We understand what it’s for.

What we don’t understand is why someone would spend so much time on HN complaining about “westerners” and lobbing ad hominems at anyone critical of China.

Please don't do royal "we".

There is criticism and then there is ignorant xenophobia. The latter must be called out. If you've read about "ad hominem" then you must also be aware that it has its valid use cases.

Also, "complaining about X" is a kind of an ironic choice of words for this thread.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

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

The downward button is for when somebody is making ad hominem attacks against someone else instead of arguing the facts.

Why do you assume that ad hominem is necessarily a bad thing? It has its valid uses. It's an argument specifically about biases. There are no facts to argue here, because then this is essentially a Russell's teapot argument.

If you have an idea how to argue about something on the other side of a cultural barier without exposing biases, I am actually all ears.

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We've had to warn you about this before, so please don't do it again.

Also, please don't post flamewar comments. You went way over the line here, even apart from the personal attack. You're as welcome here as anyone else is, but we need you to follow the rules and post in the intended spirit. I realize that's harder when representing a minority view, but there's not much we can do about that—we have to apply the rules more or less evenly.

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