I watched it recently and thought it didn't go nearly far enough in highlighting the abuses by the HK police, and even glossed over or omitted some very important events that triggered the continued protests. I actually felt it was far too fair to the HKSAR government and police.
The fragility of the CPC and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
People are saying this film is anti-China propaganda. I'd say it's pro because it shows the hopeless, illogical, ineffective, futility of HK looters and terrorists, and how deluded, manipulated and used they were.
That's what happens under a "Western system" running loose, is one message that HK could be helping to shape. China made 1 law, and order is restored. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty much pro for China, despite the incessant shrill whining of the terrorist wannabes.
> The fragility of the CPC and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
That's because they have single party system. Eventually they'll figure out that splitting into two parties and exchanging highest power between the two every few years while still colectively controlling everything of value is way more resilient system.
Then they will be able to let themselves to be hated because half of the people will hate one half of the party and the other half of the people will hate the other half of the party. And thanks to periodic swaps they can pretty much keep it indefinitely because people will never rebel. Instead people will be waiting patiently few years for their favorite half of the party to take highest offices.
But untill then they can't let people hate the party even a little bit. China has a history of multiple revolutions and costly turmoil when people hated those in power and toppled them.
They also have to find enemies for people to hate as far away from the party as possible.
> The fragility of the CPC and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
The next dimension I predict will be the fragility of the CPC for being portrayed in a positive light. What is going to happen when hypernationalism and hyperidealism is at odds with the personal and political projects of its leaders?
> The fragility of the CPC and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
The fragility of American imperialism and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
That’s why they focus on creating propaganda like this.
I’ve liked some Field of Vision stuff before (shining a light on content moderation practices on Silicon Valley social media platforms), yet this feels part of the larger ‘West hating on China’/sinophobia + red scare stuff. It’s getting boring.
All things considered, the Hong Kong police did what they had to given their precarious position. Compare the 2 deaths during a year of protesting to the 19 deaths within a couple weeks of the George Floyd protests. Keep in mind that they're stuck with the Hong Kong police even if they are allowed to become independent, so it doesn't make sense to demonize them.
The whole point of "not splitting" is a lesson learned in 2014, to continue showing support for the goals no matter the methods seen in protest. Nobody knew whether another in the group is an agent provocateur or a genuine radical. Nobody knew who were throwing the molotovs. Nobody even thought that the protest was likely achieve any its goals. The only thing that could not be faked is the sheer volume of people showing up; nobody could pay that many people to show up at a protest.
Therefore the only thing they could do is to keep showing up in support of the demands for as long as they could personally afford to do so, and try not to pay attention to the methods of others when they already knew that all methods were probably going to fail.
This is the kind of content I'd like to see less of on Hacker News.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
There are other platforms (Reddit) where there's plenty of discussion around topics like this.
Not to say that HN should be a bastion of blissful techie ignorance, but it would be nice to be able to filter out sad, political, or controversial content.
The suppression of democracy is something I'd like to see less of globally.
Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of leaving it up on Hacker News is that free speech is essential to both Hacking and News.
I hadn't known that such a film had drawn an Oscar nomination nor that the country had attempted to suppress news of the nomination within the mainland.
We may disagree here, but if wholesale suppression of the democratic rights of 7.5 million people living in the first world continues to be advanced, I'd contend that it isn't getting enough discussion.
Most isn't all, and I would make the case for an exception here... at least in ideal terms. The HK protests had a vanguard element that qualifies as "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." This film captures some of that.
That said, HN (like most social media) doesn't handle this kind of content very well... in practical terms. Might be best to go with a practical "do what you can do well" approach and avoid topics you can't do well.
Maybe a "no comments" post type for topics like this?
I don't even think political content is inherently not HN worthy, but the comment section just always devolves into flamewars and "x is bad" vs "y is bad". I would really like to see a filter or harder moderation on the submitters of this type of content.
End-user technology (as opposed to military) starts to play a broader and broader role in political events those days, and places like HN are a very good place to have people actually designing those tools realize what the implication are for real people around the world.
As an example, this video made me instantly realize how much there is a need for truely decentralized technology, that no government could shut down.
I already knew it of course, but now i have the faces of those students in my mind. I happen to be working on encryption for a messaging app at the moment.
I know I'm contributing to the problem here by replying to you, but the guidelines also say:
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
There is no doubt in my mind that Taiwan is the next target unless another axis of power comes to its aid. It's only a matter of time and the success in HK would have only bolstered CCP's conviction. Because China is hosting the winter Olympics, I don't think they will do anything of this scale before that.
I've been on a bit of an youtube archiving kick lately. Does anyone know of a good list of youtube videos that were uploaded during the protests (e.g. documenting the protest, police brutality, etc)? I'm probably too late to the party though, since I understand a lot of protesters took down their social media uploads in support of the protests after the national security law was enacted.
UK abandoned HK, creating a vacuum, leaving the door open to China to step in and take over; and nobody wants to risk stepping-in to block China from absorbing HK.
China will (literally) fight anyone who will dare step their foot in HK to 'guarantee' its independence. I don't believe anyone is able to stand up to China, apart from Russia or USA. And neither are willing to go to war for HK. It's someone else's problem. Worse case scenario when the transition is complete, HK will die as a global financial centre, and its big-banks operations will move to a more USA-friendly place.
Poor HK-ers could as well replace their flag.
It's a pity, but such is the luck of the ant in front of a elephant.
In the US I've been sadly unsurprised by how little coverage Hong Kong has gotten recently.
Our politicians are a disgrace. They scream about democracy when a bunch of hooligans riot at the Capitol, but when a human-rights defiling government legitimately suppresses democracy for 7M people, they stay silent.
They stay silent on organ harvesting, on the quasi-genocide of the Uighurs, and any number of other human rights abuses.
If the politicians, particularly those on the left, had an ounce of principle and even attempted to walk their talk, they would be leading the charge against China at every turn.
Here is a chance to step up for human rights and democracy in a big way, and it's crickets from our leaders.
> to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China
I did not know that Taiwan is part of mainland China! When did the reunification happen?
In all serious though, the original bill was because HK government wanted to extradite someone who killed his pregnant girlfriend to Taiwan, I wonder when did people spin this into extradition to mainland China now?
> to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China
I did not know that Taiwan is part of mainland China! When did the reunification happen?
In all serious though, the original bill was because HK government wanted to extradite someone who killed his pregnant girlfriend to Taiwan, I wonder when did people spin this into extradition to mainland China now?
The Economist did a comprehensive piece on the future of Hong Kong [1] recently. The CPC has little to lose by crushing Hong Kong's democracy, which they are most assuredly doing. Even if HK loses a healthy proportion of its best and brightest citizens (many are moving or have moved already), Hong Kong represents only a tiny fraction of China's overall GDP. In the long time horizon of China's development, Hong Kong's health is viewed as inconsequential.
To me, the Hong Kong situation is incredibly sad. Hong Kong was always this unique bastion of feisty entrepreneurism and social liberalism. It was a great place to visit and a fountain of ideas and dynamism that other regions would do well to take notes on, if not to copy outright.
I wish there was cause to be optimistic about Hong Kong, but I don't think that there is.
The rioters set fire to the bank. How is this okay. Regular people like you and I work at the bank and now their livelihoods could be lost. Violence begets more violence. I cannot sympathize with the rioters.
I'll try to strictly source my remarks and refrain from commenting on the political content of the HK demonstrations to keep this purely factual, as I think this could be a rather controversial thread; however, it's interesting how different the reception to these demonstrations is to the reception to the US Capitol riots and the BLM demonstrations of last year. Hong Kong demonstrators have stormed government buildings[1], thrown gasoline bombs at police[2], attacked plainclothes police[3], and the like. In total, one pro-liberalization demonstrator died after falling from a parking garage[4], and one anti-liberalization demonstrator died after being bludgeoned with a brick by pro-liberalization demonstrators[5]. To keep this in context, the current Hong Kong SAR government is democratically elected[6] according to the provisions of an international treaty signed by the PRC and the UK which took effect in 1997[7].
If these events occurred in the United States, whose government surveils almost all telecommunications[8], what would its government do? One part of that answer is to have the military occupy a city with limited congressional representation (DC)[9]. This is clearly a much more restrictive measure than the measures taken by the HKSAR government, but its presentation by non-Chinese media has been the exact opposite. For what it's worth (zero), my opinion is that both government responses are consistent with what can be expected given their respective situations. Why are they portrayed differently? Is it ideology, or am I missing something that differentiates the two?
> To keep this in context, the current Hong Kong SAR government is democratically elected[6] according to the provisions of an international treaty signed by the PRC and the UK which took effect in 1997[7].
Democratically elected ? Note that hong kong functional constituency system is fully controlled by CCP.
> To keep this in context, the current Hong Kong SAR government is democratically elected[6] according to the provisions of an international treaty signed by the PRC and the UK which took effect in 1997
At many different times in 2019, 1.7M-2M Hong Kong citizens, or 25% of the population, proudly protested in the streets and requested for their freedom. If only something good had came out of it.
Imagine if you were a proud free parisian, and all of a sudden, you now live under nazi regime with concentration camps. That's probably what it feels like.
Regarding arrest for accessing online information, I have become fascinated lately with the concept of legal warfare. It is the use of legal constructions to align other governments or subordinate bureaucracies to your strategic goals. For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, they used the pretext that only volunteers from Russia were traveling to Ukraine to support a legal separatist movement.
Now none of these claims withstand any sort of legal scrutiny, but that's not the point. In the year or so it takes the Hague to spell out the obvious, that the Russian military in coordination with the Russian presidency created a bogus legal argument that aligns with their strategic goal of annexing as much of Eastern Europe as possible, the invasion is already completed and Donetsk is effectively a Russian vassal in the middle of Ukranian territory.
Just like in the time of the American Revolution guerilla tactics were innovations to the stodgy preconceptions of war that the British had, where they believed a gentleman's war should be fought by squares of men taken broadsides at regular intervals, we must recognize that armed conflicts today are always accompanied by legal warfare, the legal activities that support broader strategic objectives.
The irony is that HK is being used as a model to get rid of peaceful protest in the U.K. - 10 years in jail for peacefully walking up the road with a sign that annoys an MP.
Flamewar comments like this will get you banned here, regardless of which side you're flaming for or against, or what about. They make discussion reliably terrible, such as in the thread below. No more of this please. You also broke the site guidelines egregiously in other ways. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules.
Edit: we've had to warn you about this repeatedly in the past. If you continue to abuse the site like this we will have to ban you, so please fix this.
Why are we treating this as an either/or? China and America largely use the same tactics to suppress protest, and they're bad in both places.
The only significant difference is that in China, the media suppression comes from the government, and in America, it comes from the leaders of the media itself.
[+] [-] system16|5 years ago|reply
I watched it recently and thought it didn't go nearly far enough in highlighting the abuses by the HK police, and even glossed over or omitted some very important events that triggered the continued protests. I actually felt it was far too fair to the HKSAR government and police.
The fragility of the CPC and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
[+] [-] gadf|4 years ago|reply
That's what happens under a "Western system" running loose, is one message that HK could be helping to shape. China made 1 law, and order is restored. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty much pro for China, despite the incessant shrill whining of the terrorist wannabes.
[+] [-] scotty79|5 years ago|reply
That's because they have single party system. Eventually they'll figure out that splitting into two parties and exchanging highest power between the two every few years while still colectively controlling everything of value is way more resilient system.
Then they will be able to let themselves to be hated because half of the people will hate one half of the party and the other half of the people will hate the other half of the party. And thanks to periodic swaps they can pretty much keep it indefinitely because people will never rebel. Instead people will be waiting patiently few years for their favorite half of the party to take highest offices.
But untill then they can't let people hate the party even a little bit. China has a history of multiple revolutions and costly turmoil when people hated those in power and toppled them.
They also have to find enemies for people to hate as far away from the party as possible.
[+] [-] gonehome|5 years ago|reply
Once you're doing that, pretty much anything is going to clear that bar.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping#Censorship
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_in_China
[+] [-] throwaway3330b|5 years ago|reply
The next dimension I predict will be the fragility of the CPC for being portrayed in a positive light. What is going to happen when hypernationalism and hyperidealism is at odds with the personal and political projects of its leaders?
[+] [-] chinathrow1029|5 years ago|reply
What percentage of Chinese mainlanders do you think watch American awards shows?
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/02/entertainment/golden-globe-ra...
[+] [-] brundolf|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Rapzid|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] beckman466|5 years ago|reply
The fragility of American imperialism and its fear in being portrayed in any negative light knows no limits.
That’s why they focus on creating propaganda like this.
I’ve liked some Field of Vision stuff before (shining a light on content moderation practices on Silicon Valley social media platforms), yet this feels part of the larger ‘West hating on China’/sinophobia + red scare stuff. It’s getting boring.
[+] [-] Aunche|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Hong_Kong_prot... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests
[+] [-] jimworm|5 years ago|reply
Therefore the only thing they could do is to keep showing up in support of the demands for as long as they could personally afford to do so, and try not to pay attention to the methods of others when they already knew that all methods were probably going to fail.
[+] [-] lxe|5 years ago|reply
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
There are other platforms (Reddit) where there's plenty of discussion around topics like this.
Not to say that HN should be a bastion of blissful techie ignorance, but it would be nice to be able to filter out sad, political, or controversial content.
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of leaving it up on Hacker News is that free speech is essential to both Hacking and News.
I hadn't known that such a film had drawn an Oscar nomination nor that the country had attempted to suppress news of the nomination within the mainland.
We may disagree here, but if wholesale suppression of the democratic rights of 7.5 million people living in the first world continues to be advanced, I'd contend that it isn't getting enough discussion.
[+] [-] dalbasal|5 years ago|reply
That said, HN (like most social media) doesn't handle this kind of content very well... in practical terms. Might be best to go with a practical "do what you can do well" approach and avoid topics you can't do well.
Maybe a "no comments" post type for topics like this?
[+] [-] La1n|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsaul|5 years ago|reply
As an example, this video made me instantly realize how much there is a need for truely decentralized technology, that no government could shut down. I already knew it of course, but now i have the faces of those students in my mind. I happen to be working on encryption for a messaging app at the moment.
[+] [-] kelnos|5 years ago|reply
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
So please, just flag and move on next time.
[+] [-] nafizh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osynavets|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablespoon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HenryBemis|5 years ago|reply
HK is 'dead in the water'.
UK abandoned HK, creating a vacuum, leaving the door open to China to step in and take over; and nobody wants to risk stepping-in to block China from absorbing HK.
China will (literally) fight anyone who will dare step their foot in HK to 'guarantee' its independence. I don't believe anyone is able to stand up to China, apart from Russia or USA. And neither are willing to go to war for HK. It's someone else's problem. Worse case scenario when the transition is complete, HK will die as a global financial centre, and its big-banks operations will move to a more USA-friendly place.
Poor HK-ers could as well replace their flag.
It's a pity, but such is the luck of the ant in front of a elephant.
[+] [-] eric_b|5 years ago|reply
Our politicians are a disgrace. They scream about democracy when a bunch of hooligans riot at the Capitol, but when a human-rights defiling government legitimately suppresses democracy for 7M people, they stay silent.
They stay silent on organ harvesting, on the quasi-genocide of the Uighurs, and any number of other human rights abuses.
If the politicians, particularly those on the left, had an ounce of principle and even attempted to walk their talk, they would be leading the charge against China at every turn.
Here is a chance to step up for human rights and democracy in a big way, and it's crickets from our leaders.
[+] [-] badpassword123|5 years ago|reply
I did not know that Taiwan is part of mainland China! When did the reunification happen?
In all serious though, the original bill was because HK government wanted to extradite someone who killed his pregnant girlfriend to Taiwan, I wonder when did people spin this into extradition to mainland China now?
[+] [-] throw2103241547|5 years ago|reply
I did not know that Taiwan is part of mainland China! When did the reunification happen?
In all serious though, the original bill was because HK government wanted to extradite someone who killed his pregnant girlfriend to Taiwan, I wonder when did people spin this into extradition to mainland China now?
[+] [-] ttul|5 years ago|reply
To me, the Hong Kong situation is incredibly sad. Hong Kong was always this unique bastion of feisty entrepreneurism and social liberalism. It was a great place to visit and a fountain of ideas and dynamism that other regions would do well to take notes on, if not to copy outright.
I wish there was cause to be optimistic about Hong Kong, but I don't think that there is.
[1]: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/20/china-is-not-j...
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hi41|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MsMowz|5 years ago|reply
If these events occurred in the United States, whose government surveils almost all telecommunications[8], what would its government do? One part of that answer is to have the military occupy a city with limited congressional representation (DC)[9]. This is clearly a much more restrictive measure than the measures taken by the HKSAR government, but its presentation by non-Chinese media has been the exact opposite. For what it's worth (zero), my opinion is that both government responses are consistent with what can be expected given their respective situations. Why are they portrayed differently? Is it ideology, or am I missing something that differentiates the two?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Legislative_Co... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50115629 [3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/hong-kong-... [4]: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3036833... [5]: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/14/asia/hong-kong-protest-el... [6]: http://www.legco.gov.hk/general/english/intro/about_lc.htm [7]: http://www.cmab.gov.hk/en/issues/jd2.htm [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) [9]: https://nypost.com/2021/03/09/pentagon-extends-national-guar...
[+] [-] chronicsunshine|5 years ago|reply
The Capitol Riots were an attempt to overturn a free and fair democratic election in favor of the rioters preferred candidate.
The HK protests are in relation to freedom from the Chinese Government's dictatorial rule.
Democracy is what is most important in both of these situations. The Capitol Riots were anti democracy. The HK protests are pro democracy.
[+] [-] rdescartes|5 years ago|reply
Democratically elected ? Note that hong kong functional constituency system is fully controlled by CCP.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_constituency_(Hong_...
[+] [-] kenneth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delta-v21|5 years ago|reply
No, this's misinformation. The HK government isn't democratically elected. The CEO of the HK government is selected by a committee appointed by the CCP. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Committee_(Hong_Kong)
Quote: The Election Committee is a Hong Kong electoral college, the function of which is to select the Chief Executive (CE).
[+] [-] jonathannat|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48656471
At many different times in 2019, 1.7M-2M Hong Kong citizens, or 25% of the population, proudly protested in the streets and requested for their freedom. If only something good had came out of it.
Now it's sunk to what China's best at:
false arrests: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/mc5bah/young_man_...,
arrest for accessing online information https://restofworld.org/2021/hong-kong-journalist-on-trial-f...
brainwashing https://hongkongfp.com/2021/03/23/hong-kong-will-distribute-...
removal of religious freedom https://hk.appledaily.com/news/20210322/ZUYEZROAIFB4NK2274RB...
fake democratic system https://hongkongfp.com/2021/03/16/why-and-how-i-ended-my-par...
Imagine if you were a proud free parisian, and all of a sudden, you now live under nazi regime with concentration camps. That's probably what it feels like.
[+] [-] ipnon|5 years ago|reply
Now none of these claims withstand any sort of legal scrutiny, but that's not the point. In the year or so it takes the Hague to spell out the obvious, that the Russian military in coordination with the Russian presidency created a bogus legal argument that aligns with their strategic goal of annexing as much of Eastern Europe as possible, the invasion is already completed and Donetsk is effectively a Russian vassal in the middle of Ukranian territory.
Just like in the time of the American Revolution guerilla tactics were innovations to the stodgy preconceptions of war that the British had, where they believed a gentleman's war should be fought by squares of men taken broadsides at regular intervals, we must recognize that armed conflicts today are always accompanied by legal warfare, the legal activities that support broader strategic objectives.
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Edit: we've had to warn you about this repeatedly in the past. If you continue to abuse the site like this we will have to ban you, so please fix this.
[+] [-] antihero|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] banannaise|5 years ago|reply
The only significant difference is that in China, the media suppression comes from the government, and in America, it comes from the leaders of the media itself.
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