None of the information, not one single byte of data used to discuss China is accurate, and probably not even in the ballpark. China is a closed society both due to Party policy and an environment that actively discourages honest data collection. My gut tells me that General Secretary Xi is playing a much weaker economic and military hand than he realizes.
Confident societies are not afraid of freedom.
Confident societies are not afraid of God and Christians.
The Party elite and top government officials get uncensored and candid reports average Chinese are not allowed to see.
They have a good idea of the true state of the country and so far there’s no reason for them to change.
The Soviet elite where forced to change because things were so bad change was both necessary and inevitable. Things in China are not yet at a state where democracy is a consideration.
As long as things are well in hand, the status quo will continue. And people seldom change unless its in their interest and even then change is frightening to them.
That’s the only thing every one knows for certain about China - including the Chinese government.
China is a developing developed country.
Confronting China has never been a bright idea.
China is actively targeting ex-patriot American pilots and aircrews; reacting to Trump, I expect. My son has left.
Even Mao said he'd only managed to change things around Beijing to some degree for a while.
The culture is incredible. And the cultural inertia--even after the cultural revolution--is also incredible.
The smug arrogance about being the middle/central Kingdom ... with the paragon specimens of the human critter is probably at least 3 standard deviations from the mean. The Japanese are similar in that regard.
This is one of the most ridiculous stories I’ve read in a long time. In many ways, I think China is a lot less strict than Korea in terms of controlling its citizens. That being said, I feel a lot more comfortable in Korea because I know people will behave even when the government isn’t looking and the vast majority are law-abiding and honest (Korea, like Japan, has almost no crime as compared to the U.S., and you will get comments in both countries about how America is dangerous and violent). In China, in a lot of ways it is totally chaotic in terms of social behavior from being chaos on the roads to chaos in terms of crowd behavior to there being a fairly high risk of dishonest behavior (especially getting cheated or being a victim of some scam).
And millions of Mainland Chinese travel as tourists throughout Asia, although that travel has been cut back recently due to increased tensions over things like THAAD. Chinese citizens are well aware of what is going on in the rest of the world. Sure they view everything from a slanted “Our China” perspective. But we do the exact same thing in the U.S., viewing Asia from our perspective which is often wildly inaccurate.
If the US market is closed to their goods they will not be able to pay their debt. Disaster awaits.
China isn’t the only country whose official government statistics can’t be trusted.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
we do know there is a large population segment that is young and upwardly mobile and urban and tuned to the digital life. These youth are not fans of the old communist ways.
Xi must tread carefully to govern such an educated and ambitious segment. They are the future. They are the Chicaps.
Anyone who has spent time there knows this. The only thing I trusted were my own eyes and individuals that earned my trust. One misstep and the person was off the list. The adage take care of your people and they’ll take care of you served very well. There were many times my reports would come to me and say ‘look here’s the situation, but I can’t say that in the meetings’. If I couldn’t do anything about it then I said got it keep me informed of the real story and try not to say anything. If I could do something then I would ask questions that eventually got me to the hard ones and opened it up. Big key was not to embarrass Anyone.
