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Comment by etaioinshrdlu | Hacker News Reader

I believe this will lead to anyone in China (Chinese or otherwise) to permanently leave the country if they are able.

Most Chinese still have full confidence in their government and society. It will take a lot more than a couple of days of starvation to get people to upend their lives and flee.

This. Try to find interviews with the average Chinese citizen. Things work very differently over there. Most of them are pretty happy to live in their little information bubbles in much the same way the those in the west do, though they have quite a bit less autonomy in creating said bubble

I really can't wrap my head around it. But this is the same image I'm seeing in the media. Very weird.

I just can't wrap my head around a people collectively happy with a pretty oppressive government.

The CCP derives its legitimacy from economic progress, and the progress has been impressive on that front; they have pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty into the middle class while building world-leading cities and infrastructure. Being oppressed isn't really a worry when you are the first generations in a country who aren't concerned solely with survival.

We compare ourselves to our neighbors. For most people the notion of neighbor is quite narrow.

Wrap your head around how oppressive the US is for, e.g., black men, or Muslims, and how happy white evangelicals are about it.

Another way to think about it: the average person has no context for oppressive/non-oppressive, at least relative to our standards. US children have freedom hammered into their heads the second they start in school. This obviously isn't really a thing there.

Rather, historically when things go off the rails in china, they go off the rails hard and they have a very long history of that to look back on, an order of magnitude more than the US's. From what I've seen, that's what's taught to them in history class. Conformism/capitulation => stability and safety whereas in the US conformism/capitulation => being a British subject/slave/native on a reservation/interned Japanese/and on and on.

Tl;dr: the differences in historical context are vast between the two countries

Currently you can't get out unless you have a business, student visa or permanent residence permit. The word is that tourist visa holders will be denied exit. Getting in is also very arduous.

I get the feeling that the public consciousness in the West may still be underestimating and excusing a dismal regime.

Typically I hear, "but the CCP lifted a billion people out of poverty!"

The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, also achieved by the same party, put them at such an artificially low point it was impossible not to spring back impressively eventually.

I don't understand your comment, especially in relation to the OP's comment that you responding to. The West generally doesn't have a very high regard for the CCP or many of their policies. Your quote is attributable to the CCP I believe and I think more recently to Xi himself. Who do you hear that from exactly? The Chinese people lifted themselves out of poverty when the CCP abandoned some of Mao's more disastrous economic policies.

"but the CCP lifted a billion people out of poverty!". Whilst this is the linchpin of the party's propaganda machine, it is a true statement.

> Currently you can't get out unless you have a business, student visa or permanent residence permit. The word is that tourist visa holders will be denied exit. Getting in is also very arduous.

As of when? I know some people who left China in December on a tourist visa to another country.

In February or March my mother in law asked her local office which replied they would not ensure her exit permission.

Would the same standard apply if this happened to you or your neighbors in your country or would you just wait for better days?

In most cases people don't even have the means to leave their home town or province...

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