[from]

Where does this meme come from that China is this horror show held together only by torturing and enslaving their population into submission? The Chinese government gets its legitimacy from thousand year old traditions and the fact that the people there have more than doubled their incomes every decade and accordingly it enjoys massive public support. The American government is basically the exact opposite of that.

[vorpalhex]

The genocidal death camps of Xinjiang Muslims may have a role there.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037

[from]

But that is not most people's experience. China is 90% Han Chinese and the overwhelming majority of people don't live in those conditions. Trust in government in China is near an all time high (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116013/china-trust-in-g..., https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...). None of this is to say that any of that is morally or ethically justified, just that in terms of social stability China is probably in the top 10% of countries.

[Throwawayaerlei]

Where does this meme come from that China is this horror show held together only by torturing and enslaving their population into submission?

History? Until Deng's reforms created a private market in food, block and village Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee had absolute power of life and death over those under it through their issuing of food ration coupons. This data from some Chinese grad students I knew who lived through that and the transition, plus it was generally known. See also how the one child policy was implimented. They also still execute a lot of people, and politically a lot of corruption cases which sometimes go that far are clearly Xi and his new Tsinghua clique eliminating competition. Which has created a great many enemies in the CCP, that is its ruling class especially now with the suppression of tech companies.

At a higher level, the estimated 70 million people the CCP killed after gaining power in 1949? That may be high, a lot of it is from Mao's enemies, but on the other hand we keep increasing the estimates of deaths from the Cultural Revolution. Which Mao used to regain power after his very costly Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine per those estimates killed tens of millions and cost him de facto paramount position.

Post-Mao and the Gang of Four the rulers of China made various agreements to ensure such things would not happen again. Xi and his new clique shredded them, and for a less contentious than the issues with Xinjiang Muslims example look at the brutality of Xi's Zero COVID policy. If Xi navigates the current every five year congress meeting to get his third term there's no reason to expect things to get better. Very possibly the same if he fails and is effectively deposed.

Those thousand year old traditions? Mao did his very best to stamp them out, especially in the Cultural Revolution. I would wonder if they're done at any greater than a cargo cult level today, although that might be enough for the public. Except of course those members of metro areas that are getting smashed when a few cases of COVID are found in them, those "owning" real estate, or those without a social safety net where 4 grandparents depend on 2 parents who depend on 1 child for the extremes of the effects of the one child policy.

For the economics you cite, also see how the residential property bubble is bursting now. That's not necessarily the fault of Xi, was inevitable sooner or later, but it is happening now in concert with other negative things including backlash like this very uncertain in its effects US chip tech embargo (the US Commerce Department has a great deal of discretion in what it will license someday).