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A Walk in Hong Kong

idlewords.com

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Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#351

Post by roca »

whoevercares wrote: post #165
roca wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that democracy and freedom are somehow foreign to Chinese people and can't work in their culture is a myth peddled by the CCP to serve their own interests. Democracy and freedom are flourishing in Taiwan. They are flourishing in South Korea (who aren't Chinese but whose traditions are no more democratic than China's). They're doing OK in Japan. "The Chinese point of view" is an ambiguous term that the CCP us…

I saw the many citations of Taiwan, Korea and many other small country (even Japan) as the example that democracy can work as is for China. IMO the scale and population is drastically different. Couple things make it complicated: 1) over 800M rural population with most of them under-educated. High school is not common and the villagers will celebrate if one of the kids made it to college. If you want them to understa…

China is different from those other countries and would face different challenges but the argument often made is that democracy is incompatible with Chinese culture or somehow otherwise inappropriate for Chinese people and that is simply not so.

Obviously democracy isn't traditional in Chinese culture, or just about any culture including "the West" if you look back more than few centuries, but that doesn't make it a bad idea.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#352

Post by lacampbell »

bllguo wrote: post #347
lacampbell wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what your point is. The people of Taiwan (or the Free Area of the Republic of China, or whatever you want to call it) today, in 2019, don't use a Civil war from 70 years ago as their main reason for not wanting to be administered by a communist dictatorship.

why do you think they went to civil war in the first place? I don't understand your point for drawing this distinction at all

Because that's simply not the lens in which it's viewed in Taiwan in 2019. Mainland soldiers and refugees were well under half of the population of the whole island- and that was 70 years ago.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#353

Post by dragonsh »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #232
dragonsh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I agree with you nationalism is ingrained from childhood and this makes it harder for minority who are against blind nationalism. This has been true for all the 70+ countries I lived and traveled. But I still believe in this quote: "Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as…

patriotism != nationalism

Actually this is another such explanation to justify one over the other. I am a believer that world should be built and bound by human to human connections and love, not by some utilitarian construct like nationalism. You can read the book of that noble laureate who influenced me, on this subject from Gutenberg press:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40766

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#354

Post by addicted »

refurb wrote: post #322
addicted wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving your own face is as common in Asian culture as in western. I mean, just look at Boeing doing everything to avoid taking responsibility (you still cannot name an individual in Boeing who has taken responsibility). How is that any different than Japanese “face saving”. Being conservative about your culture, or not wanting to buck the trend probably has a lot more to do with appetite for risk (which in turn likel…

How is that any different than Japanese “face saving”. Very different. I assume Boeing is arguing because they either believe they did nothing wrong (sense of justice) or they will get in trouble for admitting they were wrong (sense of security). There are probably other possibilities. Those are very different than saving face. That has more to do with maintaining your own personal standing with your community (sense…

So face saving is defined as not accepting responsibility when the negative consequence has something to do with your standing in society. As opposed to not accepting responsibility because say it may cause legal liability. Am I understanding that right?

In that case I think it’s a meaningless distinction. Because it doesn’t say anything about the individual behavior, but rather, how the 2 societies handle wrongdoing. Japanese society handles wrongdoing by “shunning” the wrongdoer from police company. American society handles it by suing the person.

But either way, face saving has been redefined not by the action, but rather by the consequence of the action, which makes it a fairly meaningless difference in my opinion.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#355

Post by spectramax »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #301
spectramax wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s replace China with X so there is no xenophobic rebuttals. X is an authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status in the office, piracy is rampant, no respect for privacy of others, there is an app called ourchat that is effectively owned by the government and is increasing becoming a necessity, no media let alone any kind of investigative journalism especially against…

> An eagle in the world of doves can kill a lot of doves and have short term evolutionary imbalance. But soon, the marginal cost of turning into an eagle is so small so there are new eagles popping up in the population all of a sudden. This looks like a reference to the Hawk-Dove game. For those who haven't heard of it: You have a population of two groups, hawks and doves. When they come into conflict (say, over a so…

Thanks for the additional insight, I learned about this type of strategy in "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins. Although, I personally don't think that the analogy alone can describe an incredibly complex structure such as the global society.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#356

Post by abcdefghijklmn3 »

smcl wrote: post #36
mytailorisrich wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If political submissions are accepted then we should also accept comments expressing opposite and contradicting views on the issue instead of trying to suppress them by labeling them as "bots", "online-commenter-army", etc.

Yes we should be able to have a discussion, but I'd ask you to read the article and then read the comment. Does the comment look like it is responding to the article, or attempting to open a dialogue with the other side ... or does it look like a generic attempt at point scoring for the "pro-mainland" side? If "abcdefghijklmn3" is really keen to engage with the HN community then I take back what I said. But we both k…

I've commented sincerely, and followed the rules. You're insinuating that I've been arguing in bad faith, yet the lack of responses that address my points speak for itself about yours.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#357

Post by abcdefghijklmn3 »

lkjhdcba wrote: post #87
mytailorisrich wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view it is responding to the article because that article is extremely pro-protesters and that comment expresses the opinion that this isn't so black and white. Engage with the point made instead of discarding the comment as "invalid", or just ignore the comment if you don't want to engage.

Sometimes things are black and white though. The Chinese government is bad, and undermining it in any way, including through violence, is good. Nuance for its own sake is not a virtue [1]. [1] https://kieranhealy.org/publications/fuck-nuance/

It's odd to see absolutism come back like this. "undermining it in any way, including through violence, is good"; by that statement you're advocating terrorism.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#358

Post by hamster-wheel »

whoevercares wrote: post #165
roca wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that democracy and freedom are somehow foreign to Chinese people and can't work in their culture is a myth peddled by the CCP to serve their own interests. Democracy and freedom are flourishing in Taiwan. They are flourishing in South Korea (who aren't Chinese but whose traditions are no more democratic than China's). They're doing OK in Japan. "The Chinese point of view" is an ambiguous term that the CCP us…

I saw the many citations of Taiwan, Korea and many other small country (even Japan) as the example that democracy can work as is for China. IMO the scale and population is drastically different. Couple things make it complicated: 1) over 800M rural population with most of them under-educated. High school is not common and the villagers will celebrate if one of the kids made it to college. If you want them to understa…

>over 800M rural population with most of them under-educated. High school is not common and the villagers will celebrate if one of the kids made it to college. If you want them to understand democracy good luck educating millions of people across vast areas

Sounds a lot like India, the world's largest democracy 🇮🇳

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#359

Post by coldtea »

gnulinux wrote: post #288
HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 2000 years, much of human progress came in the form of freedom. In recent times it seems there is a pushback towards less.

This is absolutely not true, only this decade we've been in a momentum for worldwide progress for LGBT rights, many states now have more liberal drug laws. Moreover, I cannot think of one thing that we were free to do a few decades ago and we're restricted to do now. There is an alarmist rhetoric in libertarian community (especially r/libertarian et al) that the West is keep getting more authoritarian, whereas the fa…

>Moreover, I cannot think of one thing that we were free to do a few decades ago and we're restricted to do now.

Fly abroad without getting our crotches checked?

Walk around the city without companies/governments tracking our location?

Less surveillance in everything?

Don't have corporations police what we can and cannot say on this era's popular platforms (doesn't matter if we can still open a personal blog in 2019, since those are not where the discussion is today - whereas they were in the early 00s, and they did matter back then).

Have a mainstream without moral panics? We used to have the easily triggered persons of the right back in the day, now we have the same of the left, but there was a point (late 60s/early 70s) where people could be more radical than today.

Buy a program without a subscription and use it for the next 10 years or so the same price you know pay for 1 to 3 years of use! (Like people are still using ancient Photoshop in Windows today, or how people like RR Martin still use something like Wordstar 20+ years after its last release -- with subscriptions it would be impossible).

Widespread free sharing of commercial music, films etc like in late 90s/early 00s without all major outlets being crushed like they are being now?

Tons of government regulations (from building codes, to "food safety" BS meant to crush smaller producers) that affect every aspect of business and everyday life, for things that people could freely do 20-30-50 years ago...

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#360

Post by unityByFreedom »

idlewords wrote: post #231
unityByFreedom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a NYT editor was reading this it would cut it down to a fifth of what it is, have it reexplain the 5 demands, give a clearer political positioning etc. The word "extradition", a key piece of information about current HK-China relations, does not appear in this blog. Let's not pretend it is deeper than something produced by a reputable newspaper. A newspaper can put out long form like this, or just straight news.…

The reasons for the protests are well-covered elsewhere, they are full of nuance that I can't get right, and my assumption is that people who read through this post and are interested will be able to find lots of background on the protests through a simple google search. I would normally have added reading links, but things are moving fast here and also I am on an unfamiliar travel laptop where it's kind of a chore t…

The protest started from a proposed law to extradite HKers to China. That point is not nuanced, it's just a contextual fact.
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