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Comment by elefanten | Hacker News Reader

Is there debate about this on the Chinese net? I'm curious because I don't know, but I imagine having a debate where people can genuinely criticize China would be difficult to conduct in the face of censorship and legal risk.

I ask because my experience across the Western net has been seeing lots of debate. This thread is a good example. I only see Chinese netizens appear in huge angry voting brigades, spamming threads with proclamations, denunciations and flimsy claims.

So I genuinely wonder; does vibrant and open debate take place somewhere? How/where could I see what such debates look like?

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> I only see Chinese netizens appear in huge angry voting brigades, spamming threads with proclamations, denunciations and flimsy claims.

You will never see it anywhere on the internet, because from the very beginning your decision has been made. Anything you read will be morphed according to your belief. Anyone pro China on this site is immediately either labeled as brainwashed retards or paid shill. That's why there are no discussions, it's just your echo chamber.

Yes it took place somewhere else. Even in tech a good portion of Chineses don’t know HN and other people just use it as “tech news hub” like medium/TechCrunch (tbh that’s my common usage). There would be a language barrier because most of the discussion would be in written Chinese which is quite ambiguous for discussion. The best way might be to interview a few Chinese people but keep in mind the redlines: 1) integrity/definition of China (e.g no sane Chinese would think HongKong is not part of China and some would terminate the conversation directly if you raise some other point. Tibet/Taiwan is more controversial maybe you can discuss). 2)Those “well known” crimes/human rights offense the government committed. Native Chinese doesn’t really trust western media that much and it might be such a meme to them already so it’s likely turning into whataboutsim (which is perfectly ok in Chinese culture, if you are not better by another magnitude don’t comment on me)

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