How "communist" was Pinochet? He had total 1-party control, after all.

Is North Korea a Democratic Republic? That's what they call themselves, after all.

You information sources are sick though, bro. Nobody has better information sources than you.

There's more small business than america, by a lot, the biggest internet companies outside of America... I think you've redefined 'communist' into some sort of tautological catch-all.

Here, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China. Unless the Wikipedia editors are communist conspiracists as well.

Anyways, you've made clear that your reference point for understanding China is Soviet Eastern Europe. If you check a map and a calendar, you can see some places where that reference point might be inexact.

You've given some pretty strong hints about it in fact, and tripled down in this comment.

I'll go out on a very specific limb, tell me I'm wrong: Moved to the US from an eastern european country at a young age, perhaps exactly 1989, parents talk a lot about how bad it was?

And "state-controlled to the tune of Norway" is approximately accurate, thank you. You know they have gigantic private corporations there? Alongside the state-owned oil behemoths, Norway makes for a particularly nice comparison.

The book covers the Cultural Revolution like US films cover Vietnam: not favorably.

Can you think about what would be persuasive to such a person?

They're not American, didn't grow up on your information diet, and really don't give a shit about what's "communist" or not. Their economy is state-controlled to the tune of Norway, or a little less so. Who cares. They are all doing way better than a generation or 2 ago, and here in America, we are comparatively struggling. They see this. Why should they want our system instead?

Changing systems without a massive, disruptive loss of life is actually a huge accomplishment. No other nation has transitioned out of communism smoothly. It had the side effect of not changing names of various things.

I'm not trying to assert authority here but you could look at the last 500 years, the last 200, 100, years, the last 50 years.. cherrypicking a 25 year period that happened between 70-45 years ago is kinda weird if you're after understanding rather than scoring points.

What has happened in China is that a billion farmers are massively, undescribably better off. You literally cannot describe it to the average American, their scale for lifestyle doesn't go that low.

Liu is Chinese just like most of HN are American so there will be different default stances on international politics, but the books did not read as jingoistic to me.

That said, seems like the easier narrative for the NYT to go with as well -- they don't have to own up to their editorial failures up the chain that way.

Break every rule of your profession and publish a bunch of BS? We'll give you another chance. Gave an inappropriate backrub 10 years ago? You're out!

He should have been fired for Caliphate and expressly for Caliphate.