
Mainlanders don't all view Hong Kong the same way - hardmaru
http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/chinas-government-wants-you-think-all-mainlanders-view-hong-kong-same
======
dumbfoundded
Just an anecdote. I went to Beijing to watch the Olympics while I was in high
school. During a volleyball game, I sat next to a local Chinese boy about my
age and started talking with him.

Apparently, at some Chinese schools, they give all of the students an English
name. Kind of like how American schools give you a Spanish name for Spanish
class. His name was Adolf. I asked him if he knew any other famous Adolf's. Of
course, he did.

I asked him about why the Chinese cheer so fervently against the Americans,
even when they're not playing the Chinese. He said it was because Americans
were friends with the Japanese. To play devil's advocate, I told him that the
Americans fought the Japanese in WW2, significantly helping China, and dropped
nukes on the Japanese. He told me it wasn't enough, the US should've
eliminated Japan from the map.

I don't think my sample size is representative but I think it's a warning of
how strong nationalism can be. In the US, we have relatively free flows of
information and we still have a dangerous nationalist movement. I imagine it's
much stronger in China where the government actively encourages it.

~~~
codeswap
You have to take into account that Japan was the ISIS of Asia. Bayoneting
babies, sex slave, medical experiments on humans. In South Korea still dislike
of Japan is greater than North Korea. And Japan is got off mostly free after
ww2 unlike the German trials

~~~
joyeuse6701
Sure, there were no public trials to provide a catharsis for the crimes
against humanity, still though, two atomic bombs on major cities vaporizing
babies, men and women alike doesn't sound like 'mostly free'.

~~~
scohesc
Sometimes you just have to send a very strongly worded message in the form of
nuclear fallout in order to get the point across. I don't think the Japanese
would have given up as easily if a not insignificant portion of their country
wasn't turned to glass in an instant.

~~~
dumbfoundded
Yeah, and it took 2 nukes! Plus the firebombing which killed just as many
people.

------
archibaldJ
Nationalism aside as a Chinese citizen I believe all educated Chinese citizens
should be grateful to the protesters in Hong Kong for the sole reason that
these protesters are directly challenging the CCP (which is an extremely rare
thing to happen in this day and age without the direct involvement of another
superpower). It may be wishful thinking but I believe through direct
confrontation like this CCP will learn and improve and reflect on all the shit
it has done (just to name a few: the Tiananmen massacre, the disinformation
campaign against Falun Gong and Jiang’s subsequent use of Falun Gong as a
scapegoat to fulfil his political needs leading to more killings and screwed-
up things like organ harvesting, the suppression and killings of the Tibetan
culture and people, the on-going internment camps in Xinjiang, the kidnapping
of Gui Minhai and others related to the Causeway Bay bookstore, etc) which
collectively, in direct or indirect ways, lead to the pandemonium in Hong Kong
today.

~~~
ConfusedDog
Only if HK didn’t protest against mainland tourists before. A lot of them has
strong prejudice against mainland Chinese making it easy for Chinese
government spin the people against these protesters.

~~~
mcny
» Only if HK didn’t protest against mainland tourists before.

Well yeah. China PR wants to pack Hong Kong with han people. This is no
secret. They did the same with Tibet as well.

~~~
yorwba
Hong Kong _is_ packed with Han people. Hong Kongers are not ethnically
different from other Cantonese.

------
the_resistence
Without all the facts, mainlanders will never be in a clear position to make a
proper decision. That's how the system is designed.

~~~
chrischen
To be fair, even with the facts I doubt the average person would ever be well-
informed enough to make a proper decision. Governing should be a full time job
done by professionals. Imagine if Apple were run by its users...

~~~
Y_Y
Imagine Apple were run by professionals! They'd employ sweatshop labour,
charge exorbitant prices, and control a colossal pile of cash for which they
cannot find a use.

~~~
sersi
And somehow completely fail to listen to their users when their users tell
them that a working keyboard is a necessity in a laptop :)

------
kccqzy
Since I can read Chinese, I've been reading news coverage as well as opinions
from both the English-speaking and the Chinese-speaking media. It is quite
depressing to find that both sides are obviously biased. The Chinese news
would emphasize isolated incidents of violence by the protesters during the
protests, pontificate on it and publish op-eds analyzing the cause of the
protests ranging from the failed economy of Hong Kong to the profound
corruption of its youth. The English side of course would illustrate the use
of tear gas and facial recognition technology by the police and paint the
protestors as victims of an unjust and unsympathetic government whose
independence and autonomy is chipped away little by little. Opinions aside,
even just for the facts I'd like to think there's truth in both, but it really
depressing that neither really wants to report the truth and the whole truth.

~~~
IIAOPSW
I don't see any element of truth in the "failed economy" narrative. That's one
angle that we really can get to the truth of without any media bias.

Are there any econometrics published from before the protests started that
would indicate an economic cause? I haven't seen any but I also haven't looked
hard enough to reject the premise.

~~~
kccqzy
I can clarify. The "failed economy" narrative was mostly about the rising
income inequality among Hong Kongers. The mainland news media is trying to
portray Hong Kong as having a mismanaged economy so that these young people
engaged in protests have seen very little increase in real income but face
tremendous increase in cost of living. And they compare it unfavorably to the
situation in mainland China where they claim that the communist party has
increased the well-being and wealth of everyone. There's some element of truth
in it, but of course I find it exaggerated.

~~~
IIAOPSW
I know exactly what you mean. I have a friend on wechat from my time living in
China. It is remarkable for me to talk with this person. He's not at all the
belligerent nationalist type nor the insufficiently critical news-bubble type.
Yet even he finds the narrative pushed by the news to be compelling. It's been
a stimulating exercise talking with him without falling down the rabbit hole
of dismissing each others facts by dismissing the others news sources as
propaganda.

The 3 narratives I see are

    
    
      1. the organizers are sell-outs to the US and the followers are just stupid. Western imperialists want to split China again.  
      2. the protestors are rioters, violent mobs, essentially a zombie horde not a movement with demands that can be met.  
      3. the stated reasons for the protests aren't the real reason. the real cause is economic. (subtext: freedoms and democracy is intrinsically a Western thing and Chinese people asking for it are denying they're Chinese) 
    

Part of why I asked for data is because I'm being lazy and want to use the
response in my other conversation. Engaging in debate as one person, when the
other side has entire media outlets working for them, is kinda hard. Help me.

~~~
yorwba
1.a Ask how much a protester is paid for participating. The number I've seen
floating around is 3000 RMB. Then ask how much it costs to buy a million
protesters. If they think that that's a reasonable amount, ask why they didn't
simply buy every single Hong Konger for just slightly more. Hopefully they'll
realize that most protesters aren't paid.

1.b The protesters' demands are all about changing the behavior of the local
government. They have no reason to split from China unless the mainland
government intervenes to prevent that change. As a bonus, consider that the
current Hong Kong government is only in power due to the election system with
functional constituencies put in place by the British to secure their grip on
the city. In a way, China simply replaced Britain as the colonial power rather
than freeing Hong Kong from colonialism. (On the other hand, this argument can
backfire since Hong Kong would be even worse off if all former British
institutions were replaced by their mainland equivalents.)

2\. If all protesters were violent rioters, they'd have conquered Hong Kong by
now. But the majority are peaceful and have even less power to stop the
rioters than the police; whose indiscriminate use of tear gas and rubber
bullets has hurt people who were either participating peacefully or just
happened to be in the area. That's why they want an independent investigation
of the police.

3\. The economic situation may make them more likely to protest, but _what_
they choose to protest is still something they care about.

Consider the protests that erupted at Nanjing School of Applied Technology in
April [1], at Beijing Normal University's Zhuhai branch in June [2] or in
Wuhan's Xinzhou district also in June [3]. Were those all for economic
reasons? Also ask whether they were aware of these or any other protests.

[1]
[https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/4/28/n11220048.htm](https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/4/28/n11220048.htm)

[2]
[http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/6/11/n11315690.htm](http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/6/11/n11315690.htm)

[3]
[https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/7/4/n11363038.htm](https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/7/4/n11363038.htm)

(I'm linking to Epoch Times articles, but in each case you can find raw
footage on YouTube searching for "南应", "北师珠", "武汉阳逻")

Finally, you should know that there just as you are here asking for help
arguing with your Chinese friends, so are Chinese people asking on Zhihu for
help arguing with their Western friends.

~~~
IIAOPSW
addendum: with respect to 1a I haven't seen it suggested that the protestors
are being paid. I've seen it suggested that a few key organizers are being
bribed and the rest are mindless followers. For instance the insinuation that
Nathan Law got into Yale as "payment" for "helping to split China". How could
I ever disprove that the CIA arranged someone to be admitted to Yale? Its an
unfalsifible yet plausible claim. That's what makes trying to disarm it fun!

~~~
yorwba
Regarding the mindless followers, there's still the question of why they're
mindlessly following the protesters and not so much the counter-protesters
waving the Chinese flag and chanting the national anthem.

------
Aperocky
There are some extremely strong prejudice and discrimination against people
from mainland, it's similar to racism. mainland Chinese people didn't know
this in the past however the past few years it became much more pronounced,
this is especially true among the poorer people in HK. People who visited Hong
Kong came back with very negative experience and words spread fast. There's
next to 0 sympathy to Hong Kong in mainland today, if the PLA rolled in to
quell the protest, half would probably cheer.

~~~
olgdyf
Exactly, as a mainland Chinese, I traveled to dozens of countries and
districts. Hong Kong was the least place I wanted to visit. As a matter of
fact, I have never been there except at only one time when I needed to stay
there over night for a connection flight, and I chose to stay at the hotel in
the airport. I think others' negative experience stands for at least 70% of
the reason for my negative attitude to Hong Kong.

------
kristianp
Does it matter what the mainlanders think? It's the communist party that
controls China, not the general public.

~~~
verroq
A government without the support of its people generally gets removed by the
people.

~~~
lacampbell
Dictatorships need a lot less popular support than democracies. Of course once
that popular support evaporates, the regime change is a lot messier than an
election.

~~~
zone411
Venezuela is a good example.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I think Romania is a better one as an example of a dictatorship rapidly
changing.

