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Comment by metacritic12 | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that if you look at the top articles on HN mentioning China in a negative light, more often than in other articles, you'll get comments talking about:

- How another country (the US usually) is even worse in many ways.

- A change of topic from the article being mentioned.

This is not an an ad-hom against the OP, for all I know he's a normal guy sitting right in my state. But just a pattern if you search other HN articles on China.

Also, I don't get your middle sentence

> Eventually China and Russia will hurt too.

If China steals UK IP, how will China "eventually hurt", other than using the most roundabout logic?

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This breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing, albeit subtly. Please don't do that—it only poisons the threads further.

People are legitimately divided about this and other divisive issues. Don't forget that HN is a highly international community, as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yeah how dare people point out that some articles about China might have been biased! Isn't it interesting that every time someone presents countering viewpoints (not even necessarily defending the Chinese gov), they are almost immediately met with accusations of astroturfing/shilling?

On the other hand, a 2hrs old account that is likely created right before this comment is made is totes not suspicious at all. Nope, not suspicious, at all.

because having an imaginary enemy always helps thinking?

I am questioning if any government official (including this MI6 boss) have any idea of how computer or internet works at all.

China is notably not implicated in messing with the democracies on things like brexit or Trump. Which isn't to say they're saints -- they're just playing a longer game.

As far as people who dare to defend China against being THE WORST... I mean, 1.4 billion people, some of them move to America and speak English. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy.

EDIT: More downvotes, please. Express your patriotism.

Right, but if there was a post about how the US is still polluting with a lot of coal, how often is the top post "But China..." Similarly, India has even more US immigrants, but look at the top critical articles on India.

There's plenty of new evidence showing that China does engage in so-call "Sharp power"

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/21/one-of-americas-biggest...

I think the proper policy is that HN users should upvote the sidetrack if they find that to be most interesting, and upvote the normal topic if they believe otherwise.

I'm sure admins can take a look into both Russian, Chinese, or even corporate influencers, and find ways to scale down their impact, which the admins should. If they're real opinions of a 1:1 person, then that's fair.

On carbon, trajectory counts. China's government is investing in clean energy and taking it seriously. America? ... Maybe this topic is a bad example for what you're trying to say.

My beef is seeing liberals succumb to red scare and hypernationalism regarding China. They have problems, but they've also done a phenomenal job for their own people these last 40 years.

Where is this partisanship coming from? There's no mention of being liberal or conservative upstream from this comment but this comment (and others of yours) are attempting to call out one party in the US and throwing fault their way. It's odd since it isn't a thing in the original article probably because it's not about the US at all.

The people from Google who've been demonizing the Chinese largely self identify as "liberal". Yes, it's awfully ironic.

I wouldn't call it partisan as they're nowhere close to mainstream Democrats.

What makes you think HN should be site with news piece of each country properly distributed?

China is not even a country. PRC is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

China is the unofficial name for the PRC and is widely known to be a country. I mean... everyone agrees China is a country and you're just talking about using a more official name for it vs not doing that. You're the only person I've ever seen saying 'China is not even a country.'

And if you look at their submissions and comments, you’ll see a heavy China focus.

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