[HN Gopher] Steam has been banned in China
___________________________________________________________________
Steam has been banned in China
Author : meibo
Score : 345 points
Date : 2021-12-25 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thegamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thegamer.com)
| amzin wrote:
| Sent the link to my son who is an avid gamer.
|
| Got an one-word response:
|
| "Winnienet".
|
| Could not phrase it better.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| Boilers on notice!
| dungPatrol wrote:
| armendhammer wrote:
| Banning google, banning, crypto, banning Steam, so much for
| progress.
| jokoon wrote:
| I just asked my 23 years old sister if she knew what Steam was,
| she said no.
|
| I would guess that China doesn't have any big enough economic
| advantage of allowing steam, so maybe steam is not that really
| big that people think.
|
| Not to mention Valve takes a large cut of game sales so China has
| pretty good reasons to block it.
|
| Aren't PC game sales a big stagnant? And on all those sales,
| Steam seems to be interesting for indie and niches games, not for
| big AAA games, since those AAA games often have their own online
| platform.
|
| I looked some numbers some time ago, and to me it seems that the
| PC game market is not really profitable anymore.
|
| And honestly, China might also increase its game profits by
| banning steam. When you can legally push a product out to make
| more money, you do it. China doesn't care about liberal
| economics.
| 300bps wrote:
| China seems more anti-game than it seems pro-profit in this
| case.
|
| Otherwise why limit children to 3 hours per week of gaming? Why
| ban images of "effeminate men"?
|
| To me, China seems to be preparing.
| xvector wrote:
| > To me, China seems to be preparing.
|
| This is a really interesting perspective. If China is trying
| to masculinize its teenage male population, we could see it
| engage in conflict as soon as these teenagers grow into
| adults at their physical prime, 6-8 years from now.
|
| I think it's entirely likely that China will attempt to annex
| Taiwan within the next 10 years.
|
| I think we will also see China be one of the first countries
| to engage in large-scale cyberwarfare alongside any physical
| conflict, e.g. DOS'ing civilian communications.
| 300bps wrote:
| Yes China seems to have a very long term perspective with
| their five year plans that they seem to take very
| seriously.
|
| Couple that with the treatment China received in the Opium
| Wars, Rape of Nanking, etc.
|
| I type on computers for a living so take it with a grain of
| salt. But it seems to me China was on top technologically
| for thousands of years. Then they suffered humiliations for
| hundreds of years. And I think they're done with that.
| 32ninin3 wrote:
| European and American economies will be destroyed by China soon.
| But their stockholm syndrome prevents them from doing anything
| against it.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Imperiums fall, such is the effect of time.
|
| And in time others rise, sometimes in the same region.
|
| China will fall too, at some point.
|
| Memento mori, amor fati!
| fosk wrote:
| Sic transit gloria mundi.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| What is China going to do? Tell their corporations to take on
| trillions upon trillions of foreign currency denominated debt,
| become unable to repay it, default on it all and go bankrupt?
|
| Because that seems like the current MO.
| enkid wrote:
| Ooookkkkk. That's not even China's goal. China need the US and
| Europe to have strong economies to sell stuff to for the
| foreseeable future. China doesn't have a strong consumer
| sector, outside real estate, which is not a good driver for
| growth in the long term, and the demographics of China mean
| it's not likely to develop a strong consumer class before the
| work force ages out.
| medstrom wrote:
| But why do you need to sell stuff to anyone, once everyone
| else has shit economy? You can lie back and relax at that
| point, you're still top of the heap.
| enkid wrote:
| You're on top of a garbage heap instead of a mansion.
| eunos wrote:
| Eh these days biggest trade partner for China is ASEAN, it
| will be much bigger of course if other Asia included.
| Especially when RCEP become effective.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Maybe they don't want a dull population sitting many hours
| playing games and eat junk food.
|
| Or they want the population to use some domestic platform, I am
| not sure, but even the Google ban has some legitimacy perhaps,
| when considering the amount of misleading news articles.
|
| China does propaganda, the US outlets lie selectively according
| to their bias.
|
| And such things can and will lead to having Trump elected with
| his maga disciples.
|
| I think both are equally bad, just different.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Or maybe they don't want kids learning to communicate and
| cooperate randomly with each other through online games.
| siva7 wrote:
| What is going on here with the comment section? Seems like it's
| flooded with pro ccp activists
| tombh wrote:
| I must offer another data point. I'm British, and often find
| myself in these threads criticising criticism of China. Not
| because I'm being paid by the CCP, but because I believe that
| mainstream anti-Chinese sentiment tells us more about the
| West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own
| historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about
| China itself.
| kmlx wrote:
| > West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its
| own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does
| about China itself.
|
| oh come on. we criticise China because it's whole political
| system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against
| basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of
| what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years
| ago, but because of what China is doing right now.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Those rights are available domestically in the West, yes,
| at least for the time being. Those same rights have never
| been extended to the citizens of the countries whose
| democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we
| call the West. But hey, here in the imperial core we are
| quite comfortable. So this state of being must represent
| our ideals!
| andrepd wrote:
| >Those same rights have never been extended to the
| citizens of the countries whose democratic governments
| were toppled or subverted by what we call the West.
|
| Well yeah, isn't that precisely what's being criticised?
|
| Also not all the evil in the world was created by the
| West.
| tombh wrote:
| Whilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the
| West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to
| affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am
| ultimately having a greater impact.
|
| What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely
| humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China,
| then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we
| demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context.
| Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism -- its
| power and influence comes from exploitation of more than
| half the world.
|
| To give an example, if a government truly wants people to
| wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister
| (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw
| private parties.
|
| We can argue about whether what the West did was net good
| or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the
| effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that
| are contrary to those words.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Your context is where everyone already is as and your
| example appears to be wholly unrelated to your claim.
|
| I don't think you are having a positive influence here.
| tombh wrote:
| Could you give more details?
| ganzuul wrote:
| I like to think that anybody who has heard about the
| Vietnam war already knows what the West does in terms
| like colonialism.
|
| I finally understood that your example related to self-
| consistency and that Boris' binges are not the definition
| of colonialism, so my suggestion about influence should
| be discarded.
| kmlx wrote:
| you are cherry-picking history in order to further your
| narrative about exploitation.
|
| in reality, humanity has been at war for millennia. the
| chinese have been at war with all their neighbours for
| centuries. slavery has been the status-quo until 200
| years ago.
|
| you are also assuming just because some politician is
| immoral than people will also be immoral. this is false.
|
| does this have anything to do with how the chinese
| government treats its citizens in the present? not at all
| tombh wrote:
| Just for the record, and to be 100% clear. I hereby
| explicitly denounce the Chinese government's murder of
| innocent students at Tiananmen Square, and the genocide
| of the Uighurs.
|
| But I think you are completely missing my point.
|
| I don't believe the West actually wants to improve the
| world. It wants so much power that it can avoid looking
| at its own past, and present for that matter.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| That's very interesting. So you think generally the news of
| vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China are due to
| the West's psychological struggles (?), and not due to actual
| suffering caused by the Chinese government?
|
| Do you have any Chinese heritage in your family? This reminds
| me of the perspective most of my half-Chinese friends had
| from back in college. They always felt as if it was their
| duty to defend China from the biased Western media, despite
| all the real world evidence painting a very clear and
| unbiased picture.
| [deleted]
| foverzar wrote:
| > So you think generally the news of vast human rights
| abuse we see coming out of China
|
| I think that generally western news have a tendency to
| misrepresent countries that are culturally different.
|
| E.g. as a Russian, reading western news about Russia makes
| me think that journalist play a broken telephone game,
| misrepresenting marginal stuff as some kind of insane norm,
| in a completely unnuanced way, without any context.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if the same was for China. Probably
| even worse, as verification is even less accessible.
|
| Dramatic news get clicks and there is no accountability for
| spicing them up. I guess, in the age of AI-delivered
| clickbait media, the old saying "Don't believe everything
| you read in the papers" was never as true.
| rocknor wrote:
| I agree, this rhetoric is true for western news about
| India as well. The BBC for example known to be awful at
| times, actively misrepresenting and hiding facts to suit
| their narrative. I guess they have to cater to their
| population with colonial mentality which can't bear the
| fact that some ex-colonies are on track to surpass them
| in the Asian century.
| whycombinatore wrote:
| Surpass in what exactly? Authoritarianism? Idiots spewing
| nonsense to collect their paychecks.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Your argument basically boils down to "you should trust
| propaganda from the authoritarian Chinese government
| because I trust the propaganda from the authoritarian
| Russian government." It's not very convincing.
| foverzar wrote:
| > Your argument basically boils down to "you should trust
| propaganda from the authoritarian Chinese government
| because I trust the propaganda from the authoritarian
| Russian government."
|
| What? Why? How? Where does this extreme binary logic come
| from? When have I said that he should "trust propaganda
| from the authoritarian Chinese government"? When have I
| said that "I trust the propaganda from the authoritarian
| Russian government"?
|
| You don't need any "propaganda" to leave the house and
| live a life. I have all the empirical evidence I need to
| competently state "well, that's not how it works IRL"
| when I see some weird journalism full of factual errors
| and false assumptions.
|
| Why are you acting as there is no personal experience?
| tombh wrote:
| I am 100% British. You misunderstand me. I am saying that
| if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best
| interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could
| profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated
| even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the
| West is defined by its colonialism, its power and influence
| comes from exploitation of more than half the world.
|
| To give an example, if a government truly wants people to
| wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister
| (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw
| private parties.
|
| We can argue about whether what the West did was net good
| or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the
| effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that
| are contrary to those words.
| rosndo wrote:
| Have you ever spent time in China? If you had, I suspect you
| wouldn't be writing this comment.
| tombh wrote:
| I lived there for 18 months
| severino wrote:
| Most people criticizing China and the CCP in those forums
| haven't spent time in China either. I suspect many wouldn't
| even be able to place China on a map.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Not being OK with the myriad of human rights abuses the
| Chinese government commits - sometimes "silently" and
| sometimes very opening and outright proudly - is just because
| I struggle with my own regions history? What the actual
| fuck... I have to call your "theory" what it is: stupid and
| dangerous - and whataboutism on top.
| tombh wrote:
| To give a metaphor, I think it is perfectly reasonable to
| criticise my project lead when she criticises me for not
| meeting my targets but turns up hungover and spends the
| whole day on Facebook.
|
| I am criticising her _because I want her to be effective at
| her job_. Not because I disagree with her about our team 's
| laziness.
| ganzuul wrote:
| We are not equating missed targets with atrocity... A
| terrorist attack does not miss the target of benevolence.
| It is something that should never, ever happen but this
| planet is such a soul-crushing clusterfuck that it is
| like water under a bridge.
|
| Human life has value. It's not effective value or an
| estimate of value. It is absolute.
| tombh wrote:
| My metaphor is not to pointing to project management as
| an analogy, it's pointing to how criticism of one side
| does not automatically mean support for the other side.
| Unless I've misunderstood your point?
| ganzuul wrote:
| I'm suggesting that we do comparison with things
| conductive to the act of comparison. With the atrocities
| we are discussing there is nothing to be gained from
| comparison because things are already maximum bad: The
| numbers just vary. Comparison can take away the weight of
| that, which in our fuzzy wetware translates to
| dissipating motivating energy that could have gone into
| action.
|
| I do agree with your point and I am not a believer in the
| law of the excluded middle.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| unprecedented? The PRC is still pursuing Imperial Qing claims
| to this day.
| mgsk wrote:
| > Not because I'm being paid by the CCP
|
| But you _are_ being paid by the CCP?
| tombh wrote:
| Doxxing myself, check my comment history and website
| https://tombh.co.uk
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Neville Chamberlain had similar thoughts about Germany.
|
| Perhaps when dictators start doing things like rounding up
| undesirables into camps and pushing ideological uniformity at
| the point of a gun the reasonable response is to condemn the
| behavior? It doesn't matter who's wearing the jackboots, it's
| despicable to appease, condone, or enable the ones stepping
| on the throats of human beings.
| tombh wrote:
| In Zygmunt Bauman's _Modernity and the Holocaust_ [1] it is
| argued that the Holocaust was not merely a tragic
| aberration of the ideals of modern Western civilisation but
| rather a logical realisation of it. Hitler himself, in both
| _Mein Kampf_ , and _Zweites Buch_ , wrote of how he was
| inspired by British concentration camps in South Africa.
| Maybe I haven't studied history enough, but I simply do not
| understand how dismissing the terrors of WW2 as merely a
| German problem is not also appeasing, condoning and
| enabling the terrors of the British. The Holocaust lies at
| the feet of _Europeans_ , not merely the Nazis.
|
| The problem isn't about who did what, the problem is the
| idea that horrors can only possibly happen outside the
| borders of the nation to which I belong.
| ganzuul wrote:
| > The Holocaust lies at the feet of Europeans, not merely
| the Nazis.
|
| Why stop abstraction there? You should continue on with
| all humans, then all life... that would be logical; this
| isn't.
| tombh wrote:
| I'm British. I was specifically taught the gruesome
| details of the Holocaust in school. But I only learnt
| about the horrors of British colonialism much later in
| life, and through my own efforts. British genocides are
| conspicuous by their absence from both our education
| system and our political discourse.
| ganzuul wrote:
| I don't think this makes it truly an European issue...
|
| In general history as it is taught is almost a total loss
| for how biased it is, meaning that since we dropped the
| ball on writing it down we are doomed to repeat it until
| we do. So far we have only been playing at historical
| account, because the truth undermines national borders.
| But this is a global issue.
| andrepd wrote:
| What does criticism of authoritarian censorship today have to
| do with imperialism? Sounds just like an attempt to muddy the
| waters tbh
| tombh wrote:
| I believe the psychological process involved is the
| malignant form of projection[1]. To give a metaphor: when I
| know myself that I've not been productive enough at work
| (and I secretly berate myself for it), I mis-perceive
| perfectly normal gestures of encouragement as personal
| attacks.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
| stared wrote:
| I am European and not affiliated in any way with China. And
| don't want to whitewash them.
|
| Still, there is a double standard regarding China vs the
| Western World. While China gets (IMHO deserved) criticism for
| their territorial claims and human right abuse, the Iraq War
| (over 400k deaths) was "business as usual".
|
| The same goes with anti-pandemic restrictions - when it happens
| in China, it's an authoritarian rule. When in the West - it's
| social responsibility. When China started vaccinating children,
| I saw an article with "child soldiers" and a photo of a crying
| kid. The same action in the West had a picture of a smiling
| kid, and a more welcoming title.
|
| Or even when it comes to pollution and worker's rights, the
| West is hypocritical. Blames China, while happily outsources
| most heavy industry there, due to lower costs. (When was the
| last time you bought some electronics and there were not
| "Manufactured in PRL"?)
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's whataboutism. Most liberal democracies didn't invade
| anyone recently and have free press and a history of little
| recent human rights abuse.
|
| It's possible to criticize China on its own merits without
| somehow excusing anyone else.
|
| I'd happily pay more for goods from manufacturers saying they
| avoid China. Hopefully this will be easier and cheaper in
| coming years.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Not really. The Iraq war was horrible and unnecessary and I
| doubt you'll find too many people here who'll say otherwise.
|
| But it was the past and it's settled. China is happening now.
| angio wrote:
| Aren't Guantanamo Bay and other torture camps (black sites
| as they are known now) still open?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| They are, and it's horrible.
|
| But they key difference is that you won't really see
| anyone downplaying them or outright denying their
| existence.
| angio wrote:
| I don't know, running torture camps doesn't sound much
| better if you can talk about them and yet they are not
| closed.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> But it was the past and it's settled._
|
| Settled? It lead to the creation of literal ISIS, the
| emergence of Islamic global terrorism on never before seen
| scales, just like plenty of war crimes, more than enough of
| them going on to this day.
|
| The only people who declare it "settled" are Americans who
| live in a fake reality shaped for them by US social media
| [0] where this "crusade on terror" had pretty much no
| consequences for them past even more authoritarian and
| draconian security laws and surveillance.
|
| This is a wound that will haunt us for decades to come,
| hand-waving that away is just crudely belittling the scale
| and impact of the injustices committed by the US.
|
| Particularly as nobody was held responsible, many Americans
| still think Iraqis should thank them, there is absolutely
| no feeling about remorse or wrong-doing among the grander
| American public, zero awareness about the damage they've
| done and still do [1].
|
| _> China is happening now._
|
| How convenient; Don't look or persecute the US for their
| actions against Muslims [2], whatabout China being the next
| Third Reich!?
|
| What does that sound like, again [3]?
|
| [0] https://www.newsweek.com/remember-abu-ghraib-torture-
| picture...
|
| [1] https://archive.md/yDIDO
|
| [2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-
| have-deli...
|
| [3]
| https://apnews.com/article/c456d72625fba6c742d17f1699b18a16
| Grakel wrote:
| Radical islamic terrorism was going on way before 2001.
| freeflight wrote:
| I didn't write radical Islamic terrorism didn't exist
| before 2001, I wrote it emerged at never before seen
| scales.
|
| And I have plenty of data to back that statement. In
| Western Europe Islamic terrorism was pretty much a non-
| issue [0].
|
| It only started becoming an issue after 2003, after the
| invasion of Iraq, when AQ conducted attacks on Madrid and
| London, respectively Spain and UK, both countries being
| part of the coalition of the "willing" that invaded Iraq.
|
| That was very much a direct response, one that previously
| wouldn't have been possible as AQ lacked the resources
| and people in Western Europe to conduct these kinds of
| operations. They got these resources and people when the
| US declared them "enemy #1" and started bombing and
| invading Muslim countries, displacing Muslims as refugees
| deep into Western Europe [1], many of them holding
| resentments over what happened to them and their
| countries as their worst fears about what an "American
| crusade" [2] would actually entail in reality.
|
| Over time AQ Iraq, which under Saddam wasn't even a
| thing, would ultimately turn into ISIS, an ISIS that
| parades its prisoners around in _very_ similar uniforms
| [3] to those the US paraded them around, which is not a
| coincidence, it 's a direct reference [4].
|
| Even when you look at the global picture, this "war on
| terrorism" did the same as the "war on drugs" had; It
| didn't end terrorism, it made it thrive [5].
|
| Anybody who looks at that and declares it "settled" does
| not understand the kind of impact this had on literally
| the whole world.
|
| [0] https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-
| terrorism-p...
|
| [1] https://earthtime.org/stories/global_refugee_crisis_t
| he_big_...
|
| [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html
|
| [3]
| https://twitter.com/syricide/status/505043264907804672
|
| [4] https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s-military-now-
| says-is...
|
| [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from-
| terrorism...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| We're not discussing the US, we're discussing the latest
| abuse of power by the CCP. That's where the link goes. Would
| you like to next make a false equivalence of US prison labor
| to slave labor in China? Because that's where this goes,
| every thread.
|
| Submit a link of the US' latest atrocity to HN. A world of
| tolerance allows and accepts the stories of violence
| perpetrated by all actors. The reason you are seeing so many
| related to China is we have some new flagrant human rights
| abuse happening from the CCP every week, sometimes multiple
| times a week, that's why you see so many of these stories
| percolate to the top. Just two days ago, the CCP tore down
| the statue commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in
| Hong Kong. [1]
|
| This is the screaming of the machine doing its work of
| control, every day of every week. The memories of them will
| be inhaled whole and exhaled as dust, a phantom of a thing
| that never truly existed.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59764029
| atomicity wrote:
| The commenter you replied to seemed to be comparing 2
| situations. That seems normal to me. Comparing things seems
| to be great way to understand complex issues.
|
| What makes the comment a wrong way to discuss? Is it a bad
| form of comparison for some reason?
| ganzuul wrote:
| Providing common knowledge on the topic rehashes things
| everybody knows so it is seen as noise and not signal.
|
| If you have uncovered stuff few people know, please
| share. Then finding comparisons is more insightful.
| yibg wrote:
| People have different opinions and are free to voice them. I'm
| not pro ccp (but here I feel the need to clarify up front), but
| it's not hard to understand that some people view china more
| favorably than most in the US. At the very least it shouldn't
| be hard to understand why some people would reject the more
| extreme anti china stance.
|
| edit: long way of me saying, I don't think anyone that defends
| china should automatically be labeled ccp propaganda.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| On hn, we should try to engage with peoples ideas, and be
| careful about attributing motives and dismissing people.
|
| That said, I've seen a lot of pro ccp posts in the last few
| months. If we hypothetically say there are state manipulators
| on hn becoming active, what is the most mature way to respond
| to the situation?
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I didn't read the comments but 1. it could be flooded with pro
| cpp activists, it's a known fact that China pays people to
| influence forums 2. It may be difficult to understand for
| Americans, but (I think) some people here are "pro-china" as
| they see China as an alternative to US imperialism, or at least
| something that can be less harmful.
|
| Personally, my wife is Taiwanese so I'm extremely concerned
| about China in a very concrete way. I'm not sure the people who
| advertise themselves as "pro-China" really have a sense of
| what's going on.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> 1. it could be flooded with pro cpp activists, it 's a
| known fact that China pays people to influence forums _
|
| Weird how that's a "known fact" with China, but whenever it's
| brought up about the Western countries [0] it's either hand-
| waved away or declared a conspiracy theory.
|
| [0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-
| ope...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| We are not talking about the west. Please return your 50
| cents to the CCP.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Please return your 50 cents to the CCP._
|
| Bewildering to see this kind of ad hominem on HN.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| It is not a personal attack. It is an attack on the
| argument. Anytime somebody says something negative about
| the CCP people always bring up the west. It is not
| relevant to the conversation and is a common tactic of
| anti west / pro CCP people to deflect.
| oblak wrote:
| Whataboutism is very relevant. If A is accusing B of
| eating babies, then why shouldn't B - or anyone, for that
| matter - not point out that A is also eating babies and
| raping old ladies?
|
| What you call "pro CCP people" is just people outside the
| sphere of influence of A. In your environment it's been
| normalized to hate on China for any reason. You're likely
| being brainwashed 24/7 or a paid troll.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Whataboutism has nothing to do with morality. If country
| A does something bad it doesn't mean that it is not
| actually bad because country B did something similar.
|
| Do you find it interesting that anytime there is a thread
| about the US doing something bad that nobody jumps in and
| say well China did the same thing? It only goes one way.
| That is why I am calling it out.
|
| The reason why it goes one way is because people who
| support the west know their side has done bad things.
| People who support China refuse to accept it.
|
| You cannot accept any criticism of the CCP and somehow I
| am brainwashed? I understand the US and other western
| countries have done and continue to do bad things. I just
| don't bring it up when it is not related to the topic at
| hand.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| even if that is true, it has nothing to do with how China
| does things. This is literally how the "whataboutism" got
| it's name, look it up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#History
| dillondoyle wrote:
| This is a great example of one of the tactics CCP deploys.
| Whataboutism.
|
| As shown to be actually happening (does not give facts
| showing it happens on HN but I personally think it's
| reasonable, or at least not unfathomable) by this recent HN
| top thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654137
| [deleted]
| charcircuit wrote:
| Not everyone who disagrees with you is an activist. It's
| possible for people to have different information than you or
| have different values than you.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Really? As somebody constantly accused of being a Chinese bot
| for not agreeing that the Chinese government is a manifestation
| of absolute evil that the world needs to destroy in order to
| save, these threads all seem to be filled with anti-Chinese
| hypernationalists.
| rosndo wrote:
| Standard practice anywhere you have Chinese people, most are
| perfectly reasonable but many are deeply indoctrinated
| nationalists.
|
| Unfortunately the rest aren't willing or able to do anything
| about the genocide cheerleader squad.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Standard practice anywhere you have... people, most are
| perfectly reasonable but many are deeply indoctrinated
| nationalists.
|
| Just a cursory reading of the comments in any topic about
| China will show you that their western counterparts are alive
| and kicking here
| rosndo wrote:
| Bullshit.
|
| Shit like this is almost exclusively a Chinese activity
| https://www.propublica.org/article/purdue-president-
| condemns...
|
| You can find countless examples of groups of Chinese people
| engaging in downright horrible behavior like this, good
| luck finding many western counterparts.
|
| Where are the western nationalists SWATting families of
| people who dare to say critical things of their
| governments?
|
| Nobody will send the secret police to harass my family if I
| dare to criticize my government, but if I was Chinese they
| certainly would.
|
| I'm sure it would be possible to indoctrinate westerners to
| behave in a similar way, but the fact remains that
| currently it's the Chinese who are uniquely indoctrinated.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| I dont know if you are being naive or a troll. In any
| case, for the benefit of other people reading this
| thread:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
|
| https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-
| cia-m...
|
| https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-
| political-...
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-big-
| idea/2016/11/5/13533838/history-...
| foepys wrote:
| This is bad. But the fact that you can post links to
| articles written by journalists here is proof enough that
| this was not okay and unacceptable.
|
| Do you have articles about similar things happening in
| China by Chinese media?
| simonh wrote:
| The communist party party has successfully managed to
| associate love of China with loyalty to the party and
| government, and criticism of the party with being "anti-
| Chinese". So being pro-democracy in Hong Kong is being anti-
| China, and opposing the ethnic and cultural suppression in
| Xinjiang is China hating.
|
| My wife is Chinese and we have a Chinese friend here in the
| UK we have to be careful what we say to. She gets upset if
| anything critical of the Chinese government comes up, because
| she "loves China". We love China too, just not the communist
| party.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| > We love China too, just not the communist party.
|
| I lived in singapore for 10 years until recently moving to
| Taiwan, this is basically the view of everyone from China I
| met. "I love China but I hate the government, that's why I
| left"
|
| It's a shame because the actions of the CCP are making
| people blame Chinese people. But the majority of people
| from China that I've met are awesome.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Well yeah, you're self selecting for people who
|
| a. Left China b. Are talking to a foreigner about
| politics
|
| CCP maintains considerable support among the mainland
| population.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _a. Left China b. Are talking to a foreigner about
| politics_
|
| This is a weird form of racism I see from a lot of people
| coming from a Chinese perspective, and it's very arrogant
| and abrasive.
|
| When a Chinese person is outside of China, _they_ are the
| foreigner. Walking around the U.S. and calling people
| _laowai_ is really a... questionable choice.
| whoevercares wrote:
| It's more of a lost in translation - we use _laowai_ as a
| convenient word. When I just came to US, I sometimes
| still "translate" what I want to express from Chinese
| first, so I even called the other fellow US students
| "foreigner" once when talking about a cultural
| difference. "Foreigners tends to do XXX while we(Chinese)
| do YYY"
|
| He laughed and thought it was funny
| simonh wrote:
| It's simply writing about Chinese attitudes and
| experiences when abroad, and therefore using phrasing
| from the point of view of the person in question.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Well we don't know what the support is truly like inside
| China. But I think it's safe to assume that there are a
| lot of people inside china who unfortunately do not have
| the luxury of being able to move their family overseas.
| jquery wrote:
| Some in the mainland population are smart enough not to
| give their real opinions. It's not safe unless you no
| longer live in China (and even then, it's not safe, as
| the government can retaliate against the person's
| family).
|
| I don't doubt that the CCP maintains considerable
| support, but considering they control the media, that's
| less impressive than you think it is.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >CCP maintains considerable support among the mainland
| population
|
| How much of that is genuine support vs saying the party
| line to avoid persecution?
| mrjin wrote:
| How do you tell that?
| rocknor wrote:
| whycombinatore wrote:
| rocknor wrote:
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| You'll find the same with any article critical of China.
|
| The party is paying people (quite well) to defend China online.
| It's another kind of misinformation campaign.
| miohtama wrote:
| You can also check the comment history of these people to see
| if they are outright government trolls or brainwashed
| university students. Sometimes it is pretty clear.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It's not always brainwashing and indoctrination, it can
| also be the threat to family social standing, political
| scrutiny, and the ability to travel freely. If they have
| family or close friends that already have trouble with the
| state, China makes exquisite use of those factors in
| controlling people.
| pell wrote:
| Always interesting to see what kind of mindblowing
| absurdities they come up with to defend the horrendous acts
| against the Uighur people. I also see it in German comment
| sections at this point.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| There are definitely signs of them here. I have another
| thread that had someone trying to steer my comment into a
| East vs West argument just for mentioning China. It seems
| like they are trying to pick fights out of nowhere as if they
| are getting paid. And if you notice, they come at certain
| hours like there is suddenly a wave of them all at once.
| foverzar wrote:
| "It seems like they are trying to pick fights out of
| nowhere as if..."
|
| ...that is what people generally do on the internet, when
| they disagree.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Yes and no. When you disagree you usually have a point to
| make, but when you purposefully try to steer a
| conversation into a confrontational topic, then it does
| become suspect.
| dungPatrol wrote:
| okasaki wrote:
| Can you point me where to sign up to get paid to defend China
| online?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Here's a starting point: https://www.nytimes.com/interactiv
| e/2021/12/20/technology/ch...
| whycombinatore wrote:
| I checked, and you don't have sufficient social score.
| okasaki wrote:
| I guess you mean my credit score/background check. We
| don't have a social score in the UK. Though I wouldn't be
| surprised it if something akin was secretly compiled by
| GCHQ et al.
| the_af wrote:
| Can you provide some examples of this alleged "flood of pro CCP
| activists" in this comments section?
|
| I'm reading some minor disagreements. Is this activism in your
| worldview?
| Lendal wrote:
| the_af wrote:
| Please provide one example in this comments section.
| Ideally many, since an alleged "flood" cannot be composed
| of a single drop, but a single example would also suffice.
| Please don't refer obliquely to some "situation", be
| specific.
|
| The example must convince me that the person you're quoting
| is indeed engaging in "activism" for the CCP and not merely
| expressing their opinion.
|
| Otherwise, if you can't provide these examples, may I
| kindly suggest what you're encountering is the normal range
| of opinions in the internet, only this time it's about a
| subject you feel strongly about?
|
| PS: is obliquely accusing people on HN of being shills
| something allowed by the guidelines? Think about this.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Hopefully these comments are swiftly removed, so you'd
| have to screenshot them to share them.
| jquery wrote:
| Many of them are dead comments, already. I don't think
| there's a flood, myself, but rather heterogeneous
| opinions largely based on whether China's dictatorship is
| viewed as a positive alternative to American imperialism.
|
| Having lived in both countries myself, I'd prefer America
| 10 times out of 10, but that wasn't always the case. Xi
| in particular has been a terrible thing for China.
| Imagine if Trump became dictator (and was a decade
| younger). That's Xi. He's made the country more racist
| and closed off in every way. It's a tragedy to see.
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| Xi is driving the PRC down a dangerous and escalatory
| path path. Nuclear weapons, controlling critical tech,
| economic punishments, etc. Very few expected it because
| it was not needed. Deng through Hu made enormous strides
| in nearly all areas for China. Xi has turned away from
| that.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Here is are a few examples, pasted the comments in case
| it gets deleted.
|
| have all the great tactics of refuting reality, spelling
| or grammar problems, redirection, whataboutism, any
| critique of CCP is racist/sinophobia, and some have great
| trump-style reverse psychology for lack of a better term
| (if he says they do it, he's the one doing it lol).
|
| I simply do not believe that a significant % of readers
| on this niche, highly educated forum, actually hold these
| opinions or hold these beliefs of what they think is
| reality/facts.
|
| Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's just trolling.
|
| If real, I have a hard time reconciling that my worldview
| could possibly exist in the same as theirs. It's just so
| hard to swallow if true. If it is true it just makes it
| feel more like water & oil, a future of neither can live
| whilst the other survives.
|
| ---
|
| A double wammy! first somehow has not heard of xinjiang
| situation, asks for source on Uyghur forced labor,
| provided one, then says but they don't provide a source!
| lol
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684508
|
| > sending of its natives to work camps by the half
| million Never heard of this event. Mind to provide a link
| with more details?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684595
|
| Thanks, this is what the major part of the report.
|
| > The report, authored by Adrian Zenz, an independent
| Tibet and Xinjiang researcher, says that 500,000 people,
| mostly subsistence farmers and herders, were trained in
| the first seven months of 2020 and authorities have set
| quotas for the mass transfer of those workers within
| Tibet and to other parts of China.
|
| One thing I hate about mainstream media reporting is that
| they never link to the source material.
|
| Just from the above description, I cannot see that these
| people are forced in anyway. And deriving such numbers
| from public Chinese government documents is not accurate
| either, as certain words can be easily misunderstood
| given the sinophobia sentiment nowadays.
|
| ----
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29682404
|
| Even the publications claiming genocide in Xinjiang have
| been backpedaling. India is the one that has been
| attacking neighbouring borders, especially since the
| fascists came to power.
|
| Taiwan's air defence zone includes much of the mainland,
| almost an entire province.
|
| Fishing vessels aren't state actors. It's certainly a
| problem that they aren't being regulated more strongly,
| although many other countries have this same problem.
|
| ----
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29682376
|
| Flagged before I can copy paste. Was a parroting of Xi's
| recent pronouncement of Chinese style 'democracy' being
| the future and better than actual democracy:
|
| ----
|
| (i commented on this one saying the same as others,
| whataboutism deflecting from what we are talking about,
| currently downvoted). I just read that profile 's posts
| and all of their comments in this thread are trying to
| pivot. they bring up problems and things we should be
| discussing for sure. but the tactic is to avoid
| discussion of the original topic.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684104
|
| > 1. it could be flooded with pro cpp activists, it's a
| known fact that China pays people to influence forums
|
| Weird how that's a "known fact" with China, but whenever
| it's brought up about the Western countries [0] it's
| either hand-waved away or declared a conspiracy theory.
|
| [0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-
| spy-ope...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Anytime someone says the CCP there is a post saying the west
| does the same thing. It is tiring since we aren't talking
| about the west.
| lionkor wrote:
| Almost 6.5 billion people in the world excluding china, and I
| don't think a single one should care.
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| China does this, then gets their panties in a bunch when the US
| bans goods made with slave labor.
| meibo wrote:
| Note: this refers to the global Steam service/community - Valve
| still offers Steam China with a very limited/censored selection
| of mostly-Valve games, adhering to local child protection laws.
|
| Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global
| service instead, as this Chinese version of Steam has only been
| available since February 2021.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| As an average Chinese citizen right now:
|
| - You cannot travel abroad (no passport issued for average
| citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)
|
| - You cannot go beyond China's intranet legally (VPN is
| technically illegal in China). VPN services keep getting
| slowed/banned.
|
| - You cannot transfer much money out of country legally (50k
| limit a year, but you end up going to bank 10+ times just to be
| able to transfer 10k)
|
| - You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid game, porn and many
| many more things legally
|
| - You have very little rights as LGBT
|
| - You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying
| flat (not working/pursuing marriage)
|
| - You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police
| station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that
| are on the growing banned list
|
| - You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or
| disappeared). The state discourages showing off wealth
|
| - You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in
| power
|
| - You are constantly subjugated to random mass covid testing,
| standing hours outside in the cold
|
| - Oh and there's the yearly flood + shoddy buildings + crashing
| economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs
| leaving + dictatorship
|
| Zhong Jiu Huai Chuai De Bu An ,Shi Yu Lai Yu Jin De Sang Zhong
| Sheng
| Aperocky wrote:
| > You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are
| lying flat (not working/pursuing marriage)
|
| None of the government/public workers are working that
| schedule. Or someone who finds a job in the private companies
| who aren't insane.
|
| > You are constantly subjugated to random mass covid testing,
| standing hours outside in the cold.
|
| Speaking from anecdotal experience, my parent has been
| subjugated to none in 2021 because they were not living in an
| affected location. Mass covid testing are only carried out
| where there are outbreaks.
|
| > You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police
| station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that
| are on the growing banned list
|
| Might apply to your personal case? I don't know even one
| person who are constantly invited to police station for tea,
| despite having hundreds of friends in China.
|
| > You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid game, porn and many
| many more things legally
|
| Except that everyone does, and I'm not aware of any
| prosecutions. Also, Spiderman, BTS, squid game does not even
| touch laws, they just haven't been screened in cinemas, you
| can still get them from different sources (which often means
| piracy in China).
|
| > Oh and there's the yearly flood + shoddy buildings +
| crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce +
| factory jobs leaving + dictatorship
|
| We'll see then. The rhetoric have been around for decades.
|
| Some of what you said is true to a degree, but you are
| painting it in a very biased fashion. China has a lot of
| flaws, but what you said certainly does not apply to an
| 'average' Chinese citizen. In fact, all of these combined are
| almost impossible to happen to a single Chinese citizen,
| average or not.
| haleking wrote:
| jdefr89 wrote:
| Are you saying China isn't constantly monitoring their
| population? Are they not the dystopian dictatorship they
| pretend not to be? I am not so sure I can be convinced when
| they literally tell citizens how long they can and cannot
| play video games.... Sorry, behaviors don't lie.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > Are you saying China isn't constantly monitoring their
| population? Are they not the dystopian dictatorship they
| pretend not to be?
|
| I did not say anything like that. Why are you setting up
| a strawman when you can easily go and refute/debate any
| language in my previous comment? Do you have any
| disagreement with any specific things I have said? Please
| be specific.
| whoevercares wrote:
| Why you are posting the exact comment repeatedly? I saw this
| twice the past week in China related posts
| bigcat123 wrote:
| Aunche wrote:
| This is the second time I've seen you try to piggyback off of
| a top HN comment without saying anything relevant to it.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| This is a thread about Chinese citizens quickly and surely
| losing their freedom. Why wouldn't my upgraded comment be
| relevant?
|
| Also, do you have anything to refute my comment?
| whoevercares wrote:
| Second time this week I saw this from the same user as
| well. Dang should pay some attention
| teeray wrote:
| This also does not refer to the gaseous form of water, which
| was my first impression reading the headline
| foverzar wrote:
| I really love how we all have an impression of China as a
| country without access to global internet, but then there are
| things like "Most Chinese Steam users have historically been
| using the global service instead".
|
| Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works
| for yourself. The more I read about China, the more
| unbelievably contradictive it gets.
| idxoutofbounds wrote:
| There's a small minority of college educated youth that speak
| english and are able to use VPNs to bypass GFW.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I might be wrong, or it may changed in the meantime, but I
| had the impression that VPN traffic is also slowed down
| extremely. While it allows you to connect to any foreign
| service, it's so slow as to be nearly useless. I only tried
| VPN services that were located outside China though. Maybe
| there are Chinese VPN services which have a 'fast route' to
| the outside world (I'd be very surprised if this is legal
| though).
| idxoutofbounds wrote:
| When I lived in China I rented a server in Hong Kong and
| ran OpenVPN, that pretty much worked fine. Back then VPNs
| weren't technically illegal I believe but that's changed
| in recent years. Major VPN providers would stop working
| for periods of time because China would keep blocking
| IPs.
| netheril96 wrote:
| Wrong protocol. If GFW suspects that you are trying to
| bypass it without confidence, it slows you down instead.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| > VPN traffic is also slowed down extremely.
|
| Exactly that. It took me >30 minutes just load my emails
| - if I found a spot where the VPN would connect at all.
| Basically I needed two coffees. One for the time to load
| the email, and the 2nd coffee to wait while my repliess
| were sending.
|
| At the same time, access to Chinese websites was super-
| fast.
| mrjin wrote:
| It depends on how your VPN services are hosted. I
| actually tried to host VPN myself on google app engine
| and the first time lasted a day or so before it was
| blocked. The second time lasted 1 hour or so.
|
| The I changed the strategy to create a VM in azure and it
| was never blocked for years, the only down time was M$
| trying to save me some credit by automatically shutting
| it down as the load of the VM had always been almost 0%.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Only if the GFW identifies you as likely VPN traffic do
| they throttle. I used Googles VPN service thingy and kept
| switching hosts everytime it slowed.
| codeddesign wrote:
| Who would think that China doesn't have internet?? They
| aren't North Korea. Even Cuba where it's literally banned has
| internet.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I don't know who "we all" is who has the impression that
| China doesn't have access to the global internet. There must
| be thousands of people on this website alone who have either
| lived in China in the past or still do now who regularly
| comment and show that not to be the case. There are plenty of
| articles in the mainstream western media that discuss exactly
| how censorship and surveillance works in the country.
|
| Steam is one of the few popular international services that
| escaped getting blocked by the Great Firewall, despite
| hosting content that the Chinese government ostensibly
| considers illegal or inappropriate. There have been a lot of
| articles about how Chinese indie game developers were using
| Steam as a loophole to sell their games without getting the
| official government approval to sell games inside China. It's
| never been clear why Steam was an exception to the blocks,
| but that's par for the course. The government never explains
| to the people why something gets blocked, sites just suddenly
| stop working from one day to the next and the people are
| expected to accept it and move on.
|
| The internet blocks are set up by the internet providers in
| the country, so somebody must know what's going on, but -
| like many things that happen in China - the people just need
| to guess the reasoning by reading between the lines of
| impenetrable Party literature or relying on supposedly
| independent editorials in the tabloid newspapers.
|
| So nobody knows for sure, but people have deduced that there
| are several reasons that the government blocks websites. One
| is as a "punishment" for a foreign company, because that
| company published content that insulted or offended some
| officials in the government. Another is if the foreign
| company is specifically and deliberately producing content
| aimed at Chinese-speakers that discusses topics the Chinese
| government does not want Chinese people to discuss freely
| (June 4/Tiananmen massacre, Hong Kong autonomy, alternative
| governing models that do not include the the Party at the
| core etc). Another one might be if the foreign company
| refuses to allow the Chinese government to install their
| surveillance hooks. But I think perhaps more relevant to the
| case of Steam is economic protectionism - the Chinese
| government tends to block foreign services that could compete
| with Chinese companies, so that Chinese companies can become
| dominant in the space.
|
| The thing with Steam is that there wasn't really a local
| alternative with a wide enough catalog of games that it would
| please the middle class/educated/moneyed gamer in the
| country, so that's probably why Steam was quietly allowed to
| continue for so long. A few years ago Valve announced a
| partnership with Perfect World (local media company) to
| produce a Chinese version of Steam, but for whatever reason
| it took ages to come out. Now that it is out, and presumably
| up and running (I don't know since I don't live in China any
| more), the government has no incentive to allow people to buy
| from the international version, so that is probably why it
| now got blocked.
|
| As usual, Chinese government only block in one direction -
| every day, every month, every year there are more and more
| things blocked. Eventually even though technically people in
| China are still able to visit most of the internet outside of
| China, the sites that are the most popular in China will all
| be owned by Chinese companies (or partnerships) and exist
| completely inside the monitoring and self-censorship bubble
| of the Chinese cultural sphere. So it's not like people in
| China don't have the opportunity to see other content, it's
| just that those other sources are very far outside the
| mainstream and not frequently accessed by the average person.
| If it did become popular, that's when the government would
| make a move.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I don't know where did you get all this. There is not much
| "strategy" you imagined.
|
| A censor find something matching a keyword, and he gets CNY
| 0.5. That's the whole story to it.
| blahgeek wrote:
| It's not true that chinese don't has "access to global
| internet". Many sites are blocked (including most top sites),
| but still it's a blacklist instead of a whitelist
| mrjin wrote:
| I thought so too until one day I suddenly found myself was
| able to access google.com etc. without any issue for days
| until I search some sensitive keywords when I was in
| mainland China. So the blocking seems to be heuristic
| instead of a blacklist. And also it seems GFW is able to
| filter SSL contents as I have always been using HTTPS if I
| can.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The GFW is not a monolith, it seems to differ depending
| on where you are. I think ISPs implement it differently.
|
| The Beijing ones were the most sophisticated
| legofr wrote:
| I'm personally opposed to the idea of visiting certain
| countries, such as China and North Korea, to 'see for
| yourself', especially when you don't know the language, when
| you're not willing to risk your life to understand and
| uncover the parts the government doesn't want you to see,
| like VICE did in Xinjiang:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7AYyUqrMuQ
|
| That being said, if you go then please try to walk into a
| random hotel/apartment you see on the street to try to book a
| room.. then you'll discover that 9/10 hotels/apartments won't
| allow foreigners to live there. I lived in China for more
| than a year before I realized this was the case, and I have
| on multiple occasions even been kicked out of
| friends/partners apartment because someone told the landlord
| there was a foreigner in the building (or maybe they saw
| through the surveillance camera).
| imbnwa wrote:
| On a lower frequency, this similar to why I'm not
| interested in tourism as "self-discovery", "new
| experience", or some shit, like the rest of the world is
| just stage and props for my existential theatre. I'm not
| gonna change as a human unless I actually move there to
| live permanently. Even worse, the middle-class trend to
| make the number of distinct places you've visited some form
| of social currency ("how many stamps are in your
| passport?").
|
| I remember this sales guy who always made it a point to
| tell every woman he talked to that he did Peace Corps in
| Africa and how it changed him working with Africans. Like,
| you could've just volunteered somewhere on the south side
| of the city if you really wanted to help some African folk.
| Levitz wrote:
| > I'm not gonna change as a human unless I actually move
| there to live permanently.
|
| This, in my experience, is simply not true.
|
| There is a value in going to different places, changing
| every variable there is to your life except yourself.
|
| When you are somewhere you've never been to, where you
| know nobody, where the food, language and customs are all
| different, then you can find out which parts of yourself
| stay, who you are and what you are capable of. That has
| value.
| musingsole wrote:
| Maybe, but too many think that visiting a resort town in
| a far flung country has given them a meaningful
| experience of "otherness" as if those same resorts
| weren't purpose built to coddle to foreigners being out
| of their element.
|
| And even if you do fall through the tourism system and
| find yourself elbow to elbow with a native, the thought
| that you as a foreigner will unlock their culture in
| handful of days when most natural born members of a group
| will be learning their own eccentricities to the day they
| die is one of the more disgusting flavors of arrogance.
| kibwen wrote:
| There are plenty of pitfalls to the attitude that tourism
| will grant enlightenment, but I agree that some amount
| travel is crucial. Experiencing a different society (the
| everyday bits, not just the facade shown to tourists),
| even for a short amount of time, helps to humanize the
| people living in that society (or really, any society
| other than your own). Never straying from one place for
| your entire life is a great way to cultivate the attitude
| that the only "real" culture is the one that you're
| familiar with. In a connected world, empathy for people
| outside your own immediate sphere is important, and even
| a small amount of travel to a small number of places will
| generally suffice to begin developing this sort of
| empathy.
| imbnwa wrote:
| It's just, you don't need a plane ticket and a passport
| to satisfy these goals
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Do you really think you can't learn anything as a
| tourist?
| imbnwa wrote:
| Learn _anything_? Certainly you can realize the true
| scale of Angkor Wat.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Most people can't learn anything and they don't want to.
| It is impossible to explain what living in a slum is like
| to a middle class woke guy.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Well if you're being that reductionist, what's the point
| in doing or learning anything? Why is tourism any more
| useless than any other pointless attempt for a woke guy
| to learn something?
| rajin444 wrote:
| Are you saying Africans and (black, which I assume you
| mean but I'm trying to be charitable) people in your city
| are basically the same? I imagine the lives and cultures
| in Africa are vastly different than whatever city you're
| in.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're also assuming that their town doesn't have a lot
| of African immigrants living on its south side, and that
| the speaker wasn't (very questionably) saying that their
| experience with Africans affected the way they interacted
| with local black people.
| martin_a wrote:
| I think OP is talking about some kind of "charity
| tourism" that's happening. I think Europe has some
| effects like this, too, where people prefer to go to
| Africa to "help some children" while they could be "doing
| good" by getting active in local organisations. No need
| to travel some thousand kilometres for that.
| imbnwa wrote:
| If the only way for you to deal with Black skin
| charitably be that they be some exotic Other "over
| there", that're 'different', who 'actually have it bad',
| and that you don't need to ever run into again, then
| you're part of a problem and don't know why.
|
| Africa won't want for charitable aid labor in spite of
| this sentiment, it just can field those grunt work jobs
| from people who're, you know, from the area itself rather
| than Western tourists looking for a story to tell or a CV
| to pad.
| [deleted]
| dfjhakdfhadkf wrote:
| hulitu wrote:
| > I'm personally opposed to the idea of visiting certain
| countries, such as China and North Korea, to 'see for
| yourself', especially when you don't know the language,
| when you're not willing to risk your life to understand and
| uncover the parts the government doesn't want you to see
|
| I'm personally opposed to the idea of visiting certain
| countries, such as USA since they searched phones at the
| border and you could be treated like a criminal based on
| who knows what.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I am surprised at what you say regarding the hosting of
| foreigners. My girlfriend was there for a couple of months
| and she didn't notice any such thing, and she actually
| rented a place with a couple of friends, also foreigners.
| Is this what you describe because of racism or because of
| government?
| arvigeus wrote:
| Depends on where she lived. Beijing, Shanghai and other
| first tier cities are ok for foreigners. The further away
| you get, the more blurry situation gets.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| mlindner wrote:
| What? The US doesn't require anyone to register with the
| local government when traveling, foreigner or US citizen.
| Where are you getting this kind of misinformation?
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I don't know about the us, but in some places in Europe ,
| the police or a security agency passes by daily to pick
| up a form that's filled out when checking in.
|
| Source, friend worked in a hotel and I have seen it with
| my own eyes.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Chinese misinformation campaign?
| pksebben wrote:
| going through whimsicalisms posts, and it's actually hard
| to build a picture of state-run propaganda. They talk
| about Taiwanese independence like it's a given, for
| example. This could possibly be a cultural
| misunderstanding.
|
| Never attribute to malice etc.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| The hell you talking about. I've been to roughly 40
| states, and am "non-white" and have never had to do this
| shit at any hotel
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You don't have to show your ID to check in?
| learc83 wrote:
| Where did you get this from? US hotels most definitely do
| not "register (resident or non-resident) guests with the
| local government".
|
| A few states require hotel guests to present an ID at
| checkin.
| beebeepka wrote:
| How can you tell if a hotel registers you with the local
| government? I am not saying they are (never bothered to
| cross the Atlantic) but you have no way of knowing what
| they do.
|
| My assumption is they all do, directly or not. I mean,
| 2013 did happen. Guess not everyone was paying attention
| learc83 wrote:
| The "local government" are my neighbors the Sheriff and
| the County Commissioner.
|
| Then there are freedom of information requests,
| journalist, whistleblowers working for local government,
| and whistleblowers working for hotels.
|
| If the Sheriff knew who you were and had probable cause
| he could get a warrant to get your credit card
| transactions from your bank and from that see you were in
| a hotel.
|
| But that's pretty far away from "hotels register you with
| the local government."
|
| There was actually a hotel owner who took it on himself
| to report suspected undocumented immigrants to ICE a few
| years ago. We know about it because it quickly made its
| way to the papers, and caused an enormous uproar.
| snomad wrote:
| remind me, what happened in 2013?
| beebeepka wrote:
| Check out this Snowden guy. He made some uncomfortable
| revelations
| throwanem wrote:
| Spoken like someone who's never spent any time in or
| around the US service industry. People will gossip, and
| something like this would be known - hell, _I 'd_ likely
| know it, just on account of knowing some folks who would
| know and would want to talk about it. I don't live in a
| tech monoculture, either geographically or socially, and
| I'm friendly, personable, and good at explaining complex
| systems simply. Because of that I get a lot of questions
| from acquaintances about everything from phone and PC
| repair to what human life might look like after a hard-
| takeoff singularity. Those conversations go lots of
| places, but often tend to converge on people's worries
| about tech in general, as they take the chance of a
| discussion with someone knowledgeable to check their
| anxieties against reality. So the surprise, if this were
| happening, would be more that by now someone _hadn 't_
| mentioned it, over drinks or otherwise, in my hearing.
|
| That said, I don't find that lack at all surprising. What
| you're thinking of here is more of a Stasi-style
| "informers everywhere" kind of deal, and US domestic mass
| surveillance really doesn't work that way. Much more
| likely would be something like NSA watching payment card
| transactions en masse for debits from hotels and
| associating those with cell tower and identity data, and
| maybe also having quietly penetrated the major booking
| systems to spot cash purchases. In light of Snowden's
| 2013 revelations, it wouldn't surprise me to hear about
| either of those, and indeed I assume they are both being
| done. (Not least because that's probably how _I 'd_ build
| it. Why deal openly with a bunch of separate businesses
| and fractious employees when you can much more quietly
| and easily learn all you want from what's going over the
| wire?)
|
| And aside from all that - not for nothing is it so common
| a theme in our popular media, especially these last
| couple of decades, that by and large we'd really just
| rather not know. You've mentioned that you don't really
| understand America, and that checks out; if you did,
| you'd neither be surprised that the response to Snowden
| was mostly a yawn, nor need telling anything I've said in
| this comment. Our intelligence agencies certainly don't.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If you pay cash, you pretty much uniformly have to show
| ID, no? I don't think it is possible to book a room
| without identifying yourself.
|
| This might not be reported to the state, but I feel like
| it definitely could be subpoenad by the state.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Both. I have been refused access to a place because the
| landlord was openly racist and didn't want to rent to me
| after she found out I was a foreigner. There is pretty
| much no recourse for foreigners who are victims of racism
| in China, it's an extremely racist country. When you're a
| foreigner you just kinda have to accept that there are
| people who will cross the street or shield their kids
| when they see you, loudly complain when you sit next to
| them on the bus, refuse to do business with you, etc etc.
| Of course in rich areas of tier one cities where the
| government has an image to uphold, this will happen much
| less frequently.
|
| That said, definitely in the case of hotels there are
| loads of hotels it seems there is a legal aspect as well.
| If you lived in China you might be familiar with the long
| and boring process of registration with the police every
| time you move house. Sometimes you even have to register
| at more than one place because you moved into a different
| urban area. According to the law, all foreigners must do
| this everywhere they go in China, including tourists who
| are on holiday. It wouldn't be very efficient to make
| tourists spend a couple hours at the police station every
| time they checked into a hotel, so some hotels have some
| arrangement with the local police to do this on their
| guests' behalf behind the scenes. Most tourists nowadays
| don't even know that they have been registered with the
| police everywhere they travel. But smaller hotels don't
| provide that service. I have successfully blagged my way
| into staying at one smaller hotel by assuring them i
| would visit the local police myself to register, but a
| lot of them don't want the hassle or (perhaps) attention
| from the local authorities, so they just ban foreigners.
|
| When I left China it was during the pandemic, and pretty
| much no hotels at all would allow foreigners to stay.
| This was xenophobia, pure and simple. There were a few
| times I had to first visit the police station and ask the
| police where I could stay, because hotel after hotel
| after hotel refused me, despite my green health code,
| valid visa and so on.
| demonshreder wrote:
| Facing discrimination when you are foreigner is pretty
| common in most countries. I think if you are from the
| white diaspora you wouldn't have noticed in the western
| countries but every time a friend (I am from India) goes
| to countries in NA & EU, there is almost always some form
| of discrimination preventing access to service or being
| overcharged without legal intervention.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| I've been to many hotels across the United States and
| Europe over a number of years in cities of all sizes and
| can honestly say have never even felt the remote
| possibility of being denied a room. Also
| Indian/Pakistani.
|
| Edit: to be clear, I'm not trying to deny your own
| experience or making any accusations here. I'm just
| presenting the other side and clarifying that I don't
| feel it's a universal experience.
| chrischen wrote:
| America has its own class of problems that get
| exaggerated or overblown, such as how dangerous it is.
| chancho wrote:
| "White diaspora" is blowing my mind a bit. I think I
| would have been slapped by my social studies teachers if
| I ever used that phrase to describe colonialism. (I'm
| white, US)
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Nice of you to assume that all white people had a chance
| to colonise (rather than be colonised and conquered by
| neighbouring nations on a regular basis). I'm not
| carrying the sins of the English-speaking (or otherwise
| formerly colonising) nations, so could the whites ==
| colonialism assumption stay wherever other such weird
| assumptions belong.
| User23 wrote:
| European diaspora is an accepted term[1]. Yes there's a
| redirect, but the word "diaspora" is used in the very
| first paragraph. It's ok, Europeans are people too.
| There's nothing offensive about the term. Plenty of
| "colonials" were sentenced to transportation, they didn't
| choose it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_diaspora
| thoms_a wrote:
| You can take solace in the fact that "whites" will never
| again command such societies in the future. The
| exaggerated "colonialism" narrative comes off as pining
| for a long-lost era of dominance, but in a socially
| acceptable way.
|
| The era of Northern Europeans ("whites") dominating the
| globe is over forever, so no need to beat yourself up
| about it. Just letting you know that this extreme
| narrative is quite bizarre to non-Americans.
| Veen wrote:
| Visiting or living in foreign countries for business or
| tourism is not "colonialism".
| powerapple wrote:
| Yes, foreigners need to register their address. I did
| that in UK every time I move when I was under student
| visa. If you fail to register within 7 days or so, you
| will be hit with a fine and other consequences. I also
| need to fill in my address in US every time I visit US. I
| assume it is normal for people traveling to westerns, but
| not very normal for westerners themselves. Most tourism
| countries, hotels do registration for you, sometimes you
| fill an extra form when you check in.
| carlmr wrote:
| I've had smaller hotels tell me they can't host
| foreigners due to some law that you need to have a star
| rating which they didn't. The only time I had problems
| booking a hotel was in Shanghai and Beijing though, in
| other cities there was never an issue.
|
| Also I was always greeted with utter friendliness, so I
| don't get the everybody's xenophobic aspect. I do speak
| some (very basic) Mandarin though so maybe that helps
| with how you're treated.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Not speaking Chinese is probably a benefit, because what
| you don't know can't hurt you. I speak fairly fluent
| Mandarin, and have overheard a lot of very open racist
| and xenophobic sentiments expressed in conversations
| around me when the people presumably assumed i couldn't
| understand what they were saying.
|
| It is true that people in China tend to be fairly polite,
| although when it blows up it tends to go straight to 11.
| (I saw a lot of this happening between police and
| residents during the coronavirus lockdowns.) But just
| because people are polite, don't assume that means
| they're not bigots. In some parts of the country,
| particularly amongst more affluent people, there is a
| sort of attitude that foreigners should be treated with
| kid gloves, which is thoroughly degrading.
| lincw wrote:
| As a Chinese who grew up in a very small city in the
| west, I think you are completely right. The more
| developed areas is, the more open they are. And so on to
| the teenagers compare elders. At least in the surface.
| However, as the government turns to be more close(I don't
| know how to describe it more correct but i believe you
| know) when Xi gets the power, even the teenagers become
| more racist and xenophobic while I am an undergraduate
| seen. IMO, probably that's because most of them could
| only receive the Internet in China(which we always
| consider it as a LAN): everything in the world has a
| "Chinese special edition". After all, IMO, it's able to
| come to China in some big cities with a VPN or something
| across the firewall since nobody can stay away to
| internet these days. Thus you will get a experience not
| too bad, and China is like most any other countries. But
| just stay in the urban area. What's more, you know it's
| not a good time to visit during pandemic, and i think
| racist and xenophobic been much more during these time. I
| don't know what the china being tomorrow, but i'm
| pessimistic. Sorry for my bad english.
| arbuge wrote:
| This is weird. Definitely not my experience at all. I
| visited Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu in China in 2012
| and I felt extremely welcome wherever I went. I might
| also add that in Chengdu, a city which sees considerably
| less foreigners than the other two, I felt like I was
| being treated like somewhat of a celebrity, with people
| smiling at me everywhere, and random passer-bys on the
| street trying to impress me with their renditions of
| "Good Morning" or "How are you?". Once I had a visibly
| excited team of students randomly stop me on the street
| to do an interview with me for their class project, and
| on another occasion a large group of young people all
| wanted to take a picture with me one by one.
|
| Needless to say, I loved it.
| brokenodometer wrote:
| Can you imagine saying "ni hao" and asking for selfies
| with random Asian people on the street in whatever
| western country? It would be racist and demeaning as
| hell. That's what they subjected you to, and you felt
| "special."
| byw wrote:
| Some things to keep in mind:
|
| Familiarity breeds contempt.
|
| Western expats in East Asia tend to be quite polarized
| about their country of residence, and expats in poorer
| countries even more so. Over time, the tint of novelty
| wears off and the warts begin to stand out. Poorer
| countries have more warts.
|
| For folks like myself who are extra sensitive, the
| negatives get an outsized representation, while the
| positives and neutrals get filtered out. It took me years
| of to develop the habits to compensate. I'm far from
| where I'd like to be, but I'm learning to accept that as
| well.
|
| This is especially true in places of higher density. If
| you encounter 1 bad apple in a place of 100 people, vs 10
| bad apples of 1000 people, the ratio is the same, but
| subjectively the latter feels ten times worse. It's the
| price you pay for living the city life.
|
| And when you have an under-stimulated career, the idle
| mind becomes the devil's playground.
|
| We let collective narratives plays a greater role in
| colouring our opinions (as opposite to direct experience)
| than we'd like to admit. In this day and age, I don't
| think it's especially controversial to say that we get
| more dopamine hits from internet discussions than having
| a stroll down the street. Ultimately, unless we
| consciously intervene, the chemicals get to decide what
| we let ruminate in the back of our minds.
|
| The idiosyncrasies you used to brush off or find amusing
| are now small but cumulative signs of impending doom.
| What we get right in direction we get wrong in magnitude.
| The sprinkles of verifiable truth can often as easily
| fuel our biases as they moderate them.
| mads wrote:
| All the cities you mention are tier one Potemkin cities.
|
| Try go to the country side to see the real China.
|
| For the racism part, I wouldn't say that signs with "no
| foreigners" in shops are common, but I have seen them a
| couple of times during my 5 year stay in China.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| 2012 is a very long time ago by Chinese standards. Xi
| only became the general secretary in November of that
| year and the president in 2013. Most of his authoritarian
| and nationalist policies have only really kicked into a
| higher gear from 2018. The xenophobia got even worse
| after the coronavirus hit, and I can't imagine it has
| improved much since I left in 2020.
|
| Also, I don't know what makes you think that Chengdu is
| off the beaten path - it's a massive tourist destination,
| in particular because of its panda reserve, presumed
| proximity to Tibet and the global renown of Sichuan
| cuisine (home of mapo tofu, hotpot etc).
|
| Thirdly, this coddling of foreigners is exactly the kind
| of racist behavior that I find to be degrading. It might
| feel superficially nice to be treated like you are
| special or unique, but really it means you are not being
| treated with respect. They are treating you like a child,
| or a curiosity. If you visit some of the indigenous
| communities of China then you will often see the Han
| majority treat the ethnic minorities in the same way, as
| if they are just props for photos or some kind of weird
| creatures to be gawked at. It's gross, imo.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Thank you. I had the same experience as GP in 2010 except
| I absolutely hated it. Can you imagine if people in the
| US treated Chinese tourists like that?
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| China has changed an awful lot even since 2012.
| rootsudo wrote:
| This is mostly because they don't know how to register
| foreign passports. If you show them how to do it and
| present your passport, it is not an issue.
|
| https://www.lostlaowai.com/blog/china-stuff/china-
| travel/for...
|
| So many foreigners/laowai spread the same misinformation.
| You can stay, if you have sufficient Chinese/Mandarin, you
| can explain the above and it works. If you have a good
| friend explain, it also works. Most say the same thing as
| you "kicked out" "not allowed" or "rascism".
|
| Not true at all, - at some hotels where I stayed I was
| really the first foreigner to ever pass through. (I wasn't
| staying in typical Shanghai places for example, more north
| and more west.)
|
| Not an issue at all, explained, showed, registered, done.
| legofr wrote:
| In every other country you show them your passport, you
| write your signature and you pay a deposit - done.
|
| In China you either need to go through an agency that
| have something similar to "The Negro Motorist Green Book"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_B
| ook), or you need to speak Chinese, convince the
| reception that they don't need a certificate they believe
| they're legally required to have, convince the reception
| to call the owner who will no doubt repeat a foreigner is
| not allowed, then you need to contact the police to
| convince the owner, if the police agree that a
| certificate is required then you need to convince the
| police that they don't know their own laws, convince them
| to call the Provincial Foreign Affairs Bureau.. that's
| what the person in your blogpost has been doing. She even
| told the police to give her their badge numbers so she
| could file an official complaint. That person is
| certainly living on the edge.
|
| Even if it's technically legal, then surely the end
| result will be the same - 9/10 hotels and apartments will
| refuse foreigners (for the apartments I rented then
| everything was done on paper, I doubt they have the
| booking system mentioned in the blogpost - not sure if
| all hotels use the same since I have never walked behind
| the desk and looked at their computer.. and they probably
| wouldn't allow it if I asked) because who in their right
| mind want to spend several hours and likely get the
| police involved just so they can rent a room for 200rmb.
| rootsudo wrote:
| It's the same in China for most hotels that know what
| they're doing. " In every other country you show them
| your passport, you write your signature and you pay a
| deposit - done.".
|
| If you go off the beaten path or less than 4 stars
| hotels, then that.
|
| And not unique just in China, Japan will do it too with
| some places - granted mostly it's love hotels which is
| ironic cause they're not supposed to know whose checking
| in, no passport is required, but many a foreigner can't
| read Kanji or talk.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> In every other country you show them your passport,
| you write your signature and you pay a deposit - done._
|
| There are nearly 200 countries on this planet, in that
| context your claim sounds more like quite the
| generalization, on your part, rather than an actual fact.
|
| edit; Wow, never would have thought that stating a simple
| fact could be controversial on HN.
|
| What is going on in these comments? People acting like
| everybody is American/Canadian, and as if the whole world
| is all the same, but only China is some weird outlier,
| smh
| powerapple wrote:
| It is true. The reason is that only hotels with passport
| verification system can accept foreign guests (all hotels
| have a system connected to police department to verify
| national id), most hotels only have a small national id
| verification system (because it was cheaper I guess), only
| some 4 star and 5 star hotels have these. I had once tried
| to use my passport to stay in a hotel, they didn't allow me
| then I learnt about this.
| rvba wrote:
| Probably only the bigger hotels have an agent of ministry
| of state security on premises.
|
| You should assume that you get a bugged room too.
|
| Russians did it in the 80s, even easier now.
| gavinray wrote:
| Hey what sort of bullshit is this HN?
|
| I was reading a reply by a guy who counter-commented on
| this, a bunch of links of people on YouTube walking around
| this same area and not seeing anything like this.
|
| Then went to comment, and it says "flagged" and was
| deleted, in under 10 minutes.
|
| I don't really care about politics or China at all, but
| that is some spooky-tier censorship here on HN. Wtf is
| going on here?
|
| Here's one of the links I followed:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wENwvxsfVM8
| wegrwerg wrote:
| If that link is the best representation of the lot, then
| yeah, they deserved to be deleted. Walking around a
| neighborhood with a high density of a given ethnicity,
| showing them managing to enjoy the life they have does
| nothing to discredit the idea that the same ethnicity is
| oppressed and heavily targeted.
|
| Or to put it another way with a much more mild example,
| you can make a video full of happy black folks in some of
| the most backwards racist oppressive parts of the US. The
| existence of happy people does not negate the oppression
| they continue to endure.
| gavinray wrote:
| I'm not intending/trying to start any sort of argument
| about how things actually are.
|
| I have no idea. I've never been to China. It could be
| really bad, exactly the way the video makes it out to be.
| The video could be dramatized, and not representative of
| the situation as a whole.
|
| I'm not sure I would believe things that China told me
| about the US
|
| By the same logic, I'm not sure I believe all the things
| that US/US-allied media tell me about China
|
| Without access to verifiably unbiased information (which
| is difficult in an age where nations have entire agencies
| dedicated to misinformation for political purposes) it's
| something that's hard for me to form an objective opinion
| on. And I'm not that invested in it to want to form an
| opinion.
|
| I just wanted to point out this odd behavior that I've
| not seen much of on here.
| hulitu wrote:
| There are a lot of people "with an agenda" here, to say
| the least. And unlike Slashdot you cannot reply to
| flagged or dead comments which benefits those people.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| I encourage you to apply occam's razor here. I don't
| think any political entity has any interest in
| controlling what individuals post on a tiny website like
| HN.
| gavinray wrote:
| Here is the post that has vanished:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=29684814
| > I don't think any political entity has any interest in
| controlling what individuals post on a tiny website like
| HN.
|
| I wish I could pull a cached view of the comment up (I
| tried), there wasn't anything I would interpret as being
| inflammatory in there.
|
| The comment boiled down to: "VICE isn't
| what I'd call the most reputable/unbiased source. I'd
| encourage everyone to do their own research/make their
| own decision. Here are a bunch of links of people walking
| around the same area, and it looks nothing like what is
| cut together from that VICE episode."
|
| The speed at which it was flagged and removed was
| shocking. Like I said, (maybe I am a bad person for
| this), I don't really care that much about China or
| politics in general. There are a lot of other things I'd
| rather spend my energy caring about, that directly impact
| me.
|
| I just wanted to call out this very odd behavior. I don't
| see HN as a place where people who speak objectively +
| respectfully get silenced, generally.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| As for the flagging, I believe HN auto-flags comments
| from new accounts that receive a large number of
| downvotes as an anti-spam feature.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| If you enable showdead on your profile, you'll see that
| this comment is denying the well documented genocide that
| is occurring in these regions. That will rightfully annoy
| many people here, hence the downvotes.
|
| So using the razor, I think we can conclude what
| happened.
|
| User makes a new throwaway account to spread easily
| disproved information
|
| Other users downvote the misinformation
|
| HN autoflags the comment to protect against preceived-
| spam.
|
| Although you are right to question what you see. It is
| never wrong to take a second to ask "what's going on
| here?"
| whydoibother wrote:
| themitigating wrote:
| There are other rules that are unrelated to being
| objective or respectful
| monort wrote:
| Enable showdead in settings to view flagged comments.
| hker wrote:
| > a bunch of links of people on YouTube walking around
| this same area and not seeing anything like this.
|
| There is heavy tracking and surveillance in China [1],
| especially in Xinjiang [2][3].
|
| Hence any reporting of Xinjiang, including the YouTube
| links you mentioned and posted, have selection bias.
|
| That is, unfavorable reports or videos are censored,
| while favorable videos are selected, if not outright
| sponsored as part of large-scale online disinformation
| campaigns [5][6].
|
| =====
|
| The tracking and surveillance of reporters in Xinjiang,
| where journalists are tracked and have photos deleted for
| no reasons [2]: I was in Kashgar to
| report on how the Chinese authorities had turned to
| technology to cement their control of the Xinjiang
| territory, a region in the west of the country. Foreign
| journalists who travel there are tracked. I became one of
| the watched. [...snipped...]
| Another time, a police officer stopped us close to our
| hotel. Inspecting Chris's photos, he deleted a shot of a
| camel. When Chris asked why that photo was deleted, the
| man turned to Chris and said, "In China, there are no
| whys.".
|
| =====
|
| The tracking and surveillance of reporters in general,
| using the pandemic as an excuse and using visas for
| control [3]: Several foreign and
| domestic journalists were forced to abandon stories after
| being told "to leave or be quarantined on the spot," the
| report highlighted. Press credentials were commonly
| canceled by Beijing officials and embassies were
| routinely tasked with trying to renew revoked visas from
| journalists. The report said foreign journalists were
| used as "pawns" in China's international diplomatic
| disputes.
|
| =====
|
| The sponsorship of favorable YouTube and other social
| media videos, also covering ethnic mintorities [5]:
| The Barretts are part of a crop of new social media
| personalities who paint cheery portraits of life as
| foreigners in China -- and also hit back at criticisms of
| Beijing's authoritarian governance, its policies toward
| ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus.
| [...snipped...] State-run news outlets and
| local governments have organized and funded pro-Beijing
| influencers' travel, according to government documents
| and the creators themselves. They have paid or offered to
| pay the creators. They have generated lucrative traffic
| for the influencers by sharing videos with millions of
| followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
| [...snipped...] His videos do not mention
| the internal government documents, firsthand testimonials
| and visits by journalists that indicate that the Chinese
| authorities have held hundreds of thousands of Xinjiang's
| Muslims in re-education camps. They also do
| not mention his and his family's business ties to the
| Chinese state.
|
| =====
|
| > Hey what sort of bullshit is this HN?
|
| This sort of bullshit (sponsored videos) should not be
| promoted on HN, which may fuel the disinformation
| campaigns [5][6].
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/29/china-
| province... "Chinese province targets journalists and
| students in planned surveillance system"
|
| [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/insider/china-
| xinjiang-re... "Being Tracked While Reporting in China,
| Where 'There Are No Whys'"
|
| [3]: https://www.newsweek.com/china-harassing-
| intimidating-journa... "China Harassing, Intimidating
| Journalists With Surveillance Built to Curb COVID-19"
|
| [4]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/techn
| ology/ch... "How Beijing Influences the Influencers"
|
| [5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20211224143113/https://w
| ww.nytim... "How Beijing Influences the Influencers"
|
| [6]: https://miburo.substack.com/p/cotton-the-act "Cotton
| the Act: Large-Scale Network of CCP-aligned Facebook
| Accounts Deny Mass Atrocity in China's Xinjiang Province"
|
| Edits: added more links.
| gavinray wrote:
| > This sort of bullshit (sponsored videos) should not be
| promoted on HN.
|
| Promoted or not, this is generally a community for having
| level-headed discussions about things.
|
| The original commenter says "China is X way".
|
| Someone responds and says "China is Y way."
|
| Everyone ought to be able to upvote/downvote, and argue +
| discuss to their hearts content.
|
| I have no horse in this race, but I would have expected
| the person to just get downvoted into oblivion or
| responded to with posts like yours, containing responding
| counter-arguments/links, if the majority of people
| disagree with or hold contrary evidence to.
|
| My reaction was less to do it about it being anything
| specifically related to China, and more about the
| principle/premise of the matter.
|
| It could equally have been "Person 1 says eggs are bad
| for you, Person 2 says eggs are good for you." and I
| would have had the same reaction.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| There is a big difference between real debate on real
| issues - the example egg nutrition lol. Versus trying to
| refute or distract with a 'debate' on reality & facts.
|
| Some things shouldn't be up for debate and calling doubt
| on reality is a weapon used by those who have political
| stakes.
|
| China is a tough one too because as we saw on a top HN
| post from a few days ago we know the CCP has a large,
| active operation to comment and engage in online forums
| to sway opinion.
|
| Article gave examples of typical straw man, whataboutism,
| handy wavy redirection.
|
| The kind of comments exactly like what got flagged.
| hker wrote:
| This HN post?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661475
| "Spamouflage: CCP-Aligned Disinformation Campaign on
| Facebook Twitter YouTube"
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I think same news source! but this was the big thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654137
|
| There have been a few over the years. One I remember
| talked about a gamified app which is like so innovative
| and sad at the same time
| freeflight wrote:
| Reminds me of this channel 4 [0] interview with writer
| Benjamin Zephaniah. Tbh I find his reasoning, go there and
| see for yourself, much more convincing than your reasoning.
|
| Particularly this;
|
| _> when you 're not willing to risk your life to
| understand and uncover the parts the government doesn't
| want you to see_
|
| Just reads like FUD, it's not China that locks up people at
| the highest rate on the planet. That "feat" is reserved to
| a country were nobody would say "don't visit there you
| might die!" even tho the chance for that to happen there is
| much more likely than in China or NK, where most police
| don't even carry guns.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/zowOkv0Cuhk
| belval wrote:
| Considering the locked up two Canadians in retaliation
| for Canada arresting Meng Wanghzu. I just don't see how I
| could go there and not have anxiety for the whole trip.
|
| It's a shame though, I always wanted to see China.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Considering the locked up two Canadians in retaliation
| for Canada arresting Meng Wanghzu._
|
| So let's just ignore the context of why and how that
| happened, or what kind of anxiety that translates to for
| Chinese people visiting countries like Canada or the US?
|
| I mean, who there started arresting other nations
| nationals as geopolitical gambling chips? It wasn't
| China, it was Canada at the command of the US.
|
| _> I just don 't see how I could go there and not have
| anxiety for the whole trip._
|
| As a German national, I don't see how or why that should
| affect me. Can you please expand on your reasoning there?
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I have Canadian citizenship and lived in China when the
| two Michaels were locked up. In reality, even if the
| worst fears are true and every foreigner is explicitly
| tracked and constantly monitored by the local police
| department, it still wouldn't really be worth the
| government's effort to "disappear" the average foreigner,
| or even "invite them to tea". Most of us simply aren't
| that influential or important.
|
| Of course, it does feel a bit suspicious when you say
| something mildly critical of the government online or
| during a meal with friends and then "mysteriously" the
| next day your VPN stops working, but it's just as likely
| that it could be coincidence and you're reading too much
| into it. But that's exactly how things are supposed to
| work in an authoritarian regime. Most of the time the
| government isn't explicitly watching over everyone, but
| because the legal system is deliberately opaque, everyone
| maintains a tiny bit of fear inside them that maybe they
| could be being watched, or that there might be a secret
| police just around the corner, so they self-censor and
| limit their behaviors just in case.
|
| So, you're right that you might have anxiety the whole
| trip, but arguably that means you're getting to
| experience the "real China". Living under a constant
| chilling effect[0] is probably worse for locals than
| foreigners. At least as a foreigner you can leave when
| the pressure gets too much. Most locals don't have that
| privilege.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
| freeflight wrote:
| _> I have Canadian citizenship and lived in China when
| the two Michaels were locked up._
|
| Who were only locked up after Canada locked up a Chinese
| citizen at the request of the US.
|
| Weirdly enough, that is framed in a completely different
| context than China's _response_ to it.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| A very prominent businessperson being held for allowing
| her company to commit fraud and violate US sanctions in a
| country that has an extradition treaty with the US is not
| the same thing as a country "suddenly" detaining two
| expats, in an immediate and obvious response to the
| previous lawful detention. The two Michaels weren't even
| charged with anything after they had been detained,
| imprisoned and interrogated for 5+ months! Meanwhile Meng
| Wanzhou was able to continue living a relatively
| comfortable life under home arrest. It's not fair to
| suggest that the average person - Chinese or not - will
| just randomly be arrested and imprisoned for months in
| Canada, with no charges filed whatsoever. The same thing
| happens frequently in China.
| powerapple wrote:
| chrischen wrote:
| I'm ethnically Chinese. While I speak a little I am still
| mistaken for a foreigner since I often hire a translator
| and I traveled extensively through China throughout the
| last 2 decades to many places both remote and urban on a US
| passport. Never had a problem with hotels (though mostly
| booked online) nor staying at relatives/friends houses, nor
| anything blatantly authoritarian besides my internet bring
| blocked (which I got around using a SOCKS proxy).
|
| I was also part of an Obama administration sponsored group
| of Americans sent to China for an entrepreneurship exchange
| trip and I think more Americans should be sent to China to
| learn about it rather than reading biased second hand
| accounts over the internet. While it was a guided and
| escorted tour, we were also allowed to freely wander the
| cities in some of the evenings. It would go a long way to
| ease tensions and reduce enmity between the two nations if
| there was more genuine cultural interaction instead of
| spooky observations from afar. People tend to exaggerate
| and boogeyman what they don't know and understand.
| itsagavin wrote:
| The reality is every step you took was observed and I
| would assume even where you slept both video and audio
| were recorded.
| chrischen wrote:
| You can assume anything. Doesn't mean it's true. The
| reality is that your perception of China is highly
| fantasized and part of a crafted narrative. It's
| dangerous if you continue to contribute to this
| propaganda without care as to whether you've verified
| anything you've heard yourself. Maybe it's true, maybe
| not, but I doubt you'd know. I mean, it's certainly
| possible our rooms were bugged, but to what end? To
| fulfill the dreams of conspiracy theorists? I guess it's
| equally likely the US embedded a CIA agent in our group
| as well so maybe bugging us would be justified.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Your naivete is unsurprising; it was one of the traits
| you were selected for in trip planning.
|
| Countries spy on foreign visitors. Friendship trips are
| carefully planned to show none of the underside of a
| society. China is one of the most oppressive regimes out
| there - see the detention of Jack Ma, who was five years
| ago one of their most celebrated businessmen.
| bigmanwalter wrote:
| I backpacked through China and stayed in youth hostels.
| Highly doubt they were bugged. They didn't even have
| heating (we used electric blankets)
| chrischen wrote:
| I think part of that is that a lot of infrastructure is
| missing, but also culturally less wasteful than American
| lifestyles. For example I stayed in my Japanese friend's
| house in Tokyo and he doesn't heat the entire place even
| though it's a pretty small apartment. My room just had a
| heated blanket as well.
|
| But I agree, for any random foreigner the government is
| not competent enough to surveil him/her and much less
| motivated to do so. The fact is any given foreigner is
| not actually that important...
| hker wrote:
| Let me add some nuances to this claim.
|
| Even if "every step is observed" is exaggerated, the
| surveillance system in China is pretty extensive: it can
| target journalists and international students among other
| "suspicious people", and can compile individual files on
| such persons using 3,000 facial recognition cameras (in a
| single province) that connect to various national and
| regional databases. [1]
|
| And this surveillance system is part of the bigger
| tracking program, which the Chinese authority has used to
| harass and intimidate journalists [2] (see this comment
| for more [3]).
|
| And according to the memoir "A Promised Land", even Obama
| and his staff were worried about Chinese surveillance
| during their stay at the Beijing hotel (see this review
| [4] or this summary [5]): "To make
| calls involving national security matters from the hotel,
| I had to go to a suite down the hall fitted with a
| sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) -- a
| big blue tent plopped down in the middle of the room that
| hummed with an eerie, psychedelic buzz designed to block
| any nearby listening devices. Some members of our team
| dressed and even showered in the dark to avoid the hidden
| cameras we could assume had been strategically placed in
| every room. (Marvin, on the other hand, said he made a
| point of walking around his room naked and with the
| lights on -- whether out of pride or in protest wasn't
| entirely clear.)" [4]
|
| And I agree with other commenters [6] that the situation
| worsened significantly after 2018 as Xi was consolidating
| power, so experiences before 2016 or so may not be
| representative of the current trend (when Xi may get more
| terms).
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-
| chinese-provinc... "EXCLUSIVE Chinese province targets
| journalists, foreign students with planned new
| surveillance system"
|
| [2]: https://www.newsweek.com/china-harassing-
| intimidating-journa... "China Harassing, Intimidating
| Journalists With Surveillance Built to Curb COVID-19"
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29685703
|
| [4]: https://georgetoparis.medium.com/obamas-a-promised-
| land-on-c... "Obama's "A Promised Land", on China"
|
| [5]: https://www.bannedbook.org/en/bnews/baitai/20201121/
| 1434392.... "Obama recalls his first visit to China and
| was under surveillance"
|
| [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684626
| legofr wrote:
| The reason it took more than a year for me to realize
| this phenomenon is because when I first visited the
| country then I relied on travel agencies, international
| hotel booking apps, and had accommodation provided for
| me. It's certainly possible to live in China for even a
| decade without realizing the reality of the situation if
| you exclusively stay at 4-5 star hotels, or only book
| hotels through international hotel booking apps, or rely
| on agencies to help you find apartment and other type of
| accommodation since they have a list of the ones that
| accept foreigners.
|
| https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/starrated-hotel-
| operation/... claim there are 10 million hotels in China
| - what percentage do you reckon are included in the
| international hotel booking apps? My guess would be less
| than 0.5%. That's why you need to walk into the random
| hotels/apartments you see on the street if you want to
| verify the reality of the situation. For you specifically
| then it might be difficult since you're ethnically
| Chinese, so while you might encounter some discrimination
| and exclusion from society (if you don't have a national
| id card) then it certainly won't be comparable to what
| white and especially black people experience while living
| in China. In my experience then the 9/10 number is not an
| exaggeration at all but if you asked other westerners who
| visited China then they will likely give different
| numbers based on their price range, location, booking
| method, etc.
|
| I also think you greatly exaggerate how much you actually
| learn about another country by going there for a short
| trip. Even the most brutal regimes can look like a
| wonderful paradise, e.g. see the national day celebration
| in 1959 which took place at a time where tens of millions
| of people were dying of starvation
| (https://youtu.be/M-XQSffVpfY?t=43).
| trasz wrote:
| There's no contradiction if you understand that all those
| bans are on companies, not users. People just use VPN, like
| they did anyway, but for companies it means they have to
| comply with Chinese law to make money there.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| IME the Great Firewall doesn't outright block global traffic
| apart from some selected services, but makes them so
| unreliable and slow that it's almost impossible to directly
| connect and use services from the other side (think 'analog
| modem speed'), companies (maybe just IT companies, not sure)
| can get an exemption (they need to connect to github after
| all), but even then it's not very reliable.
|
| If Steam had a working 'global service' then it almost
| certainly used local datacenters as proxy. But AFAIK PC
| gaming is pretty much seen as a niche for computer nerds
| though (apart from E-Sports), gaming mostly happens on mobile
| phones.
| baybal2 wrote:
| There are no such exemptions, and I don't know from where
| did this idea came
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I worked multiple times for a few weeks at a game
| development company in Shanghai in 2017 which definitely
| had a GFW bypass in place, and it was explained to me
| that companies can obtain a "license" to legally do this.
| How much of this is true, I don't know, but I could
| access the global internet at full speed (minus some
| occasional hickups) from within the company network, but
| not elsewhere.
| newhouseb wrote:
| I worked in Beijing at Microsoft Research in 2008 and at
| the time they had a fiber link to Japan that was
| completely uncensored and the fastest internet I had ever
| used at the time. Perhaps this is no longer allowed but
| it certainly used to exist.
| baybal2 wrote:
| We were buying exactly same "direct physical link" to HK.
| It came not to be such.
|
| We connected a fibre tester, and nothing was coming out
| on hk side. We tried connecting to google.com, and to our
| surprise this "physical" link was also censored.
|
| Then the cableman basically says, use this link, and VPN
| over it. The speed was quite good still.
| mcculley wrote:
| I have been studying Mandarin and reading about China for
| years. I suspect that China is so big and diverse that the
| average Chinese person cannot speak generally about China. I
| wouldn't expect someone who has only lived in Alabama to be
| able to describe America generally. Yet we fall into that
| trap often with other cultures.
| qybaz wrote:
| You should be sceptical of all the news about China that come
| from the West.
| justbaker wrote:
| > You should be sceptical of all the news about China that
| comes from China.
|
| Fixed it for you.
| qybaz wrote:
| The average Joe in the West doesn't get absolutely any
| news directly from China, so I'm not sure of what you
| mean.
| justbaker wrote:
| I think you're missing the point and just want to stand
| tall on the "China's(CCP) not so bad!" opinion you are so
| dearly, devoted to.
|
| By in the "West" what do you mean? US? North America? Any
| place but China?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| They would be surprised that they probably actually do.
|
| I would change to directly from the CCP, because there is
| no independent free press in China at any meaningful
| scale.
|
| Not only does a lot of their media get big readership
| online here, People's Daily and others.
|
| Also does anyone know how much SCMP's independence has
| eroded now? I don't know that much on that one but it
| still gets placements in news aggregators for example as
| if it were the NyTimes.
|
| CCP also pays for reach, spending millions to get their
| content in the large US based media like WaPo. Most
| people don't realize they are reading an ad, not an
| actual article by a WaPo reporter.
|
| Though maybe funnily on the opposite end, a CCP
| persecuted group Falun Gong owns the Epoch Times, which
| has grown huge too. In the past few years they have been
| one of the top sources of social media/fb links. A lot of
| it is just meme & engage bait. but it's still interesting
| to think about.
|
| Russia Today too ;)
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-
| for-... https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-
| report/2020/beijings...
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/ccp-buys-
| med...
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Why? It matches exactly my experience while being in China.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Same here. And lately I'm getting the feeling that people
| systematically "distrusting" western media takes on
| China, would just take Chinese media at face value.
| oreally wrote:
| Because china is the rising power to US dominance, and
| both sides will discredit each other from time to time.
| Also western journalist orgs have an incentive to paint
| an unflavourable picture while getting non of the
| blowback.
|
| Also, keep in mind yours is but one experience out of
| many.
| foepys wrote:
| China has no free press. Literally none. Hongkong's free
| press was obliterated shortly after China broke the
| treaties they had with the UK about keeping Hongkong
| independent. Try traveling to the areas where Uigurs are
| being detained to look for yourself if China is lying.
| You can't and so can't journalists or independent
| observers. Why is that?
|
| Saying that both are bad and so nobody can be blamed is a
| bad faith argument.
| jdefr89 wrote:
| Words can deceive but behaviors never lie. I am inclined to
| believe what the West has to say about China, because China
| behaves in a way that gives veracity to many of the claims
| made by others about China, and what they are/aren't doing.
| Once you start making judgements based on behavior rather
| than "he-said/she-said", you will find that you make far
| more accurate decisions about things in general.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| It is indeed a country full of contradictions.
|
| I was there in 2016, and besides the usual, like Google,
| Netflix, Facebook or Twitter, most western sites seemed to
| work, just very, very slow for some reason.
|
| Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access to
| the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go
| there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive
| coffee.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| That time is gone meanwhile. In late 2019 I had a very hard
| time getting access to my Gmail account, despite trying all
| the usual workarounds and staying in the best hotels in
| town. Even non-English news sites were blocked, sites that
| I could browse freely just a few years ago.
|
| Skype worked ok, but text chat only. Images never arrived.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Funnily enough, Google Fi worked just fine in late 2019.
|
| I'm wondering if foreign SIM cards are not subjected to
| filtering.
| schuke wrote:
| From what I read, the way mobile data roaming is designed
| is basically like a VPN that connects you to your own
| home provider. Thus if you're roaming in China you don't
| get the renowned GFW hospitality. That's why some local
| people use foreign / HongKong sim cards for GFW-less
| mobile data.
| nanliu wrote:
| During my last visit using GoogleFI, the mobile phone
| shows a US IP when running whatismyip. So even though the
| phone is connected to the local telecom 5G network,
| traffic is segmented and routed back to the US carrier
| (T-Mobile in AWS US east IP ranges if I remember
| correctly) before hitting any website. So phones with
| GoogleFI sim works like a US client with a bit higher
| latency. This was really nice, but attempting to tether
| another device to the phone was a highly frustrating
| exercise as it did not work reliably whatsoever.
| NamTaf wrote:
| Foreign SIM cards on globs roaming are not passed through
| the GFW as traffic is carried back to the 'origin
| country' before being sent to the internet writ large. So
| IP lookups still think you're in your original country. I
| used global roaming when working in China to circumvent
| the GFW (albeit at high expense for data).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I used Google Fi in early 2020 in China.
|
| iirc it really just depended on where you were...
| Sometimes Fi let me break through the GFW, but it
| definitely did not in Beijing.
| foverzar wrote:
| > It is indeed a country full of contradictions.
|
| Over the years, I came to understand that contradictions
| are almost always just false assumptions.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| At least in this case, there aren't any "false
| assumptions".
|
| For a country governed by a so called "communist" party,
| there are glaring inequalities. If we limit ourselves to
| free Internet usage, it's clear that the system is
| designed so poor or uneducated people would only be able
| to consume government approved content, whereas elites
| could have access to anything.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> it's clear that the system is designed so poor or
| uneducated people would only be able to consume
| government approved content_
|
| That's not by design, that's just the virtue of human
| ingenuity. Give us something we ain't supposed to do, and
| people will invest a lot of effort to still make it work.
|
| Case in point; For a while Germany wanted to put Internet
| filters in place, based on DNS blocks [0]
|
| Trivial to circumvent for anybody remotely familiar with
| networking, yet seemingly impossible for the vast
| majority of people who have no expertise in the field.
|
| Was it designed like that to lock out the poor,
| uneducated, Germans?
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz
| foverzar wrote:
| Not sure that I understand your take.
|
| How does having "a communist" party imply that there
| would be no inequalities? Especially given that merely a
| few decades ago China was poor like hell and everyone
| outsourced all the cheap labor there?
|
| > it's clear that the system is designed so poor or
| uneducated people
|
| Isn't education in China largely sponsored by government?
| qybaz wrote:
| >Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access
| to the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go
| there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive
| coffee.
|
| Practically everybody who is knowledgeable with computers
| uses a VPN - restrictions are only for "the plebs"
| nothis wrote:
| Whenever I read about countries banning sites, people
| post "just use a VPN, lol". But I wonder: If China
| _really_ wants to, couldn 't they just block VPNs? At the
| worst, just whitelist a bunch of sites and services and
| literally block everything else?
| someotherperson wrote:
| They do. They fingerprint for OpenVPN in real time and
| block it. In 2018 I was cycling through multiple VPNs at
| a time. The only thing that worked was Shadowsocks.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Can confirm. I setup a Shadowsocks VPN using Streisand on
| a DO instance at the Singapore data center. That was the
| only way to get through the firewall.
| netheril96 wrote:
| The GFW is evolving. Many VPN protocols or servers that
| worked in the past works no longer. It's definitely not
| as simple as "just run a VPN", but more like a cat and
| mouse game.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Technically, VPN apps are banned, and VPN usage by
| individuals is illegal in China. Don't know how much this
| is enforced though, probably not much.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I think this would make unworkable way too many things.
| Is it even the internet at that point?
| justbaker wrote:
| That's how I remember a friend advertising Ultrasurf to
| me -- a vpn used in China
| bnralt wrote:
| I think visiting and seeing the country for yourself is a
| good idea. I have a lot of experience with the country (lived
| there, keep in contact with many friends from there, consume
| a lot of TV and podcasts from there), and the picture of it
| usually painted by Hacker News comments is completely
| different from what I've experienced. I usually avoid the
| topic here, though, because heterodox opinions often are met
| with hostility or accusations of being propaganda.
|
| In general, when it comes to other countries, I think
| visiting them when possible and talking with the people there
| when you can is often eye-opening and can reveal personal
| biases you didn't realize you had. To give another example,
| speaking with people from the former Soviet Union and Eastern
| Bloc made me realize that many of the assumptions I had
| (adopted from the traditional "common sense" American
| narrative) were overly simplistic or just plain wrong.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| I doubt you're getting the accurate picture still
|
| > lived there
|
| China is fast devolving into dicatorship's way of life. 2+
| years away is along time.
|
| > keep in contact with many friends
|
| Those friends are afraid to say anything negative to a
| foreigner living outside the guo on a platform closely
| watched by the government
|
| > consume a lot of TV and podcasts from there
|
| Government approved safe and patriotic contents
|
| You have to be a native citizen who is living there 10+
| years to understand
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| I have been there more then once. Most of the web outside of
| China is blocked. The government actively blocks VPNs and any
| long lived connections (more then a few minutes) that cannot
| be identified is dropped. Not sure why that is so hard to
| understand.
| NamTaf wrote:
| As other posts have said, the GFW isn't just a whole heap of
| blocked IPs. There's some of that (Google, FB, etc.), but a
| lot more of it is DPI and other inspection techniques that
| also have the effect of slowing overseas data to a crawl. In
| that sense it is quite sophisticated.
|
| I remember getting 300KB/sec at the best of times to overseas
| sites. VPNs didn't really make a difference for speed (I
| believe I had poor routing on top of that), but I could use
| WG and SS to maintain access to blocked content for weeks on
| end.
|
| The end result is that internet users are corralled into
| domestic services where the CCP can flex its power. If
| anything overseas continues to be too anti-government then it
| cops a more concrete block.
|
| As also mentioned, the educated class might get VPN access
| but Joe Bloggs on the street won't know how to. Also, it's
| hard to get a VPN from within China, but once set up with one
| you can relatively easily keep using it.
| jfoster wrote:
| How does DPI work on encrypted traffic? Most of the web
| uses HTTPS now. Are they able to decrypt most of that?
| Syonyk wrote:
| SNI often allows you to discern the domain being
| accessed, and depending on how well you know that domain,
| the nature of the traffic flows can unwrap a lot more
| than most people would really like (timing and sizes of
| requests/responses - even wrapped with https, the size of
| a GET vs POST uploading data are pretty obvious).
|
| The GF doesn't care about 100% accuracy either. They
| won't _always_ perfectly ban stuff. But they will hinder
| it often enough to make some "banned" service
| effectively useless inside China.
| blahgeek wrote:
| No they don't. But they are able to classify the
| encrypted traffic (e.g. if it's used as VPN)
| sebow wrote:
| LeanderK wrote:
| > anti-Chinese, including the presence of "effeminate men"
|
| How can effeminate men be anti-chinese?
| vfulco2 wrote:
| Decentralized web advancements will continue to punch holes.
| tjpnz wrote:
| You don't need web3 to punch holes in The Great Firewall of
| China. I've got a tech illiterate acquaintance living there
| right now and they regularly finds ways around it.
| Leary wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Stutsies/status/1474748979326111751?s=20
|
| Looks like it's a DNS attack, not a ban.
| ganzuul wrote:
| In my eyes, the attack on 'effeminate men' is the nail in the
| coffin for the government of China. They are as dead to me and my
| actions will reflect it. Down with Emperor Pooh!
| steelstraw wrote:
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Awful homophobic comment.
| inopinatus wrote:
| On the contrary it's a fabulous comment.
| inopinatus wrote:
| adding: that was before the poster edited their need
| about being ready to get hard with other men whilst
| listening to Pat Benatar.
| steelstraw wrote:
| Maybe if you think effeminate is the same as gay. It's not,
| and there are masculine gay men.
| bool3max wrote:
| No it's not.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| The original comment was worse, although this one is not
| much better.
| webinvest wrote:
| The Chinese government disagrees with you as well.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Not too interested in what an oligarchy has to say about
| human rights.
| tacocataco wrote:
| I can pull a trigger just as good as any straight man.
| hn8788 wrote:
| Effeminate isn't a synonym for gay, and there is more to
| war than just pulling a trigger.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: Hard times will come again, and masculine
| men will again become sexy.
|
| There is a constant battle between dominator/partnership
| societal subgroups (a distinction by Riane Eisler in _Chalice
| and the Blade_ ) which one naively could distinguish as
| patriarchal-masculine / matriarchal-feminine. The abundance
| of resources the past decades has rendered the traditional,
| masculine and competitive men obsolete, and women have
| shifted their focus in more feminised versions.
|
| But as history has repeatedly shown, periods of prosperity
| always come to an end, and the wheel keeps turning.
| jquery wrote:
| Obsolete? We just had a President Trump not even one year
| ago. The regressive ideals of toxic masculinity still have
| deep roots in our culture.
| Lhiw wrote:
| saba2008 wrote:
| It's less than 'final nail', but rather sign that government
| has no better topics, than crude mix of chauvinism an and
| emotional manipulation. Cf. Russian progression from 'ignore
| politics, look at economic growth' -> 'ignore politics for
| economical stability sake' -> 'ignore politics or homos will
| diddle your kids'
| jkhdigital wrote:
| You know the end is near when ideas of proper morality flow
| from a government to its citizens, rather than the reverse.
| sobkas wrote:
| > You know the end is near when ideas of proper morality
| flow from a government to its citizens, rather than the
| reverse.
|
| You have no idea how many of social liberties you take for
| granted were strongarmed by governments/judiciary. Also how
| many liberties were taken from you by majority of citizens.
| So be careful what you wish for.
| IsThisYou wrote:
| Also maybe the genocide in Xinjiang.
|
| The constant attacks against India.
|
| Daily sending war planes into Taiwan's air defense zone.
|
| Using armed fishing vessels to militarily attack the
| Philippines.
|
| Raiding the fishing grounds of poor countries by turning off
| transponders and sending hundreds of fishing vessels into their
| national waters at night.
|
| Destroying world heritage nature reserves to steal fish.
|
| And don't get me started about the crimes the Chinese
| Communists are doing to the Chinese people...
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| IsThisYou wrote:
| Sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to tell me.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| cinntaile wrote:
| Judging from your comment history, there are quite a bit
| of China comments there.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Even the publications claiming genocide in Xinjiang have been
| backpedaling.
|
| India is the one that has been attacking neighbouring
| borders, especially since the fascists came to power.
|
| Taiwan's air defence zone includes much of the mainland,
| almost an entire province.
|
| Fishing vessels aren't state actors. It's certainly a problem
| that they aren't being regulated more strongly, although many
| other countries have this same problem.
| mynameismon wrote:
| > India is the one that has been attacking neighbouring
| borders, especially since the fascists came to power.
|
| Even calling the current government 'fascicists' can be
| excused, but not 'attacking neighbouring borders'. Oh wait,
| I think you meant 'attacking neighbouring borders on
| provocation', yeah, that's right. China is still trying to
| claim (rightfully and legally) Indian and Bhutanese
| territories, among other regions.
| IsThisYou wrote:
| > Even the publications claiming genocide in Xinjiang have
| been backpedaling.
|
| Not really. Both the US government and the UN have called
| it a genocide.
|
| I understand that you may think differently. There is a
| giant propaganda campaign on the way by the Chinese
| Communists to try to claim that "everything is fine".
| Western Social Media is full of paid-off Westerners doing
| their monkey dance for the CCP.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Stop calling them communists.
|
| They are not!
|
| If someone slaughters "in the name of christ" they are
| not considered christian either and the power house of
| global capitalism, China, is as communistic as a pimple
| on a us patriots buttocks.
|
| You don't become communist by calling yourself one.
|
| I know this is hard to grasp after over a hundred years
| of Hollywood propaganda against evil communists!
|
| China is a dictatorship, even a tyranny to some, but
| nothing in there is communistic
| mlindner wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| If you resurrected Lenin, took him for a walk around
| Shanghai or Beijing and explained the deal to him he
| would be proud since so much of their political system is
| derived from Leninism, ergo communism. Even their market
| economy seems like a redux of Lenin's NEP.
|
| Don't try pulling that tired old "not real communism"
| schtick, we all see through it. Another thing, if they
| weren't communists, where is the incentive to keep up the
| charade with all the symbolism? Surely a rational non-
| communist polity would realize there is a lot to gain
| from dropping the whole red, socialist realism and adopt
| a more (post-)modern aesthetic.
| andrepd wrote:
| >Another thing, if they weren't communists, where is the
| incentive to keep up the charade with all the symbolism?
| Surely a rational non-communist polity would realize
| there is a lot to gain from dropping the whole red,
| socialist realism and adopt a more (post-)modern
| aesthetic.
|
| Much to the contrary. All governments strive for
| _continuity_ to legitimise their regime. It 's why for
| example even revolutions often co-opt the institutions
| they're trying to replace. In this case the communist
| "branding" is what gives them their legitimacy.
| zokula wrote:
| Lenin wasn't a communist. China doesn't even practice
| real communism.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| > US government
|
| Why should I trust what they have to say as opposed to,
| say, China's government? Or any government at all that I
| did not vote for?
|
| I'm not a U.S. citizen nor on the payroll of CCP or
| whatnot.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Is this part of the playbook when training people on how
| best to deflect blame from China's sins? Seriously, I see
| it all the time.
|
| Someone will share a well agreed upon anecdote of the
| horrors being committed by the Chinese, and without fail,
| one of the first responses will be whataboutism regarding
| the US government, as if that has any bearing whatsoever.
|
| Nearly any civilized country around the world is in full
| agreement that there are horrific atrocities being
| committed by the Chinese, and it's largely due to
| economic bullying that we're forced to turn a blind eye.
| pell wrote:
| > Why should I trust what they have to say as opposed to,
| say, China's government? Or any government at all that I
| did not vote for?
|
| Yeah, the CCP has a great track record admitting their
| atrocities. Let's totally trust them instead of the
| Uyghurs who are all collectively making this up out of
| spite.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Are western media free from propaganda though?
|
| Also when did UN called it a genocide? I googled it but
| found nothing specific. Mind sharing a link to the claim?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The ICC has not yet prosecuted China [1]. One would have
| to be quite thick to ignore Beijing's wanton criminality
| in its west.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Is the ICC part of the UN?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Sort of. The UN Security Council refers cases to the
| International Criminal Court for prosecution [1], and the
| ICC, both present and historical _ad hocs_ , is a
| creature of it [2]. China isn't a state party to the ICC,
| which limits its jurisdiction, and vetoes UN criticism of
| it, so pointing to either of these bodies as exonerations
| is tantamount to asking Beijing is the CCP is committing
| genocide.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Crimina
| l_Court
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_I
| nternat...
| bigcat123 wrote:
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| It's weird that westerners care so much about such issues
| compared to, you know, erosion of human rights, genocide,
| totalitarianism.
| ganzuul wrote:
| It's not about an amount of caring like liters of water. Even
| then the things you mention are effects and not causes.
| topspin wrote:
| It is amusing. They could have gone on filling the oceans
| with plastic and using banned CFCs and gamifying life on
| Earth through Social Credit all while enjoying near total
| deference from the prevailing virtuegeist of the West. But
| instead they chose to mess with LGBTQ and all of the sudden
| they're evil incarnate.
| ganzuul wrote:
| This is easy to understand. All the things you mention are
| issues that affect everybody. A better understanding of
| what it means to be man affects a very small percentage, so
| when when a govt looks past everything it should care about
| in order to mess with natural roles then it is really
| obvious that they are in the wrong.
| topspin wrote:
| What gymnastics would you have performed if the systemic
| oppression of Uyghurs had been in my list? Another sin
| largely ignored by the echo chamber, yet one that
| certainly does single out a minority. Shall we speculate
| on the relative population sizes of 'effeminate' Chinese
| men vs Uyghurs while further regressing into this
| rationalization of selective outrage?
| ganzuul wrote:
| None, because that issue is hotly contested. This issue
| is not contested; there is no denial from them on this
| issue. If they are doing something wrong they know that
| it is wrong. Meanwhile they think this is something they
| can get away with openly.
|
| I hope this clears up the confusion. There is no
| selectivity here.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| lucian1900 wrote:
| It's worth reading the original. Mockery of gay men for
| attention and money is what was banned.
|
| Consider why Pooh is used so much by westerners, despite not
| being banned in China. Doesn't it seem like a racist stereotype
| to you?
| bruce343434 wrote:
| No, it seems like a meme that xi looks like winnie the pooh
| enkid wrote:
| Sorry, I trust BBC more than I trust you about what is not
| allowed in China's heavy controlled internet.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The BBC is the propaganda arm of the British imperialist
| regime. Why would you trust them?
|
| You bad just search on Baidu yourself, as well. You can
| even get a VPN. Or ask someone in China.
| hker wrote:
| The level of propaganda (censorship and sponsorship) of
| the West (BBC, CNN, etc., if that could be called
| propaganda) is nowhere comparable to the level of
| propaganda in China (CGTN, CCTV, etc.), and this is the
| reason that generally the West has free press while China
| does not.
|
| See my other comment [1] for some pointers to the level
| of propaganda (censorship and sponsorship) in China
| (e.g., police tracking journalists and deleting photos
| for no reasons, sponsoring YouTubers with special
| arrangements), which clearly has no equivalent in the
| West.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29685703
|
| This is why people generally trust BBC, but not media in
| China.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Why don't you link what seem to be private NPPA requirements?
|
| It's also a real stretch to say it's about mockery. It's
| about encouraging "correct values". I have a hard time seeing
| this as an argument in good faith, it's so far from any
| factual basis or even arguments from anyone like Chinese
| nationalists, who would argue that homosexuality is Western
| moral corruption.
| paxcoder wrote:
| dragonelite wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if tencent and others are going to launch
| their own app store. Tencent already partially did with the epic
| game store. Pull some string in China to block steams global
| edition to even out the fight for epic game store. Tencent owns
| like 40~48% of epic.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| Doubtful, Xi Jing Ping is hellbent on destroying the Chinese
| tech industry right now
| dragonelite wrote:
| In what way has the Chinese government destroyed Chinese
| tech. The big tech companies are still there just more
| regulated. They are also still innovating.
|
| The Chinese government does actually know the difference
| between real productive forces and the stock market. It would
| be really weird for a socialist government to not know the
| theoretic works of Marx, lenin and stalin.
| jfoster wrote:
| I didn't know until now that Tencent owned such a large stake
| in Epic. Makes me wonder a little about the disputes with
| Google & Apple.
|
| Whilst Epic seems to be fighting the good fight, I've thought
| it was very odd that they were putting so much on the line in
| their Google & Apple battles. Now I have to wonder if Tencent
| endorsed those legal battles with some more ambitious goal in
| mind.
| dragonelite wrote:
| Behind every big battle or war there is always a motivation
| to gain market access. This was true for ww1 and ww2 and I
| wouldn't be surprised it is true in these legal battles.
|
| Wouldnt be surprised that tencent actually was the key player
| that pushed epic to open source their unreal engine so that
| the US can't block the unreal engine code base from being
| exported to China.
| livinglist wrote:
| As a Chinese who moved to U.S. couple years ago... I will never
| move back to China if there's no sign of democratization.
| iszomer wrote:
| "Steam has been banned in China" reads differently than the
| article's original title: "Steam Has Reportedly Been Banned In
| China".
|
| FFS, get it right the first time. Initial impressions went from:
|
| * "Oh really? Not likely but okay..", clicks thread
|
| * Fast-reads comments top to bottom "fuck, what is this.."
|
| * Reads actual article, "God damnit."
| taway54321 wrote:
| siva7 wrote:
| Not sure if this is satire or you need help
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is how China is going to sell itself and its political
| model in the coming decades.
|
| I wish the OPs comment wasn't flagged and dead, because we
| need to stop closing our eyes in front of this development
| and start preparing ourselves mentally for combatting it.
|
| Chinese model is going to be sold as a method of building
| unified, mission-oriented nations that have long term
| objectives and do not spend their energy and resources on
| endless squabbles of special interest groups.
|
| This will be attractive to some people who crave political
| stability and economic growth, at least as long as China
| really grows. It will probably only stop working after some
| major crash / bubble burst in the Chinese economy.
| ls612 wrote:
| I don't think he is saying this is 'good' insofar as people
| should like it, he is saying that a model which produces more
| will outcompete by force one which produces less, regardless
| of the living conditions of the people living under that
| model. That is why the conclusion is "the future is scary".
| OtomotO wrote:
| "we've always been at war with eastasia"
|
| The major problem I see, is that every major power uses
| propaganda to their benefit, yet even highly intelligent people
| often don't see the propaganda of their native (or chosen) home.
|
| I see the propaganda of China, Russia as well as the one of the
| US and Europe.
|
| There are no white, selfless knights around. There never were.
|
| Does that mean that nothing matters, that (subjective) morale
| suddenly is meaningless?
|
| Of course it doesn't!
|
| But it puts "them vs us" into perspective.
|
| Humans are humans and act like humans all around the world.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > I see the propaganda of China, Russia as well as the one of
| the US and Europe.
|
| This is a huge false equivalence.
|
| You won't see Chinese citizens publicly in favor of US/Europe
| but you will damn well see it the other way around.
|
| E.g., some of my coworkers genuinely think it is ok for China
| to ban Western companies in the name of harmony but the US
| introducing the slightest of regulations is seen as fascism.
|
| A discussion like this can't happen inside China on a popular
| platform.
| _tik_ wrote:
| I though US maintains list of black listed companies
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| You really think the cases are equivalent?
|
| TikTok is allowed unabated in the US. Twitter is blocked in
| China.
|
| This sort of false equivalency discussion is getting really
| annoying. Even Hacker News is partly blocked in China.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600787
|
| If the US follows China's policies symmetrically, a ton
| more companies would be blacklisted.
| enaaem wrote:
| There is no such thing as unbiased news. But here in the west I
| can (legally) read Chinese state news and get the other side of
| the story. The other way around is not possible.
| polotics wrote:
| That is one big false equivalence. The mistreatment of
| minorities by the CCP is not the same thing as the mistreatment
| of minorities by the USA. Or did I miss the news about the
| black lives matter forced sterilisations?
| lmz wrote:
| You missed the part where the USA killed off most of the
| native population of its western side and drove them off
| their lands, yes. Different times, but maybe that's just the
| thing to do to get to superpower status and China's just
| catching up.
| samus wrote:
| The expansion of Chinese civilization in the south was also
| not entirely peaceful. It followed patterns of settlers
| occupying fertile lands and forcing indigeneous people to
| retreat to less fertile ones and to mountain ranges. The
| suppressions of the Miao/Hmong rebellions during Ming and
| Qing dynasty was quite brutal.
|
| The spread of civilization and the establishment of the
| modern nation states was rarely peaceful, neither in the
| West, nor in the East, and in many cases required cultural
| assimilation. It is disingeneous to pretend it was
| otherwise.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| No one missed this because Americans are educated in these
| atrocities from their early years in school.
|
| On the other hand, such a record of atrocities committed by
| the CCP is not taught in Chinese schools. The Hundred
| Flowers Campaign, the reconstitution of Tibet and the
| sending of its natives to work camps by the half million
| have been erased from the record.
| lmz wrote:
| Will there be reparations or is the US going to keep the
| lands? Is it OK if the Chinese do it now and teach their
| schoolchildren about it 100 years later?
|
| Looking from the outside this just looks like pulling up
| the ladder. "Oh we did kill them off but that was years
| ago. These _other_ countries, though... "
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I don't know what you expect to be done that hasn't been
| done already. Navajo Nation exists and it's 17,544,500
| acres of land for the Navajo people. Native Americans
| qualify for college benefits that others with citizenship
| to the States do not qualify for. Compounding the dilemma
| of how a nation makes reparations for the sins of their
| mother's mother's mother's there just aren't many Native
| peoples left to make reparations to.
|
| Your argument, at face value, offers little in the way of
| solutions. On the contrary, you make an enemy of my
| argument. Do you seek to apologize for the new makers of
| genocide today? Or what is the purpose of your comment?
|
| Much as the Buddha focused on present action as a tool
| for change, that is what we must do now, collectively, so
| we do not repeat the atrocities of yesterday today.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| The US gave land and money to tribes. They held fair
| trials and often lost. Just recently half of Oklahoma
| became tribal land because of a lawsuit.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| For others as interested in this ruling as I was here is
| a link to a story that covers this verdict [1]
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/09/889562040/supreme-
| court-rules...
| Riverheart wrote:
| How old is China? How big is China? Was it always that
| big? Everybody just come together in a big kumbaya circle
| one day?
| bigcat123 wrote:
| > sending of its natives to work camps by the half
| million
|
| Never heard of this event. Mind to provide a link with
| more details?
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I should have put the link in my original comment, thank
| you for asking. It's at [1].
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54260732
| bigcat123 wrote:
| Thanks, this is what the major part of the report.
|
| > The report, authored by Adrian Zenz, an independent
| Tibet and Xinjiang researcher, says that 500,000 people,
| mostly subsistence farmers and herders, were trained in
| the first seven months of 2020 and authorities have set
| quotas for the mass transfer of those workers within
| Tibet and to other parts of China.
|
| One thing I hate about mainstream media reporting is that
| they never link to the source material.
|
| Just from the above description, I cannot see that these
| people are forced in anyway. And deriving such numbers
| from public Chinese government documents is not accurate
| either, as certain words can be easily misunderstood
| given the sinophobia sentiment nowadays.
| saberience wrote:
| This happened 150+ years ago. Tianeman square was 1989, the
| "Great Leap Forward" with its 15-55M estimated dead was in
| 1960. And to this day China denies these things happened,
| purges the Internet of any records, and punishes/arrests
| anyone in China who mentions them. I'm not even going into
| the persecution of the Uyghur Muslims in China, their
| forced detention and "indoctrination" camps... which again
| China denies, covers up etc.
|
| Western Europe and the US, while they have done some shit
| in the past, can't really be compared. At least in these
| countries, people are allowed to discuss these things,
| protest, vote out politicians whose views they disagree
| with. China meanwhile, is cracking down on free speech and
| democracy in Hong Kong.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| You missed the part where you can openly discuss that in
| the US.
|
| You even have politicians like Elizabeth Warren overblowing
| their native ancestry to gain an advantage.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| Nah, its just getting less publicity:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Well it's the first page from 'Politics for Dummies': find an
| enemy and blame it for everything. If there's no enemy,create
| one or even imagine one.
| tristor wrote:
| And if you already have an enemy and they're doing horrible
| things, don't look the gift horse in the mouth, tell people
| about it.
|
| Comparing China's bad behavior to the bad behavior of the
| West is a false equivalence on every aspect. It is clear that
| the West also has (or had) bad behavior, but bringing it up
| is a form of whataboutism to distract from the much worse
| behavior happening right now in China.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Of course I see Western propaganda, but at least Western
| propaganda pretends to benefit me.
|
| So I would rather pretend to believe in Western progaganda than
| Chinese propaganda.
|
| ,,Humans are humans" is dangerously naive in a world full of
| thug nations.
| medstrom wrote:
| Pretends to benefit you? Example, please?
| nsv wrote:
| Propaganda does not benifit you. It benifits the state. To
| think that the state's goals are your own is a symptom of
| being poisoned by propaganda.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| > The move comes as a surprise
|
| How dense and gullible do you have to be?
|
| Do people keep forgetting they're dealing with an authoritarian
| dictatorship?
|
| ANYTHING is on the table, nothing should come as a surprise.
|
| Divest from China and diversify manufacturing sources, otherwise
| we will wake up one day imprisoned, and ,,the move will come as a
| surprise"
| jetsetgo wrote:
| beebeepka wrote:
| Excess jingoism detected.
|
| As an outsider, it is incredibly easy to notice that any anti
| China/Russia/Iran/Korea always comes in waves. Always. Which
| means that it is manufactured and you're simy parroting
| whatever some US oligarch wants
| chunghuaming wrote:
| You call it jingoism. I call it rise against dictatorships
| destroying democracy's way of life.
| freeflight wrote:
| Right, just like Saddam was even worse than Hitler [0] and
| thus needed destroying before "destroying democracy's way
| of life" with.. anthrax attacks using US military material
| [1], fictional people shredders [2] and fabricated
| witnesses [3].
|
| It's called atrocity propaganda, the US government is so
| good at it that it literally revisioned history for large
| parts of the world, putting the blame for US sponsored
| atrocities on the victims [4]
|
| [0]
| https://apnews.com/article/c456d72625fba6c742d17f1699b18a16
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#Al-
| Qaeda_...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_allege
| d_shr...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
|
| [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
| chunghuaming wrote:
| Which democracy are you responding to? Japan? Taiwan?
| South Korea? Lithuania? Australia? India? France?
| Germany? Canada?
|
| There are more democracies being threatened by China than
| just US.
| fc373745 wrote:
| Democracy doesn't work.
|
| Even the United States isn't genuinely democratic as most
| representative hold stock in various companies.
|
| The best way to influence congress in the United States is
| to lobby, not vote.
|
| And even in the ways that democracy works in the United
| States, most issues are in a deadlock position.
|
| How long has the United States argued over abortion? the
| past, what, half century?
|
| And we still go back and forth.
|
| The United States is crumbling right now due to this
| deadlock with each party looking to overturn the changes
| that the previous leadership has overturned and so on and
| so forth.
|
| Democracy is dying.
|
| My ignorance is not as valuable as your knowledge, but this
| is precisely what democracy implies.
|
| This isn't to say I advocate for Authoritarian governments
| either, but they do get rid of the levels of bureaucracy
| and levels of administration to administer changes, whereas
| in an authoritarian government is way more efficient to
| deal with changes.
|
| I'd advocate for a benevolent authoritarian, but it doesn't
| mean that the successor, or the next, won't be a complete
| asshole, which is why authoritarian is dangerous.
|
| However, the form of government that I would truly advocate
| for is a meritocratic oligarchy where the few would have
| absolute rule, but deserve to have that absolute rule in
| the sense they are benevolent, just, but wise and efficient
| at the same time.
|
| Democracy is dying. I have absolutely no hope for this
| deadlock and polarization between the the factions of the
| United States, especially when most representatives are
| sellouts to corporations.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Is that so? Have you noticed which country is the source of
| this war against evil communist dictatorship? The US.
|
| Now, let's take a step back and consider some facts
|
| 1. China has not attacked any country in a long time.
|
| 2. The champions of free speech and democracy have
| destroyed millions just this last 20 years.
|
| Seems to me the villains are the ones screaming the loudest
| against their economic rival.
|
| You really think any of this has anything to do with human
| rights?
|
| You only hear the arguments of one side. At least
| acknowledge this simple fact, then go from there
| stelonix wrote:
| What's obvious for us who have been oppressed by the
| empire, for those who live there it might be impossible
| to see. They're the ones under propaganda 24/7, after
| all. Occam's razor works really well for many users of
| this site, but as soon as the subject is a rival
| superpower, everything is thrown out the window and it's
| the usual McCarthyism.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| Please tell me where you are from that you're being
| oppressed by US _right now_ , not 10 years ago or 100
| years ago.
|
| Also, US isn't the only democracy in the world (it's
| actually a representative republic, but anyways).
| freeflight wrote:
| Tho, that's only a rather recent phenomena, HN used to be
| _way_ better about this.
|
| Makes me wonder if US [0] and Five Eyes [1] astroturfing
| programs have expanded past the usual US social media
| behemoths, into more specialized niche communities. Sure
| enough wouldn't be without precedent..
|
| [0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-
| spy-ope...
|
| [1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-
| manipulation/
| sgjohnson wrote:
| 1. Flat out false, they are actively engaging in border
| skirmishes with India, and they are actively antagonizing
| every single neighbouring country (with virtually all of
| whom they have border disputes), not to mention Taiwan.
|
| 2. Millions of what? And what's the relevance of this?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >China has not attacked any country in a long time.
|
| What is a long time to you? A month?
| retrac wrote:
| > have you noticed which country is the source of this
| war against evil communist dictatorship?
|
| IMO, you would be mistaken if you view the positions of
| American allies (Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, UK,
| etc.) here as client states simply falling in line with
| their master's opinion. Though the USA is certainly
| influential on them.
|
| Whether justified or not, the recent hardening of anti-
| Chinese-government positions from these countries seem to
| be largely independent actions, based on their own
| evaluations of their geopolitical security situation,
| which come to similar conclusions as the USA. In the case
| of Australia and Japan and Korea in particular, the
| current hard line taken actually predates the mid-2010s
| shift in America.
| jdefr89 wrote:
| China does do all of those things, it just denies their
| involvement. How many Uyghur's are in captivity right
| now?
| netcan wrote:
| Possibly, but the problem with dichotomies is that they're
| dichotomous.
|
| To the extent that they have teeth, anti-china nationalism,
| jingoism & anti-authoritarianism are very hard to
| distinguish. It has to do with motivations, and motivations
| are opaque, even to the first person.
|
| I do think that the current anti-authoritarianism/jingoism
| is, currently, a stabilizing factor for the CCP. Most
| moderately pro-democracy person will get a whiff of the
| jingoism embedded within the anti-authoritarian "movement,"
| and determine that these people are not their friends.
| Better to stick with the CCP than a faction where anti-
| chinese jingoism is indistinguishable from anti-ccp
| democracy motives.
|
| China was authoritarian previously.
| jdefr89 wrote:
| Doesn't come in waves, it's alway there. You only hear about
| it in waves...
| nullifidian wrote:
| It's not a surprise because the localized version of steam done
| in cooperation with Perfect world, a Chinese publisher, was in
| development specifically for this purpose, I believe, i.e. the
| inevitable/planned replacement of foreign with local and fully
| controlled. Otherwise there wouldn't be a need to do it for
| Valve.
|
| Not surprising really considering how hard it is to publish a
| game in China to begin with -- you basically have to have a
| local company representing you, and they usually take 80-90% of
| your profits, that's on top of the the 30% share that stores
| take, and go through an extensive bureaucratic process, with
| various forms of censorship of course, and even then there is
| no guarantee that you will be allowed to publish.
|
| China tries and succeeds at playing the globalization game in a
| way that everyone else ends up dependent on them, but not the
| other way around. And the global corporations are stampeding
| over each others heads to betray all the principles there still
| are in the west for that sweet sweet access to the giant
| Chinese market, for the time being they are still allowed to
| that is.
| ketzu wrote:
| > Do people keep forgetting they're dealing with an
| authoritarian dictatorship?
|
| > ANYTHING is on the table, nothing should come as a surprise.
|
| That does not follow from the first part. People and politics
| can, at large, still be predictable independent of the
| political organization.
| pksebben wrote:
| I would argue that any single individual is perfectly capable
| of being unpredictable, so any form of authoritarianism would
| derive that unpredictability.
|
| This is, fwig, the instability that a republic is meant to
| fix.
| netcan wrote:
| >> Divest from China and diversify manufacturing sources
|
| Who is this aimed at?
|
| Major brands (apple, tesla, disney, etc.) are not going to
| divest from China. China is a big part of their future market,
| they hope. They're going to invest wherever their market is.
| Obviously they know that this comes with strings and risks
| attached. They will get sideswiped with rules, punitive or
| otherwise.
|
| Authoritarian government action is just a risk, like any other
| risk. Apple might also lose their popularity. Disney might get
| There could be an economic downturn. These are all risks, and
| companies take risks. The reward is worth the risk, evidently.
|
| On the manufacturing side... there probably aren't as many
| surprises in the cards. Whatever qualms are to be had were had
| decades ago.
|
| On a side note, China is proof that 99% of chamber of commerce-
| ish "warnings" are nonsense. Investment goes wherever the
| market is, whatever the rules. The ccp could decree that all
| iphones must be red and starred as of next week. Apple would
| make red starred iphones, and Cook would make a public
| statement praising the wisdom of this regulation.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| > Major brands (apple, tesla, disney, etc.) are not going to
| divest from China
|
| Diversification is already happening - 20,000 foreign
| companies have left China in the last 4 years. Samsung, LG,
| GoPro, etc.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6lkW4A7Ec
|
| > China is a big part of their future market
|
| The Unemployed and semi-unemployed might reach 300M+ people
| in China. Chinese consumer market is slowing down big time -
| Lost decades just like Japan
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6lkW4A7Ec
| snicker7 wrote:
| China is not a rich country per capita (on par with LATAM),
| but it's massive size is what attracts businesses.
| kw-maller wrote:
| johnhowardstein wrote:
| Abroszka wrote:
| Recently I have been getting a lot more annoyed about China. Sure
| they can ban things, it's their right. But I just don't
| understand why we are not doing the same.
| izacus wrote:
| You don't understand why your own nation isn't following the
| tantrums of a totalitarian regime? That would make your own
| nation into China, why the heck would you want that?!
| Abroszka wrote:
| Because it's an unfair competition.
| izacus wrote:
| This isn't a competition that can be fair or we (western
| world) need to win.
| legofr wrote:
| We wouldn't be turning into China if we only banned Chinese
| companies, if we only blacklisted/punished western companies
| that spread CCP propaganda (nine-dash line, calling Taiwan a
| province of China, etc).
|
| To quote HN user stale2002: Tit for tat reciprocity is the
| basis of most modern trade relations.
| jshmrsn wrote:
| Banning Chinese companies is actually a ban on Americans
| using Chinese companies. As tempting as it is to retaliate
| or perhaps extract national economic gain, It must be done
| sparingly, if at all, as it as a reductions in freedom for
| American citizens.
| izacus wrote:
| > To quote HN user stale2002: Tit for tat reciprocity is
| the basis of most modern trade relations.
|
| It is also a basis of the most bloody and destructive wars
| in the world. Are you hoping that this time US wins again?
| jollybean wrote:
| Because trade only really works if there's balance and
| bilateral rules.
|
| Opening your nation to trade, while the other does not, and
| does things like subsidize their companies to put yours out
| of business, is not good.
|
| The US should probably play tit-for-tat and ban an arbitrary
| Chinese company for every US company banned by China.
|
| That way, China understands at least the repressions.
|
| Of course, that policy might not work, as it would just
| spiral up into a big 'ban fest', but you get the idea.
|
| Banning games is a funny thing, people like games. People are
| going to be upset.
|
| When people are playing games, they are not agitating.
|
| When people are bored, they think about things like politics.
| forgotmyoldname wrote:
| If other countries start banning everything, isn't that just as
| bad as what China is doing here?
| siva7 wrote:
| Because we are not them? There must be a fine distinction which
| results in freedom of speech
| darthrupert wrote:
| To put it bluntly: Because we're better than them.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Does it make it better to make our workers compete with
| people without rights, healthcare, holidays, sustainable pay?
| I don't have any problem with China they can ban what they
| want, I would just desire that this open borders crap would
| require import only from countries where workers have a
| compatible standard of living of importing countries
| trasz wrote:
| >Does it make it better to make our workers compete with
| people without rights, healthcare, holidays, sustainable
| pay?
|
| Why are you dragging USA into this again?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Lol alright.. well played
| darthrupert wrote:
| I probably should have added the implied "in this
| particular way at least".
|
| Also, the problems you describe don't affect all of the
| western world. And I would like to add, based on talking to
| a few chinese friends, those things are a problem in China
| as well. Competition in particular is quite brutal from
| kindergarten onwards there.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Not by a large margin, but yes, yes you are, to some extent
| still.
|
| I just wished you and Europe where as good as your PR, I
| really and genuinely do
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Impossible. You are thinking about it as an exercise in
| rationality and morals. This is a fight of chimp tribes,
| all the bla bla about human rights,justice, liberty is a
| very thin coat about the hate for the other band of apes.
| We are talking about 7 million years of evolution in
| action.
| jollybean wrote:
| No, that's not it at all.
|
| Trade is a serious issue, it has consequences.
|
| If China banned most US companies, the US would have to ban
| most Chinese companies.
| Abroszka wrote:
| Yet we are allowing human right abuses? I think we only care
| about money, that's why we allow this to happen.
|
| Just look at Intel right now, apologizing for not using slave
| labour...
| samus wrote:
| IMHO Intel was just dumb for annoncing to blanket ban
| anything from Xinjiang. They can still audit their
| suppliers and discontinue collaboration with those that
| look suspicions.
| Yottaqubyter wrote:
| Im out of the loop about this. What are you talking about?
| speedgoose wrote:
| _Cough_ Huawei _Cough_.
| _tik_ wrote:
| US already banned and blacklisted numbers of chinese companies
| beebmam wrote:
| What will happen to Chinese games on Steam? I will be profoundly
| sad if they disappear. For example: Dyson Sphere Program is one
| of my favorite games of all time. If that's gone, I'm going to
| have a hard time not making the CCP my mortal enemy
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > If that's gone, I'm going to have a hard time not making the
| CCP my mortal enemy
|
| Wouldn't be a bad choice, regardless of what happens with
| Steam.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| The Chinese government != the Chinese people. Whenever
| geopolitics separates artists from their audiences, it's just
| sad. It's in a similar vein of when total war is waged; the
| governments talk a big game but it's the common, every day
| people who suffer.
|
| If you have an axe to grind be advised to make sure it's
| targeted at the right people.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| When did I attack the people themselves? It's the Party I
| said should be stood up against.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| On second read that's fair. As long as we separate the
| people from the government/party!
| dungPatrol wrote:
| coolspot wrote:
| > The Chinese government != the Chinese people
|
| Are they controlled by aliens from the space? The
| government people come from the people, it's same
| culture/mentality.
|
| You can make whole CCP government disappear and new wave of
| similar people will replace them setting same rules.
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| > > If that's gone, I'm going to have a hard time not making
| the CCP my mortal enemy
|
| > Wouldn't be a bad choice, regardless of what happens with
| Steam.
|
| I can't tell if this is an ideological thing or not. There's
| a lot of states out there to vehemently dislike. But it's
| always this creepy strain of cold war torch-bearing that is
| so many people's pet cause. For the record, I think almost
| all states are on the exact same level of hateable, as a
| concept.
| auggierose wrote:
| That's wrong. Saying that two things are the same doesn't
| make them the same. So a comment like yours is either
| totally naive, or paid for by China.
| jtms wrote:
| Dyson Sphere Program is in my library backlog... I guess I need
| to bump it up to the top position!
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I appreciate that like something created by a group of people.
| It's a great relationship between creators and audiences.
| That's awesome and I hope you aren't cut off from this group
| for arbitrary reasons like geopolitics.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Chinese games are free to be published outside of China. It is
| about the control of what's available inside the country.
| hwers wrote:
| (Wow thanks for that gem, looks amazing I just bought it in
| case it goes away.)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| The real q should be what is not banned ...
| [deleted]
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| It might not actually be banned; there are reports on Twitter and
| Reddit saying it's just a DNS cache poisoning attack similar to
| one a few years ago. No one's posting good verifiable info though
| so I don't really know. Steam definitely seems to be inaccessible
| in China right now, but why and whether it's intentional is not
| yet clear.
| viktorcode wrote:
| But a ban can be expected, as Chinese government enforces a
| system that allows only pre-approved games to be available to
| the country citizens. Chinese gaming companies too had been hit
| with bans.
| octagons wrote:
| This correlates with some of the other reports I've read and I
| appreciate your skepticism. A "ban" is certainly not outside
| the realm of possibilities in China, especially given some of
| the new social policies, but we cannot afford to react like
| this whenever the word "China" makes its way into a headline if
| we want to draw attention to the real "bad" things.
| lenkite wrote:
| Thankfully, Taiwanese game franchises like "Sword & Fairy" are
| still available. It's deeply irritating that Emperor Xi is now
| butting his interfering nose into gaming entertainment.
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