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Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#141

Post by dang »

Asooka wrote: post #9

Good. China has every right to control its territories and this includes Hong Kong. If the KKK were to stage an anti-Black protest in an American university they would be rightfully similarly attacked and persecuted. China is only defending its rights. Those HK protesters need to face justice.

I warned you that if you trolled HN like this again, we would ban you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19496857.

I don't want to ban you because your comments have been mostly good recently. But you've also continued to post flamebait, and if you keep doing it we won't have much choice. Would you please review the guidelines and not post destructively here? The idea is to preserve HN as an interesting place for all of us. Scorched earth is not interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#142

Post by dang »

ceejayoz wrote: post #8

They'll be well primed to consider the Tienanmen Square information available to be anti-China propaganda, won't they? This is hardly unique to China. Go to a Trump rally and see how many people respond positively to an AP fact check of one of his claims.

Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594434 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#143

Post by dang »

mullen wrote: post #33
Asooka wrote: post #9

Good. China has every right to control its territories and this includes Hong Kong. If the KKK were to stage an anti-Black protest in an American university they would be rightfully similarly attacked and persecuted. China is only defending its rights. Those HK protesters need to face justice.

That does not make sense at all. The KKK is not a foreign government sending its members to foreign colleges to censor students who are lawfully protesting in their own country. If Chinese students are offended by what other college students are protesting in their own country, they can do what everyone else does, ignore them.

Please don't feed egregious comments by replying. That only makes things worse.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#144

Post by andy_bandy »

ginko wrote: post #56
skdkdk wrote: post #12

Kids will be kids, but the consul generals words do frighten me. It’s whistle blowing to Chinese kids that it’s okay to incite violence. Patriotism is never an excuse for harming others.

Sorry, but in what way, other than the most colloquial, are university students kids?

The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con...

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#145

Post by ferest »

projproj wrote: post #78
psychometry wrote: post #5

Haven't these pro-Beijing students ever tried to access uncensored information online that was denied to them until they arrived in their host countries? Why are they content to continue believe in the propaganda? You'd think that even a casual search for a subject like Tiananmen Square would be a wake-up call.

William Shirer was an American living in Germany during Hitler's reign. Here's what he said about how successful propaganda can be: "I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I…

Excellent quote, propaganda is used to manipulate people, especially those lack of calm mind and neutral view. Sadly though, today's media, especially those online ones, tend to feed you what audience interest with, not neutral on story, nor whole facts, e.g. the same event could be reported very differently on CNN and Fox. I wouldn't be surprised both sides of the arguments here read more news in their interest, or pro-their-views. Doesn't that put them in the situation German had, siloed in one side of the story, even for those educated and intelligent persons.

Perhaps a way to having a peaceful conversation is helping both sides to hear, read, understand others' points. It might not be easy though, the media are very much dominated by one language, that majority of one side in this argument doesn't speak, according to [1], 19.3% internet users contributes 1.7% content. In fact, it's VERY hard in this situation, to tell if we are the intelligent German in the story, or the William Shirer, regardless which side you are on.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_used_on_the_Internet

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#146

Post by fqye »

codesushi42 wrote: post #4

The violent pro China protestors should be kicked out of Australia. If you violently push your pro authoritarian views in your democratic host country, they have every right to kick you out.

There was another side of the story. Another video of this particular event shared among Mainland Chinese students showed that the HK students picked fight first and one female HK side student faked fall to ground after the Mainland side tried to push her away gently. Chinese students were angered by the selective coverage by BBC. BBC was also criticized for its selective coverage of HK protect that became riot. The most criticized case was a video showing a police officer pointing a short gun at protesters. There was a few minutes of video before that showing mobs attacked and beaten some police officers then this particular officer loaded the shotgun with rubber bullets.

HK protect started peacefully now turned into riot with no clear political purpose. The extradition bill is dead already. I haven't heard any clear political demand from those protesters afterwards. It could hardly be called pro-democracy demonstration now.

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#147

Post by socialist_coder »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #70
socialist_coder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in WA state and I feel like the daily pledge of allegiance here is pretty trivial. It's just something the kids say, the school isn't building it up or making it a huge deal or forcing them to believe in it like it's the only thing that matters. Comparing this to China's brainwashing is a huge slippery slope IMO. I think in terms of US school problems, this one is pretty low on the list. I would be far mo…

My point was that I moved from China back to here to avoid stuff like that for my kid, and am disappointed that things have changed for the worse since I was a kid growing up in the same area. It is a “small thing” of course compared to comprehensive political education, but it is a thing and signals the start of a trend that could turn out to be dangerous (doubly so in this age of Trump-style ultra nationalism).

> it is a thing and signals the start of a trend

Saying the pledge of allegiance in school has been around since I was a kid in the 80s though, and I'm fairly certain it's been this way since basically forever. So IMO it doesn't seem like it's the "start" of anything.

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#148

Post by coldtea »

psychometry wrote: post #5

Haven't these pro-Beijing students ever tried to access uncensored information online that was denied to them until they arrived in their host countries? Why are they content to continue believe in the propaganda? You'd think that even a casual search for a subject like Tiananmen Square would be a wake-up call.

>You'd think that even a casual search for a subject like Tiananmen Square would be a wake-up call.

That assumes they'd agree with the Tiananmen Square protests, which is quite a large assumption.

Some might disagree with any protest, like many of people in the US disagree with all kinds of protests (of left and right) -- e.g. because they're pro "law and order" and centrist --, and tons which disagree with protests of left XOR right.

Others might agree in principle, but still think China is better off without a regime change, which would be a huge unknown, and might even bring a huge 1.6 billion + country on the brink of chaos and civil war, with power struggles and what have you. Who said such a change is necessarily gonna be a peaceful transition? Officially or unofficially, they already have heard of stories of massive human toil in past power struggles (the "cultural revolution" for one), and might prefer stability and prosperity over democracy.

Or they could consider their situation just a-ok as it is, with its warts like many places have, but generally working well for the country (or for their personal interests).

Aside from propaganda, people also make their own minds, and what someone else, from another country believes they should be wanting, is not necessary what they do believe.

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#149

Post by coldtea »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50
SamReidHughes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Americans are going to hate their country after reading about MKUltra? How about solitary confinement? WMDs in Iraq?

> Do you think Americans are going to hate their country after reading about MKUltra? One, we don’t censor that information. Two, I’d expect most Americans to freely criticise those government actions, as well as the people and agencies responsible. The latter is prohibited in China.

>One, we don’t censor that information

You don't have to, when nobody really cares for it, and the system is such that nobody is gonna do anything about it (and the people who did those things get a slap on the wrist, if not a pat on the back).

It's regimes that lack this that censor information -- regimes that are worried that e.g. protests could result in bringing them down.

If you don't worry about that, you can let almost anything be said. Especially if you just let it be declassified/acknowledged decades after the fact, when even fewer will care.

Re: Hong Kong protests: 'I'm in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students'

#150

Post by coldtea »

rotred wrote: post #140
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m talking about why anybody would expect a Chinese student to change their attitude because of 6/4 I wouldn’t, but that’s because of something deeper than anything we experience in America or Australia. Consider pre-Snowden public opinions on mass surveillance. The public didn’t know and didn’t believe. Once the information came out, however, people believed. Some actions were taken, and on many fronts activism g…

> I wouldn’t, but that’s because of something deeper than anything we experience in America or Australia. I'm sick of this holier than thou attitude that people have here. There's this patronizing attitude that if only the brain washed Chinese knew what was really happening they would rise up! Yet you know about the Nayirah testimony, MKUltra, Snowden, Cambridge Analytica, migrant camps... why aren't you out protesti…

>why isn't Bush in prison, why isn't Trump impeached? It's not a "small minority"; it's the majority

Because in America you can openly talk about those things on the press and the internet and comments, and thus let off steam...

Of course the end result is the same, as in China they keep happening!

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