Really? China has open internet & unrestricted BBC?

Will tech firms challenge China's 'open' internet? - BBC News

Tiananmen Square protest death toll 'was 10,000' - BBC News

Well apart from China’s aggression over Taiwan on this thread; Japan on the Japan thread and over the South China Seas on that thread - how are they doing?

Oh! Right......

https://www.politico.eu/article/how-...ing-out-party/

I didn't say that they had open internet. There was certainly no problem watching unrestricted BBC and CNN during my fifteens years experience there.

There are so many differing casualty numbers from Tiananmen Square from different impeccable sources that it difficult who to believe.

The point was not about the numbers, just the ability of the Chinese population to read such articles at their leisure. Your opinion regarding unfettered access does appear to be in stark contrast with any published article on the subject. The issue has become known as the ‘Great Firewall of China’.... but perhaps not as visible as previously thought.

Depends on the political bias of who is publishing the article.

Every decent hotel in China has an Ethernet plug on the wall by the desk in the hotel room. In the drawer is the cable so one can connect to broadband immediately. Once I could not get my Gmail so I went to the desk to complain. They gave me the address of a website that by passed China and gave me unfettered access to everybody.

My BBC, CNN, Star Sports etc. gave via cable and I didn't notice any interruptions.

There seems to be outrage that China does not permit fully open internet including all political arguments, porn etc.. It doesn't work that way. China can be described as a paternal dictatorship and their politics are not going to change in the near future so all this bleating about so-called western style freedoms being suppressed is a waste of time.

Get used to it. I did and had a fantastic time.

99% of them don't care.

I read these anti-China threads with real amazement that there are some really well-educated people (mostly ex-military) who through many years of anti-China indoctrination seriously believe that China has malevolent intent on the world.

1. China has a youthful, fast-growing, highly intelligent population which is absolutely slurping up rapidly increasing economic opportunities available to them. If you speak to any young Chinese people these days - they remind me of American youth in the 50s/60(before the stupidity of the Vietnam war)- just massively optimistic about their futures. By contrast most young westerners are really pessimistic about their futures particularly due to climate change, Brexit, pointless wars fought for pointless aims (Vietnam was the first then many followed) - and a feeling that their respective systems of "democracy" do not hold their futures in interest.

2. China youth has no interest in war with US or anybody else. Just why would they want to wreck their future and their family future, for war with the idiotic american system, which is characterised by Trump? China does not want war - they are too intelligent for that! Like most Asians, they regard Americans as fat, smelly pigs who eat appalling food, make dreadful loud bang crude rap music, have a really sick interest in killing other people with guns, and have no culture whatsoever, and a truly vile system which keeps the poor poor and lets the wealthy get wealthier. What would they gain from war with US?

3. China has a vastly superior political system to the USA. China could never elect an idiot like Trump (or even Hilary Clinton just to be measured) as political leader. USA is just a nuisance to China. If USA would stop spending such vast percentages of its GDP on weapons which can only be justified to threaten China, China would release more of its income to spend on education, healthcare which is what any true civilisation values.

4. USA is a dead-duck. It is spending far too much on "defenSe", far too little on education. It is making itself vulnerable in the future. China will sit back, quietly build a highly educated population with equitable and meritocratic income distribution and wait...

Do you live There?

There's all in and then there's blind adulation.

Trim Stab is surely quite correct that the young Chinese should feel optimistic, their country has been resurgent in a most impressive fashion during their entire lives.
Nor should they want war, why bother when things are going so well?
As is, the US makes the world safe for Chinese investment, in Africa, Latin America and also in the USA.
Trim Stab is quite correct also when he points out that China is building the infrastructure and the social capital to support its future growth, while the US is dissipating its accumulated goodwill with pointless military interventions.
Imho, that does not translate into adulation.

IMHO, "over-demonizing" USA and "over-angelizing" China is not correct.
The reality is multi-colour (even with IR and UV components).

I'm with Van on this one

Any patriotic Chinese is going to subscribe to some of Trim Stab's rather OTT summary.

Any American is going to point to the (many) failings of the Chinese system and feel a bit queasy about the growing influence of China in the world

We should remember that great power politics is NOT a zero-sum game - it pays all sides to rub along