[HN Gopher] Hong Kong crowd booing China's anthem sparks police ...
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Hong Kong crowd booing China's anthem sparks police probe
Author : beervirus
Score : 100 points
Date : 2021-07-30 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| underseacables wrote:
| I fear that West Taiwan is going to invade East Taiwan, and it's
| going to happen while the President of the United States is
| bumbling his way through another press conference. I think it's
| highly likely that China views the United States is very weak
| right now, and they may take this decision to invade.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I find the lack of understanding of what is happening a little
| bit baffling (and comic at times).
|
| We are used to living in countries where people have rights. We
| have constitutions which guarantee citizen these rights and make
| the governments subservient to the population. Our government is
| elected by the people directly or indirectly and technically
| works for us.
|
| This is not the case with China. In China, people have no innate
| rights. Any rights they have, are given by the ruling body,
| whether it is an emperor or its continuation, the CCP.
|
| For China, what they are doing in Hong Kong is completely normal.
| They have been doing the same to their own mainland population
| for thousands of years and the changeovers from monarchy to
| communist party is basically cosmetic.
|
| China does not recognize Human Rights and so it is difficult to
| say they are "breaking" them.
|
| It is a construct we made for ourselves in countries that
| technically the people are governing themselves (ie democracies).
|
| This is an abstract concept in China. Just as if Iran started
| accusing Canada of breaking Sharia.
|
| Now, don't get me wrong, I am not absolving China of the crimes
| they are committing. Just because something is legal in China
| doesn't mean it is not a crime. We can and we should react to
| this and try to bring basic rights to Chinese people.
|
| But it is much more complex and delicate problem than people try
| to make it.
| rfrey wrote:
| Arguing that the moral standing of genocide is a matter of
| cultural construction is a pretty tenuous position.
| [deleted]
| emodendroket wrote:
| I know the Chinese government themselves are just as given to
| engaging in it, but the idea of talking about "thousands of
| years" of Chinese administration as if there's no real
| difference between China's various dynasties and the modern
| state makes about as much sense as considering the Firth
| Republic as representing an unbroken chain going back to
| Charlemagne.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _In China, people have no innate rights._
|
| It is a cornerstone principle that all people everywhere have
| innate rights. The entirety of the Enlightenment is based on
| this idea. And while China may be actively involved in
| oppressing these rights domestically, it tacitly endorses them
| on the international stage.
|
| Moral relativism is a cancer, applied selectively by the lazy.
| Do better.
| azinman2 wrote:
| The enlightenment was a European ideology. China is
| influenced still by Taoism, which has very different belief
| structure that emphasizes harmony with the masses over the
| individual.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I'm not grokking your argument. Are you calling the forced
| enslavement and "re-education" of Uyghurs and so many
| others "harmony"?
|
| https://tenor.com/search/you-keep-using-that-word-gifs
| azinman2 wrote:
| Taoism is thousands of years old, vastly pre-dating the
| CCP and its actions.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Chinese leaders are likely more familiar with Western
| thought than the other way around.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| > The enlightenment was a European ideology. China is
| influenced still by Taoism
|
| That doesn't mean one isn't morally right and one isn't
| morally wrong.
|
| If you want a hint for which one is which: one asserts that
| every living person has basic human rights. The other has
| frequent videos of people ignoring people who are dying,
| are currently destroying an indigenous population in
| concentration camps, and when a novel virus broke out,
| first shut up scientists trying to get the news out, then
| underplayed it, and then as it started spreading saw
| citizens weld shut doors of people suspected of having that
| virus.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'm not sure who/what you're replying to here. I wasn't
| making a moral judgement at all. I'm just correcting the
| GP suggesting that the Enlightenment is somehow a
| universal ideal (the way I read it), when that's far from
| the case. In fact there have been many ideologists even
| in Europe since then dealing with criticism of each
| former philosophical movement.
|
| Meanwhile it's undeniable that Taoism is a major cultural
| cornerstone of China and very much affects how the state
| and its population are related. Thus "Moral relativism is
| a cancer, applied selectively by the lazy. Do better." is
| actually quite an ignorant statement that applies a
| specific moral lens to the entire world without
| acknowledging the lack of universality in ideals across
| humanity.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| > Thus "Moral relativism is a cancer, applied selectively
| by the lazy. Do better." is actually quite an ignorant
| statement that applies a specific moral lens to the
| entire world without acknowledging the lack of
| universality in ideals across humanity.
|
| The existence of other frameworks of morality doesn't
| mean that there isn't one True Morality. It just means
| that some people act against it.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| One of my political science professors in college claimed
| that they used to struggle to translate constitutional
| documents to Chinese, as they didn't even have an agreed upon
| word for "human rights" until the 1970s or so.
|
| I think this is what the parent was trying to communicate.
| All humans may have certain inalienable rights, but not all
| humans fully understand the concept, let alone demand (or
| even desire) that their rights be respected.
|
| It's kind of mindblowing to contemplate, but enlightenment
| thought has yet to deeply penetrate the mainland Chinese
| populace.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > One of my political science professors in college claimed
| that they used to struggle to translate constitutional
| documents to Chinese, as they didn't even have an agreed
| upon word for "human rights" until the 1970s or so.
|
| Simplified Chinese:
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%E4%BA%BA%E6%
| 9...
|
| English:
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=human+rights&
| y...
|
| That claim appears to not be true. And since many Western
| concepts (like all the specialist communist terminology)
| made their way to Chinese through Japanese words using
| Chinese characters, if it _were_ true it would seem like
| it'd imply something about Japan too. Japanese uses a word
| with the same characters but I couldn't run down a good
| citation of the first dates all of these appeared besides
| the ngrams.
| haswell wrote:
| > _China does not recognize Human Rights and so it is difficult
| to say they are "breaking" them._
|
| Whether or not _China_ recognizes human rights doesn't have any
| bearing on whether or not they are breaking them.
|
| The international community recognizes human rights at least on
| some level, and it's not particularly useful to use China's
| perspective as a lens here any more than it would be useful to
| judge other atrocities throughout history through the eyes of
| the perpetrators.
|
| Edit: Adding [0] for consideration as some responses seem
| unaware.
|
| - [0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-
| huma...
| threatofrain wrote:
| A right without enforcement is just a nice idea. I don't
| think we've ever had anything close to international human
| rights. It is not remotely obvious how a framework of global
| human rights would work in current times.
| haswell wrote:
| > _A right without enforcement is just a nice idea._
|
| There was a time that all of these were just "nice ideas"
| in the US
|
| - Same sex marriage
|
| - Women having the right to vote
|
| - People of color having the right to freedom
|
| - And on the list goes
|
| Most of these rights were not enforced, or even recognized
| until people fought either with pens or with weapons and
| progress was made.
|
| I linked to the UN's framework for this in my parent
| comment, and while I agree that this is an incredibly hard
| problem to address globally, we shouldn't discount the
| value and power of "nice ideas".
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Poorly, and with lots of violations, is how I imagine the
| framework would work, but by having such a framework we
| have something that we can refer to, something that we can
| point to when countries aren't living up to it.
|
| Yes, it is just a peace of paper, except that it is also
| not once it becomes something to fight for and something
| that people believe in.
|
| The US declared itself independent while British troops
| were in the country. It asserted rights against somebody
| else who didn't recognize them.
|
| And that worked well enough that later people would refer
| to those assertions when debating freeing the slaves, and
| it was that which MLK was able to refer to in his speech.
|
| I won't live long enough to see international human rights
| become a norm and neither will anybody else alive right
| now. But that doesn't mean that it isn't important that we
| start creating the norm now.
| bllguo wrote:
| the "international community" is dominated by an affluent
| western minority that had no qualms about pillaging the rest
| of the world for centuries with no regards for human rights.
| _This_ is the Chinese - no, the foreign - perspective. If we
| think it's not useful to consider then so be it, we'll be
| locked in cold war for the foreseeable future. Personally I
| think there are more productive methods than hypocritical
| grandstanding.
| another_story wrote:
| Looking back at what other countries did centuries before
| is a weak argument for justifying what one does today. The
| "international community" includes more than a western
| minority when it comes to the issue of Hong Kong.
| wangii wrote:
| yes, basically the argument against 'whataboutism'.
| however I have a hard time to process the idea of 'follow
| what I told you, not what I have done' attitude.
| torstenvl wrote:
| The affluent Western minority is led by an anti-colonial
| rebellion whose record on this issue, while nowhere near
| perfect or even an absolute good, is the best of any
| major power in the history of humanity.
|
| When China says "You know what, China? No. We will not
| break our own agreement. How could you even suggest that?
| Hong Kong is sovereign" (as the United States recently
| did in _McGirt v. Oklahoma_ ), then we can talk about
| whataboutism. Until then, that kind of argument is
| utterly unconvincing.
| bllguo wrote:
| Sure is easy to give ourselves a good grade when we're
| also the judges. Shall we discuss track records of
| interference in external affairs? How many foreign
| regimes have we toppled in comparison?
|
| Always disappointing to see such vitriolic rebuttals to
| the mere idea of considering a Chinese perspective.
| wangii wrote:
| don't understand why it's down voted. seems to be a valid
| argument. care to clarify?
| lmilcin wrote:
| This is poor logic, even if we agree on the ultimate result.
|
| > Whether or not China recognizes human rights doesn't have
| any bearing on whether or not they are breaking them.
|
| "Whether or not your country recognizes Sharia doesn't have
| any bearing on whether or not you are breaking it and you
| should be prosecuted for breaking it."
|
| See how stupid your logic sounds when it is told from another
| perspective?
|
| If you want to fight for something at least try to understand
| what makes you right and the other one wrong.
| haswell wrote:
| You are mixing "Rights" and "Laws" in your analogy, which
| are often directly at odds with each other.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| > See how stupid your logic sounds when it is told from
| another perspective?
|
| It makes no sense because the Declaration of Human Rights
| is morally right, and China's refusal to acknowledge them
| makes them by definition evil.
|
| And before you try moral/cultural relativism in saying that
| 'well, they think they're right/ Sharia followers think
| they're right'. Even if you managed to argue that position
| well, that only means that there is an irreconcilable gap
| between the moral cornerstones of civilisations, and
| because of that, we will at some point have some huge war
| to figure out which one will turn out to be right.
| qwytw wrote:
| Killing millions of innocent people in a pointless war
| does not seem like a very good way too prove that all
| countries should respect human rights. I mean as
| oppressive as the Chinese government is almost all of the
| people they oppress in Honkong or the mainland are still
| much better of (and more free) than they would be during
| or after WWIII regardless of who won. And claiming that
| it would be the right way to solve these "irreconcilable"
| differences is much more antithetical to the Declaration
| of Human Rights than whatever China is doing now...
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| > And claiming that it would be the right way to solve
| these "irreconcilable" differences is much more
| antithetical to the Declaration of Human Rights than
| whatever China is doing now...
|
| I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying its inevitable.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > when it is told from another perspective?
|
| The difference is that the other perspective is wrong, and
| ours is much closer to being correct (even if it still has
| problems).
|
| So that is why your statement is silly.
|
| And before you say it, no, I do not care about any of your
| arguments about cultural relativism.
|
| I am perfectly happy, saying that people who, for example,
| want to kill gay people, have morals that are wrong, and
| that our morals, which are that we shouldn't do that, are
| correct.
|
| Are you able to do that?
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You are assuming that all world views are equal, and doing
| so in a way that appear to be quite arrogant.
|
| We are absolutely saying that not all views are equal and
| that it is a violation whether the country acknowledge it
| or not.
|
| If you need to anchor it in something else: humanism has
| brought the quickest, most effective and most complete,
| reduction the suffering of individuals of any system ever
| practiced anywhere, by more than one magnitude.
|
| Sharia is hanging of men for having sex with men, and the
| beating of women for getting raped.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Humanism? How do you check this? Why not "It's extremely
| probable that economic development brought the quickest
| most effective reduction of human suffering"? Why not
| "Fossil fuels brought the quickest reduction of
| suffering"?
|
| Maybe our interest for humanism depleted when we had to
| get rid of fossil fuels because of climate change; at
| which point we noticed that humanism was only a pipe
| dream atop a fossil-dependent society, and coal had made
| our life much easier for a short period of time, until we
| fell into hard times again.
| wangii wrote:
| why is this down voted? I honestly don't know. imho the
| point is perfectly valid. is there too much political
| correctness?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You may as well ask if we stopped humanism when we
| stopped using asbestos. The answer is the same: no.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _as if Iran started accusing Canada of breaking Sharia_
|
| More like if Iran agreed not to invade Canada, invaded it, and
| implemented Sharia law.
| torstenvl wrote:
| If by "invaded it" you mean "dropped two nuclear weapons on
| its enemies, saving it from utter destruction, and then
| mostly let it do its thing and even helped them grow
| economically," then sure.
|
| China is not the victim here.
| password321 wrote:
| China is a threat to the world. They have North Korea in their
| back pocket, they put their own citizens into concentration camps
| and are rapidly on the move to expand their territory. We can
| also mention being the biggest threat to the environment, spying,
| Covid and a lot more. the bottom line is that something needs to
| be done.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not enough of a threat for the western world to cut them off.
| Until everyone stops trading with them, they'll keep
| developing.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Don't be shy. What is it that you think needs to be done?
| strogonoff wrote:
| > Critics say those freedoms are now under threat with China's
| recent moves and the UK has accused China of flouting the terms
| of its handover agreement, but China denies this.
|
| To be more precise, last year or so Chinese government has issued
| a statement (on record, googleable) that HK handover agreement is
| not valid/recognized by them. So far there had been no
| consequences.
| woah wrote:
| In 1997, Britain should have handed Hong Kong over to it's
| rightful owner, the Republic Of China.
| mongol wrote:
| Was this seriously discussed or considered? I never heard it
| mentioned before.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The only reason they handed it over at all is their lease on
| the New Territories ended in 1997 and it was impossible to
| defend or administer Hong Kong without them. Even if you are
| convinced that they are the "rightful owners" of the
| territory, the ROC probably wouldn't find any better way to
| square that circle than the British would, and it seems less
| like a gift than an albatross to give it to them and ask them
| to try.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| If PRC was the same mess it was in the 50's they could have
| ignored them without issue. The problem for the UK was they
| had something to lose from offending China and it was a
| politically tricky situation domestically. They needed to
| hand HK to someone and doing what was best for HK was never
| a serious consideration.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I mean, sure, they probably could push around a weak
| state in violation of international law more easily;
| that's how they ended up administering the territory in
| the first place. I can't see what that implies though;
| the situation would have been just as sticky for cross-
| Strait relations if not more so.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| Unfortunately Taiwan was unable to accomdate all the
| outsourced manufacturing from the West.
| ksec wrote:
| US does not support any idea other than handover. It is
| called handover in English, but somehow in Chinese it is
| _return_ to china or hand _back_ to china. Subtle but
| substantial difference. ( Only New Territories belongs to the
| them, not Kowloon or HK Island ) Deng Xiaoping also made it
| _explicitly_ clear, hand it back or soldiers will cross
| border.
|
| If they dare to hand it over to ROC, they might as well kept
| it themselves.
| enriquto wrote:
| > Britain should have handed Hong Kong over to it's rightful
| owner, the Republic Of China.
|
| LOL, just squirted the tea through my nose. That would have
| been an epic troll move. Unfortunately (for HK) the british
| empire had long lost its spine by that time and could only
| bully tiny nations, not powerful ones.
| mosseater wrote:
| The Republic of China are a nation of people that ran away
| and started their own place after the PRC drove them out.
| Putting whether China is the rightful owner of Taiwan aside,
| that's a lot of politics and back and forth. But how would
| Taiwan be the rightful owner of Hong Kong in any case?
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Wait a minute - circa 1930, "China" included both the
| mainland and the island of Formosa. Then there was a civil
| war in which the Communists forcibly took over the mainland
| portion but weren't able to wrest control of Formosa.
|
| So as far as I can tell, the mainland is now the "rogue
| province" that isn't honoring the legit government that
| still remains over there in Taiwan. And thus we should be
| thinking of the PRC as "West Taiwan".
| coronasaurus wrote:
| They didn't take it over "forcibly", they took it over
| with popular support from the Chinese people. If that
| doesn't grant you legitimacy I honestly don't know what
| would.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Formosa wasn't a part of China in the 1930s it was a part
| of Japan.
| brobinson wrote:
| The Qing Dynasty lost Formosa to Imperial Japan in 1895.
| baby wrote:
| At least they would have been culturally closer and the
| integration would have been less bloody.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| If we assume RoC is the rightful government for China as a
| whole, it stands to reason that they are also the rightful
| owner of Hong Kong, no?
|
| And since one is a democratic government and the other is a
| totalitarian state actively comiting genocide, then I know
| whom I would want as my government.
| emodendroket wrote:
| But the question of whom you would want has nothing to do
| with who is the "rightful owner" or the one who enjoys
| the support of the people they claim to govern.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| "rightful owner" is a funny ol' concept.
|
| Basically, whichever power is able to hold it at the time
| is essentially the "rightful owner".
|
| I can't seem to get past this nihilism as the correct
| answer.
| mannerheim wrote:
| The ROC officially still claims to be the legitimate
| government of all of mainland China.
| emodendroket wrote:
| They also claim all of Mongolia, so maybe that should be
| given to them as well?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The ROC nationalists "ran away" because they did almost all
| the anti-Japanese fighting during WWII, while the
| communists sat back and conserved their strength for the
| coming civil war. Which they proceeded to win.
|
| Edit: It's true. Go read a book or something:
| https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-ccp-didnt-fight-
| imperial...
|
| > This would be the trend of the entire war. As two
| scholars note, "From 1937 to 1945, there were 23 battles
| where both sides employed at least a regiment each. The CCP
| was not a main force in any of these. The only time it
| participated, it sent a mere 1,000 to 1,500 men, and then
| only as a security detachment on one of the flanks.There
| were 1,117 significant engagements on a scale smaller than
| a regular battle, but the CCP fought in only one. Of the
| approximately 40,000 skirmishes, just 200 were fought by
| the CCP, or 0.5 percent."
| emodendroket wrote:
| Traditional historiography (and Chiang's contemporaneous
| American advisers) held just the opposite.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Based on the downvote patterns in this thread, it's
| pretty obvious CCP trolls with HN accounts are highly
| active.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well, it could be that there is an army of paid trolls
| targeting this relatively small and specialized forum,
| but it strikes me as much more likely that this is a
| contentious issue and not everyone feels the same way
| about it.
| monksy wrote:
| There are financial incentives to push propaganda on
| this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
| emodendroket wrote:
| Considering how frequently I find people who just don't
| like what I have to say accusing me of being bought off
| by some state, company, or other entity, I find such
| accusations less than compelling when thrown around on so
| little evidence.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| It is a very contentious discussion, and it seems like a
| lot of half-educated people are sharinng opinions. The
| way I understand it, today's population of Taiwan largely
| want to be an independent state, and all those uncreative
| jokes about ROC being the real China actually torpedo
| that.
|
| I'm generally _very_ careful with downvotes on this
| platform, as I think they should only be used when
| something is plain wrong or detrimental to the
| discussion. For me, your comment falls into the second
| category though; it doesn 't add anything to the
| discussion, but seeks to rile up people to start
| downvoting or brigading others.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think the idea of independence is still fairly
| contentious within Taiwanese politics, though they're
| currently governed by a pro-independence party so maybe
| that doesn't really matter. It is true, though, that the
| current cross-Strait consensus would be upset by Taiwan
| NOT claiming to govern the Mainland, making the "West
| Taiwan" jokes not make any kind of sense.
| TheEastIsRed wrote:
| > the UK has accused China of flouting the terms of its
| handover agreement, but China denies this.
|
| The UK invaded China to push heroin and opium on the Chinese,
| and now thinks it has the right to demand how a Chinese city is
| run. The height of western imperial arrogance, it's hilarious
| to see all the white professionals here, working from home in
| their segregated neighborhoods talking about pushing for the
| return of western domain over Chinese cities for "humanitarian
| reasons".
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Silly police. This noise actually signifies jubilation and
| support for the General Secretary of the CCP; it's just a
| cultural difference between HK and the mainland.
| King-Aaron wrote:
| "They're saying Boo-urns"
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Peace among worlds
| [deleted]
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