Seeking truth and hiding facts: information, ideology, and authoritarianism in china - Jeremy L. Wallace

• 4 stele, bazat pe 1 voturi

• A unique analysis of the numbers that came to define Chinese politics and how this quantification evolved over time.
• For decades, a few numbers came to define Chinese politics-until those numbers did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up.
• Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts argues that the Chinese government adopted a system of limited, quantified vision in order to survive the disasters unleashed by Mao Zedong's ideological leadership.
• Jeremy Wallace explains how that system worked and analyzes how the problems that accumulated in its blind spots led Xi Jinping to take drastic action.
• Xi's neopolitical turn--aggressive anti-corruption campaigns, reassertion of party authority, and personalization of power--is an attempt fix the problems of the prior system, as well as a hedge against an inability to do so.
• The book argues that while of course dictators stay in power through coercion and cooptation, they also do so by convincing their populations and themselves of their right to rule.
• Quantification is one tool in this persuasive arsenal, but it comes with its own perils.