<story><title>China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other</title><url>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oblio</author><text>One could argue that “totalitarianism” was the default government form for most of history.&lt;p&gt;The problem is, the higher we go on the Maslow pyramid, the more likely it is for it to fail. You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it).&lt;p&gt;And totalitarianism by definition has problems accepting criticism.&lt;p&gt;The only way for totalitarianism to “work” is if the rulers are both much smarter than the population as a whole and also benevolent.&lt;p&gt;Regarding China, let’s see. These kinds of regimes don’t fail immediately. Just the cracks get bigger and bigger. From what I heard there’s a consolidation of power going on, that’s generally a sure sign of the first cracks appearing.</text></item><item><author>tc</author><text>In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail.  We&amp;#x27;ve seen so many examples of fallen tyrannical states.  But many ideas fail the first few times they&amp;#x27;re tried.  China seems committed to making totalitarianism &amp;quot;work.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to think of any more dangerous invention.  Even nuclear weapons aren&amp;#x27;t as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government.&lt;p&gt;This is an invention that would be exported and widely adopted.&lt;p&gt;The liberal democratic model of government spread around the world not just because the people saw it work in America and decided that&amp;#x27;s what they wanted, but also because the ruling aristocrats saw that it would be net better for them.  The French Revolution probably helped convince them it compared favorably to the guillotine.&lt;p&gt;If another model is pioneered and proven that&amp;#x27;s better for the ruling class, it won&amp;#x27;t be difficult to find regimes eager to adopt it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cf498</author><text>&amp;gt;The only way for totalitarianism to “work” is if the rulers are both much smarter than the population as a whole and also benevolent.&lt;p&gt;I dont think thats realistic anymore. Once they are able to hit first and hit hard when opposition forms, they are pretty much untouchable.&lt;p&gt;The whole argument, of autocratic regimes having a higher chance of collapsing the longer the reign looks like a naive outdated approach to me.
It bets on a critical mass of opposition forming. With total surveillance this wont happen.&lt;p&gt;A successful mass protest has to start somewhere. If you arrest those first people willing to risk everything you quell the entire thing. Its the basic concept of 1984. The only thing holding back this dystopia was the lack of a big brother state with sufficient insight.</text></comment>
<story><title>China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other</title><url>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oblio</author><text>One could argue that “totalitarianism” was the default government form for most of history.&lt;p&gt;The problem is, the higher we go on the Maslow pyramid, the more likely it is for it to fail. You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it).&lt;p&gt;And totalitarianism by definition has problems accepting criticism.&lt;p&gt;The only way for totalitarianism to “work” is if the rulers are both much smarter than the population as a whole and also benevolent.&lt;p&gt;Regarding China, let’s see. These kinds of regimes don’t fail immediately. Just the cracks get bigger and bigger. From what I heard there’s a consolidation of power going on, that’s generally a sure sign of the first cracks appearing.</text></item><item><author>tc</author><text>In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail.  We&amp;#x27;ve seen so many examples of fallen tyrannical states.  But many ideas fail the first few times they&amp;#x27;re tried.  China seems committed to making totalitarianism &amp;quot;work.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to think of any more dangerous invention.  Even nuclear weapons aren&amp;#x27;t as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government.&lt;p&gt;This is an invention that would be exported and widely adopted.&lt;p&gt;The liberal democratic model of government spread around the world not just because the people saw it work in America and decided that&amp;#x27;s what they wanted, but also because the ruling aristocrats saw that it would be net better for them.  The French Revolution probably helped convince them it compared favorably to the guillotine.&lt;p&gt;If another model is pioneered and proven that&amp;#x27;s better for the ruling class, it won&amp;#x27;t be difficult to find regimes eager to adopt it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>s4vi0r</author><text>The amount of protests in China has been exploding over the past decade(s). I didn&amp;#x27;t even know until someone mentioned it on here a few months back, but iirc its gone from maybe a few thousand per year in the 90s to well over 100,000 in recent years.&lt;p&gt;The Chinese rich I&amp;#x27;ve interacted with are also (in my experience, at least - I don&amp;#x27;t have stats to support this) really ignorant of how bad a lot of their countrymen have it. A friend of mine&amp;#x27;s father is some sort of government official in a tier 1 or 2 city, and he&amp;#x27;s told me that the rich and poor are segregated enough that he himself didn&amp;#x27;t even realize his family was anything other than middle class until he came to Canada and saw it wasn&amp;#x27;t exactly normal to have parents who can afford 100k+ annual tuition, luxury cars and apartments, etc.</text></comment>