Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

None of these can be attributed to authoritarian, or some form of CCP brutality, when moderate amount of scrutiny is applied ...

> - You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)

This is of course because of China's CVOID policy, which is 0 tolerance. That's a rational decision of China's high-density population, and manufacturing-based economy. I do not think it's inherent anti-human-rights, as the death count is fractional to open-co-existence policy. Life itself is a human right, and probably the most precious one.

> - You cannot go beyond China's intranet

VPNs are legal in China. You just need to be technically-sophisticated enough to find the correct VPNs, and make sure it falls in the boundary of Chinese law.

> - You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks

This is just not true... You can use various services to transfer money out. The only issue is that they are subject to certain limitations, which are far more restrictive than US. But again, US dominates world financial system, there is a view that financial imperialism is a key part of US capitalist exploiting Chinese workers. Thus the financial limitation. I doubt that anyone other than the rob-barrons are affected by this. I personally know a lot of Crypto super riches, trust me, they are absolutely a net negative force in society.

> - You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid games, porn and many many more things legally

You can. VPN to netflix. And a lot of pirated content. They were just not allowed to go through the official channel. Of course, CCP is wrong here. But let's not paint a picture that Chinese people are sheeps.

> - You have very little rights as LGBT

Not sure what you are talking about. LGBT is not discriminated officially in any form in the CHinese society. Society still holds stigma over these people. One primary reason is that these groups are associated with higher chance of sexually-transmitted diseases.

And dont assume me a CCP associate, I have a good friend who is gay. He is my college friend. He is pretty happy.

> - You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat

This is probably what forced upon by the private firms. These are punished heavily by CCP recently. Jack Ma and Alibaba are the defender of 996...

> - You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that are on the growing banned list

This is not true. I have several wechat groups discussing serious political issues in China. None of the 50 people ever had any sign of being bothered. I mean, there is no way that one is constantly watched in China. If that's true, China either already have an AGI, or what we bought everyone are not actually made in China, because there are simply not enough cheap labor to produce them in the first place, and most of them are employed in watching others.

> - You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)

1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared...

First, the number of billionaires are unknown. Chinese society had a tradition of the rich become victims during the terminal phase of the dynasty. So the rich is very well aware of this fact, and they hide. Do you know that Mr. Deng Xiaoping's son is astronomically rich, but you'll never see anywhere his net worth is published?

Second, please give a citation... To engage this discussion is putting legitimacy on this ridiculous claim...

> - You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power

Come on... This becomes ridiculous... Gender equality in China is pretty high. Ranked 38th out of 157 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_China I mean it's not spectacular, but your statement is just outlandish...

> - You are constantly subjugated to idiotic mass testing/lockdown

What do you mean? I said a lot of bad words about CCP. I was not distant by my family or friends...

> - Oh and there's the yearly flood + crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs leaving + dictatorship

If you read western media, then these are what they said. But these are not true according to what I hear from my friends and family.

> (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)

How did that happen? Iirc, according to Hurun Report 10 years ago, some 80% of the upper class Chinese had an escape plan ready. You'd think, as a billionaire they have a plane waiting for them 24/7 to get out of the country.

> You cannot travel abroad

In the border with Vietnam, at night you can cross the border for 5 yuan on one of the smuggler boats.

> You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power

Only country in the world with more female suicides than male suicides.

Also, no recourse if CCP thugs steal your stuff. Guy I knew had his Ferrari stolen. Couldn't do anything because the thief was a local party functionary's son.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

What are you talking about?

Manufacturing opinion is only one part of what they do:

The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account: “touching the ground.” With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to delete their accounts.

Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten family members in China or detain the account holders when they return to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even entire accounts.

The supplier should publish designated content on overseas forums. They should increase the number of views of the post and ensure that the post appears at the top of the forum. The service should be provided at least 10 times per month. Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.