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It is fun to see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Mine is fully referenced and went to -1 instantly... there is definitely some real denial abou

It is fun to see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Mine is fully referenced and went to -1 instantly... there is definitely some real denial about what the CCP actually do.

oulu2006 6y ago
Yeah, I noticed, CCP agents are around in force. I upvoted, but I can only do so much.
- barnacled 6y ago
  I honestly wonder whether it's that or just standard HNers who are in some sort of woke-led state of denial. A totalitarian genocidal regime who has demonstrably lied consistently about everything of any importance but if you question whether, perhaps, they might have possibly done a little more about wet markets/traditional Chinese medicine given the 2003 SARS outbreak which clearly indicated this major risk area - and you get hammered for it. Go further and suggest maybe covering up the outbreak to give the virus enough time to spread everywhere was maybe not a great thing and the next virus might have a higher case fatality rate than 0.4% and that's it you're done. This is without even getting into the 'walked out of a lab' theory which would presumably get me banned off HN... It seems criticising the US, UK etc. for the slightest thing is fine but criticising totalitarian genocidal sabre-rattling pandemic-unleashing states is beyond the pale.
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    On a meta note, I wanted to respond to your top-level comment to point out (playing devil’s advocate) that there are countries like Japan with conviction rates well exceeding 99% (but for different reasons). I suspect that minor gotchas like this are capable of having the opposite effect: neutral people who care about nuance will feel like you are slightly adapting facts to suit anti-CCP narrative. Compounded by the fact that there is little verifiable information due to heavy censorship, this makes any argument on the topic quite challenging. After your top-level comment got downvoted I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my opinion: some might think I downvoted you and/or others will mistake me for an astroturfer. Personally, I’ve upvoted it and I agree on general sentiment.
    - barnacled 6y ago
      That's a good point to make, however it appears that the conviction rate in Japan comes down more to plea bargaining and only the most blatant cases being allowed to proceed forward [0]. I agree that kind of thing can erode the argument so thank you for pointing it out, I wasn't actually aware of that fact re: Japan and probably I'd put less emphasis on that knowing that there can be other alternative explanations. I don't agree that it's a struggle to criticise the CCP more generally however as while they lock down as much information as they can, plenty leaks out (as always with totalitarian regimes) and there is overwhelming evidence including video, testimony, etc. as to treatment of Uighurs and Falon Gong. I intentionally added references to my original post as to avoid such criticism... for all the good it did me! And please feel free to express yourself, I have upvoted you also :) [0]:https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468111?journalCode=jls https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468111?jou...
  - croes 6y ago
    Things like "pandemic-unleashing" devalue your comment.
    - barnacled 6y ago
      I do find the sensitivity on that phrasing hilarious given the absolute hysteria around US/UK politics and some of the phrasing used there. I won't make specific examples to avoid partisanship but it is just mind boggling. would "gross negligence, face-saving, cover up and delay resulting in over a million more deaths than necessary" work better for you? [0] [0]:https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/china-coronavirus-coverup-05253/ https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/china-coronavirus-coveru...
      - croes 6y ago
        "gross negligence, face-saving, cover up and delay resulting in over a million more deaths than necessary" So the Chinese government is acting like any other government?
        barnacled 6y ago
        err, no? This kind of (typically self-loathing) moral equivalence really bothers me. It's so entitled to think that govts leading countries like the UK and US which are nice to live in and have so many incredible freedoms and benefits which so many seem entitled and utterly unappreciative of. China are literally harvesting organs, disappearing political dissidents and covered up the outbreak of a pandemic (to say the least you could about that), and their govt is responsible for 10's of millions of deaths of their own people. Some nebulous Chomsky-ish nonsense doesn't rank against that, sorry.
        croes 6y ago
        Is that the cause of the riots in the US? Nice living and freedom? Or are you comparing apples and oranges and ignore the true costs? How is the living for the lower classes? They get exploited, imprisoned, killed. Not for the communist party but for the market. Same same but different. And that are only their own people. What happens to other nations is worse. Strange enough that the victims of the US war on drugs and war on terror aren't attributed to the US government although they are the consequences of government actions and lies. The Shah in Iran, the killing of Kurds by Saddam, the lies about WMD in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands killed in the Iraq wars, Guantanamo, the emergence of ISIS, etc. And that's only the middle east. Is that cognitive dissonance or ignorance? You probably enjoy the benefits of the "free world", that puts you in the top 10%, as it does me. I bet the top 10% of China are satisfied with the government too. Do you have as much sympathy for the Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, etc as you do for the Uyghrs in China? Or are they just terrorists or savages for you? Do you even know any of the names of the corresponding ethnic groups in these countries, or are they uninteresting because they are just collateral damage of the good guys? And don't start with whataboutism, the West has the longer history in this respect.
  - CyanBird 6y ago
    > It seems criticising the US, UK etc. for the slightest thing is fine but criticising totalitarian genocidal sabre-rattling pandemic-unleashing states is beyond the pale Yeah, because you are not calling for "criticism" but state level character assassination which is rather different Just again the suggestion of conspiracy theories can be a topic of discussion if you want, but I don't believe you are interested on discussing specifics which is rather sad to me
    - barnacled 6y ago
      It's a conspiracy theory that wet markets and traditional Chinese medicine (in which raw animal parts are mixed together etc.) are huge pandemic vectors? And that re-opening the markets and putting absolutely no controls whatsoever on them for 17 years after the SARS 1 outbreak is significantly increasing the chances of a pandemic? And that it's not impossible that the virus could have escaped from a lab (since the SARS virus did multiple times before [0]) by accident? Though there is some real debate about that so I'm not blindly advocating that theory, only saying it's not entirely implausible. I mean I'd love to hear your arguments as to the contrary, since you accuse me of 'state level character assassination' by... providing a large number of references to incredibly evil behaviour by the CCP? Please feel free to rebut any 'specific' which you accuse me of refusing to discuss? I am making specific criticisms none of which I see you have chosen to rebut or discuss rather you are instead trying to smear me. Am happy to hear your actual arguments... [0]:https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-beijing-lab-twice-50137 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-bei...
      - CyanBird 6y ago
        > wet markets and traditional Chinese medicine (in which raw animal parts are mixed together etc.) are huge pandemic vectors? Ofc, that's why they were reformed, current meat and grocery markets commonly found are nothing like the markets of SARS And yeah, huge reforms took place on Chinese Healthcare policy[0] alongside South Korean and Vietnamese Healthcare policy, which is why all three countries have been doing so well, they learned all the lessons from SARS which were ignored in the West [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/ Overall sad to see that you are clearly not engaging in good faith, as these discussions are very important :/ > And that it's not impossible that the virus could have escaped from a lab by accident? And no, once again you show the conspiracy angle, no, it is not the case because the virus has been genetically analyzed all over the world now and not datasets have been produced which could show manipulation, let alone the fact that patient Zero was found a while ago[1], but of course I am sadly not expecting you to actually accept it, as I am sure you will pivot to another branch of the broader "China == Evil" conspiracy-adjacent beliefs :/ [1] https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    There do seem to be a lot of CCP apologists when the evident facts that they commonly lie to their people, strictly control emigration, and go as far as killing dissenters, should make it very clear that this is not a regime you want to live under.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    The problem with the line of thinking that China deliberately engineered/created/released sars-cov-2 is that there's zero motivation for it. What could they possibly gain from it? What's the strategic value of it?
    - barnacled 6y ago
      Oh god... I didn't say it was deliberate!!!! The argument is that they were profoundly negligent. As for the lab side of things, the argument is that it was an accidental release (as happened multiple times with SARS 1). My point is whether or not it walked out of the lab (by ACCIDENT) given they knew in 2003 that certain things were major risks, they should have come down on them like a ton of bricks. The fact they re-opened wet markets and took no further steps to tackle that makes them responsible through negligence.
      - strogonoff 6y ago
        The combination of facts is (I’m also giving some references to your points): 1) China is known to have contributed[0] to bat coronavirus research, my speculation is that Wuhan’s BSL-4 lab exists primarily for this reason. 2) There were documented lab escapes of original SARS-CoV from labs in Beijing[1] in 2004, as I recall resulting in at least one death. 3) WHO’s study starts this month, but they don’t seem to mention lab escape (not of some “engineered virus”, just straight up a natural sample escaping on a person) as a possibility[2]. I am not sure if they are playing politics or this is their sincere outlook. I can’t stress this enough: China may have been unlucky to be struck by the original SARS-CoV, so it’s reasonable that they had the motivation to study its origins; that research is valuable and it’d be absolutely bonkers to criticize scientists for having done it. Even if lab escape did indeed happen to be the cause of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, I am not sure this should be a basis for prosecution of a particular country (as opposed to e.g. tightening of BSL security practices): there’s human factor, and mistakes happen; if it hadn’t been China it could’ve eventually been another country. What I find alarming is if an effort to obstruct the study of pandemic origins in order to save face (?) is taking place. If it was a lab escape, humanity’s future could be much safer if we knew how it happened—but how would researchers know it was a lab escape if they can’t look in that direction? [0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-015-0422-1 https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-... (2015, two authors are with Wuhan Institute of Virology) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_... [2] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-study-of-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-...
  - hndudette2 6y ago
    There's loads of Chinese and Chinese-ancestry developers on here, some non-trivial proportion harbor nationalistic sentiment towards China and auto downvote anything critical of the CCP. I've worked with over 10 mainland Chinese devs who had emigrated out of China, and even though they're wonderful people and very talented (half of them PhDs from places like Tsingua or a college outside of China), they by and large were incredibly nationalistic and won't hear a single bad word about Mao etc.
    - barnacled 6y ago
      Yeah in China the education system is hugely geared up to indoctrinate. I studied at university with many Chinese people, know people who have lived there and of course have read a lot about it. It is no surprise!
    - high_density 6y ago
      well things go bad when they actually realize and/or admit CCP isn't a beneficial entity for the Chinese... they have family/relatives in mainland... have to be careful even in abroad
    - meditative 6y ago
      I've worked with several Chinese engineers, who are quietly critical of the CCP. Since they still have family in China they know better than to be openly critical of China.
    - busrf 6y ago
      I am mainlander Chinese diaspora and this is such a reductionist portrait of the variety of opinions held by emigrants from China about the CCP, which can differ dramatically depending on when you emigrated, what age you are, what part of the country you are from, whether you are religious, your own specific family history, and who is currently in power in China. There is also quite a bit of dissonance and public vs. private attitudes that you have to sort through. The mainstream and tolerated view in mainland china is that the cultural revolution was a huge mistake - there are way too many families that were fucked up by it - but Mao was still a great guy.
  - muglug 6y ago
    > I honestly wonder whether it's ... just standard HNers who are in some sort of woke-led state of denial. I don't think there's any evidence for that. Every woke tech person I know would rather quit their job than do work that benefits the CCP. I think that's why all the biggest tech companies have tiptoed up to that point (e.g. project dragonfly) but haven't been able to cross it.
- dang 6y ago
  Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You broke them badly here. There is no evidence that the people downvoting the comments you disagree with are communist agents. The evidence is entirely that the community is simply divided on divisive topics, like this one. That's what's going on here, and it's destructive to post these inflated accusations to the contrary—it's poison, in fact. That's why the site guidelines ask you not to do it.
CyanBird 6y ago
Calling for shock-porn rather than rationality and discourse is exactly the kind of things that receive downvotes on HN, not sure why you act so surprised
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ekianjo 6y ago
> see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Let's dissociate the country from the political apparatus. What's evil is the CCP, not China in itself - it's not like the citizens can vote the current regime out.
- barnacled 6y ago
  I really get extremely tired of this kind of thing. Obviously I mean the CCP when I say 'China'. Why does nobody say this when people criticise other countries? In nearly all parlance talking about countries you reference those countries directly 'the US invaded Iraq' for e.g. It's a shorthand for 'the govt of xxx'.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > Why does nobody say this when people criticise other countries? because most other countries we talk about have some kind of representative system where the people actually have a say in who governs them. Of course it's all relative, no representation is ever perfect, but in a dictatorial regime there's no representation at all.
    - barnacled 6y ago
      Yeah sure, I mean when people say 'Iran' did X or 'Venezuela' did Y those are fully representative govts that the people can overturn at any point. Oh wait. Why aren't you saying نظام‎ instead of Iran? Why not 'Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela' instead of Venezuela? Come on man.
      - ekianjo 6y ago
        > , I mean when people say 'Iran' did X or 'Venezuela' did Y those are fully representative govts that the people can overturn at any point. For Venezuela, people did vote for Chavez in the first place right? Which then made the turn to dictatorship. Which is what you should expect when when you elect a Marxist.
      - 6y ago
dang 6y ago
If you don't have actual evidence of communist agents downvoting your comments, then you're breaking the rules by posting like this. Please review and follow https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." Overwhelmingly, this stuff is just internet-style cloak-and-dagger fantasy, and cheap rhetoric. How do I know that? Because when I look at who the actual users are who make these votes, and I see they were, for example, commenting on HN about Julia in 2015, the odds that they are a communist plant round to zero. This reality is so absolutely remote from what comments like yours are insinuating that it's hard for me to believe that people are willing to go there. Yet here we are, with spies in every closet and foreign agents under every bed. The only word for this is cartoonish. The truth is that this is a very large, very international community, with millions of users having all sorts of backgrounds and views, and they disagree on divisive topics like China. That is the extremely mundane—albeit emotionally charged—reality of what is going on here. Accusing people who hold different views of being spies and foreign agents is the fastest way to poison the community, so we don't allow it, especially when there isn't a shred of anything resembling evidence to support it. This entire dynamic is determined by tribal identifications on both sides. That leads people to hate and ultimately want to destroy each other. That's not compatible with the value of this site, which is curiosity. People can't be curious with each other and want to destroy each other at the same time—the nervous system doesn't work that way. If anyone wants more explanation, there are arbitrary amounts of it at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=astroturf%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

It is fun to see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Mine is fully referenced and went to -1 instantly... there is definitely some real denial about what the CCP actually do.

oulu2006 6y ago

Yeah, I noticed, CCP agents are around in force. I upvoted, but I can only do so much.

barnacled 6y ago
I honestly wonder whether it's that or just standard HNers who are in some sort of woke-led state of denial. A totalitarian genocidal regime who has demonstrably lied consistently about everything of any importance but if you question whether, perhaps, they might have possibly done a little more about wet markets/traditional Chinese medicine given the 2003 SARS outbreak which clearly indicated this major risk area - and you get hammered for it. Go further and suggest maybe covering up the outbreak to give the virus enough time to spread everywhere was maybe not a great thing and the next virus might have a higher case fatality rate than 0.4% and that's it you're done. This is without even getting into the 'walked out of a lab' theory which would presumably get me banned off HN... It seems criticising the US, UK etc. for the slightest thing is fine but criticising totalitarian genocidal sabre-rattling pandemic-unleashing states is beyond the pale.
- strogonoff 6y ago
  On a meta note, I wanted to respond to your top-level comment to point out (playing devil’s advocate) that there are countries like Japan with conviction rates well exceeding 99% (but for different reasons). I suspect that minor gotchas like this are capable of having the opposite effect: neutral people who care about nuance will feel like you are slightly adapting facts to suit anti-CCP narrative. Compounded by the fact that there is little verifiable information due to heavy censorship, this makes any argument on the topic quite challenging. After your top-level comment got downvoted I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my opinion: some might think I downvoted you and/or others will mistake me for an astroturfer. Personally, I’ve upvoted it and I agree on general sentiment.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    That's a good point to make, however it appears that the conviction rate in Japan comes down more to plea bargaining and only the most blatant cases being allowed to proceed forward [0]. I agree that kind of thing can erode the argument so thank you for pointing it out, I wasn't actually aware of that fact re: Japan and probably I'd put less emphasis on that knowing that there can be other alternative explanations. I don't agree that it's a struggle to criticise the CCP more generally however as while they lock down as much information as they can, plenty leaks out (as always with totalitarian regimes) and there is overwhelming evidence including video, testimony, etc. as to treatment of Uighurs and Falon Gong. I intentionally added references to my original post as to avoid such criticism... for all the good it did me! And please feel free to express yourself, I have upvoted you also :) [0]:https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468111?journalCode=jls https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468111?jou...
- croes 6y ago
  Things like "pandemic-unleashing" devalue your comment.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    I do find the sensitivity on that phrasing hilarious given the absolute hysteria around US/UK politics and some of the phrasing used there. I won't make specific examples to avoid partisanship but it is just mind boggling. would "gross negligence, face-saving, cover up and delay resulting in over a million more deaths than necessary" work better for you? [0] [0]:https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/china-coronavirus-coverup-05253/ https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/china-coronavirus-coveru...
    - croes 6y ago
      "gross negligence, face-saving, cover up and delay resulting in over a million more deaths than necessary" So the Chinese government is acting like any other government?
      - barnacled 6y ago
        err, no? This kind of (typically self-loathing) moral equivalence really bothers me. It's so entitled to think that govts leading countries like the UK and US which are nice to live in and have so many incredible freedoms and benefits which so many seem entitled and utterly unappreciative of. China are literally harvesting organs, disappearing political dissidents and covered up the outbreak of a pandemic (to say the least you could about that), and their govt is responsible for 10's of millions of deaths of their own people. Some nebulous Chomsky-ish nonsense doesn't rank against that, sorry.
        croes 6y ago
        Is that the cause of the riots in the US? Nice living and freedom? Or are you comparing apples and oranges and ignore the true costs? How is the living for the lower classes? They get exploited, imprisoned, killed. Not for the communist party but for the market. Same same but different. And that are only their own people. What happens to other nations is worse. Strange enough that the victims of the US war on drugs and war on terror aren't attributed to the US government although they are the consequences of government actions and lies. The Shah in Iran, the killing of Kurds by Saddam, the lies about WMD in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands killed in the Iraq wars, Guantanamo, the emergence of ISIS, etc. And that's only the middle east. Is that cognitive dissonance or ignorance? You probably enjoy the benefits of the "free world", that puts you in the top 10%, as it does me. I bet the top 10% of China are satisfied with the government too. Do you have as much sympathy for the Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, etc as you do for the Uyghrs in China? Or are they just terrorists or savages for you? Do you even know any of the names of the corresponding ethnic groups in these countries, or are they uninteresting because they are just collateral damage of the good guys? And don't start with whataboutism, the West has the longer history in this respect.
- CyanBird 6y ago
  > It seems criticising the US, UK etc. for the slightest thing is fine but criticising totalitarian genocidal sabre-rattling pandemic-unleashing states is beyond the pale Yeah, because you are not calling for "criticism" but state level character assassination which is rather different Just again the suggestion of conspiracy theories can be a topic of discussion if you want, but I don't believe you are interested on discussing specifics which is rather sad to me
  - barnacled 6y ago
    It's a conspiracy theory that wet markets and traditional Chinese medicine (in which raw animal parts are mixed together etc.) are huge pandemic vectors? And that re-opening the markets and putting absolutely no controls whatsoever on them for 17 years after the SARS 1 outbreak is significantly increasing the chances of a pandemic? And that it's not impossible that the virus could have escaped from a lab (since the SARS virus did multiple times before [0]) by accident? Though there is some real debate about that so I'm not blindly advocating that theory, only saying it's not entirely implausible. I mean I'd love to hear your arguments as to the contrary, since you accuse me of 'state level character assassination' by... providing a large number of references to incredibly evil behaviour by the CCP? Please feel free to rebut any 'specific' which you accuse me of refusing to discuss? I am making specific criticisms none of which I see you have chosen to rebut or discuss rather you are instead trying to smear me. Am happy to hear your actual arguments... [0]:https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-beijing-lab-twice-50137 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-bei...
    - CyanBird 6y ago
      > wet markets and traditional Chinese medicine (in which raw animal parts are mixed together etc.) are huge pandemic vectors? Ofc, that's why they were reformed, current meat and grocery markets commonly found are nothing like the markets of SARS And yeah, huge reforms took place on Chinese Healthcare policy[0] alongside South Korean and Vietnamese Healthcare policy, which is why all three countries have been doing so well, they learned all the lessons from SARS which were ignored in the West [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/ Overall sad to see that you are clearly not engaging in good faith, as these discussions are very important :/ > And that it's not impossible that the virus could have escaped from a lab by accident? And no, once again you show the conspiracy angle, no, it is not the case because the virus has been genetically analyzed all over the world now and not datasets have been produced which could show manipulation, let alone the fact that patient Zero was found a while ago[1], but of course I am sadly not expecting you to actually accept it, as I am sure you will pivot to another branch of the broader "China == Evil" conspiracy-adjacent beliefs :/ [1] https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  There do seem to be a lot of CCP apologists when the evident facts that they commonly lie to their people, strictly control emigration, and go as far as killing dissenters, should make it very clear that this is not a regime you want to live under.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  The problem with the line of thinking that China deliberately engineered/created/released sars-cov-2 is that there's zero motivation for it. What could they possibly gain from it? What's the strategic value of it?
  - barnacled 6y ago
    Oh god... I didn't say it was deliberate!!!! The argument is that they were profoundly negligent. As for the lab side of things, the argument is that it was an accidental release (as happened multiple times with SARS 1). My point is whether or not it walked out of the lab (by ACCIDENT) given they knew in 2003 that certain things were major risks, they should have come down on them like a ton of bricks. The fact they re-opened wet markets and took no further steps to tackle that makes them responsible through negligence.
    - strogonoff 6y ago
      The combination of facts is (I’m also giving some references to your points): 1) China is known to have contributed[0] to bat coronavirus research, my speculation is that Wuhan’s BSL-4 lab exists primarily for this reason. 2) There were documented lab escapes of original SARS-CoV from labs in Beijing[1] in 2004, as I recall resulting in at least one death. 3) WHO’s study starts this month, but they don’t seem to mention lab escape (not of some “engineered virus”, just straight up a natural sample escaping on a person) as a possibility[2]. I am not sure if they are playing politics or this is their sincere outlook. I can’t stress this enough: China may have been unlucky to be struck by the original SARS-CoV, so it’s reasonable that they had the motivation to study its origins; that research is valuable and it’d be absolutely bonkers to criticize scientists for having done it. Even if lab escape did indeed happen to be the cause of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, I am not sure this should be a basis for prosecution of a particular country (as opposed to e.g. tightening of BSL security practices): there’s human factor, and mistakes happen; if it hadn’t been China it could’ve eventually been another country. What I find alarming is if an effort to obstruct the study of pandemic origins in order to save face (?) is taking place. If it was a lab escape, humanity’s future could be much safer if we knew how it happened—but how would researchers know it was a lab escape if they can’t look in that direction? [0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-015-0422-1 https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-... (2015, two authors are with Wuhan Institute of Virology) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_... [2] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-study-of-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-...
- hndudette2 6y ago
  There's loads of Chinese and Chinese-ancestry developers on here, some non-trivial proportion harbor nationalistic sentiment towards China and auto downvote anything critical of the CCP. I've worked with over 10 mainland Chinese devs who had emigrated out of China, and even though they're wonderful people and very talented (half of them PhDs from places like Tsingua or a college outside of China), they by and large were incredibly nationalistic and won't hear a single bad word about Mao etc.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    Yeah in China the education system is hugely geared up to indoctrinate. I studied at university with many Chinese people, know people who have lived there and of course have read a lot about it. It is no surprise!
  - high_density 6y ago
    well things go bad when they actually realize and/or admit CCP isn't a beneficial entity for the Chinese... they have family/relatives in mainland... have to be careful even in abroad
  - meditative 6y ago
    I've worked with several Chinese engineers, who are quietly critical of the CCP. Since they still have family in China they know better than to be openly critical of China.
  - busrf 6y ago
    I am mainlander Chinese diaspora and this is such a reductionist portrait of the variety of opinions held by emigrants from China about the CCP, which can differ dramatically depending on when you emigrated, what age you are, what part of the country you are from, whether you are religious, your own specific family history, and who is currently in power in China. There is also quite a bit of dissonance and public vs. private attitudes that you have to sort through. The mainstream and tolerated view in mainland china is that the cultural revolution was a huge mistake - there are way too many families that were fucked up by it - but Mao was still a great guy.
- muglug 6y ago
  > I honestly wonder whether it's ... just standard HNers who are in some sort of woke-led state of denial. I don't think there's any evidence for that. Every woke tech person I know would rather quit their job than do work that benefits the CCP. I think that's why all the biggest tech companies have tiptoed up to that point (e.g. project dragonfly) but haven't been able to cross it.
dang 6y ago
Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You broke them badly here. There is no evidence that the people downvoting the comments you disagree with are communist agents. The evidence is entirely that the community is simply divided on divisive topics, like this one. That's what's going on here, and it's destructive to post these inflated accusations to the contrary—it's poison, in fact. That's why the site guidelines ask you not to do it.

CyanBird 6y ago

Calling for shock-porn rather than rationality and discourse is exactly the kind of things that receive downvotes on HN, not sure why you act so surprised

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ekianjo 6y ago

> see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Let's dissociate the country from the political apparatus. What's evil is the CCP, not China in itself - it's not like the citizens can vote the current regime out.

barnacled 6y ago
I really get extremely tired of this kind of thing. Obviously I mean the CCP when I say 'China'. Why does nobody say this when people criticise other countries? In nearly all parlance talking about countries you reference those countries directly 'the US invaded Iraq' for e.g. It's a shorthand for 'the govt of xxx'.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Why does nobody say this when people criticise other countries? because most other countries we talk about have some kind of representative system where the people actually have a say in who governs them. Of course it's all relative, no representation is ever perfect, but in a dictatorial regime there's no representation at all.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    Yeah sure, I mean when people say 'Iran' did X or 'Venezuela' did Y those are fully representative govts that the people can overturn at any point. Oh wait. Why aren't you saying نظام‎ instead of Iran? Why not 'Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela' instead of Venezuela? Come on man.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      > , I mean when people say 'Iran' did X or 'Venezuela' did Y those are fully representative govts that the people can overturn at any point. For Venezuela, people did vote for Chavez in the first place right? Which then made the turn to dictatorship. Which is what you should expect when when you elect a Marxist.
    - 6y ago

dang 6y ago

If you don't have actual evidence of communist agents downvoting your comments, then you're breaking the rules by posting like this. Please review and follow https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." Overwhelmingly, this stuff is just internet-style cloak-and-dagger fantasy, and cheap rhetoric. How do I know that? Because when I look at who the actual users are who make these votes, and I see they were, for example, commenting on HN about Julia in 2015, the odds that they are a communist plant round to zero. This reality is so absolutely remote from what comments like yours are insinuating that it's hard for me to believe that people are willing to go there. Yet here we are, with spies in every closet and foreign agents under every bed. The only word for this is cartoonish. The truth is that this is a very large, very international community, with millions of users having all sorts of backgrounds and views, and they disagree on divisive topics like China. That is the extremely mundane—albeit emotionally charged—reality of what is going on here. Accusing people who hold different views of being spies and foreign agents is the fastest way to poison the community, so we don't allow it, especially when there isn't a shred of anything resembling evidence to support it. This entire dynamic is determined by tribal identifications on both sides. That leads people to hate and ultimately want to destroy each other. That's not compatible with the value of this site, which is curiosity. People can't be curious with each other and want to destroy each other at the same time—the nervous system doesn't work that way. If anyone wants more explanation, there are arbitrary amounts of it at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=astroturf%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....