[bobbytran]

I've heard this argument again and again from Chinese government sympathizers...and it's just not true.

The vast majority of people aren't brutalized and shot by the police. If it does happen, it goes through a trial and the court systems.

The vast majority of people talking out against the Chinese government will be jailed or re-educated in China...that's the difference.

[bllguo]

Yes, the vast majority of US citizens aren't getting brutalized by the police. Similarly, the vast majority of Chinese citizens are not being jailed or re-educated. You can't just compare the US population at large to the subset of Chinese people who speak out against the government.

The claim was that people in China live in a state of fear, and I refuted it. Let's not conflate things.

[daenz]

>The claim was that people in China live in a state of fear, and I refuted it

That wasn't the claim, so you refuted a strawman. The claim was that China governs through fear, not that Chinese live in fear. When people disappear and are "re-educated" against their will for speaking out about the government, as an official policy of your government, you are governing through fear. Refute that.

[ineedasername]

I refute it by pointing out that if the people are not afraid, they are not ruled by fear. The vast majority are no more afraid of their government than the average person in the U.S. is. Sure, some people have reason to fear-- there's the ever present problem of racial discrimination. And I don't mean this to say the U.S. is just as bad. I mean that people caught up in the badness in either country are outliers. So few in number as to make the issue seem too abstract, even if it is much worse in China. They just don't see their restrictions on freedoms through the same lens as folks in the Western world.

[daenz]

If you can't watch this video[0] and see a level of fear in people to acknowledge the date June 4th 1989 on camera, then I just don't believe you are arguing in good faith. You seem to grossly underestimate what "disappearing" people for speaking out does to a society. You seem to think that Chinese citizens are ok with it, because they don't protest it, as if they are even allowed to speak out about it without serious repercussions. Just look at how HK reacted to the extradition laws. But I guess HK has become too westernized to understand that it's actually ok to disappear people.

0. https://vimeo.com/44078865

[ineedasername]

I'm fully aware of China's awful human rights history, the awful things they have done to their people. I've seen the videos. It was in fact a minor obsession of mine for a time. And yet the very video you post supports my point: The people questions about Tianmen Square don't react in horror or fear, they react in ignorance. Because the propaganda works".

And so what I'm saying is that you fail to understand that it's people do not, as a majority, have that view of their government. You are applying an outsider's horror of their actions in your thinking and assuming it's people are 1) fully aware of it and 2) would look on it poorly when in fact they tend to view such things as the government's protection of them from harmful influences. They have a fundamentally different view of free speech, they do not view it as a an unqualified right, they view it through a lens of "speech that harms social harmony is wrong."

You simply do not understand the extent to which China's propaganda to it's people actually works. As a result the people are not afraid. They feel protects. Because it works, there's also a high degree of self censorship. Not because they fear the consequences, but because they actually believe they are acting in their society's best interests. I have actually had someone say to me, "Even if I thought the government did something wrong, I would not talk too much about it because it would be harmful to social harmony."

China gave them the blue pill, and they took it, often not knowing the red one exists. There is no need to live in fear when you have been convinced the awful things your government does are in your best interest.

I am not just guessing on this matter. I have, first hand, had conversations on the topic with Chinese nationals. And it's infuriating, because it's much like the conversation you and I are having now: It seems obvious to us that they should be afraid, that they should look on their government with skepticism, cynicism, and fear. But they do not.* The propaganda works. The dissidents are an extremely, vanishingly small group and yes, I'm sure they live in fear. But you cannot extrapolate from that to the billion+ people who have little direct knowledge of such things, for whom such things are vague abstractions, and wouldn't care much if they knew a bit more because the propaganda works. They see someone jailed, and they think "He/she must have done something wrong." *The propaganda works."