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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

#181
post #54
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A democracy has to tolerate differences in opinion.

no, it doesn't. Like literally the purpose of a democracy is to establish government by norms and the establishment of those norms as laws. A democracy exists explicilty to bound law making within a set range of socially acceptable public disourse. To expend a strawman, Jeffrey Epstein seems to think sexual acts with human beings this country views as unable to consent - that is a difference in opinion, but he ended…

You seem to fail to grasp the difference between belief and behavior. Believing that what Epstein did is OK is a belief. Doing what Epstein did is an action.

That said, tolerance of differing opinions exist on a continuum and no perfectly tolerant society exists.

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

#182
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You know Taiwan and Korea are successful democracies right? Why do you think people choosing their leaders is a western attribute? The PRC itself is even ostensibly run by the people (it obviously isn't).

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, your suggestion is that change should be organized without talking about it, did I understand that right? Gee, the authoritarian brainwashing really is strong with you.

No. You misundertood. Changes cannot be achieved by simple talking. You have to complain and do things if it doesn't work. BTW I agree with peaceful protesters.

> You misundertood.

Quoting you:

> Actually discussing the leaders doesn't do anyone any good.

So: No, I didn't.

> Changes cannot be achieved by simple talking.

Yes, they can. And are. Constantly.

> You have to complain and do things if it doesn't work.

No. For one, many things can be changed by talking, and talking only. But also, there is absolutely nothing wrong if someone only talks about things being bad where action besides talking is required to change things. It's neither morally wrong, nor is it useless, if your talking is what enables others to implement the changes.

What actually is completely useless is complaining about people only talking about a problem. Absolutely nothing useful can possibly come from that. But it's a common fallacy used by authoritarians and parroted by their followers, nothing particularly special to China. Which is the general impression I get from a lot of your arguments in this discussion: Tons of typical authoritarian fallacies the likes of which you would also hear from right-wing nationalists in "western countries".

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

#185
Something needs to be done about the poor assimilation of Chinese students on American campuses. We had a particularly bad incident at Penn State where the Chinese student association held a banquet, and performed a rap saying that “all Americans will soon call China daddy”.

https://supchina.com/2018/04/27/nationalist-chinese-rap-prov...

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

#187

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

Ya but see, you can post that and we can talk about it.

That's the difference.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You misundertood. Changes cannot be achieved by simple talking. You have to complain and do things if it doesn't work. BTW I agree with peaceful protesters.

> You misundertood. Quoting you: > Actually discussing the leaders doesn't do anyone any good. So: No, I didn't. > Changes cannot be achieved by simple talking. Yes, they can. And are. Constantly. > You have to complain and do things if it doesn't work. No. For one, many things can be changed by talking, and talking only. But also, there is absolutely nothing wrong if someone only talks about things being bad where a…

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

#189
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A summary of College Daily rebuttal to the piece: https://supchina.com/2019/08/21/college-daily-fires-back-at-...

I... don't see the rebuttal. There is no demonstration on inaccuracies in the original reporting, just a bunch of complaining about bias.

Biased reporting that selectively misrepresents Chinese perspectives and in this case, deliberate omissions to dismiss the publication as purveyor of fake news is crux to many Chinese complaints against western MSM. See all the Huawei 5G hit pieces from a nominally free 5th estate that somehow manages to replicate the manufactured consent of state propaganda. IMO people who lived under propaganda, especially journalists, editors or other media professionals are also equipped to identify it.

>The editor claimed that during their talks, he explained to Zhang how much effort the publication put into fact-checking and confirming references. But none of these went into the final piece.

> “In the profile, there is no mention of all the insight, knowledge, experience, and stories that I shared with her about the new-media industry. Instead, it made up some lies and criticized Chinese publications like ours for producing fake news.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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.

That's not a fair characterization at all. The distrust for police goes deeper[1] and even just looking at this year's protest it's not clear cut.

> British kept it the same without granting freedom or democracy

That's again wrong. British did give HK some democracy and definitely more freedom than what's currently given (at least in reality if not on paper)

> 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.

The recent protest started because China is not fulfilling the provisions of Basic Law

[1] https://qz.com/281108/is-hong-kongs-famed-rule-of-law-breaki...

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