Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 70 posts

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#51

Post by jbay808 »

dillondoyle wrote: post #41
danrocks wrote: post #8

I live in Hong Kong. Arrived here right when the second wave of protests started, in 2018. The speed with which China is changing the face of the city since then has been incredible, if disheartening. In a mere three years, we went from having a free press, district council elections, a vibrant online community, a combative but reasonably effective LegCo. All that is gone. Head over to the South China Morning Post an…

I wish you luck. I hope the UK visa (and other safe havens?) is quick & easy enough? I read an article the other day that CCP is not surprisingly taking advantage to get party members (e.g. spies) in so I really hope that doesn't um up the process. The US is making this mistake with Afghanis but seems like there is enough political pressure now that at least we're getting them to a safer intermediary country. Not qui…

Canada is accepting democracy activists as refugees from Hong Kong:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-star...

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#52

Post by yongjik »

missedthecue wrote: post #6

China's ability to completely control the domestic narrative is really really underappreciated in my point of view. Not that it is positive from a personal liberties standpoint, but in that sense that it is an incredible strategic asset. Imagine if the second world war had been fought today in the era of entertainment journalism, twitter reactionism, and professional punditry. It would be laughable. The war effort wo…

You know what other country didn't have the problem either? Imperial Japan. Didn't serve them well in the end.

You don't fight a modern war with patriotism - you may find a million soldiers ready to die for your country, but without weapons, fuels, and food, that's what they will do - die.

The comparison with modern America doesn't really work - nobody in the US is thinking of scrapping aluminum, precisely because the country's so rich that it can fight local warlords across the world, while its citizens barely even noticing it.

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#53

Post by AussieWog93 »

alentist wrote: post #44
AussieWog93 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least "right wing" autocrats have goals, albeit misguided ones, and power is a mean to an end; but communist are obsessed by power and power alone. I don't think that's true at all. Most of the Middle-Eastern dictators are "right wing" and have no goal apart from seizing and holding onto power. On the communist side, while that would be the case for many leaders, both Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro come to mind as…

> both Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro come to mind as exceptions What do you mean?

I may be wrong, but from what I understand they had other goals than the pursuit of power and power alone. Specifically national independence, in both cases.

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#54

Post by dirtyid »

danrocks wrote: post #49
dirtyid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The targeting of the education system is insidious. The rise in HK liberal values among youth itself was engineered via "insidious" introduction of political education by UK to influence the city's overton window post handover. Curriculum under colonial rule was much more apolitical. Hence why PRC tried so hard to introduce patriotic education to counter such influence. CCP knows better than anyone that education is…

You have zero data to back up what you just said. Zero.

Plenty of papers analyzing developments in HK education curriculum pre/post handover from PRC/HK/western academics. Or demographic data on HK identity which diverge sharply by age cohorts pre/post as result of reforms. Or polling of HK sentiment of PRC stretching back since post handover. Or analysis from the mainland of why patriotic education was necessary to decolonize HK before culture fractures formed along generational lines. This is all 101 knowledge on the subject matter for anyone following HK/PRC dynamics since handover and before. Your knowledge level seems to match someone that self professed to have moved to HK in 2018 - negligible.

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#55

Post by SixDouble5321 »

PikachuEXE wrote: post #45

The security laws are sometimes called "public toilet laws" in local forums: they cover so broad in terms of behaviour and apply to everyone (not just on the planet the whole Universe). I live in Hong Kong for over 3X years. Feel free to ask me questions about Hong Kong (I am monitoring replies via RSS feed).

How scary is the thought of going back, if only for a short visit?

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#56

Post by PikachuEXE »

SixDouble5321 wrote: post #55
PikachuEXE wrote: post #45

The security laws are sometimes called "public toilet laws" in local forums: they cover so broad in terms of behaviour and apply to everyone (not just on the planet the whole Universe). I live in Hong Kong for over 3X years. Feel free to ask me questions about Hong Kong (I am monitoring replies via RSS feed).

How scary is the thought of going back, if only for a short visit?

It depends who you are.

If you are a existing target/enemy of CCP, you will probably be grabbed secretly (happens before all these laws introduced but probably not that frequent) or grabbed publicly under "diversion" in NSL (most commonly used excuse).

If you are a citizen of a strong democratic country (e.g US, UK, Australia, Japan...), you should be fine for this few months. (I can only dare to predict the next few months)

If you are a citizen of a weaker democratic country (e.g Taiwan, some smaller Europe countries), you should avoid visiting. Not saying you will be immediate or imminent danger but no point risking it (depends on your purposes).

Since the big local press companies like Apple Daily are forced to be shutdown or scared away, corruption start spreading. Accidents and human errors become more covered up / under-reported. (e.g. deaths after vaccine shots, MTR station could be lethal accidents, murders rate raising)

There is less to no feedback once the powerful people (not just the government, local big companies too) misbehave accidentally or intentionally. I recommend against visiting HK unless your purposes are worth the increases risks.

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#57

Post by deepsun »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #34
chrisco255 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out when you philosophically align your country around the idea that the state and the collective are more important than the individual, autocracy always flourishes.

Just like Japan? South Korea? Taiwan? Singapore? Or on the other side, pretty much the entire Middle East? Collectivist Asian cultures can definitely manage separation of powers and democracy.

I always wonder whether Japan, Korea, Taiwan would be able to preserve separation of powers without US support. I feel like if US one day declines in power and won't be able to support then, they would fall into autocracies pretty quickly.

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#58

Post by AussieWog93 »

deepsun wrote: post #57
AussieWog93 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like Japan? South Korea? Taiwan? Singapore? Or on the other side, pretty much the entire Middle East? Collectivist Asian cultures can definitely manage separation of powers and democracy.

I always wonder whether Japan, Korea, Taiwan would be able to preserve separation of powers without US support. I feel like if US one day declines in power and won't be able to support then, they would fall into autocracies pretty quickly.

You could say the same about a lot of non-Asian countries, though. Australia/NZ for a start, but I can imagine much of Eastern Europe too.

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#59

Post by baybal2 »

axguscbklp wrote: post #19
missedthecue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is my point. Most people got the latest war news from the government sanctioned newsreels playing in the movie theaters. Any photos of the war were approved by the government before they were run in printed media. Letters home were famously read individually to cross out unacceptable content under the pretext of protecting frontline strategies. The government had a very strong stranglehold on what informatio…

Got it, thanks for explaining so clearly. The way I see it, because of nuclear weapons, no other country can actually conquer the US, so I much prefer free speech to any sort of propaganda initiatives meant to strengthen the US against other countries. We are already basically almost completely protected from other countries by our nuclear weapons. We do not need censorship and propaganda to add any sort of meaningfu…

> We are already basically almost completely protected from other countries by our nuclear weapons.

US nuclear weapon stockpile will only be enough to neutralise just one military superpower.

A country with resources, and economy to survive the first strike, can realistically rebuild, and come back with vengeance.

I always retold my own variation on the Einstein's quote on WW3 as "WW3 will be started with nuclear weapons, but will be ended with trench warfare"

Re: ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

#60

Post by ilovebiden »

Born and bred Hong Kong. I am supportive of this bill as usual western media making a mole out of a hill. As usual some western shrills and expats, masquerading as an expert in China policy, continue to cry foul when they are not on the ground. More than anything else, there are Hong Kongers who want peace and security which the western world will never comprehend. Period Hong Kong is part of China.
Post reply on HN