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The China Cultural Clash

• juanjmanfredi 7y ago
  I'm curious as to what happens if the NBA does in fact get banned from China. I've always wondered whether, as the Chinese economy grows and living standards rise, individuals would ever feel more entitled to individual rights. Of course maybe this is just a western bias. If the NBA was blocked, would passionate Chinese NBA fans (of which there are many) fall in line? Or not?
  • yorwba 7y ago
    They'd just watch via VPN, if other bans are any indication. Of course not everyone knows how to use a VPN, but the NBA becoming unavailable might be an impetus to figure it out.
    • jakemoshenko 7y ago
      I read an article recently that made it seem as if VPN wasn't the panacea for GFW that westerner's think it is. Apparently the GFW throttles encrypted connections heavily outside of normal business hours.
      • yorwba 7y ago
        You may have to compromise on either speed or quality, but watching videos is not impossible. FWIW I had the best connection at 4 in the night, when I assume no one else in my apartment complex was still online. (All data 1 year out of data. Maybe everything is different now.)
      • kombucha11 7y ago
        I was honestly had no problems reading about Tieneman Square on Wikipedia while walking around Tieneman Sqaure last year during National Week. The thing is most of the people who know about this stuff already do and the regular Joe on the street isn't going to put work into it. The people on the ground are a lot of the time patriotic to a fault. It reminded me a lot of the non-questuoning patriotism that permeates midwest America. And honestly I got the idea they desperately want to be America (*with Chinese characteristics;) ).That being said using a VPN only is not the best solution. A suite of software solutions working in concert is a much better route. Certain VPN providers are better than others given their size or implementation but even still the large ones see huge reductions in reliability during patriotic times (i.e. National Week etc). Best to RYO or use a concert of software implementations.
  • liuliu 7y ago
    They do. It is a nationalistic rhetoric, much like what we saw here as well. At the end of the day, the legitimacy comes from some kind of populist support. Very unfortunate turn of events.
    • juanjmanfredi 7y ago
      Yeah I think you are right. But that populist support is not guaranteed forever, and I wonder what happens then.
  • knzhou 7y ago
    I'm always bemused to have to say this, but: nobody likes censorship because they enjoy "falling in line". People everywhere support censorship exactly to the degree that they agree with the censors. You probably didn't shed a tear when Alex Jones was deplatformed, because he's a scoundrel, and if this really did escalate to a full block of the NBA (which seems unlikely), by that point many Chinese citizens would probably think the same of the NBA.
    • plandis 7y ago
      The difference is that the US government didn’t dictate that Jones be removed.
    • LocalH 7y ago
      This. So much this. Deplatforming is deplatforming. If one supported the deplatforming of Alex Jones, and doesn't also support China on this, then they are a hypocrite engaging in severe cognitive dissonance. Freedom of speech is not some "loophole" that allows people to say nasty things. It's a bulwark against authoritarianism. The ones who forget that need to study world history when it comes to freedom of speech and expression.
      • juanjmanfredi 7y ago
        Twitter, Facebook, and any other entity that deplatformed Alex Jones are private companies and can deplatform whoever they want. In fact that is part of their freedom of speech. This is different from government-enforced silencing of speech, which is what is happening in China right now. I feel no cognitive dissonance, but maybe you can explain more why I should.
        • tomp 7y ago
          NBA are not legally controlled by Chinese laws. They're censoring speech because they want to (a.k.a. it's profitable), not because they're being forced to.
          • 7y ago
• ETHisso2017 7y ago
  火箭, unlike the "Lakers", is a common Chinese word (rockets). Expecting it to dominate the trending hashtag on a Chinese social media site is a stretch.
  • yorwba 7y ago
    Even worse, the search term in the image is "火影" (Naruto, EDIT: the series, not the character; the Chinese name of the series refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_characters#Hokage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_characters#Hoka... ). No wonder they're getting results completely unrelated to basketball.
    • monkbent 7y ago
      This was a mistake, since fixed, but even then there are no basketball references
      • yorwba 7y ago
        Yeah, now it's "Rocket Girls 101" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Girls_101 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Girls_101 Probably censorship, but including "篮球" in the query would make it a lot more obvious whether the Houston Rockets are suppressed intentionally or not.
      • fspeech 7y ago
        Try火箭队. I got plenty of news results on Baidu.
• avocado4 7y ago
  I'm addition to trade and human rights-related issues we should also be talking about the Great Firewall as a protectionist tool. China blocks & throttles European / Western digital services but we allow their tech to be sold here. That's not fair. WTO rules should be updated to address digital censorship.
  • moltensodium 7y ago
    The WTO/World Bank is an arm of the US State Department. The rules serve to further US diplomatic and corporate interests, not openness or trade.
    • freeone3000 7y ago
      Okay, so then we should DEFINITELY use it here, to promote US values over Chinese ones.
      • moltensodium 7y ago
        Ok. Just want to make sure we're all on the same page, this is about nationalism and competition, not freedom or trade. Pretending like we're opening the world up for everyone to become magical free millionaires just makes us seem naive and dishonest.
    • hatsunearu 7y ago
      Cool assertion, but even if that were true, why wouldn't the WTO enforce net neutrality?
    • president 7y ago
      This could not be farther from the truth. WTO has been subjugated by the Chinese, hence where we are today.
• tpmx 7y ago
  This article frames this as the US vs China, but it's really been the "Western world" vs China. And the western world has been incredibly naive and uncoordinated when it comes to dealing with China. We've all accepted the incredibly one-sided deal, in some kind of idealistic hope that the Chinese would latch on to "western" values of democracy etc just by trading with us. Edit: World -> Western world.
  • markus_zhang 7y ago
    No it's Five eyes and part of EU (excluding UK), and even US has a lot differences with EU.
    • dmix 7y ago
      Sure they have differences but in this context it's very much the western democracy vs authoritarianism, where dissenting opinions are not only tolerated but they are actively protected by the state, usually via an independent judicial body - the most important thing every truly authoritarian country lacks. China's not the first nation state to be at the butting end of this debate and they won't be the last.
  • justicezyx 7y ago
    > We've all accepted the incredibly one-sided deal Trust me, most Chinese people believed the same thing when they deal with other nations. You either need to label all of them being stupid and naive; or you are saying Chinese are so smarter than anyone else... The deals are never one-sided...
  • mc32 7y ago
    That’s true, but I think unless the US acts other players will stay on the sidelines. Maybe I’ve missed it, but has the EU commenced anything that would address some of the one-sidedness? Others are either indifferent, impotent or maybe even approving of the behavior by the CCP.
  • Analemma_ 7y ago
    Too many people bought into the Fukuyama "end of history" theory whereby free trade and free markets would automatically lead to democracy and liberal values spreading worldwide. It probably seemed like a reasonable hypothesis right after the Soviet Union fell, but at this point it's pretty clear the events of the last decade have debunked it completely. The silver lining is we're a little smarter now and will hopefully make better decisions going forward.
• ilamont 7y ago
  Attempts by China to leverage market access into self-censorship by U.S. companies should also be treated as trade violations that are subject to retaliation. Thank you, Ben, for this honest appraisal which involves sticking out your neck and perhaps even harming your ability to travel to China or expand your business. Regarding this comment about Apple: And then there is Apple: the company is deeply exposed to China both in terms of sales and especially when it comes to manufacturing. The reality is that, particularly when it comes to the latter, Apple doesn’t have anywhere else to go. That may be true of manufacturing now, but will it be true 5 years from now? Surely Cook et al saw the writing on the wall years ago when it articulated some of its core values around privacy. Conflict is inevitable, and the risk associated with having all your manufacturing eggs in one basket is too great. We saw the announcement of Apple's manufacturing initiative in Texas, and there are other locations for electronics sourcing and assembly throughout Asia. How much of Apple's supply chain could be relocated elsewhere?
  • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Note that Cook became CEO because of his logistics and operations work in China, so there is a lot of legacy to go on. Apple assembles iPhones in Brazil and I believe India now, but these are mostly for high tariff reasons. Much of what goes into an iPhone isn’t made in china (and what is made in China can easily be made elsewhere), but they are mostly made in east Asia, so having assembly done somewhere in the region. Apple could always go to Taiwan (labor is more expensive, but they could maybe rely on automation more) or Vietnam. However, whatever they would do would cost them, a cost they could pay if needed but probably not one they want to pay right now.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      But they don't own any factories, right? Wouldn't it destroy Foxconn and only defer revenue a bit for Apple? Maybe a few people who just gotta have the newest, latest, and greatest gadget will switch to a Flagship android because they can't wait for the new iPhone. But most people are pretty loyal / trapped into their mobile ecosystem. I doubt it would materially affect Apple's market share or their revenue long-term. Isn't the entire manufacturing cost of an iPhone $9? Even if it doubled, their profit on iPhones would only drop by like 5%... I think their latest pricing experiments have shown that there really is a limit to how much people will pay for a new iPhone, and they've found it, so I don't think they could pass the price onto the consumer. But it's only $10 on a $900 phone...
• TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  >TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines. The documents, revealed by the Guardian for the first time, lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app. >The revelations come amid rising suspicion that discussion of the Hong Kong protests on TikTok is being censored for political reasons: a Washington Post report earlier this month noted that a search on the site for the city-state revealed “barely a hint of unrest in sight”. Welp, Communism runs the world, if you didn't know...
  • dang 7y ago
    Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
• the_details_guy 7y ago
  It appears that the third screenshot doesn't use the characters 火箭, but some other word?
  • ETHisso2017 7y ago
    火影，or naruto, so not surprising he's not seeing the rockets. Not sure if BT will edit the article or not
    • monkbent 7y ago
      Screw up by me but point holds. Fixing.
      • theNJR 7y ago
        A wild monkbent appears!
• ausjke 7y ago
  it's either China, or the ROW(rest of world) these days. the co-existence is getting harder these days. time to break up, on all fronts.
• nostromo 7y ago
  It's frustrating to see people say that we shouldn't fight Chinese economic imperialism, mercantilism, and protectionism because we should support free trade. Free trade is a two way street. If a trading partner is engaging in unfair practices then it's reasonable to support sanctions and tariffs and other means to get them to stop, even if you're a free trade supporter. In fact this is the whole premise of the WTO, which supports free trade. If you don't engage in free trade, you get slapped with tariffs.
  • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    If your trade partner isn’t practicing as much free trade as you are, but you are still making money on trade hand over fist, then it isn’t very much in your interest to fight what is still a golden goose to you. The only reason this fight has come at all is because of a bunch of displaced factory workers (and areas that did manufacturing) that have been hurt by this trade, and their government had failed to redistribute any of the eggs from the golden goose to them.
    • yourapostasy 7y ago
      > The only reason this fight has come at all is because of a bunch of displaced factory workers (and areas that did manufacturing) that have been hurt by this trade... As a layperson watching from the sidelines in the software world, but fascinated by welding, electrical/electronics, mechanical engineering, CNC, machining, etc., it is incomprehensible to me why US business leaders would so willingly cede manufacturing to competitors (Chinese in this thread's context, but could be anyone really, even within the same nation). As a dilettante, I'm seeing parallels in manufacturing to what I experience in software, but maybe I'm just not seeing what those leaders see, so perhaps someone can help clear up my misunderstanding. To think you can divorce yourself cleanly from manufacturing and adopt a "throw it over the fence" mentality, and expect to maintain industry leadership, seems to me as misguided as thinking you can divorce yourself from coding and operational support as a software company, "throw it over the fence", and expect to stay a software leader. That might work for one or three iterations of product lifecycles over a few decades, but there are crucial insights into customer needs and market directions that come about from knowing about what those trenches deal with, that disappear in the fenced-off abstraction layer. You gradually disconnect from your market, your sales and marketing teams lose a critically-grounded, no-bullshit feedback loop from those areas, you lose understanding of the complexities to properly analyze the business problems, you lose metrics those areas gather to inform sales and marketing analytics. Maybe all those factors simply don't matter, or I'm simply wrong about them being factors at all in manufacturing business? In which case, I put on my value investor's hat and ask, what precisely is the defensible moat about giving up in-house manufacturing knowledge (and often accompanying core support functions) and only specializing in design, sales, and marketing for a manufacturer? I've never been able to figure that one out, either. Seems to me in-house manufacturing secrets are easier to come up with (see Japanese electrolytic caps) and protect than this year's trends and important customer segments, but again, I'm just a layperson, so I'm just left wondering what I'm missing.
• scrumper 7y ago
  > The internet is an amoral force that reduces friction, not an inevitable force for good. This is well said and something everyone in tech should remember. Unintended consequence is a law with teeth.
  • nnq 7y ago
    Why would you care about "good", a relative notion that means different things to different people, over reduction of friction, a clearly beneficial thing that accelerates technical and scientific progress? If we could only "dissolve" all those parts of society and culture that are mostly pure friction, and spin the wheels 100x faster to the future...
    • dragonwriter 7y ago
      > reduction of friction, a clearly beneficial thing Reduction of friction accelerates harms as well as benefits, it's not “clearly beneficial” without further knowledge of context. Sure, it makes scientific progress faster, but it also makes genocide faster.
    • baq 7y ago
      they say power tools allow you to make mistakes faster. the internet is the same.
    • scrumper 7y ago
      So... I can't say "good" but you can say "beneficial." Reduction of friction is not clearly beneficial! That's exactly the point. Superficially it appears to be, but it absolutely isn't the case. Reducing friction lets things happen faster. Both good things and bad things. And since the meaning of 'good' depends on where you sit, you can't claim that it's purely beneficial.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Faster isn't always better. Think of a control system with a delay element in it. Removing it may make the control system better. Or it may turn out that delay was dampening a positive feedback loop, and now the whole thing blows sky high.
• smackay 7y ago
  It is rather interesting to see Stratechery talk about values when normally the articles are about markets and capital. I don't how the latter, since they are inherently amoral, can accommodate values either. As a result the argument seemed a little forced. Surely if China is an important market for western companies then the rules of that market apply. It is only to be expected that in a global market there must a corresponding globalisation of the rules and norms. Free speech might not be on that list. I do have to take issue that this is a cultural problem. I don't regard the Communist Party of China to be guardian of culture in China. The country did rather well for thousands of years before it's existence and will no doubt do well for thousands more after it's demise.
  • stebann 7y ago
    That is exactly what I try to point out, but "freedom" cowboys don't care about other perspectives about Freedom. And they actually don't understand it and then they forget every atrocity their country has committed and is committing right now, including trying to overthrow legitimate governments and destabilize other countries economies to gain competitive advantage. Moral and Ethics, I don't see them anywhere.
    • kapuasuite 7y ago
      I like how you threw in the whataboutism at the end, as if the West has no moral right to criticize China because of the long list of atrocities they’ve committed. Well played. Here’s the deal - China is a totalitarian state bent on reclaiming what they see as their rightful place in the world. They will stomp on anyone they have to, friend or enemy, real or imagined, foreign or domestic, to make that happen. At the same time, the rest of the world, including the West and its allies, have the ability to force China to abide by international norms and the right to defend themselves from China’s aggression. You may think it hypocritical, but from where I’m sitting the US and its allies have the moral high ground in this instance and no amount of bleating about everyone’s historical crimes is going to distract everyone from the realities of China’s ongoing atrocities against its own people, it’s Nine Dash Line, it’s blatant political and economic attacks on the free world and its disrespect for and undermining of centuries of international laws and norms.
• AFascistWorld 7y ago
  This is just inevitable, if it's not NBA, it could be any big company who gets caught in it, execs can pretend it will be all good and surely do wish this day comes as late as possible so they can make the most of it. This is like many things in the current world, vicious cycles, the more unsympathetic ordinary Chinese perceive outside China, the more they will embrace the CCP and strongmen, the more powerful the party will be. And solution seems don't exist. Xi said "You don't eat the meal then break the wok", So there's only one question: Who's next?
  • mcphage 7y ago
    > So there's only one question: > Who's next? Well, Blizzard, already. So more like, who's after that :-)
• knzhou 7y ago
  The Chinese get pissed off at political statements Americans find innocuous. Europeans are angry over the dominance of American tech companies which they are unable to control. Americans are panicked at the very idea of anybody non-Western being associated with any technology they use, as we saw with FaceApp and 5G. This was all inevitable, and it's going to lead to siloed-off, separate internets for every region in the world. I always find it amusing and a bit sad when people condemn the Great Firewall, and then immediately turn around and demand their country get one too. Neutrality is impossible; no platform can please everybody.
  • Merrill 7y ago
    Every large organization has firewalled its internet protocol networks for decades. It's incomprehensible why some thought nations wouldn't do so as well.
    • mlyle 7y ago
      > Every large organization has firewalled The primary purpose of this is to enforce security for connections. Not every large organization employs content filtering, and those that do mostly only enforce a minimal standard of what is acceptable for work.
      • Merrill 7y ago
        Not all subnets have Internet access, HTTPS is proxied for those that do, email attachments are scanned, and there is a large list of web sites to which access is blocked, likely including social networks like twitter and facebook. Depending on your employer, they may ask you to cease posting on social media when hired since they do not want to deal with employees causing controversy.
        • mlyle 7y ago
          Clearly filtering for security and workplace appropriateness is equivalent to filtering an entire country's discourse and media. /s
• curiousgal 7y ago
  Adobe recently blocked all Venzuelans because of an executive order. Foreign companies are sanctionned by the US for dealing with Iranian entities even if their countries have no issue with Iran. (Huawei's executive was even arrested in Canada on behalf of the US for that). My point is, why should we hold companies accountable for enforcing a certain national policy when A, companies have always done awful things in the name of their owners/shareholders and B, the US itself uses companies as a proxy for its policies?
  • Qub3d 7y ago
    Okay, two things: First, to your question. Ostensibly the executive order is due to an illegitimate leader refusing to cede power and causing a humanitarian crisis. This is not dissimilar to how countries sanction North Korea. I would absolutely have preferred such actions to be passed in a democratic manner, and in fact the whole executive order mechanism needs serious rethinking, but the underlying concept is different. Second, your B) question is a tu quoque fallacy, as you're appealing to hypocrisy. Just because the U.S. does it doesn't mean we should accept it from China. We also should be (and many are) angry at the US' actions.
  • stebann 7y ago
    You forget the part where now all South-American economies are in crisis thanks to US forcing pet leaders to replace "corrupt" ones. Now 50 % of population in Argentina is poor (counting homeless too) thanks to US Foreign Policy, but for them is OK to maintain the 10 % becoming nastily rich while others pay the price.
    • aianus 7y ago
      Argentina is poor because they elect populist leaders who spend more money on social programs than they collect in taxes and eventually default. Same as Greece. It is entirely self-inflicted.
      • stebann 7y ago
        Not entirely self-inflicted. A) Argentina "populist" leaders didn't have to go to the IMF and they provided a good climate for small to large enterprises with the obvious limitations that country's market has. When the current administration (conservative, neo-liberal) got in, Argentina didn't have debts but was negotiating with foreigner speculators who took advantage during last crisis at the end of 90's. So the current administration (those administration you guys love) worsened all the conditions for enterprises and made impossible to invest in any industry. They also let financial and venture capital to take the country's destiny in their hands. Four years ago, defaulting was unthinkable. USA Foreign Policy has much to do with it when they disturbed the local political process. B) Social programs benefits a small part of population, and they really need it. Actually, the actual administration is spending even more than before on social programs, and they're not the "elected populist leaders" you refer. While we can discuss if the incentives are effective for producing a labor force (I think they fail miserably), we can't discuss the basic rights of people to have something to eat until better economic conditions are met. C) Taxes are the weakest part of the system, but alone didn't hamper Argentina's capabilities to made business locally and internationally. And you forget that their nature are not different from any other places taxes in the world. US provided political and ideological support for this complete mess and you should feel ashamed before talking about other countries.
• zarro 7y ago
  I see lots of Anti-China sentiment. I would be very careful here into not falling into their deliberate trap of making "The West" China's "Enemy". China in its current totalitarian form needs an "Enemy" to survive, without it, it has to deal with difficult internal questions which will force it to adapt and change - and this what scares them. Totalitarian governments rely on distraction and misdirection of the populace in order to survive. Without it to use as ammunition to unify the people against a commonly perceived "enemy", the very nature of its limiting rule forces the populace to start questions to try and improve their own condition. Questions like "freedom" and "censorship". Totalitarian governments are not equipped to satisfy difficult questions like this and will either adapt or crumble. Thus the best way "oppose a government that is the sworn enemy of values you regard as precious" is to allow it to face its internal discord without giving it the "enemy" it so desperately needs as ammunition to use against you. EDIT: There are many comments that I think are misguided attacking this concept, here is rebuttal to them: Proposition: If China wants to make the west an enemy, it will do so with or without us by the total control it has over its populace. Rebuttal: So the best counter plan is to help them in doing so? Proposition: So the solution is don't speak out about real issues because you don't want to piss off Chinese citizens and make them think you are the enemy? Rebuttal: Obviously not, but rhetoric implying war or xenophobia is hardly the answer either. Proposition:Most totalitarian governments fail on the battlefield. Think of Genghis Khan, Napoleon, the empires that fell during WW1, or the Axis powers in WW2. Rebuttal: Just because totalitarian regimes have fallen on the battlefield before, does not mean they will do so in the future. Not only is this proposition utterly foolish and dangerous but its not even remotely true in the nuclear age. Proposition: Even if you watch or read the heavily controlled Chinese media, it's never about fighting anyone or pointing the finger at anyone. Rebuttal: This is almost categorically untrue and uninformed. In fact, in times of political tension anti-west and anti-Japanese sentiment in the government controlled media is used almost without fail. No protests are allowed, but anti-west and anti-japanese protests are manufactured by the state. Proposition:Should we allow economic coercion and suppression of political speech in the US by a state power? Can we not speak out in favor of those protesting in Hong Kong that were promised 50 years of "one country, two systems"? Rebuttal: Of course NOT! But we should act on the defensive, and prudently, with our own best interests in mind. Proposition:This theory has proved wrong. China has been welcomed into the WTO over the last 20-30 years and it has not reformed. It is now extending it's economic superpower into political and cultural power. It's not about making an enemy, it's about limiting this unwanted influence. Rebuttal: To say the theory has proved wrong is premature, China took advantage of one sided trade agreements that created a competitive advantage for itself, subsidized by us. Limitations of its political and cultural power should be in the form of leveling out this competitive economic playing field, and not escalation into xenophobia or coercion.
• justinzollars 7y ago
  Having recently traveled to China, returning home made me very thankful to live in a Western Democracy. Many of my day to day problems are overstated, and I think our appreciation for liberty is under appreciated.
  • munchbunny 7y ago
    I think our appreciation for liberty is under appreciated. Having grown up as a Chinese immigrant, I think this is true in ways that I wish the more fervent Americans could appreciate. By that I mean I wish Americans respected the more general principle of enfranchisement more, but these days in practice that's just a straight up criticism of the GOP and anyone who votes for them, due to their gerrymandering and voter suppression practices.
  • peter_retief 7y ago
    Liberty is very hard to achieve and very easy to lose.
• Merrill 7y ago
  Since diversity is a strength, it would seem that the ideal situation globally is to have a diversity of economic, political and legal systems. If instead, these systems around the globe tend towards similarity and strong coupling, the result is likely to be fragility and instability. By having weakly coupled diverse systems with well defined interfaces, the overall global system becomes more robust and disturbances in one part are less likely to propagate to the rest of the globe. Current tensions seem to be due to too tight coupling and poorly defined protocols and interfaces.
  • drcode 7y ago
    You think totalitarian regimes like China and North Korea are OK, because "diversity"?
    • Merrill 7y ago
      North Korea is totalitarian, and it will hopefully change to something acceptable. I think of the current regime in China as more an authoritarian single party regime. We have tolerated or been allied with authoritarian single party regimes in earlier decades such as Taiwan under the KMT, Japan under the early LDP, and South Korea under Rhee. China places a higher priority on enforcing social harmony than the US, but China has a history where there have been multiple periods of severe social disturbance causing 10s of millions of deaths, such as the Taiping Rebellion. In actual practice most people have quite a lot of freedom on most subjects most of the time since, "Heaven is high, and the Emperor is far away."
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • foogoloo 7y ago
        The Chinese Communist Party places a high priority on social harmony because that’s what benefits them. Having freedom as long as no one notices you isn’t freedom.
        • 7y ago
• check-in 7y ago
  > China took the first shots, and they took them a long time ago. For over a decade U.S. services companies have been unilaterally shut out of the China market, even as Chinese alternatives had full reign, running on servers built with U.S. components But, the U.S. companies like this equation - don't they? It helps them generate more profit to their shareholders and give them access to that scale of manufacturing. This led to the growth of the US economy. Now, you have a new player in the game who doesn't like to play by the old player's rules and the old player doesn't like it.
  • Barrin92 7y ago
    Yes, and importantly the new players rules are only the old players rules of the past. The 'American System' of economic development is essentially what's playing out on the Chinese side now. The US of course doesn't need to like it, but it seems a tad silly to expect that a country that is very much still developing to act like a free-trading developed nation.
• longliveTrump 7y ago
  china is doomed we are winnning
• samcheng 7y ago
  > And then there is Apple: the company is deeply exposed to China both in terms of sales and especially when it comes to manufacturing. The reality is that, particularly when it comes to the latter, Apple doesn’t have anywhere else to go. For what it's worth, I know of multiple Chinese companies that are themselves moving manufacturing overseas, primarily to South East Asia. I'm not convinced that the multinationals have nowhere else to go.
  • adventured 7y ago
    > I'm not convinced that the multinationals have nowhere else to go. Samsung is making most of their phones outside of China. It's clear you can push most multinational manufacturing back out of China. There are several dozen countries to redistribute that manufacturing to. I've probably read 50 or 60 articles in the past year that touch on the varied types of companies moving out of China, from bicycles to bathroom fixtures to clothing to tires. The far bigger Apple issue, is that they don't want to lose the consumer side of the Chinese market. It's trivial for the Chinese authorities to snap their fingers and make Apple persona non grata in China. It wouldn't even take very long, a short duration of total disruption would be enough to wipe out Apple's market share. They'd never get it back, there are plenty of good domestic alternatives. For a company the size of Apple, losing half their position in China could mean losing half a trillion dollars in revenue over the next ~20 years. Beyond the hardware, China's extremely large consumer market is no doubt perceived to be very important for Apple's services shift over time.
• reilly3000 7y ago
  I think Western memory about the Opium Wars is a lot weaker than China's. They have a moral defense against any accusation of economic imperialism. Indeed, communism would have never taken hold if the British hadn't done such devastating harm.
  • jcranmer 7y ago
    What you're arguing is that, since China was previously a victim, China is incapable of being imperial. That's no comfort to countries which are staring down a gauntlet of Western imperialism being replaced with Chinese imperialism.
    • ben_jones 7y ago
      An enemy (eastern imperialism) of your enemy (western imperialism) is your friend. China was a victim in the Opium wars and then again to Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. This is all important context that needs to be considered. To be clear I don't support China or Eastern imperialism in (significantly) Africa, the ME, or the US. But if you want to fight it you have to be informed, history repeats itself.
      • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        No. As the web comic Schlock Mercenary says in one of its maxims, "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more; no less."
      • reilly3000 7y ago
        Also to be clear I don't support China's activities or posture around the world. I think they are building an empire, and its execution and culture are antithetical to western values. I'm just saying that the West cannot claim a moral high ground in how we've treated China, and in the US, Chinese immigrants.
        • ben_jones 7y ago
          Oh I absolutely agree, there is also a rich irony in the United States condemning financial imperialism when we literally wrote the entire playbook for it in the 20th century.
• peter_retief 7y ago
  It is time to stand up for the people of Hong Kong without apology Stop apologising to this brutal regime you cowards!
• tiredwired 7y ago
  World superpowers and associated people should not take tweets so seriously. People read too much meaning and emotion into throwaway comments.
  • Loughla 7y ago
    That just waves away the fact that Twitter and other places like it on the internet are THE platforms for conversation and statements. It's seemingly a statement that assumes internet based communication is secondary to real-life communication. And that's just not the case in 2019.
    • tiredwired 7y ago
      No, they are not THE platforms. Billions of people are not on Twitter and do not follow the mindless babble. Go ahead and downvote because facts make you angry.
    • confusedhnguy2 7y ago
      > ... for conversation and statements. Statements, yes. Conversations, no. It's just a bunch of echo chambers, when people occasionally come out of their favorite chamber they simply yell at each other with their ears covered.
• baby 7y ago
  I have an interesting take on this, from knowing a bit about Chinese culture (lived there) and for having friends and coworkers who are Chinese. Culture in China is about unity. If you look at Chinese history, and if you watch Chinese movies, this is a recurrent theme. Unification through blood and war. This is the goal and China will get stronger and more stable over time. At what cost? Tiananmen, xinjiang, hk, the gfw, and so on... people know about it but are willing to ignore them for the greater goal. Why this shocks us so much, as non-mainlander, is that our Overton window is much further left (the window of what is considered “normal” or “accepted” public discourse). We have lived through slavery, camps, revolutions for human rights. So there’s definitely a human asymmetry here, which makes it harder for any of us to find common ground. I don’t think there are much solutions here, and I think that in time Chinese people will learn the same lessons we have learned. I also think most of their distrust in western media is not because they necessarily disagree with it, but because it doesn’t promote their greater goal. And eventhough they know weibo, wechat, et al. Are heavily censored they continue to obtain their news from there, never ending the cycle.
  • novok 7y ago
    Isn't the culture more like: There were many attempts to violently force the political union of a large group of people for the ambitions of a warlord, but in the end, it never working out? The provinces have also always acted fairly independently, which is still the case today right? AFAIK the culture is more like loyalty to your family and village, and "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away". Heck even the languages of china are mutually unintelligible. Maybe in the end, china should split up into several separate countries, like the khmer region split up into thailand, cambodia, laos and vietnam. Maybe it should be split up into beijing-land, shanghai-land, guangzhou-land, tibet and xinjiang-land.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • throwaway5752 7y ago
    It is impossible to understand Chinese views towards Western values outside of the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
• colorincorrect 7y ago
  counterpoint: anglo-sphere internet is very hostile towards right-winged content, with the exception of a few special purpose "containment"-websites and social media personalities. but these people are also pretty much ignored. this is defacto censorship, or more accurately, a publication ban.
  • Loughla 7y ago
    counter-counterpoint: much right-winged content is associated with hate speech and violence. Further, many users of websites such as this are young and tend to skew more left of center, and therefore will gravitate toward that content anyway.
    • colorincorrect 7y ago
      >many users of websites such as this are young and tend to skew more left of center This is true. >much right-winged content is associated with hate speech and violence. I guess this is also true, but I think its more subtle than that. I think it depends on who you identify as being "canonical representation" for the right-wing. Popular media would lead you to believe that it is the people that appear on 8chan or went to the Unite the Right rally. They are certainly a very vocal group among that representation, but I don't quite think they accurately represent that group. If you buy into the idea of a "silent majority" (a typically conservative notion), then you might agree that it would be difficult to find an accurate "representation" of said group.
    • chillacy 7y ago
      Something to think about: > “We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC. Hate speech is off the table in the US because historically it's been used to stoke ethnic tension in a diverse society, people get hurt and die, and breaks social cohesion. Is it fair to say that criticizing the government is off the table in China because historically revolutions have caused so much death and destruction, and breaks social cohesion?
• shalmanese 7y ago
  One thing you learn from spending time studying China is that the Chinese state has an asymmetric advantage in much better understanding the US than the US understands China and being very good at deliberately structuring their systems and policies in a way that consistently exploits the weaknesses in how Western liberal democracies are organized. I think the much bigger story here is how China's state capitalism is being used to probe structural weaknesses in Western free market capitalism. Under free market capitalism, the private sector and the state are fundamentally opposed. The government's proper role is to act as a guardian of the system and establish the rules of play so that the "free market" can flourish and the role of companies are to compete to the maximum extent inside the constraints of regulation. State capitalism comes from a totally different set of first principles, under state capitalism, the private sector is a collaborator with the state and the work in concert to further the goals of the nation. Companies are allowed to compete when it would be beneficial to the state that they compete and forced to co-operate when it's beneficial to the state that they co-operate. Both systems start from a very different set of first principles and they each have their own pros and cons but China knows how to exploit the cons of free market capitalism much better than the US knows how to exploit the cons of state capitalism. One structural weakness of free market capitalism is that it has intrinsic difficulty dealing with co-ordination problems arising from prisoner's dilemma situations. Take the recent "Taiwan, China" airline thing. China announces that all airline websites must list the destination as "Taiwan, China" or risk losing rights to access the Chinese air market. Now, this risk is a total paper tiger, any sober minded analysis could demonstrate that China would be hurt way more than losing flight volume than they would gain from words on a webpage. If all US airlines stood up in unison and said they opposed the change, China would rapidly back down, the whole "hurt feelings" stuff is just window dressing for political negotiation. However, if all but one airline caved, that airline would get all of China's flight volume, China would not be meaningfully hurt but every other company would be damaged. The problem is, there's no effective mechanism under free market capitalism to do that. The "right" mechanism would be for the government to simply pass a law saying all US airlines must not refer to Taiwan as Taiwan, China and China would have immediately backed down. The problem is a) The US is utterly incapable of passing legislation these days. b) Even if it were capable, this would be something considered a massive overreach by the state and would be dragged into lawsuits for years. c) Absent legislation, such co-operation would be arguably even illegal as it would run afoul of anti-trust as cartel like behavior. So, as China predicted, you had airlines folding one by one over an utterly trivial issue because the fundamental bedrock assumptions of free market capitalism do not allow them to do otherwise. The difference with the Houston Rockets case is that the NBA does exist as a mechanism for there to be a unifying voice of the league. China initially played this the same way it always does, by performing a surgical culling of the Rockets specifically, they were expecting the rest of the league to be cowed and force the Rockets to back down. What they didn't realize was that professional sports in the US are run as a socialist collective and sports leagues are one of the only areas of American life which are explicitly sanctioned to run as a cartel. Thus, the NBA has the freedom to say fuck you to China in a way that movie studios and airlines cannot because they realize China needs the NBA more than the NBA needs China.
• tareqak 7y ago
  One could argue that this moment in history being a moment to pause and reflect. If corporations and their officers are forced to confront the question "What is more important: money or values?" and start picking values, then maybe other values like privacy and human rights will get picked along with freedom of speech as part of movement to protect values.
• chromaton 7y ago
  How can we get Tim Cook to make a statement regarding democracy in Hong Kong? Either he refuses, which would be supporting the brutal crackdowns, or he forces China to act as they did like in the NBA case.
  • Shivetya 7y ago
    Tim only stands up to leaders and governments who cannot cause him physical of financial harm. Pretty much par for the course for many American CEOs but he stands out because how much he touts Apple's stance for rights.
    • chromaton 7y ago
      Even if it means bad press for saying nothing?
      • PeterisP 7y ago
        There would be no bad press for saying nothing. There seems to be some debate whether public CEOs have the right to freely express their personal opinions on certain political issues, with a bunch of high profile cases that would be distracting here; but there's certainly no argument that public CEOs have the duty to express (or even hold) any opinions whatsoever on things that are major political events abroad; Cook responding to all Hong Kong related matters (as far as they don't directly concern specific actions that directly affect Apple) with "no comment" would not get any significant bad press as that's not breaking any taboos or even conventions.
      • coldtea 7y ago
        Companies don't care for bad press, not even for bad quarters. They care for bad stock performance...
        • chromaton 7y ago
          Apple is selling their image as much as anything.
• UIZealot 7y ago
  It helps to know a little bit about what's been going on in Hong Kong, before you all line up and take your daily dump on China. It all started a few months ago when someone committed a crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong. To prevent HK from becoming a safe haven for criminals, the Chief Executive of HK proposed a new law to facilitate extradition of these crime suspects from HK to various jurisdictions in the region, including Taiwan and mainland China. The proposed law even explicitly stated that it's not applicably to crimes political in nature. But some HK people were nevertheless concerned that it might be abused by China to target political dissidents in HK. So they have taken to the streets to protest that law. As a result, the law was quickly suspended before it had a chance to pass, and a few weeks ago the HK Chief Executive officially announced the withdrawal of the law. However, despite the concession from the HK government, the protesters pressed on, demanding four more concessions from the government, chief among them universal suffrage, or the direct election of the HK Chief Executive, who up to this point have been nominated from a narrow pool of Beijing-approved candidates, then voted on by a committee. It's not entirely clear that China even had anything to do with the proposal of the law which started this ordeal. But the protesters have been shrewd to paint a picture, to great effect, of big bad China stomping on the poor helpless people of HK. What I cannot stress enough, is the rampant violence and destruction from these protesters, which has done this great city, and many innocent citizens, unimaginable harm. Feel free to support their peaceful protests, but please don't simply pile on and encourage these violence and destruction. (EDIT: If anything I said is untrue, please correct me. Use the truth to argue your side, don't be a coward and hide behind your downvote.)
  • throwaway1997 7y ago
    Yes, if you deliberately ignore any of the bad things the government did, and focus on the bad things the protestors did, that story is roughly accurate.
    • UIZealot 7y ago
      Please tell us all the bad things the government has done since the proposal of the extradition bill.
• barnesto 7y ago
  "Second, sometimes different cultures simply have fundamentally different values." Communism is not a culture. This isn't a
• president 7y ago
  One misstep of the American education system is the lack of attention paid to Chinese/Asian history. I believe a big part of the indifference and ignorance of American citizens to the China problem, let alone policy makers is that they don't understand how Chinese people think. This is evident by the blunders by Bush and Clinton that brought us to where we are today with regards to China's rising hegemony. Our idea of Chinese people has come to be shaped by Hollywood and media portraying them as weak, geeky, and innocent when in reality the Chinese mindset is extremely subtle, resourceful, calculated, opportunistic, and oftentimes underhanded. These are the characteristics that have launched the Chinese into the forefront and should be understood from anyone that has studied even a lick of Chinese history. Armed with this knowledge, we will be better off in protecting our democratic interests in the long term.
  • thefringthing 7y ago
    Real race science hours on HN today, it would seem.
  • nearbuy 7y ago
    > the Chinese mindset is extremely subtle, resourceful, calculated, opportunistic, and oftentimes underhanded. This is dark and is the type of claim that could be applied to almost any group of people without evidence (i.e. the American mindset is extremely subtle, resourceful, calculated, opportunistic, and oftentimes underhanded).
    • supertiger 7y ago
      It's true that this claim could be applied to almost any group of people, but I think the point here is the people in the US (or the west generally) don't have the history knowledge hence the empathy about how important and sensitive territorial integrity of China is to both Chinese people and Chinese government.
  • Merrill 7y ago
    I recommend "Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science - Part 1" and "Part 2". Chinese philosophy from ancient times had given much thought to the nature of people and the problem of how to organize society. https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.1x+3T2018/course/ https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.1x+3... https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.2x+3T2018/course/ https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.2x+3...
• emanreus 7y ago
  Pot, meet the kettle. You're both niggers :) An amusing tirade but politics and economy tend to go hand in hand, especially when it comes to superpowers. And there are far more brutal examples of it going on as we speak. Blocking access to essential medicine and food comes to mind. Outside the virtue signaling bubble and PR facades the world is a very Machiavellian place.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • dang 7y ago
    Between this, the bit about "women are dead weight", and numerous violations of the site guidelines in the past, we've banned this account for trolling. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• mark_l_watson 7y ago
  I also have mostly been a supporter, at least in spirit, of China. I enjoyed traveling there and I respect their tech abilities. My support has changed, and I can’t help but think that this is about the ego of Chinese leadership, since it seems like they are making some poor decisions. Perhaps even stupid decisions. I also wonder what the effect of President Trump has had in the poor decision making process of Chinese leadership since Trump also makes a lot of bad decisions and has lowered the bar on skill in diplomacy. This is a sad situation since I really hope for lots of trade, travel between countries, and respect for other countrys’ rights to their own culture and autonomy.
  • supertiger 7y ago
    >I can’t help but think that this is about the ego of Chinese leadership It is and isn't. I grew up in China and I think the Chinese government is overacting to this NBA statement. If the Chinese fans decide to boycott NBA that's their choice and rights, but the government should not ban NBA in China. At the same time, I am frustrated to see so much misconception and lack of empathy in the discussions here. The territorial integrity of China has a very important place in the minds of many Chinese citizens if not all given the recent 100 years of Chinese history. HK is globally recognized as part of China but yet we have seen all western media's efforts to spread anti-HK police sentiment and turn a blind eye on the violent activities carried out by so-called protestors. I've lived in the US for over a decade. Before coming here, I had no idea how sensitive racial comments are. Over time I learned about the history and never made a racial joke in public or private occasions. It's not the best analogy, but I want to point out that Morey's HK tweet is out of line and doesn't deserve NBA's endorsement.
    • cbnotfromthere 7y ago
      "I want to point out that Morey's HK tweet is out of line" Which part of freedom of speech is still unclear even after supposedly you've "lived in the US for over a decade"??? "and doesn't deserve NBA's endorsement." The NBA did not endorse nor reject Morey's words.
      • 7y ago
• acqq 7y ago
  From the about of the site: > Stratechery is written by me, Ben Thompson. I am based in Taipei, Taiwan, and am fully supported by my work at Stratechery. I think it's important to know the perspective of the author, being situated in Taiwan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan,_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan,_China "the People's Republic of China (PRC) ― which is widely recognized by the international community as the legitimate representative of "China" ― does not currently exercise jurisdiction over areas controlled by the Republic of China (ROC)."
• richardzyx 7y ago
  > Kunlun Tech had acquired Grindr without undergoing CFIUS review. TikTok similarly acquired Musical.ly without oversight and relaunched it as TikTok for the Western market; it is worth at least considering the possibility of a review given TikTok’s apparent willingness to censor content for Western audiences according to Chinese government wishes. Musical.ly was a Shanghai-based company targeting the western market, once considered as a case study for similar types of companies.
• 4gotunameagain 7y ago
  > There’s one rather glaring hole in this story of immediate outrage from Chinese fans over Morey’s tweet: > Twitter is banned in China. I didn't even realize until now. They are simply censoring (mainly)American social media posts. On the internet.
  • godelski 7y ago
    Wikipedia is also banned. Most social media is banned. Though these sites are generally allowed in HK. Many people also do use VPNs, but that's a different topic.
    • ktln2 7y ago
      Not now - Chinese is turning Wikipedia into a censorship weapon. What you can see on Wikipedia (in Chinese) are largely edited by Chinese government. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49921173 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49921173
      • godelski 7y ago
        Let me clarify: Wikipedia is banned in Mainland China (what Westerners mean when they say "China"). It is allowed in Hong Kong and Taiwan - which are outside the great firewall. That doesn't mean they aren't censoring and editing the Chinese language Wikipedia. They definitely are. Also consider that many people from China (read: mainland China) are coming to the US and the west for school. They tend to read the Chinese language versions of Wiki, not the English ones.
• skmurphy 7y ago
  I supported Clinton's invitation of China into a more liberal trade arrangement,but it has not worked out as anyone in the US had hoped. Thompson's conclusion is an important insight: "Money, like tech, is amoral. If we insist it matters most our own morals will inevitably disappear."
• madiathomas 7y ago
  Anti-China propaganda machinery is in full force today. So many anti-China propaganda articles in a technical news site. This isn't what I was expecting when I joined Hacker News. I was expecting to see Hacker news, not this rubbish that has littered the front page today. I am even ready to be removed from this site today. I am not even Chinese. I have never visited China but I am able to see anti-China bullshit that is happening on this site.
  • luckylion 7y ago
    I don't believe that it's actual propaganda, it looks more like a) people being honestly upset about behavior, b) self-marketing folks jumping on the opportunity to strongly condemn whatever is en vogue to condemn c) that becoming a bit of a self-propelling force. I agree that the tenths article on the same topic that doesn't really add new information and produces largely identical comments isn't too interesting, but I don't believe that it's coordinated in any way. People like outrage, and they like to signal to each other that they are part of the same group, so they upvote and comment "I too am outraged". And then there's just the randomness of the NBA, South Park and Blizzard happening yesterday/today, had those happened a week apart, it would have looked differently. StackOverflow's PR disaster that unfolded over the last two weeks or so was similar in amount, but it was stretched over 10 days so there would only be one or two posts on the front page (granted: they did get flagged down and/or were removed by mods more quickly than the topics about China, possibly because there's more flame-war-potential in StackOverflow's actions than in "The West's" reaction to Chinese outrage).
  • Aaronstotle 7y ago
    How is this anti China propaganda? These are legitimate complaints that haven't been properly addressed nor called out for years.
    • madiathomas 7y ago
      One-sided complaints? When we point out millions of people which were murdered by US, we are downvoted and suppressed because we are a minority on this US-dominated website. I am seriously fed-up with the bullshit spread on this site. You can remove some of us and continue to discuss rubbish pro-US drivel. If there is a way to report users, please do me a favour by reporting my account. I want to get out of this rubbish website today.
• icsllaf 7y ago
  >The truth is that the U.S. China relationship has been extremely one-sided for a very long time now: China buys the hardware it needs, and keeps all of the software opportunities for itself — and, of course, pursues software opportunities abroad. The US started off the game with a lot more technology, knowledge, and power than the Chinese. I'm kind of iffy that developing nations should open their markets entirely to the largest multinational corporations especially if that means steamrolling the local companies. A lot of Chinese companies would not have been able to start if they instantly got out marketed by large American ones.
• asdf333 7y ago
  really amazing piece of writing. bravo. well written.
• ur-whale 7y ago
  Can hacker news be read from within China?
  • yorwba 7y ago
    Not since ≈66 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599249
• impatientduck 7y ago
  How much would it cost the US to source all of its products in countries other than China? I imagine it would be expensive, but possible over something like a 5 year span.
• RocketSyntax 7y ago
  For a long time, they've taken a protectionist and appropriation approach to all forms of business, not just software.
• oska 7y ago
  Just on the NBA angle: It seems quite bizarre to me that a very large country like China follows a sports league in another country. I personally would welcome the Chinese following their own sports leagues more. Yes, they are often of a lesser standard currently but that will change as local support builds.