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The history of the opium wars need to be as well know as the history of slavery in the US, until then, leaving this important context out of the discussion make

The history of the opium wars need to be as well know as the history of slavery in the US, until then, leaving this important context out of the discussion makes people think that the UK is the victim. What I was trying to say is that media in the West pay far less attentions to the wrong doings of their allies. For example, the anniversary of the Tiananmen square incident made it to the front page of HN, but I have never seen anything on HN when it's the anniversary of the Nanjing massacre. These two are comparable because the Japanese leaders are still visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Also, I have personally almost never see news about bad things that happened in Taiwan on Western media, does this mean that Taiwan is heaven on earth? You may have freedom of speech, but I don't think your people are well-informed when they are flooded by cherry-picked facts, and this leads to bias against your non-allies. About what HKers think, here is an image of the flyers they distributed during the protest: https://twitter.com/liuyun2018/status/1133227121713659904 https://twitter.com/liuyun2018/status/1133227121713659904 Translation for the main bullet points: > You don't get to have a lawyer: they will be unavailable or disappear before court. > Imprison without trail: you will spend one or two years in prison at minimum. > "Disappear": no one will hear from you when you are in prison, not even your families. > Judges follow CCP's instructions: the CCP decides what happens on court. > Super-high conviction rate: 99.94% nation wide conviction rate. > Lighting-fast trails: No lawyers no family members, 5 minutes and it's done. > Secret trails: When your family knows you are already in prison. > Collective punishment： your family members are equally guilty. Even in mainland China the situation is no where near this bad. These false accusations makes me question their motives. If you don't believe me and think we have North Korea levels of speech control, then I would ask you to please update your views or better, visit China if you get a chance. Listing several individuals arrested for their political actions doesn't justify this baseless conjecture about the future of HK. > Give an inch, give a mile. Yes I know you don't trust the CCP, the CCP doesn't trust the West either. Today we implement democracy (as you defined) in HK, tomorrow you want HK to declare independence. Who's next? Shenzhen? Shanghai? We are aware of how the West has been "liberating" people in the Middle East and we are afraid of it. Which brings me to my final point: we share completely different views of the world, and some words You have been using the word democracy like it's some kind of panacea and refusing it is unacceptable. I (and the CCP) don't agree. Democracy is guaranteed to never be the worst, but it doesn't necessarily be the best, in all situations. Besides, based on the actions of the US after WWII, we have every reason to believe that the US doesn't want other parts of the world to stay in peace, or at least, does not have the ability to resolve the problem it created. Despite what the Western media has been saying, the CCP is actually bad at media manipulation, not nearly as good as the West. CCP thinks that if we implement democracy defined by the West, then the people will fall to Western values extremely fast and the whole country will become a huge mess. Yes, we are thinking about the Brexit drama and the likes, only more bloody.

atr_gz 7y ago
Things aren't always that bad in China, but all of the things on the signs have happened and continue to happen. You're simply wrong that those are false accusations. If these things have happened even one time, they can happen again. It's the opposite of baseless. I've witnessed the Chinese judicial system secondhand, as experienced by native Chinese people. Fortunately, I haven't had to experience anything firsthand. And I've read countless articles and books to the point where I know the specific incidents those signs are referring to. I'm sorry, but I really can't spend any more time digging up sources for you. Hopefully you have a VPN or live abroad and can look for this stuff yourself. You can probably understand why they wouldn't want to be subject to that justice system. You keep putting words in mine and other people's mouths. I never said democracy is a panacea. I agree that Western media is biased about China. Average people are not well-informed anywhere. At least outside of China, people can easily learn if they choose to. I agree that Japanese politicians downplaying or refusing to apologise for Nanjing is somewhat comparable to the CCPs handling of the Tiananmen incident, although Japan obviously has nothing like the censorship in China. Both are wrong. And I think if you talk to more people you'll find they agree.
- confusedhnguy 7y ago
  We have finally come to the dead end (which I expected): you think that China is a 1984-like society and I disagree, and we can't convince each other. This is fine. For all the stuff you want me to look up online, I already know, and I know more context than you do. For example, we can talk about the cultural revolution to each other freely and we understand the long list of reasons why it happened, contrary to the simplistic "evil communists" viewpoint held by some Westerners. Go to Beijing, talk to a taxi driver, listen to how they curse our government for their wrong doings, or learn Chinese and read Weibo every now and then, and you may change your mind. Hey, my English is better than 99% of mainlanders and I read Western news all the time, but I still don't think I am remotely qualified to talk about US's internal affairs. Please don't assume someone from China knows less than you do just because you have read some second-handed materials. You didn't use the exact word "panacea", but you have been using "blocking democracy" as some kind of crime, which suggest that democracy is the only right way to go, and I disagree. Westerners keep talking about how bad censorship is, and this is exactly why I said the CCP is terrible at media manipulation. The state of the art, as used by the West, is to report partial truth and take words out of context. Look at the link posted by NeedMoreTea, "if the Brits allowed self-governance" was conveniently omitted.

atr_gz 7y ago

Things aren't always that bad in China, but all of the things on the signs have happened and continue to happen. You're simply wrong that those are false accusations. If these things have happened even one time, they can happen again. It's the opposite of baseless. I've witnessed the Chinese judicial system secondhand, as experienced by native Chinese people. Fortunately, I haven't had to experience anything firsthand. And I've read countless articles and books to the point where I know the specific incidents those signs are referring to. I'm sorry, but I really can't spend any more time digging up sources for you. Hopefully you have a VPN or live abroad and can look for this stuff yourself. You can probably understand why they wouldn't want to be subject to that justice system. You keep putting words in mine and other people's mouths. I never said democracy is a panacea. I agree that Western media is biased about China. Average people are not well-informed anywhere. At least outside of China, people can easily learn if they choose to. I agree that Japanese politicians downplaying or refusing to apologise for Nanjing is somewhat comparable to the CCPs handling of the Tiananmen incident, although Japan obviously has nothing like the censorship in China. Both are wrong. And I think if you talk to more people you'll find they agree.

confusedhnguy 7y ago
We have finally come to the dead end (which I expected): you think that China is a 1984-like society and I disagree, and we can't convince each other. This is fine. For all the stuff you want me to look up online, I already know, and I know more context than you do. For example, we can talk about the cultural revolution to each other freely and we understand the long list of reasons why it happened, contrary to the simplistic "evil communists" viewpoint held by some Westerners. Go to Beijing, talk to a taxi driver, listen to how they curse our government for their wrong doings, or learn Chinese and read Weibo every now and then, and you may change your mind. Hey, my English is better than 99% of mainlanders and I read Western news all the time, but I still don't think I am remotely qualified to talk about US's internal affairs. Please don't assume someone from China knows less than you do just because you have read some second-handed materials. You didn't use the exact word "panacea", but you have been using "blocking democracy" as some kind of crime, which suggest that democracy is the only right way to go, and I disagree. Westerners keep talking about how bad censorship is, and this is exactly why I said the CCP is terrible at media manipulation. The state of the art, as used by the West, is to report partial truth and take words out of context. Look at the link posted by NeedMoreTea, "if the Brits allowed self-governance" was conveniently omitted.