I have also travelled China and speak Mandarin. I have seen this view, and have discussed and pondered it a fair bit, but I've concluded it's wrong, and dangerously so. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I'm no doubt wrong about many things. Every society gets indoctrinated with it's own mix bag of beliefs and taboos. I went to a talk in Bejing discussing all the reasons why China's economy was fantastic and stable. It did not seem they could even consider the possibility things might not. They were even optimistic about climate change. I had to ask someone if it was the moon or the sun I was looking at in the sky one day.

One of my opinions is that when the world breaks out into a global slaugtherfest like WW2, it becomes essential for the survivors to research the causes of such an event with the explicit goal of of ensuring that it won't happen again. As far as I have seen, not a single society anywhere has done this, rather, we have minutes of silence to remember those who took part in the heroic massacre. I would not kid myself that I wouldn't also torture and kill if I was placed in a horrible enough environment, so I have put explicit effort into reading the works of Khaneman and others. Milgram's Experiment, Stanford prison experiment, etc. I was watching a fire start in a bin outside our library the other day, counting all the people walking by as smoke came out, some of them throwing rubbish in and walking off. Fortunately I'd read about bystander apathy so I just went and told someone and they put it out.

The "moderating sensationalism" view is clearly wrong when one looks at the list of search items blocked. Let's see... Top result for Tiananmen massacre in Mandarin produces no results (六四), in English, the top result is "Tiananmen massacre a myth". How can China become a better place when it's people are forbidden from even researching such events?

Another fascinating delusion in China is the distinction between "Chinese" and "foreigner", and then perhaps "Japanese" will be refereed to separately, because fuck Japan. It's quite difficult to explain. In their minds (this is all "statistically speaking" of course", everyone takes on the "Chinese" or "foreigner" label and thus they take on distinct beliefs and behaviours associated with them. It's not trivial racism or anything, actually, they are typically more polite to "foreigners", which they call me even in my home country. One of the scary things that comes from this is the hard wired belief that "Taiwan is China", despite being and separated and independent for 70 years. I have tried explaining this very carefully to many Chinese, and they will understand each point individually, but at the end of the discussion they say "but Taiwan is China!" and continue on with their insanity. Meanwhile Taiwan has the day to day trouble of trying not to be massacred by China wanting to "save" them and "bring them back" (actually things I've heard from Chinese). It is as if one had a ex that still believed they were together and the only thing stopping them from rape was the lingering threat of getting beating up by the slightly less deranged partner (the USA). Of course, Chinese people happily assure me that China would never use force in resolving this. Actually, the official stance says they would only use force if Taiwan officially claimed independence, and the idea of Taiwan actually being independent is unpalatable, so everything is fine. So in summary, I have zero confidence when Chinese people assure me this censorship is all for the greater good.

Orwell's essay on freedom of the press (which was edited out of the first edition): http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html