Ok, I believe you. You might have satisfied your curiosity by looking at the comment history of the users in question. I did, and found comments debating the relative merit of Github and Gitlab. Presumably the Chinese government has no moles that deep on HN.

It's not a worthy discussion topic without evidence. Opposing opinions are emphatically not evidence. When people allow their own strong opinions to skew their view of others in that direction, civility and discussion quality suffer terribly. So this is not something you can just raise casually, even if your curiosity is pure. Flamethrowers aren't welcome at public gatherings for pure curiosity either.