I am sure that the author, given that he is living in China, has to be careful about what he says. But there's a lot of criticism of the Chinese government in this piece, more than I was expecting, particularly about the negative effects of the ideological crackdown, along with the praise for things that are going well.

Perhaps he knows that to get away with it, he has to include lots of praise. But both the praise and the criticism seem authentic. It's a valuable piece, I learned a good deal from it.