I didn't read the comments but
1. it could be flooded with pro cpp activists, it's a known fact that China pays people to influence forums
2. It may be difficult to understand for Americans, but (I think) some people here are "pro-china" as they see China as an alternative to US imperialism, or at least something that can be less harmful.
Personally, my wife is Taiwanese so I'm extremely concerned about China in a very concrete way. I'm not sure the people who advertise themselves as "pro-China" really have a sense of what's going on.
This is a great example of one of the tactics CCP deploys. Whataboutism.
As shown to be actually happening (does not give facts showing it happens on HN but I personally think it's reasonable, or at least not unfathomable) by this recent HN top thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654137
> This is a great example of one of the tactics CCP deploys. Whataboutism.
And comments like this are a great example of propaganda methods employed by nation states since even before WWI [0];
"All who doubt our propaganda are traitors."
It's also nothing really new for me, I got plenty of similar insults and accusations thrown at me, mostly by Americans, when I opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. I was called a "terrorist supporter" and "freedom hater" for not just running after blatant lies.
Wasn't alone with that, large parts of the world felt similar, literally the largest protest event in human history [0]
In that context this whole situation feels like quite the dejavu; It's the same Five Eyes countries leading the charge, it's the same organization peddling lies. Yet bringing up these similarities shall be considered "propaganda" because "Bringing up Iraq is something that only Russian/Chinese trolls do!".
It is not a personal attack. It is an attack on the argument. Anytime somebody says something negative about the CCP people always bring up the west. It is not relevant to the conversation and is a common tactic of anti west / pro CCP people to deflect.
Whataboutism is very relevant. If A is accusing B of eating babies, then why shouldn't B - or anyone, for that matter - not point out that A is also eating babies and raping old ladies?
What you call "pro CCP people" is just people outside the sphere of influence of A. In your environment it's been normalized to hate on China for any reason. You're likely being brainwashed 24/7 or a paid troll.
Whataboutism has nothing to do with morality. If country A does something bad it doesn't mean that it is not actually bad because country B did something similar.
Do you find it interesting that anytime there is a thread about the US doing something bad that nobody jumps in and say well China did the same thing? It only goes one way. That is why I am calling it out.
The reason why it goes one way is because people who support the west know their side has done bad things. People who support China refuse to accept it.
You cannot accept any criticism of the CCP and somehow I am brainwashed? I understand the US and other western countries have done and continue to do bad things. I just don't bring it up when it is not related to the topic at hand.
You make some good points but I am not completely convinced you're arguing in good faith. Do you have any cases of "pro CCP" content reaching the front page here? Because the opposite happens multiple times a day. Context matters. Pointing out blatant hypocrisy has nothing to do with supporting whatever the current boogie man is.
I am not saying pro-CCP content is reaching the front page. All I am saying is pro China / anti-west comments are common in threads about China. In this very thread there are many comments basically saying the US and the rest of the western countries are no different than the CCP. This thread has nothing to do with the west other than Valve being a western company. I wouldn't mind a conversation about the companies in the west doing business in China or western countries restricting Chinese companies, but that is often times not what we are seeing.
Most of the posters on HN live in the west and likely consider the government of the country they live in to be better (morally) to the government of China. Seeing posts that are pro-western is to be expected for that reason. Like I said above, I am not saying there is a problem with pro CCP posts making the front page. If China does something good, I would have no issues with an article about it making the front page.
I would also note that posts that are critical of the west (especially US) do make it to the front page. In those posts at worst we see an acceptance that it happened and maybe some arguments that we should do more to try to fix the wrongs done. When we have a China post we see deflection and sometimes denial of human rights violations. When there was a post about the Uyghurs there were multiple commenters saying we can't trust the western intelligence agencies and news organizations. When is the last time you saw comments like that when it was against a western country?
People also don't generally comment on the amount of pro-US or pro-Europe comments in those threads. I don't think I've ever seen any accusations of Western astroturfing. Influencing the media, sure, but not being directly in the comments.
Also, the US is trying to maintain a moral high ground (real or perceived). They don't want to be associated with China. I don't think anyone would say "well China does it too!" but they would absolutely say "well the EU does it too!".
I do think China gets dinged for their misdeeds more than other nations do. I don't see nearly the anti-India sentiment, despite the similarities. India is perceived as a country that makes some missteps on their way to modernization, while China is perceived as a country that's rotten to the core and making intentionally terrible choices.
I don't support China. I wouldn't want to live there. I just think that we're either mentally over-prosecuting China, or that we're giving more democratic nations a pass on their misdeeds. India still has castes, and didn't they just have a series of internet blackouts to suppress dissidents? The whole thing with the farmers, though I could be misremembering. They're democratic though, so we're all pretty sure they'll find their way. No one seems to consider that perhaps China will find their way as well. Germany had Hitler 80 years ago and they're doing fine today. Perhaps in 80 years China will be more free as well.
You gave yourself the answer at the end right there: Germany got rid of Hitler only after an incredibly bloody world war and having its cities turned into 30 feet of rubble.
IMO the comparison to India is not fair. India is not doing the same aggressive international moves like China does. And the internal problems can be slowly resolved democratically. There is no democracy in China, they won't solve their problems that way.
>People also don't generally comment on the amount of pro-US or pro-Europe comments in those threads.
People don't tend to bring up the west in a good way in the thread unless other posters first bring up that the west does / has done the same thing. I think saying the west is better after somebody says the west is equal to China is just countering the argument.
>Also, the US is trying to maintain a moral high ground (real or perceived). They don't want to be associated with China. I don't think anyone would say "well China does it too!"
I agree.
>but they would absolutely say "well the EU does it too!".
This does happen sometimes, but not as frequently as it appears to happen in China posts. When it does happen, there are usually comments saying how much better the EU is for privacy or whatever the topic is and so it tends to be a retort of those comments.
>I do think China gets dinged for their misdeeds more than other nations do.
I would say that it is likely true China gets dinged more, but it is important to note that there are a lot of pro CCP people than many other countries. I don't see many people saying Afghanistan is a great country so there is less reason to call out the bad happening there.
China is also growing and is one of the biggest rivals to the west. If the west falters China could become the sole super power. There is more of a need to attempt to stop it than other countries. If China was just some random country, few people would care about their abuses because it wouldn't impact them.
>I don't see nearly the anti-India sentiment, despite the similarities. India is perceived as a country that makes some missteps on their way to modernization, while China is perceived as a country that's rotten to the core and making intentionally terrible choices.
> India still has castes, and didn't they just have a series of internet blackouts to suppress dissidents? The whole thing with the farmers, though I could be misremembering. They're democratic though, so we're all pretty sure they'll find their way.
India does have issues, but the issues do not appear to be as bad as China. China suppresses the internet for everybody, not just some people for example.
India is also more friendly to the west, so if they were to become a super power they would be less threatening to the west.
If China was more friendly to the west instead of threatening the west and attacking half the countries they share a border with they wouldn't have as much criticism. If you are going to be a bad country, keep it to yourself and most people won't bother you. North Korea is a good example. They are mostly ignored until they do or say something stupid then they are criticized.
>No one seems to consider that perhaps China will find their way as well. Germany had Hitler 80 years ago and they're doing fine today. Perhaps in 80 years China will be more free as well.
I think the problem is you need to criticize the country that is doing something bad. Should nobody have criticized Germany during Hitler's reign since maybe in 80 years they will be more free? It was bad when there were Nazi propagandists outside of Germany just like it is bad there are CCP propagandists now.
I'm not sure it's always whataboutism, it's many times just comparison.
People in the west don't tend to have an objective view of who they are and how their bevaior is seen by other people on this planet. Some of the western criticism of emerging powers is hilarious/ironic/rife with hypocrisy when viewed through a non-western lens.
When China does things in the way the US does them, while the US goes angrily; "No, no! When you do it it's evil!", then it's very relevant to point out how both are doing these things.
Particularly as the US's reach and impact is literally global; The free decentralized web does not exist anymore, by now it's not even a handful of US corporations who control the majority of web traffic [0], so the DoDBots are working with a home advantage that's pretty much global.
It's gotten to a point where even established mainstream media are using US social media [1] as their "sources", rarely ever following up on the actual person behind the account.
And the US does this in cooperation with their Five Eyes partners [2], so in addition to global reach and home advantage, they even have several teams on the same side playing the game.
It's gotten so ever-present that the US had to change the Smith-Mund Act to make domestic government propaganda proper legal, just like it used to be in the USSR [3].
And that's exactly where a lot of these accusations against China come from. It's these outfits that flood social media with posts like "China transporting Uhyrus in trains, just like Nazi Germany!". It's these outfits that turn some "It's regulated in China" into "Omg it's banned and they gonna organ harvest you for breaking the rule!" FUD.
The very same outfits were behind Saddam's people shredder, and organizing fake witnesses for US hearings [4]. Creating a bunch of sock puppet accounts is just a regularly Monday morning for them.
I must offer another data point. I'm British, and often find myself in these threads criticising criticism of China. Not because I'm being paid by the CCP, but because I believe that mainstream anti-Chinese sentiment tells us more about the West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.
> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.
oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right now.
Whilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am ultimately having a greater impact.
What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism — its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world.
To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties.
We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.
I like to think that anybody who has heard about the Vietnam war already knows what the West does in terms like colonialism.
I finally understood that your example related to self-consistency and that Boris' binges are not the definition of colonialism, so my suggestion about influence should be discarded.
you are cherry-picking history in order to further your narrative about exploitation.
in reality, humanity has been at war for millennia. the chinese have been at war with all their neighbours for centuries. slavery has been the status-quo until 200 years ago.
you are also assuming just because some politician is immoral than people will also be immoral. this is false.
does this have anything to do with how the chinese government treats its citizens in the present? not at all
Just for the record, and to be 100% clear. I hereby explicitly denounce the Chinese government's murder of innocent students at Tiananmen Square, and the genocide of the Uighurs.
But I think you are completely missing my point.
I don't believe the West actually wants to improve the world. It wants so much power that it can avoid looking at its own past, and present for that matter.
Those rights are available domestically in the West, yes, at least for the time being. Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. But hey, here in the imperial core we are quite comfortable. So this state of being must represent our ideals!
>Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West.
Well yeah, isn't that precisely what's being criticised?
Also not all the evil in the world was created by the West.
That's very interesting. So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China are due to the West's psychological struggles (?), and not due to actual suffering caused by the Chinese government?
Do you have any Chinese heritage in your family? This reminds me of the perspective most of my half-Chinese friends had from back in college. They always felt as if it was their duty to defend China from the biased Western media, despite all the real world evidence painting a very clear and unbiased picture.
> So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China
I think that generally western news have a tendency to misrepresent countries that are culturally different.
E.g. as a Russian, reading western news about Russia makes me think that journalist play a broken telephone game, misrepresenting marginal stuff as some kind of insane norm, in a completely unnuanced way, without any context.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same was for China. Probably even worse, as verification is even less accessible.
Dramatic news get clicks and there is no accountability for spicing them up.
I guess, in the age of AI-delivered clickbait media, the old saying "Don't believe everything you read in the papers" was never as true.
I agree, this rhetoric is true for western news about India as well. The BBC for example known to be awful at times, actively misrepresenting and hiding facts to suit their narrative. I guess they have to cater to their population with colonial mentality which can't bear the fact that some ex-colonies are on track to surpass them in the Asian century.
Your argument basically boils down to “you should trust propaganda from the authoritarian Chinese government because I trust the propaganda from the authoritarian Russian government.” It’s not very convincing.
> Your argument basically boils down to “you should trust propaganda from the authoritarian Chinese government because I trust the propaganda from the authoritarian Russian government.”
What? Why? How? Where does this extreme binary logic come from? When have I said that he should "trust propaganda from the authoritarian Chinese government"? When have I said that "I trust the propaganda from the authoritarian Russian government"?
You don't need any "propaganda" to leave the house and live a life. I have all the empirical evidence I need to competently state "well, that's not how it works IRL" when I see some weird journalism full of factual errors and false assumptions.
Why are you acting as there is no personal experience?
I am 100% British. You misunderstand me. I am saying that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism, its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world.
To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties.
We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.
We can split hairs about Boris Johnson throwing private parties or Joe Biden not wearing a mask or something equally trivial, but at the end of the day, I know of only one major world power which is systematically rounding up its citizens and sending them to reeducation and sterilization camps. It frustrates me when people try to defend China in such roundabout ways when the proof is in the pudding. If anything, humanity would be better off if we were _more_ harsh on China, and willing to call out its grave, grave sins, rather than absurdly shifting the discussion to Western colonialism.
The CCP are quite literally ethnically cleansing their own citizens! And lying about it! Why is it even worth discussing the context of Western colonialism when there's a true and honest legal genocide being performed at the hands of the government? This argument is no different than saying that if we just understood the context of Germany's situation in the 1930s better, perhaps we wouldn't criticize the Nazi regime as strongly. There are some acts which transcend cultural context because of how barbaric they are, and in my opinion, what's happening with the Uighur peoples is beyond forgiveness.
This is a misunderstanding of my viewpoint that I often get. I'm not defending China, and I'm not engaging in Whataboutism. Although I certainly understand how it seems like that. My point is that words are more effective when the speaker of those words lives by those words. Of course the metaphors of Boris Johnson's parties and Joe Biden's lack of mask wearing are trivial, it's just an example.
Yes, the CCP are quite literally ethnically cleansing their own citizens! But also yes, the entirety of the Americas and Australia are already ethnically cleansed. The West has set the precedent. We simply have no power to, as much as it's the ethically correct thing to do, admonish China.
I believe the psychological process involved is the malignant form of projection[1]. To give a metaphor: when I know myself that I've not been productive enough at work (and I secretly berate myself for it), I mis-perceive perfectly normal gestures of encouragement as personal attacks.
Neville Chamberlain had similar thoughts about Germany.
Perhaps when dictators start doing things like rounding up undesirables into camps and pushing ideological uniformity at the point of a gun the reasonable response is to condemn the behavior? It doesn't matter who's wearing the jackboots, it's despicable to appease, condone, or enable the ones stepping on the throats of human beings.
In Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust[1] it is argued that the Holocaust was not merely a tragic aberration of the ideals of modern Western civilisation but rather a logical realisation of it. Hitler himself, in both Mein Kampf, and Zweites Buch, wrote of how he was inspired by British concentration camps in South Africa. Maybe I haven't studied history enough, but I simply do not understand how dismissing the terrors of WW2 as merely a German problem is not also appeasing, condoning and enabling the terrors of the British. The Holocaust lies at the feet of Europeans, not merely the Nazis.
The problem isn't about who did what, the problem is the idea that horrors can only possibly happen outside the borders of the nation to which I belong.
I'm British. I was specifically taught the gruesome details of the Holocaust in school. But I only learnt about the horrors of British colonialism much later in life, and through my own efforts. British genocides are conspicuous by their absence from both our education system and our political discourse.
I don't think this makes it truly an European issue...
In general history as it is taught is almost a total loss for how biased it is, meaning that since we dropped the ball on writing it down we are doomed to repeat it until we do. So far we have only been playing at historical account, because the truth undermines national borders. But this is a global issue.
Most people criticizing China and the CCP in those forums haven't spent time in China either. I suspect many wouldn't even be able to place China on a map.
The series of high resolution pictures of me throughout the streets, hotels, places I was during my time there - these all appeared on the screens used by the guards as I was being scanned to leave the country.
So yes, I have been to China, I can place China on a map, and it is the most terrifying reincarnation of Nazi Germany - being defended by people who will say "we didn't know any better" after the concentration camps are freed.
> So yes, I have been to China, I can place China on a map, and it is the most terrifying reincarnation of Nazi Germany - being defended by people who will say "we didn't know any better" after the concentration camps are freed.
Oh, good to know that. I didn't know prisoners could left Nazi Germany just like that, only getting a scan. I had a completely different idea of that regime.
Prisoners in jail, in my country, or every other country you can imagine, can't leave either. It's called conviction. China invented a lot of things, but surely not this.
Precisely my point - you were making a false (in?)equivalence by trying to say that xinniethepooh's point was invalid because they were able to leave China while prisoners in Nazi Germany could not - while it's pretty clear that they weren't a prisoner in China, just a traveler.
It's curious that you say 'historically unprecedented imperial past' - imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler, and exerting diplomatic or military force to influence other nations.
Why do you say this is historically unprecedented? China has been imperialist since its beginning, and continues its imperialism with Hong Kong, South china sea, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Myanmar ...
What 'historically unprecedented imperial past' are you referring to that isn't preceded by China's?
Just one example: the entirety of the American continents are culturally European. Imagine if North America was North Chinese speaking Mandarin and South America was South Chinese speaking Cantonese. Not to mention the entire concept of a nation state is a European invention. That Europe drew the borders in Africa, the Middle East, India. Then there's Australia and New Zealand. It's unprecedented. Yes China have/are imperial to an extent, but it seems like apples and oranges to me.
BTW, not to dismiss the other countries from your list, but you should really understand the history of Hong Kong, specifically the Opium Wars. The British took it when the Chinese refused to continue buying their opium.
Not being OK with the myriad of human rights abuses the Chinese government commits - sometimes "silently" and sometimes very opening and outright proudly - is just because I struggle with my own regions history? What the actual fuck... I have to call your "theory" what it is: stupid and dangerous - and whataboutism on top.
To give a metaphor, I think it is perfectly reasonable to criticise my project lead when she criticises me for not meeting my targets but turns up hungover and spends the whole day on Facebook.
I am criticising her because I want her to be effective at her job. Not because I disagree with her about our team's laziness.
We are not equating missed targets with atrocity... A terrorist attack does not miss the target of benevolence. It is something that should never, ever happen but this planet is such a soul-crushing clusterfuck that it is like water under a bridge.
Human life has value. It's not effective value or an estimate of value. It is absolute.
My metaphor is not to pointing to project management as an analogy, it's pointing to how criticism of one side does not automatically mean support for the other side. Unless I've misunderstood your point?
I'm suggesting that we do comparison with things conductive to the act of comparison. With the atrocities we are discussing there is nothing to be gained from comparison because things are already maximum bad: The numbers just vary. Comparison can take away the weight of that, which in our fuzzy wetware translates to dissipating motivating energy that could have gone into action.
I do agree with your point and I am not a believer in the law of the excluded middle.
And I criticize the Chinese government because I want the Chinese people to live a life that is free and void of the constant danger of abuse (while at the same time I can as well recognize that we in the West have a big list of problems and abuses we have to tackle).
I would humbly suggest that you don't post personal information just because someone on the internet is making a comment in extremely poor form - you don't have anything to prove to them. Flag their comment (it's a pretty egregious violation of the HN guidelines) and attend to the people who are making good points.
HN may be one of the best places for discussion on the internet, with some of the best moderators, but even here, you get people who aren't interested in having civil discussions.
People have different opinions and are free to voice them. I’m not pro ccp (but here I feel the need to clarify up front), but it’s not hard to understand that some people view china more favorably than most in the US. At the very least it shouldn’t be hard to understand why some people would reject the more extreme anti china stance.
edit: long way of me saying, I don’t think anyone that defends china should automatically be labeled ccp propaganda.
Please provide one example in this comments section. Ideally many, since an alleged "flood" cannot be composed of a single drop, but a single example would also suffice. Please don't refer obliquely to some "situation", be specific.
The example must convince me that the person you're quoting is indeed engaging in "activism" for the CCP and not merely expressing their opinion.
Otherwise, if you can't provide these examples, may I kindly suggest what you're encountering is the normal range of opinions in the internet, only this time it's about a subject you feel strongly about?
PS: is obliquely accusing people on HN of being shills something allowed by the guidelines? Think about this.
Many of them are dead comments, already. I don’t think there’s a flood, myself, but rather heterogeneous opinions largely based on whether China’s dictatorship is viewed as a positive alternative to American imperialism.
Having lived in both countries myself, I’d prefer America 10 times out of 10, but that wasn’t always the case. Xi in particular has been a terrible thing for China. Imagine if Trump became dictator (and was a decade younger). That’s Xi. He’s made the country more racist and closed off in every way. It’s a tragedy to see.
Xi is driving the PRC down a dangerous and escalatory path path. Nuclear weapons, controlling critical tech, economic punishments, etc. Very few expected it because it was not needed. Deng through Hu made enormous strides in nearly all areas for China. Xi has turned away from that.
Here is are a few examples, pasted the comments in case it gets deleted.
have all the great tactics of refuting reality, spelling or grammar problems, redirection, whataboutism, any critique of CCP is racist/sinophobia, and some have great trump-style reverse psychology for lack of a better term (if he says they do it, he's the one doing it lol).
I simply do not believe that a significant % of readers on this niche, highly educated forum, actually hold these opinions or hold these beliefs of what they think is reality/facts.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's just trolling.
If real, I have a hard time reconciling that my worldview could possibly exist in the same as theirs. It's just so hard to swallow if true. If it is true it just makes it feel more like water & oil, a future of neither can live whilst the other survives.
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A double wammy! first somehow has not heard of xinjiang situation, asks for source on Uyghur forced labor, provided one, then says but they don't provide a source! lol
Thanks, this is what the major part of the report.
> The report, authored by Adrian Zenz, an independent Tibet and Xinjiang researcher, says that 500,000 people, mostly subsistence farmers and herders, were trained in the first seven months of 2020 and authorities have set quotas for the mass transfer of those workers within Tibet and to other parts of China.
One thing I hate about mainstream media reporting is that they never link to the source material.
Just from the above description, I cannot see that these people are forced in anyway. And deriving such numbers from public Chinese government documents is not accurate either, as certain words can be easily misunderstood given the sinophobia sentiment nowadays.
Even the publications claiming genocide in Xinjiang have been backpedaling.
India is the one that has been attacking neighbouring borders, especially since the fascists came to power.
Taiwan’s air defence zone includes much of the mainland, almost an entire province.
Fishing vessels aren’t state actors. It’s certainly a problem that they aren’t being regulated more strongly, although many other countries have this same problem.
Flagged before I can copy paste. Was a parroting of Xi's recent pronouncement of Chinese style 'democracy' being the future and better than actual democracy:
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(i commented on this one saying the same as others, whataboutism deflecting from what we are talking about, currently downvoted). I just read that profile
's posts and all of their comments in this thread are trying to pivot. they bring up problems and things we should be discussing for sure. but the tactic is to avoid discussion of the original topic.
> 1. it could be flooded with pro cpp activists, it's a known fact that China pays people to influence forums
Weird how that's a "known fact" with China, but whenever it's brought up about the Western countries [0] it's either hand-waved away or declared a conspiracy theory.
I am European and not affiliated in any way with China. And don't want to whitewash them.
Still, there is a double standard regarding China vs the Western World. While China gets (IMHO deserved) criticism for their territorial claims and human right abuse, the Iraq War (over 400k deaths) was "business as usual".
The same goes with anti-pandemic restrictions - when it happens in China, it's an authoritarian rule. When in the West - it's social responsibility.
When China started vaccinating children, I saw an article with "child soldiers" and a photo of a crying kid. The same action in the West had a picture of a smiling kid, and a more welcoming title.
Or even when it comes to pollution and worker's rights, the West is hypocritical. Blames China, while happily outsources most heavy industry there, due to lower costs. (When was the last time you bought some electronics and there were not "Manufactured in PRL"?)
We're not discussing the US, we're discussing the latest abuse of power by the CCP. That's where the link goes. Would you like to next make a false equivalence of US prison labor to slave labor in China? Because that's where this goes, every thread.
Submit a link of the US' latest atrocity to HN. A world of tolerance allows and accepts the stories of violence perpetrated by all actors. The reason you are seeing so many related to China is we have some new flagrant human rights abuse happening from the CCP every week, sometimes multiple times a week, that's why you see so many of these stories percolate to the top. Just two days ago, the CCP tore down the statue commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong. [1]
This is the screaming of the machine doing its work of control, every day of every week. The memories of them will be inhaled whole and exhaled as dust, a phantom of a thing that never truly existed.
The commenter you replied to seemed to be comparing 2 situations. That seems normal to me. Comparing things seems to be great way to understand complex issues.
What makes the comment a wrong way to discuss? Is it a bad form of comparison for some reason?
To me the key difference is in the way the propaganda is done.
Pro-CCP people are posting comments on the Internet to try to convince western people.
Pro-Russia people are paying celebrities of western countries to promote their culture, they are also creating news networks in the west to do the same.
USA is using the global western culture (Hollywood, singers...) to promote their agenda.
Since we're talking about torture, in the last two decades, the USA produced dozen of films or TV shows where torture is depicted as a necessary evil for the good guy to win over the bad guys. Just look at Jack Bauer.
They don't need to go an Twitter saying "no, that's not what happens, we're the good guys, see...", because in the mind of (almost) everyone, it's already accepted, since they saw a good guy doing it in a movie.
The propaganda machine from CCP is just not as evolved as the USA's, they are trying to catch up. But all in all, it's a same. It's just more obvious for the CCP guys because they haven't the right tools yet.
But given how they are investing in cultural services, I'm sure they will soon be better at it and we won't have those kind of discussion anymore.
It will not be "propaganda", but just people arguing against each other on topics on which their favorite state has different opinion.
I didn't write radical Islamic terrorism didn't exist before 2001, I wrote it emerged at never before seen scales.
And I have plenty of data to back that statement. In Western Europe Islamic terrorism was pretty much a non-issue [0].
It only started becoming an issue after 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, when AQ conducted attacks on Madrid and London, respectively Spain and UK, both countries being part of the coalition of the "willing" that invaded Iraq.
That was very much a direct response, one that previously wouldn't have been possible as AQ lacked the resources and people in Western Europe to conduct these kinds of operations. They got these resources and people when the US declared them "enemy #1" and started bombing and invading Muslim countries, displacing Muslims as refugees deep into Western Europe [1], many of them holding resentments over what happened to them and their countries as their worst fears about what an "American crusade" [2] would actually entail in reality.
Over time AQ Iraq, which under Saddam wasn't even a thing, would ultimately turn into ISIS, an ISIS that parades its prisoners around in very similar uniforms [3] to those the US paraded them around, which is not a coincidence, it's a direct reference [4].
Even when you look at the global picture, this "war on terrorism" did the same as the "war on drugs" had; It didn't end terrorism, it made it thrive [5].
Anybody who looks at that and declares it "settled" does not understand the kind of impact this had on literally the whole world.
On hn, we should try to engage with peoples ideas, and be careful about attributing motives and dismissing people.
That said, I’ve seen a lot of pro ccp posts in the last few months. If we hypothetically say there are state manipulators on hn becoming active, what is the most mature way to respond to the situation?
...and, if you suspect that there's actual manipulation going on (as there are a lot of Chinese nationals, real people, who earnestly believe in the points that they're making, on HN), then email hn@ycombinator.com and they'll use their admin powers to take a look at it.
Really? As somebody constantly accused of being a Chinese bot for not agreeing that the Chinese government is a manifestation of absolute evil that the world needs to destroy in order to save, these threads all seem to be filled with anti-Chinese hypernationalists.
The communist party party has successfully managed to associate love of China with loyalty to the party and government, and criticism of the party with being “anti-Chinese”. So being pro-democracy in Hong Kong is being anti-China, and opposing the ethnic and cultural suppression in Xinjiang is China hating.
My wife is Chinese and we have a Chinese friend here in the UK we have to be careful what we say to. She gets upset if anything critical of the Chinese government comes up, because she “loves China”. We love China too, just not the communist party.
> We love China too, just not the communist party.
I lived in singapore for 10 years until recently moving to Taiwan, this is basically the view of everyone from China I met. “I love China but I hate the government, that’s why I left”
It’s a shame because the actions of the CCP are making people blame Chinese people. But the majority of people from China that I’ve met are awesome.
> a. Left China b. Are talking to a foreigner about politics
This is a weird form of racism I see from a lot of people coming from a Chinese perspective, and it's very arrogant and abrasive.
When a Chinese person is outside of China, they are the foreigner. Walking around the U.S. and calling people laowai is really a... questionable choice.
It’s more of a lost in translation - we use _laowai_ as a convenient word. When I just came to US, I sometimes still “translate” what I want to express from Chinese first, so I even called the other fellow US students “foreigner” once when talking about a cultural difference. “Foreigners tends to do XXX while we(Chinese) do YYY”
It’s simply writing about Chinese attitudes and experiences when abroad, and therefore using phrasing from the point of view of the person in question.
Well we don’t know what the support is truly like inside China. But I think it’s safe to assume that there are a lot of people inside china who unfortunately do not have the luxury of being able to move their family overseas.
Some in the mainland population are smart enough not to give their real opinions. It’s not safe unless you no longer live in China (and even then, it’s not safe, as the government can retaliate against the person’s family).
I don’t doubt that the CCP maintains considerable support, but considering they control the media, that’s less impressive than you think it is.
You can find countless examples of groups of Chinese people engaging in downright horrible behavior like this, good luck finding many western counterparts.
Where are the western nationalists SWATting families of people who dare to say critical things of their governments?
Nobody will send the secret police to harass my family if I dare to criticize my government, but if I was Chinese they certainly would.
I’m sure it would be possible to indoctrinate westerners to behave in a similar way, but the fact remains that currently it’s the Chinese who are uniquely indoctrinated.
The first article is from Wikipedia so you are being highly disingenuous. The second thing is that it is pretty much okay and acceptable since this has never stopped. You seem to believe that if the US does something wrong and it is reported then everything is fine in the world, well, no. This guy went to jail for revealing that the drone attacks were ineffective and amounted to criminal actions:
There are definitely signs of them here. I have another thread that had someone trying to steer my comment into a East vs West argument just for mentioning China. It seems like they are trying to pick fights out of nowhere as if they are getting paid. And if you notice, they come at certain hours like there is suddenly a wave of them all at once.
Yes and no. When you disagree you usually have a point to make, but when you purposefully try to steer a conversation into a confrontational topic, then it does become suspect.
You can also check the comment history of these people to see if they are outright government trolls or brainwashed university students. Sometimes it is pretty clear.
It's not always brainwashing and indoctrination, it can also be the threat to family social standing, political scrutiny, and the ability to travel freely. If they have family or close friends that already have trouble with the state, China makes exquisite use of those factors in controlling people.
I guess you mean my credit score/background check. We don't have a social score in the UK. Though I wouldn't be surprised it if something akin was secretly compiled by GCHQ et al.
Always interesting to see what kind of mindblowing absurdities they come up with to defend the horrendous acts against the Uighur people. I also see it in German comment sections at this point.
