Well, to be fair, the things that he himself does are a much better indicator of his personality and it's very plausible that he made these friends at a stage of his life when he was too young for politics. I do not question his patriotism. That said, I do think that
@Overseaschinese could benefit from a stronger and more dominant persona and presense. His friends strongly disagree with him on something that is a core conviction and his solution is to gently persuade, then agree to disagree. However, when it comes to core convictions, I cannot overlook such a disagreement for anything. I will engage them, force them by the edge of logic and reason's blade onto my side; have them at least say that they need to reconsider their values, or there will be a split between us and we won't be friends anymore. I never shy from this conversation; once I had a professor from Hong Kong casually tell me she believed that Taiwan should be independent and I chewed her out on the issue until she said, "OK, maybe you're right about some things. I have to think about this more." I didn't care about the power dynamic, if she would give me a bad grade or treat me unfairly; nothing is above my conviction. Don't let the people around you define you; you define them, and if they're just an unsavable rotten apple, you eject them from the privilege of being your friend.
When you say "convince" they hear "beg." They think you're some CCP agent whose job is to beg people to visit the country and show them fake things to improve their view. Some people are convinced by reason and driven by reward; others are simply not. Hanjian are driven by fear; they just want to know which power is the strongest so they can kneel by it. To these people, China needs no words and no smiles, we just need to show our power and to let them see their master being defeated by us. That is the only key to this lock.
