Information operations directed at Hong Kong

HongKonger here. I have some friends in China posting similar anti-protest posts on WeChat social media. It's like the news they read has a completely different story than what it's being told in legitimate new sources. The problem of fake news does become very apparent, and I hope people in China can eventually gain awareness or at least start to question the validity of their news sources.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them?

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.

IMO the CCP gets its legitimacy to govern from its performance in some key areas: economic development and stability/security. That plays to the party's strengths, so the state-controlled media has actively promoted the view that these factors are the most important. Note how issues like the environment and health care were very much put on the back burner until public awareness and criticism reached a critical threshold, after which the party acknowledged the issues. So it's no surprise that the CCP enjoys a broad level of support on the mainland—it has performed well in the key areas it has convinced people matters most.

In a liberal democracy, on the other hand, people expect much more responsiveness to their concerns. And people tend to value freedom of expression and freedom from suppression. Those values are treasured in Hong Kong.

So no wonder mainlanders and HKers have different outlooks on this issue.

In a poor country, how are economic development and stability/security not pragmatically the most important values?