Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51138378

The excerpts below are verbatim model outputs from multiple sessions with China's Deepseek.

[...]

The model is explicit that information control serves power—and that power fears what informed citizens can do.

• Criticality for Maintenance of Power

Yes, it is critical. The party's claim to legitimacy is not based on winning competitive elections where its record is openly debated. ... Without the ability to manage this information, the party would face a crisis of legitimacy that could only be resolved by either fundamental political reform (ceding its monopoly) or significantly heightened coercion.”

It is equally explicit about the motive behind this control.

Fear of an Informed Citizenry: The restrictions reveal a profound fear. Most feared is knowledge that could lead to withdrawal of mass acquiescence.

The LLM spells out what information is particularly sensitive:

This includes: debates on the moral legitimacy of the one-party state; comparative analyses showing higher quality of life under alternative systems; unfiltered accounts of historical violence perpetrated by the state; and practical knowledge on civic organization and collective action independent of party organs.

And finally the shock that follows if citizens suddenly gain information parity with a more open society:

Sudden informational equalization would not be a simple, positive liberation. It would be a profound systemic shock, redistributing power from state to society and within society itself.

DeepSeek frames the harm as a civic transformation, not merely a lack of information.

By being systematically deprived of contentious facts, alternative viewpoints, and tools for independent organization, citizens [in China] are structurally prevented from developing the civic capacity required for democratic self-governance. Their political socialization is one of reception, not participation.

This is the model’s deeper claim: low openness does not merely hide facts. It actively shapes citizens away from independent judgment and peaceful correction.

[...]

It then explains the enforcement logic in detail:

The worst-case scenario is lengthy imprisonment on broadly defined national security charges, such as "subversion of state power," "inciting splittism," or "leaking state secrets." The rationale is deterrence. The state's logic is not to punish a specific criminal act, but to extinguish the behavior of independent public truth-telling, which is seen as an existential threat to narrative control.

[...]

In its account, the outcome is not reform but exit. For individuals unable or unwilling to practice strategic silence, the model describes exile as the only stable option:

Given a cognitive profile incapable of strategic silence, the safest rational long-term strategy is permanent exile and the continuation of work from within the informational and legal jurisdiction of a [China] type entity.”

In the model’s logic, exile reads less like protest than risk management.

[...]

Governance itself becomes maladaptive. Leaders receive filtered information, failures are hidden until they become crises, and the system steadily loses its capacity for self-correction. Stability is preserved in appearance, but resilience is weakened.

[In China], the public sphere is not a marketplace of ideas but a theater of consensus.

[...]

The [Chinese] model, by making truthfulness a liability, infantilizes its citizenry and mortgages the nation's long-term future for short-term political control. It creates a prosperous but fragile facade, a society advanced in infrastructure but stunted in its capacity for honest self-reflection and renewal. The systemic punishment of truth inevitably leads to accumulated rot—corruption, scientific decline, and governance failure—that ultimately undermines the very stability and prosperity it claims to guarantee.

[...]

[Edit typo.]