For some things authoritarianism is very effective at achieving results.
For instance, China's government simply mandated that everybody would start using a simplified writing system that was supposed to increase literacy. And the country.. just sort of went along with it.
Also, iodizing salt is sort of a big deal. Turkmenistan, being a dictatorship, simply declared non-iodized salt illegal and gave out 11 pounds of iodized salt each year to each family, and (presumably) sent out inspectors with iodine testing kits and threats of fines. Kazakhstan, being a democracy, had to cajole its people into accepting the change.
Same thing with China and India. China switched to a remarkably different writing system. I'm guessing that the process went something like "You guys have two years. After that all government forms and mass media will be written in the new system. The schools will all be teaching the new system." Whereas India, which would benefit greatly if they all spoke a mutually intelligible language, is a democracy and will never give up their ancestral languages.
> China switched to a remarkably different writing system.
The simplified characters are not actually "remarkably different". In many cases, simplification just codified a large number of short forms of the traditional characters that were already being used by the people. Have you ever seen how Chinese actually write many common characters with a paper and pen?
> For instance, China's government simply mandated that everybody would start using a simplified writing system that was supposed to increase literacy.
Orthography reforms happen in non-authoritarian countries, too. After the fall of Communism, Romanian saw a change to its spelling rules. Spanish and German, too, have had changes in recent decades. Even under a democracy, language academies and the big publishers can have enough prestige to push changes.
> The simplified characters are not actually "remarkably different".
You're incorrect. As a simple example look at the difference in the character horse between the two character systems. You might be able to sort of figure it out if you knew ahead of time what it meant. Just plopping a whole pile of text in front of you with no translation in the language you're familiar with is fairly incomprehensible.
>Have you ever seen how Chinese actually write many common characters with a paper and pen?
Yes, I have written some stuff in chinese and I have friends who write sloppily. The strokes are still suggested if not perfectly expressed. Have you any experience?
> Orthography reforms happen in non-authoritarian countries, too.
Although there since it's not enforced, you end up with a plurality of languages, like India. You can change any individual language but still have to support the old way.
> As a simple example look at the difference in the character horse between the two character systems.
If you are a foreign learner just looking at typeset ways of representing this character, then the difference may seem great between traditional and simplified. But in fact, the rapid way of writing 'horse' before the script reform, is where the simplified form was eventually taken from.
> The strokes are still suggested if not perfectly expressed.
No, rapid writing often drastically limits the number of strokes. I’m sorry, but I must question your experience with Chinese, because all this is covered in any reasonable introduction to the script reform.
Even Wikipedia's article [1] is pretty clear on this: "Character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, more complicated forms ... Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms."
This is why Taiwanese and Hong Kong readers, though they may find mainland China’s system culturally alien, do not generally consider it a barrier to understanding.
> Although there since it's not enforced, you end up with a plurality of languages, like India.
You are very mixed up here. One moment you are talking about orthography, the next about multilingualism. They are distinct things.
So, the thing about India is that it has two scripts which an outsider, not concerned with Indian politics would say are simply used to write the same language. This sort of thing happens in Eastern Europe all the time, there's a big powerful culture (Russia) using Cyrillic on one side of you, and another (Western Europe) using Latin, and so you end up writing your words in whichever system is convenient, politically, economically, or just the one you learned in school. Same words, different writing system.
But you mustn't say this in India, at least, not in an ordinary public setting, it is very important to the two cultures involved that they have two completely different languages, written quite differently, which it just so happens are in practice mutually intelligible when spoken. Laughing at this will get you much the same response as if you mocked Americans for their Civil War. It is a Big Deal for them, even if it seems like childish nonsense to you.
> writing often drastically limits the number of strokes. I’m sorry, but I must question your experience with Chinese, because all this is covered in any reasonable introduction to the script reform.
No, it's not the same. When you make the abbreviated strokes you try to simulate things. It's not turning four apostrophes into a straight line. I also like the little dig about my knowledge about Chinese writing.
> This is why Taiwanese and Hong Kong readers, though they may find mainland China’s system culturally alien, do not generally consider it a barrier to understanding.
It is in terms of familiarity. Just like reading Shakespeare. Or the KJV if you're used to reading modern English. Try filling out a DMV form written in Chaucerian English.
> You are very mixed up here. One moment you are talking about orthography, the next about multilingualism. They are distinct things.
No, not at all. Maybe I should explain myself more. Orthography if rigorously enforced by ALL parties leads to acceptance. If you start accepting old scripts and language, you start causing multilingualism.
> It's not turning four apostrophes into a straight line.
Yes, it definitely is. The reduction of four strokes to one at the bottom for the character for "horse" is a perfect example of how the simplified form proposed by the Chinese state merely copied the rapid way of writing the traditional character. Again, I must question your familiarity with this subject.
> Yes, it definitely is. The reduction of four strokes to one at the bottom for the character for "horse" is a perfect example of how the simplified form proposed by the Chinese state merely copied the rapid way of writing the traditional character.
Again, we're talking about mutual legibility. You can scan through traditional sloppily written chinese because there are still subtle cues that you're used to. With simplified there is none of that, as well as the upper part of the character being just a straight line when it was a vertical line with two lines crossing it. If you scribble something there you still make things vertical and a bit bumpy to suggest the original shape.
Traditional is legible sometimes, as not all characters have changed and some changes aren't important. Take the symbol for country. That is completely puzzling.
You seem to be arguing from how you think things work logically. However simplified is very difficult to figure out from traditional sometimes, no matter how you slice it.
I'm Spanish, and ortographical changes made to Spanish by the Royal Academy are very mild and very slow. Typically affecting only a single letter or accent mark in a few words every few years. And still many people resist the changes. While I don't know German, Germans I know say that it's similar for their language.
The change from traditional to simplified Chinese was much more radical. Although there are even better examples. For example, Atatürk changed Turkish from the Arabic alphabet to a modified Latin alphabet in 1928. This was a really profound change, and it was possible because Turkey had no democracy at that time.
“China is ahead on electrifying its fleet because it has the world’s worst pollution problem. With a growing urban population and galloping energy demand, the nation’s legendary smogs were responsible for 1.6 million extra deaths in 2015, according to non-profit Berkeley Earth.”
It’s great to celebrate progress, but don’t fall for the spin.
A study published in Nature [1] found 3.3 million deaths per year worldwide attributed to air pollution. China owning nearly half that is mind blowing.
The figure for the U.S., by comparison, is 60-80,000. In terms of per capita mortality rate, China’s polution problem is 5x more deadly. [2]
Economics is the study of allocation of scarce resources. China investing more heavily in electrifying their buses is not surprising in the context of a deadly pollution epidemic. The same level of investment into electric buses in the US would be a tradgedy in the sense of actual lives lost due to gross misallocation of public funds.
> The same level of investment into electric buses in the US would be a tradgedy in the sense of actual lives lost due to gross misallocation of public funds.
I get it that you don't like public investment in electric buses, but there is no evidence to suggest that such investment would cause any "actual lives lost", vs the other much bigger public budget items in the US.
If anything, more people in buses would likely reduce a significant cause of deaths in the US: car accidents.
I have no issue at all with the appropriate level of investment in electric buses.
Investment in public transit in general is besides the point. It’s economic fact that paying more for an electric bus and building the infrastructure to support them is more justifiable and will provide better ROI in China where the pollution is 5x more deadly.
If your metric is spending dollars efficiently to save lives, there’s better ROI in the US by spending the money elsewhere.
> If your metric is spending dollars efficiently to save lives, there’s better ROI in the US by spending the money elsewhere.
It's massively oversimplifying the trade-off to reduce it to a single metric, and it proposes a false choice.
Why not also consider reducing congestion, reducing local-air-pollution related respiratory conditions, etc?
And compared to the known types of huge government expenditures that might be doing actual harm to some subset of citizens (i.e. lives lost in wars of questionable value) why point the finger at electric buses?
IMO conflating air polution and greenhouse gases does not make a lot of sense. CO2 has the highest impact greenhouse gas, yet it has no adverse health effects in the concentrations humans are exposed to it. In terms of CO2 emissions per capita, China is AFAIK still below EU average and 3x below the US who is by far the worst offender among highly populated developed nations. Air pollution is a problem, yes, but a different one than combating human induced climate change.
I’m not sure where climate change enters the picture in this story. I don’t think China is investing in electric buses to reduce CO2 to head off climate change, but rather to control actual smog/air pollution.
> actual lives lost due to gross misallocation of public funds.
The US already makes gross under-allocation of public funds with the result of lives lost, but since that relates to healthcare and homelessness it seems hard to get anyone to care.
