China vs. Russia

I play with China more often in Civ, fuck a bonus on tundra tiles imo.

Lol, how is that even a question. China is a superpower in every sense of the term and they're looking at 2100. Russia is a barely functioning oligarch troll state with a nostalgia for the cold war.

If I was offered money by an MSS agent to spy for China - I'd do it without a 2nd thought. Wouldn't do shit for Russia!

China on food alone. Nothing against pickles and black bread, but gimme Szechuan cooking any day.

Yeah, Russia kinda underrated re: food but China is such a heavyweight in that department it's not a faur fight.

Russia might win on modern literature? Haven't read many modern Chinese authors.

Seems like we're forgetting or ignoring what the Chinese are doing to the Uyghurs... but then so is everybody else.

I mean if we're talking which is worse on a per capita basis of crimes against humanity, I don't even know how to assess that. Both terrible obviously.

Do i want to watch movies with snow or do i want to watch movies with people flying around and punching each other and shit

The 21st century is China’s, but I have a soft spot for Russian literature and they’ve provided some of the best classical music composers ever.

not bothered about the big guns of Russian literature apart from Gogol and that really funny weirdo Daniil Kharms and also the greatest chronicler of the gulags, Shalamov.

I mean if we're talking which is worse on a per capita basis of crimes against humanity, I don't even know how to assess that. Both terrible obviously.
― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, March 26, 2025 2:10 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If we follow human rights / freedoms / corruption, it seems Russia is still considered overall "better" and less controlling / coercitive, but it's a battle of the villains indeed.

V-DEM Human rights index: China (0.19) - Russia (0.26)
Freedom House Freedom in the world index: China (9) - Russia (13)
Heritage Foundation / TWSJ Index of economic freedom: China (48.5) - Russia (52)
World Press freedom index: China (22.97) - Russia (34.77)
The Economist Democracy index: China (2.12) - Russia (2.22)
Global Rights Index: China (5) - Russia (5) TIE
UNDP Human development index: China (0.788) - Russia (0.821)
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index: China (42) - Russia (22)

Seems like we're forgetting or ignoring what the Chinese are doing to the Uyghurs... but then so is everybody else.

Nah I don't think anyone's championing China for its good record on human rights itt.

do any of these really great "free" countries lose points on this index for giving diplomatic cover and full military assistance to a genocide?

i'd probably bang a russian man before a chinese man but chemistry is hard to predict

i honest to christ read that as hang first time round and i was like harsh but it is the thread to say it in if you are going to say it so

not bothered about the big guns of Russian literature apart from Gogol and that really funny weirdo Daniil Kharms and also the greatest chronicler of the gulags, Shalamov.

Singing the title of this thread to “Monkey versus Donkey” by Wild Man Fischer

Both Russia's and China's present forms are very much in line with their histories. Their current governments are basically recapitulations of their Czarist and Confucian/Imperial past. Same applies to their cultures. If you make me choose, I'd rather live under the Chinese forms of society. Russian society is too wild-eyed and their style of repression of freedom is much more violent, irrational and unpredictable. In China at least everyone knows what the rules are.

Sadly, the Trump regime right in step with the Russian style of rule and shares almost nothing in common with the Chinese methods of control.

Not enough one armed swordsmen and deadly venoms running around China these days when compared to the Imperial era.

Openly wishing the fascist Trump administration was more competently authoritarian like fucking China is an absolutely insane take.

Chairman Xi my people long for freedom

gyac, if you thought that was referring to anything I said, then you're off by several miles.

Sadly, the Trump regime right in step with the Russian style of rule and shares almost nothing in common with the Chinese methods of control

The Chinese methods of control are bad because it’s an authoritarian state!

It's always Russia.

I took out an atlas with my friends in grade 2 library day and was shook to discover there was a country that was like 10x as big as any other (largeness being a very important quality to a 7yo). They've got a train line going across the country that runs for 9,289km. That's just silly.

When I was on that train I stopped off at a little nowhere town, wooden houses, few blocks wide, one little food store by the train station. Ice cream seemed like a good go so I pulled out the icecream sandwich looking square package from the freezer with the cow on the packaging. I pay for it, get back to the train, open it up, and it's a stick of butter. 6 russian children start openly laughing at me.

Then I got robbed a couple days later in Irkutsk. All I got in China was food poising twice in four days.
It's got to be Russia

"ELEVEN times zones..."

stalinist purges vs. the cultural revolution, which was worse

Some of the most stunning architecture you'll ever see in the two big cities too

The Chinese methods of control are bad because it’s an authoritarian state!

While I appreciate your taking the time to point this out, I think this can safely be considered common knowledge.

Going to pretend to take this dumb thread seriously for a minute though.

China - I have never been to mainland China yet. I do want to go though. Shanghai, maybe Beijing and then somewhere inland. Heard Yunnan Province is nice.

However I have been to Hong Kong which is one of my favourite cities of all time. It’s China, but it’s really not. Maybe like visiting China if it wasn’t a competently authoritarian state. I would go back any time.

Russia I’ve been to, idk, four times? But only St Petersburg and Moscow, which were both amazing in very different ways.

St Petersburg is a big city. Strangely for a European city and especially one in Russia it’s incredibly white - and I grew up in Ireland, so the fact that stood out to me on first impression was memorable. The Hermitage was unreal. We went in dead of winter on three successive days and still whatever we saw was only scratching the surface. I dream of it sometimes.

Moscow is a real international city. Here you get a sense of the diversity of Russia - there are lots of Turkic/Western Asian people and people from the Caucasus and former USSR Central Asian states living there. There are students from around the world too. I don’t think I ate one traditional Russian dish the entire time I was there - went to Georgian and Azeri places mainly, which was incredible.

Lots to see historically. Cyrillic is easy to learn so you can read street signs enough to get around the metro and walking. It’s extremely easy to travel around both cities, even when it’s brutally cold.

In the main, though, as someone who was fascinated with Russian history since my teens, it was an incredible experience that I’m glad I got to do when I did because I don’t know if I’d ever go back. Different reason, same sentiment for Kyiv and Odessa, two of my favourite cities in Europe. It’s fucking awful.

_The Chinese methods of control are bad because it’s an authoritarian state!_

While I appreciate your taking the time to point this out, I think this can safely be considered common knowledge.

We've got the Russian ministry of foreign affairs building

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Foreign_Affairs_of_Russia_headquarters#/media/File%3AMID_building_16_September_2010.jpg

Vs. The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs building

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ministry_of_Foreign_Affairs,_Beijing.jpg

It's a knock-out

I've been to Macao, it was frankly not great but then I don't think it's generally rated as one of the greatest Chinese cities, unless you're addicted to gambling. Hong Kong I bet is a lot more interesting. One day...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Foreign_Affairs_of_Russia_headquarters#/media/File%3AMID_building_16_September_2010.jpg

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Foreign_Affairs_(China)#/media/File%3AMinistry_of_Foreign_Affairs%2C_Beijing.jpg

stalinist purges vs. the cultural revolution, which was worse

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, March 26, 2025 6:13 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The latter

Okay I give up

I will say for ancillary cities, Hong Kong beats Kaliningrad (where I spent 90% of my time guarded by weirdly glamorous airport police) hands down.

There is much to love and respect about both Russia and China as civilizations. In college I read as much as I could about both societies and even visited Russia with my Russian literature class. In terms of recentish history the Bolsheviks were more sympathetic than Mao — at first — but at the end of the day both systems became nightmarish. Xi and Putin both seem relatively uninteresting authoritarians tbh.

I remember during my school trip to Moscow I became violently vodka drunk at some students’ apartment. I had let my guard down because I was with my TA (another American) and thought, “I’m safe. With a teacher.” We went outside to go home and realized both we did not know how to pronounce the address of our hotel and we didn’t know where in Moscow we were. It was a maze of identical concrete high rises. It was snowing and subzero temperatures.

Also HK is full of surprises for someone who’s never been there. Like how near the mountains and jungle is to the city. Like how I saw a leopard cat just casually exiting a park. Like the sheer humidity, and how it’s like walking into a dirty wall of warm water sometimes.

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618ad6_7059e65ed9744ef3aed08a41e5f5d12c~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_653,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/618ad6_7059e65ed9744ef3aed08a41e5f5d12c~mv2.jpg

Xp love that

I do think there is something fucked up at the heart of Russian society though. Like a pervading cynicism that leads them to place their hope, desperately, in authoritarians. If you read Gogol you would think he was like Kafka, a critic of bureaucracy and a voice against the arbitrary use of power. But he was like an insane ethnonationalist.

I arrived to moscow from St. Peterberg from the overnight train at 5am, January 7th, 2017. It was -35 degrees and literally nothing was open. Spent an hour in the street searching before retreating to the subway for warmth until the earliest cafe opened at 8am. Felt like an appropriate welcome

mega xps - From where I sit, the Russian government appears to be just as authoritarian as China, with a far-reaching and brutal state secret police apparatus. Russia seems quite competent when considered purely in its authoritarian aspect. They'd be the first to tell you they can match the Chinese in terms of crushing dissent. They pride themselves on it.

The main difference between the two government, so far as I can see, is that while government in Russia is a pure kleptocracy and thoroughly incompetent at delivering services to its people. By contrast, the Chinese government appears to consider that one tool for neutralizing dissent is to increase the prosperity of ordinary Chinese worker, taking away freedoms with one hand while delivering some measure of material goods as a kind of compensation.

By saying Trump's authoritarianism is worse for being in line with Russia, my sense was that he is busily creating a more punitive system against dissent, while decreasing the prosperity of common workers and establishing a pure kleptocracy. In no way was I implying that I wished for even more stringent authoritarianism, but I just don't where you can compare Russia and China and say Russia's authoritarianism is any less bad than China's. Is that your contention?

Xxp otm. That Russian cynicism is what makes their culture so attractive to me. The warmth on the inside vs. The cold on the outside. There is something particular to Russian suffering. It's scale (like everything in russia) has been so large that it's effected it's quality (for better and worse).

There's a sentiment in Russia you'll find in much literature, as well as the mouths of it's citizens (I was shocked to find it reified): "when is it our turn?"

A form of jealously that on the political stage has lead to some of the greatest crimes ever committed. But when you hear it from the individual, it can stir empathy. The diagnosis is fair, the treatment disastrous.

Totally agree on all parts. I love 19th century Russian literature for just this reason.

They'd be the first to tell you they can match the Chinese in terms of crushing dissent.

the weird thing is that Russia does have opposition parties, unlike China - but they tend to just rubberstamp everything Putin might suggest, so I think they're more for show, to give the outward appearance of a pluralist 'democracy' even if nothing could be further from the truth

just don't where you can compare Russia and China and say Russia's authoritarianism is any less bad than China's. Is that your contention?

Russia has Chekhov, so I'm going with Russia on that alone

I also like some Gorki stories, I think he gets unfairly painted as a bolshevik stooge.. 'The Orlovs' is an incredible story

gyac, you keep basing your posts on the false assumption that I was at some point expressing approval of or making apologies for any form of authoritarianism. the OP asked us to make a choice and gave exactly two choices to select from. I specifically prefaced the rationale for my choice with "If you make me choose. So, plz stop pretending I love Xi and Chinese authoritarianism, or Putin, or Trump for that matter. I simply tried to comply with the terms of the thread. If there was a polite way to tell you to fuck off, that's what I would tell you now. Sadly, there is no polite way.

The idea that Russian society is geared towards authoritarianism is pretty silly, imo. Putin was initially successful precisely because he did deliver material gains after a period of chaos, not because of any inherent gravitation towards strongmen. He has become less popular and more authoritarian as the economy stagnated.

You could possibly also argue that an obsession with onshoring manufacturing with a pool of precariously employed labour, economic protectionism, building ‘real things’ (albeit in a Gundo-centred mil-tech way, rather than cool trains), ideological conformity throughout government, putting tech giants in their place politically, etc, reflects a Trump outlook that aligns quite substantially with the Chinese model, but idk. It definitely seems like there is a perceived need to become more like China to compete with China.

ideological conformity throughout government

my observations suggest that Trump has no ideology. the conformity he is instilling in the higher reaches of government is simply a uniform loyalty to him no matter what he does or says

Chinese food >>>>

Trump has no ideology

If you look at his political record, you're right.. he actually rejoined the Democratic Party during the Obama years
But his overriding agenda is personal enrichment, and playing golf with his fellow rich men

trump has an ideology. it's called authoritarian nationalism. it's very consistent this term.

in the first term he had like the team of rivals or whatever and was sort of stumbling around. but he has a real project now, which includes consolidating as much power as he can to himself while breaking america off from foreign alliances. he thinks this will free us up to shake down other countries like a mob boss. this is a childish vision but it is an ideology.

Trumpism is already a word and we can safely predict it will be in use in the next decades, much more than the personal ideology of presidents like Xi who took the pain of writing them down and get them promoted as bible: the two most downloaded apps in China (per Apple China) are the one to report fraud, and the one to teach Xi Jinping thought, and then comes TikTok / WeChat. And yet, probably nobody outside China cares. Putin is not going to be remembered for his ideology either.

Xi has a thousand times more interesting backstory than Putin or Trump. Like growing up as bad political classes during CR and going from comfortable prosperity to father arrested and living in a courtyard slum to a cave in the countryside (shitting in a wooden box). And I think his sister ended up committing suicide after struggle sessions.

in the first term he had like the team of rivals or whatever and was sort of stumbling around. but he has a real project now, which includes consolidating as much power as he can to himself while breaking america off from foreign alliances. he thinks this will free us up to shake down other countries like a mob boss. this is a childish vision but it is an ideology.

I think criminality is often seen as non-ideological or apolitical, but I don't think thats necessarily true at all. Lawlessness is ideological, and there's no such thing as crime because there's no such thing as law, just as there are no lies because there is no truth. Its not just to take things because you want them, it's to take them because it's morally incumbent on you to do so. It is unnatural to place artificial barriers in the place of doing so

Can we have trump free threads sometimes? Just as a little treat?

China ≥≥>>>>>>>>> Russia > US

China v India v Russia is possibly the more interesting question.

China v India is almost a third of the world's population.

Let's do a BRICS poll

Have you forgotten...

BRICS

Lol

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

whoa my Chekhovian sacrifice vote didn't make much difference

Congratulations to Chairman Xi on his victory.

on his victory over contemporary Russia in an ILX poll I assume you meant

Over the US and the Western world too, in the century to come.

maybe if the US had experienced a cultural revolution in the 60's/70's (instead of that hippy shit) they wouldn't keep having terrible presidents and would still be leading the world!

They are having a cultural revolution now

weird thing about America is that there is so much nostalgia for the period when they had the biggest manufacturing base in the world but not one iota of political will to ever repeat that feat. While China has got on with the business of becoming the most powerful industrial-military behemoth of all time, that Boney N predicted they would be.

Boney M or Napoleon Bonaparte?

Nappy B!

Boney M had plenty to say about Russia but I was racking my brains to remember what they'd said about China.

that Mao Mao Rasputin one were good

I was talking to my brother, who lives in Dubai. He has these huge intimidating cats with piercing yowls. I asked him what the heck type of cats are they? He said they are called Mao's. I asked if they are named after Chairman Mao? And he answered of course they are, you daft twat.

(xp) Mao Baker surely?

I loved that post Chairman Mao hit they had, Mary's One Child

lol

What kind of world do you want to live in? 🌏 pic.twitter.com/OU57nQ2saI

— CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 (@MFA_China) April 3, 2025

Dear China MFA, I am interested in a position in your upcoming Potemkin World attraction and seek more information on available positions, salary, vacation time, and health benefits.

This was interesting, as far as soft power goes.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-04-03/IShowSpeed-s-China-livestreams-take-global-social-media-by-storm-1CgPEA5vzJS/p.html

we've entered a period where footage from china is identical to the way tokyo was portrayed in my youth. when i first started traveling there in 2018 i was still getting skeptics, side-eyes, warnings about pollution and scammers and an inability to understand why i'd even go.

— punished giorgio (@GMomurder) March 28, 2025

that Mao Mao Rasputin one were good

there was a 猫 that really was gone

calzino, i think your brother means these cats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Mau