Every thread that paints China in a negative light on HN always follow the same pattern:

- USA whataboutism

- Mass flagging (resulting in the story getting knocked off the frontpage despite having a great upvote, comment and submission ratio)

- Comments negative towards China receive 1-5 quick downvotes before slowly climbing back to normal again

It’s really unfortunate that an otherwise well moderated community is so easily defeated by this abuse, and that there appear to be nothing being done to fix it despite many obvious and simple solutions (ignore flags and downvotes by those who abuse them, ban shills that resort to whataboutism from posting in threads containing /China/Chinese keywords).