Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How could you possibly know this? Research by Harvard, York University, Democracy Perception Index, more. Or you could... go visit China, talk to Chinese people. The majority of them support the government. And I haven't even brought up my own friends and family as anecdotal evidence. But let me turn this around. If you're so convinced that all satisfaction is fake and a result of coercion, then how do you possibly…
> The answer is twofold: China isn't a dictatorship, and you can't reason about all countries using this dictatorship-vs-democracy dichotomy. Can I complain about the man in charge? If I go to social media and I post that I hate the bear, what happens? :-) For comparison purposes, on a daily basis, Klaus Iohannis (the Romanian president) can fill his fridge with meat, as we say in Romanian (I'll let you figure out fr…
Concretely: yes in China there is censorship, and yes you can't just criticize the president. However, you can criticize policy. Not only can you, people do: as I've said before, there are 15000 protests in China every year, and often times the government gives in to protesters. The 0-covid protests resulting in lifting of 0-covid measures being a big recent one.
In contrast, in many western countries you certainly have the freedom to complain about more things, but your ability to get policy changes is almost non-existant. Not so in China: policy changes happen all the time as a result of protests, even if there are topics that are more taboo than in the west.
Material vs non-material freedom is also not the point (even though it's somewhat relevant). There are classes of immaterial freedom in China that the west doesn't even recognize as freedom. For example, the sheer safety in China grants one a huge amount of freedom of movement. A female Australian acquaintance once told me that she thought that political freedom and freedom of speech are the most important things. But once she visited China and experienced how safe the streets were, and how she could walk around during the night without escort, she realized that she valued freedom of movement much more.
To understand China one must move away from the dichotomy. China should be understood using entirely separate paradigms, on its own terms, not the terms that the west (in its relation/history with the Soviet Union) tries to project on China.