[admk]

It is puzzling to me why foreigners would actually believe that we are somehow inflicted by the "social credit score" and worry about being sent to a "re-education camp" for simply circumventing the censorship.

I work in a research institute that is government-sponsored, and I can assure you that our work relies on having access to censored foreign sites (Google, Google Scholar, etc.), and there isn't an official way to do so and we all use third-party or self-hosted VPNs.

All my friends and families always discuss incidents in the past history of PRC freely, and never have to worry about being surveilled. It has recently bothered me that the western media often see the issues in colored lenses, have strong beliefs in anti-China sentiments and yet provide no direct evidence relating to the claimed atrocities commited by the government. I tried very hard to find actual direct evidence and to justify their claims (e.g. [1]) but discovered none. The lack of evidence make those hard to believe and would urge you to take those with a substantial grain of salt, and not everything is abysmal in China.

Conflict of interest: I am a Chinese and I studied in the UK for 8 years.

[1]: https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/China-T...

[avar]

As a westerner outside China I'm not under the impression that the CPC cares much about your private or semi-private conversations with your friends and family, unlike notably the Stasi or early Soviet censorship.

But I bet you'd be running a very different mental calculus before saying some of those things you'd say in closed circles on your widely-read blog under your own name.

That's the thrust of what the GP is talking about, which I think you're taking a very selective view of in thinking that by "chilling effect" they're talking about Stasi-like censorship. Even if can get away with certain speech 99.9% of the time in a totalitarian regime just having to worry about the 0.01% has a huge chilling effect.

[gurkendoktor]

> provide no direct evidence relating to the claimed atrocities commited by the government. I tried very hard to find actual direct evidence and to justify their claims ... but discovered none

I'm genuinely curious about this. There are witness accounts of forced organ harvesting, and it's not too long ago that the government announced that it stopped the practice[1], implying that it was happening at least up until that point, and the rumors were correct.

There's no way for external parties to verify that forced organ harvesting has ended as promised. When a government does not invite external observers to verify such an important matter, shouldn't anyone's gut feeling go on red alert? Has there ever been a case when a lack of gov't transparency wasn't a bad sign? Is it cultural bias on my end to assume the worst-case scenario?

[1] https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/dk99ol0WsHPmCmdviXAReg?

[vorpalhex]

So by forcing the use of illegal vpns, you can always be arrested. Or fired for not doing your job.

It's not that everything is terrible in China, it's that the Chinese government is an oppressive regime with severe totalitarian bent. Those oppressive regimes which least interfere in the everyday are the most likely to continue existing - we've known this since ancient times.

But censorship, ethnic camps, totalitarian power and mass surveillance do a reppressive regime make.

[admk]

There are a few cases when it comes to arrests of VPN service owners, but zero incidents that I know of of VPN user being arrested. This is simply because the former breaks the law and the latter doesn't.

Censorship is no secret, totalitarian power is hard to define, but ethnic camps and mass surveillance may or may not exist depending on the existance of direct evidence.

Edit: Evidence is universal, and I suppose we can all agree that it is not dependent on me.

[jamoes]

Here's some direct evidence of the atrocity that is the Tiananmen Square massacre: https://i.imgur.com/E3D9BuH.jpg.

I'm sure you've seen the infamous "tank man" picture, which provides direct evidence that the PRC rolled tanks into Tiananmen Square. The above picture isn't as iconic, but it shows what the PRC did with those tanks: they crushed and killed anyone in their path.

[pishpash]

If this is indicative of the depth of your knowledge about government atrocities, I suggest you stop. Worse would be to talk about reeducation camps, or organ harvesting. It's meme-like at this point and has no bearing on reality.

Things that actually happened: rural protests, corruption, razing houses by eminent domain, medical malpractice, even some obscure musician being blacklisted, things that can happen everywhere but happen with "Chinese characteristics" in a more volatile way because of the lack of rule of law and due process, often ending with violence or curtailment of basic rights. But these are not as trendy and nobody really gives a shit about how Chinese people live, people just want to feel morally superior.

[admk]

I was refering to more recent events, e.g. FLG, organ harvesting, Uighurs, Hong Kong protests.

I am aware (as told by many, I was too young to know) that there were numerous deaths and many more injured in that year.

[69robots]

I believe the fear and anti-China sentiments stemmed from the the past history of the regime in China. It's okay to bear the "outsider" concept that as long as you are not doing something wrong then the gov won't do anything to you. However, please do keep in mind that if you are not voicing out for the others that are suppressed, then no one would voice out for you when you are the target of suppression. Assuming you had some sort of higher education, it's hard to gauge when will your interest conflicts with the central government's. The fact that people around the world are resisting and pressuring such regime is because the fear that it would spread its influence globally. I personally don't think the issue relates to the people itself, but I would not trust the central government at all. (Tienanmen square, "re-education camps", Surveillance, Censorship, Persecution of political dissidents)

Conflict of interest: Hong Konger

[PhasmaFelis]

Your link [1] goes to an exhaustively researched and documented conclusion that China is participating in "widespread or systematic" state-sponsored forced organ transplants, torture, and extermination, targeted specifically against Uyghurs and Falun Gong, "beyond any reasonable doubt."

What were you trying to accomplish by posting that? Did you skim the first couple of pages outlining the claims, get bored, and assume their conclusions would match your beliefs? Or did you hope that no one would bother to read enough of the bloody dense thing to figure out what it actually said?

Either way, you're lying when you say you "tried very hard to find actual direct evidence but discovered none."

[admk]

I didn’t lie, and actually wasted my valuable time on this bloody dense thing and found it to be extremely biased and lacks solid evidence.