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As a Chinese myself, with many connections to actual Chinese living in and outside of China, I can assure you, the Chinese people aren't "kept in the dark" on s

As a Chinese myself, with many connections to actual Chinese living in and outside of China, I can assure you, the Chinese people aren't "kept in the dark" on such things. Many are quite well-informed about what's going on. Yes there is censorship, but that works quite differently from how many on Hacker News imagine it. > I, and everyone I know wants the Chinese, and all people, to succeed, and enjoy prosperous self-determination. You can't believe how many times I've encountered a phrase similar to this one. But 9 out of 10 times, upon closer examination, they're just empty words at best, blatant lies at worst. If you're shocked by what I said above (i.e. you're thinking "wtf is he blabbering about?"), allow me to explain. Chinese have different primary values. The things they value most are unity and collectivism. "Freedom" as the ultimate virtue is a western ideology. The Chinese have the concept of "too much freedom", i.e. a lack of social responsibility. "$WESTERN_COUNTRY is too free" is a literal phrase that I've heard from Chinese students in Europe several times. I've witnessed with my own eyes early 2020 how people in China largely voluntarily (without coercion) followed government advice on social distancing and wearing masks. Chinese now watch with amazement how people in the west refuse to social distance and refuse to wear masks under the guise of "freedom". You should read this essay by a Chinese national: "How [Chinese] liberals lost of a generation of young Chinese" — https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g Google Translate does a decent enough job (note: phrases like "year 18" mean 2018) This essay says that for a long time time, the CCP was unpopular in China. So much that CCP members don't care mentioning their membership because that might raise eyebrows. There has always been propaganda and censorship, but censorship can merely silence, not change, what people feel in their hearts. The mainstream opinion was that western liberal democracy is better. However there's been a remarkable change the past 10 years or so. Party popularity has been soaring, and people are now increasingly confident that China's own system is better. Why? Because people found out the government actually does a pretty good job. Many people visited foreign countries and found out that western democracies aren't as good as they thought. They've witnessed the anti-corruption campaigns that have been going on since the early 2010s, are bearing fruit. Life in many Chinese cities is becoming increasingly better. A major change occurred in 2020. People thought China would collapse because of COVID, and they thought western democracies would be able to control the virus, because of freedom of information. That's the narrative that Chinese liberals sold. But then they witnessed the opposite: western countries failed to control the virus and the Chinese government did a great job. This completely discredited Chinese liberals. Now, Chinese are more proud of their own government than ever. This increase in satisfaction isn't merely opinion. A 15-year study by Harvard has shown this trend of increasing satisfaction as well. In the last year of the study, 2016, Harvard measure 92% satisfaction rate with the central government. Another study in 2020 by York University measured 98%, and the study concluded that this major bump was caused by China's good handling of COVID. Kishore Mahbubani is an ex-Singapore diplomat, ex-UN Security Council head. He says the following about China: the past 30 years are literally the best out of 3000 years. Chinese have got more freedom and more prosperity than they have ever had in their history. Why wouldn't they be happy about this? Back to your "I support the Chinese people [and only hate their government]". The Chinese people support their government. So where does that leave you? Most people that I tell this story to, will immediately label me a "propagandist", "CCP shill", etc. I hope you're not one of them, because those people are the very embodiment of how they're blatantly lying about "supporting the Chinese people": they only support Chinese people until Chinese people disagree with them.

toss1 5y ago
Very interesting article, thank you We definitely agree about China's handling of the virus compared to western countries and especially the USA. As far as I can tell, the initial CCP reaction was to suppress information about the virus, but when that became impossible, they did (and are still doing as necessary) real proper lockdowns, vaccinations, etc., and they have a much better handle on it. What you observe in the west related to the virus is true disfunction both at a societal and political level. Politically, you have one party that can no longer win and is attempting to implement autocracy, and so is weaponizing disinformation and populism. And you have the usual herd of people who detest any kind of control, think of public health measures as a personal affront, and are happy to spread any bad information that supports their biases. A truly toxic combination. I'm not surprised to find that the 2016 election and subsequent events has soured many on the benefits of western democracy. We have yet to see if that becomes a historical fluke, or if this democracy falls. On censorship, I'm not surprised that it is common knowledge that everyone is being censored - it would probably be hard to go very long without seeing evidence of manipulation, and then wondering about it. So the real question is, how successful is the censorship - do the people commonly know everything that the CCP tries to keep from them, or do they just know that their feed is incomplete, but have no good way of completing it? E.g., do they know the real story of Tibet being overrun, or do they just accept the fragmentary stories about some historical period when a previous dynasty had some authority over that area? Do they know the whole story about the Uhigur concentration camps, or just that there is some reeducation? Do they know how many people died by bulldozers in Tianmen, or just that something bad happened? If they know the whole story and still support the CCP, I'd certainly need to reevaluate. If not, then the support is built upon a very weak basis. And yes, I almost always find it necessary to make a distinction between a people and their government. This is necessary in all but the highest-functioning democracies (and the USA is not one right now - I can tell you very directly that 60% of the USA were extremely distraught at how their govt did not represent them in the 2017-21 administration, and I'm sure that 30% will tell you the same today.)
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  Thank you for being open-minded. Not many are like that today so I applaud that. I agree with a lot of what you say. There are some things that I think deserve a different perspective. What I'm going to say may sound shocking or ridiculous. That's because mainstream reporting on China is so distorted and negative nowadays that anything that deviates from the mainstream narrative sounds ridiculous. Please hear me out. The "information supression" narrative is greatly distorted. I assert that it's not so much "deliberate information suppression", but rather "nobody had any idea what's going on, so it was chaotic and nobody knew what the best course of actions were". You should read this article: "The Fable of the Chinese Whistleblower" https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/the-fable-of-the-chinese-whistleblower https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/the-fable-of-th... You're probably thinking about Li Wenliang, the eye doctor who later died from COVID. The first doctor that discovered that something was wrong, is Zhang Jixian, not Li Wenliang. A few days before Li noticed anything, Zhang started an investigation and escalation process which on December 31 led to escalation to WHO. Li Wenliang heard about Zhang's investigation and also felt that something was wrong, and so he warned friends in a private social media group about "there being SARS in the hospital". Li Wenliang is in fact not a whistleblower: he never intended to tell the public, nor did he (or anyone else for that matter) know what exactly it was. His social media messages then somehow leaked out to the public. Li Wenliang was never arrested or jailed, as the mainstream media claims. The police reprimanded him for "spreading rumors" and he had to sign an NDA. That's it, nothing else happened. He could go back to work immediately after. What happened to Li was not even that consequential in the bigger scheme of things. Because Zhang was never censored or suppressed. Unlike Li, Zhang followed official procedure from the beginning, he kept working, and his work resulted in escalation to the national CDC as well as to the WHO within days. The timeline is very telling: - Zhang started investigating on December 27 - Li posted on social media on December 30 - Zhang's work led to escalation to national CDC and WHO by December 31. By this time, Chinese media already reported about the mysterious virus. Proof: https://twitter.com/Sky_Blue168/status/1245551783167942656 https://twitter.com/Sky_Blue168/status/1245551783167942656 - Li's post leaked around the same day, when Zhang already escalated and when the media already reported - Police reprimanded Li on January 1 Is the police's treatment of Li right? I make no big judgement on this, but I'll add some perspective. Back then not much was known about COVID (transmission rate, fatality, etc). But Li said that it was SARS — a much more deadly disease than COVID. His messages could have caused widespread panic. If panic in itself isn't bad enough, consider this: if people started moving out of Wuhan en masse, then it would have spread COVID to the entire country, making lockdown impossible. Anyway, my opinion on whether the police's treatment of Li is right, isn't that important. Because Li took the case to the judge, and the judge ruled in Li's favor, saying that the police's treatment was inappropriate. The police then apologized. Think about how weird the previous paragraph is, from the perspective of mainstream reporting about China. Isn't China totalitarian state where everything is tightly controlled, where citizen have no freedoms and are at the mercy of the government? How could a judge possibly judge in favor of a citizen and against the police??? This is already proof that China is very different from what many westerners think. But I digress. It's a tragedy that Li later died from COVID, and many Chinese are angry about this fact. The Wuhan government screwed up big time initially, no doubt about it. They were hesitant because they had no idea whether it was really bad, and they'd rather err on the side of believing that everything was fine until there was enough evidence to the contrary. We now know that that was a mistake. But Chinese are also angry about how the situation is misrepresented in western mainstream media. None of the above important facts are reported by western mainstream media — they all go with the simple "Li was jailed and censored" story. I'm among one of those angry people. Many Chinese climb over the firewall, and become shocked at all the bullshit stories that western mainstream media writes about China. Many are then shocked into becoming very pro-China. This is perhaps the biggest irony. Many westerners believe that Chinese become "enlightened" if only they can escape censorship and read the "free flow of information". In fact, for many Chinese, the effect is opposite. Western mainstream media misinformation about China is very big, so big that most westerners don't even know that they're being propagandized themselves. Bad western mainstream media reporting on China is better pro-China propaganda than any actual Chinese propaganda (which is usually pretty bad; you should watch them). FYI, there are also US intelligence reports that corroborate that no Chinese government official had good knowledge about COVID back then.

toss1 5y ago

Very interesting article, thank you We definitely agree about China's handling of the virus compared to western countries and especially the USA. As far as I can tell, the initial CCP reaction was to suppress information about the virus, but when that became impossible, they did (and are still doing as necessary) real proper lockdowns, vaccinations, etc., and they have a much better handle on it. What you observe in the west related to the virus is true disfunction both at a societal and political level. Politically, you have one party that can no longer win and is attempting to implement autocracy, and so is weaponizing disinformation and populism. And you have the usual herd of people who detest any kind of control, think of public health measures as a personal affront, and are happy to spread any bad information that supports their biases. A truly toxic combination. I'm not surprised to find that the 2016 election and subsequent events has soured many on the benefits of western democracy. We have yet to see if that becomes a historical fluke, or if this democracy falls. On censorship, I'm not surprised that it is common knowledge that everyone is being censored - it would probably be hard to go very long without seeing evidence of manipulation, and then wondering about it. So the real question is, how successful is the censorship - do the people commonly know everything that the CCP tries to keep from them, or do they just know that their feed is incomplete, but have no good way of completing it? E.g., do they know the real story of Tibet being overrun, or do they just accept the fragmentary stories about some historical period when a previous dynasty had some authority over that area? Do they know the whole story about the Uhigur concentration camps, or just that there is some reeducation? Do they know how many people died by bulldozers in Tianmen, or just that something bad happened? If they know the whole story and still support the CCP, I'd certainly need to reevaluate. If not, then the support is built upon a very weak basis. And yes, I almost always find it necessary to make a distinction between a people and their government. This is necessary in all but the highest-functioning democracies (and the USA is not one right now - I can tell you very directly that 60% of the USA were extremely distraught at how their govt did not represent them in the 2017-21 administration, and I'm sure that 30% will tell you the same today.)

FooBarWidget 5y ago
Thank you for being open-minded. Not many are like that today so I applaud that. I agree with a lot of what you say. There are some things that I think deserve a different perspective. What I'm going to say may sound shocking or ridiculous. That's because mainstream reporting on China is so distorted and negative nowadays that anything that deviates from the mainstream narrative sounds ridiculous. Please hear me out. The "information supression" narrative is greatly distorted. I assert that it's not so much "deliberate information suppression", but rather "nobody had any idea what's going on, so it was chaotic and nobody knew what the best course of actions were". You should read this article: "The Fable of the Chinese Whistleblower" https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/the-fable-of-the-chinese-whistleblower https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/the-fable-of-th... You're probably thinking about Li Wenliang, the eye doctor who later died from COVID. The first doctor that discovered that something was wrong, is Zhang Jixian, not Li Wenliang. A few days before Li noticed anything, Zhang started an investigation and escalation process which on December 31 led to escalation to WHO. Li Wenliang heard about Zhang's investigation and also felt that something was wrong, and so he warned friends in a private social media group about "there being SARS in the hospital". Li Wenliang is in fact not a whistleblower: he never intended to tell the public, nor did he (or anyone else for that matter) know what exactly it was. His social media messages then somehow leaked out to the public. Li Wenliang was never arrested or jailed, as the mainstream media claims. The police reprimanded him for "spreading rumors" and he had to sign an NDA. That's it, nothing else happened. He could go back to work immediately after. What happened to Li was not even that consequential in the bigger scheme of things. Because Zhang was never censored or suppressed. Unlike Li, Zhang followed official procedure from the beginning, he kept working, and his work resulted in escalation to the national CDC as well as to the WHO within days. The timeline is very telling: - Zhang started investigating on December 27 - Li posted on social media on December 30 - Zhang's work led to escalation to national CDC and WHO by December 31. By this time, Chinese media already reported about the mysterious virus. Proof: https://twitter.com/Sky_Blue168/status/1245551783167942656 https://twitter.com/Sky_Blue168/status/1245551783167942656 - Li's post leaked around the same day, when Zhang already escalated and when the media already reported - Police reprimanded Li on January 1 Is the police's treatment of Li right? I make no big judgement on this, but I'll add some perspective. Back then not much was known about COVID (transmission rate, fatality, etc). But Li said that it was SARS — a much more deadly disease than COVID. His messages could have caused widespread panic. If panic in itself isn't bad enough, consider this: if people started moving out of Wuhan en masse, then it would have spread COVID to the entire country, making lockdown impossible. Anyway, my opinion on whether the police's treatment of Li is right, isn't that important. Because Li took the case to the judge, and the judge ruled in Li's favor, saying that the police's treatment was inappropriate. The police then apologized. Think about how weird the previous paragraph is, from the perspective of mainstream reporting about China. Isn't China totalitarian state where everything is tightly controlled, where citizen have no freedoms and are at the mercy of the government? How could a judge possibly judge in favor of a citizen and against the police??? This is already proof that China is very different from what many westerners think. But I digress. It's a tragedy that Li later died from COVID, and many Chinese are angry about this fact. The Wuhan government screwed up big time initially, no doubt about it. They were hesitant because they had no idea whether it was really bad, and they'd rather err on the side of believing that everything was fine until there was enough evidence to the contrary. We now know that that was a mistake. But Chinese are also angry about how the situation is misrepresented in western mainstream media. None of the above important facts are reported by western mainstream media — they all go with the simple "Li was jailed and censored" story. I'm among one of those angry people. Many Chinese climb over the firewall, and become shocked at all the bullshit stories that western mainstream media writes about China. Many are then shocked into becoming very pro-China. This is perhaps the biggest irony. Many westerners believe that Chinese become "enlightened" if only they can escape censorship and read the "free flow of information". In fact, for many Chinese, the effect is opposite. Western mainstream media misinformation about China is very big, so big that most westerners don't even know that they're being propagandized themselves. Bad western mainstream media reporting on China is better pro-China propaganda than any actual Chinese propaganda (which is usually pretty bad; you should watch them). FYI, there are also US intelligence reports that corroborate that no Chinese government official had good knowledge about COVID back then.