[exitheone]

The CCP control is strictly about blast radius. Individual citizen in their homes are rarely subject to any enforcement action. Even talking critically on social media in small circles is mostly fine (apart from simple "bad-word" filters that just remove whole messages). The moment you reach a wider audience or "disrupt public harmony", they come down on you.

[hnbad]

Yeah but ultimately that is far more dangerous, no? The law enables severe punishments that are applied arbitrarily by those tasked with enforcing it. Knowing there is a clear and reliable line you can't cross allows for opposition movements to take advantage of that line and build within the narrow demarcations. Arbitrary enforcement means you can never know if someone in charge has it out for you that day because you probably already broke laws that could be used against you before coming anywhere near actively participating in political dissent.

As the common wisdom goes: Al Capone was not arrested for being a crime boss but for tax evasion. Why bother setting clear boundaries on what behavior is or isn't anti-revolutionary if you can just make sure everyone already violates the law based on technicalities and then just decide who you want to arrest for it as necessary?

[op00to]

No, the DDR “spy on your neighbor” situation is much more dangerous.