolute authoritarian regimes is that the friends of those in power are defined as "not criminals", and vice versa for enemies. It's part of the reason I'm against presidential pardon. (Except for when it's retrospective on laws that have changed, maybe?)
> If any of those people were politically connected
Connection works both ways. You can be your superior's lapdog on Monday and jailed for being so cordial that he thinks you are trying to take over his position — I mean, taking bribes — by Wednesday.
Given how this man stayed out of trouble for 30 straight years before finally being apprehended, I feel this could be exactly what happened. He probably had some political leverage to keep the prosecutors looking the other way. And the moment he lost his leverage — maybe his superiors changed their minds about him, maybe he stepped on the toes of someone, who knows — they went after him.
What happens in countries with no rule of law is rule of power hierarchies. A regional party boss would have his trusted deputes running things, who have their underlings, they underlings have their preferred business partners (police chiefs, businessmen, prosecutors, control authorities) and so on. A bribe at any level is always redistributed upwards.
Sometimes the big guy falls out of favor with bigger guys, and then the whole structure is up for grabs. The whole vertical is massacred (sometimes literally) while new people take over from the top down. Often what's visible happens a few degrees removed from the actual cause.
There's understanding among the ruling class and much of the populace that it's just How Things are Done. But moments like that give you public trials with executions that make some naïve Westerners clap.
I sometimes see people "celebrate" this, with the rationale that China is cracking down on white-collar crimes and handing out sentences unheard of in the west.
But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for it. Some sentenced to death.
He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view.
Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese football programs. They’ve been decimated because of corruption prosecutions, both executives and players. It’s a major reason why China isn’t competitive on the global stage, which much smaller countries with significantly smaller budgets can compete. And, yes, Xi does care about competing in the World Cup. Prestige is very important to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
>He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power
This right here is why “corruption” should be looked on with great skepticism. In an authoritarian government basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption. You know, like having a say in how people are governed. This is a high crime in a state with 1 party that cannot be replaced.
In that way, “corruption” can mean “not being loyal to the dictator.”
> In an authoritarian government basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption
Could you list some of those basic liberties? Are they the sort of liberties whose exercise involves taking half a billion in bribes?
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Generally, basic liberties like showing up to a protest aren't considered corruption, they get called terrorism, or somesuch. A Texas judge just sentenced a dozen people to 30-70 years in prison for exercising them, by the way. Some of the people given 30 weren't even at the protest. Half this forum looked at that, and saw nothing wrong with it. I can only imagine that if they were born on the other side of the Pacific ocean, they would be card-carrying party members.
>Some of the people given 30 weren't even at the protest.
That by itself isn't a convincing argument. You can't plan a bank heist and be waiting at your safe house and say, "I'm not guilty of anything, because I wasn't in the bank!". The mafia guy doesn't get to say, "I didn't actually whack the victim, I just nodded to Joey, and he did the whacking".
...maybe this is mostly a thing in common law jurisdictions? Maybe there is a lawyer here who can point us to a interesting history of conspiracy in common law vs civil law jurisdictions? Also of interest might be things like:
Thank you for giving a front-page example of the CCP's logic when it comes to dealing with protests and dissenters. Find one who did something illegal, hang the rest for conspiracy.
For anyone else curious as to what OP is talking about, I had to look this up:
> The protest was a late-night/noise demonstration (involving fireworks) against immigration detention policies. It turned violent when a shooting injured a police officer. Prosecutors described it as an "act of terrorism" linked to an alleged antifa cell; defendants and supporters denied organized antifa ties and framed it as protected protest activity
It sounds like they arrived in tactical gear, started destroying property, and when cops arrived opened fire.
This seems like a bad example on your part, as the people opposing ICE are some of the most misaligned people in the country. That said, we have a right to protest in traditional public forms, you don't have a right to shoot up an ICE facility.
Only one person opened fire. He got 100 years. (I agree that he shouldn't have gotten a slap on the wrist for what he did, but I'll happily point out that killers serve less, if at all.)
The rest got 70. None of them had guns.
The guy who got 30 years wasn't even at the protest.
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There is no universe where this is not completely batshit insane, but it's interesting to see you use the exact same logic[1] the CCP has in its crackdowns and pogroms to justify it.
The reason the sentences were so high, by the way, was because the judge took dozens of minor offenses and added the sentences for each. It's the equivalent of sentencing someone who stole a 12-pack for 12 counts of theft, or someone tagging 'FUCK ICE' for 8 counts[1] of destruction of federal property.
For some reason, the current regime does not hold its footsoldiers and other useful idiots to the same standard.
---
[1] Someone in a protest/movement/group did something bad, brand them all terrorists, and make sure that everyone's going to a 're-education' camp for what will remain of their lives.
[2] One for each letter, and another one for the space.
I think your confusion comes from the fact this wasn't a protest gone awry, it was an organized domestic terrorist attack. It was a small group of armed people in body armor who privately organized a domestic terrorist attack intending to cause damage and hurt/kill federal officers in an ambush. The only reason the officer lived was because Song's gun jammed before he could kill people and get away.
Certainly if this was a jihadist attack, a lifetime sentence would be appropriate. Why should it be different just because they're white?
This guy carried out an organized domestic terrorist attack with help from others, actually killed someone as well as badly injuring another, and got only 41 years. Why the disparity?
The Federal Building where he murdered the security guard is just an administrative building; at least the people in Texas were motivated by the somewhat reasonable belief that they were attacking guards at a concentration camp.
Most people at these facilities can leave at any time, right? Just so long as it isn't back into the United States? They can return to their country of origin, or another country. I'm sure someone will offer a correction if this particular facility was holding people for other crimes in addition to their unauthorized alien status.
I use the phrase concentration camp not to dispute the legality of their detention, but to draw attention to the deplorable conditions thereof. Just because it may be legal to detain does not mean the state has the right to abuse them or hold them in deplorable conditions.
A guy deliberately drove his car through a street full of scattering protesters in my neighbourhood a few years ago, and when people tried to pull him out of it, he shot one of them, and then ran off, waving his gun (with a jungle-taped pair of mags inserted into it).
Was he a (disorganized) political terrorist? If these guys got 70 years for being at the protest, how many hundreds of years in prison do you think were warranted for him?
Bringing guns to shoot people you disagree with, then shooting them and injuring them for doing their job is not a harmless demonstration. It's terrorism, and they deserve what they got.
>> basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption
Like insider trading by congress?
Jokes aside, this is not how dictatorships normally deal with democratic activists? I don’t see how you can come to this conclusion u less you believe that corporations are people, election spending is a form of legally protected free speech, and corporations should vote in elections:
I like how you are unable to separate actual crimes from government policies you disagree with.
>> corruption is an institution
>> Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?
Another country may decide to have no IP protections, that’s not a crime.
Furthermore Intellectual property is legal fiction, some people and countries don’t believe in it.
Apparently Anthropic don’t believe in IP either, they are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, but cry wolf when someone does it to them. And they are asking for legal immunity on IP theft.
I'm not being unable to separate crime from policy, you're the one trying to dilute both as showing a signal to policy change.
If this was just a political action to take down just another corrupt official enabled by the government, how is this a good thing?
Well for a lot of countries protecting inventions with patents was a major trigger for development, so much so it became a cornerstone and you can even say an institution. So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions.
And it's not like China says it would never abide by IP, else they would have never got the investment that made them into what they are today.
But look further from IP theft, what about seizing assets from companies, or whole companies?
Go look up the history of the USA and creation of copyright/patent/trademark was done, and how we dis-recognized all European claims. They were howling similarly.
Go look at how extreme patent law perverted and kept airplanes locked to the Wright brothers, and held down an industry, while other countries (many European as well) were at the forefront of avionics. Patents held the USA back until the US GOV eminent domained the patent freeing it for WW1 armament.
Or go look up why Hollywood was a thing. Again, patent laws on cameras, and eacaping to California was all about screwing over patrnt holders over royalties.
And sure, China didnt recognize our copyrights. Ok. And? We dont recognize theirs either.
> So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions
It’s not viewed as corruption. US gov made numerous public statements condemning IP theft, and never even once classified it as corruption - it’s simply a different crime.
Furthermore, you suggested a benchmark is: “How wealthy are the ruling elites”
Well let’s see - the richest man in the world is American, 70% of 100 richest people are American, American has higher inequality than China.
By what robust quantitative measurement does this effort look less genuine than American one?
Are you accessing any objective facts or you simply are unable to accept that a country you are opposed to is making genuine progress?
>And he did this as a public servant for over 30 years.
and it was discovered just now? May it be that he played exactly by the rules, the real rules, of the regime - corruption being among the foundational rules of it - and thus it was going for 30 years? And right now he just got his turn like it usually happens in totalitarian regimes. The regime will for show find an excuse to execute you if you got your turn, corruption is just the easiest one.
Also note that corruption is for the officials, state treason is for regular citizens. Same as in Russia. The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.
>Violating the public trust should be extremely harsh.
definitely. The only question why the comrade Xi is still not executed?
> and it was discovered just now? May it be that he played exactly by the rules, the real rules, of the regime - corruption being among the foundational rules of it - and thus it was going for 30 years? And right now he just got his turn like it usually happens in totalitarian regimes. The regime will for show find an excuse to execute you if you got your turn, corruption is just the easiest one.
Yeah, that would be wild if any of that completely unsubstantiated conjecture, bordering on fan-fiction, was what actually happened.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
White collar criminals often get caught later in their "careers" precisely because they do it for years and years and years without being caught. They get complacent. They get messy. Each round of embezzlement leads to a larger body of evidence that exists somewhere that becomes more and more damning as time goes on.
> The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.
In this thread we have dozens of examples of political officials being prosecuted. I'd strongly suggest you park your McCarthyism, take a break, perhaps go for a nice walk.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t you? You’re from a Western country, right?
>White collar criminals often get caught later in their "careers" precisely because they do it for years and years and years without being caught.
You’ve definitely never seen the castles and fleets of exotic cars that government officials in those countries manage to get on their meager government salaries. Yet you post such authoritative comments …
If you have evidence as to any of the wild conjecture you're posting, you're more than free to provide it instead of just lobbing out accusations as though they change anything substantive about the arguments being made.
Yep, this is the usual common response from Americans. Its just Sinophobic whataboutism.
China has laws especially regarding significant financial crimes like embezzlement, theft, money laundering. And most governments also have rules against breaching public trust, corruption by favoritism, bribery, and more.
This guy was in multiple public servant roles, and exfiltrated $325M. This isn't a 'possible smell of impropriety ' in taking a supper with a potential vendor. This is basically highly illegal anywhere in the world.
But the Americans go back to their 'but communist China!' howls. The punishment's harsh, sure. But I think its a great standard to hold leaders and public servants to.
As Stalin demonstrated even when you're totally loyal, you're still frequently made victim of the terror.
The point of totalitarian regime is that nobody should feel safe, nobody should have an agency. In particular the people shouldn't be able to obtain safety themselves even by the way of being totally loyal.
I have no doubt that that guy was corrupt like any other official there. Yet, he isn't punished for the corruption. The show needed another star, and he was chosen to be that star.
These are just weird fantasies that you're writing out, with absolutely no reference to any events that have happened in China. You seem to just be writing fiction, and assigning it to the Chinese. The Chinese are actually people, though, they're real. If you want to accuse them of unremitting evil, you should be able to talk about something they did in detail.
That does not mean that you should google "China bad" and paste a bunch of random urls in a reply, though.
What Cold War propaganda did to Western brains is tragic.
> to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
Or his sinocentricity and even racism (as in superiority of chinese people). There's been a long standing view in China about their own superiority of others, including all the way into the way they view their national pride as extending back further than any other civilization, even though external historians might view it more like several disjoint civilizations in a similar region... Kinda like how we don't call American history as starting when previous groups from contemporary russian crossed ice bridges to the Americas... We say it started in 1776 because it was a new major iteration of the regime.
I don't think this makes any sense, what you argue would imply that the external historians would say that Japanese history starts in 1947 or that French history starts in 1958, but I'm not sure if they nor people of those countries would agree with that.
The point is, there's a lot more to history than political organization. A continuous culture and language is a big part of why civilizations extend far beyond the current governing regime.
It's like you're so close to getting it. Xi is serious about "corruption" alright. It's just that in an authoritarian state "corruption" is really just used as a euphemism for illoyality.
If having corruption as an euphemism for "illoyality" means we get the same kind of public investment in infrastructure in the west as China does, then I'm all for it. Seems like here we only have the corruption part, except they call it lobbying and rub it in our faces.
But there is also tons of actual corruption especially in the military [1] which is maybe by design so you never know if a purge is political or legitimate or both.
>Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have >noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for >it. Some sentenced to death.
Honest question to anyone who may be from China - the perception I've been fed in the US is that almost every bureaucrat is on the take. They certainly were in the USSR, you had to "know someone" to get anything done or just eat.
> Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption.
that's BS
cracking down on corruption has been a common tactic for decades to get rid of people who are a threat to the top dog at the CCP, and Xi has employed this perhaps better than anyone since Mao
are those people being purged corrupt? probably most are. but plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged, it's a highly selective process.
Xi started this a few years after coming into power -- and it was obviously to the educated class was it was (I was living in Beijing at the time), but "mei banfa" (or emigrate, as many people with the $/ability to do so, did).
CCDI hit like 7m+ people by now, that's hardly selective. You can say it was intelligently staged for power consolidation component, purging corrupt rival/cliques (who should be purged) first before cleaning own house, i.e. Xi's faction wasn't spared, it just happened later, because that's smart sequencing. Beijing educated class from 2012s aren't as baizuo shitlibs as Shanghai but their opinions are comparably useless, and it's been 10+ years, we now know scale + duration of anticorruption program. Like you don't discipline millions of flies, and 1000s of tigers because they're all rivals, you do it because you want to reduce corruption. Ask what kind of people had $ to immigrate in 2010s and buy up those million dollar mansions when PRC per capita GDP was was like $7000, hint the corrupt, which frequently overlaps with the educated.
Xi in particular seems to be personally offended by small scale corruption like business lunches. Huge crackdown on it for probably a negative political benefit.
there have always been ongoing crackdown on small scale corruption ("flies"); it's taking down the big "tigers", who all just happened to be from other CCP factions, that made Xi stand out among his predecessors.
tbh my take as someone who follows sports heavily: China is just not good at team sports. If we consider the most relevant ones (part of the Olympics games):
- volleyball. Probably their best team sport. Men's team have nothing to show but the women's team won the competition 3 times (1984, 2004, 2016) and the World Cup twice (1982, 1986)
- basketball. Women's team are usually there at the Olympic games and they won a silver medal in 1992 and a bronze in 1984 but nothing ever since. They were the runner ups in the last World Cup final (2022) against the US. Men's team have 0 results.
- football, irrelevant. Men's team only qualified to the World Cup once in 2002. Women's team is slightly better being the runner up once in 1999, and they also won silver medal in the 1996 Olympic games. But that was a one generation thing, nothing to show ever since.
- water polo, irrelevant. Women's team is slightly better usually qualifying for the Olympic games but 0 results. Same at the World Cup.
- baseball/softball, irrelevant.
- field hockey, irrelevant.
- handball, irrelevant.
- rugby sevens, irrelevant.
China is good at group sports where everyone have to do the same thing together (artistic swimming and diving) but team sports needs individuals working together where everyone have to be good at their given position, in their own little world, so almost the exact opposite.
One thing we know is important for a country to be globally competitive in team athletics is having pervasive grass roots youth leagues developing talent from an early age. My sense is the Chinese have a structured selection system where they try out kids in key sports and select the best for special development.
Compare this with Western democracies where kids of most skill levels are generally able to keep playing club sports through high school as long as they have an interest and any aptitude at all. In America, pee wee football, girl's soccer leagues, etc are part of the social fabric of communities. It's considered worthwhile to let kids practice, play and develop even when they show no professional or collegiate potential.
The deep reach and years of development of kids with no clear aptitude matter because it's about identifying outliers. I suspect it comes down to chaotic but pervasive casual development beating central planning.
China will probably be a contender in like 20 years for basketball. Basketball is incredibly popular, and the average male height has grown significantly as they embraced Capitalism.
Youth Soccer is popular, but at least in my experience, most of the top athletes in school will leave soccer for the big 3 as a focus sport Football/Basketball/Baseball. If they are very good, those are much more likely to give scholarships as well. Soccer is much more popular with the middle to upper middle class suburbia kids, who might also be playing other sports, but are not treating it as a career. Maybe theyll play soccer in college, but their Major is still Finance.
I don't agree with OP, and I'm willing to hear why you're correct in that assessment, but can you elaborate?
To be explicit about each other's assumptions, I think Race (however ill-defined or specific construct as it may or may not be), is not the same thing as Country, Political System, Culture, Religion, etc.
Understanding racists these days mostly use euphemisms and codewords, and it's a devil's work sometimes to figure it out, in the "Principle of Charity" sense, I read that post as being a critique of China's political and cultural systems in general, and their sport-league / development in particular, leading to specific societal outcomes. I could be extremely naive though but I'm willing to learn if you may provide more backing/thought for that?
There is a strong theme of "Chinese people are drones" when you hear about whatever the west's current propaganda issue is. I'm not sure if the poster was explicitly trying to hint at that, or just repeating derived ideas from those that really think it.
Lots of posts about how the CPC isn't really doing the will of the people, they are just following and the people are too docile or subdued to resist. Chinese people are bad at team sports where an individual contribution can play a big part. They are only good at the ones where they all do the same thing.
It ties in with the western ideology that we are unique, dynamic, flawed but able to push ahead in a way collectives aren't.
I will also posit the downplaying and discrediting of Chinese tech and industry is also related with this mindset.
As a Chinese-American, I feel rather ambivalent about it - dare I say even positive emotion at the West's current propaganda. Due to the quote - "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win", with the only caveat that West doesn't laugh but rather "coddle you as the savior". So in another word, I don't expect NYT (or Fox News for that matter) to "accept" or "approve" Chinese people - as much as I can't wait for Japan to apologize or ask reparations for IJA 's action in Asia during WW2; when China has overtaken Japan in GDP decades ago. (which is by the way of due to Plaza Accord which is an tangent but not really on the subject matter of self-reliance and global unilaterism vs. multilaterism).
Not sure when we will see this but when we have the Century of Africa, I'd love to see the spin on the front-page of NYT then. I predict something similar to the shade like "Nationalism/Hinduism by Modhi" when he won't play ball with the West on Russian sanction; when African countries rise up with their own ambitions and visions for their own people.
It's 100% social. The biggest difference is Americans generally believe immigrants and minorities can become American, and diversity is good. Whereas Chinese people believe you are born Chinese. Recently China is trying to change that and create a larger, more diverse, Chinese identity.
Absolutely love it. The West could take some notes. And to those who would jump to downvote, ask yourself why one country is on the rise, and the other is in a drain spiral.
And he still isn't a billionaire. There's no credible evidence to suggest he's even 8-9 digit millionaire outside of FLG spam or US intelligence / DNI copium that he's hiding $$$ via extended family, who leveraged their princeling/read family stature to get rich well before Xi. Like all signs comports with wikileak CIA profile that Xi is incorruptible by money / not $$$pilled. See bloomberg investigation 10 years ago (that got them booted from country) into Xi/Peng finance and found them squeeky clean which relative to 10 years ago, would be outlier for for their status. Not not saying Xi acetic, his wife famous to never need to worry about money on her own right, but there's nothing suggest Xi not fine with being merely very financially secure vs three comma club.
There is credible evidence his family controls billions of dollars of assets. Those assets accumulated in direct correlation with his power. Chinese state media disagrees, and if that's your cup of tea for Chinese leaders' corruption, I guess sure, Trump's also clean as a whistle.
>his family controls billions of dollars of assets
None sequitur / who cares? Xi personally doesn't have obscene wealth/assets according to relevant evidence which is what matters.
Many CCP red family nepo babies/princelings influence peddled their way to wealth in last 50 years, they get are first dibs aristocracy class and their wealth should logically snowball with PRC moving from billion to trillion $ economy.
But Xi himself specifically has been outlier in how squeaky clean, even by western investigations. Nothing has been tied to him, hence lame "but his family manages his wealth" cope. Like the bro married Chinese 80s Taylor Swift and all signs point to him being fine what he has, which is not nothing, but also not extravagant, which makes trying to associate him to stupendous graft levels corruption he is trying to fix impossible.
Of course broader PRC leadership class has lots of corruption from development, it should be expected that Xi's sister/husband, both from red families to be wealthy from PRC development, but timeline of Xi's sister/husband wealth predates Xi - i.e. early real estate / rare earth investments. Difference between Xi and Trump is Xi himself has been historically clean, and in office made his family divest/liquidate 100ms in assets vs Trump is is historically unclean and family uses his influence to accumulate.
So no, all signs point to Xi is clean as a whistle while Trump isn't, and its ridiculous to equate the two just because both families are wealthy.
And to circle to original claim, there is no evidence that Xi is fantastically corrupt, only evidence to the contrary, that he is outlier in how uniquely uncorrupt he is relative to elite prestige, access, opportunities.
I'm not saying that those guys weren't corrupt, but that's a classic authoritarian pattern. Purging anybody who might potentially in the future be a threat to your rule is step two in any authoritarian playbook. Were they perchance replaced with unambitious yes men?
To be clear that was 5 of the top 7 in the military not the CCP as a whole. Leaves just Xi and the anti corruption officer.
But yes agreed. It’s very hard to parse what is going on from the outside.
My very uninformed read is that the people who were purged seemed already loyal allies to Xi but had more clout to disagree with him, while the new guys know they are replaceable. The PLA is notoriously corrupt as well so hard to say which of those purges were political control vs corruption based.
I kinda doubt the new guys are unambiguous though you need to be ambitious and risk taking to rise like that in the CCP.
I think they are meaning "the measure seems meaningless as it would imply Russia is even tougher on corruption" rather than "Russian leadership cares deeply about corruption".
It's a risky play to try to communicate over the internet to a bunch of us literalist nerds :p.
> Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing
Almost certainly. But it's not simple to understand because four things are simultaneously true:
1. Corruption is a serious problem Xi is genuinely focused on reducing through high-profile prosecutions with extreme sentences.
2. Xi and his party lieutenants have certainly used corruption charges to eliminate central party 'Titans' because they got too powerful, got too greedy, or were deemed insufficiently 'loyal'.
3. Corruption is pervasive at almost every level and there's no way most of it can be eliminated anytime soon. In fact, the system relies on it to function as well as it does. The purpose of these high-profile prosecutions is only to reduce the size and frequency of corruption. It reminds officials that stealing half the money half the time can be bad for their health. So they stick closer to taking 10-20% only 10-20% of the time.
4. The sub-1% of corrupt officials who are prosecuted, likely end up being busted because they got 'too greedy' and were made a sacrificial lamb by their corrupt peers to fill the system's need for a few high-profile examples. The 'too greedy' isn't from taking too much, it's usually from not greasing enough palms with enough money (including the provincial corruption investigators themselves). When there's tens of millions of dollars of illicit money at stake, the dynamics become like de facto organized crime mobs and there's always competition between factions. This guy probably knows exactly which rival played the game better and beat him.
I never understood why you can't just take any random European country where ones company also has a presence and stick to the (government mandated) vacation time there, usually 5-6 weeks p.a. - is this considered unacceptable in the U.S.A.?
The key is understanding that accounting is driving the policy. 'Unlimited PTO' really means 'uncounted PTO' because for most public companies in the U.S., once PTO is counted, the salary value of each vacation day becomes another liability which must be reported and carried on the balance sheet. It's no different from a payable debt like a bank loan, except the debt becomes immediately due in cash the moment the employee ceases employment for any reason (quits, retires, laid-off, fired). It's also a debt that cannot be delayed, negotiated or discharged even in bankruptcy.
In a competitive employment market, paid time off is just another part of the cash value of any compensation package. Employees compare the overall packages, so companies need to offer 'competitive' PTO. In the past decade, FAANG-ish valley companies have had to offer 4-6 (or more) weeks of PTO. I know people who took two weeks every year and 'banked' four weeks. They retired early after 12 years with an extra YEAR of cash salary paid in full the day they left. When 5-10% of a company's debt is owed to their own employees and could become immediately due at any moment - it can be a cash flow and accounting issue for companies.
By 'not counting' the PTO, any time off you don't take in the year you earn it doesn't go on the balance sheet as an unpaid debt from the prior year - meaning PTO becomes 'use it or lose it'. This isn't materially different than the EU where it's normal for most corporate employees always take every day of PTO anyway. In the U.S., where historical PTO trends were closer to 2-3 weeks and only recently grew to 4-6 weeks, the result was more employees took more PTO each year (which is net good), but one component of their overall comp package became a little less good because they could no longer 'bank' more than one year's PTO and cash it out. Earned PTO carry-over was capped at one year and any you didn't take disappeared, unless you made an agreement with your manager.
For example, I deferred a chunk of my vacation into the next calendar year because we were shipping a major product (I was happy to do so and suggested it myself as I was leading the product). Technically, I guess it wasn't 'counted' in any HR record-keeping so if I suddenly quit before I took the vacation, I might not have been paid for the extra two weeks I deferred from the prior year - but only if my boss and the company decided to be real jerks about it. Another reason not to work for jerks if you can avoid it. Also, it isn't smart for companies to not reasonably honor verbal agreements with employees because word gets around and no other employee would agree to defer any PTO and future big projects would suffer. This flexibility wasn't always only in the company's favor. There was also a time I deferred a week of PTO to the next year by verbal agreement which I lumped together with paternity leave when my kid was born. Note: I'm only familiar with the dynamics in the U.S. I believe they also apply in some other geos but regulations and financial reporting requirements differ per country.
I've spent a lot of time in the EU working with tech companies, have a lot of friends there in tech companies and am on the board of a Swiss company at the moment. While it's true the average corporate worker generally has more protected rights in the EU, in my experience that additional government regulation doesn't usually pay off in ways that really matter that much to most employees most of the time.
As a thought experiment, if offered a tech job in, say, downtown Zurich, how much extra money would be required for an avg EU tech worker to happily accept that same job under Bay Area employment law, protections and standards (at-will employment, non-banked PTO, etc) than under EU employment law, protections and standards? In other words, apples-to-apples what are those extra protections actually worth in cash value? I suspect the answer would be, at most, around $25K to $50K/year. But when you look at the total comp packages (salary, benefits, equity, 401k, etc) between Bay Area and Zurich tech workers, the delta is far greater than that. In effect, the bay area tech worker 'sold' that extra protection for a big chunk of cash and is using some of it to self-insure against the potentially increased volatility. I think a lot of EU tech workers would be delighted to make the same trade. Another way of looking at it is you've given up a lot of upside for a relatively small amount of guaranteed extra protection on the downside.
This might surprise you but the reality is, many of the potential employment abuses you may be concerned about are vanishingly unlikely to occur in practice. The point is, you can end up paying a lot for expensive 'tiger insurance' you probably won't ever use and don't really need. While you can feel good knowing you have extra protection from tigers, on a purely economic basis I averaged over $500k/yr over my multi-decade career in bay area tech. In good years, the equity could take it over a million. My own admin (with no college degree) averaged over $200k a year in total comp. The highest paid admin at the Zurich company I'm on the board of makes closer to 50k CHF (and living in downtown Zurich isn't much less than SF). So, the "US tech employment deal" may seem weird and perhaps less fair, but the extra half million dollars my admin earned over several years put a lot of 'social safety net' in the bank that she can spend whenever and however she wants - and she still works there for my old boss, still loves her job and has never had to use any protections or social safety net yet (she's probably over a million in extra total comp banked by now). In short, viewed objectively, it's a different deal but not necessarily a worse deal. In many cases, EU workers may be giving up far more value than they're actually receiving in return.
Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption, and part of the reason he remains in power on an indefinite term is by presenting himself as the "only trusted" person to maintain anti-corruption amongst all the factions.
While I'm sure he doesn't catch all corruption and the CCP overall has selective enforcement, the reason they do have measures like this is in large part because of Xi Jinping's specific reputation and positioning.
Or in authoritarian regimes it often means "stole from the party". As long as you only steal from the poor and give the proper bribes up the chain you are in no danger in most corrupt societies. Except possibly in the rare occasion where your corruption causes a disaster that embarrasses the people above you in the hierarchy.
Far too often when you see stories about how someone was persecuted for corruption it boils down to "he stole from rich people".
This is true in any power structure ever. Kings, mafia, pick-your-dictatorship, many democracies. Hurt or steal from the poor, not other rich or elite, and always make sure to kick some up to the big guys.
All presidents rise to power on a message of anti-corruption, they all clean house when they start in office but usually it falls off until the next president takes over. The problem Xi has is that now that he is now president for life, the house isn't getting cleaned in the usual way every 10 years; he has to do a corruption purge every so often or things will get grimey.
I'm just talking about China, we were only talking about China right? We don't really have a lot of data points to go by since there have been only three presidents so far with supreme power (after it was combined with General Secretary and military chair head, before that president was more of a ceremonial role).
Counter-example: Sam-Bankman Fried. Biden's second biggest donor. Sentenced to 25 years in jail. Prosecuted even though it wasn't a clear cut case so there were excuses to hang a lack of prosecution on. No pardon.
The case was pretty clear-cut, and as for the pardon... He clearly didn't pay the right president, Trevor Milton got one right at the start of this presidency.
Exactly. Hopefully the contrast between the two presidencies weans people off the idea that "they're all corrupt" and "they're all liars". I'm not hopeful.
>Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing
no need to speculate, it's already happened. Zhou Yongkang who was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (the highest governing body in Chinese politics) was prosecuted, and up until that point people at the top were considered relatively untouchable. Xi also axed the last to vice chairmen of the central military commission, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, that's the commander in chief of the PLA.
The Zhou Yongkang incident happened over a decade ago, it happened in roughly the first year of Xi Jinping's tenure, Zhou Yongkang was a supporter of the also-purged Bo Xilai, and while he was still in power he ran the department responsible for internal security. I don't doubt the guy was corrupt but this is exactly the sort of target you go after if you want to maintain your own grip on power.
Trump definitely thought about doing that, but even the judges he appointed wouldn't go for it. He still talks about putting Obama in jail for reasons.
I mean, Trump was prosecuted as well and plenty of people want to put him in jail. My point is these kinds of things can't really be argued purely from a meta-level, the actual specifics matter. And in the case of China and Xi, I certainly don't know the specifics and I doubt most people here do either.
Trump was actually convicted of a felony in New York even though he wasn't put in jail. Trump wants to throw his political enemies in jail without due process, very different thing.
Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose.
Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.
And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.
You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.
Europe is prosecuting the Epstein Pedos. Trump is protecting his friends
Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house
Price Andrew got a name change, but hasn’t had any real penalty to date. He had the Queen protecting him.
Mandelson probably will end up in court but it won’t be for anything related to child abuse.
The West would benefit from an increase in prosecution of $100M+ financial crimes, regardless of whether that prosecution is fair or uniform. Many will avoid such crimes, even when they might be allowed them by corruption, simply to avoid being held hostage to that same corruption. That doesn’t mean that corruption is a great thing (it’s not), but frequent and capricious enforcement is somewhat better relative to today’s infrequent and erratic enforcement.
Selective prosecution and tough punishment can still be a net positive vs no punishment. (I am not saying it necessarily is nor that I would celebrate this.)
The CCP derives a significant part of its legitimacy from improving quality of life and living standards for the common Han Chinese. Waste and fraud that harms consumers is a drag on this progress; the incentives somewhat align. Real economic harm often causes real political harm.
Xi's been anticorruption for 10+ years, CCDI has prosecuted MILLIONs, including his own faction/clique i.e. even Xi doesn't have that much enemies. Westoids just can't fathom it's simply a systematic, competent drain the swamp program designed to change culture an work through the huge backlog of illict behavior form 30+ years of under regulated development.
Can't it be both? Xi doesn't have 7m+ rivals, and you know... rivals can be corrupt and should be purged. There's reason wikileaks / CIA analysis on Xi insinuates he's incorruptible by $$$, so who better to lead. Sometimes swamp is filthy and needs cleaning, and sweeping out legacy clique/faction level power structure that CCP had to "put up with" as part of ascendancy, aka power consolidation, is just good 101 good old power politics. Doing it right is how China gets 300+ year stable/rising dynamitic cycles. American wanks about 250 while swamp filthier than ever, and forget power consolidation has built many 250+ year civilizations.
Sometimes systemic, competent purge the political rivals program is gud and what you want. But IMO US too young/stubborn, doesn't have institutional memory of REAL political crisis, nor humility to learn from history.
While other commenters take the lesson that Xi goes after corruption, I would restate it:
* he goes after corrupt officials, in both minor roles and very public big cases; and
* he also accused inconvenient people (mostly potential contenders) of corruption to get rid of them (see the list of party leaders purged since Xi came to power, with some even led off stage at the main CCP Congress in a show of power).
* How many corrupt officials are not persecuted due to political favouritism is by definition impossible to know from the outside.
Inner circle members of the CCP are the first to fall because their competitors wouldn't dare not use it against them. The whole Bo Xilai mess a decade and a half ago is a good example of that.
I think the way to determine how real this is: is the corruption allowed to damage the real economy? Most of the problems of Africa and South America are linked to that answer being "yes".
> Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
The west is inundated with simplistic anti-chinese propaganda, so you would never perceive it as such, the way it would be presented to you in the west is as the evil dictator Xi Jingping purging his opposition, for instance:
Correct, so long as there is a state controlled media and no independent media and we can only speculate on where people who have “disappeared” from public view are, this is exactly the position everyone should hold.
This is single party autocracy, no matter how much people cry about propaganda.
It's a complex system of layers of representatives being elected on the local level, various institutions and levels of governance that you know literally nothing about and yet has been incredibly successful at uplifting it's people. In the simple mind of the western chauvinist this rich five thousand year old culture and complex society with good and bad, gets flattened into antagonistic slogans like "single party autocracy".
You don't understand how calling you a victim of propaganda is me being charitable, I could've also called you a typical western ignorant sinophobe.
Not everything that Chinese leadership does is perfect, they have made mistakes, but overall, leadership that is openly like "we need to maintain a tight control over the population for stability" is generally more trustworthy than that campaigns on freedom and small government only to get in power and make themselves richer.
You can’t squeeze blood from a brick. At a certain point, you need to tolerate a little messiness to optimize societal growth.
Think of it as a dial you can turn clockwise or counterclockwise:
Security <——> Freedom
A healthy society would have good feedback mechanisms that allow it to change the dial of the government in power, to adjust to the current situation. Obviously, there’s no one optimal position; to use a historical example: Churchill was great for Britain during WW2, and immediately elected out afterwards.
This often gets missed. Of course, it can be repulsive. But I sort of appreciate how honest other societies are about their social problems. In the United States there is a lot of doublespeak. The current president is actually quite refreshing in this regard, or at least was for a time.
The way the mainstream media freaked out about him asking Bill O'Reilly, "what, you think our country is so innocent?" is a good example. Or saying we're in Venezuela for oil at the outset. Or talking about how they killed so many Iranians they don't even know who they are negotiating with anymore. I mean at least we didn't have to suffer through fumbling Bushisms about freedom. If the day ever comes when presidents are held to the same standards as the people, then ironically in many regards we will have to at least give him some points for honesty... it is quite sad how he is the only person to succeed to such an extent on such an "outsider", really anticorruption message ("drain the swamp"), then turn around and do the same thing. I think it is probably related to the core problem of American society - the doublespeak, the dual consciousness, the resistance to self reflection. People don't want honest answers - including to their own complicity (who elected these people anyway?). They want slogans. The results are sad, but predictable. A society that elects (and then worse, reelects) someone like Trump to end corruption is clearly a society that cannot look itself in the mirror. The same goes for the other side of the aisle. The "democracy" party that has no primaries and says it's either "fascism" or geriatric grandpa. We take this election very seriously that is why we have nominated a corpse. Don't mention it or you're a fascist. No you don't get another choice. Vote for us or democracy dies...
Sad... maybe if politics was a venue where people weren't punished for being honest we wouldn't have such low quality politicians. Brings to mind the George Carlin line:
That would be a nice realistic campaign slogan for somebody: 'The public sucks. Elect me.'"
Probably not but it's hard to really pin this down. On the one hand, China's rise has in the recent past has been phenomenal but that kind of rapid cleanup has always been accompanied by repression and destruction of political rivals. So. perhaps a bit of both.
It's fascinating to see the effects of anti-China propaganda. There are plenty of stories about China cracking down on corruptiojn yet people need to do contortions to make this anti-China somehow.
There's no evidence that Xi Jinping is like Putin (who has enriched himself to abe unknown but expectedly high dgree), no evidence the military generals have enriched themselves with corruption (again, like Russia) or really anything else. Instead there's evidence that the likes of Jack Ma, a billionaire, are brought to heel, China has cracked down on so-called yin-yang contracts, sentenced to death people who messed with the baby formula supply chain and so on.
People really should reflect on why they're so willing to seek confirmation bias and why they have that bias at all.
Here's a tip: if you take anything China says or does at face value you will be more correct than 95% of the China "experts" that have entrenched themselves in the media and Western policy circles.
Is reflection really necessary? On why they're so willing to seek confirmation bias on a self appointed dictator for life and why they have that bias towards a self appointed dictator for life? Isn't it self evident?
I see it as being sort of like how every 6 months someone is made an example of by the media and they need their retribution. It is a means of keeping people at ease and that the narrative of the system works, 'the bad person' will be punished, just like in the movies. All is well.
Admittedly, in a lot of the western world one side of the conversation has seen Trump take this place, only without any sort of completion of the narrative arc. Good for business, bad for emotional strength for some people. Will be interesting to see what comes after him.
These are mainly political purges dressed up as “anti corruption drives”. Not ideal, but at least someone high up is getting punished compared to slaps on the wrist in the West.
As opposed to the US where even if white collar criminals are caught and punished they get pardoned by Biden or Trump, Obama, etc... Every US president has pardoned white collar criminals
China executes their criminals, in the US criminals get pardoned
All of these white collar criminals were pardoned by Biden
Nina Simona Allen (December 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to defraud financial institutions.
Duran Arthur Brown (December 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a mortgage fraud scheme.
Ravidath Ragbir (January 2025): Convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Jerry Donald Manning (December 2024): Convicted of two counts of mail fraud.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (January 2025 - Posthumous): Convicted of mail fraud in 1923.
Alex Nain Saab Moran (December 2023): Convicted of money laundering conspiracy (released as part of a U.S.–Venezuela prisoner swap).
Abraham W. Bolden Sr. (April 2022): Former Secret Service agent convicted of bribery attempts, fraud, and obstruction.
Kim Douglas Haman (December 2024): Convicted of making false claims against the government.
Vadim Konoshchenok (July 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., smuggling goods, and export control law violations (released as part of a multi-national prisoner swap).
Paul John Garcia (December 2024): Convicted of signing false documents with intent to deceive and theft/sale of government property while serving in the Navy.
Hunter Biden (December 2024): Convicted of federal tax offenses (alongside separate firearm charges). The pardon broadly covers any federal offenses committed or taken part in between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.
Gerald Glenn Lundergan (January 2025): Convicted of unlawful campaign contributions, making false statements, and falsifying documents.
Ernest William Cromartie (January 2025): Convicted of attempting to evade or defeat tax, as well as structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.
I don't understand why you think your question in reply to theirs revealed that theirs was naive.
If anything, I think it actually reduces the quality of discussion because it tries to say that dynamics in China are equivalent to the next you would find in pretty much any country which is is vague and lazy as analysis goes, and goes against the HN recommendation that conversations get more precise over time.
We improve it by ensuring the same people don't dominate the justice system and that prosecutions still happen whenever they don't. It was Biden's and his AG's job to do something about this and he fumbled.
I understand that perspective to some degree, but imagine a hypothetical country with say, two parties in power, where prosecutors only crack down on white collar criminals if they are supporters of one party and not the other. We would call that system corrupt, and probably not celebrate that at least some of the criminals face justice.
Also, from a practical standpoint, charging some and not others is not necessarily better if the selection is made politically. That moves the needle from "at least something got done" to "law is just a tool of oppression".
again, you're approaching it from perspective "both sides get caught" being a possibility
when in actuality the choice is between "both sides steal" or "one side steals"
and allowing both sides to steal is in no way better
---
the main way desired "both sides get caught" state becomes a thing is after "one side" splits in two - still being close in horizontal connections to stabilize, but with developed instruments for either half to guard against the other
No, I tried to be pretty clear that "at least one side got caught" is not always better than "nobody got caught" if corruption dictates who gets caught.
To unfuck a system like that you have to have a clean reset of sorts. It will feel unjust because past criminals will all go free, but you have to prioritize future stability. You offer amnesty for past crimes in exchange for absolute transparency and massive structure reforms moving forward.
Or, you do what the democratic party in the US has been afraid to do: Rip the bandaid off, accusations of weaponization of the DOJ be damned. The parent's hypothetical situation is precisely what is happening in the US right now where Garland failed to prosecute, and the entire democratic party was far too afraid of appearing to weaponize the justice system meanwhile the opposition has no qualms about doing so. Yes, the public will view it as entirely partisan but there's no other path forward.
But if you just do nothing at all, eventually the social contract breaks. The cost of the corruption becomes too high and the state fails, or you get a forced regime change.
> But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
> thus celebration that at least something got done
Is it really something to celebrate if:
1. Someone got sentenced to death because they lost some internal power struggle, and bribery was falsely used as the public reason?
2. The guy's getting killed as a scapegoat, or because he pissed off his superiors by not sharing more of his bribes, etc.?
> #1 is a net-better outcome for everyone else than doing nothing.
You kill some corrupt guy, just to replace him with another corrupt guy who's in the leader's good-graces. How is that "a net-better outcome for everyone else"?
>it's the choice between "prosecute this one or nobody"
Even that assumes a normal of being lucky that anything is prosecuted, ever. So it's good but against a low bar rather than rising to the bar parent commenter suggested.
Killing people in any context is barbaric because it is not possible to bring someone back from the dead.
I’m not a law expert but it seems pretty basic that there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment.
Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence, which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world as far as I can understand.
So harsher punishment means people with less power will get shafted harder
Just to be clear - you can't really "reverse" most things. The arrow of time only moves in one direction. People who are jailed and then exonerated do not have their lives "reversed". Their future circumstances are changed. Maybe they are compensated. But they still suffered in jail. You cannot erase that part of their reality anymore than you can raise the dead. This is not to discount your point that making amends while someone is still alive is seen as preferable.
Of course, attempts are made to "reverse" even after someone had been put to death. Posthumous pardons are a thing. It may not bring anything to the person who has passed, but it could give somewhat similar benefits to living descendants.
It's just to say we shouldn't undermine how impactful something like incarceration is on the theory that it is "reversible". Evidence suggests such experiences mess people up in pretty severe ways. Lets also remember thinking of death in these distinct terms may be very cultural. Few penal systems escape barbarity. There are worse things than death. There are many instances or societies were it is preferable or expected people kill themselves rather than go through something like the ignominy of incarceration.
As to the last line, I'm also not sure. Brutal societies have a way of turning on themselves. Nations that accord more protections to their people are generally a better place for their rulers, even if the reverse is not always true. Personally I would love a legal system that baked into its norms higher punishments for people with more power. I think these have existed in the past, even if enforced through less modern mechanisms.
It is also the case that people in power do things that people with less power are incapable of. Getting rid of notions of executive privilege or qualified immunity would be a good start. The way the law is written currently, people in power won't simply not be punished - they won't even be charged. Take George Bush. Did he ever even just have to testify under oath about the rationale for the Iraq War once? Would the United States really descend into a banana republic if he had been charged for perjury or war crimes? It seems like the push in that direction can instead trace its genesis to the fact that in America, we evidently make our leaders untouchable.
I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
> Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence
I am also unconvinced. I don't think it is fair to treat a child like an adult and I think those in power should have more stringent standards and larger consequences for violating them.
> I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
Let's say that some new evidence comes out that exonerates the person. You can indeed reverse the "no longer hold office" punishment. You can't bring someone back from the dead.
Le sigh. Fine, the punishment was you forfeit your chickens to your neighbor. Should those chickens be inedible by the new legal owner? What if they have to return them later if new evidence comes to light?
Chickens are basically fungible and interchangeable with money.
You can't select some random person and do a bit of bureaucracy and then tell a family whose member you killed that this rando is now part of their family as restitution for your mistake. You can give them money but in general it is considered somewhat distasteful to put an immediate pecuniary value on human life.
The problem with putting a dollar number on it is it's devoid of context. Lunch from McDonald's is going to cost me $15 in the US, so $6 is not enough to live off of here. But the actual number is irrelevant. Is it enough to get food for the day or the week. How about housing? $6 doesn't sound like a lot, but if lunch is $0.50 and a roof over your head is $1.00 for the night, $6 goes a lot further!
So what is the alternative punishment for folks like this who have destroyed the lives of countless people ? Hard labour for life in a mine until death ?
The US has four times as many prisoners per capita as China, the "police state."
edit: some interesting trivia. Due to the combination of America's incarceration rate, a racist justice system, and a completely wealthless and desperate class of freed slaves who were never compensated (although their owners were), Black Americans are 0.5% of the world's population but 5% of the world's prison population.
Your american KGB knows nearly everything about me, as well as about any other person with internet access (and also those without), without any "warrants", "judges", etc
"american KGB"? pray tell, who would that be? FBI? NSA? ICE? Even with their tooling, they are still struggling to legally acquire information, and even more so to act on it. There's even considerations of abolishing these agencies.
Try suggesting the abolition of the MSS as a mainland Chinese national and see what happens.
"Fbi, nsa,.." - I dont care much about their acronyms or the organizational structure
"Still struggling to legally acquire information.."
I dont doubt for a single moment, and I dont think you should, that you are right there in their database, with your identity, psychological profile, and all the rest. Now whether it was acquired "legally" i dont know, but when they choose people to murder abroad, I dont think that matters much.
> I dont care much about their acronyms or the organizational structure
So I call bullshit on your argument.
> dont doubt for a single moment, and I dont think you should, that you are right there in their database, with your identity, psychological profile, and all the rest.
I do. Perhaps I am there. Perhaps I'm not. Perhaps my name is there, but the data is wrong and/or misleading. I'm not going to deny USA's alphabet boys abilities, but I'm not going to glaze them either.
Nor I'm going to ignore that I might also be on the PRC's databases as well. They might not bombing people yet, but foreign policy can change easily.
I'm simply going to do my best to protect my privacy, not pretend that either of these regimes wouldn't kill me if they find it convenient.
That said, it is undeniable that USA would have more issues pulling that off domestically, and, arguably, even internationally. PRC has an entire legal apparatus for doing this domestically.
Just because i call them collectively KGB - since the essence is precisely that - you "call bullshit on my argument"?
Though you are right I guess in what regards the legal apparatus of PRC.
But look, here in the free west my speech is suppressed without any need for "legal apparatus".. and it is not because I was provocative (though this is eventually what you become when your mouth is being consistently shut with a big fat lap).
As regards to your efforts to ptotect privacy, your identity can be deduced without much difficulty just from the sites you visit.. and Tor's origin you should know, and here I would stop.
> Just because i call them collectively KGB - since the essence is precisely that - you "call bullshit on my argument"?
Yes, because it means you don't have a good idea of the claims being presented. Perhaps there's a point in there, but you should think it through rather than just allowing it to remain nebulous as suggested in "I dont care much about their [...] organizational structure". Organizational structures matter, they make certain corporate actions easier and others more expensive.
> But look, here in the free west my speech is suppressed without any need for "legal apparatus".. and it is not because I was provocative
I appreciate the change in tone, but I have to ask whether that's really the case, as you're being ambiguous with the suppression methodology. There's quite a gap between "flagged into oblivion in a site" and "arrested for a year for posting anti-government opinions". Given the initial comments on your profile, you haven't done any favors in keeping downvotes and flags away. Not just provocations, but also gratuitous accusations. I try to avoid those because all they do is give ammo to the enemy.
> As regards to your efforts to ptotect privacy, your identity can be deduced without much difficulty just from the sites you visit.. and Tor's origin you should know, and here I would stop.
That's a oversimplified view about privacy. Every piece of information about a person, when enough is collected, can be used to identidy them. Collecting said information, specially when the infrastructure for that is not trivially available (as is the case in the USA in comparison to the PRC) is easier than done. When was the last time someone got identified by law enforcement in the US via their internet traffic? You are better off worrying about GDID in Windows.
A similar story goes for Tor. For starters, it was developed by US Navy, not the intelligence/law enforcement agencies. Second, the protocol is open and publicly being developed, so even if the NSA added a backdoor, it can be caught and removed. Finally, Tor is not the only option, see I2P for an example.
"That said, it is undeniable that USA would have more issues pulling that off domestically, and, arguably, even internationally."
You think so?
I spend a lot of time working with (actual) anarchists in the US, and most of us are far more worried about the US gov putting us in jail (or murdering us outright) for our signal chats, protests, and "actions" than literally anything that the PRC might consider doing to us.
Now try doing that in mainland China. Ask yourself why there isn't a strong active anarchist presence in the PRC despite their population in comparison to the US. If the actions you do actually are enough to cause the US domestic forces to go after you, rest assured, PRC domestic ones would already have got you.
It's true that the US may be more of a immediate threat to those in its territories, but to compare it to KGB is to either massively oversell US domestic forces abilities or undersell KGB's. Even in the closest cases of political executions, extrajudicial murders through abuses of force and qualified immunity, as seen in the recent ICE shootings, they still caused a lot of national instability, even within the right wing. Similar happenings in the USSR didn't come close in reactions.
Even if it's politically motivated, it's still punishment for a real and serious crime. Compare to prosecuting someone for touching a pool that the president happens to really care about for no good reason.
> he was described as the most corrupt official in Chinese history... Heshen is remembered as one of the richest men in history... His total property was... reputed to be equivalent to the imperial revenue of the Qing government for 12 years.
I wish India did something like this. A crackdown on corruption and enforcement of existing laws would fix 90% of India’s problems. Obviously I don’t think folks should get the death penalty but something harsh like long jail sentences and tearing down of whatever kingdoms they have built.
Classic whataboutism and both sides are the same in a single sentence? wow thats a new record!
Trump's pardons far exceed what Biden did in terms of scope and corruption. Trump's literally collecting bribes for pardons. There has been multiple confirmed, documented cases of someone donating to his reelection fund or buying trump coins, and then receiving a pardon in short order.
This is blatant misrepresentation to try and justify the unprecedented corruption by the current administration. He will be documented as the most corrupt president ever, even surpassing U.S.Grant for the title.
This is a lie. Joseph Biden pardoned Francis W. Biden, James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, John T. Owens and Valerie Biden Owens among many, many other dubious choices.
I'd imagine because of the talk from the then-incoming administration talking about how he'll go after their families unless his personal ongoing charges were dropped [0]. I would do the exact same thing if a vindictive POS was about to gain power.
I'm not the liar here -- none of those family pardons are for "white collar crimes", they were to protect them from retribution by Trump.
Again, Trump pardons people for a fee, and the motto of his pardons office is "no MAGA left behind". The fraud that he has pardoned amounts to about $2 billion to date.
Main difference between death penalty in US and China, is in US police officers easily sentence subjects to death and the courts do it with great difficulty. In China the inverse.
For instance, high level executive Bryan Malinowski was executed by the ATF and barely anyone noticed, but if the courts had sentenced him in such way, there would be great outrage.
Interesting story. This guy was actually airport director at the airport in Little Rock, AR. He used to buy and sell a bunch of guns and was an avid collector. He was killed when ATF agents raided his home and he responded with gunfire. The controversy seems to circle around the fact that:
* the ATF decided not to raid his home when he was out of town but early in the morning when he was at home
* the ATF gave him 28 seconds to comply with their announcement after which they battered the door down
Given the fact that the agents weren't wearing body cameras, the guy had a normal day job that he'd go to, and that 28 seconds is certainly too short to dispose of firearms it does seem a lot like execution served by way of search warrant. Certainly, I wouldn't be able to let anyone in 28 s after waking up to pounding on my door.
Willingly and with aforethought engineering a situation that is practically guaranteed provoke an asleep person with ~no notice in the early morning to "unprovoked" defend themselves and wife against unknown people breaking into their home in order to lawfully "defend" one's self is execution in my book.
I can understand if there's some imminent threat but there was none. He was going to wake up, and report to a secure airport full of cops and federal agents. But they couldn't resist engineering a situation that ended up with him dead, doing what anyone would do to protect their wife when given ~zero time to distinguish threats entering their home at night.
Now you can argue maybe it wasn't an execution, and only their acts were indistinguishable from what those doing an execution would do.
If you violently bust into someone's home in the United States, you're liable to, and absolutely deserve to, get shot. I do not care if you have a badge. If you want to execute a lawful search warrant, the best time to do it is when nobodies home. The second best time is during the day, when you can clearly state your legal mandate to be there, and allow the homeowner to comply.
The ATF in this instance (and frankly most instances) chose the most violent option available to them, because good people don't join the ATF. Violent thugs who get off on shooting dogs join the ATF. And when they get tired of shooting dogs, they decide to manufacture a scenario where they get to kill a more dangerous game.
I wish we did this here in the US. Here it’s the opposite - white collar criminals get “club fed” treatment - good food, comfortable room, tennis courts, etc.
And that’s if they’re ever charged at all, which is rare.
Other details for the official (Yang Youlin) in this news.
---
Whistleblower Yang Hai already reported Yang Youlin for his economic misconduct in July 2008. The whistleblower was detained because of the report at Nov 21st, 2008.
---
People's comment on this matter around March, 2009:
哇塞！终于有人敢动杨友林啦，杨海好样的。杨友林此人早该除无奈碍于他的势力。除掉杨友林大快人心。Wow! Finally, someone dares to take action against Yang Youlin. Good job, Yang Hai. That guy should have been dealt with long ago, but we were stuck with his influence. Getting rid of him is incredibly satisfying.
不杀此贪官，难平民愤。If you don't execute this corrupt official, you won't appease the public's anger.
江宁有一个传说，谁也动不了杨永林！There's a legend in Jiangning: nobody can touch Yang Youlin!
他的保护伞是谁？Who is protecting him?
希望引起中央的重视！I hope this gets the attention of the central government!
现在社会怎么啦？好多天了根本没人关注这件事？是上层没有看到？还是视而不见？还是怕牵连自己？What's going on with society lately? It's been days and no one is paying attention to this! Did the higher-ups miss it? Are they turning a blind eye? Or are they just afraid of getting dragged into it?
---
Since the report, there were several pieces of news about "the investigation about Yang Youlin is ongoing", but no real progress until 2023.
I feel like crimes over a certain threshold should include accessories in the punishment, like the Death Penalty here in Indiana does.
It certainly helps motivate them to testify in court.
Strong minority opinion: If someone steals more than the average total lifetime earnings of 10 people, I think the death penalty should apply. That's about 25 million USD
Autocracies tolerate corruption because if everyone is corrupt, anyone can be "legitimately" prosecuted for corruption. (At least I think that's how it works in Russia, but I don't know much about China.)
A state should never have the power to kill people --even though I think some just deserve death (like those raping then killing a child)-- because the state one day shall abuse that power to get rid of those who they don't like.
But I gotta say something: if the EU or the US were to kill politicians taking in bribes, there wouldn't be many politicians left.
How does one steal $300m? If someone is supposed to be on a clerk's salary, even if generous, I would think their explicable net worth should not go beyond a couple million. Being a hundred times richer than that means you have to keep a low profile, in which case being that rich isn't worth the risk.
Society cannot work with too many corrupt civil servants. Yes, "autocrats", "civil liberties", and yet - the guy slurped up $325M to put his finger on the scale, not to change the model of governance.
I wish we in the west took corruption more seriously, but I suppose we're more interested in cage fights on the lawn these days.
Does Xi Jinping (or any of his Politburo colleagues) publish their income and/or tax records? Otherwise, this "we are so anti-corruption" stance is basically just political theater as the Courts themselves are CCP-bound.
The US is very good if you're very rich. It's bad for everyone else. China appears to be somewhat bad or critical of the superrich, which is why they want to come to the US, but good if you're middle class or poor.
I would like such justice to be applied to a few European and French officials... Democracy could be a lot different if corruption and selling his votes was not a career goal for our officials.
Will it happen here to the most corrupt a-hole? I don't think so. He'd chant - they hate me, or i'm part of a witch hunt, or 'i'm politically prosecuted.
I mean, many people in many states of the US are clearly fine with the death penalty dispensed for violent criminals.
I think that white collar crimes of this nature are way worse than an isolated case of violence since it creates lots of indirect systemic misery & suffering for the people & taxpayers that need those resources (that by the way is also the perfect recipe for violent crimes).
What happens to the money in these cases? I could imagine the official taking solace knowing the money he amassed over the years would eventually go his family.
I don't really understand the mentality of people who do this sort of criminal activity. If he'd stopped after, say, $5m and just retired he'd probably have managed to get away with it. Continuing to such a ridiculous degree through sheer greed led him to a death sentence. That's just plain stupid.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Unless you are extremely crafty, you don’t get to retire from this sort of criminality. Everyone who enabled you wants more and you have a semi-permanent metaphorical sword hanging over your head.
This kind of crime means you develop a network around you that won't stop having expectations of you just because you think you have enough for your eventual retirement.
They'll basically be your friends, partners and coworkers. Making a sudden change in how you associate with each other can have rather negative consequences, ranging from anxiety to them trying to murder you.
I think your logic makes sense, if this was both logical and about the money. But it seems to be more about greed, discontentment, and "more". There is no limit to "more".
Yup, it's called greed. It's a part of human nature. That's one reason societies create laws and penalties: to discourage harmful behavior and keep that instinct in check.
So many comments here by western people clinging to the only thing that they have left. The idea that somewhere in the world there is 'injustice' and a 'lack of freedom' and 'dictatorship' makes their absolute dystopian hellscape seem somewhat barely tolerable in their addled minds because they can at least imagine that elsewhere there is some big bad dictator and therefore they are comparatively free. No matter that they are poor and getting poorer or that their governments and companies are all sold out to billionaires and wrecked by private equity. No matter that their freedom begins and ends at consumerism and the vague idea that the police won't arrest them for posting something online. Apparently freedom to have a strong government that actually funds things for the public and doesn't suck billionaire cocks is not as important as having the opportunity to get into debt and spaff shite on the internet. If these people actually went to China and saw it with their own eyes then they would realise that they have been lied to. It's extremely sad to see.
Pretty sure most rational western people (on here at least) are the first to acknowledge all the bad things going on in their countries… and most of the comments I’ve read in this thread seem rather supportive of corruption crackdowns? Idk what prompted this rant tbh.
Someone like Trump probably couldn't even be a CCP party member. I've heard it's a relatively meritocratic organization, at least compared to pur political system. Though maybe someone from China can correct me.
does punishing corruption with a death sentence - look excessive ? Yes!
is it prone to abuse by those who yield power - Yes!
however - the alternative - where corruption goes unchecked is even worse!! if you come from a poor country e.g in Africa - you would've experienced the effects of corruption.
American are now experiencing it now - & the country is already worse off. though before corruption in American was used as an incentive mechanism - now it's just pure grift.
so yeah sentencing one or two people to death explicitly is the humane outcome vs sentencing thousands to death implicitly.
Death sentence is excessive. But many people here will be comparing it to the USA where the current punishment for corruption is nothing. Literally nothing. You just get away with it in plain sight
We don't need death sentence, we just need, like, any regular sentence
In your opinion, which specific criminal acts have American executives committed in the last 20 years?
Holmes et co have been charged and incarcerated, SBF is also sitting in prison, other executives at smaller companies have also been prosecuted and faced imprisonment. I think there is a lot of fraud in various industries, but some of it is prosecuted, and some of it is legal enough that there is only a fine to pay. There is some accountability, and as much as i can criticize what corps do, i don't think of them as "legally responsible" for every misuse of their tools. Today it seems that if someone cuts their own leg off with a power saw it is a lawsuit against the tool company.
Insider trading - Using knowledge of impending policy decisions and military operations to massively profit from the stock market.
Further than this, one could argue that those policy decisions were made, or at least timed, in order to deliberately short stocks in order to reap profit. The timing of a lot of the Iran war announcements followed very suspect patterns.
Using the highest office in the land to promote personal businesses.
Awarding military contracts to companies linked with family members of the administration over other more suitable options.
We'll likely never see any accountability for the literal billions being illicitly gained by the current administration after they've left office.
The alternative is 4 years of house arrest, just until the next administration can issue a pardon. There is no sentence between 4 years and capital punishment.
Hang on. City level officials play an incredibly important role in China. While Nanjing is not in the same tier as Shanghai, Beijing, or Shenzhen, it is in the tier just below them. It is the provincial capital of one of China's most important provinces -- GDP similar to Texas. Many large Chinese companies are often tied to specific cities -- they get grants and subsidies via the city they are located in.
This guy did it over 30 years so it is feasible.
Scapegoat isn't the right term but I think it is very possible he is being executed to essentially send a message. I think your bigger point that there are way more corrupt officials than just this guy involved seems very plausible.
Nah he took the bribes and probably paid 90% upward/laterally. Being the guy that actually takes the bribe is likely part of how he got promoted to where he is, in a way, like a soldier who gets promoted for being a calculated risk taker.
That's not how this works. It really depends on how close you are to a position, where people might want to bribe you. Low provincial officials with direct ties to local land development might e.g. be able to take many more bribes than a highly ranked official in an office that is far removed from economic activity.
While Xi Jinping is heavily criticized in private within China, he truly attaches great importance to punishing corruption. The fundamental reason is that as China underwent reform and opening up, it abandoned the Maoist emphasis on equality for the people. As a result, interest groups have continuously expanded and begun to severely impact economic development. In the past, it was still possible to encourage officials to serve the people through rationality and grand socialist ideals. Now, with the fading of the former, severe punishment must be used to correct the course.
Additionally, there are two noteworthy aspects regarding the unique characteristics of Chinese law:
(1) The characteristic of "politics over law" in China has gained increasing approval online. Previously, many people admired and envied Western judicial independence, but more and more people are realizing the drawbacks of this system.
(2) China has always been very cautious regarding the execution of the death penalty. Even during the feudal dynasties, official executions remained rare and typically required imperial review. In essence, China still operates under a model of governance by Confucian elites.
If we executed people in Congress who make money in a way that is illicit for the general population we’d be left with like a handful or two left in the congress. They all have PACs and or engage in insider trading.
If we actually punished corrupt officials and we had some kind of truth serum that forced people to admit yes/no as to whether they are corrupt, I would not be surprised if the majority of officials in the federal government would be culled. Its practically a breeding ground for corruption.
The topic comment at the time I’m writing this is asking fair questions, in my opinion.
- Many people feel the death penalty is wrong in every case.
- Some have a general familiarity with high-level politics of elites and wonder about selective enforcement.
These don’t feel like they’re in bad faith. The merits are difficult to know from the outside, so there will always be speculation based on someone’s lived experience and perceptions. Better to have those aired with a chance to respond, in my opinion.
Especially for China, since it is a global power that operates differently from others. In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
> the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.
…juxtaposed to your conclusion:
> In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
fwiw, i too feel that the death penalty is wrong. but, that's answering an off topic survey question.
i should also note that you've gotten pushback on your comment above declaring that "Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption". my issue is that there's a narrative that forms based on up/downvotes and thus these political threads are gamed. kinda like how my concerns about legitimacy are being downvoted – that's to be expected.
Anyone who think this demonstrates the CCP's epicbacon commitment to anti corruption needs to ask themselves how did this man take so much bribe over 30 years and is only sentenced now.
Is he dumb? Surely he is smart enough to know he committed a capital crime and yet he kept doing it. Perhaps he only kept doing it because he believed he could somehow get away with it? Perhaps he saw others pull off the same stunt? Or perhaps he had the political capital to keep himself out of trouble and is now facing justice because he rubbed someone higher up the wrong way?
Is the prosecution dumb? 300 million is no small money are they really so incompetent that over the course of 30 years they could not find anything wrong with this guy? Perhaps they had a reason to keep him around? Perhaps he had them in his pocket? Perhaps he had the connection to fuck up anyone who dares investigating him? Perhaps they never meant to care about corruption anyway and only went after him because someone somewhere issued an order and they are just charging him for corruption because the true reason is less convenient?
China has invested a lot in whitewashing its public image these days. Every young left leaning westerner is salivating at the idea of a Chinese century because they somehow convinced themselves that the Chinese has the solution to everything that went wrong in the west. It's sad to see it spreading even to this website.
generally an allusion to the sophomoric takes of enthusiastic ignorance found on places like Reddit (where The Oatmeal and Cards Against Humanity were popular)
The antifreeze toothpaste people didn’t get away with it, nor did the 3000 pigs in the river people, and nor did that one group of executives who were in charge of a fertilizer/chemical plant that was one of the largest industrial catastrophes in the world let alone China.
If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance. You can’t buy your way out if you do something so spectacular that you cause the government to lose face.
You might as well go jump off a building or a bridge cause you’re done for.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/china-executes-ex...
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/uvm7oy/i...
> nor did the 3000 pigs in the river people, and nor did that one group of executives who were in charge of a fertilizer/chemical plant
What about the bridge falling down people, or the overpromised scam apartment people, or the tunnel that flooded people, or the police officers that blocked view of the flowers left for the folks who died in the tunnel that flooded people, or the opened the dam to flood the farmers during the rainy season people, or the fake drains people, or the fake fire hydrants people, or the lead paint in the kids school food people, or the covered up the lead paint in the kids school food doctors, or the barricaded an apartment that was burning during covid people, or the apartments with styrofoam instead of concrete that collapsed in venezuela earthquake people...?
I haven't heard of many of these but the ones I have were state actors covering up things the state itself did or enabled. that's a different category from private executives getting punished when they embarrass Beijing.
i looked it up and at least the evergrande ceo seems to have bern fined to the point where he had to declare bankruptcy (as of a few months ago, my information is old), so i guess he did find some justice (i think hes not very bright and was likely lied to by his underlings -- many such cases, so it is nice that the buck stopped there but the root cause was not fixed afaict)
Evergrande was a credit crunch similar to Silicon Valley Bank, they were funding development of projects by selling the units before they're built, they got ahead of themselves and then a pullback in housing prices exposed them.
It sucks extra bad for the people who took out a mortgage for a home that didn't get finished, but it does seem like more of a screwup than corruption.
? Everyone in the party is incolved in similar crimes. The only thing they are guilty off in addition is a lack of loyalty to emperor xi. Incompetence and criminal corruption, that you can edit out of history, but intrigue is unforgivable.
Are you sure? Do you have an example of substantial disaster or scandal that resulted in loss of life and loss of face for China, but perpetuators got away?
For UK I have: Grenfell tower scandal (over 100 dead, no one in prison), infected blood scandal (thousands dead, no one in prison), postmaster scandal (thousands falsely imprisoned , no perpetrator in prison), etc.
Well but the point was, that these are wiped from the internet. Sure it’s convenient, but I wouldn’t put it past the Chinese government - I’m sure they have erased quite a bit of uncomfortable facts.
I don't understand how they could simultaneously wipe some things completely off the Internet and other things are completely leaked out.
If it leaks into independent medias, they probably will have a hard time erasing it. If they erase it before it makes it to any independent media, they have a good chance it will never surface again. At least that’s how I imagine it.
Are we restricting this to businesses, or is the genocide of the Uyghurs fair game?
How does it relate to the question?
Wuhan situation is clearly government policy. It may be terrible, but that is besides the point.
It was not policy of British government to burn down a skyscraper in central london with hundred of people inside cooked alive.
It was not the policy of British government to infect 30,000 people with AIDS.
Yet British government is unable or unwilling to take action against people responsible.
They ran a rolling internment program for a few years, holding people against their will in mandatory patriotism camp for months at a time.
That's bad and wrong but you need to be killing people to call it genocide. It's been a master class in propaganda on this topic, look up the name Adrian Zenz and see how often he gets uncritically quoted.
> you need to be killing people to call it genocide
No, you don't.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
See Article 2.
So the “-cide” root of the word which means “kill” no longer means that?
It's never meant only that, but that's not the argument. We decided that a long time ago.
Genocide refers to a People (race, kind, tribe, family, etc.), not individual people. The group is a concept, and 'killing' it doesn't have to involve the biological death of the group members. That's part of what the linked resolution is trying to say.
For example, you could go sterilize every member of an ethnic group, without killing - causing the biological death of - any of them. None of them will be able to have children, and as they die of old age, the group disappears. That's genocide.
Another example would be to forcibly separate all the members of the group and prevent them from engaging in the lifestyle associated with membership in the group (e.g. style of dress, music, food, language, worship, etc.). Over time, perhaps generations, the people basically give up trying to do any of these things if they even remember what they were. They have no group cohesion, so the group has essentially disappeared. No need to directly cause any biological death. The argument is that if this is done intentionally, it is also genocide.
Genocide as a concept is about ending the group, not specifically the individual members. It's definitely true that you can end a group by killing all its members, though.
Ok but none of those things came even close to happening in this case. The arguments are all, like, it was in pursuit of genocide, because I say so, so if one guy died in detention then it's a genocide.
Well there are allegations of mass detentions, forced labor, destruction of religious sites, suppression of language, separation of children into Chinese-controlled boarding schools, coercive birth control, and sterilization.
You agreed with me that genocide is more expansive than "we're directly killing people". For the sake of argument, let's assume the allegations are true: what would you call that?
But the allegations aren't true for the most part. Some are out-of-context true, like if you have too many kids they sterilize you, that was true across China for decades and going away now. But then the limit on kids for minorities was HIGHER than it was for Han Chinese until recently. So were they self genociding?
Taking an angle like "well, lets assume these things are true, THEN can we accuse China of genocide" is basically what the media did for 5 years on this topic.
Was, yes. That policy ended in 2017 I think, which I don't know if I call that recent. Post-2017 some evidence pieced together by a journalist suggested that IUDs and forced sterilizations were higher in Xinjiang than the rest of the country, and went up when the rest of the country went down. But you're right, their population has not evaporated.
My point about the assumption was to get you to agree that if these things are happening, we know that it constitutes genocide. At this point I don't care if you agree or not.
They stopped being higher because the limit was raised from 2-3 for Han, not because it went down for minorities. It happened in 2021.
And it's very easy for me to believe that rates of childbirth and hence violations are higher for subsistence farmer populations than urban workers, because that's true everywhere. Uyghur population grew a ton between 2010-2020, 3 kids per couple is net growth.
Lastly, no, there's no such thing as a "technical" genocide on a points system without some massive crimes against humanity that would drop anyone's jaw, and those things are hard to hide. It's not like you make a couple of technical errors and, oops, genocide even though the population is substantially fine and economic reforms are working.
So beeing unable to keep up, because your culture holds you back that is a genocide? Like somebody develops machines, that marginalize your existence until you fade away, that is a genocide?
No I believe it requires intent (possibly systemic in nature) on the part of the perpetrator. If the quakers end up disappearing and it turns out to be primarily due to their refusal to adopt modern technology that's not genocide as I understand it so long as everyone else was at worst indifferent to their plight.
So genocide ranges from “murder” to “discrimination, maybe”?
The only thing this does is cheapen the word. In the past genocide was something serious. But now it includes activities that are simply upsetting.
It doesn't cheapen the word. If discrimination is intentional and has the effect of minimizing and eventually eliminating the target ethnic group, then you have the same result as if you lined up everyone in that group and shot them.
The word is attached to the intended outcome, not the specific actions taken to achieve it.
You're omitting so much, such as torture and ethnic cleansing and massive levels of abuse. Any genocidal concentration camp could be called 'an internment camp'. Anyone reading this, just look up coverage in credible sources.
"Killing people" is not required for committing a genocide:
Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
2.1 Killing members of the group
2.2 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
2.3 Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
2.4 Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
2.5 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
Brother, I eat at a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan pretty regularly. Nobody destroyed any groups.
There was a big overreaction that violated people's rights but the people still exist and are fine.
If we contrast with how the West have reacted to terror attacks, its quite rich to see them throwing UN definitions at China.
I really haven’t written anything about Uyghurs specifically. I only corrected your mistaken assumption that genocide must necessarily involve the killing or physical extermination of people. It doesn't even require to be successful at its mission - it's the intent when taking any of the specified actions that counts, such as causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing destructive conditions of life, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children. If those acts are committed with intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part, it might be considered a genocide.
So “Uyghur restaurants still exist” or “Uyghur people still exist” does not answer the legal question. The relevant question is whether the group’s cultural, religious, familial, or biological continuity is being targeted as a group. It's enough to do this in a single village.
This may sound like a grammar nitpick, but I think it points to the actual issue: “the people still exist and are fine” does not answer the genocide question.
Genocide is not simply about whether “the people” — individual members of a group — still exist. It is about whether a people — a protected group as such — is being targeted for destruction, in whole or in part.
So the relevant question is not merely whether “the people still exist and are fine,” but whether a people still exists as a people, and whether it is fine culturally, religiously, socially, biologically, and institutionally.
In this particular case, I don’t claim to have enough information to make a final judgment. But the fact that so little independent journalism and investigation is possible must be blamed on the CCP and cannot be treated as counterevidence. Unlike individual human beings in a court of law, governments that suppress a free press and block independent investigations should not receive the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion.
I'm saying all of the people still exist and their lives were never in danger. There were some dozens executed for actual terror/separatism charges, maybe some of those cases were bad, but it was not a threat to "the people".
The fact that the argument has to lean into technicalities and attributed unspoken intentions rather than actual horrors should say everything.
There are people saying all the Jews were still alive in Germany. For a matter of fact, I've recently been to a jewish restaurant. The owners seemed fine.
And those people are cranks because we have tons of evidence of the holocaust.
Conversely, in this case, Adrian Zenz is a crank because for a decade he's been unable to put up any. In an era where every single person carries a high def video camera in their pocket. It's a faith-based accusation.
What if a culture is genocidal and hellbent in removing all minorities from its surroundings? Like nazis driving everything away in a wave of conquest? Is extinction of this genocide? Look at the minority histograms of the middle east for example
> Brother, I eat at a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan pretty regularly.
Honest question here;
is it a traditional Uyghur owned and managed restaurant freely frequented by local Uyghurs as a living expression of past and ongoing Uyghur culture, or
is it more a Disney "themed Uyghur restaurant" with the same relationship to Uyghur culture as Outback Steakhouse has to actual IRL Australian food and culture (ie three tenths of f-all).
It's run by a family from there, they speak dialect among themselves which is very much not Wuhanhua. The food is only slightly xinjiang actually, its a stretch noodle shop with a couple of lamb dishes.
But even if it were the latter.. even that would go against the narrative of total cultural hostility?
In context, and I'm not just thinking of Uyghur culture in China here, the presence of {X}-like restaurants can mean a lot of things.
Majority culture "celebrating" / "allowing" minority culture restaurants, clubs, bars, etc happens in many different ways with many differing meanings, complicated layers even.
Black Harlem in New York went through stages of being an outpost of US black culture(s) (from US North and South, urban, rural, "African"), a hip place for hip white people, birth place for new takes on old culture, etc. All that while the attitude of majority culture in the US fluxed a few times wrt black minority culture.
TLDR; It's hard to get a read on what a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan means either way in the greater China attitude toward the re-education of the Uyghur.
Ok, can I step back a bit and call out some big picture differences?
The legacy of slavery in America is a key component of the microwave background radiation there, the story seeps into default assumptions of everything.
China just.. doesn't have that. They had slavery amongst themselves in the olden days like everyone else but no master race chattel slavery period. There's definitely racism on the black/white scale here but it mostly goes with perceived income/status of the black/white foreigner (most blacks here are from africa), its not some core piece of the national story.
Additionally, minorities here have mostly always been loosely governed people at the empire's periphery, rather than integrated and persecuted in the core. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_regions_of_China). The Xinjiang camps were an exceptional case after some terror attacks, and they're over now.
I think the equivalent core narrative here would be being victims of colonialism during the century of humiliation, which puts them if anything on the same side as domestic minorities.
Opinions seem varied, that's for sure.
Wikipedia describes the camps more as rebranded than "over now" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps
and those annoying Australians are claiming the CCP are using "powerful resources in Beijing’s ongoing efforts to reshape the global narrative on Xinjiang, influence political elites abroad" - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cultivating-friendly-forces/ (July 2026)
/r/AskHistorians adopts a practice of waiting 20 years before attempting to write a reasonable balanced history on current events .. so give things another 16 years and we'll see, I guess.
Yeah, ASPI and Adrian Zenz are the sources for basically every allegation in Xinjiang besides just quoting what the government itself said they're doing. Their evidence is typically "sources".
Meanwhile all of Ukraine and Gaza have been on youtube the whole time, everyone has a cell phone, why do we go back to the same 2 ideological think tanks with rumor-tier evidence every time on this issue? Seriously. Find any article and cite crawl, it's always either ASPI or Zenz at the bottom, citing each other or "sources".
If someone accused the US government of a secret genocide for 7 straight years with this caliber of evidence they would rightfully considered cranks. Especially if everyone was still alive.
To be fair, Gregory Stanton has had the US listed as problematic for awhile now and he's considered a top authority on the topic. Of course his reports are based on the definition from the UN Genocide Convention which you don't seem to hold in high regard.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/united-states-of...
I would suggest that the strict etymology of a word doesn't really matter much in geopolitics, at least not as much as legal definitions arrived at via international consensus.
I mean, I wouldn't consider him a top authority. It's an overly lawyerly approach to US treatment of groups that are clearly not actually being genocided (presently, native americans were). So I disagree on the same grounds as China, you need some mass casualties at minimum before getting into the legal nitty gritty. Maybe mass sterilization could also suffice.
I actually restrained myself from pointing out that the standards used against China in this thread would fit just fine against US treatment of minorities, it seemed too facile.
Now, western actions in the middle east on the other hand, we have mass casualties so legal arguments are on the table. I wonder if they said anything incensed and dumb that would indicate genocidal intent.
I agree that scale is often overlooked in these discussions. The real value of current legal definitions isn't just in identifying the industrialized murder of a population, but in recognizing the warning behaviors that precede it. It's crucial to identify when a situation starts moving in that direction.
Ok but this case is over and moving in the other direction.
The middle east on the other hand.. there are a whole group of US establishment natsec people who hold that obviously China committed genocide to the tune of hundreds while obviously Israel did not to the tune of nearly 100,000 and millions displaced. Because we have all of these lawyerly definitions, you see.
As human beings we have got to have a sniff test here.
The middle east is a mess and I can't disagree. The warning signs were there, and they were ignored, mostly.
You don't like my choice in appeal to authority, sure I get that. That doesn't preclude from there being authoritative views on the topic though.
We probably should have something to stand on other than vibes. Maybe we can come to consensus on who is an authority. How about the IAGS? https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Fina...
Now, if it has moved in the other direction since 2022, I don't see anything countering that either and I certainly can't speak to the current state of things and will believe you (mostly because I have no intention of looking deeper currently). I will say that's a strong indicator that the process of being called out on the international stage worked though.
I'll definitely grant that international pressure helped. Even if there were never any possible chance of genocide, internment camps are still bad! It's good that they are over.
I feel like genocide legal debates skip over the human harm into some binary "is it genocide" thing, like detention or the first 90k deaths were ok but now you're really a bad guy.
> intent to destroy
Except there was no intent to destroy, literally all other points 2.X that follows is irrelevant. There's reason plurality of UN takes PRC position that they indented to deradicalize / reeducate, aka not genocide. Which is obvious except to useful idiots on Pompeo propaganda because reducing PRC minorities by 1 is bad for Xi's hagiography. Now the gets to bask in the glory of speed running histories most successful war on terror with minimal bloodshed by sinicizing restive frontier region. Basically Obama should hand over his Nobel Peace Prize to Xi.
So you say the Germans should just have reeducated the Jews to not being Jews anymore - and it wouldn't have been a genocide?
No, it would be "cultural genocide", which bluntly is empty label - there's a reason no international framework exits for something prosaic like enforcing common language and culture on minorities - because it's nation building 101. And regardless that's not even what PRC did, they didn't turn Uyghurs into non Muslims, they Sinicized them back to traditional Uyghur + state Islam and excised strains of extremist Wahhabism which was recent import. You know how western minorities mostly speak the dominant language, aka melting pot, that's what PRC minority policy is moving towards, away from soviet autonomous multicultural oblast model which was too hands off leading to minorities getting to restive/handsy with terrorism/separatism.
German jews btw overwhelmingly spoke German, were deeply assimilated, patriotic of course. XJ would be like if German Jews who spoke only Yiddish and stuck in their minority enclaves, carried out 100s of terrorist attacks, got reeducated to speak both German, and Yiddish, reform religion to be less extremist, and doing it in <10 years / single generation. Not only would it have not been genocide, it would have been exemplar model to emulate for domestic serenity. Which is broadly what XJ securitization was, the most successful deradicalization and integration program in human history. Not unique to human history... again integration = nation building 101 stuff, it was just technologic mediated speedrun, in that sense parallels Germans.
COVID19
Who, exactly, were the "perpetrators" of Covid19?
Whoever funded the laboratories in Wuhan.
>> The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provided roughly $1.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
So.. Biden?
Came to power in 2021 - time traveler too is he? Did you mean Trump?
Hard to tell one old man with dementia from another
Weird way of apologizing for being wrong. Keep that shit on Reddit.
According to Wikipedia, the lab leak theory is, uh... unproven to say the least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory
Why is this downvoted? My claims are re: what Wikipedia says and are verifiably true. Whether you agree with Wikipedia or not is a different question.
I wish there was an investigation but the CCP blockaded any inquiries, going so far as removing the computers and not cooperating with international authorities. /s
You're assuming that this guy was actually being prosecuted for crimes or that this guy lacked loyalty to Xi Jinping. A tremendous number of top generals and leadership has been wiped out in a short time and not necessarily refilled, and it's not because China has a huge disloyalty problem.
> You're assuming that this guy was actually being prosecuted for crimes or that this guy lacked loyalty to Xi Jinping
That's not an "or" question, imo. If you threaten the king by having too much power, too many allies, or too keen a mind, you get moved off the board. Disloyalty and risk of disloyalty are both abhorrent to autocrats.
Does it actually have a huge disloyalty problem or are they just better at punishing people for it compared to the us
Given that they've already carried out a Stalinist purge within the military ranks, I'm leaning towards the former. Xi might very well be positioning for a Taiwanese invasion.
> it's not because China has a huge disloyalty problem.
Why not? Dictators often purge anyone who is a threat, often because they form a possibly competitive power structure (regardless of their intent), and often because of paranoid perceived disloyalty, and for actual disloyalty.
And corruption is the cover story they commonly use - it's vague, general, the public sees enough gov't corruption to believe it and to hate it. Trials are not needed. Off the top of my head, Putin in Russia, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, ...
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"If you get caught". Do the math on how many get caught per capita. Its like worrying about a random coconut falling on your head. Fighting corruption in unequal societies is not possible because ambitious people born without wealth and status, and constantly bombarded with signals from birth that wealth and status is a sign of success, will do whatever it takea to get it. The Law doesnt reduce corruption. Its just a story like Religion that allows people to cope with a reality they dont control.
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China is as corrupt or more corrupt as anywhere else. You can absolutely buy your way out, or otherwise wrangle something. Zero tolerance death penalty for this sort of thing is a sign of extreme desperation - the fact that there are any such scandals despite the penalty is telling.
The smart ones quit while they are ahead and procure citizenship somewhere else (like Canada).
I'm pretty sure the smartest ones just don't do crime.
I think this is just materially incorrect.
You’ll have to define “smartest”. Crime and IQ don’t really correlate (negatively or positively) as far as I know.
Among the criminals embezzling public funds in China, arguably the ones who get away with it are the "smarter" ones.
They may not have a higher IQ, but in fact it may be more like the ones who have more self control and discipline. It probably has not been studied.
"Why have criminals who have not been caught not been studied?" is an exercise for the reader.
They don’t get caught
LOL
As long as god doesn't see it anything goes.
In the 90s and 00s when I was a kid, being a crook had real consequences here too. Not the death penalty per second, but the die in prison penalty left and right.
When John Meriweather and the rest of LTCM nearly blew up the market they didn't get a bailout, and the taxpayer didn't fund the hole in the balance sheet. The New York Fed organized private money and leaned on all their counterparties to get it done, but they didn't backstop it. Meriweather and the Sheik and Scholes and the rest were wiped out, they worked it off for a couple of years for salary and then skunk away in shame (we had shame back then). Took it like men near as I can tell. I admire John Meriweather a great deal in spite of the scandal.
President Clinton was impeached and very nearly removed from office for (ultimately) consenting but untoward involvement with a young woman (they got him on lying about it technically, but the political will was there because the country was furious about the skirt chasing.
Enron. Accounting that went from aggressive to sketchy to fraudulent (most of it would pass with flying colors today). Hard time. Skilling, Fastow I think just got out like five years ago (don't take my word for the date). Ken Lay IIRC died before they locked him up which saved him dying inside.
Madoff, died in prison. Ebbers, I think he died in prison too.
When Microsoft was gearing up to strangle the web in its crib the Justice Department pulled guys off of terrorists and human traffickers to go take a pipe to Gates until he backed off, he was allowed to keep Microsoft intact by letting the web happen, the Feds weren't asking, he decided to not fuck around and find out.
Consequences for serious fucking bad shit for people who are our leaders work. A people gets exactly what it demands from it's leaders and that's exactly what a people deserves.
Right now we're choosing to settle for a lot less, China is demanding more. Which is why we're getting our asses kicked.
> we had shame back then
The collapse of our standards has been heartbreaking to see and I am observing that most are simply in denial.
This comes and goes in seasons. At the turn of the last century the broligarchs of the time (they called them robber barons then) had the game stitched up worse than today. They owned the state legislatures (who elected the senators at that time) lock, stock, and barrel. They bought laws as they pleased.
The mores of the time caused them to be a little more circumspect about their pornographic rapine of the body politic, but they squeezed just as hard and their fists were stronger. Children died working in factories, diseases of poverty claimed entire city quarters, Pinkertons shot striking workers flat dead and walked away like ICE with a brisk stride before they'd even holstered their weapon the way I read it.
Just like today they paid no tax of any kind. And we're heading back there at speed. The typical person is closer to being in an Amazon warehouse where someone has died or the subject of an OSHA report that Instacart hushed up than they were five years ago, things are getting worse for most everyone.
But a few things broke the public's way, a couple of muckracking journalists tee'd it up, Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, you get one class traitor in the White House, and in less than thirty years the robber barons had lost it all, the economy goes into hyperdrive, the working man goes to sleep every night knowing, not hoping, that his children will live far better than him.
This one comes back around too, and the endless vulgarity and corruption on every surface that can render a photo or a sentence? That's not organic someone is paying for all that, it ebbs and flows too. I'm optimistic we can have cool R-rated movies and no banned books without hustler culture Instagram and celebrity yachting YouTube being crammed into every eligible impression.
Until then?
The worse? The better.
I think your comment is valuable and insightful, but
> China is demanding more.
I have yet to see evidence of that beyond propaganda. Naming someone who reportedly gets a harsh sentence is not evidence.
When is the last time someone was given the death penalty for a white collar crime in the US?
> Naming someone who reportedly gets a harsh sentence is not evidence.
And if I show you official statistics you will say statistics out of China can’t be trusted.
Folks like yourself will only realise when it’s too late
So you have no evidence.
The PRC is lapping us in everything from solar panels to electric cars to broad-based robotics and AI in real goods heavy industry.
Their power grid runs at a huge margin of excess capacity and they easily bring more online because they can still do infrastructure projects.
They are rapidly overtaking the United States in domestic, sovereign, and secure semiconductor fabrication. They're a couple of nodes behind but Kirin SoCs and multi-terraweight LLM inference on Aspire look pretty hot shit to me and no one can yank them around like a dog on a leash that it'll get turned off.
Government is dramatically more participatory than the western caricature. It is substantially at the local and regional level that it is directly participatory (so, the size of the whole US). At the very top it is representative in the sense that a party guy in Beijing is considered incompetent (they care about that) if the needs of the region are not on the agenda. When's the last time you called your congressman and got change?
Innovation is plural, research is open, the university system is in the loop, the public benefits.
Real wages are going up.
The PRC gets jumped in with Putin's Kremlin by lazy Americans who don't talk to Chinese people.
It's not the Kremlin. It's JFK in a Chairman Mao hat.
As I said, I have yet to see evidence.
That's a bunch of words, but if we didn't know before LLMs and before the Internet, we know now: words are cheap and valueless without other properties. What distinguishes those words from propaganda? Why should someone believe it's true?
Throwing insults at people who disagree or question you makes it less likely there is substance to the words.
That comment threw no insults and made a bunch of easily verifiable claims.
"lazy Americans"
> easily verifiable claims.
I disagree that they are verifiable, not being factual statements. But if you think so, then verify them. I'm not going around HN verifying the claims in everyone else's comments.
If you can't be bothered to verify claims then don't cast doubt.
The EV claims are the most trivially verifiable, the rest go down from there. Some of them have more nuance but you did not engage with that. Don't worry, reality will catch up eventually, you being convinced is strictly optional.
> If you can't be bothered to verify claims then don't cast doubt.
It's the opposite: If you post claims then others will absolutely cast doubt and it's up to you to verify them. No way other people should do it for you (that's also very inefficient - you already know how to verify them and also it's redundant for everyone else to do it). Even better, you'll see people cite their claims before anyone asks.
In any serious field, you don't make claims and then require others to verify them. Imagine a scientist or courtroom lawyer doing that. It's up to you and if you don't, then it's nonsense by default.
It's a comment section, and those are common sense observations about the Chinese economy. Like I said, you don't need to be convinced, it will continue happening whether you agree or not.
They're not commonsense - most disagree with what I know - and just saying they are is just stuff. Saying it will continue to happen isn't evidence. Just saying things doesn't mean anything.
> It's a comment section
Not just any comment section; HN plays by different rules. Look at how others interact. Just spouting claims doesn't get you far.
I didn't mean to call you lazy, I hadn't seen any evidence that you see Beijing and Moscow as undifferentiated other, which is the habit of thought I did call lazy.
You are awfully contrarian for someone whose response to an argument is "that's not proven to my satisfaction" and when asked what citations would satisfy you replies "it's not my job to define what citations I will and won't admit".
You do you king, but it's not exactly the incandescent childlike wonder of the perpetual student's mind.
I'll wager your mind was made up before we started having a conversation.
> when asked what citations would satisfy you replies "it's not my job to define what citations I will and won't admit".
That exchange never happened - maybe you're thinking of someone else?
> I'll wager your mind was made up
You can see how empty the Sinophile side is: they will talk about anything, say anything, but provide actual substance as a basis for their claims.
Having a side is a habit of the uncurious.
I agree, and there's clearly a Sinophile side here: I wish people would engage in a substantive discussion instead of attacking others, this time as 'uncurious'. As I've pointed out, anything but engage on substance.
"You can’t buy your way out"
Absolutely you can. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire thing is fabricated to just execute political opponents that don't align with Xi.
> You can’t buy your way out if you do something
Not with money.
It's also not like the West doesn't impose extremely harsh punishments on the top financial crimes. You can go away for life if you steal enough money.
Generally the only people that get harshly punished in the west are the ones who steal/defraud from rich people.
Who's defrauding poor people? The risk/reward is much better for defrauding rich people...
Wage theft is the most common form of theft in America.
For UK I have: Grenfell tower scandal (over 100 dead, no one in prison), infected blood scandal (thousands dead, no one in prison), postmaster scandal (thousands falsely imprisoned , no perpetrator in prison), no Eipstein clients are I. Prison to this day, Covid procurement was corrupt, no one went to prison
And finally no one went to prison for the global financial crisis, which was caused by fraud
Generally in a federal prison for non-violent offenders.
on edit: In the U.S obviously, in Western European nations I would assume better conditions than that even.
Seems like the appropriate place for a non-violent offender.
I certainly don't want him sent somewhere violent, but the life in prison for financial crimes is generally less harsh, when comparing experiences not reasons for imposition, than life in prison for other things.
Also, just off the top of my head I would expect many people getting life in prison for other things are younger than people getting life in prison for financial crimes, since financial crime tends to happen between mid 30s to mid 40s and violent crime tends to happen in teens and twenties. Assuming that the reason for skewing financial crime higher, because needing business connections and experience to pull off, holds with the size of crime without an stats to back me up I will say my naive expectation is the financial crimes that earn you life in prison would tend to be in the 50s, while the violent crimes mainly remain teens and twenties.
Obviously I don't mind anyone proving me wrong by going and doing the actual statistics work that I can't be bothered to do. I just have suppositions that I have not bothered to confirm as they do not significantly impact my life whether correct or incorrect.
money that is stolen from the public at a certain point is really damaging, especially when people think they can get away with it.
some non-violent offenders definitely need to be put into the same prison as violent ones
I suppose it is only non-violent on the surface. What if the stolen money could have been used to strengthen the healthcare system or improve citizens’ lives in other ways?
Right, cough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli, cough.
Shkreli's investors straight up testified they didn't feel victimized and that they would invest with him again. He didn't lose them any money or have any actual damages to people for the crime he was convicted of. I don't think he'd go to jail for what he did there in China, or even probably Singapore.
If you're thinking of the pharmacy drug price jacking thing, the thing he did that physically harmed many people, he wasn't convicted for that.
"He wasn't convicted for that". Maybe that's the point. Maybe he should have been.
> Shkreli's investors straight up testified they didn't feel victimized
That makes it right? And that is what you think is reprehensible about him ?
It's not right, but that's how you get convicted of these crimes in Asia. If you make your investors money, everyone is happy, it's incredibly, incredibly incredibly unlikely you'll be convicted for defrauding them. In fact in the USA it's extremely rare to get convicted of defrauding a person that got the returns they want and have no interest in pressing charges.
Now maybe if you hurt someone else in the process you'll get convicted, but that's not what happened in Shkreli's fraud conviction, the only people he was accused of harming were the investors who said weren't harmed and had no damages or interest in prosecution.
What happened to Shkreli was a most extreme anomaly practically worldwide.
I don't agree. If this sleazeball had done this in China, there's a good probability that with enough complaints he'd seen a pretty swift reckoning.
IMO, the Chinese government has a pretty good ear for the happiness of their population.
It depends on how the complaints are voiced. Karen-like entitled complaints are definitely not working there. Often, legit complaints also do not work, but sometimes they do.
I'm curious if this particular guy is actually going to be executed or the sentence being commuted to life without parole, like in other cases. Looks like it's not.
You're moving goalposts.
>> It's also not like the West doesn't impose extremely harsh punishments on the top financial crimes. You can go away for life if you steal enough money.
> You're moving goalposts
How?
In the U.S. you get pardoned for a fee. The pardon office's motto is "No MAGA left behind."
Does this actually happen in practice?
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> penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance
I think this is more about punishing political grafting than white-collar crime.
What about if the harm is solely limited to people outside of China, because the product was export-only?
While I am all for holding especially c corp and politicians accountable, similar sentences are a tragedy for me because there is no legal system I would trust, and I don't believe in death sentences as a crime punishment.
Only if you get caught and someone in power doesn’t like you
if trump ordered someone to be shot for accepting bribes we would find this idea a lot less appealing
anyone who spent a lot of time in that part of the world will tell you this stuff can basically be made up
the western method to do this is to plant csa material on a person and then publicly announce they've been caught with it. not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on your 2 acre lot, or a usb stick that has been planted in your car
your entire family and social network will immediately cut you off and very few consider these things can be fabricated
not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on your 2 acre lot, or a usb stick that has been planted in your car
That's because that's not how the laws worked in the U.S., nor have the laws ever worked that way. If that was actually how the laws worked, a lot of enemies of each administration would get tarred with this, instead of literally none of them.
https://www.hornwright.com/civil-rights-law/when-police-plan...
https://abcnews.com/US/florida-deputy-arrested-allegedly-pla...
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/20/538279258...
> You can’t buy your way out if you do something so spectacular that you cause the government to lose face.
You don't have to buy your way out as long as you are the government, i.e. the chairman.
Only if the CCP doesn't like you or decides that it doesn't like you because you are more valuable as an enemy. Otherwise it's no big deal because politics in a communist country does not get done without bribes in one form or another. Honest players are not to be found in a communist country. Government is like open source. The more open you are, the less likely there is going to be shenanigans.
> If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance.
LOL. Bribery is basically required in China for anyone with a medium sized business. Otherwise, you'll be indefinitely blocked by a bureaucrat who has no incentive to help you. Departments in municipal governments are often underfunded and bribery makes up for a significant portion of their effective payroll.
Facilitation payment are usually considered the less egregious kinds of bribery, some may be considered acceptable in a culture, and there can be a whole etiquette to it.
In some countries, doctors or surgeons are severely underpaid and it would be customary for a well off citizen to bring them a gift or a cash summ before an important surgery.
That’s quite different from Kickbacks (rampant in UK leaseholds by the way), etc.
Just because it's considered acceptable doesn't mean that you can't get in trouble for it down the line if you get the wrong people upset. "Acceptable" bribery goes far beyond giving a gift to your underpaid doctor. What I meant by funding payroll is that it's pretty common to basically "donate" to a hospital and then afterwards your kid magically has a job there.
What those who fetishize China's punishment of billionaires need to understand that what allows for this punishment is also what allows for even more blatant corruption. Rule of law is just something that doesn't exist. You may think that the US no longer has rule of law under Trump, and while that's true to a certain extent, for the most part people act with a rule of law mindset because that's what they are familiar with.
I am just saying that it would be good if we could have more precise discussion about corruption because different types of it are not equal, and we have more precise terminology.
I’ve lived in 2 out of 3 of those countries and I can assure you people get away with fraud and corruption all the time.
If you’re well connected (or making the right people rich) they are happy to overlook it. But if you bite off too much and they need a head to roll they will find one (usually someone lower level).
I mean look at the number of military leader simply dismissed in China for massive corruption. They get a fat pension and go away quietly and the small guy pays with his life.
Not sure I’d be expounding the greatness of that system.
> If you get charged
FTFY
[flagged]
You're only hearing about the ones caught and punished. You have no proof of "Zero tolerance", or of what percentage of people are caught.
CCDI has disciplined like 7m+ officials by now, flies and tigers (low and high), _you_ only hear about the juiciest tigers. 100+ provincial/ministerial officials gets investigated per year. It's a wide anti corruption program, lazy but easy back of envelop calc, there's ~100m CCP members, need to be CCP to be in politics and business, so 7/100 ~7% of those classes including top level, which feels like reasonable amount given historic corruption rates. Anecdotally, petty level corruption essentially gone, corrupt/graft industrial complex (banquets/gifts etc it was entire service sector withing broader luxury) went out of business 10 years ago. Not saying corruption gone - it's evolved to your normal financial vehicle engineering like in west.
"Zero tolerance" and "we catch every criminal" are two unrelated ideas.
Yes -- and even a spectacular punishment does not establish the guilt of the recipient.
Some may be innocent (framed) or only partially guilty (scapegoat.) Other may have been known to be guilty all along and has only recently fallen out of favor.
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The thing they have zero tolerance for is the embarrassment, not the corruption, pollution, crime, or other abuse. You can do whatever you can get away with so long as you don't cause embarrassment or shame.
That's one of the big cultural differences that people from the West don't really get - that "saving face" is one of the core concepts that Eastern societies are built on - not the actual things that, when discovered, cause you to lose face (e.g. corruption).
Ah, the old “only western people have morals, everyone else just cares about how it looks” argument. And where did you get this super objective assessment that eastern peoples only care about “saving face”? Couldn’t be a stereotype popularized by western people to feel better about themselves could it? The racists always come out in full force under any post showing an eastern country doing something better than the US in particular.
> Ah, the old “only western people have morals, everyone else just cares about how it looks” argument.
That's not even remotely close to what I said. You should read the comment you're responding before responding with ignorant and blatantly manipulative falsehoods.
> And where did you get this super objective assessment that eastern peoples only care about “saving face”?
Again - never said anything like that. Learn to read.
> The racists
Actually, learn to think. This has absolutely nothing to do with race, as anyone who has passed high school can tell you. This claim is straight-up objectively false.
The second you start slinging the word "racist" around you immediately prove that you have zero valid points to give and are just trying to cry your way into acceptance. Which correlates with the rest of this post.
This is either a troll post, written by a middle-schooler, or blatant propaganda.
I'm not the guy who responded to you, but “only western people have morals, everyone else just cares about how it looks” is pretty much what you tried to imply.
And before you start on me, yes - I'm able to "think", and no, I'm not a "troll"
If its not what you wanted to imply, then perhaps you'd be better served at owning up & clarifying, rather than insulting others who merely pointed out what you originally wrote.
And on a general note (not specifically or only you), I'm somewhat amused (in a morbid sense) at the sheer predictability of some of the "oh no, don't you dare try to impugn any moral superiority to that lot over there, vs us westerners" reactions.
Refreshing to see how even after a multi year ongoing genocide, kidnappings other countries presidents, and triple-tap bombing little girls elementary schools, westerners still feel they own the "moral high ground" (wherever that is anymore ...)
> pretty much what you tried to imply
Ahhh, the propagandist's classic tactic - when unable to muster even the feeblest possible response to an argument, just make up things and pretend that the other party said them.
Fact: I said nothing of the sort. You are lying.
> owning up
I have nothing to own up to because I said nothing of the sort, and anyone with basic reading skills can see that.
> clarifying
I was exactly as clear as I needed to be. I do not need to provide every single possible hedge on my statements. It is ok to not be perfectly clear and disclaim every negative, and this is now normal, sane, socially well-adjusted people behave.
It is completely unacceptable (and more than a little psychotic) to take that ambiguity and interpret it in the worst possible way.
It is downright evil to then defend that malicious misinterpretation instead of apologizing.
You are evil.
Hmm, so I am "evil" and a "propagandist"? I think you need to go into a dark room & quietly contemplate for a while.
Have fun. Over and out.
You are straight-up lying about my own words. Yes, you are both, and thank you for conclusively discrediting your own position instead of responding with something that'd actually require effort to dispute (such as a logical argument based on facts).
Saving face is certainly A Thing, but China has also had a strict legalistic tradition extending back about 2500 years. There's rather more to Chinese public life and philosophy than 'Confucius say' and the CCP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy)
You got it. I'm not saying that saving face is the only cultural priority - just that it's a much greater one than in most Western cultures - and most Westerners don't understand that, and that leads to misunderstanding of the mindset and rationale for actions and decisions.
(Spoilers for The Wire)
I buy the whole thing that some cultures give more weight to face-saving than others. I would classify my supposedly western country (Chile) as one that gives it more weight than, for example, Germany. Even then, this just sounds like a kneejerk "you cannot trust these dastardly orientals".
Face saving is a thing in the US, to the point that it's a common plot point prestige TV (e.g most of The Wire). It's an accepted fact in political campaign with spin doctors. The 30K in credit card debt to keep up appearances is also face culture. The hustle culture, etc.
You don't need to be racist, you just can be skeptic of the claims of an autocratic government.
Nowhere did I say that Western countries don't care about saving face - it's just not a deeply embedded cultural priority that is nearly as valued as it is in many Eastern cultures (including, relevantly, China).
How is the existence of a PR/spin industry, the fact that many Americans live way beyond their means, or the proliferation of influencers whose job is to show a specific story not evidence of a society that values appearances and will do a lot to protect face?
> a society that values appearances and will do a lot to protect face
Read my comment again, carefully, and you'll understand that your response is unrelated to my point.
Also: all of these things exist in large, industrialized Eastern nations too. You've clearly never lived in any of those places or even had tangential exposure to their culture. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that - just understand that you are exactly the kind of person who is going to have the hardest time understanding the cultural difference - which is part of my point.
What, in your estimation, is the difference between saving face in China versus keeping-up-with-the-Joneses in America?
There's no "in my estimation" - this is a well-researched topic and the vast majority of sociologists agree that there is a major cultural difference between the two, starting with the fact that "keeping up with the Joneses" is an individual act of pride vs "saving face" in China not only involves individual pride of an objectively greater magnitude, but also a collective pride that is rare in Western cultures and almost unheard of in highly individualistic cultures like the United States.
For understanding this better - you can try to read the Wikipedia page on the concept of face ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) ), but part of my point is that academic/intellectual understanding is a really poor substitute for experience in this domain, and reading a page allows for intellectual disagreement that is literally inconsistent with reality - experience forces you to directly confront that reality.
I'd suggest watching a few hundred hours of media from several different Eastern cultures (I personally like a mix between Japanese, Korean, and Chinese television shows - they each have their own memetics and charm and can be highly enjoyable - but most forms of media should give you the same experience as long as it's diverse enough).
What does saving face as a collective mean, in your estimation?
When Americans apologise to non-Americans for the behaviour of American tourists abroad, is that collective face saving?
How does a “diverse enough” media diet give someone the “same experience”? Maybe you’re picking and choosing media to reinforce your inner biases?
You clearly have both zero exposure to any sort of Eastern culture, and you also didn't read any of the sources in that Wikipedia page - and instead of doing either of those (because you know that if you do, you'll be proven wrong and/or have to content with cognitive dissonance), you're trying to catch me with a gotcha. It's clear you're not operating in good faith - any person genuinely trying to understand would do one of those things, and you're not.
> Maybe you’re picking and choosing media to reinforce your inner biases?
You think that I chose to watch thousands of hours of media, not for entertainment, but specifically to deluse myself into a very specific and niche bias that the vast majority of people don't even have a mental framework to conceptualize and never comes up in casual conversation or has any relevance to my daily life? Congratulations, that's one of the most insane accusations I've ever seen on the internet.
Wasnt the especially hard trial and punishment of Chelsea manning, assange, etc. not a punishment by the western establishment for losing face?
...no? Not that the answer to that question is even relevant to the comment I actually wrote.
I am pointing out the whole ‘losing face’ thing exists in the west too.
If you cause certain people to lose face, you will get China-like response.
In fact it’s a core conservative value and you can observe it in interactions with police - if a victim embarrasses the police they will prosecute the victim instead of the perpetrator
> I am pointing out the whole ‘losing face’ thing exists in the west too.
Yes, in the sense that a bicycle and a Formula F1 are both wheeled modes of transportation.
I never said that western cultures don't have the concept of pride - just that it's categorically different in eastern cultures.
This is both extremely well academically supported[1] and immediately obvious to anyone who has nontrivial exposure to most eastern cultures (including, specifically, Chinese culture).
Furthermore, the punishment of Chelsea manning is clearly irrelevant for multiple different reasons:
1. Specific instances are not reflective of a general pattern
2. Manning and Assange were instances of leakers of classified information, which is a separate category from merely "losing face"
3. There's a consistent pattern of the US government prosecuting leakers of classified information[2] even when there's zero media exposure, which conclusively disproves the "its just saving face" theory
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Re...
[2] https://www.justice.gov/news/press-releases?search_api_fullt...
yeah since when does "saving face" not happen in the West? Isn't there a war in europe that's been going on for four-ish years now that essentially a face-saving operation that has killed nearly a million?
There was a great essay I read a few years ago that I can't locate, about how much of Western society is driven by the threat or actualization of humiliation. The Black Freedom Struggle (all incarnations) was won (inasmuch as it was won) not really through moral appeals or the imposition of practical reality, as much as through the humiliation of the slaver/segregationist position on the global stage and in the media.
You want to win? Make them look stupid in such a way that continuing to fight makes them look even more stupid. Pain doesn't stop people, practical futility doesn't stop people; but, faced with the prospect of being considered persona non grata or a laughing stock or just robbed of their dignity, whether they win or lose, that is when people will call the match and walk off.
So, yes, face is a Western thing, too.
I would say it’s worse in the West, as we have generalized the concept across society to the point where our politicians (and even our militaries) are only able to fight symbolically. Actual ground truth has become secondary.
See also: oil futures, politicians who feud over “vibes” instead of tangible policy, constant symbolic strikes in war with no results, etc.
Yeah it’s pretty funny how worked up the CCP get when they’re called out. “How dare you accuse us of launching a spy balloon?”. Whereas Russia hits you with the “oh those aren’t FSB agents, just lovers on vacation ;)”
Well I given that it wasn’t a spy balloon in the end, perhaps they had a point
I mean, the entire concept of "spy balloon over the continental US in the 21st century" could be considered a litmus test for critical thinking.
A country with satellites is running a Wile E. Coyote tier balloon plot?
Yes, and if you think it's not feasible, you failed the critical thinking test. Balloons have the ability to observe signals that satellites do not. It's that simple.
While being incredibly obvious and easy (and justified) to shoot down, as we saw.
But enlighten me. What critical signals intelligence was that balloon getting?
One of the problems with absolute authoritarian regimes is that the friends of those in power are defined as "not criminals", and vice versa for enemies. It's part of the reason I'm against presidential pardon. (Except for when it's retrospective on laws that have changed, maybe?)
luckily the phrase gp wrote was: "caught and punished"
So, zero tolerance cannot be known without correct stats on both catching and punishing. so it is, indeed unknowable.
Is there any evidence any of the people convicted were actually executed or imprisoned?
If any of those people were politically connected, they probably just got a new identity and shoved off to somewhere else in the country.
> If any of those people were politically connected
Connection works both ways. You can be your superior's lapdog on Monday and jailed for being so cordial that he thinks you are trying to take over his position — I mean, taking bribes — by Wednesday.
Given how this man stayed out of trouble for 30 straight years before finally being apprehended, I feel this could be exactly what happened. He probably had some political leverage to keep the prosecutors looking the other way. And the moment he lost his leverage — maybe his superiors changed their minds about him, maybe he stepped on the toes of someone, who knows — they went after him.
What happens in countries with no rule of law is rule of power hierarchies. A regional party boss would have his trusted deputes running things, who have their underlings, they underlings have their preferred business partners (police chiefs, businessmen, prosecutors, control authorities) and so on. A bribe at any level is always redistributed upwards.
Sometimes the big guy falls out of favor with bigger guys, and then the whole structure is up for grabs. The whole vertical is massacred (sometimes literally) while new people take over from the top down. Often what's visible happens a few degrees removed from the actual cause.
There's understanding among the ruling class and much of the populace that it's just How Things are Done. But moments like that give you public trials with executions that make some naïve Westerners clap.
> If any of those people were politically connected, they probably just got a new identity and shoved off to somewhere else in the country.
It's great that you provided evidence of that ... no hypocrite you.
I sometimes see people "celebrate" this, with the rationale that China is cracking down on white-collar crimes and handing out sentences unheard of in the west.
But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for it. Some sentenced to death.
He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view.
Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese football programs. They’ve been decimated because of corruption prosecutions, both executives and players. It’s a major reason why China isn’t competitive on the global stage, which much smaller countries with significantly smaller budgets can compete. And, yes, Xi does care about competing in the World Cup. Prestige is very important to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
>He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power
This right here is why “corruption” should be looked on with great skepticism. In an authoritarian government basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption. You know, like having a say in how people are governed. This is a high crime in a state with 1 party that cannot be replaced.
In that way, “corruption” can mean “not being loyal to the dictator.”
> In an authoritarian government basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption
Could you list some of those basic liberties? Are they the sort of liberties whose exercise involves taking half a billion in bribes?
---
Generally, basic liberties like showing up to a protest aren't considered corruption, they get called terrorism, or somesuch. A Texas judge just sentenced a dozen people to 30-70 years in prison for exercising them, by the way. Some of the people given 30 weren't even at the protest. Half this forum looked at that, and saw nothing wrong with it. I can only imagine that if they were born on the other side of the Pacific ocean, they would be card-carrying party members.
>Some of the people given 30 weren't even at the protest.
That by itself isn't a convincing argument. You can't plan a bank heist and be waiting at your safe house and say, "I'm not guilty of anything, because I wasn't in the bank!". The mafia guy doesn't get to say, "I didn't actually whack the victim, I just nodded to Joey, and he did the whacking".
You might be interested in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conspiracy
...maybe this is mostly a thing in common law jurisdictions? Maybe there is a lawyer here who can point us to a interesting history of conspiracy in common law vs civil law jurisdictions? Also of interest might be things like:
https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-mur...
Thank you for giving a front-page example of the CCP's logic when it comes to dealing with protests and dissenters. Find one who did something illegal, hang the rest for conspiracy.
For anyone else curious as to what OP is talking about, I had to look this up:
> The protest was a late-night/noise demonstration (involving fireworks) against immigration detention policies. It turned violent when a shooting injured a police officer. Prosecutors described it as an "act of terrorism" linked to an alleged antifa cell; defendants and supporters denied organized antifa ties and framed it as protected protest activity
https://x.com/i/grok/share/87352ef0ac4b454aba924157c44f476f
It sounds like they arrived in tactical gear, started destroying property, and when cops arrived opened fire.
This seems like a bad example on your part, as the people opposing ICE are some of the most misaligned people in the country. That said, we have a right to protest in traditional public forms, you don't have a right to shoot up an ICE facility.
Only one person opened fire. He got 100 years. (I agree that he shouldn't have gotten a slap on the wrist for what he did, but I'll happily point out that killers serve less, if at all.)
The rest got 70. None of them had guns.
The guy who got 30 years wasn't even at the protest.
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There is no universe where this is not completely batshit insane, but it's interesting to see you use the exact same logic[1] the CCP has in its crackdowns and pogroms to justify it.
The reason the sentences were so high, by the way, was because the judge took dozens of minor offenses and added the sentences for each. It's the equivalent of sentencing someone who stole a 12-pack for 12 counts of theft, or someone tagging 'FUCK ICE' for 8 counts[1] of destruction of federal property.
For some reason, the current regime does not hold its footsoldiers and other useful idiots to the same standard.
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[1] Someone in a protest/movement/group did something bad, brand them all terrorists, and make sure that everyone's going to a 're-education' camp for what will remain of their lives.
[2] One for each letter, and another one for the space.
I think your confusion comes from the fact this wasn't a protest gone awry, it was an organized domestic terrorist attack. It was a small group of armed people in body armor who privately organized a domestic terrorist attack intending to cause damage and hurt/kill federal officers in an ambush. The only reason the officer lived was because Song's gun jammed before he could kill people and get away.
Certainly if this was a jihadist attack, a lifetime sentence would be appropriate. Why should it be different just because they're white?
This guy carried out an organized domestic terrorist attack with help from others, actually killed someone as well as badly injuring another, and got only 41 years. Why the disparity?
The Federal Building where he murdered the security guard is just an administrative building; at least the people in Texas were motivated by the somewhat reasonable belief that they were attacking guards at a concentration camp.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/steven-carrillo-sentenc...
>a concentration camp
Most people at these facilities can leave at any time, right? Just so long as it isn't back into the United States? They can return to their country of origin, or another country. I'm sure someone will offer a correction if this particular facility was holding people for other crimes in addition to their unauthorized alien status.
I use the phrase concentration camp not to dispute the legality of their detention, but to draw attention to the deplorable conditions thereof. Just because it may be legal to detain does not mean the state has the right to abuse them or hold them in deplorable conditions.
https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/detained-immigra...
> it was an organized domestic terrorist attack
A guy deliberately drove his car through a street full of scattering protesters in my neighbourhood a few years ago, and when people tried to pull him out of it, he shot one of them, and then ran off, waving his gun (with a jungle-taped pair of mags inserted into it).
Was he a (disorganized) political terrorist? If these guys got 70 years for being at the protest, how many hundreds of years in prison do you think were warranted for him?
Bringing guns to shoot people you disagree with, then shooting them and injuring them for doing their job is not a harmless demonstration. It's terrorism, and they deserve what they got.
>> basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption
Like insider trading by congress?
Jokes aside, this is not how dictatorships normally deal with democratic activists? I don’t see how you can come to this conclusion u less you believe that corporations are people, election spending is a form of legally protected free speech, and corporations should vote in elections:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upho...
> Like insider trading by congress?
No. Like Kushner and Witkoff and Trump (and probably Hunter Biden) literally peddling influence for money.
That may well be true, but that hardly applies to the current case of taking $325M in bribes
US folks will contort to the extremes about any discussion of gross illegal conduct in China.
This guy took $325M in bribes, embezzlement, abuse of power, and money laundering. And he did this as a public servant for over 30 years.
I say good on China for attacking such brazen corruption so directly. Violating the public trust should be extremely harsh.
Well it isn't much contortionism when you look at the big picture you'll find that corruption is an institution in some countries.
For example, you're making an effort to try legitimize the regime by framing a factual gross illegal conduct as a overarching policy.
But is it like that when you observe the whole structure?
How wealthy are the ruling elites? Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?
Or we can reframe this: how do we tell the difference between a genuine tackle on corruption, from a weed out of the system with a public display?
You have plenty of cases in other corrupt regimes when they want to seize assets from someone the regime wants to push away: it's corruption.
Which again, they could be very well be corrupt, but they are corrupt because they're part of the regime.
You'll probably say: "Oh but the USS!!!" Yes, there's some level of systemic corruption there, just not an institution - yet!
I like how you are unable to separate actual crimes from government policies you disagree with.
>> corruption is an institution
>> Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?
Another country may decide to have no IP protections, that’s not a crime.
Furthermore Intellectual property is legal fiction, some people and countries don’t believe in it.
Apparently Anthropic don’t believe in IP either, they are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, but cry wolf when someone does it to them. And they are asking for legal immunity on IP theft.
I'm not being unable to separate crime from policy, you're the one trying to dilute both as showing a signal to policy change.
If this was just a political action to take down just another corrupt official enabled by the government, how is this a good thing?
Well for a lot of countries protecting inventions with patents was a major trigger for development, so much so it became a cornerstone and you can even say an institution. So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions.
And it's not like China says it would never abide by IP, else they would have never got the investment that made them into what they are today.
But look further from IP theft, what about seizing assets from companies, or whole companies?
Im assuming youre likrly from the USA.
Go look up the history of the USA and creation of copyright/patent/trademark was done, and how we dis-recognized all European claims. They were howling similarly.
Go look at how extreme patent law perverted and kept airplanes locked to the Wright brothers, and held down an industry, while other countries (many European as well) were at the forefront of avionics. Patents held the USA back until the US GOV eminent domained the patent freeing it for WW1 armament.
Or go look up why Hollywood was a thing. Again, patent laws on cameras, and eacaping to California was all about screwing over patrnt holders over royalties.
And sure, China didnt recognize our copyrights. Ok. And? We dont recognize theirs either.
> So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions
It’s not viewed as corruption. US gov made numerous public statements condemning IP theft, and never even once classified it as corruption - it’s simply a different crime.
Furthermore, you suggested a benchmark is: “How wealthy are the ruling elites”
Well let’s see - the richest man in the world is American, 70% of 100 richest people are American, American has higher inequality than China.
By what robust quantitative measurement does this effort look less genuine than American one?
Are you accessing any objective facts or you simply are unable to accept that a country you are opposed to is making genuine progress?
>And he did this as a public servant for over 30 years.
and it was discovered just now? May it be that he played exactly by the rules, the real rules, of the regime - corruption being among the foundational rules of it - and thus it was going for 30 years? And right now he just got his turn like it usually happens in totalitarian regimes. The regime will for show find an excuse to execute you if you got your turn, corruption is just the easiest one.
Also note that corruption is for the officials, state treason is for regular citizens. Same as in Russia. The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.
>Violating the public trust should be extremely harsh.
definitely. The only question why the comrade Xi is still not executed?
> and it was discovered just now? May it be that he played exactly by the rules, the real rules, of the regime - corruption being among the foundational rules of it - and thus it was going for 30 years? And right now he just got his turn like it usually happens in totalitarian regimes. The regime will for show find an excuse to execute you if you got your turn, corruption is just the easiest one.
Yeah, that would be wild if any of that completely unsubstantiated conjecture, bordering on fan-fiction, was what actually happened.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
White collar criminals often get caught later in their "careers" precisely because they do it for years and years and years without being caught. They get complacent. They get messy. Each round of embezzlement leads to a larger body of evidence that exists somewhere that becomes more and more damning as time goes on.
> The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.
In this thread we have dozens of examples of political officials being prosecuted. I'd strongly suggest you park your McCarthyism, take a break, perhaps go for a nice walk.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t you? You’re from a Western country, right?
>White collar criminals often get caught later in their "careers" precisely because they do it for years and years and years without being caught.
You’ve definitely never seen the castles and fleets of exotic cars that government officials in those countries manage to get on their meager government salaries. Yet you post such authoritative comments …
If you have evidence as to any of the wild conjecture you're posting, you're more than free to provide it instead of just lobbing out accusations as though they change anything substantive about the arguments being made.
Yep, this is the usual common response from Americans. Its just Sinophobic whataboutism.
China has laws especially regarding significant financial crimes like embezzlement, theft, money laundering. And most governments also have rules against breaching public trust, corruption by favoritism, bribery, and more.
This guy was in multiple public servant roles, and exfiltrated $325M. This isn't a 'possible smell of impropriety ' in taking a supper with a potential vendor. This is basically highly illegal anywhere in the world.
But the Americans go back to their 'but communist China!' howls. The punishment's harsh, sure. But I think its a great standard to hold leaders and public servants to.
Reminder that complaining about the PRC's governance isn't Sinophobia anymore than complaing about Putin is Russophobia.
Intro to "moral hazard"
As Stalin demonstrated even when you're totally loyal, you're still frequently made victim of the terror.
The point of totalitarian regime is that nobody should feel safe, nobody should have an agency. In particular the people shouldn't be able to obtain safety themselves even by the way of being totally loyal.
I have no doubt that that guy was corrupt like any other official there. Yet, he isn't punished for the corruption. The show needed another star, and he was chosen to be that star.
These are just weird fantasies that you're writing out, with absolutely no reference to any events that have happened in China. You seem to just be writing fiction, and assigning it to the Chinese. The Chinese are actually people, though, they're real. If you want to accuse them of unremitting evil, you should be able to talk about something they did in detail.
That does not mean that you should google "China bad" and paste a bunch of random urls in a reply, though.
What Cold War propaganda did to Western brains is tragic.
>What Cold War propaganda did to Western brains is tragic.
Some weird fantasies you have.
I grew up in USSR. So very well familiar with inner workings of such regimes.
> I grew up in USSR. So very well familiar with inner workings of such regimes.
Just wondering how old you are? 60? 70?
Did you feel safe, growing up?
> to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
Or his sinocentricity and even racism (as in superiority of chinese people). There's been a long standing view in China about their own superiority of others, including all the way into the way they view their national pride as extending back further than any other civilization, even though external historians might view it more like several disjoint civilizations in a similar region... Kinda like how we don't call American history as starting when previous groups from contemporary russian crossed ice bridges to the Americas... We say it started in 1776 because it was a new major iteration of the regime.
I don't think this makes any sense, what you argue would imply that the external historians would say that Japanese history starts in 1947 or that French history starts in 1958, but I'm not sure if they nor people of those countries would agree with that.
The point is, there's a lot more to history than political organization. A continuous culture and language is a big part of why civilizations extend far beyond the current governing regime.
It's like you're so close to getting it. Xi is serious about "corruption" alright. It's just that in an authoritarian state "corruption" is really just used as a euphemism for illoyality.
If having corruption as an euphemism for "illoyality" means we get the same kind of public investment in infrastructure in the west as China does, then I'm all for it. Seems like here we only have the corruption part, except they call it lobbying and rub it in our faces.
Trump pardons people for a fee.
How can a soccer player be loyal or illoyal to Xi?
Duh, by saying things Xi perceives as disloyal... which in China can be something as bizarre as posting a picture of Winnie the Pooh.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855
But there is also tons of actual corruption especially in the military [1] which is maybe by design so you never know if a purge is political or legitimate or both.
[1]. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-rocket-forc...
>Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have >noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for >it. Some sentenced to death.
Honest question to anyone who may be from China - the perception I've been fed in the US is that almost every bureaucrat is on the take. They certainly were in the USSR, you had to "know someone" to get anything done or just eat.
Perhaps it's just a RIF.
> Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption.
that's BS
cracking down on corruption has been a common tactic for decades to get rid of people who are a threat to the top dog at the CCP, and Xi has employed this perhaps better than anyone since Mao
are those people being purged corrupt? probably most are. but plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged, it's a highly selective process.
Xi started this a few years after coming into power -- and it was obviously to the educated class was it was (I was living in Beijing at the time), but "mei banfa" (or emigrate, as many people with the $/ability to do so, did).
CCDI hit like 7m+ people by now, that's hardly selective. You can say it was intelligently staged for power consolidation component, purging corrupt rival/cliques (who should be purged) first before cleaning own house, i.e. Xi's faction wasn't spared, it just happened later, because that's smart sequencing. Beijing educated class from 2012s aren't as baizuo shitlibs as Shanghai but their opinions are comparably useless, and it's been 10+ years, we now know scale + duration of anticorruption program. Like you don't discipline millions of flies, and 1000s of tigers because they're all rivals, you do it because you want to reduce corruption. Ask what kind of people had $ to immigrate in 2010s and buy up those million dollar mansions when PRC per capita GDP was was like $7000, hint the corrupt, which frequently overlaps with the educated.
Xi in particular seems to be personally offended by small scale corruption like business lunches. Huge crackdown on it for probably a negative political benefit.
there have always been ongoing crackdown on small scale corruption ("flies"); it's taking down the big "tigers", who all just happened to be from other CCP factions, that made Xi stand out among his predecessors.
It's gotten ridiculous in the last 2 years according to my hearsay, like it's actually hurting the restaurant industry.
>plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged
This sounds really interesting, do you have any examples?
have you lived in China? just look around and you'll find plenty of examples. the country literally runs on "favors"
tbh my take as someone who follows sports heavily: China is just not good at team sports. If we consider the most relevant ones (part of the Olympics games):
- volleyball. Probably their best team sport. Men's team have nothing to show but the women's team won the competition 3 times (1984, 2004, 2016) and the World Cup twice (1982, 1986)
- basketball. Women's team are usually there at the Olympic games and they won a silver medal in 1992 and a bronze in 1984 but nothing ever since. They were the runner ups in the last World Cup final (2022) against the US. Men's team have 0 results.
- football, irrelevant. Men's team only qualified to the World Cup once in 2002. Women's team is slightly better being the runner up once in 1999, and they also won silver medal in the 1996 Olympic games. But that was a one generation thing, nothing to show ever since.
- water polo, irrelevant. Women's team is slightly better usually qualifying for the Olympic games but 0 results. Same at the World Cup.
- baseball/softball, irrelevant.
- field hockey, irrelevant.
- handball, irrelevant.
- rugby sevens, irrelevant.
China is good at group sports where everyone have to do the same thing together (artistic swimming and diving) but team sports needs individuals working together where everyone have to be good at their given position, in their own little world, so almost the exact opposite.
> China is just not good at team sports
One thing we know is important for a country to be globally competitive in team athletics is having pervasive grass roots youth leagues developing talent from an early age. My sense is the Chinese have a structured selection system where they try out kids in key sports and select the best for special development.
Compare this with Western democracies where kids of most skill levels are generally able to keep playing club sports through high school as long as they have an interest and any aptitude at all. In America, pee wee football, girl's soccer leagues, etc are part of the social fabric of communities. It's considered worthwhile to let kids practice, play and develop even when they show no professional or collegiate potential.
The deep reach and years of development of kids with no clear aptitude matter because it's about identifying outliers. I suspect it comes down to chaotic but pervasive casual development beating central planning.
China will probably be a contender in like 20 years for basketball. Basketball is incredibly popular, and the average male height has grown significantly as they embraced Capitalism.
people have been making similar predictions about the US and soccer since I was a kid. Youth soccer is incredibly popular yet...
Youth Soccer is popular, but at least in my experience, most of the top athletes in school will leave soccer for the big 3 as a focus sport Football/Basketball/Baseball. If they are very good, those are much more likely to give scholarships as well. Soccer is much more popular with the middle to upper middle class suburbia kids, who might also be playing other sports, but are not treating it as a career. Maybe theyll play soccer in college, but their Major is still Finance.
Ah yes, race essentialism. I'd say I'm surprised to see this on HN, but I'm not.
I don't agree with OP, and I'm willing to hear why you're correct in that assessment, but can you elaborate?
To be explicit about each other's assumptions, I think Race (however ill-defined or specific construct as it may or may not be), is not the same thing as Country, Political System, Culture, Religion, etc.
Understanding racists these days mostly use euphemisms and codewords, and it's a devil's work sometimes to figure it out, in the "Principle of Charity" sense, I read that post as being a critique of China's political and cultural systems in general, and their sport-league / development in particular, leading to specific societal outcomes. I could be extremely naive though but I'm willing to learn if you may provide more backing/thought for that?
There is a strong theme of "Chinese people are drones" when you hear about whatever the west's current propaganda issue is. I'm not sure if the poster was explicitly trying to hint at that, or just repeating derived ideas from those that really think it.
Lots of posts about how the CPC isn't really doing the will of the people, they are just following and the people are too docile or subdued to resist. Chinese people are bad at team sports where an individual contribution can play a big part. They are only good at the ones where they all do the same thing.
It ties in with the western ideology that we are unique, dynamic, flawed but able to push ahead in a way collectives aren't.
I will also posit the downplaying and discrediting of Chinese tech and industry is also related with this mindset.
As a Chinese-American, I feel rather ambivalent about it - dare I say even positive emotion at the West's current propaganda. Due to the quote - "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win", with the only caveat that West doesn't laugh but rather "coddle you as the savior". So in another word, I don't expect NYT (or Fox News for that matter) to "accept" or "approve" Chinese people - as much as I can't wait for Japan to apologize or ask reparations for IJA 's action in Asia during WW2; when China has overtaken Japan in GDP decades ago. (which is by the way of due to Plaza Accord which is an tangent but not really on the subject matter of self-reliance and global unilaterism vs. multilaterism).
Not sure when we will see this but when we have the Century of Africa, I'd love to see the spin on the front-page of NYT then. I predict something similar to the shade like "Nationalism/Hinduism by Modhi" when he won't play ball with the West on Russian sanction; when African countries rise up with their own ambitions and visions for their own people.
I sincerly didn't mean to be racist with my comment so I apologize, it was just my sport loving observation
Chinese govt is a GPU. US is a CPU. Whether that's hereditary is a separate question, but culture exists.
It's 100% social. The biggest difference is Americans generally believe immigrants and minorities can become American, and diversity is good. Whereas Chinese people believe you are born Chinese. Recently China is trying to change that and create a larger, more diverse, Chinese identity.
The problem seems to be that "he" chooses who is corrupt and who isn't', right?
This is a person who invites war criminals to his country and rolls out the red carpet...then again...
Absolutely love it. The West could take some notes. And to those who would jump to downvote, ask yourself why one country is on the rise, and the other is in a drain spiral.
> Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption
Xi is also fantastically corrupt. He wasn’t born a billionaire.
And he still isn't a billionaire. There's no credible evidence to suggest he's even 8-9 digit millionaire outside of FLG spam or US intelligence / DNI copium that he's hiding $$$ via extended family, who leveraged their princeling/read family stature to get rich well before Xi. Like all signs comports with wikileak CIA profile that Xi is incorruptible by money / not $$$pilled. See bloomberg investigation 10 years ago (that got them booted from country) into Xi/Peng finance and found them squeeky clean which relative to 10 years ago, would be outlier for for their status. Not not saying Xi acetic, his wife famous to never need to worry about money on her own right, but there's nothing suggest Xi not fine with being merely very financially secure vs three comma club.
> he still isn't a billionaire
There is credible evidence his family controls billions of dollars of assets. Those assets accumulated in direct correlation with his power. Chinese state media disagrees, and if that's your cup of tea for Chinese leaders' corruption, I guess sure, Trump's also clean as a whistle.
>his family controls billions of dollars of assets
None sequitur / who cares? Xi personally doesn't have obscene wealth/assets according to relevant evidence which is what matters.
Many CCP red family nepo babies/princelings influence peddled their way to wealth in last 50 years, they get are first dibs aristocracy class and their wealth should logically snowball with PRC moving from billion to trillion $ economy.
But Xi himself specifically has been outlier in how squeaky clean, even by western investigations. Nothing has been tied to him, hence lame "but his family manages his wealth" cope. Like the bro married Chinese 80s Taylor Swift and all signs point to him being fine what he has, which is not nothing, but also not extravagant, which makes trying to associate him to stupendous graft levels corruption he is trying to fix impossible.
Of course broader PRC leadership class has lots of corruption from development, it should be expected that Xi's sister/husband, both from red families to be wealthy from PRC development, but timeline of Xi's sister/husband wealth predates Xi - i.e. early real estate / rare earth investments. Difference between Xi and Trump is Xi himself has been historically clean, and in office made his family divest/liquidate 100ms in assets vs Trump is is historically unclean and family uses his influence to accumulate.
So no, all signs point to Xi is clean as a whistle while Trump isn't, and its ridiculous to equate the two just because both families are wealthy.
And to circle to original claim, there is no evidence that Xi is fantastically corrupt, only evidence to the contrary, that he is outlier in how uniquely uncorrupt he is relative to elite prestige, access, opportunities.
5 of the 7 highest ranking officials have been purged in recent years [1].
It’s not totally clear what the consequences were for those purged or if their crimes were legit but seems like they are all in prison.
[1]. https://www.afpc.org/publications/articles/the-inevitability...
I'm not saying that those guys weren't corrupt, but that's a classic authoritarian pattern. Purging anybody who might potentially in the future be a threat to your rule is step two in any authoritarian playbook. Were they perchance replaced with unambitious yes men?
To be clear that was 5 of the top 7 in the military not the CCP as a whole. Leaves just Xi and the anti corruption officer.
But yes agreed. It’s very hard to parse what is going on from the outside.
My very uninformed read is that the people who were purged seemed already loyal allies to Xi but had more clout to disagree with him, while the new guys know they are replaceable. The PLA is notoriously corrupt as well so hard to say which of those purges were political control vs corruption based.
I kinda doubt the new guys are unambiguous though you need to be ambitious and risk taking to rise like that in the CCP.
Russia is even tougher on corrupt oligarchs
No, Russia is tough on oligarchs that split from Putin. There is no non-corrupt oligarch.
I think they are meaning "the measure seems meaningless as it would imply Russia is even tougher on corruption" rather than "Russian leadership cares deeply about corruption".
It's a risky play to try to communicate over the internet to a bunch of us literalist nerds :p.
Yes and that's also exactly how Xi deals with illoyal people in China - just accuse them of "corruption". It's the authoritarian playbook.
> Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing
Almost certainly. But it's not simple to understand because four things are simultaneously true:
1. Corruption is a serious problem Xi is genuinely focused on reducing through high-profile prosecutions with extreme sentences.
2. Xi and his party lieutenants have certainly used corruption charges to eliminate central party 'Titans' because they got too powerful, got too greedy, or were deemed insufficiently 'loyal'.
3. Corruption is pervasive at almost every level and there's no way most of it can be eliminated anytime soon. In fact, the system relies on it to function as well as it does. The purpose of these high-profile prosecutions is only to reduce the size and frequency of corruption. It reminds officials that stealing half the money half the time can be bad for their health. So they stick closer to taking 10-20% only 10-20% of the time.
4. The sub-1% of corrupt officials who are prosecuted, likely end up being busted because they got 'too greedy' and were made a sacrificial lamb by their corrupt peers to fill the system's need for a few high-profile examples. The 'too greedy' isn't from taking too much, it's usually from not greasing enough palms with enough money (including the provincial corruption investigators themselves). When there's tens of millions of dollars of illicit money at stake, the dynamics become like de facto organized crime mobs and there's always competition between factions. This guy probably knows exactly which rival played the game better and beat him.
It's like unlimited PTO. Take a reasonable amount of PTO and you're fine, but if you actually treat it as unlimited then you'll get fired.
I never understood why you can't just take any random European country where ones company also has a presence and stick to the (government mandated) vacation time there, usually 5-6 weeks p.a. - is this considered unacceptable in the U.S.A.?
The key is understanding that accounting is driving the policy. 'Unlimited PTO' really means 'uncounted PTO' because for most public companies in the U.S., once PTO is counted, the salary value of each vacation day becomes another liability which must be reported and carried on the balance sheet. It's no different from a payable debt like a bank loan, except the debt becomes immediately due in cash the moment the employee ceases employment for any reason (quits, retires, laid-off, fired). It's also a debt that cannot be delayed, negotiated or discharged even in bankruptcy.
In a competitive employment market, paid time off is just another part of the cash value of any compensation package. Employees compare the overall packages, so companies need to offer 'competitive' PTO. In the past decade, FAANG-ish valley companies have had to offer 4-6 (or more) weeks of PTO. I know people who took two weeks every year and 'banked' four weeks. They retired early after 12 years with an extra YEAR of cash salary paid in full the day they left. When 5-10% of a company's debt is owed to their own employees and could become immediately due at any moment - it can be a cash flow and accounting issue for companies.
By 'not counting' the PTO, any time off you don't take in the year you earn it doesn't go on the balance sheet as an unpaid debt from the prior year - meaning PTO becomes 'use it or lose it'. This isn't materially different than the EU where it's normal for most corporate employees always take every day of PTO anyway. In the U.S., where historical PTO trends were closer to 2-3 weeks and only recently grew to 4-6 weeks, the result was more employees took more PTO each year (which is net good), but one component of their overall comp package became a little less good because they could no longer 'bank' more than one year's PTO and cash it out. Earned PTO carry-over was capped at one year and any you didn't take disappeared, unless you made an agreement with your manager.
For example, I deferred a chunk of my vacation into the next calendar year because we were shipping a major product (I was happy to do so and suggested it myself as I was leading the product). Technically, I guess it wasn't 'counted' in any HR record-keeping so if I suddenly quit before I took the vacation, I might not have been paid for the extra two weeks I deferred from the prior year - but only if my boss and the company decided to be real jerks about it. Another reason not to work for jerks if you can avoid it. Also, it isn't smart for companies to not reasonably honor verbal agreements with employees because word gets around and no other employee would agree to defer any PTO and future big projects would suffer. This flexibility wasn't always only in the company's favor. There was also a time I deferred a week of PTO to the next year by verbal agreement which I lumped together with paternity leave when my kid was born. Note: I'm only familiar with the dynamics in the U.S. I believe they also apply in some other geos but regulations and financial reporting requirements differ per country.
> [...] but only if my boss and the company decided to be real jerks about it. Another reason not to work for jerks if you can avoid it.
Worker protection rights in the U.S.A. truly are seen as a joke.
I've spent a lot of time in the EU working with tech companies, have a lot of friends there in tech companies and am on the board of a Swiss company at the moment. While it's true the average corporate worker generally has more protected rights in the EU, in my experience that additional government regulation doesn't usually pay off in ways that really matter that much to most employees most of the time.
As a thought experiment, if offered a tech job in, say, downtown Zurich, how much extra money would be required for an avg EU tech worker to happily accept that same job under Bay Area employment law, protections and standards (at-will employment, non-banked PTO, etc) than under EU employment law, protections and standards? In other words, apples-to-apples what are those extra protections actually worth in cash value? I suspect the answer would be, at most, around $25K to $50K/year. But when you look at the total comp packages (salary, benefits, equity, 401k, etc) between Bay Area and Zurich tech workers, the delta is far greater than that. In effect, the bay area tech worker 'sold' that extra protection for a big chunk of cash and is using some of it to self-insure against the potentially increased volatility. I think a lot of EU tech workers would be delighted to make the same trade. Another way of looking at it is you've given up a lot of upside for a relatively small amount of guaranteed extra protection on the downside.
This might surprise you but the reality is, many of the potential employment abuses you may be concerned about are vanishingly unlikely to occur in practice. The point is, you can end up paying a lot for expensive 'tiger insurance' you probably won't ever use and don't really need. While you can feel good knowing you have extra protection from tigers, on a purely economic basis I averaged over $500k/yr over my multi-decade career in bay area tech. In good years, the equity could take it over a million. My own admin (with no college degree) averaged over $200k a year in total comp. The highest paid admin at the Zurich company I'm on the board of makes closer to 50k CHF (and living in downtown Zurich isn't much less than SF). So, the "US tech employment deal" may seem weird and perhaps less fair, but the extra half million dollars my admin earned over several years put a lot of 'social safety net' in the bank that she can spend whenever and however she wants - and she still works there for my old boss, still loves her job and has never had to use any protections or social safety net yet (she's probably over a million in extra total comp banked by now). In short, viewed objectively, it's a different deal but not necessarily a worse deal. In many cases, EU workers may be giving up far more value than they're actually receiving in return.
Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption, and part of the reason he remains in power on an indefinite term is by presenting himself as the "only trusted" person to maintain anti-corruption amongst all the factions.
While I'm sure he doesn't catch all corruption and the CCP overall has selective enforcement, the reason they do have measures like this is in large part because of Xi Jinping's specific reputation and positioning.
You seem to be circling the issue. Corruption can mean anything from taking bribes to exerting influence that is outside Xi’s interests.
And far too people are aware that Xi is extraordinarily corrupt..
"Similarly, Xi’s siblings, nieces, and nephews held assets worth over $1 billion in business investments and real estate"
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Un...
Or in authoritarian regimes it often means "stole from the party". As long as you only steal from the poor and give the proper bribes up the chain you are in no danger in most corrupt societies. Except possibly in the rare occasion where your corruption causes a disaster that embarrasses the people above you in the hierarchy.
Far too often when you see stories about how someone was persecuted for corruption it boils down to "he stole from rich people".
This is true in any power structure ever. Kings, mafia, pick-your-dictatorship, many democracies. Hurt or steal from the poor, not other rich or elite, and always make sure to kick some up to the big guys.
All presidents rise to power on a message of anti-corruption, they all clean house when they start in office but usually it falls off until the next president takes over. The problem Xi has is that now that he is now president for life, the house isn't getting cleaned in the usual way every 10 years; he has to do a corruption purge every so often or things will get grimey.
> All presidents rise to power on a message of anti-corruption
You mean in China specifically? Otherwise there are some pretty harsh counterexamples to that "all".
I'm just talking about China, we were only talking about China right? We don't really have a lot of data points to go by since there have been only three presidents so far with supreme power (after it was combined with General Secretary and military chair head, before that president was more of a ceremonial role).
> Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption
Just like Trump and Modi
> are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution
Maybe, but they hit the rich. All the selective prosecution in the US hits those least able to resist.
Counter-example: Sam-Bankman Fried. Biden's second biggest donor. Sentenced to 25 years in jail. Prosecuted even though it wasn't a clear cut case so there were excuses to hang a lack of prosecution on. No pardon.
The case was pretty clear-cut, and as for the pardon... He clearly didn't pay the right president, Trevor Milton got one right at the start of this presidency.
The case was clear-cut, choosing to prosecute wasn't. Especially in hind-sight given FTX's holdings of Anthropic shares.
Exactly. Hopefully the contrast between the two presidencies weans people off the idea that "they're all corrupt" and "they're all liars". I'm not hopeful.
[dead]
>Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing
no need to speculate, it's already happened. Zhou Yongkang who was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (the highest governing body in Chinese politics) was prosecuted, and up until that point people at the top were considered relatively untouchable. Xi also axed the last to vice chairmen of the central military commission, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, that's the commander in chief of the PLA.
The Zhou Yongkang incident happened over a decade ago, it happened in roughly the first year of Xi Jinping's tenure, Zhou Yongkang was a supporter of the also-purged Bo Xilai, and while he was still in power he ran the department responsible for internal security. I don't doubt the guy was corrupt but this is exactly the sort of target you go after if you want to maintain your own grip on power.
Isnt that just the winning end of corruption?
Are we really heralding purging political opponents as anti corruption? Imagine if Trump won and put Harris in jail.
I think we're in agreement, I was trying to dispute the GP's portrayal of the purges but maybe my intent was not clear.
> Imagine if Trump won and put Harris in jail.
Trump definitely thought about doing that, but even the judges he appointed wouldn't go for it. He still talks about putting Obama in jail for reasons.
I mean, Trump was prosecuted as well and plenty of people want to put him in jail. My point is these kinds of things can't really be argued purely from a meta-level, the actual specifics matter. And in the case of China and Xi, I certainly don't know the specifics and I doubt most people here do either.
Trump was actually convicted of a felony in New York even though he wasn't put in jail. Trump wants to throw his political enemies in jail without due process, very different thing.
Trump's trying to put Comey in jail.
At least they try to appear anti-corruption—that's certainly more than you can say about the west.
It's easy to appear anti-corruption if you have complete control your country's internet and almost as much control of your country's internet.
Don't confuse "the west" with the US. The US is less than half of "the west".
Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose.
Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.
> Corruption is, of course, universal.
So is crime. But it's all about prevalence.
And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.
You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.
If you just look at e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Corruptio...
you will see that the spread is very wide, and China/India is significantly behind most western nations.
You are shifting the goalposts. You first said "at least they try to appear anti-corruption".
This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)
Europe is prosecuting the Epstein Pedos. Trump is protecting his friends
Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house
> Europe is prosecuting the Epstein Pedos.
Are they?
Price Andrew got a name change, but hasn’t had any real penalty to date. He had the Queen protecting him. Mandelson probably will end up in court but it won’t be for anything related to child abuse.
> Price Andrew got a name change, but hasn’t had any real penalty to date.
For the British Royals, I suspect becoming persona non grata is more impactful than a jail sentence.
More impactful than prison? Nah. Why not both?
> More impactful than prison?
Class-based systems get pretty weird at the top.
Yes, but also, for Andrew to have behaved this way, a lot more people than him had to be involved. It appears they get no sanction.
They're not wrong. It's definitely spread throughout EU too.
The West would benefit from an increase in prosecution of $100M+ financial crimes, regardless of whether that prosecution is fair or uniform. Many will avoid such crimes, even when they might be allowed them by corruption, simply to avoid being held hostage to that same corruption. That doesn’t mean that corruption is a great thing (it’s not), but frequent and capricious enforcement is somewhat better relative to today’s infrequent and erratic enforcement.
Selective prosecution and tough punishment can still be a net positive vs no punishment. (I am not saying it necessarily is nor that I would celebrate this.)
The CCP derives a significant part of its legitimacy from improving quality of life and living standards for the common Han Chinese. Waste and fraud that harms consumers is a drag on this progress; the incentives somewhat align. Real economic harm often causes real political harm.
Xi's been anticorruption for 10+ years, CCDI has prosecuted MILLIONs, including his own faction/clique i.e. even Xi doesn't have that much enemies. Westoids just can't fathom it's simply a systematic, competent drain the swamp program designed to change culture an work through the huge backlog of illict behavior form 30+ years of under regulated development.
It's a systematic, competent purge the political rivals program.
Can't it be both? Xi doesn't have 7m+ rivals, and you know... rivals can be corrupt and should be purged. There's reason wikileaks / CIA analysis on Xi insinuates he's incorruptible by $$$, so who better to lead. Sometimes swamp is filthy and needs cleaning, and sweeping out legacy clique/faction level power structure that CCP had to "put up with" as part of ascendancy, aka power consolidation, is just good 101 good old power politics. Doing it right is how China gets 300+ year stable/rising dynamitic cycles. American wanks about 250 while swamp filthier than ever, and forget power consolidation has built many 250+ year civilizations.
Sometimes systemic, competent purge the political rivals program is gud and what you want. But IMO US too young/stubborn, doesn't have institutional memory of REAL political crisis, nor humility to learn from history.
While other commenters take the lesson that Xi goes after corruption, I would restate it:
* he goes after corrupt officials, in both minor roles and very public big cases; and * he also accused inconvenient people (mostly potential contenders) of corruption to get rid of them (see the list of party leaders purged since Xi came to power, with some even led off stage at the main CCP Congress in a show of power). * How many corrupt officials are not persecuted due to political favouritism is by definition impossible to know from the outside.
Inner circle members of the CCP are the first to fall because their competitors wouldn't dare not use it against them. The whole Bo Xilai mess a decade and a half ago is a good example of that.
I think the way to determine how real this is: is the corruption allowed to damage the real economy? Most of the problems of Africa and South America are linked to that answer being "yes".
> Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
The west is inundated with simplistic anti-chinese propaganda, so you would never perceive it as such, the way it would be presented to you in the west is as the evil dictator Xi Jingping purging his opposition, for instance:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41670162
Correct, so long as there is a state controlled media and no independent media and we can only speculate on where people who have “disappeared” from public view are, this is exactly the position everyone should hold.
This is single party autocracy, no matter how much people cry about propaganda.
It's a complex system of layers of representatives being elected on the local level, various institutions and levels of governance that you know literally nothing about and yet has been incredibly successful at uplifting it's people. In the simple mind of the western chauvinist this rich five thousand year old culture and complex society with good and bad, gets flattened into antagonistic slogans like "single party autocracy".
You don't understand how calling you a victim of propaganda is me being charitable, I could've also called you a typical western ignorant sinophobe.
Ah yes, the old - it’s too complex to understand by outsiders argument. And claims of racism to boot.
Taiwan is Chinese, they don’t have this system. So spare me the crocodile tears.
Single party rule and state controlled media with one of the most sophisticated censorship infrastructure in the world has exactly one simple goal.
Which goal is that?
Control.
Not everything that Chinese leadership does is perfect, they have made mistakes, but overall, leadership that is openly like "we need to maintain a tight control over the population for stability" is generally more trustworthy than that campaigns on freedom and small government only to get in power and make themselves richer.
Only if society needs more security.
You can’t squeeze blood from a brick. At a certain point, you need to tolerate a little messiness to optimize societal growth.
Think of it as a dial you can turn clockwise or counterclockwise:
Security <——> Freedom
A healthy society would have good feedback mechanisms that allow it to change the dial of the government in power, to adjust to the current situation. Obviously, there’s no one optimal position; to use a historical example: Churchill was great for Britain during WW2, and immediately elected out afterwards.
Given how China is doing, Id say they have the knob in a more optimal place.
Yes. The Chinese people trade freedom for good governance.
The problem is, if they dont like their governance they cant trade it back for their freedom.
Freedom is not one dimensional. In some ways Chinese are more "free" than Americans.
Sure they can. That's how they got this government.
This often gets missed. Of course, it can be repulsive. But I sort of appreciate how honest other societies are about their social problems. In the United States there is a lot of doublespeak. The current president is actually quite refreshing in this regard, or at least was for a time.
The way the mainstream media freaked out about him asking Bill O'Reilly, "what, you think our country is so innocent?" is a good example. Or saying we're in Venezuela for oil at the outset. Or talking about how they killed so many Iranians they don't even know who they are negotiating with anymore. I mean at least we didn't have to suffer through fumbling Bushisms about freedom. If the day ever comes when presidents are held to the same standards as the people, then ironically in many regards we will have to at least give him some points for honesty... it is quite sad how he is the only person to succeed to such an extent on such an "outsider", really anticorruption message ("drain the swamp"), then turn around and do the same thing. I think it is probably related to the core problem of American society - the doublespeak, the dual consciousness, the resistance to self reflection. People don't want honest answers - including to their own complicity (who elected these people anyway?). They want slogans. The results are sad, but predictable. A society that elects (and then worse, reelects) someone like Trump to end corruption is clearly a society that cannot look itself in the mirror. The same goes for the other side of the aisle. The "democracy" party that has no primaries and says it's either "fascism" or geriatric grandpa. We take this election very seriously that is why we have nominated a corpse. Don't mention it or you're a fascist. No you don't get another choice. Vote for us or democracy dies...
Sad... maybe if politics was a venue where people weren't punished for being honest we wouldn't have such low quality politicians. Brings to mind the George Carlin line:
That would be a nice realistic campaign slogan for somebody: 'The public sucks. Elect me.'"
Probably not but it's hard to really pin this down. On the one hand, China's rise has in the recent past has been phenomenal but that kind of rapid cleanup has always been accompanied by repression and destruction of political rivals. So. perhaps a bit of both.
The top is already pushed with prisoner for life. In a tiered society a well functioning country focuses on the tier that is current bottleneck.
Corruption endangers the CCP rule and weakens China why would they not self purge?
Everyone in China knows how dynasties end.
Has the dictator been removed for it? Someone cherished by them? Or are we to assume those are impollute?
It's fascinating to see the effects of anti-China propaganda. There are plenty of stories about China cracking down on corruptiojn yet people need to do contortions to make this anti-China somehow.
There's no evidence that Xi Jinping is like Putin (who has enriched himself to abe unknown but expectedly high dgree), no evidence the military generals have enriched themselves with corruption (again, like Russia) or really anything else. Instead there's evidence that the likes of Jack Ma, a billionaire, are brought to heel, China has cracked down on so-called yin-yang contracts, sentenced to death people who messed with the baby formula supply chain and so on.
People really should reflect on why they're so willing to seek confirmation bias and why they have that bias at all.
Here's a tip: if you take anything China says or does at face value you will be more correct than 95% of the China "experts" that have entrenched themselves in the media and Western policy circles.
Is reflection really necessary? On why they're so willing to seek confirmation bias on a self appointed dictator for life and why they have that bias towards a self appointed dictator for life? Isn't it self evident?
A win is a win. Could there be more wins? Glass is half full.
I see it as being sort of like how every 6 months someone is made an example of by the media and they need their retribution. It is a means of keeping people at ease and that the narrative of the system works, 'the bad person' will be punished, just like in the movies. All is well.
Admittedly, in a lot of the western world one side of the conversation has seen Trump take this place, only without any sort of completion of the narrative arc. Good for business, bad for emotional strength for some people. Will be interesting to see what comes after him.
These are mainly political purges dressed up as “anti corruption drives”. Not ideal, but at least someone high up is getting punished compared to slaps on the wrist in the West.
As opposed to the US where even if white collar criminals are caught and punished they get pardoned by Biden or Trump, Obama, etc... Every US president has pardoned white collar criminals
Biden didn't pardon SBF.
China executes their criminals, in the US criminals get pardoned
All of these white collar criminals were pardoned by Biden
Nina Simona Allen (December 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to defraud financial institutions.
Duran Arthur Brown (December 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a mortgage fraud scheme.
Ravidath Ragbir (January 2025): Convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Jerry Donald Manning (December 2024): Convicted of two counts of mail fraud.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (January 2025 - Posthumous): Convicted of mail fraud in 1923.
Alex Nain Saab Moran (December 2023): Convicted of money laundering conspiracy (released as part of a U.S.–Venezuela prisoner swap).
Abraham W. Bolden Sr. (April 2022): Former Secret Service agent convicted of bribery attempts, fraud, and obstruction.
Kim Douglas Haman (December 2024): Convicted of making false claims against the government.
Vadim Konoshchenok (July 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., smuggling goods, and export control law violations (released as part of a multi-national prisoner swap).
Paul John Garcia (December 2024): Convicted of signing false documents with intent to deceive and theft/sale of government property while serving in the Navy.
Hunter Biden (December 2024): Convicted of federal tax offenses (alongside separate firearm charges). The pardon broadly covers any federal offenses committed or taken part in between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.
Gerald Glenn Lundergan (January 2025): Convicted of unlawful campaign contributions, making false statements, and falsifying documents.
Ernest William Cromartie (January 2025): Convicted of attempting to evade or defeat tax, as well as structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.
You can ask the same about inner circle of current US leadership
It will have the same answer, no
who would be able to prosecute them and how?
who would even investigate them
Yeah but that’s bad right
The Achilles heel of all whataboutism is assuming someone can't consistently criticize the new thing in addition to the original thing.
It's not whataboutism if you point out question was naive. (answer is the same everywhere and has always been the same)
Inner circle leadership won't be prosecuted anywhere as long as their group holds some power.
So, then, question is, how can this be improved?, can it be improved?
I don't understand why you think your question in reply to theirs revealed that theirs was naive.
If anything, I think it actually reduces the quality of discussion because it tries to say that dynamics in China are equivalent to the next you would find in pretty much any country which is is vague and lazy as analysis goes, and goes against the HN recommendation that conversations get more precise over time.
We improve it by ensuring the same people don't dominate the justice system and that prosecutions still happen whenever they don't. It was Biden's and his AG's job to do something about this and he fumbled.
There's nothing Biden could have done that would have prevented the american people from voting in Trump.
Trump was convicted, he still won. He probably would have won from jail as well.
So original question remains, what can be done?
of course
Just look what corruption does to russia. Total brainfuck, kleptocracy, subhuman idiots everywhere.
You're trying to approach from the wrong side
it's not a question of "prosecute this one or the other person" - it's the choice between "prosecute this one or nobody"
thus celebration that at least something got done
I understand that perspective to some degree, but imagine a hypothetical country with say, two parties in power, where prosecutors only crack down on white collar criminals if they are supporters of one party and not the other. We would call that system corrupt, and probably not celebrate that at least some of the criminals face justice.
Also, from a practical standpoint, charging some and not others is not necessarily better if the selection is made politically. That moves the needle from "at least something got done" to "law is just a tool of oppression".
again, you're approaching it from perspective "both sides get caught" being a possibility
when in actuality the choice is between "both sides steal" or "one side steals"
and allowing both sides to steal is in no way better
---
the main way desired "both sides get caught" state becomes a thing is after "one side" splits in two - still being close in horizontal connections to stabilize, but with developed instruments for either half to guard against the other
No, I tried to be pretty clear that "at least one side got caught" is not always better than "nobody got caught" if corruption dictates who gets caught.
it's not corruption that dictates who gets caught - it's power balance
crying about oppression only leaves you stuck in "everyone steals" state
How else do you propose a system that is fucked like that ever gets unfucked?
To unfuck a system like that you have to have a clean reset of sorts. It will feel unjust because past criminals will all go free, but you have to prioritize future stability. You offer amnesty for past crimes in exchange for absolute transparency and massive structure reforms moving forward.
Or, you do what the democratic party in the US has been afraid to do: Rip the bandaid off, accusations of weaponization of the DOJ be damned. The parent's hypothetical situation is precisely what is happening in the US right now where Garland failed to prosecute, and the entire democratic party was far too afraid of appearing to weaponize the justice system meanwhile the opposition has no qualms about doing so. Yes, the public will view it as entirely partisan but there's no other path forward.
But if you just do nothing at all, eventually the social contract breaks. The cost of the corruption becomes too high and the state fails, or you get a forced regime change.
[dead]
You start with one party - doesn't matter which - getting in power, and then prosecuting corruption on both sides, not just on the other side.
> You start with one party - doesn't matter which - getting in power, and then prosecuting corruption on both sides, not just on the other side.
The day this happens is the day that 90% (or more) of our "leaders" find themselves suddenly in prison.
> But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
> thus celebration that at least something got done
Is it really something to celebrate if:
1. Someone got sentenced to death because they lost some internal power struggle, and bribery was falsely used as the public reason?
2. The guy's getting killed as a scapegoat, or because he pissed off his superiors by not sharing more of his bribes, etc.?
#1 is a net-better outcome for everyone else than doing nothing.
> #1 is a net-better outcome for everyone else than doing nothing.
You kill some corrupt guy, just to replace him with another corrupt guy who's in the leader's good-graces. How is that "a net-better outcome for everyone else"?
Another possibility exists - the new one might well be less corrupt.
Given that this one took nearly half a billion, it is, in fact, quite likely.
>it's the choice between "prosecute this one or nobody"
Even that assumes a normal of being lucky that anything is prosecuted, ever. So it's good but against a low bar rather than rising to the bar parent commenter suggested.
Killing people in any context is barbaric because it is not possible to bring someone back from the dead.
I’m not a law expert but it seems pretty basic that there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment.
Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence, which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world as far as I can understand.
So harsher punishment means people with less power will get shafted harder
Just to be clear - you can't really "reverse" most things. The arrow of time only moves in one direction. People who are jailed and then exonerated do not have their lives "reversed". Their future circumstances are changed. Maybe they are compensated. But they still suffered in jail. You cannot erase that part of their reality anymore than you can raise the dead. This is not to discount your point that making amends while someone is still alive is seen as preferable.
Of course, attempts are made to "reverse" even after someone had been put to death. Posthumous pardons are a thing. It may not bring anything to the person who has passed, but it could give somewhat similar benefits to living descendants.
It's just to say we shouldn't undermine how impactful something like incarceration is on the theory that it is "reversible". Evidence suggests such experiences mess people up in pretty severe ways. Lets also remember thinking of death in these distinct terms may be very cultural. Few penal systems escape barbarity. There are worse things than death. There are many instances or societies were it is preferable or expected people kill themselves rather than go through something like the ignominy of incarceration.
As to the last line, I'm also not sure. Brutal societies have a way of turning on themselves. Nations that accord more protections to their people are generally a better place for their rulers, even if the reverse is not always true. Personally I would love a legal system that baked into its norms higher punishments for people with more power. I think these have existed in the past, even if enforced through less modern mechanisms.
It is also the case that people in power do things that people with less power are incapable of. Getting rid of notions of executive privilege or qualified immunity would be a good start. The way the law is written currently, people in power won't simply not be punished - they won't even be charged. Take George Bush. Did he ever even just have to testify under oath about the rationale for the Iraq War once? Would the United States really descend into a banana republic if he had been charged for perjury or war crimes? It seems like the push in that direction can instead trace its genesis to the fact that in America, we evidently make our leaders untouchable.
> there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment
I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
> Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence
I am also unconvinced. I don't think it is fair to treat a child like an adult and I think those in power should have more stringent standards and larger consequences for violating them.
> I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
Let's say that some new evidence comes out that exonerates the person. You can indeed reverse the "no longer hold office" punishment. You can't bring someone back from the dead.
Le sigh. Fine, the punishment was you forfeit your chickens to your neighbor. Should those chickens be inedible by the new legal owner? What if they have to return them later if new evidence comes to light?
Chickens are basically fungible and interchangeable with money.
You can't select some random person and do a bit of bureaucracy and then tell a family whose member you killed that this rando is now part of their family as restitution for your mistake. You can give them money but in general it is considered somewhat distasteful to put an immediate pecuniary value on human life.
barbaric is society which has half of the worlwide population living with less than 6 USD per day in borderline slavery
The problem with putting a dollar number on it is it's devoid of context. Lunch from McDonald's is going to cost me $15 in the US, so $6 is not enough to live off of here. But the actual number is irrelevant. Is it enough to get food for the day or the week. How about housing? $6 doesn't sound like a lot, but if lunch is $0.50 and a roof over your head is $1.00 for the night, $6 goes a lot further!
barbaric is society which has 1% of its adult population living behind bars
If 1% of its adult population have committed crimes then it would not be barbaric if they were in jail?
Objection: relevance
The funny thing you really believe that, american m..n
So what is the alternative punishment for folks like this who have destroyed the lives of countless people ? Hard labour for life in a mine until death ?
Does that killing is bad apply to other nations with different beliefs than you?
> I’m not a law expert but it seems pretty basic that there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment.
I agree with you, but we also can't reverse entropy.
You are murdering people for so much less..
In Iran, Gaza, Russia (no no, it is not you, it is.. "Ukraine").
You are much worse than them, actually. Though believing yourself to be the light of civilization, soulless robots..
The US has four times as many prisoners per capita as China, the "police state."
edit: some interesting trivia. Due to the combination of America's incarceration rate, a racist justice system, and a completely wealthless and desperate class of freed slaves who were never compensated (although their owners were), Black Americans are 0.5% of the world's population but 5% of the world's prison population.
Another piece of interesting trivia: PRC can legally confiscate and search your devices without warrant nor case.
Oh really?
Your american KGB knows nearly everything about me, as well as about any other person with internet access (and also those without), without any "warrants", "judges", etc
Never even imagined in Soviet Union.
You are the ultimate horror.
"my"? I'm not even american.
"american KGB"? pray tell, who would that be? FBI? NSA? ICE? Even with their tooling, they are still struggling to legally acquire information, and even more so to act on it. There's even considerations of abolishing these agencies.
Try suggesting the abolition of the MSS as a mainland Chinese national and see what happens.
"Fbi, nsa,.." - I dont care much about their acronyms or the organizational structure
"Still struggling to legally acquire information.."
I dont doubt for a single moment, and I dont think you should, that you are right there in their database, with your identity, psychological profile, and all the rest. Now whether it was acquired "legally" i dont know, but when they choose people to murder abroad, I dont think that matters much.
> I dont care much about their acronyms or the organizational structure
So I call bullshit on your argument.
> dont doubt for a single moment, and I dont think you should, that you are right there in their database, with your identity, psychological profile, and all the rest.
I do. Perhaps I am there. Perhaps I'm not. Perhaps my name is there, but the data is wrong and/or misleading. I'm not going to deny USA's alphabet boys abilities, but I'm not going to glaze them either.
Nor I'm going to ignore that I might also be on the PRC's databases as well. They might not bombing people yet, but foreign policy can change easily.
I'm simply going to do my best to protect my privacy, not pretend that either of these regimes wouldn't kill me if they find it convenient.
That said, it is undeniable that USA would have more issues pulling that off domestically, and, arguably, even internationally. PRC has an entire legal apparatus for doing this domestically.
Just because i call them collectively KGB - since the essence is precisely that - you "call bullshit on my argument"?
Though you are right I guess in what regards the legal apparatus of PRC.
But look, here in the free west my speech is suppressed without any need for "legal apparatus".. and it is not because I was provocative (though this is eventually what you become when your mouth is being consistently shut with a big fat lap).
As regards to your efforts to ptotect privacy, your identity can be deduced without much difficulty just from the sites you visit.. and Tor's origin you should know, and here I would stop.
> Just because i call them collectively KGB - since the essence is precisely that - you "call bullshit on my argument"?
Yes, because it means you don't have a good idea of the claims being presented. Perhaps there's a point in there, but you should think it through rather than just allowing it to remain nebulous as suggested in "I dont care much about their [...] organizational structure". Organizational structures matter, they make certain corporate actions easier and others more expensive.
> But look, here in the free west my speech is suppressed without any need for "legal apparatus".. and it is not because I was provocative
I appreciate the change in tone, but I have to ask whether that's really the case, as you're being ambiguous with the suppression methodology. There's quite a gap between "flagged into oblivion in a site" and "arrested for a year for posting anti-government opinions". Given the initial comments on your profile, you haven't done any favors in keeping downvotes and flags away. Not just provocations, but also gratuitous accusations. I try to avoid those because all they do is give ammo to the enemy.
> As regards to your efforts to ptotect privacy, your identity can be deduced without much difficulty just from the sites you visit.. and Tor's origin you should know, and here I would stop.
That's a oversimplified view about privacy. Every piece of information about a person, when enough is collected, can be used to identidy them. Collecting said information, specially when the infrastructure for that is not trivially available (as is the case in the USA in comparison to the PRC) is easier than done. When was the last time someone got identified by law enforcement in the US via their internet traffic? You are better off worrying about GDID in Windows.
A similar story goes for Tor. For starters, it was developed by US Navy, not the intelligence/law enforcement agencies. Second, the protocol is open and publicly being developed, so even if the NSA added a backdoor, it can be caught and removed. Finally, Tor is not the only option, see I2P for an example.
"That said, it is undeniable that USA would have more issues pulling that off domestically, and, arguably, even internationally."
You think so?
I spend a lot of time working with (actual) anarchists in the US, and most of us are far more worried about the US gov putting us in jail (or murdering us outright) for our signal chats, protests, and "actions" than literally anything that the PRC might consider doing to us.
Now try doing that in mainland China. Ask yourself why there isn't a strong active anarchist presence in the PRC despite their population in comparison to the US. If the actions you do actually are enough to cause the US domestic forces to go after you, rest assured, PRC domestic ones would already have got you.
It's true that the US may be more of a immediate threat to those in its territories, but to compare it to KGB is to either massively oversell US domestic forces abilities or undersell KGB's. Even in the closest cases of political executions, extrajudicial murders through abuses of force and qualified immunity, as seen in the recent ICE shootings, they still caused a lot of national instability, even within the right wing. Similar happenings in the USSR didn't come close in reactions.
Perhaps people in the US commit more crimes than people in China?
Even if it's politically motivated, it's still punishment for a real and serious crime. Compare to prosecuting someone for touching a pool that the president happens to really care about for no good reason.
Doesn't hold a candle to the scale of Heshen's crimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heshen
> he was described as the most corrupt official in Chinese history... Heshen is remembered as one of the richest men in history... His total property was... reputed to be equivalent to the imperial revenue of the Qing government for 12 years.
Damn
I wish India did something like this. A crackdown on corruption and enforcement of existing laws would fix 90% of India’s problems. Obviously I don’t think folks should get the death penalty but something harsh like long jail sentences and tearing down of whatever kingdoms they have built.
It's a shame we relabelled corruption as lobbying. The damage it has done is untold.
One thing that China does should be adopted in the West.
trump and biden both pardoned tons of white collar criminals
Classic whataboutism and both sides are the same in a single sentence? wow thats a new record!
Trump's pardons far exceed what Biden did in terms of scope and corruption. Trump's literally collecting bribes for pardons. There has been multiple confirmed, documented cases of someone donating to his reelection fund or buying trump coins, and then receiving a pardon in short order.
This is blatant misrepresentation to try and justify the unprecedented corruption by the current administration. He will be documented as the most corrupt president ever, even surpassing U.S.Grant for the title.
LOL you are attacking strawman
Both pardoned criminals, yes Trump pardoned more criminals
Know how many criminals China has pardoned? zero they get the death penalty
The first is true, the second is a lie. The motto of Trump's pardon office is "No MAGA left behind."
This is a lie. Joseph Biden pardoned Francis W. Biden, James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, John T. Owens and Valerie Biden Owens among many, many other dubious choices.
The U.S.A. is the embodiment of crony capitalism.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos...
I'd imagine because of the talk from the then-incoming administration talking about how he'll go after their families unless his personal ongoing charges were dropped [0]. I would do the exact same thing if a vindictive POS was about to gain power.
[0]: "Trump threatens to prosecute Bidens if he’s re-elected unless he gets immunity" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/30/trump-second...
I'm not the liar here -- none of those family pardons are for "white collar crimes", they were to protect them from retribution by Trump.
Again, Trump pardons people for a fee, and the motto of his pardons office is "no MAGA left behind". The fraud that he has pardoned amounts to about $2 billion to date.
Main difference between death penalty in US and China, is in US police officers easily sentence subjects to death and the courts do it with great difficulty. In China the inverse.
For instance, high level executive Bryan Malinowski was executed by the ATF and barely anyone noticed, but if the courts had sentenced him in such way, there would be great outrage.
Interesting story. This guy was actually airport director at the airport in Little Rock, AR. He used to buy and sell a bunch of guns and was an avid collector. He was killed when ATF agents raided his home and he responded with gunfire. The controversy seems to circle around the fact that:
* the ATF decided not to raid his home when he was out of town but early in the morning when he was at home
* the ATF gave him 28 seconds to comply with their announcement after which they battered the door down
Given the fact that the agents weren't wearing body cameras, the guy had a normal day job that he'd go to, and that 28 seconds is certainly too short to dispose of firearms it does seem a lot like execution served by way of search warrant. Certainly, I wouldn't be able to let anyone in 28 s after waking up to pounding on my door.
> executed
He was shot after opening fire, unprovoked, on federal agents performing a search of his home under a lawfully obtained warrant.
Willingly and with aforethought engineering a situation that is practically guaranteed provoke an asleep person with ~no notice in the early morning to "unprovoked" defend themselves and wife against unknown people breaking into their home in order to lawfully "defend" one's self is execution in my book.
I can understand if there's some imminent threat but there was none. He was going to wake up, and report to a secure airport full of cops and federal agents. But they couldn't resist engineering a situation that ended up with him dead, doing what anyone would do to protect their wife when given ~zero time to distinguish threats entering their home at night.
Now you can argue maybe it wasn't an execution, and only their acts were indistinguishable from what those doing an execution would do.
They gave notice, and supplying guns to criminals sounds like an immanent threat to me. I don’t think you’re being rational, here.
If you violently bust into someone's home in the United States, you're liable to, and absolutely deserve to, get shot. I do not care if you have a badge. If you want to execute a lawful search warrant, the best time to do it is when nobodies home. The second best time is during the day, when you can clearly state your legal mandate to be there, and allow the homeowner to comply.
The ATF in this instance (and frankly most instances) chose the most violent option available to them, because good people don't join the ATF. Violent thugs who get off on shooting dogs join the ATF. And when they get tired of shooting dogs, they decide to manufacture a scenario where they get to kill a more dangerous game.
I wish we did this here in the US. Here it’s the opposite - white collar criminals get “club fed” treatment - good food, comfortable room, tennis courts, etc.
And that’s if they’re ever charged at all, which is rare.
Other details for the official (Yang Youlin) in this news.
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Whistleblower Yang Hai already reported Yang Youlin for his economic misconduct in July 2008. The whistleblower was detained because of the report at Nov 21st, 2008.
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People's comment on this matter around March, 2009:
哇塞！终于有人敢动杨友林啦，杨海好样的。杨友林此人早该除无奈碍于他的势力。除掉杨友林大快人心。Wow! Finally, someone dares to take action against Yang Youlin. Good job, Yang Hai. That guy should have been dealt with long ago, but we were stuck with his influence. Getting rid of him is incredibly satisfying.
不杀此贪官，难平民愤。If you don't execute this corrupt official, you won't appease the public's anger.
江宁有一个传说，谁也动不了杨永林！There's a legend in Jiangning: nobody can touch Yang Youlin!
他的保护伞是谁？Who is protecting him?
希望引起中央的重视！I hope this gets the attention of the central government!
现在社会怎么啦？好多天了根本没人关注这件事？是上层没有看到？还是视而不见？还是怕牵连自己？What's going on with society lately? It's been days and no one is paying attention to this! Did the higher-ups miss it? Are they turning a blind eye? Or are they just afraid of getting dragged into it?
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Since the report, there were several pieces of news about "the investigation about Yang Youlin is ongoing", but no real progress until 2023.
In the West, $325M in bribes is called Monday!
I feel like crimes over a certain threshold should include accessories in the punishment, like the Death Penalty here in Indiana does.
It certainly helps motivate them to testify in court.
Strong minority opinion: If someone steals more than the average total lifetime earnings of 10 people, I think the death penalty should apply. That's about 25 million USD
Autocracies tolerate corruption because if everyone is corrupt, anyone can be "legitimately" prosecuted for corruption. (At least I think that's how it works in Russia, but I don't know much about China.)
That makes sense. Give those under the leader enough rope to hang themselves but only when needed.
A state should never have the power to kill people --even though I think some just deserve death (like those raping then killing a child)-- because the state one day shall abuse that power to get rid of those who they don't like.
But I gotta say something: if the EU or the US were to kill politicians taking in bribes, there wouldn't be many politicians left.
I'm generally against the death penalty but this kind of malfeasance truly deserves it. Sad to see similar corruption at the top levels of the US.
How does one steal $300m? If someone is supposed to be on a clerk's salary, even if generous, I would think their explicable net worth should not go beyond a couple million. Being a hundred times richer than that means you have to keep a low profile, in which case being that rich isn't worth the risk.
Good for China.
Society cannot work with too many corrupt civil servants. Yes, "autocrats", "civil liberties", and yet - the guy slurped up $325M to put his finger on the scale, not to change the model of governance.
I wish we in the west took corruption more seriously, but I suppose we're more interested in cage fights on the lawn these days.
Does Xi Jinping (or any of his Politburo colleagues) publish their income and/or tax records? Otherwise, this "we are so anti-corruption" stance is basically just political theater as the Courts themselves are CCP-bound.
I wonder if he could have lived if it was just one $325M bribe and not 30 years of bribery.
The US is very good if you're very rich. It's bad for everyone else. China appears to be somewhat bad or critical of the superrich, which is why they want to come to the US, but good if you're middle class or poor.
This is so true
please elaborate on how the US is very good for those who are extremely poor? social safety net?
You're right. It's only good for the superrich.
I would like such justice to be applied to a few European and French officials... Democracy could be a lot different if corruption and selling his votes was not a career goal for our officials.
Will it happen here to the most corrupt a-hole? I don't think so. He'd chant - they hate me, or i'm part of a witch hunt, or 'i'm politically prosecuted.
Too bad China doesn't have a president fit for pardoning thugs.
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I mean, many people in many states of the US are clearly fine with the death penalty dispensed for violent criminals. I think that white collar crimes of this nature are way worse than an isolated case of violence since it creates lots of indirect systemic misery & suffering for the people & taxpayers that need those resources (that by the way is also the perfect recipe for violent crimes).
What happens to the money in these cases? I could imagine the official taking solace knowing the money he amassed over the years would eventually go his family.
Exfiltrated to Vancouver or London where the wife and kids live most likely.
China isn't afraid to assassinate them there. They'll have to live their lives behind bulletproof glass, mistrusting servants and visitors.
I mean, live that way on $325 million. But yeah.
Until his family receives the bill for the bullet of $325M
I don't really understand the mentality of people who do this sort of criminal activity. If he'd stopped after, say, $5m and just retired he'd probably have managed to get away with it. Continuing to such a ridiculous degree through sheer greed led him to a death sentence. That's just plain stupid.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Unless you are extremely crafty, you don’t get to retire from this sort of criminality. Everyone who enabled you wants more and you have a semi-permanent metaphorical sword hanging over your head.
Unless you are extremely crafty, you don’t get to retire from this sort of criminality.
He got away with it for 30 years. That shows at least some level of craftiness.
Or you use your single digit millions of currency to buy an island and retire for a decade or two while everyone forgets you exist
One does not simply move money out of China
The options increase when you’re already breaking the law.
They will send people after you at some point like they did to Vadym Yermolaiev
China killed him?
His own people tried to
Cryptocurrency or GPUs. Both are fairly easy to obtain and even easier to move out.
> Everyone who enabled you wants more
And once you've taken the first bribe, they now have leverage.
> Unless you are extremely crafty, you don’t get to retire from this sort of criminality.
You should come to [insert your favourite EU country here].
The culture of bribes is a bit different in China. 'Mutually assured corruption' describes the situation better.
Once you start high-profile criminal activity you have to keep doing it to pay off the right people, as soon as you retire you're fucked.
People get away with this all the time—you just only hear about the stupid ones.
$2 million in cash flushed down the toilet, manually, that clogged the sanitation system was a very stupid funny one.
This kind of crime means you develop a network around you that won't stop having expectations of you just because you think you have enough for your eventual retirement.
They'll basically be your friends, partners and coworkers. Making a sudden change in how you associate with each other can have rather negative consequences, ranging from anxiety to them trying to murder you.
I think your logic makes sense, if this was both logical and about the money. But it seems to be more about greed, discontentment, and "more". There is no limit to "more".
It's the wielding of power which is intoxicating, the monetary amount just illustrates how many decisions he could personally influence.
It's called greed, as you aptly pointed out.
Think of Breaking Bad. His wife literally asked him this same question. When is it enough?
It's a mentality where you can't stop.
Yup, it's called greed. It's a part of human nature. That's one reason societies create laws and penalties: to discourage harmful behavior and keep that instinct in check.
Breaking Bad is a work of fiction.
This is load bearing guanxi
So many comments here by western people clinging to the only thing that they have left. The idea that somewhere in the world there is 'injustice' and a 'lack of freedom' and 'dictatorship' makes their absolute dystopian hellscape seem somewhat barely tolerable in their addled minds because they can at least imagine that elsewhere there is some big bad dictator and therefore they are comparatively free. No matter that they are poor and getting poorer or that their governments and companies are all sold out to billionaires and wrecked by private equity. No matter that their freedom begins and ends at consumerism and the vague idea that the police won't arrest them for posting something online. Apparently freedom to have a strong government that actually funds things for the public and doesn't suck billionaire cocks is not as important as having the opportunity to get into debt and spaff shite on the internet. If these people actually went to China and saw it with their own eyes then they would realise that they have been lied to. It's extremely sad to see.
Pretty sure most rational western people (on here at least) are the first to acknowledge all the bad things going on in their countries… and most of the comments I’ve read in this thread seem rather supportive of corruption crackdowns? Idk what prompted this rant tbh.
Someone like Trump probably couldn't even be a CCP party member. I've heard it's a relatively meritocratic organization, at least compared to pur political system. Though maybe someone from China can correct me.
赵瑞龙：哪来那么多腐败分子啊，说白了不就是你们内斗吗？
does punishing corruption with a death sentence - look excessive ? Yes!
is it prone to abuse by those who yield power - Yes!
however - the alternative - where corruption goes unchecked is even worse!! if you come from a poor country e.g in Africa - you would've experienced the effects of corruption.
American are now experiencing it now - & the country is already worse off. though before corruption in American was used as an incentive mechanism - now it's just pure grift.
so yeah sentencing one or two people to death explicitly is the humane outcome vs sentencing thousands to death implicitly.
Death sentence is excessive. But many people here will be comparing it to the USA where the current punishment for corruption is nothing. Literally nothing. You just get away with it in plain sight
We don't need death sentence, we just need, like, any regular sentence
In your opinion, which specific criminal acts have American executives committed in the last 20 years?
Holmes et co have been charged and incarcerated, SBF is also sitting in prison, other executives at smaller companies have also been prosecuted and faced imprisonment. I think there is a lot of fraud in various industries, but some of it is prosecuted, and some of it is legal enough that there is only a fine to pay. There is some accountability, and as much as i can criticize what corps do, i don't think of them as "legally responsible" for every misuse of their tools. Today it seems that if someone cuts their own leg off with a power saw it is a lawsuit against the tool company.
Just a few from the executive branch:
Insider trading - Using knowledge of impending policy decisions and military operations to massively profit from the stock market.
Further than this, one could argue that those policy decisions were made, or at least timed, in order to deliberately short stocks in order to reap profit. The timing of a lot of the Iran war announcements followed very suspect patterns.
Using the highest office in the land to promote personal businesses.
Awarding military contracts to companies linked with family members of the administration over other more suitable options.
We'll likely never see any accountability for the literal billions being illicitly gained by the current administration after they've left office.
The alternative is 4 years of house arrest, just until the next administration can issue a pardon. There is no sentence between 4 years and capital punishment.
Why is this on Hacker News? I thought the site is for tech posts, as named 'Hacker'
Serious countries don't still use the death penalty. It's barbaric. Even if the crimes are barbaric.
We need more of that here
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We should do this in USA
You'd have to industrialize the capital punishment system to handle the demand.
A relatively low level official can't take this much bribes. More like a scapegoat.
Hang on. City level officials play an incredibly important role in China. While Nanjing is not in the same tier as Shanghai, Beijing, or Shenzhen, it is in the tier just below them. It is the provincial capital of one of China's most important provinces -- GDP similar to Texas. Many large Chinese companies are often tied to specific cities -- they get grants and subsidies via the city they are located in.
This guy did it over 30 years so it is feasible.
Scapegoat isn't the right term but I think it is very possible he is being executed to essentially send a message. I think your bigger point that there are way more corrupt officials than just this guy involved seems very plausible.
Just to add more context to this - he accepted ~$10 million a year while managing a city that has a population larger than New York City.
The GDP of the city was 278.9 billion USD in 2025.
Nah he took the bribes and probably paid 90% upward/laterally. Being the guy that actually takes the bribe is likely part of how he got promoted to where he is, in a way, like a soldier who gets promoted for being a calculated risk taker.
It's not outside the realm of possibility for the positions he occupied. But yes, corruption is selectively cracked down upon in China
That's not how this works. It really depends on how close you are to a position, where people might want to bribe you. Low provincial officials with direct ties to local land development might e.g. be able to take many more bribes than a highly ranked official in an office that is far removed from economic activity.
Over thirty years? I am surprised he didn't take more.
China being a communist country, I'm sure they want to show the people the harsh consequences for corruption.
In North Korea, you get a death sentence for even something a lot smaller.
While Xi Jinping is heavily criticized in private within China, he truly attaches great importance to punishing corruption. The fundamental reason is that as China underwent reform and opening up, it abandoned the Maoist emphasis on equality for the people. As a result, interest groups have continuously expanded and begun to severely impact economic development. In the past, it was still possible to encourage officials to serve the people through rationality and grand socialist ideals. Now, with the fading of the former, severe punishment must be used to correct the course.
Additionally, there are two noteworthy aspects regarding the unique characteristics of Chinese law:
(1) The characteristic of "politics over law" in China has gained increasing approval online. Previously, many people admired and envied Western judicial independence, but more and more people are realizing the drawbacks of this system.
(2) China has always been very cautious regarding the execution of the death penalty. Even during the feudal dynasties, official executions remained rare and typically required imperial review. In essence, China still operates under a model of governance by Confucian elites.
China doesn't sentence official to death for genocide against Uyghurs
Fascinating development in Chinese politics.
I wonder how often Trump would have to die for his acts of high treason and making the USG lose face over and over again.
Ooh, now do USA.
Keep in mind, the official may have done nothing wrong but not kissed the wrong Communist behind so he got framed.
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If we executed people in Congress who make money in a way that is illicit for the general population we’d be left with like a handful or two left in the congress. They all have PACs and or engage in insider trading.
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If we actually punished corrupt officials and we had some kind of truth serum that forced people to admit yes/no as to whether they are corrupt, I would not be surprised if the majority of officials in the federal government would be culled. Its practically a breeding ground for corruption.
What do you count as "officials"? I doubt some random manager at the FAA or CFPB took bribes. The rank and file tend to take this stuff seriously.
The high-level appointees? Yeah, I'd believe it if most of them had to go. And good riddance to them if they did.
That's a bit harsh. It's not like he took a $400 million jet.
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Rent free
the reason i dislike seeing these articles on HN is that:
1. strong defensive positions float to the top... which could be astroturfing.
2. the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.
maybe it's all fair, but on a site where everyone's ~anonymous, it's hard to take the discussion at face value.
Most people here are anonymous, for all the discussions. Either trust that your fellow HNers are legitimate, or… ?
The topic comment at the time I’m writing this is asking fair questions, in my opinion.
- Many people feel the death penalty is wrong in every case.
- Some have a general familiarity with high-level politics of elites and wonder about selective enforcement.
These don’t feel like they’re in bad faith. The merits are difficult to know from the outside, so there will always be speculation based on someone’s lived experience and perceptions. Better to have those aired with a chance to respond, in my opinion.
Especially for China, since it is a global power that operates differently from others. In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
first, look beyond the top comment.
then, re-read my comment:
> the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.
…juxtaposed to your conclusion:
> In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
fwiw, i too feel that the death penalty is wrong. but, that's answering an off topic survey question.
i should also note that you've gotten pushback on your comment above declaring that "Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption". my issue is that there's a narrative that forms based on up/downvotes and thus these political threads are gamed. kinda like how my concerns about legitimacy are being downvoted – that's to be expected.
Jk
Wonder who this guy pissed off in the CCP.
It starts with an "X" and ends with an "i."
Corruption is the most significant threat China has left now that Western capitalism has surrendered.
Tariffs on all things Chinese is pretty much an open admission that the West can't compete.
Anyone who think this demonstrates the CCP's epicbacon commitment to anti corruption needs to ask themselves how did this man take so much bribe over 30 years and is only sentenced now.
Is he dumb? Surely he is smart enough to know he committed a capital crime and yet he kept doing it. Perhaps he only kept doing it because he believed he could somehow get away with it? Perhaps he saw others pull off the same stunt? Or perhaps he had the political capital to keep himself out of trouble and is now facing justice because he rubbed someone higher up the wrong way?
Is the prosecution dumb? 300 million is no small money are they really so incompetent that over the course of 30 years they could not find anything wrong with this guy? Perhaps they had a reason to keep him around? Perhaps he had them in his pocket? Perhaps he had the connection to fuck up anyone who dares investigating him? Perhaps they never meant to care about corruption anyway and only went after him because someone somewhere issued an order and they are just charging him for corruption because the true reason is less convenient?
China has invested a lot in whitewashing its public image these days. Every young left leaning westerner is salivating at the idea of a Chinese century because they somehow convinced themselves that the Chinese has the solution to everything that went wrong in the west. It's sad to see it spreading even to this website.
Epicbacon? Is that some new slang or a typo
generally an allusion to the sophomoric takes of enthusiastic ignorance found on places like Reddit (where The Oatmeal and Cards Against Humanity were popular)
Hopefully China will advance to a stage where they ban the death penalty like in many other countries.
> advance
Like those 'advanced' countries that don't have death penalties but are silent - or arming/funding - a genocide?
I guess some deaths are ok.
Separate issues, don’t mix them for your own personal priorities.
I thought a life was a life, but given you stated it's 'separate issues', thanks for proving my point.
There is the concept of sending doubles to stand in for punishment in china. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_zui
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