[Steltek]

Isn't that the problem though? How do you know you're getting a genuine opinion when there's a public, broad, and well funded astroturf campaign? What even is a genuine opinion or free thought when the government employs such ruthless censorship?

[refenestrator]

If you're not open to other opinions, you will hear none, and that's entirely on you.

In extremely broad strokes, China has gone from colonized and poor to powerful and rich. Is it so hard to believe that the average Zhao is pretty OK with things?

[tpm]

It's not a question of belief, it's more a question of who is speaking - him or the state propaganda? We had the same in communist Eastern Europe - you publicly said things that you thought were ok and assumed anyone with ears can be an agent of the regime. Privately you might have thought something very different, but why end up in prison and cause problems for your family?

[dirtyid]

China is not an Eastern European "old country" that got broken and remains broken because communism. IMO I find an interesting divergance in opinions immigrants of ex-soviet bloc countries and China, the former mostly has experience of decline and bad times to draw from, the latter largely supports and are of proud of modern PRC, many have aspirations to return / sea tutural back to live and work. You'll find many Chinese people genuininely defend PRC (and CCP) precisely because China isn't a failed communist Eastern European country.

[tpm]

The point is we have no way to distinguish what is "genuine" in this case. Compounding that problem is the current massive Chinese propaganda offensive, which makes it even harder to believe any positive opinions. Especially when at the same time we can see what is happening in HK, for example.

[dirtyid]

I've wrote elsewhere in this thread that this alleged "Chinese propaganda offensive" especially on western social media is massively overblown. In terms of data, we have decades of western analysis of polling and sentiments in PRC suggesting people are genuinely supportive of central government, reflected in opinions of millions of Chinese diasphora populations who post on western media and/or interact regularly with people in the west. Even substantial percentage of HK itself is supportive of PRC, hence yellow/blue camps. So at minimum the issue is divisive with proponents and opponents, including in HK itself. Except the opponents are trying to create this narrative that proponent opinions can't be genuine because propaganda when that narrative itself is propaganda. All I can say is in my experience, folks in modern PRC voice dissent all the time, this isn't the 70s under Mao where one can be literally dispeared for private conversation. The stazis/red guards days are over. These days negative messages get deleted, positive messages get amplified. It's filtered. In the west the filtering goes the other way. Positive messages of get suppressed, negative ones get attention.

[tpm]

I did not mention social media, but I know things about Chinese influence in e.g. academia. It's not overblown at all; we are not talking nearly enough about it.

See, I already mentioned polling in totalitarian society does not make sense - it's quite simple really - and you are still using it as an argument. That's not a good way to have a discussion.

[sudosysgen]

There is a 90% chance there are ruthless, public, broad and well funded astroturf campaign for and against most of your impactful opinions.

You have to take it with détachement. I have enough Chinese friends living away to know that opinions often aren't that different living here vs in China. Censorship isn't that effective in the era of anyone easily getting a VPN.

[dirtyid]

>a public, broad, and well funded astroturf campaign?

Abroad where 50c doesn't operate? Reality is there aren't any substantial large scale astroturf campaigns from PRC according to recent foreign influence reports from western social media companies (see Twitter, Facebook). There's hand full of practice bit increasingly competent script kiddie tier campaigns with limited exposure on subject matters most westerners don't care about but CCP does (i.e. GuoWenGui). Even less so per studies before 2020 that only found anti-China social media manipulation that targeted PRC netizens who jumped the firewall. The real brainwashing is thinking Chinese opinion can't be "genuine opinion or free thought" because ruthless western manufactured consent created a misinformation enviroment that insinuates PRC opinions are totally controlled even abroad. There's plenty of genuine PRC supporters in the diasphora, and plenty of opponents as well. The former are usually the educated folks who immigrated in the last 10-30 years with duo perspective on Chinese/western models, largely normal people. The latter are dissidents, groups marginalized by CCP, who only has snapshot / out of date / time bubble memory of PRC. Incidentally they're the ones creating epochetimes, hanging with insurrectionist, and trying to convince western audiences that being pro PRC can't be a genuine opinion.

Here's the 2021 RAND report on PRC disinformation from a week ago:

* China has not carried out substantial disinformation attacks on other U.S. allies or partners (such as Singapore, the Philippines, or Japan).

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4373z3.html

PRC information campaigns are being tested, they may target west one day. But the idea that PRC is astroturfing the west is the product of western astroturfing itself.

[dillondoyle]

I strongly hold this skepticism of there being targeted CCP shills, including on HN. If true, that goes beyond censorship of their own citizens. How do you prove though. There has been some reporting about it, I remember one about their distributed mechanical turk-ified gamification of astro turfing basically.

And I think that not knowing is part of the value for them. The Putin way of power through questioning reality, just throw out lots of lies, deflect, scapegoat, whataboutism. Class troll behavior has invaded the real world.

I also see parallels in the US, at first from the extreme right 'media' just taking this bold faced bs approach and sadly it works.