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> I can only guess, but it could be explained by mentally categorizing Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and even Tiananmen protesters as "not Chinese." I don't think it's

> I can only guess, but it could be explained by mentally categorizing Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and even Tiananmen protesters as "not Chinese." I don't think it's so much racism as a binary "us vs. them" classification system that expresses itself as the opinion that "the Chinese" should be punished for oppressing <some group>... That could be in some cases, though what you're describing sounds more like a government leaders/enforcers vs. liberals/oppressed minorities classification (which also leaves a big gray area). The people sympathize and feel allied to the latter group, so the "us" includes a lot of Chinese people, so it's not so much Chinese vs not-Chinese. I think I've seen similar comments, but I usually interpreted it as a mess of lazy or imprecise language, because often the complaints could only apply to a narrow group even though the person is using some broad term like "China" or "Chinese."

yorwba 7y ago
> "us" includes a lot of Chinese people, so it's not so much Chinese vs not-Chinese. I fear not everyone realizes that on an intuitive level. People see a bunch of vocal Chinese nationalists repeating government propaganda and get the impression that this is representative of the average Chinese person, leading them to demand that Chinese users be banned from social media, or Chinese students have their visas denied, or whatever measure would solve the issue at hand while simultaneously excluding the Chinese part of "us." It's maybe a question of defaults, where the knowledge that something is Chinese leads to the suspicion that it must be bad, unless some redeeming quality (such as being anti-government) can be found.