Live data from Hacker News

Leaving China

persuasion.community

351–360 of 686 posts

Re: Leaving China

#351

I am an American expat who just moved from Germany to Indonesia about six months ago. One thing I see is that the comments he makes about China echo my views of the West. Where there was once optimism and openness, there is growing political repression (though in the US, we outsource this to the private sector so that we can actively argue that it doesn't exist). What is driving a lot of this in the West is the effor…

Moving from Germany to Indonesia is a wild move! Did you move to Bali or somewhere else?

"the West": This term is meaningless to me. Does this include Africa, South America, AUS/NS, Middle East?

"Where there was once optimism and openness, there is growing political repression": In continental Europe? I don't think so. Please provide concrete examples.

Re: Leaving China

#353

I suspect China's draconian, desperate attempt to eliminate Covid entirely was largely due to official guilt. They knew that their poorly managed reckless science program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and they wanted to somehow prove they could wipe the virus out entirely (which they couldn't). Eventually they had to give up. I wonder what happens to people in China who point this…

Oh well, the fact that e-cigarette pneumonia at the end of 2019 and the samples were not allowed to be inspected, and that those US military members who went to Wuhan to participate in an event showed symptoms, is conveniently forgotten.

Re: Leaving China

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that amazing, it's just that American investors wanted to cut labor costs in the late 1990s and China was offering dollar-a-day workers. The claim that opening up trade with China would have a 'liberalizing influence on the country' was one of the key selling points back in 2000-2001, pushed by both Clinton and GW Bush: https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/09/18/china.... See Clinton's Mar 2000 sp…

> Of course it was all nonsense, Clinton and Bush were just listening to Wall Street interests I'm not a fan of either Clinton or Bush, but this is unfair. There was far more going on. At the time, there was a strong sense that democracy had won, and that it was inevitable. That empowering people economically would eventually, without fail, lead to democratic reform. Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" i…

[dead]

Re: Leaving China

#355
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chinese diaspora I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.

China is a civilisation masquerading as a nation.

China had a pre-mature political system established 2k years ago.

Re: Leaving China

#356
post #117
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd encourage you to study Mandarin for a year or so and look into what the non-influencer set is saying about China. My first trip to China was in 1999 and my last in 2019. That was a time of amazing freedom and growth. Beijing went from bicycles to cars to subways and everything was growing. It's not like that now, youth unemployment is very high, foreigners are not welcome, and you really can't imagine the politic…

I'd encourage everyone to read: https://globalbrief.ca/2020/06/zeal-and-chinas-wolf-warrior-... This goes way further than most to explain "Chinese characteristics" (my term usage not link's). China is very complex and belies any simple summary. I definitely think it's a vastly smarter state than Russia... who by comparison it must now regard as a baby sitting project.

That was a good read. Thanks for posting it.

Re: Leaving China

#357
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chinese diaspora I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.

China is a civilisation masquerading as a nation.

I had no idea how sprawling Chinese diaspora was until I was in Ecuador and a sailor on the boat with me took me to a Chinese restaurant. In Ecuador. Of course there would be a Chinese restaurant in Ecuador, but of course there's also a sailor on my US-flagged ship who's ethnically Chinese and speaks Mandarin. And so we ordered Chinese in Chinese, in a Spanish-speaking country. In 1999.

Re: Leaving China

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It almost felt like another Chinese city ... >If I were to live in Asia, it might have once included Hong Kong because of its unique British history OTOH this attitude is why PRC finally calibrating HK for PRC nationals/one-way permits instead of privileged foreign expats was long overdue. Mainlanders I know in HK find the new mix PRC/HK mix more preferable than UK/HK, less visible discrimination etc. Local nativism…

If you swap out the entire population of HK with those from PRC then all you have left is a name and a bunch of buildings. Because it is the people and their unique customs that defines a culture. You seem to be way too flippant about cultural genocide.

So are you distinguishing "Cantonese Culture" from "Hong Kong Culture"? Guangzhou (just up the river) has a flourishing Cantonese culture... which is where most of Hong Kong culture came from originally.

So really you are talking about the cultural differences developed from 1950 to now. Which is still quite large because of the cultural revolution... but "Cultural Genocide" seems like not the correct term.

Re: Leaving China

#359
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you win or get out of the attempts to rewrite atrocities like they have never happened in history? What did the victims that died that week do to you? https://imgur.com/a/q8ZIS

How do you explain the US cables from that day that were leaked by Wikileaks which contradict the official Western narrative?

Are you referring to this? https://archive.is/qysvb

If so, the Wikipedia article on the event already aligns with that story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

Re: Leaving China

#360

I suspect China's draconian, desperate attempt to eliminate Covid entirely was largely due to official guilt. They knew that their poorly managed reckless science program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and they wanted to somehow prove they could wipe the virus out entirely (which they couldn't). Eventually they had to give up. I wonder what happens to people in China who point this…

> I suspect China's draconian, desperate attempt to eliminate Covid entirely was largely due to official guilt.

OR it was because they didn't have a vaccinated population and they couldn't build and staff hospitals fast enough to deal with a nation wide exponentially growing infection.

Don't let facts get in the way of a good rant though.

Post reply on HN