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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

#141

Post by NoodleIncident »

markus_zhang wrote: post #112
zwaps wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you imagine anyone do better? It is easy to see all the good things that happened in China in the last decades, and see the things that work. But I can very easily imagine a better government in China, much like I can do so for the US and in EU countries. The CCP is running literal concentration camps, is suppressing free speech, using (possibly) questionable economic measures, strongarming other independen…

I can't any imagine any other real government can do better. Sorry forgot to put real . I don't follow ideas unless it's actionable. You can imagine a lot of good things for sure, but won't be useful if not actionable. Like I said, it has its good and bad, but generally I think it's OK. I didn't say it's all good. Now let's look at the list: 1) Concentration camps and organ harvesting: I'm not going to argue about th…

> For example. the protesters in HK was not even put into prison for some of their violent actions, and if that's not enough I really can't say more.

I'm neither educated nor motivated enough to argue with most of this. But preventing China from punishing HK people according to China's laws is the _entire point_ of the protests, is it not?

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

#142

Post by r3n »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #30

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…

> In the end, the protests will only hurt HK.

I want to point out that Hong Kong people tried every way they can before this protest. They are aware the consequence.

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

#144

Post by cthalupa »

dragonsh wrote: post #138
tareqak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal experience as a person of Bangladeshi origin, a similar outlook and generational divide exists concerning the role of a job/career and the expectations one has of it with respect to an individual's happiness. Update: added my origin to narrow the scope of my comment.

This article paints 1.4 billion people with a broad brush. I have met personally highly talented and bright people in China like in many other nations. So I feel this is really not fine if you try to say they don't understand. The reason people in China do not agree with Hong Kong protestors is first about nationalism, they think Hong Kong protestors are attacking China's sovereignty and independence, indeed many put…

>If Hong Kong protestors just followed the path of non violence without attacking China's sovereignty or accepting that they are first Chinese citizen and showing their discontent, it would have been different.

I don't think it's clear that the protestors started the violence. Most reports seem to indicate otherwise.

I also don't know that it's reasonable to expect people who were born and raised in HK when the governance was different and without mainland influence to accept that they should just allow the PRC to change their way of life and rule of law.

And of course there is an economic aspect to it. But much of that is due to industries such as finance beginning to withdraw from HK - there is too much uncertainty there. Beijing has begun exerting influence long before they agreed to with the handover treaty, and there is a general fear that they will continue to accelerate this.

I don't see any way that the PRC loses this, however. International observers aren't going to step in, and the rich in powerful in HK will simply leave, as they have been.

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

#145

Post by tareqak »

dragonsh wrote: post #138
tareqak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal experience as a person of Bangladeshi origin, a similar outlook and generational divide exists concerning the role of a job/career and the expectations one has of it with respect to an individual's happiness. Update: added my origin to narrow the scope of my comment.

This article paints 1.4 billion people with a broad brush. I have met personally highly talented and bright people in China like in many other nations. So I feel this is really not fine if you try to say they don't understand. The reason people in China do not agree with Hong Kong protestors is first about nationalism, they think Hong Kong protestors are attacking China's sovereignty and independence, indeed many put…

I updated my comment to narrow the scope to my personal experience: I did not intend for my comment to apply to people outside of my personal experience. Sorry for the trouble.

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

#146

Post by AFascistWorld »

cassbot wrote: post #105
ccccppppp wrote: post #25

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 sol…

As a Chinese American, I've noticed that propaganda is everywhere and we all need to be wary of it. Tiananmen is often brought up, but did you know that the US experienced a parallel event? I didn't learn about this in US history class, but apparently soldiers fired upon unarmed student protesters in the Kent State shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Wow, don't know where you got your education, but that's some cheesy argument, it's not even worth wasting time to reason with you.

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

#147

Post by Ensorceled »

This actually reminds me of the conversations I had with a Cuban classmate. He explained it as a combination of propaganda and “elders” memory. His grandmother would always tell him about how bad it was before Castro and Communism and the government would be spreading propaganda about how great things were; it’s a potent combination.

I expect China is in the same place, things are so much better for the average Chinese citizen and the propaganda machine is running full tilt.

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

#148

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #30

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…

I think the protesters will offer a different slant. From what I've read, they genuinely understand that what is at stake is their freedom to choose their own path. They've watched as China has gradually taken control of the governing body, the media, the financial management and the police. Each transpired more or less over a number of years, but each was also worrisome and that worry and anxiety pent up. The trigger for the current mass-action was not an economic event, it was a judicial one: A new law was proposed that would enable any court in China to charge and then extradite a Hong Kong resident without checks by Hong Kong's judges. Effectively, it would mean that Hong Kong's judicial system was subordinate to China's judicial system, and therefore, did not have a judicial system at all.

There have been many foreboding events that portend the loss of liberty that Hong Kong residence fear. Liberty is what they are fighting to keep. Not wealth.

Addendum: The Chinese judicial system is as one with the communist party. It does not operate the same basic law that Western countries, and tenuously Hong Kong, operate. Under China's judicial system, people literally disappear for months or more with no information provided to family or employer. Many times, they never return.

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

#149

Post by jdietrich »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #30

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…

>when you're very poor, economic circumstances matter more than political freedom

It's more than that.

Back in the 70s, Westerners could very easily make the case that the USSR was corrupt, inefficient, hopelessly backwards and fundamentally organised in the interests of the state rather than the people. The evidence was abundant, even to Soviet citizens; any possible defence of the Soviet system was predicated on blind ideological faith or a tapestry of lies.

Contemporary China is a long way from perfect, but a Chinese citizen could quite legitimately make the case that their system is superior to Western democracy on a pragmatic level. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese people who grew up in squalid shacks with no running water but now have a lifestyle that is recognisably middle class. They're on the tail end of the longest and fastest period of economic growth in human history and they're still growing - we can quibble about the percentages, but their GDP growth figures are still spectacular. While many Westerners are struggling with homelessness due to a chronic shortage of housing, Western newspapers are writing about China facing a crisis due to building too many homes.

We're not talking about North Korea, we're talking about a political system that can be legitimately defended. It's not whataboutery for Chinese people to point out the manifold problems facing many Western democracies right now - there are advantages to democracy, there are advantages to Communism with Chinese Characteristics and there's no prima facie case for the superiority of either that relies solely on pragmatism rather than ideology.

If Westerners want to promote democracy in China, their arguments will need to get a whole lot more sophisticated. Why is political and social liberty really so valuable? Why are the rights of the individual more fundamental than the rights of society as a whole? Why should troublemakers be allowed to destabilize society with impunity? Given the current political climate, finding better answers to those questions might also prove rather valuable domestically.

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

#150

Post by shkkmo »

markus_zhang wrote: post #98
Joakal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's none. That's why people rely on elections and news to hear about events even if they are not favourable to the government. Better informed people can then keep the bastards honest. When you don't have either, what can you do about it?

We do have both. The election doesn't work the same way as in other countries, but I'd be lying if I say there is none. For the news, you can find quite a lot of news that are not favorable to the government on weibo/wechat if you read Chinese. I don't fully agree with censorship (they do serve some good I must say that), but it's not black and white. I'm also very pessimistic about "better-informed" people. Receivin…

> I'm also very pessimistic about "better-informed" people. Receiving news from different sources doesn't make you just. You can't receive A and B and just average them.

... you don't average them. You use critical thinking to evaluate the information with regards to its sources, their agendas and integrate those sources. When there are contradictions you try to understand why.

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