this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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The study in that link is the same one from the last in the report they have the “implemented by a reputable domestic Chinese polling firm” 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 it’s Harvard, then again isn’t 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 won’t name the firm anywhere. Like “The 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.” what leading polling company? Wouldn’t 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 people’s 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, don’t idolize people or institutions to the point you think they’re infallible.
Second, you aren’t making the same claim as the source. And I’m not contradicting it (Harvard’s 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 “highly positive news proliferated throughout the country” so I’m not doubting Harvard I’m actually agreeing with it
Lastly, my concern over data collection doesn’t actually apply to Harvard. I’m 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 I’ll just send the researchers an email about it tomorrow and see if they respond. I’ve 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 you’ll just say they’re 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 it's against the western narrative
The western brainpan cannot comprehend a genuinely popular government
This stuff applies always. It’s called critical thinking skills and it absolutely applies when someone is speaking “for the western narrative” too
Clearly you can’t 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 it’s easy to think that there’s a singular big bad out there. That there’s just this one entity called “the west” and you’ll be able to fight and conquer it. It’s easier to believe things are black and white, that certain countries are innately good and others innately bad at all times. But that’s not reality.
If you give into those kinds of delusions you’re not really better than the people who blindly believe in Trump or God etc. It’s easy believe that kind of blind faith because it’s less scary than admitting you might be wrong. We are driven to cling to the idea that there are hero’s out there, a righteous nation behind us fighting for good, someone we can always depend on, but if you don’t see reality as it is, you’re setting yourself up for more pain. Those feelings are opium not a cure, and often they hurt you and your causes too
If you’re delusional people won’t believe what you say even if it’s true. So if you constantly go around attacking people with ad hominem, or claiming literally everything is western propaganda without actually providing evidence, you’re really just hurting the causes you’re trying to support
Anyway dude, even if you didn’t actually engage my argument you did point me to a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, so thanks for that, but I think I’m 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 doesn't 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 „reputable“ source is always very untrustworthy even when it’s 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 can't just say the words 'central limit theorem' like it's 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 doesn't 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 doesn't 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 you're coming in here with "The ebil authoritarians" commies don't take a 'nuanced' 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 isn't an ad hominem. If I say 'You're wrong because x, therefore you're stupid' that's just an insult. If I say 'You're wrong because you're stupid', 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.
"You're just hurting your own cause" says the person who hates us and our cause.
You know, getting overly familiar with someone you don't know during a disagreement by saying things like 'dude', 'bro' and 'buddy' comes off as massively disrespectful and arrogant.
Hell of a thing to say to someone you just insulted and belittled. I might almost think you're being disingenuous.