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What do you think, that the chinese govt purposefully makes their peoples lives miserable? They are doing exactly what they think is necessary to stay in power,

What do you think, that the chinese govt purposefully makes their peoples lives miserable? They are doing exactly what they think is necessary to stay in power, whether that is a good thing or not is another question. Beating husbands act out of frustration or other problems but not because they fear losing power, And get a kick out of it. Chinese everyday life is as free or unfree as it is here. It's funny how average Joe is so proud of living in a free country when all his life he is working his ass off to pay the bills never going anywhere, never being the heroic activist changing anything. That handful of people who are like that definitely are better off here than in China, but the general public in China is just as happy with life as long as they get their steady income, a shiny iPhone and whatever the Chinese clone of Netflix is. And They certainly don't care that WhatsApp or some other app/website with zero market penetration in China is blocked over there.

wtetzner 9y ago
> Beating husbands act out of frustration or other problems but not because they fear losing power Are you sure that's the case? It certainly seems like they to it to keep control over the relationship.
- iforgotpassword 9y ago
  Not sure as in having done research, that's what I picked up from news reports. Still even if, its not like people in China feel threatened or even abused. Like I said, everyday life is almost completely unaffected. The occasional political rant on social media gets deleted sure, which people are annoyed by, but there are no consequences to that unless you really push for it, which brings us back to activism.
pmarreck 9y ago
> whether that is a good thing or not is another question. Anyone who has read any history would know that is most certainly not a good thing. Perhaps China will censor all of human history next, so that those pesky young university students quoting George Washington's farewell address don't get any "revolutionary" ideas.
- mistermann 9y ago
  The interesting thing is, both of you are completely correct.
adventured 9y ago
> What do you think, that the chinese govt purposefully makes their peoples lives miserable? To maintain a dictatorship you have to terrify the people from time to time. Every dictator - that we have a recorded history of behavior for - of the last century has frequently used fear to maintain their power. Read the history of dictators as diverse as Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Pinochet, Franco, Ceaușescu, etc. They all used the seeming random application of terror/fear upon the population and their competitors to retain control. Xi has been using frequent applications of fear the last five years. That's how he acquired the power he now has. He implemented a "corruption" purge, targeting powerful opponents seemingly at random. They never know who is next. The same thing has been going on in the economic sphere, as they arrest people for "economic crimes" - nobody in the business sphere knows who will be disappeared or charged next. This behavior will get a lot worse now that Xi has formally consolidated power.
mr_spothawk 9y ago
I lived there, the US is MUCH different than China. start with the face scanning, and go from there. nowhere nearly as "free" there as it is here. I can blame all the presidents I want for my misfortune, and don't have to go to jail.
- iforgotpassword 9y ago
  How long? 6 weeks? I lived there for quite a bit longer (years). What is even your point? Chinese people can also blame any president, Mao or the CCP without going to jail. It happens all the time in everyday conversation. If you post it online it will be deleted, but you certainly don't go to jail unless you do it on a daily basis and ignore multiple warnings by government officials. Sure, technically not as free as most places on this planet, I don't even question that: just go read my initial post again. The point is that it doesnt matter to 99.999% of people. It simply never interferes with everyday life. And I must say, during my time there I rarely felt unfree or oppressed by government. Obviously I needed VPN as a foreigner to access everyday stuff, but everything else was mostly minor annoyances, normal differences in culture or law. I find it odd you mention security cameras. I consider that primarily a privacy issue, but apart from that it's a bit ironic to bring this up post-snowden. The government tracking my online movement worries me much more than cameras in public. And how everyone uploads all their photos and life to big cloud providers that don't give access to their users' data to the NSA ever /s. China definitely does all this too, but in comparison the cameras are really just the icing on the cake. The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck.
  - mr_spothawk 9y ago
    for years, same. so you remember registering your new apartment with the police every time you moved. you said "security cameras", not me. I said FACE SCANNING... which is explicitly for tracking your movement in meat-space, they already track your movement in fake-space. to your point about cloud providers, yes... an existential threat to privacy. > The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck. disgusting in both cases Edit to add: there are a lot of things about China that I really enjoyed. and in some ways, more real freedom... in the absence of enforcement. I went with broken ideals, and I'm sure I left with broken ideals... but they were at least better informed, if still broken, ideals. and the food was better than anything I have had before or since.

wtetzner 9y ago

> Beating husbands act out of frustration or other problems but not because they fear losing power Are you sure that's the case? It certainly seems like they to it to keep control over the relationship.

iforgotpassword 9y ago
Not sure as in having done research, that's what I picked up from news reports. Still even if, its not like people in China feel threatened or even abused. Like I said, everyday life is almost completely unaffected. The occasional political rant on social media gets deleted sure, which people are annoyed by, but there are no consequences to that unless you really push for it, which brings us back to activism.

pmarreck 9y ago

> whether that is a good thing or not is another question. Anyone who has read any history would know that is most certainly not a good thing. Perhaps China will censor all of human history next, so that those pesky young university students quoting George Washington's farewell address don't get any "revolutionary" ideas.

mistermann 9y ago
The interesting thing is, both of you are completely correct.

adventured 9y ago

> What do you think, that the chinese govt purposefully makes their peoples lives miserable? To maintain a dictatorship you have to terrify the people from time to time. Every dictator - that we have a recorded history of behavior for - of the last century has frequently used fear to maintain their power. Read the history of dictators as diverse as Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Pinochet, Franco, Ceaușescu, etc. They all used the seeming random application of terror/fear upon the population and their competitors to retain control. Xi has been using frequent applications of fear the last five years. That's how he acquired the power he now has. He implemented a "corruption" purge, targeting powerful opponents seemingly at random. They never know who is next. The same thing has been going on in the economic sphere, as they arrest people for "economic crimes" - nobody in the business sphere knows who will be disappeared or charged next. This behavior will get a lot worse now that Xi has formally consolidated power.

mr_spothawk 9y ago

I lived there, the US is MUCH different than China. start with the face scanning, and go from there. nowhere nearly as "free" there as it is here. I can blame all the presidents I want for my misfortune, and don't have to go to jail.

iforgotpassword 9y ago
How long? 6 weeks? I lived there for quite a bit longer (years). What is even your point? Chinese people can also blame any president, Mao or the CCP without going to jail. It happens all the time in everyday conversation. If you post it online it will be deleted, but you certainly don't go to jail unless you do it on a daily basis and ignore multiple warnings by government officials. Sure, technically not as free as most places on this planet, I don't even question that: just go read my initial post again. The point is that it doesnt matter to 99.999% of people. It simply never interferes with everyday life. And I must say, during my time there I rarely felt unfree or oppressed by government. Obviously I needed VPN as a foreigner to access everyday stuff, but everything else was mostly minor annoyances, normal differences in culture or law. I find it odd you mention security cameras. I consider that primarily a privacy issue, but apart from that it's a bit ironic to bring this up post-snowden. The government tracking my online movement worries me much more than cameras in public. And how everyone uploads all their photos and life to big cloud providers that don't give access to their users' data to the NSA ever /s. China definitely does all this too, but in comparison the cameras are really just the icing on the cake. The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  for years, same. so you remember registering your new apartment with the police every time you moved. you said "security cameras", not me. I said FACE SCANNING... which is explicitly for tracking your movement in meat-space, they already track your movement in fake-space. to your point about cloud providers, yes... an existential threat to privacy. > The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck. disgusting in both cases Edit to add: there are a lot of things about China that I really enjoyed. and in some ways, more real freedom... in the absence of enforcement. I went with broken ideals, and I'm sure I left with broken ideals... but they were at least better informed, if still broken, ideals. and the food was better than anything I have had before or since.