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Another Hacker News reader recommended in a thread a month or so ago the book series by historian Richard J. Evans on the Third Reich. In the second book in the series, The Third Reich in Power, Evans points out that the Nazis had a law against making jokes about the regime leadership, and many neighbors informed on neighbors to the Gestapo about jokes they heard. But few of those cases were prosecuted, and even people in the Nazi leadership, according to archival records, thought it was important to let people blow off steam about the Nazi leadership.

Yes, what a dictatorial regime most fears is concerted, fearless action, not just talk. Taiwan's largely peaceful transformation to free and fair elections, a free press, and general protection of civil rights came about only after there was an organized opposition (the 黨外 movement) counteracting decades of attempts by the former dictatorship to suppress the development of independent civil society organizations. The eventual transformation in China will most likely take the same form. The regime is trying to delay that transformation.