The governments and corporations of the "Free World" will only pander to China, for “access to their market”, and individuals can't do much against a regime that would happily mow its own citizens down with tanks and then erase all memory of the event within a single generation. [0]
Maybe independent developers could put a notice against Chinese authoritarianism in their apps and services when they're accessed from a Chinese IP, to raise awareness among their public.
In your case, not egging it on would be a start even.
There is no bottom to this abyss. There is no limit to the number of victims, the upper ceiling for that is 100%, or a gazillion people. There is no limit to their innocence, and no limit to the cruelty inflicted on them. There is no time limit, either. You say this because for you as an individual, it's easier rationalizing that non-resistance will somehow lead to a good outcome. But if everybody did that, it will become a trillion times worse for everybody, "forever", than ANYTHING you could do today. Setting yourself on fire in protest would achieve more, and hurt you less, than the outcome of global, perfect totalitarianism -- which is an ever shrinking noose of sociopathy, not stability.
Until you understand this you will not understand that your personal feelings are of secondary concern when basically the world is at stake. Not the planetoid, human society, the space where human personalities would have developed.
"A boot stamping on a human face, forever." Don't whitewash that in your own mind.. it involves blood, it involves children screaming in terror for what is done to their parents, it involves sobbing elderly crushed underfoot, "and so on". If you were face to face with just ONE such an act, could you really just shrug it off? If you could not help, it would still sit with you, you know that. If you were lucky, you would seek for ways to turn it into a constructive force.
What we are lacking is a perspective for what is at stake, and for the vast opportunities we have. As long as we use our minds more to make excuses than develop principles and stand behind them, we have no say in what is possible. Start with thoughts, then words. Don't be another voice calling people to fall into a sleep that would end in a potentially never ending, ever worsening nightmare.
Writing all that here is all well and good but until developers and engineers STOP caving in and bending over backwards to accommodate and help China implement that authoritarian nightmare, it's all just words that will not change anything.
I never caved in, and encourage others to resist, what more are you asking? Anything you're actually giving yourself? You won't get to action without thought and words, and this textbox literally doesn't allow any other input than words, so what's the point of complaining about that?
