Similar to anon, I'd disagree with you that "politics is not a natural part of the Chinese conversational diet". Chinese people talk about politics all the time

Similar to anon, I'd disagree with you that "politics is not a natural part of the Chinese conversational diet". Chinese people talk about politics all the time: America being world police, current reforms the government is trying to push through, etc. More about individual rights/data privacy though, I'm not convinced that it's something ingrained in the culture. As badly as the Tiananmen square protests went, that was still a significant portion of China advocating for a democratic government. I do agree that there is an uphill battle where many Chinese are simply apathetic about the government. For many of them, they've just been in the middle of 30 years of pretty unbelievable economic growth. Not exactly the type of environment conducive for anti-government ideals to take hold.