Tweet of the Day: Chinese Irony
As mainland Chinese students and Hong Kong students protest and face off on university campuses around the world, it’s important to remember that mainland students are exercising a right they don’t actually possess back home. And most (none?) of them seem to recognize that irony.
— Melissa Chan (@melissakchan) August 17, 2019
Since most Western university campuses lean in a PC direction, this means such campuses will already be pro-mainland China, so if mainland students abroad express their strident opinions, this won’t evoke an irony at all: there’s no power to fight against when you and the local powers already agree. What would be ironic would be for mainlanders to gather together in “Free Tibet!” or “Taiwan is its own country!” rallies on Western campuses. That would quickly become a free-speech issue, and that’s what would generate the irony.
But we won’t see any of that from mainlanders on Western campuses. Generally speaking, the kids are way too indoctrinated. I recall tutoring, in 2012, a Chinese national in northern Virginia; when I showed him a pic of Tiananmen’s “tank man,” that was his first time ever seeing the image. Talk all you want about how the Net-savvy Chinese can bypass government censorship to see forbidden information; the fact remains that the Chinese government has been very successful at blocking, erasing, and rewriting history.
You’re tight Kevin. And companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter lean decidedly more toward Beijing than Hong Kong as well.
Sad. So much potential, and yet so many people choose tyranny over liberty.