Learning to Survive Without WeChat | Hacker News Reader

Learning to Survive Without WeChat

nytimes.com

20 pointstysone4 comments

It’s always interesting to me to see posts like this. While I certainly agree with the author’s sentiment and concerns, I feel like I never hear about Chinese people actually complain about these concerns in China. Sure I hear occasional and minor complaints about Facebook/Instagram being blocked.

If you told me to guess what percent of Chinese people actually have concerns about the heavy monitoring by their government, I’d say <1%. Most aren’t even aware of the extent of the monitoring/restrictions.

I do wish more people were aware. But there really aren’t many good ways to go about bringing awareness. If you try anything, you’ll be squashed or jailed. Me as a foreigner would also not attempt anything as it would likely mean losing my visa which means I couldn’t visit my family, etc. Quite a complex situation.

I had sort of come to peace with China having such heavy surveillance. Not because I approved of it but really there's only so much you can judge when your tax dollars go towards harming children overseas.

I recently learned about the Uighur situation though and it made me wonder if the average Chinese citizen even knows about that either and would they even care if they did. It's really a tricky state of affairs.

Certainly. I try not to take too high of a moral high ground for many similar reasons. US’s constant wars/conflict, our ridiculous murder/violence/crime rates, the fact that China likely needed a very strong handed government to unify China and push it forward.

I’m just mainly sour about having crappy and extremely restricted internet, and wish more Chinese cared and could do anything about it. :)

And no, your average Chinese person doesn’t know about the Uighur situation. And what they do know is that there are many Muslim terrorists. When I have brought it up they think I’m preaching false news or propaganda ha. I speak Chinese so get a good dosage of random and mixed conversations. Intend to just not bring it up in too critical of a sense as It’s clear I’d just become “that foreigner who is always criticizing China”.

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