It is fun to see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Mine is fully referenced and went to -1 instantly... there is definitely some real denial about what the CCP actually do.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Overwhelmingly, this stuff is just internet-style cloak-and-dagger fantasy, and cheap rhetoric. How do I know that? Because when I look at who the actual users are who make these votes, and I see they were, for example, commenting on HN about Julia in 2015, the odds that they are a communist plant round to zero. This reality is so absolutely remote from what comments like yours are insinuating that it's hard for me to believe that people are willing to go there. Yet here we are, with spies in every closet and foreign agents under every bed. The only word for this is cartoonish.
The truth is that this is a very large, very international community, with millions of users having all sorts of backgrounds and views, and they disagree on divisive topics like China. That is the extremely mundane—albeit emotionally charged—reality of what is going on here. Accusing people who hold different views of being spies and foreign agents is the fastest way to poison the community, so we don't allow it, especially when there isn't a shred of anything resembling evidence to support it.
This entire dynamic is determined by tribal identifications on both sides. That leads people to hate and ultimately want to destroy each other. That's not compatible with the value of this site, which is curiosity. People can't be curious with each other and want to destroy each other at the same time—the nervous system doesn't work that way.
If anyone wants more explanation, there are arbitrary amounts of it at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
Let's dissociate the country from the political apparatus. What's evil is the CCP, not China in itself - it's not like the citizens can vote the current regime out.
In nearly all parlance talking about countries you reference those countries directly 'the US invaded Iraq' for e.g.
It's a shorthand for 'the govt of xxx'.
because most other countries we talk about have some kind of representative system where the people actually have a say in who governs them. Of course it's all relative, no representation is ever perfect, but in a dictatorial regime there's no representation at all.
Why aren't you saying نظام instead of Iran? Why not 'Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela' instead of Venezuela?
Come on man.
You do realize that Iran is a republic right?
They hold legislative and executive branch elections every few years with different political parties and all....
For Venezuela, people did vote for Chavez in the first place right? Which then made the turn to dictatorship. Which is what you should expect when when you elect a Marxist.
And yes, the same should go for Iran and Venezuela. But it's easy for CCP because they officially made the acronyms by themselves...
Poor example, EU is not a country and represents a political apparatus, nothing else.