<story><title>Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/hong-kong-books-by-pro-democracy-activists-disappear-from-library-shelves</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chadcmulligan</author><text>How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don&amp;#x27;t exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don&amp;#x27;t see how they can keep a lid on this long term.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>camillomiller</author><text>You’re applying the wrong Western categories to Chinese people.
People think Chinese don’t have a religion, but they actually do and the God is China itself.
First, they all believe China needs to step up to its role in the World stage.
Second, the social pact in China is quite straightforward: you give up some useless rights that only weak westerners seem to be overly attached to, and you get in exchange growth, stability, safety, work and riches. 
Chinese people that live by this social pact are genuinely happy people. They know about the data collection, they know about the limitations to the information but they don’t care as long as they feel safer, richer and on a prosperous path. Which, sadly, has been true for a while now, if you consider how many trillions of dollars the country has invested in R&amp;amp;D in the last 35 years.
All this while America has been gradually renouncing to their international role, or while even allies have come to reckon the instability America has been unleashing on so many regions of the world just by pretending to operate by the failed credo of “exporting democracy”. 
Mix this and what the Chinese believe about their country’s place in the world and you’ll understand their perspective better. 
The US and the US way of life are not the center of the free world anymore and haven’t been for a long time. 
As a European, living in Germany, my only hope is in a third European way. Quite sad that Angela Merkel will be stepping down, she would have been the right leader to manage this for the entire EU.</text></comment>
<story><title>Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/hong-kong-books-by-pro-democracy-activists-disappear-from-library-shelves</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chadcmulligan</author><text>How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don&amp;#x27;t exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don&amp;#x27;t see how they can keep a lid on this long term.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arkades</author><text>As a Russian, seeing how Russians perceive things, which I imagine is something of an analogue:&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t believe our internal propaganda. That&amp;#x27;s why Russia and the like spend so much time hyping up where we don&amp;#x27;t live up to our ideals - it lets them sell the line that we&amp;#x27;re just as bad, just as corrupt, just as etc. but we either mouth the propaganda trying to get by, or we&amp;#x27;re dumb&amp;#x2F;gullible enough to fall for the propaganda.&lt;p&gt;My understanding of Chinese culture suggests there&amp;#x27;s also a strand of &amp;quot;they&amp;#x27;d love us to be hamstrung by falling for their bullshit, so we don&amp;#x27;t seize our place in the world.&amp;quot;</text></comment>