This is John Batchel, conversation with colleague Charles Burton of Synopsis, author of the new book

The Beaver and the Dragon about Canadian Chinese struggles with each other, especially with China.

Here Charles comments on the new campaign launched in China to discourage people from being pessimistic on social media.

Charles says, yes, it works. Very few people have access to better news. However, there is a twist here.

The unhappiness is expressed from friends to family, and the frustration grows.

Charles explains.

Charles Burton on severe censorship of even unhappy thoughts on Chinese media

and what is to be done.

Much more of this later.

Well, I mean, certainly, you know, there are these Internet commentators, and it is possible

to get some truth from people speaking in Chinese across in other countries via VPN's

virtual private networks.

But these don't reach a lot of people.

I think most of the

discouragement occurs in private, in people's, around people's kitchen tables. You know, the

families of people who are in the, in the Chinese Communist Party extrajudicial incarceration facilities

to confess fiscal fraud.

You know, you've got a lot of people who are very unhappy about how the regime has been treating their family and friends.

They can't articulate it in any way except by private means and whisper campaigns. And that, you know, that is a problem for the regime

because I don't know the extent to which Xi Jinping and his coterie of friends are really aware

of the degree of discontent with his leadership that exists at the lower levels. But from my

contacts with Chinese people, the discontent with him is

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