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Information operations directed at Hong Kong

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1116 points whatok | 1 comments | 19 Aug 19 18:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.231s | source
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xt00 ◴[19 Aug 19 19:09 UTC] No.20740783[source]▶
Was in China when the first protest happened and the news coverage was mostly saying things like that the people are clueless in Hong Kong and don’t understand the law about extradition. They had various experts all saying similar things and they would also point to random weibo posts about totally not on the payroll “people” saying they want their city back from the protesters.. I mean it’s one thing if China’S central government wants Hong Kong to be a certain way but dressing it up as “lots of ordinary folks agree with them” is pretty disingenuous and it seems very fair for any platform to call the government out on it—-especially non-Chinese owned platforms.
replies(2): >>20741494 #>>20742068 #
1. rolltiide ◴[19 Aug 19 21:39 UTC] No.20742068[source]▶
> was mostly saying things like that the people are clueless in Hong Kong and don’t understand the law about extradition

It is important to understand there is some truth in the statement, while it neglects the symbolism that Hong Kong citizens have rallied behind.

It is no longer important, but the possibility of extradition to mainland China was a very small part of the bill, which updated a long list of countries that extradition would be possible to. It also lowered the number of crimes that were extraditable.

So on its face it was a meaningful updating of an old law and mostly kept the existing process which was full of appeals and approvals of various departments to actually extradite someone, but the mere inclusion of one particular country allowed everyone to channel their disdain for crossing an ideological line.

So when the first protest happened, China's cherry picking of the issue is not at all inaccurate. Coupled with the understanding that all the disdain comes towards them, from their own autonomous region, it is pretty embarrassing.