This article is published in the SCMP. The SCMP was purchased some time ago by Jack Ma. There were fears from various corners that Jack Ma, being friendly with the mainland Chinese government, would influence the SCMP to have coverage that was less independent than before. So it's interesting to see this published by SCMP.
The SCMP seems to have been fairly vocal. There doesn’t seem to be anything that would stop the removal of all the critical journalists though, so I am somewhat confused.
The SCMP wants to be seen as an authoritative regional news source, so it avoids blatantly biased coverage on the news side. It's generally pretty neutral.
The opinion and longform side of the paper are another matter, though. Almost all the columnists are pro-Beijing hacks at this point. It's kind of like how there's a divide at Fox between the "news" side, which is relatively reasonable (e.g. with Chris Wallace), and the "opinion" side (e.g. Bill O'Reilly an his ilk). While the news folk at these kinds of places might be principled journalists, their ultimate purpose is to legitimize the propagandists on the opinion side.
"It's similar to YC getting to open a China program in exchange for getting a few Mainland mods on HN. Any anti-China posts do come up to front page but then disappear much faster than everything else (same will happen to this one)."
So this is one big statement. Is it true, or are you just guessing at that? Is it common knowledge, or suspicion? Where are we with the validity of that statement?
Complaints like "disappear much faster than everything else (same will happen to this one)" are quite misplaced when they concern posts that spend 10 hours or so on the front page.
YC seems to be a generally 'above board' entity, if they say they aren't doing anything specifically, I believe them.
That said, this is not an NGO, it's a Venture Capital firm. So they're going to assuage their interests. I've always found YC kind of interesting that way, playing along a very fine line.
YC has enough credibility (and frankly a lot to lose) so I'll take their word for it.
