<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">During the Great Leap Forward, regional authorities each wanted to look good to the top. So they competed with each other to claim a bigger harvest. It didn't matter what did this did to the people below them, what mattered was looking good to the people OVER them. The result was probably the largest famine in world history. <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I suspect something similar is happening now. Each regional authority wants to prove that they are even more zealous in enforcing Covid rules than the next.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It's not so much a display of power as a display of subservience, but that subservience is to the CCP bosses, not to the people. If people cry, starve, burn, so what? If the middle ranks disappoint the upper bosses, their own families will be the ones to cry, starve and burn, so it's worth it to them to prove their fanatic loyalty.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Tara Maya<br class=""><div class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Nov 29, 2022, at 10:29 PM, Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" class="">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta charset="UTF-8" class=""><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto" class="">You think they’re having the lockdowns just as a display of power, even though it’s turning people against them and damaging the economy, the one thing that the leadership knows has kept them in power this long?</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" dir="auto" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"></blockquote></div></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">--<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class=""><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Stathis Papaioannou</div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></div></body></html>