Woke up this morning and a little surprised about the discussion form my original post. Originally I intended to stop already, because I don't believe in fire post a lot of replies and "fight" every disagreement. I believe in make my point and listen to others response, observe my short come in my own belief and learn from it and improve myself's judgement. But a lot of responses are really good so I am going to continue a little bit. As I said, I don't want dwell on it and fire fight everyone just to try to prove myself. I enjoy learning just as giving.
1. Yes, I am Chinese and I, for one, does not conform to the uniformity of the Chinese culture. I have been living in USA for 30 years and recently when China changed their constitution to void the term limit to the leader without any major disagreement or even discussion from the society, I even cut Wechat connection to most of my classmate because I cannot stand their jingoism and what happened run counter to my belief.
2. Some poster indicate that we should be terrified about China's everywhere video monitoring and facial tracking. Well, from Chinese point of view, why is there anything to be terrified about unless you are a murderer or pick pocketer? A general citizen just want to live a safe life, and these high tech tools only enhance their life quality. Of course as an American, I strong disagree with their methods because I worry the lost private and the slippery road of government controlling every aspect of citizen's life, as I indicated in my original post. My point is even though we hold our belief, it is none of our business to judge how other country run their own business. And in this case, how Elon perceived how successful Chinese government run their business taking care of their people. Here we are not talking about Chinese forcing us to install camera at every corner of USA street, neither we are talking about USA and Chinese living peacefully along side each and mind their own business, I was merely responses to the very original post that Elon is soft on Chinese government because of the economic benefit, and the undertone it implied, that Chinese government is bad all around. So it is us who are judging them. And I think it is wrong that we have the moral high ground to judge how Elon's interpretation about how Chinese government treat their people.
3. With regard to Covid, yes, in China, if there is a family member that caught COVID, then the whole house can not buy food, as you said (actually I am not sure if this is entirely true, usually what happen is that there can only be one family member leave the house to buy food every other day, but I am really not sure the situation if some family member is actually sick). But you omit an important factor in China, they mobilized a large army of neighborhood based volunteers to deliver food to your door step while you cannot leave your house to buy food. Otherwise people would starve to death, think about it. There is only one city recently that did not have enough volunteer when they implemented the house shut down polity, that people went starving. The city official was under tremendous pressure and facing the prospect to lose his job he hastily implemented the shut down policy without enough volunteer. But the situation is quickly corrected.
Yes, in China government shut down the subsection of the city if there is COVID spreading and take people's freedom away, but you also omit the important second leg of the story that after 2 weeks hard quarantine and Covid is eradicated from the neighborhood that they give people's freedom back. I saw in videos that at 11pm in frigid temperature and high wind, people as old as 70, and young kids, lining up and slowly walk away from their apartment building in dimly lighted street towards concentrated quarantine site, under the watchful eyes of the medical staff in full protective gear. Can you imagine this would happen here without people accusing government sending them to concentration camp or even Auschwitz camp and be terminated? But the fact is, even when the line of people walking slowly in the dark, sad from the video, but from the audio they are joking with the medical staffs and there is smile and laugh. Because they understand this is temporary hardship and this is for common good. And they are willing to sacrifice their individuality for the good of the large. I find this to be noble and shining of the humanity.
And judging by Whole China thinking "inside the box" and running free from COVID (the only country in the world) since May or June of last year (there are sporadic cases to be exact, but neglectable), do you still believe that our thinking "outside of box", unwilling to even sacrifice temporarily our freedom (mask and travel and partying and gathering) and result in the COVID running everywhere with no end in sight, and our government's continuous struggle to try to eradicate the disease without major success is a better choice because we "preserved" our freedom and individuality during the pandemic? I find this to be anti science and selfish and shortsighted and inhumane. Did you see the video of a march in a mall where mask protestors shouted: "we are willing to die, everyone die!", and one lady was furious, "You asshole, My father is in hospital because of Covid!" And the guy's response was "Well, you father will eventually die." In this case, it's not just inhumane, it's evil, evil in the name of individuality and freedom.
Once again, I believe China did not do a good job containing the disease at the beginning when cases showed up in Wuhan in January 2020, but through the collective sacrifice of Chinese people and their government's decisive action, they are free of the Covid since May or June, 2020. And their misjudgment is somehow understandable since nobody, nobody know fully the extend of the disease at the beginning. Just think about how much misinformation US government doll out after March 2020, when the disease's damage had laid bare in front of our eyes.
OK, I will stop now and will not continue this topic, since as one said above, Elon and Tesla is doing well adapting to different culture and that's what matters, and I feel like I said too much already and don't want to turn this into a culture debate. I don't believe in fighting with every disagreement with long posts. A lot of times listening and thinking about others opinion is more helpful than just stick with my own belief and trying to jam it down others with long post.
