by insane_dreamer | 2025-05-16 15:10:59+00:00
> what does it mean for the middle class to not support the government?

There's no legal process, so the only option would be mass protests. Believe it or not, this does happen in China occasionally, but not in big cities like Beijing/Shanghai, and it's very quickly put down and not reported in the news (and social media reports are very quickly censored, though Chinese can find ways around this, often using very clever play-on-word techniques which the Chinese language is much better suited to than English; censors are on to it though so it's cat-and-mouse or whak-a-mole).

> I completely see china as an authoritarian state rife with unchecked (and therefore arbitrary) power, but China is also functional in a way the US is very much not and that's become very interesting to think about, for me.

I understand how that can seem appealing from a distance. Much like the way that people who don't live in the US look at it from a distance and think "land of opportunity" (which to be fair, for some people it has been). Live and work in China for years and you understand that the way it looks from the outside is not the way it is. China is no more functional than the US, and in fact, very much less so. The uncertainty created by the lack of a proper legal system is _not_ something you experience in the US. Case in point: We were pulled in by the police for failure to comply with some paperwork (paperwork that couldn't be complied with, a typical catch-22 situation in China that creates a grey zone in which businesses operate within the law but can at any moment also be considered in violation of the law if so deemed). Anything could have happened, from shutting us down completely, to a slap on the wrist. We were first told we had to shut down completely, but the higher up got a call from one of our well-connected Chinese friends and gave us a slap on the wrist instead (see how that works?). Except that the highest investigating officer said that he wanted to be a partner in our business and we ended up giving him 10% of the business to ensure that we didn't get pulled in again. Straight out of Don Corleone's playbook. This is quite common, and none of our Chinese friends were surprised (in fact, they advised us to go along with it, because it's just the way it goes (unless you have enough guanxi). For all its faults, this would not happen in the US (we'd sue).

This is just one example. But articles and books about China don't give you a proper idea of what things are like there because people visit for 3 months (or 3 weeks) and think they understand China. Or they spend 1-2 years there at a Chinese university, or living in an expat bubble, and think they know. Spend 6 years there embedded in Chinese society, and you'll quickly become disabused of your ideas about China.

I also pretty strongly disagree with your take on freedom. It's easy to say that because you don't live in an autocratic country, and neither has Snyder. I've spent years in two highly autocratic countries (China and Russia) and let me tell you, money itself is not freedom. What money does in those countries is buy you a ticket out.

After having lived on almost every continent in a range of countries under different governmental systems, I still agree with Churchill that Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.