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Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#81

Post by mantap »

xiaochuanSun wrote: post #52
lawrenceyan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?

There are some Chinese students who are studying in US universities support the CN government on this event. Even though they have access to the information, they still choose not to believe it.

It doesn't surprise me. The Chinese government isn't dumb enough to say "we want to abolish the rule of law in HK", instead they say "we want to stop rapists and murderers from escaping justice".

Honestly in most places in the world, that kind of appeal to emotion is an effective way to dismantle the rule of law. It is only because the people of Hong Kong are both highly educated and distrustful of Beijing that it doesn't work on them.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#82

Post by kumosawa »

dis-sys wrote: post #59
kumosawa wrote: post #39

I’m from china mainland, and I stand for these protesters. At least, I don’t want them lose the right of fighting for their rights. And btw, even such huge protest happening, there is no report, no discussion in China, even message left on SNS also get censored or vanished. Terrifying. Edit: apologize for uncertain words, it needs add a time limitation. The first protest was happening at 9th June and all Chinese medi…

I don't know what is your motivation to use a throwaway account to publicly lie on this... Don't get hurt too much for seeing the reports below that can be publicly verified by everyone. Coverage from sohu.com, one of the largest news sites - https://www.sohu.com/a/320190989_114731 http://www.sohu.com/a/320742090_223357 http://www.sohu.com/a/320247941_419342 Coverage by tencent's QQ News: https://new.qq.com/cmsn/TWF2…

What about take time back to 9th, June. The time the first protest happening, almost every famous media reported this but except Chinese. Is it wired?

And take a look at the links you chose, I don’t think it maybe a fair stand view because of already being defined as a riot.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#83

Post by my_username_is_ »

tlear wrote: post #14
smnrchrds wrote: post #12

Could someone please explain what the long-term goal of the protesters is? Best case scenario, HK and Chinese government postpone the integration until 2047. What then? When the borders come down, what will happen to all those who openly talked against Beijing government, held candlelight vigils for Tienanmen Square victims, and rallied and protested against a government who does not like people protesting and does n…

They are idealists, their parents and grandparents were not subjected to Cultural revolution and rest of the brutality of PRC. They think they can keep the city they love as it is. Realistically their only hope is collapse of PRC. Never say never and who knows they might help it happen. I have quite a few classmates back from university (end of 90s start of 2000s) whose families saw writing on the wall, had enough $$…

I think part of the reason that the number of people protesting has grown over the years is that a lot of the people who would have been protesters left around '97. A new generation has grown up with many basic freedoms and they don't want to give those up... And they don't want to leave HK either. I'm not sure if it's harder to get visas to other countries nowadays, but a lot of people are choosing to stay and fight for their country and their way of life rather than running away.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#84

Post by wybiral »

brobinson wrote: post #73
wybiral wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually viewed as a protective measure more than a mechanism of oppression. And it is protective. If you believe that widespread dissidence could lead to the collapse of your government then preventing that is a necessary evil to ensure your own well being. So, yeah, most mainlanders are aware of the censorship but it's not always viewed as inherently bad. And not just out of fear of being targeted or something.…

>We allow similar censorship in the US (of things like extremist propaganda or hate speech) with a similar justification. The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand. The US government can't do anything about you hosting a website and posting extremist propaganda/hate speech on it. (the exception being speech which is _likely_ to cause _imminent lawless…

You're right, I didn't mean to compare them in that way. There is a difference between government-mandated vs corporations voluntarily censoring.

My point was just to highlight that even here in the US we accept some level of censorship. Most of us are okay with Islamic extremist propaganda or videos of violence being removed from websites if it's done to prevent future violence. And that should explain why there are so many people in mainland China who accept censorship without seeing it as excessively oppressive. Especially when they aren't fully aware of what all is being censored or why.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#85

Post by seanmcdirmid »

xiaochuanSun wrote: post #52
lawrenceyan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?

There are some Chinese students who are studying in US universities support the CN government on this event. Even though they have access to the information, they still choose not to believe it.

Those students see the government mostly aligned with their interests and have benefits from a lifetime of indoctrination via a higher end public school system. Censorship is more for the less elite classes that don’t have those benefits.

Even then, if China decided not to censor anything tomorrow and just went with western-style spin, 80% of the population would basically still agree with the government. That they don’t bother is basically a hold over of old-fashioned thinking, and once the last cultural revolution era leader (Xi Jinping) retires, China’s government should modernize very quickly. That this leader has decided not to retire on schedule is very disturbing.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#86

Post by whoevercares »

catpack wrote: post #70
whoevercares wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shuhhhhhhhh you break the social norm

It should be a norm to take articles from authoritarian state-owned outlets with many grains of salt. The common trope is to give the basic outline of the facts while ignoring the real issues: namely the fact that communist China is undemocratic, violates basic human rights and that it is a tarnish to anyone's reputation and character to turn a blind eye to this.

Also don’t assume Chinese people are like brainless idiots, people READ the news and will wonder what ACTUALLY happened. Ironically, though silently, most educated Chinese people won’t trust official newspaper that much. so thanks no worries

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#87

Post by dmix »

xiaochuanSun wrote: post #52
lawrenceyan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?

There are some Chinese students who are studying in US universities support the CN government on this event. Even though they have access to the information, they still choose not to believe it.

I never really understood how Chinese people could live under such a regime until a read a long-form book about life in China by a New Yorker journalist who lived and reported from the for many years:

https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-eb...

It's really hard to grasp how effective information control, combined with 20-30% of the population being "party members", and other means of control can completely convince (or more likely blind) the population from external realities.

It's hard because you can see how smart and capable Chinese-Americans (or Canadians, or whatever) are at anything they set their mind to, where it almost seems like something is missing in their culture vs the West.

The general lesser educated and poor swath is easier to understand how they can be lied to and believe. The key is the smarter-than-average Chinese who do end up getting access to outside information are thoroughly convinced by the state early on that 'western propaganda is merely constantly trying to denigrate China's great, big, neverending achievements. But not only that, they amplify all of the negative things the western countries do poorly like class or race relations or other things citizens are constantly complaining about in the media, and try to pretend they are covering up those while hypocritically trying to judge Asian countries.

It's really quite a genius type of system when you look at how successful it is, which legitimate the US contributed to with all of the pysop/intelligence community stuff that they mastered. But of course it's 100x easier in a system where media and education are entirely controlled, not just partially like in the US (the Chinese aren't just dumb drones is what I'm saying but I'm not convinced the state can maintain this delusion forever).

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#88

Post by irjustin »

lostmsu wrote: post #2

Considering, that HK leader did not immediately withdrew the bill after the first protest, it is only natural to assume, that that person does not represent the will of the people. So it makes sense to impeach.

The difficulty with this statement is it requires that the people have the ability to affect their leaders through voting which in Hong Kong's case does not.

In HK, the people can vote for a Chief Executive of HK, but the pool that you can vote for is now only allowed to be "pro China", this is what the umbrella revolution was protesting and sadly failed. "Universal suffrage but only with the people we let you vote for."

Today, impeachment of the Chief Executive is overtly not possible[2] since China controls whether that vote is allowed to take place with pro China people doing the voting.

By overtly, I mean I personally cannot see a way forward, but I admit, I'm very surprised to see this bill be rescinded. Tactically speaking, I would have expected the same thing from the Umbrella Revolution. Which was basically let the protestors occupy the streets and let the public become annoyed to the point where the oppressed (protestors) become the oppressors.

Why wasn't the waiting game played this time around? I'm not sure. I'm super happy they were successful in this, and I hope/pray for long term change as my heritage is from HK. But... I'm extremely skeptical.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#Hong_Kong

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#89

Post by catpack »

whoevercares wrote: post #86
catpack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be a norm to take articles from authoritarian state-owned outlets with many grains of salt. The common trope is to give the basic outline of the facts while ignoring the real issues: namely the fact that communist China is undemocratic, violates basic human rights and that it is a tarnish to anyone's reputation and character to turn a blind eye to this.

Also don’t assume Chinese people are like brainless idiots, people READ the news and will wonder what ACTUALLY happened. Ironically, though silently, most educated Chinese people won’t trust official newspaper that much. so thanks no worries

What can I say, these people are brainwashed from birth to think that what they have is good. Once we put enough economic pressure on them the paper tiger will fold.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#90

Post by irjustin »

smnrchrds wrote: post #12

Could someone please explain what the long-term goal of the protesters is? Best case scenario, HK and Chinese government postpone the integration until 2047. What then? When the borders come down, what will happen to all those who openly talked against Beijing government, held candlelight vigils for Tienanmen Square victims, and rallied and protested against a government who does not like people protesting and does n…

Agreed, which I was surprised the waiting game wasn't played like during the Umbrella Revolution.

I'm glad they were successful in this piece, but man... what's the long game and how do you get there?

Is there a path to keeping Hong Kong truly separate? A Crimea? An independent state?

Personally, I don't think so, but keep fighting guys, it's basically all they've got.

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