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Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

scmp.com

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Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#51

Post by rayiner »

math_and_stuff wrote: post #14
terenceng2010 wrote: post #12

It might not change HK government attitude after all, but it shows that Hong Kongers align with western values - no one should live under the fear of arbitrary prosecution.

Why say 'align with western values' instead of 'respect human rights'? Freedom of speech and assembly are encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN, particularly at that time (1948), was a creation and creature of the western world. The drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt: http://research.un.org/en/undhr/draftingcommittee. Of the nine drafters, six were from a western country (US, UK, France, Australia, and Chile). Two (the ROC delegate and the Lebanese delegate) were educated in the US. (The ROC delegate moved to New Jersey and lived there until his death). The other delegate was from Russia, which is a mostly western country.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#52

Post by heraclius »

PakG1 wrote: post #10

This article is published in the SCMP. The SCMP was purchased some time ago by Jack Ma. There were fears from various corners that Jack Ma, being friendly with the mainland Chinese government, would influence the SCMP to have coverage that was less independent than before. So it's interesting to see this published by SCMP.

The SCMP seems to have been fairly vocal. There doesn’t seem to be anything that would stop the removal of all the critical journalists though, so I am somewhat confused.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#53

Post by gwright »

heraclius wrote: post #15
terenceng2010 wrote: post #12

It might not change HK government attitude after all, but it shows that Hong Kongers align with western values - no one should live under the fear of arbitrary prosecution.

This idea that fundamental human rights are “western values” is profoundly unhelpful, because it implies that in some sense to fight injustice is to no longer be truly Chinese—a nonsense whose propagation is both supported by and helpful to the CCP.

At one level I understand what you area saying but at another level I think your statement undermines what it means to relinquish one set of ideas in favor of another.

It is perhaps a hindrance that we don't have an ethnic-neutral term for the set of ideas associated with "western values" but "western" is descriptive of the origin not the applicability of the ideas.

In order to genuinally adopt and espouse "western values" you have to at some level abandon "non-western values". This of course has as a pre-requisite that you've discarded the notion of multiculturalism -- at least the version of multiculturalism that insists that avoiding value judgements between cultures as a virtue unto itself.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#54

Post by avocado4 »

PakG1 wrote: post #10

This article is published in the SCMP. The SCMP was purchased some time ago by Jack Ma. There were fears from various corners that Jack Ma, being friendly with the mainland Chinese government, would influence the SCMP to have coverage that was less independent than before. So it's interesting to see this published by SCMP.

SCMP has been pushing CCP propaganda since Jack Ma took over, it's just more subtle than GlobalTimes/XinhuaNet or other official sources. Not covering this protest would have been immediately obvious. You have to be a very subtle troll to make propaganda work abroad.

It's similar to YC getting to open a China program in exchange for getting a few Mainland mods on HN. Any anti-China posts do come up to front page but then disappear much faster than everything else (same will happen to this one).

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#55

Post by rayiner »

gwright wrote: post #53
heraclius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea that fundamental human rights are “western values” is profoundly unhelpful, because it implies that in some sense to fight injustice is to no longer be truly Chinese—a nonsense whose propagation is both supported by and helpful to the CCP.

At one level I understand what you area saying but at another level I think your statement undermines what it means to relinquish one set of ideas in favor of another. It is perhaps a hindrance that we don't have an ethnic-neutral term for the set of ideas associated with "western values" but "western" is descriptive of the origin not the applicability of the ideas. In order to genuinally adopt and espouse "western v…

What makes it tough is that many more cultures have a concept of "fundamental human rights" than ones that agree with western countries on which specific rights are fundamental.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#56

Post by loyukfai »

heraclius wrote: post #52
PakG1 wrote: post #10

This article is published in the SCMP. The SCMP was purchased some time ago by Jack Ma. There were fears from various corners that Jack Ma, being friendly with the mainland Chinese government, would influence the SCMP to have coverage that was less independent than before. So it's interesting to see this published by SCMP.

The SCMP seems to have been fairly vocal. There doesn’t seem to be anything that would stop the removal of all the critical journalists though, so I am somewhat confused.

Even among the pro-Beijing businesses and the establishment, there are serious concerns about this.

Business people want to make money, foreign companies have started to divest from China, perhaps Hong Kong would be next?

Passing this law may akin to killing the goose for the golden eggs.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#57

Post by AnimalMuppet »

chii wrote: post #44
CamelCaseName wrote: post #13

For anyone like me who was looking for some background on this, on Reddit, someone linked to a Vox video entitled "China is erasing its border with Hong Kong" [0]. At 15 minutes, it's a captivating introduction to the conflict. Another video (6 minutes) you might be interested in by Vox is "China's trillion dollar plan to dominate global trade" [1], which is on China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). [0]: https://www.y…

The vox video paints the Belt and Road Initiative in a negative light - which i feel is wrong. Why shouldn't China be allowed to invest and gain soft power? Why shouldn't they be allowed to make deals with countries the US deems 'undemocratic'?

If you're making deals with a government that is undemocratic, you're making a deal with the government, but not with the people. At that point, the deal is probably going to be one that benefits the government, but not the people. Countries do that, when it is in their best interest to do so.

But the US (rightly) gets criticism for doing such things. If it's right to criticize the US for such actions, it's also right to criticize China for them.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#58

Post by gwright »

rayiner wrote: post #55
gwright wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one level I understand what you area saying but at another level I think your statement undermines what it means to relinquish one set of ideas in favor of another. It is perhaps a hindrance that we don't have an ethnic-neutral term for the set of ideas associated with "western values" but "western" is descriptive of the origin not the applicability of the ideas. In order to genuinally adopt and espouse "western v…

What makes it tough is that many more cultures have a concept of "fundamental human rights" than ones that agree with western countries on which specific rights are fundamental.

You have to add in a lot of other ideas though to come close to the basket of ideas associated with "western values". For example: limited government, representative government, scientific inquiry, equality of women, due process, free markets, private property, contract law, and so on.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#59

Post by Zenbit_UX »

rayiner wrote: post #51
math_and_stuff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why say 'align with western values' instead of 'respect human rights'? Freedom of speech and assembly are encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN, particularly at that time (1948), was a creation and creature of the western world. The drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt: http://research.un.org/en/undhr/draftingcommittee . Of the nine drafters, six were from a western country (US, UK, France, Australia, and Chile). Two (the ROC delegate and the Lebanese delegate) were educated in the US. (The ROC delegate moved to New Jersey and lived the…

You're using "west" as in western aligned? If not Australia and Russia are most definitely not western geographically. I've also never heard of Russia mentioned as western or grouped with other western countries. There's a lot of political tension between Russia and the "west" some I'm surprised to hear you say that.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#60

Post by arthurcolle »

hkai wrote: post #5

Just finished the 8 hour march. That was insane. But the law is even more insane. A North Korea-like totalitarian state that puts people in camps can just snatch any lawyer, businessman our journalist and take them away without trial and without revealing their location. Imagine people at startups working in sensitive areas like DNA testing, biotech, finance or data mining can be taken away and forced to reveal data,…

Can you tell us more about your experiences as a participant in the march?
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