Just to give you a bit of local perspective: talking to the locals here in China (and actually a Chinese Malaysian guy I met too .. so it's not just confined to the people agrarian paradise), they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either.
The article says "a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates" but of course that's just one angle. The local perspective is seeing it mostly as an effort by the government to try to moderate sensationalism, things getting spun out of proportion and down right fabrications (ie. US-TV news, Buzzfeed et al)
They see our CNN having some 24hr coverage of a kitten stuck in a tree - which they will not stop till either half the nation is foaming at the mouth with rage at the government's incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified
The article says "a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates" but of course that's just one angle. The local perspective is seeing it mostly as an effort by the government to try to moderate sensationalism, things getting spun out of proportion and down right fabrications (ie. US-TV news, Buzzfeed et al)
They see our CNN having some 24hr coverage of a kitten stuck in a tree - which they will not stop till either half the nation is foaming at the mouth with rage at the government's incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified