Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by pas » Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #350

pas wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One success/failure story does not mean much. There are a lot of studies about how economic prosperity and democracy/liberalism went hand in hand in a lot of countries. And there are outliers, and the studies can be questioned, and so on. China rented out its workforce and a relatively enlightened but autocratic leadership made sure it works, they make a lot of money, and that they reinvest that. India never had such…

> don't forget how India slowly started to get rid of the caste system and other deep rooted inequality problems ... China spent no time with such sentimental stuff. You might be interested in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

I was mainly referencing the decades where the huge economic boom happened, basically/circa 1975-2005.

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

#372

Post by pas » Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

roboys wrote: post #304

pas wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One success/failure story does not mean much. There are a lot of studies about how economic prosperity and democracy/liberalism went hand in hand in a lot of countries. And there are outliers, and the studies can be questioned, and so on. China rented out its workforce and a relatively enlightened but autocratic leadership made sure it works, they make a lot of money, and that they reinvest that. India never had such…

Democracies are not as agile as they used to seem. The ability to move with conviction on short notice is an edge that the Chinese government has over Western nations.

I think it's not inherently Democracy's "fault". The problem is the currently prevailing fiscal and monetary culture is overly conservative.

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

#373

Post by pas » Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

age_of_stone wrote: post #358

pas wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, oppressive regimes usually favor the "people". in this case if you are Han Chinese and don't have any strange ideas (eg Falun Gong, democracy, liberalism), then you can get ahead pretty well. Otherwise not so much. See Xinjiang, Tibet, and so on.

believe or not, people in Xingjing and Tibet used to have more rights than Han Chinese. for example, they were allowed to have more than one children while Han Chinese were strictly not allowed the second child. it's much easier for Uighur and Tibetan students to go to prestigious colleges with lower scores. and so on. you name it. the government did that in hope of country unity.

"was". now it's not so.

and of course, the central power encourages integration, go to a university far from home, assimilate, etc.

And I have no problem with that on a fundamental practical level. But the reeducation camps, the constant aggressive in-your-face surveillance, the book confiscation, the history falsification, the other forms of very serious oppression is very real, and it is unacceptable.

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

#374

Post by bidluo » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 12:21 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #119

bidluo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend is the same, this Hong Kong issue has been quite the discussion point whenever something news worthy happens. I'm pretty sure some of my beliefs has been swayed by western propaganda but she believes China is not in the wrong here, she knows loosely about 1984 and is aware of what's happening with muslims but with HK she and a lot of my other mainland friends think the protesters are destroying everythi…

What does she think of Tiananmen Square?

Not really sure, it's a bit mixed. She knows about the event and people died but not the specifics like Tank Man, the APC pies, mowing down students at chokepoints etc She didn't know about the event until I told her so she probably doesn't have a strong opinion either way just knows it was bad. It's a hard subject to broach.

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

#375

Post by seppin » Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 7:05 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #349

seppin wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The millions in Xinjiang would like a word. Why do you spend your free time defending a brutal autocracy on the internet?

Because the truth is more important than making up lies to feel good about yourself? Also, let's talk about the "Land of the Free" for a moment... China's incarceration rate -- for crime -- is 118 per 100,000, for 1,649,804 total. Let's add the DOD claim that an extra 3m are held in re-education camps, and take that to 4.5m, which takes us to 308 per hundred thousand. The US figure is _655_, disproportionately poor p…

Mindless babble and whataboutism. I thought this website had more intelligent conversation..

Comparing an over-zealous drug incarnation against a political political concentration camp is just perfect. Every time I visit Europe I encounter similar lazy thinking from aging leftists and teenage anarchists.

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

#376

Post by cthalupa » Sun, Sep 01, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

amaccuish wrote: post #367

cthalupa wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, I forgot that America is the only country in the world where a certain number of people need to die by shooting for people to care, and that number has never been attained...

You're putting words in my mouth and totally misrepresenting my point.

I never said we shouldn't care about Kent State, nor have I said that it was unimportant.

What I said is that Tiananmen was several orders of magnitude worse, and while anyone in the US can look up Kent State and other horrible occurrences in their history books, many of them found in schools, or in any other place they'd like, people in China cannot look up the Tiananmen Square massacre.

I am replying to someone claiming that the US has done the same with Kent State as China has done with Tiananmen Square and that the events were equal to begin with. So if you can show me where the US has tried to cover up the fact that Kent State happened at even 1/1000th of the effort that China has gone through to cover up Tiananmen Square, or that the loss of human life between the two is similar, this might be a productive conversation.

In the mean time, you're responding to a point I never made and words I never said.