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China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Protesters (nytimes.com)
197 points by tysone on Aug 13, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 106 comments



I wonder if there was a way to help the protestors. They have shown amazing resolve and discipline so far


Other democracies should offer automatic asylum status to anyone who wants to get out now.


Is there a way to donate? I've heard that because of the daily protests people are losing a lot of money, and protestors can't afford food/masks/protections.


https://www.facebook.com/612Fund/

This fund is the most popular among locals.


Wow so nobody gives props to Facebook for making their channels available for this.



I think we need to offer the protesters an opportunity to evacuate from Hong Kong. We should give them green cards or citizenship in the US, Canada, or Japan.


Perhaps by making the article from The NY Times available to non-subscribers?


If you truly want to help the protestors, please tell them to keep calm, violence and blocking other ppl's life is not how satyagraha works, they will lose support from western ppl. Check interview from Richard Scotford and you know what I mean.


"Just send a few tanks over to clean them up."

It's ironic that this was written by someone whose government has made it illegal for him to learn what happened the last time his government cleaned up some protestors with tanks.


Not really ironic — it’s to be expected


I was taken aback by a recent conversation with an very Americanized Chinese Harvard grad (grew up in Northern Cal) who genuinely asked me after having said my parents are from Taiwan whether it's true if the people of Taiwan think China is "a part of Taiwan."

I couldn't believe that any person in the West could believe such a thing, and the only explanation is that Chinese disformation spreads far and wide beyond China's own borders.


Isn't that the official position of the Taiwanese government, though - that they are the only legitimate government of all of China and the current administration of the PRC are not legitimate?

I understand that there's a diversity of opinion among the people of Taiwan (and some mixed messages from the government itself) regarding the issue, but it doesn't seem unbelievable that someone might think that the people of Taiwan share a belief in their country's official policy.

Is there something I'm missing?


When the nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, they wound up killing a lot of the intelligentsia already there. So you had a huge divide between pre-1949 Chinese (mainly of fujian descent), who became the populous working class of the island, and the minority 1949 mainlanders, who became the richer factory owners and such (and also ruled the country in a dictatorship until the 80s). To add more kindling to the fire, the Japanese treated the Taiwanese pretty fairly before the war ended, with Taiwanese considered almost as full Japanese citizens (unlike the Koreans). So whenever these questions are addressed, it isn’t just antagonism against the PRC that comes through, but also a lot of antagonism for the ROC.

Now that the opposition can easily win elections, they have mostly become the ROC government, but they don’t buy those original tenants of mainland unity at all (though they don’t have the power to change them, nor do they want to antagonize the PRC as much as they would if they could).


> though they don’t have the power to change them, nor do they want to antagonize the PRC as much as they would if they could

I want to also add that the oppositions, although not antagonize the PRC as much as they would, is also antagonizing the PRC more than the nationlists; the PRC-hating original tenants died off (it’s been 60 years after all), and the nationalists transformed themselves to fully embrace PRC in the name of economy. You have the nationalists (Kuomintang) occupying both ends of the pro/anti-PRC spectrum, and this weird situation is arguably one of the prominent problems of Taiwanese identity.


The richer nationalists have lots of business interests in China now (think Foxconn), so they are firmly aligned with the PRC as a matter of interest. It doesn’t help that the opposition are primarily working class and their interests are actually hurt as the good jobs go to China (think republicans vs Democrats in the states without the Trump populism, and very counter intuitive to communism).


Do you have resource recommendations for learning about the Taiwan/ROC-vs-PRC situation? My father's side is ROC Taiwanese, and I'm looking for more objective perspectives on the conflict.


Yes. Even more weirdly, the PRC government is actually more tolerant of this position than they are of entertaining the idea of Taiwan as a separate country.


The official name of Taiwan is the Republic of China. That government used to control all of China. Then there was a communist revolution and the ROC government fled to Taiwan, still claiming to be the rightful government of China, merely having been forced to make a tactical retreat. This is still the official position of the ROC government, even if no one really believes that the ROC will one day return and reconquer the mainland. Now to be fair, Taiwan probably would have simply declared independence and given up on the mainland but for fear that this would lead to a PRC invasion.

The government even really acts officially as if it is the government of all of China sometimes, such as its support of the PRC in certain maritime claims. The ROC claims certain islands are "part of China" even though they would fall under the physical control of the PRC and thus don't really concern Taiwan.


I'm surprised you don't know that Taiwan never renounced their authority over mainland China.


Not related to China, but I am noticing more disinformation on sites I would not expect - like even imgur for example.


Imgur is not any better then reddit in this regard...


For anyone "wish" Chinese gov send tanks or armies, you will be disappointed, this gov really learned a lot from 1989. Those videos about military movements in Shenzhen are released by official medias from China, which is obvious bluffer: if they want to do sth, they will definitely do it secretly, and just another reminder, China do have a lot legal armies in HK.


Also doing the same thing to Taiwan, Australia, the US, and a bunch of other places.


Anyone have a mirror?



Thank you!


At first I thought you're talking about disinformation in our countries.


Would you settle for unavailable information in our countries?


It's strange, but information like this makes me more sick to my stomach than if they were just crushing the protests with brute force.


Careful what you wish for, looks like they might add in the brute force option soon:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/chinese-military-ama...

>"Beijing’s latest response to protesters came as a grave threat issued Tuesday morning through state-run media, saying Hong Kong citizens are "asking for self-destruction,"


They're gearing up for that, or at least posturing that it's coming - perhaps hoping the mere threat is enough. Troop exercises, exercises that would seem suited for civil war not crowd control, troop ships on the border:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/colour-revolut...


Me too, so sick of these governments (another example is US): http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45340184/ns/us_news-life/t/police-...

Why can't these brute countries just show a bit mercy to these peaceful protesters?


The brute force bit might come later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests


Btw. There was another thread[1] which got a bunch of points and comments very quickly and got bounced out of the front page very quickly as well. Are posts about China/Hong Kong being penalized on HN?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20687266


Probably people flagging it. I tend to flag stories that are "just news" and don't have a particularly compelling link to standard HN topics, or ones in which HN isn't going to have any particularly interesting angle to add to the conversation unique to the community's strengths, or ones that are coming up a lot, like this one. (I mean, yes, nominally everything is on topic, but there's still boundaries.)

There's a strong attractor basin around discussing the same news as everybody else that's worth pushing HN away from, in general.


I really hope people can stop flagging these then. One of the world's capital is about to go down and this is going to impact all of us.


https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.


Okay, then let's talk about the protester's novel tactics and use of technology to coordinate a distributed, leaderless protest.

That seems like it should be fair game.


I see it as more akin to the first paragraph of the HN rules:

anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.


"Things that impact all of us" could easily occupy the entire front page of HN and crowd out actual HN content, which by and large is less important than many current events.


It should be noted that YCombinator does business in China. They may have incentives to limit criticism of China on this forum. They announced YC China in August 2018, and nothing indicates that it has been shut down since then.

While there is a lot of great work in high tech and startups coming out of China, we (and the people who run this site) should be clearheaded: there is no significant distinction between the military and industry in China. Cooperation with China comes at a cost that will, eventually, be paid.

Not to say that HN is actively filtering out China-critical posts. But they easily could in the future.


60/109 points/comments ratio probably kicked off the flame war detector.


[flagged]


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What I saw in the video is violent protestors beating someone brutally. Could you please elaborate a bit how it comes to be disinformation?

By the way, you’re unlikely to convince anyone with personal attack.


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1. define enemy and prove the victim is. 2. are you suggesting protesting is a war which “perfectly acceptable” to use any violence at will?


[flagged]


Are you suggesting the victim is "oppressors" to the protestors? Or, are you suggesting anyone from "The state of China" should be tagged as "enemy"? How do you define "willing supporters"? Did the victim attack protestors? How comes slaughter a human being (even if an enemy) becomes natural right in a civilized society?


[flagged]


> Anyone from China who given the chance does not surrender is fair game.

Given what chance? from whom? Surrender to whom? It seems there's some authority that ppl have to comply with, and they should be "slaughtered" if not? This doesn't sound like democracy at all.

> If a party you have no prior social contract with endevours to threaten your existence you have every right to threaten theirs. Such people are undeserving of civility.

Who is threatening your existence? Is the victim in the video threatening anyone?


[flagged]


> I don't care for democracy.

Nothing to say about this :-) Just FYI I care democracy & so do HK ppl.

> No one atm, I just think China should be wiped off the map and its leaders executed in public.

The last person I knew who tried to wipe several countries off the map and execute its ppl is a poor German. Though he did write a book to defend his idea which is "persuasive" somehow. I'd suggest you start from there.


>Just FYI I care democracy

And yet somehow that feels untrue.


It doesn't matter at all as long as the democracy I care about is not about killing ppl at will.


People will die either way. Some people are more deserving of death than others.


[flagged]


Sorry, I thought in HN everyone has equal right to discuss on facts regardless his/her account is created today or ... 5 months ago.


Oh, they normally are, it's just that it's suspicious, that so many of them are being created with the single purpose of participating in a thread, that talks no less than about China's disinformation machine.


As long as we want to eliminate "disinformation", it's good that different opinions from different perspectives occur in this thread. To be honest, if a thread about a global political affair has only one sound, it's disinformation to me as well. Ppl could believe in sth in common and share common value, that's why we have right to protest if the value is under compromise; but ppl could also have different opinion and every right to express the opinion, that's why we have HN.


Sure it is, but, it is really, really funny you have to create so many new accounts to do it, and all of them defending exactly China. I.e. the autocratic government under the suspicion of using its disinformation machine to manipulate us.


Please don't break the site guidelines by posting insinuations of astroturfing, shilling, spying, or other abuse on HN. If you think you're seeing abuse, the guidelines ask you to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.

I've posted a zillion explanations of this if you (or anyone) want more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...


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I post a comment like once a month, how could this be "active"? I used the username since high school, any problem with it? I just came back from HK right before the airport protest, if you don't believe what people said, go to check it by yourself.


"Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


There is OBVIOUS astroturfing going in this thread. Is it really accomplishing anything to stick our head in the sand?


You've broken the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously with comments like this. We ban accounts that do that. Please do not degrade HN by posting any more like this.

Comments like this poison the commons badly. The overwhelming majority are pure imagination, born out of humans' inability to listen to others with different perspectives from their own. If you have any evidence for the accusations you're making, send it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate, as the guidelines ask. Comments you strongly disagree with are not evidence of anything other than that people in an international forum have very different perspectives.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


> The overwhelming majority are pure imagination, born out of humans' inability to listen to others with different perspectives from their own

Really? How deeply have you looked into this? Usernames follow patterns, entire names with only comments defending China from bad PR, voting happening in bursts, etc. The same thing happens on other sites and the same patterns happen with other areas with well known disinformation and social media teams.

The people bringing attention to things like this gave their reasons. Not only that, this is a thread about Chinese propaganda.

I would love to be shown that I'm off base, there is plenty of information that users don't have to that should make these things pretty obvious. Instead of looking into the extremely suspect patterns here though, you just called my comments 'poison' and 'pure imagination'. If you are going to say that, show me that it's true. Why are so many names in this thread named the same way and only used to counter negative stories about China?


Perhaps there are a lot of Chinese citizens overseas who name their accounts the same way? Use your imagination for a little bit. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll. There are people who grew up in different environments and have very different worldviews.


That's entirely possible, which is why I brought up all the other points of naming patterns, histories that are almost all deflections of Chinese criticism and no other participation, multiple downvotes on multiple comments within the same few minutes when the general trend is in the other direction, etc.

These are all hallmarks of disinformation campaigns from other groups and the same patterns happen on other sites. I think that is worth a discussion. A moderator jumping in to say it's 'poisonous' to point this out while giving no information to support that is pretty disgusting.


I've given you this information to support it: nearly every time we investigated these claims, which are legion, we find nothing but the accuser's imagination. This pattern is overwhelming, which is why we've written that guideline the way we have.

If you're worried about abuse, you should be doing what the guidelines ask and email hn@ycombinator.com instead of posting off-topic and destructive insinuations in the thread, where the odds are we won't even see them. We don't come close to reading everything here. I looked at some of the accounts with similar names and didn't find anything. That doesn't mean I looked at everything you saw; I probably didn't. If you want your concerns taken seriously, we're happy to look into specific links that you send. Occasionally we do find evidence of abuse, and in such cases we crack down hard. But we need you to follow the site guidelines, and not react to our requests to stop breaking them by breaking them further.

It is indeed poisonous to accuse other users of posting in bad faith, merely because their views seem preposterous to you. Users accusing other users of astroturfing, shilling, meddling, propaganda-ing, foreign-agenting, spying and so on is the most common internet trope there is right now. It's painfully clear that almost all of that is simply made up, and obviously we can't have HN discussions degenerating to that level.

The only approach to dealing with abuse that makes sense is to look for actual evidence. Someone else having an opposing view, even a completely wrong view, isn't evidence of abuse. It's just evidence that people have different views on divisive topics. As for "voting happening in bursts", "hallmarks of disinformation campaigns", and so on, all that kind of thing is notoriously in the eye of the beholder. People mostly see whatever they've primed themselves to see, and that is a function of how strongly they feel about their views: the ones who feel most passionately about a topic are inevitably the ones who see the most convincing 'patterns'. Still, if you're concerned about it, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com with specific links and we'll look into them. We always do. Just please follow the site guidelines from now on.

I've posted about this countless times, and anyone who wants more explanation can consume arbitrarily much of it here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...


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HN is far from Chinese government’s concern in my mind, you should talk with the administrator.


This is serious whataboutism, and actually is related to what the article is saying.


Whataboutism is another concept , say, take an hypothetical example, that French police did same thing and French media also make disinformation. Here the OP just claim that NYT report only one side story while hide another story. If his claim is true or not everybody can check.


https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sniperjzp

Most of the comments from the last four months are actually whataboutism in response to criticism of China.


Yep. And I love how I'm getting downvoted too!


I had nothing either way, then suddenly multiple downvotes right around 8 a.m. Beijing time. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

Edit: And very swiftly more downvotes and comment flags. Seems a little more stochato than a typical bad comment that gathers a few downvotes over time.


>”The assertion was more than just spin or fake news.”

Wait, is there a difference, or is it just a matter of scope?

Surely we know China is a great propaganda power. This is the bread and butter of any serious socialistic regime on the left and right. It’s no surprise and no revelation. What is surprising to me is the nonchalant approach to fake news western media is prone to when it comes to both domestic as well as foreign issues. So, yes China is foing bad things, but come on NYT, you also do the lesser evil when it fits your agenda (or doesn’t fit the agenda of the day)


I would argue that the difference between "western" (Hollywood, NY Times, WaPo, Fox News, Newsmax) and "eastern" propoganda (CCTV, Xinhua, etc) is that the western outlets are a bit more sophisticated. Propaganda from the "west" is relatively robust, in that even in the absence of government censorship, the majority of consumers of western propaganda still maintain their beliefs even when they observe contrary evidence/information. Propaganda from the "east" is much less robust and thus requires a comprehensive government censorship infrastructure (Great Firewall) to maintain consumer engagement. Perhaps with time, media outlets in China will catch up to the level of sophistication of the west and that may be the day that government censorship controls of foreign media come down in China.


> Wait, is there a difference, or is it just a matter of scope?

Scope I think is the main indicator. The stranglehold on information in and out of China is very strong, aided by the media being state-run and by the Great Firewall. CNN and NYT clearly are left leaning, but I'd say what happens in China has more in common with Fox, which increasingly over the years has devolved from simply a counter-biased to most news providers, to what amounts to the propaganda arm for the Republicans.

> What is surprising to me is the nonchalant approach to fake news western media is prone to when it comes to both domestic as well as foreign issues.

This is very frustrating indeed. Fox has, since it's inception been droning on and on about how left-leaning the main press is, but instead of simply accepting their bias, they seem deadly intent on proving them wrong all the time (which is of course ridiculous, because Fox is never going to say they aren't biased) and as a result they constantly fall into the trap of false equivalence instead of trying to find the Truth of a given situation, simply presenting both sides of a given argument. Their coverage of Climate Change is especially troubling in this regard because it paints the situation as though it's still unresolved, when in fact the anti-CC scientific community is laughably, hilariously outnumbered by the pro-CC community. It's not even a contest, I think the last number I saw was something like 97%-3%.

> So, yes China is going bad things, but come on NYT

In addition to scope though, I think severity is another one. Basically, how far they have to stretch a given truth to put out what they clearly want to put out. The NYT always has a certain spin, but typically they aren't stretching facts too hard, mostly just editorializing over facts, which in my opinion there's nothing wrong with. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a journalist to completely shed any and all opinions when writing a story, especially when they can cite relevant information to back up their position. In fact, I'd go so far as to say when a journalist has spent a fair amount of time getting immersed in a given topic, I'd very much like to hear their editorializing, because it's likely from a fairly informed viewpoint.

But, I also say all of this as someone who thinks centrism and balance in news coverage is greatly overvalued; I'd much rather see journalism that chases down the truth, and figures out which side has it more right, even if they don't always get it right themselves. I think the modern "just the facts" reporting has done a great disservice to our critical thinking abilities.


The NYT calling others out for fake news is itself propaganda: the NYT routinely engages in fake news, but is fighting to portray itself as reputable while others engaged in the same aren’t.

Like when the NYT completely blew the Covington story, due to its institutional animosity towards white people:

> The New York Times, sober guardian of the exact and the nonsensational, had cannonballed into the delicious story on Saturday, titling its first piece “Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March.”

They were forced to print a retraction less than 24 hours later when facts contradicted their racism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must...


>serious socialistic regime on the left and right

What's the connection between "great propaganda power" and "serious socialistic regime"?

Also what's a "socialistic regime on the right"?


Socialism requires a powerful centralized government. Powerful centralized governments have the means to great propaganda power since they control most of the media, and they usually need to use that power because the people won't always like the choices the government makes for them.

Although left and right are ambiguous terms, a generally agreed upon example of a socialistic regime on the right is Nazi Germany. Nazi is short for National Socialism. Whereas Soviet Communism was a socialist system with a goal of spreading throughout the world by a series of revolutions, National Socialism was a socialist system with a goal of spreading throughout the world via German conquest. Both aspired to world domination, but the means were different.


Not the person you were replying to but there's this strange idea amongst alt-right folks that Nazis were socialists because the party called itself the National Socialist party. Could be referring to that.


There was a genuinely "left-wing" part of the Nazi party (Strassurists)[1], though they along with their leader (Ernst Rohm)[2] were purged in the night of the long knives (also known as the Rohm purge)[3]

The Germans had a term for communists who swapped to the Nazi party - Beefsteak Nazis[4]. Brown on the outside and red on the inside.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Nazi


Interestingly, these same folks are somehow able to see through the "Democratic Republic" part of "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". An odd blind spot.


It's not a blind spot. They are not conservatives, they do not believe in liberty and God-given individual rights. Actual alt-righters oppose capitalism and believe in economically socialist and communitarian ideas. Similarly but to a lesser degree, "far-right" parties in Europe are oftentimes more economically socialist than their mainstream center-left and center-right opponents. Le Pen vs Macron is an example.


I'm not sure what you mean by "alt-right..." Usually that means something specific (For a good summary see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHXL00wY3nY). Among the people who have written about how the National Socialists were socialists is Jonah Goldberg (see https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Po...), whom you might not like, but is not alt-right, in that he disagrees with the alt-right on almost everything.


I don't see how the Nazi's were right-wing, seems pretty clear based on their excessively centralized government that they were more left-wing than not.


Here we go again...

Seriously, it's not difficult to understand that any majorly autocratic government, left or right, needs a centralized government by definition.

That is got nothing to do with being left or right, but with being liberal or autocratic.


Well ideas on the left of the political spectrum generally demand larger more centralized governments, because it's required to implement heavy-handed government interventions; whereas, ideas on the right, traditionally, are about smaller government and therefore tend to have much less of a centralized government.

Note I say ideas here, because the reality is e.g. the republicans in the US are for the most part big government politicans despite being on the right, but that seems more a bastardization of the traditional right, which historically is about smaller government.

So generally speaking, because left wing political ideas tend to involve big government, it means that centralization is generally more extensive in left wing governments, and I would argue thus left wing governments are more liable to be autocratic.


These things sound like a kind of socialism to me (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Economics).

"Various work programs designed to establish full-employment for the German population were instituted once the Nazis seized full national power. Hitler encouraged nationally supported projects like the construction of the Autobahn highway system, the introduction of an affordable people's car (Volkswagen) and later the Nazis bolstered the economy through the business and employment generated by military rearmament. The Nazis benefited early in the regime's existence from the first post–Depression economic upswing, and this combined with their public works projects, job-procurement program and subsidised home repair program reduced unemployment by as much as 40 percent in one year. ... Upon being appointed Chancellor in 1933, Hitler promised measures to increase employment, protect the German currency, and promote recovery from the Great Depression. These included an agrarian settlement program, labor service, and a guarantee to maintain health care and pensions."

Of course, you could say that Republicans in the United States have also done some of these things, but again, that would be Socialism on the right.


Nation-scale political movements are rarely 100% or 0% anything, but I don't see how you could read that entire section and go "yup, that all sounds like socialism". Opposition to social welfare, soliciting the involvement of businesses, going after unions and the left.

Vox has a pretty good explainer of the differences between Hitler's National Socialism and socialism. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18283879/nazism-socialism-hitl...


Socialistic ~= command economy, state ownership or heavy control of economy. USSR, PRC, imperial Japan and various fascist regimes in Europe (Germany, Italy).


Sorry, but I have to correct you that PRC is running "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" after 1978, and is totally different from your narrative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact..., you can think it as a kind of national running capitalism.


What's the formal demands from the HK protests?

Can someone point to some official documents from the protesters?


Carrie Lam's resignation, plus:

The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill

The government to withdraw the use of the word “riot” in relation to protests

The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them dropped

An independent inquiry into police behaviour

Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/what-do-the-ho...


They want the word "riot" to be dismissed because it allows the gov to put protesters in jail for up to 10 years


> The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill

Reasonable.

> The government to withdraw the use of the word “riot” in relation to protests

Unfortunately, not reasonable.

OK, now it's no longer factual to say that it's not a "riot". I do not defend either side, but let's be sure to use the word correctly.

> The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them dropped

Sorry, not reasonable.

What about the protester who is claimed to bite off a police's finger: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/30...

> An independent inquiry into police behaviour

Reasonable.

But there will be an independent inquiry being requested on the protesters as well. I am not suggesting that, I am just saying obviously Chines government is going to demand that as well.

> Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

Moderately reasonable. You are asking a country to adopt a different political system in a prominent area.

But if you want to retrieve the skin of a lion by asking politely, or assume you only suffer minor scratch, you'd better prepare to get killed.


Universal suffrage in the election of the Chief Executive was definitely, and I think - though I'm not certain - of the legislative council was in the handover agreement. The Sino British agreement China was happy to sign and see lodged with the UN as binding international agreement.

The one China says doesn't matter any more.


>>The government to withdraw the use of the word “riot” in relation to protests

>Unfortunately, not reasonable.

It's completely reasonable the word riot carries legal implications that should not apply here. It doesn't matter what the common definition of the noun is it matters how the government uses that word.

It's the equivalent of a vegan saying "Meat is Murder" pointing out the technical definitions of the words then expecting all meat eaters to get arrested for at least conspiracy to commit murder.

Not to cast false aspersions but I bet you can't even look at the image in the link below and write the same sentence about the other leader in this photo without fearing for your future.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855

Sentence: Obama is Tigger.

Now you write the full sentence : Xi Jinping is ____


Historically, there was only one: withdraw the extradiction bill.

The amount of police violence during the protests have bumped that number to 5:

https://twitter.com/HongKongHermit/status/116040946563762176...


Well there is plenty of report on both side about polices being violent, and protesters being violent.

I do not refute the idea that polices are violent at the beginning, after all, that's what they are hired to do.

But the escalation of events pretty much marred the picture as a splendid mixes of colorful distortions.

If anyone recall how CCP got the power, they got that through violence.

It does not matter who is violent, the winner has to win in order to rewrite the history. And please be aware that demanding universal voting is calling for revolution.


> I do not refute the idea that polices are violent at the beginning, after all, that's what they are hired to do.

I had extended family in law enforcement, and my brother is studying to become a police officer. They would be very offended to hear that police are hired to be violent. They're hired to enforce justice. A Hong Kong citizen speaking their mind against the government to achieve change is absolutely within the bounds of Hong Kong justice, to violently break up assemblies aimed at changing government policy by voicing discontent is far removed from the principles police forces like the one in Hong Kong were founded on.

If they were deployed simply to be violent towards people who voice their opinion the government no longer functions within Hong Kong's basic law and they are no longer representing the people of Hong Kong. Just like the people of China has done multiple times towards rulers who don't represent them, the people of Hong Kong fought back.


A bully punches a child in the face for months, and once the child pushes back, there are people to say "it does not matter who is violent," and decry "the escalation of events."

It does matter.


I do not meant to defend either side. But the first comment on the NYT article has the following statement:

""" Well dear reporters, you failed to mention the fact that the story actually first started on Facebook. Some guy who claimed himself the victim’s brother posted on FB saying his sister was actually shot by her fellow protesters accidentally. This incident is now heartedly discussed on a popular online community in HK(https://www.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=28439217). Those who can understand written Cantonese can take a look. Anyway dear reporters, those above may not qualify to be a reliable source but still...the “state-run” media didn’t make up the story out of nowhere. """

My feeling is just that the news report in modern time is simply no longer fact-driven.


My feeling is that I'm seeing a lot of comments from people whose usernames are a common word plus three characters that defend China in a backhanded way.

It's just a feeling, but I'd say that's about as credible as these comments.


It doesn't have to be a feeling. It's been well documented that the Chinese government has a group of people that it employs to spread pro-Chinese propaganda and downvoted perceived threatening speech on social web sites around the world.

HN has been a target of this brigade for years.


This comment breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing. If you have evidence, I'd like to see it—we take actual evidence seriously and always look into it. But the overwhelming majority of comments like this one turn out to be nothing more than the commenter imagining an explanation for comments they disagree with. Such imagination feels extremely convincing, but it is imagination nonetheless.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


I guess Chinese gov needs to pay me then ;), mind sharing out the "well documented" reference?

It's a common way for Chinese to pick up an username, a common word plus few characters from their name. I created mine since high school and I use it like a charm for almost a decade. I'm not defending China, I just wanted to let you know NYT is not telling the full truth. I've done biz in HK for 5+ yrs, the conflict and tension between China and HK can't be simply explained in two or three sentences.

The protest is out of control right now, you can't imagine how scary and horrible the current HK is, protestors hit people if they don't want to join, they forbid people from going to work, they rush into airport, train station to interfere public transportation, etc. I was lucky to return back earlier, but it's really disappointing to see NYT only reports whatever favors them. People visiting HK for holidays or biz are not the right ones the protestors should blame. If you don't believe what I said, you can go to HK and take a look (I hope not, at least not now), or talk to anyone who just came back.


Yeah this has become a serious moderation issue. Having a policy that forces people to pretend it isnt happening is also totally counterproductive.


In terms of feeling, we know which government can easily out number any other country on this planet...


It's hard to even know what you're trying to say here.

You feel your country can beat up Hong Kong?




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