censoring porn is pretty regressive to me and doesn’t really solve anything, as proved in Japan

This statement is made in a vacuum without historical context, so I will try my best to provide it.

Japan historically was an imperialist country, and colonized territories in East and Southeast Asia. Most notably China and Korea. The Japanese imperialists committed unspeakable acts against the Chinese and Korean peoples, but most relevant here is forcing the women of the two peoples into sexual slavery. They were called “comfort women”, and were basically forced to service their imperial invaders as if they were their wives and girlfriends. This humiliation was devastating and extremely traumatizing, and Japan has a very grave responsibility to the peoples subjected to it. To this day, Japan hasn’t apologized for their crimes against humanity. History books were re-written deliberately leaving out just how serious the offenses of Japan were in the Second World War.

You may not know much about China right now, which is why you’d say that you don’t think censoring pornography would “really solve anything”, but you should know enough about Japan for what I’m about to say next to make sense. Japan hyper sexualizes its women. Patriarchy is still a big problem in Japan, and women are not treated with the same level of respect as men. Japan also has some of the most horrendously abusive and outright disgusting pornography in existence, not to mention the age of consent in Japan has been 13 years old for a long time. You may not think much of this, but a nation’s use of art reflects the characteristics of the nation itself, which should tell you something about how a lot of Japan sees its women.

Japan has also been under US dictatorship since the end of WWII after they dropped two nukes, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. A blatant flex at the Soviet Union, using Japan’s own civilian population to make that statement. The ruling party in Japan right now is the Liberal Democratic Party, which was created by the US and remains subservient to it. All liberal parties, especially those under US dominance always trend fascist. Thus, the country is hyper-capitalist and worker exploitation is severe. People’s living conditions continue to decay and people get less for their money the longer it goes on. Take a look at all the broom closet and school locker sized apartments in Japan. People don’t have reliable opportunity to escape poverty because the working class have not been in power to develop the country to serve their interests. Thus, naturally, desperate people, especially women, turn to pornography to make faster money because sexual exploitation is immensely profitable.

China, as I have hopefully helped you to understand, has been following the exact opposite trend of Japan. They’ve pulled over 800 million people (more than twice the population of the US) out of poverty with their government’s policies and guidance under the CPC, which is a working class party. People actually have much more plentiful and healthy opportunity to be prosperous because the CPC, with the support of its people, has cultivated the most advanced, most educated and most upwardly mobile society on planet Earth. They did this in no small part to resisting unhealthy social trends like hedonism. Pornography causes addiction, and lowers the quality of cognitive function massively over time. The Chinese people treat pornography just like a drug, and China actually was a victim of opium thanks to the British Empire and other Western powers, which came to be known as a big player in the century of humiliation. China does not tolerate drugs because drugs were forced on and crippled their population. For pornography, it’s the same, in addition to the historical scars and trauma and humiliation of its people being sexually exploited as “comfort women” back then. Because opportunity is so plentiful in China, especially so in the STEM fields, it makes little sense to pursue a career in sexual exploitation. They even dress a lot more conservatively, in a conscious effort to not sexualize their people. Women would rather be engineers and do something productive that helps build up the country than make their living on their backs. Who would’ve thought.

China’s censorship of pornography makes sense, given the historical context provided. Porn isn’t just censored in terms of mosaics, it’s outright banned and illegal in the country. This is why I say history matters and does not expire. They have arguably the healthiest population on Earth, and are by far the most productive given the national conditions of their country.

Like in my other response, I urge you to go back through and watch all the videos I provided you.

Did you patiently watch all the videos I provided in my response? If not, I strongly encourage you to make time to do so as much of what you had trouble grappling with was already addressed therein.

I would like to have constructive conversation, but there are things you just need to see for yourself to really get the full picture, hence providing those video resources. They are all information dense and provide much needed context to why I said the things I said. What we absolutely must understand is that concepts of “independence” and technological competency and literacy do not exist in a vacuum. They are not neutral in the world of geopolitics. History matters and, more importantly, history does not expire. We have a responsibility to know how we got here, so we can make an informed and responsible decision about where to go from here.

I urge you to go back through and watch every video in order, and then re-read the text part of my statement. The videos themselves can also be considered intertwined with the rest of my comment.

because realistically speaking only very few people relative to everyone else will even know what a VPN is.

You spend too much time talking to techies who think they’re super special people who are the only ones smart enough to touch computers. Everyone knows how to use a VPN. A working VPN is was the first result on Baidu when I tried to use one last time. Boomers who are afraid to update their computer know what Tor is. And even besides that there are plenty of times I’ve seen articles from western news media posted in China, usually consumed by the local libs. Who do you think the NYT Chinese version is for? Chinese diaspora don’t read the NYT enough to justify them having a Chinese version of like half their articles, it’s for Mainland Chinese liberals. Chinese people know about and complain about DW, BBC, NHK, CNN etc because we can read the articles and see the shit they pull (for example a big meme is when DW published some article about China and the title said “human fork” instead of “human rights” in Chinese, or the time the BBC published an ominous photo of the WIV (with a grey filter) and another photo of the BBC photographer having to to lay in a ditch to take the photo came out).

Ultimately in the 21st century access to information doesn’t matter as much as having a population that actually is capable of consuming information. In the west people are trained to ignore everything that goes against the narrative as propaganda. The average westerner can not name a single Chinese social media site or news publication. They cry shill and propaganda followed by some racial slurs any time they encounter Chinese people online.

I have to say, from what I understand it’s the nations themselves that petition US bases

Okinawa/Ryukyu has regular protests against US military bases. The people there do not want a US military base. It’s so bad I even saw a Ryukyu nationalists cringily try to cozy up to China.

this is probably a really intense issue here but I honestly just don’t really agree… I don’t think a country is entitled to invade land just because it previously held it

You do realize that Taiwan officially considers itself the “Republic of China” and the legitimate government of not just China but also Mongolia right? Even Tsai Ing-Wen calls herself Chinese when giving campaign speeches. The whole Taiwanese identity thing is an idpol ruse by the DPP. Those same “taiwanese” will go on long rants about how they’re the only real Chinese and all mainlanders are “yellow russians” right after yelling slurs about various northern Chinese minorities/Taiwanese aboriginals. If you can read Chinese they’re all over social media. This also ironically leads to the 2% aboriginal Taiwanese population voting for the pro-China party. The funny thing is these people drop the act immediately when they sense they’re about to get hatecrimed abroad. I personally knew a guy who went out of his way to call himself Taiwanese and make fun of mainlanders until Asian hate crimes started happening, then he started posting about how he was Chinese and had Chinese flags all over his social media.

This is in contrast to places like Singapore, which are majority ethnically Chinese but have an actual legitimate national identity, instead of whatever crazy shit the DPP does. Again if you can read Chinese you can easily see the difference between well adjusted Singaporean vs. Deranged DPP supporters on social media(look up 1450 army, every liberal accusation is an admission of guilt).

because realistically speaking only very few people relative to everyone else will even know what a VPN is.

It would surprise me if it was Huawei. Huawei is largely owned and democratically controlled by its workers, remarkable in its structure even for an AES country like China and one of very few large firms of this kind in the world (this is why the Failed States tries so hard to smear and destroy it, harder than say for example Xiaomi, which is publicly traded and subject to the whims of capital). If you are talking about pushback from software firms maybe you are thinking of eg. Tencent or Alibaba, which are publicly traded.