It was very clever of China to tighten their grip on Hong Kong while the world is distracted with the pandemic, and the US is further distracted with its own issues. Well played. I hope it backfires on them.
Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
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Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#12How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don't exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don't see how they can keep a lid on this long term.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#13It was very clever of China to tighten their grip on Hong Kong while the world is distracted with the pandemic, and the US is further distracted with its own issues. Well played. I hope it backfires on them.
Very much it,
But even before that, your usual club of rogue nations worked ceaselessly to keep moving Western red lines, and eroding West's resolve while 18 Western Alliance armies were merrily bombing men with flintlock rifles in the middle of nowhere.
This issue absolutely did not appear overnight.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#14"Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." - Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings. Heinrich Heine
What do you say about classic literature being banned from classrooms because people were unable to see the content in the context of the time it was written?
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#15Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.
I’m sorry but this is childish thinking. These companies do not have whatever values you are attempting to impute to them, they just don’t. They just make money. So they issued some statements, big whoop.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#16The world has already spoken: Money is more important than human rights.
The Moloch from the Slate Star Codex has spoken. As a corporation you can support human rights but you'll get outcompeted by the less scrupulous actors.
In theory the government could step in to solve this coordination problem, but it is also subject to the coordination problem. Other governments willing to throw human rights under the bus will reap the economic benefits of cooperation with China.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#17Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.
Did you at some point think that the corporate leadership of a massive for-profit organization was going to make a public statement that was anything other than the bare minimum lip service they were required to pay in order to weather the PR storm of the day, so that they could continue doing business?
The answer to that question is almost always "no," and certainly until proven otherwise. Complaining that these corporate PR statements are anything other than lip service is like complaining that the world isn't fair, or that everyone dies. Perhaps a sad truth, but one you should've figured out by the time you turned twelve.
Corollary: corporations are not hypocrites, either, because corporations don't hold beliefs. They make PR statements. Their belief is "I will say what I need to in order to be left in peace to maximize profits." Any corporate leader that doesn't hold to that will be replaced by someone that does, either proximally (by the board and shareholders) or ultimately (by one day landing on the wrong side of idealogy and getting outcompeted by organizations that weather the storms more nimbly.)
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#18Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.
> Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard Don't you think that C-levels of all of them were previously dying to get into China, and were ready to do anything? On my memory, Google's advisers were all over Kremlin, coaching the regime in "internet media operations" in 2005-2008, teaching them how to hound opposition online, and doing psyops style public opinion manipulation, while inventing silly lies about the na…
Any handy links for that Google-Russia story? It’s not that I don’t believe, because I do (IMO this is something that Google would have done) it’s just that I’m on mobile and am too lazy to search for those links myself.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#19"Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." - Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings. Heinrich Heine
What do you say about classic literature being banned from classrooms because people were unable to see the content in the context of the time it was written?
I see it as an order of magnitude less dangerous than censorship at the library level.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#20How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don't exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don't see how they can keep a lid on this long term.
As a Russian, seeing how Russians perceive things, which I imagine is something of an analogue:
They don't believe our internal propaganda. That's why Russia and the like spend so much time hyping up where we don't live up to our ideals - it lets them sell the line that we're just as bad, just as corrupt, just as etc. but we either mouth the propaganda trying to get by, or we're dumb/gullible enough to fall for the propaganda.
My understanding of Chinese culture suggests there's also a strand of "they'd love us to be hamstrung by falling for their bullshit, so we don't seize our place in the world."