Chris Arnade: evaluation

Transcript context

…The inner committee of the CCP — I think it is to make China “a great nation again,” to drive the United States out of Asia, to have much of the world kowtow to China, to have China be rich, never democratic, and stable. Now, all that together is probably impossible, but it’s not a crazy set of goals. They’re not my goals. What struck me and one of the things I wrote about on both the pieces, was I kept thinking of them as a guardian class incorporating Plato’s Republic. They really do think of themselves as the guardian class whose goal is to build the best society. I just don’t know what they’re working towards, because if they’re working towards increasing material wealth, they’re doing well. But if the end point is someplace like Korea, Korea’s famously not particularly happy. [laughs] I don’t think that’s their goal, but I think they want China to be happy enough. I don’t think they’re not altruists. I just think it’s a very nationalistic view of altruism where Chinese lexically come before other considerations. Anyone who’s ethnic Chinese ultimately falls under their purview, which is also different than, say, an American view.…

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