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Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

latimes.com

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Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#21

Post by wtdata »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #9
socrates1998 wrote: post #6

Chinese students should be allowed to think however they want, but their behavior is unacceptable in a western democracy. I am not sure that these international Chinese students are good for our universities. I feel like the universities sold out to them because they pay full price tuition. This is latest example of them not understanding even basic behavior in western country.

Wanting their rules to apply in a host country... yeah, that's not a good look. In contrast, we in the West never expect other countries to do it our way when we visit them... /s

It is weird then, that the all world wants (and feels entitled) to come through our borders and live under our western rules instead the other way around.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#22

Post by markus_zhang »

From my PoV, the protesters should target the big families instead of targeting the mainland government/people. I mean why give your support to anyone who blames you, and unjust-fully?

Let alone that many protesters are indeed violent...

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#23

Post by Joakal »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #13

Serious question: I've got a couple of mainland Chinese acquaintances on my social networks, who are real people but also busily spouting Chinese government propaganda. As the article says, I don't expect them to change their views overnight, but I would like to plant some seeds of doubt. Any suggestions for links to suitable content? (Ideally accessible from behind the GFW, although most can VPN outside it.) For exa…

Ask them to read many sources. Point out that it costs too much to manipulate many media.

Careful with asking this as you are risking their life and their family/friends: Ask them when they started hearing about the HongKong protests (China initially censored HongKong protests)? Are they aware that HongKong had been seeking democracy and/or independence for a long time even under UK rule? Have they read about Wukan Democracy experiment and Tiananmen Square (Both asked for democracy as a peaceful resolution)? If they do for either, are they aware of the list of demands from protestors (China has been trying to portray the events as destructive people and censor the demands).

All of this is on Wikipedia and many news websites. Which are censored in China for a good reason.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#24

Post by seppin »

deepVoid wrote: post #2

> When Chinese students step outside of China to study, they are struggling to adapt to a new education system, and are frequently confronted — in class, in daily life, and online — with assumptions that they have been “brainwashed by the Chinese government.” It makes some feel attacked and reaffirms what they were taught in China: The West is biased and hostile. Many Chinese people in the West still read the same pr…

> It makes some feel attacked and reaffirms what they were taught in China: The West is biased and hostile.

It's easier when you want to believe something, to believe it. No matter what the source is.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#25

Post by ccccppppp »

Or how many Russians don't understand why Ukraine for example is upset.

Is as if propaganda works. Who would have thought.

Once I was discussing with a Chinese colleague and the Tiananmen subject came up (it was in the news, I didn't bring it up), and he told me that the students were not that innocent either, that they killed 150 soldiers the night before. I asked him, how could some students with rocks kill 150 soldiers with machine guns, but he said it was true. As suspected, I couldn't find any reputable sources for this later when I did extensive googling.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#26

Post by iLoch »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #13

Serious question: I've got a couple of mainland Chinese acquaintances on my social networks, who are real people but also busily spouting Chinese government propaganda. As the article says, I don't expect them to change their views overnight, but I would like to plant some seeds of doubt. Any suggestions for links to suitable content? (Ideally accessible from behind the GFW, although most can VPN outside it.) For exa…

Actually I was trying to find a simple question, and I came across an example of the same sort of spouting of Chinese government propaganda. Check this out: https://www.quora.com/Are-children-in-China-taught-about-the...

I think it's interesting to ask people who are educated in China what they think about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For instance, what do they think about this photo? https://i.imgur.com/0zAQqAO.png

Though, this line of questioning may be met with hostility. So I suppose you could ask them why they're angry about evidence of a massacre of their own people.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#27

Post by appleiigs »

I had a similar experience chatting to my former coworker (who moved recently from China) regarding Taiwan. I said Taiwan is pretty much an independent country given it has it's own currency, military and democratic government. She looked at me like I was telling her the earth was flat. She was smart and good natured, and didn't have any opposing reasons, but she insisted Taiwan was simply another province of China.

Really made an impression on me. I bet most of my beliefs are baloney too, but I have no idea which ones they are.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#28

Post by iLoch »

Joakal wrote: post #23
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #13

Serious question: I've got a couple of mainland Chinese acquaintances on my social networks, who are real people but also busily spouting Chinese government propaganda. As the article says, I don't expect them to change their views overnight, but I would like to plant some seeds of doubt. Any suggestions for links to suitable content? (Ideally accessible from behind the GFW, although most can VPN outside it.) For exa…

Ask them to read many sources. Point out that it costs too much to manipulate many media. Careful with asking this as you are risking their life and their family/friends: Ask them when they started hearing about the HongKong protests (China initially censored HongKong protests)? Are they aware that HongKong had been seeking democracy and/or independence for a long time even under UK rule? Have they read about Wukan D…

I like this more than my own answer. Asking them if they understand the motivations of the protesters is an excellent line of questioning.

Re: Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

#30

Post by Mikeb85 »

I think a lot of people who were born in the west don't understand that, when you're very poor, economic circumstances matter more than political freedom. After all, having money (or not) affects what you can or cannot do far more than whoever's in charge.

Chinese people today have lived through an economic miracle. If I lived there I doubt I'd criticize their system, especially considering people still can remember worse times. For young Hong Kongers however, they didn't live during British rule. They were born into wealth, and now their own career prospects (like many millenials around the world) aren't great. So they protest.

The unfortunate thing is that they'll fail. The finance industry is already planning to exit HK (too volatile), and China can kill the rest of their economy. Rich HKers will leave. In the end, the protests will only hurt HK.

Occupy Wall Street didn't do anything, successive Ukrainian revolutions never lasted either. Ukraine is often cited: after the Orange Revolution, Yanukovych eventually came back to power. Poroshenko had his time, but lost in the biggest landslide in Ukraine's short history. Now Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, they're not in the EU, they're not in Nato, they lost Crimea, Donbass is at war, and while Zelensky can't possibly be any worse, there's no clear sign things will get better.

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