theseadroid

Throughout the human history most inventions are aimed to improve military strength initially and find civilian usages later on. Wars, detrimental to individuals, are surely one of the boosters for human race progression.

Does this action look bad to you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdxXCTpHARQ&list=LLFo7VgFlg9...

>This wouldn’t be the first time CCP uses armed forces against civillian protest

Europeans have killed how many American Indians and ended up just fine. But can they do that today? Coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada had been legal for as late as 1970s and do they dare to do that today [1,2]?

What I'm saying is the world has changed quite a bit and so do CCP.

>and on every previous occasion they ended up just fine.

Really? For starters during previous conflicts CCP rarely had an economy to crash.

Again, the legitimacy of CCP within mainland is almost purely lay on its power of economy growth. There are many Chinese people who are not content with it but bear CCP because of the economy growth [3].

You probably knew the 2014 Hong Kong protest, which had a similar scale? If CCP can wait that one out, why can't it do it again this time? [4]

1. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/forced-sterilization-la...

2. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sterilizat...

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20148705

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Central_with_Love_and_P...

You think Beijing would think pulling a Tiananmen 2.0 would bring HK into the right track fulfilling its economic role after? I dont think almost anyone, include almost every mainland Chinese would think that way.

If military is involved, economies will crash, hard. Not only HK's economy, a lot of economies will crash. It will be an economic suicide for mainland China. Is there any doubt about that? And that's irrelevant if any western countries intervene or not.

You probably haven't talked to any educated mainland Chinese recently? For the ones who would like to get HK in line and even get Taiwan back, the only feasible way they see is economic dominance over those territories. As a strategy by itself, I kinda agree.

Edit: I dont think PRC depends on HK more economically than emotionally. HK is one of the symbols of western countries invasion 100 years ago. Getting it back has a great deal of emotional value for mainland Chinese. What I see PRC can extract more value out of HK right now is to emphasize the western influence over the protest, making regular Chinese more in line with PRC's world view and values. Anger directed towards other countries rather than introspective is a good thing for the gov if and when there's any hardship inflicted during the trade dispute period.

Genuine question, with all the context and nuances you have provided, what positivity would bring to Beijing if they use military force? For me I dont see a militarized HK will help with the trade dispute in any way.

how about Chinese living overseas? A discussion a few days ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594103

nah other cities are as patriotic as it ever can be at this point.

As a Chinese mainlander emmigrated because BOTH of the Chinese gov and the people, I'm fine with an independent Taiwan or Hong Kong or whatever. With that being said, I find the stupidity in those reportings and conversations around Hong Kong's protest astonishing. It is sad to see illogical media-induced anger has taken the better part of many commenters here at HN as well.

There's no incentive for the Chinese gov to use military force, period. What the protestors are doing is actually pretty beneficial to the Chinese gov. The protest is destroying HK's economy, yes. But HK's economy is actually not vital to China's economy anymore[1]. Instead, a less economic significant HK would be much easier to govern in the long run. China would rather further develop its Shanghai or Shenzhen, than investing into HK.

What's more, the recent trade dispute with US, and the Hong Kong protest, have made significant negative impact on mainland Chinese attitude toward the western countries and idealogies. If there's any internal conflicts and fights for certain types of freedom before, they certainly become muted now. The rise of nationalism is surely making the higher-ups happy.

1. https://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6857567/hong-kong-used-to-be-1...

I wish every game depicting the real world contribute to a common 3D world repository. And maybe allow crowd sourcing that repository too. Imagine what we would get to play in flight simulators or driving simulators with such a repository.

Many people might have flagged it as offtopic of this forum.

You could say in some degree that not only the military needs a purpose. The deteriorating of infrastructure, the lack of vision of politicians, the increasing inequality are probably all the result of a lacking of a purpose.

Many people can't afford to take the day off for voting. And even mail ballots are allowed, making the process easier would encourage more participation. Is this not a problem worth solving?

My routine with audiobooks:

Cardio: stationary bike, jumping rope, stair climbing. Body weight: some for abs some for lower back. I learned and picked a few from the youtube channel Athlean X. I personally feel we need those exercises to combat the long hours we sit everyday. And stretching! It was so boring before audiobooks I never stretch, now I stretch before and after.

Feel free to experiment to find your own optimal routine, since we have different schedules and access to equipments. I guess the idea is with audiobooks experimenting can be fun too. Even cleaning the house is fun now with audiobooks :D

I guess for me I mostly halfheart on the audiobook end. Like if I missed a sentence or two I'll just let it go. So I dont listen to serious books. On the other hand some weight training doesn't really require a fast cadence if not training for explosion I assume. Interestingly for me music sometimes can mess up my own exercise tempo.

An anecdote from me: Before I discovered audiobooks I rarely read non technical books, especially fictions. I just couldn't find enough time to finish books at a satisfactory pace. What's more, I couldn't enjoy many types of exercises and because of that I just didn't exercise enough. I find the activity of doing those types of exercises by themselves or even with music is too low in information density, that I just became bored after a while.

Now with audiobooks I read many non technical books while I do those types of exercises I couldn't enjoy before. If a book is not great I dont find it a waste of time. The combination of audiobooks and exercising is the right amount of information density for me to enjoy the moment. The result? I exercise much much more now.

Also I started to use the local library for audiobooks. Comparing to the effort of borrowing paper books or device restriction of borrowing ebooks, borrowing audiobooks is just a much better overall experience.

Consumers are well capable of voting in Japan though, isn't it?

It's not like that Japanese government is consuming the whale meat. So why only blame it? seems deliberately missing the target.

Javascript might not add much value to the reader/end user, but it can/might have made building the above 3 functionalities much faster and easier for the developer. Without Javascript we simply might not have all those great content to begin with.

So if it makes the content creators' lives a bit easier, the cost of making the job harder for a small group of end users might be worthwhile.

I'm sure of that. I'm just comparing it with a few other governments, e.g. Denmark/the Netherlands.

More tax or not, I'm not sure the US government is capable of using the tax money effectively.

Am Chinese. See my profile and past comments. Shot me an email if you like. Let’s chat more :)

It is more than a social process.

One day I'll translate this article into English: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E5%B9%B4%E5%B8%9D%E5%90%A...

The gist of it is in 2016 January, many mainland Chinese VPNed onto Facebook to post curses on Taiwan politicians who support Taiwan independence.

It's not a big event but it's funny they VPNed out to do that. Also from my personal experience many oversea Chinese students, and first generation immigrants, many of whom tech workers, among which many of them working for FANNG, dont consider censorship a big deal.

Sure. Those Chinese exists, but ones from the other end too, living in north america no less.

Are you sure it's the government, not some random Chinese though? I've know enough patriotic mainlanders who would do this. Brainwashed you may say, but still they would act like that genuinely.

I wonder how many diseases are becoming more prevalent because we eat manufactured food on a long term basis. Additives have been approved on the ground that they are not harmful to our body, yet we know very little in which ways they may influence our gut microbes (e.g. [1]).

A higher proportion of North Americans tend to find certain kinds of food/snacks from other cultures gross, yet the perfectly sterilized/packaged/high-sugar food options here are probably much more harmful.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181001101932.h...

>In any case, what possible reason would the average Chinese person have to systematically oppress the Uighurs or falun gong?

This question is crucial to indicate that you have no idea about ordinary Chinese people. You need to sit down with some Chinese to talk about it if you are really interested. So I encourage you to find some first gen immigrant from mainland China currently living in SFBA. It wont be hard to find them. I can even direct you to relevant social media sites if you like.

And to add education to the data:

In 1970 41% of Chinese are illiterate, comparing to 63% Indians. In 2015 India is at 30%, PRC at 6%.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/projections-of-the-rate-o... ^ this source is interesting. it's actually sponsored by ycombinator. anyway if you look into many categories you'll probably have a good idea how India compares to China now. The many charts of this page is enough for me: https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment

What you are saying is India has a better human rights record than China. But at the end of the day what exactly is human rights? To you it's the ability to speak freely, to nordic countries it can be free education, free healthcare, and even free internet connections. But to a poor country, what is the most important human right? It's be able to be fed! It's not die!

According to world bank data, China had 755.8 million people living on less than $1.9 a day in 1990. In 2013 it's 25.2 million.

What about India? There are still 268 million people earning less than $1.9 per day in 2011 and data are not collected afterwards[1]. More than doubled the infant mortality rate[2].

Now I believe you live in SFBA. There are ton of mainland Chinese working at AMZ, at FB, at Google, etc. Tons of them in Chinese grocery stores. Go ask them if they think India is better than mainland China to live. Now that they live freely away from mainland China's propaganda, go ask them if they care about the massive crime you are talking about to the degree they would want a government overthrown and have a government similar to India's.

Again my point is there are huge problems about PRC. Still, it would be highly unlikely that the solution is what you, a nonexpert, proposed. I believe there are westerners who understand the problems better than me. But they've spent years of effort studying the issues. Not like you or even me who just read some news articles and think we knew better. Thinking about it it's almost like climate change. Everyone has a say to it no matter what experts think.

1 http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/IND http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/RUS http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/BRA look up some other third world countries as you see fit.

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mo...

I'll not monitor this thread anymore but I've sent you a msg we can talk there.

oh so the current presidents of Brazil is not democratically elected you mean[1]?

And how would you assure a democratic China will not have a corrupted election scheme that resemble Russia's?

Without you stating any evidence, I dare to say your sense is wrong. Chinese are more than ready for capitalism if the current system is not already it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Brazilian_general_electio...

Thanks. I didn't mean to make you a research assistant. In this age of misinformation, I think it's good manner to back up our claims with some evidence. And as a Chinese I was pretty surprised by the claim itself.