My Chinese friends discuss the politics openly, sometimes even on WeChat. As long as you don't do it over group chats or in public no one would bother you.
There was just this funny thing that the famous llama pic was automatically filtered even in 1-1 chats.
as long as people are able to discuss politics with their friends, they have a outlet to vent without being able to actually form political resistance.
Our idea of an oppressive autocratic government is more similar to that exemplified in Orwell's 1984- a government that prevents and punishes expression of dissenting ideas at any level, even the private one (you never know if the friend or person you're talking to could be a police informer).
Another interpretation could be that China cares about, or simply consideres legitimate, the expression of dissent, but is terrified by the consequences of mass protest movements such as that of Tiananmen Square, preferring to maintain a rigid control on the direction and pace of change.
> Another interpretation could be that China cares about, or simply consideres legitimate, the expression of dissent, but is terrified by the consequences of mass protest movements such as that of Tiananmen Square, preferring to maintain a rigid control on the direction and pace of change.
These statements are practically identical the only thing that changes is how charitably you're framing the suppression of political dissent and if you're viewing things from the POV of the political class or the regular people.
Any forums or messing app alike must do ISP registration from the government, the cloud provider has to make sure they can take down any website or web service on demand.
Those websites without ISP registration has quite a change being blocked, and cannot use a lot of 3rd party integration like WeChat pay, etc.