As a Chinese who moved to U.S. couple years ago... I will never move back to China if there's no sign of democratization.
Steam has been banned in China
401–410 of 533 posts
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m ethnically Chinese. While I speak a little I am still mistaken for a foreigner since I often hire a translator and I traveled extensively through China throughout the last 2 decades to many places both remote and urban on a US passport. Never had a problem with hotels (though mostly booked online) nor staying at relatives/friends houses, nor anything blatantly authoritarian besides my internet bring blocked (whic…
The reality is every step you took was observed and I would assume even where you slept both video and audio were recorded.
I backpacked through China and stayed in youth hostels. Highly doubt they were bugged. They didn’t even have heating (we used electric blankets)
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
On a lower frequency, this similar to why I'm not interested in tourism as "self-discovery", "new experience", or some shit, like the rest of the world is just stage and props for my existential theatre. I'm not gonna change as a human unless I actually move there to live permanently. Even worse, the middle-class trend to make the number of distinct places you've visited some form of social currency ("how many stamps…
> I'm not gonna change as a human unless I actually move there to live permanently. This, in my experience, is simply not true. There is a value in going to different places, changing every variable there is to your life except yourself. When you are somewhere you've never been to, where you know nobody, where the food, language and customs are all different, then you can find out which parts of yourself stay, who yo…
There are plenty of pitfalls to the attitude that tourism will grant enlightenment, but I agree that some amount travel is crucial. Experiencing a different society (the everyday bits, not just the facade shown to tourists), even for a short amount of time, helps to humanize the people living in that society (or really, any society other than your own). Never straying from one place for your entire life is a great way to cultivate the attitude that the only "real" culture is the one that you're familiar with. In a connected world, empathy for people outside your own immediate sphere is important, and even a small amount of travel to a small number of places will generally suffice to begin developing this sort of empathy.
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m ethnically Chinese. While I speak a little I am still mistaken for a foreigner since I often hire a translator and I traveled extensively through China throughout the last 2 decades to many places both remote and urban on a US passport. Never had a problem with hotels (though mostly booked online) nor staying at relatives/friends houses, nor anything blatantly authoritarian besides my internet bring blocked (whic…
The reality is every step you took was observed and I would assume even where you slept both video and audio were recorded.
Let me add some nuances to this claim.
Even if “every step is observed” is exaggerated, the surveillance system in China is pretty extensive: it can target journalists and international students among other “suspicious people”, and can compile individual files on such persons using 3,000 facial recognition cameras (in a single province) that connect to various national and regional databases. [1]
And this surveillance system is part of the bigger tracking program, which the Chinese authority has used to harass and intimidate journalists [2] (see this comment for more [3]).
And according to the memoir “A Promised Land”, even Obama and his staff were worried about Chinese surveillance during their stay at the Beijing hotel (see this review [4] or this summary [5]):
“To make calls involving national security matters from the hotel, I had to go to a suite down the hall fitted with a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) — a big blue tent plopped down in the middle of the room that hummed with an eerie, psychedelic buzz designed to block any nearby listening devices. Some members of our team dressed and even showered in the dark to avoid the hidden cameras we could assume had been strategically placed in every room. (Marvin, on the other hand, said he made a point of walking around his room naked and with the lights on — whether out of pride or in protest wasn’t entirely clear.)” [4]
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-chinese-provinc... "EXCLUSIVE Chinese province targets journalists, foreign students with planned new surveillance system"
[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/china-harassing-intimidating-journa... "China Harassing, Intimidating Journalists With Surveillance Built to Curb COVID-19"
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29685703
[4]: https://georgetoparis.medium.com/obamas-a-promised-land-on-c... "Obama’s “A Promised Land”, on China"
[5]: https://www.bannedbook.org/en/bnews/baitai/20201121/1434392.... "Obama recalls his first visit to China and was under surveillance"
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. Shit like this is almost exclusively a Chinese activity https://www.propublica.org/article/purdue-president-condemns... You can find countless examples of groups of Chinese people engaging in downright horrible behavior like this, good luck finding many western counterparts. Where are the western nationalists SWATting families of people who dare to say critical things of their governments? Nobody will send…
I dont know if you are being naive or a troll. In any case, for the benefit of other people reading this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-m... https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-... https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/5/13533838/history-...
This is bad. But the fact that you can post links to articles written by journalists here is proof enough that this was not okay and unacceptable.
Do you have articles about similar things happening in China by Chinese media?
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself. oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right…
Whilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am ultimately having a greater impact. What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic u…
Your context is where everyone already is as and your example appears to be wholly unrelated to your claim.
I don't think you are having a positive influence here.
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not gonna change as a human unless I actually move there to live permanently. This, in my experience, is simply not true. There is a value in going to different places, changing every variable there is to your life except yourself. When you are somewhere you've never been to, where you know nobody, where the food, language and customs are all different, then you can find out which parts of yourself stay, who yo…
There are plenty of pitfalls to the attitude that tourism will grant enlightenment, but I agree that some amount travel is crucial. Experiencing a different society (the everyday bits, not just the facade shown to tourists), even for a short amount of time, helps to humanize the people living in that society (or really, any society other than your own). Never straying from one place for your entire life is a great wa…
It's just, you don't need a plane ticket and a passport to satisfy these goals
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
As for the flagging, I believe HN auto-flags comments from new accounts that receive a large number of downvotes as an anti-spam feature.
If you enable showdead on your profile, you’ll see that this comment is denying the well documented genocide that is occurring in these regions. That will rightfully annoy many people here, hence the downvotes. So using the razor, I think we can conclude what happened. User makes a new throwaway account to spread easily disproved information Other users downvote the misinformation HN autoflags the comment to protect…
[dead]
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a bunch of links of people on YouTube walking around this same area and not seeing anything like this. There is heavy tracking and surveillance in China [1], especially in Xinjiang [2][3]. Hence any reporting of Xinjiang, including the YouTube links you mentioned and posted, have selection bias. That is, unfavorable reports or videos are censored, while favorable videos are selected, if not outright sponsored as pa…
> This sort of bullshit (sponsored videos) should not be promoted on HN. Promoted or not, this is generally a community for having level-headed discussions about things. The original commenter says "China is X way". Someone responds and says "China is Y way." Everyone ought to be able to upvote/downvote, and argue + discuss to their hearts content. I have no horse in this race, but I would have expected the person to…
There is a big difference between real debate on real issues - the example egg nutrition lol. Versus trying to refute or distract with a 'debate' on reality & facts.
Some things shouldn't be up for debate and calling doubt on reality is a weapon used by those who have political stakes.
China is a tough one too because as we saw on a top HN post from a few days ago we know the CCP has a large, active operation to comment and engage in online forums to sway opinion.
Article gave examples of typical straw man, whataboutism, handy wavy redirection.
The kind of comments exactly like what got flagged.
Re: Steam has been banned in China
#410What is going on here with the comment section? Seems like it's flooded with pro ccp activists
People have different opinions and are free to voice them. I’m not pro ccp (but here I feel the need to clarify up front), but it’s not hard to understand that some people view china more favorably than most in the US. At the very least it shouldn’t be hard to understand why some people would reject the more extreme anti china stance.
edit: long way of me saying, I don’t think anyone that defends china should automatically be labeled ccp propaganda.