I happen to live next door to Spain, in Portugal, and I did ask my parents and older friends (some of which who are very leftwing and were Communists back in the days of the Revolution) and back then in our own Fascism (which ran parallel to Spain’s) nobody would tell their true opinion about the government to a stranger, much less a stranger claiming to be doing a poll for some university in a country which is viewed and views itself as an adversary of your own country.
Hell, in such a setup people would loudly tell the foreigner (or local working for those foreigners) just how great their government was just in case that was some kind of sting operation by the secret police or what you said leaked out: back when even your neighbours could rat you out to the secret police for saying something critical of the regime, criticizing the regime to somebody claiming to be doing a “poll” like this was a good way to end up a political prisioner (and, unlike those hailing from the middle class, politicial prisioners from poorer families didn’t get the velvet glove treatment, and most people were poor and working class).
So, it’s strange you didn’t ask such things from older people in the country you claim to hail from…
That and given how you phrased…
You, as a westerner, believe your western propaganda that China is an antidemocratic autocracy where people can’t give their political opinions freely. Chinese people simply don’t feel that way as per any serious study, and your opinion can be safely ignored because it’s based on your misunderstandings as a misled westerner.
all sounds a lot like you’re not a Spaniard. Which would make your earlier statement:
As a Spaniard, it’s hard to conceive 90+% of the population being satisfied with the central government
a lie.
Guess who would try and pass themselves as a “westerner” to seem more trustworthy in a forum mostly frequented by “westerners” when defending China?
A propaganda astroturfer.
(Funilly enough, there’s a ton of anti-China propaganda in the West, especially in the US, it’s just that this time you seriously overplayed that as a card when you tried to whitewash your own propaganda with it)
PS: Oh and just to point out how much that “westerner bias” bollocks applies to me, just after I made that previous comment on your bullshit, I made an equally critical comment on some other muppet from the “other” side talking about “China’s attrocities”, and that comment of mine definitelly sounds like pro-China to any simpleton tribalist moron or propaganda sockpuppet.
My biggest “bias” in this is against Hipocrisy and Propaganda.
Hablamos en Español si lo prefieres, campeón. De verdad que es la actitud más imbécil posible asumir que cualquiera que te contradice es un astroturfer.
Again, all your comment can be wholly ignored because the polls I referred to are done by western institutions. You will not find a response to Pew Research polls in North Korea because they can’t freely carry out their polls there.
I’ve had the pleasure of directing the Master’s and Bachelor’s theses of a plethora of Chinese students during my time as a PhD candidate in a German university. I’ve had discussions of politics with all my Chinese students regarding topics as controverted as Taiwan, the Communist Party, etc, and I’ve received a plethora of different opinions, the majority of which were supportive of the Chinese government, yes, even after tasting the glorious “European political freedom” that kept them scared because AfD Nazis threaten to get first place in government and make their lives impossible as migrants. Most of these students now, after spending 4-5 years in Germany on average, moved back to China and live happily there, I have frequent conversations with some of them still. Only one of my students decided to stay in Germany.
You’re taking out of copious amounts of western propaganda if you seriously don’t believe Chinese people can freely give an answer to a Pew Research anonymous survey on government satisfaction, and you obviously haven’t discussed politics with a normal Chinese person in your entire life.
Hablamos en Español si lo prefieres, campeón. De verdad que es la actitud más imbécil posible asumir que cualquiera que te contradice es un astroturfer
Vindo de alguem que acusa aqueles que duvidam de inquéritos que mostram 90%+ de taxa de aprovação do governo num país de “Partido único” de serem “ocidentais com o cérebro lavado pela propaganda ocidental” é uma ironia de ir para o Livro de Recordes do Guiness.
Se fores mesmo Espanhol, sugiro que fales com pessoas que viveram no tempo do Franco para veres como as coisas funcionam em sistemas onde o Estado controla a informação e tem poder arbitrário.
Alternativamente, vai trabalhar para grandes empresas durante uma décade ou duas e aprende como é que os jogos de poder e a pressão funcionam até mesmo em ambientes muito mais pequenos que um país: as pessoas quando já são crescidinhos e têm de se preocupar com por comida na boca dos filhos absolutamente não dizem certas coisas abertamente se pensam que estão a ser vigiadas e podem sofrer consequencias por isso.
Não leves a mal mas tu soas como alguns dos jovens no pequeno partido de Esquerda de que sou membro no meu país - ignorante e com uma visão simplística do mundo e da política.
Sigues con la misma cantinela comparando los tiempos de Franco con el gobierno de China. He viajado a China y la gente vive vidas normales y felices sin represión del Gobierno. Y te repito que he hablado con muchos estudiantes de China fuera de China, y la mayoría de ellos, en contra de lo que piensas, apoyan al gobierno de China. Me decían que no podían entender cómo el gobierno Alemán dejaba morir a cientos de miles de personas de COVID y que les parecía horroroso. Uno de los estudiantes me llegó a decir que antes era crítico del gobierno de China, pero que cuando llegó a Alemania y vio lo que hay allí, se volvió mucho menos crítico de China.
Si tanto te preocupa el gobierno de Franco, te deberían preocupar en primera instancia los sistemas de gobierno de Europa. Te asusta el gobierno comunista Chino, mientras que en Europa asoman la cabeza los fascistas por todas partes. En España estamos cagados con VOX, en Alemania llegan los nazis de AfD, en Italia tienen a Meloni…
You are free to travel to China and ask people. What you learn will surprise you. They do not feel like they are living in an evil authoritarian nightmare and are generally actually pretty satisfied
I very much doubt it’s an authoritarian nightmare (that would be North Korea or China back in the days of Mao).
China does however have a system of “social points”, so people are well aware that if they don’t do and say the right things, it might negativelly impact their lives (you don’t set up such a system for anything other than push people to behave in certain ways).
Further, only an idiot would deny that during about 3 decades (though that was mainly over about a decade ago) China has pulled up from poverty more people than the rest of the World combined, by a huge margin, even while in the West social mobility went into reverse and inequality started growing (especially after 2008).
Equally only an idiot would deny that in a single party system being openly critical of the Party is likely to have negatives consequences for that person and even the mere concern that it might happen will make people just say nothing, just in case. (I mean, shit, people will naturally just do this at work in supposedly free countries with work-at-will legislation were they can just be fired for no reason, so it takes quite a lot of naivety to think people will not “keep their mouths shut, just in case” when it’s actual authorities with no independent oversight over them keeping a keen eye on a persons sayings and doings, as they have the power to fuck your life up far more than merelly firing you).
Finally, it takes are a very (very, VERY) special kind of idiot to think that there are only two ways to govern a country and if you’re critical of one of them, then you must be a brainwashed tribalist supporting the “other” one. There is no bigger kind of political moron because the very mental architecture the use to judge things hyper-simplistic and ultra reductive.
If people’s life was amazing, the authorities there wouldn’t need a Great Firewal of China, a social points system or a giant civil society surveillance system, just like in the supposedly free West you see the increase in civil society surveillance and the Propaganda machine (around here using immigrants and even people with non-normative sexuality as scapegoats) going into overdrive, all coinciding (by “an amazing coincidence”) with the time when quality of life stopped improving and started going down and the first generation in a century who is expected the have a worse life than their parents started coming of age.
(Against, this kind of shit should be familiar to Spaniards, at least those who were adults during the days of Franco, because very similar tools were used).
Those kind of mechanisms aren’t deployed against a people which supports by 90%+ the current government, and they’re generic rather than a China-only thing and some are just as much used in supposed Democracies as in Autocracies - similar techniques, just with different excuses justifying their use.
Whilst the country is not an absolute dictatorship, Chinese “we love the Party” data is highly poluted by a “it’s best not to say certain things, just in case” concern, information control and internal Propaganda in a similar way to, say, the public opinion in Hungary is shaped by that regime’s control of the Press and a certain insecurity so if you work for the State over there you won’t be critical of Orban and his party because that’s just not good for your career (and a similar thing happens in, for example, Turkey) so their data on it is going to be highly poluted (unsurprisingly, if you personally know people form those countries, its the more well informed people who think worse of the government, hence typically even with all the information control and even iron first, they have worst polling in the larger cities)
What shocks me is that somebody supposedly from a country which had a dictatorship until 75 can’t recognize certain kinds of mechanisms which I’m pretty sure their parents or grandparents are familiar with and their impact.
That doesn’t mean that most people in China aren’t content, what it does mean is that poll data showing a 90%+ stated approval of the government must be taken with a large pinch of salt.
I happen to live next door to Spain, in Portugal, and I did ask my parents and older friends (some of which who are very leftwing and were Communists back in the days of the Revolution) and back then in our own Fascism (which ran parallel to Spain’s) nobody would tell their true opinion about the government to a stranger, much less a stranger claiming to be doing a poll for some university in a country which is viewed and views itself as an adversary of your own country.
Hell, in such a setup people would loudly tell the foreigner (or local working for those foreigners) just how great their government was just in case that was some kind of sting operation by the secret police or what you said leaked out: back when even your neighbours could rat you out to the secret police for saying something critical of the regime, criticizing the regime to somebody claiming to be doing a “poll” like this was a good way to end up a political prisioner (and, unlike those hailing from the middle class, politicial prisioners from poorer families didn’t get the velvet glove treatment, and most people were poor and working class).
So, it’s strange you didn’t ask such things from older people in the country you claim to hail from…
That and given how you phrased…
all sounds a lot like you’re not a Spaniard. Which would make your earlier statement:
a lie.
Guess who would try and pass themselves as a “westerner” to seem more trustworthy in a forum mostly frequented by “westerners” when defending China?
A propaganda astroturfer.
(Funilly enough, there’s a ton of anti-China propaganda in the West, especially in the US, it’s just that this time you seriously overplayed that as a card when you tried to whitewash your own propaganda with it)
PS: Oh and just to point out how much that “westerner bias” bollocks applies to me, just after I made that previous comment on your bullshit, I made an equally critical comment on some other muppet from the “other” side talking about “China’s attrocities”, and that comment of mine definitelly sounds like pro-China to any simpleton tribalist moron or propaganda sockpuppet.
My biggest “bias” in this is against Hipocrisy and Propaganda.
Quit giving feedback to the astroturfer man. Don’t improve their talking points. Lol
Hablamos en Español si lo prefieres, campeón. De verdad que es la actitud más imbécil posible asumir que cualquiera que te contradice es un astroturfer.
Again, all your comment can be wholly ignored because the polls I referred to are done by western institutions. You will not find a response to Pew Research polls in North Korea because they can’t freely carry out their polls there.
I’ve had the pleasure of directing the Master’s and Bachelor’s theses of a plethora of Chinese students during my time as a PhD candidate in a German university. I’ve had discussions of politics with all my Chinese students regarding topics as controverted as Taiwan, the Communist Party, etc, and I’ve received a plethora of different opinions, the majority of which were supportive of the Chinese government, yes, even after tasting the glorious “European political freedom” that kept them scared because AfD Nazis threaten to get first place in government and make their lives impossible as migrants. Most of these students now, after spending 4-5 years in Germany on average, moved back to China and live happily there, I have frequent conversations with some of them still. Only one of my students decided to stay in Germany.
You’re taking out of copious amounts of western propaganda if you seriously don’t believe Chinese people can freely give an answer to a Pew Research anonymous survey on government satisfaction, and you obviously haven’t discussed politics with a normal Chinese person in your entire life.
Vindo de alguem que acusa aqueles que duvidam de inquéritos que mostram 90%+ de taxa de aprovação do governo num país de “Partido único” de serem “ocidentais com o cérebro lavado pela propaganda ocidental” é uma ironia de ir para o Livro de Recordes do Guiness.
Se fores mesmo Espanhol, sugiro que fales com pessoas que viveram no tempo do Franco para veres como as coisas funcionam em sistemas onde o Estado controla a informação e tem poder arbitrário.
Alternativamente, vai trabalhar para grandes empresas durante uma décade ou duas e aprende como é que os jogos de poder e a pressão funcionam até mesmo em ambientes muito mais pequenos que um país: as pessoas quando já são crescidinhos e têm de se preocupar com por comida na boca dos filhos absolutamente não dizem certas coisas abertamente se pensam que estão a ser vigiadas e podem sofrer consequencias por isso.
Não leves a mal mas tu soas como alguns dos jovens no pequeno partido de Esquerda de que sou membro no meu país - ignorante e com uma visão simplística do mundo e da política.
Sigues con la misma cantinela comparando los tiempos de Franco con el gobierno de China. He viajado a China y la gente vive vidas normales y felices sin represión del Gobierno. Y te repito que he hablado con muchos estudiantes de China fuera de China, y la mayoría de ellos, en contra de lo que piensas, apoyan al gobierno de China. Me decían que no podían entender cómo el gobierno Alemán dejaba morir a cientos de miles de personas de COVID y que les parecía horroroso. Uno de los estudiantes me llegó a decir que antes era crítico del gobierno de China, pero que cuando llegó a Alemania y vio lo que hay allí, se volvió mucho menos crítico de China.
Si tanto te preocupa el gobierno de Franco, te deberían preocupar en primera instancia los sistemas de gobierno de Europa. Te asusta el gobierno comunista Chino, mientras que en Europa asoman la cabeza los fascistas por todas partes. En España estamos cagados con VOX, en Alemania llegan los nazis de AfD, en Italia tienen a Meloni…
You are free to travel to China and ask people. What you learn will surprise you. They do not feel like they are living in an evil authoritarian nightmare and are generally actually pretty satisfied
I very much doubt it’s an authoritarian nightmare (that would be North Korea or China back in the days of Mao).
China does however have a system of “social points”, so people are well aware that if they don’t do and say the right things, it might negativelly impact their lives (you don’t set up such a system for anything other than push people to behave in certain ways).
Further, only an idiot would deny that during about 3 decades (though that was mainly over about a decade ago) China has pulled up from poverty more people than the rest of the World combined, by a huge margin, even while in the West social mobility went into reverse and inequality started growing (especially after 2008).
Equally only an idiot would deny that in a single party system being openly critical of the Party is likely to have negatives consequences for that person and even the mere concern that it might happen will make people just say nothing, just in case. (I mean, shit, people will naturally just do this at work in supposedly free countries with work-at-will legislation were they can just be fired for no reason, so it takes quite a lot of naivety to think people will not “keep their mouths shut, just in case” when it’s actual authorities with no independent oversight over them keeping a keen eye on a persons sayings and doings, as they have the power to fuck your life up far more than merelly firing you).
Finally, it takes are a very (very, VERY) special kind of idiot to think that there are only two ways to govern a country and if you’re critical of one of them, then you must be a brainwashed tribalist supporting the “other” one. There is no bigger kind of political moron because the very mental architecture the use to judge things hyper-simplistic and ultra reductive.
If people’s life was amazing, the authorities there wouldn’t need a Great Firewal of China, a social points system or a giant civil society surveillance system, just like in the supposedly free West you see the increase in civil society surveillance and the Propaganda machine (around here using immigrants and even people with non-normative sexuality as scapegoats) going into overdrive, all coinciding (by “an amazing coincidence”) with the time when quality of life stopped improving and started going down and the first generation in a century who is expected the have a worse life than their parents started coming of age.
(Against, this kind of shit should be familiar to Spaniards, at least those who were adults during the days of Franco, because very similar tools were used).
Those kind of mechanisms aren’t deployed against a people which supports by 90%+ the current government, and they’re generic rather than a China-only thing and some are just as much used in supposed Democracies as in Autocracies - similar techniques, just with different excuses justifying their use.
Whilst the country is not an absolute dictatorship, Chinese “we love the Party” data is highly poluted by a “it’s best not to say certain things, just in case” concern, information control and internal Propaganda in a similar way to, say, the public opinion in Hungary is shaped by that regime’s control of the Press and a certain insecurity so if you work for the State over there you won’t be critical of Orban and his party because that’s just not good for your career (and a similar thing happens in, for example, Turkey) so their data on it is going to be highly poluted (unsurprisingly, if you personally know people form those countries, its the more well informed people who think worse of the government, hence typically even with all the information control and even iron first, they have worst polling in the larger cities)
What shocks me is that somebody supposedly from a country which had a dictatorship until 75 can’t recognize certain kinds of mechanisms which I’m pretty sure their parents or grandparents are familiar with and their impact.
That doesn’t mean that most people in China aren’t content, what it does mean is that poll data showing a 90%+ stated approval of the government must be taken with a large pinch of salt.