Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by justicezyx » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

> Surely if everyone was doing well, conversation would be encouraged

CCP encourage very open discussion on anything except political issues. While presumably one day that won't work, because absolute power brings absolute corruption. How long until that happens and backfires, it's not clear.

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

#122

Post by andrekandre » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #70

sand_castles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true though ! Apply the same logic to the US. Wouldn't it better to censor Fox ? since it has become Murdoch's personal propaganda machine. All it has done is harm social cohesion. It would be better to have Fox viewers go through some classes on critical thinking before allowing them to consume all sorts of Media that may be trying to manipulate them.

No, democracy is the only good ( but slow ) way. Fox News had a successful advantage in the start, but their cookie of right speech is not crumbling.. It's collapsing

> It's collapsing

any evidence of that?

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

#123

Post by derefr » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

chadcmulligan wrote: post #26

arkades wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

interesting, but Russians afaik don't get schooled overseas too much, like so many Chinese students spend years at overseas uni's, you'd think some of it would seep in. If not I'm very disappointed with the universities. Edit: a world without dissent seems so ... pointless

The Chinese social-credit-score system (where people are, among other restrictions, not allowed to travel outside the country if they’re e.g. anti-authoritarian) is a formalization of a long-standing practice.

Over the years, many mainland-Chinese university students (and tourists!) have been granted the funds and visa-arrangements to visit these other countries, specifically because they were known to be “patriots” of China—and moreover, to demonstrate “faith” in the Chinese government in the face of evidence against its character.

Until recently, you could spot tour-buses of these folks often in Hong Kong tourist destinations. The tours were always led by mainland-Chinese tour-guides, never locals.

I imagine the same applies to foreign University programs, but with even stricter selection criteria, such that the students won’t need a handler.

(The “nice” thing about the social-credit-score system is that it replaces all this manual background-checking work with a default-allow system with continuous blackballing. China can now portray itself as a country that allows its citizens to travel freely, while only restricting “those with criminal intent”—while in practice allowing only the same people to travel that it otherwise would have under manual background-checking.)

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

#124

Post by star-trek-fleet » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #51

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.

Because they see things from a completely different angle, different cultural background, and obviously pre-seeded with what the CCP wants them to see as the truth. Because really, consider in how many ways the west does not practice what it preaches. Look at how big corporations abuse capitalism, work against customer rights through lobbying. Look at the whole "right to repair" debate. There is plenty of stuff you c…

Sounds like the reverse kitchen debate where the national capitalism laughed the incompetence of the classic capitalism.

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

#125

Post by WiseWeasel » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

magicsmoke wrote: post #112

chadcmulligan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 independenc…

With speech suppressed, and a population trained to avoid unflattering expression, how do you suppose the group of elites behind the closed doors of their ivory tower are able to collect public opinion in order to take it into account?

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

#126

Post by MarkSweep » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

magicsmoke wrote: post #112

chadcmulligan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 independenc…

> Currently, governing decisions are made behind closed doors by a group of elites that carefully deliberate their choices after taking public opinion into account.

How do you know how carefully choices are deliberated and how much public opinion is taken into account if decisions are being made behind closed doors?

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

#127

Post by justicezyx » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

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…

Have you thinker about why there is not toilet paper in public restrooms?

Turns out there is multitude issues, but at the core: the country is still poor. There simply isn't enough fund to support the Western style public facility.

And TBH, public rest room improvement has nothing to do with democracy anyway. In US, there isn't the public rest room in the same definition as China anyway...

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

#128

Post by baybal2 » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

fuoqi wrote: post #113

baybal2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even that wouldn't mean nearly all opposition media vanishing from the Internet in the span of few weeks.

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

#129

Post by hkai » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

justicezyx wrote: post #114

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?

I will admit it was not the best comparison.

But having these books does feel quite scary, that a foreign language (even though you understand it well) is imposed on you by a hostile government.

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

#130

Post by justicezyx » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

chadcmulligan wrote: post #98

Ericson2314 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The British and German elite also intermingled because the world wars, it's not enough. Basically, if the masses don't know about the either country, and the elites are tempted by power (it's nicer to make the propaganda than receive it, plus their economic prospects are better in China) and knowing they don't have to fight in wars themselves, it's not good enough. Also, as much as I truly believe in the west's value…

There are other democracies besides the US, and they're all doing fine in general. Our PM recently pointed out in a speech [1], that maybe the US couldn't beat them alone, but Aus, Japan, Phillipines, India, Indonesia, Korea and the US could probably have a good shot at it, all countries China is picking fights with, not that I think its likely, just saber rattling - there's no profit for China in a war, just loss of…

How was China picking fight on "Aus, Japan, Phillipines, India, Indonesia"

Philippines and Indonesia are the target of picking fight on the islands at South China Sea.

I have no idea China is initiating fight with India Australia or Japan.