Hacker News Reader

Comment by jo3483754 | Hacker News Reader

"You cannot trust anything reported out of China" does not need to mean what you are taking it as. It is true you cannot trust anything reported out of China. But that's not the same as saying not to believe anything reported out of China. The former is a fact, you should be skeptical instead of blindly trust a country known for propaganda. The latter is racist, saying nothing China says is true. There are a few people saying forms of the latter. But most here seem to be saying more the former, that strong skepticism is needed. This isn't inherently racist, and it even aligns with your whole point here, thus is the opposite of a fallacy.

View on HN

Sometimes you need to look a bit further than logical correctness. Yes the two sentences are logically equivalent:

"You cannot trust anything reported out of China" "Not all things reported out of China can be trusted"

But the language you choose to use has its emotional implication. Ask any Chinese, which of the two sentences is more biased.

Nitpick, but those 2 sentences are not logically equivalent:

"You cannot trust anything reported out of China" = "Nothing reported out of China can be trusted",

while

"You cannot trust something reported out of China" = "Not all things reported out of China can be trusted"

I understand the feeling of my follows, they are hot-blood emotional beings.... What I could summarise more abstractly is this: they are not discrediting the news sources abroad, but instead, because chinese society / us people are well connected (in real person). It's almost impossible to hide any major events in China, even with large scale blockage. Everyone talks to everyone. Hence the reaction from a lot of people from China is due to the fact that they understand the situation 'better' than just seeing what's reported.

I had a similar reaction back in 2010 when talking to a scientist from Libya (during the internal conflict). He was in real shock of what's been known for ages of his country in the west. Of course it doesn't mean everything in the western media is wrong. But he knew some facts that had simply not surfaced at all in people's view. I have a similar feeling now.

> because chinese society / us people are well connected (in real person)

Most Uyghurs don't even speak your language. That generalization of well-connectivity doesn't apply at all. Unless you speak Äynu, you are likely talking mostly with Han Chinese in Xinjiang (or Uyghurs who had undergone severe Sinicization).

> It's almost impossible to hide any major events in China, even with large scale blockage

It is impossible to hide "major events" only when jounralists are free to roam around in China.

I have a jounralist friend whose grandfather was a Chinese war hero (i.e. he is a 红三代). He is now a US citizen, and works for a respectable news media. He had internal CCP connections but were denied Chinese visa when he was working on the Uighur story in 2017. This had never happened before, even when he was investigating the controversial story with Bo Xilai.

I appreciate your comment but I didn't imply that the connection was seamless between ethnic groups. Your thinking assumes that there is a huge segregation between the two populations and anyone who cross-over would be 'Sinicization' / radicalisation. But reality is more complex than that. If you been or watched any videos from Xinjiang (unfortunately most not in English) you would see alot of locals (ethnic minorities) supporting the current way of life or even the law enforcement themselves (which I don't want to argue about its right or wrong here).

I don't see how the journalist story relates to this. I know exactly the kind of profile he has. Most people in/out of China know the limit of political freedom and the sensitivity changes according to political tides. It'll be quite strange that he pretends he didn't know the severity. But that's exactly my point: these events muddle the water and hide the real serious issues.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com