In China, we can never speak ill of our government. Otherwise, your blogs will be blocked due to the auto-checking online. (Of course,not including Hive and foreign websites) It is the reason why I say it is a big surprise for me to read such kind of articles about critizing their own government.
I am so happy to know in the Democratic countries the citizens enjoy their freedom to find fault with their own government and speak the truth with conscience.
To be honest, for our common Chinese, such kind of behavior is unthinkable. I guess it is because of our Chinese confucianism tradition and belief. According to Confucianism, the origion of our life is from our parents, instead of God, which is the biggest difference between Confucianism and Christianism. So in a traditional Chinese family parents are equal to the holy God who never makes mistake. Smilarly, the government, compared to parents in the country-- the biggest Chinese family, can never make mistake ,being in a position of unchallenged authority.

However, I should be an exception. I have repeated to express my abhorrance of the Great Firewall by Chinese government in Hive.
Just as you said, China is such a closed system, going abroad to see the world just becomes a privilege only for a few wealthy Chinese people. As a result, most of western foreigners also have no chance to learn about the truth of China. I feel it is more horrible than those poor African countries at this point. Too badly!