An intelligent conversation is not one that desires oppression, economic or whatever kind. That kind of dialogue you seem to refer to is basically pseudo intellectual hipster culture, the shit you see on reddit and in liberal spaces.
Over 95% of Chinese as a whole support the Chinese government. This is according to a Harvard study that spanned around 20 years, from what I remember. So, it does have to do with race.
Disallow porn and weird content, and you have a kids friendly instance. Atmost you will need to specifically stop naughty references, but that is not an issue for teenagers anyway.
This is not something to blame Taliban for. Mali government was also keen on taking down .ml instances of Lemmy. This is simply a legal and reasonable reservation of country TLD domains.
Vimeo. Not a Fediverse platform, but Vimeo is the most independent and long standing non-Big Tech platform, besides VKontakte (used for video hosting besides being the Russian FB clone).
Update, I bought myself a nice chunky cheesy pineapple pizza with capsicum, jalapeno, tomatoes, cottage cheese and some chillies. It was from a nice local pizza bakery for $10. I got to eat a piece of heaven in many years.
Hottest single mummies around your area!