WeChat uses one censorship policy in China and another internationally
citizenlab.org
citizenlab.org
Recently I tried to engage with my oldest Chinese friend about the Sesame Credit system that I think will gradually be adapted to compel more and more obedience. It was like water off a duck's back. As far as she was concerned, the government's description was the end of the story.
Anecdote, of course, but I can't do a real survey. My feeling is that I could try all day (speaking very frankly on WeChat) to get Chinese friends to at least understand my concerns and I'd just get blown off 20 different ways. I hope I'm wrong, that it's just my limited experience that makes the situation seem gloomier than it really is.
This is what people don't get about China. "Ooohh yeah, China will take the U.S down a few pegs, go China!" this is a very popular sentiment on reddit's /r/Worldnews or with any cynical millennial on reddit. They eat up all the blatant propaganda that comes out of either Xinhua or the People's Daily (China's very own English language, government-owned & ran propagand... erm, I mean "news agency"). China literally, not figuratively, brainwashes its citizens. And they do so from a very early age: Japan is evil!. I get a kick when I hear people say how China hates Japan and Japan hates China. I'm sorry, but relatively speaking, it's a one-sided hatred -- just go search youtube for people asking random Japanese people down the street what they think of China. There are dozens and dozens of them, all by different youtubers and done at various times over the last 10 years.
What they don't understand is that if China replaced or supplanted the U.S as the world's sole superpower, things would be a whole hell of a lot different than they are now. China would most definitely exert its influence in a way that the world has yet to see. The U.S is far from perfect but they are, by *orders of magnitude, the lesser evils. They're simply benign by comparison. Under Chinese rule, it would most certainly not be benign and many of our freedoms would erode the more powerful China got. Until one day we wake up to a global "great firewall". Sounds like an exaggeration but as someone who has lived in China, I assure you, it's not.
Here is the data: http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/07/18/americas-global-image-re...
Only 5% Japanese like China.Its strange,because China never invaded Japan.
No, the narrative is consistently "Japanese imperialism and/or Militarism is evil, there has nothing to do with Japanese people". Of cuz, there is leaked abstraction. Just like many US people hate Chinese, while US propaganda always clearly only mark CCP as the evil. No doubt many people hate Japan as a whole, and think they are evil.
This in part because: 1. CCP claimed to represent people as a whole, and distinguish itself from other political parties, as the unique property of CCP. By that reasoning, Japanese political parties must not represent the whole people, so everywhere it uses strictly words to not mention anything about Japan as a whole.
Unfortunately, as we know it, majority of Japanese people did support Japan's invasion in China during WW2. And this fact is never mentioned in any text books. For obvious reasons to allow government to work with Japanese government, otherwise, angry people will stump the CCP because it works with an 'evil' nation that killed 50MM+ Chinese civilians and military personnels.
2. For many economic reasons, China needs to work with Japan. So the narrative clearly intends to portrait an innocent picture of Japanese people, so the government can work with Japanese cooperations.
I am Chinese and accept the formal education until my Master's.
Except, Japan hasn't engaged in any form of imperialism in 70+ years. They are a completely pacifist country, not just in law but in actions. The same cannot be said about China who are now building military bases in Africa. They are also incredibly aggressive in the region.
> majority of Japanese people did support Japan's invasion in China during WW2. And this fact is never mentioned in any text books
You've fallen victim to propaganda I'm afraid. They most certainly do mention it in textbooks. Not just that, but they talk about Japan's atrocities like Nanking. Stanford University did a study which proved Japan's textbooks are more accurate than China's, South Koreas and Americas, less nationalistic too. See for yourself: http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/
> Just look at places where that's currently happening, such as Ethiopia or Zambia.
Are you using that as a positive example? You need to do your research kid, China's imperialism in Africa is not turning out to be a good thing for the African countries they're working in. Hell, Kenyan workers were protesting the Chinese http://qz.com/749177/kenyan-rail-workers-are-protesting-agai...
Oh yeah, and Zambia? http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36341367/china-denies-...
Sounds like everything is peachy.... /s
Who is China going to rule and erode their freedoms in your hypothetical?
I'm not sure I'd get much further talking with my friends in the UK about the Investigatory Powers Bill.
I took them to a nice restaurant after a day of meetings. I said something about the censorship being bad after they said they couldn't access some websites I mentioned.
They answered a nervous "It's ok" and an awkward silence followed. I sensed they had a lot of things to say about that but even 6000km+ away from China, they still didn't feel comfortable voicing any concerns.
Also, just about every taxi I took, the taxi driver would complain about the government.
Maybe your colleagues just didn't want to talk about it in a professional setting?
> We first draw reader’s attention to the upper left quadrant of the graph. In some sense, this quadrant can be called “liars” quadrant, as the divergence between expressed and actual support are greater for these groups than the sample average (in other words, more intense falsification). Four groups are located in this quadrant: (1) wealthy individuals (the top 20% of the local income percentile),16 (2) frequent internet users,17 (3) those with college-level education or above,18 and (4) state sector employees. Memberships in the first three categories are highly correlated.19 Together, they represent a segment of the Chinese society that is intelligent, informed and with relatively high socioeconomic status. Based on our conjectures of information access, it is not entirely surprising that these groups hold the greatest distrust in the official anticorruption narrative. Individuals with higher levels of education are typically more capable of critically processing information from the political authority. Frequent internet users could easily get access to overseas websites that discussed the power-struggle aspect of the purge. The economically better-off class probably had an extra bit of sympathy for Chen as many of them might have made their fortune under his administration (note the very negative coefficient on actual support for this group). Yet, the fact they are also among the groups that voiced the highest expressed support–a sharp contrast to their own vocal, active style as documented by many existing studies (King et al., 2013; Yang, 2013)—is somewhat counterintuitive. This pattern of behavior is nonetheless consistent with our second conjecture: These groups, by virtue of their better economic conditions, typically had much more to lose from state sanctions than those from lower social strata. At the same time, their intelligence and information probably also gave them a better understanding of the risks associated with expressing dissident views in a moment of high politically sensitivity. As a result, while members of these groups might be outspoken in times when revealing true preferences bears little political cost, they can be extremely cautious about the views they express when the political atmosphere is tightened.
I'm Chinese and I know that my people have a strong sense of national and racial unity. We easily get triggered when we see Chinese people neglected/criticized unfairly.
If the Westerner was willing to talk in Mandarin, perhaps they would be more willing to discuss the issue.
I'm curious what this divide in perception between the well-educated elite and the non-English speaking majority means for China's future.
Many Americans agree on that. We even argue with each other.
> or free speech.
Ok, you got me there.
I spent 9 years in China (I just moved back in August). Southerners (e.g. Fujianese) tend to be more subversive than northerners, but only one-on-one, given a largish group of Chinese, there is definitely a standard "party line" that diverges little. There is just no chance to have actual "public" factions like we have in the states (e.g. pro gun and anti gun), they can only exist under the radar (e.g. one-on-one conversations).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/world/nsa-dragnet-included...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131112/08223925211/if-ns...
And isn’t it also a 3rd party service?
Hnwatch, which should be a good thing (why not keep a sanity check on things?), does the same. What point are you trying to make? "Someone said something!" ???
Some HN users think chemtrails are real. I saw one of those comments. So what?
If product A is praised for doing something while product B is unanimously condemned for doing the exact same thing in another country, it is reasonable to point that out.
Plenty of people were eager to point out that Facebook censoring fake news wouldn't really be censorship, because it is not being done by the government but by a private company. Of course, that's exactly how it works in China. So where are all of those people on this story, pointing out that what Wechat does isn't really censorship and that this really isn't really a free speech issue?
Well there's term for that: self-censorship.