Since OP refuses to explain, my uneducated guess is that OP is facing similar issues that people in r/hapas are facing.
Not sure why OP got downvoted.
21 karma · joined April 1, 2019
Not sure why OP got downvoted.
Edit: I can't even ask for a reference without getting downvoted again and again. Nice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Japan%E2%80%93So...
If you can read Chinese, go to weibo or tieba or tianya or hupu, you can see posts about the protests. Surely they may get removed after a while but I can assure you that one doesn't gets arrested just for posting the news and discuss about it a bit. The number of off-line discussions cannot be estimated.
Proof (a screenshot from NGA): https://imgur.com/a/FbofCOK
Please remember that HK is physically connected to mainland China and 83.2 million people crossed the border in 2015[0]. Hell, even in 1984 some people still know the government's dirty secrets, it would be extremely arrogant to assume we know nothing.
False statements like this appeals to the Westerners but it worsens the misunderstanding between us, which is counterproductive if you want a more open and free China.
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/FbofCOK
Yes, recently there has been an abnormally high amount of news about China on HN and I find most of the comments questionable to say the least. I was so pissed and registered this account to post some comments that are also questionable, so I really should calm down and contribute something that actually helps.
Speaking of the Japanese culture, I must admit that I envy them for how well it is preserved and developed with time. I totally understand why you find it's beautiful and think it represents the good things in the Far East. Our problem is that the Japanese government treat us like they defeated us during WWII because now they are the ally of the allies, which makes us super upset.
Yes all our governments suck, but from our perspective, the US has actively caused much much more trouble around the world than China. And we are genuinely concerned about what's going to happen next because of mentality shown by words like [0] (sorry if the link is pay-walled).
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/04/because-c...
I have spent 9 years in the US. When I first came here, I was fed up with CCP's bs and thought the US and its system is the best. But now I have come to the conclusion that it is just as evil as the CCP, but in different ways. I think so because I have witnessed first hand about how insulting the Chinese is still acceptable [0] even in the PC culture (ppl still ask me if I eat dogs), how biased the mainstream media are, and how the democratic system here is full of flaws. More and more mainlanders are sharing my view, for better or for worse.
Also, it's not just "lose control to foreign organization". Based on the above reasons, we believe that the West is hostile towards Asia and will do everything to prevent any country in that area from growing up and challenge them. The US supports Korea, Japan and Taiwan just so it can put pressure on China, instead of actually caring about their people. Look, the HN crowd are still down-voting my post that complains about you mentioning Japan and I still can't think of why.
Yes, I understand that rights can only be obtained by earning instead of begging, and the Chinese-American community did a poor job to defend their rights. But until we have a memorial day for [1], I do not believe the Westerners care about our well-being at all.
As for your protest, this image of the flyer in [2] was circulating privately on our social media, and I have to say that one of the bullet points is really questionable, namely, collective punishment (do you have proof of this?). Even if all the other ones are true to some extent, this one is going to hurt your credibility a lot and push people away from you.
I am going to take a risk by quoting Chairman Mao's words: 政治就是，把支持我们的人搞的多多的，把反对我们的人搞得少少的！The number of people in the mainland who doesn't like CCP's actions is probably larger than you realized, but these people, by their nature, dislike liars in general. If HK want to win their support, then it really should make sure that their flyers/slogans are flawless and based on facts, and do not smell like the typical Western propaganda. I know this is putting the burden on you but hey this is not an easy task to begin with.
Keep up the good work!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFxOsUe0I8o
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_Americans#T...
[2] https://twitter.com/liuyun2018/status/1133227121713659904
Edit: Let me add more materials that supports my view that the US doesn't care about us at all [3], and how they provided continuous support to Chiang Kai-shek even if he did [4] and [5]. I am from Henan so you can imagine why do I think this is just as bad as what the CCP did, and how angry I am when almost no Westerners talks about these when they talk about the KMT.
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ygpo0/i_was...
Yes, this is the sane choice. Unfortunately we both know that bad news draw more attention from the general public. Just like many mainlanders still remember vividly that (a small fraction of) HKers called them as locusts, when some Japanese say something bad about China, it gets spread much much faster than other news and stays in the memory for a long time. I was merely stating the fact that it is not a good idea to praise Japan in a conversation in general unless necessary, given the current state of our media. But still, their officials need to stop visiting the Shrine, or the names of the war criminals need to be removed.
> "riot" charge by the government
Usual CCP bs. My stand on this is that: HK is the best candidate for advocating changes to the CCP, if you can succeed before 2047 then we really own you a big favor. But HK should also remember that this is our internal affair, no foreign organization should interfere. The West can be used as extra pairs of eyes to keep the CCP checked so it doesn't repeat the disaster happened in Tiananmen square, but that's it. I hope you can understand why we don't trust the West, after we have witnessed the events happened elsewhere.
Mainlanders are also perfectly capable of doing it, although we are not doing as good as we can.
https://www.chinasmack.com/chinese-football-fans-pick-up-tra...
Downvote me all you want, I still support your democratic movements. But if you truly want mainlander to hear your voice, talking about how good Japan is is counterproductive.
If you want to make friends with the victims, it is not a good idea to talk about how morally superior the criminals are. Please explain why are you down-voting this. I changed my mind seeing your previous posts, and I may change again if you can point out my mistake.
In the link you provided: As of 2010, 24% of South Koreans still believe that Japan has never apologized for its colonial rule, while another 58% believe Japan has not apologized sufficiently. So apparently I am not alone.
Until the names of the "1,068 convicted war criminals" are removed from the Shrine, visiting it hurts people's feelings, period. This has nothing to do with what they visited it for. Even if you ignore other parts of Asia, those people did great harm to their own country, leaving their names in the Shrine makes people question whether the Japanese government realize how much tragedies were caused by them.
> This is not a baseless conjecture
True, I apologize. Putting myself in your perspective, I can see how scary the bookstore incident is, and the CCP really fucked up its (already bad) reputation with this one.
> Japan and US coexist peacefully.
US-Japan relationship really is the best the US can do and I still don't think they are independent from each other enough so that their relationship can be described as "peaceful". Would you say you and your shoes have a peaceful relationship? Your shoes really have no choice but to stay with you. BTW, I was thinking about the Middle East when I talk about how the the mess created by the US.
Even if you don't agree with me about how Japan is a "client state", you should at least acknowledge that their relationship is far from peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Japan#Uni...
Imagine if the PLA in HK did something similar.
The image in your link makes me laugh. I can do the same, just get an image of an Amazon fulfillment center and say it is holding thousands of supporters of Edward Snowden against their will.
> I dunno, you tell me.
Because we don't arrest people for their religions.
It's not just 31 people btw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_rio...
If you don't think your media could lie, there is nothing I can do.
For all the stuff you want me to look up online, I already know, and I know more context than you do. For example, we can talk about the cultural revolution to each other freely and we understand the long list of reasons why it happened, contrary to the simplistic "evil communists" viewpoint held by some Westerners. Go to Beijing, talk to a taxi driver, listen to how they curse our government for their wrong doings, or learn Chinese and read Weibo every now and then, and you may change your mind. Hey, my English is better than 99% of mainlanders and I read Western news all the time, but I still don't think I am remotely qualified to talk about US's internal affairs. Please don't assume someone from China knows less than you do just because you have read some second-handed materials.
You didn't use the exact word "panacea", but you have been using "blocking democracy" as some kind of crime, which suggest that democracy is the only right way to go, and I disagree.
Westerners keep talking about how bad censorship is, and this is exactly why I said the CCP is terrible at media manipulation. The state of the art, as used by the West, is to report partial truth and take words out of context. Look at the link posted by NeedMoreTea, "if the Brits allowed self-governance" was conveniently omitted.
Have you tried to image what kind of resource does it need to do this? How many prisons and guards are needed? How many hospitals, power stations and other related facilities are required to support this? Where are the satellite images?
If we are arresting them for their Islamic religion, how come I still have a large amount of Hui friends hanging out with me just as usual? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people
Trusting the Western media unconditionally without thinking about how ridiculous the news are, truly ignorant and arrogant. Surely your media will never lie or leaving important facts out, like the terrorist attacks happened in China. But I am sure your media has already painted them as some kind of freedom fighters.
Also is the West stronger than China or not? I am confused. If it is, then this threat means nothing. If the China is stronger, then why bother to create the one country two systems policy? Also, if China was strong enough to threaten the West, why is Taiwan still an issue till today?
The reference in the article you posted says:
> not hesitate to take positive action to have Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories liberated” if the Brits allowed self-governance.
So the Chinese government doesn't want HK do declare independence instead of returning to China, and will take positive actions if that is about to happen.
Again, you and I don't agree on what the word "return" means.
What I was trying to say is that media in the West pay far less attentions to the wrong doings of their allies. For example, the anniversary of the Tiananmen square incident made it to the front page of HN, but I have never seen anything on HN when it's the anniversary of the Nanjing massacre. These two are comparable because the Japanese leaders are still visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Also, I have personally almost never see news about bad things that happened in Taiwan on Western media, does this mean that Taiwan is heaven on earth?
You may have freedom of speech, but I don't think your people are well-informed when they are flooded by cherry-picked facts, and this leads to bias against your non-allies.
About what HKers think, here is an image of the flyers they distributed during the protest: https://twitter.com/liuyun2018/status/1133227121713659904
Translation for the main bullet points:
> You don't get to have a lawyer: they will be unavailable or disappear before court.
> Imprison without trail: you will spend one or two years in prison at minimum.
> "Disappear": no one will hear from you when you are in prison, not even your families.
> Judges follow CCP's instructions: the CCP decides what happens on court.
> Super-high conviction rate: 99.94% nation wide conviction rate.
> Lighting-fast trails: No lawyers no family members, 5 minutes and it's done.
> Secret trails: When your family knows you are already in prison.
> Collective punishment： your family members are equally guilty.
Even in mainland China the situation is no where near this bad. These false accusations makes me question their motives. If you don't believe me and think we have North Korea levels of speech control, then I would ask you to please update your views or better, visit China if you get a chance.
Listing several individuals arrested for their political actions doesn't justify this baseless conjecture about the future of HK.
> Give an inch, give a mile.
Yes I know you don't trust the CCP, the CCP doesn't trust the West either. Today we implement democracy (as you defined) in HK, tomorrow you want HK to declare independence. Who's next? Shenzhen? Shanghai? We are aware of how the West has been "liberating" people in the Middle East and we are afraid of it.
Which brings me to my final point: we share completely different views of the world, and some words
You have been using the word democracy like it's some kind of panacea and refusing it is unacceptable. I (and the CCP) don't agree. Democracy is guaranteed to never be the worst, but it doesn't necessarily be the best, in all situations. Besides, based on the actions of the US after WWII, we have every reason to believe that the US doesn't want other parts of the world to stay in peace, or at least, does not have the ability to resolve the problem it created. Despite what the Western media has been saying, the CCP is actually bad at media manipulation, not nearly as good as the West. CCP thinks that if we implement democracy defined by the West, then the people will fall to Western values extremely fast and the whole country will become a huge mess. Yes, we are thinking about the Brexit drama and the likes, only more bloody.
OK, the Provisional Legislative Council was questionable in your view, I understand. But how exactly does this proves that the Chinese government blocked the democracy for 60 years? How about the existence of LegCo? Also I still don't think we agree on what the word "return" means.
Yes there are thousands of links that talk about the opium wars, and you have learned about it in school, but that doesn't help because the news don't talk about it. If you decide to include every wrong doings of the CCP when you talk about HK, it is dishonest to exclude the UK's dirty history.
I would also ask you to challenge your beliefs about why some parts of the world is unstable. I do not have proofs about whether there is someone behind this event in HK, but the protesters also have no proof that this bill is going to make HK a 1984-like society. China is a country surrounded by enemies, it isn't a bad thing to be paranoid, especially when people are clearly overreacting.
https://www.investigaction.net/en/trojan-horses-and-color-re...
> suspension were quietly lifted in the future when the world has moved on from the protests
Very unlikely to happen in the social media era. Even in mainland China, where most of the Westerners fantasize about being a 1984-like society, someone on social media can always dig eye-catching new bills/laws/regulations out and raise some attention on Weibo/various online forums.
Out of all the 7.4 million people in HK, it only takes one guy to discover the attempt and post it online (even on HN), and the West will be all over it.
Citation needed. Also, the UK is extremely famous for intentionally or unintentionally leaving a mess when it leaves, any sane government will not just let the British do whatever they want.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/india-pakistan-pa...
> nearly impossible to learn in Chinese media
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. So I guess we are even here.
> Also the claim that these protests were caused by foreign influence is wrong and insulting.
Then what is this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democra...
BTW he/she said "largely encouraged".
Next time please just say that the Chinese government is evil, save all the typing.
Right or wrong do exist, I also think Xi is an a-hole. But people ignore issues that are "inconvenient" for them and their allies is what drives me crazy. I would prefer people put their own oxygen masks on before helping others.
For the southern parts of China, I would say almost all the countrymen have access to tap water. For the northwestern parts, it is still pretty bad, a lot of them still rely on rivers/wells, although I don't have numbers. As for how clean the water is, that is something I have no idea about, and I am not optimistic.
Edit: grammar.
Look at some of the comments here, people have no idea what they are talking about. Seriously? A civil war is good in his/her book? How many people do you think is going to die? And would the US and the Europe happily accept Chinese refugees? It is fine for millions of people from other parts of the world to die, billions to suffer, as long as it is for western values. Just look at the Middle East.
Also, an unbaised standard does not exist when it comes to international affairs. Do you think the billions of poor people in India are enjoying their lives? How come the west always focus fire on the Chinese when they talk about human right issues? Have you heard of the caste system?
About culture, as a Chinese living in the US, many Americans have asked me whether I eat dogs, or do I have microwaves/tap water back in China. Do you think they will change their minds even if I try my best to explain my experience to them? Americans want culture diversity as much as kids want to visit a zoo: lol look at these barbarians, now let's go back to our modern, superior way of life.
Edit: People read several biased articles online and think they know everything about China, because why would the media lie? We obviously do not need to set foot on this huge country to see it for ourselves, a few news reports are all we need.