I've browsed this site for years now, and I do see this pattern in many posts that critique China.
A large number of replies turn the conversation towards how the West is equally bad or worse. Another set of replies talks about how China may inevitably come out ahead.
You can check yourself by Googling 10 HN threads that critique China, versus say, Japan or Poland.
Is China running some indirect social public relations in the style of Russian Facebook ads for Trump? Or is it simply China hawks / nationalists or other casual supporters? My personal conclusion is that there's a decent chance it's a bit of both. And the likelihood of the first may be concerning.
But seriously, check out the pattern and come to your own conclusion.
P.S. If it matters, I'm ethnically Chinese as well, and think well of the Chinese people in general.
Agreed on basically all points here. My criticism of the state of China is not a defense of the state of the West. It's merely intended to provide a clear distinction between the two, and to combat the rising pro-CCP shilling I see happening consistently on HN. It is very much possible for two different bad things to both be bad.
The top comment criticizes China, I'm not really sure that what you say is accurate. There's much to criticize about China, but we westerners are in a really bad place to do so, lest we want to sound either condescending or hypocritical.
> No; we should single them out in this thread. Because this thread is about them.
Amen! In my experience, on articles critical of China, 90% of the comments are deflections about the West. Here's one thread that's easy to count [1]. 9/10 comments talk about how the West does it too
> when the anti-China-goverment narrative spills into an anti-China-people one
other than sloppy posting I don't think I've ever seen that (that I can remember). Whereas I've seen a fair number of pro china posts that freely talk about 'westerners' instead of western governments. They tend to get killed pretty fast though.
I follow a lot special-interest online communities that are getting inundated with off-topic pro-china posts. "The west is corrupt and china will save the west." "The US can't possibly stand up to china." Maybe it's just a phenomenon that's unique to my own filter bubble. I'm not sure.
Some anecdata: I've seen a big increase in pro-Chinese commentors on the internet in the past year or so. HN especially. It keeps popping up in subtle ways. I'm not saying it's necessarily propaganda or psyops, but we'd be fools to believe China isn't doing that quite extensively. Hell, America does it; we just had a scandal where the military was doing that when they shouldn't have been.
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.
This phenomenon isn't limited to dry discussion of foreign policy. You see it as an endless barrage of distorted, negative articles about every aspect of China posted all over social media. Try opening a reddit thread about China sometime. You won't have to scroll very far before you see someone wishing death upon some Chinese people.
> Whenver there is any negative story about china, the downvotes happen immediately and "defends of the honor of china" pop up magically throwing dirt everywhere.
Maybe a little, but the main thing I see in stories like that is dozens of comments that that derail the comments into a "the US is just as bad!" flame-war, and kill discussion of the negative story.
It's really effective, because Western users are often ignorant of China and/or indifferent to it, but will happily jump into a flame-war about Western countries when presented with the bait.
Then why do I regularly see an anti-west china post pushed to the top (without even much to say). Typically it gets pushed out later but odd how often that happens.
Why does anything critical of china get met with downvotes rather than responses? - I've pointed this out before.
Why, if I try to argue with pro-china people does a pattern of rebuffing or denial occur followed by, when pushed into a corner, posting some nebululosty with little meaningful content followed by them going quiet?
If this is not government sponsored shilling, there are a bunch of people who are quite willing to behave against HN rules but don't get banned in a hurry - should I be flagging these more or something?
I have no problem with people being pro-china, it's a question of honesty.
No I'm talking about impassioned nationalistic defenses of China on western social media platforms, not Chinese ones. Even if they are much more critical internally, on issues like Tibet which are seen as hypocritical attempts by western forces to impugn their national sovereignty, my impression is that most of the actions by Chinese internet commentators are undirected.
Again, I could be wrong about this as I am not an expert in internet shills but only a casual observer of them.
I didn't want to say that, but for a long time I already have a feeling that there are users here in the HN community whose sole purpose is to deny any kind of criticism against China or putting it in a bad light. Almost like paid trolls, I would say. I expect lots of this kind of comments in this thread too.
I'll offer a contrasting viewpoint - I'm scared to see people propagate opinions like these though I see why people might believe these things. (In no way do I mean any disrespect to you. Power to you for being brave enough to post what may contribute to an interesting discussion.)
For one, these opinions are essentially a list of judgments based on a biased set of observations. There is a difference between making an observation and making a judgement:
For example, perhaps you observe that there are few replies on this thread and therefore judge that people are disinterested. Perhaps you observe China is a rising power and you judge that it is gathering power for the purpose of undermining Western countries. Perhaps you observe that Chinese people have copied a lot of Western ideas and you judge what they are doing to be selfish stealing. Perhaps you observe that China doesn't have due process, free press, etc and therefore judge that Chinese authorities are "happy" to jail people.
These kinds of judgments tend to attribute intention to behaviors. Such judgments aren't falsifiable nor testable, are too narrowly focused, and they put people at risk of committing fundamental attribution errors. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error)
I suspect people who post opinions like these tend to have some less-than-virtuous private psychological desire they want to fulfill. Perhaps they are projecting their own life metaphors onto abstract geopolitical entities - which I think is often silly. Even though we all know China is a country and not a person, people often personify the abstract entity of _the whole of China_ as “wanting” things or having "values" or being "happy to do anything". Perhaps they think life is supposed to be fair and so they frame the actions of countries in terms of fairness. I don’t think it is always correct to think about countries in terms of these metaphors.
Sometimes I also suspect people who have these kinds of opinions to be low-key racist since they are quick to turn observations into more than they are. Perhaps they believe Chinese people are only good at copying people and not making anything original of their own. Perhaps they think Chinese people live in inferior ways and are too inferior to come up with a superior way of living. Perhaps they think it is only natural we should always be drawing negative attention to divergences between what those people do and what we do. I can sympathize with these views but I wonder what the end goal of propagating these views are - is it a war based on an obsession with something related to identity? Or are people calling for help in finding some way to peacefully coexist? Or do people just want to stroke their own ego?
It is no great intellectual achievement to come up with a political narrative. Many narratives aren't falsifiable, some are psychologically driven, bias driven, and many should never be considered politically-actionable. It is one thing to be disinterested and another to be informed yet cautious about jumping to judgment.
Actually I do see them occasionally here. On articles about China I sometimes see a suspicious number of comments supporting China from newly created accounts.
A large number of replies turn the conversation towards how the West is equally bad or worse. Another set of replies talks about how China may inevitably come out ahead.
You can check yourself by Googling 10 HN threads that critique China, versus say, Japan or Poland.
Is China running some indirect social public relations in the style of Russian Facebook ads for Trump? Or is it simply China hawks / nationalists or other casual supporters? My personal conclusion is that there's a decent chance it's a bit of both. And the likelihood of the first may be concerning.
But seriously, check out the pattern and come to your own conclusion.
P.S. If it matters, I'm ethnically Chinese as well, and think well of the Chinese people in general.
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