In China and Elsewhere, Forget the Numbers—Look at the Lights
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/how-spot-autocrats-economic-lies
The Jin Mao tower skywalk in Shanghai, May 2021
Aly Song / ReutersWinston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984, spends his days as an employee at the Ministry of Truth adjusting documents to conform to the fluctuating political needs of Big Brother’s regime. “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past,” Orwell wrote, drawing a connection between a government’s ability to influence what the public perceives as the truth and that government’s political survival. Although he leaned to the political left, Orwell was deeply wary of the tyranny coalescing in the Soviet Union, which sought to bend reality to its needs. Joseph ....
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/how-spot-autocrats-economic-lies
