• laylawashere44@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Considering that WeChat does video and audio calls it’s pretty reasonable that wechar asks permission to use the microphone. I think you’ve been caught up in fearmongering. China isn’t going to invade Taiwan any time soon. There has been little to any real indication they would or even could. You’ve gotta understand that the CCP is authoritarian but no government is that competent to be keeping tabs on a random Americans conversation that they had at some point at some time who may more may not be ever visiting China. I’m not saying China is run by good people, I’m saying no government is competent enough to actually 1984 anyone in real life.

    It’s like the social credit system that doesn’t really exist. The CCP put out a vague instruction to have a credit system based on social stuff because many Chinese people don’t have banks thus don’t have access to regular credit systems. Random cities and provinces came up their own systems with random rules and regulations. Then basically all of them were walked back because they were stupid and random and overbearing, and the CCP delegating their vague orders gives them plausible deniability in that they blamed the stupid systems on local government and played the good guy when they ordered them walked back.

    • 001100 010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I can either:

      1. Not visit China

      Cons: Not being able to revisit places I’ve been to that I always wanted to go.

      Pros: Being safe from an authoritarian government that’s increasingly regressing back to totalitarianism

      1. Visit China

      Pros: I can visit places I always wanted to revisit

      Cons: Being arrested in China, placed on exit ban, tortured, or executed. And if I somehow leave unharmed, upon returning to the US, I could be accused of being a communist spy due to rising US-China tensions, possibly spending time in prison because of a second red scare.

      Potential consequences are not worth it.

      Tourism is not worth being tortured.

      • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        Being arrested in China, placed on exit ban, tortured, or executed.

        What do you plan on doing in China? You must have quite the crime spree planned.

        • 001100 010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Do you not understand US-China tensions? Both countries fear each other, and someone who’ve lived in the US for practically their entire life suddenly wants to visit China? That’d definitely raise some alarms about a potential spy. Maybe nothing happens, maybe they falsely assume I’m a spy.

          Same thing when I return to the US, those border agents are gonna ask me why I went to my China during these times of high tensions.

          There are risks from both countries. Whereas if China was democratic and US-friendly, none of these would be an issue.

          Do you know how many people in the US were falsely arrested? That’s in a democratic country. Think about those odds if it were an authoritarian one.