[hker]

Thank you for your honest reply, I just upvoted you.

> While I agree with your other words, is the last paragraph really necessary? If you want us mainlanders to trust you, it is advisable to not praise Japan when it is not directly related to the conversation.

I agree that the last paragraph is not necessary. But I did learn something from your reply to my last paragraph.

I personally separate the Japanese people we see nowadays from the wartime Japan under militarism, and I think this sentiment is popular among the recent generations in Hong Kong (and perhaps in Europe and US, etc). Older generations in Hong Kong, who experienced the Japanese occupation, think differently, understandably.

So to a Hong Konger like me, praising Japan does not have any strings of nationalism attached. It is like praising the spice in Thai food (and this is irrelevant to whether we like Chinese food, or China). And that's why I am being over-insenstive here, and I could have done better.

Likewise, most of Hong Kong people could separate mainland people from CCP.

> Mainlanders are also perfectly capable of doing it, although we are not doing as good as we can.

> https://www.chinasmack.com/chinese-football-fans-pick-up-tra...

Thanks for letting me know something I was not aware of, and I sincerely praise those mainlanders for their effort. Keep up with the good work.

As your linked article also suggests, Japan is leading the world in cleaning after themselves, that's why I gave credit to them.

And back to the protest, I mention that Hong Kong people are cleaning trashes in protest [1], because I disagree with the "riot" charge by the government [2], which could result in a maximum term of ten years.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/c18ybh/protester_...

[2]: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/13/hong-kong-protesters-c...

[confusedhnguy]

> separate the Japanese people we see nowadays from the wartime Japan under militarism

Yes, this is the sane choice. Unfortunately we both know that bad news draw more attention from the general public. Just like many mainlanders still remember vividly that (a small fraction of) HKers called them as locusts, when some Japanese say something bad about China, it gets spread much much faster than other news and stays in the memory for a long time. I was merely stating the fact that it is not a good idea to praise Japan in a conversation in general unless necessary, given the current state of our media. But still, their officials need to stop visiting the Shrine, or the names of the war criminals need to be removed.

> "riot" charge by the government

Usual CCP bs. My stand on this is that: HK is the best candidate for advocating changes to the CCP, if you can succeed before 2047 then we really own you a big favor. But HK should also remember that this is our internal affair, no foreign organization should interfere. The West can be used as extra pairs of eyes to keep the CCP checked so it doesn't repeat the disaster happened in Tiananmen square, but that's it. I hope you can understand why we don't trust the West, after we have witnessed the events happened elsewhere.

[hker]

> I was merely stating the fact that it is not a good idea to praise Japan in a conversation in general unless necessary, given the current state of our media.

Agreed, and points taken. Thanks.

> My stand on this is that: HK is the best candidate for advocating changes to the CCP, if you can succeed before 2047 then we really own you a big favor. But HK should also remember that this is our internal affair, no foreign organization should interfere. The West can be used as extra pairs of eyes to keep the CCP checked so it doesn't repeat the disaster happened in Tiananmen square, but that's it. I hope you can understand why we don't trust the West, after we have witnessed the events happened elsewhere.

That's reasonable. Thanks for voicing out your main concern: that China may lose control to foreign organization, hence CCP should stay unless absolutely unbearable. I think I understand more how mainlanders think now.

[confusedhnguy]

Please allow me to add more details.

I have spent 9 years in the US. When I first came here, I was fed up with CCP's bs and thought the US and its system is the best. But now I have come to the conclusion that it is just as evil as the CCP, but in different ways. I think so because I have witnessed first hand about how insulting the Chinese is still acceptable [0] even in the PC culture (ppl still ask me if I eat dogs), how biased the mainstream media are, and how the democratic system here is full of flaws. More and more mainlanders are sharing my view, for better or for worse.

Also, it's not just "lose control to foreign organization". Based on the above reasons, we believe that the West is hostile towards Asia and will do everything to prevent any country in that area from growing up and challenge them. The US supports Korea, Japan and Taiwan just so it can put pressure on China, instead of actually caring about their people. Look, the HN crowd are still down-voting my post that complains about you mentioning Japan and I still can't think of why.

Yes, I understand that rights can only be obtained by earning instead of begging, and the Chinese-American community did a poor job to defend their rights. But until we have a memorial day for [1], I do not believe the Westerners care about our well-being at all.

As for your protest, this image of the flyer in [2] was circulating privately on our social media, and I have to say that one of the bullet points is really questionable, namely, collective punishment (do you have proof of this?). Even if all the other ones are true to some extent, this one is going to hurt your credibility a lot and push people away from you.

I am going to take a risk by quoting Chairman Mao's words: 政治就是，把支持我们的人搞的多多的，把反对我们的人搞得少少的！The number of people in the mainland who doesn't like CCP's actions is probably larger than you realized, but these people, by their nature, dislike liars in general. If HK want to win their support, then it really should make sure that their flyers/slogans are flawless and based on facts, and do not smell like the typical Western propaganda. I know this is putting the burden on you but hey this is not an easy task to begin with.

Keep up the good work!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFxOsUe0I8o

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_Americans#T...

[2] https://twitter.com/liuyun2018/status/1133227121713659904

Edit: Let me add more materials that supports my view that the US doesn't care about us at all [3], and how they provided continuous support to Chiang Kai-shek even if he did [4] and [5]. I am from Henan so you can imagine why do I think this is just as bad as what the CCP did, and how angry I am when almost no Westerners talks about these when they talk about the KMT.

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ygpo0/i_was...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Changsha_fire

[spookieboogie]

FYI, this conversation is very productive and contributes to the greater conversation in a positive way. Thank you for bringing in a unique viewpoint. I hope we all can work better towards the future.

> I think so because I have witnessed first hand about how insulting the Chinese is still acceptable [0] even in the PC culture (ppl still ask me if I eat dogs), how biased the mainstream media are, and how the democratic system here is full of flaws.

I have seen this as well, HATE it, and I've had to chew people out on it before. But it's something bigger than just one person trying to be mindful, I think.

There is the normal amount of it that is in jest, as with any other group of people, but for some reason, treating Asia like the butt of your jokes almost NEVER seems to be taken with any sort of seriousness at all. For example, a normal, sane westerner wouldn't go out saying 'Black people eat nothing but watermelon,' without complete irony, but for a much longer time, it was completely reasonable to make similar jokes, even more vulgar jokes towards people from Asia. Only recently have people started thinking 'Oh, maybe this is a bad idea, too.'

The media... Yeah. The media is dreadful. But it's a growing sentiment in the west that the media is useless and does extraordinarily more harm than good (being a shame since it's so ingrained in everything)

> Look, the HN crowd are still down-voting my post that complains about you mentioning Japan and I still can't think of why

Just for a western perspective, there may be a few reasons this is happening

* People in the west LOVE Japan. Obviously we'll look at the entire country with rose tinted goggles, and anything they've done to the west we've done back to them tenfold. So as a rule, Japan tends to get a MUCH bigger free pass on just about everything. Doubly so because their culture is so prevalent in the west. My initial thought, without actually reading into what you were saying was: "Japan is terrible. China is better." Obviously that's not what you said at all, but it's STILL my first gut reaction (the next thought was instinctively 'maybe some nuance was lost between languages?' Which is also a very unhelpful sentiment, but it remains my initial reactions)

* There's been a LOT of anti-Asia, especially Chinese, sentiment lately. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, if there's some sort of propaganda push or people are literally just echoing the political climate, but especially on Hacker News, it has been almost unusable due to how toxic it is lately. Again, I try to see beyond what I'm seeing/hearing, but even for me it's hard to not get swept up at times. So ANYTHING pro Chinese is bound to be at least met with skepticism at best.

* People unfortunately, and incorrectly treat the 'flag' button as a 'dislike/I don't like this' button. I think Reddit unfortunately normalized this as a trend.

> we believe that the West is hostile towards Asia and will do everything to prevent any country in that area from growing up and challenge them

I may not be as well researched into this as someone who's actually on the receiving end, and I am on the younger side, but from the perspective I know, Russia, China, and the US were always on equal footing and were constantly trying to do similar things like this to each other. I would be interested in hearing more about this from a different viewpoint, however.

[confusedhnguy]

Thank you for your kind words, it really warms my heart.

Yes, recently there has been an abnormally high amount of news about China on HN and I find most of the comments questionable to say the least. I was so pissed and registered this account to post some comments that are also questionable, so I really should calm down and contribute something that actually helps.

Speaking of the Japanese culture, I must admit that I envy them for how well it is preserved and developed with time. I totally understand why you find it's beautiful and think it represents the good things in the Far East. Our problem is that the Japanese government treat us like they defeated us during WWII because now they are the ally of the allies, which makes us super upset.

Yes all our governments suck, but from our perspective, the US has actively caused much much more trouble around the world than China. And we are genuinely concerned about what's going to happen next because of mentality shown by words like [0] (sorry if the link is pay-walled).

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/04/because-c...

[spookieboogie]

The more people having constructive conversations, the better. If at least to attempt to drown out the toxicity. But, if we never succeed, well, at least we made the effort.

The general west hears very little about Japanese government as a rule. So I don't have any reason to believe or disbelieve you. All we get are the culture's good bits, but maybe never see the underbelly. Maybe we'll hear something if there's a controversy, or about the new emperor since it was a novelty, but that's it. So that's very interesting to hear about Chinese-Japanese relations.

Funny enough, if you just skim this article, it seems to prop up Japan as a underdog model state. Reading into it a bit more has more detail, but I know at least several people who just read the bullet points of articles like this, and walk away with whatever they got. I wonder if this is a contribution to the push, but it might be that this is what is in the news right now, and this is what politicians in the west are talking about. (Or at least what the media is reporting)

I think the thing to watch for is next year's US elections. The two parties in the US are somewhat similar on a global scale, but the differences that do exist between them are really important for these relations, and has the potential to improve things, rather than continuing to polarize them. Either way, the US was divided almost in half by population last election, (the majority didn't even vote for the Republican offices, but that's not how the election system works,) so it seems at least say that there is a large number of people that do not hold the same opinions as their government.

[echaozh]

I think the root of the conflict between the West and China is the arrogance of the Westerners and the (slowly rising) confidence and impatience of the Chinese.

The arrogance is not only the jokes or bamboo ceilings. The deepest arrogance is the unwilingness to understand the Chinese way, let alone respecting it.

Why do the Chinese tolerate their government? Are they silly or are they all cowards? No. There are just trade-offs. And there is reality. So, do the homeless in US cities who live under bridges enjoy the democracy? Do they really have a way to change their way of living by having the right to vote? The Chinese people are practical and still in the low tiers of Maslow's hirearchy of needs, and the government provides them with the basic needs. Yeah, we have electricity, phone signals, roads and bridges for the smallest villeges scattered in mountains. Not sure if the US can promise the same.

And there are so many myths about Chinese legal system or sensoring. Yeah we got problems in these fields, but such problems are not always pushed top down. The Chinese people also have a huge influence on the court system, and the justice popular in China may not be popular in the West. About the punishment to people refusing to pay the debts, or to people refusing to give up seats belonging to other passenger on the trains. The Westerners throw so much FUD at it, but it's actually quite well-accepted by the Chinese. So, what do you actually want the Chinese to have? What you think is good for them, or what they actually want? What makes you a better decision maker?

And the arrest of people making outrageous remarks on the Internet are actually well accepted too. The police may actually act on request of other civilians seeing those remarks and get offended. And most such remarks are actually bordering or well into the territory of hate crime. Don't you talk about joking about presidents. More like humiliations, and not to officials, but to veterans, war heroes, moral code, and other people and things honored by the majority of the society. Do they deserve arrest? Perhaps and perhaps not. But the Chinese people are not complaining.

So, do you Westerners really want diversity of cultures or not? If you really mean it, try to understand the Chinese and respect their way. Like you claim to have done to the Islamic way. If you don't, just shut up and let it be.

[hker]

(Could not edit the parent comment for one more remark)

> I still support your democratic movements. But if you truly want mainlander to hear your voice, talking about how good Japan is is counterproductive.

Thank you for your support, and for the honest opinion. It is important for us to understand how you think. I hope we can understand each other better with enough communication.