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paradite

How about stopping the baseless accusations thrown at China?

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do...

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-ihinpmn...

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do...

http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml

http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html

Edit: Looks like I'm being flagged for pointing out the false accusations? Slowly losing my faith in HN.

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> How about stopping the baseless accusations thrown at China?

Apologies, but all the links you posted are in chinese, and google translate just turns them into mostly garbage so Im struggling with the context of your comment.

But I'm not sure what this issue here is, the user above you pointed out "the kind of information being censored" as an example of what's being discussed in the parent article, and that seems unrelated to the argument "Stop throwing baseless accusations about X".

Is the problem with the accusation that China is censoring economic information, or is it that the default rate as used in this example is inaccurate?

The example is inaccurate, or rather false and misleading.

Welllllll I don't really think that was the point of the comment, rather it was showing an example of what content has been blocked.

I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is.

The article is about censoring economic news.

The top comment suggests an example of economic news that is censored.

Anyone reading the comments would assume that the example news is indeed censored.

However, that was not the case, as shown in the links I provided. (If they were censored, the pages would have been taken down retrospectively)

I'm pointing out that example is a false accusation of the content being censored.

What were the links posted? They were flagged and removed.

Just some links to articles in Chinese websites that talks about defaults recently:

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do...

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-ihinpmn...

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do...

http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml

http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html

I interpreted OP's comment as meaning that this particular reuters link is censored, not necessarily all URLs with the same semantic content. Probably censors are not vigilant enough.

The context of the NYT article is that bad news in Chinese media is censored. GP already said "the kind of ...", which was not about a specific piece or a specific link, so it would be natural for me to interpret GP's comment as "the semantic content about defaults is censored in China", which is not true according to @paradite.

Right. I didn't see that you could interpret it that way. Apologies for not stating that assumption.

Can you explain in short what accusation you deem baseless? Is it the fact that censorship is going on or is it the specific item of "bad economic views" linked by the parent?

Unfortunately for most of us westerners the chinese web remains mostly opaque (and automated translation very mediocre) so I don't understand what your links are supposed to demonstrate. That's probably why you're getting downvoted too.

Apparently he linked several uncensored Chinese language articles that talk about that specific piece of news.

I vouched for your post because as far as I can tell, it's written in good faith and is not in violation of any HN guidelines. I'm not sure why your post got so rapidly killed - the posts you link to are clearly discussing bond defaults, so I'll take your word for it that they're discussing the same problem as the Reuter's article. And that would indeed seem to be prima facie evidence that this particular story is not being censored.

Censorship in China doesn't work like what Orwell would have told. The claim in the article about a "government directive" might as well be true because similar directives have been consistently leaked to Western media over the years and obviously they have credible inside sources for this kind of leaks. If you look at the detail of the directive it says "manage" which means content getting demoted, removed from front-page, retweets disappeared, anything but outright removal, so existence of content doesn't prove its popular visibility is not being manipulated. This is likely them learning to take a page from the book of Western media operation but you can still tell what amateurs they are when supposedly state secrets are leaked left and right like this.

I would agree with you that such techniques could be used, and in fact I suspect they are used. However, I wouldn't say they strictly qualifies as censorship, because you can still get the information if you know where to look at (go to specific websites legally and search for them).

If information that would typically be widespread was prevented from becoming widespread, then censorship has taken place and succeeded.

If a newsworthy event has taken place but is not reported on mainstream media because of government intervention, that is censorship.

The main purpose of censorship is not to completely stop all access to some information, it is to prevent that information from reaching a majority of its target audience.

This is what happened here. You're shrugging it off with 'ehhh but you can still find the information if you know to look for it in the first place, where most people would not look'. This apologist attitude is why you're being downvoted. You are using the Chinese government 'approved' definition of censorship with is contradictory to the definition outside of china.

If it's just because of different definitions of censorship, I would gladly take the downvotes. After all, people disagree on definitions and HN allows downvotes for disagreeing.

In fact I am happy that we found the root cause of our disagreement.

Edit: To be more clear, I would define censorship as denying legal means to access a piece of information.

"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient" as determined by a government or private institution"

The definition is pretty clear, and TFA pretty clearly meets that definition. You're not being downvoted simply because people disagree with your point of view, you're being downvoted because you're using alternative party-approved language which subverts the discussion.

To put it really bluntly, your comments match the heuristic of what people would consider propaganda trolling.

> To put it really bluntly, your comments match the heuristic of what people would consider propaganda trolling.

I got downvoted to hell for pointing out that the article doesn't provide the total size of the bond market when talking about those $8 bln defaults. I provided a link to a recent bloomberg article showing the total size is $11 trillion.

Surely those downvotes are a good show of freedom of speech! Shame on you.

> where most people would not look

He/She linked articles from sina.com and hexun, they are arguably the most popular online news outlets in China. Xinhua also have numerous news articles on the increasing defaults [1][2][3] -

May 2018 [1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/finance/2018-05/29/c_1122902212.htm

August 2018 [2] http://www.xinhuanet.com/tech/2018-08/04/c_1123221839.htm

July 2018 [3] http://www.xinhuanet.com/finance/2018-07/13/c_1123119356.htm

How about stop commenting on something you don't even understand?

Paradite, I upvoted to give some balance. People might be quick to downvote in this case because they've encountered too many nationalist trolls from whichever country, not just China. Not saying that you are a nationalist troll! I imagine that if the topic were about, say, net neutrality or the Patriot Act in the US and I were to write, "Hey how about you guys cut it with the attacks on the US, OK?" I'd be (appropriately) downvoted. Is there anti-PRC bias at HN? I'm not sure and don't think it's easy to know. In any case the very great things the PRC government since Deng has done for the development of China, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and into a strong position, must be viewed along side everything else, including censorship and importantly now the crackdowns on Uyghurs, I imagine you'd agree. I can't imagine that most members of the HN community would wish it any other way when it came to their own countries. I understand the desire to defend China and the PRC state, especially when people appear to jump to the wrong conclusions and there is anti-Chinese sentiment all around, but that also doesn't mean that the PRC is blameless.

Why would you have faith in HN in the first place? :)

If it's on the NY Times about a trade war and a country the USA is losing ground to economically, it's probably something relating to Chomsky's propaganda model.

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