1) China isnt communist, theyre authoritarian (possibly fascist). They stopped being communist after Mao died.
2) 66 million are. Many many more practice falun gong. Im also
3) Just to be clear that stance is incompatible with a belief in freedom of speech. Why are you so afraid of people making up their own minds? You have no problem peddling Mao Zedong worship in school.

Its very interesting that english appears to be a second language, you posted as an AC, and you seem to have an intimate knowledge of the official names of the sanctioned Chinese churches which very few people I have talked to know.

Any chance you're posting this from China? Perhaps part of the wangluò pínglùn yuán (50 Cent Army)?

People do this all the time. If you caused a disruption, it is possible you would be asked to leave.

I witnessed this on a random street in China, where a man was handing out flyers in a public square. Police appeared, the man ran, all flyers were confiscated-- including the ones people were holding. That sort of thing simply does not happen in the US.

No such thing. See National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie

This is off topic and out of context. He was specifically asking why someone would go to a country like china and preach an illegal message. I provided the answer. The US's separation of church and state is not relevant because its not illegal in the US to preach such a message.

Obviously they do not, and missionaries certainly go to prison for it. Are you arguing that it SHOULD be illegal?

They design it to appear sporadic. Generally you have to hit a certain number of "deviations" to trigger a problem, and often things like VPN will work for some short period of time before breaking and bringing your connection to a throttled state.

I was simply demonstrating in stark contrast the difference in "freedom" in China and the US.

As to WHY someone would break the law to evangelize? Peter puts it well:
And the high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men."

Jesus, however, did not, so his birth was not in the spring.

Im not sure what your definition of high-profile is. If you form a house church over there and they find you, you WILL be detained, or deported (if you are an ex-pat), or at the very least monitored. I believe the unofficial threshold for being a concern is a gathering of 15 or more, hardly "high profile".

Not only that, but a vow of atheism is required to have a government career.

Many have been detained and deported for it, however, and had congregations threatened if details about other contacts were not revealed.

For all intents and purposes, no religious thought unsanctioned by the government can be discussed. I have not been to a Three-self church, but the reports I have heard indicate that they are not what one would call "orthodox Christianity". Actual protestant churches, like those for Ex-pats, require a foreign visa to enter and tend to have barbed wire or electrical fencing.

Its perfectly legal to espouse KKK doctrine; ask the Westboro Baptist Church, or the residents of Skokie, Il during the Nazi demonstration.

There is no official policy for this, nor has the NSA been found to compel anyone to allow SSL MITM without a court order. In fact there is no evidence currently that any widescale SSL MITMs are going on.

Need some evidence.

Of course I do. But you would have to be absolutely ignorant of life in each country and the repercussions of open political speech in each to even begin making the comparison. The US has nothing even remotely comparable to the GFW.

And you should totally lecture them on that point at Thanksgiving or Christmas, so you can be That Guy.

The US government as official policy does not do DPI. While I am quite sure various agencies DO do it, whether it is legal is Big Question #1, and whether its universal is Big Question #2 (and Im sure it isnt). The most you could say for the NSA is they secretly try to subvert comms between you and Google.

China openly (in the sense that its official policy-- they dont generally advertise it) uses filter lists, works with companies to create "custom" chinese software (ie, TOM Skype), hotwords ALL text and voice communication, intercepts and interrupts VPN connections, and simply blocks websites they dont like (like Google). They also directly engage companies like Microsoft and Yahoo to assist in the spying.

Yes, and you could also inform someone on their birthday that theres actually nothing special about the day astronomically and that they're quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Its just that you probably arent going to get invited to his birthday party ever again, and while you could make the same remark about objective fact that Tyson did, you'd still be a jerk.

And that is not reinforced by any bit of history I am aware of. Christianity has tended to improve women's rights, not degrade them, and I posed evidence to support this. I have seen precious little to suggest that GP is correct-- but as I say I am no expert on this so perhaps one of you two could provide sources.

Not necessarily, just that perhaps they made less of a big deal about it. Nevertheless a large number of the women's colleges that sprang up were seminaries, if Wikipedia and some quick googling be believed. The entire reason I objected and did spot research is because it struck me how many venerable old women's colleges are religiously (protestant / catholic) affiliated; it seems disingenuous to claim that Christianity is holding the women back academically in spite of that.

You're right that this is a particularly sensitive area for me, because I see these sort of attacks all over the place, and its highly irritating that this sort of stuff becomes "generally known fact" despite being quite incorrect. It seems to me the only way to fight these pervasive myths is to be sensitive to them and respond with sourced facts whenever I see them.

GP was not being directly confrontational, but he was laying a huge portion of the blame directly on Christianity as being a traditionalist enforcer of the oppression of women; he simply phrased it much more tactfully than that.

And I would agree that not only are they not doing that, but that they probably wont do it. China's whole MO with the GFW is to subtly punish "deviant" internet users, and reward conformant ones. Blocking email from gmail users would punish both and make their filtering more generally known.

They tend to prefer things like making gMail or google really spotty, slow, or unreliable so it is obnoxious to use without it being obvious that its actually censorship.

China doesnt use a handful of pf rules, they use a comprehensive array of filtering, DPI, and firewalling techniques. They've been known to actively probe VPN services to determine whether they are allowable, implement real-time updated keyword content filtering, and forge RST packets for any "undesirable" content.

They are also incredibly proactive about nullifying workarounds; ask the Tor guys how their efforts with e.g. obfsproxy and obfs2 went. Really good at circumventing the GFW for a year or so until it ended up 100% blocked just like stock OpenVPN.

No, its not, it fits 100% in with their existing (bad) relationship with google.

Your information is about 5 years out of date. Ever since the Aurora hacks in 2010, Google has ceased all cooperation with the Chinese government on that front, and has ceased filtering on their end. They have in fact on a number of occasions worked to alert users when third party tampering has occurred, which has led to a number of confrontations with the Chinese gov't. Notably, in June of this year, China completely blocked Google prior to the TIanenmen Square anniversary.

Except for the part where they are the one major internet company NOT cooperating with them, while Microsoft and Yahoo continue to do so. Hope you dont use Skype over there.

Yes, the people I know who were deported for "unlawful speech"-- totally imagining that. Imagining Liu Xiaobo too, and illegal flower ceremony. Tank man? Never happened. Suppression of free speech during the olympics? Definately not.

And all those deals with Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google (since reneged, which is why China is so irked with them) in 2006 to help spy on their users and expose dissidents? Internet myth.

Sounds like you have it all figured out.

Yes, and yes.

In return Id challenge you to stand on a corner and preach the risen Christ, and see how long it is before thugs detain you and give you a 1-way ticket out of the country. Or you could try handing out pamplhets advocating democracy-- I actually saw one of those-- You'd get the same response.]

By the way-- if you are a chinese national, please do not do this as you will get a 1-way trip but it wont be out of the country.

You're naieve. Some of it is in the open, a lot of it is not.

For instance: Ask your average Chinese college student whether they have freedom of religion / speech, and they will say yes. What they often dont know is that you can be arrested for talking to a minor about religion, or talking about religion outside of a state-sanctioned church. Ask the Falun-Gong about their thoughts on Chinese free speech.

Another example, for quite some time the GFW was analyzing google searches for forbidden content, and massively throttling connections with hits. Google posted an alert on their search page when such throttling occurred, which made the government quite angry. Why do you suppose that is, if theyre quite open about it? Why throttle, rather than displaying a block page?

I can also tell you that it is apparently not common knowledge there that if you text something "forbidden" in China, the government gets a copy.

Its wonderful that you think China is such a free country and that all of the reports of their human rights issues are apparently overstated. Maybe you think Liu XIaobo received his Nobel Peace Prize and was released from detenention, or that his wife has been released-- Im sure they would be thrilled to learn this.