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China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

nytimes.com

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Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#31

Post by hevi_jos »

glandium wrote: post #8

I'm not particularly convinced this is much worse than what happens in the west, where people get their news from biased sources, be they Fox News, CNN, or Facebook. Sure, there's the theoretical difference, censorship is bad, etc., but practically speaking, the result does not feel that different...

One of the great advantages of the West happens when biased sources do not overlap.

That is for example the CNN or NYT looking with microscope whatever Republicans do badly and ignoring what Hillary or Obama does wrong could be extremely valuable is there are "opposite biased media" that looks with microscope whatever Hillary does wrong.

This happens in multiple levels, there are financial interest that own media and will never criticize its masters.

The Churches also own media, the Unions own media, the military and farma industry own media. Google or Facebook ARE media.

People in power should be controlled, and that is one of the most realistic ways to control people in power. Wanting media to be unbiased is a dream. Most people are biased.

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#32

Post by xfs »

repolfx wrote: post #28
paradite wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about stopping the baseless accusations thrown at China? http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-ihinpmn... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do... http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html Edit: Looks like I'm being flagged for pointing out the false accus…

I vouched for your post because as far as I can tell, it's written in good faith and is not in violation of any HN guidelines. I'm not sure why your post got so rapidly killed - the posts you link to are clearly discussing bond defaults, so I'll take your word for it that they're discussing the same problem as the Reuter's article. And that would indeed seem to be prima facie evidence that this particular story is no…

Censorship in China doesn't work like what Orwell would have told. The claim in the article about a "government directive" might as well be true because similar directives have been consistently leaked to Western media over the years and obviously they have credible inside sources for this kind of leaks. If you look at the detail of the directive it says "manage" which means content getting demoted, removed from front-page, retweets disappeared, anything but outright removal, so existence of content doesn't prove its popular visibility is not being manipulated. This is likely them learning to take a page from the book of Western media operation but you can still tell what amateurs they are when supposedly state secrets are leaked left and right like this.

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#33

Post by paradite »

xfs wrote: post #32
repolfx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vouched for your post because as far as I can tell, it's written in good faith and is not in violation of any HN guidelines. I'm not sure why your post got so rapidly killed - the posts you link to are clearly discussing bond defaults, so I'll take your word for it that they're discussing the same problem as the Reuter's article. And that would indeed seem to be prima facie evidence that this particular story is no…

Censorship in China doesn't work like what Orwell would have told. The claim in the article about a "government directive" might as well be true because similar directives have been consistently leaked to Western media over the years and obviously they have credible inside sources for this kind of leaks. If you look at the detail of the directive it says "manage" which means content getting demoted, removed from fron…

I would agree with you that such techniques could be used, and in fact I suspect they are used. However, I wouldn't say they strictly qualifies as censorship, because you can still get the information if you know where to look at (go to specific websites legally and search for them).

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#34

Post by pas »

paradite wrote: post #29
mads wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the links posted? They were flagged and removed.

Just some links to articles in Chinese websites that talks about defaults recently: http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-ihinpmn... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do... http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html

I interpreted OP's comment as meaning that this particular reuters link is censored, not necessarily all URLs with the same semantic content. Probably censors are not vigilant enough.

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#36

Post by 07d046 »

lolc wrote: post #30

The interesting thing for me here is a problem with all censorship: Those doing the censoring need to understand the issue to work effectively. So the censorship bulletins need to provide enough information that they become a source of truth. It gives investors an incentive to read them, because they are a factor in where the market moves.

I think it's partly censorship, and partly the secrecy around the creation of economic (and other) data. When people are incentivised to report inaccurate data and have the ability to do so, they will. This is an old problem. Emperor Kangxi developed a secret palace memorial system in the seventeenth century to learn from trusted eunuchs if the grain prices his senior officials were reporting were accurate, and if his son was a monster, and things like that.

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#37

Post by notabot »

pas wrote: post #34
paradite wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just some links to articles in Chinese websites that talks about defaults recently: http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-ihinpmn... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do... http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html

I interpreted OP's comment as meaning that this particular reuters link is censored, not necessarily all URLs with the same semantic content. Probably censors are not vigilant enough.

The context of the NYT article is that bad news in Chinese media is censored. GP already said "the kind of ...", which was not about a specific piece or a specific link, so it would be natural for me to interpret GP's comment as "the semantic content about defaults is censored in China", which is not true according to @paradite.

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#38

Post by paradite »

pas wrote: post #34
paradite wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just some links to articles in Chinese websites that talks about defaults recently: http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-ihinpmn... http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do... http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html

I interpreted OP's comment as meaning that this particular reuters link is censored, not necessarily all URLs with the same semantic content. Probably censors are not vigilant enough.

Right. I didn't see that you could interpret it that way. Apologies for not stating that assumption.

Re: China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth

#40

Post by bicubic »

paradite wrote: post #33
xfs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship in China doesn't work like what Orwell would have told. The claim in the article about a "government directive" might as well be true because similar directives have been consistently leaked to Western media over the years and obviously they have credible inside sources for this kind of leaks. If you look at the detail of the directive it says "manage" which means content getting demoted, removed from fron…

I would agree with you that such techniques could be used, and in fact I suspect they are used. However, I wouldn't say they strictly qualifies as censorship, because you can still get the information if you know where to look at (go to specific websites legally and search for them).

If information that would typically be widespread was prevented from becoming widespread, then censorship has taken place and succeeded.

If a newsworthy event has taken place but is not reported on mainstream media because of government intervention, that is censorship.

The main purpose of censorship is not to completely stop all access to some information, it is to prevent that information from reaching a majority of its target audience.

This is what happened here. You're shrugging it off with 'ehhh but you can still find the information if you know to look for it in the first place, where most people would not look'. This apologist attitude is why you're being downvoted. You are using the Chinese government 'approved' definition of censorship with is contradictory to the definition outside of china.

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