[188201]

Let's be realistic here. Why Liang would fund a site like that. Either one of the reason: CCP ordered that, or he wants to show loyalty and earn credit to CCP. Either case, it was as good as funding by CCP because CCP liked that to happened and didn't ban it.

And Liang is vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. What it means is he is not officially CCP but a very trusted person to be included as decision maker of CCP.

[powerapple]

I don't think I like the argument of "it was as good as funding by CCP because CCP liked that to happened". CCP is a party with 90 million members, so if you argue Liang act as a member of CCP, I think I am okay with that.

I don't know should we be 'realistic' or should we be 'accurate' when we make a point. This is a strange time.

[188201]

It is an interesting point so I can discuss a little bit. Seems people didn't understand the implication of an autocratic government.

When people tried to avoid government funded software, let say a communication app, what is the reason? Because we want to avoid state-owned software violating user privacy and sent all my personal data for their profiling database.

You will trust a private company for that more, why? Because even a private company have to obey court order to disclose personal information to law enforcement, they usually have the right to deny it before the issue escalated to the court.

Now what is the case for autocratic government? Are there any real private company? Using China as an example, any person have to right to inform the government about secret information obtained, so China government have the right to get any information obtained from any Chinese private company without court order. In addition, any large organization including public company have to setup a party branch and have CCP member to oversee the organization. Including Huawei, claiming to be a private company.

So, using any product from any private Chinese company has equivalent disadvantage to a 3-letter agency funded VPN network.

Now back to the issue of if Liang is CCP or not. I won't quote unconfirmed source about Liang is a hidden CCP member. Just use the opened fact, Liang is a formal governor of Hong Kong, which means Liang has taking oath to CCP and CCP trusted this person to rule HK. Liang is currently a decision maker inside CCP's committee, and if Liang has conduct issue from CCP's point of view, then Liang can be secretly prosecuted by party order and put in jail in China.

Another example is Teresa Cheng, Hong Kong Secretary for Justice. For some reason she has been to UK but being taken back to China for investigating her conduct and possibility for applying political asylum by party secret police. She was then released and continued her work in Hong Kong. Detailed is not confirmed, but one thing is clear. Any Hong Kong official can be threatened by party secret police and they must do their job according to CCP plan.