and certainly there's no reason why so many students from .cn, even .tw, do use, for instance, WeChat merely for 'clean', 'non-political', absolutely superficial messaging only but other Apps/Protocools speaking frankly -- ofc only to those whom they know and decided to trust
get out there : speak to students, any level, from any spot in .cn, be that .HK, or any mainland-.cn spot
if u succeed in establishing a bi-laterally trustet basis for discussion, well, then u achieved a lot in the first place
it was pretty different some 7-10yrs back, give or take; depended much more on where ppl originated from, where relatives/friends in .cn were stationed
it turned significantly worse -- from my pov, judged on the basis of experience of my real-life contacts -- i can pin-point the date : the day after that day when in .HK the Victoria Park got crowded peacefully for the first time and clips of it made top headlines, the other yr
there is no argument of whatever twisted nature which could whitewash what's been going on for some time : in the arts, for instance, we do not have a single contact in .cn who not yet experienced what suppression of the .cn-govt kind can amount to. in specific fields of neuroscience, i can speak of myself, it worsened dramatically, in particular, when all the paper-mills, fakes & fraud in sciences and faked-publications widely made news progressively
right now, as we speak, there are 3 ppl from .cn in that part only of the univ college bldg i'm currently in, who told me, that they perfectly well know what's expected from them not make their friends and relatives in .cn pay for their 'a-social' behaviour. on a regular basis they post some crappy pics to fb/ig but no personal comment other that 'happy b-day', or so.
their wording, in private, on this whole issue of soc-nets and what to do, more importantly, what not to do, is way more blunt and precise : suffering is the term most frequently employed
a very well-known artist, who sadly died the other month, spoke about his experiences in .cn when visting a friends art-circle in .cn for quite a few months. he was not the man to be easily scared. he'd worked a lot on what nazi-phekkers did, their ideology, their crimes. he had been attacked by french presidential candiates, amongst one not shy to send him her creeps to his doorstep interfering disturbingly with his installations & exhibitions [till they realised it boosted reception of his art but not their malicious intent]. as he did put it, to him too, there was no big difference in what it must have been like in the 3rd reich and what he experienced over there.
systems are much alike. badges, and brand names, may differ tho
techniques might have improved, aims and malicious intent not