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> It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universal

> It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? In general people don't agree with it. However, for a lot of people, it's not actually on their radar. The reality is most people in China are so engrossed in their work and day-to-day life that censorship isn't really actually an issue for them, and taking political action is not something that an average citizen would do considering the grave risks to your career. Also, it's worth noting that most citizens prioritize safety over free speech. If changes in the law indirectly mean that there will be riots on the streets, most citizens would rather have whatever it takes to have no riots. That isn't to say people agree with censorship, but for what it's worth, people are happy that you can more or less walk around anywhere in China without much fear of your personal safety. Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin.

Fauntleroy 6y ago
You're really conflating a couple other issues in with the original idea here.
throwaway8581 6y ago
That attitude is catching on in America. The censorship and consent apparatus is more privatized and not officially backed by state power (but see threats from politicians to tech companies to remove “disinformation” “or else”) but most people just put their heads down and toe the “official” line. You might even put on a little show about how woke you are to prove your loyalty. Such acting is common in all regimes. This happens in every society. There is an official ideology and whether through central direction or self-organizing systems, that ideology is enforced. Occasional periods of lighter repression (when the official ideology is something like classical or Rawlsian liberalism) end up just being openings for more assertive ideologies to take control. America recently exited such a period.
- int_19h 6y ago
  What point would you define as the beginning of that period that we're supposedly exiting?
  - throwaway8581 6y ago
    The 50s and 60s. It was in full swing by the 70s. If I had to point to one iconic development, it would be the Warren court, and in particular its free speech cases. Those marked the decisive defeat of traditional conservatism, which never again was a powerful force in national politics (unless you count some elements of the Trump coalition) despite occasional lip service and token concessions by Reagan and Bush 43. A half-century later, Rawlsian liberalism has fallen to wokeism, which has become powerful enough to overcome the cultural and procedural obstacles to establishing itself as the new ruling ideology, taking out the liberal framework that enabled its rise, and beginning its own campaign of repression. Though you could say it was the American Revolution that set things off and that it merely took America 250 years to go through the progression that the French Revolution traveled in a mere 5 years.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      I feel like this overemphasizes the legal angle, while ignoring other aspects of censorship. It's true that the Warren court significantly liberalized things by setting very narrow constitutional boundaries in Brandenburg v. Ohio etc. But there's censorship by law, and then there's censorship by public opinion. When you complain about "wokeism", it's mostly the latter - but there was plenty of that in the 70s as well, only with different opinions considered unacceptable to the point where people could get fired for them, or have trouble finding a platform to address large audiences.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway8581 6y ago
        I don’t agree. You are suggesting that liberalism was just a mirage for a different underlying ideology. But I don’t think that’s what was happening. People really believed in liberalism. Live and let live is not a very profound philosophy—nor a very self-preserving one, which is why it fell so quickly—but it was real.
hong_kong 6y ago
Any assertion of what 'most' Chinese citizens want is unprovable given the lack of any representation on any level of society. Plenty of China watchers are happy to claim that Chinese people all support their government - and yet the government is curiously unwilling to test this assertion in democratic polls. Tells you something about how strongly held these beliefs are (hint: not very).
- xtian 6y ago
  Do you think the results of the Harvard Kennedy School's study were fraudulent? https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resilience-surveying-chinese-public-opinion-through-time https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...
- ehmmmmmmmm 6y ago
  A big fallacy is that the "Chinese government" is this big monolithic entity. It's not. Supporting the Chinese government does not equal support censorship. Do you support the National Park Service? Do you support the Federal Aviation Administration? Do you support the USDA? Do you support Donald Trump? Do you support the FDA? Do you support NIST? Do you support Joe Biden? Do you support NIH? Do you support public schools? Do you support Guantanamo Bay? Do you support the Environmental Protection Agency? The Chinese government, although not democratically elected, is similar in one aspect, in that it is a very multi-faceted set of institutions that do a whole lot of things well that the majority of people support, and a few things that the majority of people secretly do not support but are unlikely to be vocal about.
frequentnapper 6y ago
>Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong Good to know. This means that if the American govt decides to just topple the chinese leadership and take over, submissive Chinese citizens such as yourselves will carry on as usual instead of making trouble.
- dang 6y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, and please don't do nationalistic flamewar either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like your account is (or is on the cusp of) using HN primarily for political/ideological/national battle. That's the line at which we ban accounts. Please review the guidelines and stick to using the site as intended. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
themacguffinman 6y ago
Sure, it's the peace of submission, the peace of silence, the worst kind of peace that hardly reflects any level of "happiness". It's quite disingenuous to compare Shenzhen to Hong Kong's molotovs. What's left unspoken, of course, is the fear of thinking, saying, and doing anything that disagrees with or simply embarrasses the state (like the Chinese doctor who alerted his community about this new virus that was spreading out of control); They won't throw molotovs at you, they will erase you and possibly your entire ethnic group. That's a level of extreme happiness that formerly free Hong Kong wasn't able to achieve. It's important that the West never fall this low. This is the final form of low-trust politics that thrives when democratic government repeatedly fails in its duties. Eventually, the population completely loses trust in the ability of free society to collectively achieve results (let alone operate with integrity) so it starts picking & tolerating corrupt authoritarians as long as they produce results. China will likely continue to tolerate the CCP's total lack of integrity as long as the trains run on time. This is also why economic sanctions can be effective against authoritarian regimes.
- bordercases 6y ago
  Does happiness mean harmony or does happiness mean expression? Therein lies the philosophical difference between the US and China.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    How harmonious is a society if that harmony is forced upon it?
    - bordercases 6y ago
      Harmonious! FWIW China also has a culture that appreciates subterfuge/hidden efforts as a part of what it means to live skillfully in society. So the dissonance might not be as strong if you are high-trust on the surface, yet low-trust in the back.
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    Harmony for whom? Dead & tortured dissidents, religious citizens, people who express truth to help their community against dangerous state sanctioned lies? The citizens for whom dissent is fatal and whose every communication & information source is controlled; those are the people who are proclaiming that they live in harmony? This is philosophically absurd, like a murderer pleading innocence by killing everyone who dares accuse him. What immense harmony must have fallen in the court!
frogcoder 6y ago
> most citizens would rather have whatever it takes to have no riots Isn't it a brilliant tactic deployed by the regime, making people think that freedom of speech equals riot on the street. Like the USA is burning in hell with all the black live matters protest and the capitol protest/riot?
cataphract 6y ago
> Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin. In a related matter, I wonder why mainland China came down so aggressively on Hong Kong's autonomy. Was the legal system in Hong Kong so lax that it was impossible to punish severely the main organizers of the illegal demonstrations? Why was the Hong Kong government so incapable of stopping the violence, but the mainland intervention so effective? I'm surprised China chose to abandon its international commitments and make it much harder to get Taiwan to agree with a similar or even more favorable arrangement.

Fauntleroy 6y ago

You're really conflating a couple other issues in with the original idea here.

throwaway8581 6y ago

That attitude is catching on in America. The censorship and consent apparatus is more privatized and not officially backed by state power (but see threats from politicians to tech companies to remove “disinformation” “or else”) but most people just put their heads down and toe the “official” line. You might even put on a little show about how woke you are to prove your loyalty. Such acting is common in all regimes. This happens in every society. There is an official ideology and whether through central direction or self-organizing systems, that ideology is enforced. Occasional periods of lighter repression (when the official ideology is something like classical or Rawlsian liberalism) end up just being openings for more assertive ideologies to take control. America recently exited such a period.

int_19h 6y ago
What point would you define as the beginning of that period that we're supposedly exiting?
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  The 50s and 60s. It was in full swing by the 70s. If I had to point to one iconic development, it would be the Warren court, and in particular its free speech cases. Those marked the decisive defeat of traditional conservatism, which never again was a powerful force in national politics (unless you count some elements of the Trump coalition) despite occasional lip service and token concessions by Reagan and Bush 43. A half-century later, Rawlsian liberalism has fallen to wokeism, which has become powerful enough to overcome the cultural and procedural obstacles to establishing itself as the new ruling ideology, taking out the liberal framework that enabled its rise, and beginning its own campaign of repression. Though you could say it was the American Revolution that set things off and that it merely took America 250 years to go through the progression that the French Revolution traveled in a mere 5 years.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    I feel like this overemphasizes the legal angle, while ignoring other aspects of censorship. It's true that the Warren court significantly liberalized things by setting very narrow constitutional boundaries in Brandenburg v. Ohio etc. But there's censorship by law, and then there's censorship by public opinion. When you complain about "wokeism", it's mostly the latter - but there was plenty of that in the 70s as well, only with different opinions considered unacceptable to the point where people could get fired for them, or have trouble finding a platform to address large audiences.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway8581 6y ago
      I don’t agree. You are suggesting that liberalism was just a mirage for a different underlying ideology. But I don’t think that’s what was happening. People really believed in liberalism. Live and let live is not a very profound philosophy—nor a very self-preserving one, which is why it fell so quickly—but it was real.

hong_kong 6y ago

Any assertion of what 'most' Chinese citizens want is unprovable given the lack of any representation on any level of society. Plenty of China watchers are happy to claim that Chinese people all support their government - and yet the government is curiously unwilling to test this assertion in democratic polls. Tells you something about how strongly held these beliefs are (hint: not very).

xtian 6y ago
Do you think the results of the Harvard Kennedy School's study were fraudulent? https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resilience-surveying-chinese-public-opinion-through-time https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...
ehmmmmmmmm 6y ago
A big fallacy is that the "Chinese government" is this big monolithic entity. It's not. Supporting the Chinese government does not equal support censorship. Do you support the National Park Service? Do you support the Federal Aviation Administration? Do you support the USDA? Do you support Donald Trump? Do you support the FDA? Do you support NIST? Do you support Joe Biden? Do you support NIH? Do you support public schools? Do you support Guantanamo Bay? Do you support the Environmental Protection Agency? The Chinese government, although not democratically elected, is similar in one aspect, in that it is a very multi-faceted set of institutions that do a whole lot of things well that the majority of people support, and a few things that the majority of people secretly do not support but are unlikely to be vocal about.

frequentnapper 6y ago

>Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong Good to know. This means that if the American govt decides to just topple the chinese leadership and take over, submissive Chinese citizens such as yourselves will carry on as usual instead of making trouble.

dang 6y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here, and please don't do nationalistic flamewar either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like your account is (or is on the cusp of) using HN primarily for political/ideological/national battle. That's the line at which we ban accounts. Please review the guidelines and stick to using the site as intended. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

themacguffinman 6y ago

Sure, it's the peace of submission, the peace of silence, the worst kind of peace that hardly reflects any level of "happiness". It's quite disingenuous to compare Shenzhen to Hong Kong's molotovs. What's left unspoken, of course, is the fear of thinking, saying, and doing anything that disagrees with or simply embarrasses the state (like the Chinese doctor who alerted his community about this new virus that was spreading out of control); They won't throw molotovs at you, they will erase you and possibly your entire ethnic group. That's a level of extreme happiness that formerly free Hong Kong wasn't able to achieve. It's important that the West never fall this low. This is the final form of low-trust politics that thrives when democratic government repeatedly fails in its duties. Eventually, the population completely loses trust in the ability of free society to collectively achieve results (let alone operate with integrity) so it starts picking & tolerating corrupt authoritarians as long as they produce results. China will likely continue to tolerate the CCP's total lack of integrity as long as the trains run on time. This is also why economic sanctions can be effective against authoritarian regimes.

bordercases 6y ago
Does happiness mean harmony or does happiness mean expression? Therein lies the philosophical difference between the US and China.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  How harmonious is a society if that harmony is forced upon it?
  - bordercases 6y ago
    Harmonious! FWIW China also has a culture that appreciates subterfuge/hidden efforts as a part of what it means to live skillfully in society. So the dissonance might not be as strong if you are high-trust on the surface, yet low-trust in the back.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  Harmony for whom? Dead & tortured dissidents, religious citizens, people who express truth to help their community against dangerous state sanctioned lies? The citizens for whom dissent is fatal and whose every communication & information source is controlled; those are the people who are proclaiming that they live in harmony? This is philosophically absurd, like a murderer pleading innocence by killing everyone who dares accuse him. What immense harmony must have fallen in the court!

frogcoder 6y ago

> most citizens would rather have whatever it takes to have no riots Isn't it a brilliant tactic deployed by the regime, making people think that freedom of speech equals riot on the street. Like the USA is burning in hell with all the black live matters protest and the capitol protest/riot?

cataphract 6y ago

> Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin. In a related matter, I wonder why mainland China came down so aggressively on Hong Kong's autonomy. Was the legal system in Hong Kong so lax that it was impossible to punish severely the main organizers of the illegal demonstrations? Why was the Hong Kong government so incapable of stopping the violence, but the mainland intervention so effective? I'm surprised China chose to abandon its international commitments and make it much harder to get Taiwan to agree with a similar or even more favorable arrangement.