i don't speak for every hexbear but here goes: Banning social networks like Facebook is good and I wish it would happen here. It's a cognitive hazard. Banning kids from playing online games during the week is also good. Grindy gacha games are another cognitive hazard.

China's limit on how many foreign movies it imports per year has allowed a domestic market of Chinese movies to flourish without their film industry being overrun by Marvel, Disney and whatever pseudo intellectual thing A24 makes that year. That's good.

Censoring cults like Falun Gong is good. Censoring medical misinformation is also good. China seems to have a better understanding that you shouldn't allow conspiracy theorists to spread whatever nonsense they want. Calls for freedom of press tend to go hand in hand with calls for private control over media apparatuses, which means you get things like media conglomerates run by people like Roger Ailes (FoxNews). The one that gets talked about the most by people outside of China is the Winnie the Pooh thing, which is bizarrely characterized as a personal vendetta Xi Jinping has or something, like he's a petty child raging at Mad Magazine for making a caricature of him. My understanding is there's a blanket ban on mischaracterizing members of the government, and I believe that's to prevent misinformation. The example a Chinese person gave me was some people might come under the idea Xi Jinping is affiliated with Disney somehow. Winnie the Pooh the character is not part of any broad censorship and this misconception came from my earlier statement about China only releasing a certain number of foreign films per year. I was in China in 2019 and saw people wearing Disney apparel with the character. They declined to release the 2018 Christopher Robin movie in theaters and that's when I remember this whole thing starting.

Personally speaking I think the ban on caricature is a little too much, since the former president Zemin was often caricatured online as a frog and no one cared. But it's their country and they can do what they want. however I think at this point the way westerners use the winnie the pooh thing borders on open racism, plus it's just old. get some new material, jesus christ. i've been hearing how Xi Jinping is a cartoon bear for like 6 years now. At least call him something more serious if you don't like him. Winnie the pooh is a delightful bear who eats honey out of a pot, how is that bad

Also VPNs work in China. I used one while I was there and could access any website no problem. It's a misconception that Chinese people are somehow unaware of the outside world or foreign culture. The average Chinese person has more awareness of global affairs than the average American because their education system is more robust. There also isn't any sort of widespread censorship on information about Tienanmen square in 1989. Chinese people know about it and have a variety of opinions. It's taught in schools.

As I understand it a big driver of "censoring" Western media/internet is because of market protectionism.

Also there's good reason to partition off China's internet beyond protectionism - if the West was exposed to the opinions of Chinese citizens regularly, the USA would claim that Beijing has a millions-strong army of 'cyber warriors' spreading 'Communist propaganda' when it's just people in China voicing and defending their opinion that they think the government's pretty good/don't themselves have any issues with it.