Well, I’m from a neighboring country (Vietnam). We have the CVP. I immigrated here a bit over a decade ago to start a business. I do speak and read Vietnamese, but poorly. It’s not 100% on topic, but I can share my experience for what it’s worth, in case you don’t get tons of replies from our Chinese colleagues.
In practice, most of my interactions with government bodies have been positive. They’ve helped me figure out the tax system, granted me legal status and various licenses here, some tax cuts, and so on. I got married at a People’s Committee (UBNQ), which is sort of our equivalent to a town hall.
At the start, most other non-nationals I knew told me it was impossible to do anything legally (full stop), or without constantly paying bribes. I ignored them, filled out forms and submitted them without ‘extra fees’, everything worked out just fine. So I mostly ignore “what people say” about bureaucratic processes, and just call my lawyer for advice – they usually tell a very different story.
It’s not a carefree paradise, we’re a developing nation and life has it’s difficulties. However on a daily basis, my main concerns are traffic, workplace politics, air pollution, and occasionally neighbors singing karaoke. Top things I struggle with on longer timescales are things like home ownership, maintaining my health, and planning for retirement. I live in a slum, but it’s safe and people seem “big picture” fairly happy and decent. Except for one mean lady in the market who gossips all day – there’s a good term in Vietnamese for this kind of person that roughly translates to “many stories”.
Oh I also have to mention the big red propaganda posters! Most of them say things like “don’t do drugs, kids”, “don’t drink and drive”, and “try to eat less sugar / salt”. Or “don’t spit in public, that’s gross”. A few pertain to upcoming national holidays or anniversaries of historical events too. They’re sort of like the “public service messages” we used to get in Canada, except with nicer artwork. Also if we’re being honest, I probably should eat less salt.
So that’s a slice of my life. My thoughts on the CVP remain moderately positive, but I’m not particularly political – this describes most people I know here. I suspect it’s a lot more ordinary than what you might think from all the angry politics online. I imagine it’s similar with my Chinese colleagues (my main client is a Chinese company), but don’t really know since we really only talk about work.
It is not as much of a risk as some westerners think. Unless you are actually activists planning change, it is unlikely for CCP to disappear everyone that speaks against it; especially on non-Chinese platforms. On Chinese social media, on the other hand, dissents will be de-platformed quite quickly; I think some might receive couple warnings and/or threats before they are in physical danger.
However, it is not uncommon to hear about larger platforms being threatened by CCP with their own safetys or their families.
In the end, for many people, it is a large enough risk with barely any reward. Everyone knows CCP is oppressive: maybe not every western media report about China was fully truthful; but with these many reports, some have to be true. On the other hand, tankies aren’t going to change their mind because one anonymous “Chinese” on the internet speaks up against CCP. Speaking up against CCP really will not bring that much change, especially given the potential of putting themselves and their family at risk.
I am not a Chinese person in China, if that is what you are asking.
But I have been in China and communicate with Chinese for a good amount of my life, and I still regularly communicate with Chinese in and out of China (I hang out with more people out of China than inside China, since I am not in China).
One YouTuber I follow, Naomi Wu (SexyCyborg) has had a few run-ins with the CCP, and recently had another and it seems like after that she’s decided to keep a low profile if not been almost entirely silenced.
Now she has a few strikes against her, being a lesbian with a very unconventional appearance (she had a video somewhat recently where she went into some detail about her particular experiences that may be worth a watch for those who are interested in such things) and her partner is a Uygur.
But overall, I never got the impression that she was super critical of the CCP, to the point I’ve seen people calling her a still for the Chinese government. I personally wouldn’t say she toed the party line exactly, you could definitely get the impression there were a lot of things she wasn’t totally happy with, but I never really saw anything from her that I thought really rose above the level of general annoyed grumbling that I expect from literally every human in the world about their government. The overall impression I usually get from her is of someone who is overall proud of her country and culture, who only really got vocal about some fairly minor and reasonable issues. And she’s a tech reviewer/maker type channel, very little that she says really has anything to do with politics at all, and if anything she’s probably done some good for China’s tech/manufacturing industry and economy by showing off some cool gadgets and such being made there and dispelling a bit of the (admittedly not entirely undeserved) reputation for them making garbage knockoff products.
And even still that’s the kind of person the CCP wants to put the screws to. It kind of seems like the first time was sort of a warning/test because she has some western following and they didn’t want to make too many waves, but when they didn’t get any significant reaction to it, they basically told her “ok, the gloves are off, we’re serious this time.”
It was also pretty telling to me that she made a comment that she could leave but her partner couldn’t.
This is the way it usually works. Disappear the most vocal and organised 1% of the opposition, punish the next 9% somehow, and thereby intimidate the remaining 90% into rough compliance. The trick then is to keep the loyalists onside, which is usually what brings a regime down.
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