<i>many HN readers bashing China have probably never set foot there</i><p>Readers of Hacker News who have been reading the Chinese press in the original Chinese since the 1970s and who have been to the Chinese-speaking world since the 1980s and thereafter (as I have) get really sick and tired of credulous Westerners believing propaganda from China, that&#x27;s all. I can remember a time from the 1980s when China (by contrast with Taiwan) was praised by a French student I knew at the time for having no air pollution. I pointed out to him then that that was because China was only just beginning to develop economically at the time. (In that year, the per-capita G.D.P. of Taiwan was ten times that of China.) China has made some interesting progress on some issues, and I often appear here on Hacker News pointing out that even the United States can learn quite a bit from how China does primary school instruction in mathematics, for example.[1]<p>But China is still a dictatorship, with none of the free and fair elections or free press that Taiwan now has. (Taiwan was a dictatorship when I first lived there, but a thriving democracy the second time I lived there.) China&#x27;s air pollution is now about the worst in the world--it could have put in pollution controls as it industrialized, as the technology for pollution control was well known by then, but the dictators of China chose to industrialize without minimizing pollution. In general, when I see a gee-whiz popular press story about China here on Hacker News, I simply don&#x27;t believe the first submission. I look for comments in the thread by some of the Hacker News participants who currently live in China and who know the language well[2] (the latter criterion is more stringent, but necessary) to check whether the story is plausible at all.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0415873843" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;condor.depaul.edu&#x2F;sepp&#x2F;mat660&#x2F;Askey.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;condor.depaul.edu&#x2F;sepp&#x2F;mat660&#x2F;Askey.pdf</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ams.org&#x2F;notices&#x2F;199908&#x2F;rev-howe.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ams.org&#x2F;notices&#x2F;199908&#x2F;rev-howe.pdf</a><p>[2] In this thread, the earlier comment by a Hacker News participant who lives in China deserves an upvote.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10779183" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10779183</a>