Whips in the soul.
A Walk in Hong Kong
191–200 of 398 posts
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#192> The protesters learned in 2014 that having leaders was a weakness. Once the leadership was arrested, the heart went out of the occupy movement, and it lost momentum. So in 2019, there is no leadership at all.
Another thing that's similar with the (still ongoing) Yellow Vests in France.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that democracy and freedom are somehow foreign to Chinese people and can't work in their culture is a myth peddled by the CCP to serve their own interests. Democracy and freedom are flourishing in Taiwan. They are flourishing in South Korea (who aren't Chinese but whose traditions are no more democratic than China's). They're doing OK in Japan. "The Chinese point of view" is an ambiguous term that the CCP us…
I think you may not realize this, but you've been brainwashed by western propaganda (I grew up in the west, but I've been exposed to many different countries, so I understand this better now). The idea that "freedom" is the freedom for society to be controlled by large corporations and the wealthy is not the only notion of freedom, and many prefer a technocratic / meritocratic society over a plutocratic one. I think…
True freedom exists at the personal, inner level, each individual must earn it for themselves. How little Americans personally value the kind of external (political) freedom which they talk up as the absolute good and sacred can be observed in the 10% ish turn out rates in cities like NY and SF, as well as in how everyone tries to get out of jury duty as much as they can.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that "the other culture" is some sort of inscrutable, mysterious entity that's completely alien to any kind of understanding or bridging by foreigners is a common talking point of authoritarian, nationalistic and/or warmongering rhetoric. It allows to make a number of points, such that foreign country X is the enemy, immigrants from country Y could never integrate, critics from foreign country Z should shut…
> The idea that "the other culture" is some sort of inscrutable, mysterious entity that's completely alien to any kind of understanding or bridging by foreigners is a common talking point of authoritarian, nationalistic and/or warmongering rhetoric. Damn straight! Beijing just wants to rile up Hong Kong into defeating themselves, presumably so someplace closer to Beijing becomes a more powerful trading post. No other…
HK youth getting Cambridge Analytica'd for the sake of the trade war by the usual actors.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anyone else is open to the other point of view, I could use some help. I'm struggling a lot at the moment with how little relevance seems to be given to how significant HK was in defining China's modern identity. How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium t…
Hong Kong and the greater area around it has its own identify as well. That is, they are mainly Cantonese Chinese, a sub-culture, complete with their own dialect and variation of the writing system, plus their own takes on Chinese culture. Especially in Hong Kong where it's been better preserved because they skipped the Cultural Revolution and other influences from the CCP, taking the good parts from the British inst…
I'm troubled to disagree with your comment, because I usually get so little feedback to such opinions and also it makes it look like I'm CCP stooge. So I should add that I'm British, I just lived in China for a year.
Your comment really worries me though, because it seems to me you're conflating the subculture of Guangdong with the culture of Honk Kong, perhaps in an attempt to make a tenuous argument that it is in fact Guangdong, like Taiwan, of which HK is but a tiny part, that desires independence. I think that's dangerously disingenuous to suggest that HK's current political consensus is but a facet of the wider Guangdong region's political sensibilities. I don't see any evidence whatsoever to suggest that what has happened in HK would not have also happened to any other port on the cost of China. HK wants independence because it took on the subculture of Britain not Guangdong.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main negative driver in asian societies is shame, while the main one in "western" societies is guilt. And yes, both emotions are often at the root of street violence.
What would you say is the difference? Isn't guilt just a form of shame that is consciously acknowledged?
I could be splitting hairs, but to me, guilt is established by another party, and something you may or may not recognize, whereas shame is mostly sourced internally. Someone, including the government, my employer, and other people, can declare me guilty of something. I also can admit guilt, but its not required. Shame on the other hand is something that only exists if I personally feel it.
I do agree with the notion that this may be somewhere close to one of the major differences between Western and some Asian societies (I'm thinking of Japan primarily, as that is what I have experience with, so this may not extrapolate to other Asian cultures). In Japan, I was shocked at the low crime rates. I could leave my bike unlocked pretty much anywhere and not worry about it being stolen. They leave vending machines on random alleyways everywhere with no fear that someone will break into them. Crime in general is just so much lower, despite opportunity potentially being much higher. Additionally, streets are so much cleaner than American cities. People don't defecate on the sidewalk. They clean up after their animals. Public transportation is clean and reliable and you aren't going to be screamed at by a homeless person. I think a lot of this comes from the fact that Japanese culture has a strong element of shame attached to people who transgress societal rules. In Western countries, the emphasis is more on guilt, which leads more to a culture of "getting away with what I can", and "its only a problem when I get caught". We litter more. We steal more. We are more violent. We tend to put less effort into our jobs.
Of course there are flip sides. I think the strong sense of shame and societal responsibility in cultures like Japan's also leads to more mental health issues, higher suicide rates and societal isolation. Tougher work environments and cultures. Sometimes a stronger apprehension towards challenging the status quo. I'm not sure if one is more ideal than the other. I'm personally a big fan of the societal cohesion that seems to exist in Japanese culture, but I have friends who found it stifling and sterile.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anyone else is open to the other point of view, I could use some help. I'm struggling a lot at the moment with how little relevance seems to be given to how significant HK was in defining China's modern identity. How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium t…
> But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war... This is somewhat also the case for Hongkong although I think many in Hongkong migrated there for simple economic reasons.
Yes, so I think you're supporting my point right?
Of course HK would be a haven for anti-CCP refugees and in in the last few decades that has come to be an important part of HK's identity. But that doesn't change the facts surrounding the inception of HK as merely a British-held asset to ensure the continued extraction of financial wealth from an Opium-addicted mainland China.
Of course I'm not trying to justify the Chinese aggression, I'm just trying to understand why so few people seem interested in going beyond the "China Bad" stereotype and really actually try to understand the context of China's motivations.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually I don't think so. It is much more than losing face. Losing sovereignity in East Asian countries, where nationalism is hyper active, is an attack directly on national identity. The Chinese government now will cease to exist if it yields to independence demands from any of the separationist region. The nationalistic education has been ingrained into society at large, something nobody dares to question.
Losing sovreignity is the country scale version of losing face.
Like what happened when HK was stolen by invaders. The over-correction in response is to be expected, regardless of how delayed it might seem.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is some serious “too interested in seeing if you could, and not stopping to wonder if you should” content. What possible positives are there in exploring how to de-anonymize people whose life and freedom requires anonymity, and who are fighting the good fight?
Telling those people how to improve their privacy before Beijing did this.
That's a boneheaded excuse: if the comment was about improving privacy it would be highlighting mitigation strategies, not focussing on exploiting potential vulnerabilities.
Re: A Walk in Hong Kong
#200I am in Verona (Italy) at this time, and I'm in a hotel where some tourists from Shanghai happen to be as well. I'm alone, so I hang out in the lobby a lot. I just engaged in some small talk with some of those tourists, and the discussion somehow shifted to the Hong Kong protests. Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. They don't seem to say that the chinese way…
^^ CCP Propaganda Alert. This account was created 7 days ago and this is its only comment.