> 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.
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.