China is a communist dictatorship where you can be arrested and possibly murdered for saying the wrong thing. So this is not very surprising.
This problem is getting worse as nationalistic feelings are heating up all over. If we're going to keep HN alive as a place for thoughtful discussion, we need users to control their rhetorical impulses and consciously respect opposing points of view. HN is a large for a single internet community (5M readers a month), highly international, and replete with opposing points of view. That ought to be a good thing if we don't tear ourselves apart with them.
YC doesn't cross my mind while posting these. What has changed on HN over the last year or two is an uptick in nationalistic flamewar. That's happening because of larger social conditions we're all familiar with, but it has never been welcome on HN, and won't be as long as I'm moderating. That, btw, has nothing to do with which countries people are flaming about. It has to do with the purpose of this site—intellectual curiosity—being incompatible with tribalism.
Generic ideological comments and denunciations of entire countries are examples of empty, fiery rhetoric that we don't want on HN. Why? Because their information content is low, they provoke others into posting worse, and they lead to extremely predictable discussion. The main thing a site dedicated to intellectual curiosity needs to do is not be predictable, so HN is a bad place to fight the same fights over and over.
In case it helps, I've been asking people for years on this site not to bash each other's countries, and the countries that have come up would make a long list. There's no national bias in it.
"You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you."
More seriously, though, the highbrow dismissal of very real problems as tribalism on the same site that frequently has slapfights over technology and news/advertising spam of various forms seems a little much.
Like, if the answer is just "Hey, knock it off we don't want flamewars" that's totally respectable...but the other arguments you've used come off as really smug and out-of-touch.
The moderation issue is garden-variety internet flamewar and requiring people to adhere to the site guidelines. That is mundane stuff, regardless of how much rhetoric people pour out on the internet.
Given that it is a Communist Dictatorship and that it does not have rights-based rule of law, mass internment camps are not very surprising.
Their economy is obviously capitalist. And although Xi has been leaning towards more dictator-like behavior, they haven't been a dictatorship since Mao.
It's more like a giant bureaucracy. They have a process, they have regular handovers of power. It's not "I am the law".
But also not much less absurd than that.
Taking the words of totalitarian leaders literally is very naive.
Does mandated 50% local (aka party) ownership align with "obviously capitalist"? That seems a stretch (aka crony capitalist).
Xi has asked for indefinitely long term of power and gotten it. Handover of power?
> Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
> Economists, political economists, sociologists and historians have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free market capitalism, welfare capitalism and state
The caveats that I mention aren't just "not like the USA" but specifically not like most other capitalist economies either.
Slapping a bunch of incorrect trigger words together terminates thought.
China isn't organized by any free trade principles, they've just formalized their black markets and cronyism.
> It's more like a giant bureaucracy. They have a process, they have regular handovers of power. It's not "I am the law".
You're writing this on an article titled, "China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight," with the subtext, "Around 1 million Uighurs have disappeared without trial. Worse may come."
Dictatorship is about an individual. The chinese government has not been since Mao.
All non-western-democratic governments are not the same. They're not all some giant grab-bag of interchangeable scare words about communism, fascism, dictatorship.
Norway's a socialist state. Do they belong in your bucket too?
Their economy is the exact opposite of Capitalist in fact. It's de facto state controlled top to bottom.
1) The Chinese economy is overwhelmingly state owned or directly controlled. All the major banks are directly owned or controlled by the government. All of their major industries, such as steel, aluminum and energy, are directly owned or controlled by the government. Their largest electronics and telecom companies such as Huawei and China Mobile are directly commanded by the government.
2) No company may do anything out of lock-step with the government. Whether you're Alibaba or Baidu, you must obey at all times, no matter what the stray edict of the week is. You may not challenge the party. Ask Tencent about the government's damaging, arbitrary restrictions on gaming for example. [1]
3) There are no actual property rights. Your property may be revoked, taken from you at any time for any reason. You will not get it back, and you have no ability to challenge this in a court of law. The Chinese Government issues arbitrary rules non-stop that alter your property rights and how property may be used (including randomly choosing to restrict what's acceptable day to day; one day you may have joke apps, the next day they're illegal).
4) The entire economy operates on a system of bribes. You can't operate anything in China without paying bribes. There are no exceptions, whether you're trying to operate a small food business or put up a skyscraper. This means the rule of law is entirely lacking, which is why Transparency International ranks China #77 in the world on corruption.
5) The economy is entirely closed to normal foreign business operations. You can't just set up a business in China as a foreigner. You can't buy Chinese businesses outright, or in most cases take a majority ownership position. Contrast this with the US (which isn't even the best example): you can spend less than a thousand dollars with Stripe Atlas and set up a US corporation at any time, without permission, having never once visited the country and you own it outright.
6) Capital is locked down. You may not take your wealth and flee the country. You and your capital are held captive by their very tight capital controls. You can hardly legally get enough cash out of China to buy a middle class house these days.
7) As a Chinese business you may not operate outside of the country in any manner that the government disagrees with. They approve all large transactions and all large investments. If they don't like something you've done, you will be forced to liquidate out of that position no matter the consequences.
8) It's almost entirely illegal to privately own farm land. This contributes to China having the most backwards and low output farming industry of any major economy.
How is all of this obviously Capitalistic? The state completely controls everything. It's the exact opposite of Capitalist.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-13/china-ord...
Find a Chinese person over the age of 40. Ask them if they've experienced 2 economic systems in their life, then ask them if the first one was communist, and the second one was capitalist. They'll answer yes on all 3, with maybe some elaboration about transitions, legacy effects, and the peculiarities of China.
Then break out the list and try to change their mind. Let me know your results.
Describing an oligarchy as a communist dictatorship is near-equivalent. Far from dishonest.
> Their economy is obviously capitalist
It's capitalist at specific granularities. This is a derail, at best.
> They have a process, they have regular handovers of power.
So does an oligarchy.
But they're not near-equivalent. Group vs individual. Politics are entirely different. Both deemphasize citizen rights but that doesn't make them the same!
Why are people so offended that this distinction exists?
> Group vs individual.
If the organizational operation isn't transparent, it's observably the same top-down dictatorship (worrying about one versus many is silly, insofar as no human governs alone).
[1]: There are vastly different levels of transparency for, in order: Foreigners, rural poor, non-party members (there are 90M party members), party members, people who are well-connected locally and/or nationally -- cynical people might say it's the same here in certain ways, with the biggest difference being party membership as a prestige badge to work for and benefit from.
They are Communists even if they aren't communists.
I see in a later post you say a dictatorship is about individuals. Not in Marxist theory.
Both strongmen did whatever they could and wanted to do. Don't buy the bullshit.
Lack of surprise doesn't mean much of anything w/r/t what the appropriate response ought to be.