[bigmonads]

I reject the accusation of "whataboutism". Let's take those in order.

"Why have I made 5~6 comments in the thread?" It's an interesting topic that I've spent over 5 years researching.

"Why are you talking about the United States in a China thread?" I think this comment captures it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185364

[ardy42]

> "Why have I made 5~6 comments in the thread?" It's an interesting topic that I've spent over 5 years researching.

By my count, you've made 13 comments in this thread so far, which is about 20% of the current total.

I don't think you've spent "over 5 years" researching surveillance China. It seems like you may have spent that much time researching surveillance in the US (but I have my doubts), and are very intent on derailing the thread into a discussion of that instead of the article content about China.

[zug_zug]

Well I'm gonna be one of the people downvoting all the whataboutism I see, if you have 13 comments doing it that's 13 downvotes.

Immorality in one region isn't excused by immorality in another. If what you mean to say is "This is absolutely inexcusable in China, and inexcusable in the West too" that's fine, but completely irrelevant to the article at hand, but I don't think that's what you're saying.

[tomhoward]

It's not about agreeing whether or not something is indeed "inexcusable" in one region or another, but understanding things in their context.

One can't fully comprehend an issue without comparing/contrasting it with other scenarios that may be somewhat comparable.