Comment by mstaoru
8 hours ago
I lived in China for a while, and my wife is from China. We moved out almost 5 years ago, and she still was a bit freaked out about a picture of Xi Jinping's book next to Winnie Pooh book I took at a Book Expo here in Germany. Once you lived 1-2 generations with censorship, this gets from "chilling" (as in, you're aware of the thought but suppress it) to "not even thinking about it".
I don't know if it's a net negative on society, in the end in China people are very apathetic towards all of this, their lives are fine, they can get food delivered in 5 minutes, trains run on time, flying cars, and all that. Bread and circuses, bread and circuses.
being a third generation myself (parents and grandparents lived under a "regime"), as long as you tell them how it was for you, the kids might be the ones who will stop eating the poison bread and tell the clowns to take off their makeup