[Freire_Herval]

The sentence is just a factual statement. 3 agencies have done it. That is fact.

The sentence did mention china has done it on the first attempt which is also factual and relevant to context. The article is about moon landings and associated failures.

As for the Apollo program everyone knows about it. There's no point in regurgitating obvious facts.

[sidlls]

It's only relevant to context if it also includes the context in which the event occurred: China's first attempt is not a notable achievement in the same way the first successful landing after many failures is. I really hate these sinophiles' attempts to elevate China into some super-awesome, super-intelligent master race.

[messe]

> China's first attempt is not a notable achievement in the same way the first successful landing after many failures is.

Landing on the first attempt is pretty impressive in itself, given the difficulty in landing at all is.

> I really hate these sinophiles' attempts to elevate China into some super-awesome, super-intelligent master race.

...I'm sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?

[sidlls]

There is a...contingent...of people here and in other social media venues who seem quite set on elevating the achievements of their chosen group (China, in this case) with exaggerated, unmerited praise, and simultaneously poo-pooing the (usually equally or even more notable) achievements of others.

It's not just with China; it happens in other areas, too, usually focused on eastern nations or private enterprise (e.g., classical/ancient period mathematicians from India, SpaceX, etc.). I don't know if it's overcompensation for westerners' historically casual and sometimes active diminishing/ignoring these accomplishments or what, but it comes off as a tasteless attempt to assert superiority where none exists. And I'm just kinda tired of seeing it.

[Dah00n]

>I really hate these sinophiles' attempts to elevate China into some super-awesome, super-intelligent master race.

Please don't do this. You are seeing things in the text that isn't there and you seem to do the same just the other way around. It reads anti-chinese / racist.

[sidlls]

There are two reasons to point "on the first try" and leave out all the other context (in particular, the giant body of work done by other space agencies and engineering technologies, especially the US's, that China built on): 1) to artificially elevate China's achievement; 2) out of ignorance. I suppose an assumption of ignorance might be considered more charitable somehow, since at least it implies the author could learn something.

[cubefox]

He was just arguing against (what he perceived as) excessive sinophilia.

[xeromal]

I'm often suspicious of china's motives, but I didn't see any sinophilia in the posts they're replying to. You did say "perceived" though, but it's a fine line. Some crazy people also see "Jews" in every aspect of money and government and it eventually turns into hate.