I lived in China for two years and have taken mandarin for 8, the best experience of my life was getting to go to university there and then visit many more times. I was treated with kindness and love as I fumbled through getting a firm grasp of the language and culture, the people were beyond kind and welcoming to me, but there was this underlying pervasive rule of “do not comment a negative word about the government”, even exchange students in the US I went to school with were terrified to criticize or comment on anything PRC related or about Tibet. First time I went to China you could go on Facebook, access american sites, two years later you needed a VPN and stuff got crazy. The way Xi is acting, it just feels like wind power is not really top priority right now.