oops, I accidentally noticed you quoted my post
I wonder if people in China can browse the net to the extent of following this discussion here ... just asking
There exists tonnes of internet forums in China where people discuss---"discuss" is a too polite word to use---almost all aspects of life, and yes include politics.
There used to be a joke in the Chinese internet forums where a guy lamented that (excuse my poor translation)
"On internet, we discuss things as small as soy sources and cooking oil, and as large as national and international politics, and it has become almost a rule that every discussion will degenerate very quickly into personal insults and verbal abuses with the worst kind of profanity possible; the only exception are in porn forums, where all people are all so polite and civilised: 'Thank you, poster, you are great', "May you have a long and happy life"."
In reality, the censorship is really overplayed by the Western media. Unless you are a political activist, the censorship really does not affect your everyday life. And it is not like people are not allowed to talk about politics. People talk about government policies, and complain about them, pass judgement on national, local leaders etc on line all the time. The censorship only kicks in when the discussion is related to elements and current events that are considered destabilising factors, and which are judged to cause incitement to social unrest. And even then, the most common result is that your post gets deleted, certain words replaced by stars, or that you receive a warning from the moderator to tone down the rhetoric. Actually not too dissimilar to this forum.
At the end of the day, you have to ask how many people actually are that interested in politics or serious about it anyway? And again, how many people in China are really that interested in watching Western media channels? If anything, people watching Western media channels everyday would probably do great harm to Sino-Western relationships. Given all the negative stuff these Western media tends to say about China, it would only make most people hard-core nationalists.
Seriously, I have known a lot of Chinese students who turned from very anti-CCP and having a positive view of everything West when in China, to hard-core nationalists after a few years studying in the UK or other Western countries. All thanks to the mainstream Western rhetorics on everything related to China. And the line I have heard most akin to "I have never realised how much I loved my country until I came abroad and studied".
And does this kind of political censorship really cause a great restriction to average people's lives? My wife has absolutely zero interest in politics, and objects me watching even this board or news articles during the evenings for not talking to her instead. She is a bigger censor than the Chinese government ever would or can be. When I was back in China (almost every year), I usually do not have much time sitting in front of a computer in free times, let alone browse the internet. There are A LOT of other things one can do in the evenings in China.
And internet forums are already quickly losing its crowd and interest in China, even social media sites like Ren Ren, which is a clone of Facebook are rapidly losing appeal. People have moved on to mobile social media platforms, like Wechat or Sina Weibo. And my wife is constantly hooked onto them, and believe me or not, there are tonnes of politics related stuff in some of the microblogs---my wife ignores them as usual, of course.
As a matter of fact, if you really want to use some of the banned services like some of the Google tools, or insist on reading Falungong websites, then it is not like it is hard. There are tones of proxy softwares and servers (thanks to NED et al no less) floating in the Chinese web sphere that, you can just grab one, install it, and do whatever you want in and out the great firewall. I have used one version once to access CDF many years ago, when we still used dialup modems (I am not sure if it is still blocked). Most of the people I know use these tools for porn, rather than watching what the western people has to say about politics.
You may or may not think the Chinese are not currently free people, but then again, what are you or me to pass general judgements to people we hardly know, based on your or my own values and experiences?
