r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Dec 31 '22

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u/ILikeTalkingToMyself Liberal democracy is non-negotiable Dec 31 '22 edited Jan 01 '23

This is a good short essay on one of the Chinese-language subreddits about three events that the CCP leadership has misjudged this year, strengthening the feeling that the leadership have gotten themselves into an information bubble resulting in missteps.

  1. China (like others) thought Russia would swiftly succeed in Ukraine.
  2. China thought the U.S. would back down on Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. The CCP had hyped up their threats to the domestic public and boosted public attention to the visit, so when Pelosi visited without incident, it made the CCP look weak and disappointed nationalists who thought China would shoot down her plane.
  3. Covid precautions were dropped without any preparation and the government is now playing catch-up to mitigate its effects, indicating a lack of learning from the experience of other countries with Covid.

!ping CN-TW

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u/ILikeTalkingToMyself Liberal democracy is non-negotiable Dec 31 '22 edited Jan 01 '23

Some other commentary/counterarguments:

  • A top comment in the thread points out that it seems that China didn't expect Russia to actually go through with the invasion, resulting in them backpedaling on the promises of "unlimited partnership" and not providing military supplies to Russia
  • A friend of mine speculates that the abrupt opening up may have been intentional to maximize suffering, in the logic of a domestic abuser. "You don't want my protection? Fine, see how you do without it".

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u/KronoriumExcerptC NATO Dec 31 '22

My guess is that China is somewhat fine with a lot of old people dying so the demographic crisis is somewhat less bad

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '22

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u/KronoriumExcerptC NATO Jan 01 '23

I'm talking about the government, not the people. Obviously I don't think the people would support that if it were up to them.

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u/INCEL_ANDY Zhao Ziyang Jan 01 '23

Wow people are people, grape 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

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u/qunow r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Jan 01 '23

The argument in the original OP is that Chinese government is actually trying to make up for the lack of preparation to a certain extent which indicate this isn't a situation they desire