You're missing the point. I should have left the anecdote out as it's clearly distracting from what I really wanted to get across. I'm saying that this type of poll is never going to be accurate in an authoritarian regime where citizens know they're being watched.

The anecdote was just an observation and as such should of course be taken with some skepticism.

They didn't miss the point. Yes your anecdote is "meh" because the economy being about to crash doesn't necessarily mean you think your country is going in the wrong direction. But claiming you won't get an honest answer from those people seems just as flawed. It's a pretty general question. If you download the PDF you'll see there were a bunch of more precise questions asked and in some of them China did rank Quite high, like the environment one.

I'd actually argue that just claiming Chinese people are brainwashed would be a better explanation, but as has been said in other comments here, I think it's mostly that they have very different priorities in life. For example, privacy traditionally never has been as an important issue even before the internet and everything, so things like that social credit system just don't appear as crazy to them as to us.

This different priorities argument comes out every time China is discussed. It's tired, simplistic and overused by people who want to feel culturally enlightened and hand wave away the possibility of issues in China. Anyone who's been to China knows they value different things, of course they do, every culture has different values.

Just because someone doesn't particularly care about censorship and surveillance doesn't mean they don't adjust their behavior accordingly though. If you read the PDF China ranked highly on precisely the questions which are officially approved government positions, such as the need for greener tech and better environmental management.

> This different priorities argument comes out every time China is discussed.

So you're trying to invalidate the argument by saying it's mentioned to often? I don't think this is how this works.

> Just because someone doesn't particularly care about censorship and surveillance doesn't mean they don't adjust their behavior accordingly though.

Of course they do, and if you knew Chinese culture you'd clearly see that. The average person trying to make a living might not, but it's the same in the west. Who even cared about the snowden revelations? Certainly not your bus driver. When bringing up the argument how companies like Facebook and google know more about you than your best friend, and government access is just one court order away, how many people counter you with "well I got nothing to hide"? I'd go as far as saying I can at least give the Chinese gvt the props for being upfront about their censorship and surveillance. Before snowden, if you claimed the NSA would be running a huge surveillance program tapping into the country's and world's largest internet exchanges, you got a confused look or were told to put your tinfoil hat back on.

Bottom line is, people in China genuinely think their country is heading in the right direction and the vast majority doesn't care about censorship and surveillance, anyone who's been to China for more than just a couple weeks quick travelling and didn't just spend time with other expats would quickly have learned that. Whether they truly understand the implications of this is an entirely different matter and not even part of the survey. But then again most westerners also don't, they just happen to live in a very free environment and don't realize what they got themselves there, or just don't care (Facebook point from above, voter turnouts).

There’s no way you can look at the social credit shit they have going on and say “uh yeah everything looks fine!”

People in cults also say they’re doing fine...

>People in cults also say they’re doing fine...

Yep, and people in religions say they're doing fine. Some of them probably are doing fine.

I admit that this survey could be biased because of people being afraid of their answers being monitored, and also that people in a country like China are probably somewhat brainwashed by the censorship in the media.

But you have to keep your mind open to the possibility that a human might balance all things in mind and with a calm disinterested choice decide that it's worth giving up privacy and freedom for a more peaceful, orderly, and efficient society. I know those aren't the values of many Americans, but Americans sometimes seem strangely unable to imagine that any human being could possibly have different values to theirs.

I am sure if you ask any current or past tirant, all of them will tell you that they just want a "more peaceful, orderly, and efficient society". Hell, even Genghis Khan would say that

That's the whole point of the survey, as I read it. You can't look at it and say it's fine, but they do. That is important to understand.

As a counterpoint, the US polls the lowest concern in the world for poverty and inequality. Yet there's no way in my mind you can look at inequality in the states and say "yeah, that's fine", but over 4 in 5 Americans polled said exactly that.

Here is an observation that I have made: its always the worst countries that are the most patriotic. Nobody pledges allegiance to the flag in the Netherlands or Norway.

Of course they say that it's fine. You would too if you could be punished by your government for saying otherwise.

How would the US government punish someone who complains about poverty and inequality in the states?

I'm not talking about the Americans, I'm talking about the Chinese saying things are going well, which is what the first part of the comment I'm replying to was referring to. Then they shoehorned Americans into the argument for some reason. I'm saying that I doubt this is just a matter of the Chinese being blind to the issues in China. It's a matter of them bring unwilling to risk speaking out.

> There’s no way you can look at the social credit shit they have going on and say

I am not saying that, people who are born and raised and live there say so (the small sample I speak to a lot). I find it hard to judge as an outsider although it definitely does not look ok.

> There’s no way you can look at the social credit shit they have going on and say “uh yeah everything looks fine!”

Social credit is more than just a tool for oppression. (There's also more than one possible implementation currently in trial, but that applies to all of them.) Because the vast majority of Chinese citizens are not anti-government activists, any such survey will be dominated by those who can finally get a line of credit for their small business. Even a million Uyghurs in internment camps don't make a dent when you're just looking at average satisfaction.

The Uyghurs in prison were not available to participate in study. Nor to comment.

Even after factoring in the worst estimates of those detained in Uyghur reeducation camps, America's incarceration rates are still over 3x China's.

Uyghur population is less than one percent of China's population. Results won't change even if they are able to participate.