<story><title>The Hostile Forces of Beijing</title><url>https://scholars-stage.org/candlelight-vigils-and-hostile-forces/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mrtnmcc</author><text>You have to understand that after the cultural revolution, most all Chinese understand that internal rebellion can be very bad (leading to mass famine and death). Hence they largely support strong government regulation, even on speech. Americans think individual independence is a noble &amp;quot;Western value&amp;quot; because the Revolutionary War worked out fine for us.  But these experiences each lead to biased extrapolations from the past. For the future, the specific conditions matter for individualism versus collectivism.. on which is the better path.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Hostile Forces of Beijing</title><url>https://scholars-stage.org/candlelight-vigils-and-hostile-forces/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>netsharc</author><text>I wonder if the people who get these Security Commission briefings believe the bullshit about &amp;quot;hostile external forces&amp;quot; or if they all know it&amp;#x27;s just a pretend boogeyman and the population unrest happened because they don&amp;#x27;t tolerate the government&amp;#x27;s behavior.&lt;p&gt;Then again a lot of American reddit&amp;#x2F;Twitter users screamed &amp;quot;Russian bot!&amp;quot; when they see things they didn&amp;#x27;t like. Some of it maybe were Russian bots, but imagine if all the Russian interference disappeared, would all the anti-American commenters disappear off the Internet?</text></comment>