The rest of your comment is also the kind of nationalistic ranting that isn't allowed on HN. People on both sides of every strongly-felt line perceive their opponents as trolls. If you have evidence of abuse, please email us so we can take a look; we ban accounts that do that, regardless of which nations or opinions are at issue.

But please don't post insinuations without basis. By 'basis' I mean specific links or data. Simply having an opposing view is not enough; it's too subject to how one feels. The site guidelines mention this, so it would be a good idea to (re-)read them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Is there a pattern of downvotes whenver there isa negative story about China

There isn't such a pattern than I'm aware of. What you're probably seeing is users flagging stories that they feel are off-topic for HN, presumably because they lead to nationalistic flamewars.

It’s becoming a nuisance, which is fine. But I fear what will happen if the trend continues. It may very well end up suffocating thoughtful discussion about China and their policies. Which, ironically, would make it all the more important to have those :)

I find myself wondering if it’s astroturfing or blind nationalism.

(I agree the comment about his wife is in poor taste, by the way :/ I would support an amendment to your post, but I guess that’s your call.)

I'm skeptical that mods are deliberating burying such posts. What can happen is

1 - it gets flagged then vouched, but still has a huge karma hit. This happened to all the Damore discussions.

2 - it has a much greater ratio of comments to upvotes. This is taken as a marker of bickering and leads to penalization

that is most definitely not a fact, it is an opinion, namely your opinion. It's also a pointless and needlessly inflammatory insult that engenders no productive discussion. Would you say the same about the first lady of the US?

I'm not saying that it's being orchestrated by the Indian government, but it does happen.

How many Chinese people live in China?

How many Americans are there?

I have not counted them all myself, however this discussion has not talked the numbers and there are a fair few Chinese and Indian people and not so many American people, therefore some presence online is to be expected by people that don't go along with what Washington says.

Regarding whether it is bots or not, the guys in the China office where I work sometimes send out company wide emails that do not look like they have been written by humans. Particularly salient are the 'employee of the month' nominations that should be sent to HR and not 'cc all'. These emails definitely look like they could be written by an auto-translating bot. Reflected in these emails are different values and different ways of praising people that cause us in the UK to chuckle a bit.

Maybe a little, but the main thing I see in stories like that is dozens of comments that that derail the comments into a "the US is just as bad!" flame-war, and kill discussion of the negative story.

It's really effective, because Western users are often ignorant of China and/or indifferent to it, but will happily jump into a flame-war about Western countries when presented with the bait.

The first time you see such nonsense like the "bimbo" reference, you call it out. However, after you see it 50 times, you just ignore it. For you, you ignore it, but since nobody calls it out, it is gradually asserted as fact. This is the same trend online by the organized trolls whereby nobody even bothers to call them out when they pretend Taiwan is part of China; that the South China Sea belongs to China; and that Xi Jinping is the new Kim Jong Il.

The first time you see something like this attack, you call it out. By the time you see it 200 times from 20 different people, you'll be indifferent.

I should write a better 50c algorithm that spews Peng is a stupid bimbo until everyone on the internet accepts it.

Note. I don't think she is a bimbo, but the point stands none the less