As a person who works in mainland china from time to time and travels to hong kong at times.
The shyt is night and day. In mainland china folks are literally scared to say shyt open about the government.
I will never forget when I first went there for business. We are at a table and a american dude was saying stuff about the chinese government. All the chinese people I worked with at the table got scared and tried to change the conversation. Cause they knew if someone overheard them it is nothing for someone to tell and they could get in trouble. Maybe you are sent a warning in the mail or a cop comes and visits you or you could lose your job cause the government leaned on your boss to fire you.
I knew shyt was real when I first watched tv there and when they would block out entire segments of live cable news shows because they said some disparaging remarks about china.
The shyt is real as hell over there. We as americans take that shyt for a joke but its not.
I have mentioned on here how folks in china don't even trust their government, but they make sure to not say that shyt in public.
The crazy thing is I have worked and traveled to other countries and folks talk about their government like shyt without fear. But in mainland china its a whole different ball game.