8 ms·

US companies giving in to pressure from China

80 points by maxwell 8y ago

Analemma_ 8y ago
It's not just companies, it's US people too. The original HN thread on this subject (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17660872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17660872) had a truly depressing percentage of comments saying "No big deal" using some combination of whataboutism, false equivalence and simple fatalism. I seem to remember that when Google first pulled out of China the reaction among HN types was much more positive; what has happened to our morals since then?
- cantalouper 8y ago
  By morals, do you mean your specific brand of self-righteous extremism?
- rogerthis 8y ago
  It remembers me a book: The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, by Antony C. Sutton.
- se30b 8y ago
  Hacker news has been overtaken by evil insect-like people that hate freedom, and goodness itself.
  - sbinthree 8y ago
    This statement is delusional in the context of Google offering a censored search product. People in China who mind will leave China, most don't mind according to Confucianism values, this policy is not going to change because nerds in North America disagree with it, and neither is Google.
    - jryan49 8y ago
      I don't think poor people from China don't have the ability or money to leave China. The poor of any country usually have limited mobility. Most people in China are poor. Also, it's not like the world has open borders, and people can move to another country without huge efforts.
- kyrra 8y ago
  It's important to remember history a bit. Google left China[0] after it was hacked as part of Operation Aurora[1]. It had been serving a censored version of Google Search from 2006-2010. [0] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-chin... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
- autokad 8y ago
  I don't find it odd or wrong that companies are abiding to the law when they offer services within a certain jurisdiction. Google pulled out because of hacking and attacks against their services, if I remember correctly.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Google pulled out because of the hacks, but remember both Page and Brin came from eastern block countries, so they had a more idealistic and personal outlook on the matter (at least at the time).
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I think there are a lot more Chinese on HN now then 2010. Also, it is increasingly clear that any action to get China to open up and liberalize more can’t come from the private sector due to a successful policy of economic engagement (and some say entrapment) by the Chinese.
- sykhic 8y ago
  It's increasingly hard to justify not doing business in China for moral reasons whilst doing business in the U.S. If the moral high ground could indisputably be claimed by the U.S. then peoples' views would be different. Now it's not a big deal that Google wants to do business in China since it's doing business in the U.S. It's not necessarily that morality has gone down in the U.S; it's that trust in the morality of America's leaders has gone down. I see this as a sign of a decline in the faith of America's institutions. Also with globalization the distinction between nation-states begins to erode. This is especially so in the case of business.
  - 394852034 8y ago
    That kind of moral relativism is precisely why humanity is currently being suffocated by communism. Please take a second to center yourself and then consider that you are retorting an unachievable standard as measure by which the USA must be evaluated "indisputable American moral high ground", and you are doing that in combination with rationalization and excusing of Chinese moral low ground. There is no comparing the two countries or societies, let alone any other for that matter that the USA has lifted out of poverty and defended and secured for decades now and all the USA ever gets is what is really a mentally deranged and suicidal mentality echoing mindset of self-loathing and insult of America. While China and Russia were intentionally starving tens of millions of their own people and abusing them to degrees that are clearly unimaginable to the types of self-hating and self-destructive types as you seem to be, a single American literally saved billions of people from starvation through the Green Revolution ... and that, do you types, infested with post-modern, communist, self-hating, self-destructive ideological subversive mental illness, is the same thing. The moral superiority and general superiority of all things American is so without equal and incomparable to anything any other society has ever produced or done, and yet you cannot see the objects in front of you for all the light streaming into your eyes. It's a bizarre and strange mental derangement. A mass psychosis, that in the end will also choke off the engine that you rely on, the USA, if you don't realize that. Forget global warming, nuclear war, pandemics, .... they are nothing in the face of the destructive force of post-modern, relativist, communist suicidal westerners that are destroying the engine of humanity from within out of manic mental illness. American moral high ground IS indisputable, people's minds have just been so twisted and propagandized that they can't see that there is literally no other country that could replace the USA. Which is a morally superior country and society than the USA and has the capacity to take over from the USA? Let us know, we will gladly take over so they can suffer the disrespect and being spit on and shit in our face for everything the USA has provided to the world, which essentially makes up every single thing you see and have around you. And no, it was not a multicultural communist poison pill, it was teh homogeneous white and christian society that created everything we are still running on, every single bit of it that is being torn own and ever increasingly being beset by parasites.
- Afforess 8y ago
  Uh, morals? What does ethics have to do with Google operating their search business in China? I'm confused why I am supposed to be outraged. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about censorship in foreign countries - how does what the Chinese government do affect American speech? I guess censorship in general is _bad_, but it's purely an internal, domestic matter. The Chinese aren't scrubbing American textbooks of the historical record. Really, I think I've only noticed China's influence in cinema; I see more Asian lead roles in Hollywood films, but this seems more a corrective change than bad thing. I'm not seeing how what happens to internet search in China affects Americans. Nor what ethical concerns there are.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    The Chinese aren't scrubbing American textbooks of the historical record. The Chinese government certainly would like to, though, and if they get powerful enough they will.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    I believe the expected reaction is the same amount of moral outrage that would accompany the American government treating the American public the same way.
  - mratzloff 8y ago
    At what point does it become a moral imperative to stop doing business with a government? I assume we can all agree that US businesses should not sell more efficient gas chambers to Nazi Germany. So where does the line get drawn?
  - tonyztan 8y ago
    > "The Chinese aren't scrubbing American textbooks of the historical record" However, the Chinese Communist Party is in fact coercing American websites to conform to its political preferences. "It issued an ultimatum that expired last week, asking airlines around the world to refer to Taiwan as part of China on their websites."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
pnw_hazor 8y ago
Boeing and other traditional high-skill/tech manufacturers have been giving away their to China technology for years. CEOs/Boards/State don't care though, its all about next quarter's numbers.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Boeing doesn’t sell tech to China. They sell them planes, spare parts, they even put a finishing center in China, but no IP transfer. McDonal Douglas did sell MD80 machining tools to China, which is what the 909 is based on. However, this is only for the body, the other stuff (avionics, jet engines) are being imported.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    "Over the decades, Boeing and other American companies, including General Electric, Honeywell and Rockwell Collins, have helped China to build the broad foundation necessary for an aerospace industry. That same Chinese industry is now getting close to producing its own commercial jets that could one day take much of the profitable Chinese market back from Boeing and rival Airbus." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/23/china-offers-huge-rewards-for-u-s-companies-like-boeing-but-it-could-also-take-away-their-business/?utm_term=.742f49f693c0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/23/china...
mobmobmob 8y ago
These US corporate elites are selling out US and the rest of the democratic free world in order to meet shareholder's expectations (and of course, MONEY!). And giving into a dictatorship and giving that dictatorship jobs, money, capital, knowledge, and power. That dictatorship now has imprisoned close to 1 million people in Xinjiang. Shame on you, Sundar Pichai. At least when Google was lead by Erich Schmidt, Google pulled out of China, and didn't bend to the whims of Chinese government. Shame on you, Tim Cook. Apple has 4.8 million jobs in China, more than double the jobs in US. https://247wallst.com/jobs/2017/03/17/apple-supports-4-8-million-jobs-in-china-more-than-double-us-total/ https://247wallst.com/jobs/2017/03/17/apple-supports-4-8-mil... . Shame on you for not bringing jobs back when news broke out that Foxconn has created a slave labor like working condition. Shame on you, Mark Zuckerberg, for continuing to appease the dictator in China, so that Facebook may gain a foothold there. Shame on you, Satya Nadella, for continuing to supply censored search results in Bing. and for not taking a stand against censorship. But I guess the microsoft borgship has a lot in common with China. Shame on you, Jeff Bezos. You become the richest man on earth, by allowing pirated, stolen, IP infriged goods from China to be sold on your platform without care, destroying small US businesses. You also partnered with Foxconn for Amazon Echo, tablet, and other hardwares. Amazon is a showcase for trade imbalance. disgusting.
- excalibur 8y ago
  > user: mobmobmob > created: 17 minutes ago
  - xeromal 8y ago
    Is that why the user is green? I've always wondered?
    - ndiscussion 8y ago
      Yes it is, but what does that have to do with the nature of the comment?
      - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
qiqing 8y ago
An excerpt, which sounds shockingly similar to GDPR compliance, listed as an example: "APPLE, AGAIN That wasn’t the only issue Apple faced in the country. Earlier this year, Apple moved Chinese iCloud data to a state-run company after new laws were enacted requiring foreign companies to store data locally."
- tonyztan 8y ago
  The difference is that in the case of China (and Russia), requiring local data storage is intended to enable government oppression. EU countries have much better human rights records than China and Russia do.
  - qiqing 8y ago
    Do you believe it is morally wrong for China and Russia to pass their own GDPR-esque legislation? And for corporations to comply with said legislation?
    - d0100 8y ago
      Motive and outcome are valid measures for deciding if something is moral
deeg 8y ago
I look at it this way: change is not going to be forced on the Chinese government by US corporations. That can only come from the Chinese population (with possibly a small assist from foreign governments). So what's the best way to help their citizens with changing the government? I believe the best way is to make them prosperous and informed; people who are hungry or worried about their job are less likely to question the political status quo. Are US corporations helping with either of those? Not much with the latter but I believe more trade helps the former, as long as it also doesn't make it easier for the government to oppress the Chinese population. Is there much of a difference between US corporations doing business in China and the rest of us buying inexpensive goods from Chinese companies?
- mehblahwhatevs 8y ago
  This thinking is common that more middle-upper class people won't put up with a dictatorial regime. But isn't Singapore kind of a counter to that?
  - repsilat 8y ago
    Singaporeans at least have the right to leave. Chinese people aren't even free to migrate internally. Singaporean internet access is significantly freer than Chinese. Singapore has freer markets, more rule of law. They don't have a real democracy, and there are restrictions on speech, but it's absolutely crazy to equate it with China. If China turns into Singapore as it gets richer it'll be a humanitarian miracle. Unfortunately I share your skepticism. Not because of Singapore as a counterexample, though, but because of China-to-date. They haven't been liberalising, they have been getting less free, more nationalistic and so on. The Party has increased its control on every part of life and all levers of government. I can't see why that trend should reverse.
    - ngcc_hk 8y ago
      Yes and even if go you are chinese first. Kidnapping foreign national in a foreign land (Thailand not just 1c2s Hk) is done. You are chinese first even if you have other passport ...
georgeburdell 8y ago
Honestly, I don’t find the censorship tools or local-hosting of data to be too offensive; if the big Cloud players don’t do it, another will, with the net effect being the same. What bothers me the most is the airlines listing Taiwan as part of China. This goes against policy of the vast majority of the world, including the U.S. It’s one of many reasons (the others are not germane to the article so I will not list them here) why I refuse to buy new Chinese products. It has been quite difficult, but between second hand stores and a relatively robust domestic manufacturing base, I’ve made it work.

80 points by maxwell 8y ago

It's not just companies, it's US people too. The original HN thread on this subject (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17660872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17660872) had a truly depressing percentage of comments saying "No big deal" using some combination of whataboutism, false equivalence and simple fatalism. I seem to remember that when Google first pulled out of China the reaction among HN types was much more positive; what has happened to our morals since then?

cantalouper 8y ago
By morals, do you mean your specific brand of self-righteous extremism?
rogerthis 8y ago
It remembers me a book: The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, by Antony C. Sutton.
se30b 8y ago
Hacker news has been overtaken by evil insect-like people that hate freedom, and goodness itself.
- sbinthree 8y ago
  This statement is delusional in the context of Google offering a censored search product. People in China who mind will leave China, most don't mind according to Confucianism values, this policy is not going to change because nerds in North America disagree with it, and neither is Google.
  - jryan49 8y ago
    I don't think poor people from China don't have the ability or money to leave China. The poor of any country usually have limited mobility. Most people in China are poor. Also, it's not like the world has open borders, and people can move to another country without huge efforts.
kyrra 8y ago
It's important to remember history a bit. Google left China[0] after it was hacked as part of Operation Aurora[1]. It had been serving a censored version of Google Search from 2006-2010. [0] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-chin... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
autokad 8y ago
I don't find it odd or wrong that companies are abiding to the law when they offer services within a certain jurisdiction. Google pulled out because of hacking and attacks against their services, if I remember correctly.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Google pulled out because of the hacks, but remember both Page and Brin came from eastern block countries, so they had a more idealistic and personal outlook on the matter (at least at the time).
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
I think there are a lot more Chinese on HN now then 2010. Also, it is increasingly clear that any action to get China to open up and liberalize more can’t come from the private sector due to a successful policy of economic engagement (and some say entrapment) by the Chinese.
sykhic 8y ago
It's increasingly hard to justify not doing business in China for moral reasons whilst doing business in the U.S. If the moral high ground could indisputably be claimed by the U.S. then peoples' views would be different. Now it's not a big deal that Google wants to do business in China since it's doing business in the U.S. It's not necessarily that morality has gone down in the U.S; it's that trust in the morality of America's leaders has gone down. I see this as a sign of a decline in the faith of America's institutions. Also with globalization the distinction between nation-states begins to erode. This is especially so in the case of business.
- 394852034 8y ago
  That kind of moral relativism is precisely why humanity is currently being suffocated by communism. Please take a second to center yourself and then consider that you are retorting an unachievable standard as measure by which the USA must be evaluated "indisputable American moral high ground", and you are doing that in combination with rationalization and excusing of Chinese moral low ground. There is no comparing the two countries or societies, let alone any other for that matter that the USA has lifted out of poverty and defended and secured for decades now and all the USA ever gets is what is really a mentally deranged and suicidal mentality echoing mindset of self-loathing and insult of America. While China and Russia were intentionally starving tens of millions of their own people and abusing them to degrees that are clearly unimaginable to the types of self-hating and self-destructive types as you seem to be, a single American literally saved billions of people from starvation through the Green Revolution ... and that, do you types, infested with post-modern, communist, self-hating, self-destructive ideological subversive mental illness, is the same thing. The moral superiority and general superiority of all things American is so without equal and incomparable to anything any other society has ever produced or done, and yet you cannot see the objects in front of you for all the light streaming into your eyes. It's a bizarre and strange mental derangement. A mass psychosis, that in the end will also choke off the engine that you rely on, the USA, if you don't realize that. Forget global warming, nuclear war, pandemics, .... they are nothing in the face of the destructive force of post-modern, relativist, communist suicidal westerners that are destroying the engine of humanity from within out of manic mental illness. American moral high ground IS indisputable, people's minds have just been so twisted and propagandized that they can't see that there is literally no other country that could replace the USA. Which is a morally superior country and society than the USA and has the capacity to take over from the USA? Let us know, we will gladly take over so they can suffer the disrespect and being spit on and shit in our face for everything the USA has provided to the world, which essentially makes up every single thing you see and have around you. And no, it was not a multicultural communist poison pill, it was teh homogeneous white and christian society that created everything we are still running on, every single bit of it that is being torn own and ever increasingly being beset by parasites.
Afforess 8y ago
Uh, morals? What does ethics have to do with Google operating their search business in China? I'm confused why I am supposed to be outraged. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about censorship in foreign countries - how does what the Chinese government do affect American speech? I guess censorship in general is _bad_, but it's purely an internal, domestic matter. The Chinese aren't scrubbing American textbooks of the historical record. Really, I think I've only noticed China's influence in cinema; I see more Asian lead roles in Hollywood films, but this seems more a corrective change than bad thing. I'm not seeing how what happens to internet search in China affects Americans. Nor what ethical concerns there are.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  The Chinese aren't scrubbing American textbooks of the historical record. The Chinese government certainly would like to, though, and if they get powerful enough they will.
- Kalium 8y ago
  I believe the expected reaction is the same amount of moral outrage that would accompany the American government treating the American public the same way.
- mratzloff 8y ago
  At what point does it become a moral imperative to stop doing business with a government? I assume we can all agree that US businesses should not sell more efficient gas chambers to Nazi Germany. So where does the line get drawn?
- tonyztan 8y ago
  > "The Chinese aren't scrubbing American textbooks of the historical record" However, the Chinese Communist Party is in fact coercing American websites to conform to its political preferences. "It issued an ultimatum that expired last week, asking airlines around the world to refer to Taiwan as part of China on their websites."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

pnw_hazor 8y ago

Boeing and other traditional high-skill/tech manufacturers have been giving away their to China technology for years. CEOs/Boards/State don't care though, its all about next quarter's numbers.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Boeing doesn’t sell tech to China. They sell them planes, spare parts, they even put a finishing center in China, but no IP transfer. McDonal Douglas did sell MD80 machining tools to China, which is what the 909 is based on. However, this is only for the body, the other stuff (avionics, jet engines) are being imported.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  "Over the decades, Boeing and other American companies, including General Electric, Honeywell and Rockwell Collins, have helped China to build the broad foundation necessary for an aerospace industry. That same Chinese industry is now getting close to producing its own commercial jets that could one day take much of the profitable Chinese market back from Boeing and rival Airbus." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/23/china-offers-huge-rewards-for-u-s-companies-like-boeing-but-it-could-also-take-away-their-business/?utm_term=.742f49f693c0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/23/china...

mobmobmob 8y ago

These US corporate elites are selling out US and the rest of the democratic free world in order to meet shareholder's expectations (and of course, MONEY!). And giving into a dictatorship and giving that dictatorship jobs, money, capital, knowledge, and power. That dictatorship now has imprisoned close to 1 million people in Xinjiang. Shame on you, Sundar Pichai. At least when Google was lead by Erich Schmidt, Google pulled out of China, and didn't bend to the whims of Chinese government. Shame on you, Tim Cook. Apple has 4.8 million jobs in China, more than double the jobs in US. https://247wallst.com/jobs/2017/03/17/apple-supports-4-8-million-jobs-in-china-more-than-double-us-total/ https://247wallst.com/jobs/2017/03/17/apple-supports-4-8-mil... . Shame on you for not bringing jobs back when news broke out that Foxconn has created a slave labor like working condition. Shame on you, Mark Zuckerberg, for continuing to appease the dictator in China, so that Facebook may gain a foothold there. Shame on you, Satya Nadella, for continuing to supply censored search results in Bing. and for not taking a stand against censorship. But I guess the microsoft borgship has a lot in common with China. Shame on you, Jeff Bezos. You become the richest man on earth, by allowing pirated, stolen, IP infriged goods from China to be sold on your platform without care, destroying small US businesses. You also partnered with Foxconn for Amazon Echo, tablet, and other hardwares. Amazon is a showcase for trade imbalance. disgusting.

excalibur 8y ago
> user: mobmobmob > created: 17 minutes ago
- xeromal 8y ago
  Is that why the user is green? I've always wondered?
  - ndiscussion 8y ago
    Yes it is, but what does that have to do with the nature of the comment?
    - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

qiqing 8y ago

An excerpt, which sounds shockingly similar to GDPR compliance, listed as an example: "APPLE, AGAIN That wasn’t the only issue Apple faced in the country. Earlier this year, Apple moved Chinese iCloud data to a state-run company after new laws were enacted requiring foreign companies to store data locally."

tonyztan 8y ago
The difference is that in the case of China (and Russia), requiring local data storage is intended to enable government oppression. EU countries have much better human rights records than China and Russia do.
- qiqing 8y ago
  Do you believe it is morally wrong for China and Russia to pass their own GDPR-esque legislation? And for corporations to comply with said legislation?
  - d0100 8y ago
    Motive and outcome are valid measures for deciding if something is moral

deeg 8y ago

I look at it this way: change is not going to be forced on the Chinese government by US corporations. That can only come from the Chinese population (with possibly a small assist from foreign governments). So what's the best way to help their citizens with changing the government? I believe the best way is to make them prosperous and informed; people who are hungry or worried about their job are less likely to question the political status quo. Are US corporations helping with either of those? Not much with the latter but I believe more trade helps the former, as long as it also doesn't make it easier for the government to oppress the Chinese population. Is there much of a difference between US corporations doing business in China and the rest of us buying inexpensive goods from Chinese companies?

mehblahwhatevs 8y ago
This thinking is common that more middle-upper class people won't put up with a dictatorial regime. But isn't Singapore kind of a counter to that?
- repsilat 8y ago
  Singaporeans at least have the right to leave. Chinese people aren't even free to migrate internally. Singaporean internet access is significantly freer than Chinese. Singapore has freer markets, more rule of law. They don't have a real democracy, and there are restrictions on speech, but it's absolutely crazy to equate it with China. If China turns into Singapore as it gets richer it'll be a humanitarian miracle. Unfortunately I share your skepticism. Not because of Singapore as a counterexample, though, but because of China-to-date. They haven't been liberalising, they have been getting less free, more nationalistic and so on. The Party has increased its control on every part of life and all levers of government. I can't see why that trend should reverse.
  - ngcc_hk 8y ago
    Yes and even if go you are chinese first. Kidnapping foreign national in a foreign land (Thailand not just 1c2s Hk) is done. You are chinese first even if you have other passport ...

georgeburdell 8y ago

Honestly, I don’t find the censorship tools or local-hosting of data to be too offensive; if the big Cloud players don’t do it, another will, with the net effect being the same. What bothers me the most is the airlines listing Taiwan as part of China. This goes against policy of the vast majority of the world, including the U.S. It’s one of many reasons (the others are not germane to the article so I will not list them here) why I refuse to buy new Chinese products. It has been quite difficult, but between second hand stores and a relatively robust domestic manufacturing base, I’ve made it work.