Citizens of authoritarian countries often trust their governments more than those in liberal democracies. This apparent paradox is easily explained by the tight control these governments maintain over what people can see and hear. Since Tiananmen the Chinese government has ramped up it’s campaign to eradicate any opinions that are contrary to the government line, and now a whole generation has grown up in this new, hermetically sealed environment.
It’s impossible to systematically lie to an entire country’s population about the country itself. It’s never happened anywhere on Earth and will never do so with current technology. It is however trivial to lie about other countries, which I like to always keep in mind. Think for a moment what reason a Chinese person would even have to dislike their government, when they are clearly doing a good job and actually solving their problems. Even the victims of Tiananmen weren’t those often talked-about “pro-Democracy” students, most were anti-liberalization communist worker protestors.
Buddy, entire books have been written on how western oligarch owned media works with western regimes to manipulate public opinion. Here are a couple you should read:
- https://archive.org/details/inventingrealit000pare
- https://archive.org/details/pdfy-NekqfnoWIEuYgdZl
Thing is that no amount of propaganda can counter the actual lived experience of the people in a country. This is why there is growing social unrest despite the west having the most sophisticated and best funded propaganda in the world. People can see that their lives are constantly getting worse and they’ve lost trust in the system and the media.
If people’s material conditions in China were declining the same way they are in the west, then people in China would lose faith in their system too. Yet, the opposite is happening because people are seeing their lives improve drastically with each an every decade.
