It's fine to be a futurist but get a realistic picture of present China first, the one you depict as 'authoritarian,' 'techno-utilitarian,' and 'limited by human rights concerns' does not actually exist. There is not space to examine all three of these epithets, so let's take a quiz about the first one, 'authoritarian':
In what authoritarian country does the leader have the sole power to..
* Hire and fire the country's 5,000 top officials.
* Declare war. Frequently.
* Issue 300,000 national security letters (administrative subpoenas with gag orders that enjoin recipients from ever divulging they’ve been served);
* Control information at all times under his National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
* Torture, kidnap and kill anyone, anywhere, at will.
* Secretly ban 50,000 citizens from flying–and refusing to explain why.
* Imprison 2,000,000 citizens without trial.
* Execute 1,000 citizens each year prior to arrest.
* Kill 1,000 foreign civilians every day since 1951
* Massacre its own men, women and children for their beliefs
* Assassinate its own citizens abroad, for their beliefs.
No Chinese leader, or group of leaders, has ever had one such power.
Mao was a total pussy. When they dropped him from the [Steering Committee] after the Great Leap Backward, he wandered around for months, moaning, "I feel like a mourner at my own funeral”.
Eventually they took him back, of course. But no Chinese politician or leader has ever killed another–a rule Mao laid down in 1929 and held steadfastly to thereafter. When war-hardened colleagues wanted to dispense with postwar legal niceties, Mao asked, “What harm is there in not executing people? Those amenable to labour reform should go and do labour reform so that rubbish can be transformed into something useful. Besides, people's heads are not like leeks. When you cut them off, they won’t grow again. If you cut off a head wrongly there is no way of rectifying the mistake even if you want to”.
It's fine to be a futurist but get a realistic picture of present China first, the one you depict as 'authoritarian,' 'techno-utilitarian,' and 'limited by human rights concerns' does not actually exist. There is not space to examine all three of these epithets, so let's take a quiz about the first one, 'authoritarian':
In what authoritarian country does the leader have the sole power to..
* Hire and fire the country's 5,000 top officials.
* Declare war. Frequently.
* Issue 300,000 national security letters (administrative subpoenas with gag orders that enjoin recipients from ever divulging they’ve been served);
* Control information at all times under his National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
* Torture, kidnap and kill anyone, anywhere, at will.
* Secretly ban 50,000 citizens from flying–and refusing to explain why.
* Imprison 2,000,000 citizens without trial.
* Execute 1,000 citizens each year prior to arrest.
* Kill 1,000 foreign civilians every day since 1951
* Massacre its own men, women and children for their beliefs
* Assassinate its own citizens abroad, for their beliefs.
* Repeatedly bomb and kill minority citizens from the air. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/02/duncancampbell) (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia).
No Chinese leader, or group of leaders, has ever had one such power.
Mao was a total pussy. When they dropped him from the [Steering Committee] after the Great Leap Backward, he wandered around for months, moaning, "I feel like a mourner at my own funeral”.
Eventually they took him back, of course. But no Chinese politician or leader has ever killed another–a rule Mao laid down in 1929 and held steadfastly to thereafter. When war-hardened colleagues wanted to dispense with postwar legal niceties, Mao asked, “What harm is there in not executing people? Those amenable to labour reform should go and do labour reform so that rubbish can be transformed into something useful. Besides, people's heads are not like leeks. When you cut them off, they won’t grow again. If you cut off a head wrongly there is no way of rectifying the mistake even if you want to”.