What Peng Shuai reveals about one-party rule

Of course, I'm defending HN's values and on occasion have also defended you when I noticed people posting unfair attacks (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494968).

I realize you're representing a minority viewpoint. The HN demographic is highly international, but also overwhelmingly Western, and that inevitably comes with certain biases. We can benefit from hearing perspectives outside those biases. But that only works if you don't break the rules yourself, and you haven't been keeping to that.

I get that it's not easy and not fair, but the truth is that the one who represents a minority or contrarian view has to hold themselves to a higher standard [1]. Otherwise you make it easy for people to point fingers at you when you break the rules and use that as an excuse to discredit you [2]—and then they also point fingers at us and demand to know why we aren't enforcing the rules in your case. That's a lose-lose situation: either we have to ban you and silence a minority voice, or we allow you to break rules that would get others banned, in which case people will rightly accuse us of double standards. We can't allow that; I have to be able to say "no, we don't do that" in good conscience.

In order to follow the rules we need you to specifically do three things: (1) stay respectful and neutral when arguing; (2) avoid flamewar (your comments in this thread were inflammatory and way over the line, especially because the topic involves multiple flamewar themes - not just China/West but sexual assault etc.); and (3) not use HN primarily to argue about political and national fights. I'm sure there are other things on HN that interest you as well. Good community members engage out of curiosity on a variety of subjects—not just pre-existing agendas on the single point or two that they feel most passionately about. All of this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

You're probably wasting your time :) Here's more context for what this user is peddling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344244

See also @honglilai on Twitter ("Hongli Lai") for more exclusively pro-China commentary. I'm afraid that engaging him in honest debate is an exercise in futility.

(Note: I'm not attempting to dox the user, his Twitter handle/name can be found in his HN profile)

I believe you. If you could just do the three things I listed, that would go a long way to solving the problem.

dethrone != "take over"

It's important to understand the concept of the Petrodollar, how that system is secured by US maritime supremacy, and how it underpins the US financial system.

https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/50983

  *If there is another strong power that can provide military security and at the same time offer sufficient funds and industrial products, the whole Middle East oil can be freed from the dominance of the dollar*

>>>What size defense force do you think China should have?

It's not the size that matters per se, it's the content. China used to have a largely-coastal navy. It has massively expanded its ability to conduct expeditionary warfare, with aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. The latter category are basically carbon-copies of the equivalent US classes. You only need warships like this if you expect to put entire battalions of troops on other people's shores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_071_amphibious_transport_... compared to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio-class_amphibious_t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_075_landing_helicopter_do... compared to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-class_amphibious_assau...

You are making very big assumptions. Re Taiwan (or any other matter), I am anti-war and pro-peace. Let's make a wager: I dare you to dig up a message in which I support military invasion of Taiwan. If you can do so within 3 days I will pay you $1000 USD. Otherwise you pay me $1000 USD. Do you dare to take this challenge?

Saying "you clearly and plainly defend CCP" is unnuanced at best, a complete misrepresentation at worst. Explaining how the Chinese government works and explaining that many Chinese people view things differently, is not at all the same as "defending the CCP", and even further from "defending the CCP blindly" as you seem to be implying. One can say "this is how it works, and the population there don't see it as much of a problem as here" without personally agreeing with everything.

You are also being very reductive about this matter. It's perfectly possible to have complex thoughts and complex stances. My stance is "the CCP has many problems but it is unfair to ignore the good aspects, and one should recognize that some issues depend very much on one's perspective, and the Chinese perspective differs from western perspective". That is not at all the same as "the CCP great".

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You are confusing censorship with kidnapping. Unlike what people think, they are not related: censorship is a kind of super-moderation.[1] You and I dislike censorship on an ideological level, but that is besides the point I'm making. People getting censored is not an indication of people getting kidnapped. In fact, it happens regularly that people are censored for their criticism, and that the government responds to that criticism.

This, along with "CCP is open to criticism", isn't "delusional", it's fact supported by research papers[2][3][4], Asian media[5], independent accounts by foreigners who have lived in China[6] and street interviews[7]. None of these facts are well-known by popular western understanding of China, and indeed they seem so ludicrous that your first impression is that I am delusional, but they remain facts nevertheless. Please, go read my hard evidence before you declare me as delusional (or even lying).

My point isn't "censorship is fine and I defend it", it's "censorship is misunderstood, censorship works differently and its role is different than what westerners typically imagine, plus the Chinese themselves have complex and nuanced opinions about censorship, viewing them as both good and bad". That's not "defending the CCP", that's showing complex, nuanced reality and alternative perspectives.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29347811

2. Harvard: How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression — https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-...

3. Harvard: Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence From a Survey Experiment in China — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0010414014556212

4. American Journal of Political Science: Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China — https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12207

5. https://mothership.sg/2019/12/news-china-protests-wenlou-hua...

6. Cyrus Janssen: About protests in China — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqcScSCTgbM

7. Asian Boss: what does democracy mean to the Chinese? — https://youtu.be/nl59t---30g

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If you say that I am delusional, then what about my Chinese family? Are we all delusional then? My father in law told me this: that "censoring Peng Shuai is not necessarily bad, because it protects her privacy and protects her from angry mobs that will socially ostracize her for admitting to having been a mistress". This is a very typical example of nuanced Chinese thought on censorship. They're way less ideologically rigid. Disagree as we two may on censorship, who are we to tell a Chinese citizen what he should think about it?

He also said "Why would they arrest her? She didn't do anything illegal. Her social media will be restored once the controversy cools down". I'm pretty sure that, having lived in China for decades, he knows China better than you do.

Regarding your simple exercise: that exercise has already been done by others, so I will show you directly. The French embassy posted a message on Weibo on which they voice concern about Peng Shuai's safety. This message is not censored, you can read it here: https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4706377967338593 What's more, it attracted hordes of angry comments from Chinese people. Nobody believes that Peng Shuai has ever been in danger — because that's not the kind of place China is. People tell the French embassy to go mind their own business.

What may even be more incredible is that there are even messages in that thread criticizing the fact that Peng Shuai is censored. Here is an account by Dutch Sinologist Manya Koetse: https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1463074733042380802 These criticisms have not been censored. What's notable about these criticisms is that they're not criticizing censorship wholesale: they're criticizing censorship for having added fuel to the fire. Even these criticizers don't believe that criticizing means that Peng Shuai has been kidnapped!

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You say many people disagree with me. Yes no doubt. But do you know why I hold these opinions regardless? Because we are at the dawn of a new Cold War which could erupt into a hot war at any time. China is the flashpoint, and anti-China sentiment is being abused by the US military industrial complex to manufacture a consent for war. To you, it's just "criticizing the CCP for atrocities". To me, it's contributing to an environment in which anti-Asian crimes become socially acceptable, and contributing to an atmosphere in which a war with China would be a good idea. The maddening thing about this phenomenon is that half of these "anti-CCP" criticisms are based on facts for which one can verify that they've been misrepresented, if only people dig deeper than biased mainstream media reports.

I am taking a risk here to voice these unpopular opinions because I don't want nuclear warheads to fly all over the world. And for that to happen, people need to get rid of their unnuanced, reductionist ideas of China being an evil place.

Someone told me "but being against the CCP is not the same as being against the people". Here's why that doesn't stand to scrutiny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29358557

I can turn the argument around: people see a Chinese person — who has obviously done a lot of research, seeing the number of sources I post — holding a controversial opinion, one that would even seem to harm that person's interests ("why would you support an oppressive government that murders your own people?"). Why do these people hold on to the notion that they are right, instead of wondering why I hold the opinions I do? Could it be that their assumptions are wrong? Why do so many people lack self-reflection?

Now it's my turn to give you an exercise. Go to a local university, find 20 mainland Chinese students and tell them they're being oppressed by the government and that you support their overthrow of the CCP. Watch their reactions. See whether you can still claim that I am being delusional.