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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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The freedom to shout into the void and have none of your concerns addressed.
Not to mention the fact that China has far more open discourse than the US and its media organs / capitalist controlled platforms allow.
I'll take "things foreigners say when they've never been to China" for 500 Alex
I'll take "sexpat that's been to China, never left his bubble and is a China expert now" for 500 alex
Never claimed to be any kind of China expert but it's absurd to claim "much more open discourse" if you've spent any appreciable amount of time in the countries being discussed. You can literally just walk + talk in public and see the difference.
Like all these asserted freedoms it just magically happens better and free'er but you definitely can't verify it because "media". The open political discourse I see and hear in major EU/US cities pales in comparison to the uh... hidden... open discourse in T1/T2 Chinese cities? Definitely heard some first/second hand political discourse but it was never, ever, ever a public forum.
By all means, give me evidence to the contrary. Maybe I just keep catching China with a bad case of the Mondays. Have you been? Can you point to any discourse on domestic politics? Where is the asserted diversity of opinion on hotbed issues? Can you show me any strong opposition to the party line on a public stage?
I guess you've never been on weibo westoid
I have! Have you been on it in China? Have you contrasted the foreign feed to a citizen's? Have you seen the coordinated response to genuine spreading political discontent vs mundane petty scandals? Because it kinda sounds like you haven't if you think that's a killer response.
I have! And I have my Chinese friends feed too. Inside and outside of china. There's definitely differences, but that's how algorithms work
Yes i have seen it. They solve things pretty fast e.g. COVID lockdowns when minor protests broke out, petit bourgeois real estate protests, etc. doesn't look like you pay attention to things like that
"Solve" is an interesting verb for suppression of legitimate mass discontent at being physically locked into their apartments. That "solution" worked so well for those "minor protests" that they decided to do a 180° turn from the Zero Covid policy to no restrictions overnight.
Truly a bastion of free speech, except for any real discontent is labeled capitalist subterfuge so we'll just disregard that.
Your response is very telling.
Considering the uncertainty surrounding COVID at the time, China's approach while heavy handed, prioritized people's lives instead of continuing capitalist exploitation like they did in the west. The infection rates and death toll speak for themselves. Once it was clear that the worst waves were over, and the popular sentiment was to loosen up restrictions the Chinese government reacted. The largest protest numbers I saw a in the lower hundreds of thousands across multiple provinces, which also considering Chinas size (more than hundred cities are 1M+ population with a total of 1.4B people) is indeed minor.
Also nice free speech you got over here where vaccine "sceptics" got to spew their nonsense all over the place and you have disease's coming back that where considered to be eradicated. GTFO shitlib
LMAO.
If the government listen the protesters and remove the lockdown policy is bad, if they don't listen to the protesters and maintain the lockdown is bad. Is impossible to win.
In the end of the day the lockdown was the right call and the "freedom above everything else" just cause death in the west.
Weird way to "listen" by suppressing their voices. Zero Covid was the "right call" in a narrow lens of limiting direct disease transmission, but it was completely untenable as a true long term strategy and had no foresight.
The protests weren't due to solely to the restrictions on personal freedom, it was also the total lack of sane administration and fallback plans. The enforcement, quarantine logistics and vaccine rollout were entirely scattershot. The government had no realistic approach to the problem beyond rigid policing.
When their authority to enforce the policy was stretched to its limits they did an about face and pretended the problem didn't exist, leaving their vulnerable populations in the lurch with no offramp. The core problem of inept administration was completely unaddressed. I wouldn't give them credit for "listening to the protesters" any more than I would give Tsar Nicholas credit for listening to his striking workers.