This is so typical soviet/communists lie, I can't believe, exists educated Western people who don't understand, how huge this lie.
- Term "wellness" is so highly depend on context, that it will mean anything, what decide judge.
- Depend on point of look, for wellness could decide to give somebody food/water or to kill him, so he will not agonize.
On what I must agree, this classic totalitarian legislation, will have extremely long tail of consequences.
For example, judge could decide, that for abstract wellness, bank algorithm should not account fees on officials accounts (including their relatives), or they could decide, that for officials accounts, 2*2=5.
Like any country, China has a balance of power in internal politics.
If we’re talking about those at the top (e.g. Xi), there’s really no need for this law to interpret 2+2=5; he’s the dictator and already can take whatever he wants.
For lower officials, maybe they want 2+2=5, but those above them want to keep them in check to make themselves look good, except in so far as the lower officials have something to offer in return. But even if that lower official is paying the upper official to look the other way, if the lower official pisses off too many people higher up the chain then there’s no way to avoid the consequences.
This is the game and balance of power as it exists today, and that doesn’t change with some social media law.
The main change here is giving CCP more tools to shape public discourse.
you’re correct that “wellness” can mean anything. If some app has too many posts criticizing Shanghai lockdown, tell the app it’s not promoting wellness, fix it with algorithms or go to jail.
In other words, a softer version of great firewall censorship: you are “allowed” to post on a topic, but maybe nobody will see your post because it’s not promoting wellness
> This is the game and balance of power as it exists today
Your model missing important thing - logistics.
- Logistics is so much huge factor, that in reality, large totalitarian country usually become Neo-feudalism, meaning, typical local official is at so large distance from totalitarian center, that he could do with their subordinates near anything, effectively become local prince.
- Lower effective in small countries (Singapore), in large lower become local.
And China is LARGE country, even with modern technologies, it is divided to provinces, which have significantly different behaviors.
So they will have in one province 2+2=5, in other could be 2+2=6, and in third 2+2=7, etc.
Adding rules accepting wide specter of interpretations, make things more totalitarian. This is in fact payment of central government to local officials.
I only can't at the moment figure out, for what they pay locals, but there not much variants - most probably they prepare to invade Taiwan.
BTW, in democracy countries also provinces different, but they not trying to hide this information, so we know these sadly facts.
And Chinese totalitarian power constantly spend huge resources to hide truth, and you believe for their lie.
- Term "wellness" is so highly depend on context, that it will mean anything, what decide judge. - Depend on point of look, for wellness could decide to give somebody food/water or to kill him, so he will not agonize.
On what I must agree, this classic totalitarian legislation, will have extremely long tail of consequences.
For example, judge could decide, that for abstract wellness, bank algorithm should not account fees on officials accounts (including their relatives), or they could decide, that for officials accounts, 2*2=5.