| That wasn't part of the conversation. But I'll bite. Somehow I always end up defending China on HN but really I'm just sharing what I have seen/heard during my time there. The majority of the Chinese do not worry about those things. The great firewall is probably the greatest inconvenience you listed. However, the Chinese that come here and see FB and Google say, hey, maybe the firewall is not a bad idea. It's easy to circumvent anyway. It just blocks the majority of the population from western media. The social credit system I don't know anything about, sorry. The camps, AFAIK, are for Uyghurs classified as dangerous or high risk. At least, that's what the Han believe. The general understanding is if you do something like text "terrorism" as a Uyghur - you disappear for a while. I think part of this is because they are terrified the US will radicalize the muslim extremists. The truth is we barely have to - they hate the Chinese enough there are recorded events of the Uyghers just running around killing Han Chinese with knives. This was before cameras were super popular, but there is potato footage. This is partly why large cities in Xinjiang have such high security (think officers with MP5s outside every K-6 school) So, the Han do not protest at such camps. |
Picture yourself being jailed, taken away from your family, forced to learn another language and change your customs because “people who look like you can be dangerous”.