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Huawei Could Divide the World

137 points by howard941 8y ago

xrd 8y ago
Can someone explain how a Chinese company is subject to a US embargo? And, at the risk of getting political, whether the idea raised in the article about the success of China in the last forty years being due to abandoning their isolationism is at direct odds with a trade embargo anyway.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Can someone explain how a Chinese company is subject to a US embargo? AFAIK, the actual charges are fraud relating to representations to third parties relevant to requirements from the embargo on those third parties, but, that aside, there is nothing that stops a sovereign country from making it's laws applicable to foreign acts of foreign actors (in fact, this is mandated under international law for local law implementing certain provisions of international law), though there may sometimes be practical constraints in enforcement of such provisions.
- camillomiller 8y ago
  Huawei buys tech from American companies. If that tech ends up in infrastructure which gets sold to embargoed countries, then it’s a felony on US soil and some allied countries as well. Huawei says it didn’t happen, U.S. prosecutors maintain that it did happen, through a shady HK subsidiary, while Meng was purportedly well aware of that.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    This particular case was about the individual I think, buying up HP gear and sending it to Iran. I don't even think it was a Huawei thing, just an elitist level money grab. But Huawei is also being accused of enabling the Chinese government spying apparatus. Many governments are wary of using their gear, and are considering taking their gear out of network.
    - pyvpx 8y ago
      this is so intellectually lazy. you don't have to look very hard at Cisco (and many other "US" companies) to find Five Eyes assistance embedded in their products (either purposefully or by willful ignorance)
      - sonnyblarney 8y ago
        I'm not at all denying that Cisco and others might be a gateway to five eyes. But there's also the fact that there is incredibly more oversight in 'five eyes' countries, and of course they are 'my side'. I naturally care less about 'us' spying on 'them' than I do 'them' spying on 'me'.
        lostlogin 8y ago
        There is more oversight in the five eyes countries, but that isn’t as reassuring as it sounds. Is anyone in those countries comfortable with what those organisation do and how they are controlled?
        sonnyblarney 8y ago
        There is more oversight because a) 5 eyes are all democracies and b) there are elected bodies that have direct oversight of these activities. For example, in the US, there are both House and Senate committees which have oversight into various bodies and operations which are highly secretive. Example [1] Finally, c) there is an open and free press, and quite a number of whistle blowers and informants to the press, which have legal protection. That's very different from an authoritarian entity that answers to no-one, and does what they please. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Select_Committee_on_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Select_Co...
        794CD01 8y ago
        As natural as it might be, it's wrong. If you are, for example, a US resident, the US government is in a great position to use any information they have about you. The Chinese government, not so much, especially if you have no desire or plans to travel to China.
- unmole 8y ago
  > Can someone explain how a Chinese company is subject to a US embargo? From the article: "She was detained at the behest of the U.S. for allegedly misleading financial institutions about the company’s Iran business, causing them to violate U.S. sanctions."
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  US sanctions apply to any company that does business in or with the USA (including USA companies). Think of it as trying to be a transitive closure.
- mandevil 8y ago
  She's actually accused of fraud, for (allegedly) lying to US companies that what they were doing would not be in violation of any US embargo. The legal theory here is that when she made materially untrue statements that caused US organizations to commit a crime she committed the crime. In broader terms, any financial interaction in dollars likely goes through a US financial institution of some kind, who will be legally obligated to carry out all US embargo rules. There are ways around this, but they are, at present weird hacks that you have to go out of your way to do.
- xster 8y ago
  No need to worry about it getting political because it is a political rather than a judicial act. Otherwise, imagine private citizen board members or executives of HSBC being arrested or extradited (US-UK have extradition) for actually 'violating sanctions' with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba in 2012. The sanction itself is purely political as well. The US overthrows the Iranian democratically elected government to maintain BP's regional dominance because the government threatened to use their country's natural resources' profits to benefit its people. Installs puppet and helps the puppet plan to build 23 nuclear reactors (and the secret police Savak among other things). Puppet gets overthrown by the people and now Iran has 'nuclear ambitions'. And that's after getting the other puppet Saddam to go to war with Iran and then getting rid of the other puppet because now he's US armed like ISIS. And now Iran has a sanction and the sanction is used against other countries. This is a pyramid scheme of imperialism.
  - slededit 8y ago
    You mean like when Mike Turner the CEO of Britain's largest defense company was arrested upon landing in America for arms sales to Saudi-Arabia? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1976770/BAE-bosses-detained-by-US-investigators-over-Saudi-case.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...
    - xster 8y ago
      One might be able to find dozens of non-snatched executives from sanction breaking companies per each arrested one such as: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo. Since we're all about making light-hearted fun of China's non rule of law, I think it's consistent to be at least concerned about the selective enforcement of Western rule of law. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-war-on-huawei-meng-wanzhou-arrest-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2018-12 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-war-on-hu...
ssnistfajen 8y ago
I miss the Internet in early-2000's China. Not as many sites were blocked and everyone was much more open-minded as the undereducated chauvinists did not yet acquire reliable Internet access. Nowadays everyone has a smartphone and it has enabled the chauvinists and other radicals to voice their opinions online, only this time they are actually emboldened by the nation which has risen in the last 30 years to become a serious competitor against the current superpower nation that is the US. China has achieved amazing progress thanks to market reforms and entrepreneurship but certain aspects are continuously regressing under Xi's term which will last for the forseeable future. Private sector confidence is at an all-time low due to state media editorials calling for more state control and boosting state-owned corporations. There has been more and more censorship orders aimed at reducing "Western influence" regardless of whether they are politics-related. More and more Chinese citizens are travelling abroad yet their beliefs in the "Chinese system" only gets re-affirmed by mistakenly thinking that China's success is completely dependent on authoritarianism. I don't agree with fervently supporting the current regime which is oppressive, brutal, antidemocratic, and still corrupt; nor do I agree with painting an entire nation and its people as some sort of evil reincarnate for the sake of a new Cold War. I don't have the knowledge or capability to offer a solution and I am just overall disappointed at the current state of affairs.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It was “different” back then. CNN was blocked in 2002 but New York Times wasn’t. One of the reasons I started reading the New York Times actually. The internet was much more open in 2008 than 2002 (neither nytimes or cnn or anything else major was blocked), but after the olympics China reversed course. Most major news sites are now blocked, but unlike 2002, CNN isn’t. Go figure. I think the high point of Chinese liberalization in recent history must have been the late 80s, but that is pre-internet.
  - hangonhn 8y ago
    Wait, 1989 was not a good year for Chinese liberalization... I think the high point was really under Hu Jintao. The transition from Hu to Xi was a very tumultuous period. Xi, unlike his predecessors, had a very contentious transition and had to fend off numerous fractions inside the CCCP. After surviving that, based partly on the backing of the PLA (his father was a PLA general), he really, really consolidated power. He now has a path forward to be president for life. His ideas are now literally part of the Chinese constitution, elevating him to the same level as Mao. Liberalization is, in some ways, the opposite of centralization. Therefore, liberalization must be stemmed. Hu Jintao, on the other hand, didn't really have that much power. There was always Jiang and his fraction. When power is divested, liberalization is more likely.
ngcc_hk 8y ago
It seems the case built on lie to bank not just about export.
hguant 8y ago
I found this article incredibly naive and idealistic. The divide between China and America isn't a mere disagreement about trade 'disparities' and how IP is handled. The Chinese Communist Party is running an authoritarian, draconic police state that has spent its time quashing human rights, and threatening and bullying democratic nations, all while cynically exploiting its own citizens for increasingly centralized wealth. No amount of cross border trade can alter the fact that China has positioned itself as an enemy of democracy when it stands in the face of hegemonic Chinese power, both abroad and at home. This is a country where the government forced ~10,000 women to be sterilized or see their families imprisoned in 2010, where a report came out not 2 months ago documenting how prisoners of conscience are harvested for organ transplants (the organs in question being sold; it is, after all, _state_ capitalism), a country that joined Russia in preventing the UN from sanctioning Syria after one of the worst chemical weapons attacks...I think since the Iran/Iraq war. This is the country that is stripping its citizens of their rights based on an algorithm that takes into account everything they say on the internet. Every country commits human rights violations of some sort or another. No group is perfect. That being said, the breadth, scale, and malicious intent behind China's human rights violations beggars belief. These are not the actions of a nation that wants the best for the international community. These are not the actions of a nation that wants to integrate with the international community, except to loot it while enjoying the protections and rights created by that self same community of nations. Huawei is not dividing China from the world; China has done that for itself.
- walrus01 8y ago
  I'm disappointed to see that you're being downvoted. People like to play "what about" games comparing the US and China's human rights record, but we're talking about a country that indisputably runs literal prison camps for an ethnic/religious minority: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-... https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp&q=0 https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describ...
  - pound 8y ago
mistermann 8y ago
Good article, it touches on some of the more subtle but important issues at play in this case in particular, but the rise of China overall. Due to a historic lack of more balanced articles like this reaching a relatively more mainstream audience, I think a lot of people seriously underestimate how important the opinion of the average man on the ground is (or can be) when it comes to international trade. I've been very concerned about the rise of China for many years now, the rate at which they're closing the technological capability gap with the Western world coupled with their massive population and cultural propensity to hard work and saving, wielded by an authoritarian pseudo-communist government poses a very large risk to the future well being of the world. This isn't to say it is guaranteed to produce a bad outcome, but it certainly could, and it doesn't seem terribly unlikely to me, at all. It has been very interesting to observe the shift in public opinion on China in forum discussions over the last several years, but particularly in the last 3 months or so. Here in Canada, 4 or so years ago typically only the most hardcore "racists" would have something negative to say about China, and the typical response would be overwhelming disagreement and downvoting, if not deletion of comments and banning from the forum. Contrast that with today, where I'd say strongly anti-China sentiments are at least 50% of the comments, and heavily upvoted and rarely moderated (suggesting a change in sentiment even among moderators). Another example would be the typical discourse on tariffs when Trump first started discussing them compared to now. At the beginning, the typical comment was a hearty "oh my god, Trump thinks trade is a zero sum game, what an idiot!", but I can't remember the last time I read anyone saying that, suggesting that even the most anti-racist people out there have somehow become more educated on the topic. And you rarely hear it mentioned (it usually requires an access to information request by a journalist), but this change in public sentiment on this and related topics is definitely a serious topic of discussion behind closed political doors in Canada. Very interesting times, I hope it all works out in the end.
kuanyi 8y ago
Why so many company of USA are blocked in China? Facebook, Google, twitter, Reddit ... But any company of China can make money in USA whenever they want? USA make CCP rich, but CCP wanna USA to die. These should not be tolerated anymore.
- ausbah 8y ago
  Because those USA companies can expose Chinese citizens to information the Chinese government doesn’t want them to be aware of. If you’re not willing to bend to the censorship demands of the Chinese govt, you can’t — or are at least limited in your capacity - to do business in China. It’s not like the US and other Western countries are letting Chinese companies run freely amuck either. There has been increasing scrutiny against large companies like Huawei that are in cahoots with the Chinese state.
  - kuanyi 8y ago
    CCP is Evil. HuaWei calls on US, others to show proof of security risk. Well, here is the evidence. Could HuaWei explain what they help CCP doing in Xinjiang Concentration camp ? Why do they scan the data in oridnary people cell phone? And where does the income of HuaWei goes to? The Evil may ask "can you prove I am an Evil?" I CAN PROVE!!! BECAUSE I KNOW YOU MURDER INNOCENT PEOPLE IN THE PAST, NOW, AND FUTURE!!!!!!
    - dang 8y ago
      We've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
- some_random 8y ago
  The original idea was that if the West opened its economy to China, they would inevitably liberalize. Many years later it's clear that was naive, but that's why the incredibly one sided rules are/were tolerated.
  - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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peisistratos 8y ago
The English speaking West's relationship to China can be seen in a few things in past years. One is the UK leaving Hong Kong in 1997. The British Empire, on which the sun never set and the blood never dried, and which is causing potentially bloody Brexit chaos in Ireland today, went to war with China in 1842 in order to force opium and heroin on its citizens. The US was junior helper in these opium wars. The UK stole Chinese territory and stayed there until 1997, and unbelievable affront of imperialism. The US can be seen in having the Air Force play hot dog on the Chinese border in April 2001 (the US military was too busy doing that to protect itself from jihadis it had funded and armed in Afghanistan to overthrow Afghanistan's secular government and then betrayed by occupying Arabia - they would strike the US to end that occupation later in 2001). They crashed into a Chinese plane, killing the pilot, then illegally landed on Hainan island without permission. Then the US press and diplomacy became enraged that the Chinese were actually inspecting the plane and were holding these military personnel who killed a Chinese pilot. Then this is followed by human rights lover Trump's recent campaign against China. It is in this context that the demonization of China by English-speaking Western liberals currently happens in. Liberals who are also attacking and demonizing Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and who applauded Obama's overthrow of Honduran democracy several years ago with the US funded Honduran military's overthrow of the elected leader. But the US attacks and bombs so many countries, as does the UK, it's hard to keep up with who they have a campaign against from day to day.
- Maken 8y ago
  I suspect something else happened between 2001 and 2018, nobody would start a trade war over a missing plane.
- Theodores 8y ago
  Your comment was worth the down votes, but you can be ticked off for mentioning off topic ideas such as Brexit. The Bloomberg article was pretty good in my opinion, the writer had spent a lot of time in China and taken time to see things from a Chinese perspective. I thought his mention of 'IP' extending to the know how on how to setup factories and such like was a very good point. I also believe that people here who shoot off about China stealing IP need to look themselves in the mirror - a few years ago, when they were starting in tech, did they not steal a copy of Microsoft Office, learn Photoshop with a pirated copy and listen to some stolen MP3 files whilst they were at it? China has worked hard, Chinese people have worked hard. There is a higher percentage of people actually working in China than in America, and Americans in work do have not that many holidays, so there is no dismissal of Americans as being lazy there. Regarding Huawei, they are ahead. Yes, ahead. Their products are not cheap knock offs of Western tech, their kit is really good. They are already there with 5G and their latest smartphones do make me wonder why I would want a Google or an Apple phone when I can have things like a 40Mb camera and beautiful build quality. This is just an opinion, but I think the quality of Huawei products is superb and that is where the problems are. If I was a domestic rival I would be trying to get the government to stop them as competing is not easy! There is also the small matter of five-eyes, they are not able to cooperate with Huawei to the level they can with domestic kit manufacturers, so again, spread some FUD - projection - about 'them spying on us'. Who on this thread has taken the time and had the courtesy to listen to translated to English words uttered by the Chinese government? Or does everyone just read how the media sound-bites what news comes from China? We are familiar with weasel words from our own politicians, politicians that were born with silver spoons and went to Ivy Leagues. The Chinese leadership had no such easy start in life, they grew up under Mao and true terror. They have perspective that Western leaders lack. Clearly Obama had humble origins but there are few others in Western democracies that can claim the same. Angela Merkel is another, after that I am struggling to think of others. The aspect of China being a 'police state' with 'censorship' does not sound too bad to me. I look in disgust at the lies printed in the press in the West. I question why they must spit such bile and hatred on a daily basis, doing their best to profit from keeping people divided. Even 'liberal' Western press is far too keen to do-down the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, Iranian, Indian and African man. They have strayed far away from reporting that wins the Pulitzer Prize. The true rulers of the Western world think that democracy is great. But democracy far too often results in the most narcissistic useful idiots with no understanding of history or philosophy getting into office, lured by money and power. Our Western governments have told us about freedom but it is not freedom for us, it is freedom for their backers money. The Western experiment in neo-liberal capitalism has left us with two classes of people - the rich and the poor. Our society is like a parasite that has devoured the host, everyone including the moderately rich enslaved by debt. If you take mortgages into account everyone is burdened by debt and the governments of the West have debt that will never be paid off, the can kicked down the road for future generations to pay. China have some base or port in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, the U.S. has troops on 50 of the 55 countries of Africa. It is hard to believe if you only read the Western media (and easy to believe if you listen to what the Chinese leadership have to say) but China does seek mutually beneficial, stable trading partnerships with the rest of the world. China does not have a mindset of exploitation. Of course there are those that speak of China's human rights violations and persecution of minorities in Tibet and far beyond, but, again, have any of these people so eager to tell us this been to any of these places or shared a few words with people from these allegedly oppressed areas? No. Hence they do not know whether they are being useful idiots, allowing xenophobia to get the better of them. We are all stranded on this small rock we call earth together, in the West we must up our game to be as polite, courteous and diplomatic as our Chinese neighbours, to learn from them, to be friends and to restore this planet to the beautiful garden that it deserves to be. We must practice the art of turning the other cheek and not getting fired up by media and politicians that only have the interests of money at heart.
thisgoodlife 8y ago
No. Huawei doesn't divide the world. The world is divided and Huawei gets caught in the middle. Just like those two Canadians, they may or may not do something wrong. But that's irrelevant when they get caught in the middle between China and Canada.
cs702 8y ago
Questions that keep me awake: What is the endgame of this escalation of conflict between the US+Canada and China? If there's no endgame, why are politicians escalating the conflict? The last thing we would want is for both sides to continue to escalate the conflict in response to further escalation from the other side, because neither side wants to end up looking "weak," to the detriment of everyone.
- nradov 8y ago
  The usual end game of this type of crisis is some kind of private negotiated deal which enables both sides to preserve public "face" while secretly giving up some concessions. Like when President Kennedy agreed to withdraw nuclear missiles from Turkey later as a quid pro quo to end the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    But what happens when the stated positions of one side change by the day or even minute? The chest beating strongman typically has a position that is rigidly held and clear. It’s a situation with without precedent.
  - rat87 8y ago
    With Trump? unlikely
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  I think its really simple. Cars made in China and sold in the U.S. have a 2% tariff. Cars made in the U.S. and sold in China have a 40% tariff. We need to balance that eventually. If we ignore it for another 40 years there won't be any American car companies. We don't have to have perfect balance tomorrow, or free trade exactly, its ok to allow them to exploit trade with us to some extent as there economy catches up with the west. But it is time for that assistance and trade imbalance to start to shrink. China has given no indication that they think we should be equal trading partners even after their country becomes the world leader in economy, scientific research, and military power.

137 points by howard941 8y ago

xrd 8y ago

Can someone explain how a Chinese company is subject to a US embargo? And, at the risk of getting political, whether the idea raised in the article about the success of China in the last forty years being due to abandoning their isolationism is at direct odds with a trade embargo anyway.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Can someone explain how a Chinese company is subject to a US embargo? AFAIK, the actual charges are fraud relating to representations to third parties relevant to requirements from the embargo on those third parties, but, that aside, there is nothing that stops a sovereign country from making it's laws applicable to foreign acts of foreign actors (in fact, this is mandated under international law for local law implementing certain provisions of international law), though there may sometimes be practical constraints in enforcement of such provisions.
camillomiller 8y ago
Huawei buys tech from American companies. If that tech ends up in infrastructure which gets sold to embargoed countries, then it’s a felony on US soil and some allied countries as well. Huawei says it didn’t happen, U.S. prosecutors maintain that it did happen, through a shady HK subsidiary, while Meng was purportedly well aware of that.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  This particular case was about the individual I think, buying up HP gear and sending it to Iran. I don't even think it was a Huawei thing, just an elitist level money grab. But Huawei is also being accused of enabling the Chinese government spying apparatus. Many governments are wary of using their gear, and are considering taking their gear out of network.
  - pyvpx 8y ago
    this is so intellectually lazy. you don't have to look very hard at Cisco (and many other "US" companies) to find Five Eyes assistance embedded in their products (either purposefully or by willful ignorance)
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      I'm not at all denying that Cisco and others might be a gateway to five eyes. But there's also the fact that there is incredibly more oversight in 'five eyes' countries, and of course they are 'my side'. I naturally care less about 'us' spying on 'them' than I do 'them' spying on 'me'.
      - lostlogin 8y ago
        There is more oversight in the five eyes countries, but that isn’t as reassuring as it sounds. Is anyone in those countries comfortable with what those organisation do and how they are controlled?
        sonnyblarney 8y ago
        There is more oversight because a) 5 eyes are all democracies and b) there are elected bodies that have direct oversight of these activities. For example, in the US, there are both House and Senate committees which have oversight into various bodies and operations which are highly secretive. Example [1] Finally, c) there is an open and free press, and quite a number of whistle blowers and informants to the press, which have legal protection. That's very different from an authoritarian entity that answers to no-one, and does what they please. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Select_Committee_on_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Select_Co...
      - 794CD01 8y ago
        As natural as it might be, it's wrong. If you are, for example, a US resident, the US government is in a great position to use any information they have about you. The Chinese government, not so much, especially if you have no desire or plans to travel to China.
unmole 8y ago
> Can someone explain how a Chinese company is subject to a US embargo? From the article: "She was detained at the behest of the U.S. for allegedly misleading financial institutions about the company’s Iran business, causing them to violate U.S. sanctions."
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
US sanctions apply to any company that does business in or with the USA (including USA companies). Think of it as trying to be a transitive closure.
mandevil 8y ago
She's actually accused of fraud, for (allegedly) lying to US companies that what they were doing would not be in violation of any US embargo. The legal theory here is that when she made materially untrue statements that caused US organizations to commit a crime she committed the crime. In broader terms, any financial interaction in dollars likely goes through a US financial institution of some kind, who will be legally obligated to carry out all US embargo rules. There are ways around this, but they are, at present weird hacks that you have to go out of your way to do.
xster 8y ago
No need to worry about it getting political because it is a political rather than a judicial act. Otherwise, imagine private citizen board members or executives of HSBC being arrested or extradited (US-UK have extradition) for actually 'violating sanctions' with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba in 2012. The sanction itself is purely political as well. The US overthrows the Iranian democratically elected government to maintain BP's regional dominance because the government threatened to use their country's natural resources' profits to benefit its people. Installs puppet and helps the puppet plan to build 23 nuclear reactors (and the secret police Savak among other things). Puppet gets overthrown by the people and now Iran has 'nuclear ambitions'. And that's after getting the other puppet Saddam to go to war with Iran and then getting rid of the other puppet because now he's US armed like ISIS. And now Iran has a sanction and the sanction is used against other countries. This is a pyramid scheme of imperialism.
- slededit 8y ago
  You mean like when Mike Turner the CEO of Britain's largest defense company was arrested upon landing in America for arms sales to Saudi-Arabia? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1976770/BAE-bosses-detained-by-US-investigators-over-Saudi-case.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...
  - xster 8y ago
    One might be able to find dozens of non-snatched executives from sanction breaking companies per each arrested one such as: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo. Since we're all about making light-hearted fun of China's non rule of law, I think it's consistent to be at least concerned about the selective enforcement of Western rule of law. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-war-on-huawei-meng-wanzhou-arrest-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2018-12 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-war-on-hu...

ssnistfajen 8y ago

I miss the Internet in early-2000's China. Not as many sites were blocked and everyone was much more open-minded as the undereducated chauvinists did not yet acquire reliable Internet access. Nowadays everyone has a smartphone and it has enabled the chauvinists and other radicals to voice their opinions online, only this time they are actually emboldened by the nation which has risen in the last 30 years to become a serious competitor against the current superpower nation that is the US. China has achieved amazing progress thanks to market reforms and entrepreneurship but certain aspects are continuously regressing under Xi's term which will last for the forseeable future. Private sector confidence is at an all-time low due to state media editorials calling for more state control and boosting state-owned corporations. There has been more and more censorship orders aimed at reducing "Western influence" regardless of whether they are politics-related. More and more Chinese citizens are travelling abroad yet their beliefs in the "Chinese system" only gets re-affirmed by mistakenly thinking that China's success is completely dependent on authoritarianism. I don't agree with fervently supporting the current regime which is oppressive, brutal, antidemocratic, and still corrupt; nor do I agree with painting an entire nation and its people as some sort of evil reincarnate for the sake of a new Cold War. I don't have the knowledge or capability to offer a solution and I am just overall disappointed at the current state of affairs.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
It was “different” back then. CNN was blocked in 2002 but New York Times wasn’t. One of the reasons I started reading the New York Times actually. The internet was much more open in 2008 than 2002 (neither nytimes or cnn or anything else major was blocked), but after the olympics China reversed course. Most major news sites are now blocked, but unlike 2002, CNN isn’t. Go figure. I think the high point of Chinese liberalization in recent history must have been the late 80s, but that is pre-internet.
- hangonhn 8y ago
  Wait, 1989 was not a good year for Chinese liberalization... I think the high point was really under Hu Jintao. The transition from Hu to Xi was a very tumultuous period. Xi, unlike his predecessors, had a very contentious transition and had to fend off numerous fractions inside the CCCP. After surviving that, based partly on the backing of the PLA (his father was a PLA general), he really, really consolidated power. He now has a path forward to be president for life. His ideas are now literally part of the Chinese constitution, elevating him to the same level as Mao. Liberalization is, in some ways, the opposite of centralization. Therefore, liberalization must be stemmed. Hu Jintao, on the other hand, didn't really have that much power. There was always Jiang and his fraction. When power is divested, liberalization is more likely.

ngcc_hk 8y ago

It seems the case built on lie to bank not just about export.

hguant 8y ago

I found this article incredibly naive and idealistic. The divide between China and America isn't a mere disagreement about trade 'disparities' and how IP is handled. The Chinese Communist Party is running an authoritarian, draconic police state that has spent its time quashing human rights, and threatening and bullying democratic nations, all while cynically exploiting its own citizens for increasingly centralized wealth. No amount of cross border trade can alter the fact that China has positioned itself as an enemy of democracy when it stands in the face of hegemonic Chinese power, both abroad and at home. This is a country where the government forced ~10,000 women to be sterilized or see their families imprisoned in 2010, where a report came out not 2 months ago documenting how prisoners of conscience are harvested for organ transplants (the organs in question being sold; it is, after all, _state_ capitalism), a country that joined Russia in preventing the UN from sanctioning Syria after one of the worst chemical weapons attacks...I think since the Iran/Iraq war. This is the country that is stripping its citizens of their rights based on an algorithm that takes into account everything they say on the internet. Every country commits human rights violations of some sort or another. No group is perfect. That being said, the breadth, scale, and malicious intent behind China's human rights violations beggars belief. These are not the actions of a nation that wants the best for the international community. These are not the actions of a nation that wants to integrate with the international community, except to loot it while enjoying the protections and rights created by that self same community of nations. Huawei is not dividing China from the world; China has done that for itself.

walrus01 8y ago
I'm disappointed to see that you're being downvoted. People like to play "what about" games comparing the US and China's human rights record, but we're talking about a country that indisputably runs literal prison camps for an ethnic/religious minority: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-... https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp&q=0 https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describ...
- pound 8y ago

mistermann 8y ago

Good article, it touches on some of the more subtle but important issues at play in this case in particular, but the rise of China overall. Due to a historic lack of more balanced articles like this reaching a relatively more mainstream audience, I think a lot of people seriously underestimate how important the opinion of the average man on the ground is (or can be) when it comes to international trade. I've been very concerned about the rise of China for many years now, the rate at which they're closing the technological capability gap with the Western world coupled with their massive population and cultural propensity to hard work and saving, wielded by an authoritarian pseudo-communist government poses a very large risk to the future well being of the world. This isn't to say it is guaranteed to produce a bad outcome, but it certainly could, and it doesn't seem terribly unlikely to me, at all. It has been very interesting to observe the shift in public opinion on China in forum discussions over the last several years, but particularly in the last 3 months or so. Here in Canada, 4 or so years ago typically only the most hardcore "racists" would have something negative to say about China, and the typical response would be overwhelming disagreement and downvoting, if not deletion of comments and banning from the forum. Contrast that with today, where I'd say strongly anti-China sentiments are at least 50% of the comments, and heavily upvoted and rarely moderated (suggesting a change in sentiment even among moderators). Another example would be the typical discourse on tariffs when Trump first started discussing them compared to now. At the beginning, the typical comment was a hearty "oh my god, Trump thinks trade is a zero sum game, what an idiot!", but I can't remember the last time I read anyone saying that, suggesting that even the most anti-racist people out there have somehow become more educated on the topic. And you rarely hear it mentioned (it usually requires an access to information request by a journalist), but this change in public sentiment on this and related topics is definitely a serious topic of discussion behind closed political doors in Canada. Very interesting times, I hope it all works out in the end.

kuanyi 8y ago

Why so many company of USA are blocked in China? Facebook, Google, twitter, Reddit ... But any company of China can make money in USA whenever they want? USA make CCP rich, but CCP wanna USA to die. These should not be tolerated anymore.

ausbah 8y ago
Because those USA companies can expose Chinese citizens to information the Chinese government doesn’t want them to be aware of. If you’re not willing to bend to the censorship demands of the Chinese govt, you can’t — or are at least limited in your capacity - to do business in China. It’s not like the US and other Western countries are letting Chinese companies run freely amuck either. There has been increasing scrutiny against large companies like Huawei that are in cahoots with the Chinese state.
- kuanyi 8y ago
  CCP is Evil. HuaWei calls on US, others to show proof of security risk. Well, here is the evidence. Could HuaWei explain what they help CCP doing in Xinjiang Concentration camp ? Why do they scan the data in oridnary people cell phone? And where does the income of HuaWei goes to? The Evil may ask "can you prove I am an Evil?" I CAN PROVE!!! BECAUSE I KNOW YOU MURDER INNOCENT PEOPLE IN THE PAST, NOW, AND FUTURE!!!!!!
  - dang 8y ago
    We've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
some_random 8y ago
The original idea was that if the West opened its economy to China, they would inevitably liberalize. Many years later it's clear that was naive, but that's why the incredibly one sided rules are/were tolerated.
- 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

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peisistratos 8y ago

The English speaking West's relationship to China can be seen in a few things in past years. One is the UK leaving Hong Kong in 1997. The British Empire, on which the sun never set and the blood never dried, and which is causing potentially bloody Brexit chaos in Ireland today, went to war with China in 1842 in order to force opium and heroin on its citizens. The US was junior helper in these opium wars. The UK stole Chinese territory and stayed there until 1997, and unbelievable affront of imperialism. The US can be seen in having the Air Force play hot dog on the Chinese border in April 2001 (the US military was too busy doing that to protect itself from jihadis it had funded and armed in Afghanistan to overthrow Afghanistan's secular government and then betrayed by occupying Arabia - they would strike the US to end that occupation later in 2001). They crashed into a Chinese plane, killing the pilot, then illegally landed on Hainan island without permission. Then the US press and diplomacy became enraged that the Chinese were actually inspecting the plane and were holding these military personnel who killed a Chinese pilot. Then this is followed by human rights lover Trump's recent campaign against China. It is in this context that the demonization of China by English-speaking Western liberals currently happens in. Liberals who are also attacking and demonizing Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and who applauded Obama's overthrow of Honduran democracy several years ago with the US funded Honduran military's overthrow of the elected leader. But the US attacks and bombs so many countries, as does the UK, it's hard to keep up with who they have a campaign against from day to day.

Maken 8y ago
I suspect something else happened between 2001 and 2018, nobody would start a trade war over a missing plane.
Theodores 8y ago
Your comment was worth the down votes, but you can be ticked off for mentioning off topic ideas such as Brexit. The Bloomberg article was pretty good in my opinion, the writer had spent a lot of time in China and taken time to see things from a Chinese perspective. I thought his mention of 'IP' extending to the know how on how to setup factories and such like was a very good point. I also believe that people here who shoot off about China stealing IP need to look themselves in the mirror - a few years ago, when they were starting in tech, did they not steal a copy of Microsoft Office, learn Photoshop with a pirated copy and listen to some stolen MP3 files whilst they were at it? China has worked hard, Chinese people have worked hard. There is a higher percentage of people actually working in China than in America, and Americans in work do have not that many holidays, so there is no dismissal of Americans as being lazy there. Regarding Huawei, they are ahead. Yes, ahead. Their products are not cheap knock offs of Western tech, their kit is really good. They are already there with 5G and their latest smartphones do make me wonder why I would want a Google or an Apple phone when I can have things like a 40Mb camera and beautiful build quality. This is just an opinion, but I think the quality of Huawei products is superb and that is where the problems are. If I was a domestic rival I would be trying to get the government to stop them as competing is not easy! There is also the small matter of five-eyes, they are not able to cooperate with Huawei to the level they can with domestic kit manufacturers, so again, spread some FUD - projection - about 'them spying on us'. Who on this thread has taken the time and had the courtesy to listen to translated to English words uttered by the Chinese government? Or does everyone just read how the media sound-bites what news comes from China? We are familiar with weasel words from our own politicians, politicians that were born with silver spoons and went to Ivy Leagues. The Chinese leadership had no such easy start in life, they grew up under Mao and true terror. They have perspective that Western leaders lack. Clearly Obama had humble origins but there are few others in Western democracies that can claim the same. Angela Merkel is another, after that I am struggling to think of others. The aspect of China being a 'police state' with 'censorship' does not sound too bad to me. I look in disgust at the lies printed in the press in the West. I question why they must spit such bile and hatred on a daily basis, doing their best to profit from keeping people divided. Even 'liberal' Western press is far too keen to do-down the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, Iranian, Indian and African man. They have strayed far away from reporting that wins the Pulitzer Prize. The true rulers of the Western world think that democracy is great. But democracy far too often results in the most narcissistic useful idiots with no understanding of history or philosophy getting into office, lured by money and power. Our Western governments have told us about freedom but it is not freedom for us, it is freedom for their backers money. The Western experiment in neo-liberal capitalism has left us with two classes of people - the rich and the poor. Our society is like a parasite that has devoured the host, everyone including the moderately rich enslaved by debt. If you take mortgages into account everyone is burdened by debt and the governments of the West have debt that will never be paid off, the can kicked down the road for future generations to pay. China have some base or port in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, the U.S. has troops on 50 of the 55 countries of Africa. It is hard to believe if you only read the Western media (and easy to believe if you listen to what the Chinese leadership have to say) but China does seek mutually beneficial, stable trading partnerships with the rest of the world. China does not have a mindset of exploitation. Of course there are those that speak of China's human rights violations and persecution of minorities in Tibet and far beyond, but, again, have any of these people so eager to tell us this been to any of these places or shared a few words with people from these allegedly oppressed areas? No. Hence they do not know whether they are being useful idiots, allowing xenophobia to get the better of them. We are all stranded on this small rock we call earth together, in the West we must up our game to be as polite, courteous and diplomatic as our Chinese neighbours, to learn from them, to be friends and to restore this planet to the beautiful garden that it deserves to be. We must practice the art of turning the other cheek and not getting fired up by media and politicians that only have the interests of money at heart.

thisgoodlife 8y ago

No. Huawei doesn't divide the world. The world is divided and Huawei gets caught in the middle. Just like those two Canadians, they may or may not do something wrong. But that's irrelevant when they get caught in the middle between China and Canada.

cs702 8y ago

Questions that keep me awake: What is the endgame of this escalation of conflict between the US+Canada and China? If there's no endgame, why are politicians escalating the conflict? The last thing we would want is for both sides to continue to escalate the conflict in response to further escalation from the other side, because neither side wants to end up looking "weak," to the detriment of everyone.

nradov 8y ago
The usual end game of this type of crisis is some kind of private negotiated deal which enables both sides to preserve public "face" while secretly giving up some concessions. Like when President Kennedy agreed to withdraw nuclear missiles from Turkey later as a quid pro quo to end the Cuban Missile Crisis.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  But what happens when the stated positions of one side change by the day or even minute? The chest beating strongman typically has a position that is rigidly held and clear. It’s a situation with without precedent.
- rat87 8y ago
  With Trump? unlikely
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
I think its really simple. Cars made in China and sold in the U.S. have a 2% tariff. Cars made in the U.S. and sold in China have a 40% tariff. We need to balance that eventually. If we ignore it for another 40 years there won't be any American car companies. We don't have to have perfect balance tomorrow, or free trade exactly, its ok to allow them to exploit trade with us to some extent as there economy catches up with the west. But it is time for that assistance and trade imbalance to start to shrink. China has given no indication that they think we should be equal trading partners even after their country becomes the world leader in economy, scientific research, and military power.