[age_of_stone]

"Authoritarian regimes are rarely fair and are not particularly interested in the financial well being of the population."

if you think Chinese government is authoritarian, then it is an exception coz it does care and try its best to improve the financial well being of the population. and it is the social contract between China government and its people. you need to realize that even "authoritarian" governments are quite different.

[pas]

sure, oppressive regimes usually favor the "people". in this case if you are Han Chinese and don't have any strange ideas (eg Falun Gong, democracy, liberalism), then you can get ahead pretty well.

Otherwise not so much. See Xinjiang, Tibet, and so on.

[age_of_stone]

believe or not, people in Xingjing and Tibet used to have more rights than Han Chinese. for example, they were allowed to have more than one children while Han Chinese were strictly not allowed the second child. it's much easier for Uighur and Tibetan students to go to prestigious colleges with lower scores. and so on. you name it. the government did that in hope of country unity.

[pas]

"was". now it's not so.

and of course, the central power encourages integration, go to a university far from home, assimilate, etc.

And I have no problem with that on a fundamental practical level. But the reeducation camps, the constant aggressive in-your-face surveillance, the book confiscation, the history falsification, the other forms of very serious oppression is very real, and it is unacceptable.