This comment breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing. If you have evidence, I'd like to see it—we take actual evidence seriously and always look into it. But the overwhelming majority of comments like this one turn out to be nothing more than the commenter imagining an explanation for comments they disagree with. Such imagination feels extremely convincing, but it is imagination nonetheless.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I guess Chinese gov needs to pay me then ;), mind sharing out the "well documented" reference?

It's a common way for Chinese to pick up an username, a common word plus few characters from their name. I created mine since high school and I use it like a charm for almost a decade. I'm not defending China, I just wanted to let you know NYT is not telling the full truth. I've done biz in HK for 5+ yrs, the conflict and tension between China and HK can't be simply explained in two or three sentences.

The protest is out of control right now, you can't imagine how scary and horrible the current HK is, protestors hit people if they don't want to join, they forbid people from going to work, they rush into airport, train station to interfere public transportation, etc. I was lucky to return back earlier, but it's really disappointing to see NYT only reports whatever favors them. People visiting HK for holidays or biz are not the right ones the protestors should blame. If you don't believe what I said, you can go to HK and take a look (I hope not, at least not now), or talk to anyone who just came back.