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Comment by exo-pla-net | Hacker News Reader

This is an article spun to make controversy out of nothing.

The narrative is that a student tweeted something critical about China, and the CCP pressured his advisor into dropping him.

The reality is that the student published a tweet that "depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes". This understandably was perceived as racist by a Chinese student in Canada, who complained to the advisor. The advisor agreed and dropped her racist-seeming doctoral student.

The CCP wasn't involved. Nobody cared about his criticism of China. It was his racist-looking tweet that got him dismissed.

Edit: But yes, the CCP can have a chilling effect on free speech. See the Blitzchung controversy. This article is just a non-story.

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The advisor who dismissed the student changed their story multiple times, didn't name the accuser, and contradicts the Ph.D. students records of his matriculation and attendance. Furthermore she has a motive, if she is truly under political pressure or is intimidated by the diplomatic consequences of being associated with a critic of CCP. She is a China researcher, so being barred from entering China could be a fatal blow to her career. Finally, the last thing she wants is a viral story in fairly reputable newspaper of record.

I cannot directly refute your claims, only call them into question. But I think that is the crux of the story here anyway, to question. What affect is the mass surveillance and blanket censorship of China having on Western institutions of open inquiry? Are the tendrils of the PRC police state stretching into places we assume will always be bastions of free speech? I don't think we can definitively answer these either way today.

Yeah, agree.

Almost the entire article is spun telling only one part of the story, and only towards the very end do they, at least, reveal the other side, which shows that the student published a racist cartoon, and that it was just some random person who complained to the professor. It feels misleading and deliberate that, from the start, they mention that they've seen the emails which confirm the student's account, but withhold the rest of the information (the racist image; the deregistration affair) until near the end.

I'm disappointed; I expect better from the NZZ.

It's convenient to believe that your enemy is so fragile that they're threatened by a twitterer with a dozen followers. I don't see how that does one any good outside a feeling of smug superiority. China is building a frightening amount soft power through trade deals and building goodwill. That's what people should be talking about, not China supposedly censoring angry opinions that can be found anywhere else on the internet.

> It's convenient to believe that your enemy is so fragile

There is ample evidence that they are butt-hurt by the tiniest criticism – intentioned or not, real or imagined, by inclusion or by omission – which would not even count as an affront under most other circumstances. The psychic trauma that is amenable to a degree for this response unfortunately is deeply seated and difficult to shake loose.

China is not at all worried about small Twitter followers. But if China shows they will shut down even the most inconsequential dissent. Then real dissent will know that, if they speak up, they will be shutdown very hard.

Google "glass heart"

Until I see it, I'm not going to believe that cartoon is racist. I mean seriously, Asian people have skin that is somewhat more yellow and somewhat narrower eyes. With the way the media manipulates anything, the lack of a photo is a pretty strong sign that the cartoon ISN'T significantly racist (just as the lack of race in the title in a act of police brutality is a strong sign that the victim is white).

I have the opposite thought. The article was obviously sympathetic to the student, so not including the racist image is a pretty strong sign.

Even the student ended up saying if he had given it more thought, he would not have posted the racist image.

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