To feel I've been lied to about China

[Sulettamercury]

I'm well aware the country is far from perfect but no where is and I've just come back for the summer after spending 2 years there working as a teacher I'm going back in a few weeks.

What I can't get over is the fact all my friends seem to be indoctrinated into thinking China is this 1984 style hell hole where you can't criticise the government or do anything without being in constant fear.

I have to say living there really opened my eyes and I was shocked when in my first months of teaching one of the Chinese workers (now a good friend) started openly moaning about government policy and I'll admit I was nervous at the time but soon realised nothing would happen and that despite what I was told no one came after her and she didn't disappear and that every one was moaning about government policy if it didn't suit them with no consequences.

The infrastructure is also wonderful and far from the cheap rubbish you're told it is and housing isn't all on the verge of collapse or at least no worse than some of the rubbish I've seen here in the UK

Again it's definitely not perfect but AIBU to say I I feel like we're lied to in the west about how bad China really is and that some of the things we accuse them of we either do ourselves or we blow out of proportion?

Like spreading a deadly contagion?

I think it depends who you talk to - two of my closest friends are Chinese, settled here and married to British men so I’ve lots of conversations with them and don’t recognise your description of China at all. Having said that, there are a lot of human rights issues there 😬

nice one!

This reads like planted party political propaganda from the Chinese Communist party.

Your experience sounds wildly different to mine OP!

Fair point but I doubt that was done purposely as it didn't benefit them and we've started illegal wars that destabilised the entire middle east and allowed our financial institutions to cause the massive crash of 2008 that also had devastating global consequences so we're hardly in a position to act all high and mighty.

I did say they're far from perfect but I think we do make things sound much worse their than what they are

Before everyone absolutely dog piles me I'm happy to hear other people's experiences as I'm aware I could be being naive and that 2 years in a country is still technically the honey moon period.

You should listen to the Trevor Noah podcasy episode on “ChinaMaxxing”. He covers this really well.

I mean some people think Scotland is still stuck in the 14th century and we don’t have tvs or phones so…

It’s good to know they can criticise their government openly.

When it’s election time they’ll be able to vote against them too….. oh, wait…..

Well it’s certainly not North Korea. I do think there’s a lot of issues though, poverty, lack of rights. Look what happened to the protestors in Hong Kong, the govt might take a bit of muttering about things but people can only push it so far. The Taiwan issue isn’t going away.

My friend taught there, said pretty much the opposite, i suspect it’s down to where you are, your employer and your friends

Where are you? Obviously not Xinjiang or Tibet? I'm guessing maybe Shanghai or Shenzen? You realise China is nearly 10mil km sq?

There are a lot of human rights issues in the UK, too, it's just that most people are lucky enough to be naive to them.

I think the difference is likely to be that China is great unless you are executed. Here that can’t happen.

You know that most Western media and social media are banned, right? So they can’t freely get information apart from what the state censors allow? My Chinese colleagues couldn’t access LinkedIn or the FT.

When I went to Beijing in 1999 there were toilet blocks for the street in residential areas. They smelt awful. I’ve heard that has been cleaned up / modernised now and that Shanghai in particular is absolutely amazing.

I know they have lifted the one-child policy, but only recently and having that policy was not the act of a state for whom individual freedoms were seen as desirable.

Have you read “Wild Swans”? That’s not information coming from the west…

Just to be clear my topic isn't about saying China is some sort of perfect utopia just that we aren't being told the complete truth just like they are 100% not told the complete truth about life in the west.

I can only discuss my personal experience and as I've already said I could be being very naive which was one of the reasons for starting the topic so I could get a broader opinion pool beyond my friendship group so feel free to be as critical of the subject as you like but please remember I'm just a person not a Chinese spy lol and yes I've read my OP back and realise that it embarrassingly does sound that way but it wasn't my intention

I don't think we have a leg to stand on when it comes to smelly public toilets in the UK lol

I do think you’re naive to believe that your colleague grumbling about the government is a good example of how China deals with political dissent more generally.

Similarly, I accept it’s not a total hell hole, and I would like to visit. But let’s not pretend it’s misunderstood - it is what it is, a dictatorship doing authoritarian stuff.

Is this thread a response to this story yesterday?

This was the guy's fifth attempt to get out of China and stay out.

'I must get out into the free world', dissident who fled China on boat tells BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2j2jw117lo
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry told the BBC that the Chinese government "handles the entry and exit of its citizens in accordance with the law and that Chinese citizens must abide by the Constitution and the law".
Dong, a police officer-turned-human rights activist, has been jailed in China several times for his activism.
In 1999, Dong was fired from the police force after 13 years because he signed a petition to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the brutal Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Must try harder OP!

It’s a big country.

Haha very true, but people have toilets in their houses in the UK, they don’t have to use the street communal toilet blocks because there is nothing else.
Also there were no doors on the toilet stalls. To me that was awfully primitive.

“Moaning about government policy” is very very vague. But generally, I think you are being very naive because it is a one party state and there is widespread fear about speaking out against the government. Your example of one person (where we don’t even know what they were speaking out against) doesn’t prove anything. The communist party has eyes and ears everywhere and they might have turned a blind eye to that particular person but that doesn’t mean others won’t be reprimanded for it. When I have visited China, I have been struck by the level of corruption and bribery and how important it is who you know.

I understand now. Similarly to the way many people still think of parts of Africa as being full of starving people with HIV (my experience of the African countries I've visited were incredible. Vibrant. Wonderful people. But still lots of human rights issues and scary for women at times). Some parts of China are incredible. However the human rights issues for surpass those we see in the UK.

By the way, OP, I always enjoyed my stays in China.

Doesn't make me think the Chinese government's systematic destruction of the Uyghur people and use of forced labour is OK.

(And I should add I haven't been back as a tourist since that repression became known.)