While I agree with attempts to prevent governments from controlling speech, have spent a fair amount of time working on that, and was disturbed by Apple's role here, I don't think the dichotomy you present works as cleanly as you suggest. State power and culture shape and reinforce each other in an extremely complex way.
That's true. I lived in China for a few years and was surprised to find out that most people seemed relatively (if not very) happy with the CCP. Ignorance plays a role but it's mainly that they value economic growth (and therefore, political stability) over anything else. Free speech would be nice but when you go from near starvation to owning a house and a car, you learn what economic growth does and start to value it.
Assuming it was a rhetorical question: I am basing my observation on many private conversations I had over the years (e.g. with my wife). I think most foreigners in China would agree with this as well.
In case your question wasn't rhetorical: nothing would happen. That is, unless you were a very public figure or made it your life's mission. Fun fact: China has a very low incarceration rate, about 15% that of the USA. It's not like people are getting thrown in jail right and left for opening their mouth.
China has a lower incarceration rate, but they also have a higher rate of execution. Even for things like drug trafficking (which most of the US prison population consists of). These stricter punishments surely make people more afraid of breaking the law...and I'm sure many chinese are justifiably afraid of speaking out due to fear of the consequences. So the fact that there is a smaller prisoner population isn't that great when considering there are harsher penalties.
I agree that incarceration rates alone don't paint the whole picture. The "hard pill to swallow" was that Chinese people don't value free speech as much as we do, even if you account for the deterrents. That's a hard pill to swallow, at least to a person like me who values free speech.
>Fun fact: China has a very low incarceration rate, about 15% that of the USA. It's not like people are getting thrown in jail right and left for opening their mouth.
That's not a good comparison. You would need to compare stats for number of people thrown in jail for speaking out against the government.
The US has the idiotic war on drugs and terrible recidivism driven by bad incentives to thank for its high incarceration rate.
The thing is though that the economic growth came after, and as a result of, the market deregulations and special economic zones instituted by the Deng administration. The founding principles of the CCP has been proven not to work in China, they led to millions of people starving to death and a huge brain drain to the US, Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan the effects of which are still felt today.
So, I wonder if it's not all ignorance. I just don't see how anyone with access to uncensored history books can give credit to the CCP for the economic growth. Surely they could tell that Taiwan, also a Chinese country, has a far better track record when it comes to economic growth and the well being of their population (not to say that the Kuomintang has a squeaky clean record)?
They could also tell that there are a number of countries with fresh democracies that have fared a lot worse (See the entirety of eastern Europe for instance).
The view that "Meh, it could be worse" is the one that's been most prevalent among those who I've talked to about the issue. As mentioned higher up in the thread, it's easy to look the other way when it comes to a couple of human rights crimes when your family has gone from starvation to owning cars and apartments in skyscrapers in less than a generation.
Not to steer this completely off topic, but despite a lot of setbacks in Poland, Hungary and Russia the economic situation post USSR in Eastern Europe has been tremendous (Poland was the only country in the EU not to suffer negative growth in the Great Recession), the political rights to the citizens (such as being able to vote for more than one party), the freedom of the press increases (even in Poland, despite the recent setback with government intervention in public service media) is far beyond what China has mustered since the Deng deregulations started in the early 80s.
If you're Polish or even Russian you are far more likely to have a nice car, food on the table, a nice house, the ability to blog about whatever interests you, read what you want and even run for office than if you're a citizen of the PRC. So, again, it sounds like it's mostly ignorance, or expectations that democracies never experience setbacks.
People in general will tolerate restrictive systems as long as they are economically compensated or economic system is humming. The most authoritarian regimes, use fear but the most used tactic is to "payoff" the "village elders". If a dictator yielded the kind of break-neck growth that China experienced in any Western country, there is a good chance people will put up with it. The problem is when the growth dies, and the gravy train stops. How will CCP handle a low growth system? By becoming more authoritarian, that is what is happening in China with corruption purges.
