by hayst4ck | 2025-05-15 00:41:59+00:00
> how much implementation of the law in China, at every level, depends very much on who is doing the implementation.

Is that is not true here? What you stated is true of all hierarchical systems. The criminalization of "driving while black" in practice is an example of who is doing the implementation effecting law in America, and that is just one example out of many. The current head of the OMB said he wants to put government workers in trauma so that they do not have the resources to regulate big oil, on video.

> worse than China in that respect.

We are already there.

> but your statement about China is straight from a CCP propaganda handbook.

It is my external assessment from my own observations including significant amounts of talking with Chinese citizens. If you think I am a CPC propagandist, you can check my comment history where I assert that Taiwan is its own country many many times, and I am quite critical of many things, but if you want to have reality based assessments, it's clear that China can build things while the west generally cannot and it's clear China was right about the GFW (which implies a whole bunch of things Americans generally aren't ready to confront), even if what is said about the GFW is almost word for word the same out of Chinese people's mouths and very clearly propaganda.

> That was a long time ago, and obviously those executives didn't have the necessary guanxi.

I can't argue with that assessment, but it is also tautologically true based on how you define gunaxi. Regardless, there were consequences, while there are a dearth of any consequences for anything of our rich class in the US. We even refer to this immunity to prosecution as "the corporate veil," which appears to be nearly impenetrable in the US. The only time it seems to be penetrable is when another person of the same class is damaged.

> Who gets accused and is found guilty of corruption in China depends very much on who is in power

My core point is that we can't seem to find anyone guilty here. There are no consequences for the rich in the west. In the US the law is used as a weapon to create order while maintaining power hierarchies and not a system of using the states power against the powerful to promote justice. When Hong Kong was re-colonized by the Chinese, it was rule Rule of Law and the rights associated with it that became the academic argument for why those in Hong Kong are justified to protest extradition, and while at the time I found those arguments quite compelling. The degradation of the west and clear decline of democracy has turned the issue from what was clearly black and white at the time, to something that is much more grey.

If I ask which country has more corruption, I don't think the answer is very clear anymore, and if law is supposed to address corruption particularly at the highest levels, then it seems clear our notion of law is weak.

You mention CPC propaganda, but what about our own propaganda? If you analyze while assuming our own propaganda is true, western ideas make a lot of sense, but if you analyze ground reality, reality seems to be conflicting strongly with our propaganda.

> Who gets accused and is found guilty of corruption in China depends very much on who is in power. That much was obvious in how Xi cleared out the opposition from 2013-2017.

And yet my understanding is most Chinese (greatly influenced by the perceptions of those I interact with) believe that there was a successful crackdown on rampant corruption coinciding with a cross society economic uplifting. China is now a technological power house, and their innovation engine is now very much competitive, if not exceeding, our own.

What if those people cleared out actually were corrupt? What if they were like republicans who argue that the government can't work, and that's why they should be in power/their crony friends should get all the contracts? What if those people are doing as much damage to society as possible in order to justify new leadership? That's what's happening in the US and has been happening for 50 years.

So what looks like a black and white power grab, once you put those ideas in American terms, is much much less black and white.

> That's one thing China gets right that the US is totally inept at because it's built on a car culture.

These topics are related. Car culture is a function of the car industry's capture of the US government. China, AFAIK, wants to imitate car culture in order to not appear poor, but whether car company concerns or national concerns come first and how that gets navigated is materially meaningful to public transportation. Public transportation means less car owners, less car infrastructure, etc. It is unchecked power in the US that prevents our own infrastructure investments, because making those investments means challenging those who currently enjoy nearly unchecked power.