Comment by hearsathought

> is the the response desired by the authoritarian Chinese government who has carefully engineered the situation in the first place.

But they are an "authoritarian" government so they don't really care what their citizens believe. Right? Doesn't your logic apply more to "democratic" and "free" countries. No?

> The purpose of constantly publishing obvious lies is not for people to believe them (though some always will), it's to devalue the idea of truth in general.

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." -- Thomas Jefferson

Are you saying the US was "authoritarian" from the very beginning?

> As long as the economy's good, people just don't care about anything that doesn't harm them directly.

Isn't this true for every government? "Democratic", "authoritarian", "monarch", "anarchic", etc?