The Big [Censored] Theory

I don't really agree with this, but consider this argument : Is it really a bad thing if different countries have different understanding of what's allowed/not allowed? If the whole world had the same system of governance, that could be dangerous too.

Because the people of China didn't choose this: their oppressive and authoritarian government did it for them.

This is right. If people vote for censorship in a democracy, that's a perfectly fine form of governmental heterogeneity. What's happening in China is not that.

I find it slightly amazing how often commenters here (hello aero-glide2) fail to see that the people in a country are not the same as the dictators controlling the country.

When such misunderstandings are common here at HN, where people are a bit brighter that elsewhere (or so I think) -- then, such misunderstandings must be dangerously common outside HN. I wonder what consequences follow from that

Given the scale of the demographic collapse in China -- the over-reporting of girls by 100M, the situation where 20M men have no chance of the possibility of having a stable heterosexual relationship due to the lack of women, the rapidly aging population (highest in the world) that is post child bearing age -- doesn't it begin to seem reasonable the steps that the government is taking to curtail and shape public opinion?

China has no replacement generation, and they are facing internal turmoil within the next decade on a scale that has no historical precedent.

The Communist Party is the reason China is in this mess in the first place, and further control and oppression by them isn't going to magically fix it.

That's a fair observation. I'm curious though, do you have any ideas to improve the situation? What would you do if you were responsible for 1.5B people and were facing a situation where the labor force participation drops by half over the next ten years and continues to drop every year since? Will you be able to arrange for the population to be able to be fed, clothed, housed, and given medical care?

It's not possible to "magically" create several hundred million young people, communism or no, to "fix it". So what do you do?