Quote (Santara @ Sep 19 2022 01:07pm)
I have a hard time believing 95% of a large group agree on anything at all. It strains credulity.
Of course you do, because you live in a society where nothing ever changes, where it's an act of imagination to expect things to actually improve over time. Not so in China.
Every time I go back to China it's a different country. Chinese people have seen their lives dramatically change, going from being perhaps the poorest country in the world in 1949 to being, by some measures, as much as 30% of the entire global economy. So not only do they see that their government has been highly effective at the national level, they expect it to continue to get better, which is why Chinese people (again, unlike Westerners) are very optimistic about the future.
Quote (Santara @ Sep 19 2022 01:07pm)
I saw that part. Local government doesn't decide policy, it enacts it.
But you're dodging my question. You are claiming that Chinese people are lying when they report enormous levels of satisfaction with the national government, saying that if they said otherwise they'd face punishment. However, they are simultaneously doing
exactly that thing you say they aren't allowed to do when they criticize their sub-national governments.
So something has to give. Clearly they are allowed to express their dissatisfaction.
Honestly, this conversation is insane for someone whose spent a lot of time in China. You're trying so hard to find some way to deny this thing that anyone who speaks or reads Mandarin knows is completely and obviously true.