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Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

At least in a democracy with a free press, you (the average person) can try to start a news frenzy and bug your elected government representatives to apply pressure on your behalf.

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I would argue that the US is not a representative democracy, and that it does not have a free press.

But would you argue that citizens in the U.S. and China have basically equal rights?

You have no elected officials. That's the point. You are an American being held for geopolitical reasons in China, or you are a Chinese citizen being held for geopolitical reasons in the US. There is no elected official representing you to which you can appeal. You're just screwed. Again, unless you are an elite and people will pull strings for you. But most of us here are not elites, we're too far down the chain. No one is going to pull strings for us. We just have to sit in prison until China and the US finish comparing bra sizes.

I'm saying both americans and chinese should be mindful of this risk when working in the other country.

Last I checked, every American has an elected official. (Non-voting in the case of territories)

Has something changed?

Yeah, they would have been arrested in China, where their elected official means exactly dick. The whole reason China arrested a patsy is to provoke the US. So how exactly is senator useless gonna get him out of jail? The entire reason the Chinese arrested him, was to anger senator useless and american media. Were it not for senator useless, the american wouldn't be sitting in a Chinese prison in the first place. Were it not for Chinese party member dickmouth, the Chinese guy would not be sitting in an american prison. The government officials are the problem, they're definitely not going rush right out to get a regular worker out of prison. At least not until they finish their argument over who has the best hair or whatever.

Putting faith in the government officials is just a bit naive I think.

I'm not sure this is the forum you're looking for, if that's how you structure your argument.

Please stop using HN for ideological, political, or national flamewar. You've been doing it repeatedly, and that's not ok.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

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