Police block Beijing Easter service - 36 Detained

Right. You go ahead and trust a government that bans and outlaws time travel. Keep on keeping on with that.
Here is a quaint little list of banned words in China. I will pay you $28,000.00 to go to Tienanmen Square and start reading off this list. But of course you are probably not familiar with Tienanmen Square as it is also something that is not talked about.

en.wikipedia.org...

民主 (democracy)
人權 / 人权 (human rights)
獨裁 / 独裁 (dictatorship)
鎮壓 / 镇压 (oppression)
封鎖 / 封锁 (Blocking) YES the word blocking is blocked lol CHINA FAIL

You keep telling yourself that China is a great place to live. Meanwhile I will hope with all of my heart that the people rise up and take their country back from the communist oppressive regime of dictators.

Originally posted by paraphi
Of course it is not just Falun Gong or other religions. It is any movement who dares to speak out against the single party, self serving dictatorship that runs China. You may think that’s OK, if you believe in human rights then it’s not OK. It's a disgrace.

Well, you got that part right. In China, while you theoretically have rights to complain about problems, you have no right to oppose the 1-party system. That line is a fine one, look at the recent quote by the premier impelling local and provincial authorities to listen to the people and not harass them.

Life here is simple. You need to know where the boundaries are so that while the government lives in fear of you, you need not live in fear of them.

Things are actually getting better, but it's 1 step forward, 3/4 of a step back. With 1.35billion people in 56 central government-recognized nationalities speaking over 150 languages and dialects with a VERY poor wealth distribution and a nation even larger than the US - well it just ain't that easy. But consider what this place was like in 1980 or 1990 or even 2000. Things are changing, fairly quickly. But no, not quickly enough and not in some of the ways it should.

The strong central government ruled by one party isn't likely to change any time soon (not in my lifetime). Instead, the party will have to change. That won't ensure anything like democracy, but it can get a lot better. Hopefully it will and won't end up in the autocratic and criminal mess that became of the Soviet Union and it's former republics.

Big issues here are corruption (government and non-goverment) and a culture where safety (as in with respect to food for one thing, building quality another) is just too readily thrown out when there's money to be had. Other issues are environmental (China is having the crisis the US faced in the 1960's but on a much larger scale) and transportation (why are they investing in high-speed rail lines most Chinese cannot afford to use - they need affordable transit). They need to invest their trillions in ways that will actually make the lives of their citizens better. This is something that is being talked about a lot and I hope that the government listens.

A billion peasants who are pissed off is one thing, but 100 million middle class and above getting really pissed off is dangerous. As people achieve more their expectations rise. Money in the bank is only so good if you live in Shanghai, Chongqing or other cites where the air quality on a good day is off the scale in any US or western European city and you can't trust your food quality, you wouldn't dare drink the water that comes out of the faucet and you can't trust police to even protect you. These are the problems they must work on.

reply to post by idonotcollectstamps

I have to agree that banning words is both evil and ridiculously stupid. Especially here in China where people get really used to using metaphor, homophones and other such things. Oh, and 民主 is not banned as the word is used often in the press as are some of the others. However, they do ban many things, most of which are stupid and the people here laugh at the government when they do.

I live behind the Great Firewall, I know what a pain in the ass it can be. Mostly it blocks interferes with people who are no threat to anyone and anyone who might be a threat just uses all the known ways of circumventing it. Hell, many people use those - they refer to them as 翻墙技术 or 翻墙软件 (wall-climbing technology / software) or just 翻墙 for short. And no, that term is not banned although no official paper is likely to talk much about it...

Oh well, in the 7 months I have been here I really haven't seen anything myself that I would say is evil. Several stupid things. But the government (or officials acting on their own - no real rule of law here) does many things that range from obnoxious to evil. I wish they wouldn't.

But thinking that will change quickly is naive and thinking any rapid change will end up being good for the Chinese people or for people in the west is very ignorant.

Wether you are a Christian or not...the very thing that happened thousands of times over on Sunday across the USA, Christians were arrested for in China.

If you think this is propaganda or bull stuff...you may want to talk with the 4 team members at the Cancer Research Center my wife manages. They and their families are here for just such persecution. Some of the researchers using the labs there are Chinese and they came here to do research the Chinese government would not let them do... and for their families sake.

They say they could live a better and cheaper lifestyle there...but their freedoms would be severly curtailed.

So, if you are secular and don't really have any beliefs or are not independent minded...China might be a great place. But I actually know of more than a few people that go through the paper work every year so they can stay here in the USA.

Originally posted by AlreadyGone
If you think this is propaganda or bull stuff...you may want to talk with the 4 team members at the Cancer Research Center my wife manages. They and their families are here for just such persecution. Some of the researchers using the labs there are Chinese and they came here to do research the Chinese government would not let them do... and for their families sake.

They say they could live a better and cheaper lifestyle there...but their freedoms would be severly curtailed.

I have a number of friends who are Chinese citizens living in the US and I agree that many prefer to have their families live in the US than in China. The US universities are better, the quality of life is better, it is safer and some (who come from Shanghai and Shenzhen) also state that at least for the upper middle class, most cities in the US are also significantly cheaper to live in (food and nannies/maids are cheap in China while property, nice clothes, cars, gas, etc are cheaper in the US).

Quite a few have no plans on becoming citizens of the US - they like keeping their options open. Some own property in both countries and plan to go back and forth while mainly living in the US. I can't blame them.

This upper class (really just upper middle class) is the set of people China needs to think carefully about. They know the world, they have high expectations and they have money. They don't like the government f*cking with them and they are mostly young enough to not think they should always hold their tongue. If China does not moderate its policies these upper middle class, post 1980 young adults are the ones the government will learn to fear and they hold enough power to cause trouble for the central government. If they ever started pulling in the same direction that is... And those born after 1991 have even great expectations.