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Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

While I agree, as a current resident, I also witnessed the insane destructive behavior of Apple Daily, who did exagerate quite a bit the situation and was far from a neutral observer. I'd even say that telling kids the police murdered 2000 people was not exactly helping them strategize rather than throw themselves in desperate waves at the police... These guys all pushed the situation towards a point of no return for the communists, which could have been instead worked around.

Ofc a strong and self assured nation would be able to swallow it, and China shows us how weak and self doubting it is, but I won't cry too many tears for that newspaper.

I'm even a tad annoyed Lai is presented as a glorious press freedom figure when I felt reading it that it was on the abusive side of freedom. I guess we all need now to redraw the line at which we collaborate vs resist and Im not yet at the resist stage.

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The situation is clearly asymmetric tough. The Apple Daily is not a great paper and they got more coverage than they deserve but they are symptomatic of a need for people to voice opposing opinions.

Now there is basically nothing left. Local news outlets will censor themselves because the law is overly vague and will be systematically interpreted in the broadest possible way. Journalists are harassed and intimidated, if not threatened physically.

The independence of justice is also in peril with judges being replaced and pressured into compliance.

There is no turning back for HK, it's just terribly sad. It could have been an example for China, an experiment. Anti-China sentiment was comparatively fairly low while there was some token respect for the 2-system.

I agree with you that China only shows us how weak it really is with its display of comically over-the-top caricatural retaliation against any form of dissent.

I'm not sure what resisting can look like though. No cooperation is granted but while I'm a resident, I'm also a foreigner and a guest here. Options are limited apart from being an observer.

I love HK with all my heart and it kills me to see it go through that transformation into a pro-CCP satellite.

The tank has breached the border -figuratively- and I don't think anything will stop it now. I expect freedoms to slowly erode a lot further over the next few years as the CCP increases its hold over the various representative bodies (only patriots allowed!).

It sometimes goes beyond harassment and intimidation of journalists into outright assault:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_attack_on_Kevin_Lau

We don't cry tears because of the kind of journalism, we cry tears because it was on some level journalism or at minimum freedom of expression and the clampdown means the same it will happen to you if you try that route.

Anyone who contradicts Putin and gets any stickiness or popularity ends up dead. You don't have to agree with Putin's antagonists to realize why that is bad.

tell that to twitter or facebook

Was Apple Daily regularly sharing outright falsified stories?

Yes, I dunno what you call regular, but they repeated taiwanese rumours that were vastly exagerated. In 2019 saying the police didnt kill 2000 people in secret would warrant you a slap in the street, because of these newspapers that were a bit... activist ?

Kids that were arrested were hollered by these Apple Daily journalists to display their ID card to the camera in case they disappeared, creating a climate were they felt like oppressed freedom fighters rather than overly violent political activists.

Honestly me and my wife, at the beginning of Jimmy Lai s arrest were relieved because we felt it could stop the insanity a bit. Ofc China will go too far as usual but that's the feeling some of us have. Dunno how common it is, as it's hard to discuss calmly in HK.

Either people feel their little pride shattered by all this anti China discourse, or they feel invaded and tortured by the fact we're a Chinese city. Hard to discuss a middle ground where we ignore each other like we've done for 2 decades.

There's no middle ground really: China has taken over, you have no rights. That's it.

If you speak ill of someone powerful, you'll disappear one way or another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Daily It's interesting that most people here don't read Apple Daily. Those who can read Apple Daily and know the real nature don't want to talk too much because the opinion doesn't align the majority of HNer's belief based on partial information.

It's a tabloid newspaper but more than that, it's full of hate and anger. That's its strength because there's a big market for it.

I contradict Xi proudly. I wouldnt tell children the police killed 2000 of them in secret, under the cover or repeating taiwanese news, to excite some sort of defensive behavior in them.

If the police killed 2000 kids like this newspaper sometimes proclaimed, then all the violence the protesters used felt justified. That's why im on the fence in this case, and that s also why China is hysterical at that paper that did more propaganda than them.

Genuinely curious, what do you tell kids about the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square?

In every country in the world, when you claim that police murdered 2000 people, you will get in trouble. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression, exept when you have very good evidence but even then it's dangerous to make such claims.

This is not true.

Go on to Twitter right now and say those things. In almost every democracy, nothing will happen to you.

Put up a website and make that claim.

You might get banned from Facebook.

If the Apple journalists published information about the roughly 10 000 people that were killed in Tianamen protests, would they get shut down as well? [1]

Do you see somewhere in the UK or the US where 500 police raid a major news entity?

They might do that if the paper leaked sensitive military information ... but even then that'd be extremely rare and it would not happen merely for making ridiculous claims.

Anyone who challenges Xi or the CCP will end up in jail.

The obvious solution would be to allow Hong Kong residents to vote in their own leaders and decide for themselves.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516

No you won't. There are lots of conspiracy theory lunatics running around in Western (or many other) countries claiming stuff like this and nobody is arresting them if they don't also propagate or participate in violence.

>These guys all pushed the situation towards a point of no return for the communists

Ah yes, the victim left absolute no choice to the aggressor than to punch them in the face ! What sort of logic is that ?

You don't arrest bad journalists, just like you don't burn bad books or censor bad movies out of the excuse that they're bad. On first principles, the nature of things is more important than their subjective value.

You dont but they do. So we have three choices: lick their boots, throw ourselves at their jails, or discuss alternatives until we find one. I'd rather continue discussing than say it's already too late, but I live in it and you dont so maybe that's why.

There are no alternatives in totalitarian regimes, the only other option is to leave. Yes, I have lived in one.

> These guys all pushed the situation towards a point of no return for the communists, which could have been instead worked around.

It couldn't have been worked around. It doesn't work this way. There is no other way, in 2048, or in 2022, no other way around. That's the goal of Beijing. Tell us if it's something else.

On other hand, if HK turns into mini-Syria, it would've mobilised way more people, even the most inert, and apolitical.

For Beijing, it will also be a guaranteed loss both ways then. They lose 2048, and HK on the platter as it is, with its access to world financial markets. I believe only a scare of this kind have a chance to make Beijing to back off.

Third, HK is the seat of Western money in Asia. If the bank where their money is will literally burn to the ground, at least then they would've not pretend that nothing happens.

Some times, a solution to violence, is bigger violence.

Well the goal of Beijing is for the party to survive, there are many solutions between murdering us all and let HK become a country.

I mean we're a city, we have no army, what do you propose ? I propose to work around the party, like Macau, sing the anthem from time to time and basta, the problem can only be fixed by China as a whole, not at our level.

Beijing cannot "back off" more violence, they can only double down. Put yourself in their shoe: if they're a mafia in need of legitimacy and survival, that committed too many crimes to welcome honest competition, how can a HK citizen think that burning a local metro station will make them "oh right, freedom is too important for HK, we should maybe even copy them".

Before immediately jumping to desperate violence, maybe we can try to bribe them. Which is what we did before, and what we now do albeit with a bit more cost to re-assure that yes yes we're good patriots until the dragon goes back to sleep...

I prefer to discuss about things in a less free Hong Kong than starve and steal in a mini Syria but you're welcome to solve problems that way where you live :D

> if they're a mafia in need of legitimacy and survival, that committed too many crimes to welcome honest competition,

If you back down to a mafia in need of legitimacy and survival, you support the mafia, and you become a man without honour.

Such people never returned a punch to the face, and never prevailed.

> I mean we're a city, we have no army, what do you propose ?

For the amount of money an average HK billionaire has, you can buy enough arms from Bulgaria, or Balkans to arm the whole HK population 10 times over.

The average HK billionaire is rich because of China. They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them.

Since when is Bulgaria and the Balkans a military industrial complex? I thought the Bulgarians made tomatoes and peppers and the Serbs made slibovitz and plum jam. Both countries are homes to great food. North Macedonia too.

Guessing by your name, you are a local? South-East Europe is a huge producer, and trade centre for small arms, sometimes to the big surprise of their own citizens.

While small arms are peanuts in comparison to jet fighters, and missiles by value on the world's arms market, they are still there, and Balkan makers have good prices, and collaborative governments.

This article[1] sheds some light on small arms proliferation. Bulgaria and Serbia aren't even mentioned. While there are still lots of unlicensed rifles in the West Balkans[2], the bulk of small arms still comes from the US, Russia, China and Western European states. They're sold to dictators or given to rebel groups in conflict areas. The former are then stolen, smuggled and resold to rebel groups and civillians.

  1. https://social.shorthand.com/ymuntaiwan/ug53Pq2PhT/disec-i-proliferation-of-small-arms-and-light-weaponry
  2. http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/G-Issue-briefs/SAS-AV-IB4-Western-Balkans.pdf

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