Again, she wasn’t charged with trading with Iran. Since you can’t seem to understand that simple point, I don’t see this conversation as productive any longer.
97 karma · joined August 4, 2018
What do you mean about the US banks having a legal say? The government is the one doing the prosecuting.
And if they were lied to, then how would they know that their money would be used to violate sanctions? Are you saying that they should have known that Huawei was lying, therefore it’s their own fault? Maybe that’s the case, but it doesn’t have any bearing on whether a crime was committed.
Edit: And that doesn’t change the fact that your original comment was highly misleading. I’m sure you can come up with some argument against the US position, but you should have done that in the first place instead of posting a strawman.
Your characterization seems a bit misleading.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3036457/foreign-t...
It seems to me that there certainly is a distinct cultural identity in Hong Kong. Children are raised with less indoctrination in school, they have more access to Western media, and they have different values and manners. It’s obvious the minute you get to Hong Kong. Ask the mainlanders who complain about pretentious, condescending Hong Kongers whether there’s a distinct culture there.
I do think I see your point - there are many distinct cultures all over China and it’s certainly not a monolith. But I still have the impression that in certain ways the values of Hong Kong people are, on average, different. They certainly don’t seem to want to give ground on some of their individual freedoms.
Anyways, it seems hypocritical for Beijing to characterize this as a sovereignty issue, if your analyst is correct about their view. They agreed to one country two systems (for now), and the whole sovereignty argument seems more like a distraction to me.
It seems like they just don’t want to admit mistakes - easier to blame Western influence than admit that they’ve pushed too hard and made the people too angry.
Anyways, I really appreciate the discussion. I’m kind of starved for people to talk to about it.
They didn't even cover the protests for something like two weeks. They waited until they had some negative things to cover and their talking points all sorted out, then started hammering away about how violent the protestors were and how they were all that way because of foreign influence. It was truly absurd.
The Overton [1] window in China and amongst Chinese people is therefore very far from the truth. Combine that with social pressure, and poor reporting by Western sources, even overseas Chinese people have trouble understanding other opinions on the matter.
I don't agree about your different form of censorship idea. It's completely different to have the majority of people disagree with or ignore your opinion than to have top-down censorship of different ideas. I can easily find Chinese opinions on social media and educate myself about your beliefs. Not so easy in China. To me it just shows weakness - if the government of China can't trust their people to make up their own mind, what does that say about their arguments?
I haven't tried to bring up the Hong Kong protests with many friends here in China, just because I'm afraid of losing their friendships. How must it feel for Chinese people who have sympathy for them?
As far as the NBA, some friends have actually broached the topic with me. They tend to be upper-middle class, educated types, and while they might disagree with what that one guy said (and apologized for), they aren't angry at the NBA, and they feel the government response is ridiculous and counter-productive.
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/06/china-and-the-u-s-stock...
HackerNews is read surprisingly widely here. I've met Chinese people (who work in tech) who read it. But the strangest thing I saw was a random older relative of my wife who linked an article that was just translations of various HN comments.
I don't remember which post they were from. It was an AskHN - something like "what's the worst codebase you've ever seen" or whatever. It was surreal to see the translations linked a month after I'd read the original thread.
Actually I have emacs running on Android as well. I don't really use it often - but it works fine. Maybe if I bought a little Bluetooth keyboard I would play around with it more.
I don't think it's literally as extreme as the book 1984, but yeah China has a lot of problems. A non-independent judicial system will never be as just as an independent one.
You've been shown to be wrong so many times in this thread and then your response is always to expand the scope of the discussion and put words in my mouth. I think it's really dishonest.
By the way I live in China, have a Chinese wife, and Chinese friends. My Chinese is far from fluent but I'm working on it. I never claimed to be an authority on China, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I don't have a simplistic view and I don't think China is totally evil. You're just using that to dismiss everything I say, even though you're the one who's been repeatedly factually wrong in this discussion. I am open-minded to your viewpoint, but you simply aren't very convincing when you argue like this.
No kidding, a cab driver can discuss his problems with the government in his own cab? Sometimes a gently disagreeing post on Weibo briefly trends and gets discussion before it's removed? Amazing.
Chinese media tells partial truths and takes things out of context constantly. The Western media are not some evil masterminds that CCTV can never match.
With that, I'm really finished here. Good luck to you.
I've witnessed the Chinese judicial system secondhand, as experienced by native Chinese people. Fortunately, I haven't had to experience anything firsthand. And I've read countless articles and books to the point where I know the specific incidents those signs are referring to.
I'm sorry, but I really can't spend any more time digging up sources for you. Hopefully you have a VPN or live abroad and can look for this stuff yourself.
You can probably understand why they wouldn't want to be subject to that justice system.
You keep putting words in mine and other people's mouths. I never said democracy is a panacea. I agree that Western media is biased about China. Average people are not well-informed anywhere. At least outside of China, people can easily learn if they choose to.
I agree that Japanese politicians downplaying or refusing to apologise for Nanjing is somewhat comparable to the CCPs handling of the Tiananmen incident, although Japan obviously has nothing like the censorship in China. Both are wrong. And I think if you talk to more people you'll find they agree.
I definitely think Britain should have offered citizenship. I'm surprised they didn't want to.
But, how often does the news need to talk about the Opium Wars? I would say there are plenty of long-form articles talking about it, but does every article about Hong Kong need to give century-old context?
It's brought up in Chinese media far more often because it's useful for the CCP to remind people. It helps keep them in power and feeds their narrative that China must never be seen as weak again. And while I personally don't think excessive nationalistic propaganda is a good thing, it's at least understandable.
However, my point is that this part of history being brought up more often in Chinese media doesn't mean it's the natural state of things, or that it should be brought up more often in Western media. No one reasonable thinks the British or other foreign powers involved did the right thing there.
You claimed straw-man really easily before. Don't you think saying that HKers think this one bill will turn HK into a 1984-like society is a bit of a straw-man? I think most of them might say that the problem is not one bill, but more of a slippery slope type thing. Give an inch, give a mile.
What beliefs do I have about why parts of the world are unstable? I don't think I've expressed any, so you must be making an assumption there. And actually, if you ask around, I don't think you'll find many westerners who think colonialism was a good thing, although I'm sure there are some.
Finally, about the British wanting Hong Kong to be democratic. After further reading, 60 years might not be right. There was a plan in the 40s and 50s for democracy, but it sounds like it was the British governor of the time who blocked it for unclear reasons. I don't know if there were other attempts before the negotiations for the handover began. The 1980s are more accurate, so maybe about 20 years before Chinese rule.
That said, I still think it can be assumed that the CCP opposed democracy in Hong Kong. If you want me to say Britain messed up with Hong Kong by not allowing democracy, then I can agree with that. And I'll certainly agree that Western colonialism was for the most part a terrible thing that made the world a worse place.
You claimed that it's impossible to read about the Opium Wars in Western media, I say I learned about it in high school history and give you one of thousands upon thousands of links about it that will come up when you search.
I never claimed the West was innocent, nor that they should be forgiven about anything. You're just adding all that stuff in to further muddle the discussion when you've been proven wrong.
I hope you learn to challenge your own beliefs, because after your comments I don't think it's a good use of my time to continue discussing things with you.
Here ya go (he has further citations at the bottom if you're really interested):
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/...
Regardless of whose fault it is, it doesn't have any bearing on whether or not the people of HK should have self-determination.
>It is also nearly impossible to learn anything about the opium wars in Western media, or how the governors of HK are all appointed by the British monarch directly.
I don't know about that, I learned about it in high school. Here's a more recent book and review about it:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/book...
>Then what is this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democra....
>BTW he/she said "largely encouraged".
So the existence of the NED proves to you that a large portion of the protestors in Hong Kong are foreign-influenced? Okay. Personally, I think it's more likely that they're concerned about their rights and it's insulting to say otherwise.
Which is something I learned about in the Western media, by the way, and that it would be nearly impossible to learn in Chinese media.
Also the claim that these protests were caused by foreign influence is wrong and insulting. It also echos what the higher-level CCP members have been saying.
At least in my school, it was taught as unequivocally wrong and one of the biggest mistakes the US government ever made. The focus was on how painful it was for the families and how much they lost. And this was in a rural, conservative community.
I see this repeated a lot on Hacker News, but it's no* longer true. Search WFOE (wholly foreign-owned enterprises).
*Fixed a typo - thanks to below comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-tr...
That said, the shipping times definitely aren't as consistent as Amazon (although I've only used Amazon in Seattle). I'm not in a Tier 1, but I am in a provincial capital. I'd estimate about 50% of my orders take 3 days, 30% take 2 days, 10% take 1 day, and 10% greater than 3 days.
With Amazon it was like 80% 2 days, 20% 1 day, and hardly ever more than 2 days using prime.
This isn't a totally fair comparison, I guess. I don't pay a yearly fee to Taobao and I rarely get express shipping, I just use the default. But really Taobao is fine. It's not as amazing as some people on here say, but it's not crap either.