I've spent many, many hours telling HN commenters not to cross into nationalistic hostility, especially about China in recent years. But it's important to be precise with language if you're going to argue for tolerance. If you call a comment like the GP one racist, you'll only alienate readers who read the comment and don't see racism there. The comment contains plenty of other material that makes it a bad comment for HN.

Internet commenters are much too quick to factor into camps and tribes and then use extra-intense labels ("racism" in this case) to denounce each other. This appeals only to the side that already agrees with you, and leads to a downward spiral in which each side keeps escalating and the rest of the audience just feels alienated and starts wishing for some other place. That path leads to HN no longer being a forum for useful information and substantive comments, so we all need to take a different path.