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Boston Student wrote ‘I'm from Hong Kong’ An onslaught of Chinese anger followed (washingtonpost.com)
51 points by bubmiw 2584 days ago
5 comments

During my stay at various research institutes throughout Europe where I met a lot of Chinese PhD students and Researchers, it was surprising to know that many of these highly educated intelligent people didn’t see anything wrong with Chinese leadership. And insisted Tibet is theirs and Hong Kong is part of China. I was really shocked at first but a friend from Hong Kong explained me that many Chinese are highly patriotic and brainwashed from Chinese media to distrust western media. And anything bad western media says about china they think it’s all false.
Israel is very similar. After several decades of “this is ours”, people don’t even remember what the world used to look like before.
China is a terrifying dictatorship extending control to every part of life for their citizens.
Semi-relevant anecdote: Back in my first year of university (in the UK), I remember coming back from the Christmas break to find my Chinese flatmate, disheveled. Turns out he had spent the holiday in the library reading up on Tiananmen Square and the like and was very eager to share with me his astonishing discoveries. He was surprised when I told him that people outside of China know about all that stuff. I can't imagine how confused it all must've made him feel, especially since he returned to China after his studies.
This article is very impressive to me. China is able to project cultural power to US universities.

That’s incredible. The West has no comparable. We’re too confused these days with the myriad of identity politics in our democracy and China has realized that that is a weakness and is going to exploit it.

Those sinofascists also tell ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries that they are Chinese, and owe allegiance to the People's Republic. Not much different from Nazi Germany's expectations of ethnic Germans living abroad.

Except that the Chinese citizens feel extreme offense and hurt feelings when told that some Chinese are not citizens and don't owe a damn thing to the People's Republic.

Could this article be provocative on purpose? This seems like something that is written to provoke outrage, and exactly what I would do if I were running anti-chinese propaganda. It's unconfirmably anecdotal, the victim is a female Boston college student (very easy to sympathize with), and fits in the "China is expanding their fascist policies" narrative.

In the same vein, if I were running Chinese propaganda, I'd probably write a story about how a fat American in China demands a Chinese laborer give up their seat because they are inferior.

Yes, it could be. It could also be a sincere journalistic attempt to report their understanding of a situation.
The Chinese government has attempted to quash free speech in the USA which criticizes it. [0] is an interesting anecdote.

[0] https://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/mural-draws-fire-fro...