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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

#201

Post by seppin »

peteretep wrote: post #157
morpheuskafka wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government can throw you in into a re-education camp at a snap of their fingers, that's not economic prosperity in my book. Better to be poor and free than economically sufficient at the pleasure and whim of a dictator. The entire concept of economic prosperity is meaningless outside a free market with due process protections. If the government can take away your prosperity for no reason at all, it's purely ar…

> Better to be poor and free than economically sufficient at the pleasure and whim of a dictator Just how poor have you ever been?

How many years have you spent in jail as a political prisoner?

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

#202

Post by shkkmo »

aidenn0 wrote: post #53
msie wrote: post #18

We have the same problem with the extreme left and right in the US although I am more annoyed with the MAGA supporters out there.

This is what annoys me most with the political system today. If you are opposed to open borders then the left calls you racist. If you talk about anthropogenic global warming, the right accuses you of spreading fake news. Everything has become so partisan, nobody wants to cede even a millimeter of ground to the other side, so taking the most extreme position has become the norm in debate. It is strategic, (if you wan…

Partisanship in this country is a huge problem. It also has been deliberately encouraged by our leaders.

In a number of measures, the effects of partisan bias are much stronger than the effects of racial bias. [0]

[0] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/october/dems-gop-polariz...

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

AFascistWorld wrote: post #196
dirtyid wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 journali…

You are their target audience then. >how much effort the publication put into fact-checking and confirming references. Looks like you can read Chinese, so tell me if they do what say, why are there so many allegations of fabrication and plagiarism against this "self-media" on Chinese social media? EDITED.

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by _ptgt »

seppin wrote: post #193
Mikeb85 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what I've read, they genuinely understand that what is at stake is their freedom to choose their own path. Unfortunately that's not what's at stake because they won't succeed; freedom isn't actually an option. They think it is, but they'll fail. > Liberty is what they are fighting to keep. Not wealth. That might be what they tell themselves, but I can guarantee that if all the HK youth got cushy finance jobs l…

> if all the HK youth got cushy finance jobs like the previous generation, these protests would have never happened You are assuming HKers would sell their freedom to a tyrprican government in exchange for GDP growth the way mainland Chinese can. That's a big assumption.

It's not like mainlanders every really had a choice. Their own protests were crushed with tanks in 1989 and they've been relentlessly propagandized on everything from the papers to the schools to social media since then. I have zero doubts such strong propaganda efforts over decades would yield similar results on the vast majority Americans had it happened here.

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

#205

Post by cassbot »

cthalupa wrote: post #165
cassbot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm super glad it was taught in your high school history class!

I dug up my AP US History textbook and found that it was covered in half a sentence. So I guess this was how I missed it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/6x8Zfgh8HSuCbRdB8

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

#206

Post by supernova87a »

peteretep wrote: post #157
morpheuskafka wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government can throw you in into a re-education camp at a snap of their fingers, that's not economic prosperity in my book. Better to be poor and free than economically sufficient at the pleasure and whim of a dictator. The entire concept of economic prosperity is meaningless outside a free market with due process protections. If the government can take away your prosperity for no reason at all, it's purely ar…

> Better to be poor and free than economically sufficient at the pleasure and whim of a dictator Just how poor have you ever been?

Great question. I would guess the person stating the strong opinion above has never had it tested by being in those circumstances and seeing how far it holds.

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

#207

Post by 8bitsrule »

"For those us who grew up in a system where information control is all-encompassing, processing ideas contrary to what we were taught and believed all our lives is not easy."

Yeah, true. I grew up in the US version of that. It's all different now ... of course.

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

#208

Post by _ptgt »

mips_avatar wrote: post #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...

Any active assimilation efforts will almost certainly backfire and would be a massive civil rights infringement.

All immigrants, not just Chinese, tend to associate with their own ethnic subgroup in the US and always have. Time is the only real assimilator.

That said, the CCP does and will continue to actively attempt to influence Chinese living in America and the US needs to take a look at that.

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

#209

Post by dialpennteller »

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…

>Chinese people today have lived through an economic miracle

The so called 'economic miracle' fallacy only works if you ignore that it was the CCP who crippled the economic development of China.

Loosening your grip upon your victim's neck is not the same as performing the Heimlich maneuver. It doesn't make you a qualified doctor. The 'economic miracle' fallacy presents the strangler as the savior.

If we can agree that the Great Leap Forward was a regressive measure, then what of the One Child Policy? Is this not regressive and changing the terms of success? If you can not create positive economic outcomes for the majority of your population, shrinking your population is the same as moving the goal posts.

Ultimately it was not central planning which advanced the economic circumstances of Chinese people. It was the individual acts of citizens.

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

#210

Post by thedudeabides5 »

dragonsh wrote: post #169
cthalupa wrote: post #144

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…

Ok, and what if the people of Hong Kong just don’t want to be part of China anymore?

Independence movements are as old as the concepts colonialism and empire.

Why not expand the right of self-determinism to Hong Kong?

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