| I am a western educated mainlander who reads both Chinese and Western new. Here is my answer to your question. The Chinese population is huge so it is hard to lump them all in one basket, but here are the different types of people that I encounter. 1) People fueled by Chinese nationalistic sentiments, they believe that the Chinese way of development is superior. They believe the model has a long term vision and it makes decisions faster than western liberal democracies. They know about the Tiananmen square, but they think the government did a good thing by sacrificing a small number of people to achieve a long period of economic prosperity and stability. There are a significant portion of educated Chinese elites who believes in this, partially because they are usually the beneficiaries of the development mode, partially because they are only receiving news and entertainments from the Chinese media, which is quite a bubble in itself. People who do not benefit from this development model also fall into this category due to a self defensive mechanism. They can't change their country easily, and it slowly becomes a Stockholm syndrome. They have to justify why they are ruled by a legitimate government. In the western media, these kind of people are much over represented because they are usually the loudest. If they spread their rhetoric, they don't have to bear the consequences. 2) People who are pro democracy, they are much more skeptic of the Chinese government, but they can't speak out in anyway for the fear of retribution. They are severely under represented in the westerm media. There are government tentacles everywhere in the world to report you if you speak out against your government. 3) People whose political interest is completely paralyzed. Due to the constant bombarding of useless rhetoric shown in mainland media. They know it is probably not true, but they can't change it, so they might as well focus on their economic interest and learn how to navigate within the system, which is still full of opportunities. I would say this is probably the majority. |