Students cheated by foreigners

One can easily sample opinions from around the world in Skypeland. Talking to a 19 year old from China, we asked her about Tiannamen Square. She said she knew all about Tiannamen Square. I asked what she knew. She said that it happened in 1989. I asked what happened in Tiannamen Square. She said that the soldiers had killed students in Tiannamen Square. I asked why the government had killed them. She said that students had been cheated by foreigners. She said the students were criminals, obviously, and so the soldiers had shot them. I told her tens of thousands of Chinese students in the US had stayed in the US after the Tiannamen Square Massacre. She said this was impossible since few Chinese students were allowed to go to university at that time.

I asked her if China was in any wars in the last 50 years. She said that China was in no wars in the last 50 years. I asked about Chinese wars with Russia, India, Vietnam and Tibet in the last 50 years. She was shocked and said they did not happen.

I asked about the Cultural Revolution. She said she knew everything. I asked her what she knew. She did not tell me.

I asked if she had free speech. She said she did. I asked if she could protest the Communist Party and she said of course she could not, but why should she?

She said she had full access to information on the internet. I told her that China had the world's largest internet censorship program. She was shocked to hear that. I told her that China had threatened western companies like Yahoo and Google if they do not cooperate with China's censorship program. She did not have much to say in response.

I asked if North Korea should have nuclear weapons. She said they should be allowed to have them. I asked why she disagreed with the Chinese government. She was somewhat shocked to be told that she disagreed with her government.

She became quite annoyed with me for bringing these things up. She said many foreigners tried to tell her these things, but she did not want to hear them since she believed that she had a happy life and the Chinese Communist Party is good and she supports it.

Amazing. But quite a good example of what sort of culture exists in much of China.