I've personally found that saying critical things about the Chinese Communist Party on this website results in people quickly conflating said attacks on a government with a non-existent ethnic group (ignoring the fact that China has multiple ethnic groups instead of just the dominant Han majority) and suddenly you are flagged for being a bigot. It's pretty obnoxious behavior that is very dominant in Silicon Valley.
I view it as primarily driven at the bottom by people who see all bigotry through a purely Western lens (and are therefore blind to the fact that "white" privilege is actually "dominant ethnic group" privilege and changes depending on where you are), don't know anything about China other than it being an Asian country, and equate criticizing the country as being Western imperialism.
From the top, it's money money money, because hey, who cares about Uighurs anyway, I just got a billion from some dude whose dad fought for Mao and is now a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party. Now I'll go talk about how much I value diversity while my company is funded by a country which imprisons people because they are Muslim, or criticize the government, or, you know, tell the truth.
There are plenty of critical comments about China and the CCP which don't get downvoted or flagged. In fact, there are massive numbers of them. What gets downvoted and flagged are mostly meta deviations (into this sort of off-topic morass) and flamewars. Please don't post like that—it's against the site guidelines, for good reason.
Would you please stop posting this sort of grandiose, generic rhetoric? There are plenty of comments in this thread representing the same view you adhere to. The requirement is simply that people post thoughtfully and reflectively, rather than from a knee-jerk reflex or flamewar place.
No, that's not because we're secret communist sympathizers. It's because on HN, we want threads not to be predictable. Readers come to HN to have their curiosity gratified. There is zero curiosity being gratified in angry, repetitive comments.
This is an area where the interests of readers are not aligned with certain kinds of commenters—the kind that want to do ideological or political or nationalistic or religious battle on the internet. The site guidelines explicitly ask you not to do that, so please stop doing it.
I understand your mod decision. I would also recommend looking into the OP's claim. I have to agree, the downvoting on this topic is much more than I am used to, and I get downvoted often! So, it appears there is more than the normal HN audience at work here.
I'd be happy to look at specific links that anyone is worried about. That's part of the contract we have with users: the guidelines ask people not to post insinuations about astroturfing but they also ask people to send the concerns they do have to hn@ycombinator.com.
Based on everything I've seen, though, the null hypothesis is that what you're describing is explained not by a difference in the audience, but by the topic. China was already probably the single most divisive topic on HN in the last year. Obviously the covid crisis has accentuated that. This isn't an HN thing—it's all through Western media and no doubt a symmetrical version is running through Chinese media as well. HN can't possibly be immune from macro social trends (
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
).
You can see that I've been making this point, including about China, for a long time:
That is a good point. The uptick in downvotes I see could maybe explained by the topic's high profile and divisiveness, instead of astroturf. But, that still leaves the question as to who is in favor of the CCP? Or is it just a reaction to short, dismissive posts on the topic? Must be interesting as a mod to get to quantitatively analyze these questions!
This is a disturbing trend I've seen on the left. Any criticism of a foreign country is construed as racism, or talk around immigration policies. That's obviously conflating issues, and it serves to shut down conversation rather than promote it. I hope people stop being so woke and wake up to the harm they're causing with that kind of extreme attitude.
It's unfortunate, because I think those people are largely motivated by good intentions and don't realize the damage they do. With apology for the pejorative, this is the entire problem of the "useful idiot".
> This is a disturbing trend I've seen on the left.
It’s not just the left, it’s both sides, and often there have been incidents of actual racism that can be accurately cited as prior examples of racism.
I haven't seen this on the right, I think the left is far more guilty of invoking racism falsely. The right tends to be guilty of actual racism sometimes.
One can't look at Russia and say they're the good guys - but I have a lot of empathy for how they're treated by the West. I don't think it's always fair or justified by any means.
Governments seem to find it useful to have a bad guy to point to, for various reasons, and Russia has served this purpose a lot. That's a shame, because we should be trying to get along peacefully rather.
Uighurs are not persecuted "because they are Muslim". Hui, the second largest Chinese ethnic group after Han, are Muslim too. And they are not persecuted in any way.
Uighurs are persecuted for the same reason the CCP tries to destroy the Tibetan ethnic group.
Both these groups have strong independence movements that want to break away from China.
For the Xinjiang/Uighur case, I don't have a book recommendation. Uighurs are a Turkic people, so they don't really fit into China culturally. Xinjiang became Chinese about a millennium ago, but Uighurs continue to fight for an independent "East Turkistan". The movement's headquarter is in Munich, afaik.
Unfortunately this conflation may have even contributed indirectly to early spread of Coronavirus in SF. After the virus was spreading but before the US lockdowns, there was an article in one of the SF papers that accused people who were deciding not to eat out in Chinatown of being racist.
So I think this conflation doesn't originate here on HN, and it is very difficult in general to discuss some political/governmental issues without triggering the conflation.
Reminds me of this tweet [0] from the chair of the NYC health council committee.
He wrote, "If you are staying away, you are missing out!" - called those who stayed away from Chinatown "racist" - then tested positive for COVID-19 a week later.
Did he get infected in Chinatown? Were there good reasons to assume there would be more infected there? Recent reports suggest the majority of Corona imports into NYC came from Europe. Joining a large event full of people seems like the bigger issue.
Around here, somehow people got scared about Taiwanese that haven't left Germany in years, but not their buddies that have been traveling a lot.
It can be both. Neither situation excludes the other.
Yes, people that refused to eat out in Chinatown were racist, because those people in Chinatown weren't the ones travelling. And the people that were refusing to eat out were still eating at other places which had travelers from all over; they weren't self-quarantining or trying to limit the spread of the virus.
There's nuance to discussion where you can discuss a country without being racist, but at the same time I've seen people make obviously racist remarks while trying to pretend it's meant as a criticism of the country and not the people.
If you're avoiding little Italy or little Canada because you think they're diseased then yes, that would make you racist.
If you avoid those places because you don't feel like having Italian or Canadian food right now then no, that's not racist.
In this case, the reason why people were avoiding Chinatown was because they were avoiding a group of people they were afraid of due to the coronavirus. That's racism. They weren't trying to avoid the virus because they were still going out, eating at other restaurants and still being in the general public.
You feel avoiding little Canada would make you racist?
Against what race would that be?
I feel like the word racism has lost it's intended meaning if people believe not going to little Canada (for fears of getting a virus) is somehow judging a group of people based on their skin colour. A Canadian can be white/black/asian/native or anything else... A Canadian isn't a race it is a term that includes many races. Unless you are now racist against all races by not going to little Canada I can't imagine how that term applies.
Maybe you want to say.. prejudice (to pre-judge) rather than racist (to pre-judge based on race).
People were pre-judging when making decisions to go to chinatown. They thought with all of the international travel between China and little China perhaps they would be more likely to get the virus.
Calling people who made a decision based on belief of likeliness of getting the virus racist is wrong. They didn't make a decision on race they made it on some other factor that didn't include slin color.
Calling them racist makes you racist. You have pre-judged a group of people based on race (little China) when everyone else were basing it on geography. I hope you can accept responsibility and change your views for the future. The world doesn't need people judging others based on race we need to get away from that.
In other words, early on, it wasn't unreasonable to believe that P(travel to china|inside chinatown) > P(travel to china|outside chinatown), especially in a city with strong trade ties and relative geographic proximity to the Pacific ocean.
Would you ask GrubHub to not send anyone Chinese or Italian to your door? Did you inquire about the nationality of any service worker you interacted with, and ask for someone who's not Italian or Chinese? What if they're only part Italian or part Chinese, do they only get half infected?
Starts to sound kind of racist when you assume person of certain race = infection.
>'ve personally found that saying critical things about the Chinese Communist Party on this website results in people quickly conflating said attacks on a government with a non-existent ethnic group
Been banned for it under the guise of flamebait. Didn't say anything inflammatory.
What's worse is that we know the CCP employs a "troll army" for astroturfing all over the web, but on every major platform a pro China post would simply never be silenced - so the CCP in short is playing our own institutions against us because we increasingly cannot separate criticism from intolerance.
Based on my examination of my own attitudes about China, I'd say unease/fear about the future actions of the Chinese government may fuel some of my desire to criticize it for issues I may otherwise be indifferent to. While this fear is not based on some underlying dread of the Han people, it is, perhaps, motivated by nationalist instincts that many might disparage.
Self-preservation, especially in the face of a group diametrically opposed to your culture's values, isn't something to be ashamed of. Nationalism is not evil when it is defined inclusively, and not based on immutable characteristics.
I would go further and say that while we shouldn't be ashamed of nationalism, we should draw our boundary wider. We should say that we are proud of, and willing to support, the values we uphold and all people that uphold them, regardless of what country they happen to live in. The people of Hong Kong, for instance, are in serious jeopardy. Simply acquiescing to the influence of the Chinese government allows them to steamroll ever more people, and silence ever more voices in favor of the values countless people have fought and died for.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle" - Edmund Burke
My only long term fear with China is what happens if it collapses. It might last another 100+ years, but dictatorship + immense corruption is not a recipe for stability. China’s internal politics has changed a lot since 1976 and it’s still evolving rapidly.
The explanation with both is that on charged issues people only want figure out if you are with them or against them. If you are neither, they will still try to categorize you as quickly as possible based on a keyword match to their prejudices.
Another pattern I see is that discussions about the CCP quickly devolve into distracting comparisons to problems outside of China. I never see discussions about problems outside of China get distracted by "what about the CCP".
I'm not sure if it's a coordinated distraction campaign designed to make false equivalences; or if it's just American guilt (fostered by the media and schools) losing all perspective.
Let's stay focused. The CCP is a real problem for human rights -- not just for the Chinese people, but for everyone around the world.
This is a good case in point. The parent comment, at the time of my comment, has decent points about how criticism of CCP is treated. And it is itself greyed out due to downvoting. Thus, the OP's point is sustained.
From the top, it's money money money, because hey, who cares about Uighurs anyway, I just got a billion from some dude whose dad fought for Mao and is now a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party. Now I'll go talk about how much I value diversity while my company is funded by a country which imprisons people because they are Muslim, or criticize the government, or, you know, tell the truth.