A bunch of people around the world used 小红书 for months when they were worried about a twitter ban.

They got the same version of the app that people in China got. I haven't seen any formal studies but my impression, at the time, was that Chinese people were far better informed about the US than Americans were about China.

▲

pjc50 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, yes, China doesn't have open media for its citizens. Chinese people will on average be less well informed about China, even accounting for the extent of Americans who choose trashy propaganda channels.

(reminded of ex-tech influencer Naomi Wu, who basically went dark with a post along the lines of "the police have told me to stop posting")

▲

woooooo 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're saying Chinese people are less informed than Americans about China?

▲

curt15 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Compare what is required to learn about the Tiananmen Square massacre from inside and outside the Great Firewall.

	▲	aprentic 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Given that they're regularly labeled as "pro democracy protests", I'd venture to say that most people outside the Great Firewall don't know much about it either.
	▲	woooooo 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ni juede zhongguoren bu zhidao tiananmen square 1989 de shihou zuole shenme? That's HSK2 being generous, if you had to plug it into Google Translate, how can you say you know more than the people who speak the language and live there?

▲

bllguo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

western arrogance is truly astounding. somehow people who consume 0 chinese media and cant speak a lick of the language somehow are intricately aware of not only chinese media, but chinese society.

but of course. the benchmark is minor influencer and HN darling naomi wu.

▲

s5300 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲

contagiousflow 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well you could say that every educated country is far better informed about the US than vice versa.

▲

mikepurvis 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You could even say that many foreigners are better informed about the US than US citizens are about the US, but that's not a high bar... I mean, 38% still approve of the current administration so that's already over one in three who don't understand the basic functioning of government or the economy.

▲

aprentic 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I think foreigners tend to be better informed than the locals wherever you go.

As a baseline, they have experience living in about twice as many countries as the locals. They picked up their lives, often learned a second language, and established a home with minimal social support. They tend to be highly motivated people.

In many cases, they know more about the country than the locals do because they've traveled all over said country while the locals never left their home town.

edit: I just realized this might be confusing. By "foreigner" I mean someone who is from a place other than where they currently live. I'm not referring to people who only know about a country through hearsay.

	▲	mikepurvis 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, it took me a moment to clue in, but I think maybe "expat" is the more common term there. In any case, I think it also applies to some degree to people who live outside the US just purely based on media diet. We all see clips of CNN and MSNBC and Fox on YouTube, but a person elsewhere will have the additional perspective of BBC, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, The Guardian, etc.