The net does route around censorship; why do you think China keeps passing laws to outlaw VPNs that are already illegal? What the net doesn't handle as well are the armies of paid commentators the state uses to inflate it's preferred opinions.

If you really want to know what happened at Tiananmen in 1989, you can find a way to "jump the wall" and find out. It's just that most users aren't actively looking for alternatives to the propaganda statements, so their opinion on the state will be formed by enthusiastic reporting on the "belt and road" program or some other party-led initiative.

I think that's a semantic defense of the original "routes around censorship" concept.

When that statement gained currency it was about being free to finally be outside of the cage that governments and large organizations made.

Today the old guard have built new tools - mass online commenting - to combat the signal itself.

So while the network may well reroute around censorship - the good censors just use the network to change the signal.

I've been on forums long enough now, and helped moderate enough To know the old naive version of free speech doesn't lead to the exchange of ideas.

It leads to the exhchange of whichever mind virus or meme is most capable of building reactions and structures in brains.

So it's definitely the era of subverting people and mass subversive speech/propaganda.

If I can press the right buttons in a person before you reach them with your facts/truth - what will you do?

That's the question I don't have an answer for just yet.

The historical problem was that the state controlled all media. The only message available was propaganda.

Now you can get any information if you want it and the problem is that propaganda still exists and some people still believe it.

It's not perfect but it's better.

Well... the states continue to control the media now don't they?

And with the new tools, in particular the ability to sock puppet and impersonate human behavior in a context poor environment (you can't physical see the person, so can't make out if they are real or not, or body language and other factors we normally have during interaction).

So wouldn't it be fairer to say that they now have stronger control?

Their government's current history is measured in decades. Future historians may yet measure it in decades. Do not be so quick to praise tyranny. It will last until the economy plateaus. Only then will we see if it is resilient.

In china central governance can be measured in milenia

Milenia of failure. None of their dinasty's lasted even 1,000 years and many where very short.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zdHkY3XYHKA

Millenia of continuity- as in there always where citys, there always where villages, there always where fields.

No civil war destroyed all records. No civil war spanning more then three generations. No locked in against foreigners syndrom.

You could say that about Europe, the Middle East, South Asia.

If China does undergo civil and political upheaval I don't think it has the social institutions or mechanisms to suddenly switch to enlightened liberal democracy, history matters, but that doesn't mean the Communist Party is guaranteed political control in perpetuity.

"No civil war destroyed all records"

It got pretty damned close in the Cultural Revolution.