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How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Does everyone mostly understand t

How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?

xiaochuanSun 7y ago
There are some Chinese students who are studying in US universities support the CN government on this event. Even though they have access to the information, they still choose not to believe it.
- fopen64 7y ago
  They should be sent back.
- mantap 7y ago
  It doesn't surprise me. The Chinese government isn't dumb enough to say "we want to abolish the rule of law in HK", instead they say "we want to stop rapists and murderers from escaping justice". Honestly in most places in the world, that kind of appeal to emotion is an effective way to dismantle the rule of law. It is only because the people of Hong Kong are both highly educated and distrustful of Beijing that it doesn't work on them.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    And of course they’re doing in a way that’s also reasonable. The HK law isn’t about political crimes... it just happens to be an extremely slippery slope and of course China wants that incremental movement towards total control.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Those students see the government mostly aligned with their interests and have benefits from a lifetime of indoctrination via a higher end public school system. Censorship is more for the less elite classes that don’t have those benefits. Even then, if China decided not to censor anything tomorrow and just went with western-style spin, 80% of the population would basically still agree with the government. That they don’t bother is basically a hold over of old-fashioned thinking, and once the last cultural revolution era leader (Xi Jinping) retires, China’s government should modernize very quickly. That this leader has decided not to retire on schedule is very disturbing.
  - pishpash 7y ago
    Like anything, the lack of competition and criticism makes the Chinese political culture susceptible to attacks and its propaganda weak and useless. Censorship has worked a little too well, and it's become a nasty habit to break out of. That's why the biggest traitor in modern times is Fang Binxing, the father of the GFW, though he probably believed himself to be a patriot.
    - chantelles 7y ago
      Lack of competition and criticism is the foundation of Western democracy too. Polemics is not a space where actual meaning has ever sprung from; yet try to find anywhere here or in media or in real life discussions that are not that shape. Binaries shape all we are. I do not feel I have enough knowledge to judge life anywhere but where I live. I live in the West; I experience extreme censorship of my ideas due to my gender, class and career choices.
      - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
        Where do you live in the west? I'm in the us, I just don't see extreme censorship except for racist pandering comments. Don't like the president, or cell phones, or capitalism, all good. Don't like poor people, no one will try to stop you. Only if you make racist, sexist, or gay bashing comments will people try to stop you from speaking. I haven't lived in China but I see the value in people being free to ask questions, read what they want, and not be worried about being kidnapped in the night and taken to prison - those seem pretty safe as universal rights to me.
        eropple 7y ago
        > Only if you make racist, sexist, or gay bashing comments will people try to stop you from speaking. Beware of conflating "the ideas you express suck and we want nothing to do with you" (on either a social or an economic basis) with "you can't speak". There's a very large difference and the people who are speaking in the way you describe are absolutely begging (shout outs to Laura Loomer) to be thought of as "persecuted by the normies".
- dmix 7y ago
  I never really understood how Chinese people could live under such a regime until a read a long-form book about life in China by a New Yorker journalist who lived and reported from the for many years: https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-ebook/dp/B00GET185M/ https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-eb... It's really hard to grasp how effective information control, combined with 20-30% of the population being "party members", and other means of control can completely convince (or more likely blind) the population from external realities. It's hard because you can see how smart and capable Chinese-Americans (or Canadians, or whatever) are at anything they set their mind to, where it almost seems like something is missing in their culture vs the West. The general lesser educated and poor swath is easier to understand how they can be lied to and believe. The key is the smarter-than-average Chinese who do end up getting access to outside information are thoroughly convinced by the state early on that 'western propaganda is merely constantly trying to denigrate China's great, big, neverending achievements. But not only that, they amplify all of the negative things the western countries do poorly like class or race relations or other things citizens are constantly complaining about in the media, and try to pretend they are covering up those while hypocritically trying to judge Asian countries. It's really quite a genius type of system when you look at how successful it is, which legitimate the US contributed to with all of the pysop/intelligence community stuff that they mastered. But of course it's 100x easier in a system where media and education are entirely controlled, not just partially like in the US (the Chinese aren't just dumb drones is what I'm saying but I'm not convinced the state can maintain this delusion forever).
  - whoevercares 7y ago
    As a native Chinese living overseas (well US, the location might matter), I could add that it’s not necessary true oversea Chinese students will wind up pro-democracy, because 1) most were having a utopian view of US and most will be disappointed/delusioned after a few years. 2) most if not all never lived in a multi race society before, so the smallest discrimination can be 10x magnified 3)Anti-China news are often mis-interpreted as Anti-Chinese, which myself still struggling to get out sometimes (e.g. “we shouldn’t do business with mainland China” look very offensive to me)
- philwelch 7y ago
  Well, sure. One of the most interesting questions is whether there really is a universal human desire for liberty and democracy or whether that’s just an arbitrary cultural norm of the West. Different cultures can have different preferences and values; part of the whole reason for controlling the flow of information is to control the flow of those values.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  Your comment suggests that there is a correct opinion and an incorrect opinion. This is as totalitarian as the "other side". This issue of extradition is far from being black and white.
wybiral 7y ago
It's usually viewed as a protective measure more than a mechanism of oppression. And it is protective. If you believe that widespread dissidence could lead to the collapse of your government then preventing that is a necessary evil to ensure your own well being. So, yeah, most mainlanders are aware of the censorship but it's not always viewed as inherently bad. And not just out of fear of being targeted or something. It's also easier to justify things that way when you're not even sure what exactly is being censored or why, you just assume it's probably for the better. We allow similar censorship in the US (of things like extremist propaganda or hate speech) with a similar justification. But free speech in the US is rarely an actual threat to the authority of the government itself.
- brobinson 7y ago
  >We allow similar censorship in the US (of things like extremist propaganda or hate speech) with a similar justification. The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand. The US government can't do anything about you hosting a website and posting extremist propaganda/hate speech on it. (the exception being speech which is _likely_ to cause _imminent lawless action... see: Brandenberg v. Ohio)
  - wybiral 7y ago
    You're right, I didn't mean to compare them in that way. There is a difference between government-mandated vs corporations voluntarily censoring. My point was just to highlight that even here in the US we accept some level of censorship. Most of us are okay with Islamic extremist propaganda or videos of violence being removed from websites if it's done to prevent future violence. And that should explain why there are so many people in mainland China who accept censorship without seeing it as excessively oppressive. Especially when they aren't fully aware of what all is being censored or why.
  - jake_the_third 7y ago
    > The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand. Is this really a meaningful difference if the end result is the same?
kumosawa 7y ago
In China mainland, there is a censor tech named Great Firewall.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall?wprov=sfti1) It just cut off the connection between China and the World Internet by blocking famous website like Twitter, Facebook etc. Only the people have eagerness of finding truth will use anti-blocking tech like VPN to find information by themselves. Of course, it’s inconvenience and sometimes not working because of outer server banned. Not sure how many people could get information by themselves. But it’s pessimistic for people living in China how willing to find the information. Recently, because the propagation by gov, the citizens even think the GFW is protecting them from harmful information and the outside force want breaking up China rather than censorship itself. Especially, this time the protest is propagated as a riot planned by western country. Being lack of information, most citizens support gov’s standpoint. So maybe not ignorant, just like not conscious, as a result of being accustomed.
- hungryhobo 7y ago
  How can you say that with a straight face with recent news like Cambridge analytica is beyond me
- educationdata 7y ago
  > Being lack of information, most citizens support gov’s standpoint. NO, because of the censorship, we do not know how many people actually support gov’s standpoint. Your statement is pure speculation and does not have any factual basis. The Chinese government will not allow any professional organization to conduct and publish a survey like: "Do you support the censorship?", or "Do you support protest in HK?", or "Do you support shooting students in the Tianman Square", or "Do you support Xi to be the Chairman forever?" Even the Chinese government itself does not know how many people support it and they fear the number is in fact not small, that is exactly why they need censorship in the first place. One of the most commonly used words in their propaganda is "一小撮" [1, 2]. They always claim the people against them is only a few bad people. I never bought this even when I was in middle school. The reason is so obvious: if it is truly only a few people against you, why don't you just allow people to vote? Why don't you just allow people to speak up? The only reason you are so afraid is that you know maybe it is not just a few, and you know there is a good reason for people to stand against you. 1. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE 2. https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE.html https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8...
weggooi 7y ago
I've been to mainland China recently, both rural and the fast changing cities like Shenzhen. Chairman Mao is universally revered. No one ever questions his track record on economic growth was, even though the evidence is everywhere to see. Similarly, censorship is rarely questioned.
- wangii 7y ago
  then you failed with your trip. Mao is highly controversial if not hated among all my family and friends. Censorship is laughed at on every level. where did you go?
  - thoughtfunction 7y ago
    Is your family inside or outside of china?
    - wangii 7y ago
      inside.
  - simonh 7y ago
    I think views on Mao vary a lot. Some members of my Chinese family suffered terribly under Mao, others did very well. My father in law's family owned some land, so they were crushed by the Communists as class enemies. My mother in law grew up in a city and went to university. Students back then could travel for free, so she went all over China with her friends as a young woman. She's no fan of Mao, but some Chinese do still revere him. I saw a news report last year about some Chinese students that got arrested. They had been taught Marxism, solidarity with workers, class struggle, etc at University, then tried to put that into practice. They protested against unsafe working practices for cleaners and cooks, campaigned for workers rights and ended up getting arrested and sent to jail for challenging the very system that educated them to do this in the first place. Apparently it wasn't just an isolated incident and things like that happen from time to time.
    - 7y ago
rqs 7y ago
> How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Let me answer this question as well, because, well, I'm entitled. It's very very rare to see Chinese people use VPN other than for maybe to play games, most people here is just living, don't even curious about the outside world. Even worse, among those who did got out, some saw those China's wrong doings and then they choose to simply denial. And is the very reason of why it is important to spread information: To establish some basic understanding. It's not about who is wining, not about trade war, it's not about tech superiority or smear tactics, it's about basic right and wrong. Recently, the government issued a series of laws and regulations to further limit Chinese people's ability to access information outside of China by making it straight out illegal. And some individuals already been punished for just using a proxy. Also, since June 1, the GFW has been upgraded to block any high risk unknown traffic, which is intended to stop Shadowsocks and other traffic encryption tools that can be used to by pass GFW's screening. It's very effective, many people lost connection with their proxy because of this. HongKong is Not a sovereign country, if people in HongKong eventually failed, then they will face the same thing in the future. Which is the reason why they must try not fail. (If they do, then welcome to West Korea, comrade. May our dear supreme leader bless you!) And I must say, HongKongers is really bad at resonating with others, especially with mainlanders. They must know that many people in mainland is actually quite supportive of some of their protects, we both want real democracy in our country and we are NOT enemies (Well, at least on this subject, we still love tax-free milk and iPhone so). > Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant? Young people who don't interested to see outside world are also not interested in figuring out what's really going on[0]. Old people who actually felt the pain knows more about the pain. I also want to add, even in China, under such heavy censorship, people still blaming the government in some ways. So I don't think it's just "genuinely ignorant", but more of a "so what you can do about it?". [0] An unrelated but "interesting" pic for you: https://twitter.com/1240883174Hu/status/1050010276584550400 https://twitter.com/1240883174Hu/status/1050010276584550400
- hker 7y ago
  > HongKong is Not a sovereign country, if people in HongKong eventually failed, then they will face the same thing in the future. Which is the reason why they must try not fail. (If they do, then welcome to West Korea, comrade. May our dear supreme leader bless you!) Hong Kong people are trying to do their best--after all, with no army of its own, 2 million people went to the street to voice out, peacefully--but support from mainland China, and from the rest of the world (not necessarily US) would definitely help. And we do thank the attention and support we have been receiving in previous weeks, which led to the suspension of the extradition law. We know the battle is not over yet, not before the resolution regarding 2047 (50 years from the handover in 1997) is clear, not before the fate of Hong Kong's autonomy is sealed. > And I must say, HongKongers is really bad at resonating with others, especially with mainlanders. They must know that many people in mainland is actually quite supportive of some of their protects, we both want real democracy in our country and we are NOT enemies (Well, at least on this subject, we still love tax-free milk and iPhone so). Thank you for your support. I, for one, do not treat mainland people as enemies, and I think many Hong Kong people share my view. If you can point out concretely how Hong Kong people have been misunderstanding mainland people, please let us know. We want to speak in a way that more people can understand.
zachguo 7y ago
In my bubble where people who has attended top schools and chose to stay in China. Almost all of them are aware of what is being censored. But people are too busy with earning their next million to care about those censored political topics.

xiaochuanSun 7y ago

There are some Chinese students who are studying in US universities support the CN government on this event. Even though they have access to the information, they still choose not to believe it.

fopen64 7y ago
They should be sent back.
mantap 7y ago
It doesn't surprise me. The Chinese government isn't dumb enough to say "we want to abolish the rule of law in HK", instead they say "we want to stop rapists and murderers from escaping justice". Honestly in most places in the world, that kind of appeal to emotion is an effective way to dismantle the rule of law. It is only because the people of Hong Kong are both highly educated and distrustful of Beijing that it doesn't work on them.
- azinman2 7y ago
  And of course they’re doing in a way that’s also reasonable. The HK law isn’t about political crimes... it just happens to be an extremely slippery slope and of course China wants that incremental movement towards total control.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Those students see the government mostly aligned with their interests and have benefits from a lifetime of indoctrination via a higher end public school system. Censorship is more for the less elite classes that don’t have those benefits. Even then, if China decided not to censor anything tomorrow and just went with western-style spin, 80% of the population would basically still agree with the government. That they don’t bother is basically a hold over of old-fashioned thinking, and once the last cultural revolution era leader (Xi Jinping) retires, China’s government should modernize very quickly. That this leader has decided not to retire on schedule is very disturbing.
- pishpash 7y ago
  Like anything, the lack of competition and criticism makes the Chinese political culture susceptible to attacks and its propaganda weak and useless. Censorship has worked a little too well, and it's become a nasty habit to break out of. That's why the biggest traitor in modern times is Fang Binxing, the father of the GFW, though he probably believed himself to be a patriot.
  - chantelles 7y ago
    Lack of competition and criticism is the foundation of Western democracy too. Polemics is not a space where actual meaning has ever sprung from; yet try to find anywhere here or in media or in real life discussions that are not that shape. Binaries shape all we are. I do not feel I have enough knowledge to judge life anywhere but where I live. I live in the West; I experience extreme censorship of my ideas due to my gender, class and career choices.
    - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
      Where do you live in the west? I'm in the us, I just don't see extreme censorship except for racist pandering comments. Don't like the president, or cell phones, or capitalism, all good. Don't like poor people, no one will try to stop you. Only if you make racist, sexist, or gay bashing comments will people try to stop you from speaking. I haven't lived in China but I see the value in people being free to ask questions, read what they want, and not be worried about being kidnapped in the night and taken to prison - those seem pretty safe as universal rights to me.
      - eropple 7y ago
        > Only if you make racist, sexist, or gay bashing comments will people try to stop you from speaking. Beware of conflating "the ideas you express suck and we want nothing to do with you" (on either a social or an economic basis) with "you can't speak". There's a very large difference and the people who are speaking in the way you describe are absolutely begging (shout outs to Laura Loomer) to be thought of as "persecuted by the normies".
dmix 7y ago
I never really understood how Chinese people could live under such a regime until a read a long-form book about life in China by a New Yorker journalist who lived and reported from the for many years: https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-ebook/dp/B00GET185M/ https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-eb... It's really hard to grasp how effective information control, combined with 20-30% of the population being "party members", and other means of control can completely convince (or more likely blind) the population from external realities. It's hard because you can see how smart and capable Chinese-Americans (or Canadians, or whatever) are at anything they set their mind to, where it almost seems like something is missing in their culture vs the West. The general lesser educated and poor swath is easier to understand how they can be lied to and believe. The key is the smarter-than-average Chinese who do end up getting access to outside information are thoroughly convinced by the state early on that 'western propaganda is merely constantly trying to denigrate China's great, big, neverending achievements. But not only that, they amplify all of the negative things the western countries do poorly like class or race relations or other things citizens are constantly complaining about in the media, and try to pretend they are covering up those while hypocritically trying to judge Asian countries. It's really quite a genius type of system when you look at how successful it is, which legitimate the US contributed to with all of the pysop/intelligence community stuff that they mastered. But of course it's 100x easier in a system where media and education are entirely controlled, not just partially like in the US (the Chinese aren't just dumb drones is what I'm saying but I'm not convinced the state can maintain this delusion forever).
- whoevercares 7y ago
  As a native Chinese living overseas (well US, the location might matter), I could add that it’s not necessary true oversea Chinese students will wind up pro-democracy, because 1) most were having a utopian view of US and most will be disappointed/delusioned after a few years. 2) most if not all never lived in a multi race society before, so the smallest discrimination can be 10x magnified 3)Anti-China news are often mis-interpreted as Anti-Chinese, which myself still struggling to get out sometimes (e.g. “we shouldn’t do business with mainland China” look very offensive to me)
philwelch 7y ago
Well, sure. One of the most interesting questions is whether there really is a universal human desire for liberty and democracy or whether that’s just an arbitrary cultural norm of the West. Different cultures can have different preferences and values; part of the whole reason for controlling the flow of information is to control the flow of those values.
NotPaidToPost 7y ago
Your comment suggests that there is a correct opinion and an incorrect opinion. This is as totalitarian as the "other side". This issue of extradition is far from being black and white.

wybiral 7y ago

It's usually viewed as a protective measure more than a mechanism of oppression. And it is protective. If you believe that widespread dissidence could lead to the collapse of your government then preventing that is a necessary evil to ensure your own well being. So, yeah, most mainlanders are aware of the censorship but it's not always viewed as inherently bad. And not just out of fear of being targeted or something. It's also easier to justify things that way when you're not even sure what exactly is being censored or why, you just assume it's probably for the better. We allow similar censorship in the US (of things like extremist propaganda or hate speech) with a similar justification. But free speech in the US is rarely an actual threat to the authority of the government itself.

brobinson 7y ago
>We allow similar censorship in the US (of things like extremist propaganda or hate speech) with a similar justification. The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand. The US government can't do anything about you hosting a website and posting extremist propaganda/hate speech on it. (the exception being speech which is _likely_ to cause _imminent lawless action... see: Brandenberg v. Ohio)
- wybiral 7y ago
  You're right, I didn't mean to compare them in that way. There is a difference between government-mandated vs corporations voluntarily censoring. My point was just to highlight that even here in the US we accept some level of censorship. Most of us are okay with Islamic extremist propaganda or videos of violence being removed from websites if it's done to prevent future violence. And that should explain why there are so many people in mainland China who accept censorship without seeing it as excessively oppressive. Especially when they aren't fully aware of what all is being censored or why.
- jake_the_third 7y ago
  > The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand. Is this really a meaningful difference if the end result is the same?

kumosawa 7y ago

In China mainland, there is a censor tech named Great Firewall.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall?wprov=sfti1) It just cut off the connection between China and the World Internet by blocking famous website like Twitter, Facebook etc. Only the people have eagerness of finding truth will use anti-blocking tech like VPN to find information by themselves. Of course, it’s inconvenience and sometimes not working because of outer server banned. Not sure how many people could get information by themselves. But it’s pessimistic for people living in China how willing to find the information. Recently, because the propagation by gov, the citizens even think the GFW is protecting them from harmful information and the outside force want breaking up China rather than censorship itself. Especially, this time the protest is propagated as a riot planned by western country. Being lack of information, most citizens support gov’s standpoint. So maybe not ignorant, just like not conscious, as a result of being accustomed.

hungryhobo 7y ago
How can you say that with a straight face with recent news like Cambridge analytica is beyond me
educationdata 7y ago
> Being lack of information, most citizens support gov’s standpoint. NO, because of the censorship, we do not know how many people actually support gov’s standpoint. Your statement is pure speculation and does not have any factual basis. The Chinese government will not allow any professional organization to conduct and publish a survey like: "Do you support the censorship?", or "Do you support protest in HK?", or "Do you support shooting students in the Tianman Square", or "Do you support Xi to be the Chairman forever?" Even the Chinese government itself does not know how many people support it and they fear the number is in fact not small, that is exactly why they need censorship in the first place. One of the most commonly used words in their propaganda is "一小撮" [1, 2]. They always claim the people against them is only a few bad people. I never bought this even when I was in middle school. The reason is so obvious: if it is truly only a few people against you, why don't you just allow people to vote? Why don't you just allow people to speak up? The only reason you are so afraid is that you know maybe it is not just a few, and you know there is a good reason for people to stand against you. 1. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE 2. https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE.html https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8...

weggooi 7y ago

I've been to mainland China recently, both rural and the fast changing cities like Shenzhen. Chairman Mao is universally revered. No one ever questions his track record on economic growth was, even though the evidence is everywhere to see. Similarly, censorship is rarely questioned.

wangii 7y ago
then you failed with your trip. Mao is highly controversial if not hated among all my family and friends. Censorship is laughed at on every level. where did you go?
- thoughtfunction 7y ago
  Is your family inside or outside of china?
  - wangii 7y ago
    inside.
- simonh 7y ago
  I think views on Mao vary a lot. Some members of my Chinese family suffered terribly under Mao, others did very well. My father in law's family owned some land, so they were crushed by the Communists as class enemies. My mother in law grew up in a city and went to university. Students back then could travel for free, so she went all over China with her friends as a young woman. She's no fan of Mao, but some Chinese do still revere him. I saw a news report last year about some Chinese students that got arrested. They had been taught Marxism, solidarity with workers, class struggle, etc at University, then tried to put that into practice. They protested against unsafe working practices for cleaners and cooks, campaigned for workers rights and ended up getting arrested and sent to jail for challenging the very system that educated them to do this in the first place. Apparently it wasn't just an isolated incident and things like that happen from time to time.
  - 7y ago

rqs 7y ago

> How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Let me answer this question as well, because, well, I'm entitled. It's very very rare to see Chinese people use VPN other than for maybe to play games, most people here is just living, don't even curious about the outside world. Even worse, among those who did got out, some saw those China's wrong doings and then they choose to simply denial. And is the very reason of why it is important to spread information: To establish some basic understanding. It's not about who is wining, not about trade war, it's not about tech superiority or smear tactics, it's about basic right and wrong. Recently, the government issued a series of laws and regulations to further limit Chinese people's ability to access information outside of China by making it straight out illegal. And some individuals already been punished for just using a proxy. Also, since June 1, the GFW has been upgraded to block any high risk unknown traffic, which is intended to stop Shadowsocks and other traffic encryption tools that can be used to by pass GFW's screening. It's very effective, many people lost connection with their proxy because of this. HongKong is Not a sovereign country, if people in HongKong eventually failed, then they will face the same thing in the future. Which is the reason why they must try not fail. (If they do, then welcome to West Korea, comrade. May our dear supreme leader bless you!) And I must say, HongKongers is really bad at resonating with others, especially with mainlanders. They must know that many people in mainland is actually quite supportive of some of their protects, we both want real democracy in our country and we are NOT enemies (Well, at least on this subject, we still love tax-free milk and iPhone so). > Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant? Young people who don't interested to see outside world are also not interested in figuring out what's really going on[0]. Old people who actually felt the pain knows more about the pain. I also want to add, even in China, under such heavy censorship, people still blaming the government in some ways. So I don't think it's just "genuinely ignorant", but more of a "so what you can do about it?". [0] An unrelated but "interesting" pic for you: https://twitter.com/1240883174Hu/status/1050010276584550400 https://twitter.com/1240883174Hu/status/1050010276584550400

hker 7y ago
> HongKong is Not a sovereign country, if people in HongKong eventually failed, then they will face the same thing in the future. Which is the reason why they must try not fail. (If they do, then welcome to West Korea, comrade. May our dear supreme leader bless you!) Hong Kong people are trying to do their best--after all, with no army of its own, 2 million people went to the street to voice out, peacefully--but support from mainland China, and from the rest of the world (not necessarily US) would definitely help. And we do thank the attention and support we have been receiving in previous weeks, which led to the suspension of the extradition law. We know the battle is not over yet, not before the resolution regarding 2047 (50 years from the handover in 1997) is clear, not before the fate of Hong Kong's autonomy is sealed. > And I must say, HongKongers is really bad at resonating with others, especially with mainlanders. They must know that many people in mainland is actually quite supportive of some of their protects, we both want real democracy in our country and we are NOT enemies (Well, at least on this subject, we still love tax-free milk and iPhone so). Thank you for your support. I, for one, do not treat mainland people as enemies, and I think many Hong Kong people share my view. If you can point out concretely how Hong Kong people have been misunderstanding mainland people, please let us know. We want to speak in a way that more people can understand.

zachguo 7y ago

In my bubble where people who has attended top schools and chose to stay in China. Almost all of them are aware of what is being censored. But people are too busy with earning their next million to care about those censored political topics.