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China

The Great Zaganza said:
The Chinese Leadership has a long, long list of things they want to do, which includes the destruction of Russia, Japan, India and the US.
It will do what it thinks it can to further its aims, and in the meantime pretend that they only want peace.
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Ironically enough that sounds an awful lot like the aims of the Japanese Militaritst in the 1930's.
"Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere " 2.0
 
dudalb said:
Ironically enough that sounds an awful lot like the aims of the Japanese Militaritst in the 1930's.
"Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere " 2.0
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and it would be the aims of a United Korea, too :

all of these former Empires consider themselves the Rightful Rulers of the World.
 
lomiller said:
Not necessarily.
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I know of no exceptions. And we know for certain that China isn't an exception.

Dictators tend to get the answers they are looking for.
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Which are often different than the answers that are true. Which is the problem.

In the absence of religion or nationalism they want to know how to hang onto their own personal power
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Absolutely. Which is why they have an incentive to want to learn the truth. The problem is that their underlings don't always have an incentive to tell the truth. But even worse, because access to information must be controlled, you can't implement effective methods of error detection and correction. Nobody can watch the watchers.

Religion and nationalism change the dynamics because such leaders have things they want to believe are true
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Everyone has things they want to believe are true. Being secular or non-ideological doesn't insulate you against that. The details of what you want to be true may change, but the basic problem is universal. And in a dictatorship of any kind, nobody wants to tell the dictator that the things he wants to believe are false.

This isn't unique to dictators either, even democratically elected leaders heavily influenced by religion or nationalism will make major policy blunders because they hear what they want to hear instead of what's actually true.
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Sure. But it's much less of a problem in open societies because much more information is public, and so error detection and correction is much easier.
 
Ziggurat said:
Which are often different than the answers that are true. Which is the problem.
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If the answer they want is "how do I hold on to power" the answers they get will be aimed at telling them how to hold on to power. Quality of advice is never prefect so the answers may be wrong, but leaders who want to hold on to power will receive advice aimed at doing just that.

Ziggurat said:
Sure. But it's much less of a problem in open societies because much more information is public, and so error detection and correction is much easier.
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Religion and nationalism are often tied to populist movements which are frequently immune to information, detection and correction until things go drastically wrong. In fact this can persist even when things do go drastically wrong. see MAGA or Brexit
 
arthwollipot said:
If China has territorial ambitions over these regions, they're being awfully quiet about it
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CNN: China’s new national map has angered its neighbors
China published a new version of its national map on Monday, as it has regularly done since at least 2006, to correct what Beijing has in the past referred to as “problematic maps” that it claims misrepresent its territorial borders.

The Philippines said Thursday it “rejected” the map because of its inclusion of a dashed line around contested areas of the South China Sea that was subject to an international tribunal ruling in 2016 that found in favor of Manila.

[...]

India was the first to complain on Tuesday when it lodged a “strong protest” about the inclusion of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the disputed Aksai-Chin plateau in Chinese territory.

[...]

Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also dismissed China’s “unilateral claims,” adding the southeast Asian nation “is consistent in its position of rejecting any foreign party’s claims to sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction on Malaysia’s maritime features.”

During a regular press briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin dismissed the complaints, saying the revisions were a “routine exercise of sovereignty in accordance with the law.”

​

The article goes on to discuss China's territorial claims on India in more detail.

China, known for keeping quiet about its territorial claims. /s
 
lomiller said:
If the answer they want is "how do I hold on to power" the answers they get will be aimed at telling them how to hold on to power. Quality of advice is never prefect so the answers may be wrong, but leaders who want to hold on to power will receive advice aimed at doing just that.
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Obviously not. The advice will be aimed at improving the position of the person giving the advice. It will sometimes also help the leader keep power, but not always, and only as a secondary effect.

Religion and nationalism are often tied to populist movements which are frequently immune to information, detection and correction until things go drastically wrong.
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Good thing China isn't nationalist, then.

Oh....
 
Ziggurat said:
Good thing China isn't nationalist, then.
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Do you think you are making some sort of astute observation? Of course they are nationalist, this is one of the main reasons I think China is more Fascist then Communist.
 
Personally I see the current leadership of China taking on the role of the former Imperial government bureaucracy, just lacking the Emperor.
 
lomiller said:
Do you think you are making some sort of astute observation?
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I'm making a relevant observation, in the context of this exchange. Remember, this conversation traces back to your claim that dictators are predictable. I contend that this is often not the case, because dictators often operate based on bad information. China and Xi suffer from all of these information problems, and we must expect unpredictable behavior from them as well.
 
I think another problem is that dictators are not generally altruistic or humanitarian, and are often not concerned with establishing and overseeing a sustainable nation-state.

Again I'm reminded of the bust-out metaphor. This involves finding something with established value, such as a profitable business with good credit, and extracting as much value as possible over the short term, without any thought of keeping the business solvent. The line of credit is exploited to line the owner's pockets, and then the business is discarded once the debt comes due and is not repaid.

You'd think that dictators would be smarter than this, or at least show some skill and foresight in setting up their exit strategy. But that often does not seem to be the case. Many dictators seem to be getting bad information because they're asking bad questions. Instead of asking, "how can I perpetuate a healthy nation with me at its head indefinitely?", they're asking, "how can I and my cronies extract more wealth from this failed state before the wheels finally come off?"
 
theprestige said:
I think another problem is that dictators are not generally altruistic or humanitarian, and are often not concerned with establishing and overseeing a sustainable nation-state.

Again I'm reminded of the bust-out metaphor. This involves finding something with established value, such as a profitable business with good credit, and extracting as much value as possible over the short term, without any thought of keeping the business solvent. The line of credit is exploited to line the owner's pockets, and then the business is discarded once the debt comes due and is not repaid.

You'd think that dictators would be smarter than this, or at least show some skill and foresight in setting up their exit strategy. But that often does not seem to be the case. Many dictators seem to be getting bad information because they're asking bad questions. Instead of asking, "how can I perpetuate a healthy nation with me at its head indefinitely?", they're asking, "how can I and my cronies extract more wealth from this failed state before the wheels finally come off?"
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You are insufficiently cynical.

The problem is you have assumed that a healthy, prosperous nation is actually in the dictator's interest. And in general, it's actually not in their interest. They actually have a logical reason to loot their own country and thus keep it poor, which is why that path is almost unavoidable for dictatorships. The problem for the dictator is that if you actually make your nation wealthy and prosperous, that necessarily creates opportunities for wealth concentration outside of your control. Unless you've got incredibly concentrated sources of wealth (like Saudi Arabia), then you have to let capital work outside your direct control. But wealth outside your control can serve as a power base for challengers to your authority. It's a massive threat. You're much safer if you don't let wealth build up outside your control, even if that impoverishes your country. Being poor has never really been a problem for dictatorships.

Even a dictator who wanted to be benevolent would have a very hard time doing so.

 
Ziggurat said:
I'm making a relevant observation, in the context of this exchange. Remember, this conversation traces back to your claim that dictators are predictable. I contend that this is often not the case, because dictators often operate based on bad information. China and Xi suffer from all of these information problems, and we must expect unpredictable behavior from them as well.
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Repeating my position back to me and trying to imply you are coming up with a new observation is "relevant"? I've made it very clear China's nationalistic ambitions are a major source of failure for it.
 
lomiller said:
Repeating my position back to me and trying to imply you are coming up with a new observation is "relevant"? I've made it very clear China's nationalistic ambitions are a major source of failure for it.
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We weren't talking about failure. We were talking about unpredictability, which isn't the same thing. And I'm repeating what you said back to you because you seem to have forgotten that.
 
An analysis of what's happening with China's economy (and it's not good news for them):

 
Where is Li?

China's Defense Minister Has Been MIA for a Month. His Ministry Isn't Making Any Comment (AP)

BEIJING — A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson said Thursday that he was “not aware of the situation” in the ministry's first public comments on the disappearance of the defense minister from public view about one month ago.

Senior Col. Wu Qian, the director of the ministry's information office, gave only a one-sentence response when asked at a monthly news conference whether Li Shangfu is under investigation for corruption and if he is still the defense minister.

“I’m not aware of the situation you mentioned,” Wu said in response to a question from a foreign news outlet.
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