Indeed, my favorite part is when people argue how Chinese government does all these things to ensure that public is happy so that it can maintain political stability for itself, and I’m like yeah that’s how things should work. The government should be primarily interested in ensuring that the public supports it, this isn’t some gotcha.
It shows how neoliberalism has rotted people’s brains. The government making things better is bad actually as it is an attempt to gain favour. Anything other than managed decline is unthinkable.
Unless it is bending over backwards to subsidise privately owned business, then it is fine and good to pander actually. Gotta make sure that the same handful of people keep getting obscenely richer.