All: this thread quickly degenerated into a hellish flamewar. Please don't post nationalistic flamewar comments to HN, and do not post cheap internet insinuations about astroturfing, brigading, shilling, spying, foreign agents and communist party operatives. If you're worried about abuse, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. You're not welcome to fill HN threads with fervid imaginations about commenters who have different views than you. HN is a big place and that's the very simple explanation for why not everyone agrees. I've posted about this many times, both about astroturfing in general and China-related topics in particular:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

There have been ugly mob behaviors on this site in the past, which have hounded people out of the community. Is that who you want to be? who we want to be? No it is not. Yet it happens all too easily, and the people doing it don't even realize that they're doing it—they just think they're righteously defending truth or freedom or the home team. If you don't want to be that way, then err on the side of respect, benefit of the doubt, and not jumping to predetermined conclusions. (If you do want to be that way, please find some other site to post to.)

We ban accounts that break these rules, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended. It has a very specific intended spirit and most of the people who've posted in this thread so far have been breaking it.