ttmrichter

I think you should at least open the link and check the video description and comments. Probably it might surprise you.

I'll do so when I have some spare time. (Last night was a non-starter. I got injured working out so my night was spent mostly whining quietly in my corner. :D)

Harvard study made that very clear, and to every single person I have mentioned it as a response to “haha but gubmint evil CCP bad no freedom”, each of them has acted like a denialist. I always tell them as an asterisk that CPC does not get to fund Harvard, so they should use better arguments to convince me.

As a general rule of thumb, when I see people use "CCP" I map in "ignorant asshole". It's kind of … ballsy … to claim expertise in a subject when you can't even get the name right, after all.

One more question here. Since Russia and other socialist countries also have “authoritarian” governments yet clearly have had a response failure, why is China so different? Socialist countries generally have people in solidarity, so I want to make sense of that.

Rice culture.

No, really. It's a thing.

When the main crop of the bulk of your society is rice, and has been for thousands of years, cooperation is in your genes and memes. Rice is not a crop you can farm large-scale individually. Using ancient techniques, for a village to even farm enough rice to feed itself (not to mention an excess for use in trade) it takes a lot of cooperative behaviour that is not needed if you're, say, farming wheat or potatoes or such. Any person not doing their thing kills the whole. Villages that didn't learn that lesson starved to death and stopped the spread of their genes and their cultural memes. Farming rice turns out to be a powerful vaccination against maladaptive selfishness.

Russia (which is not particularly socialist right now, and maybe never really was) doesn't have that need to cooperate hammered into its very genetic and memetic structure. Japan and South Korea (neither of which is even remotely socialist) both do. This is why Russia fared pretty pathetically in facing a threat that was society-wide and J/SK fared relatively well.

I can only speak for things I've observed or talked about with people, so my perspective is necessarily limited.

What is the current consensus regarding Indians in China?

I suspect that for most it's not given much thought. Indian food is well-regarded as exotic, yet palatable. It kind of occupies the same space as Italian food in Canada (right down to being largely inauthentic). For a long time, Indian soap operas were a major hit on television. Nobody in my household watches television any longer (we've all switched to streaming to private devices) so I don't know if that's the same now. Several of my friends used to go to India once a year and loved it there. One of them wishes he'd stayed in India, in fact, because it seems he'll never get back given the state of the pandemic.

So largely I suspect the opinions, on average, range from "don't know, don't care" leaning toward approval.

What is the consensus regarding topics like privacy, anonymity, Tor, censorship et al, since I advocate privacy stuff (r/privatelife, c/privatelife and also mod c/privacy), and China does not have the kind of privacy/anonymity culture like in Western “freedom” countries? I have never gotten an opinion on it from China’s perspective, and it is just a very odd question.

This is one area where the Chinese are definitely different from westerners. Privacy and anonymity are not huge cultural touchstones. While at the same time they cheerfully use the very kinds of services I'm using to circumvent the Great Firewall because the "Golden Shield" (to give it its proper name) inconveniences them at their work and play.

If you were to go on about anonymity here you'd get people wondering what it is you're trying to hide, likely causing suspicion, not "HELL YEAH!" responses.

I am not a Sinophobe (many know that well here), but I really have trouble believing that there are merely 100K cases among 1.4B people, unless they literally locked people away in their homes. 100K is 0.071% for such a colossal population size.

I am having trouble picturing how China could have only 100K cases among 1.4B people. A 0.071% case rate is just too low for me to fathom it happening unless they literally locked people away in their homes.

That would have been a better start. That whole 'I am not X' construct has been poisoned by literally centuries of bad-faith use of it. Don't use it.

I didn't think you were an actual Sinophobe which is why I put it as a side note and addressed your points directly. (Had I thought of you as a Sinophobe I'd likely have just made fun of you. I'm just oh so weary of those motherfuckers.)

And I saw this before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46DfBFWxTuM.

Sorry, I'm not going to watch an almost hour-long thing to get maybe ten minutes' worth of actual information. If there's something to read, I'll read it. (I read like lightning.) I do not have an hour out of my day to watch what is very likely a bunch of bullshit (given that it's on Youtube).

Why are the attitudes of people there compliant both on micro and macro scales when compared to rest of the world?

Better education, more trust in expertise (because education is valued), and better government in the experience of an overwhelming majority of the population.

On that latter point, as incredible as it may sound, keep in mind that the single largest source of government interaction most people have is with their community officials … who are their literal neighbours. Keep in mind too that in my lifetime China went from a mostly-agrarian economy to the #2 economy in the world, having switched from (barely) rural majority to full-blown urban majority population not only in my lifetime but in the time I've been here. (It was 60% rural when I came. Now it's approaching 80% urban, if I remember the stats right.)

The government, to the shock and dismay of western pearl-clutchers, has a lot of credibility with the Chinese. As I've heard from quite a few people: if everything changed today and genuine free and open elections were held, the current government would win in a landslide. (This is especially true given the utter shit show that the western world has become in controlling a disease that was almost contemptuously handled by Chinese authorities, not to mention the clowns the "free" world put into power around the world … including India.)

There are a lot of factors that play into why China handled COVID-19 so well, and its authoritarian government is probably the least important of them (though it obviously had an impact: building two massive hospitals in under a month is something that could not happen in Canada, for example, because there would be people profiteering from the land sale, people launching lawsuits to block it on stupid grounds, etc. etc. etc.)

Me and my friend discuss things, and we feel Western countries might still struggle with this for a year, and USA for even close to 2 years, at the rate the whole scenario is going on.

A year? You're an optimist. Look at the chart I posted. Two years into a pandemic that has already killed over 5.5 million people and infected over 300 million and ... Europe and North America both are having sudden rapid rises in infections. Two years in and they haven't learned even the basics that China learned in the first three months or so (from the December start date, not the date of the Great Lockdown).

This is not going away anytime soon. Five years from now there will still be outbreaks all over the "free" world and more and more people are going to stack up in body bags.

(As a side note, whenever someone opens with "I am not X, but..." my brain automatically finishes that with "...I totally am X." You might want to work on that.)

If you "know" more than people with boots on the ground there is simply no hope of convincing you. I've learned since the Great Wuhan Lockdown not to argue with people who are convinced and can't be unconvinced. I just break out the popcorn and enjoy their lamentations.

But the fact is that my direct social sphere numbers in the thousands (courtesy of 16 years of teaching … that's a lot of students, and in China students keep in touch). With my family (spread out over about four cities here—including Wuhan), my friends (mostly just Wuhan), my colleagues (again mostly Wuhan), and my former students I know nobody directly who has had a case of COVID-19. None of their family or other people important to them have had cases. And take that another degree of separation and still, thus far, not a single reported case.

I'm also in a few QQ and WeChat groups that have people spread around the country. These groups have participation measured in six figures or more. Not a case reported. My Weibo interaction is smaller, but that's another 50,000 or so people, from a brief eyeballing, that have no reported cases.

Oh and somewhere along the way I also managed to completely fail to fall over the stacks of bodies that would be required for some of the more hysterical death estimates. (Some fuckwits are saying 21 million dead because mobile phone cancellations.)

Oh, sorry. I lied. I do know a friend who got COVID-19.

In Poland.

Not a single person in China.

So … your dad is a doctor, but he's not a doctor IN CHINA. He has not seen what mitigation efforts were used IN CHINA. He has not seen the behaviour of people IN CHINA. He is, to put this bluntly, not a source of information. He is at best a slightly better than average source of speculation.

But speculation don't mean shit in the face of actual information and experience.

Here's a few clues, however, to help you through your confusion.

… unless they literally locked people away in their homes …

When the Great Lockdown occurred in Wuhan, there were no locks. But yes, people were required to remain in their domiciles for all but a very small number of very specific activities. For two months my world was my apartment with my wife, my son, and my mother-in-law. We were permitted to leave only to drop off refuse, and to pick up food deliveries (in timed small batches of people) from the compound gate. When we had a lockdown, it wasn't that cosplay shit the west called a lockdown. It was a genuine lockdown. For two months. Dead streets. Dead businesses. Dead parks. Dead everything. The only things that moved were ambulances, police vehicles, and the delivery trucks.

(The story of those delivery trucks alone is worth a fucking movie. They were the real heroes of Wuhan, topping even the health workers by a small margin!)

Is it because asymptomatic testing was avoided entirely?

The exact opposite. In the summer of 2021 when we had a Delta outbreak in Wuhan, the entire population of Wuhan (11 million people) were tested. Twice. Inside of two weeks. Again, the Chinese didn't do the cosplay shit the rest of the world did in fighting COVID-19. When a case was found (note: A CASE, singular!), a large district of the city was shut down in a mini-lockdown, contract tracing was turned back on, everybody was tested (twice, as I said), and that was kept up for a few weeks until it was clear the Delta spread had been stopped. Then life returned to normal.

I live here. Which specific lies are you thinking of? Let's see if I can't put any of them to bed for you.

"Banned from Twitter" is usually code for "right-wing extremist" IME. I mean look at Gab or Parler and see what's mostly in there.

… the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 …

Ooh! I missed that one!

There was no Tiananmen Square Massacre. At all. This is hinted at in the very title of the piece you quoted: 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. There's a few "facts" you're going to find out, to your likely intense shock, surrounding that.

1. There was no massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Citing the same source you quoted:

Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews and CBS correspondent Richard Roth reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the Square itself.

Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and claimed that he didn't see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated, "Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning."

Want non-Chinese sources? How about The Columbia Journalism Review? Read that and a few more similar sources (the finding of which is left as a learning exercise) and upon completion ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

2. No matter what you think you remember, Tank Man did not get run over.

I have met people utterly SHOCKED (indeed shaken to their core) when faced with the evidence that what they "clearly remember"—Tank Man being squished into pulp under the treads of merciless Chinese tanks—never happened, but … it didn't. If you remember seeing Tank Man killed, you are the victim of very skilled propaganda using carefully timed editing, skillfully worded suggestion, and flat-out lies.

The full video exists showing the aftermath of the famous, iconic shots that shocked the world. It's a good exercise to seek it out. When you do, ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

3. The real story of what went on is far darker.

Not only because of what it implies for the Chinese people but also because of what it implies for western people. The truth is that there was protests aplenty in Beijing in 1989. And there was a massacre. It's just that the protests the Chinese government was nervous of were worker protests, not student protests. The thing is that the western press didn't want to do the actual work (and dangerous work!) of covering these. The children cosplaying revolutionary were far more photogenic and could be covered within a brief walk from the popular journalist hang-out hotel.

Further, the corporate masters of most western media really did not want to be broadcasting stories of workers rising in rebellion against cruel masters. It would have struck far too close to home, that would have. Much better to focus on the cute kiddies playing revolutionary! D'aw! They even have a mock Statue of Liberty they call the Goddess of Democracy! Aren't they cute!?

The real massacre was near Muxidi. It was a massacre of workers who'd finally had enough and snapped. Who'd rioted and attacked police and PLA. Who were subsequently mercilessly gunned down by machine gun, run over by tanks and APCs and generally slaughtered. It was the low point of governance in the modern era of China and it sparked quiet reforms that continue to this day: some good for the people, some ... not so good.

In retrospect the press story never really made any sense. The students at the protests came from all the top universities in Beijing and environs. They were the scions of the most powerful and wealthy people in China. They were the sons and daughters of Chinese leaders! I know that people have been trained for their entire lives into thinking that the Chinese are unthinking, unfeeling robots, but do you seriously believe it extends to the point that Chinese leaders are going to order the massacre of their very own children!?

Ponder that for a while, and ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

4. The protests (and suppressions) didn't just happen in Beijing.

One of the huge problems I have with the ZOMG THEY KILLED ALL THE STUDENTS IN THE SQUARE!!!!!!1111oneoneoneeleventyone!!! narrative is that not only does it suppress the worker uprising and subsequent bloody suppression in Beijing, it also hides the same uprisings and suppressions that happened all over the place! There were protests in Shanghai. In Fujian province. In Hubei province. In all kinds of places. Workers protested. Low-level Communist Party officials protested. PLA SOLDIERS PROTESTED! This was a nationwide political disaster brewing and all of that is erased in the official western record of cute kids cosplaying counter-revolutionary.

What possible motive could the press have for not reporting this? (It was known to them. You'll find sources detailing that quite easily once you drop down that particular rabbit hole.) Ponder that and ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

5. Things have actually improved since then.

You don't last as long as absolute dictators as the Chinese government has, over a population as unruly as the Chinese have historically always been, if you're stupid. While the Chinese government did clamp down and clamp down hard (the better term is "brutally") on the uprisings (note the plural) they also recognized what led to them and started to, get this, fix the problems.

Jackasses from the west bemoan that the locals don't want to talk about 1989 with them. There's three major reasons for this, however.

1. Nobody trusts the west. There's a long, ignoble tradition of the western press putting sources at risk and then topping it all off by lying. Of fucking course they're not going to want to talk about politically-sensitive issues, knowing that western reporters are sociopaths who'll put them and their families at risk all for the fucking clicks.
2. Most of the time people use the wrong language. They assume everybody calls it the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre for instance. Which is not the term used here. Quite often, I suspect, the people being asked have no idea what they're being asked. It would be like me going up to an American and asking them their opinion on Santa Anna's Grand Victory or whatever.
3. 1989 is over 30 years ago. Most of the people being addressed weren't even born for it. Many of the rest were in middle school. They don't know, and don't care, what you're talking about. Kind of like how most Americans alive today don't know or care about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

You seriously can't fathom the notion of disagreeing respectfully? Of respectful criticism? Really?