53 ms·

I am not trying to defend China or the CCP in any way here, the situation is not defensible. However, I'm surprised that more comparisons haven't been made to

I am not trying to defend China or the CCP in any way here, the situation is not defensible. However, I'm surprised that more comparisons haven't been made to the way the West has erased Julian Assange, and how easily he disappeared from our collective consciousness.

z3rgl1ng 5y ago
These are very different things.
afavour 5y ago
The West hasn’t censored Assange, though. Throughout he has been free to say whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to say it. Him disappearing from collective consciousness says more about the speed of news cycles these days than anything about censorship, IMO.
freeAgent 5y ago
If we’re going to talk about erasure, one big difference is that there are many people like you in the West who do draw those comparisons publicly on the internet and they remain accessible and even popular online.
yongjik 5y ago
Because that's not comparable..? If someone tried to disseminate classified Chinese military documents depicting war crimes, and got caught by CCP, chances are that nobody will ever see them or hear of them ever again. A much more comparable incident is something like this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct... ), where nobody was "disappeared" - on the contrary, for several months, the media talked about it pretty much every day.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Assange isn't American. Is it true that an Australian reporting on Chinese warcrimes would not see freedom for 9 years? That doesn't pass the smell test for me.
__s 5y ago
You'll hear more Assange when there's progress on US extradition case https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049570918/the-u-s-is-set-to-appeal-the-u-k-s-refusal-to-extradite-wikileaks-assange https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049570918/the-u-s-is-set-to-... For now there's recent news that he's getting married, but that isn't going to be frontpage news
adriand 5y ago
That's not an analogous situation. This is virtually identical to #MeToo cases in the West. For many years, those were also swept under the rug, but the situation now, while still mixed, does seem different. A closer analogy would be the accusations that were made against Bill Clinton. Those would (presumably, and hopefully) be dealt with differently today than they were at the time, but to echo your sentiment, it is a bit amnesiac to point fingers at China for behaviour that the West (or perhaps just some Western countries) has just barely started to change. One difference is that rather than censorship, allegations of sexual abuse by the powerful have long been simply ignored by the police, judiciary, media, etc., rather than censored. The end result was much the same.
zarzavat 5y ago
I don't think the situations are similar. Peng is not a dissident, she's a tennis player. And Assange has not been erased, his trial has been covered even in the mainstream media. The real difference, as the old story goes, is in the quality of the propaganda. The west has managed to convince its people that Assange is a bad person, a rapist even. Whereas China has not managed to convince many of its people that Peng is a bad person, rather they are simply crudely prevented from talking about the issue online. The west is much much better at propaganda than China.
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  People think Chinese propaganda is clever and insidious but in truth Chinese propaganda is extremely clumsy to the point of being essentially harmless in the west. This is the typical level of Chinese propaganda: https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1454346638596743173 https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1454346638596743173
  - afavour 5y ago
    > being essentially harmless in the west. Is their aim to be harmful in the west? My impression has always been that they’re pretty ambivalent about that, they’re more concerned with the internal effect. I don’t know that people even do think Chinese propaganda is clever! In my mind their skill is overarching control over communication. It’s dumb and brute force but it seems to work.
    - FooBarWidget 5y ago
      They aren't aiming to be harmful. But I've seen plenty of people paint everybody who have a non-mainstream opinion on China, as paid undercover propagandists.
      - clove 5y ago
        You don't have a non-mainstream opinion on China; you hold every Chinese (domestic) mainstream opinion and parrot them on this Western forum. One only needs to look at your post history to see that all you do here is post CCP propaganda. Who would do that but a paid shill? HN is one of the few places online that both allows free speech and isn't riddled with bots/spammers/shills. I'd like to keep it that way, meaning you should fuck off. No one is buying your shit, anyway, as you might have found from the replies your posts get. It's a lost cause.
Buttersite 5y ago
[dead]

z3rgl1ng 5y ago

These are very different things.

afavour 5y ago

The West hasn’t censored Assange, though. Throughout he has been free to say whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to say it. Him disappearing from collective consciousness says more about the speed of news cycles these days than anything about censorship, IMO.

freeAgent 5y ago

If we’re going to talk about erasure, one big difference is that there are many people like you in the West who do draw those comparisons publicly on the internet and they remain accessible and even popular online.

yongjik 5y ago

Because that's not comparable..? If someone tried to disseminate classified Chinese military documents depicting war crimes, and got caught by CCP, chances are that nobody will ever see them or hear of them ever again. A much more comparable incident is something like this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct... ), where nobody was "disappeared" - on the contrary, for several months, the media talked about it pretty much every day.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Assange isn't American. Is it true that an Australian reporting on Chinese warcrimes would not see freedom for 9 years? That doesn't pass the smell test for me.

__s 5y ago

You'll hear more Assange when there's progress on US extradition case https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049570918/the-u-s-is-set-to-appeal-the-u-k-s-refusal-to-extradite-wikileaks-assange https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049570918/the-u-s-is-set-to-... For now there's recent news that he's getting married, but that isn't going to be frontpage news

adriand 5y ago

That's not an analogous situation. This is virtually identical to #MeToo cases in the West. For many years, those were also swept under the rug, but the situation now, while still mixed, does seem different. A closer analogy would be the accusations that were made against Bill Clinton. Those would (presumably, and hopefully) be dealt with differently today than they were at the time, but to echo your sentiment, it is a bit amnesiac to point fingers at China for behaviour that the West (or perhaps just some Western countries) has just barely started to change. One difference is that rather than censorship, allegations of sexual abuse by the powerful have long been simply ignored by the police, judiciary, media, etc., rather than censored. The end result was much the same.

zarzavat 5y ago

I don't think the situations are similar. Peng is not a dissident, she's a tennis player. And Assange has not been erased, his trial has been covered even in the mainstream media. The real difference, as the old story goes, is in the quality of the propaganda. The west has managed to convince its people that Assange is a bad person, a rapist even. Whereas China has not managed to convince many of its people that Peng is a bad person, rather they are simply crudely prevented from talking about the issue online. The west is much much better at propaganda than China.

FooBarWidget 5y ago
People think Chinese propaganda is clever and insidious but in truth Chinese propaganda is extremely clumsy to the point of being essentially harmless in the west. This is the typical level of Chinese propaganda: https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1454346638596743173 https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1454346638596743173
- afavour 5y ago
  > being essentially harmless in the west. Is their aim to be harmful in the west? My impression has always been that they’re pretty ambivalent about that, they’re more concerned with the internal effect. I don’t know that people even do think Chinese propaganda is clever! In my mind their skill is overarching control over communication. It’s dumb and brute force but it seems to work.
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    They aren't aiming to be harmful. But I've seen plenty of people paint everybody who have a non-mainstream opinion on China, as paid undercover propagandists.
    - clove 5y ago
      You don't have a non-mainstream opinion on China; you hold every Chinese (domestic) mainstream opinion and parrot them on this Western forum. One only needs to look at your post history to see that all you do here is post CCP propaganda. Who would do that but a paid shill? HN is one of the few places online that both allows free speech and isn't riddled with bots/spammers/shills. I'd like to keep it that way, meaning you should fuck off. No one is buying your shit, anyway, as you might have found from the replies your posts get. It's a lost cause.

Buttersite 5y ago

[dead]