I do have opinions on this Bodhi, the real problem to my way of thinking appears to be insecurity, a lack of trust if you like. China censors a lot of what it doesn't want people to see because it spends at least 10 years of everyone's life educating them to be respectful of authority, respectful of teachers, respectful of the government and hierachy. When they do this, they are also encouraging people to believe in and trust what the government, through state controlled media, is telling them.

Given that Chinese are both psychologically inclined and encouraged to be respectful it also means they are trusting. They know that the media is controlled by the government and, to a large degree they trust the government so they are ok with it.

In the West, people see this as "brainwashing". They are taught, trained and encouraged to be both critical and cynical. People in the West should, but seldom do, question their news sources, they should be but seldom are critical of the news they read. This is rather surprising, given that we are taught to question everything and it's this questioning which leads to innovation, creativity and development. It leads to the challenging of norms and opens debate. Sadly, when it comes to news in the west, people don't question, don't challenge and readily accept. Hence we get narratives driven by media and accepted by the population.

Now, imagine the same situation in China! People who are taught and encouraged to accept the heirachy suffenly deluged with fake, misleading and misunderstood information. China may very well slide into chaos and anarchy and for sure, if Newscorp, or other extremist media were present in China there would be mass confusion. Suddenly everything they think is true is being challenged and that could be very dangerous for social stability..

The question is: would it though?

My personal opinion is no, it wouldn't because despite the belief that Chinese people might accept as true everything they read, I personally think they are more likely to read it, then ask themselves, what does my government say about this?

However, that's a risk I suspect the media arm of the Chinese government isn't quite ready to accept yet.