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I am in Verona (Italy) at this time, and I'm in a hotel where some tourists from Shanghai happen to be as well. I'm alone, so I hang out in the lobby a lot. I j

I am in Verona (Italy) at this time, and I'm in a hotel where some tourists from Shanghai happen to be as well. I'm alone, so I hang out in the lobby a lot. I just engaged in some small talk with some of those tourists, and the discussion somehow shifted to the Hong Kong protests. Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. They don't seem to say that the chinese way is the right way, or that the western culture is the one to accept. They just say that they are different, and that of course a shift in culture is difficult for Hong Kongers. They think it will all pan out somehow: Hong Kong has to accept that they are Chinese now, and accept all the consequences that come with that. I understand that the viewpoint of hn, a very USA oriented site, is different, and that most people here think that the libery of HK people should not be taken away from them because democracy is the only way, but I think the chinese point of view should be heard as well, and should be taken into consideration to get a better understanding of everything that is happening. My personal opinion on this is that China should just let them keep their autonomy, and let them be Hong Kong: a state by it's own with it's own rules and laws.

spectramax 7y ago
Let’s replace China with X so there is no xenophobic rebuttals. X is an authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status in the office, piracy is rampant, no respect for privacy of others, there is an app called ourchat that is effectively owned by the government and is increasing becoming a necessity, no media let alone any kind of investigative journalism especially against the government, your social score goes down if you buy a particular book, you cannot sue the government or even think about it, punishment can include selling your organs for arbitrary reasons, the list goes on and on. If X were an impoverished country like Somalia, the tune would change and most people would condemn such a society. I want to do so fearlessly but sometimes people see it as an attack against the Chinese people. I’ve been to China and have spent many months there, made lifelong relations, etc. I have no room for any concession or bargain for the argument that authoritarian rule has benefits - yes it does but at aforementioned costs. China has risen above due to government’s iron grip over every aspect of the country. It is doing so at a cost. Fundamentals don’t change even if one sees the strategy panning out. An eagle in the world of doves can kill a lot of doves and have short term evolutionary imbalance. But soon, the marginal cost of turning into an eagle is so small so there are new eagles popping up in the population all of a sudden. This balance oscillates in the short term, but evolutionary pressure returns it back to an equilibrium. Fundamentals of eagle and dove dynamics don’t change even though the state of this system shows “success”. I’m in the position to criticize any authoritarian regimes in the strongest way possible - be it China or any other country, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to die seeing this world turn into a power grab for a few with a consequence of a dystopian society. I wish the next superpower would be a country such as Norway or Sweden, it would set such a utopian example for the world to move into the right direction.
- roca 7y ago
  Norway is a petro-economy. That doesn't really work as a role model for countries that don't have vast easily-exploited natural resources. Lucky for Norway that they've transitioned out of petroleum before the climate disaster comes due.
  - surfmike 7y ago
    They have?
    - roca 7y ago
      Yeah OK, it's declining, but they aren't out of it yet. https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/exports-of-oil-and-gas/ https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/expo...
      - outside1234 7y ago
        And wait until islands (and Florida) start sinking under the sea and there is this big Norwegian oil fund there sitting like a target...
- iguy 7y ago
  I think you can take one more step backwards and still have an argument. X is a huge country. Y is a small island/peninsula nearby, with shared cultural roots, but very different recent history (decades to centuries) and different government & economic structure. People living in Y are free to leave Y and move to X. Then I think it's better if Y continues to exist. Even if Y is worse on some measures, e.g. if it were Y that had an "authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status ", then I'd like it to continue. It's good to have a diversity of approaches to problems. Even if Y gets 90% wrong, maybe it discovers something in the 10% right, or maybe it's just an interesting study in what not to do. Its people are (by assumption!) free to leave, and have a culturally similar neighbor that will take them.
- theklub 7y ago
roca 7y ago
The idea that democracy and freedom are somehow foreign to Chinese people and can't work in their culture is a myth peddled by the CCP to serve their own interests. Democracy and freedom are flourishing in Taiwan. They are flourishing in South Korea (who aren't Chinese but whose traditions are no more democratic than China's). They're doing OK in Japan. "The Chinese point of view" is an ambiguous term that the CCP uses to its advantage. In fact it is the Chinese Communist Party's point of view, which they have managed to indoctrinate into most Chinese citizens via their control of all Chinese media. Where Chinese people have escaped CCP influence, they tend to have quite a different point of view.
- alexmlamb2 7y ago
  I think you may not realize this, but you've been brainwashed by western propaganda (I grew up in the west, but I've been exposed to many different countries, so I understand this better now). The idea that "freedom" is the freedom for society to be controlled by large corporations and the wealthy is not the only notion of freedom, and many prefer a technocratic / meritocratic society over a plutocratic one. I think most Chinese people understand this, as well as a sizable fraction of literate/intelligent people in the west. Unfortunately many westerns, like you, just like to turn their brain off and believe whatever their TV tells them to believe.
  - loyukfai 7y ago
    Is that why most of the relatives of the top brass in CCP, and wealthy Chinese business people are holding passports of foreign countries?
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    Large Western corporations do not select which books I'm permitted to read. Large Western corporations do not forbid me from criticizing their CEO's. Large Western corporations do not harvest organs from the poor. Large Western corporations do not imprison minorities in concentration camps. Large Western corporations do not scrape thousands of protesters into a gutter with bulldozers and disappear anyone who speaks of the incident
seppin 7y ago
> Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. Funny that authoritarianism, corruption, etc. is being excused as "Chinese cultural differences". This stuff ain't new, folks.
oinkl 7y ago
America's Fundamental Misunderstanding of China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojr-tqaQQOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojr-tqaQQOQ
- jnbiche 7y ago
  Boy, all kinds of new accounts in this thread, with just one or two comments about the Hong Kong situation.
  - oinkl 7y ago
    I've long been a lurker on HN but these protests have compelled me to create an account to chime in on the situation. As someone who's bilingual, travelled to both China and Hong Kong, and worked and interacted with Chinese people, the sheer volume and intensity of Sinophobic comments on western social media (Twitter, Reddit) following the wake of these protests painting China and the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) as an evil communist government which brainwashes and oppresses its citizens, reflects to me deep ignorance and opened my eyes to how environment and media shapes your worldview. I'm not saying the CCP is without flaw; China has done things I strongly disagree with. But making broad sweeping statements about how China bad based on what you know from western media, without having stepped foot into either China or Hong Kong, without making an effort to understand a foreign culture, is an even greater crime. To me, it's no different from liberals claiming conservatives are all brainwashed by Fox News. Regarding the Hong Kong protests, most people don't have time for deep political analyses. You read headlines, read stories, read social media, form an impression of whats going on, and then you pass judgement based on your worldview. Western media has largely framed these protests as a fight for democracy against China and oppression. Who's the audience? The English speaking world, which is largely democratic. However, if you can understand Chinese/Cantonese, I would suggest looking at Hong Kong and Chinese media and social media. It's also prone to biased reporting, but there are moderate and sensible comments as well, and you get a deeper understanding of both sides of the conflict. In my opinion, the situation is alot more nuanced and complicated than what's portrayed in mainstream media.
    - 7y ago
Asooka 7y ago
Basically, Hong Kong has lost its roots after decades of British occupation and forceful western indoctrination. Hong Kong is China, there are no two opinions on that. The domestic terrorists currently raising hell are misguided and work against their cultural interest. I do not doubt there will be a massacre and many will die, but this will be good for China and good for global economy.
nailer 7y ago
> Hong Kong has to accept that they are Chinese now, and accept all the consequences that come with that. HKs independence was agreed to by the PRC as part of the handover. The PRC must accept there are two systems.
- loyukfai 7y ago
  A certain level of autonomy, yes. Independence, no.
xkgt 7y ago
//Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the Chinese culture. This is exactly a regurgitation of the propaganda by CCP. They blamed western influence, education and cultural whitewashing of HK Chinese as the reason for the current protests and their citizens believe it sincerely. They conveniently overlook the crux of the protest, which is to ask for universal suffrage. Even for a well educated, widely traveled main-lander, it is difficult to come out of this conditioning. I have some friends from mainland, currently staying in HK, who sincerely believe the general public is too naive to be allowed to make any decision. With the right amount of conditioning, people can be led to believe in anything even if it is contrarian to their well-being.
- whoevercares 7y ago
  Of course, your friends living in HK probably come from the “upper” middle class from China (depends on how old they are, ironically the younger the less likely they arise from lower class). For them it’s dreadful to imagine allowing the vast larger rural and under-educated population to make a decision. I agree though HK people should have a choice Since the scale is too small and people are mostly highly educated
  - justicezyx 7y ago
    > allowing the vast larger rural and under-educated population to make a decision. Culture Revolution PTSD?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- empath75 7y ago
  After the 2016 election I almost feel the same about letting the public vote.
  - grotsnot 7y ago
    Truly one election not going your way is proof we should go back to serfdom. The proles must learn their place!
tombh 7y ago
If anyone else is open to the other point of view, I could use some help. I'm struggling a lot at the moment with how little relevance seems to be given to how significant HK was in defining China's modern identity. How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium to keep Chinese people addicted and thus in sustainable trade. Queen Victoria ignored a letter from China exhorting her to stop. When Britain didn't stop, China took it into their own hands, destroying all the imported Opium they could find. Britain took this as destroying their "property" and thus went to war with them, easily winning and requiring the handing over of the port of Hong Kong so the trade would not be impeded again. I know that was over 150 years ago now, but surely that has to be taken into account? If you don't think that's relevant to today's innocent HK'ers, then at least we have to realise that the handing over of HK was a defining factor in the ultimate end of the Qing dynasty, the closing of over 2000 years of China's political tradition and precipitating the radical changes that thrust China onto the world stage as we see it today. I support the rights of all people to self determination. But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. In fact, somewhat ironically, it came to it precisely because of an unaccountable, authoritarian regime, with no other agenda but self interest.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago
  The conclusion makes sense to me - that HK is not Taiwan. However, after so many generations I do think that some of the HK people do recognize the irony of how they got to their situation but that doesn't mean their yearning for the situation Taiwan has isn't legitimate.
  - tombh 7y ago
    Of course their yearning and indeed protest actions are legitimate. To what extent though would you agree that, using the computer world's RFC vocabulary (MUST, SHOULD, MAY, OPTIONAL, etc), Hong Kong MAY ask for recognition whereas Taiwan SHOULD ask for recognition? It feels to me that HK is exploiting the fact that most of the world automatically assumes big superpowers, especially little understood foreign ones, are the bad guys, such that HK the underdog MUST fight for recognition. I think such framing of the conflict misrepresents the situation preventing HK getting the actual relevant help that will bring about the most practical solution. By which I mean most of the world unhelpfully sees the black and white of HK good, China bad. When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods. If we're genuinely interested in finding a way forward don't we need to reflect on these nuances? I know that's a big ask, but big problems usually require a big effort.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I think the western society is objectively further advanced than the Chinese one. Not surprising since China is a country in development and most other countries have gone through similar phases. So it should not be taken as a accusation. This conflict aside, I wouldn't see them on the same level.
brendanw 7y ago
^^ CCP Propaganda Alert. This account was created 7 days ago and this is its only comment.
gwathk 7y ago
Go Hong Kong visit sometime. You will find British has managed to build Hong Kong into a prosperous and peaceful society with all the elements of so-called Chinese culture and Western culture. There is a church next to a mosque next to a temple in Tsim Sha Tsui district. People enjoy yum cha in their lunch and America rib-eye steak in their dinner. I wonder whether the Chinese viewpoint stands. It is purely bad governance of HKSAR and CCP.
nesadi 7y ago
The Chinese point of view is to take HK culture and remove it, because the Chinese way is the only way. You said it yourself. I'm not sure how that's okay or what greater understanding is supposed to yield. China wants to subsume HK at any cost. HKers want to keep their culture, rights and freedom. They're going to fight for it, and China is going to crush them and force their will on them. I don't see the good here, or how a "fair" evaluation of the situation will change these facts.

spectramax 7y ago

Let’s replace China with X so there is no xenophobic rebuttals. X is an authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status in the office, piracy is rampant, no respect for privacy of others, there is an app called ourchat that is effectively owned by the government and is increasing becoming a necessity, no media let alone any kind of investigative journalism especially against the government, your social score goes down if you buy a particular book, you cannot sue the government or even think about it, punishment can include selling your organs for arbitrary reasons, the list goes on and on. If X were an impoverished country like Somalia, the tune would change and most people would condemn such a society. I want to do so fearlessly but sometimes people see it as an attack against the Chinese people. I’ve been to China and have spent many months there, made lifelong relations, etc. I have no room for any concession or bargain for the argument that authoritarian rule has benefits - yes it does but at aforementioned costs. China has risen above due to government’s iron grip over every aspect of the country. It is doing so at a cost. Fundamentals don’t change even if one sees the strategy panning out. An eagle in the world of doves can kill a lot of doves and have short term evolutionary imbalance. But soon, the marginal cost of turning into an eagle is so small so there are new eagles popping up in the population all of a sudden. This balance oscillates in the short term, but evolutionary pressure returns it back to an equilibrium. Fundamentals of eagle and dove dynamics don’t change even though the state of this system shows “success”. I’m in the position to criticize any authoritarian regimes in the strongest way possible - be it China or any other country, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to die seeing this world turn into a power grab for a few with a consequence of a dystopian society. I wish the next superpower would be a country such as Norway or Sweden, it would set such a utopian example for the world to move into the right direction.

roca 7y ago
Norway is a petro-economy. That doesn't really work as a role model for countries that don't have vast easily-exploited natural resources. Lucky for Norway that they've transitioned out of petroleum before the climate disaster comes due.
- surfmike 7y ago
  They have?
  - roca 7y ago
    Yeah OK, it's declining, but they aren't out of it yet. https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/exports-of-oil-and-gas/ https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/expo...
    - outside1234 7y ago
      And wait until islands (and Florida) start sinking under the sea and there is this big Norwegian oil fund there sitting like a target...
iguy 7y ago
I think you can take one more step backwards and still have an argument. X is a huge country. Y is a small island/peninsula nearby, with shared cultural roots, but very different recent history (decades to centuries) and different government & economic structure. People living in Y are free to leave Y and move to X. Then I think it's better if Y continues to exist. Even if Y is worse on some measures, e.g. if it were Y that had an "authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status ", then I'd like it to continue. It's good to have a diversity of approaches to problems. Even if Y gets 90% wrong, maybe it discovers something in the 10% right, or maybe it's just an interesting study in what not to do. Its people are (by assumption!) free to leave, and have a culturally similar neighbor that will take them.
theklub 7y ago

roca 7y ago

The idea that democracy and freedom are somehow foreign to Chinese people and can't work in their culture is a myth peddled by the CCP to serve their own interests. Democracy and freedom are flourishing in Taiwan. They are flourishing in South Korea (who aren't Chinese but whose traditions are no more democratic than China's). They're doing OK in Japan. "The Chinese point of view" is an ambiguous term that the CCP uses to its advantage. In fact it is the Chinese Communist Party's point of view, which they have managed to indoctrinate into most Chinese citizens via their control of all Chinese media. Where Chinese people have escaped CCP influence, they tend to have quite a different point of view.

alexmlamb2 7y ago
I think you may not realize this, but you've been brainwashed by western propaganda (I grew up in the west, but I've been exposed to many different countries, so I understand this better now). The idea that "freedom" is the freedom for society to be controlled by large corporations and the wealthy is not the only notion of freedom, and many prefer a technocratic / meritocratic society over a plutocratic one. I think most Chinese people understand this, as well as a sizable fraction of literate/intelligent people in the west. Unfortunately many westerns, like you, just like to turn their brain off and believe whatever their TV tells them to believe.
- loyukfai 7y ago
  Is that why most of the relatives of the top brass in CCP, and wealthy Chinese business people are holding passports of foreign countries?
- homonculus1 7y ago
  Large Western corporations do not select which books I'm permitted to read. Large Western corporations do not forbid me from criticizing their CEO's. Large Western corporations do not harvest organs from the poor. Large Western corporations do not imprison minorities in concentration camps. Large Western corporations do not scrape thousands of protesters into a gutter with bulldozers and disappear anyone who speaks of the incident

seppin 7y ago

> Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. Funny that authoritarianism, corruption, etc. is being excused as "Chinese cultural differences". This stuff ain't new, folks.

oinkl 7y ago

America's Fundamental Misunderstanding of China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojr-tqaQQOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojr-tqaQQOQ

jnbiche 7y ago
Boy, all kinds of new accounts in this thread, with just one or two comments about the Hong Kong situation.
- oinkl 7y ago
  I've long been a lurker on HN but these protests have compelled me to create an account to chime in on the situation. As someone who's bilingual, travelled to both China and Hong Kong, and worked and interacted with Chinese people, the sheer volume and intensity of Sinophobic comments on western social media (Twitter, Reddit) following the wake of these protests painting China and the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) as an evil communist government which brainwashes and oppresses its citizens, reflects to me deep ignorance and opened my eyes to how environment and media shapes your worldview. I'm not saying the CCP is without flaw; China has done things I strongly disagree with. But making broad sweeping statements about how China bad based on what you know from western media, without having stepped foot into either China or Hong Kong, without making an effort to understand a foreign culture, is an even greater crime. To me, it's no different from liberals claiming conservatives are all brainwashed by Fox News. Regarding the Hong Kong protests, most people don't have time for deep political analyses. You read headlines, read stories, read social media, form an impression of whats going on, and then you pass judgement based on your worldview. Western media has largely framed these protests as a fight for democracy against China and oppression. Who's the audience? The English speaking world, which is largely democratic. However, if you can understand Chinese/Cantonese, I would suggest looking at Hong Kong and Chinese media and social media. It's also prone to biased reporting, but there are moderate and sensible comments as well, and you get a deeper understanding of both sides of the conflict. In my opinion, the situation is alot more nuanced and complicated than what's portrayed in mainstream media.
  - 7y ago

Asooka 7y ago

Basically, Hong Kong has lost its roots after decades of British occupation and forceful western indoctrination. Hong Kong is China, there are no two opinions on that. The domestic terrorists currently raising hell are misguided and work against their cultural interest. I do not doubt there will be a massacre and many will die, but this will be good for China and good for global economy.

nailer 7y ago

> Hong Kong has to accept that they are Chinese now, and accept all the consequences that come with that. HKs independence was agreed to by the PRC as part of the handover. The PRC must accept there are two systems.

loyukfai 7y ago
A certain level of autonomy, yes. Independence, no.

xkgt 7y ago

//Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the Chinese culture. This is exactly a regurgitation of the propaganda by CCP. They blamed western influence, education and cultural whitewashing of HK Chinese as the reason for the current protests and their citizens believe it sincerely. They conveniently overlook the crux of the protest, which is to ask for universal suffrage. Even for a well educated, widely traveled main-lander, it is difficult to come out of this conditioning. I have some friends from mainland, currently staying in HK, who sincerely believe the general public is too naive to be allowed to make any decision. With the right amount of conditioning, people can be led to believe in anything even if it is contrarian to their well-being.

whoevercares 7y ago
Of course, your friends living in HK probably come from the “upper” middle class from China (depends on how old they are, ironically the younger the less likely they arise from lower class). For them it’s dreadful to imagine allowing the vast larger rural and under-educated population to make a decision. I agree though HK people should have a choice Since the scale is too small and people are mostly highly educated
- justicezyx 7y ago
  > allowing the vast larger rural and under-educated population to make a decision. Culture Revolution PTSD?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
empath75 7y ago
After the 2016 election I almost feel the same about letting the public vote.
- grotsnot 7y ago
  Truly one election not going your way is proof we should go back to serfdom. The proles must learn their place!

tombh 7y ago

If anyone else is open to the other point of view, I could use some help. I'm struggling a lot at the moment with how little relevance seems to be given to how significant HK was in defining China's modern identity. How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium to keep Chinese people addicted and thus in sustainable trade. Queen Victoria ignored a letter from China exhorting her to stop. When Britain didn't stop, China took it into their own hands, destroying all the imported Opium they could find. Britain took this as destroying their "property" and thus went to war with them, easily winning and requiring the handing over of the port of Hong Kong so the trade would not be impeded again. I know that was over 150 years ago now, but surely that has to be taken into account? If you don't think that's relevant to today's innocent HK'ers, then at least we have to realise that the handing over of HK was a defining factor in the ultimate end of the Qing dynasty, the closing of over 2000 years of China's political tradition and precipitating the radical changes that thrust China onto the world stage as we see it today. I support the rights of all people to self determination. But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. In fact, somewhat ironically, it came to it precisely because of an unaccountable, authoritarian regime, with no other agenda but self interest.

bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago
The conclusion makes sense to me - that HK is not Taiwan. However, after so many generations I do think that some of the HK people do recognize the irony of how they got to their situation but that doesn't mean their yearning for the situation Taiwan has isn't legitimate.
- tombh 7y ago
  Of course their yearning and indeed protest actions are legitimate. To what extent though would you agree that, using the computer world's RFC vocabulary (MUST, SHOULD, MAY, OPTIONAL, etc), Hong Kong MAY ask for recognition whereas Taiwan SHOULD ask for recognition? It feels to me that HK is exploiting the fact that most of the world automatically assumes big superpowers, especially little understood foreign ones, are the bad guys, such that HK the underdog MUST fight for recognition. I think such framing of the conflict misrepresents the situation preventing HK getting the actual relevant help that will bring about the most practical solution. By which I mean most of the world unhelpfully sees the black and white of HK good, China bad. When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods. If we're genuinely interested in finding a way forward don't we need to reflect on these nuances? I know that's a big ask, but big problems usually require a big effort.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I think the western society is objectively further advanced than the Chinese one. Not surprising since China is a country in development and most other countries have gone through similar phases. So it should not be taken as a accusation. This conflict aside, I wouldn't see them on the same level.

brendanw 7y ago

^^ CCP Propaganda Alert. This account was created 7 days ago and this is its only comment.

gwathk 7y ago

Go Hong Kong visit sometime. You will find British has managed to build Hong Kong into a prosperous and peaceful society with all the elements of so-called Chinese culture and Western culture. There is a church next to a mosque next to a temple in Tsim Sha Tsui district. People enjoy yum cha in their lunch and America rib-eye steak in their dinner. I wonder whether the Chinese viewpoint stands. It is purely bad governance of HKSAR and CCP.

nesadi 7y ago

The Chinese point of view is to take HK culture and remove it, because the Chinese way is the only way. You said it yourself. I'm not sure how that's okay or what greater understanding is supposed to yield. China wants to subsume HK at any cost. HKers want to keep their culture, rights and freedom. They're going to fight for it, and China is going to crush them and force their will on them. I don't see the good here, or how a "fair" evaluation of the situation will change these facts.