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Comment by jccalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, the few times I've tried to bring it up with Chinese students at USA universities they have all been blasé about it. They have all been, "that's just the way it is."

That could be because they just don't want to talk about it. Or because they are mostly from rich families and so they really don't care. Or only kids from loyal families are allowed to go to school overseas.

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Or perhaps their English isn’t good enough or they think type are trying to lecture them?

At least one person I talked to was very fluent in English.

TIP: find a student born and raised in Beijing/Tianjing, they are much more likely to talk about politics. My father’s favorite story was about drinking with the student leader at the night before 89’s event happened.

No one wants to upset a good thing, that being in the United States of America.

I have asked many as well. I believe it is partly cultural pressure to conform, but mostly because they all have family back in China still and care about what happens to them.

I have also heard, but have not been able to verify, that any Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party.

"Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party." . The chinese international students in US, have to become member of the Chinese Students Association. The association is a front for the Chinese govt via their Embassy to monitor the students.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/14/exclusive-chinese-gover...

> that any Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party

Not true. Being a Chinese student who studied in the US in the past, I never joined, or was asked to join the Communist Party. In fact, the majority of Chinese students in the US that I know are not Communist Party members. A passport (and a valid visa) is all you need to go abroad.

I wonder if a comparison to how US students would react to mentions of Kent State or Rodney King or OWS would be enlightening. There's obviously a big difference in severity, but given student opposition to some of the fubdamentals of freedom of speech in recent years, maybe we can learn what cultural differences and commonalities drive state- and self-censorship and thus better address the root problems.

The key difference is whether or not people in the society are allowed to discuss the incident, or if doing so is heavily censored.

You know, it's funny. I originally planned to post that comment under a throwaway, but I thought it was ironic that I was afraid of censorship on an American forum. I decided HN readers would be mature enough to handle honest conversation about how to handle a problem that affects all of us in every country. Guess I was wrong

Censorship in America is vast and pernicious. It takes many forms: taboos, shunning, algorithms, downvotes, shadowbans, no-platforming, heckling, harassment, must-show news segments, advertiser demands, textbook authoring committees, etc.

There are ongoing movements on US college campuses and ongoing development in US tech companies that will undo every bit of progress that was fought for in the free speech movement.

This very thread shows a video on an American site being removed because of Chinese complaints.

I am not trying to detract from the importance of Chinese censorship by muddying the waters. This is not whataboutism. We are standing on a sinking ship ourselves, and if we don't start fixing the damage to our own freedoms, we will sink right along with the rest of the world. We must solve our own problems if we are to have any hope of helping others with theirs.

What would you expect an overseas US college student to say or not say about Rodney King?

Whatever the individual US student themselves actually thought about Rodney King and all of the social impacts and causation surrounding those terrible events in Los Angeles.

This is in fact the critical difference between totalitarian society and free society.

I did not ask them about Tienanmen Square but about censorship in general so it is a little different.

I am a college professor and I think student opposition to freedom of speech is way way way overblown.

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