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Information operations directed at Hong Kong

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Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#421

Post by tremon »

echevil wrote: post #401
qtplatypus wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it about exposure to the US that will make someone more pro the Chinese government?

Plenty of reasons. To begin with, seeing how biased the Western media are when they report anything related to China is both appalling and disappointing. The impression of what average American has about Chinese government, Chinese people and their relation is light years away from reality. Moreover, people immigrating to US from China tends to be more pro-democracy than average Chinese, but we got disillusioned afte…

Out of curiosity, when you're talking about "Western media" do you mean only US-based outlets, or do the European outlets (excluding the English rags) have the same effect?

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#422

Post by powerapple »

dang wrote: post #409
powerapple wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly only comment on China related articles, with a pro-China view. Sometimes I find it necessary to comment because it is rare to see pro-China comment here. I am definitely not state-sponsored, I might be brainwashed in your opinion, but definitely not getting paid for those comments, and those comments are from the bottom of my heart :) I don't really like to read political posts on Hacker News, I am mostly in…

I believe you, but it's against the site guidelines to use HN primarily for political battle (which includes nationalistic arguments), and it seems you have been doing so exclusively. We ban accounts for that, not because we think they're insincere, but because political flames will take over the entire site if we let them, and there's a big difference between accounts that use HN this way and accounts that use HN as…

Thanks. I will not comment any more on any topics from now on. I use Hacker News to follow what's going on in tech world, unfortunately I see there are more and more political posts these days. I generally only read without commenting (either others comment has reflected my view or I don't feel the need of commenting). It is just those posts so one sided made me wanting to comment. Since your request is clear, I will no longer comment. Just to make it clear, I am not intended to have political battle at all.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#423

Post by powerapple »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #418
powerapple wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care so much about Dalai Lama to be honest. I think religion has its place, but shouldn't be the center of stage. In my view, if you don't allow kids to vote before 18, why pushing religious view to them when they are young? I think that's more important to a person than political views. On personal level, I find religion is fundamentally exclusive (where you believe something is the ultimate truth), I think…

I understand but could you explain why the Chinese government freaks out so much about the DL when in fact he has such moderate views?

I am not the government, and I cannot take their position to explain this. But here is my naive thoughts: Chinese government are engineers. If there is a bug in a feature cannot be fixed, keep the feature out of the delivery until it is fixed. DL is the feature. Also no one is willing to take the risk of working on the bug, because you may fail your KPI. So every time a customer request this feature, we will scare them off, so that no one is requesting this any more. It is kind of coward, but it doesn't know how to deal with it. And politicians in west really like the influence of DL, his popularity can help them in their career, so they want to bring him up again and again. I guess that basically is what's going on. Does it really matter every time Chinese government freaks out?

I am been told by the moderator not to comment on political issues, mainly because although I use Hacker News for tech news, I do mostly comment on China issues (not many though), apparently it is against the community guideline. so I will not comment any more. For me, I have lost wills to read news, and Hacker News is the only thing I read in the morning before work, it is unfortunately there are more and more political topics here.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#424

Post by ksec »

spacehunt wrote: post #309
bobjordan wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the case of Hong Kong, the ideals at risk here are the right to self-governance." American here using a VPN from China, not an operative. My view after 10 years in China with businesses in China and Hong Kong, is that it is useful to think about Hong Kong similarly to a USA state. It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get…

> It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get permission to enter Hong Kong. This is not 100% true. Setting aside the fact that not all permanent residents in Hong Kong are Chinese nationals, there have been many cases where people have been denied entry into mainland China. But this is a minor point compared to the next point…

>> So, its a state where the people living inside have all the benefits of being Chinese, with few of the downsides. As a native HKer this sounds very weird. I'm not sure how the previous point leads to this. Anyways, I know this is how it's portrayed in mainland China,

Which is where the problem is, even from an American living inside China believes HK is talking all the advantages without any downside. And just like you said this is how it is portrayed in China, and how majority thinks like this.

That was the the view [1] as shown in previous HN article.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#425

Post by ospider »

shawndrost wrote: post #337
ospider wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…

Really interesting to read about your perspective. Thank you for sharing. Quick follow-up question. Do you believe this [1] is a legitimate transmission from the CCP? What are your thoughts about it? [1] https://pincong.rocks/article/3572

It could be true.

The Publicity Department of CCP or its branches did issue files like this one in the past. However, posts on this site are all blindly anti-CCP, which make me doubt the legitimacy of this file. Also, there is a mistake in this file, 三(three) was used twice.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#426

Post by ospider »

LilBytes wrote: post #364
Aeolun wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly it is an alternative to democracy. It’s existed more or less successfully for some 80 years now. The question is if it’s really a place any of us (who grew up in a democracy) would want to live. The ethos of the CCP is just fundamentally incompatible with my own worldview, even though I can admit to their effectiveness so far. I’m not really willing to accept the existence of such a country in my world either…

Yes, totalitarian dictatorships are a literal alternative to Democracy, though I feel we're nitpicking on the semantics of my words here. When I say I don't see Totalitarian Dictatorships as an alternative, I don't mean in the literal sense, I mean in the viable sense. In the literal sense, yes, it's an alternative to Democracy. As is building a house on sand is a literal but not viable alternative to building a hous…

Speaking of documentaries, I would recommend BBC's The People's Republic of Capitalism [1].

[1]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtf2H4YrYVw

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#427

Post by ksec »

ospider wrote: post #237
ryanchankh wrote: post #22

HongKonger here. I have some friends in China posting similar anti-protest posts on WeChat social media. It's like the news they read has a completely different story than what it's being told in legitimate new sources. The problem of fake news does become very apparent, and I hope people in China can eventually gain awareness or at least start to question the validity of their news sources.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…

>Most westerners and HongKongers on Hacker news have a very extreme political view, you just believe "democracy is good"(TM),

That is not true. I used to dislike Democracy, and some what Pro Authoritarianism when I was young. It is how you get things done. Until you grow old and have a much wider view to balance. Democracy is the worst form of government. It is not like we don't know what crap and shit democracy brings us. Constant arguing and struggle against one and other, but it is also the only one that works. It brings Order within Chaos.

Democracy is the only system that can contain two ( or more ) opposing force, and anyone will always have the Option to choose. Being able to choose is important. Freedom isn't about doing what you what, it is about having the option of saying No to things you don't want to.

The need for Democracy wan't obvious until you have been on the oppressed side.

Right now the option of saying No is slowly and gradually being taken away in Hong Kong.

>I think the protest is a result of economic regression in HK

Yes and No. First there isn't any economic regression in HK. Second it is the wealth inequality that is the highest in any developed nation, and the 2nd part cant be solved without having a government that work with Hong Kong people, not against it.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#428

Post by LilBytes »

chrischen wrote: post #377
LilBytes wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, totalitarian dictatorships are a literal alternative to Democracy, though I feel we're nitpicking on the semantics of my words here. When I say I don't see Totalitarian Dictatorships as an alternative, I don't mean in the literal sense, I mean in the viable sense. In the literal sense, yes, it's an alternative to Democracy. As is building a house on sand is a literal but not viable alternative to building a hous…

China is not a totalitarian dictatorship.

No?

Definition:

Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#429

Post by spacehunt »

xster wrote: post #360
spacehunt wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get permission to enter Hong Kong. This is not 100% true. Setting aside the fact that not all permanent residents in Hong Kong are Chinese nationals, there have been many cases where people have been denied entry into mainland China. But this is a minor point compared to the next point…

> So, its a state where the people living inside have all the benefits of being Chinese, with few of the downsides. I also don't agree with that point but probably for different reasons. Hong Kong was simply straddled with a half oligarchic system nominally democratic but in actuality structurally setup to be unconcerned with the livelihood of the middle class. While the CCP is at least nominally held to be the stewa…

Another reason for the lack of economic reforms is that many people in Hong Kong have drunk the free market fundamentalism kool-aid for so long that they actually believe it's the reason for Hong Kong's past success. What ended up happening of course is that markets don't have level playing fields anymore.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#430

Post by whoevercares »

tremon wrote: post #421
echevil wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of reasons. To begin with, seeing how biased the Western media are when they report anything related to China is both appalling and disappointing. The impression of what average American has about Chinese government, Chinese people and their relation is light years away from reality. Moreover, people immigrating to US from China tends to be more pro-democracy than average Chinese, but we got disillusioned afte…

Out of curiosity, when you're talking about "Western media" do you mean only US-based outlets, or do the European outlets (excluding the English rags) have the same effect?

For me I was reading the Economists (through my uncle who works in publishing) in China since high school. My American foreign language teacher told me it’s too conservative. FWIW, it almost has the same effect
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