I don’t need The Onion, I have China Daily | Hacker News Reader

I don’t need The Onion, I have China Daily

guyhance.com

168 pointsguyhance44 comments

Since we're on the topic of underhanded media manipulation, I'll just leave this here:

I saw this entry skyrocket its way to position #2 on the front page, and within minutes, despite have 130+ upvotes and 30+ comments within 1 hour it is now suddenly 11 pages down, at position 340 (as of this post). As you can see this submission does not have any remark from mods and is not marked "[Flagged]" or anything...

I noticed that too. Hit refresh and it was magically gone from the front page with 139 points while older submissions with fewer points remained.

I had the front page open in a slightly old browser window with this post at #1, and specifically opened a new window before proceeding in case this exact situation happened.

A comment by mods would be appreciated.

Comments criticising China tend to get downvoted. Then slowly as the watchful eye of PRC moves to newer threads less zealous minds prevail and tip the scales back.

HN is no different from every other internet forum: Heavily moderated with very little transparency -- the perfect recipe for filter bubbles and groupthink.

The moderators can even apply permanent penalties to individual users (your comments will sink to the bottom where few will see them) without notice or justification. It's sort of like a shadow-ban but your comments are still visible.

So a modern day Baghdad Bob?

For those laughing, just remember this when a politician comes forward and wants to protect you from fake news. It can happen anywhere, it just does not need to happen all at once for it to come into being.

This is wild. Does anyone have a sense of what people in areas of mainland China think about the protests?

Do they know there are protests?

That must be how the explain the protests, lol

We do know. The number of mainlanders that know about the protests is probably larger than HK's entire population.

If you can read Chinese, go to weibo or tieba or tianya or hupu, you can see posts about the protests. Surely they may get removed after a while but I can assure you that one doesn't gets arrested just for posting the news and discuss about it a bit. The number of off-line discussions cannot be estimated.

Proof (a screenshot from NGA): https://imgur.com/a/FbofCOK

Please remember that HK is physically connected to mainland China and 83.2 million people crossed the border in 2015[0]. Hell, even in 1984 some people still know the government's dirty secrets, it would be extremely arrogant to assume we know nothing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_Wu_Control_Point

More importantly, YouTube now labels all media channels like BBC or RT by their funding sources, where's that disclaimer on any PRC media outlets?

The Onion would probably post something similar :)

http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201906/17/WS5d06d79ca3103d...

>Among these social groups was an alliance of more than 30 local political, business and legal dignitaries who support the proposed amendments to the SAR's extradition law.

Why does anyone in HK support the amendments (or is this fake news)?

This is flagrantly fake news.

That is the point. The people of Hong Kong are marching to protest China's new extradition policy.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/06/16/hong-kong-protes...

China Daily is trying to almost completely misrepresent the reason for the protests. The only way they could make it more "opposite day" is by calling the protest a celebration festival for the love of Chinese authority in Hong Kong.

The funny thing about the misrepresentation is that the U.S. isn't really even meddling. We care our trade deficit with China and tariffs than human rights abuses in China.

Well, there's a bipartisan bill that threatens to abolish HK's treatment as separate from mainland China for trade purposes, if HK's autonomy becomes insufficient.

(And, I despise Ted Cruz, but kudos for supporting that bill.)

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/14/us-senators-table-bill...

It might well be that 30 people or so support the amendments, but what China Daily forgot to report is that more than a million people marched to protest against them.

2 million, according to some estimates. From the images, it definitely looked more than the 1m that were out in the streets last week.

Yes, maybe a quarter of the population. It's insane, and inspiring, the strength of the opposition.

BTW, for better coverage of HK news I recommend the HK Free Press:

https://www.hongkongfp.com

Tom Grundy, the creator of HKFP, has an agenda (as do most news outlets).

I balance HKFP with RTHK and Apple Daily (easier if you can read Cantonese). I don't trust blantantly pro-China outlets, like Sina.

For readers of English, there's not that much left: SCMP (bought by Alibaba recently), and the free (ad-financed) The Standard.

Can you elaborate on Grundy's agenda? Anything beyond pro-democracy, civil liberties, etc.?

Definitely anti-establishment. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but it's good to balance that out with multiple perspectives.

SCMP used to be my paper of choice growing up, but it has started to become more pro-establishment of late.

Some in Hong Kong are willing to sell out the region's independence and principles for the recent economic growth brought by being the PRC's sidecar.

The establishment (somewhat aligned with "pro-Beijing" camp) has more than half seats (43/70) in HK's Legislative Council. Goverment bills require simple majority in the Council to pass. Establishment's support guaranteed that the bill would have passed.

> Keung Suk-man, one of the parents among the protesters, denounced the opposition camp for calling for a strike by schools and teachers to oppose the extradition amendments. Such blatant incitement went against the school's principle of protecting students and training them to think independently, she added.

"training them to think independently", It really does read like satire

It always amazes me that either 1. they can't see how ridiculous what they are writing is or 2. don't care because it works and they get paid, no matter how deceptive, immoral, and harmful it is.

The world would be so much better if people refused to write this hypocritical drivel.

I've known people like that; I try to stay far away from them.

You know it's funny because you can use Internet freely. Chinese people behind GFW has nothing to fact check with. All the social network platforms require real name, trying to spread something you learned through VPN will result in police knocking on your door real fast.

> Eleven protesters were arrested on suspicion of unlawful assembly, assaulting police, disorderly conduct in a public place, and other riot-related offenses, according to the police.

Protestors were arrested while being treated in hospitals, because the police used a backdoor that the Hospital Authority installed in hospitals: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/17/police-can-access-full...

Also "Eleven protesters were arrested on suspicion" is a pretty low percentage of incidents for a 2 million or so strong protest. That to me sounds like pretty good evidence that it's largely very peaceful.

Cracking down on a massive popular protest against overreach would just be counter productive to Chinese interests. My guess is that these eleven are not just random protesters, but were either identified as leaders or will be used to send a message.

They were arrested for last week's protest of approx. 1m people, not Sunday's. According to some estimates, the police injured 70+ people and arrested 11.

It's pretty shocking for us HKers, as the police used to be trusted and looked upon very favorably. That trust has deteriorated since the Umbrella Revolution.

When people are used to this they can't easily tell what is satire anymore.

I remember a few years back China Daily (or was it the People's Daily) quoted The Onion because the 'journalist' hadn't realised it was a satirical website...

Edit:

Here it is. It was the People's Daily: https://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/world/asia/north-korea-china-...

Oh the irony...

What is so absurd about the US trying to influence the legislation or elections of another region?

I know the government did many shit things. But, for this Hong Kong protest, can anyone tell me why they want to protest? Is the government doing the right on "controversial" extradition?

Maybe you ought to read CNN for a more nuanced view on this.

People claiming everyone is against this, ought to remember that it fits with long term policies of the current government in Hong Kong. Someone must have elected them.

> Seen in light of this pattern of conduct by Hong Kong's government, the extradition bill is nothing new.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/11/opinions/hong-kong-protes...

> Someone must have elected them.

Beijing did. Hong-Kong isn't a democracy.

Alas that seems a very low bar nowadays.

No, I'm afraid you are incorrect. Also the quality of reporting from CNN is extremely suspect these days, and you must be especially careful when reading opinion pieces written by Chinese nationals, as there is a large, well funded program by the Chinese government to coordinate opinions and opinion leaders among Chinese expat communities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/world/asia/hong-kong-chie...

Only partly. First of all the British are the ones that made sure there would be no general elections. They basically gambled that they would keep their power by appeasing the PRC.

And the British were at the forefront of deciding who would be part of the 1200 man election council to appoint the CEO of Hong Kong.

Pretending like we can just scrap the history of a place and our own hand in it just because we don't like the outcome is disingenous at best.

> "Pretending like we can just scrap the history of a place and our own hand in it"

If two people commit a crime by one person first knocking the victim down and the second person tying them up, good luck trying to defend the second person by saying "we can't scrap the history of the crime and the first criminals hand it". Ethically it does not matter whether or not someone made it easier for you to commit a crime. In fact, according to most legal traditions it would be considered worse.

No, I think the people you get to put the full blame on is whoever is currently doing the oppressing.

(Finally, I reject the idea that 'we' somehow inherit blame from hundreds of years ago when that guilt is used in an attempt to rationalize current oppression.)

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