this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Dude. They literally started the first comment with "I lived in China for 4 years". When you start trying to "um actually" people with years of first-hand experience, it might be time to reflect on your own biases
What hypocrisy?
What makes that hypocrisy, and how is that manifested in the comments you replied to?
"instead" is incorrect. They both do both, albeit to differing degrees.
Also you're quoting yourself, not caboose. How long have you lived in China? They lived in China and spoke to Chinese people in Chinese about their personal experiences with the Chinese information landscape. Where were they hypocritical?
And yeah, lots of Chinese people do [X], if [X] is a thing people do. There's like 2 billion of them. Even the most supportive source you could find said 75% don't use VPNs. Listen to the person with personal experience.
Nothing you said have anything to do with hypocrisy. You still haven't quoted them.
I didn't accept the accuracy of that figure, I just noted it as an upper bound. Absolute values aren't particularly useful in this kind of discussion. Any weird and obscure niche interest has millions of fans. What's relevant are proportions. I think numbers are probably much closer to 1:10. In a big country that's a lot of people, but it isn't anywhere near typical. Even 1:4 isn't typical, and that's an unexamined generous figure.
Do they have more personal experience with the US than you do? I only listen to them enough to figure out how they got where they are and how to prevent others from going there, but I've lived in the US for decades so I have my own expertise. How long have you personally lived in China?
Living in China doesn't make you an expert.
Tons of people who hate China live in China as "English teachers" because it's "easy" and stay within their own "expat" bubble.