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I’m from china mainland, and I stand for these protesters. At least, I don’t want them lose the right of fighting for their rights. And btw, even such huge prot
I’m from china mainland, and I stand for these protesters. At least, I don’t want them lose the right of fighting for their rights. And btw, even such huge protest happening, there is no report, no discussion in China, even message left on SNS also get censored or vanished. Terrifying.
Edit: apologize for uncertain words, it needs add a time limitation. The first protest was happening at 9th June and all Chinese media chose keep silent. And now it cannot be covered. But attention, it still be defined as a riot.
It seems the information flows to certain populations. I work for an US based company with an office in mainland China. Pretty much everyone in the office knows about the stuff happening in Hong Kong.
Does the satellite office proxy web traffic via the HQ?
Is the internet at your office filtered? I've heard of offices for foreign companies being unfiltered, but I haven't seen it firsthand.
How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you?
Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?
I don't know what is your motivation to use a throwaway account to publicly lie on this...
Don't get hurt too much for seeing the reports below that can be publicly verified by everyone.
Coverage from sohu.com, one of the largest news sites -
https://www.sohu.com/a/320190989_114731 https://www.sohu.com/a/320190989_114731
http://www.sohu.com/a/320742090_223357 http://www.sohu.com/a/320742090_223357
http://www.sohu.com/a/320247941_419342 http://www.sohu.com/a/320247941_419342
Coverage by tencent's QQ News:
https://new.qq.com/cmsn/TWF20190/TWF201906130000270D.html https://new.qq.com/cmsn/TWF20190/TWF201906130000270D.html
https://xw.qq.com/partner/vivoscreen/20190614A09WZI/20190614A09WZI00 https://xw.qq.com/partner/vivoscreen/20190614A09WZI/20190614...
Coverage by Baidu's infamous baijiahao
http://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1636182195709413986 http://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1636182195709413986
Give us a break. You link us to communist propaganda and expect us to take you seriously? The paper tiger Chinese government is insecure enough to take down songs from Les Miserables (https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/06/14/do-you-hear-the-people-sing-not-in-china https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/06/14/do-you-hear-th...). There is no fair coverage without a free press, and my view is that we need to reinforce our allies in the Hong Kong and Taiwanese and wait out or even hasten the PRC's collapse. The Chinese people deserve liberation.
On that note, the Hong Kong Free Press--a nonprofit, English-language, digital newspaper in HK--is doing its annual fundraising drive right now. If you want to support a free press in the region, this is a good place to start. Their coverage of the protests has been quite good, and they definitely hit above their weight class with the amount of resources that they have.
https://www.hongkongfp.com https://www.hongkongfp.com
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I did wonder what the coverage on the mainland was like. No coverage seemed like the most likely outcome.
Are you sure there are no discussions about this in mainland? I don't go to a lot of forums but at least I have seen lots of discussions on NGA and tieba. I am sure that there are even more discussions happened in Hupu, douban, KDS, and the countless QQ group chats. Even the threads got removed after a while, it still counts because people knows about the event and exchanged ideas.
False statements like this appeals to the Westerners but it worsens the misunderstanding between us, which is counterproductive if you want a more open and free China.
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/FbofCOK https://imgur.com/a/FbofCOK
I never really understood how Chinese people could live under such a regime until a read a long-form book about life in China by a New Yorker journalist who lived and reported from the for many years:
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-ebook/dp/B00GET185M/ https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth-eb...
It's really hard to grasp how effective information control, combined with 20-30% of the population being "party members", and other means of control can completely convince (or more likely blind) the population from external realities.
It's hard because you can see how smart and capable Chinese-Americans (or Canadians, or whatever) are at anything they set their mind to, where it almost seems like something is missing in their culture vs the West.
The general lesser educated and poor swath is easier to understand how they can be lied to and believe. The key is the smarter-than-average Chinese who do end up getting access to outside information are thoroughly convinced by the state early on that 'western propaganda is merely constantly trying to denigrate China's great, big, neverending achievements. But not only that, they amplify all of the negative things the western countries do poorly like class or race relations or other things citizens are constantly complaining about in the media, and try to pretend they are covering up those while hypocritically trying to judge Asian countries.
It's really quite a genius type of system when you look at how successful it is, which legitimate the US contributed to with all of the pysop/intelligence community stuff that they mastered. But of course it's 100x easier in a system where media and education are entirely controlled, not just partially like in the US (the Chinese aren't just dumb drones is what I'm saying but I'm not convinced the state can maintain this delusion forever).
As a native Chinese living overseas (well US, the location might matter), I could add that it’s not necessary true oversea Chinese students will wind up pro-democracy, because 1) most were having a utopian view of US and most will be disappointed/delusioned after a few years. 2) most if not all never lived in a multi race society before, so the smallest discrimination can be 10x magnified 3)Anti-China news are often mis-interpreted as Anti-Chinese, which myself still struggling to get out sometimes (e.g. “we shouldn’t do business with mainland China” look very offensive to me)
Being offended by #3 isn't really unique. The whole anti-Israel vs. anti-Semitic thing is a good example of this difficulty. Same with people being critical of long-standing American institutions -- Americans get offended. The only time people can really make it clear in their mind whom they are criticizing is when they are criticizing a particular leader, e.g. Trump, Xi, Kim Jong Un, etc. Everything else just riles people up for no reason.
simple answer: we don't have alternatives. comparing with being meddling by USA or any foreign power, I'd rather pick CCP.
No matter how well intentioned you guys are/were, I'll say it in your face: I don't trust you. here is the problem: if you were pissed off by my remark, then how could you overcome the trust issue? if you were not, how stupid I'm going to be to trust you?
honestly, I think we deserve whatever we have right now, and so do you. how about we just do business and leave the urge to 'help' other people in the world in sci-fi books?
Helping other people in the world is all we're here to do.
Not from the west. You don't have to trust people, but you should be free to make up your own mind. Read what they say and decide.
In South Africa we used to have strict control over our news media. Having opened up, I'd rather read and watch what I want, make my mind up, and not get into trouble for voicing my opinion.
A free media fights corruption. If you have no corruption then you're a very special country.
Be free to make your own mind. The Chinese are making their own mind, right? So what the fuss?
The most funny part when the US or other western countries point fingers at Chinese having insufficient information of misinformation to decide for themselves, is that a significant portion of their population still believes in God, and in US specifically, people believe in Creationism.
I don't know, information is just information and can be manipulated and interpreted in both ways. Is abortion a choice of the mother, or a violation of rights of the child? Are guns tools to fight oppression or ways to kill innocent people? They're both, but each side sees the other side as heretic and intolerable.
Now, don't the Chinese people know there's corrutption in the country? Don't they know there's censorship? Don't they even joke about it? US has problems and people talk about it. China has problems and people talk about. In public. On the Internet. China is not how you think it is, no need to paint it as a monster.
In China mainland, there is a censor tech named Great Firewall.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall?wprov=sfti1) It just cut off the connection between China and the World Internet by blocking famous website like Twitter, Facebook etc. Only the people have eagerness of finding truth will use anti-blocking tech like VPN to find information by themselves. Of course, it’s inconvenience and sometimes not working because of outer server banned. Not sure how many people could get information by themselves. But it’s pessimistic for people living in China how willing to find the information.
Recently, because the propagation by gov, the citizens even think the GFW is protecting them from harmful information and the outside force want breaking up China rather than censorship itself. Especially, this time the protest is propagated as a riot planned by western country. Being lack of information, most citizens support gov’s standpoint.
So maybe not ignorant, just like not conscious, as a result of being accustomed.
How can you say that with a straight face with recent news like Cambridge analytica is beyond me
> Being lack of information, most citizens support gov’s standpoint.
NO, because of the censorship, we do not know how many people actually support gov’s standpoint. Your statement is pure speculation and does not have any factual basis.
The Chinese government will not allow any professional organization to conduct and publish a survey like: "Do you support the censorship?", or "Do you support protest in HK?", or "Do you support shooting students in the Tianman Square", or "Do you support Xi to be the Chairman forever?"
Even the Chinese government itself does not know how many people support it and they fear the number is in fact not small, that is exactly why they need censorship in the first place.
One of the most commonly used words in their propaganda is "一小撮" [1, 2]. They always claim the people against them is only a few bad people. I never bought this even when I was in middle school. The reason is so obvious: if it is truly only a few people against you, why don't you just allow people to vote? Why don't you just allow people to speak up? The only reason you are so afraid is that you know maybe it is not just a few, and you know there is a good reason for people to stand against you.
1. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE
2. https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%8F%E6%92%AE.html https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8...
This is the wishful thinking of a westerner projecting its values on other people. The colonization of China ended almost a century ago, didn't you get the news?
I suspect you're being downvoted for the big shouty capital NO, and the fact you're trying to refute someone's opinion, when they were explicitly asked what their opinion was. This came across as being negative and confrontational. Reading your post more carefully I can see your heart is in the right place and are mainly just trying to provide context and comment but the initial confrontational tone drowns that out.
This is a very open and courteous community, where a bit of generosity in interpreting people's statements, and courtesy even to people we disagree with, is highly valued and it seems to me you have some very valuable views and experience to share.
Thanks for your voice, and pointing out the defect in my thought. I came up with my view by my observation on Chinese SNS platform, and no factual basis like a professional survey or any data could support my view.
It let me feel bad that in the political environment in China which is not allowed to talk about politics freely, it's hard to find factual evidence to support my stand.
This reminds me of a discussion that I've seen somewhere, with a Russian journalist who ran to the US after becoming a target for participating in the 2011–2013 Russian protests.
- What's the public opinion of Russian people on Putin?
- There's no such thing as public opinion in Russia.
- What do you mean, I can go out, sample 1000 people and ask them a question. That's what I mean by public opinion.
- You can do that, but the result is useless. There are studies on the topic - people will just say whatever was on last week's [state controlled] news.
> You can do that, but the result is useless. There are studies on the topic - people will just say whatever was on last week's [state controlled] news.
I doubt the correlation is perfect, which makes such polls non-useless. For example, comparing questions on which the correlation is more or less strong would allow identifying the degree of trust in the state media depending on the topic they're reporting on.
> How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you?
Let me answer this question as well, because, well, I'm entitled.
It's very very rare to see Chinese people use VPN other than for maybe to play games, most people here is just living, don't even curious about the outside world. Even worse, among those who did got out, some saw those China's wrong doings and then they choose to simply denial.
And is the very reason of why it is important to spread information: To establish some basic understanding. It's not about who is wining, not about trade war, it's not about tech superiority or smear tactics, it's about basic right and wrong.
Recently, the government issued a series of laws and regulations to further limit Chinese people's ability to access information outside of China by making it straight out illegal. And some individuals already been punished for just using a proxy.
Also, since June 1, the GFW has been upgraded to block any high risk unknown traffic, which is intended to stop Shadowsocks and other traffic encryption tools that can be used to by pass GFW's screening. It's very effective, many people lost connection with their proxy because of this.
HongKong is Not a sovereign country, if people in HongKong eventually failed, then they will face the same thing in the future. Which is the reason why they must try not fail. (If they do, then welcome to West Korea, comrade. May our dear supreme leader bless you!)
And I must say, HongKongers is really bad at resonating with others, especially with mainlanders. They must know that many people in mainland is actually quite supportive of some of their protects, we both want real democracy in our country and we are NOT enemies (Well, at least on this subject, we still love tax-free milk and iPhone so).
> Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?
Young people who don't interested to see outside world are also not interested in figuring out what's really going on[0]. Old people who actually felt the pain knows more about the pain.
I also want to add, even in China, under such heavy censorship, people still blaming the government in some ways. So I don't think it's just "genuinely ignorant", but more of a "so what you can do about it?".
[0] An unrelated but "interesting" pic for you: https://twitter.com/1240883174Hu/status/1050010276584550400 https://twitter.com/1240883174Hu/status/1050010276584550400
> HongKong is Not a sovereign country, if people in HongKong eventually failed, then they will face the same thing in the future. Which is the reason why they must try not fail. (If they do, then welcome to West Korea, comrade. May our dear supreme leader bless you!)
Hong Kong people are trying to do their best--after all, with no army of its own, 2 million people went to the street to voice out, peacefully--but support from mainland China, and from the rest of the world (not necessarily US) would definitely help. And we do thank the attention and support we have been receiving in previous weeks, which led to the suspension of the extradition law.
We know the battle is not over yet, not before the resolution regarding 2047 (50 years from the handover in 1997) is clear, not before the fate of Hong Kong's autonomy is sealed.
> And I must say, HongKongers is really bad at resonating with others, especially with mainlanders. They must know that many people in mainland is actually quite supportive of some of their protects, we both want real democracy in our country and we are NOT enemies (Well, at least on this subject, we still love tax-free milk and iPhone so).
Thank you for your support.
I, for one, do not treat mainland people as enemies, and I think many Hong Kong people share my view. If you can point out concretely how Hong Kong people have been misunderstanding mainland people, please let us know. We want to speak in a way that more people can understand.
Indeed, my read as an expat living in HK is that HKers treat mainland China Government as an enemy, not so much the people. It's even said clearly when you go to the protests, people complain about the Beijing government...
A friend of mine who is from the mainland but spent most of their life in the United States went to HK a few years ago. They told me that traveling on a PRC passport really set off the immigration folks, and that even day to day folks were fairly rude -- to the extent that they attempted to mimic a Taiwanese accent.
I think it's unfortunate, but understandable, that there's a certain amount of contempt for mainlanders beyond "love the people, hate the government" as the problems go beyond the government (e.g. affluent mainlanders stocking up on 'safe' supplies from HK).
> If you can point out concretely how Hong Kong people have been misunderstanding mainland people, please let us know. We want to speak in a way that more people can understand.
I think there is a disinformation campaign against Hong Kong people here at mainland (Actually, this should be "in fact", not "I think").
During the Umbrella Movement, I asked around for people's opinion, many believes HongKongers was seeking for separation rather than democracy. One thing that makes such disinformation campaign easy, I think is because the slogan is not hitting the real goal. It could be more clear if something like「我要真民主 (I want real democracy)」is run a long side with the slogan「我要真普選」. The key is to leave no gap for those disinformation campaigners to operate.
Also, 蝗蟲論 (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%9D%97%E8%9F%B2%E8%AB%96 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%9D%97%E8%9F%B2%E8%AB%96) is very harmful. Many of my family member, even young ones believes "HongKong people thinks we are locusts". I personally view this objectively (In short, "Then why you go there and brought all of their milks?"), but many people don't.
Communication is important, you know. The two side must understand each other better so the common goal might be reached. Don't be fall to the trap and got Divide and Conquered.
It's funny to make comparison between CCP and "foreign power" as CCP was originally funded by the Soviets, which is, of course, a "foreign power".
And the sad truth is that you as an individual really can't make opinions for "we" which I'd take as "Chinese people" here. The problem is that the opposite opinions to yours are getting oppressed in a unprecedented way.
Lastly, "do business" doesn't mean "cheat and take advantage", as civilized people won't call IP theft as part of "business".
I didn't expect to see such Wumao speech here (no matter you're paid or not) and really don't want to waste more time on your typical Wumao debates and tricks, so plz don't reply thx.
yes, CCP was funded by Soviets and it's not a secret. ideas always come from somewhere. according to your logic, USA would be impossible b/c all the funding fathers were brits, at the time. or, you were suggesting CCP is still under Russian influence? well, it's possible. besides, I don't support every move of CCP.
I'm pride not to use 'we' here precisely b/c I know I can't represent all Chinese. whom am I to claim to have that authority? I know whom I am, and I know I have blind spot in my view, and I happily to admit the fact. and I'll be even happier to know if there is any wrong with my logic. the question is, are you?
or, maybe you want to shield the light on the tactic about 'Red herring'?
Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed reply.
> I think there is a disinformation campaign against Hong Kong people here at mainland (Actually, this should be "in fact", not "I think").
I have read some news articles along those lines, so I agree that's likely. And to be honest, this is expected.
> During the Umbrella Movement, I asked around for people's opinion, many believes HongKongers was seeking for separation rather than democracy. One thing that makes such disinformation campaign easy, I think is because the slogan is not hitting the real goal. It could be more clear if something like「我要真民主 (I want real democracy)」is run a long side with the slogan「我要真普選」. The key is to leave no gap for those disinformation campaigners to operate.
That's an interesting suggestion, which I have not thought of. I do think these details, especially the key slogans, need more work because they are important.
I think the deeper cause of these gaps and lack of clarity is that, their target audience was Hong Kong people, so the protestors missed how it would have been perceived by mainland people, and this is a real missed opportunity.
> Also, 蝗蟲論 (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%9D%97%E8%9F%B2%E8%AB%96 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%9D%97%E8%9F%B2%E8%AB%96) is very harmful. Many of my family member, even young ones believes "HongKong people thinks we are locusts". I personally view this objectively (In short, "Then why you go there and brought all of their milks?"), but many people don't.
Thank you very much for your honest opinion. Points taken. And yes, I have heard of those sentiments towards parallel importers who are mainly from Mainland. At the same time, Hong Kong people have been blaming the Hong Kong government for its incompetence in balancing the needs for local residents and handling the mass demand from parallel importers. It would be better if the whole situation is kept civil.
> Communication is important, you know. The two side must understand each other better so the common goal might be reached. Don't be fall to the trap and got Divide and Conquered.
I completely agree, thanks for the words.