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There's a lot of truth in your response. My own personal feeling, from my visits to the country from the 90s to the present, is that in some ways the day-to-day
by CWuestefeld 6y ago
There's a lot of truth in your response. My own personal feeling, from my visits to the country from the 90s to the present, is that in some ways the day-to-day life on the streets of Shanghai seem more free than America. It seems like the government has been mostly laissez-faire toward the individual people, so long as those people leave the oligarchy alone.
The thing is, it's very much a pendulum. The Cultural Revolution, when my wife was growing up, was one of the worst times. The couple decades starting in the 90s was relatively quite good. The thing is, since Xi took control the pendulum has been swinging back in the other direction. That's most obvious back in Hong Kong, but is also evident within the mainland, as reported by family members and we can see ourselves through online interactions (e.g., on multiple occasions my wife's WeChat comments have been censored).
- TimTheTinker 6y agoThe CCP has not at all let up on its persecution of people, groups, and ideas that are deemed "enemies of the state": Christians who do not meet in a State-registered/3-self (= state-controlled) church (persecution of those Christians has worsened significantly), Falon Gong practitioners, and minority group members, among others. In addition to religious and ideological persecution, we see grave human rights abuses continue unabated: forced abortions, arbitrary (non-rule-of-law) treatment of citizens, lack of habeas corpus, ruling officials and legislators who are unelected (or who are only eligible for election if they are CCP members), a secret police, massive slave labor camps, long prison sentences for journalists and human rights activists, etc. Perhaps the only difference we're seeing since the 1950's is that capital and property ownership in themselves are not seen as anti-state.