this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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China may be a dictatorship, but they actually put tax money into public projects. When they say they are going to do a project for the next X years it actually gets done. As a result, when cool new projects come up, the infrastructure is already there. It is one of the reasons why Chinese EVs are so good and so cheap.
Meanwhile, we have the US where the government is wholly noncommittal to public services that don't extract money from their citizens. They frequently break contracts and agreements when they are no longer profitable or beneficial to the upper class. We have private militaries kidnapping and killing legal citizens just for existing.
It's no wonder people view the US less favorably than China. Both are evil, but at least China doesn't behave like a petulant child.
There was a documentary about how china handles business, damn if I can find it now.
They crap out a new city with a port, they offer people bonus state benefits to move there. (normally if you move out of your original area, you lose state benefits) Then they order the state run banks to give businesses 0% loans for whatever industry they're trying to ingest. They make sure that all the businesses they need get on board and fulfill the needs of the manufacturing and BAM, super cheap hard to make things.
They did with with solar, and they did this with EV's
China has some pretty heinous human rights violations, but the US has the ICE-stoppo shooting down legal workers in the streets in front of their kids and we basically handed over all the arms needed to genocide Palestine.
I'll take a dictator that seems to care about the well-being of their country over a wannabe dictator that only cares about getting paid any day.
Like Putin?
Dictators are going to be in power long after donald will be ousted.
That said, USA is really on the slippery slope to be a proto dictatorship. But you seem to like dictators so ...
Hahaha, this guy thinks trump is going away
Americans scream and spit on Chinese democracy while they cling to electoral colleges and governor appointed senators and the fight to disenfranchise minority voters en mass.
I just don't know how to take any of it seriously. China's a dictatorship because it's ruled by a single, seemingly insurmountable communist party. But Texas and Florida can elect Republicans to a bulletproof supermajority for 40 years and that's just the Will Of The People.
A Congress with a 20% approval rating enjoys a Lockean Mandate, while a Parliament with 50-70% approval is a tyrannical regime of brutal oppression.
And don't even get me started on prison population...
How are we even defining democracy anymore? It just seems like American Exceptionalism.
Chinese democracy is an oxymoron. Not saying American is one at this point either (especially after Trump is finished decimating everything from his 2020 temper tantrum). But let’s not prop up one as better than the other. The CCP strait up sucks too. Better if both governments failed and a better system was put in place for the benefit of both the Chinese and Americans.
There are multiple organisations invested in rating democracies worldwide, the main one is from The Economist EIU ,(https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2025/, there are numerous places where the raw data is published more accessible such as here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu).
I personally prefer the index made by Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world) because it includes what a regular citizen experiences:
Their assessment of the US democracy:
EIU (2024): 7.85/10, "flawed democracy" Freedom in the world score (2025): 81/100
These scores obviously are not about other things that matter, like economic stability or access to healthcare.
Damn, you can't even use China as the positive comparison here without some random tankie getting pissed I didn't adequately glaze China.
Yeah, the comparison is positive, but also anyone who disagrees with you wants you murdered by a tank.
FFS, can you people take any level of criticism?
I read your comment as largely, if not entirely, supportive of the guy you responded to. What am I missing?
Oh! All this time and I hadn't clocked that tankie was referencing the Tiananmen Square massacre. That makes a lot of sense.
I thought it was something related to think-tanks or something, some kind of weird way of saying "brainiac" or having "big-brained ideas" in a derogatory manner.
It's not. It's referencing the Hungarian Revolt of '56.
Hahaha.
Well, in my heart of hearts, this is who it's really talking about.
See, now I’m even more confused!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
"I'll take a dictator..."
This is a MAGA talking point and repeated by MAGA supporters.
No we won't.
In my experience, the kind of person that will purity test a hypothetical is probably gonna join the dictator's vanguard.
Chinese EVs are so cheap because of the massive direct subsidies they get from the Chinese government, not because of some infrastructure.
The subsidies for chinese citizens has been cut for years and phases out entirely in 2027.
There never was a subsidy for exports.
This narrative is just a way for non-competitive companies to demand protectionist measures so they don't have to invest in better factories and can continue charging more for less value.
Just like almost every industy in the US. Agriculture - heavily subsidized. Fossil fuels - heavily subsidized. Medicine - heavily subsidized (even if the patients don't see any of it). Defense contractors of every shade - heavily subsidized. Only difference is that the US subsidizes to help the billionnaires. China subsidizes to help the general populace.
They are cheap because of the infrastructure AND because of subsidies. But to be honest, European automotive companies also once started out with massive subsidies. Companies like Volkswagen were completely government sponsored in the beginning.