[potatote]

Yep. I was born in SE Asia and came to the US for high ed (and have since been living here). Most of the people who I met on the internet and in the US, who are interested in the political situation of my home country, posses a view from a bubble that is very different than the perspective from people there. Overall, people just want to have food, shelter and a good living. They could care less about who is ruling them. It's like some people from Europe think Americans are idiots because of our current leader's doings. Not a lot of people in the US, who reads NYT, Economists and such, do not understand that their glimpse into other countries is very much biased and limited.

[Slansitartop]

> posses a view from a bubble that is very different than the perspective from people there. Overall, people just want to have food, shelter and a good living. They could care less about who is ruling them.

Seems like just different bubbles, actually. I'm somewhat skeptical of taking at face value the opinions of a population subject to authoritarian information controls. Even in such a case, you're likely to get very different opinions of a government like China's in Xinjiang or Tibet than you will in Beijing. Both groups are only able to form their opinions of the whole from the very limited pieces available to them.

I think the most interesting perspectives come from people with a foot in both worlds. I have friends who don't want China to become a democracy, at least not right away, because they're afraid of what it would do. The CCP has kept the necessary civil society weak, and encouraged popular nationalist sentiments that could be very dangerous if put into action.

[SZJX]

Do you mean not a lot of people understand or "do not understand"? Your wording is a bit confusing. Apparently more self-awareness is good but indeed I'm afraid if they keep being imbued in the mainstream media who keep feeding them ideological nonsense and agendas from their own elite politicians they'll know very little about the reality. Talking about China, Tibet, Xinjiang all the time without even actually having been there at least once and talked to actual people living there. That's laughable.