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Notes -
Obligatory 'Everything is Worse in China'.
(I believe Greer later, on Twitter, retracted the point about China at least not having the American gender nonsense. That is in fact spreading among Chinese youth.)
My experience, having known and talked to a fair number of people from mainland China, is that if you want to be politically successful you do have to participate in an awful lot of lies, or at least, insincerities. If you don't want to be part of that, you can mostly check out, but the way that goes for most Chinese people is that you resign yourself to living under a government and a social system that constantly barrages you with a combination of lies, misrepresentations, and technical truths, and you have no way of telling them apart. Most Chinese people know that their government is deceptive and incompetent, and generally try to route around it, or live with its demands, since they have no practical ways to change it.
Now I know what the obvious response is - that Western countries also have governments that barrage people with lies and misrepresentations, and that political or social advancement is also contingent on repeating lies and sincerities. I agree that this is mostly true.
But it is worse in China.
One of the things I'm very grateful to have heard and learned from Chinese friends is that intuitive sense of "same crap, different day". They deal with pretty much the same kind of garbage as Westerners. Only more of it. And worse.
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