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Cake day: August 4th, 2025

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  • This is the same cheap propaganda that is so widespread here. China is a dictatorship where people can’t openly say their opinion about democracy nor anything else, at least not if the opinion differs from the Communist Party’s narrative. And Beijing’s human rights violations have been evident for decades.

    Edit:

    I remembered a study I read some time ago and could now find it. It’s from 2024, and it essentially says that when Chinese citizens are surveyed anonymously, support for party and government plummets:

    Most public opinion research in China uses direct questions to measure support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government policies. These direct question surveys routinely find that over 90 per cent of Chinese citizens support the government. From this, scholars conclude that the CCP enjoys genuine legitimacy. In this paper, we present results from two survey experiments in contemporary China that make clear that citizens conceal their opposition to the CCP for fear of repression. When respondents are asked directly, we find, like other scholars, approval ratings for the CCP that exceed 90 per cent. When respondents are asked in the form of list experiments, which confer a greater sense of anonymity, CCP support hovers between 50 per cent and 70 per cent. This represents an upper bound, however, since list experiments may not fully mitigate incentives for preference falsification. The list experiments also suggest that fear of government repression discourages some 40 per cent of Chinese citizens from participating in anti-regime protests. Most broadly, this paper suggests that scholars should stop using direct question surveys to measure political opinions in China.

    This is just one among many studies that show that ‘perception’ of democracy isn’t that simple to illustrate just by something like a diagram as propagandists make it seem. It should be clear that directly asking citizens who live under a dictatorial regime what they think about their government will provide no useful answers in my opinion.








  • As an addition, here are two sources regarding the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region.

    A Committee Report to the Canadian Parliament says about the Chinese government:

    In particular, the Subcommittee was informed that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government:

    • continues to detain Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in what witnesses referred to as concentration camps, where women and girls are regularly subjected to sexual abuse and other forms of gender‑based violence;
    • separates children from their families and places them in state run schools or orphanages;
    • forces Uyghurs to work in various types of factories in Xinjiang and other regions of China, as part of the PRC government’s “poverty reduction” initiative;
    • uses invasive surveillance measures to repress Uyghurs living in Xinjiang and abroad; and
    • imposes barbaric methods to reduce Uyghur birth rates in Xinjiang, including the forced use of intrauterine contraceptive devices as well as forced and coerced sterilizations and abortions.

    Justine Nolan, Professor of Law and Justice and Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, writes that a UN report on Xinjiang abuses leaves no room for plausible deniability,

    The Chinese regime’s treatment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in the province of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity …

    It describes as “credible” allegations of torture, including rape and sexual violence, discrimination, mass detention, forced labour and widespread surveillance.

    Multiple reports over the past five years have documented human rights abuses in the far-western province. These include the arbitrary detention of at least 800,000 people, and possibly millions …

    It is no longer possible for anyone – including the many companies that continue to source products from Xinjiang – to claim plausible deniability …

    You find much more on the web.











  • Russian-linked actors stoking division in Alberta separation debate, research says

    The ongoing study has found the discussion about Alberta separation has gone far beyond Canadian borders – mainly to Russian and American ‘content farms’ and influencers.

    “It’s very clear that there is foreign interference,” said Brian McQuinn, who is the co-director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Conflict at the University of Regina and the CEO of Cipher AI …

    Through July and August, researchers found hundreds of websites, headlines, social media content and more generated that “repeated misleading framing.”

    “Their goal is to have us start to turn on each other, is to no longer see someone who disagrees with you as someone who has a different opinion, who still cares about the country, but is actually an enemy of the country,” McQuinn said …

    McQuinn says Russian-based attempts to influence the debate have been more covert through misleading headlines, articles and false narratives. Russian-linked participants made up the vast majority of influence attempts, the data shows.

    American-based influences have been more overt, through influencers or politicians making comments publicly …