I assume you are a typical so-called westerner. I just expressed my own opinion here, and according to my knowledge and experience, his statement is definitely wrong. This is not an essay, I have no time to write too much. If you want to know more, you should explore it by yourself.
Serpentza? I watched most of his videos, and found he is just a hypocritical racist. You see, he never communicate with the locals, and just live in his own circles and make judgement based on his own kind of imagination. So I quit and never watched his videos again. I think People should explore the world by himself/herself.
For sure, you can keep your opinion, maybe seemed ignorant to me, but it has nothing to do with me. I just expressed my own opinion, that's it.
I get the feeling that you might not understand why you're being downvoted. There's nothing wrong with expressing your opinion. But on Hacker News especially, it is important to contribute to and elevate the discussion. After you post your comment, people should learn something from it. If people do, they appreciate your thoughts, and upvote you, especially if your thoughts are very insightful. If you don't contribute anything new to the discussion, people don't appreciate your comments and prefer to downvote you.
In both of your comments, you say that someone is wrong, but don't offer any detailed examples of why someone is wrong. You state, "This is not an essay, I have no time to write too much." But this is Hacker News. If you read through many of the discussions here, many of the comments that get upvoted the most are actually essays that go into a lot of detail, logic, and evidence to explain each writer's thoughts. And those essays are appreciated because they elevate the discussion so that everyone learns something new.
did you see the author provide any evidence? the author say something you'd like to hear then you instinctively think it's logic. if you have known how ridiculous it is to compare hutong with indian slum by the author, you will know nearly all of what he said is bullshit. (see on my explaination on another reply to him)
Looking at his comment, I believe he relied on his experience living in both India and Beijing to make his statement. He also did not say that Beijing hutongs were the same as Indian slums. He said "to a lesser extent" and "slum-like". He also said he wasn't trying to be judgmental. He also qualified his statements by saying that it was a while ago, so his information may be out of date.
Having lived in Beijing myself in 2014, most hutongs are not comparable to Indian slums; some might be. But there are definitely problematic housing situations for migrant workers, even now. Many live in dangerous conditions, if not slum-like conditions, though some would consider these to be slums (certainly, many would agree that these properties are run by slumlords). At this point, we are quibbling about the meanings of words, when we should really be focused on whether people can live healthy, safe, and productive lives on their current salaries.
the author say something you'd like to hear then you instinctively think it's logic. Given that this is a complaint I have about many people, it is an interesting feeling to have someone else have this complaint about me.
It's ignorant to equate hutong to slum. The well-preserved and updated BJ courtyard(residences in hutong) is worth over 100 million RMB (16 million USD) on average.
Sorry for off-topic, this branch is gone out of hand.
OK, No, instead, I'm teaching you how to preform an argument so other people can understand you well, rather than get yourself a brunch of down votes and nobody believes what you said.
It's very clear to me, most Chinese people didn't receive any proper training on how to make an argument that could yield good results. Everybody in the end is just ranting to each other without generating or putting out valuable information.
Unfortunately, you are among those who don't know how. For example, from your comment I quote:
> I assume you are a typical so-called westerner.
> Serpentza? I watched most of his videos, and found he is just a hypocritical racist ... he never communicate with the locals, and just live in his own circles ...
First of all, I consider myself Rational. You're welcome if you treat it as a synonym of 'westerner', I don't put it that way, however.
Secondly, be careful when you want make this kind of assumptions, because it's actually quite easy to be proved wrong.
For example, I could ask you what you mean by 'westerner', then you may answer "Chinese people who favors west ideology", then I can either say "No, I just rational" like what I just did to save my time, or, if I want to hook you up, I could just let you explain "What is west ideology?", after that, I can just simply put out a question "Can you point out any of my words up there which gives you that impression?" while knowing you can't.
About that video host, I don't think you knew hes personal life out of the camera do you? So how do you prove "he never communicate with the locals"? Especially when hes wife is a local Chinese.
I'm not ensuring you hes 100% correct, in fact some part of it is not. However, that video is good enough for people who interested on the topic, a informative watch for them.
To preform an good argument, one fundamental rule you need to know is it's required for you to show your respect, by correctly understanding what's your opponent is saying and their reason, and by putting out your reason of why your opponent were wrong if they did.
A high quality comprehensive comment will bring you likes, bad one will give you down votes. If you in a hurry, don't post anything until you have time to do so. Because you need time to research the problem.
And the reason of why there are a population limit, is not because what you said:
> Some stupid officers can make all kinds of ridiculous policies, sometimes the basic reason is just to consolidate their regime
You need to have some basic understanding on politics and history to provide a reasonable answer, don't assume our government are just made of a brunch of idiots, this will not make you look better.
In my point of view, the reason of limiting the population of those tier 1 cities is complex, simply put:
1, The government needs to found a way to limit how many resources (both nature and welfare) a single city can consume. Because of a lots of reason (geo location for example), the city cannot hold too many people. (Shanghai for example, relies heavily on piped and shipped natural gas[0], which is expensive and not a long-term solution)
2, Many cities in China is not well designed. When it needs to handle huge amount of population, problems (Pollution, traffic jam, security problem etc) will occur.
3, Tier 1 cities are sucking resources (Intelligent people, welfare, infrastructure etc) from other cities, makes them harder to grow.
However, I skeptical about such hard limit will hold, because it's too hard to implement (What? they want to install doors for every city?), and you just can't stop people from seeking better life. We'll see how it goes.
Ever been given an assignment that requires you dig through a whole library to prove a point? Or having to conclude a book all by yourself? There are lot's of critical thinking and reasoning involved there, because if you don't do that ahead of time, other people may criticize you and it's embarrassing. So, you actually received some of the training by doing those things.
In China, the text book often concluded most of the things for student, so you end up just copying content from the book into your submission. And teachers will verify your submission by check whether or not you included the right content.
Because of that, people lost many of chance to exercise their abilities of forming a sophisticated opinion.
Serpentza? I watched most of his videos, and found he is just a hypocritical racist. You see, he never communicate with the locals, and just live in his own circles and make judgement based on his own kind of imagination. So I quit and never watched his videos again. I think People should explore the world by himself/herself.
For sure, you can keep your opinion, maybe seemed ignorant to me, but it has nothing to do with me. I just expressed my own opinion, that's it.