Dear Individual,

«Advising them to stand up & take action for themselves is a much more viable option.»

Do they not know it already?

I have not much to add following Plantagenet's contribution.

an AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN in China,
plantagenet,
Are you saying there are Australians in China who didn't criticise the Govt & can't leave ?

Thanks Yuyutsu

Regards

Pete

My guess is that China is the one who will knock Islam on the head big time, Inshallah !

the poorer Chinese can be witnessed picking up curb-side council cleanup rubbish, in the latest model Mercedes SUV's.
diver dan,
Your point ?? I see Council executives & Govt bureaucrats & many public servants on huge salaries & they do nothing ! Again, what is your point ?

Mr. Hennessy does not seem to know that the gravitation law of Newton does not apply in China. The apple does not fall off from a tree; it flies up from the ground to the tree. Because "One determining influence on East Asian civilization has been its relative isolation from the other great civilizations of mankind (which grew in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and India), (Edwim O. Reischaur, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, co-authored by J. K. Fairbank and A. M. Craig).

C. P. Fitzgerald, who taught at Australian National University, said (China: A Short Cultural History), "In the long course of Chinese history there have only been two revolutions which have radically altered the political and social structure. The first was the great revolution of 221 B.C., by which the feudal system of ancient China was utterly destroyed and a centralised monarchy formed in its stead."
Since then Chinese society has been put together only by imperial, gigantically oppressive dynasties and nothing else can piece society together. Autocratic, though nominally benign, emperors, mandarins, and the masses too dreaded nothing so much as social chaos and disintegration. (I am not sure but if I remember correctly Fitzgerald said somewhere in "China" that the Chinese love material comforts and pleasures and care least for freedom of speech.)

"...the reality of empire was that of a hard core, or wei, surrounded by a soft pulp of de, virture. Althoug court records praise the Confucian wisdom of emperors, they in fact behaved like Legalists, who suggested that well-ordered society depended on clear rules and punishment for violators rather than benevolence (June Teufel Dreyer, YaleGlobal Online, China's Tianxia, Oct. 30, 2014.)"