Pretty sure this is not new. I bought my daughter a new PC about a year ago, and experienced these exact problems with Chrome refusing to stay running. After a lot of reinstalls I finally realized I had at some point in the past added her account to a parental control group under my Microsoft account. Problem was for the life of me I could not get her off that group or change the settings to allow Chrome to run. In the end I had to setup that PC to run with my account, and suddenly Chrome runs without problem.

They are not the only ones that seem to be relying on extortion. My company recently had a run in with PTC, where they claimed we were using some 15+ unlicensed seats of Creo. Problem is the site where they claim this to have happened is mostly a back office, with only one semi-retired engineer who knows how to use that software. We offered to work with them to see if there is some configuration issue causing their detection software to misflag this. Time and again their only response is that our only way out is to buy 15 licenses, even though we absolutely do not need them. We later heard through a distributor that their business has been down significantly, and therefore have been relying on such tactics to scare people into buying licenses...

This is a pretty US-centric view that thinks other parts of the world (particularly China) are dystopian societies that people will try to avoid at all costs. The fact is despite the many failings of its government, I would say a large percentage of people who live in China are quite content, including a not insignificant number of foreigners. And just like US view of China is biased based on media and government reports, many local Chinese view American society with trepidition, with seemingly high rates of violent crime and an out of control woke culture. The reality is of course never quite as bad as portrayed in media, but it would be naive to assume everyone is just yearning to move to America.

I live in Hong Kong, which is one of the most expensive places to live in the world. For as long as I can remember, we've had so called "cage houses", where people would rent a bed space in a bunk bed and put up chicken wire to fence in their space. Even now we have "sub-divided flats", where a property owner will take an apartment and divide it into multiple rooms to rent out. In many cases these rooms can barely fit a double bed, and may house a family of 3-4 people. Children would eat, sleep, play and do their homework all on that bed. The scary part is that by and large this is considered an acceptable solution to offer housing for those who can't afford an apartment and are still waiting for government housing.

Here's a tax system that isn't dysfunctional. I live in Hong Kong. We've had a free online filing system run by the government for many years now. The tax filing is automatically populated using information from your previous filing as well as income info from your employer. For people like me with simple tax obligations, you mainly just click through the screens to make sure there are no mistakes, then sign electronically. It took me less than 2 minutes to complete my tax filing.

Because it is currently in vogue to do anything and everything against China and Chinese people.

This is shortsighted. Do you really think the money that goes towards the fees come out of nowhere? For sure sellers have included this cost into the price they charge you, so yes you are paying for the fees. Because Alipay/WeChat uses a QR code based system, it can be adopted even without any setup, whereas credit card transactions need to go through a terminal that needs to be paid for and installed. This is why even street artists (and beggars) in China can use Alipay/WeChat to accept money. Try doing that with a credit card. The bigger problem here is that the US government has taken a stance to use "national security" as a pretext to try to stunt foreign companies (recently specifically Chinese companies) from competing and dominating the market, without demonstrating an actual threat beyond losing its leadership position. Given the US's criticism of other countries for doing the same, and touting its own transparent free market economy, such moves are highly hypocritical.

I sure hope I won't have to hire you bunch in any development position. Just because something has been done before by someone else, so it is not worth doing? Who doesn't play catch up before they make advances of their own? The US Space program grew explosively in the early years only because there was fierce competition from the Russians. Once that was "won", public support has waned and advances have slowed. People who are science and technology minded should be happy there is viable competition growing that can help push advancement in the field, no matter what country those advancements come from.

And yes I did register just so I can post this, not as a troll but to put forward an important point that many protest supporters including western media choose to ignore. I do not support the government's actions and I certainly agree the police have at times overreacted. But to try to cast the protesters as a coherent movement that is selflessly and rationally pursuing reform is at best a naive view of the situation. Yes there is a core of peaceful supporters, but there is also an undeniably increasingly violent and volatile element.

Anyone who looks at video footage of the protests can tell you it is not "mostly peaceful". They have been hurling bricks and molotov cocktails, shooting ball bearings from slingshots, vandalizing, dismantling traffic signs and safety barriers, disabling traffic lights, and in at least three instances they have zip tied and beat up people who they suspect to disagree with the movement. Their current strategy is to create enough collateral damage to forcefully co-opt the rest of society into putting pressure on the government. As another poster said, silencing state media just means any wrongdoing by the protesters get ignored, encouraging them to escalate their actions.