I’m a nobody and what is posted by some dipshit foreigner on an English language forum is pretty far outside of the concern of the government.
When I talked about the Xinjiang situation with people inside China the attitudes varied, but it wasn’t nearly as hush-hush a topic as Tiananmen, but probably because it just wasn’t widely known about at that time (this would be two or three years ago).
A barber once casually joked that my hair resembled that of a Xinjiang terrorist. This would’ve been in 2014 soon after the Kunming train station stabbings.
My in-laws grew up during the Cultural Revolution and I specifically remember my father-in-law being in disbelief when I brought it up (early 2018) because the Uyghurs are part of the big happy, multi-ethnic Chinese family and then my sister-in-law being like “yeah but the terrorism”.
I got “you should understand the need to stop Islam better than anyone, being American” a few times from younger guys.
It’s a tiny sample size, but in my experience (in 2019) mainland Chinese people I talked with were generally far more open to having sympathy towards Uyghurs than they were Hong Kongers who supported democracy.
What happens is some reactionary says Noam Chomsky sucks and you’re an apologist for Pol Pot if you say anything positive about Noam Chomsky. And that’s bullshit in at least three different ways.
HK’ers are commonly seen there as calling it Little Britain and, despite being Chinese citizens, expecting to be able to retain western-style freedoms.
I like the idea that North and South Korea are just two different styles of govt - socialist and capitalist, ying and yang, each favored by its own people - and not that one is a totalitarian dynasty where you can get sent to a concentration camp for the rest of your life because someone accused your uncle of badmouthing Dear Leader.
Chomsky was pretty accurate about Latin America imo. The US was the unequivocal bad guy in pretty much every instance. And there’s a lot more grey area between whether you’d rather live in Nicaragua vs. Guatemala than N. vs. S. Korea.
Chomsky is right about 90% of stuff but because he undermines the legitimacy of powerful people they make damned sure that we hear alot about the other 10%.
The colonial aspect is inescapable obviously, but a big part is class. The perception mainlanders have of Hong Kongers (ime) is largely that they are the filthy rich who look down on dirty mainlanders.
My wife lived in Guangzhou for several years before we met. She would routinely travel to Hong Kong for work (and shopping etc). Being treated rudely for speaking Mandarin or imperfect Cantonese was the norm. I’ve heard the same thing from several mainland Chinese.
Meanwhile when my white ass was in Hong Kong and spoke English+basic mandarin it was fine and I even got some praise.
I have a Taiwanese friend I talked about this with and he said in Hong Kong he got a “where are you from? Taiwan? Oh ok” a few times for speaking Mandarin.
None of this is to defend the end of rule of law in Hong Kong, of course.
That Pol Pot take must have been scorching. I recently contributed him to the local history society’s map of people who used to live in the area. Not a fan, though.
Sorry for the China bullshit. I’m under mini-lockdown here in Taiwan with my “work” canceled and the place I’m staying this week doesn’t have wifi. Being a 5th-rate China observer is pretty much all I can contribute to this forum