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Comment by carterehsmith | Hacker News Reader

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carterehsmith

I find this funny. If we compare that to US or UK or whatever... looks quite similar :)

> Mass surveliance and censorship?

Yes, we got that.

> Your credit score can be affected...

Yes, your Zipcode tells everything

> If you are considered problematic for the party...

Yes, we got that. We get people 'suicided' and then we close the files so that they can't be opened for 50 years or whatever. Got that.

> China pressures countries to align their vision with theirs.

US, UK, France, Italy etc etc do that too

> Contents censored

Yup. See 'national board of review'

View on HN

Do you get steamrolled (not figuratively. literally, with a steamroller) in front of your village if you criticize the prime minister? probably not right?

Do you get your organs harvested in jail if you oppose the ruling party?

Can you open Wikipedia and read articles that challenge the political views of your leadership? Can you go to a library and buy a book about opposing political systems? Can you study such systems in school? Can an academic have a job if he has opposing political views?

Can you vote and pick a guy from another party? Do other parties exist at all? Can you start your own party?

So no, it's not the same. You can make all the analogies you want, but there's no equivalence, at least not in the extent in which these things are happening.

There is surely shady stuff going on everywhere, and corruption and coverups, but it's still not the same.

We even have RT, the Russian station that is mostly propaganda for the Russian Federation leadership views, and you can tune into it if you want and watch it all day if so you prefer.

> Can you open Wikipedia and read articles that challenge the political views of your leadership?

You can actually do that in China, if you know English. Only the Chinese Wikipedia is blocked.

> Can you go to a library and buy a book about opposing political systems?

If you mean a book that explains the political system of e.g. the United States, sure, you can read that. If you mean a book that proposes an alternative political system for China, probably not.

> Can you vote and pick a guy from another party? Do other parties exist at all?

There are no other parties, but in theory, you can write in any name you want on your vote sheet. It's just that one of the "recommended" guys always wins.

> So no, it's not the same.

Agreed. I just wanted to point out that it's not exactly as bad in China as you think it is.

Yes sure, I just wanted to stress some less known aspects of how repressive the system is. There are good things about China, there are things that work and scale more than in the US, for sure.

China works very well for you if you are aligned with the party, or you are indifferent and don't get in their way. Otherwise it does not work very well.

> Can you vote and pick a guy from another party? Do other parties exist at all? Can you start your own party?

All you're illustrating with this one is that the US does a better job of faking democracy.

If China had a pro-establishment Democratic Communist Party alternative to a pro-establishment Communist Party, each sharing 99% of the resources, media, power and influence, along with infinite minnow parties that pose no threat to the system or established order because the system doesn't allow them to, it would be as democratic as the US.

Maybe a small party will not make it to the presidency because of the issues you have mentioned (to that also add electoral trickery like gerrymandering).

But there are many branches of government that can help influence government, and you can also run for office within your state. Here some states have independent senators.

In China you don't really have independent branches of government, it's just the Chairman of the party and whatever he wants is what gets done.

No, we don't "have that as well". If you can't see the difference between censorship in China and US then i don't know what to say.

No, I don't see it.

Disclaimer: I know a bunch of people -- friends, colleagues, neighbours etc that are Chinese/or of Chinese descent.

1. - they got here somehow -- was it hard?. No. They did not have to escape on a raft like Cuban exiles. They just left and noone bothered them.

2. - They seem to be communicating with their families in China with no issues. You know, SMS, email etc

3. - They also travel back and forth, this includes kids, parents, grandmas and grandpas.

Overall, the funny thing is that I never heard any of my friends/colleagues complain about China.

Meantime, CNN and Fox etc keep saying that China is like devil, except worse.

Guess who I trust.

https://www.google.com/search?q=abu+ghraib+prison

https://www.google.com/search?q=tank+man

One of these searches is incredibly damaging to Chinese interests, one to US interests.

Try doing them in each country.

At the same time I agree very strongly that China is nothing like the former USSR, let alone the current North Korea.

But the people you mention, once go back to China, are behind the firewall, and everything they do is subject to surveillance and censorship.

Ask your friends if they would feel safe to go and openly/publicly criticize the communist party of China and hear their answers.

It only takes them to go and acknowledge membership to Falun Gong/Falun Dafa for them to be put into a organ donor list (while still alive).

Censorship in the West is a bit different. It is waged through the "free" mainstream media. Think of it as market share, where the MSM has 90% market share. It doesn't really matter what the other 10% think when they can be either brainwashed by partizan journalism or divided and made irrelevant. The main difference is that there isn't just one ruling party, there are usually two (conservatives and socialists) with their grip on power. If you don't align with them, you're irrelevant - unless they both screw up bigtime like it happened in France.

You could say what the differences are that you think he can't see, instead of acting as if "no" is a good enough argument or rebuttal.

Who needs censorship if you have Cambridge Analytica?

Well, it depends. For me the Chinese censorship towards google/facebook is not only about politics, it also helps a lot for local companies to become gigantic. In some way they ban google/facebook == US ban Pirate Bay, etc. They harm local businesses.

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