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Comment by knzhou | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: have you personally seen the "propaganda" of the other side? If you've only seen one side, how are you so completely sure you know which one is right?

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I have. Like how their government lies about the air quality index, but when you check the index as generated by any other country's embassy you get a much higher number. How the people are taught that smog and unhealthy air is normal, and are afraid to talk about it if you bring it up. Or how major world events don't hit the papers, and if they do are given massive spin. Or how huge swaths of the internet are blocked. I used to live on an international floor in college, and when one of the Chinese students came here and went to the library, he said he read Chinese history and cried because it was so much different from what he'd be taught.

Yes. Calling HK protestors 'cockroaches' to dehumanize them is a common refrain, along with calls to 'squash' them.

The wumao '50 sent army' is active on twitter, in both Chinese and English.

Check out the recent Catalonia thread on HN, and tell me if mainlander rhetoric differs all that much from that of a couple of the Spanish posters in it.

I don't accuse said posters of being members of a 50 peso army. I assume that their (nationalistic) opinions are just that.

You should extend these same assumptions to China.

Yeah the truth is hard to access if you can't read in both languages. Though if I had to bet, I'd pick the side that didn't firewall most of the internet.

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