The current global situation is still “less worse” than that of the 1980s (both us and the Chinese/rest of world were under harder surveillance and many of the resources for computers/gadgets diverted to making atomic bombs). Chinese hackers could also equally do much more damage to such things as air traffic, power grids etc in the West but do not (maybe likely because their parents own those…)
A lot of translated news reports for Europe arrive via BBC Caversham as well and have the usual “Western” spin put on them. Xinhua’s press releases are obviously government issued.
News articles in English about China appear on news websites in Singapore, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and even Hong Kong are often slightly more balanced.
It is true their is (and always has been) intensive surveillance on Chinese citizens and authorities can be very harsh against rule breakers. However that is not on the scale of 1989 and unlikely to ever be like that again. During the recent protests in Hong Kong the coppers there were less harsh than Metpol in London during the 1980s.
The quality of life does vary a lot in CN (it is big!) and conditions in the South are better than the North.
Not every Chinese has to work 16 hour days in the Foxconn factory making Iphones or work in a paddy field – middle class extended families now have as good as if not better quality of life than the UK other than the excessive air pollution in some regions.
If they have enough savings and/or professional skills they can also easily emigrate [usually to places like SG, MY, NL, DE etc] if they so wish [UK is viewed as a bit backward and unsafe to raise children due to poor schools and dangerous traffic] ; so the Govt cannot be that harsh on them.
I recently read an article bemoaning how some Chinese bloggers have been discouraged from writing about political subjects due to a change in policy; instead they had to blog about their motor cars, gadgets, fashion items and medium size pet dogs.
Which would mean they (and their friends/readers) had or could afford these things in the first place – even 10 years ago that was less common. Also the culture of strict government, strict parenting and hard work across East/SE Asia has [unsurprisingly] created a baby shortage and an ageing population (the Japanese are already going extinct).
CN recently stopped the “one family / one child ” policy which wasn’t always enforced in some areas anyway; in areas where the electronics industry is dominant girls and women have risen in equality and status (as they are better at both fine assembly tasks and / or quality management)
Beijing and Shanghai also do not want to end up going the same way as Damascus and Tripoli.
I don’t agree with the censorship and tactics used in CN but from reading a lot of the articles (including those from the Chinese themselves) it appears the “harsh treatment” against “cyber activists” is not that different from when the middle aged folk in NL are busted running a pirate radio station by the DE authorities (who can and do cross the border along with the Polizei to do this), the chap in AT busted for running a Tor exit node or what happens to the NL lads for the ransomware or the UK ones for the Talk Talk hack.
Domestic cops can be much less pleasant against younger real life activists at trade unions/protest marches (just like UK, USA or RU) but even that is less common nowadays. Most of the time they are too busy dealing with traffic collisions and industrial accidents.
If anything Chinese cops seem to return the activists’ computers back in one piece fairly soon afterwards [albeit possibly with any amount of rootkits, spyware etc] or just warn them first that if they shut the website down (which is often hosted on resources of a Chinese company dealing internationally) they aren’t bothered with again.
by todays standards it would be equally unjust to threaten a young University student with arrest for theft of resources and put him out of University for merely using the WWW via connections from London to Germany and Switzerland and also discussing controversial subjects such as drug use; but that was exactly what happened to me in 1992.
