Please don't take HN threads into generic flamewar, and certainly not generic nationalistic flamewar. It's tedious, predictable, nasty, and not what we want here.

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

I don't think this is true.

I think for most of HN's readership, China is the current Big Bad. There will be exceptions, like there always are for anything, but in general this will be true.

The US is something to be criticized because many HN readers either live in the US or interact with US companies/tech. Critiquing what one knows is to be expected. But they do not consistently describe every action of an American company, business or initiative as some sort of lie or conspiracy to suppress dissent. Some companies, they do; but many they do not. What would be HN's readership instinctive reaction to a mainland Chinese company that claimed to be like YC?

> I don't think this is true.

I think the parent comment was referring to this comment section. If you scroll down and read the grayed-out comments, there are indeed quite a few people trying to argue that "everybody does it" as a way of downplaying this.

His/her comment reads more like a general indictment. The assertion is false both in this comments section and in HN in general.

Why wouldn’t you have high expectations of the US and low expectations of China?

The rise of King Xi should demonstrate that culturally China is still hundreds of years behind the West.

What compelled you to make such a wildly uninformed and bigoted comment?

People get the government they deserve. If Chinese society, in the 21 century, is still elevating monarchs to engage in genocide and totalitarianism, I’m not persuaded that it’s bigotry to conclude the society is not something to be admired. YMMV.

Is this comment supposed to be some kind of threat? It seems wildly out of place for HN.

That does not describe HN dynamics at all.

There is saying or idea or something, I don't remember how it's called, but the gist of it is down to that you are always going be more extreme when those closest to you go out of line. A religion can tolerate and live peacefully around other people that are part of a different religion but if a heretic group starts blooming in the midst, things are going to get ugly really fast.

It's sort of the same with politics. You expect more from countries you see as sharing most of our cultural values. That's one of the reasons Israel for example is criticized much more than worst human rights offenders.