The only thing the questionnaire does, assuming it is built well, is show that when asked those questions people in different countries answered differently.
Did the Chinese populations sampled by the study respond more positively to those four questions more than the samples of other nations? Yes.
Can you assert that this is proof that china is more democratic and less authoritarian than those countries? NO.
At best, this study shows that public opinion of the government in china is higher than that of the other countries. Which definitely doesnāt mean all that much at all, for example I could ask half my family members and theyād say that things are better now under trump than theyāve ever been before. Is that the case? Absolutely not. Does that change their minds? No.
Now, the original article you linked seems much more soft science but the article it first mentions actually has more concrete data but still that data is on public opinion.
Unfortunately the democracy index site appears to be missing and āfor saleā
If you could find me the actual questionnaire in mandarin so we could read it as it was presented and compare with the English version we could rule out some of the bias I presented earlier, but not all.
Lastly, kairos buddy, your argument was that a country (which many of the people youāre trying to persuade think is George Orwell big brother level controlling) isnāt authoritarian. Using polled data, especially that which was āimplemented by a reputable domestic Chinese polling firmā is not going to hold much evidentiary worth to your target audience.
Iām not Anti-China, in fact I was and possibly still am thinking about taking a semester or internship out there; I only wanted to point out that you arenāt actually backing your argument up with any solid evidence especially with regards to your target audience.
I really am curious about the test though, especially since the democracy index paper is on a dead site, so if you could find it in Mandarin Iād be interested. If you could find a source on what āreputable polling firmā Harvard used Iād be interested in that too since the report didnāt actually mention the nameā¦?
Oh and one last thing is that the article mentions āFurthermore, China outperforms the US and most European countries on these indicators ā in fact, it has some of the strongest results in the world.ā Fun statistical fact: outliers are a sign your sampling methodology is flawed, especially when the outliers are a set of samples and not just a singular data point.
From just the āmy government serves the peopleā bars alone, it would appear the Chinese dataset is well beyond 1.5 standard deviations if the other three are so much lower and show such low variation. If this was a single data point, one would throw it out, but considering it is supposedly a longitudinal collection of samples it implies that there is a very strong influencing factor that is only largely affecting the Chinese survey takers.
If the pattern holds for many other metrics, then it implies this singular factor (or other factors) have significantly biased the Chinese samples. This doesnāt necessarily mean that factor is government intervention or bias from being raised in rhetoric from an authoritarian state, but it is statistically unlikely that this factor is simply due to china just somehow having a better democracy than every single country on earth (including all of its allies and enemies alike) by a statistically gigantic margin.
Fun statistical fact: outliers are a sign your sampling methodology is flawed, especially when the outliers are a set of samples and not just a singular data point.
āThis jetās speed is an outlier in this set of planes. Outliers mean the methodology must be invalid, so jets canāt be faster than planes.ā
This is nonsense. China and the euros have fundamentally different political systems, there is no reason to suppose they should have similar outcomes. The whole point of the discussion is that Chinaās system is superior, if you say that any data that supports that is an outlier, and therefore must be invalid youāre just presupposing your conclusion.
On your other point about the usefulness of this data: while it is true that there can be many different explanations for the observed results, that just means that we need more evidence to show which system is more democratic, not that this evidence is useless. Saying that peopleās opinion of their own system is irrelevant is extremely chauvinistic. In the case of China, we can see the massive increase in quality of life of itās citizens, as well as a systematic overview of itās political structures like here. Iāve also heard the book Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is good, but I havenāt read it yet myself.
Furthermore, your point about manipulation of public opinion goes the other way, too. Where did the idea that China is authoritarian come from? People going to China and studying what life is like there, or media manipulation? Who do you think is more likely to be manipulated like that, the people living there who actually experience the political structures of China, or rando westerners whos only source of information is capitalist media? A simple poll like this is more than enough to debunk the people who think China is authoritarian based on nothing but vibes from capitalist media.
KimBongUn already provided other sources, Iām not going to go through the trouble of finding a poll in mandarin when I canāt speak it. Popular support for the PRC is well-documented, as well as the ability for the people to direct policy in a far more material way than in liberal countries.
China has democracy comparable to other socialist states. The difference is socialism vs capitalism, itās as simple as that.
The study in that link is the same one from the last in the report they have the āimplemented by a reputable domestic Chinese polling firmā line.
The brief neither mentions the name of the polling organization nor does it list or link to the actual questions asked. Honestly seems odd given that itās Harvard, then again isnāt meant to be a rigorous academic paper and I doubt the Chinese government would be up for letting more research be done if they had found negative associations.
Still odd that they wonāt name the firm anywhere. Like āThe work began in 2003, and together with a leading private research and polling company in China, the team developed a series of questionnaires for in-person interviews.ā what leading polling company? Wouldnāt they want their name attached to this? Also an in person questionnaire seems both much more qualitative and much less private than I would have expected. If you want to get peopleās true anonymous opinions without any coercive bias, having them physically go somewhere and have to answer questions to an actual person is definitely not the best approach.
Nice straw man. First, ethos is bullshit man, donāt idolize people or institutions to the point you think theyāre infallible.
Second, you arenāt making the same claim as the source. And Iām not contradicting it (Harvardās research). The source rightfully states that their survey found high satisfaction in government, higher than in most other countries. The original paper is on how those reports seem to be increasingly positive overtime and show that development of rural areas correlates with increased reports of happiness in that survey.
The researchers question the validity of their results because they are abnormally high and list possible other factors influencing the data. One of the researchers states that they believe the abnormally high levels are likely due other factors like the āhighly positive news proliferated throughout the countryā so Iām not doubting Harvard Iām actually agreeing with it
Lastly, my concern over data collection doesnāt actually apply to Harvard. Iām reasonably certain that Harvard did the best with the data they were given. And the Ash Center used that data to create their little positive promotional brief well too.
The research done by Harvard seems sound, as are my concerns about the validity of the collected data and my statement that this kind of data cannot be used to draw conclusions on the actual state of democracy or the actual workings of the government.
Fuck it maybe Iāll just send the researchers an email about it tomorrow and see if they respond. Iāve gotten responses from physicists and mathematicians before, might be fun
To be fair I doubt that would change your mind since you seem dead set on ignoring my actual argument. If they agree with me youāll just say theyāre producing propaganda for the western elites haha. But hey chances are the researcher will actually engage me in real discussion which would be nice
Funny how stuff like this only applies when itās against the western narrative
This stuff applies always. Itās called critical thinking skills and it absolutely applies when someone is speaking āfor the western narrativeā too
The western brain pan cannot comprehend a genuinely popular government
Clearly you canāt comprehend elementary statistics like the central limit theorem lol
And honestly god damn you tankies give communists and socialists such a bad name with all your braindead bullshit. Nothing talks me out of trusting china more than talking with you idiots
Look I know itās easy to think that thereās a singular big bad out there. That thereās just this one entity called āthe westā and youāll be able to fight and conquer it. Itās easier to believe things are black and white, that certain countries are innately good and others innately bad at all times. But thatās not reality.
If you give into those kinds of delusions youāre not really better than the people who blindly believe in Trump or God etc. Itās easy believe that kind of blind faith because itās less scary than admitting you might be wrong. We are driven to cling to the idea that there are heroās out there, a righteous nation behind us fighting for good, someone we can always depend on, but if you donāt see reality as it is, youāre setting yourself up for more pain. Those feelings are opium not a cure, and often they hurt you and your causes too
If youāre delusional people wonāt believe what you say even if itās true. So if you constantly go around attacking people with ad hominem, or claiming literally everything is western propaganda without actually providing evidence, youāre really just hurting the causes youāre trying to support
Anyway dude, even if you didnāt actually engage my argument you did point me to a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, so thanks for that, but I think Iām going to disengage now
I hope your days go well, and I wish you peace and happiness mate
This stuff applies always. Itās called critical thinking skills and it absolutely applies when someone is speaking āfor the western narrativeā too
A Chinese source claiming Chinese are happy with their gvmnt doesnāt hold as much materiality as a western source claiming that Chinese are happy with their government. (And vice versa) Do you even know what bias is? So much for cirtical thinking on your part
Look I know itās easy to think that thereās a singular big bad out there. That thereās just this one entity called āthe westā and youāll be able to fight and conquer it. Itās easier to believe things are black and white, that certain countries are innately good and others innately bad at all times. But thatās not reality.
The commenter was questioning the validity of the organisation conducting the survey, which was weirdly not specifically mentioned in the research article. Saying that the data comes from some āreputableā source is always very untrustworthy even when itās regarding western countries.
This just makes the science difficult to control/refute which is a necessary thing for good scientific research
Clearly you canāt comprehend elementary statistics like the central limit theorem lol
What? The central limit theorem states that if you take many averages of a distribution, the distribution of averages will be a normal distribution. What does that have to do with anything? Since the resulting normal distribution has a variance of sigma/n, the central limit theorem supports these kinds of polls, since they get more accurate as the number of responses increases. You know you canāt just say the words ācentral limit theoremā like itās some kind of magic spell right? Like you have to actually make an argument that uses the central limit theorem to support your conclusion.
Unless you mean that stuff about outliers? But again, the underlying distributions for different countries are different, so the central limit theorem doesnāt apply. There is a more general version of the theorem, but that has many preconditions for validity, so again, you have to show your work that it applies here. You are extremely arrogant for someone who doesnāt understand statistics.
And honestly god damn you tankies give communists and socialists such a bad name with all your braindead bullshit. Nothing talks me out of trusting china more than talking with you idiots
Even if everyone here did have invalid arguments, trusting China less for someone on the internet having a bad argument is a fallacy fallacy. So much for your critical thinking skills.
Look I know itās easy to think that thereās a singular big bad out there. That thereās just this one entity called āthe westā and youāll be able to fight and conquer it. Itās easier to believe things are black and white, that certain countries are innately good and others innately bad at all times. But thatās not reality.
Communists regularly criticize China, they criticize the actually bad parts about it, rather than the delusions that only exist in liberal minds, so if youāre coming in here with āThe ebil authoritariansā commies donāt take a ānuancedā outlook, because the situation has no nuance. What a massive strawman. So much for your critical thinking skills.
If you give into those kinds of delusions youāre not really better than the people who blindly believe in Trump or God etc. Itās easy believe that kind of blind faith because itās less scary than admitting you might be wrong. We are driven to cling to the idea that there are heroās out there, a righteous nation behind us fighting for good, someone we can always depend on, but if you donāt see reality as it is, youāre setting yourself up for more pain.
Once again, massive strawman. So much for your critical thinking skills.
If youāre delusional people wonāt believe what you say even if itās true. So if you constantly go around attacking people with ad hominem,
Just saying mean things isnāt an ad hominem. If I say āYouāre wrong because x, therefore youāre stupidā thatās just an insult. If I say āYouāre wrong because youāre stupidā, that would be an ad hominem. So much for your critical thinking skills. Also real smart complaining about insults in the middle of a massive insulting screed.
or claiming literally everything is western propaganda without actually providing evidence
They did provide evidence. Not great evidence, but more evidence than anyone provided to claim that China is authoritarian, which is zero. So more than enough evidence for the situation, in other words. If any libs made more specific claims with more specific evidence, more specific counter evidence would have been provided. So much for your critical thinking skills.
youāre really just hurting the causes youāre trying to support
āYouāre just hurting your own causeā says the person who hates us and our cause.
Anyway dude
You know, getting overly familiar with someone you donāt know during a disagreement by saying things like ādudeā, ābroā and ābuddyā comes off as massively disrespectful and arrogant.
I hope your days go well, and I wish you peace and happiness mate
Hell of a thing to say to someone you just insulted and belittled. I might almost think youāre being disingenuous.
The only thing the questionnaire does, assuming it is built well, is show that when asked those questions people in different countries answered differently.
Did the Chinese populations sampled by the study respond more positively to those four questions more than the samples of other nations? Yes.
Can you assert that this is proof that china is more democratic and less authoritarian than those countries? NO.
At best, this study shows that public opinion of the government in china is higher than that of the other countries. Which definitely doesnāt mean all that much at all, for example I could ask half my family members and theyād say that things are better now under trump than theyāve ever been before. Is that the case? Absolutely not. Does that change their minds? No.
Now, the original article you linked seems much more soft science but the article it first mentions actually has more concrete data but still that data is on public opinion.
Unfortunately the democracy index site appears to be missing and āfor saleā
If you could find me the actual questionnaire in mandarin so we could read it as it was presented and compare with the English version we could rule out some of the bias I presented earlier, but not all.
Lastly, kairos buddy, your argument was that a country (which many of the people youāre trying to persuade think is George Orwell big brother level controlling) isnāt authoritarian. Using polled data, especially that which was āimplemented by a reputable domestic Chinese polling firmā is not going to hold much evidentiary worth to your target audience.
Iām not Anti-China, in fact I was and possibly still am thinking about taking a semester or internship out there; I only wanted to point out that you arenāt actually backing your argument up with any solid evidence especially with regards to your target audience.
I really am curious about the test though, especially since the democracy index paper is on a dead site, so if you could find it in Mandarin Iād be interested. If you could find a source on what āreputable polling firmā Harvard used Iād be interested in that too since the report didnāt actually mention the nameā¦?
Oh and one last thing is that the article mentions āFurthermore, China outperforms the US and most European countries on these indicators ā in fact, it has some of the strongest results in the world.ā Fun statistical fact: outliers are a sign your sampling methodology is flawed, especially when the outliers are a set of samples and not just a singular data point.
From just the āmy government serves the peopleā bars alone, it would appear the Chinese dataset is well beyond 1.5 standard deviations if the other three are so much lower and show such low variation. If this was a single data point, one would throw it out, but considering it is supposedly a longitudinal collection of samples it implies that there is a very strong influencing factor that is only largely affecting the Chinese survey takers.
If the pattern holds for many other metrics, then it implies this singular factor (or other factors) have significantly biased the Chinese samples. This doesnāt necessarily mean that factor is government intervention or bias from being raised in rhetoric from an authoritarian state, but it is statistically unlikely that this factor is simply due to china just somehow having a better democracy than every single country on earth (including all of its allies and enemies alike) by a statistically gigantic margin.
āThis jetās speed is an outlier in this set of planes. Outliers mean the methodology must be invalid, so jets canāt be faster than planes.ā
This is nonsense. China and the euros have fundamentally different political systems, there is no reason to suppose they should have similar outcomes. The whole point of the discussion is that Chinaās system is superior, if you say that any data that supports that is an outlier, and therefore must be invalid youāre just presupposing your conclusion.
On your other point about the usefulness of this data: while it is true that there can be many different explanations for the observed results, that just means that we need more evidence to show which system is more democratic, not that this evidence is useless. Saying that peopleās opinion of their own system is irrelevant is extremely chauvinistic. In the case of China, we can see the massive increase in quality of life of itās citizens, as well as a systematic overview of itās political structures like here. Iāve also heard the book Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is good, but I havenāt read it yet myself.
Furthermore, your point about manipulation of public opinion goes the other way, too. Where did the idea that China is authoritarian come from? People going to China and studying what life is like there, or media manipulation? Who do you think is more likely to be manipulated like that, the people living there who actually experience the political structures of China, or rando westerners whos only source of information is capitalist media? A simple poll like this is more than enough to debunk the people who think China is authoritarian based on nothing but vibes from capitalist media.
KimBongUn already provided other sources, Iām not going to go through the trouble of finding a poll in mandarin when I canāt speak it. Popular support for the PRC is well-documented, as well as the ability for the people to direct policy in a far more material way than in liberal countries.
China has democracy comparable to other socialist states. The difference is socialism vs capitalism, itās as simple as that.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
The study in that link is the same one from the last in the report they have the āimplemented by a reputable domestic Chinese polling firmā line.
The brief neither mentions the name of the polling organization nor does it list or link to the actual questions asked. Honestly seems odd given that itās Harvard, then again isnāt meant to be a rigorous academic paper and I doubt the Chinese government would be up for letting more research be done if they had found negative associations.
Still odd that they wonāt name the firm anywhere. Like āThe work began in 2003, and together with a leading private research and polling company in China, the team developed a series of questionnaires for in-person interviews.ā what leading polling company? Wouldnāt they want their name attached to this? Also an in person questionnaire seems both much more qualitative and much less private than I would have expected. If you want to get peopleās true anonymous opinions without any coercive bias, having them physically go somewhere and have to answer questions to an actual person is definitely not the best approach.
ok
Nice straw man. First, ethos is bullshit man, donāt idolize people or institutions to the point you think theyāre infallible.
Second, you arenāt making the same claim as the source. And Iām not contradicting it (Harvardās research). The source rightfully states that their survey found high satisfaction in government, higher than in most other countries. The original paper is on how those reports seem to be increasingly positive overtime and show that development of rural areas correlates with increased reports of happiness in that survey.
The researchers question the validity of their results because they are abnormally high and list possible other factors influencing the data. One of the researchers states that they believe the abnormally high levels are likely due other factors like the āhighly positive news proliferated throughout the countryā so Iām not doubting Harvard Iām actually agreeing with it
Lastly, my concern over data collection doesnāt actually apply to Harvard. Iām reasonably certain that Harvard did the best with the data they were given. And the Ash Center used that data to create their little positive promotional brief well too.
The research done by Harvard seems sound, as are my concerns about the validity of the collected data and my statement that this kind of data cannot be used to draw conclusions on the actual state of democracy or the actual workings of the government.
Fuck it maybe Iāll just send the researchers an email about it tomorrow and see if they respond. Iāve gotten responses from physicists and mathematicians before, might be fun
To be fair I doubt that would change your mind since you seem dead set on ignoring my actual argument. If they agree with me youāll just say theyāre producing propaganda for the western elites haha. But hey chances are the researcher will actually engage me in real discussion which would be nice
Funny how stuff like this only applies when itās against the western narrative
The western brainpan cannot comprehend a genuinely popular government
This stuff applies always. Itās called critical thinking skills and it absolutely applies when someone is speaking āfor the western narrativeā too
Clearly you canāt comprehend elementary statistics like the central limit theorem lol
And honestly god damn you tankies give communists and socialists such a bad name with all your braindead bullshit. Nothing talks me out of trusting china more than talking with you idiots
Look I know itās easy to think that thereās a singular big bad out there. That thereās just this one entity called āthe westā and youāll be able to fight and conquer it. Itās easier to believe things are black and white, that certain countries are innately good and others innately bad at all times. But thatās not reality.
If you give into those kinds of delusions youāre not really better than the people who blindly believe in Trump or God etc. Itās easy believe that kind of blind faith because itās less scary than admitting you might be wrong. We are driven to cling to the idea that there are heroās out there, a righteous nation behind us fighting for good, someone we can always depend on, but if you donāt see reality as it is, youāre setting yourself up for more pain. Those feelings are opium not a cure, and often they hurt you and your causes too
If youāre delusional people wonāt believe what you say even if itās true. So if you constantly go around attacking people with ad hominem, or claiming literally everything is western propaganda without actually providing evidence, youāre really just hurting the causes youāre trying to support
Anyway dude, even if you didnāt actually engage my argument you did point me to a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, so thanks for that, but I think Iām going to disengage now
I hope your days go well, and I wish you peace and happiness mate
A Chinese source claiming Chinese are happy with their gvmnt doesnāt hold as much materiality as a western source claiming that Chinese are happy with their government. (And vice versa) Do you even know what bias is? So much for cirtical thinking on your part
And you talk about strawman GTFO shitlib
The commenter was questioning the validity of the organisation conducting the survey, which was weirdly not specifically mentioned in the research article. Saying that the data comes from some āreputableā source is always very untrustworthy even when itās regarding western countries.
This just makes the science difficult to control/refute which is a necessary thing for good scientific research
What? The central limit theorem states that if you take many averages of a distribution, the distribution of averages will be a normal distribution. What does that have to do with anything? Since the resulting normal distribution has a variance of sigma/n, the central limit theorem supports these kinds of polls, since they get more accurate as the number of responses increases. You know you canāt just say the words ācentral limit theoremā like itās some kind of magic spell right? Like you have to actually make an argument that uses the central limit theorem to support your conclusion.
Unless you mean that stuff about outliers? But again, the underlying distributions for different countries are different, so the central limit theorem doesnāt apply. There is a more general version of the theorem, but that has many preconditions for validity, so again, you have to show your work that it applies here. You are extremely arrogant for someone who doesnāt understand statistics.
Even if everyone here did have invalid arguments, trusting China less for someone on the internet having a bad argument is a fallacy fallacy. So much for your critical thinking skills.
Communists regularly criticize China, they criticize the actually bad parts about it, rather than the delusions that only exist in liberal minds, so if youāre coming in here with āThe ebil authoritariansā commies donāt take a ānuancedā outlook, because the situation has no nuance. What a massive strawman. So much for your critical thinking skills.
Once again, massive strawman. So much for your critical thinking skills.
Just saying mean things isnāt an ad hominem. If I say āYouāre wrong because x, therefore youāre stupidā thatās just an insult. If I say āYouāre wrong because youāre stupidā, that would be an ad hominem. So much for your critical thinking skills. Also real smart complaining about insults in the middle of a massive insulting screed.
They did provide evidence. Not great evidence, but more evidence than anyone provided to claim that China is authoritarian, which is zero. So more than enough evidence for the situation, in other words. If any libs made more specific claims with more specific evidence, more specific counter evidence would have been provided. So much for your critical thinking skills.
āYouāre just hurting your own causeā says the person who hates us and our cause.
You know, getting overly familiar with someone you donāt know during a disagreement by saying things like ādudeā, ābroā and ābuddyā comes off as massively disrespectful and arrogant.
Hell of a thing to say to someone you just insulted and belittled. I might almost think youāre being disingenuous.