this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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its literally really common in china for people to use VPNs to get around the blocks.
i suggest you read some leftist theory despite the propaganda your country does to make you hate it, you don't seem to know you are missing it dearly in the US.
Buddy, I lived there for years. My sources are the hundreds of Chinese people I spoke to in their native tongue for years. Not the propaganda from my country. True, SOME Chinese people have VPNs. Most do not.
And I think the more poignant question is this. Why do they need a VPN to access the wider internet in the first place?
what? i never claimed they needed VPN access. i claimed that most of them used it when they wanted to get around blocks. if i remember correctly, a good chunk (like almost a fourth of people) have used it before.
the real question is why would the average chinese need to use western social media? are they like, livid they don't get to be lied to by the us government?
Stop with the pedantic BS. MOST do not use VPNs to get around censorship because MOST do not have a VPN. So again, why do the Chinese need a VPN to access the wider internet?
And there's more to the internet to social media.
i literally didn't say MOST people used it. just that it is common. and it is, i'm not the one being pedantic here.
Again, why would they need to access the western* internet?
I said this to someone else in this thread, but encouraging access to fascist propaganda can't be equated to freedom.
Not all internet outside of China is Western. I'll give you an example. My wife was a cross cultural communications teacher in China. She had her students pick countries outside of Asia to do a cultural report on. One student picked Poland for whatever reason. The Chinese internet, other than here is Poland on a map, it has this many people, and it's capital is Warsaw, had no other information, Literally nothing else.
So when you ask why they would need access it's because they deserve to be informed about the world around them. There is waayyyyyyy more to the internet than "fascist propaganda".
They also can't access the absolutely braindead remarks you're saying right now. Isn't that a travesty?
I quick and dirty looked poland up on baidu and got hits in mandarin about its history, culture and more. i also found lots of pictures, news articles, and silly clickbaity videos about it. i could probably find english results on chinese google.
now you are just being silly. when did i claim the entirety of the internet is fascism? all you have been doing is strawmanning with things i didn't say or mean for the last couple of posts.
because you disagree a lot of people use vpns in china? it sounds like you are angry so i will just wish you a nice day and go talk to someone else.
And you searched this inside China did you? What are you not getting? Even Chinese search engines inside China show different information then Chinese search engines outside china. It's a walled garden. You are out of your depth here. Go to bed.
Were you an English teacher?
Dude. They literally started the first comment with "I lived in China for 4 years". When you start trying to "um actually" people with years of first-hand experience, it might be time to reflect on your own biases
That doesn't mean that person is an expert on China just because they lived there. They could very well be wrong, and in fact they are. You don't have to take my word for it, the Brazilian YouTuber Felipe Durante has lived in China for years, and continues to do so, and he goes in the complete opposite direction than the person saying "I lived there and censorship no one knows anything" in this thread.
Why should I take this random person word instead of the one I can literally see is in China?
just pointing out some hypocrisy. letting fascism fester in social media because some vague idea of "freedom" is no true freedom. motherfuckers in china can and do use VPNs when they want to.
ill have to reinforce my suggestion to expose yourself to politics beyond us propaganda.
What hypocrisy?
What makes that hypocrisy, and how is that manifested in the comments you replied to?
because its the same thing, except us media lies about it and muddies the water instead of suppressing it like china does.
and for worse reasons. one country does it to suppress fascism, the other does it to suppress resistance to them globally.
"instead" is incorrect. They both do both, albeit to differing degrees.
Also you're quoting yourself, not caboose. How long have you lived in China? They lived in China and spoke to Chinese people in Chinese about their personal experiences with the Chinese information landscape. Where were they hypocritical?
And yeah, lots of Chinese people do [X], if [X] is a thing people do. There's like 2 billion of them. Even the most supportive source you could find said 75% don't use VPNs. Listen to the person with personal experience.
I literally just explained it to you in my previous post. I quoted what I said and further clarified it because you asked.
a quarter of 2 billion people is quite a lot. If you told me 20% of the people on the planet own a car, I would not tell cars are common, but VERY common (and they are!).
should i listen to MAGA fascists then, because they mostly have extensive personal experience with the US?
Nothing you said have anything to do with hypocrisy. You still haven't quoted them.
I didn't accept the accuracy of that figure, I just noted it as an upper bound. Absolute values aren't particularly useful in this kind of discussion. Any weird and obscure niche interest has millions of fans. What's relevant are proportions. I think numbers are probably much closer to 1:10. In a big country that's a lot of people, but it isn't anywhere near typical. Even 1:4 isn't typical, and that's an unexamined generous figure.
Do they have more personal experience with the US than you do? I only listen to them enough to figure out how they got where they are and how to prevent others from going there, but I've lived in the US for decades so I have my own expertise. How long have you personally lived in China?
Living in China doesn't make you an expert.
Tons of people who hate China live in China as "English teachers" because it's "easy" and stay within their own "expat" bubble.