[byyyy]

>I feel these statements at least partly stem from contrarian origins. We have a huge supply of facts as to why China indeed is a fascist totalitarian state - look at what happened to Hong Kong as an example. Pooling these facts into ”US propaganda” is borderline intellectually dishonest.

Of course theirs plenty of evidence. There's also plenty of evidence that the US is a nation of violent psychopaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes. That's just one example of the bad things in the US.

The US is far from great and when viewed through the right lens there's tons and tons of stuff. The Chinese are fed this stuff and all of it is true. All of it. The problem here is that this information isn't a full characterization of the US. It's a small slice of the pie.

What I'm saying is that the information you are being fed is also a small slice of the pie. It's nearly impossible to prove this to both you and your Chinese counterpart being fed anti-American propaganda. So I can only tell you about my perspective and hopefully you can at the very least consider the fact that your universe of information is limited.

I'm a Chinese American. Meaning I was born in the US to immigrant parents from China. I have many immigrant friends from China, many friends that were born here and lived in China (myself included) and I can only tell you that if you lived in China and it's not what you think. It's quite normal living in China, it's not some imagined fascist dystopia so many misinformed Americans fantasize about.

It's unlikely you'll change your opinion based off this one post. But perhaps this post can be a seed for the future where you might become more informed about what it's really like.

Perhaps I can convince you to at least mistrust western propaganda. Western propaganda is highly, highly sophisticated because it's fed to you under the guise of Freedom of the press. It's more sophisticated then Chinese propaganda because the Chinese on a certain level are aware of lies and censorship. It's actually not violating any freedom of press policies. Government sponsored lies in the press is still technically freedom of the press. Take a look at these sources:

https://graphika.com/reports/unheard-voice https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/sio-aug-22-takedowns https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z77m/facebook-twitter-take...

I guess the best way to break out of that mode is to have several Chinese friends from china here. Ask them what it's like.

>In happiness, China ranked 82nd out of 146 countries in 2023.

If you lived in China you'll know it's not because of the government. It's actually because of capitalism. China is a dog eat dog competitive society. People are overworked there. The unhappiness is the same sort of unhappiness that corporate drones feel here for their 9-5 job but 1000x worse. The Chinese aren't unhappy because of "lack of freedoms" or anything like that.

[lostmsu]

It is a fascist dystopia. You just didn't feel the full scale because you were on the right side of the boot. And still some continued stuff like censorship and limiting access to public information must have been obvious.

[byyyy]

Bro, everyones on the censorship side of the boot. You're on the "not knowing anything side" because you don't live there you just read the bullshit headlines. I've lived and experienced it.

The majority doesn't really care about censorship because it doesn't effect peoples daily lives. Most people aren't protestors or part of organizations with an agenda.

Not to mention free speech isn't something that's available on HN too. Watch if this thread becomes too heated, dang will swoop in and shut it down. You're not free to say whatever you want. The government in China is much the same way except it's global law. You think if you have a huge problem with the administration here on HN you're free to talk about it openly? This almost never happens because everyone knows free speech isn't available on HN, it's a private forum.

Some things are worse in China other things are worse in the US. Think about it. A chinese guy is telling you like it is right to your face but you stubbornly refuse to even consider it. How is this different then say Big Oil denying climate change or Big Tobacco denying the addictiveness and health effects of tobacco? At the very least none of what I said should flip your beliefs but a wise person should begin to question it.

[lostmsu]

> The majority doesn't really care about censorship because it doesn't effect peoples daily lives. Most people aren't protestors or part of organizations with an agenda.

Have you considered that the majority aren't protestors _because_ of censorship?

HN is not a country, I don't have to use it.

I am from Russia, and many people were telling me the same thing, but they are fools. After the last February most of them got their senses though.