but have you considered that if I do choose to get exploited, I am able to keep a very small part of the value I create and use it to purchase any one of fifty-seven brands of corn flakes

yes, the country that’s actively reducing their fossil fuel use and have historically reached their stated goals with time to spare is surely the problem, never mind the massive pollution from the long-industrialized Western countries that have had many decades to stop using fossil fuels

I disagree. I would much rather have pro-communist propaganda from China than pro-imperialist propaganda from Amerika, especially considering how effective the latter clearly is. Letting companies like Facebook interfere in your country’s internal politics has been shown to be a terrible idea. In the future, when all children in China have grown up being taught to critically analyze everything they read, an open Internet would pose less of a threat, but until that has happened, I consider it completely reasonable for China to protect their information space, just like they protect their physical borders.

Sure, I would personally feel uncomfortable with browsing the Internet without some trusted proxy, just like I do right now because of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. I would certainly like to be able to legally use Tor, for example, even if people who use it through bridges in China aren’t routinely punished. However, I also understand why the government decided to block domestic civilian connections to Western social media and other sites, even if it could be considered overkill, because they are constantly under threat from highly effective imperialist propaganda, and I understand why they would prioritize shielding their citizens from this. Any domestic privacy concerns should be dealt with by Chinese citizens, not outsiders, and I certainly wouldn’t denounce the Chinese revolution over something like this.

China certainly has plenty of Internet censorship, and it’s far more overt (although not necessarily more strict) than Amerika’s censorship. There are very good reasons for this.

The article doesn’t mention Amerika’s various illegal attempts to influence China’s domestic policies through Western social media. Maybe that has something to do with the Chinese government’s decisions to ban Facebook, Google, etc.

It also doesn’t mention how Amerika uses their “human rights organizations” (Amnesty International, HRW, etc.) for regime change. There’s no discussion of the primarily Amerikan-sponsored attempts at colour revolution (typically called something like “advocating democratic reforms” – i.e. a transition to some form of liberalism, which I’d consider equivalent to advocating for a return to feudalism or chattel slavery in a capitalist society) or the various acts of terrorism funded by Amerika (e.g. in Xinjiang). Maybe it’s not completely irrational to deeply distrust Amerika and its cohorts. Maybe they’ve seen what’s happened to Taiwan after being manipulated by decades of imperialist propaganda. Maybe China learned from prior socialist experiments that it’s best to be on the safe side while constantly under thread from imperialist nations.

I also find it odd that you would use the Council on Foreign Relations as a source, considering that it’s a pro-imperialist think tank directed by various massive capitalists and Amerikan war criminals. Theoretically, even the most vile organization can tell the truth, but considering how heavily biased the article is and how many of the references are to anectodal “evidence”, I’d say it’s fair to be somewhat skeptical.

Is it ideal for China’s government to censor and track Internet use? In my opinion, no. Is it justified based on historical analysis? Absolutely.

What freedoms do you believe are missing in China that are present in any given country in the imperial core?