[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.

[dirtyid]

>polling in totalitarian society does not make sense

Why? There's tons rigorous analysis by western institutions with decades history polling in PRC [1]. The allegations that you can't get useful polling because communism is facile. There's no basis to it other than projection and feels. It's common among East Europeans who abscribe their experiences on PRCs, which is very different. Unlike Soviet Block countries during cold war, PRC prior to mid 2010s was saturated by western NGOs who were given broad access because it was seen as helpful to modernization. Also the topic covered HK polling, if you think that's biased even pre NSL, then there's no reason to believe pro-HKers either.

[0] >The “Surprise” of Authoritarian Resilience in China https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/surprise-authorit...

>I did not mention social media, but I know things about Chinese influence

The original topic was about astroturfing, so assumption was when you talk about massive propaganda ops it would be related.

>academia

Where is the massive propaganda campaign? Thousand Talent particapants being poorly prosecuted by DoJ's China Initiative covered ~80 cases where only %50 had anything to do with espionage/theft. Even then high profile cases had to be dropped because FBI basically admitted they lied and were just targetting / profiling Chinese academics. Of course there's PRC influence in academia, but it's not as substantial as all the engineered headlines suggests.

[tpm]

> There's no basis to it other than projection and feels.

The basis is that the authorities can lock you up if you dissent. You have no right to free expression and no chance for a fair trial. You know this and will deny it happens.

I am not saying that for example HK polls are biased pre-NSL (they are because smart people knew what is coming 2047 or sooner), I am fully aware that half the people will support any government, no matter how bad. That also happened in Eastern Europe, so China is not as unique as you seem to think. It simply does not matter. Once dissent is not allowed - or you know you might be prosecuted for dissent in the future, or your family in China might be in danger - you will start self-censoring.

> Where is the massive propaganda campaign?

all over the world. See for example the Confucius Institute network associated with various universities, its overt task is to teach language and culture, but covertly to manipulate and to pressure lecturers and students and basically anyone around to toe the party line (happened to a friend very recently). Many similar stories all over academia, pressuring companies etc.