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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Chinese state media has urged authorities to take a "tougher line" against protesters in Hong Kong who vandalised state-run Xinhua news agency and other buildings at the weekend, saying the violence damaged the city's rule of law.
[...] In an editorial, state-backed China Daily newspaper criticised the "wanton" attacks by "naive" demonstrators, adding, "They are doomed to fail simply because their violence will encounter the full weight of the law."
Police fired tear gas at black-clad protesters on Saturday and Sunday in some of the worst violence in the Asian financial hub in weeks, with metro stations set ablaze and buildings vandalised.
Violence also erupted on Sunday after a man with a knife attacked several people and bit off part of the ear of a pro-democracy politician. Two of the victims are reportedly in critical condition, according to reports.
The past five months of anti-government protests in the former British colony represent the biggest popular challenge to President Xi Jinping's government since he took over China's leadership in late 2012.
Protesters are angry at China's perceived meddling with Hong Kong's freedoms, including its legal system, since the Asian financial hub returned to Chinese rule in 1997. China denies the accusation.
The widely-read Global Times tabloid on Sunday condemned the protesters' actions targeting Xinhua and called for action by Hong Kong's enforcement agencies.
"Due to the symbolic image of Xinhua, the vandalizing of its branch is not only a provocation to the rule of law in Hong Kong, but also to the central government and the Chinese mainland, which is the rioters' main purpose," it said.
On Friday, after a meeting of China's top leadership, a senior Chinese official said it would not tolerate separatism or threats to national security in Hong Kong and would "perfect" the way it appointed the city's leader.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 10 2019, @12:57PM (20 children)
Even when it's done by the people themselves?
Which is true here. Democracy is a superior culture here.
So? I see no problem with that.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday November 10 2019, @01:54PM (19 children)
The only problem that is useless as there can be no such thing as superior culture. Whole notion is idiotic. Promoting it is empty waste of time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 10 2019, @02:57PM (18 children)
And yet, we have counterexamples to that all over the place, particularly in China. Some cultures persist and others die out.
When discussing matters that aren't critical to us, like which behaviors are considered polite or not (burping during a meal or wearing white between two dates of the year aren't actions that make or break society), to speak of the superiority of one culture would be folly. But when it comes to survival or the prosperity of a society, culture matters a great deal. For example, I've noticed that a lot of extant Chinese philosophy starts with the idea that normal people can't take care of themselves and discussion of the need for strong leaders. I think that's more because that's what books will survive millennia of authoritarian society than because it is somehow appropriate or right for Chinese culture. Similarly, Chinese culture has been shaped by those millennia of feast and famine.
But we're no longer in that era. Those cultures which suppress human individuality and free thought are inferior because they can't change fast enough to keep up with the world. Where are the innovations and adaptations going to come from? China is much better in this light than it used to be, but it still has a ways to go.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:35PM (17 children)
Such observations like you did are possible only with extreme amount of cherry-picking. Chinese themselves have own history of individualism too, in fact for most of their history they were ahead of western monarchies in that regard. Only problem that Mongol, Manchu and Western invasions slowed down their development. As long as individualism is associated with the West they will not increase individualistic component in their ideologies because Westerners are jerks. So to promote this among them we need to convince them that Westerners themselves are not individualistic. Otherwise it's a doomed idea.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:57PM (16 children)
And they did quite well during those times.
China rotted from within.
Their loss. And as we see in the Hong Kong example, there are much bigger jerks out there than Westerner stereotypes.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday November 10 2019, @08:30PM (15 children)
West has it worse now. It would be more convincing in times of Abe Lincoln but now not anymore. So making Hong Kong more West like would be like curing plague with cholera. Humanity's social institutions always need improvement but adopting external aspects of foreign institutions is never a good idea. It's along the lines of "Lincoln was a great leader so if I'm going to wear same top hat as him I'll be a great leader too!". Same thing with elections. They're not panacea. Some great leaders managed to come to power via them like.. Adolf Hitler! Whoops!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 10 2019, @09:29PM (14 children)
What? You and others have mentioned several such problems. Each case China had it worse. So what's the problem that China doesn't have worst that makes the difference?
You would, of course, adopting the working aspects of foreign institutions, not the external aspects.
Without elections, China managed to get Mao Zedong, one of the few people in history who killed more people than Adolf Hitler. Sure, elections aren't panaceas, but they're great for preventing the sort of widespread injustice and abuse that the two governments are trying to impose in China.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday November 10 2019, @10:00PM (13 children)
And this is exactly what I'm asserting: that general elections are an external aspect, not working aspect. It's nothing more than a PR ploy to feel people represented while in fact hereditary aristocracy(Bush I, Bush II) is still in power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @12:42AM (12 children)
Except that they aren't still in power and hereditary aristocracy is a nonsense term even for the political families - they still have to get elected.
And once again, since this is a comparison rather than just considering the US in a vacuum, China doesn't do it better. You might detect a theme here.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday November 11 2019, @06:37AM (11 children)
It's simply irrelevant what's going on in China. It's another country with language from another language macro-family, it has own cultural context that's most likely cannot be understood properly for anyone not immersed in their culture. As far as actual evidence goes, "they have it worse" is nothing more than ideological statement which is taken as axiom. Cherry-picked facts aren't needed to prove it, since you don't need to prove axioms.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @01:51PM (10 children)
To you. Allegedly. Yet we get all sorts of interesting narratives from you every time they pull something like this.
Ah yes, talk about how we can't ken their ways and wiggle the fingers mysteriously.
Or truth.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday November 11 2019, @04:02PM (9 children)
It cannot be truth in general since it's not a truth-apt statement. It merely reflects compliance to memes mandated by your local government. It doesn't reflect anything happening in objective reality. It's modern variant of the christian Trinity doctrine, it blatantly makes no sense yet it's still exchanged like meme in order to establish a feeling of commonality and justification for hostile raiding of other communities that don't share same nonsensical ideas.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:26PM (8 children)
I like how you contradict yourself in the second sentence. "It" can't be truth-apt except then you provide a context "memes mandated by your local government" that indeed makes it truth-apt. Good job.
Not what truth-apt [wikipedia.org] means:
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday November 11 2019, @09:43PM (7 children)
There is no contradiction. Government more than can mandate you to spew nonsense. Those memes don't carry truth-apt statements, they're merely information tags, they function kinda like smells for territorial animals like cats. They have no other purpose other than friend/foe determination. And multiple meme macrocosms cannot be superior one to other, just like one colony of cats is not inherently superior to other.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:26AM (6 children)
Still stand by what I said before. Plus, mandate means coercion. Chinese government has that power.
I can think of plenty of ways a cat colony can be superior to another: lower population density, less disease, no psychopathic kids in the neighborhood, more food, etc. So far you've named one way Chinese culture is superior to Western culture - namely, it's a bit easier for someone immersed in Chinese culture to understand Chinese culture.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday November 12 2019, @09:32AM (5 children)
I've never tried to even look for advantages of Chinese culture. The point that the whole idea for looking for them is fallacious. It's pure idiocy. In case of cat colonies each one can cover limited territory so many of them can exists at the same time, whatever fine points they have over each other change over time and what can be considered advantage or not is in the eye of beholder. Probably even cats themselves have enough brains to understand that. I see human macrosocieties like this too: they have things in which they're different, they have things that they share. You utterly failed to prove that there is any need to establish an order relation on their set.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:18PM (4 children)
I think it would be a healthy exercise to try contrary to assertion.
Unless, of course, it's not.
And yet, none of the conditions I mentioned was subjective like that.
False. None of the societies present now share the facet of nonexistence with the ones that have gone away.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:52PM (3 children)
All of the above is nonsense. Justify why would anyone look why one society is superior than other or concede that you have no point. Any advantages or disadvantages are so subjective that any way about proving advantages/disadvantages would involve insane amount of cherry-picking and will not be falsifiable [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:08PM (2 children)
I already answered [soylentnews.org] the question.
You're just not paying attention.
Except of course, by its presence or absence in the future. The future will happen.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:59PM (1 child)
Your reasons are just cherry-picking. If you look at it objectively currently Chinese are better at surviving than rest of humanity if population numbers are taken in account. Even your theories about relative importance of "strong leader" are unconvincing and unsubstantiated. Like there are people emphasizing different aspects of strong leadership both in China and outside of it. Sweeping statements can be once again only made by cherry-picking. But you still evade my question. Not why is China superior/inferior but why you want to answer this question in the first place? Why even try to grade it on some scale? Why do it? After all your points are driven by a wish to find some advantage so if you find them then it's not admissible proof due to fine-tuning and cherry-picking(They are better in some thing? Then it's irrelevant. They're worse at some thing? Then it's all-important). Only justification is your wish for it to be so. Thus it is circular reasoning. Many of unfortunate things in China are directly caused by Western policies aimed at achieving purely mercantilist aims. Thus it's also self-fulfilling prophecy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:16PM
Just cherry picking a couple of really important ones. You don't need a thousand reasons to own a cat, you just need a good one.