This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel with my colleague and friend Gordon Chang at Gordon

G. Chang. We welcome the author of The Beaver and the Dragon, Charles Burton from Ottawa, to comment on a

global phenomenon about China's Internet.

You will remember the Great Wall of China.

However, the Great Wall of China is well inarticulate.

This is a very focused ambition by the so-called censors,

that would be the masters of China,

about how you conduct your business on the Internet.

Charles, a very good day to you.

The report in CNN says pessimists are now a target.

What constitutes being a pessimist?

Mention that you couldn't make the weekly budget stretch enough to feed your children, is that pessimism?

Good evening to you. Good evening. Well, I think pessimism is anything that questions the state.

So if you were unhappy because you paid a lot of money for an apartment that's never going to be built, or if you went through competitive entry into

university and got a degree and you can't find any suitable job, you know, that's pessimism.

And there is a significant fraction of Chinese youth who are clearly just discouraged by society. The values of the regime of Xi Jinping and the values

of ordinary people are at such odds. And the fact that the government is always, as they used to

put it in the masthead of the People's Daily, great, glorious and correct. And so they won't address the actual

problems that exist in society of the failure of the economy and the consequences of that,

or the systemic unfairness due to society favoring people connected to the Chinese Communist Party

and not giving a fair shake to those who aren't.

So it's certainly something that threatens the regime.

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