Then why do I regularly see an anti-west china post pushed to the top (without even much to say). Typically it gets pushed out later but odd how often that happens.

Why does anything critical of china get met with downvotes rather than responses? - I've pointed this out before.

Why, if I try to argue with pro-china people does a pattern of rebuffing or denial occur followed by, when pushed into a corner, posting some nebululosty with little meaningful content followed by them going quiet?

If this is not government sponsored shilling, there are a bunch of people who are quite willing to behave against HN rules but don't get banned in a hurry - should I be flagging these more or something?

I have no problem with people being pro-china, it's a question of honesty.

You're probably running into the notice-dislike bias: you (not you personally, of course, but all of us) are more likely to notice the things you dislike and weight them more heavily, whereupon they become your dominant image of the site. People with the opposite preferences have the opposite image, I guarantee you.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Quite possibly. Or not. So how do we find out?

We already find out a lot from the presence of exactly the opposite complaints by the opposite side. This happens on every single divisive topic. Moreover the feelings people have about their perceptions, the language they use to express them and so on, are identical, even when they're claiming opposite things.

This shows that these perceptions are not objective. That's the main point. Why such perceptions routinely arise, and why people are so intensely convinced of them, is an interesting question but a secondary one.

> exactly the opposite complaints by the opposite side > This happens reliably, even universally, on every single divisive topic > the language they use to express them and so on, are identical

I just don't see, or at least recognise, this type of behaviour elsewhere. See a post on guns or free speech and the flames that erupt amongst USAians, they have a very different character to the ones about china.

> This shows that these perceptions are not objective

Inevitably, but that does not in itself eliminate their being actual differences, and these being of a nature different from other flames ie. being backed not by ultranationalistic citizens of some country, but by a concerted centralised interference.

So again, how do we determine this, or disprove it, in an empirical way?