The overton window for critical thinking about the government is MUCH smaller in China than in the US (although detailed, up-to-date data is difficult to pinpoint). Society and culture has changed substantially as a result of nearly 75 years of propaganda, and overton windows are especially targeted by the propaganda apparatus.
I can definitely see large numbers of Chinese people looking at the protest barriers, conspiratorially thinking “this barrier is totally meant to target protestors” and maybe talking about it with some trusted friends. And then the road work starts, and they second-guess themselves and think “maybe I jumped to conclusions to think this barrier was set up by the government due to the protests”. Or, at least talk about it less frequently, because they aren’t unambiguously protest barriers anymore, they could be something else, so people don’t feel like thinking or talking about it as frequently.
Obviously, the default explanation is still that the government tried to disguise the barriers and was inadequate. The barriers themselves were mainly an expensive costly signal to remind people how serious the ruling party is about preventing public protests, so the roadwork might alternatively fit into the scare tactic calculus in some complicated way I’m not aware of.
The overton window for critical thinking about the government is MUCH smaller in China than in the US (although detailed, up-to-date data is difficult to pinpoint). Society and culture has changed substantially as a result of nearly 75 years of propaganda, and overton windows are especially targeted by the propaganda apparatus.
I can definitely see large numbers of Chinese people looking at the protest barriers, conspiratorially thinking “this barrier is totally meant to target protestors” and maybe talking about it with some trusted friends. And then the road work starts, and they second-guess themselves and think “maybe I jumped to conclusions to think this barrier was set up by the government due to the protests”. Or, at least talk about it less frequently, because they aren’t unambiguously protest barriers anymore, they could be something else, so people don’t feel like thinking or talking about it as frequently.
Obviously, the default explanation is still that the government tried to disguise the barriers and was inadequate. The barriers themselves were mainly an expensive costly signal to remind people how serious the ruling party is about preventing public protests, so the roadwork might alternatively fit into the scare tactic calculus in some complicated way I’m not aware of.