You kind of wonder why they bother. It’s not like there’s much in the way of a call for resistance to the new CCP.
There’s a lot of young people lying flat in resistance to the government and societal pressures. Add to that growing gender imbalances and inequality, they’re ripe for fermentation.
Just because they can’t openly call for the end of the government, doesn’t mean they support it.
That’s something completely different. None of them are asking for actual liberal democratic reforms. Of course it’s hard to get a feel for how much undercurrent there is from so far away but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
When asking for the reforms you’re talking about results in things like getting disappeared of course people are going to be underground about it. The human spirit isn’t meant to be caged in the way that the CCP does (Or Western capitalism does for that matter), eventually resistance will build up to a breaking point I hope.
In my experience the human spirit can take a lot more than we think. I was talking to my kids the other day about the value of democracy and what is the point if nothing gets done and people still suffer. As you say we live in a democracy but one way or another our government has been captured by the mega wealthy basically forever. And we’ve seen recently how easy it is to undermine democratic principles when people feel angry or threatened. Many people in the “free” west have only a tangential grasp of how their democracy works in the first place, and only really care about it in as far as it benefits them (which, broad perception is, it currently doesn’t)
Learning that your government blatantly murdered peaceful protestors has an effect on a population. Along with some minor social distress, that’s enough to start a revolution.
Fascists are obsessed with controlling the narrative because they know the truth makes them look like the weak, uncreative, and ineffective.
