Fact Check Me: China Isn’t the Enemy — It’s the Mirror
In the U.S. right now, a lot of poor people are drifting toward authoritarianism.
That sounds dramatic, but it’s not complicated.
If “freedom” has never once paid your rent, filled your fridge, or kept your kids warm in winter, it stops feeling sacred and starts feeling like a scam. When democracy only shows up as chaos on TV and anxiety in your bank account, of course a strong hand starts to look attractive.
People don’t crave ideology.
They crave *relief*.
So here’s the uncomfortable question:
> Is a poor person in America actually **freer** than a poor person in China?
Because it’s hard to feel free when every day is a fistfight with poverty.
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### The Poverty Question We Don’t Like Asking
We love talking about rights in the West:
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of assembly
- Freedom of the press
- Freedom to protest
All of that is important.
But what does any of that mean if you’re living in a car, rationing insulin, and praying your boss doesn’t cut your hours?
A person who wakes up every day thinking, *“Can I eat? Can I stay housed this month?”* is not free in any meaningful way. They’re cornered.
Now put that next to someone in China who:
- has a small apartment,
- steady work,
- cheap public transit,
- basic healthcare,
- kids in school,
- and at least a sense that tomorrow might look like *something*.
Yes, their speech is limited. Their internet is censored. Their elections are theatre. Those are real problems.
But if we’re talking about **lived freedom** — the ability to move through your life with some dignity and stability — the comparison is not as simple as “West = free, China = not free.”
Economic security is a kind of freedom.
And you can’t pretend China hasn’t delivered a lot of that.
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### “Made in China” Used to Be a Joke
I grew up in the era when “Made in China” meant cheap plastic crap that would break before you got it home.
You bought “Made in China” when you *couldn’t* afford quality.
Look around now.
“Made in China” is:
- the phone in your pocket,
- the laptop you type on,
- the TV on your wall,
- parts of your car,
- the battery in your EV,
- and half the stuff in your house.
At some point, quietly and without asking permission, China went from “knockoff factory” to **global production backbone**.
Did they start with low-quality, high-volume manufacturing? Of course they did. They *needed* those jobs. They needed foreign capital, technology transfer, and practice.
But they didn’t stay there.
They learned.
They scaled.
They upgraded.
Factories got better. Supply chains got smarter. Products improved. Quality rose. Whole cities reorganized themselves around industry, logistics, and tech. Now there are companies in China whose names you’ve never heard that could out-manufacture entire Western nations on a bad day.
We can hate that, or we can admit it:
China became very, very good at something the world needs.
And instead of saying, “Okay, what can we learn from that?” we default to, “They’re the bad guys.”
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### Why the West Acts So Adversarial
So why is the default posture toward China so hostile?
Some of it is real concern:
- surveillance,
- human rights violations,
- censorship,
- espionage.
These aren’t imaginary. They matter.
But some of it is insecurity.
China is doing a bunch of things Western countries *say* they value — often *better*:
- Building high-speed rail while some countries still argue about fixing bridges.
- Lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty in a few decades.
- Becoming a world leader in solar power, EVs, and green tech.
- Planning 20, 30, 40 years ahead instead of one election cycle at a time.
That’s hard to look at if you’ve built your whole identity on being “the most advanced society on earth.”
So instead of facing the mirror — instead of saying, *“Damn, maybe we’ve dropped the ball"* — it’s easier to say:
> “They’re authoritarian. They’re evil. Nothing they do counts.”
That’s not strategy.
That’s ego.
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### Pushing a Giant and Expecting a Hug
When you push someone, their first instinct is to push back.
You know this on the mat.
You know this in marriage.
You know this with a teenager.
We somehow forget it with entire nations.
We sanction, scold, threaten, isolate, and then act shocked when China:
- doubles down on internal control,
- turns more inward,
- tightens its alliances elsewhere,
- and invests even more in self-sufficiency.
What did we expect?
You don’t get a billion people to open up by calling their country a villain 24/7.
You get them to open up by saying:
- “We see what you’re good at.”
- “We need what you do well.”
- “Let’s build around those strengths together.”
- “Now let’s talk — honestly — about what worries us.”
Respect first.
Then pressure.
Then progress.
That’s not naïve. That’s how you work with any powerful, proud, *educated* country.
---
### “But China Pollutes!”
Yes, China polluted — a lot.
So did Britain when it industrialized.
So did the U.S.
So did every country that ran full-speed into the fossil-fuel era.
Here’s the part people leave out:
- China is now the **largest investor in renewable energy**.
- It dominates the global solar panel market.
- It’s leading in EV production and adoption.
- It’s rolling out more high-speed electric rail than the rest of the world combined.
- It’s reforesting in some regions at a pace that would be headline news if any Western country did it.
Are they still burning coal? Yes.
Do they still emit a ton of carbon? Yes.
But they’re also running the fastest, largest energy transition project in human history while still lifting people out of poverty and keeping the lights on for 1.4 billion people.
Again: nuance.
You can say, “China needs to do better,”
and also say, “China is doing a lot — maybe more than us — to shift the global energy system.”
Both can be true.
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### Human Rights, Espionage, and the Hard Stuff
Now, none of this means you ignore:
- crackdowns on dissent,
- tight information control,
- the treatment of minorities,
- state surveillance,
- or spying.
You don’t just shrug and say, “Well, they built a lot of trains, so never mind.”
But you also don’t fix any of that by screaming from across the ocean.
If you want a government like China’s to move — even a little — on human rights or transparency, you don’t get there by treating them like a comic-book villain.
You get there by:
- building *real* partnerships,
- creating dependencies that make cooperation valuable,
- talking consistently, not just when it’s convenient,
- and making it clear that respect and responsibility are linked.
“You’re capable of better, and we’re willing to meet you halfway if you want to try.”
That’s very different from:
“You’re evil and must be contained.”
One invites growth.
The other invites defiance.
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### What We Could Actually Learn From China
I’m not a fan of communism.
My wife’s family literally fled it.
They were political refugees from Poland. I know how dark that system can get when it’s twisted and weaponized.
But China today isn’t Soviet-style communism. It’s this weird hybrid:
- **State-managed capitalism**
- with **socialist bones**,
- **authoritarian governance**,
- and a **long-term national project**.
Buried under all of that are some lessons the rest of us badly need:
1. **Long-term planning matters.**
You can’t run a country — or a planet — four years at a time.
2. **Poverty reduction is non-negotiable.**
If you don’t give people economic security, they will eventually trade their democratic freedoms for anyone who promises order.
3. **Infrastructure is freedom.**
Trains, transit, housing, energy — these are *real* freedoms that shape daily life more than any politician’s speech.
4. **The state can coordinate massive projects.**
Not everything can be left to the “free market.” Some things are too big, too important, or too slow to profit.
We don’t have to copy China’s system to learn from those parts of it.
You can say:
> “We still want liberal democracy, freedom of speech, independent courts…
> but maybe we should steal a few pages from the Chinese playbook on planning, inequality, and infrastructure.”
That’s not betrayal.
That’s evolution.
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### Starting From Respect, Not Fear
Here’s the core idea:
China is not going away.
China is not shrinking.
China is not going to “become us.”
China is a permanent, central, global partner — whether we like it or not.
So we have a choice:
- Treat them as a cartoon villain and guarantee a hostile, fractured century,
**or**
- Treat them as a complex, powerful, flawed, *human* counterpart — one we can argue with, learn from, push, and grow alongside.
We can say:
- “We respect what you’ve built.”
- “We disagree with some of how you run it.”
- “We want to work with you to raise the floor for everyone — not just our own people.”
Not because we’re soft.
Because we’re smart.
Because in a world this interconnected, “us vs. them” isn’t a strategy — it’s a slow-motion suicide.
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I don’t care for communism.
I don’t want to live under a one-party state.
I still think some of the most important freedoms are the ones you get by being allowed to say “no” to your own government.
But I also think this:
> The bones are there for China — with its mix of socialism, scale, and planning — to become an example of what a more coordinated, less selfish future might look like.
If they can bend even a little more toward human rights, transparency, and openness — and if we can bend even a little more toward economic justice, long-term planning, and humility —
then maybe we stop staring at each other across the ocean like enemies
and start acting like co-owners of the same burning house.
And if you think I’m wrong, or naïve, or too soft on China?
You’ve got a phone.
You’ve got the internet.
You know what to do.
Go ahead —
**fact check me.**
事实核查