This sounds much like astroturfed campaigns typical in authoritarian states once a public figure is deemed the enemy. It's wild how Western reporters take the "peoples comments" at face value.
Jack Ma was a governmental sponsored big tech monopoly that hated by many small merchants.
Now the government decided to punish Alibaba, so the crowds cheered, for whom the saddest part is the whole thing has little to do with them from start to end
In the US, it is incredible how often reporters parrot security state talking points without any research into whether they're accurate, such as how people piled on Russia after the recent hacking scandal without any evidence shown, just a gut insinuation as far as I know.
The only advice I can give is: always be skeptical. period.
People without first hand experience often do not comprehend it, even if accept the argument logically. But when you live there, you grow up with the 6th sense of political momentum. It's as natural as breathing. You are not starting to shit on a powerful person in your country unless you sense a strong political tailwind.
Mr. Ma famously claimed that 996 is a blessing of fortune [1], despite the global outcry on 996, Jack was untouched almost entirely in the media and online circle. He probably was deemed a member of the entrepreneur class, which cannot be unethical I guess?
Jack said that he is not interested in money on CCTV (the national TV station) [2], a rather hypocritical statement.
He claimed that Chinese banking system works as pawnshop, while at the same time his Ant works like "payday loan". He claimed that Chinese financial system is not innovative enough, while Ant is repeating the same gambling practiced 10 years ago.
Jack joked that AI is Alibaba Intelligence in front of Elon Musk. Universally ridiculed in China.
Jack was a close friend of actress Zhao Wei was caught in camera of close interchanges, (Google 马云 赵薇) Mrs Zhao also participate Ant IPO through her mother. She was banned from security market for misconduct [3]. After that, Jack said they were not close at all [4].
There are plenty more. Probably most were censored already. These are just the most brazen ones I suppose.
Remember that Chinese were indoctrinated through Communism ideology. Mr. Ma can even appear in public is itself a proof that he is under the protection of CCP while he is still useful.
An ordinary citizen, showing these behaviors, would have to worry about their personal safety at all times; and would be mocked everyday online. Not for Mr. Jack Ma though.
Now let's see how far CCP wants to expose Mr. Jack Ma to the people's resentment...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/business/jack-ma-996-china/in...
[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oVi5EGbZy1A
[3] http://www.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2018-04/16/c_129851599.htm
https://3g.163.com/dy/article/ED813TL60542805D.html?spss=ada...
Are you saying that a sufficiently unpopular public figure would have a high likelihood of being physically attacked on the street?
Chinese netizens routinely make threats to public figures who make statements that are contradicting to common Orthodox. Mrs. Zhao Wei, the one I already mentioned above, and elsewhere in other posts, was once attacked by poops, because she wore clothes that has the imperial Japanese flag [3].
Then take a look at this [4], a teen used Ant's personal loan, and cannot repay, so she runs away, then her mom committed suicide.
Similar incidents happened a lot...
I am fairly sure that, some young Chinese vigilante, after reading this, had the conviction that Mr. Jack Ma probably is a bad man, and they are compelled to do something about it.
[1] https://amp.scmp.com/tech/tech-leaders-and-founders/article/...
[2] https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/90762149
[3] https://www.scmp.com/article/365213/pop-star-under-fire-posi...
Jail is for foreigners and well known people they want to silence, when they need to pretend there's a real justice system.
There's plenty of firsthand accounts of this stuff happening on the internet.
No astroturf needed to find people who hate the rich in a society that punishes the poor.
“...well yeah but, it’s China!”
It’s unfortunate but How often do we see comments like that? China has been such a brutal, oppressive nation that it’s really hard to overlook, and accept at face value anything that comes out of it.
Simply put, by its very nature China instills mistrust, distrust, and critique.
China does not have a great government, but American coverage of it is also extreme propaganda.
If we were to evaluate China objectively we would have to recognize its huge achievements. Living in China for much of the last 20 years and being able to witness the changes first hand, the subject often comes up in conversation both here and overseas. Without getting bogged down in tangential statistics, I generally point out that at the beginning of the 20th century, China was roughly parallel to India in many macro-economic metrics. Now look at the difference. It is a viable superpower, a space power, the world's renewable energy technology and perhaps also deployment leader (certainly e-vehicles), the world's reforestation leader, a far more educated (eg. popularly literate and numerate) and healthy (well fed) population, a population no longer dangerously expanding, corruption is under control, world leading mobile payments, world leading logistics, and it is at the center of the world's global supply chain (and consumption!) for almost every industry.
That said, China has many problems (living here is earth-shatteringly frustrating a lot of the time), @alisonatwork's comment is on the mark, and the achievements of the 20th century do not by any means excuse the grave and terrible costs, but to suggest that its government is inept in a hand-wave is shatteringly naive.
That’s the point: there is no bad information coming out of China, it’s always “positive,” like it was written by a PR team. No nation is perfect, but China works very hard so that nothing comes out of the country that is negative. By manipulating the news so that nothing is ever negative, you destroy all confidence in the accuracy of that reporting.
If China was serious about being a world power, worthy of respect, they wouldn’t work so hard to hide all the negative, censor, and punish people who speak the truth.
Then what do you consider the article this post is discussing? Or all of the stories mentioned in your other post?
If you are disgusted by some of the things the government did, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to specify that?
The Trump administration is absolutely a disaster and “didn’t do anything warrant a positive article,” but I wouldn’t call the U.S. names because of the government.
American people aren’t against climate change and exited Paris Climate Accord, the Trump administration did.
Ordinary Chinese citizen did not censor the reporters, the government did.
Your Nazi example makes no sense. I assume you can put some blame on the people who made the gas if they know its purpose. But you wouldn’t blame every German national during WWII for Genocide.
So you tell me: Who operates the Chinese concentration camps?
...is a false equivalence.
A lot of that goodwill started getting frittered away as the CCP were involved with events that appeared to threaten freedom/democracy and autonomy both in the China region and around the rest of the world. Just a few off the top of my head...
- 2016 Artificial islands and military bases built in South China Sea
- 2017 Four Corners report on CCP influence operations in Australia
- 2017 HRW report on Uighur reeducation camps
- 2018 Xi Jinping dissolves term limits
- 2018 Two Michaels detained
- 2019 Hong Kong National Security Law and protests
- 2020 Coronavirus
- 2020 Ladakh border skirmishes
There are lots more examples. Meanwhile, citizen journalists are being disappeared and foreign journalists are getting kicked out of the country, which is only making it more difficult to get independent reporting of what is going on.
Personally, I don't think it's so much that there is no positive reporting about China happening in the west any more, it's just that now the more optimistic stuff is balanced out by a more cynical take.
I'd argue there is US mass media manipulation. There's simply clear monetary (and nationalistic) incentive in riling Americans against an evil enemy. In my eyes, the US paints China as evil just as much as NK paints US as evil. Do you not think it's propaganda that all the news is one sided, have you not considered a scenario where Americans might have been planted a bias by the media?
Also, I'd be an effin' amazing impostor to act as a plant as a YC alum on HN with my username orange. Maybe China wired me some money.