[yogthos]

There is plenty of government censorship happening in US as well. Entire books have been written on this subject. I'm not aware of any country that doesn't have censorship in practice.

I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd. People can certainly understand whether they are happy with their lives and whether their quality of life is improving or not. Given that vast majority of people in China claim this is the case, I'm going to go with their lived experience over your notions about what life in China is like.

Frankly, the fact that people in US have been convinced that they know better what life in other countries is like than people living there do is a testament to the effectiveness of US propaganda.

[mindslight]

> I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd

I'd say the exact opposite - those in a system become desensitized to its failings, and steeped in societal myths. One needs to be outside of that to have a frame of reference to compare anything to.

Your argument seems to hinge upon material wealth. That can carry a lot of water for a system's failings, as it does in the US. But it's not particularly indicative of the shapes of power structures.

[yogthos]

What system failings are those precisely?

[grayhatter]

> There is plenty of government censorship happening in US as well. Entire books have been written on this subject

Interesting, can you cite any of these books? I don't believe they contradict my understand that censorship in China is so drastically different from the US that the comparison becomes dishonest.

> I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd. People can certainly understand whether they are happy with their lives and whether their quality of life is improving or not.

I didn't claim this, because normally I'd agree with you. I don't think I understand their lives better than they do. If someone says they're happy with their life, and I don't suspect duress. I'm happy to believe them. My claim was, in part because it's so hard to get reliable information inside from China given the extreme government censorship; that the opinions from the population about the quality shouldn't be given the normal amount of weight you'd give opinions about the government from a country that has strong protections and freedoms for the press. At best, they're under informed, and at worse they're misinformed. If you disagree, and believe they're perfectly informed, can you explain why there's so many articles, information, and evidence showing the CCP attempting to coverup information and events?

[yogthos]

Here are just a couple of books documenting censorship and public opinion manipulation that happens in US

https://archive.org/details/inventingrealit000pare

https://archive.org/details/pdfy-NekqfnoWIEuYgdZl

>My claim was, in part because it's so hard to get reliable information inside from China given the extreme government censorship; that the opinions from the population about the quality shouldn't be given the normal amount of weight you'd give opinions about the government from a country that has strong protections and freedoms for the press.

Then you surely will give weight to western sources, such as Harvard, saying this is the case?

Here's a Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey showing that Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...

https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-tha...

https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilif...

>If you disagree, and believe they're perfectly informed, can you explain why there's so many articles, information, and evidence showing the CCP attempting to coverup information and events?

You seriously need me to explain to you why there ism assive propaganda in US against its peer competitor? The very fact that you can't even spell the name of the party, which is Communist Party of China (CPC) correctly says volumes. It's like if I insisted on calling your country ASU.

[grayhatter]

> You seriously need me to explain to you why there ism assive propaganda in US against its peer competitor?

Yes, because you're not convincing anyone you're right. You're convincing people that you're kind of a dick. I have a large body of evidence claiming one thing, and the other side culminates in "just trust me bro". And because you're being such an asshole to both me and other commenters, I find it really hard to trust you, given I don't think you're operating in good faith.

> The very fact that you can't even spell the name of the party, which is Communist Party of China (CPC) correctly says volumes. It's like if I insisted on calling your country ASU.

No, it's not because my primary source of information is "western" explicitly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party which uses CCP, and because I'm on a predominantly "western" message board. I chose to use the more commonly understood initialism. Do you find ad hominem convincing yourself? Personally I find them either insulting, or distracting, and quite often distractions and red herrings are used to stifle conversations and the sharing of ideas. Which seems to be a theme across most of your comments here, you misunderstand a comment, and then bring up distractions from the topic quite a lot.

[yogthos]

If providing actual sources and concrete examples to back my arguments isn't convincing anyone, that really shows how lost Americans are. I've literally linked you Harvard studies in the reply. You're the one doing the whole trust me bro thing here buddy.

>No, it's not because my primary source of information is "western" explicitly

Once you actually read your source, you'll see that the official name of the party is indeed CPC, the Communist Party of China.

> The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Why ASU affiliated sources choose to call the party CCP I have no idea.

>Do you find ad hominem convincing yourself?

If you're going to use terms like ad hominem to make yourself sound smart then you should at least learn what they mean first.

Ad hominem, would be me saying that you are wrong because of poor quality of your character. However, I've actually provided factual sources to show why your argument is wrong here. Perhaps don't engage in debate on subjects you're utterly ignorant regarding and then you won't feel the need to feel insulted.

I understand your comment perfectly, and all you're doing here is using sophistry to distract from the fact that your comment was demonstrably asinine.