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Comment by fiblye | Hacker News Reader

The outcomes will also give them a heightened sense of nationalism and feed into the idea that the West is just out to get China and Chinese people, which the media plays up quite a bit.

As an American, sitting down next to a European on vacation for more than a few minutes is never fun. Once they inevitably ask "Where are you from?", they follow it up with a lecture on American politics before I can even finish my sentence. It's tedious and it's nothing new.

It's probably way more frustrating for people having to listen to their boss lecture them at work about how screwed up a country they've never been to but you've lived your whole life in is. You're not in a position to just politely say "bye" and never see them ever again without any consequence. You certainly can't speak up against them because they're in a position of authority.

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That's my worry too. A lot of us are very defensive now even to be reasonable. However it is hard to buy these videos if you were born and raised in China, simply because you understand the culture around it. For example there are a lot of Vloggers in Xinjiang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRXnF42z1oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3VGz4HFs_A

If you understand the language and culture the locals talk a similar way to the responses from the BBC video. And in the Vice video the locals even spoke for the secret journalists.

Also for mainland china everyone refers people from any ethnic background from Xinjiang a 'Xinjianger' not a singled out 维族人. I'm sure there are a lot of injustice but ethnic minorities are known to entitle a few 'privileges' such as carrying knives and not subject to one-child policy. Hence the cause of the inevitable unfair treatment and conflict (to be honest many policies are not up to modern liberal views). I'm not defending ccp ever, but I'm also shocked people knew very little about everything else.

I think this is an important point. Even if GP "open the eyes" of coworkers on the matter, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will side with the Western point of view. For a variety of reasons they might approve the government action, which will cause additional tension to an already rude situation, as explained by other posters.

> As an American, sitting down next to a European on vacation for more than a few minutes is never fun. Once they inevitably ask "Where are you from?", they follow it up with a lecture on American politics before I can even finish my sentence. It's tedious and it's nothing new.

Counter-anecdotally; I've never experienced this and in my workplace at least, the people who never stop talking politics are all American.

It's common enough many American backpackers in hostels introduce themselves as Canadians, saves them the hassle.

I think your argument here amounts to a form of internalized oppression and a bunch of unintentional sophistry that tries to legitimize it. Considering the history of computer science as a consequence of the Enlightenment, it is quite ironic how working programmers have had to become.

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