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Have you ever been to China? You can find yourself cornered by armed soldiers with assault rifles just for taking a photograph of the "wrong" building in a com

Have you ever been to China? You can find yourself cornered by armed soldiers with assault rifles just for taking a photograph of the "wrong" building in a completely ordinary public thoroughfare. Dissent is literally banned and access to external social networks is cut off. There's no way support for the government is completely genuine in such an environment.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
geogra4 7y ago
There are plenty of places in the USA where you're not allowed to take photographs too.
- corey_moncure 7y ago
  Citation needed. Name a place in any USA city where you will be detained and your equipment confiscated for taking pictures from a public thoroughfare.
  - geogra4 7y ago
    You made the assertion that there are places in china where this happens so you can go first.
    - corey_moncure 7y ago
      This happened to me personally in Nanjing. I'd show the photos as proof, but of course I don't have them anymore.
  - freeflight 7y ago
    I can name such places in Germany where the US military has jurisdiction. Bad Aibling, with its ECHELON installation, used to be quite infamous for that because it was located in a pretty popular hiking region. I doubt the US military is that much more lenient domestically about having their installations photographed/filmed, no military really is, and a lot of law enforcement/IP rights are neither [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law
wavyhighlight 7y ago
Keep in mind you're also a (most likely) obvious foreigner taking pictures of perhaps a sensitive building in a foreign country. You don't think that given the current geopolitical climate, Asian people in the US taking pics of say, Mar-a-Lago, or a military complex or even an industrial park would sometimes run into trouble? Also, you may have been to China, but have you ever taken the time while there to attempt to understand why there might be some support for the government? This is a country where even among the fairly young, most experienced poverty as children, where their parents and their grandparents have experienced hunger, sometimes severe famine, being invaded and conquered and brutalized by the Japanese, then civil war, and the civil strife and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese families are close knit, most grow up living with their grandparents - these generational experiences are ingrained into the fabric of society. There's genuine and heartfelt appreciation for the recent policies and stability that has finally let a people raise themselves out from that poverty. (China in the 50's, 60's, and 70's was much poorer than Sub-Saharan Africa - per capita GDP was something from 1/2-1/3 of even places like the Congo and Zimbabwe). There is pride too, overwhelming pride in the grit and determination and hard work that has been poured into all that development and progress. Obviously, that's not to say that there isn't plenty of criticism and opposition and people making fun of aspects of the government and government policies, but the general support is not fake or coerced. I imagine it's not that different from the way a certain generation of Americans from a particular economic class saw FDR and his whole New Deal administration. Just keep in mind that sometimes, depending on their background story and life experiences, people can see the same things in a very different light. They also have different utility curves - some might value a tootsie roll over a twix bar, some might value liberty over their own life, or some might just value stability and the opportunity to live their lives and raise their children over anything else in the world.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

geogra4 7y ago

There are plenty of places in the USA where you're not allowed to take photographs too.

corey_moncure 7y ago
Citation needed. Name a place in any USA city where you will be detained and your equipment confiscated for taking pictures from a public thoroughfare.
- geogra4 7y ago
  You made the assertion that there are places in china where this happens so you can go first.
  - corey_moncure 7y ago
    This happened to me personally in Nanjing. I'd show the photos as proof, but of course I don't have them anymore.
- freeflight 7y ago
  I can name such places in Germany where the US military has jurisdiction. Bad Aibling, with its ECHELON installation, used to be quite infamous for that because it was located in a pretty popular hiking region. I doubt the US military is that much more lenient domestically about having their installations photographed/filmed, no military really is, and a lot of law enforcement/IP rights are neither [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law

wavyhighlight 7y ago

Keep in mind you're also a (most likely) obvious foreigner taking pictures of perhaps a sensitive building in a foreign country. You don't think that given the current geopolitical climate, Asian people in the US taking pics of say, Mar-a-Lago, or a military complex or even an industrial park would sometimes run into trouble? Also, you may have been to China, but have you ever taken the time while there to attempt to understand why there might be some support for the government? This is a country where even among the fairly young, most experienced poverty as children, where their parents and their grandparents have experienced hunger, sometimes severe famine, being invaded and conquered and brutalized by the Japanese, then civil war, and the civil strife and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese families are close knit, most grow up living with their grandparents - these generational experiences are ingrained into the fabric of society. There's genuine and heartfelt appreciation for the recent policies and stability that has finally let a people raise themselves out from that poverty. (China in the 50's, 60's, and 70's was much poorer than Sub-Saharan Africa - per capita GDP was something from 1/2-1/3 of even places like the Congo and Zimbabwe). There is pride too, overwhelming pride in the grit and determination and hard work that has been poured into all that development and progress. Obviously, that's not to say that there isn't plenty of criticism and opposition and people making fun of aspects of the government and government policies, but the general support is not fake or coerced. I imagine it's not that different from the way a certain generation of Americans from a particular economic class saw FDR and his whole New Deal administration. Just keep in mind that sometimes, depending on their background story and life experiences, people can see the same things in a very different light. They also have different utility curves - some might value a tootsie roll over a twix bar, some might value liberty over their own life, or some might just value stability and the opportunity to live their lives and raise their children over anything else in the world.