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Re: China

#371

Post by hkmaxpro »

Aperocky wrote: post #216
ilamont wrote: post #43

Xi's in a trap. The nationalist fervor that the CCP has whipped up for decades, coupled with the demonization of the HK protestors by Chinese media and Xi's 'no compromise' stance, makes it impossible for him to lighten up -- and the protests to de-escalate -- without him seeming weak. The HK protestors/population at this point are so angry and the radical wing so large, that they won't willingly de-escalate. Even if…

Both the west and China omit information when reporting about HK. China highlights protester violence, the west talk about police. The only difference is that west is doing it voluntarily. If you step back and think about it, if this protest were to happen in the US, with subways burned, shops destroyed, road blocked, for 6 months. What is going to happen? Compare this hypothetical scenario with what happened in Hong…

> If you step back and think about it, if this protest were to happen in the US, with subways burned, shops destroyed, road blocked, for 6 months. What is going to happen? Compare this hypothetical scenario with what happened in Hong Kong.

If the same protests happened in the US, with a quarter of the population marching peacefully on June 16 (as it did in Hong Kong), the government has to immediately respond to its people’s demands, for otherwise the current government will lose in landslide in the next election. And all the subway burning, shops destruction, etc will be avoided — these events happened at least three months into Hong Kong protests in September, long after the mega march on June 16.

Thank you for pointing out Hong Kong has no genuine democracy, which is directly related to one of the five key demands.

Re: China

#372

Post by cayblood »

baby wrote: post #157
spacehunt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media in China is also heavily censored and manipulated. There are quite a few in mainland China who understands what's going on here in Hong Kong, but most buy into the state propaganda and wants us exterminated for being "separatists" and "traitors of the Chinese race."

There’s a lot of mainland people in the US who think the western medias are all biased and that they are helping HK to separate from China.

Several highly-educated Mainland China associates and colleagues have shared such thoughts with me and expressed general disdain for the HK protestors.

Re: China

#373

Post by CharlesColeman »

koube wrote: post #345
CharlesColeman wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information. No, sorry. It's not that clean cut. Your links had economists stating things like "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports." But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intense…

> "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports." This is a description of a property or behavior of a system. > But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement This would be apolitical in all but the most semantic of arguments. "Buying the things I want to buy" is assumed to be a good thing by the vast majority of people.

>> But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement

> This would be apolitical in all but the most semantic of arguments. "Buying the things I want to buy" is assumed to be a good thing by the vast majority of people.

That's a myopic view: it's not the only good thing, and it's arguable that it's not even the most important good thing. The politics are embedded in the shape of the myopia.

Re: China

#374

Post by foresto »

novok wrote: post #129

I don't think that the cheaper goods that China gave the world only benefited the %1, and actually has helped a lot people in america and the world. I also don't think that the economic miracle that has happened in China is a bad thing, and they could of been more singaporean/south korean authoritarian vs. genocidal authoritarian to achieve it. I really want china to become another Japan or Korea eventually. I do agr…

> I don't think that the cheaper goods that China gave the world only benefited the %1, and actually has helped a lot people in america and the world.

Extreme wealth inequality is making life difficult for many, many people today. Cheap goods from China make it easier for them to tolerate this situation, and therefore less likely to take action to change it. One view of this would be that cheap goods are helping people. Another would be that cheap goods help the wealthy elite to continue unchallenged, furthering wealth inequality over time, and making overall quality of life much worse for everyone else in the long run.

Re: China

#375

Post by throwaway34241 »

codingslave wrote: post #33
mc32 wrote: post #2

>”It’s economically productive for the 1% to maintain a trade relationship with China. The financial incentives don’t help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship...” So true, since its inception with GHW, its execution and realization through Clinton and then once fully engaged the timid, supplicant responses from GW and BO, China has contributed to the stagnation of the blue collar work…

I am still shocked by how many people do not give Trump credit for putting China on the political issue radar. Both sides of the aisle were destroying the American economy and middle class, and literally no one was talking about it. The guy has issues, and even if he fails in his endeavors, he brought trade and immigration into the national conversation. For all we know, he saved the USA

Because automation is an even bigger factor in the decline of manufacturing jobs than China. Because focusing on China specifically will not lead to outsourced jobs coming back to the US when there are many, many other countries with cheap labor (many cheaper than China at this point). Because even if you banned foreign trade altogether, automation would probably happen 10x faster since then the incentives would be so high. Because manufacturing has many steps, and sometimes the US is in the middle (buy steel from China, make motorcycle, sell to Europe) and lack of access to trade can put these jobs in jeopardy. Because even if by some miracle all these issues disappear, manufacturing is a small percent of employment so you don't fix the problems for the rest of the middle/lower class.

Because the expenses that are killing us (housing, health care, education) aren't outsourced at all.

As far as I can tell (and according to most economists), the idea that "we can fix the middle class by going after China trade" is intuitive, simple, and wrong. And it's popular on both sides of the aisle. And historically, it's always been easier to find some group to blame than to fix structural economic issues.

So I think the further we go along this path, the less likely it is we will end up fixing our actual problems, and the more likely countries will be distracted by trade wars and maybe real wars in various parts of the world as those problems increase, and various groups are blamed instead of fixing economic policy.

This is separate from the human rights issues. But I think if we want to put penalties to try to address the human rights issues, we should be clear about that. Because if the penalty is for other political reasons it doesn't add an incentive to improve human rights, since that wouldn't make the penalty go away.

Re: China

#376

Post by jeffdavis »

iandanforth wrote: post #290
jeffdavis wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no moral equivalence between China's totalitarianism and the U.S. China is worse by orders of magnitude both in degree and kind. Comparing the two is just an excuse to do nothing. In the meantime, feel free (pun intended) to protest misdeeds by the U.S., vote for new leaders, organize with like-minded individuals, or buy weapons. (Aside: many people feel like buying weapons is completely futile against oppres…

Meta: I think the rhetoric of humility is more powerful here. "We are not perfect, but we can't stand by. We have sins of our own that we are trying to rectify, but we cannot allow what you're doing." The flaw in mutual criticism without admission of guilt is that saying "we're good" even in comparison is so obviously self-serving that it gives your opponent a trivial excuse to dismiss you.

Americans are admitting our flaws, constantly. And when we do that, we don't compare ourselves to China to divert the issue. But debates about China always end up with this diversion into US flaws.

Re: China

#377

Post by dang »

Aunche wrote: post #246
a13n wrote: post #182

Hey mods is there a particular reason this post is being penalized? As of writing it's #22 with 400 points in 1 hour, while #5 has 119 points in 3 hours.

I noticed this happens to a greater extent the further the post is about tech. For example, opinions about the Damore memo got over a thousand upvotes, but disappeared off the front page in a few hours.

I'd beware of drawing general conclusions about HN or HN moderation from examples that stand out to you. Which particular examples stand out are going to be highly conditioned by what you're already interested in and/or feel strongly about. (I don't mean you personally, but everyone.) That tends to lead to erroneous conclusions—and people who feel the opposite way derive the opposite erroneous conclusions.

Based on how we work as moderators, I'd say it happens to a lesser extent the further the post is about tech—but that's not really what we're looking for either way. What we're looking for is topics that are intellectually interesting and can support intellectually curious discussion. Topics that have already been debated to death are much more likely to get penalized whether they're about tech or not. Initial discussions about the Damore thing spent much time on HN's front page, just like the Snowden thing in 2013, and the Stallman thing a few years later.

Why do we tend to penalize topics that have already been debated to death, unless a story contains significant new information? Because curiosity withers under repetition and people's responses become predictable. In other words, moderating this way is a simple consequence of intellectual curiosity being HN's organizing principle. That's the one thing we optimize for in everything we do here.

Even with all that, I'd say we barely get by in terms of having an intellectually curious site—but there are so many strong forces acting against it, that barely getting by is probably the best one can do. From the beginning, the idea of HN has been to stave off decline for as long as possible. I've always liked that goal, as it seems modest enough to have a chance.

Re: China

#378

Post by account73466 »

hohohmm wrote: post #228
kick wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News Guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys intellectual curiosity, the value of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How else to turn HN guys to do illegal and/or immoral privacy-related things if not to make them feel that they are doing the right thing?

Re: China

#379

Post by ThisIsBrilliant »

dang wrote: post #294
ThisIsBrilliant wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar or use HN primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I know you very well, you specifically only target pro-trump posters. You have NEVER ever said anything to anti-trump baiters.

Re: China

#380

Post by [deleted] »

echelon wrote: post #87
spectramax wrote: post #22

Liberal societies, such as the Bay Area (where I live), it’s impossible to criticize anyone without having the doubt of “offending” someone. When it comes to China, I can’t go out in the lunch room and openly criticize CCP because you know, I could “offend” a Chinese National. This needs to stop. I see this behavior on HN, which is frustrating, counterproductive, anti-free speech and extremely left-winged. Another pr…

You're being downvoted for expressing a contrarian viewpoint. This kind of censorship isn't even targeting hate speech, and it drives me crazy. Why downvote them?

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