The existence of censorship is pretty well-known among Chinese. You saw it as much in that Weixin article that I sent you.

But I believe the role of censorship is mischaracterized because westerners reason from their own history, experience and values, not from the Chinese perspective. Whereas from the western perspective censorship and information control are mortal sins, from the Chinese perspective it's a lot more complicated, considered both good and bad.

There are 3 aspects of Chinese culture that tie into this view:

1. Talk is considered cheap, what you do is more important

2. Respect for authority

3. Outcome legitimacy vs procedural legitimacy

Aspect 1: You see this by the fact that Chinese tend to be much more humble than e.g. Americans — Chinese don't talk about how great they are, they put down their heads and do the job. This characteristic reflects all the way back to the government: in general, the Chinese government is bad at explaining and marketing themselves, and they tend to focus on execution. Hence why Chinese propaganda is so horrendously bad, especially from the western perspective.

Aspect 2: One does not talk bad about one's parents and boss. Not talking bad about the government is an extension of that. Chinese view the relationship between employee-boss and citizen-government as analogous to child-parent. Not exactly the same, but similar enough as far as respect for authority goes. It's not just a matter of "CCP punishes dissent" (a statement which by itself is also mischaracterized).

Aspect 3: We in the west focus on the process of government selection as a measure of legitimacy. To Chinese, whether the government actually delivers good results that benefit the people, is considered the right measure of legitimacy. A voted-in government that does not deliver is considered illegitimate. A dictator that took power by force, but works for the interest of the people, is considered legitimate.

When combining all 3 aspects, censorship and information control are not considered a sin. They are tools. The outcome of using these tools matters much more.

The mainstream western view is that Chinese censorship is meant to suppress dissent and to glorify the party. But research by Harvard shows that this is not true: "How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression"
https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-...

This paper states that censorship's main role is to cool down controversies and to suppress collective action, no matter whether those controversies/collective actions are pro- or anti-government. In fact, the paper is very clear about the fact that anti-government messages are not censored as long as they don't cause a stir, while pro-government messages are censored if they become too popular and run the risk of getting a life of its own.

Why does censorship behave like this? Consider that as little as 30 years ago, the past 150 years or so have been absolutely horrendous. Foreign imperial powers walked all over China, looting the country (gunboat diplomacy), literally putting people on drugs (Opium Wars), stealing territory, and in case of the Japanese during WW2, even mass killing and raping. There was poverty, famine and political instability which lasted well until the late 60s. This chaos has raged on for so long, it has become collective memory. Some of it is still in living memory: my grandma (who is still alive) told me tales of fleeing from the Japanese.

Thus to Chinese, social stability and freedom from poverty matter more than anything else. When you are poor, you are not free, no matter how much you can vote. After the Cultural Revolution, people became tired of revolution.

By and large, the Chinese people view unity as an important goal to pursue. On the one hand, it's part of people's identity as Chinese: Chinese history has always tended towards unity. On a more practical level, both ancient and modern Chinese history has shown that times of disunity are chaotic and are correlated with all manners of bad outcomes: wars, famines, corruption. More recently they've learned that being disunited means weakness: the inability to resist foreign imperial powers who are out to exploit China. People are tired of all those bad outcomes that have plagued China for so long.

The government views censorship as a tool to aid in unity and social stability. There are positive outcomes of censorship that are never mentioned in the west:

- Censorship is used to suppress incitement of ethnic hatred. In the US after 9/11, racist attacks against Muslims or anyone Middle-Eastern-looking spiked. In China, there have been many major terrorist attacks by ETIM. Terrorists set off bombs, walked around with machetes, drove cars into crowds — killing innocent Han and Uyghurs alike. This information was censored in order to prevent Han from hating on innocent Uyghurs. Only recently has censorship on this information been lifted.

- Censorship is also used in the context of China's foreign policy of non-interference. Here's a concrete example. One of the prominent pushers of the Uyghur genocide narrative, is Adrien Zenz. There are many critics of Adrien Zenz's work. One such critic is Jerry Grey, an Australian who has been living in China for over a decade and who has visited Xinjiang many times. He published an article in Chinese media, criticizing Zenz's research methodology as being unsound, and inviting Zenz to come over to Xinjiang to take a look for himself (Zenz has never visited Xinjiang). His article was censored because according to China's foreign policy, it's not China's place to encourage others to change their minds. https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/131872917977329664...

Whether censorship succeeds in this goal is a whole different discussion. I personally think that the people who head the censorship department are too old, too conservative/careful and too out-of-touch with modern society.

In the context of western mainstream media misinformation about China, there are Chinese who, after climbing the firewall, have gained an appreciation for censorship and the firewall. They hypothesize that one of the reasons why the firewall exists, is because the Chinese government knows it cannot compete with foreign propaganda, which is much more sophisticated. The Chinese government is neither good at explaining themselves nor good at selling themselves with pretty rhetoric. Which means that the firewall is a defensive measure, rather than an offensive measure meant to punish/attack the citizen.