what can we change

I am an international student in the United States. My undergraduate degree is in the top five engineering courses in China. Later, I transferred to a famous public Ivy League school in the United States to study CS. After graduation, I directly stayed in the IT industry in the United States. I used to be an activist for joining the Party. I graduated from the Party School in my second year of college, and my application for joining the Party was interrupted because I could not complete the background check when I went abroad. I never thought of staying in the US, in my mind, the country is full of possibilities, the booming IT industry. I like Chinese-style crowds and lively places. I hate drugs, I hate guns, I hate homeless people in big American cities. As a post-95s generation, my parents experienced the June 4th incident firsthand, and my high school classmates went to support Occupy Central, but I have never shaken my pride in the country. The party and the country may have flaws and shortcomings, but how proud is China's development?

Changes are still happening quietly. When my classmates in Taiwan said to me in a half-joking tone, "We have already called ourselves 'Chinese Taipei', and we have no choice in the future." % of the votes and the vast majority of seats; when the mainland kept popping up 996, 404, 251, and when I thought the most maverick "Qi Hua Shuo" began to vote "996 jobs don't 886" results; I have lost that kind of confident. I don't have any power.

I think that my "birth" is not bad in China. I grew up in Guangzhou and studied in Shanghai. There are many students from top domestic universities in the circle of friends, and most of the students who went to Europe and the United States to study at the undergraduate or postgraduate level. I still have discussions with my classmates:

"Democracy is not necessarily a good thing, isn't it enough for the people to live a good life?" - A party member and classmate who studied in Hong Kong

"Because the benchmark in your heart is the Western system, you are suspicious of China. I am the Chinese people and I support the Chinese government" - a student studying in Canada

"We have chosen the leadership of the Communist Party. We must believe in the Party's decision-making and support the Party's leadership. This is our system." ——A student studying in the United States

"In the June 4th incident, people died, but there were definitely not many people, and they were all people who should have been sentenced to death. The law is not efficient enough to quell the riots. Hong Kong is an example." - Ibid., a classmate

Maybe these samples are very small, but at least they are all outside the wall, and at least they have channels to access information that is completely opposite to domestic public opinion. For those who are still in the wall, I no longer have optimistic confidence. "Western democracy" and "judicial independence" have long been placed on the opposite side of "people's interests" by our party, and I can no longer see the dawn of the "socialist core values" I have learned. In fact, I know that many students have no plans to return to China after coming to Europe and the United States. The S386 incident in the United States has also caused a stir in the international student circle. Many parents I know around me, no matter whether they have achieved success or accumulated wealth in China, all say to their children: "At least get an American green card first, and strive to stay in the United States." Domestic development and domestic progress, on the one hand, are alienated one after another. I don't know what happened to this. For the past two months or so, I've been asking myself, asking friends, looking on Matters, just wondering, is there anything else we can do?

I am fortunate enough to read this "We Can Change Each Other" today, which has a lot of inspiration. I think if everything starts from the beginning with communication, maybe there is still a chance to change something. But after experiencing various events in the past six months, I found that the information I could access and the knowledge I possessed were too one-sided and too narrow. I hope to build an information exchange platform, brainstorm ideas and make progress together. The following are my thoughts and proposals published with this article, I hope to get the support and opinions of all netizens.

Purpose: To explore the problems and advantages existing in Chinese society today, and to find possible solutions if there are verifiable problems

method:

1. Use "weakly centralized" chat platforms such as telegram to build study discussion groups
2. Group members independently study literature on social issues, collect news and other information published on different platforms, and the results can be integrated and published on the Matters platform to form articles
3. Regularly collate consensus issues arising from discussions and research possible solutions

in principle:

1. Peaceful, rational, nonviolent discussion, debating through arguments
2. Subsequent more principles can be made through democratic forms of decision-making, such as by voting to add or delete new "principles"

Object:

1. Anyone willing to participate in the discussion

If there are any netizens who are interested in similar ideas, please reply to this article directly. We can start by choosing a chat platform and suitable literature, and then act bit by bit.

In addition, the opinions of classmates in this article are only the parts I have personally come into contact with, and are not representative of the overall circle.