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It's sad that techies who champion knowledge, freedom, righteousness, supports a country like China that openly rejects democracy, openly and brashly monitors i

It's sad that techies who champion knowledge, freedom, righteousness, supports a country like China that openly rejects democracy, openly and brashly monitors its people and assign them scores, holds 're-education/concentration camps' for its minorities the Uighur, threatens democratic countries like Taiwan, house arrests many of its own citizens and nobel prize winners, spews its pollution into the ocean and to other countries airspace, supports a crazy dictator in North Korea who seeks to destroy US and Japan, etc etc etc

dna_polymerase 9y ago
That's a very leftist, biased and effectively fascist way to look at things. China may have its problems yet for every point you make one could find a negative point in most other countries in the world. Especially if you choose the other country to be the US, which really can't claim moral superiority over many nations in the world (probably not even North Korea). Let specific points aside, technology is also a way to make things better for people. So instead of working on the next Tumblr or the third Uber it might make sense to go somewhere else and broaden ones horizon.
- outworlder 9y ago
  > China may have its problems yet for every point you make one could find a negative point in most other countries in the world. Especially if you choose the other country to be the US, which really can't claim moral superiority over many nations in the world (probably not even North Korea). This is ridiculous. I agree with the general point when you say that all countries have problems. But some have way more problems than others – and I wouldn't call whatever happens in North Korea just "a problem". While the US foreign policy leaves much to be desired, you cannot compare the way US citizens are treated versus how Chinese or North Korean citizens are. So yes, the US CAN claim moral superiority in many areas.
  - dna_polymerase 9y ago
    > So yes, the US CAN claim moral superiority in many areas. Oh really? The biggest patriot of the US is forced to live in Russia because he pointed out, that the US has built an apparatus for mass surveillance. That man is Edward Snowden. If he would go back home he would be killed, legally, that is, because your highly moral superior nation allows to sentence people to death (just like China, which is such a worse place to be). In general people that speak against the US are threatened. The US actually goes out of their way to try and silence these voices. Even as far as bullying other countries into their crap. Look at Julian Assange, who is forced to live in a tiny room for years now, because the US made sure to catch and extradite him as soon as he leaves the embassy in London. Which by the ruling of the United Nations in against basic human rights, yet Assange is sentenced to death in the embassy (just like dissidents in China). North Korea is bullyied by the world (on behalf of the US) because they have not opened to capitalism and they have a nuclear bomb. Which by the way the US has, yet the US arsenal is not only one bomb but more like one hundred bombs per country of the world. To be honest, I am more afraid of the lunatic in the white house to launch one of those bombs than the fatty in North Korea. The US always points at the free press and free speech, yet they created such an environment of leftist propaganda, that Sam Altman feels more safe to say things in China than in the Valley. The free press is so damn broken that they spent the last year talking about Russians manipulating their elections that Donald Trump can slip everything he wants into congress without anyone actually noticing. And while NYT, WashPo, LATimes, etc. keep talking about the bad Russians your nation turns into shit. Oh and I did not even mention the broken capitalism and lobbyists yet... I could do this for hours. The point is, nope moral high ground is long gone for you guys, in fact I think after Hiroshima you never had it.
    - athrun 9y ago
      The US (along with the democratic free world) may have its own problems but it absolutely can claim some sort of moral superiority in many areas. You cite Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Well, you can freely support, advocate, demonstrate or petition for their cause, in the open. Let me know how it goes for you if you were to try defending political dissidents in Russia, China or North Korea. The fact that we can debate these things in a public forum is proof of our moral superiority. This does not mean there aren't plenty of things we need to learn from these non-democratic societies. We just don't need to reject our moral beliefs to do so.
  - dang 9y ago
    Could you please not use HN for political and national flamewar? This is the last thing we want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - outworlder 9y ago
      I apologize. Won't happen again.
      - dang 9y ago
        Much appreciated!
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Moral superiority is a huge myth, usually its use is coupled with what aboutism fallacies anyways. There is much that China can improve irrespective of the situation in other countries. Besides, when someone criticizes the USA, no one ever points out that China is worse, even when it obviously is. It isn't relevant.
- tanilama 9y ago
  It is ridiculous a country that elects a openly racist president like Trump claims any morale high ground...
  - freeloop3 9y ago
    How is he openly racist? Because he wants to secure our borders?
    - tanilama 9y ago
      Oh, so many racist slurs he spilled among the way, speak his characters to me.
      - freeloop3 9y ago
        What racist slurs?
        dang 9y ago
        Using HN for political flamewar will get you banned. Please don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 9y ago
    Please keep political and nationalistic flamebait off HN. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
probably_whf 9y ago
It's not as bad as the way many French intellectuals directly supported Maoism[0] - at least our "techies" don't (usually) claim to be experts on the political/philosophical side. (Ideally we would have a functioning intelligentsia in the US, but I really think this is more of a symptom of not having one than it is of having a morally decrepit one.) [0](see page 9) https://todhartman.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/michel-foucault-power-knowledge-interviews-and-other-writings-1972-1977-_gordon-colin-ed_.pdf https://todhartman.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/michel-foucau... - whatshisface, but posted on an alt so I don't have to feel bad about points. ;)
um_ya 9y ago
China has created "exclusive economic zones" like Hong Kong and Shenzhen that are more free than the United States. Mainland China may be a shithole, but at least they have places where capitalism can thrive, better that even the United States.
- robjan 9y ago
  Shenzhen is a Special Economic Zone and Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous Special Administrative Region under "one country, two systems". There may be more economic freedom that the US but still less freedom of speech and press.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    HK had plenty of freedom of speech and press until very recently. With the bookseller abductions, that is obviously over, but it did exist at one point.
- nichtich 9y ago
  There's no way Shenzhen is more free than US. I'm not sure you're more misguided towards US or China though.
- zhte415 9y ago
  Hong Kong is not and never has been a Special Economic Zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zones_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zones_of_Chin...
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    HK is a Special Administrative Region (the HK SAR). To be honest, all these acronyms are confusing anyways (an SEZ, a SAR, the TAR)...
outworlder 9y ago
Being fascinated by some aspects of a foreign culture is not the same as supporting the political regime itself.
jhales 9y ago
There no support for the Communist Government, only a vibrant tech community.
foxylad 9y ago
To me, he didn't seem to be supporting China - he seemed to be shopping in Shenzhen. He didn't make a single positive comment about the regime, and in fact spent a lot of the article complaining about the hassles caused by the Great Firewall.
- suitelife 9y ago
  pretty sure 'giving money to the China's economy' is the same as supporting China. doubt China cares about emotional support.
  - platinumrad 9y ago
    So nobody should ever vacation in or visit China? Even if you were to avoid explicitly giving money to Chinese businesses, it's probably impossible to buy any moderately complicated manufactured good without indirectly supporting China's economy. Why do new accounts pop up to shittalk China every single time someone writes a piece like this. Paid Taiwanese shills?
    - suitelife 9y ago
      we are techies, if we can program artificial intelligence, we can figure out ways to avoid giving money to an evil entity that produces concentration camps that today houses China's minorities, tomorrow maybe your children.
      - IntronExon 9y ago
        You can’t program AI, just some mindless feedback models that have the name “AI” slapped on them. You also can’t sway a group of skeptics with corny lines such as, “tomorrow your children...” Get real. I don’t want to live in China right now, but evil? I live in a country that has destabilized country after country after country in the name of ideology, fear, and greed. This country kills civilians on a regular basis, and calls it acceptable. We’re all evil, if you want to be hyperbolic about it, or human I’d you want to be realistic. Pointing fingers at external “devils” is just a non-starter to anyone with a rational bone in them.
drpancake 9y ago
By visiting Silicon Valley am I supporting the US government's covert wars, extrajudicial drone strikes and interference in the affairs of other countries? Not in any meaningful way. This is an absurd argument.
- abalone 9y ago
  It's a hypocritical argument, not an absurd one. One could argue that it's also wrong to uncritically celebrate the technological achievements of Silicon Valley. Well over a million people have been killed in U.S. wars of aggression (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) and there are very direct ties between SV high tech funding and the Pentagon. Exhibit A: DARPA.[1] Even more direct than in China. A lot of what SV does is commercializing military technology developed at taxpayer expense. Autonomous vehicles and Siri are just a couple recent examples.[2][3] [1] https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO
  - jjtheblunt 9y ago
    Vietnam was not a US war of aggression: the US came at the request of the French presence as the communist north tried to take the French allies in the south. The result was a mess, sadly, predictably.
    - thebread 9y ago
      No. America supported colonialism (France), then later suspended the Geneva agreement of 1954. The agreement required elections across both north and south that they knew Ho Chi Minh would win. That beget what is known in Vietnam as the American War. Vietnam struggled for 30 years to be one country. Ho Chi Minh took assistance from the OSS in WW2 and styled the Vietnamese declaration of Independence on the American one. He turned to the Communists when America decided colonial rule was more important than freedom.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
volgo 9y ago
You seem to have a very distorted view of the world that's almost identical to what the media feeds you. Have you ever visited China and experienced it yourself, or do most of the things you say come from what organizations tell you? Not saying everything in your post was incorrect, but it's a very unrealistic view.
dang 9y ago
Taking HN into political and nationalistic flamewar is a bannable offense, and we've banned this account. All: please don't spoil this thread still further by taking this kind of bait. If you want a poster child for what happens, look below for a reductio ad absurdum in two steps: (1) bickering about wars of aggression (yes they were no they weren't); (2) relitigating Vietnam. If this is what you want to do on the internet, Hacker News is not the site you are looking for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dna_polymerase 9y ago

That's a very leftist, biased and effectively fascist way to look at things. China may have its problems yet for every point you make one could find a negative point in most other countries in the world. Especially if you choose the other country to be the US, which really can't claim moral superiority over many nations in the world (probably not even North Korea). Let specific points aside, technology is also a way to make things better for people. So instead of working on the next Tumblr or the third Uber it might make sense to go somewhere else and broaden ones horizon.

outworlder 9y ago
> China may have its problems yet for every point you make one could find a negative point in most other countries in the world. Especially if you choose the other country to be the US, which really can't claim moral superiority over many nations in the world (probably not even North Korea). This is ridiculous. I agree with the general point when you say that all countries have problems. But some have way more problems than others – and I wouldn't call whatever happens in North Korea just "a problem". While the US foreign policy leaves much to be desired, you cannot compare the way US citizens are treated versus how Chinese or North Korean citizens are. So yes, the US CAN claim moral superiority in many areas.
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  > So yes, the US CAN claim moral superiority in many areas. Oh really? The biggest patriot of the US is forced to live in Russia because he pointed out, that the US has built an apparatus for mass surveillance. That man is Edward Snowden. If he would go back home he would be killed, legally, that is, because your highly moral superior nation allows to sentence people to death (just like China, which is such a worse place to be). In general people that speak against the US are threatened. The US actually goes out of their way to try and silence these voices. Even as far as bullying other countries into their crap. Look at Julian Assange, who is forced to live in a tiny room for years now, because the US made sure to catch and extradite him as soon as he leaves the embassy in London. Which by the ruling of the United Nations in against basic human rights, yet Assange is sentenced to death in the embassy (just like dissidents in China). North Korea is bullyied by the world (on behalf of the US) because they have not opened to capitalism and they have a nuclear bomb. Which by the way the US has, yet the US arsenal is not only one bomb but more like one hundred bombs per country of the world. To be honest, I am more afraid of the lunatic in the white house to launch one of those bombs than the fatty in North Korea. The US always points at the free press and free speech, yet they created such an environment of leftist propaganda, that Sam Altman feels more safe to say things in China than in the Valley. The free press is so damn broken that they spent the last year talking about Russians manipulating their elections that Donald Trump can slip everything he wants into congress without anyone actually noticing. And while NYT, WashPo, LATimes, etc. keep talking about the bad Russians your nation turns into shit. Oh and I did not even mention the broken capitalism and lobbyists yet... I could do this for hours. The point is, nope moral high ground is long gone for you guys, in fact I think after Hiroshima you never had it.
  - athrun 9y ago
    The US (along with the democratic free world) may have its own problems but it absolutely can claim some sort of moral superiority in many areas. You cite Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Well, you can freely support, advocate, demonstrate or petition for their cause, in the open. Let me know how it goes for you if you were to try defending political dissidents in Russia, China or North Korea. The fact that we can debate these things in a public forum is proof of our moral superiority. This does not mean there aren't plenty of things we need to learn from these non-democratic societies. We just don't need to reject our moral beliefs to do so.
- dang 9y ago
  Could you please not use HN for political and national flamewar? This is the last thing we want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - outworlder 9y ago
    I apologize. Won't happen again.
    - dang 9y ago
      Much appreciated!
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Moral superiority is a huge myth, usually its use is coupled with what aboutism fallacies anyways. There is much that China can improve irrespective of the situation in other countries. Besides, when someone criticizes the USA, no one ever points out that China is worse, even when it obviously is. It isn't relevant.
tanilama 9y ago
It is ridiculous a country that elects a openly racist president like Trump claims any morale high ground...
- freeloop3 9y ago
  How is he openly racist? Because he wants to secure our borders?
  - tanilama 9y ago
    Oh, so many racist slurs he spilled among the way, speak his characters to me.
    - freeloop3 9y ago
      What racist slurs?
      - dang 9y ago
        Using HN for political flamewar will get you banned. Please don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 9y ago
  Please keep political and nationalistic flamebait off HN. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

probably_whf 9y ago

It's not as bad as the way many French intellectuals directly supported Maoism[0] - at least our "techies" don't (usually) claim to be experts on the political/philosophical side. (Ideally we would have a functioning intelligentsia in the US, but I really think this is more of a symptom of not having one than it is of having a morally decrepit one.) [0](see page 9) https://todhartman.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/michel-foucault-power-knowledge-interviews-and-other-writings-1972-1977-_gordon-colin-ed_.pdf https://todhartman.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/michel-foucau... - whatshisface, but posted on an alt so I don't have to feel bad about points. ;)

um_ya 9y ago

China has created "exclusive economic zones" like Hong Kong and Shenzhen that are more free than the United States. Mainland China may be a shithole, but at least they have places where capitalism can thrive, better that even the United States.

robjan 9y ago
Shenzhen is a Special Economic Zone and Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous Special Administrative Region under "one country, two systems". There may be more economic freedom that the US but still less freedom of speech and press.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  HK had plenty of freedom of speech and press until very recently. With the bookseller abductions, that is obviously over, but it did exist at one point.
nichtich 9y ago
There's no way Shenzhen is more free than US. I'm not sure you're more misguided towards US or China though.
zhte415 9y ago
Hong Kong is not and never has been a Special Economic Zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zones_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zones_of_Chin...
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  HK is a Special Administrative Region (the HK SAR). To be honest, all these acronyms are confusing anyways (an SEZ, a SAR, the TAR)...

outworlder 9y ago

Being fascinated by some aspects of a foreign culture is not the same as supporting the political regime itself.

jhales 9y ago

There no support for the Communist Government, only a vibrant tech community.

foxylad 9y ago

To me, he didn't seem to be supporting China - he seemed to be shopping in Shenzhen. He didn't make a single positive comment about the regime, and in fact spent a lot of the article complaining about the hassles caused by the Great Firewall.

suitelife 9y ago
pretty sure 'giving money to the China's economy' is the same as supporting China. doubt China cares about emotional support.
- platinumrad 9y ago
  So nobody should ever vacation in or visit China? Even if you were to avoid explicitly giving money to Chinese businesses, it's probably impossible to buy any moderately complicated manufactured good without indirectly supporting China's economy. Why do new accounts pop up to shittalk China every single time someone writes a piece like this. Paid Taiwanese shills?
  - suitelife 9y ago
    we are techies, if we can program artificial intelligence, we can figure out ways to avoid giving money to an evil entity that produces concentration camps that today houses China's minorities, tomorrow maybe your children.
    - IntronExon 9y ago
      You can’t program AI, just some mindless feedback models that have the name “AI” slapped on them. You also can’t sway a group of skeptics with corny lines such as, “tomorrow your children...” Get real. I don’t want to live in China right now, but evil? I live in a country that has destabilized country after country after country in the name of ideology, fear, and greed. This country kills civilians on a regular basis, and calls it acceptable. We’re all evil, if you want to be hyperbolic about it, or human I’d you want to be realistic. Pointing fingers at external “devils” is just a non-starter to anyone with a rational bone in them.

drpancake 9y ago

By visiting Silicon Valley am I supporting the US government's covert wars, extrajudicial drone strikes and interference in the affairs of other countries? Not in any meaningful way. This is an absurd argument.

abalone 9y ago
It's a hypocritical argument, not an absurd one. One could argue that it's also wrong to uncritically celebrate the technological achievements of Silicon Valley. Well over a million people have been killed in U.S. wars of aggression (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) and there are very direct ties between SV high tech funding and the Pentagon. Exhibit A: DARPA.[1] Even more direct than in China. A lot of what SV does is commercializing military technology developed at taxpayer expense. Autonomous vehicles and Siri are just a couple recent examples.[2][3] [1] https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO
- jjtheblunt 9y ago
  Vietnam was not a US war of aggression: the US came at the request of the French presence as the communist north tried to take the French allies in the south. The result was a mess, sadly, predictably.
  - thebread 9y ago
    No. America supported colonialism (France), then later suspended the Geneva agreement of 1954. The agreement required elections across both north and south that they knew Ho Chi Minh would win. That beget what is known in Vietnam as the American War. Vietnam struggled for 30 years to be one country. Ho Chi Minh took assistance from the OSS in WW2 and styled the Vietnamese declaration of Independence on the American one. He turned to the Communists when America decided colonial rule was more important than freedom.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago

volgo 9y ago

You seem to have a very distorted view of the world that's almost identical to what the media feeds you. Have you ever visited China and experienced it yourself, or do most of the things you say come from what organizations tell you? Not saying everything in your post was incorrect, but it's a very unrealistic view.

dang 9y ago

Taking HN into political and nationalistic flamewar is a bannable offense, and we've banned this account. All: please don't spoil this thread still further by taking this kind of bait. If you want a poster child for what happens, look below for a reductio ad absurdum in two steps: (1) bickering about wars of aggression (yes they were no they weren't); (2) relitigating Vietnam. If this is what you want to do on the internet, Hacker News is not the site you are looking for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html