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A wrong thing many people now believe is that Chinese people's knowledge and views of the outside world are basically unchanged since the mid-1990s.
If you believe this it's worth asking why the CCP invests so much time and effort in suppressing freedom of expression.
If you believe this it's worth asking why the CCP invests so much time and effort in suppressing freedom of expression.
From the scanty opinion research out there, support for "liberal democratic" values are in line with Germany, Japan, South Korea. Support for authoritarianism is not dramatically higher than in South Korea: link.springer.com/article/10.118… 
~1m overseas students every year. 30m-40m VPN users, & numbers rising during major foreign policy events.
It's naive to think the CCP will just sit back and let foreign influence erode its power. But it's also naive to think contact with the outside world doesn't change views.
It's naive to think the CCP will just sit back and let foreign influence erode its power. But it's also naive to think contact with the outside world doesn't change views.
The CCP is so repressive around freedom of thought precisely because it worries that contact with the outside world is changing the views of the next generation of the Chinese elite.
IMO there's a nihilistic view that "nothing ever changes in China, so the world must shun it" which, in its way, is as naive and damaging as "the internet will turn China into Sweden". It assumes that CCP=the Chinese people, which is exactly what the CCP wants you to believe.
On that note, read this very interesting @amyyqin piece and thread today on how HK protestors are quite deliberately pitching today's march at mainland Chinese tourists:
Bear in mind as you read it that mainlanders with critical views of the government are far less likely to state their opinions on the record to a @nytimes journalist, so what you read here may well significantly *understate* such views.
