I'll let that speak for itself on "which is worse". I find these cases where modern, educated westerners are afraid to draw the obvious, self evident conclusion sad. You know which is worse, but you actually think someone else who disagrees is worthy of respect. They aren't. They are brainwashed.
Until people wake up from this silly idea that there are infinite interpretations of reality that are all equal, this weak kind of statements will continue.
Roseanne Barr didn't get arrested, imprisoned, or executed. The CCP fears and hates it's own people. I walked through an Ai Wei Wei exhibit 2 years ago. I was awestruck and moved to silence by his amazing work. Along with the aforementioned Nobel Laureate, these are individuals that are gifts to the human race. But their mere opinions threaten the CCP, and the last I heard, Weiwei had his studio burned and had been intermittently imprisoned. An amazing, once in a generation artist..... And you have the audacity to act as if there is an equivalency here.
Wow.
I do personally think that their system is worse in terms of magnitude of consequences, and that ours is worse in that its rules are completely arbitrary and unwritten.
Yes, that's why we have government and law in an attempt to protect you from things like that.
So the fact that some other government or law is intentionally doing that to other people doesn't seem like a rationalizing argument to me.
You cannot with any seriousness compare the de-normalisation of certain opinions, as it happened in the US in the past few decades, with the systematic, brutal, ubiquitous repression and censorship happening in China right now. China is one of the most un-free countries on earth in nearly every measure. Claiming that, eh sure, it is one way to do things and in the west they fire you if you say you hate niggers, so this is two flavours of pretty much the same thing, claiming this is the kind of gaslighting and propaganda that regimes such as China and Russia are trying to push on the West.
Sorry if it is too personal, but if you don't mind, I would like to know if you have actually visited China.
In my opinion, only people who have actual experience living in China are qualified to make such statements.
I went to a good school in Beijing, and after arriving in the US, I realized they were teaching us basically propaganda in our Chinese, History, and Poli Sci classes. They even managed to sneak propaganda into our chemistry class, it’s nuts!
If what happened to pewdiepie isn't "systematic, brutal, ubiquitous repression and censorship", I am not sure what it is. That's effectively what happened to Bi Fujian, after he was caught bad-mouthing Mo Zedong [1].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/08/asia/china-tv-star-curse/inde...
I can, and do, publicly express politically incorrect (and sometimes downright incorrect) opinions in public. That's why Twitter exists. The only thing stopping you is cultural norms (should you choose to accept and fear them).
If you have any kind of serious career in any field this isn't quite true.
You might be lucky enough to work mostly in a like-minded industry, so you're safe, but not otherwise.
The 'wrong opinion' is suicide in some places: journalism, entertainment etc..
Edit: Seems like I have crossed the line on HN. Moderators, feel free to moderate this comment. And apologies for unintentionally starting this long and boring thread.
The point is that we are free to do so without fear of retaliation from the government. People are free to argue with each other and determine for themselves where to draw the lines.
Can you say the same? Of course not. You are a victim of a government that fears it's own people. The fact that you accept this as normal and ok is a consequence of Maoist brainwashing. If a government can control what you say, they by extension control what you think. You're a slave. And you're descendingt your master.
You can run your own site, tattoo is on your face, say it to your friends... As long as you aren't directly inciting violence against others. That's really the only thing that's outright censored (genuine hate speech).
But criticizing the government, laws, society, anything really, is totally legal and in fact constitutionally protected. Just don't hurt or threaten other people.
> Edit: Seems like I have crossed the line on HN. Moderators, feel free to moderate this comment.
Did you get an actual warning or are you trying to make a point about censorship?
May I ask, if it's ok, why do you do this?
If you need evidence, just look at Trump’s tweet feed.
Whereas, do you know about the famine in the great leap forward? And it is widely known?
I was talking to one chinese student who maintained that there was no censorship in china. She was surprised to learn that I, a foreigner, could not make a wechat account for my business. And she is well educated, has travelled abroad, etc
There is a term and a meme for it on Chinese internet. You can Google-translate these pages that explain the term:
> Whereas, do you know about the famine in the great leap forward? And it is widely known?
Yes, the famine is widely known. It's not considered secret at all.
However, it is attributed to the weather, not to the government.
Every culture is going to have taboos and forbidden things. The important questions are who enforces them and why.
> On the other hand, people in US enjoy freedom to exchange ideas on whatever they want, except politically incorrect topics in public.
People in the US enjoy the freedom to exchange almost all ideas in public, including politically incorrect topics. For some extreme examples, look at the "Dark Enlightenment" folks and racists like Richard Spencer. However, many people choose to not use that freedom because they wouldn't enjoy the experience of other people using their freedoms to personally reject them or to tell them that their ideas are stupid, wrong, bad, etc.
That situation is only superficially comparable to Chinese censorship, and that comparison ignores the very important and fundamental differences.
Let me classify politically (potentially sensitive/incorrect) topics into 2 classes: 1) concerning concrete specific claims of history or what is happening or happened, 2) abstract discussion of properties of systems, designing "utopias", expressing general complaints and identifying their root/radix/fundamental causes in the design of society, and concluding radical/fundamental proposals of what should change etc... without naming nor insinuating specific politicians/leaders etc...
Are subjects in the second class also taboo/censored in China? All the examples in these articles about chinese censorship relate to specific individuals or events, and not to ideology/normative/prescriptive statements of what humans may or may not desire/expect/demand from a system.
For example would it be taboo or censored in China to discuss the following idea:
No one created the world/China, so we are all equal co-owners of the world/China. Everybody and every company rents their locations (farmland, buildings, ...) The highest rent bidder becomes the accepted renter. And the sum of all rented is divided equally among all humans/citizens. This could happen in a decentralized fashion (I hate the term blockchain), using OpenStreetMap etc. Nobody is forced to live here or there, so there is freedom, and there is equal rights. If you get a job you can thus rent an above average place, Without a job you can afford an average place and food, and if you rent a small unwanted shack for a few years you have the budget to start your own enterprise, or perhaps party all life long if you are otherwise OK with your shack...
Would this be considered taboo? Parasitism? Irrespective of our religion, no human created the sun (and the edible chemical energy it generates in plants), the earth, ... and all systems worldwide take claim of these resources, in order to make the puny little individual feel guilty about being born and having needs...
or would it be the freedom part that would be considered offensive: that beijing can no longer dictate who does what work and lives where?
EDIT: also consider Joseph Brodsky [0], everybody calls the USSR "communism", but he was accused of parasitism, so I am inclined that the idea of Provably Affordable Average Rent, i.e. we don't even need taxation to insure everyone has the right to roughly the average food, average housing, average minerals etc.. the rent that is spent is redistributed as "basic income", so by definition you get the average rent. I am inclined the idea is taboo in both the West and the East, and would have been in the USSR as well...
This is not true; there are many common instances of this happening, Every Single Day.
That said, even in 'private' Chinese have all sorts of highly relevant information filtered.
Such as the activities, possibly illegal, of their leaders.
My perspective is that there's such an incredible difference in degree as to be a difference in kind. Politically incorrect speech in the US may get you socially ostracized, but not literally jailed. And occasionally some people actually do it (look at any self-proclaimed Nazi or the Westboro Baptist Church). And criticizing the government or governance in the US is not politically incorrect; it's rather in vogue these days.
On the other hand, people in US enjoy freedom to exchange ideas on whatever they want, except politically incorrect topics in public.
So basically in both cases, people are just hiding what they truly know/think in their minds instead of speaking them out.