I think that the Communist Party of China made a really big mistake, which caused a serious impact on China's national image. But I also do not agree with Liu Xiaobo's political views.
Finally, China's political environment indeed bad, but most of the Western media coverage distorted the facts, including the Liu Xiaobo event.
You haven't clarified any facts, you've just made two statements of opinion without any supporting evidence or greater explanation.
I hate China's government and the way they operate but I also recognize that the world is very complex and cultures are ancient and have very different but also successful mechanisms of operation. On the same note I would not write off an American's perspective because the president is a wack job.
It just so happens that this kind of statement is common in the Chinese people that I speak with.
You can make a very good case that Western media is terrible in its China reporting, but a blunt statement like that isn't going to be received well in a community like HN that likes to think of itself as critical.
As I said, I was trying to help them understand how their statement was likely to be received not "tritely dismissing the comment on technicalities." which is an interpretation entirely of your own that wasn't contained in my original post.
You take a comment that is not really qualitatively different from any other post on HN and give it special status because it's posted by a Chinese national.
You're the one asking others to give this empty argument special status because it was posted by someone who claims to be Chinese.
"Oh the coverage is all wrong" is a pretty empty statement by itself.
That in itself is not necessarily a good thing; more than once I've seen it lead to fruitless discussion because it turns out those involved actually did not agree on those assumptions.
But on the other hand it's sometimes necessary. We can't have a discussion, practically speaking, where we define every term we use journal-article-style, or provide references for every single assumption.
My point is that it strikes me as perfectly reasonable that when 'we' are confronted with a perspective that is very different from our own, some more effort should be put into providing arguments (and/or definitions).
Not to mention that on the whole I'd say HN already demands elaboration even from those who have a relatively-similar perspective or background, and I think more of that wouldn't hurt.
I do understand how it can seem unfair, but I don't think it's unreasonable.
But grandparent's post genuinely just presented two opinions without elaboration. It could have come from a westerner and it would downvoted, because it just isn't a high quality comment (though definitely not an offensive one either).
What facts were distorted? That he was jailed, multiple times, for defending freedom of expression? That he died in custody? That his wife Liu Xia was under house arrest for years without charges? Or was it his role during the Tiananmen protests and subsequent massacre? That he negotiated the free passage of students from Tiananmen, saving many from the advancing tanks?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-...
Who gets to decide what is or is not allowed to be spoken?
> Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.
Even if it is repressive, preventing him to say it by arresting him and his family is not repressive to you?
Are you sure he was arrest because of saying that? Do you have any facts to support your view?
> Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.
Do you think Liu deserves Nobel Peace Prize after saying that publicly?
Remember that the argument was "There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated".
I don't care one way or the other, it's the Nobel committee's decision who they award the prize to. It makes no difference to me. It doesn't make what he, or any other Nobel Laureate say any more true or worthy of consideration.
> Remember that the argument was "There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated".
There was no argument, it was a statement. If you want to argue in favor of why some views should never be publicly stated and who is gonna decide what is/is not allowed, go ahead.
the core issue here is simple: how come such a man who repeatedly made such extremist styles comments in public got awarded the nobel peace prize.
That is your issue, not mine.
> you came to this thread largely because Liu is not a random dude on street, he had the nobel peace prize.
I am here because of the outrageous comment you made about ‘certain views that should never ever be publicly stated’. If you can’t defend your opinions then why are you here? Can you, or can you not explain how do you support your extremist views?
what a joke.
A joke indeed.
If you live in a society that allows you to publicly state anything without consequences, I'd say that is horrible.
If you live in the US, try talk about some racial stuff and bring in the same colonization elements in, see how that is going to end.
Time to grow up talk like an adult.
For his sentence, no one in this thread ever supported that, for me, it is as bad as giving this man the nobel peace prize.
Yes. You must defend every word you say.
> Time to grow up talk like an adult.
You mean like an adult who can't defend his/her positions and is willing to send to jail everyone who disagrees with him/her? What a wonderful "adult" you must be.
But that doesn't exist anywhere in the world. The closest is the US, but even their extremist version of freedom of speech has government imposed limits.
Yea. That is what I want to learn. You do not care about the Prize.
> If you want to argue in favor of why some views should never be publicly stated and who is gonna decide what is/is not allowed, go ahead.
It seems that is you want to know about it. Probably I misunderstood you. I have no interest :P. So we can stop here.
You can spend your entire life arguing whether it is good or bad for China to be colonized by the west for 300 years, I am not going to waste my time on that.
Oh, you just don't like it.
In America we have helpful groups like Southern Poverty Law Center which direct us to which ideas are bad speech that shouldn't be allowed. Maybe China should follow our example and privatize their speech curatorship police, then they would be more free.
To see this as people simply being closed-minded to different cultures is really myopic.
I personally refuse to hold people to different moral standards because they come from another country.