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Originally Posted by Phanuthier
Do you ever feel the sense of communism or living in a dictatorship? Maybe its because in my generation and being a Canadian, I saw floods of people coming to Canada because of the handover of Hong Kong and Macau, so I do wonder how oppressed freedoms are in China.
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The thing is that the presence is reasonably constant, but not something to feel conscious of most of the time. The firewall which censors so much of the internet is certainly annoying, but on a daily basis, dealing with normal matters of daily life, there is no real sense of communism or the dictatorship. If you get into discussing political issues with people, the influence of the dictatorship becomes apparent very quickly as most people don't feel comfortable openly expressing negative views about the government in front of people they are not comfortable with. Still, this is different by generation, and the generations in China are very different from each other. Children of the 80s and 90s are wildly more open than their parents are.
It is phenomenal how effectively China is able to censor the news within the country though. Things that would make world headlines if they happened in a place like Canada will simply go unheard of in China for the effectiveness of the media censorship. It is becoming more and more the place of bloggers to shed light on the dirt that happens within China, which is one of the reasons that the government is so very concerned with media censorship. There is a strong limitation on the use of social networking sites and services. For instance, twitter, facebook and most blogs are blocked on Chinese internet.
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Oh and I would also like to know what your thoughts are on sanitation of going into the many hole-in-the-wall food stands around China (that I saw when I visited Beijing in the 90's)
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Doesn't bother me at all. I eat at them all the time and I don't think I've ever gotten sick. Also, I just don't have that much faith that bigger, fancier restaurants are really that clean anyways.