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This anti-china propaganda on the internet at the moment is sickening. If you want to buy into the China Removes Avatar from Cinemas and Rides With Hitler, then

This anti-china propaganda on the internet at the moment is sickening. If you want to buy into the China Removes Avatar from Cinemas and Rides With Hitler, then go on, but I'm not going to involve myself in any more of these discussions. China is trying to develop for 1/4 of the worlds population in a system that is different to yours, but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation. This will be my last sentence on china related topics till this propaganda wave blows over: Just because it's different does not mean you must kill it.

djcapelis 17y ago
China has not been conducting attacks on foreign companies via the Internet for 5000 years and it's not inappropriate to question an environment which forces US-based companies to deal with sophisticated computer attacks just because they're doing something China doesn't like. We've been very good about ignoring what China does in China. (One could argue that Americans, myself included, are exceptionally good at this actually!) This recent wave of controversy is about what China does outside of China. I would expect the same outcry to occur if any other country was staging the type of operations the PRC regularly conducts in foreign infrastructure. Frankly, the fact that outcry is so long in coming is the only thing that surprises most people in security. I agree that people need to be careful to not go overboard, but your assertion that no one should ever be critical of China because they're different is equally absurd. Different systems deserve to be appropriately examined and talking about the ramifications of each is both appropriate and necessary.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Just a reality check question: Do you think for a moment that the American CIA doesn't infiltrate foreign networks if i thinks it has a security interest in doing so? I'm very curious about your response.
  - djcapelis 17y ago
    I think it would be appropriate for people in China (and everyone else, for that matter) to discuss exactly the extent it was occurring and if it was hindering their enterprises there, discuss exactly the effects of such issues. I would have no objection to stories of such things being posted on HN and I wouldn't object to those stories as anti-American. In fact, I think Americans frequently post such stories, we just often don't have good intelligence on what our government is doing. That said, as a security researcher who has read some of the reports involved, I do think the PRC may in fact be operating on a far broader range of targets than our own government. In particularly their tendency to include any corporations they want is probably different than how we do things most (but not all) of the time. These may or may not just be stylistic differences and I would welcome a debate on which ones were more troublesome. I would not blast such stories as racist, which is what the poster I was responding to was essentially doing. (As an aside, just because it's a pet peeve: Please, the CIA? They're not the ones you have to be concerned with, the American government has a broad and vast array of different intelligence agencies, the CIA is not the most likely one to be doing this type of work. The CIA's job is to be one of the most visible intelligence agencies, a job they do very well.)
    - grandalf 17y ago
      Those are good points. I do not disagree with any of them, and thanks for the reminder about the many intelligence agencies. I think that if it were just about discussion and having an opinion it would be owe thing, but this anti-China meme is really growing in force, and seeming to turn into real moral outrage and disgust, which I think are not constructive emotions for understanding another country...
- papersmith 17y ago
  While I agree that the criticism is well-deserved, industrial espionage is really nothing new. Google's move certainly deserves the spotlight, but I find the sudden shift of attention to industrial espionage a bit knee-jerking and sensationalist. Heck, shouldn't you be more worried about military espionage, which has been happening for ages in every country?
euroclydon 17y ago
I didn't see your handle in any of the responses to the original article. The author made a lot of points. I would be interested to hear which ones you take issue with.
PieSquared 17y ago
I guess these are just the effects of Google's decision. As for 'if it's different, kill it': I've noticed this in my discussions about China. Many of the people I talked to that supported China's handling of things (or were themselves Chinese) disagreed with me on a fundamental value basis which you can't argue. I value human rights far, far above nationalism, yet those people did not. I simply do not see how they could do that, and, I'm guessing, they can't see how I could consider human rights more important than national pride. The Internet is mostly ruled the by United States and Europe - if the word 'ruled' is even applicable. Anyway, the US and Europe tend to share the idea of human rights > nationalism, and are thus pushing it in other places too. Now, my opinion. I don't think you can go with the 'he just has a different view than you, everyone's view is good' thing here. I think there is a 'good view' and a 'bad view' - where the "goodness" of a view is characterized by long term societal benefit and societal contentment. Obviously, I think the 'good-er' view is one which emphasizes human rights over nationalism, because while allowing human rights might cause some unpleasant effects in the short term, in the long term, it will result in a better country with a happier populace. Why are there riots? Why is there a need to suppress information? Because people are unhappy. Clearly, the current system of suppression isn't working perfectly. In fact, it isn't working perfectly by definition, since if everyone were happy, this wouldn't be needed. (By my definition, of course.) Now, I realize that my point of view may sound biased - incredibly so. Maybe even something along the lines of "I'm right because the things I say are better". But you say: "Just because it's different doesn't mean you must kill it." You don't have to, but perhaps it will be better for the world as a whole if you do? I'd love to hear your counterargument if you're willing to write another sentence about china. (Ack, that sounded snarky. Wasn't meant to.)
- jhancock 17y ago
  "Clearly, the current system of suppression isn't working perfectly." No argument there. How would you do it differently? I have to ignore the history comparisons by you and more so the parent as they cover far too large time periods and I'm only familiar with China of the last 10 years. China's leadership, for the most part, makes decisions based on controlling their own domain. I believe a balanced solution requires wealthy countries that trade with China to take a uniform stance to protect workers, environment, and property everywhere they do business. Citizens of these countries and their leaders have to push for this as China clearly is going to simply protect their side of the equation. Which country or group of countries are going to step forward in a unified front to create balance? What conditions will force their hand? Perhaps we are seeing those conditions unfold right now. Time will tell.
DarkShikari 17y ago
So if, say, Germany was found to have hired tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers around the world, we should just chalk it up to their "different system" and let them off with a slap on the wrist? Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it. Why should China get special treatment? Why shouldn't we be allowed to criticize them as we would criticize anyone else who did the same things? but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation. There is absolutely nothing similar between China's current embarrassing actions and their glorious history prior to ~1800. Merely comparing the current oligarchy to the institutions of the past is a huge insult to China and its history.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- yread 17y ago
  Can you provide a reference for the tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers? Surely there would be some whistle-blowers, after all hackers are such an unreliable bunch! That's exactly what the parent is talking about: all this smells fishy. Google says it and 34 other companies have been attacked and the world goes crazy. Companies exist to make profit, government is here for security. I think it is quite realistic to assume that Google did it to make more money, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062059 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062059
  - profquail 17y ago
    Yep, here you go: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/01/13/chinas-sophistcated-hacker-army-the-worlds-best-cyber-terrorists/ http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/01/13/chinas-sophistcated-ha... The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission is to steal American military and technological secrets and cause mischief in government and financial services.
yumraj 17y ago
Wow, you make your point and then run away stating "I'm not going to involve myself in any more of these discussions.", how nice. First of all, China was not communist for 5000 years, so not sure where that is coming from. No one is criticizing China for being different, all countries in the World are different, no two are the same, yet we criticize some and admire others. China is being criticized for: 1) Complete and utter disregard of IP of companies in other countries. Ex: Huawei vs Cisco, IP theft against Google and other 30+ companies and numerous others. 2) More example of blatant copies of cars: http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/ http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/ 3) Censoring of information to its citizens. Even Iran, from what I can tell, is better than China at the moment. 4) Organized, and fairly obviously state sponsored, network intrusion attacks on other countries. 5) Human rights violations, whether in Tibet, or any other place. 6) Complete disregard to environment. 7) Hegemony of neighboring, and much smaller, states. 8) Australia blocks investment of China in Rio Tinto, within next few days China arrest Rio Tinto's China head in espionage charges. The list goes on and goes, and none of the above is fabricated, it's all public news
- grandalf 17y ago
  If you go back in time 100 or 150 years all of those criticisms apply to the US. What is it about the year 2010 that makes your moral outrage appropriate? The US/UK empire has done all of the same, and only after using those techniques to gain superpower and first-world status, we start criticizing others for doing it.
  - ellyagg 17y ago
    We can criticize it because this isn't a morality game. China doesn't rack up evil chips because the US behaved evilly in the past. There's no score to settle. What they're doing is wrong and hurts us and the world right now, regardless of who did what in the past. We argue for principles that allow everyone to prosper. We argue for the golden rule and the categorical imperative.
    - grandalf 17y ago
grandalf 17y ago
Well put! You are right that it's just propaganda. What the propagandists hate to discuss is what we should do about it -- chances are most favor sanctions, warships in the gulf of China, and other neoconservative strong arm tactics.
- djcapelis 17y ago
  Your accusations are unproven, irrelevant and baseless. Please provide concrete arguments if you disagree.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Ok, well, what should we do about China? Also, at what point should we insist that China do what we want to the point of sending in ships, etc.?
    - djcapelis 17y ago
      I think those are both excellent questions. I'm not sure what we do about it, I don't think anyone is. Google's choice certainly had some flair to it, but probably isn't a general stategy for most relations with China. I'm not sure where that leaves us. Myself, I'm working towards more research that will hopefully make it harder to attack systems, it's a hard area, but I think there's still more we can do. I think there are some levels of technological measures we can take to help with this issue, though obviously nothing is a panacea. As for military response, it may well be that eventually that plays a role. (Hopefully at most only involving the ability to set clear lines on what merits military action to hopefully act as a deterrance.) I think many people are working hard to try and get a handle on this issue before it ever goes that far. In my opinion, the largest problem is right now we do not have a handle on this, so it's really unclear how it all plays out.
      - grandalf 17y ago
        Google's decision amounted to depriving the Chinese people of the knowledge of which search terms were being censored, information which, I think, would be tremendously valuable to any Chinese person concerned about censorship -- at least it helps him/her figure out what to be curious about. There is probably a role for advanced crypto in helping to free information. However be careful that it doesn't get stopped by US export restrictions :) I've had some ideas about low-tech approaches to getting by censors but haven't worked on the project for a bit. Military response is a much tougher issue. As I pointed out earlier, Americans are raped every day in American prisons. Would we want China sending an aircraft carrier near Los Angeles and demanding that the human rights atrocities stop? Or maybe you believe that such a move (if it resulted in an increased appreciation of prisoner rights) would be a good thing. I'm enough of a cynic to realize a few things: - Some people in China have total access to the full internet, even if it's just b/c they have a cousin in the US who downloads the articles, encrypts them, and sends them via email... - The military angle is all about international power relations. The US sees China as an adversary and it is thus important to make sure that Americans view China as being morally bankrupt, since Americans generally prefer to go to war when they feel that they are on the side of "good".

djcapelis 17y ago

China has not been conducting attacks on foreign companies via the Internet for 5000 years and it's not inappropriate to question an environment which forces US-based companies to deal with sophisticated computer attacks just because they're doing something China doesn't like. We've been very good about ignoring what China does in China. (One could argue that Americans, myself included, are exceptionally good at this actually!) This recent wave of controversy is about what China does outside of China. I would expect the same outcry to occur if any other country was staging the type of operations the PRC regularly conducts in foreign infrastructure. Frankly, the fact that outcry is so long in coming is the only thing that surprises most people in security. I agree that people need to be careful to not go overboard, but your assertion that no one should ever be critical of China because they're different is equally absurd. Different systems deserve to be appropriately examined and talking about the ramifications of each is both appropriate and necessary.

grandalf 17y ago
Just a reality check question: Do you think for a moment that the American CIA doesn't infiltrate foreign networks if i thinks it has a security interest in doing so? I'm very curious about your response.
- djcapelis 17y ago
  I think it would be appropriate for people in China (and everyone else, for that matter) to discuss exactly the extent it was occurring and if it was hindering their enterprises there, discuss exactly the effects of such issues. I would have no objection to stories of such things being posted on HN and I wouldn't object to those stories as anti-American. In fact, I think Americans frequently post such stories, we just often don't have good intelligence on what our government is doing. That said, as a security researcher who has read some of the reports involved, I do think the PRC may in fact be operating on a far broader range of targets than our own government. In particularly their tendency to include any corporations they want is probably different than how we do things most (but not all) of the time. These may or may not just be stylistic differences and I would welcome a debate on which ones were more troublesome. I would not blast such stories as racist, which is what the poster I was responding to was essentially doing. (As an aside, just because it's a pet peeve: Please, the CIA? They're not the ones you have to be concerned with, the American government has a broad and vast array of different intelligence agencies, the CIA is not the most likely one to be doing this type of work. The CIA's job is to be one of the most visible intelligence agencies, a job they do very well.)
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Those are good points. I do not disagree with any of them, and thanks for the reminder about the many intelligence agencies. I think that if it were just about discussion and having an opinion it would be owe thing, but this anti-China meme is really growing in force, and seeming to turn into real moral outrage and disgust, which I think are not constructive emotions for understanding another country...
papersmith 17y ago
While I agree that the criticism is well-deserved, industrial espionage is really nothing new. Google's move certainly deserves the spotlight, but I find the sudden shift of attention to industrial espionage a bit knee-jerking and sensationalist. Heck, shouldn't you be more worried about military espionage, which has been happening for ages in every country?

euroclydon 17y ago

I didn't see your handle in any of the responses to the original article. The author made a lot of points. I would be interested to hear which ones you take issue with.

PieSquared 17y ago

I guess these are just the effects of Google's decision. As for 'if it's different, kill it': I've noticed this in my discussions about China. Many of the people I talked to that supported China's handling of things (or were themselves Chinese) disagreed with me on a fundamental value basis which you can't argue. I value human rights far, far above nationalism, yet those people did not. I simply do not see how they could do that, and, I'm guessing, they can't see how I could consider human rights more important than national pride. The Internet is mostly ruled the by United States and Europe - if the word 'ruled' is even applicable. Anyway, the US and Europe tend to share the idea of human rights > nationalism, and are thus pushing it in other places too. Now, my opinion. I don't think you can go with the 'he just has a different view than you, everyone's view is good' thing here. I think there is a 'good view' and a 'bad view' - where the "goodness" of a view is characterized by long term societal benefit and societal contentment. Obviously, I think the 'good-er' view is one which emphasizes human rights over nationalism, because while allowing human rights might cause some unpleasant effects in the short term, in the long term, it will result in a better country with a happier populace. Why are there riots? Why is there a need to suppress information? Because people are unhappy. Clearly, the current system of suppression isn't working perfectly. In fact, it isn't working perfectly by definition, since if everyone were happy, this wouldn't be needed. (By my definition, of course.) Now, I realize that my point of view may sound biased - incredibly so. Maybe even something along the lines of "I'm right because the things I say are better". But you say: "Just because it's different doesn't mean you must kill it." You don't have to, but perhaps it will be better for the world as a whole if you do? I'd love to hear your counterargument if you're willing to write another sentence about china. (Ack, that sounded snarky. Wasn't meant to.)

jhancock 17y ago
"Clearly, the current system of suppression isn't working perfectly." No argument there. How would you do it differently? I have to ignore the history comparisons by you and more so the parent as they cover far too large time periods and I'm only familiar with China of the last 10 years. China's leadership, for the most part, makes decisions based on controlling their own domain. I believe a balanced solution requires wealthy countries that trade with China to take a uniform stance to protect workers, environment, and property everywhere they do business. Citizens of these countries and their leaders have to push for this as China clearly is going to simply protect their side of the equation. Which country or group of countries are going to step forward in a unified front to create balance? What conditions will force their hand? Perhaps we are seeing those conditions unfold right now. Time will tell.

DarkShikari 17y ago

So if, say, Germany was found to have hired tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers around the world, we should just chalk it up to their "different system" and let them off with a slap on the wrist? Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it. Why should China get special treatment? Why shouldn't we be allowed to criticize them as we would criticize anyone else who did the same things? but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation. There is absolutely nothing similar between China's current embarrassing actions and their glorious history prior to ~1800. Merely comparing the current oligarchy to the institutions of the past is a huge insult to China and its history.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
yread 17y ago
Can you provide a reference for the tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers? Surely there would be some whistle-blowers, after all hackers are such an unreliable bunch! That's exactly what the parent is talking about: all this smells fishy. Google says it and 34 other companies have been attacked and the world goes crazy. Companies exist to make profit, government is here for security. I think it is quite realistic to assume that Google did it to make more money, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062059 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062059
- profquail 17y ago
  Yep, here you go: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/01/13/chinas-sophistcated-hacker-army-the-worlds-best-cyber-terrorists/ http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/01/13/chinas-sophistcated-ha... The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission is to steal American military and technological secrets and cause mischief in government and financial services.

yumraj 17y ago

Wow, you make your point and then run away stating "I'm not going to involve myself in any more of these discussions.", how nice. First of all, China was not communist for 5000 years, so not sure where that is coming from. No one is criticizing China for being different, all countries in the World are different, no two are the same, yet we criticize some and admire others. China is being criticized for: 1) Complete and utter disregard of IP of companies in other countries. Ex: Huawei vs Cisco, IP theft against Google and other 30+ companies and numerous others. 2) More example of blatant copies of cars: http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/ http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/ 3) Censoring of information to its citizens. Even Iran, from what I can tell, is better than China at the moment. 4) Organized, and fairly obviously state sponsored, network intrusion attacks on other countries. 5) Human rights violations, whether in Tibet, or any other place. 6) Complete disregard to environment. 7) Hegemony of neighboring, and much smaller, states. 8) Australia blocks investment of China in Rio Tinto, within next few days China arrest Rio Tinto's China head in espionage charges. The list goes on and goes, and none of the above is fabricated, it's all public news

grandalf 17y ago
If you go back in time 100 or 150 years all of those criticisms apply to the US. What is it about the year 2010 that makes your moral outrage appropriate? The US/UK empire has done all of the same, and only after using those techniques to gain superpower and first-world status, we start criticizing others for doing it.
- ellyagg 17y ago
  We can criticize it because this isn't a morality game. China doesn't rack up evil chips because the US behaved evilly in the past. There's no score to settle. What they're doing is wrong and hurts us and the world right now, regardless of who did what in the past. We argue for principles that allow everyone to prosper. We argue for the golden rule and the categorical imperative.
  - grandalf 17y ago

grandalf 17y ago

Well put! You are right that it's just propaganda. What the propagandists hate to discuss is what we should do about it -- chances are most favor sanctions, warships in the gulf of China, and other neoconservative strong arm tactics.

djcapelis 17y ago
Your accusations are unproven, irrelevant and baseless. Please provide concrete arguments if you disagree.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Ok, well, what should we do about China? Also, at what point should we insist that China do what we want to the point of sending in ships, etc.?
  - djcapelis 17y ago
    I think those are both excellent questions. I'm not sure what we do about it, I don't think anyone is. Google's choice certainly had some flair to it, but probably isn't a general stategy for most relations with China. I'm not sure where that leaves us. Myself, I'm working towards more research that will hopefully make it harder to attack systems, it's a hard area, but I think there's still more we can do. I think there are some levels of technological measures we can take to help with this issue, though obviously nothing is a panacea. As for military response, it may well be that eventually that plays a role. (Hopefully at most only involving the ability to set clear lines on what merits military action to hopefully act as a deterrance.) I think many people are working hard to try and get a handle on this issue before it ever goes that far. In my opinion, the largest problem is right now we do not have a handle on this, so it's really unclear how it all plays out.
    - grandalf 17y ago
      Google's decision amounted to depriving the Chinese people of the knowledge of which search terms were being censored, information which, I think, would be tremendously valuable to any Chinese person concerned about censorship -- at least it helps him/her figure out what to be curious about. There is probably a role for advanced crypto in helping to free information. However be careful that it doesn't get stopped by US export restrictions :) I've had some ideas about low-tech approaches to getting by censors but haven't worked on the project for a bit. Military response is a much tougher issue. As I pointed out earlier, Americans are raped every day in American prisons. Would we want China sending an aircraft carrier near Los Angeles and demanding that the human rights atrocities stop? Or maybe you believe that such a move (if it resulted in an increased appreciation of prisoner rights) would be a good thing. I'm enough of a cynic to realize a few things: - Some people in China have total access to the full internet, even if it's just b/c they have a cousin in the US who downloads the articles, encrypts them, and sends them via email... - The military angle is all about international power relations. The US sees China as an adversary and it is thus important to make sure that Americans view China as being morally bankrupt, since Americans generally prefer to go to war when they feel that they are on the side of "good".