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China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

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Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#51

Post by berrynice »

hart_russell wrote: post #8

There's a lot of negative things that can be said about president Trump, but I for one am glad he's taken economic action against China. It seems like most Nations have resigned themselves to let China become the preeminent super power, which is very troubling to me; to let a nation with legitimate concentration camps, prisoner organ harvesting, and a general lack of moral compass become the most powerful country in…

I totally agree. I'm pretty sure it's the only good thing Trump has done in his entire presidency, but someone needs to challenge China's export supremacy.

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#52

Post by vkou »

dragonwriter wrote: post #43
vkou wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty surreal watching this conflict play out. I'm still shocked this is happening on the international stage and other nations are unwilling to take sides in the conflict. Are you equally shocked that other nations are unwilling to take sides in the various political conflicts that we've lived through in the past decade in the United States? Generally, it's prudent, in the geopolitical arena, for nation stat…

> Are you equally shocked that other nations are unwilling to take sides in the various political conflicts that we've lived through in the past decade in the United States? Other nations (and international bodies like the UN) have voiced fairly strong opinions on various internal US policy controversies in the last several years.

1. Other nations critique foreign policy, but rarely domestic policy.

2. Exactly how much of a care does the citizenry & political leaders give about some UN sub-committee condemning the US?

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#53

Post by clydethefrog »

w_s_l wrote: post #38
billfruit wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American prison system is deeply problematic too, one which both parties has continually failed to reform. Perhaps CCP see themselves as guardians of a country, a system thousands of years old. In comparison the existence of the modern democratic West has been for a mere ephemeral duration, and look who likes to lecture whom..

I don't understand what a privatized prison system has to do anything with the rest of your argument which seems to be more of a rant than anything. Democracy isn't new its older than communism. Democracy also took time to develop in the West. It's unfathomable to someone who has never been fed information that the Party didn't change.

>Democracy isn't new its older than communism

Many anthropologists would disagree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism#Nature_of_...

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#54

Post by 24gttghh »

w_s_l wrote: post #41
billfruit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Chinese civilization, not just communism.

so communism is but an ephemeral and insignificant given the lengthy and turbulent history of China. It's only been around for roughly 70 years compared to the backdrop of many millenias. Democracy has been in America for well over a 100 years, so it has china beat.

>Democracy has been in America for well over a 100 years, so it has china beat.

If we're going to play this game: 243 years to be more precise. While communism as a nascent ideology was only invented in 1848... (that's 171 years). 97 years in place as an established government if you count what the USSR called communism as such...and yes ~70 years since the end of the Chinese Civil war.

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#56

Post by moftz »

w_s_l wrote: post #34
moftz wrote: post #13

China is really betting on the media coverage helping the pro-China side. They control the narrative and the discussion in official channels but that doesn't mean they control everything. Hong Kong is insular enough that they could become something like Taiwan, de facto independent. I don't see major revolution in Beijing happening anytime soon.

im quite surprised that they would be willing to take such a risky bet. but after seeing Crimea get a pass from the West, more and more countries with authoritarian regime have become emboldened further more with the US in political disarray. It appears that the leadership's patience has run out and it is nervous that it will spread to other cities like Wuhan, in which there's currently a massive protest ongoing. Thi…

Very little news coverage on the Wuhan protests. Maybe it's not as big as it seems. Although all it takes for a revolution to start is for everyone to realize that everyone else is not happy with the situation. You can point to protestors and say "look at how unruly and dangerous these people are" but that image of protestor being beaten up could just be enough to embolden some people. If someone out there is willing to get beaten up for their ideals, those ideals must be pretty important to them.

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#57

Post by CogitoCogito »

underthebus wrote: post #31
CogitoCogito wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look you’re just repeating the same nonsense they are. I don’t even blame you. You’ve heard it so often so that it must be true. The PRC has never governed Taiwan. The ROC hasn’t governed the mainland for close to 70 years. They have separate militaries, currencies, and separate international relations. Hell they even trade with each other. They are two separate countries regardless of what either sides political cla…

> Look you’re just repeating the same nonsense they are. I am describing the historical reality. I think the point of HN is to be able to do that without receiving insults in return. > They are two separate countries regardless of what either sides political claims. They are of course are de facto separate states. This does not change a thing to my previous comment. 'China' is made of the mainland and Taiwan, like 'G…

> I am describing the historical reality.

No you’re really not. The PRC and the ROC are two separate countries with (extremely large border disputes). Everything else is just propaganda. There is a landed region vaguely referred to as “China” made up of land that one time or another contained the mainland as well as Taiwan. That region is not a “country” today and is definitely not represented by either the PRC or the ROC regardless of what the acronyms stand for.

> I think the point of HN is to be able to do that without receiving insults in return.

I didn’t insult you. I called your argument nonsense. I mean that literally and it is true. You are parroting old propaganda that there is “one China” which was first put forward by the ROC when it was a member of the UN and trying to assert its claims to the mainland. That propaganda continued to be used by the PRC attempting to make similar claims. But it can’t hide the fact that they are two countries and that propaganda simply makes no sense. Hence the “nonsense” of your argument.

> Really, the mistake of the PRC is to have prevented the use of the official name of what Taiwan is as a state: The Republic of China. That would have nipped all those "Taiwan v. China" narratives in the bud.

I have no idea what this refers to. The ROC refers to itself the “Republic of China”. It considers itself a state.

The real mistake of the PRC is the one it continues to make: not accepting reality and stopping it’s interference in the ROC’s international relations (including its blocking of admittance is the ROC to the UN). It was a farce when the ROC kept the PRC out of the UN and it’s a farce now.

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#58

Post by CogitoCogito »

taobility wrote: post #46
ericd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure those other countries were/are internationally recognized as being separate countries.

can you give a list?

> can you give a list?

It’s not totally clear to me what you’re referring to, but East and West Germany and North and South Korea were (are in the Korean case) separate countries by any sane meaning.

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#59

Post by dang »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #28
underthebus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The PRC has never governed Taiwan yet essentially no governments call their imperialism what it is and tacitly accept their “unification” language. Taiwan is internationally recognised as being part of China. What happened is that the Chinese government of the time fled there during the civil war. The communists founded the PRC and the ROC government kept control of Taiwan. Since then the question has been who to r…

Look you’re just repeating the same nonsense they are. I don’t even blame you. You’ve heard it so often so that it must be true. The PRC has never governed Taiwan. The ROC hasn’t governed the mainland for close to 70 years. They have separate militaries, currencies, and separate international relations. Hell they even trade with each other. They are two separate countries regardless of what either sides political cla…

This comment breaks the site guidelines by name-calling and crossing into personal attack. Would you please review them and stick to the rules when posting here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Note that they include: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Re: China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger

#60

Post by hker »

underthebus wrote: post #22
CountSessine wrote: post #15

It's kind of fascinating how important the defacing of the national insignia is in the reporting in China. An authoritarian government like China's has no real mandate - they have no right to be running the country and no legitimacy that can be claimed. They're a bunch of men that the army listens to. They have the guns and the power and that's it. With such a government, symbols and flags are the proxies for legitim…

Patriotism and nationalism are strong in China and this is not because of the government. In fact the government is an expression of this, not the cause. China was attacked, invaded, humiliated from the end of the 18th century until 1945. This is what created a reaction that led to the collapse of imperial rule and to the rise of the modern parties (Nationalists and Communists). The communist government did manage to…

> Patriotism and nationalism are strong in China and this is not because of the government. In fact the government is an expression of this, not the cause.

> China was attacked, invaded, humiliated from the end of the 18th century until 1945. This is what created a reaction that led to the collapse of imperial rule and to the rise of the modern parties (Nationalists and Communists).

For a discussion of the birth of nationalism and patriotism in China, see this Chinese article [1] by Wai Kin Chung 鍾偉健.

Like anything in social science, nationalism–including the Chinese one–is a social construct. The nationalism of China, in particular the term 中華民族 Zhonghua minzu, was first coined towards the end of the 19th century [1], and before that China was much more receptive of people of different ethnicity: in the past dynasties many famous poets and generals were of a different race. More precisely, Chinese back then didn‘t care much about differing ethnicities, but they care about differing cultures. The Chinese nationalism (esp. stressing the humiliation by foreigners) was socially constructed near the end of the last dynasty (Qing) in China, and clearly played an important role to its demise, in the way you pointed out.

For comparison, Japan or Germany do not stress their defeat and humiliation by the Allied power for their nationalism, because their source of legitimacy is democracy.

[1]: https://gushi.tw/you-are-also-chinese/

> (Nationalism) This is a real source of legitimacy.

Exactly, completely agree.

Xi, like his predecessors, is trying to equate the party with the nation (mostly the Han race) to fuel this modern Chinese nationalism for legitimacy, and the latest attempt is a revival nationalism called Chinese dream [2]. In the last decade, a main source of legitimacy for CCP was fast GDP growth, but this source is drying up quickly due to excess production, unsustainable credit expansion, and aging population. So Xi is trying to promote another source of legitimacy for CCP in case the economy is not performing well, again stressing 中華民族 Zhonghua minzu or effectively the Han race and their humiliation by foreigners, as you elaborated.

[2]: https://www.eurasiareview.com/08122018-the-contours-of-xis-c...

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