As a Russian, seeing how Russians perceive things, which I imagine is something of an analogue:
They don't believe our internal propaganda. That's why Russia and the like spend so much time hyping up where we don't live up to our ideals - it lets them sell the line that we're just as bad, just as corrupt, just as etc. but we either mouth the propaganda trying to get by, or we're dumb/gullible enough to fall for the propaganda.
My understanding of Chinese culture suggests there's also a strand of "they'd love us to be hamstrung by falling for their bullshit, so we don't seize our place in the world."
interesting, but Russians afaik don't get schooled overseas too much, like so many Chinese students spend years at overseas uni's, you'd think some of it would seep in. If not I'm very disappointed with the universities.
Edit: a world without dissent seems so ... pointless
> Chinese students spend years at overseas uni's, you'd think some of it would seep in. If not I'm very disappointed with the universities.
Don't you think that a big number of them go to the West with full knowledge of that?
Western education is still only affordable to a fraction of 1% of Chinese population, with many of them being CPC members themselves.
I had a curious case when I was studying in Canada: one very quiet girl, always wearing a tracksuit, always telling everybody her being a daughter of ordinary daylaborers who saved all their life to send her to the West.
She was one of few Chinese students we actually believed being who she claimed she was, and not a son/daughter of some elite, concealing family background. Then, by an accident, some son of a Chinese military officer outed her as a daughter of a 2 star general when he made advances on her.
The Chinese social-credit-score system (where people are, among other restrictions, not allowed to travel outside the country if they’re e.g. anti-authoritarian) is a formalization of a long-standing practice.
Over the years, many mainland-Chinese university students (and tourists!) have been granted the funds and visa-arrangements to visit these other countries, specifically because they were known to be “patriots” of China—and moreover, to demonstrate “faith” in the Chinese government in the face of evidence against its character.
Until recently, you could spot tour-buses of these folks often in Hong Kong tourist destinations. The tours were always led by mainland-Chinese tour-guides, never locals.
I imagine the same applies to foreign University programs, but with even stricter selection criteria, such that the students won’t need a handler.
(The “nice” thing about the social-credit-score system is that it replaces all this manual background-checking work with a default-allow system with continuous blackballing. China can now portray itself as a country that allows its citizens to travel freely, while only restricting “those with criminal intent”—while in practice allowing only the same people to travel that it otherwise would have under manual background-checking.)
> like so many Chinese students spend years at overseas uni's, you'd think some of it would seep in. If not I'm very disappointed with the universities.
A Chinese friend of mine has said that, nowadays, most of the overseas Chinese students are rich kids who didn't make the cut in the Chinese education system. They're less curious about the world than previous generations of Chinese students, and have more to gain from the current Chinese system, too.
My friend comes from one of those previous generations, was more curious about the world, and it still took her many years to get over the propaganda.
I'm not sure how to best say this within the bounds of Hacker News guidelines, but you come across as Chinese intelligence, posting to reduce fear of China. Or satire? If you have more nuanced discussion of why you turned Maoist, would be interested to understand. Also, people still relate to Mao in the west? I thought that would be similar to saying "Stalanist".
I live in a country where political affiliation has become so central to personal identity, and so bound up in our perception of "good" vs. "bad" morality, that you can't take a dissenting position on anything - not even for fear of government censure, at this point, but for fear of social censure. It's not even fear of current social censure - it's become clear with people willing to dig up old transgressions that you have to protect not only against currently popular ideology, but anything that might become ideology in the future.[1]
I happen to agree with you. I'm just responding to the subtext in your post that seems to imply that we still have freedom to dissent.[2]
[1] This is my reminder that I'm running late on my regular purging of social media accounts. To try to at least vaguely preserve my sense of anonymity, which I'm sure is much more illusory than real.
[2] I have to point out, given that this current strain of criticism is also politically polarized, that I am a liberal. I just happen to be of the generation of liberals for whom phrases like "free speech extremist" are a betrayal of so much of what we stood/stand for.
I think I live in a different country from you, though there is some of that here to, but yes democracy is going through a rough patch in spots, but it's better than the alternatives imho, you need a system that allows different points of view, there are a lot of them, and thats the only way things will improve, sure there is one system that is good at making factories and widgets, but its a pretty empty life imho.
There was a series of books I read many years ago - The Dorsai by Gordon R Dickson, in that humanity split off into a bunch of extremists and we all flew off to our own planets, religious extremists, scientists, soldiers etc, I keep thinking of that more lately, maybe we'll just have to wait for Musk, Bezos and Branson to build some more ships.
They don't believe our internal propaganda. That's why Russia and the like spend so much time hyping up where we don't live up to our ideals - it lets them sell the line that we're just as bad, just as corrupt, just as etc. but we either mouth the propaganda trying to get by, or we're dumb/gullible enough to fall for the propaganda.
My understanding of Chinese culture suggests there's also a strand of "they'd love us to be hamstrung by falling for their bullshit, so we don't seize our place in the world."