• Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    19 hours ago

    That “high trust” is only because the government hides a lot of information from them where in a free country it would be discussed in public. The government heavily controls what information is available, what topics can be discussed and what opinions are allowed.

    Its not because they govern responsibly and earnt the admiration of the general public.like you seem to suggest.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      You are half right and half wrong.

      The Government controls all media. There are no major independent news organisations in China. Therefore, they won’t allow negative press about it to spread.

      Because the news and social media only ever have good or at worst neutral news about the Government, never critical news, the result is that people think the Government does a good job governing.

      At the same time, the poverty alleviation and anti-corruption efforts of the CCP have indeed brought millions out of poverty (even though that poverty is largely a result of bad leadership decisions by the same CCP in the past) and eliminated most forms of petty corruption. That is something that the Government makes sure everyone knows about and is always talking about. And to their credit, it isn’t wrong.

      I do not and will not suggest that popular support for the Government would be anywhere near what it is now if it weren’t for the Government’s propaganda efforts and the suppression of speech, dissent, and criticism.

      • bookmeat@lemmynsfw.com
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        17 hours ago

        I wouldn’t suggest that people think their government is doing a good job because the media doesn’t expose the bad. Rather, the goal of speech suppression is to limit factions forming, organizing, and growing. Public discussion is the fuel for organization. Limiting speech keeps everyone in the same tent or in their own tiny, isolated pockets.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          And you are correct. But it doesn’t matter to my original point. For any reason, people trust the Government. Because of this trust, policies like the one discussed in the original post don’t alarm the average Chinese netizen.

          Although an interesting side note is that while some people think that saying anything bad at all about the Government will get you arrested in China, that’s not really true. You are free to talk all the smack you want about the Government, in private. It’s when you try to start some kind of political movement or organise something in public that now you will be labelled a threat to public order and state security.

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Absolutely.

      The only fair way to handle it is to pay lip service to the free flow of information, and then get your friends who own every mass media platform with reach to push your own agenda, burying the rest in lawsuit threats and filtering algorithms.

      Don’t get me wrong - I’m not defending the Chinese government as saints, but I think at this point we can safely acknowledge EVERYTHING sucks. If there’s a country fairly managing to promote truth while keeping dangerous nonsense from propagating, I sure haven’t found it.