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Comment by xtony | Hacker News Reader

Maybe ask a friend who lives in China or a friend who has friends that live in China? They're also subject to fake news, but at least they can give you their experience of what daily life is like where they live. It's not like China is so locked down that it's impossible to communicate with their citizens.

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But it may be unwise for them to say anything overly critical via electronic means. We'd almost need pen and paper (which might be eccentric enough to attract attention too).

I asked an American friend over Signal about it, he confirmed that the lockdown was less severe in Beijing months ago while US cities were in peak shelter in place. But he also said that every single day somebody would call to check in. That level of surveillance wouldn't fly here (our contact tracers are far less effective than say South Korea's).

China isn't North Korea. You can use VPN to access the broader internet. And if you have an American SIM card, all your traffic gets routed through the US so you can access the full internet (it's just painfully slow).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201310

"If Chinese citizens are told by their government that covid is no longer a risk to the general population and that western media outlets are fear mongering to damage China, they will believe it regardless of the truth. The CCP is the truth in China."

Chinese people are incapable of thinking for themselves and anything you personally hear from one should be disregarded as brainwashing.

With an attitude like this, I see no hope for meaningful future cooperation. Everybody on board the cold war train.

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