I don't think that setting up an enemy is what Chinese government needs to survive after 1979. it might be used to. on the contrary, what they need to survive now is to keep their economy stable and strong to prove/maintain their legitimacy to rule the country.
"Not being able to say something in public is like not being able to say it at all."
buddy, being so cynical is not really helpful for any constructive discussion. not mention that I was telling a fact not argument.
even in many democratic countries, in terms of political correctness, you don't want to talk about some subjects in public. Does it really mean not being able to say it at all?
if you don't know or doubt how popular VPN is used in China, it indicates that you know little about modern China. everyone I know uses VPN or know how to use VPN if they need. as for exact scale, I'd leave that to you. you could easily figure that out as there are ton of such information online.
If brainwashing really worked greatly like you said, Soviet Union would still exist now. It was their people who overthrew Soviet Union.
exactly because of China going through the disaster like Cultural Revolution, many people just don't believe these propaganda anymore.
my point was not there is no brainwash. it's everywhere including China and US. my point was in the era of Internet and the popular use of VPN in China, i don't think the brainwash really works greatly like you'd think.
you are right. but there is bigger question of what information is "correct". no offense, it'd be naive to treat the first result of google result as being correct. we all know there is such a thing called SEO.
I watched the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests on China official TV daily when it was broadcast until the end of May 1989. I was a teenager at that time. we talked about it at school. we talked about at home. we talked about it heavily at college. we just didn't talk much about it publicly. nobody got arrested by simply talking about it, which may not be like what you might be thinking.
when I was young, there was no GFW. I remembered that I visited lots of western medias about it to better understand it by two-sided stories. and I believe that I did better understand it.
I do use VPN as many of others when I am in China. It's a common thing.
how many Chinese people have you ever talked to before you say "most of them are brainwashed"? If more than 1 billion people are brainwashed in the era of Internet, either 1. it is a huge success of Chinese government or 2. it's not the truth.
As we all know, VPN is very popular in China. It's just an easy job to access information out of Great Fire Wall.
thinking critically, could you be "brainwashed" by some degree when you assume more than 1 billion people got brainwashed?
"The average Chinese person either doesn't know about Tinanmen"
I am an average Chinese person but I know it since I was a teenager. I suggest that you don't assume that Chinese people is controlled like puppet, that's simply wrong.
don't you think that Fedex is suspicious for diversion to the US of some Huawei packages when US government is targeting Huawei for "national security"?
what if a Chinese courier company operating in US diverts some Cisco packages to China when China is "blacklisting" Cisco? what do you think US government would do?
assume if you are a leader of central government and your trusted local government proposes a bill, would you support it or not? can you simply say it's wrong to support?
believe or not, people in Xingjing and Tibet used to have more rights than Han Chinese. for example, they were allowed to have more than one children while Han Chinese were strictly not allowed the second child. it's much easier for Uighur and Tibetan students to go to prestigious colleges with lower scores. and so on. you name it. the government did that in hope of country unity.
you can speculate that China government is behind the bill. anyone can. but it's speculation until there is evidence. So far, there isn't such evidence as far as I am aware.
In my understanding, China central government favors Hong Kong stability over anything else. It's quite likely that it's Hong Kong government but China central government that proposed the bill.
"Authoritarian regimes are rarely fair and are not particularly interested in the financial well being of the population."
if you think Chinese government is authoritarian, then it is an exception coz it does care and try its best to improve the financial well being of the population. and it is the social contract between China government and its people. you need to realize that even "authoritarian" governments are quite different.