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Comment by Shenglong | Hacker News Reader

Every time I read one of these anti-China articles, I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China. The chuckling goes a step further when someone inevitably responds, "they just don't know they're being oppressed!" Yeah, there are a few cases that are less-than-acceptable by our standards, but what do these people expect, when they try to cause a Cultural Revolution 2.0?

Anyway, back on topic:

I can't imagine Cisco losing this case. They're competing in a market, and not trying to torture people, or enable it. If they win, essentially any company providing supplies to China could be considered aiding in torture. Ridiculous.

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"I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China"

When John Howard was re-elected in 2004 I spoke to everyone I could and didn't find one person who voted Liberal (probably because I lived in the Inner West of Sydney).

The point being you can't necessarily take your personal experience as being representative of any sizable population.

"I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China."

A lot of people fail to realize during these "I've been there and asked around" situations is that there is a fear or reprisal, especially in regimes that prosecute dissident views, and especially in those persons you ask don't know/trust you.

How do the people know who you are and whether you have ties to the government to confide in you? They know they and their families can be sent to jail and persecuted just for stating an opinion. What's the benefit of telling you about their beliefs? The downside is quite obvious.

Don't take for granted these "I've asked them and they said it's fine" encounters.

Put yourself in your shoes, living in that regime. Would you confide in someone looking like a traveller/stranger in such a regime?

You must have not talked to Uighurs or Tibetans or Falung Jong members. It's nice being a middle class member of the ethnic majority isn't it? If you're in China you'll be happily oblivious to this list of protests and riots that have occurred in China just this year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinese_protests

Are you actually citing Falung Gong - the cult that gets people to burn themselves?

Are you actually citing the Tibetans, who ended up murdering an Olympic torch runner in protest of the Olympics, and have been bombing Chinese buildings for years?

There's a little more here than meets the eye.

Oh I see, you actually want people that are different than you to be oppressed and to take it, not to protest against it. Must be nice being in the Han majority, you have nothing to worry about, but screw everyone else.

I do not really want to associate with anyone who urges others to burn themselves. I do not want to associate with anyone who backs the bombing of innocent civilians. If that's what you mean - you're 100% correct.

As a counterpoint, I have heard complaints about the Chinese political regime from a number of Chinese students here in the Netherlands.

Yes, I have also run into those who see no problem with (or even approve of) the censorship.

But there are more than enough dissidents.

EDIT: changed "oppression" to "Chinese political regime" as it more truthfully reflects my experience with Chinese students.

How many of these people who have complaints, actually have solutions? People are quick to criticize, but slow to offer solutions.

If you're interested in the most sophisticated discussion I've seen about the paradoxical nature China's political repression / freedom, take a look at James Fallows' book Postcards from Tomorrow Square: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0307456242?ie=UTF8... . Most of the people with your perspective and most of the people writing "anti-China" articles are half right.

I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed

Same could be said about NK.

That was probably true a decade ago, as North Koreans were effectively brainwashed. That's been changing, due to obsolete Chinese media devices getting smuggled across the border, which North Koreans buy on the blackmarket (along with other illegal stuff like, um, food). They share South Korean TV shows, and start to ask questions.

Chinese generally know what is going on in their country. They are often pretty blunt about not liking the government. But they don't generally feel oppressed, as the government only cracks down on stuff that's an existential threat to them. Try to overthrow them, and you will get oppressed. But otherwise, the government tends to be quite liberal.

OK, the government does hold huge amounts of land, which is an invisible kind of tax. They also have high taxes, on the people who pay tax. And low interest rates, and controls on banks lets them create other invisible taxes. There's also a big difference between the rules, and what is regularly enforced, so people think they are very hands off, when they can be officious pricks at times. And criminals - drug dealers, thieves, etc. are punished very severely. But really, look at a street in China, and a street in the USA. See which one looks "freer".

One of my ethics lecturers at University was a Chinese national and she was clearly quite uncomfortable, nervous almost, of discussing human rights and oppression in China.

Little off-topic, but there's a thing that comes to my mind every time that I see articles and discussions about things going very bad for people somewhere in China, or things going very good for people somewhere else in China:

We're talking about country that has two times more people than the whole Europe combined. In such a big population, pretty much everything will happen. There will be places with riots, and at the same time there will be thriving cities and happy citizens somewhere else. I think that on this scale, it's much more easier to have a selection bias (and our wonderful, always-telling-the-truth traditional media aren't exactly helping).

While I'm not defending Cisco here (I don't like them anyway ;)) and not denying that there is lots of human rights abuse going on in China, I think it's worth bearing in mind that China might not be a everything-is-bad-everywhere-for-everyone country.

I've met quite a few who don't have much respect for the central government and, while they do generally downplay any 'oppression' as you suggest, it's more that they view it as necessary rather than nonexistent, from what I gather.

I've also noticed generational differences. The baby-boomer-age folks who managed to emigrate after spending their youth in re-education camps tend not to be very quiet in their contempt for the regime. But Gen-X'ers that I've met swing in the other direction. These kids were raised by people who didn't want to see their children beaten and jailed, so they were raised to support the party line.

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