Mảnh gương Trung Quốc

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On the contrary, what they mean by “law” in China is just the form in which
the government issues its arbitrary (chuyên quyền, độc đoán; tùy hứng, tùy tiện) orders (mệnh lệnh) and bans (lệnh cấm).

When the Chinese political authorities (cơ quan chính trị) imitate (bắt chước) Western governments’ interventions (can thiệp), they imitate precisely (chính xác) what has, over a century or so, most undermined the rule of law: antitrust (chống độc quyền) laws, attacks on industries that the state doesn’t like (or whose executives it doesn’t like), mercantilism (chủ nghĩa trọng thương; tính hám lợi/vụ lợi/con buôn), investment and trade controls, government surveillance (giám sát, theo dõi), etc. The Chinese privacy laws are meant to constrain (ép buộc, cưỡng ép) independent businesses, not government agencies.

China has become a deforming mirror of the West, where the state is using corrupted Western ideals to become a worse Leviathan. It remains to be seen whether the US government and other Western governments, as well as the public, will be repulsed (từ chối chấp nhận, phản đối) by what they see in the Chinese mirror (chiếc gương, tấm gương) and will rediscover classical-liberal values (các giá trị tự do truyền thống), or whether they will be led to look more and more like the deformed image (hình ảnh biến dạng) they see in the mirror. Thus far, the latter seems to be happening. Another example: the US government and other governments in the West are expanding industrial policy (chính sách công nghiệp), which has long been proved inefficient (không hiệu quả) and been gradually (if only formally) abandoned (từ bỏ), but is now rekindled for the illusory (ảo tưởng) goal of competing with a planned economy under a tyrannical state.

Bài trước: Dừng ngay