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I wonder if this section is a large part of what gets you down voted. You are off course right that we need to protect our freedom. Your statement can easily be understood add too broad though. There is also many countries that make policy tradeoffs that might be more attractive and arguably better to many. This holds easily for many European and Asian countries (of course the opposite cases you are aiming it are also easily found) It hints at a sense of American exceptionalism that is frequently uninformed and ugly to many. I acknowledge that this easily is a misinterpretation of your statement. Given the current political climate and how everyone uses terms like "socialism" to mean different things and then fight over it, this wouldn't be a unusual interpretation. You frequently see statements that could be paraphrased as "we cannot have Medicaid for all because then we'll lose all freedom and become like China or Venezuela" which is off course nonsense and this easily can get mixed up in.
The only point behind my recent anti CCP posts is to prevent westerners from taking Chinese numbers and information without hefty skepticism.
Also readers should consider this: China just locked down 700MM+ people for two months and shuttered it's entire GDP (80-90% according to CNBC a month ago). They are now approaching the time where they must resume some production as now critical supplies, including potentially medicine and food, are at risk of running out, as chains across the country have indisputably been disrupted.
If they are not recovering as effectively as they claim, they are effectively between a rock and a hard place - risking a second wave of infections to bring critical industry online, or risk famine and other hardship by continuing the wartime lockdown conditions.
This is exactly the kind of scenario where the CCP is possibly going to try to have their cake and eat it too - lie about recovery, including international gestures like equipment donations, in order to maintain authority, while simultaneously implementing necessary policies to resume function even risking another wave of infections.
Westerners need to understand that these perverse incentives pervade the entire society. It's like a nightmare bureaucracy governing every aspect of your life. The men at the top are "incentivized" by party leaders to report fewer infections. That Cascades downwards and you end up with absurd gaming of metrics on not just a corporate scale, but a social scale. The regional administrator of Wuhan was just replaced twice - the first one was forced out because he dared to report new infections.
Be very wary of any positive news out of China. We're seeing more of the truth as European nations lock down one by one - and soon American states, in the next 1-3 weeks. Watch.
>most of them don't even use the internet
China internet penetration is 61% according to here https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/statistics/china-internet... and similar numbers are shown elsewhere.
Technical infrastructure and censorship are 2 different things, and effective censorship in highly technical society emphasizes and illustrates the scale and capabilities of the authoritative power oppressing the population.
Functionally for our intents and purposes there is little difference between having no internet and having a national intranet which is cut off from the rest of the world and literally policed by the government. Technically the walled garden FB wanted to set up in India was "internet" too.
Plus as we've determined, the internet has spread to 60% of Chinese at best, and majority urban areas.
Ok, sorry, I was off by 10%. That doesn't change my point that China is a nation of two worlds.
Also, with the degree to which information is controlled in China, these are likely Chinese numbers. Are you sure you want to trust them?