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Are Chinese laws deliberately written to be ambiguous?

So its not just China, in many parts of the world there are laws you can break and laws that you shouldn’t break. For example in the USA, if you murder someone you WILL be brought to court. If you evade taxes, the IRS will get you for that. However, lesser illegal acts like smoking weed or downloading illegal torrents online isn’t likely to get you anything more than just a warning.

In China its similar. If you organize a protest, you will get arrested for that. Drug dealing? yup that’s a big offense. But if you get it on with some prostitutes in a karaoke even though prostitution is technically illegal, no one’s gonna care. distribute some games or movies illegally, no one’s gonna care. Visit some foreign websites using a VPN which millions do in China even though you’re not supposed to, no one cares. All depends on the degree of the crime of course.

Not all illegal acts are equal, and it widely depends on the country. Consequences for smoking weed or doing drugs is ALOT worse in Asia than it is in America.

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Why do so many people love China’s government?

I think you gotta see it from Chinese point of view not from Westerner’s point of view.

For Chinese people, their lives improved dramatically from the Cultural Revolution days to now. My parents couldn’t go to university, couldn’t own a TV, had to carry red books with them all the time. That was the time that they grew up in.

Now, China is modernizing, just a few years ago they didn’t even have 3G networks now they have full LTE networks everywhere, bullet trains, skyscrapers everywhere, smartphones everywhere etc so the economy improved a lot for the middle class.

Now as Westerners think, there are problems with the Chinese government, mainly lack of freedom + censorship.

Here’s the thing: Chinese people don’t value freedom as much as Westerners do. They value stability more.
-We think not being able to access Facebook, Google, Youtube, Wikipedia etc is hard to live with. Chinese people don’t really miss it – they have their own domestic competitors WeChat, Baidu, Youku, Zhihu etc and since most Chinese cannot speak English well, its unlikely many Chinese would use foreign websites even if they had access to it. The Chinese that do speak English well, are usually tech savvy enough to use a VPN, so it’s not a problem for them.
-We think censoring sex/violence in entertainment is too extreme. Chinese people are fine living without a rating system because they think it will corrupt the youth (not saying this is true, but that’s what they believe)
-How about having political opinions online censored? Well there’s an easy solution, just don’t talk about politics. As far as I’ve noticed, talking about politics and religion almost always leads to fights and arguments in Western countries anyways.
-We put a huge premium on privacy online, as Facebook has gotten into troubles about these days. Chinese people don’t care – they know their government spies on them, but they don’t care. As long as you aren’t doing anything bad, you don’t have a problem.

So there you have it, Chinese people like the economic progress and they are fine with censorship in the name of stability.

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If you woke up tomorrow as the president of China, what would you do?

-Levy higher taxes on the rich to help fund better social programs for the poor and elderly. This will help reduce income inequality.

-Eliminate the whole ‘hukou’ system. Chinese people should be able to work whereever they choose.

-Encourage people to have whatever religion they choose

-Stop censoring nonsense like Winnie the pooh on social media because I can’t take a joke

-Remove the foreign movie restriction of 34 a year. Chinese should be able to choose whether they want to watch foreign movies or domestic movies.

-Remove the ban on foreign companies with uncensored content like Facebook and Youtube and Google. Chinese should be able to decide which platform they want instead of forcing them to choose Chinese platforms. Also, this will be beneficial to foreigners who currently have to use VPNs to even access their own email.

-Remove the censorship on sex/violence in entertainment and create a rating system so that Chinese have the choice to see those things in movies/video games or not

-Develop the entertainment industry more to compete with Korea and Hollywood. That means production of higher quality dramas and movies, training singers and dancers etc

-Develop the west side of China more so that it’s not East side heavy like it is. Create economic zones similar to Shanghai and Shenzhen in heavily underdeveloped areas like Guizhou, Guangxi, Gansu etc

-Create incentives for foreign women (maybe SE Asian women) to move to China to help balance out the gender ratio so that more Chinese men have a chance to marry

-remove the petty boycotting on Korean/Japanese goods. Again Chinese people should have the freedom to decide whether they want those goods or domestic brands

-Create a program for Chinese travelling abroad to help educate them in the do’s and do not’s so that they aren’t perceived as negatively in other countries

-Stop interfering in Hong Kong’s business and let them be autonomous – this will create more peace in that area

-Remove the visa restrictions for traveling foreigners. Canadians and Americans should be able to stay in China 3 months without a visa just like they can for Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and most other countries.

-Free political prisoners. They should be allowed to protest. Chinese people should be able to decide what kind of political priorities they want – if they have support from the majority

-Create a national food inspection program similar to the USDA so that all Chinese food can be tested and deemed safe before eating. We can avoid incidents like the Milk poisoning scandal and food poisoning from ‘fake’ chinese foods

-Break off the relationship with North Korea. Seriously, we don’t need North Korea. Have North Korea and South Korea reunite but under the condition that the US forces *must leave* the Korean peninsula.

Most of the things I would do would be to eliminate the restrictions on a lot of things so that Chinese people have more freedoms. I think this will be more beneficial for the people and the country.

There is one more thing I would like to eliminate which is ‘face culture’ which I think is one of the worst things of Chinese culture, but it will be difficult. I’m not sure the best way to do it but I think media campaigns about focusing on the quality of other people rather than judging them based on material worth, and creating more public holidays for couples to enjoy time with each other rather than ‘shopping days’ which is currently what Singles day stands for in China, would help.

And yes, I would do all this while keeping a one party system because I feel it would be the most efficient way to get these things done.