China is a communist nation and its current "President for life" Xi Jin Ping has consolidated his power and is now the top dog of a very corrupt government (all centralized ones are - this is why socialism always fails). From PJ Media:
The virus that challenged the world
The coronavirus crisis is testing political systems all over the world. In China it is challenging Xi Jin Ping because he 'owns' the system, Melinda Liu writes in Foreign Policy. "The party has something to do with everything in China, especially under Xi Jinping—and suddenly, for Xi, that has become a double-edged sword. As president, party head, and top military commander, Xi has consolidated his authority, centralized decision-making, abolished presidential term limits, and promoted his loyalists. People expect Xi, China’s 'chairman of everything,' to fix everything when it goes wrong."
And there's a lot wrong. The virus is devouring the entire Chinese medical system. NPR reports that patients requiring urgent surgery, even cancer treatment are simply turned away because the epidemic has used up all available Chinese resources. If you arrive in the hospital with a heart problem, too bad.
Wretchard also looks at Iran, Europe and California - he closes with this:
The alternative to the contraction as readers of the Belmont Club already know is componentization. Like applications on your smart phone, each has to be separated from the others by standard interfaces so that corruption in one does not destroy them all. That is the future political parties must envision instead of rehashing Marxist manifestos from the early 20th century. Chief among componentization's needs must be a world wide text only satellite based system, unfettered by prior censorship open to every fully attributed person on the planet.
Bad as it is, it's not the coronavirus we should worry about so as much as what might come after it. The reason Xi did not see the fatal black swan approaching despite ubiquitous surveillance and AI is because information is surprise, not the carrier wave but something unknown as yet or else it would be in cache. But one has to be open to one's own ignorance to listen and that is something authoritarians can't do, even when their survival depends on it.
Some interesting observations and ideas - good writer.
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