this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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I may not like the CCP, but you have to give credit to where it is due. The government is run by pragmatic technocrats with long term vision. These are the characteristics that America has lost long ago. It is so ironic and funny that it is China who is the promoter now of international free trade.
Holy shit no.
The CCP is mostly controlled by Xi Jinping, and he’s happy to purge anyone who gets in his way, since 2012 and continuing today. He’s also forcing compliance at every level — from disappearing Jack Ma for the mildest of CCP criticism to enforcing a blackout of tianamen square in their ai models. He is much closer to Putin than Trump.
This same control-freak policy applies to their trade. Want to do business in china? Be prepared to set up a 50/50 joint stock company. Want to move money out of the country? Good luck, 50k/year max. This is why so many Chinese buy foreign property, they are trying to move assets outside the reach of the CCP. It’s also why China turns a blind eye to the fent trade — it weakens the US and provides a valuable source of hard (ie cash) currency for China.
Don’t get it twisted, the CCP is run by authoritarians with little tolerance for dissent, not wise technocrats building a better China.
Chinese belt and road initivate can nearly be called free trade.
Yes, CCP is authoritarian, but the party has long term vision for the country. Because they don't want to revert back to the so-called century of humiliation when China became technologically behind and had been carrion feeds for outside powers. The country had been isolationist which made Imperial China weak, but the CCP decided to open up and use international free trade to assert their own influence, instead of being controlled by it like before. Much of CCP's decision making is influenced by historical trauma, as well as from Confucian idea of mandate of heaven-- that the ruling government is only legitimate so long as they can deliver for the people.
So even though Xi cracks down on dissent, he is open to ideas when it comes to technological advancements and pushes his subordinates to keep up. And as we can see, Deep Seek had beaten Western AI development at a fraction of the cost, and China is leading in manufacturing electric vehicles and battery and other renewable technologies. Millions of Chinese had been lifted out of poverty, and the older generations still remember the hardship and the war so many Chinese feel grateful. Xi wants the CCP to prove to the population that only they can deliver progress. But as you pointed out, there is a cost to all of this.
The CCP long term vision isn't for China and Chinese citizens, it is entirely for the CCP.
China is the CCP. That's how a 1-party state works
Just being pedantic regarding the AI models; they're only censored on the publicly hosted versions. Like any other model if you run it locally you're only restricted by the model's training
https://ollama.com/
Nope, running locally still has censorship issues, just not as much
https://www.wired.com/story/deepseek-censorship/
Your article literally proves my point
Just because you will be purged for making Winnie the Pooh references, doesn't mean you are not allowed to make suggestions to improve China, or that Xi is Idi Amin taking all wealth of the country for himself. There exists an intellectual party that is capable of removing him if they thought he was acting inappropriately. Sure, capital controls is a restriction on the rich in China, but that doesn't make it a shithole country pillaged by oligarchs, like some.