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Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

theguardian.com

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Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#111

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

oefrha wrote: post #102
corey_moncure wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as charitably as possible, comments like these indicate to me that the poster has never been to China and has no idea about the actual conditions there. If you just step outside the select few favored economic zones you will see a very different, much lower, standard of living that accounts for the vast majority of the land area. Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus f…

> Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus from Taicang to Kunshan for instance, on the Eastern coast just out of Shanghai, I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity. Speaking as someone who’s travelled extensively in the region, I’d say you might have been there 28 years ago, not eight. I heard there are still extremely poor villages without electricity scattered…

China is still mostly a "bring your own toilet paper and soap" country.

The idea that there should be free toilet paper and soap in every bathroom is just not widely accepted in China. Even in Taiwan, a lot of public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. When you ask people why, they generally respond that people would steal the toilet paper / soap.

I expect that some day, the central government will announce that every bathroom must have toilet paper and soap, and then it will be rolled out very quickly. But that day hasn't come yet.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#112

Post by magicsmoke »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #92
magicsmoke wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to reconcile the words in a textbook that says an authoritarian society is doomed to fail, then go home and watch rice paddies turn to skyscrapers in a generation. In a competition between academia and the real world, the real world always wins out.

Your comments are interesting (in this and other threads), as others have mentioned - authoritarian societies are good for those in authority - less so for the others. If the authoritarian society is so good, why is it necessary to disallow conversation? Surely if everyone was doing well, conversation would be encouraged - because everyone would be saying how well things are going. The assumption of any reasonable pe…

The issue is that in China's case, authoritarianism has been good for both people in authority and the majority, as evidenced by increasing economic growth and standards of living. You could make a theoretical argument that if China was democratic, then everyone would be even better off. But people in China use India as a mirror since both countries had massive populations, were underdeveloped, and gained independence at roughly the same time. That's not a flattering comparison.

As for suppression of free speech, the attitude in China is much more pessimistic about the ability of free speech among the public to produce good governing decisions. There is a difference between speech that can be used to gauge public opinion, and speech that seeks to spur the public into taking rash actions. Currently, governing decisions are made behind closed doors by a group of elites that carefully deliberate their choices after taking public opinion into account. Free speech that attempts to sidestep this process by not just allowing people to air their grievances, but tries to rally people into pressuring the government and seizing the decision-making levers directly are suppressed. At the end of the day, it is an authoritarian system to tries to keep the existing holders of power entrenched. But when the current philosopher kings are doing so well, only a minority of people on the margins of society really want to rock the boat.

At the end of the day, every society limits free speech in some way. The US sets that limit at threatening physical harm on specific individuals. China sets that limit at upsetting the status quo without going through the proper channels.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#113

Post by fuoqi »

baybal2 wrote: post #27
paganel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That episode has near no coverage in English, and I don't think much of coverage in Russian survived to this day. But here is it in basics: Russian opposition was completely dominating the Internet at the time, before around 2005, a complete opposite of the picture on the TV, and fake opinion polls. Kremlin was not happy, and went straight to the Internet's "kingmaker" — Google (or maybe it was the other way around?)…

There is an easier explanation: Kremlin just started to spend money on its Internet presence and opposition could not match it, which got amplified by more people getting connected to the Internet (thus instead of tech savvy crowd sympathetic to opposition, you get a bigger share of conservative "simple man"). Opposition just got relaxed and thought that Internet will be their home ground forever. And it's far easier for opposition to blame Google for collusion with the government, than to work hard on quality of their websites. Compare the old "non-systematic opposition" influence with the drive behind people like Navalny and you can see that there is no conspiracy, just laziness vs hard work.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#114

Post by justicezyx »

hkai wrote: post #41

Two things are true at the same time: - Hong Kong's rule of law has disappeared; - The books in question are written by pretty radical young revolutionaries. Personally I am more concerned that libraries in Hong Kong seem to keep less and less books in the local version of Chinese and more books written in Simplified Chinese used in Mainland China. It's like if you are in California and suddenly half of the books in…

Traditional Chinese are quite consistent with simplified one.

I think you ought to say English and Spanish are replaced by British English and European Spanish?

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#115

Post by throwaway34241 »

Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn'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.

> If they really stood by their values > It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage

I don't have any special insight into their motivations. But aren't the consequences very different? As far as I understand it, if western companies publicly go against the Chinese government the only change they will get will be being kicked out of the country and being replaced with a local competitor.

I'm skeptical about corporate activism too, I just don't like the idea that intentionally picking totally losing battles should be some kind of standard. Even in a real military conflict it's reasonable to avoid that.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#116

Post by dgellow »

magicsmoke wrote: post #45
catalogia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once asked a Chinese citizen I was working with this question. The response was that it's important for the Chinese government to censor the internet for the masses because the masses are dumb and will believe anything they read. However it wasn't important to censor the internet for smart people because smart people aren't susceptible to harmful information. So when he was in the west on uncensored internet or at…

Western societies believe freedom of speech is the root of all that is good in the world. Healthy discussion leads to good governance leads to wealth, power, and status. China believes freedom of speech is just a leaf on the tree. Wealth, power, and status are the roots of a society that can weather the chaos of dissent. Dissent is like a source of entertainment to keep people distracted to be sprinkled strategically…

> Western societies believe freedom of speech is the root of all that is good in the world.

That’s not the case for all western societies. Talking for the ones I’m the most familiar with, neither Germany, nor France, nor Switzerland is based on freedom of speech as the root of what is good and they have a good amount of legal and social rules regulating speech. As far as I’m aware only the US, and maybe British classic liberalism are that focused on freedom of speech as the most import concept.

As a free speech advocate living in Europe I can tell you that’s not really something people embrace easily in that part of the world.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#117

Post by derefr »

caymanjim wrote: post #84
hkai wrote: post #41

Two things are true at the same time: - Hong Kong's rule of law has disappeared; - The books in question are written by pretty radical young revolutionaries. Personally I am more concerned that libraries in Hong Kong seem to keep less and less books in the local version of Chinese and more books written in Simplified Chinese used in Mainland China. It's like if you are in California and suddenly half of the books in…

It's odd that you include Spanish since until recently the same argument was made about half the books in the library being in Spanish instead of English.

Maybe in other states, but the US purchased much of California from Mexico, so that population isn’t immigrant to that region, but native to it.

That historical basis—of there being (acquired) natural US citizens whose primary spoken language is Spanish—is one of the main reasons that Spanish is a national language. Spanish-language books aren’t at-all strange to see in (Southern) California libraries. They’re part of the region’s heritage, rather than a novelty.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#119

Post by oefrha »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #111
oefrha wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus from Taicang to Kunshan for instance, on the Eastern coast just out of Shanghai, I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity. Speaking as someone who’s travelled extensively in the region, I’d say you might have been there 28 years ago, not eight. I heard there are still extremely poor villages without electricity scattered…

China is still mostly a "bring your own toilet paper and soap" country. The idea that there should be free toilet paper and soap in every bathroom is just not widely accepted in China. Even in Taiwan, a lot of public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. When you ask people why, they generally respond that people would steal the toilet paper / soap. I expect that some day, the central government will announce that every…

> China is still mostly a "bring your own toilet paper and soap" country.

Um, there usually isn’t toilet paper, but soap is everywhere.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#120

Post by magicsmoke »

hkai wrote: post #58
chadcmulligan wrote: post #12

How 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.

Oh, not just students. Most of my colleagues are ethnic Chinese folks who were born or raised in the West, schooled there and then they returned to China. On a few occasions that I have a chance to talk politics with them, they says that democracy to them means gridlock, racism, Trump, Brexit, white supremacy. They support the Singapore / China model because of the apparent stability, wealth, getting things done quic…

Tragedy of the commons. It's perfectly fine when an authoritarian government makes other people sacrifice for the good of the nation I associate with. But when I have to make sacrifices suddenly I'm not home. Very human thing to be.
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