If anything, the idea that either the Chinese population is unhappy and repressed, or that we can't possibly know what they think, that is an assumption. Or rather, an eternal myth perpetuated by undying stereotypes.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...
> The work began in 2003, and together with a leading private research and polling company in China.
Knowing that studies like this must have government oversight, and that study was performed by a company in China, can you really trust the data of the study?
My point is that we really do not know what is happening in China because we have very little visibility in China. Everything is censored and the CCP tells us what they want us to think.
Now the people could very well be happy, and love the CCP, and not be repressed. But in reality we literally have no idea because anytime anyone speaks out in China its censored.
The Harvard survey was anonymous. Or do you think they're lying and they secretly recorded every participant's personal information so that they can punish them to answering wrong? If so then why did 4% answer unsatisfied? Did they have a death wish? Have all those people been jailed? And why was satisfaction rate for lower governments much lower? Won't those people get into trouble with e.g. the local police department or the mayor?
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/chinese-police-squ...
Censorship happens on a daily basis.
I guess all the leaked photos and videos of the Shanghai lockdown that were censored and removed from Weibo never happened tho. The animal abuse. Staged food supply videos. Suicides. Forced removal. Covid camps partially built with no beds or showers. Office buildings converted to covid bed. People stuck in offices and restaurants during lockdown, delivery drivers who refuse to enter Shanghai for fear of being forced to stay once they deliver supplies. I guess because it was all removed from WeChat and Weibo it all never happened.
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Of course some people have to be dissatisfied. They can’t have a report that states 100% love for the CCP. You make it sound like I think the CCP is stupid.
The survey being anonymous doesn’t change the fact that company doing the survey is beholden to the government. The survey cannot occur without government oversight. And it’s done by a Chinese company. That means every piece of information goes over the desk of The Central government before it ends up at the ash center.
The Central government doesn’t care about the lower government. The lower governments get thrown under the bus all the time. It’s about protecting The Central government.
Anyway it’s clear that you’re pro CCP so there’s no point in debating this with you because you’re just going to use any excuse possible to justify the actions of the CCP.
You miss the point regarding censorship and you focus too much on it. I am saying that protests, censorship and the changing of policies in response to protests (despite censorship) are all real at the same time.
So no of course those events did not factually disappear because there was censorship. What I am protesting is your notion that the entire population is being fooled and has no idea what's going on and that there aren't any societal discussions about government and policies. This is false. If you check for example Whats On Weibo then you can see that there are very often very active discussions and that people are aware of government screwups. Even state media has reported on what went wrong in Shanghai.
I am also protesting the notion that the existance of propaganda must mean everything is fake. No. Yes maybe a few staged food supply videos exist, but food supply is very real! My family and acquaintances have had them. Propaganda is more like marketing than some brainwash scheme with nothing real behind.
You then proceed to make some big assumptions about how government works. No, not everything goes through central! Do you really think that the central government has time to micromanage the entire country? Chinese governance is very decentralized.
Businessmen who have had contact with the central government often think that just because they got approval from the foreign minister that everything is then taken care of, because of their own misconception that everything in China is top-down tightly cobtrolled. They then get confused by why nothing happens. The foreign minister then gets confused about why the businessmen don't talk to local governments directly, because the minister doesn't control those things.
Likewise you seem to have some implicit assumption that any censored Weibo posts have been reviewed by government. No: government sets some rules on what's not allowed and then platforms have to do the censorship themselves. Censorship does not equal direct government disapproval, and more importantly censorship has little relationship with whether government addresses grievances or not. Stuff can be censored and policies can be changed to address grievances, all at the same time.
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Again, I am not "pro CCP". I am pro-"treat China fairly".
If CCP screws up then they deserve to lose legitimacy. You mention e.g. badly built quarantine camps as if I would be okay with that. Of course not. Of course beating people is not okay, but I protest the notion that beatings happen on a regular and systematic basis as opposed to incidentally. Here in the Netherlands police beatings also happen but nobody uses individual cases to paint the larger narrative that the Dutch police beats all protesters.
When one makes assumptions about China based on stereotypes and downplaying what many Chinese people say, that is not being fair. When anti-CCP sentiment is being hijacked to attack Chinese people (we're in a cold war after all), especially when the reasoning was flimsy in the first place, that's not being fair.
For ** sake, today's China is literally the best 30 years out of 3000 years. Can't westerners be happy for us for a change instead of continuing to perpetuate the stereotype that we're all oppressed? China is not USSR. China is not North Korea.
As long as there is more food and toys than before, people stand by the regime that happened to be in power at the time and took the credit. People forgive lies, privacy and freedom violations, obvious policy failures and everything else.
People don't "forgive" policy failures, they just tend to have a more nuanced understanding of the whole than the west does. For example Mao is considered good in some ways, bad in others, whereas we in the west are fixated with painting a figure as wholly good or wholly bad, nuance be damned.
On top of it all, the west has an implicit assumption that China will automatically become great if only we kick out all the bad guys (= CCP). No, things aren't that simple, just look at Chinese history.
I got a similar vibe from talking to some Russians. Freedom is not important, it’s warranted that it’s limited, we’re not the West, we value it less. I suspect it’s Stockholm syndrome, a consequence of a self-preservation instinct.
Many Westerners don’t approve of their governments—their countries have comparatively prospered for a while, and now it feels like the growth has stopped. By contrast, in some other countries the generational memory of significant hardship and poverty is very fresh, and quality of life is still on an upward trend from historical lows.
Of course people in these countries value things like safety, order, health very highly.
Unfortunately, in some of these countries—this includes both Russia and China—the upward trend coincided with oppressive governments. This led to citizens rejecting values like freedom of action, thought and speech (which is a requirement for individual moral growth—if people live under strict rules imposed by someone else, they don’t have to form any rules of their own), considering such values “foreign” and “not suited to their culture”.
> China will automatically become great if only we kick out all the bad guys (= CCP)
I would never say it’s so simple. There would be a downturn due to uncertainty, and the unfamiliar degree of individual freedom combined with suffering moral values/inexperience in making choices (an outcome of oppression and surveillance) would certainly cause a dip in quality of life.
However, I believe a society where everyone has access to information, a country that treats its own citizens as adults and trusts them, a country where policies are not set by a few self-selected humans with the first-order goal to maintain own power (humans are fallible, and power corrupts), would after growing pains prosper much more.
Anyway, my answer to your post has two components: a philosophical one and a practical one.
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Philosophical:
To call it Stockholm Syndrome is an overly simplistic reading which ignores thousands of years of Chinese philosophy, tradition and history, which have had a profound impact on today's attitude. Chinese philosophy and paradigms are very different from western ones and they do not easily map to each other.
A couple of things I forgot to mention in the list are sovereignty and responsibility.
Sovereignty is valued not only by China, but by many global south countries because of experience with imperialism. For many, sovereignty ranks higher than "freedom": yes maybe there are freedom problems, but in the end they're our problems, and we'd rather own these problems than having outsiders interfere, supposedly for our own good. This actually ties a lot into the practical component, so I'll get back to this point later.
Responsibility is a huge philosophical component that's nearly absent in western philosophy. The basic ethical concept of Chinese social political relations is the fulfilment of the duty to one’s neighbour, rather than the claiming of rights. It has been this way for thousands of years. This does not mean rights haven't existed: they have existed in a more philosophical form rather than legal form. For example you keep calling the Chinese govt "oppressive", but traditional Chinese thought says that it's the ruler's responsibility to care for the well-being of its people, and that the people have the right to revolt if the ruler fails to do so. This is in fact exactly what have happened time and again in thousands of years. The modern ruling class understands this as well: they are incentivized to do a good job because ultimately the stability of the nation depends on it, even though it is not codified in formal texts and legal systems as westerners would approach it.
Responsibility is also considered a two-way street. Rulers work in the interest of people, but people also have obligations towards rulers (beyond basic things such as paying taxes). Western societies focus on rights, on what the state isn't allowed to do to individuals, but classical Chinese philosophy focuses on obligations that people have towards each other, including the rulers but also towards neighbors, family, etc.
For a more in-depth discussion about this, see this writeup by philosopher Lo Chung Shu: https://en.unesco.org/courier/2018-4/confucian-approach-huma...
Furthermore, China is a collectivist society. China emphasizes collective rights more than individual rights. This means that individual rights are sometimes violated if that's what's necessary for the greater good, a practice that western societies would frown upon.
TLDR: China is a society built more on responsibility rather than freedom. One must not underestimate how different Chinese paradigms are from western ones. I suspect I'm further along the Dunning-Kruger effect line than you. It's easy for people to draw early (and wrong) conclusions about China based on superficial knowledge about China. But the more I learn about China and the impact of classical Chinese thought, the more I think "western understanding of China is even more wrong than I thought" and "we know absolutely nothing" (https://fourweekmba.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/dunning-k...)
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Practical:
Having western ideals of freedom etc is fine. Unfortunately, in the context of foreign relations, such ideals deviate so far from practice that they can even be actively harmful.
The west has preached freedom and democracy for more than a century. But in the 19th and 20th century they invaded China while preaching these values. The birth of the CCP was directly triggered by the fact that the "free" US gave Tsingdao — a German colony — to the Japanese rather than back to China, in direct violation to earlier promises. These sort of scandals taught China that sovereignty matters more than anything: foreigners don't have our best interest at heart no matter what they say; and there is no freedom, no equality, no prosperity, until we have sovereignty.
These sorts of things aren't just relics of the past. The west still likes to sanction or invade all sorts of countries based on flimsy evidence: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and more. Many European countries gave dirty looks to the US for its invasion of Iraq, but none of them sanctioned the US for it, while happily joining Syria and Afghanistan a few years later. All while preaching to value democracy and freedom. Nobody seems to care about Yemen. Only when the war gets too close to home, do people suddenly care.
This does not mean the ideal of freedom is wrong. But how can one expect other societies to take these ideals seriously when the teachers violate them all the time? In an ideal world, the west practices what they preach.
In the past, I've often looked at western reports about China taking "authoritarian measures" on this and that, not being free enough, not allowing western activists in to promote freedom, etc. I used to think: "why does it look like the Chinese govt is wary of foreign activism? We don't live in the imperialist 19th century anymore, the world is at peace and the west has good intentions nowadays".
Then I learned about CIA color revolutions, how the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, what the US did to China in the aftermath of WW2, NATO's recent involvements in wars, etc. And then I think "aw crap, the Chinese govt was right all along".
Until recently, I thought the EU was more sincere about human rights than the US (NATO involvement in wars notwithstanding). And then I read this tweet by Ursula von der Leyden, who calls Abe Shinzo a "great democrat". https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1545339439458750464 Uh, what? Abe Shinzo has a history of denying Imperial Japan war crimes, and is directly mentored by his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, the "butcher of Manchuria". That's a bit like Merkel having Henrich Himmler as mentor, and Merkel visiting Hitler's grave every year while calling him a war hero.
I don't personally care that much about Imperial Japan war crimes (though my grandmother would, because she fled Japanese butchers while she was a child), and I get that Japan is an ally, and I get that dead people deserve some level of respect. But still: EU, you don't have to pretend that a man with such a problematic past is an entirely wholesome person with no stains. Chinese and Korean social media are on fire for the past few days because they both think "good riddance".
With the EU apparently only having "values" when it suits them geopolitically, happily looking the other way when confronted with allies' crimes, how can one take these values seriously?
I base this on discussions I had with people from both countries (numerous in real life, as well as some online, including here), there are enough anecdata points for me to form this opinion.
Most likely you were just in a community with people who are unhappy about China. I live in Netherlands and most Chinese here (specifically: those who came from the mainland) are supportive of China. Those from Taiwan or who were born here are a mixed bag.
I don't think I've met a person in Singapore who wasn't supportive of China. They all love their country, and why wouldn't they, beautiful country, people, food, culture. But what I said was they don't like the CCP. You can hate the CCP and still love China.
But that notion doesn't go very far, because a large part of that notion is detached from the reality of how that notion is abused. 9 out of 10 people that I've met spout the "love Chinese people hate CCP" line, only to continue with spouting borderline racist stuff like "Chinese can't innovate/steal our tech" or "why do so many diseases come from China". Furthermore, "hating the CCP" in practice translates to actions that harm not only the CCP, but also the Chinese people as a whole, and most people have absolutely no problem with that. Chinese people are considered a sacrificial pawn who should gladly offer themselves up for the noble fight against the CCP. People slap the "CCP spy" label on Chinese scientists, engineers, students, etc, completely without proof, and voila — you now have a justification to attack Chinese people behind a fascade of "standing up against the CCP".
The pro-China people that I know here get angry whenever they see another article that claims that China is performing $HUMAN_RIGHTS_ABUSE. They don't care about CCP specifically, but many such allegations merely pay lip service to the notion that they're only attacking the CCP. If you look past the fascade then in practice they're attacking China and the Chinese people, because such accusations are used to justify sanctions against China, Chinese companies, entire Chinese provinces, depriving normal people of their livelihood, all with either very little proof or very misrepresented facts.
There is popular support for the government (that means, people are not looking to reelect or overthrow the government) because people think the government did good (a.k.a. did not screw up enough). But the government may have, in fact, screwed up; it just successfully manipulated popular opinion and benefitted from economic context.
It has also screwed up in the most fundamental way, by preventing people from peacefully replacing it (meaning the first key objective of any of its policies is to ensure it maintains power).
You fail to recognize your life may have improved despite the policies, not necessarily thanks to them; meanwhile, those policies may have degraded individual moral values such that the only thing keeping the country from descending into chaos is total surveillance, all the while benefiting the ruling elites.
As for the rest: what is the point of what you say? "May" have successfully brainwashed people. "May" have had nothing to do with successes. Even if those are true, what do they have to do with the point of whether Chinese people fear speaking up? Their truthiness don't negate the fact that anti-CCP sentiment is being actively hijacked to attack China and its people, and few people seem to care despite putting up a fascade of "loving the Chinese people and only hating the CCP". That is one of my major grievances about China discussions.
Same point as it was in my original comment. If X was in charge during a good trend, it’s a human fallacy to post-rationalise the past as if the good trend was happening because of X being in charge (and even turn X’s downsides into X’s benefits), even if the good trend happened despite X being in charge. That’s how many Xs stay in charge while being objectively unworthy of it; especially those Xs that can use a combination of force and politics play.
Regarding “loving Chinese people and hating the CCP”, I am disinclined to blame the Chinese people, much like I am disinclined to blame the Russian people—they are bombarded with misinformation from young age and are given limited individual choice. (Also one of the reasons I’m inclined to blame the respective regimes.)
But in this case, it's easily refuted by looking at data. India and the PRC started at roughly the same time, same population and same GDP. (Actually PRC had it worse than India, GDP- and infrastructure-wise.) Now compare them today. Chinese are not inherently smarter than Indians.
Heck, look at emerging democracies in the past 30 years. Which ones have grown like China and have been able to give their citizen good lives? Not one. If you look at South Korea and Taiwan, then you see that most of their growth and development came during a time when they heavily relied on industrial policy — the same strategy that China today employs.
Thus, there is a strong case to be made that China's success is for a significant part contributed by its government. To believe otherwise and ignore the data is to just cling onto the hope that the CCP should not have any legitimacy.
Regarding blaming Chinese people for being "bombarded with misinformation": so say so is to remove Chinese people's agency. We aren't mindless drones, we can have a legitimate opinion that's different from yours, for legitimate reasons.
Furthermore, there is a power problem here. If you say that you blame the Chinese people, then you leave people like me no choice but to become more supportive of the CCP. Because foreign actors won't act in the best interest of China: they claim they do ("freedom", "democracy", etc) but at the end of the day we empirically observe that the actions that foreign governments take, harm not only the Chinese state and the CCP, but also regular Chinese people. Despite all its faults, CCP is the only party that actually stands up for the interests of the Chinese civilization.
Disclaimer: I make no comments about Russia. Just China.
What you are saying is basically the same as saying war in Ukraine and oligarch money laundering merely justifies sanctions against ordinary Russians, Russian companies, depriving normal people of their livelihood, blahblah.
No. They are kleptocrats, both Xi and Putin, using violence against own people and posing tangible threats to free societies elsewhere. If you want to alleviate those threats yea unfortunately ordinary people will get affected, no way around it.
They can revolt but they won't. I know first hand how many people in Russia support Putin because they enjoy a nice lower-middle-class lifestyle now, incomparable to miserable lives of their parents. They thank Putin for that obviously.
What's important to remember is that it does not make them bad people, same as supporting Xi doesn't make Chinese bad people. The support is a consequence of propaganda, lack of education and so on, which is not individual's fault. If they are hurt economically, it's not because they are the ones targeted.
So not commenting on Putin. But saying that Xi is a kleptocrat is 1) an opinion, and 2) doesn't match the reality of many opinions in China and why people have that opinion, and 3) doesn't match the actual facts of how he came to power or what he does on a daily basis (as opposed to MSM representation of his persona). That is not helpful for a fact-based discussion.
If the Chinese govt screws up badly enough, there will be a revolt. It has happened tons of times in the past 2000 years and it will happen again.
You attribute Chinese opinion too much to propaganda. Many who cross over the firewall are disillusioned: they assumed that China is full of propaganda and that the west is a beacon of truth and free speech, only to find out that western media lies a lot about China and that Chinese media has been more truthful than they thought. Chinese opinion about things are also far more nuanced than you give it credit for.
Don't just copy-paste your assumptions about Russia onto China. China deserves to be analyzed on its own, using non-western paradigms.
We /assume/ they have popular support, in reality we don't really know.