They are: how many people the country represses internally, and how many people the country kills in foreign wars. These are the topline metrics for a government being good domestically and being good internationally. For example, Nazi Germany had horrible repression internally and started horrible aggressive wars, and that’s the entire reason we think it was bad. Well, today’s US has much higher incarceration rate than today’s China and also kills much more people in foreign wars, so there’s that.
Is your claim that non-imprisoned Chinese should be considered non-repressed, or at least comparably repressed to Americans?
I think with these kind of subjective things you can fudge a lot. “The Chinese are repressed” “Sure, but they have healthcare” “Sure, but they have Uyghurs” “Sure, but you have reservations” and there you go again. It’s the same problem that effective altruism was trying to solve, that the “society for curing rare diseases in cute puppies” is not effective, so you’ve got to find numbers that are hard to fudge. Or with measuring crime, theft reports are affected by a lot of factors and you need to look at murder rate which is harder to fudge. Same logic here. You’ve got to choose some objective numbers that reflect reality.
Given that, I stand by my choice of numbers. In Stalin’s USSR, Nazi Germany and Maoist China the internal repression was reflected in incarceration rates. But in today’s China, the incarceration rate is 1/5th that of the US. This means the repression in today’s China is much lower than these historical examples, and not obviously worse than in the US.
Financial repression (disposable income as % of GDP, limits on currency conversion)
Censorship level (% of movies shown in theaters that are pre-approved by government censors, % of foreign websites that are accessible)
Population/movement controls (not sure how to measure these, but e.g. “one-child policy” and hukou household registration system, which have no counterparts in the US)
After thinking for a few days, I agree with your objection. Incarceration rate is a signal but not as strong a signal as I thought, unless it spikes really high. (Still feel that foreign wars are a strong signal though, I wonder if you have objections to that too.)
China has little ability to project power across the ocean so it can only have wars with its neighbors. Nevertheless, since CCP took over in 1949 it has fought in
Korean War (1950–1953)
Sino-Indian War (1962)
Sino-Soviet Border Conflict (1969)
Sino-Vietnamese War (1979)
with total deaths of ~190,690 – 427,522 for China and ~207,941 – 240,988 for its enemies (according to Gemini Pro). This is roughly half of the total deaths of wars the the US has fought across the globe during the same period, but OOMs more than the US if we only count its neighbors (say the western hemisphere).
To put it another way, in order to compare their willingness to fight wars, you have to factor out their capabilities (including e.g. alliances and vulnerabilities to counterattacks and sanctions), after which it’s far from clear that China is less war-like than the US.
I’m 43 years old and the last of these wars ended before I was born.
Also, I wonder about your comparison of deaths. You say 400-700K killed in wars involving China. If we look at the biggest wars involving the US in the same period, the Korea war killed 2.5-4M, the Vietnam war killed 1.5-3M, and the war on terror killed 1-4M and is ongoing (all numbers from Wikipedia). Maybe the US is responsible for only double China’s number, or maybe more. I guess it depends how many deaths should be blamed on the US and how many on others.
Do you know the Hide your strength, bide your time quote (commonly attributed to Deng Xiaoping, who didn’t actually say it (his successor did) but did apply a similar policy)? If we apply an instrumental convergence / deceptive alignment lens on this, we have to conclude that we can’t really make any conclusions based on surface behavior, about how “aligned” (peaceful or warlike) a country is, while it’s below some capabilities threshold, at least if it’s collectively smart enough.
(I thought of mentioning this analogy in my previous comment, but it seemed too obvious to spell out explicitly. Did I underestimate the inferential distance? Do you still disagree?)
No country is aligned, and in particular neither China nor the US is aligned to me (a Russian emigrant). They’d both treat me badly if it was in their nationalist interests.
Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
I agree that there’s no strong justification for this, but would make other arguments in this direction rather than point out the data that you did (China caused fewer deaths in external wars), mainly that AGI/ASI is likely to be either unaligned/uncontrollable or radically change the power structure and/or values of whatever country “wins” the AI race, so we can’t form strong judgments based on past evidence.
BTW who on LW is fanning this race? If I try to recall what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about trying to slow China down (through things like export controls and securing American AI labs) rather than speed the US up, which seems unobjectionable? Do you see LWers doing more than this, or think this is objectionable too?
If Alice and Bob are doing something that might be plausibly interpreted as a race, and Alice is not
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to move faster, if she thought about the situation as a race],
but she is
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to slow Bob down, if she thought about the situation as a race],
then this should make an impartial observer Charlie increase his credence that at the very least Alice (if not Bob) is thinking about the situation as a race.
You’ve got to choose some objective numbers that reflect reality.
Fair. I choose the number of legal oppositional parties and the number of peasants prevented from migrating to cities by the hukou system.
the repression in today’s China is much lower than these historical examples, and not obviously worse than in the US
The former is obvious, the latter is a spicy take. Of course, the US isn’t exactly having its best moment these days, but I still doubt that the percentage of Americans who would prefer living in China would be even within one order of magnitude of that of hopeful Chinese immigrants.
Why are your numbers more indicative, though? There’s tons of possible numbers to choose from that go every which way. When I was figuring out for myself how to compare countries, I tried to choose numbers that were hardest to fudge, most indicative of bigger trends and least cherrypicked. That seems like the only way to clear things up, like defining QALYs in EA.
About migration as a criterion, consider Filipino migrants in Saudi Arabia. The Philippines are a flawed democracy, while Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with a poor human rights record and a higher incarceration rate. Why the migration then? Economic reasons. If China becomes as rich per capita as the US, I’m not sure they’d be as eager to migrate. Migration often depends on which country is richer, not which country is more free.
Well, I mean, congrats on your choice, but why are your numbers more indicative than mine? Looks to me like you’re just cherrypicking. Everyone can cherrypick.
I’m not claiming that they’re more indicative, but I do claim that they aren’t obviously less indicative. Since everyone can cherrypick, it’s not clear in what way are objective numbers better than vibes anyhow.
Ok, cool, imagine China becomes as rich per capita as the US.
IMO CCP-led China will never come close, and the level of repression is an important factor of that. Small-ish petrostates aren’t relevant here.
Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, China has achieved miraculous growth and eradicated absolute poverty despite a similar level of repression. What exactly leads you to believe that, under such repression, China could never reach the level of development enjoyed by the United States? Why not consider what might happen if the repression were relaxed? For example, what if the household registration system and the detention and deportation system were abolished? Rural residents lacking basic urban job skills would flood into cities in a disorderly manner and establish slums, which would severely hinder urban planning and trigger a deterioration in public order. At the same time, a significant portion of the government’s main revenue comes from land sale proceeds. Without these systems, the government would be unable to generate revenue from urbanization and use it for critical infrastructure such as high-speed rail, which would in turn severely impact economic development!
What exactly leads you to believe that, under such repression, China could never reach the level of development enjoyed by the United States? Why not consider what might happen if the repression were relaxed?
My impression is that things are as relaxed as they are going to get, and the trend these days seems to be in the direction of increasing repression.
China and the UAE are, in fact, quite similar: the UAE’s GDP comes primarily from non-oil sectors, and these industries rely heavily on the kafala system to bring in cheap labor from the Third World. Meanwhile, at least over the past few decades, China’s developed coastal regions and major cities (such as Shanghai) have developed labor-intensive industries to take on international industrial outsourcing, while its densely populated inland regions (such as Henan) have served as internal colonies and sources of cheap labor.
Is your claim that non-imprisoned Chinese should be considered non-repressed, or at least comparably repressed to Americans?
I think with these kind of subjective things you can fudge a lot. “The Chinese are repressed” “Sure, but they have healthcare” “Sure, but they have Uyghurs” “Sure, but you have reservations” and there you go again. It’s the same problem that effective altruism was trying to solve, that the “society for curing rare diseases in cute puppies” is not effective, so you’ve got to find numbers that are hard to fudge. Or with measuring crime, theft reports are affected by a lot of factors and you need to look at murder rate which is harder to fudge. Same logic here. You’ve got to choose some objective numbers that reflect reality.
Given that, I stand by my choice of numbers. In Stalin’s USSR, Nazi Germany and Maoist China the internal repression was reflected in incarceration rates. But in today’s China, the incarceration rate is 1/5th that of the US. This means the repression in today’s China is much lower than these historical examples, and not obviously worse than in the US.
Have you looked into:
Financial repression (disposable income as % of GDP, limits on currency conversion)
Censorship level (% of movies shown in theaters that are pre-approved by government censors, % of foreign websites that are accessible)
Population/movement controls (not sure how to measure these, but e.g. “one-child policy” and hukou household registration system, which have no counterparts in the US)
After thinking for a few days, I agree with your objection. Incarceration rate is a signal but not as strong a signal as I thought, unless it spikes really high. (Still feel that foreign wars are a strong signal though, I wonder if you have objections to that too.)
China has little ability to project power across the ocean so it can only have wars with its neighbors. Nevertheless, since CCP took over in 1949 it has fought in
Korean War (1950–1953)
Sino-Indian War (1962)
Sino-Soviet Border Conflict (1969)
Sino-Vietnamese War (1979)
with total deaths of ~190,690 – 427,522 for China and ~207,941 – 240,988 for its enemies (according to Gemini Pro). This is roughly half of the total deaths of wars the the US has fought across the globe during the same period, but OOMs more than the US if we only count its neighbors (say the western hemisphere).
To put it another way, in order to compare their willingness to fight wars, you have to factor out their capabilities (including e.g. alliances and vulnerabilities to counterattacks and sanctions), after which it’s far from clear that China is less war-like than the US.
I’m 43 years old and the last of these wars ended before I was born.
Also, I wonder about your comparison of deaths. You say 400-700K killed in wars involving China. If we look at the biggest wars involving the US in the same period, the Korea war killed 2.5-4M, the Vietnam war killed 1.5-3M, and the war on terror killed 1-4M and is ongoing (all numbers from Wikipedia). Maybe the US is responsible for only double China’s number, or maybe more. I guess it depends how many deaths should be blamed on the US and how many on others.
Do you know the Hide your strength, bide your time quote (commonly attributed to Deng Xiaoping, who didn’t actually say it (his successor did) but did apply a similar policy)? If we apply an instrumental convergence / deceptive alignment lens on this, we have to conclude that we can’t really make any conclusions based on surface behavior, about how “aligned” (peaceful or warlike) a country is, while it’s below some capabilities threshold, at least if it’s collectively smart enough.
(I thought of mentioning this analogy in my previous comment, but it seemed too obvious to spell out explicitly. Did I underestimate the inferential distance? Do you still disagree?)
No country is aligned, and in particular neither China nor the US is aligned to me (a Russian emigrant). They’d both treat me badly if it was in their nationalist interests.
Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
I agree that there’s no strong justification for this, but would make other arguments in this direction rather than point out the data that you did (China caused fewer deaths in external wars), mainly that AGI/ASI is likely to be either unaligned/uncontrollable or radically change the power structure and/or values of whatever country “wins” the AI race, so we can’t form strong judgments based on past evidence.
BTW who on LW is fanning this race? If I try to recall what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about trying to slow China down (through things like export controls and securing American AI labs) rather than speed the US up, which seems unobjectionable? Do you see LWers doing more than this, or think this is objectionable too?
If Alice and Bob are doing something that might be plausibly interpreted as a race, and Alice is not
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to move faster, if she thought about the situation as a race],
but she is
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to slow Bob down, if she thought about the situation as a race],
then this should make an impartial observer Charlie increase his credence that at the very least Alice (if not Bob) is thinking about the situation as a race.
Fair. I choose the number of legal oppositional parties and the number of peasants prevented from migrating to cities by the hukou system.
The former is obvious, the latter is a spicy take. Of course, the US isn’t exactly having its best moment these days, but I still doubt that the percentage of Americans who would prefer living in China would be even within one order of magnitude of that of hopeful Chinese immigrants.
Why are your numbers more indicative, though? There’s tons of possible numbers to choose from that go every which way. When I was figuring out for myself how to compare countries, I tried to choose numbers that were hardest to fudge, most indicative of bigger trends and least cherrypicked. That seems like the only way to clear things up, like defining QALYs in EA.
About migration as a criterion, consider Filipino migrants in Saudi Arabia. The Philippines are a flawed democracy, while Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with a poor human rights record and a higher incarceration rate. Why the migration then? Economic reasons. If China becomes as rich per capita as the US, I’m not sure they’d be as eager to migrate. Migration often depends on which country is richer, not which country is more free.
I’m not claiming that they’re more indicative, but I do claim that they aren’t obviously less indicative. Since everyone can cherrypick, it’s not clear in what way are objective numbers better than vibes anyhow.
IMO CCP-led China will never come close, and the level of repression is an important factor of that. Small-ish petrostates aren’t relevant here.
Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, China has achieved miraculous growth and eradicated absolute poverty despite a similar level of repression. What exactly leads you to believe that, under such repression, China could never reach the level of development enjoyed by the United States?
Why not consider what might happen if the repression were relaxed? For example, what if the household registration system and the detention and deportation system were abolished? Rural residents lacking basic urban job skills would flood into cities in a disorderly manner and establish slums, which would severely hinder urban planning and trigger a deterioration in public order. At the same time, a significant portion of the government’s main revenue comes from land sale proceeds. Without these systems, the government would be unable to generate revenue from urbanization and use it for critical infrastructure such as high-speed rail, which would in turn severely impact economic development!
My impression is that things are as relaxed as they are going to get, and the trend these days seems to be in the direction of increasing repression.
China and the UAE are, in fact, quite similar: the UAE’s GDP comes primarily from non-oil sectors, and these industries rely heavily on the kafala system to bring in cheap labor from the Third World. Meanwhile, at least over the past few decades, China’s developed coastal regions and major cities (such as Shanghai) have developed labor-intensive industries to take on international industrial outsourcing, while its densely populated inland regions (such as Henan) have served as internal colonies and sources of cheap labor.