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Comment by bardan | Hacker News Reader

I assume that you are a good-natured member of this community. Hacker News tends to have a higher grade of participant. I also note that I gave no indication about my opinion of you personally, despite your suggestion. Since that is cleared up, and since you seem to take an alternate viewpoint than mine, I will repeat my initial question:

Why, in your opinion, was her name censored on the PRC Internet? Why have international broadcasts in China been dropping out when her case is mentioned? Why did the CCP deny any knowledge of her situation, only to later say "she will be making a public appearance soon"?

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To the best of my knowledge, this is what's going on:

- In China, censorship is common for any kind of controversy, regardless of whether they are pro- or anti-government. It's common for people to be silent during a controversy regardless of what it was about. Furthermore, censorship is not related to whether someone will be caught/jailed/kidnapped or not. See my writeups here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344676 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29347811

- When you say "CCP deny knowledge of her situation", you need to understand that neither the CCP nor the Chinese government (there is a distinction, but for the sake of simplicity let's assume they're the same) are a monolith. The people who were asked are responsible for foreign relations. They don't know every single domestic issue right away, especially not if China didn't consider that issue to be a diplomatic issue. It's like asking the US ambassador "where is Britney Spears, her Facebook is blocked!"

The censorship apparatus operates independently from the foreign relations apparatus, and even from the law enforcement apparatus. Censorship is more like super-moderation rather than a police force. Furthermore, censorship is decentralized. The censorship authority provides guidelines on what sort of content to censor, and then Internet companies do the censoring themselves. It's not so that the censorship authority directly monitors every post at all times.

The western public kept pushing for "Chinese government, produce her". So they did.

- The Chinese public largely does not believe that she is or has ever been in danger. Some Chinese criticized the fact that she's censored, but even they don't believe she's in danger. They don't believe she's forced to give a false statement. Chinese have high trust in government and police, and they trust that if Zhao is indeed a corrupt official then he will be dealt with.

- The Chinese view censorship and information control in a more nuanced manner than westerners. Where censorship is a deadly sin in the west, Chinese view censorship as sometimes good sometimes bad. They believe that sometimes censorship is necessary for the greater good.

I will note that my writeups are not so much about endorsing them. My primary goal of my writings are to promote better understanding between China and the west. You don't have to agree with their practices, but I do think it's important for people to understand what the Chinese public thinks, and how Chinese values are different from western values. The Chinese way would work disastrously in the west, and the western way would work disastrously in China. China is different rather than universally evil. To each their own.

I can't say you have answered my questions satisfactorily. Broadcasts from international news sources that mentioned Peng Shuai were censored - this is not just some procedural or algorithmic issue. And what business does the CCP have, if Peng Shuai is free from the kind of imprisonment it is assumed she is under, telling the public when she will be making a public statement? As for the Chinese public not believing she is in danger, well why would they? Again, information about her, including in international broadcasts, have been censored in China, online and on TV.

I edited my comment slightly and added more info. Not sure whether you've seen them.

> Broadcasts from international news sources that mentioned Peng Shuai were censored

I do not know about this specific issue. What I suspect is that now it has become a foreign relations issue, they are pushing for unity in messaging. Unity in messaging is a core principle in Chinese foreign relations practice.

> And what business does the CCP have, if Peng Shuai is free from the kind of imprisonment it is assumed she is under, telling the public when she will be making a public statement?

This is a matter of values. Westerners believe that government should interfere as little as possible in citizen matters. That's fine.

The Chinese don't tend to see the government in an adversarial manner. In general, they prefer a strong, centralized government that actively meddles in citizen matters as long as it is for the public benefit. They see the government as a partner (though, depending on times and context, "necessary evil" may sometimes be more appropriate) in building a better society rather than an enemy of a better society.

Furthermore, the CCP and the government aren't just a top-down imposition. They are the very fabric of society. They are everywhere. Every neighborhood has a neighborhood commitee who are party members. They help the neighborhood and perform important community management tasks. If you have a complaint about the neighborhood, you go to them. They regularly come ask you whether everything is fine, whether you need something. During Wuhan's COVID-19 lockdown they were the ones on the front lines, ensuring that health workers stay supplied and ensuring that food gets delivered to every household. The CCP has 90 million members, or about 5% of the population. Everybody has some relative that's a party member.

The Chinese public does not view the issue as "the govt is telling her to make a public statement". Rather, they view it as "the foreign public is making so much fuss about her, the government and the media are helping her voice get heard by foreign public". That her social media account remains blocked for now is seen as a completely separate matter, related to domestic social stability, which has got nothing to do with foreign relations.

Regarding the future of her censorship: that will be lifted once things have calmed down. See my case studies on Jack Ma and Fan Bingbing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29347811

With regards to the value judgement, it depends on whether you can accept that western values are not universal. I propose the thesis that they are not, because many other Asian and African countries have also criticized the western "our values are the only right ones" attitude.

Like I said in another response to you, it's a wonderful coincidence for a totalitarian government to be ruling over people who are so naturally deferential. There is no evidence of innate deference to totalitarian governments in Chinese people. Given environments out of control of the CCP, like Hong Kong or Taiwan, Chinese people eagerly engage in democratic processes.

If you think that it's impossible for Chinese (or other countries in general) to have a different attitude towards government then you should watch some videos by Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat. For example https://youtu.be/zBpmm5hdbFQ

Furthermore, the characterization of China being "totalitarian" is wrong because China is in no way comparable to the likes of North Korea or Saudi Arabia. You should check out the works of political science professor Daniel A. Bell: https://youtu.be/ckt94_JWHPs

This isn't a "coincidence". The Chinese government has evolved to its current form because of Chinese values. The CCP won the civil war because it had support of the majority of the population.

This is what totalitarian governments always claim. "We are the deterministic result of the people organizing themselves", generally a single ethnic group. Conveniently this also means an attack on the party is an attack on the ethnic group. The CCP was formed in the chaos of the early 20th century, buoyed by the Soviets, and maintained its power in part by astonishing acts of brutality on the Chinese people. If the "Chinese peoples values" you're referring to includes a significant streak of sadomasochism you can fill me in.

What? An attack on the party is not seen as an attack on Han man. You can't just conveniently draw false comparisons between western paradigms and China. You keep saying unsubstantiated stereotypes while I keep posting sources.

Han supremacism — while it exists — is largely not a thing and certainly not state policy. State policy is that minorities receive extra benefits that Han do not enjoy, and that the provincial government heads of minority provinces must be of those ethnicities.

Please go to China and tell a Chaoxianzu he's not Chinese. He'll tell you to fuck off.

Please go to China and tell people that the KMT should have won the civil war and see how people react.

> My primary goal of my writings are to promote better understanding between China and the west.

> China is different rather than universally evil.

I think I found the issue - you might be confusing criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party with criticisms of the Chinese culture or people, and those are two very different things.

I've seen very few comments on HN (or even in real life) that criticize the people or the culture - everything is about the CCP and its policies, which are authoritarian-for-your-own-good at best.

Every piece of evidence that I've seen points to the CCP being a very evil organization that has hijacked the legacy of a great and old empire and convinced its subjects that its merely the latest figurehead of it.

I'm an American, acutely aware of the many faults and malicious actors at work in my government, yet I'm capable of separating that from the ideals of my country.

Don't confuse criticism of your government with criticism of your people, history, culture, or national ideals. They're completely separate.

> I think I found the issue - you might be confusing criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party with criticisms of the Chinese culture or people, and those are two very different things.

This is something I have heard many times before, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

For one, I have debated with a lot of people. The majority of them say something along this line, but then a few messages later they post things like "Chinese people can't innovate, only copy" or "they are brainwashed". A lot of people hide blatant racism, sinophobia or plain prejudice behind "we are only against the CCP, not the people". This is no criticism to you or the other poster specifically, but is a criticism against the general public.

Furthermore, even among the more honest people, what I have noticed is that most of even them are not so much "against the CCP and not the people", but rather "against the CCP and don't care about the people". They will happily suggest actions (sanctions, revolutions, overthrow of government, war, etc) that will result in Chinese people suffering. But they consider that fine, because they are just "standing up to the CCP". In other words, they don't care whether Chinese people become cannon fodder and collateral damage in their fight of justice against the Chinese government.

Why would Chinese people want this? We just got out of 120 years of war, revolution and famine. We've tried many things. Many different governing and social organization forms failed, and now when things are finally going well foreigners want us to start over again just because they think our government is bad? Can't we have a say in this too? Can't we say, look the government is not perfect but it's not as bad as you think, they also do a lot of good things and things are still improving (and they have improved), so we don't want another revolution and we certainly don't want you to encourage one for us?

Anti-China sentiment (or anti-CCP sentiment, as you'd prefer to call it) isn't just about logic and debate, it's a gateway drug into a war against China. The US military industrial complex is literally pouring millions of dollars in anti-China propaganda and the prop-up of "the China threat", with the aim of manufacturing consent for a war against China.

The more people jump on the China-evil (or the CCP-evil) bandwagon, the more you enlarge the echo chamber and the more willingness there is for a war. It doesn't matter whether the bandwagon is "China is evil" or "the Chinese government (but not its people) is evil" — the potential outcomes are equally disastrous. You can already see this on the streets: anti-Asian violence has spiked in the US thanks to all the anti-China reporting. Thugs on the streets don't care whether a person is Vietnamese or Taiwanese or anti-CCP Chinese or whatever, they are all Chinese to them. Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat, recently visited New York, reporting that the mood in New York is very dark: people see the Chinese state as "the enemy".

As someone who thinks about many things rationally, what I find stupid about this bandwagon is that half of the reasons people cite for declaring the Chinese government as bad, are based non-understanding of Chinese context and values, an inflated sense of "the China threat", the idea that the western perspective is the only legitimate one, or just plain biased reporting. Yet most people refuse to critically examine whether their attitude against China/CCP is even correct and based on the right facts and the right perspectives. Most people start with the final conclusion that China/CCP is evil and then they find arguments to fit that conclusion, while sticking to the notion that the western perspective is the only perspective that could possibly be right. This attitude perfectly aligns with the goal of manufacturing a consent for war.

TLDR: focussing on the people-government separation is akin to sleepwalking into a war.

TLDR 2: Attacks on the CCP are attacks on the Chinese people. But not because I see it as such, but because the western public makes it into such, as measured by potential practical outcomes.

I probably don't need to remind you that a war with China can escalate into WW3, in which lights all over the planet will go out.

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