Comment by Barrin92

China actually has both actual elections (at the local level) and it definitely has negative public opinion. The Chinese are, if anything, some of the most ardent shitposters if you've actually ever used social media in China. Of course some of it is censored but most of it isn't, deliberately so because it's pretty much the only way to figure out what grievances people have, and technically because you can't stop a billion people with the ability to make memes and puns from getting around anything.[1] There's even people who make that stuff available for English speaking audiences[2]

This notion that you somehow can't figure out what the Chinese want, as if you couldn't talk to them, which you literally can, you could just visit China actually, just shows that the entire discourse happens at some sort of meme level.

[1]https://qz.com/2014939/chinese-internet-users-reject-beijing...

[2]https://www.whatsonweibo.com/