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China has many laws but many of those laws are ignored and unenforced. The same goes for the US. China doesn't have "rule of law" so much as it has "rule of c

China has many laws but many of those laws are ignored and unenforced. The same goes for the US. China doesn't have "rule of law" so much as it has "rule of context" The same goes for the US, just to a different degree in different contexts.

dageshi 10y ago
You can say that, but I don't see many wealthy Americans parking their money made in the US in China, whereas there are a multitude of Chinese citizens investing in the North America/Europe as a means of safeguarding their capital. I think that's somewhat telling in terms of which legal system is trusted more.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  You transformed a factual "The same sorts of things happen. (severity unspecified)" to "It's just as bad in the US as China!" Congrats on reading things into someone else's text and displaying your biases.
  - dageshi 10y ago
    I guess I read it that way because merely stating "The same sorts of things happen. (severity unspecified)" is pretty pointless when the severity and its effects on doing business are the only really relevant thing that matters in this conversation?
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      I think it's plenty relevant that the US has the same kinds of flaws in its system, and that the differences are really differences in degree and not kind. (As large as those differences in degree might be in certain places.) I think that's a very important bit of perspective.
- awongh 10y ago
  That's only kind of true. They park it in other places besides China: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/magazine/how-to-hide-400-million.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/magazine/how-to-hide-400-m...
  - dageshi 10y ago
    Granted... but they're not parking it in China are they? So in terms of places you put your money being sure you'll get it back, China is not very high on that list for a number of reasons.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Asset prices in China are grossly inflated because of 1) capital controls and 2) China has been running large trade surpluses for about 2 decades. It would make sound financial sense for any rich person to move as many assets as they could out of the country, regardless of whether the nation's institutions were trustworthy.
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
I know this is a what aboutism, but... > The same goes for the US. Different scales! One has third-world law enforcement issues, the other has first-world law enforcement issues. At any rate, the US doesn't put out so many laws (at least at the federal level) that it knows it can't enforce because enforcement would destroy the economy, while China has no problem doing that. Heck, China has an entire "constitution" that guarantees many rights unequivocally (freedom of speech, assembly, all the good stuff), which is then unilaterally ignored. Say what you want about the US, but the supreme court isn't that horrible or ineffective (yet). > The same goes for the US, just to a different degree in different contexts. Yep. It is never black and white, just a very dark gray vs. a much lighter shade of gray.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Different scales! One has third-world law enforcement issues, the other has first-world law enforcement issues. Exactly what is the difference? Is it what you refer to below? At any rate, the US doesn't put out so many laws (at least at the federal level) that it knows it can't enforce because enforcement would destroy the economy, while China has no problem doing that. Funny, but the rhetoric from the political right in the US would have one believe this is happening. (There is undoubtedly some self interested bias at work there.) I did have some experience with export regulations when ordering a piece of industrial equipment from Guangdong province in China. (A knock off of a J-Cut laser cutter.) The Chinese company was surprisingly diligent in their technical support. However, they cheerfully agreed summarily then ignored my requests for the proper paperwork. The expediter I worked with on the US end explained that the US regulations that came up in response to 9-11 were basically unenforceable, so everyone exporting from China just ignored them. Heck, China has an entire "constitution" that guarantees many rights unequivocally (freedom of speech, assembly, all the good stuff), which is then unilaterally ignored. Say what you want about the US, but the supreme court isn't that horrible or ineffective (yet). The supreme court might work, but the US isn't perfect either. The US doesn't have "innocent until proven guity" enshrined directly in the constitution, though it's taken as being implied by other parts of the law. However, local governments do abrogate this principle on statistical grounds. Yep. It is never black and white, just a very dark gray vs. a much lighter shade of gray. I suspect the 5 downvotes were from people with rather black and white viewpoints.
criley2 10y ago
I think you're falsely equivocating the British-inspired American Common Law system with a fundamentally, institutionally different Chinese concept. Even French and other European nations which use Civil Law instead of Common Law systems operate a good bit differently than the Anglo law systems. In fact, Chinese Law is kind of a Civil Law system mixed with Soviet Socialist Law and Traditional Chinese Law, so you'd have much more luck comparing German Law with Chinese Law. But to then equivocate between US and Chinese law, calling them basically the same, it ignores larges differences and for seemingly no benefit. If you wanted to say Hong Kong law system and US/UK law systems were so similar that the differences in this conversation aren't worth discussing, that's one thing. But Mainland Chinese law, the Socialist Law system, is very different. Their Western Civil Law + Soviet Socialist Law + Traditional Chinese Law system is different, especially the Traditional Chinese legal influences, which is the topic of discussion here: how native Chinese companies can often navigate traditional law while foreign companies are held to a more strict western-influenced civil law standard.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  I think you're falsely equivocating the British-inspired American Common Law system with a fundamentally, institutionally different Chinese concept. No. I'm just observing a few factual items, like the New Hampshire law that defines a brothel as 5 or more unmarried women living together under the same roof. There are also many more laws in the US than are enforced in practice. Our Supreme Court does get around to invalidating some of them, and they arise from a very differently structured system, but the US clearly has these too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat... The "false equivalence" was only in your mind, not in my text. It was only in how you imagined my motivations must have been to write such a comment, not any content of the comment itself.
  - criley2 10y ago
    >The "false equivalence" was only in your mind, not in my text. It was only in how you imagined my motivations must have been to write such a comment, not any content of the comment itself. It's sad that you bristled so indignantly at my words that you were unable to think them through and form a good understanding. In your haste to screech that I put words in your mouth, you in turn became the very object of your scorn and put words in my mouth. Let's be frank: Silly archaic laws like NH's brothel law are wholly unrelated to Business, and if a business in NH or America formed to take advantage of archaic laws they would be smacked down aggressively by a court or legislature. That is a wholly false analogy to the Chinese Traditional and Socialist Law systems, which have precedent and are aggressively used, today, in today's world, by natives and native businesses. We're discussing a complicated 3 headed legal system where natives have a different experience than foreigners. Your NH brothel law, and American law in general, DO NOT OPERATE THIS WAY. It's not three headed, it's one headed. It's not an amalgamation of 3 disparate world concepts, it's an evolution of 1 concept. What a terrible analogy, what a terrible reply.
brilliantcode 10y ago
Ah yes the cliche practice of making a loose blanket counter claim based on false assumptions to suggest that any critical view of China is inherently flawed due to the bias of being American. I wonder if you even live in North America, the difference is night and day. If I was in China and a company violates my IP and trademark, what punitive measures are enforced to ensure that my brand is not damaged as a result of knock-off products that ultimately turns out to be unsafe? What if you bought an iPhone only to discover it was a fake and customers are uploading burning batteries with the Apple logo on WeChat and Weibo? Clearly such practices are not allowed in North America or Europe and I can rest assured that there's very little chance of that continuing. There's no middle ground, it's A) did you use their trademark? B) If yes, you broke the law. C) Enforcement of the consequences. D) Scares everyone else to follow the law What possible context do you need here to justify trademark violation? Does China understand the value and role trademarks play? Without a clear authenticity, you can't control the quality, and the consumer and the producer lose. The economic loss as a result of not enforcing is great enough in the long term that the Western nations have long adhered to it. Being fair to China, it's still a growing economy and it's learning all these pieces. I feel like the future Chinese economy will be very similar to the US, and only then, will it truly shine. Unfortunately with a communist themed leadership where a central government is controlling everything, such maturity will not come in time and it will ultimately be it's undoing. The rule of law is interpreted as it is. Context should never be used as an excuse to say that the law doesn't work. Clearly, in the US or Canada, any trademark violation is enforced swiftly. Are you seriously trying to suggest that is the case in China?
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Ah yes the cliche practice of making a loose blanket counter claim based on false assumptions to suggest that any critical view of China is inherently flawed due to the bias of being American. Ah yes, the knee-jerk reaction to simple factual statements that reveal the biases of the commenter, through how they imagine the other comment was motivated. No, sorry, but the statement is factual. Both the US and China have laws that are selectively enforced. I wonder if you even live in North America, the difference is night and day. No one said anything about relative severity. That part is entirely in your own head. If you disagree, please provide a quote. Also ask yourself, why do you imagine such motivations, and react so strongly? I think that would be most instructive. I was born in and have lived in the US all my life. I have an Ivy league education and lots of life experience at all levels of the socioeconomic ladder. I think I have a good sense of this society's biases. (From both the political left and the right.) The rule of law is interpreted as it is. Context should never be used as an excuse to say that the law doesn't work. In the US, context is used to abrogate principles as fundamental as "innocent until proven guilty." That's simply fact. I never said the US was just as bad at protecting intellectual property. I merely stated that both the US and China bend the rule of law based on context. I didn't specify the contexts. You imagined contexts that you could get incensed about, apparently.

dageshi 10y ago

You can say that, but I don't see many wealthy Americans parking their money made in the US in China, whereas there are a multitude of Chinese citizens investing in the North America/Europe as a means of safeguarding their capital. I think that's somewhat telling in terms of which legal system is trusted more.

stcredzero 10y ago
You transformed a factual "The same sorts of things happen. (severity unspecified)" to "It's just as bad in the US as China!" Congrats on reading things into someone else's text and displaying your biases.
- dageshi 10y ago
  I guess I read it that way because merely stating "The same sorts of things happen. (severity unspecified)" is pretty pointless when the severity and its effects on doing business are the only really relevant thing that matters in this conversation?
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    I think it's plenty relevant that the US has the same kinds of flaws in its system, and that the differences are really differences in degree and not kind. (As large as those differences in degree might be in certain places.) I think that's a very important bit of perspective.
awongh 10y ago
That's only kind of true. They park it in other places besides China: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/magazine/how-to-hide-400-million.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/magazine/how-to-hide-400-m...
- dageshi 10y ago
  Granted... but they're not parking it in China are they? So in terms of places you put your money being sure you'll get it back, China is not very high on that list for a number of reasons.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Asset prices in China are grossly inflated because of 1) capital controls and 2) China has been running large trade surpluses for about 2 decades. It would make sound financial sense for any rich person to move as many assets as they could out of the country, regardless of whether the nation's institutions were trustworthy.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

I know this is a what aboutism, but... > The same goes for the US. Different scales! One has third-world law enforcement issues, the other has first-world law enforcement issues. At any rate, the US doesn't put out so many laws (at least at the federal level) that it knows it can't enforce because enforcement would destroy the economy, while China has no problem doing that. Heck, China has an entire "constitution" that guarantees many rights unequivocally (freedom of speech, assembly, all the good stuff), which is then unilaterally ignored. Say what you want about the US, but the supreme court isn't that horrible or ineffective (yet). > The same goes for the US, just to a different degree in different contexts. Yep. It is never black and white, just a very dark gray vs. a much lighter shade of gray.

stcredzero 10y ago
Different scales! One has third-world law enforcement issues, the other has first-world law enforcement issues. Exactly what is the difference? Is it what you refer to below? At any rate, the US doesn't put out so many laws (at least at the federal level) that it knows it can't enforce because enforcement would destroy the economy, while China has no problem doing that. Funny, but the rhetoric from the political right in the US would have one believe this is happening. (There is undoubtedly some self interested bias at work there.) I did have some experience with export regulations when ordering a piece of industrial equipment from Guangdong province in China. (A knock off of a J-Cut laser cutter.) The Chinese company was surprisingly diligent in their technical support. However, they cheerfully agreed summarily then ignored my requests for the proper paperwork. The expediter I worked with on the US end explained that the US regulations that came up in response to 9-11 were basically unenforceable, so everyone exporting from China just ignored them. Heck, China has an entire "constitution" that guarantees many rights unequivocally (freedom of speech, assembly, all the good stuff), which is then unilaterally ignored. Say what you want about the US, but the supreme court isn't that horrible or ineffective (yet). The supreme court might work, but the US isn't perfect either. The US doesn't have "innocent until proven guity" enshrined directly in the constitution, though it's taken as being implied by other parts of the law. However, local governments do abrogate this principle on statistical grounds. Yep. It is never black and white, just a very dark gray vs. a much lighter shade of gray. I suspect the 5 downvotes were from people with rather black and white viewpoints.

criley2 10y ago

I think you're falsely equivocating the British-inspired American Common Law system with a fundamentally, institutionally different Chinese concept. Even French and other European nations which use Civil Law instead of Common Law systems operate a good bit differently than the Anglo law systems. In fact, Chinese Law is kind of a Civil Law system mixed with Soviet Socialist Law and Traditional Chinese Law, so you'd have much more luck comparing German Law with Chinese Law. But to then equivocate between US and Chinese law, calling them basically the same, it ignores larges differences and for seemingly no benefit. If you wanted to say Hong Kong law system and US/UK law systems were so similar that the differences in this conversation aren't worth discussing, that's one thing. But Mainland Chinese law, the Socialist Law system, is very different. Their Western Civil Law + Soviet Socialist Law + Traditional Chinese Law system is different, especially the Traditional Chinese legal influences, which is the topic of discussion here: how native Chinese companies can often navigate traditional law while foreign companies are held to a more strict western-influenced civil law standard.

stcredzero 10y ago
I think you're falsely equivocating the British-inspired American Common Law system with a fundamentally, institutionally different Chinese concept. No. I'm just observing a few factual items, like the New Hampshire law that defines a brothel as 5 or more unmarried women living together under the same roof. There are also many more laws in the US than are enforced in practice. Our Supreme Court does get around to invalidating some of them, and they arise from a very differently structured system, but the US clearly has these too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat... The "false equivalence" was only in your mind, not in my text. It was only in how you imagined my motivations must have been to write such a comment, not any content of the comment itself.
- criley2 10y ago
  >The "false equivalence" was only in your mind, not in my text. It was only in how you imagined my motivations must have been to write such a comment, not any content of the comment itself. It's sad that you bristled so indignantly at my words that you were unable to think them through and form a good understanding. In your haste to screech that I put words in your mouth, you in turn became the very object of your scorn and put words in my mouth. Let's be frank: Silly archaic laws like NH's brothel law are wholly unrelated to Business, and if a business in NH or America formed to take advantage of archaic laws they would be smacked down aggressively by a court or legislature. That is a wholly false analogy to the Chinese Traditional and Socialist Law systems, which have precedent and are aggressively used, today, in today's world, by natives and native businesses. We're discussing a complicated 3 headed legal system where natives have a different experience than foreigners. Your NH brothel law, and American law in general, DO NOT OPERATE THIS WAY. It's not three headed, it's one headed. It's not an amalgamation of 3 disparate world concepts, it's an evolution of 1 concept. What a terrible analogy, what a terrible reply.

brilliantcode 10y ago

Ah yes the cliche practice of making a loose blanket counter claim based on false assumptions to suggest that any critical view of China is inherently flawed due to the bias of being American. I wonder if you even live in North America, the difference is night and day. If I was in China and a company violates my IP and trademark, what punitive measures are enforced to ensure that my brand is not damaged as a result of knock-off products that ultimately turns out to be unsafe? What if you bought an iPhone only to discover it was a fake and customers are uploading burning batteries with the Apple logo on WeChat and Weibo? Clearly such practices are not allowed in North America or Europe and I can rest assured that there's very little chance of that continuing. There's no middle ground, it's A) did you use their trademark? B) If yes, you broke the law. C) Enforcement of the consequences. D) Scares everyone else to follow the law What possible context do you need here to justify trademark violation? Does China understand the value and role trademarks play? Without a clear authenticity, you can't control the quality, and the consumer and the producer lose. The economic loss as a result of not enforcing is great enough in the long term that the Western nations have long adhered to it. Being fair to China, it's still a growing economy and it's learning all these pieces. I feel like the future Chinese economy will be very similar to the US, and only then, will it truly shine. Unfortunately with a communist themed leadership where a central government is controlling everything, such maturity will not come in time and it will ultimately be it's undoing. The rule of law is interpreted as it is. Context should never be used as an excuse to say that the law doesn't work. Clearly, in the US or Canada, any trademark violation is enforced swiftly. Are you seriously trying to suggest that is the case in China?

stcredzero 10y ago
Ah yes the cliche practice of making a loose blanket counter claim based on false assumptions to suggest that any critical view of China is inherently flawed due to the bias of being American. Ah yes, the knee-jerk reaction to simple factual statements that reveal the biases of the commenter, through how they imagine the other comment was motivated. No, sorry, but the statement is factual. Both the US and China have laws that are selectively enforced. I wonder if you even live in North America, the difference is night and day. No one said anything about relative severity. That part is entirely in your own head. If you disagree, please provide a quote. Also ask yourself, why do you imagine such motivations, and react so strongly? I think that would be most instructive. I was born in and have lived in the US all my life. I have an Ivy league education and lots of life experience at all levels of the socioeconomic ladder. I think I have a good sense of this society's biases. (From both the political left and the right.) The rule of law is interpreted as it is. Context should never be used as an excuse to say that the law doesn't work. In the US, context is used to abrogate principles as fundamental as "innocent until proven guilty." That's simply fact. I never said the US was just as bad at protecting intellectual property. I merely stated that both the US and China bend the rule of law based on context. I didn't specify the contexts. You imagined contexts that you could get incensed about, apparently.