It might not change HK government attitude after all, but it shows that Hong Kongers align with western values - no one should live under the fear of arbitrary prosecution.
This idea that fundamental human rights are “western values” is profoundly unhelpful, because it implies that in some sense to fight injustice is to no longer be truly Chinese—a nonsense whose propagation is both supported by and helpful to the CCP.
Taiwan is a very democratic and open society, but evolved on its own from a dictatorship to a proud free society. I think many Taiwanese would be very proud to say they developed it with their own distinctive Taiwanese values (and bento box throwing matches in the Legislative Yuan).
At one level I understand what you area saying but at another level I think your statement undermines what it means to relinquish one set of ideas in favor of another.
It is perhaps a hindrance that we don't have an ethnic-neutral term for the set of ideas associated with "western values" but "western" is descriptive of the origin not the applicability of the ideas.
In order to genuinally adopt and espouse "western values" you have to at some level abandon "non-western values". This of course has as a pre-requisite that you've discarded the notion of multiculturalism -- at least the version of multiculturalism that insists that avoiding value judgements between cultures as a virtue unto itself.
What makes it tough is that many more cultures have a concept of "fundamental human rights" than ones that agree with western countries on which specific rights are fundamental.
You have to add in a lot of other ideas though to come close to the basket of ideas associated with "western values". For example: limited government, representative government, scientific inquiry, equality of women, due process, free markets, private property, contract law, and so on.
Why say 'align with western values' instead of 'respect human rights'? Freedom of speech and assembly are encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Because the issue they are protesting is extradition and the rule of law being maintained; HK has a western style rule of law, mainland has practically no rule of law to speak of.
I think the distinction trying to be made here is that Chinese, Hongkongers, and Taiwanese people don't see themselves as westerners. Posters aren't saying that they shouldn't fight for basic human rights, but rather that basic human rights aren't "western", they are human. We being westerners should be proud that we have laws like this, but that doesn't mean we need to impose everything western on others. It also doesn't mean that our fight for basic human rights is fundamentally western. Just the same way it isn't American, British, German, etc. They are basic human rights after all, and last I checked these people are still humans.
TLDR: basic human rights doesn't mean you have to identify as western.
> The Tiananmen Square massacre, which originated due to the protesters fighting for more freedom/human rights, from I heard from my uncle, it was because of the influence from westerners
This is garbage. The massacre happened because Beijing responded ham-fistedly to a peaceful student demonstration. It involved atrocities including PLA troops firing on their own ambulances and dissolving bodies under tanks and in vats of acid [1].
And while the protests in Beijing are memorialised by Tank Man, there were protests in pretty much every other Chinese city at the time. They were all brutally suppressed in favour of the ruling elite.
I was talking about the ultimate reason why they protested, it was influenced by the west, human rights.
Not the way they were massacred, or how people memorialized them.
I am definitely stunned to know how hacker news people comprehend
edit: confirmed hacker news upvote/downvote buttons work like reddit's ones, and in turn work like facebook one except facebook doesn't have a downvote button neither
Well, respect of human rights maybe a relatively recent "western" concept, but judging from the fact that so many family members of the top brass of the communist party of China have become citizens in these "Western" countries, it does seem that they themselves do embrace such values (when it doesn't confront their own interest).
> And probably I will get downvoted by mentioning this. The Tiananmen Square massacre, which originated due to the protesters fighting for more freedom/human rights, from I heard from my uncle, it was because of the influence from westerners.
Marxism, or the morphed variety of the CCP, also originates from the West. That doesn’t mean that Mao or the 6/4 movement didn’t have a genuine appreciation of “Western ideas” and want to implement them.
And yes, the West causes lots of problems. At least there is freedom to discuss them, and the probability of being sent to a camp for pointing things out is extremely low. That doesn’t discredit Western ideas; indeed, the self-awareness and capacity for self-criticism of the West is an important feature of its political system that the CCP increasingly lacks.
> downvoted me for no reason, hacker news, what's the point of the upvote/downvote button anyway
In case you are genuinely confused why people would downvote you: you bring up a lot of issues like 6/4, the Opium Wars, Huawei ... that only fit into a coherent topic if you make it incredibly broad, e.g. "China vs. the West". It is hard to have a good discussion on a topic that broad, and by bringing up so many different issues you spread yourself too thin and argue none of your points particularly well.
If you were to focus on a single on-topic issue, try to provide some additional relevant information and keep your value judgment out of it (voting on opinionated comments is inevitably going to be opinion-based), it would at least make for good reading.
You're being downvoted because you seem to just be here to argue. You're not interacting with peoples' responses to you very much, just throwing out a blizzard of new accusations. That's not a conversation, it's just a rant. HN isn't the place for that.
> You're not interacting with peoples' responses to you very much, just throwing out a blizzard of new accusations.
I think I have made my point even though it was harsh. This thread is about protest in Hong Kong, and what the list of accusations (as you said) don't spread too far away, since it relates to the same thing.
Your point seemed to be "west = bad" but you did not make it well. Nor is it an interesting point - we can say communism is western, Hitler is western, "freedom" is western, whatever, good or bad, but it's silly and shortsighted. Ideas have complicated histories and there's no clean separation between good sources of ideas and bad ones.
More interesting is your idea that protesting - being willing to demonstrate disagreement with leadership - is a negative value that governments should resist and supress. You could make that argument in a clearer form, but you would still not convince many people here. (Note that this would be a different argument from "western countries also suppress disagreement sometimes.")
I'm not really sure what your harsh point is to be honest, please expand!
Massacres and atrocities are no easy things to discuss. I've spoken to survivors of the holocaust in Europe, and the Rwandan genocide, you have obviously not heard anyone participating in Tiananmen square talk about the events? It's very hard to talk so lightly about massacares when you have heard personal anecdotes and the hard ships that the people went trough.
While in this particular Hong Kong protest case, it was influenced by the west (or western values).
So my only point is that the west has caused more troubles than ever for the world. (Which is why I go on and talk about the wars etc)
Perhaps I am wrong, it was the history written by someone else.
> Massacres and atrocities are no easy things to discuss. I've spoken to survivors of the holocaust in Europe, and the Rwandan genocide, you have obviously not heard anyone participating in Tiananmen square talk about the events? It's very hard to talk so lightly about massacares when you have heard personal anecdotes and the hard ships that the people went trough.
I don't talk about this at all. (not that I am cold hearted if the impression I left for you was such, I am sorry)
edit: I made a mistake, I mean I don't talk about the details of massacres and atrocities. I just mentioned the title of them.
The UN, particularly at that time (1948), was a creation and creature of the western world. The drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt: http://research.un.org/en/undhr/draftingcommittee. Of the nine drafters, six were from a western country (US, UK, France, Australia, and Chile). Two (the ROC delegate and the Lebanese delegate) were educated in the US. (The ROC delegate moved to New Jersey and lived there until his death). The other delegate was from Russia, which is a mostly western country.
You're using "west" as in western aligned? If not Australia and Russia are most definitely not western geographically. I've also never heard of Russia mentioned as western or grouped with other western countries. There's a lot of political tension between Russia and the "west" some I'm surprised to hear you say that.
"Western" is generally defined in terms of historical/cultural affiliation, not geography. Almost 90% of Australia's population is of English/Irish/Scottish descent, and Australia's laws, institutions, and culture are directly descended from Britain.
Russia is harder to pin down. Historically, they self-identified as western, even though the geographic center of Russia is actually in Asia.
