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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party All people in China mainland is taught that Taiwan is part of China and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party All people in China mainland is taught that Taiwan is part of China and it is so ingrained on them that it is impossible to discuss this with them. And now that things are getting sour in China the CCP always uses the external enemy card to redirect the anger against others and not become beheaded themselves.

FooBarWidget 5y ago
Meh. I'm Chinese and I think you're seriously overestimating the amount of influence CCP propaganda has on people's opinions, and seriously underestimating the genuineness of people's opinions on Taiwan. This is typical western bias: blaming everything on the CCP as if the people can't have any sort of agency or legitimate opinion that differs from the western mainstream. There is a saying that if China were democratic, then they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. In this sense the CCP are moderates. I also can't believe that so many people accuse China of propping up an external enemy without taking a good hard look at their own country's behavior. It's this sort of lack of introspection that could eventually trigger WW3.
- ailun 5y ago
  I agree that there is a bad tendency to look at Chinese people as brainwashed drones. But you're going too far in the opposite direction. China's media control, educational policies, and army of nationalists absolutely affect the Overton window in the Chinese public sphere. You can't tell me with a straight face that it's acceptable to discuss Taiwan independence online in a positive way in China. If someone genuinely feels that mainstream opinion in China is wrong on Taiwan, they aren't going to be comfortable discussing it openly.
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    I will not say that it is publicly acceptable to discuss Taiwan independence in China, or any other politically controversial matter for that matter. However I also believe that is irrelevant: I think you are overly attributing the forming of opinions to censorship, and not giving enough credit to people's ability to form their own opinions despite censorship. See my other writeup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28840722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28840722
    - ailun 5y ago
      I don't believe it is irrelevant. You're saying other people are overly attributing opinions to censorship - and you have a Harvard paper (but don't link to it) that may show censorship in China is more based on potential to go viral than on the actual content. How do you think opinions change if ideas can't freely be shared? And I'm guessing that the definition of censorship in this paper is based on things that are actually removed from the internet, which is not the whole picture. Movies, songs, TV, news, and books all have to be approved by the party before distribution. Education is controlled by the government. There's also the comments that people don't make in the first place because they know it will be censored. That line is always being pushed, and it's purposefully vague. There was a teacher in Sichuan a month or so ago who made a very polite, short comment saying he wondered if the government would consider other strategies on their covid response and he went to jail for 2 weeks! How do you think people break out of their set opinions? Where did those opinions come from in the first place?
      - FooBarWidget 5y ago
        How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows-government-criticism-silences-collective-expression https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-... How do opinions change? Through objective reality. Censorship and media control isn't powerful enough. "How Chinese liberals lost the young generation" https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g
- goblin89 5y ago
  I had seen China and talked to Chinese. The range of policy opinions my counterparts could express, and topics they could engage in, seemed to be extremely limited due to what I could only assume was the state of being misinformed (including by omission) by—and fearing retribution from—their own government. The very same factors would, obviously, be limiting their political agency. Do you have a real choice in how to personally treat CCP and Taiwan? As in, do you feel like you can talk about, say, respecting the preference of Taiwan citizens about them being/not being part of China, or about that mysterious May 35th incident, with, say, a taxi driver? Could it be that the population overwhelmingly supports invading Taiwan because this is literally the only appropriate course of action instilled in them by a government in full control of both traditional and social media?
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    I think you are overly attributing opinions to censorship, and not giving enough credit to people's ability to form their own opinions despite censorship. The hypothesis that Chinese opinions are overwhelmingly the product of censorship and media control has already been debunked by Harvard research. There is a paper which shows that censorship does not steer opinions in a certain direction. Instead, censorship's goal is to silence and dampen movements. Both pro-government and anti-government comments are equally censored -- the actual criteria is whether those comments have the potential to become viral. The inability of censorship to steer opinions, is corroborated by a recent essay "How Chinese liberals lost the young generation" https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g This essay states that for a long time, the popular opinion was that CCP is bad, and and that western-style democracy is superior. It also states that censorship did nothing to change people's opinion on this topic because reality is stronger than censorship/propaganda. It then states that all of this has changed in the past 5-10 years: the CCP has become popular nowadays, again not because of censorship or propaganda, but because in reality they've actually improved and done a good job.
    - goblin89 5y ago
      My first question wasn’t rhetorical, knowing where you stand could help any further discussion, should it occur, be meaningful. What you instead wrote in response makes sense to me only under the assumption that people have a choice—to have CCP or not to have CCP—and that they choose to have CCP; if you’re saying that assumption is correct then we have sufficiently differing views of reality (perhaps you know something I don’t, etc.) that we’d be talking past each other. Newspaper pieces on how %opposition% is %something negative%—written as if it was somehow relevant and even vitally important, creating an illusion of pluralism in absence of any real possibility for the reader to effect any change—were a thing in USSR from what I hear; based on your summary of the essay I smell the same old fish wrapped in a fresh newspaper.
- garmaine 5y ago
  > There is a saying that if China were democratic, then they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. In this sense the CCP are moderates. That saying is propaganda. Here is a list of literally every war between democratic powers in the entirety of human civilization. It's a very short list, given the sheer number of wars that have been fought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democracies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democraci... Democracies don't start wars with other democracies, outside of very unusual and exceptional circumstances. If China and Taiwan were both democratic, there wouldn't even be a thought of war.
  - 1_player 5y ago
    To be fair, we haven't had many democracies compared to autocracies in the history of the world. One of the richest countries in the world is a warmongering democracy. The idea that democracies are peaceful is a red herring and cherry-picking.
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    Propaganda by whom? Because it isn't something said by the Chinese govt or by Chinese media. I assert that it only sounds like propaganda because people can't let go of their false preconceived notions of China, not because it is actually propaganda.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  The US was 80% against getting involved in WW2, so democracies aren’t as predictable as one would think.

FooBarWidget 5y ago

Meh. I'm Chinese and I think you're seriously overestimating the amount of influence CCP propaganda has on people's opinions, and seriously underestimating the genuineness of people's opinions on Taiwan. This is typical western bias: blaming everything on the CCP as if the people can't have any sort of agency or legitimate opinion that differs from the western mainstream. There is a saying that if China were democratic, then they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. In this sense the CCP are moderates. I also can't believe that so many people accuse China of propping up an external enemy without taking a good hard look at their own country's behavior. It's this sort of lack of introspection that could eventually trigger WW3.

ailun 5y ago
I agree that there is a bad tendency to look at Chinese people as brainwashed drones. But you're going too far in the opposite direction. China's media control, educational policies, and army of nationalists absolutely affect the Overton window in the Chinese public sphere. You can't tell me with a straight face that it's acceptable to discuss Taiwan independence online in a positive way in China. If someone genuinely feels that mainstream opinion in China is wrong on Taiwan, they aren't going to be comfortable discussing it openly.
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  I will not say that it is publicly acceptable to discuss Taiwan independence in China, or any other politically controversial matter for that matter. However I also believe that is irrelevant: I think you are overly attributing the forming of opinions to censorship, and not giving enough credit to people's ability to form their own opinions despite censorship. See my other writeup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28840722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28840722
  - ailun 5y ago
    I don't believe it is irrelevant. You're saying other people are overly attributing opinions to censorship - and you have a Harvard paper (but don't link to it) that may show censorship in China is more based on potential to go viral than on the actual content. How do you think opinions change if ideas can't freely be shared? And I'm guessing that the definition of censorship in this paper is based on things that are actually removed from the internet, which is not the whole picture. Movies, songs, TV, news, and books all have to be approved by the party before distribution. Education is controlled by the government. There's also the comments that people don't make in the first place because they know it will be censored. That line is always being pushed, and it's purposefully vague. There was a teacher in Sichuan a month or so ago who made a very polite, short comment saying he wondered if the government would consider other strategies on their covid response and he went to jail for 2 weeks! How do you think people break out of their set opinions? Where did those opinions come from in the first place?
    - FooBarWidget 5y ago
      How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows-government-criticism-silences-collective-expression https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-... How do opinions change? Through objective reality. Censorship and media control isn't powerful enough. "How Chinese liberals lost the young generation" https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g
goblin89 5y ago
I had seen China and talked to Chinese. The range of policy opinions my counterparts could express, and topics they could engage in, seemed to be extremely limited due to what I could only assume was the state of being misinformed (including by omission) by—and fearing retribution from—their own government. The very same factors would, obviously, be limiting their political agency. Do you have a real choice in how to personally treat CCP and Taiwan? As in, do you feel like you can talk about, say, respecting the preference of Taiwan citizens about them being/not being part of China, or about that mysterious May 35th incident, with, say, a taxi driver? Could it be that the population overwhelmingly supports invading Taiwan because this is literally the only appropriate course of action instilled in them by a government in full control of both traditional and social media?
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  I think you are overly attributing opinions to censorship, and not giving enough credit to people's ability to form their own opinions despite censorship. The hypothesis that Chinese opinions are overwhelmingly the product of censorship and media control has already been debunked by Harvard research. There is a paper which shows that censorship does not steer opinions in a certain direction. Instead, censorship's goal is to silence and dampen movements. Both pro-government and anti-government comments are equally censored -- the actual criteria is whether those comments have the potential to become viral. The inability of censorship to steer opinions, is corroborated by a recent essay "How Chinese liberals lost the young generation" https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g This essay states that for a long time, the popular opinion was that CCP is bad, and and that western-style democracy is superior. It also states that censorship did nothing to change people's opinion on this topic because reality is stronger than censorship/propaganda. It then states that all of this has changed in the past 5-10 years: the CCP has become popular nowadays, again not because of censorship or propaganda, but because in reality they've actually improved and done a good job.
  - goblin89 5y ago
    My first question wasn’t rhetorical, knowing where you stand could help any further discussion, should it occur, be meaningful. What you instead wrote in response makes sense to me only under the assumption that people have a choice—to have CCP or not to have CCP—and that they choose to have CCP; if you’re saying that assumption is correct then we have sufficiently differing views of reality (perhaps you know something I don’t, etc.) that we’d be talking past each other. Newspaper pieces on how %opposition% is %something negative%—written as if it was somehow relevant and even vitally important, creating an illusion of pluralism in absence of any real possibility for the reader to effect any change—were a thing in USSR from what I hear; based on your summary of the essay I smell the same old fish wrapped in a fresh newspaper.
garmaine 5y ago
> There is a saying that if China were democratic, then they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. In this sense the CCP are moderates. That saying is propaganda. Here is a list of literally every war between democratic powers in the entirety of human civilization. It's a very short list, given the sheer number of wars that have been fought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democracies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democraci... Democracies don't start wars with other democracies, outside of very unusual and exceptional circumstances. If China and Taiwan were both democratic, there wouldn't even be a thought of war.
- 1_player 5y ago
  To be fair, we haven't had many democracies compared to autocracies in the history of the world. One of the richest countries in the world is a warmongering democracy. The idea that democracies are peaceful is a red herring and cherry-picking.
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  Propaganda by whom? Because it isn't something said by the Chinese govt or by Chinese media. I assert that it only sounds like propaganda because people can't let go of their false preconceived notions of China, not because it is actually propaganda.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
The US was 80% against getting involved in WW2, so democracies aren’t as predictable as one would think.