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Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

But violent protests made it worse. The gov removed the extradition law at first but we gave them the opportunity to do worse to restore order and Im forced to back it because I prefer the national security law and some order than no law and no order which it was starting to look like...

However you re so very right: protests movements in the west are barely responsible for change. What s responsible for change is slow and long discussion among the population, progressive education, love of the debate rather than pursuit of efficiency, and in general the acceptance we re all part of the nation, not just a minority group.

When most chinese will see us as them and we ll see them as us, then it ll get better. Until then, we cant even start a debate: we're trators, they're invaders.

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No, the government did not remove the extradition law until September 2019, after proposing it in February 2019.

By then, many Hong Kongers had been protesting, arrested, beaten and worse. The reason we Hong Kongers did not and have not stopped is because there has been no justice for them.

That's the principle behind 5 demands, not 1 less.

All forms of government no matter how big or small are fcorrupt. That’s how it works—they/them who bends the will of the masses wins. Either that’s done by manipulating folks into believing the next candidate will “take their pain away”, or by inflicting pain for non-compliance. Or they change the rules: voter suppression, censorship, etc and pretend they “won the election.” Or they just murder the opposition and blame it on Santa Claus.

It's plainly fallacious to say there is no difference in corruption, conduct, and outcomes of different governments and different forms of government. To say 'all governments are corrupt' is the same as saying 'all people are violent'; but some are murderers, some got in shoving matches with their siblings when they were 12, and there is the entire range in between.

Well it’s hard to say at the scope of world powers. Maybe small, local governments there’s less. But let’s be honest here, and consider the atrocities of yesteryear. They span the gamut, and they span democracy through authoritarian regimes. The only difference is how it’s conveyed/portrayed to citizens, and how quickly /easily it is for any single party to gain control of a nation.

I agree that some systems are better than others, and there is still hope for better ones to come. But let’s not kid ourselves into believing China has done anything terrible that the USA has not already done in spades.

These 'it's all the same' arguments are obviously false, beyond the meaningless truism that 'nobody's perfect!'.

> it’s hard to say at the scope of world powers

No it's not, at all. Some governments and forms of government are far more corrupt than others. Nobody compares Sweden or the US with Russia or Nigeria.

> They span the gamut, and they span democracy through authoritarian regimes. The only difference is how it’s conveyed/portrayed to citizens ... let’s not kid ourselves into believing China has done anything terrible that the USA has not already done in spades.

Nobody's kidding anyone; unless you look back centuries, China does things - such as in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Tienanmen Square - that the USA never does. There's no comparison. The USA is not about to round up the populace of a region and put them in torture and reducation camps.

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