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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

Related to this and the censorship story already on the front page:

China is censoring internal news about these trade controversies. From family over there I know that the general public isn't seeing this on TV or anything. And even messages on WeChat are being taken down (my wife has had several private postings removed)

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I don’t know why and I am not a Chinese citizen but this kind of thing bothers me deeply. I hope Streisand effect takes over China in a self-propelling feedback loop until this whole show comes crashing down. People of China deserve better (once they’re a solid middle class and taken out of poverty).

> People of China deserve better (once they’re a solid middle class and taken out of poverty).

You are implying that the current policies will bring them out of poverty which in a sense contradicts your first statement.

Countries have emerged out of poverty even with strong democracies. I'm not sure why the world thinks that a strongman regime like the CCP is needed for economic growth.

In that sense, China is (IMHO) actually an outlier, an exception where a Communist regime used fully capitalistic economic policies and foreign investment to bring people out of poverty. This could have happened even if there was a different form of government there.

https://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404369575977348865 This is from People' s Daily (the most official state-owned paper) on Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) in the early morning of May 8th, the most popular social media in China, and the commentator of this article is believed to be the direct voice from the politburo, the highest leadership of CPC.

Added: I really do not know why so many people are claiming that this piece of news have been censored in China, I saw the coverage at noon on May 7th on many mainstream medias, and every move from the U.S were also reported, along with every response from the press briefing of Chinese diplomat department. The latest coverage of it is also from People' s Daily about China' s retaliation response: https://weibo.com/2803301701/HtiphBxKZ , it was referenced and reported by all major mainstream medias i follow, so what did I miss?

My comment was based on lack of reporting up to the morning of May 7 (i.e., yesterday evening to us), when family were still saying they'd seen nothing. So maybe they decided to lift the embargo at noon as you said.

But even with that, it doesn't change the removal from WeChat private messages that my wife experienced as recently as over last night.

CCP is wise enough to know such news cannot be censored and censoring it only creates chaos and panic, my guess is it was struggling how to respond. CPC does censor the debates about it, but from it started in last year till now, every development has been reported by the official press, it has been laid low about the deal and prepared for the worst scenario, the news about the negotiations are always simple description of the events, but it never covered up any development.

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