If what the gov is doing (ostensibly) makes them rich, e.g. they can afford cars and condo prices double every few years, them yes, the majority of people doesn't care.
Look, I've spoken to this to my friends in China about this before, and I can understand that to them it's okay, they've seen their lives improve over the past 10 years. And I understand why they feel that way, they've never known anything else.
But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.
China has a long cultural history of being relatively more wealthy than everyone else. But in absolute terms though they've just had a huge amount of technological progress dropped on them. Something like 3+ generations in of progress in Europe compressed into a fraction of a generation in China. And they look like they are regaining their traditional place as a world leading power.
India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well, on the basis that it presided over the fastest leap forward in living standards in human history. I'd still rather live in Europe, India or America though.
>India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance
I doubt it. If anything India's system is less effective, equally or more corrupt, and downright barbarous in some social aspects (e.g. castes). Plus the rampant inequality which is much worse than China.
In what sense? Singapore is a democracy. They have a high GDP per capita. They have a very strong rule of law and little corruption. I wouldn't necessarily want to live there but it is one of many democratic countries that looks like a much better bet to live in than China.
Have you not been following the news where India just elected a facist leadership and had numerous deadly race riots supported by their government? Try checking your ideology with reality sometimes.
There is a difference, I would think, between a country going through a "bad period" of preferring totalitarianism, usually in response to pressures of economic and social inequality (e.g. Germany in the early 1900s; several middle-eastern and central-american countries today); and a country whose populace maintain deeply-held beliefs that have caused them to maintain a totalitarian leadership style over decades/centuries with no sign of changing (China.)
Though, I mean, part of that difference is that the rest of the world feels uncomfortable with sudden shifts like India's, and so usually gets together to trade-sanction the problem away so that things will go back to the way they were (which might cause the country to lash out, at which point it becomes a World War); while, on the other hand, the international community is so used to "the way things are" with countries like China, that they don't do anything.
I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well
Indeed, in the 50’s and 60’s it seemed plausible that the economies of North Korea, Cuba, Russia, the DDR were all going to surpass their Western counterparts before long. The wheels started to come off in the 70’s and by the 90’s it was all over for them.
But these countries were isolated from the world in terms of technology, economy and influence. China, on the other hand, is a country the West depends on both for production and profit, and has not closed off itself to anything that can help it stay on top. From a state of pariah, it rose to superpower status, and there is no real competitor to take its wheels off - the western companies and governments are the first to rush and make business with China, instead of beating it at its game like they did with the rest of the communist countries.
Snowden basically told the Western world how much access to their online data governments have, but people don't seem to care. Yet, they care that China does it for some reason
You're right that correlation does not equal causation, but it doesn't have to be for those folks to not care.
Having lived in Singapore, Hong Kong (current) and China, I can tell you that in Singapore's case, folks are aware that they live under a semi-dictatorship, that their government controls all media (radio, tv, everything is state-owned). But they always say "but I guess the government is doing a good job".
One has nothing to do with the other. The government can do a good job without the dictatorship, but it's the way folks rationalize their helplessness, their sense of lack of control over their fate.
This is also why we in Hong Kong ARE fighting against these kind of controls, probably in vein, but I for one do NOT want to resign in rationalizing for the government's over-control without a fight.
I've lived in Singapore too. Its mighty oppressive in that I found myself self-censoring on occasion but you can't compare it to the dystopia China has become.
Or ... the "cultural revolution" from Mao himself?
Or the cleansing events after the revolution?
Or, ... before the red revolution, years of bloody civil war, with ruthless warlords taxing even dying of their underlings, or general things in old china like child towers outside of town, where the unwanted babys were thrown to die, so their souls did not haunt the houses of the living?
In other words, you have been sleeping before(or did not bother with china at all), if you only consider the current events the strong ones, that qualify for dystopia.
Yeah, is there any information on why the Chinese government feels like they need the censorship?
As far as I can tell they are the most successful government at least in modern history in terms of increasing living standards (huge GDP growth and even things like being the only country to successfully almost eradicate SARS-CoV-2), so it seems they would keep power even in a fully functioning democracy with no censorship since they are so good.
Then maybe the censorship is actually integral to their success as it reduces the time wasted on going in directions different from the government's one and possibly boosts morale and happiness?
Bullshit! Taiwan started in the same state as the PRC communist dictatorship and they have progressed much more economically than China, their GDP is much higher.
Also culturally and from a human rights perspective Taiwan blows the chicoms out of the water.
Taiwan shows what China could have been if they would not have been taken hostage by the communist chinazis.
I don't think anyone's saying oppression is necessary, merely that bread and circuses have always been enough to placate the masses. Nobody revolts on a full stomach.
But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.