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FAQ.md 5.89 KiB

FAQ

Do you hate China?

On the contrary. China is my favorite country. It has many, many wonderful things. As Bjarne said:

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

I only focus here on negative things to provide content that will activate the Great Firewall.

This repository is completely biased against the Chinese Government!

I prefer the term focused :-)

That being said, I take the agenda of information sources very seriously.

E.g. I try to clearly classify Communist Party and Falun Gong linked sources.

If programming websites get blocked, there will be less good programmers to fight against the dictatorship

This is a good point, and one that does make me think.

  1. The commies calculate their actions very well to stay in power.

    Why don't they just take down the entire Internet like they did in Xinjiang in 2010?

    Because that would hurt them:

    • people would go mad, and revolt
    • people would work less efficiently, making the country, and thus themselves, poorer

    So this puts pressure on them to take away the firewall.

  2. Programmers are more likely to develop better Firewall climbing tools if SO is blocked

  3. If we don't take any action to show our dissatisfaction, the dictatorship never ends.

    The commies exist like any other organization for a sole purpose: maintain their own power.

    If nothing is done to show dissatisfaction, they will never give up on that power.

    There are two extremes of action (both which I don't support):

    • everyone become a willing mindless slave of the leader: perfect stability
    • everyone take up arms and do terrorism: perfect instability

    But between those two extremes, what is the right measure? I think that saying nothing is too close to stability.

    I do see that one alternative scenario is that if we do nothing, maybe there will be more and more contact with Western countries, and the Chinese will see for themselves that we are not that bad, and eventually request democracy.

  4. Even if programmers get very powerful, it is not very likely that they will succeed to undo the dictatorship, they simply don't have enough power.

    I'd rather have a less strong dictatorship, than one with good programmers.

You are harming the Chinese programmers

What is the root of the harm: me or GFW?

There are bad things happening all over the world, why don't you fight for those causes as well / instead?

We have to choose the one we think is the worst, and focus on it.

What is worse is a subjective choice. For me:

  1. I love China and my Chinese GF
  2. I hate dictatorships, and China is the largest one

My SO username and protest time are not infinite.

You are not Chinese, you can't interfere in Chinese politics

  1. If I lived under a dictatorship, I would welcome foreign intervention.

  2. The commies say that all foreigners are bad.

    I disagree. There are good and bad ones.

    The commies do this because most foreign countries are telling the Chinese to get rid of the dictatorship.

  3. We live in the same world.

    If China's economy is bad, my economy is worse.

    If China's environment is bad, my environment is worse.

    If China starts a war, I might have to fight it.

In the Tweet you say "correctional facility", but reeducation through labour has been abolished

My bad here, the precise term is "jail". I'm not talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor Unfortunately I can't edit a Tweet.

You have nothing to lose by doing that, but we Chinese programmers do

I think I have the most to lose personally: no enterprise who wants to do business with China will ever hire me for a high position.

I also have an increased risk of being hacked.

Chinese programmers all know how to climb the wall.

This is your personal problem, we have nothing to do with it, stop punishing us for it

We have to fight for justice for our fellows, or else when injustice happens to us, no one will fight for use either.

Every form of protest incurs some damage. E.g., if we manifest on the street, it generates a traffic jam.

I don't like it, but I think it is worth it.

What you are doing will never have any effect

That is true with high probability, just like any other individual which tries to influence 1B people.

Every action is statistical: I just push the balance a little bit towards freedom.

And if we never start somewhere, nothing will ever happen.

To have an idea, in 2015 there are about:

You are using Stack Overflow in a way that it was not meant to be used, so what you are doing is in principle wrong

This is somewhat true, and I don't like myself for it.

But I think freedom is worth it.

Any act of protest will use things in ways that it was not meant to be used.

For example, the street is not meant to showcase protest banners, it is meant to be a passageway for cars.

Making a statement where no one will ever see it, like a personal website, is sure to have no effect.

Does your employer support this?

My employer has nothing to do with this.

He doesn't approve or disapprove of the Chinese government or of my private actions.

The only thing that my employer does believe in is that employees can have their own political opinions, and that this should not affect hiring decisions.

Obviously, my employer risks losing contracts with China because of me, But she believes that being morally correct, and not discriminating political positions is more valuable.