Reflection 5

This week one of the presentations mentioned how the reigning of press freedoms in China has aided their stability as a country. This really got me thinking about the differing political systems in our two countries. As a result of a rabbit hole, I found myself watching a video by a group called Asian Boss asking people in the streets of China about how free they feel. Where this got very interesting was in the differing definition I found of freedom in this setting, compared to in a debate I recently watched between Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek. In the asian boss video freedom was almost a proxy to comfort. Happiness and a lack of government imposing itself on the individual was the definition of freedom which I got from it. Peterson and Zizek both agreed on a more traditional western/liberal take on freedom which focused more on the responsibility of the society falling on the individual rather than “the state” or some other third party. I am looking forwards to seeing if my analysis of the definition of freedom in China changes as a result of my trip.