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I find it very strange (understatement) that on the one hand people say they support the Chinese people, but on the other hand when Chinese people have a different opinion, then those Chinese people are dismissed as being brainwashed, a paid shill, spies, etc. Way to dehumanize them.
I find it very strange that on the one hand people say the Chinese people just all have different values, but on the other hand ignore the terrifyingly huge totalitarian propaganda infrastructure that prevents any dissenting ideas from being legitimately expressed and discussed in China.
If you compare China from 40 years ago to China today, then these are literally the best 40 years in 4000 years. Yes not everything is perfect, yes there is limited ability to dissent. But come on, when your children were starving, your house was run down, the streets were polluted and dirty, your children and belongings were always at risk of being abducted by criminals, you couldn't choose what clothes to wear; and then flash forward 40 years later, ALL of that has changed, is it so hard to imagine that some people could be grateful for the progress even if not everything is perfect?
When your country has been at war and revolution for 100 years, due to different factions that kept fighting each other until the end of days, is it so hard to imagine that one day you're tired of that, and desire unity over conflict?
Live and let live. I don't say you have to value that. It's fine for western countries to value the ability to politically dissent, as a primary value. But why do you have to force that value down the throat of others, that have had a very different history?
China is not "totalitarian". There's a huge range between "fully free" and "totalitarian", and while China is more on the latter side than most western countries, it's not all the way there, and is way more to the former side than the USSR was. What sort of totalitarian regime lets people freely travel abroad where they can learn about all the things that are banned in the home country? 40 years ago you may have been right to describe China as totalitarian. Get on with the times.
China bans dissident websites and internet platforms that don't comply with their censorship, they actively censor dissenting speech and amplify propaganda on social media like Douyin (owned by ByteDance, whose CEO also publicly pledged to work towards "Strengthening the work of Party construction, carrying out education among our entire staff on the “four consciousnesses,” socialist core values, guidance of public opinion"; oh, fun fact, ByteDance owns TikTok), they also monitor private communications on WeChat and ban apps that don't allow this, remove protesting apps from the Chinese iOS App Store (eg. HK), bans foreign journalism, arrests heads of publications critical of the regime (eg. Jimmy Lai), tracks and detains ethnic religious practitioners (eg. Uighurs) and seizes authority over local religious chapters (eg. Catholic church), declares that it is the “basic responsibility” of schools to strengthen students’ sense of national identity (said by the Education Bureau, reported by SCMP) and revises the history curriculum to omit embarrassing sections of China's dynastic history.
So when someone leaves China to go abroad, they've just left a country that controls what information they can consume online and from mainstream news, controls what they can publish online and say on social media, mandatorily monitors and punishes what they say in private to their own friends and family via p2p services like WeChat and Zoom, controls what religions you're allowed to practice, controls religious authorities, and ensures your education builds up your nationalism.
Sure, they don't control what they say outside the US (sometimes). They just control everything else that forms the very foundations of thought, speech, identity, and character.
Seems pretty total to me. Maybe I'm just not with the times enough to understand your convincing argument that they're not totalitarian because they allow people to travel.
I won't mince words: there is zero legitimacy to the public support of a totalitarian regime by the subjects inside the totalitarian regime that controls and grooms them.
> You've got to be kidding me. Why can't they have a genuine opinion of their own? You may not agree with them because you have different values, but that's very different from claiming that their opinions are illegitimate and merely a result of "brainwashing".
After 10 years or so, some of my Chinese friends are a little embarrassed by some of the things they said/positions they took when they first came here as students.