Thea Alexander wrote a book called 2150 AD, originally published in 1976. She describes a fascinating world that includes two parts consisting of the Macro World and the Micro World.
In the Macro world there was harmony, cooperation, and everyone respected everyone else and did their best to be good and kind to each other. In contrast, the micro world was smaller and isolated from the macro world. It was ruled by oppression, mind control tactics and keeping the public in ignorance of current events.
Nothing in our modern world completely bears resemblance to the Macro world but it is easy to see how the Chinese Communist Party and other repressive regimes are accurate reflections of the rulers of the micro world.
In China, the news is censored and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. To make sure that everything and everyone stays in line, there is an extensive system of 'forced re-education through labor' camps. One might question how one is 're-educated' through forced labor. Such a phrase would seem the height of oxymoronic prose.
Perhaps a more appropriate term would be, "mind control through forced labor". It is interesting to note that a person can be sent to a forced labor camp for up to three years without a court conviction or court order in China. Not that it would matter much, the judiciary in China is dictated to by the Chinese Communist Party. In such a system, justice is scarce.
Much like the Micro world in Thea Alexander's book, if you were to ask the average Chinese person if they lived in a repressive society, they most likely would say,"no". Some might say so because they fully believe the CCP's propaganda which is broadcast everywhere. Most might say so out of total fear. To say anything against the Chinese Communist Party is risking arrest, torture, forced labor and possibly death.
That is similar to how the Micro world leaders maintained absolute control in Thea's book. That is how the Chinese Communist Party does it in the real world, today. There are many groups and individuals persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. A a recent web search for "persecution in China' yielded 2,150,000 results.
The Clearwisdom website does a good job of documenting the abuses of the Chinese Communist Party against Falun Gong practitioners. The Falun Gong practitioners are peaceful and non-violent. They simply wish to meditate and believe in Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. Yet the irrational need to control what people think in the confines of their own minds seems to have always been a priority for the Chinese Communist Party.
The Macro world was a world of beauty, harmony, peace and cooperation. The Micro world was a world of control and oppression with inhabitants that either did not realize, tried to forget or would not dare to speak the truth for fear of their lives and worse. Which type of world would you rather live in and support?