> Youtube videos from randos aren't very good sources

Sure

But a rado guy who have not even had the first-hand information, would be an even worse source. That's always been my #1 rule of assessing the reliability of any news reporting.

My point still stands, the mainstream media's report on Xinjiang is lazy, they have no first-hand deep reporting.

Note that the early reporting by Vice is the right approach [1]. But it still suffers from the same inconsideration to the different cultural and political aspects of Chinese society. For example, when reporters are followed by government employees, that's the usual lazy bureaucratic reactions to western media. Those are not evidences of "vanishing Uyghurs".

Instead, if they just pretend to be normal travellers, and hop on trains, on bus, on the street, and gather the information through small talks and gossips with real locals, they'll have much more freedom to reach deeper.

No, they dont think they should be restricted at all. They believe in free press; which was never been established in China since the unification in Qin dynasty. They believe that news reporting is so universally believed that, they would get whatever truth they seek just by showcasing their face.

From a larger scope, government in US enjoys an legitimacy through voting democracy. So they usually do not care much about criticism about their performance from media. Individuals certainly are much more sensitive to such reporting, but that's same for Chinese beauractics.

That's different in China, criticism to government performance is questioning the legitimacy. So the default contract is that media cannot openly criticize government, but individuals are given plenty of channels to ask for improvements.

Essentially, China runs like a big corp. It wont allow individual to openly criticize the leadership. But it allows a lot of channels to offer suggestions.

So the working approach, for US government, is to establish non-public channels, and inquiry the situation directly, and ask for the open dialogue in private. And obviously, that's what George Bush (the old one) did regarding 1989's Tiananmen Protest [5]. Basically, he asked for the information through direct channel, and learned what's going, and assessed from a balanced view.

And frankly, at this stage of China, voting democracy does not work in China. At least 20% of the population who went through Cultural Revolution still believes the fierce class struggle (age older than 45, just given an idea, there is no statistics). (The vocal voices who argue no one likes Cultural Revolution are unanimously intellectuals, who were suffering from the wrong accusations, which is understandable). And the colleague educated population is only 25% for 2 year equivalent, and 14% for 4 year equivalent.

There has never been any successful deployment of voting democracy outside of US for decently sized countries, let alone the largest country on earth.

Once China learned the techniques of organizing the society with more self-directed citizens, the people will naturally ask for more independence. The historical trend has been showing a steadily improvement of Chinese people's awareness of their rights. You may believe in the so-called regression of personal freedom after Xi's ascension to power. But in reality, it's more of a sentiment towards competition with US, not that anyone forgetting what happened before.

And for that, because of the vast size of China, YT videos, even rando ones are more useful than media reports, because they are showing nuances.

As for Daniel, "like laowhy86's mirror universe twin". Exactly, that's what Daniel stands for, and I have the same assessment as well.

But the truth is that, I do watch both. Although laowhy86 has gradually showing behaviors that are based on racial biases, and I no longer follow them only because I no longer follow much of the same content from Daniel and laowhy86 as a whole. Obviously their content is heavily temporary, follows certain trendy topics, and after a while everyone sees the futility to see diversity from individuals, because individuals are always, I mean, shows individual preferences.

> Even the people who bash the MSM rely on it for pretty much all of their information about the outside world.

That's the problem, right? One should start realize that their preferred media might not have the 1st-hand information on other regions of the world. And start looking for that.

I know very well that CCTV does not show negative staff about China. But it's obviously impressive to be able to showcase a lot of real achievement of the Chinese people.

As for US mainstream media, unfortunately, their hostility towards China drove me off just like laowhy86. They simply cannot even consider dial the balance of reporting a little bit.

For example, China was US' defacto ally during the cold war, China countered USSR's influence in Asia, even started a war to Vietnam, who was supported by USSR to invade Cambodia and Thailand. China was the most important ally of US during cold war [3] because of its pressure to USSR from inside the communist bloc. Considering the historical importance of Cold war and its victory by the western world, don't you think China deserves some mentioning. No, never... not even a hint.

Look at also the Dixie Mission [2], which also correctly predicted the outcome of China's political struggle. Given the widespread debate on "who lost China", did anyone give balanced report on Dixie Mission? Very little. I mean, at the time, Mao and CCP like US very much, at least not less than towards USSR. If you read the Dixie Mission report, you might find that the observers actually saw a lot of first-hand situations of the CCP controlled area, that gives a complete picture, not some biased reports by people sitting in the white house or Shanghai's foreign controlled areas. If Dixie report was treated with balanced view, there might not even be a cold war at all... As CCP explicitly seeks the support from US at the time.

> Also, you put far too much weight on "setting foot" somewhere.

No, I have not put enough.

I haven't visited Xinjiang, after the 75 incident [4], because I am concerned about the safety.

I intend to visit Xinjiang myself; and talk to the people. I remain distrust the 1 million Uygur story. But I have no doubt that there are issues within the area that requires continued effort to solve. And I need to see it through my own eyes to be confident about my judgement.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7AYyUqrMuQ&ab_channel=VICEN...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mission

[3] https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_rio...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests