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> HN tends to want to avoid political flamewars. Articles about China tend to devolve into political flamewars. If HN has an algorithm that spots flamewars (and I think they do), that could explain some of the behavior you're seeing.

I don't think that explains it either. On most of the stories I'm talking about (including this one), there are little to no comments before the story is down-weighted. There's no flamewar for an algorithm to spot.

It really feels like topic-based censorship, and likely manual since it seems reactive to popularity.