As a regular Chinese citizen, freedom of speech is at the bottom of list of things I care about, and I would happily sell that for profit if it is sell-able.
I lived in US for quite some time and travel to US regularly. But seriously, I feel much less safe or comfortable when I am in US, and a lot of things Americans care so much about doesn't mean anything
Not surprising at all. I've been actively logging into Google and confirming my visits at various restaurants. I've been using it to track my past activities, and I hope it can provide more accurate restaurant recommendations for me. It has been quite useful. Video recommendations on Youtube are also way more accurate than any other service I've ever seen. If you don't mind sharing your personal data, you do get better service over time.
I speak a branch of Wu myself, and it's ABSOLUTELY not a different language from other dialects of Chinese. There are small parts (also commonly used) of the dialects that's dramatically different from Mandarin, but most parts are still the same. Especially if you need to speak about things in a more formal context, or describe concepts that are more abstract, the dialects has no difference with each other if written down
A few dialects are unintelligible indeed, and they're mostly spoken in southern parts of China. But most people can understand dialects spoken in central and east (north of Changjiang river) fairly easily even though they cannot speak those dialects.
This is off-topic, but since you strongly encourage using grids for layout. How do you deal with browser support issues? I found even IE11 is still very buggy in supporting CSS grid properly.
I'm not denying China doesn't have problems. It has tons of problems in fact. Aggressive blocking is annoying. But let's take a break and see:
Do you think you have to be super careful if you are in China and not to call Xi "Steamed Bun"?
Do you seriously believe anyone in China would get blocked of loans because a credit system is in place that assigns low score to anyone talking ill of the government?
That's what western media wants you to think. The truth behind these stories are usually a lot more complicated, but it's not in the interest of the media to unravel all the truth.
In fact, tons of people calls Xi "Steamed Bun" in China, it's like his nickname, I also do that myself.
And yes, a government blacklist do exists in China. It's totally reasonable you'll at least be denied of applying for loans if you made your way to that list. I couldn't find the reason why those Xie is on that blacklist (the article certainly downplayed that part, at least), but the article also said "Hu said the central government has not assigned any social credit scores to its citizens yet, but eventually there will be a financial credit score".
Did you see what that mean? At least these cases in the report do not have much to do with credit system because it doesn't exist yet. How things would turned out eventually is a guess, at most.
I've lived in US for quite some time, and saw tons of shit show. Why do American news media split into "Left" and "Right"? If you read reports from both sides, you'll almost see two entirely different world. And yet most Americans do not do so, they chose one side and read only what they want to believe. Is either side lying? Maybe, but not necessarily. News reporters just need to selectively report the truth that can reinforce what they believe. Magnify problems of the other side, and downplay anything that they found hurtful. That's just human nature
lol, interesting read. I used to work on a graphics project with a state machine at its core, and user actions are defined to trigger state transitions
Both Xi and communist party wants stability and economic growth, and they cannot get that if they can't keep most of the people happy.
Even with media censorship, the Chinese government has to react to people's comments (and a lot of times, much faster and effective than western governments, contradictory to what western media wants to believe)