Is their aim to be harmful in the west? My impression has always been that they’re pretty ambivalent about that, they’re more concerned with the internal effect.
I don’t know that people even do think Chinese propaganda is clever! In my mind their skill is overarching control over communication. It’s dumb and brute force but it seems to work.
But I've seen plenty of people paint everybody who have a non-mainstream opinion on China, as paid undercover propagandists.
Who would do that but a paid shill?
HN is one of the few places online that both allows free speech and isn't riddled with bots/spammers/shills. I'd like to keep it that way, meaning you should fuck off. No one is buying your shit, anyway, as you might have found from the replies your posts get. It's a lost cause.
I compare arguments from both sides and I make up my own mind. I have my own agency and my own opinion, thank you.
If you're gonna call me a "paid shill" even though I have 20 years of online history in a different field, you're gonna have to prove it.
If you don't like what I have to say, then fine, don't listen to me. But don't prevent others from listening to me and don't prevent me from speaking.
Ultimately I want peace and understanding between both sides.
You’re being extremely rude here, accusing people of being shills and telling them to literally “fuck off”. If anything goes against the HN ethos and rules, it’s terrible behaviour and bad faith behaviour like that, not a veteran Hacker News member with an account that’s twice as old as yours arguing a refreshingly non-mainstream perspective.