[NedIsakoff]

Xi's breaking the 10 year rule. Xi's involvement in the Bo Xilai incident. Xi's anti corruption campaign which is basically a purge of those who oppose him.

You have to remember that the people on HN from China or Chinese is not representative of the average person in China. My cousin was born and raised in China in a tier 2 city. He now works in a tier 2 city making 30K RMB/month which is extremely good pay. He has travelled abroad many times and reads western books/culture.

I was born in China and left at 16. Educated in Canada and went back at 26 and worked for 14 years there before I left. When I was there I was working in major IT companies in a tier 1 city.

You have to think about Hu's The Harmonious Society Idea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society) and part of the 'Stability At All Cost' ideal. The censorship is for the average person in China.

[seanmcdirmid]

I worked in Beijing at Microsoft for almost 10 years, so I get the demographic divide and striving for stability. Still, it feels like they dug their hole and have to live in it now, gradual liberalization could have also been stable, maybe even more so.

[NedIsakoff]

When were you in Beijing? I was there for 2-3 years with Google prior to them leaving.

[seanmcdirmid]

I was there from 2007 through 2016. We were first down the street at Sigma/zhichunlu and then the new building close to the sinopec building in central zhongguancun.