Although you insist you’re merely “stating facts,” your narrative keeps tipping from observation into admiration: praising Shanghai’s immaculate streets, silent traffic, and absence of homelessness implicitly celebrates the coercive measures that criminalise graffiti, protest and vagrancy; lauding China’s decades‑long planning horizons extols a one‑party system that can bulldoze opposition rather than negotiate; and hailing near‑zero petty crime highlights the fruits of a pervasive surveillance state without acknowledging the civil‑liberty price tag. Each time you spotlight these outcomes without the context of the authoritarian machinery that enables them, the tone shifts from reportage to a subtle endorsement of the very governance model you claim not to be defending.
Communism v. what China actually is
You note that “All I heard from the day I was born was how terrible communism was” yet today’s People’s Republic is neither Marxist utopia nor Soviet‑style command economy. The more accurate label is authoritarian capitalism (some scholars say ‘market‑Leninism’): privately owned firms, intense consumerism, and globally integrated supply chains—all under a party that brooks no political competition. Praising battery innovation and gleaming transit hubs while calling the polity “communist” lets Beijing claim a false ideological victory over the West, when in fact it won by adopting large chunks of market economics while keeping one‑party rule.
System ≠ current administration
You condemn recent U.S. presidents and cite poverty, medical costs, and gun violence, yet those ills flow from policy decisions, not from democracy itself. America’s architecture—independent courts, a confrontational press, staggered elections, federalism, and hard‑stop term limits—is engineered so that no occupant of the White House can bend the entire system to their will or leave irreversible scars; when voters tire of an administration, they can oust it, sue it, or gridlock it, and the next cycle offers a built‑in reboot. China, by design, offers no such safety valve: the Communist Party and the state are fused, so a reckless leader is locked in by the very machinery that elevated them. In the U.S., bad leadership is a temporary malfunction; in China’s one‑party model, the malfunction becomes the motherboard. I think it’s worth clarifying on your side, are your criticisms of the US aimed at its temporary leadership or the flawed democratic system itself?
The trade‑off we knowingly make
An authoritarian government can lock in thirty‑year industrial policies and sweep addicts, migrants, or graffiti artists off the streets overnight. Democracies move slower, look messier, and often reverse course every four years—because the citizenry is free to change its mind. You highlight the upside of decisiveness and safety, but you don’t weigh it against the cost: censorship, forced conformity, and the ever‑present risk of abuse once the same unchecked machinery is wielded by a less‑benevolent hand.
So the question back to you is straightforward:
Would you be willing to give up the vote, an adversarial press, and the right to stage a protest in Trafalgar Square in exchange for spotless streets and fifty‑year infrastructure plans?
Most of us accept the frictions of democracy precisely because we think those liberties are worth the inefficiency. Celebrating the fruits of authoritarian efficiency while downplaying its roots risks implying the trade is cheap—or worse, that it isn’t a trade at all.
China’s achievements in clean transport, poverty reduction, and industrial scale are real and impressive. As you seem to have discovered Authoritarian Capitalism clearly has its benefits. Indeed they should spur the U.S. and Europe to tackle their own dysfunctions. But we can acknowledge China’s successes without romanticising the power structure that produced them, and without losing sight of the democratic safeguards we would have to surrender to replicate it wholesale.
As an American, I am completely ashamed of our government and how it's not working for the common people. At least China has learned to keep the proletariat happy and not cause unrest...
It's not rosy what your government has done to the rest of the world either, common people or otherwise. Regarding unrest in China, that censored event in 1989 showed why there isn't any- at least in the West we can protest, maybe some of the more fanatical elements in your society took that too far after your current POTUS got booted out four years ago, but on the whole peaceful protest is something the West enjoys that this particular East does not.
But they have an attitude unburdened by an obsession with past greatness.
They are about doing something now.
Some of those things may have been in the wrong place. But; they are committed to achievement and I think they want to be seen as competent and professional, they will soon not need western "expertise" in tech and engineering but they may continue with associations that work for longer than expressly necessary.
I had an interpreter /guide in China so I was never walking around on my own but I felt it was not that much different from home.
Shanghai was opulent Nantong was dusty, and Dallian reminded me of Brighton.
It's not just China. Their neighbours in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are willing recipients of Chinese investment and will no doubt be a ready market for ekectric scooters to replace the swarms of petrol ones that are all over those countries. Saigon in particular is an amazing modern city.
Robert,
Although you insist you’re merely “stating facts,” your narrative keeps tipping from observation into admiration: praising Shanghai’s immaculate streets, silent traffic, and absence of homelessness implicitly celebrates the coercive measures that criminalise graffiti, protest and vagrancy; lauding China’s decades‑long planning horizons extols a one‑party system that can bulldoze opposition rather than negotiate; and hailing near‑zero petty crime highlights the fruits of a pervasive surveillance state without acknowledging the civil‑liberty price tag. Each time you spotlight these outcomes without the context of the authoritarian machinery that enables them, the tone shifts from reportage to a subtle endorsement of the very governance model you claim not to be defending.
Communism v. what China actually is
You note that “All I heard from the day I was born was how terrible communism was” yet today’s People’s Republic is neither Marxist utopia nor Soviet‑style command economy. The more accurate label is authoritarian capitalism (some scholars say ‘market‑Leninism’): privately owned firms, intense consumerism, and globally integrated supply chains—all under a party that brooks no political competition. Praising battery innovation and gleaming transit hubs while calling the polity “communist” lets Beijing claim a false ideological victory over the West, when in fact it won by adopting large chunks of market economics while keeping one‑party rule.
System ≠ current administration
You condemn recent U.S. presidents and cite poverty, medical costs, and gun violence, yet those ills flow from policy decisions, not from democracy itself. America’s architecture—independent courts, a confrontational press, staggered elections, federalism, and hard‑stop term limits—is engineered so that no occupant of the White House can bend the entire system to their will or leave irreversible scars; when voters tire of an administration, they can oust it, sue it, or gridlock it, and the next cycle offers a built‑in reboot. China, by design, offers no such safety valve: the Communist Party and the state are fused, so a reckless leader is locked in by the very machinery that elevated them. In the U.S., bad leadership is a temporary malfunction; in China’s one‑party model, the malfunction becomes the motherboard. I think it’s worth clarifying on your side, are your criticisms of the US aimed at its temporary leadership or the flawed democratic system itself?
The trade‑off we knowingly make
An authoritarian government can lock in thirty‑year industrial policies and sweep addicts, migrants, or graffiti artists off the streets overnight. Democracies move slower, look messier, and often reverse course every four years—because the citizenry is free to change its mind. You highlight the upside of decisiveness and safety, but you don’t weigh it against the cost: censorship, forced conformity, and the ever‑present risk of abuse once the same unchecked machinery is wielded by a less‑benevolent hand.
So the question back to you is straightforward:
Would you be willing to give up the vote, an adversarial press, and the right to stage a protest in Trafalgar Square in exchange for spotless streets and fifty‑year infrastructure plans?
Most of us accept the frictions of democracy precisely because we think those liberties are worth the inefficiency. Celebrating the fruits of authoritarian efficiency while downplaying its roots risks implying the trade is cheap—or worse, that it isn’t a trade at all.
China’s achievements in clean transport, poverty reduction, and industrial scale are real and impressive. As you seem to have discovered Authoritarian Capitalism clearly has its benefits. Indeed they should spur the U.S. and Europe to tackle their own dysfunctions. But we can acknowledge China’s successes without romanticising the power structure that produced them, and without losing sight of the democratic safeguards we would have to surrender to replicate it wholesale.
As an American, I am completely ashamed of our government and how it's not working for the common people. At least China has learned to keep the proletariat happy and not cause unrest...
It's not rosy what your government has done to the rest of the world either, common people or otherwise. Regarding unrest in China, that censored event in 1989 showed why there isn't any- at least in the West we can protest, maybe some of the more fanatical elements in your society took that too far after your current POTUS got booted out four years ago, but on the whole peaceful protest is something the West enjoys that this particular East does not.
China went to war with Vietnam in the 80s and got its ass whipped
Great article.
10 yrs ago air quality in Beijing was painful.
But they have an attitude unburdened by an obsession with past greatness.
They are about doing something now.
Some of those things may have been in the wrong place. But; they are committed to achievement and I think they want to be seen as competent and professional, they will soon not need western "expertise" in tech and engineering but they may continue with associations that work for longer than expressly necessary.
I had an interpreter /guide in China so I was never walking around on my own but I felt it was not that much different from home.
Shanghai was opulent Nantong was dusty, and Dallian reminded me of Brighton.
Umm. Tibet?
Very interesting read, and makes total sense.
I want the Go-Kart
It's not just China. Their neighbours in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are willing recipients of Chinese investment and will no doubt be a ready market for ekectric scooters to replace the swarms of petrol ones that are all over those countries. Saigon in particular is an amazing modern city.