China's government has achieved several very historic accomplishments that have not been achieved by comparable countries: - Eliminating all extreme poverty - 3-4 decades of continuous, positive GDP growth - Not a single recession in the past 3-4 decades according to the definition the US uses - Modernization at a pace that almost no other nation has kept up with - Mastery in fields such as electric cars, solar panels, manufacturing, and many others. These achievements have only been possible because of China's unique governance structure set up by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s and 80s, and evolved by Hu Jintao, Jiang Xemin, and Xi Jinping since. The US is increasingly unable to compete with China, and has been forced to adopt similar approaches: the US now owns golden shares in Intel, is attempting to use state-directed investment to compete with China's dominance of rare earth metals, and is increasingly having to just ban Chinese competitors rather than its own companies being able to keep up (electric cars, Huawei phones, now humanoid robots and routers). While China is by no means perfect, its governmental / political system offer considerable advancements that other countries should learn from, especially those in the global south or similarly disadvantaged countries. The combination of state-directed planning, heavily regulated markets, intense competition, and the unique mass line / consultative democracy approach, has created a country that makes even people in developed countries look on with awe and a bit of jealousy.

China's zero-COVID policy saved considerably more lives than the US's COVID policy did. First, to address the misinformation, while there are obviously edge cases where things I won't defend happened, 'trapping people in apartments', 'delaying care', and 'collapsing into a chaotic reopening' was not the general experience for those living in China. China has a population of more than a billion people, and while I'm sure MisucMind can point to several examples of things that I won't defend happening, they take those isolated examples done in a decentralized governance system (local branches of government have wide autonomy, far more than most Westerners realize) and assert that all of China must have been that way. COVID is a pretty poor example for MusicMind_M to bring up. Death numbers per capita were significantly lower than the United States, with the United States having anywhere from a comparable amount of deaths to China to 3-5x as much, despite its population being a third of the size. The official number of deaths is around 100,000, extrapolated numbers from overall death numbers points to roughly 500,000, and more aggressive, partisan studies by Western countries point to upwards of 1.4 million deaths. The US' death numbers are around 1.1 million. This makes its per capita death rate anywhere from 3-10x more deadly than China. Not only that, China never had a recession, even during COVID. Despite being shut down, its economy *still* kept growing while keeping workers safer than the United States. In the United States, people were furloughed and laid off and the economy entered a recession, which was only countered by a historic amount of government stimulus. China, however, has significantly more levers it can pull to deal with economic issues than the US. The banks in China are state-owned. This means that instead of having to collect higher income taxes, it can instead encourage its citizens to save, and invest that money (like a bank) in areas that have strategic priorities. The state owned enterprises can be used to shift production drastically to other focuses where necessary. And China's management of its economic circulation through the state banks means that the RMB's inflation rate can be adjusted faster and more predictably than Western alternatives. Compare this to the US' main economic tool (raising or lowering interest rates), and it's obvious what we could learn from China.

MusicMind_M keeps wanting to make this a debate that it's not. Rather than engaging with what I've said, my opponent has constructed a strawman full of half-baked arguments I never made and rebutted that, rather than what I said. We aren't talking about just "poverty reduction". We are talking about an entirely unprecedented elimination of extreme poverty, not only according to the World International Bank's standard, but according to a more aggressive standard that is nearly 2x as much ($1.90 vs $3.20). No other country has achieved anything on the same scale, as evidenced by extreme poverty still existing within the United States and other Western nations today. We aren't talking about just "growth". We are talking about more than 4 decades of uninterrupted economic growth that has been called an "economic miracle". Not a single recession over the past 40 years. During the same time, the US had 3. I never claimed that policies like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution or the one-child policy didn't happen. No serious Chinese scholar or even Chinese official does that. The CPC's official stance is that Mao was "70% right, 30% wrong", with the party acknowledging that the Great Leap was a mistake. I said clearly in my opening thesis and arguments that the outcomes have been "generally positive". Not "perfect". Not "there are no costs". If we want to talk about the 'worst bars' of China, then compare its worst bars accurately. The US led a genocide of native Americans, was the primary promoter of chattel slavery, has led or been involved with numerous wars abroad that killed millions of civilians (more than a million in Iraq, 15% of the population in Korea), sponsors terrorism and war, still allows slavery under the thirteenth amendment, and has a rampant homelessness and housing problem that China doesn't face. If we want to judge a system by its "worst bars", that has to be relativized to countries and governmental systems that *never* have that bar applied. I can't and won't get into 'oppression olympics' trying to debate the scale of which is worse, but it is obvious to any reader that China is at the very minimum 'equal' to what the US has done, if not better. Rather than cite specifics, facts, or details, my opponent seems comfortable with asserting things into existence and just saying that they're true. Rather than actually interact with frankly my very detailed and specific argument, they interact with a cherry-picked and dumbed-down version of it that is not accurate. Despite me engaging directly with quite literally everything they've said, they cannot seem to do the same for me. I'm a bit unsure of how to proceed if this continues to be the case.

My opponent again does not interact with any of the specifics of what I've said and just asserts ideological points without evidence, specificity, or details. What am I supposed to do with this? How can I argue about this? Unless they say something more specific, should I keep wasting effort on them never engaging with my argument or talking about specifics? "Imagine a government that only ends a policy when it becomes politically unbearable"?? China has one of the most extensive consultative and polling systems in the world, polling people regularly and getting their feedback on legislation and regulatory decisions regularly. They monitor civilian opinion and frequently change policies and legislation quickly. "politically unbearable"?? Have you seen how unpopular support for Israel is in the United States currently? The vast majority of Americans do not support Israel, and yet we continue to send weapons and aid to them despite polls showing again and again that most Americans do not want our tax dollars being sent to them. What about Medicare For All? Single payer healthcare is one of the most popularly polling policies in the past three decades and yet we have made NO steps in the direction of it. Even when political parties clearly have the chance to implement a single payer *option*, like when Barrack Obama did when passing the ACA, politicans go out of there way not to pass any laws that would cause competition in the medical industry. Primarily because they are lobbied and funded by the insurance and healthcare corporations whose bottom line it would impact. Trying to claim that this is somehow exclusive to China, and maybe not a general feature of how complicated the governance of hundreds of millions of people is, is absurd. But rather than cite examples or address any concrete details, my opponent goes with vibes and assertions. I never judged a model "by its best bars". I named specifics. My opponent never discussed any of them. I mentioned things outside of "lower deaths in one pandemic", many other things that we could learn from. It's almost insulting how lazy my opponent is with their argument. How is this defensible? Even the most hawkish people on China would be able to mention a single specific thing I mentioned in any of my arguments rather than write a paragraph of useless drivel. This is embarrassing.

When judging the results of a debate, we do not argue based on opinions we hold or facts we think we know, but what is presented clearly here. It is on my opponent to fact check me or address the specific details of what I am arguing, not judges, and certainly not the audience. My opponent could have at any time interacted with any of the specific and well-known details that I've cited, but rather than do that, they continue to strawman and assert things without evidence. That is simply not acceptable. Pay attention to this last-ditch attempt to save face. My opponent claims, without any evidence, that this model isn't somehow portable, despite many other countries having taken steps towards this model and showing similar results. According to my opponent's point of view, China's outcomes are simply dumb luck. Somehow they luckily over 40 years have gone from a poor, impoverished country to the second world superpower. Through dumb luck they somehow have been the only nation to eliminate extreme poverty at a scale never seen before in human history. No, it's not through any of the publicly readable and carefully researched public policy documents they published, through years of support and outreach, decades of pioneering new insights into economics, science, and technology that they then incorporated into governance. No, all of those things are just dumb luck. China, to my opponent, is simultaneously a stunted, incapable state where 'muzzling critics is cheap and fast', never did the work of 'building state capacity' over decades, and yet somehow has achieved historical outcomes that have not been achieved by any country before or since. Rather than use Google Translate and look at the decades of open public policy documents available for free on the internet from the Chinese government and research institutions inside China on the issue, my opponent infantilizes then while simultanously demonizing them. The Chinese state is 'incompetent' while also being 'dangerous', it has a 'closed feedback loop' while somehow through sheer luck achieving outcomes no other state has. They assert without evidence that any of these very concrete, very real policy decisions and government structures cannot be copied, when other countries have structures like these. Other countries *have* state owned enterprises. Other countries regulate their markets very strictly. Other countries use consultative approaches to gather public opinion. These all show consistently positive results, and yet my opponent discard and discounts all of them. When evaluating the result of the debate, the score is not decided based on ideological alignment, it is decided based on what each person has said and done. I have engaged with literally everything my opponent has said. And my opponent has discussed a fraction of that, spouting talking points rather than arguing.