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Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

reuters.com

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Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#201

Post by knzhou »

aww_dang wrote: post #115
knzhou wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of comment that makes me know there's no hope for HN. The color of your skin has bought you a lot. When you were a kid, my parents were making a dollar a day. When your parents were kids, my grandparents were facing famine. Now, finally, for the first time in all of modern history, a large group of non-white people has escaped crushing poverty. They're not rich by any means. You'd still be richer tha…

>You look at this tiny measure of progress and hope, and you declare it repulsive. You think if you're no longer standing far on top of everybody else ... you'll become a "second class human" I didn't read that in the above comment at all.

Yes, you didn't, but you weren't really looking, were you?

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#202

Post by knzhou »

aww_dang wrote: post #170
Reelin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conflation of criticism of the CCP with racism Which is particularly ironic since it appears to have been pointing out the racism that currently exists within China that started all this.

Irony abounds. The OP doesn't even mention a particular race in the comment. Yet the responses assume he is white with all of the trappings of privilege. Not impossible to characterize this assumption as racist on multiple levels.

It was not a hard thing to infer. There is a very particular kind of deep ignorance one needs to write a comment like OP's.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#203

Post by almost_usual »

fqye wrote: post #156

When it comes to politics, HN is similar to Reddit. People just comment by emotion and ideology, because they could feel the satisfaction by chanting the beautiful words of democracy and freedom, without burden of insightgul knowledge of history and culture of other people and countries. Some here even wanted to start a war with China in the name of human rights. Remember crusades in the name of Christian? Most peopl…

I’m going to get downvoted for saying this but I will.

The wealthiest people on the planet who actually influence what governments do prioritize wealth accumulation above nationalism presently. If they didn’t every nation wouldn’t be so in bed with each other at this point.

The aggression is a display of power and generate a ‘feeling’ of superiority to keep a population content.

There won’t be a war. We’ll only see large scale wars again when our environment collapses and wealth extraction is no longer the number one priority. Having food, water, and other natural resources that were once plenty go scarce will cause war.

Perhaps this will never happen but I’m assuming it will. The wealth extraction phase will continue to abuse our planet at peak efficiency until Earth can no longer handle it. Then you will have war.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#204

Post by fqye »

threeseed wrote: post #188
fqye wrote: post #156

When it comes to politics, HN is similar to Reddit. People just comment by emotion and ideology, because they could feel the satisfaction by chanting the beautiful words of democracy and freedom, without burden of insightgul knowledge of history and culture of other people and countries. Some here even wanted to start a war with China in the name of human rights. Remember crusades in the name of Christian? Most peopl…

Last year you posted, "HK protect started peacefully now turned into riot with no clear political purpose". Do you now understand why those riots were important ? Because the National Security laws are being used to crackdown on dissent exactly as the HK protestors predicted.

Maybe you got the logic wrong?

This arrest is actually an opportunity to test if the new security law has some merits. Jimmy Lai has the resource to defend himself in court. Let's wait for it to unfold.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#205

Post by knzhou »

throwaway1yf wrote: post #141
knzhou wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of comment that makes me know there's no hope for HN. The color of your skin has bought you a lot. When you were a kid, my parents were making a dollar a day. When your parents were kids, my grandparents were facing famine. Now, finally, for the first time in all of modern history, a large group of non-white people has escaped crushing poverty. They're not rich by any means. You'd still be richer tha…

> a large group of non-white people has escaped crushing poverty, but at the very fucking least Chinese people are no longer starving to death by the millions. I'm pretty sure skin colour isn't related to poverty, maybe you can blame chairman Mao for that. > this tiny measure of progress and hope So you suggest all the bad things happened to Uyghurs and Han people can be justified with economic growth? That's just a…

When did I make that argument?

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#206

Post by toyg »

peanutz454 wrote: post #158
throwaway77643 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1920s, I don’t think any person could have imagined the progress in Civil Rights that would occur in America. And yet it happened. From racist Jim Crow laws to Gay Rights, the progress made in 100 years is astonishing. Give the PRC 100 years and who knows how it might change.

I guess that's exactly what Thatcher thought would happen when she handed over Hong Kong - That China will make progress towards liberalism in politics and economics. Instead of China becoming like the rest of the world, I am wary of the world becoming like China. Progress has been made in the past, but cannot take that for-granted.

Thatcher did not “hand over” anything - the lease of HK would expire in 1997, so the UK government had no legal basis to stick around unless the Chinese allowed them to. Unsurprisingly, a “restored” China, now nuclear, said no. Thatcher failed to persuade them otherwise, despite years of negotiations, and was effectively forced to swallow the handover.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#207

Post by est »

throwaway-semi wrote: post #36

Why are we empowering this regime? Shouldn't we force companies like Apple to make a statement of why they manufacture their goods in China? Apple is happy make a statement about BLM - it is cheap, doesn't cost them anything. But when it comes to things that actually harm profits and challenge shareholder responsibilities, they stay mum. We need to force Apple (and other giant corporations) to speak up about atrociti…

Well hello? it's not like Apple setup their manufacturing in Hongkong or something. Apple and Taiwan businessman purposely setup factories in mainland China for its exploitable cheap work force and government subsidies of the supply chain.

For the mainland Chinese' perspective, it's just HK people's "privilege" being stripped, HK's special status are gone and just like another average Chinese city so what's the outcry?

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#208

Post by JimDabell »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #120
jessaustin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any firm in history has ever been rich enough to weather a bit of a business setback, surely Apple would be?

Consider that Apple's supply chain is centered around the PRC - if Apple PR ever says the /wrong/ then then Foxconn would immediately find their factories closed and Apple wouldn't have their latest iPhone available come October - and Christmas. I'm surprised it took until very recently for Apple to start spinning-up alternative supply arrangements and manufacturing in other countries - I guess they expected that the…

> if Apple PR ever says the /wrong/ then then Foxconn would immediately find their factories closed and Apple wouldn't have their latest iPhone available come October - and Christmas.

Is that something China could realistically do without irreparably harming themselves in the process though? It’s not just Apple’s supply chain that goes through China, it’s everybody’s. And once China demonstrates they are willing to do that, everybody is going to see a China-based supply chain as a gigantic business risk and look elsewhere. Apple can weather that kind of setback, but it would be an existential threat for most businesses and they would need to be proactive. Apple would go elsewhere and lay down the infrastructure, then everybody else would follow in their footsteps.

As far as I can see, China can throw their weight around to a certain extent but their hands are tied when it comes to stronger action because "Apple’s PR saying the wrong thing" is nowhere near as harmful to them as companies diversifying their supply chains en masse.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#209

Post by [deleted] »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #125
actuator wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your sentiment on this. Among all the big tech, Apple is the only one which has a significant foothold in China and can possibly have an impact. But they have failed to live upto the ideals they speak about when it comes to earning easy money. BLM is easy to speak about and acts as good marketing for them. At least at one point Google stood up for its ideals and quit Search in PRC, which I highly respect. Wit…

> BLM is easy to speak about and acts as good marketing for them. Considering a good chunk of the US population (15-30%?) is vocally "anti-BLM" - it is somewhat ballsy for a high-profile company to wear pro-BLM in their corporate messaging - I'm sure we've all seen people on Facebook vow to boycott Apple or other "liberal" organizations.

[deleted]

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#210

Post by ipsum2 »

ktln2 wrote: post #58
seibelj wrote: post #4

As an anecdote, someone I know is an immigrant from HK and has lived in the USA for many years, and this person is afraid of saying anything publicly against China out of fear. Fear for their family in China and fear for their personal safety even in the USA. Similar to how Russia murders defectors [0], it’s not a good idea to be an expat and criticize China. It is an authoritarian regime, bottom line. [0] https://en…

The fear is real - A lot of pro-democracy Hong Kong activists in US are harassed and threatened by PRC government agents, many of them Chinese students studying in US. [1] https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2019/08/30/hong-kong-activist... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/us/hong-kong-protests-col...

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