Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

South Park is spot on this season. You could say they are good with predictions, but I think they just gave different perspective to something that already has been happening (episodes on China censorship)

While I agree they’re spot on, it’s not like this is a new issue.

China has been leveraging their power "quietly" for some time now. Anything anti-China gets buried or discredited or shouted down using whataboutisms. Even here on hackernews you'll see tons of posts on negative chinese news from month old accounts fuzzing the narrative saying some variation of "it's not easy to understand if you're not chinese etc etc"

The hong kong issue is just bringing the issue into the mainstream

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I've wasted too much time on HN arguing with people who simply don't believe China isn't as bad as portrayed, and believe everything that comes up here or on other sites is nothing but anti-Chinese propaganda.

There are plenty of people who are so jaded that they're unwilling to condemn China for all the immoral things they do, much less economic or political behaviours that aren't overtly immoral, but do have clear negative impact on the Western sphere of influence and economic status.

As bad as the US is, I don't want a country run by such an authoritarian, ruthless government like the CCP to take over the position as the world's superpower.

>but do have clear negative impact on the Western sphere of influence and economic status.

And this is such a problem that you think the US should take actions to try and overthrow their government? Even considering how terribly most US regime changes damage a country, and the horrible civil wars that have accompanied the previous Chinese collapses?

>As bad as the US is, I don't want a country run by such an authoritarian, ruthless government like the CCP to take over the position as the world's superpower

I'm not thrilled at the prospect of a Chinese super power either. However, I also view the US as a rather terrible superpower, and unlike in China I have some amount of agency to change that.

You don't think there is any moral difference between the two?

For many people worldwide, the difference is that China is not bombing them, isn't overthrowing their governments and creating & fueling a civil war in their country.

I'm quite certain that China will do those things if they ever become the world's single global super power, but so far they haven't. Not because they wouldn't for moral reasons, but for lack of opportunity. Still, in practice, the worst China is doing to other countries somewhere across the world is blocking some website or creating tariffs, not level a city.

Is that true? Seems they are doing a lot in Africa. And even if it were, it's hard to believe they'll treat foreigners any better than their own people.

They are buying Africa via development aid, that's quite different from bombing Africa. The Chinese will certainly leverage their power, but they tend to do it in more subtle ways, at least where their power isn't overwhelming. Their posturing in the South China Sea certainly looks different from their behavior in Africa or South America. But as I mentioned, I don't believe that it's because they care about human rights, the sovereignty of countries etc, it's that they can't get away with openly bombing random countries on the other side of the globe yet. The US -for the most part- can, so they don't care for subtlety and just do.

Who is bombing Africa? It seems a lot of moral outrage against the US stems from false equivalence.

The US has been routinely bombing both Libya and Somalia for around a decade.

Yes but for what reason? Just for fun? To take them over? To combat terrorism?

Ostensibly it's combating terrorism, but basically American imperialism.

I must have missed when we colonized Somalia and Libya. Thanks for the update.