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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

#161

Post by proverbialbunny »

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…

Politics is an emotional thing. It's unfortunately also a selfish thing. Both aspects must be kept in mind when saying or doing anything if the topic is political or religious. (Or anything else guided by emotion.)

Positive reinforcement works best. Find something that will make them feel good, that also breaks their bad habits. In this case, specially the habit of taking in news sources that lie. This is far more difficult than it sounds.

Negative reinforcement / negative emotions, seems to only work when they agree with it. You can steer someone's thinking this way towards a positive path, but usually negative feelings are to be avoided at all costs. This includes talking about conflicting information.

So, for example, if I was in your situation, it may not be an ideal answer, but I might talk about the fairness doctrine and how much propaganda we have in the US. If they already believe we are biased, this will have a positive emotional response, because the facts are in agreement. The trick with this is talking about how in our news it used to be illegal to lie to people. By talking about the fairness doctrine you plant a seed of how things could be done -- a better way.

This will not change their views, but that seed will slowly grow into something much more months to years from now, because they'll start questioning their own news sources. This happens in part because explaining the fairness doctrine explains one way to guarantee the news is not biased. This is done by giving equal time to opposing views. The seed then becomes, "This news source isn't giving an opposing view along side it." and then it becomes, "Maybe I should look at multiple news sources to get an honest take." Though, usually it will be an acknowledgement of how fucked up it is, without the effort taken to learn the real truth. Either way, that imho is one of the few seeds you can plant that will open people's eyes.

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

#162

Post by yardie »

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.

I consider the 2 to be intertwined. If you are not free to pursue a better way of life, economic circumstances matter very little. The Arab Spring was sparked by a Tunisian street vendor having all his possessions confiscated by the local police. Out of frustration he set himself on fire.

Authoritarian regimes are rarely fair and are not particularly interested in the financial well being of the population.

> The finance industry is already planning to exit HK (too volatile), and China can kill the rest of their economy.

Businesses aren't leaving HK because of the volatility, they are leaving HK because Beijing is choosing the winners and losers. And they have decided that Beijing and Shanghai will be the financial capitals.

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

#163

Post by markus_zhang »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #141
markus_zhang wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It might be legitimate for a western people e.g. you may be used to get different laws in different levels of government, but it's utterly unthinkable for the Chinese. The fact that HK even keeps foreign judges and officials pretty much surprised a lot of Chinese.

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

#164

Post by markus_zhang »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #137
glbrew wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite as pessimistic as you regarding HK and Ukraine. In the short run, yes, the powerful people (China, Putin) will win. In the long run, will Putin and his cronies continue to have the economic power to strong arm all of Ukraine? I highly doubt it. In the long run will the CPC continue to pull 100m's in poverty into wealth while protecting their failing water systems, soil systems, international good will?…

Long term, if Ukraine succeeds, it'll be because of pragmatic politicians like Zelensky. Not because of anti-Russian fervor. And if HK and China do eventually become liberal democracies, it'll be because of gradual change within the Chinese government. I'm personally very optimistic about their long term prospects, I just think history has taught us that violent revolution or sudden change usually leads to negative c…

Sensible man.

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

#165

Post by cthalupa »

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

The Kent State shooting is taught in almost all high school history classes. Not sure how you missed it.

It's also a totally different scale - 4 vs. a number in the hundreds to thousands.

We don't even know the numbers for sure because it's been clamped down so massively, vs. Kent State, where we know exactly what happened.

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

#166

Post by beatle_sauce »

r3n wrote: post #142
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.

IMHO, the Chinese influence over the law system will damage HKs economy more than the protests in the long term. "Protests damaging HK" is a narrative that seems to be pushed in Chinese state media.

I recommend: https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/08/hong-kong-for-internati...

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

#167

Post by v-yadli »

dnautics wrote: post #99

One of my colleagues was a stanford-undergraduate, harvard-grad-school (at the time biochemistry postdoc) who grew up in china. He was somehow fed information that Muslims don't eat pork because they worship pigs. I tried to correct him but he was insistent that he was correct. An otherwise extremely intelligent human who had no difficulty reconciling conflicting evidence and information (e.g. in science)

Curious: how did you correct him? Also just FYI, the Muslim people live with Han people together in most areas of China (you can just go to about any cities in China and start sampling) and most Han people have learned to respect the Muslim religion, to not even talk about pigs, pork or even spam in front of them. I think the "worshiping pigs" misconception may just come as a result of good will trying to avoid embarrassment and conflicts and not talking about any of that at all, and thus the ignorance.

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

#168

Post by Mengkudulangsat »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #48
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…

It's worrying that our concept of extensive searching relies entirely on one advertising conglomerate.

Worry not! These days we also have Scihub, which is an absolute eye-opener for me as someone who never bothered with research papers before.

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

#169

Post by dragonsh »

cthalupa wrote: post #144
dragonsh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gover…

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

Its clear from the videos of protest supporters and media outlet without China's influence like BBC, CNN, The Guardian that there was violence in the protest (not small enough to be ignored). This is just deflecting the reality to create confusion.

Hong Kong is China according to handover and follows "Chinese Nationality Law" except for the provisions defined in "Basic Law" which differentiate part of two systems for 50 years. So people who accepted it stayed back and those who couldn't went to either Canada, UK or some other destination. The funny part is many returned back [1][2][3], when it didn't work out for them economically or culturally in those places.

Now the situation is very different, the long term prospect of cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou looked better than Hong Kong which largely moved to worse especially in housing. This discontent when there is no visible better future prospects descended into protests conflating many issues. If protests only targeting the real primary reason of economics and future prospects, it might not have divided society.

Hong Kong has always been about trade, economics and money. British kept it the same without granting freedom or democracy, China to fulfill the provisions of Basic Law granted autonomy (indeed more autonomy in policy making compared to when it was a British colony), but not outright democracy which is not part of the Basic Law or Handover.

[1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1...

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/hk.returnees...

[3] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19438776/ns/world_news-asia_pacifi...

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #130
markus_zhang wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Actually discussing the leaders doesn't do anyone any good. For one, how do you know the things you being fed are real? And what are you going to do if it's real/not real? Just venting? If you don't like the leadership, there are plenty of other ways to improve that, but talking is the cheapest.

And that all sounds well and good to most people, until it's their dad who the leaders decide should be shipped off to a re-education camp. But it's too late at that point; even if I go around yelling to everyone that my dad's not a terrorist, they know just as well as I once did that yelling at government leaders means I'm a cheap agitator with nothing better to do.

[deleted]
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