That is if you believe biological general intelligence is the end goal of evolution, which I believe is highly unlikely.
Intelligence is simply a special side-product of evolution, there is nothing general about general intelligence. Many organisms can thrive without it.
There is also a non-negligible chance that all organisms would die out before reaching intelligence. We are fortunate to live in a world that produced us.
Well I'm Chinese and have positive personal experiences in China, so I'm pro-China.
If you're going to base your questions on the premises that I do not agree with, and do not give your reasonings, then there is no way to engage in productive conversation.
My suggestion is that you shouldn't bother. The Chinese people would not believe the Western media narrative on Xinjiang (XJ), which also doesn't really have credible sources if look deeper into their "facts" [0]. And it is increasingly clear that the XJ narrative is a US-backed propaganda rather than factual reporting [1]. Most of us would consider the western people being brainwashed into believing whatever the media puts out about XJ, just as much as the English speaking westerners think about us. Please ponder about this: can I, as a Chinese, easily change your media-fed opinion on XJ? Yet I am trying my best here (because I procrastinate).
The video shown by the BBC about the official visit to the vocational training center implants a subliminal message of "bad things are happening here" with eerie BGM and horror-movie-like filter. Your system 1, i.e. your fast, instinctive and emotional mind [2] would also be tricked by that too. Regardless of what's happening there, do you really think this is the way of objective, bias-free reporting?
Personally, I do not like the way they train these people. Westerners would never understand this culturally. But when compared to the war effort instigated by the US against Islamic nations, vocational training is IMHO a much better alternative against terrorism. XJ used to have a terrorism problem, and it's now much safer.
I would suggest you guys to travel in XJ after opening up, if possible, it is an incredible place to visit. If not then there are plenty of local people on youtube vlogging their daily lifes.
Re. [1,2] see [4], but I wouldn't expect it to convince you.
Re. [3] I fail to see how an apology is an acceptable excuse for the protesters' behaviour, regardless of their cause.
Because the news of the journalist got beaten up by the protesters went viral. There were more than 4 billion views on the related searches [1].
I will refrain from commenting on politics (don't have the time to contribute) but must say that I found both sides are incredibly biased against each other.
There are a few cases when it comes to arrests of VPN service owners, but zero incidents that I know of of VPN user being arrested. This is simply because the former breaks the law and the latter doesn't.
Censorship is no secret, totalitarian power is hard to define, but ethnic camps and mass surveillance may or may not exist depending on the existance of direct evidence.
Edit: Evidence is universal, and I suppose we can all agree that it is not dependent on me.
It is puzzling to me why foreigners would actually believe that we are somehow inflicted by the "social credit score" and worry about being sent to a "re-education camp" for simply circumventing the censorship.
I work in a research institute that is government-sponsored, and I can assure you that our work relies on having access to censored foreign sites (Google, Google Scholar, etc.), and there isn't an official way to do so and we all use third-party or self-hosted VPNs.
All my friends and families always discuss incidents in the past history of PRC freely, and never have to worry about being surveilled. It has recently bothered me that the western media often see the issues in colored lenses, have strong beliefs in anti-China sentiments and yet provide no direct evidence relating to the claimed atrocities commited by the government. I tried very hard to find actual direct evidence and to justify their claims (e.g. [1]) but discovered none. The lack of evidence make those hard to believe and would urge you to take those with a substantial grain of salt, and not everything is abysmal in China.
Conflict of interest: I am a Chinese and I studied in the UK for 8 years.
Intelligence is simply a special side-product of evolution, there is nothing general about general intelligence. Many organisms can thrive without it.
There is also a non-negligible chance that all organisms would die out before reaching intelligence. We are fortunate to live in a world that produced us.