Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It

Present day thinkers and reporters are given the same silent treatment on mainstream media which is obviously controlled by the narrow oligarchy which controls everything else. Same treatment is happening on youtube as China is doing; non-conforming perspectives are actively sought out and removed by censorious apparatchiks. Oh yeah, and now they're also sometimes denounced as "russian agents" as well -a pack of absurd, paranoid and Orwellian nonsense which makes anything the ChiComs say look like objective common sense.

The US engages in ritual denunciation of itself for slavery and killing off the Indians. Somehow our most excellent international adventures, ridiculous military provocations, poisoning of the food chain, extractive slave economics of the native population and colonial control of half the population of the world is A-OK. For all I know, China engages in ritual denunciation of its pre-Maoist self as well. That doesn't mean they're not carefully controlling the narrative now.

That sounds more like a branding guideline for employees than censorship of a topic. But, as you said, this doesn't apply to normal citizens and presumably is done so that the spokespeople seem like they're on the same page.

You cannot with any seriousness compare the de-normalisation of certain opinions, as it happened in the US in the past few decades, with the systematic, brutal, ubiquitous repression and censorship happening in China right now. China is one of the most un-free countries on earth in nearly every measure. Claiming that, eh sure, it is one way to do things and in the west they fire you if you say you hate niggers, so this is two flavours of pretty much the same thing, claiming this is the kind of gaslighting and propaganda that regimes such as China and Russia are trying to push on the West.

I can, and do, publicly express politically incorrect (and sometimes downright incorrect) opinions in public. That's why Twitter exists. The only thing stopping you is cultural norms (should you choose to accept and fear them).

If you need evidence, just look at Trump’s tweet feed.

Whereas, do you know about the famine in the great leap forward? And it is widely known?

I was talking to one chinese student who maintained that there was no censorship in china. She was surprised to learn that I, a foreigner, could not make a wechat account for my business. And she is well educated, has travelled abroad, etc

Every culture is going to have taboos and forbidden things. The important questions are who enforces them and why.

> On the other hand, people in US enjoy freedom to exchange ideas on whatever they want, except politically incorrect topics in public.

People in the US enjoy the freedom to exchange almost all ideas in public, including politically incorrect topics. For some extreme examples, look at the "Dark Enlightenment" folks and racists like Richard Spencer. However, many people choose to not use that freedom because they wouldn't enjoy the experience of other people using their freedoms to personally reject them or to tell them that their ideas are stupid, wrong, bad, etc.

That situation is only superficially comparable to Chinese censorship, and that comparison ignores the very important and fundamental differences.

Let me classify politically (potentially sensitive/incorrect) topics into 2 classes: 1) concerning concrete specific claims of history or what is happening or happened, 2) abstract discussion of properties of systems, designing "utopias", expressing general complaints and identifying their root/radix/fundamental causes in the design of society, and concluding radical/fundamental proposals of what should change etc... without naming nor insinuating specific politicians/leaders etc...

Are subjects in the second class also taboo/censored in China? All the examples in these articles about chinese censorship relate to specific individuals or events, and not to ideology/normative/prescriptive statements of what humans may or may not desire/expect/demand from a system.

For example would it be taboo or censored in China to discuss the following idea:

No one created the world/China, so we are all equal co-owners of the world/China. Everybody and every company rents their locations (farmland, buildings, ...) The highest rent bidder becomes the accepted renter. And the sum of all rented is divided equally among all humans/citizens. This could happen in a decentralized fashion (I hate the term blockchain), using OpenStreetMap etc. Nobody is forced to live here or there, so there is freedom, and there is equal rights. If you get a job you can thus rent an above average place, Without a job you can afford an average place and food, and if you rent a small unwanted shack for a few years you have the budget to start your own enterprise, or perhaps party all life long if you are otherwise OK with your shack...

Would this be considered taboo? Parasitism? Irrespective of our religion, no human created the sun (and the edible chemical energy it generates in plants), the earth, ... and all systems worldwide take claim of these resources, in order to make the puny little individual feel guilty about being born and having needs...

This is not true; there are many common instances of this happening, Every Single Day.

That said, even in 'private' Chinese have all sorts of highly relevant information filtered.

Such as the activities, possibly illegal, of their leaders.

My perspective is that there's such an incredible difference in degree as to be a difference in kind. Politically incorrect speech in the US may get you socially ostracized, but not literally jailed. And occasionally some people actually do it (look at any self-proclaimed Nazi or the Westboro Baptist Church). And criticizing the government or governance in the US is not politically incorrect; it's rather in vogue these days.

I suspect kids in China would care about 1989 like kids in the USA in 1989 cared about the Kent state massacre: not very much, it was a long time ago right? But then that begs the question why the CPC bothers to censor it, perhaps they just don’t want to chance an open discussion about it since many of those people are still alive.