People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know that democracy is generally good, but they also know that a strong central government can also be useful for certain circumstances. Most westerners and HongKongers on Hacker news have a very extreme political view, you just believe "democracy is good"(TM), protesting against the evil Chinese government is good. But can you take a closer look at what is really happening in HK and then decide what you believe?
BTW, I'm neither pro-protester nor pro-police, I think the protest is a result of economic regression in HK. You could also check my comment and posting history to see that I'm not a 五毛党.
If we were to overthrow the Chinese government, can we get a better tomorrow for the Chinese people? The west have show us what happened in Middle East. Clearly, wars are not what we want.
I'm saying that we want democracy, we do want that, but blaming it all to "the evil communist party" is not a good way show us how to get a democracy, please provide some practical guidance. Thanks.
hong kong has demonstrated, with some of the largest protests in global history, that they do not want the chinese government to interfere with the autonomy that they currently have. the chinese government has responded with misinformation to sway their population so that they can continue to constrain hong kong in ways that they don’t want
the point isn’t really that the chinese government isn’t better than an alternative, it’s that it’s going in a direction further away from what it’s citizens would generally agree they want, and not allowing people the knowledge to even know it’s happening, let alone the freedom to have a discussion about alternatives
Like "being raised out of poverty"? For large parts of the Chinese population, the biggest concern isn't 4G coverage or cultural appropriation at some college party.