It's going to be interesting to see what the long-running consequences of manipulating an entire populous will be. In Europe there are rules that curb speech and their culture is inherently more grounded than American culture - but outspoken individuals are aware of rules not outright banned or silenced in most cases.
China in 20yrs will either be productive and well disciplined to produce for the state - essentially near pure fascism or it might meld into something far more dystopian when newer generations grow up never even knowing what discourse or dissent from dogma is.
Trouble in China is that the population and the country is very very big, it's hard to start a revolution, like in other smaller countries likes Syria or Tunisia, with the support of all the people and all the territories. Maybe someone will also be able to rebel, in Beijing, but at 3000km away if nothing happens, it will end up (bad) as Tiananmen square.
The point about population is commonly overlooked! What's more, China doesn't seem to have a strong basis of values (religious or otherwise) other than what the government applies by force. This is how you end up with people willing to take insane ethical leaps to make meager sums of money and discount the wellbeing of fellow citizens etc etc. At this point the CCP actively re-write their own religious grounding and at times willingly erase cultural tenants. I also think it's incredibly important to outline that *positions / beliefs of the CCP should not necessarily be conflated with the people of China*.
For a point of comparison, many mischaracterize how a large portion of conflict in the middle east has actually been intellectually driven by a deeply seated notion of agency along side belief structures. That said, the middle east even "tyrannical" countries like Iran have religious figures who think deeply about the direction of their dogma. This is something that appears to be completely absent in modern China.
You appear confused. Douban continues to be up and work as a discussion forum. E.g. there is an endless torrent of posts about the app getting taken down https://www.douban.com/group/search?cat=1013&q=%E8%B1%86%E7%... (okay, you might argue that there's no discussion going on because everyone made new posts instead of looking for an older one to reply to). The stated reason for the takedown are the app's data collection practices (my guess is that it's related to adtech trackers). WeChat was made to disable new account signups in July for the same reason, but reactivated them in August, presumably after modifying their app in accordance with the regulating agency's demands. I expect Douban to be back in app stores fairly soon. Until then, users can download the APK from their website...
Well, thank you for the report and correction, clearly the "the app's data collection practices" is an excuse to hide some other reasons, I hope the app will be back regularlu in the stores and not only via APK.
> clearly the "the app's data collection practices" is an excuse to hide some other reasons
What makes you think so? And do those "other reasons" also apply to the 105 other apps listed in the same notice? (And the previous times that apps were called out for excessive data collection?)
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] threadChina in 20yrs will either be productive and well disciplined to produce for the state - essentially near pure fascism or it might meld into something far more dystopian when newer generations grow up never even knowing what discourse or dissent from dogma is.
For a point of comparison, many mischaracterize how a large portion of conflict in the middle east has actually been intellectually driven by a deeply seated notion of agency along side belief structures. That said, the middle east even "tyrannical" countries like Iran have religious figures who think deeply about the direction of their dogma. This is something that appears to be completely absent in modern China.
What makes you think so? And do those "other reasons" also apply to the 105 other apps listed in the same notice? (And the previous times that apps were called out for excessive data collection?)