> Right, that's why I said "Many Chinese".
No offense but I used to do this and I now think of it as a means of lying to myself that I have covered myself from the "edge cases" that don't support my obviously non-neutral arguments.
> And this process doesn't strike me as being super different from the way our democratically elected representatives bring up new bills.
This is the reason that I disagree with the rest of what you said.
There are no democratic elections in China, and the people who often end up making decisions for everyone else are selected and groomed to do that *according to the party's values* early on in life. What that means is that you won't be making any decisions in the first place if they feel that your values and motives do not, or have a chance that they will not, align with the part's interest.
So who gets in? It's people who are truly patriotic (and probably getting exploited for that), people with the relevant lineage, or mostly people who are just in it for career progression, power and money because the states control so much that you just simply can't advance without being part of the party.
In non-authoritarian countries you often have some means of recourse, including putting pressure on the government with media, if the government screws up. You can't even disagree with the CCP to begin with because the means of communication for most people are censored by the government. There are literally laws that the government can punish you with even if you just remotely disagree with the government.
Most people just want to live a normal life and value their assets and family above all. The country is generally growing well economically, so there are no real reasons for them to risk what they have in exchange for some intangible idealistic things that they have never experienced. This is literally the citizens self-policing themselves because control is deliberately built into every layer.
It is super different.
People literally do not dare to speak up, it's not anti-CCP people making up antagonistic stories.
> because there are in fact supporters, just like there are both supporters and detractors to controversial government decisions on this side of the pond.
I'm sure there are in fact supporters for pervasive control and surveillance in the name of protecting children and society. However, at least on "this side of the pond" we can oppose it without fearing any repercussions from the government. I can trash the policy all I like on any social media platform I want, I can write opinion pieces and submit to newspapers, I can organize groups to oppose the policy — all without fearing repercussions from the government. Can you do any of that under the CCP?
Get a piece of paper, divide it into acceptable and unacceptable, write down the things that fall into each category that align with your core values, then come back to read your arguments.
If you don't think there are any contradictions, great. If there are, perhaps there is nothing wrong with "the general tone" that you find problems with.