A Mongolian Wedding, A Chinese Wedding, and a Funeral
Channel: Daily Insight
Date: 18/01/2019

Happy New Year 2019 everybody. As the title suggests, I’ve been away for the last five weeks or so off in China attending a couple of weddings. Unfortunately, Internet use is heavily regulated in the PRC, so I was unable to access websites such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Reddit, Quora, etc. Basically any website where information can be freely passed between people. Apparently they’re a threat to the Chinese Communist Party. News websites such as the ABC and the BBC are also strictly off limits, so I wasn’t easily able to access Australia news, either. Consequently, this is the first video I’ve posted in over a month.

So regarding Internet censorship, does the average Chinese person care? The answer is a resounding no. They are blissfully unaware of the existence of all of these potentially anti-Chinese Government websites. But that doesn’t mean they go without. The Chinese Internet has its own version of all the major websites which most of the population use. The heavily regulated Baidu is the search engine of choice. Good luck finding any meaningful results, however. While I was in China, I used Microsoft’s Bing search engine. As expected, it’s been heavily filtered to suit the Chinese government, so wasn’t much better than Baidu.

Almost every Chinese person I’ve seen uses the ubiquitous WeChat — China’s answer to WhatsApp / Messenger / Pay Pal — all mixed into one. It’s by far the most common way people use to communicate with each other. Mobile data is super cheap in China. People happily make video calls from their cars to ask their husbands to pick up some dumplings for dinner. Videos of grandchildren skiing on the mountains are immediately shared with grandparents sitting at home in their living rooms. WeChat has pretty much become an integral part of the Chinese economy. WeChat is China.

So after having lived in China and visiting it over the last few years, I’ve concluded that the Chinese people see themselves as free. They have access to all this wonderful technology and can communicate to anybody in the world as long as the other person uses WeChat. They don’t know that they can’t access the BBC website. They probably don’t even know about the BBC website. The Chinese Communist Party have played their cards well. They realised they can’t just take stuff from people. They have to give something back, too — and they have. They’ve given the Chinese populace the tools to create a thriving economy without the feeling of being oppressed or hard done by. It’s North Korea, but where the people have access to lots of food, technology, and a nice apartment. Alcohol is cheap. Cigarettes are cheap. Food is plentiful. There’s no signs of political oppression taking place to the average Chinese person. They are free to talk to their friends and family from all over the country as long as political debate is kept low-key and out of the public eye. Public complaints about the government are not welcome.

Most of the Chinese I’ve met either have little interest in politics and are just happy to get on with their lives, or openly praise the current leadership. They see Xi Jinping as taking China in a good direction. Certainly, most Chinese have a positive outlook for China. There are no feelings of resentment towards the current regime. As long as most people see their lives improving on a yearly basis, they are happy with whoever is in control. As long as their kids have access to schooling, and food, and new clothes, they’re happy.

So back to the weddings. We had to travel all the way to the northern plains of Inner Mongolia to attend a wedding between my Chinese brother in-law and his Mongolian bride.

The Mongolian trip was nice. We managed to see a few of the sights, but it was time to head back to Northeastern China for the Chinese version of the wedding. As expected, the Chinese wedding was very showy. Lots of music and flashing lights. A professional emcee saying all the right things. Lots of guests drinking baijiu and beer. It didn’t last long. It was all over by lunchtime.

So my Chinese trip was very interesting, but I’ve certainly had enough. Although the Chinese don’t know that they don’t have access to international news, it certainly affected me. Five weeks in China was defintely enough. The Internet has become a lot worse than I remember it. Xi Jinping is cracking down, but in such a way that the average Chinese citizen doesn’t know and just doesn’t care. They have their cell phones. They have their WeChat. They have their plentiful food and their caffeine and their nicotine and their alcohol. They’re content in their state-controlled dictatorship, because it just doesn’t feel like one.

And now that I’m back in the world of the free and can access all the other problems of the world. Sometimes I can understand why China is the way it is. Ignorance, sometimes, is bliss.

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