7 ms·

US is doing with China what China did with them. American VCs and business men used to criticize and mock Chinese government for it. Since US is following the f

by pknerd 6y ago

US is doing with China what China did with them. American VCs and business men used to criticize and mock Chinese government for it. Since US is following the footsteps of China, I wonder whether Chinese will be doing what US VCs did?

jorblumesea 6y ago
I don't think the US is necessarily doing it permanently. Likely this is a short term geopolitical tactic to get China to play a little fairer on the field. It was always weird how this double standard existed where China would block Western companies but demand free access to Western markets. This is just tit for tat. Also, I don't think this is a "Trump" thing (although he has accelerated the process), relations between the US and China were already on the decline starting with Obama's first term. I don't think it will be successful, I think China has made it very clear they will continue to play the US time and time again until they are dominant. The CCP will accept nothing but that. But that's the thinking behind the current moves.
xeromal 6y ago
Oh how the turn tables
vmception 6y ago
Careful there, someone is going to dismiss your completely valid observation because it happens to be a geopolitical context.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bigpumpkin 6y ago
AirBnB's business in China doesn't look so attractive anymore.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
China shouldn't expect a free pass while it continues to abuse global trading.
- seebetter 6y ago
  You can't speak truth on HN -- too many here are infected with Chinese money. Kevin Mayer at TikTok, Neil Bush supporting Chinese aerospace companies -- it's just standard business. But wait, they can justify their "globalization" with authoritarian powers because 1) it makes them rich and 2) they don't believe in principles like classical liberalism. https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/28/neil-bush-china-agreement-space https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/28/neil-bush-china-agreement...
- horsemessiah 6y ago
  Congress should pass laws in retaliation then, not the President.
  - khuey 6y ago
    Congress has passed a number of laws delegating a substantial amount of power to the President on matters of international trade and national security, e.g. IEEPA.
RavlaAlvar 6y ago
If US successfully force China to open market, that would be a win for everyone. Of course though, this situation would only occur in fantasy land.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  Thinking that US market forces will open the chinese market after decades of failing to have that effect seems rather naive.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Active versus passive approach
  - jariel 6y ago
    It's not 'US market forces' that will open China, and it never was. It was the opportunity to expand into global economic markets, with a certain perspective in mind, ballpark along the lines of Western Liberal Democracy and Economy. The Asian countries that followed this path after WW2 were enormously succesfull: South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. They are basically beacons of prosperity surrounded by economic mayhem. China chose 'it's own path' - which is fine - and there are probably many advantages to the central planning early on (those other nations did that, Korea was an authoritarian state and then opened eventually, kind of 'part of a plan') - but of course the CCP has another agenda, they don't want to cede power, and China has a different historical view of itself which is not just a function of CCP propaganda. I think it is literally at this very point wherein the 'advantage' of autocracy is starting to be a disadvantage, and that a degree of opening up would actually beneficial. Basically - once you get the 'easy investments' done - like roads, bridges, and you succesfull rip off everyone else's IP and are 'to some extent caught up' - then the plan starts to falter. At some point, you have to 'lead' - and it takes a different kind of approach. At least in many areas, though we should not underestimate them. There are no obvious economic choices for China now and their 'old plan' won't work. Putting Uyghers in jail, grabbing S. China sea, getting into pissing matches with India and Japan - none of this will bear fruits. The 'Belt and Road' is actually one 'grand strategy' that a central power like China could have that America could never have (takes a couple decades of consistent vision) - but it seems that the heavy handedness and deep corruption of the system won't allow for it. Geopolitically, people 'love to hate on America' in the press and in propaganda, but when 'push comes to shove' there is nobody who doesn't understand what side they would rather be on, both pragmatically and for the sake of the good of everyone. Though Trump is a dufous and blow-hard (sorry), he is actually the only Western leader with the 'crazy like a fox' to take on China, and he's absolutely right to ban TikTok and other entities. Basically - the West needs to apply trade rules with China that are exactly tit for tat: China doesn't allow foreign competition in certain areas - then we ban that. They don't allow ownership, then we ban that. They have a lot of controls over content, then we do as well - we ban everything remotely related to the Chinese state. They require foreign companies to fork over IP, and then give it to local champions - then we do as well. Imagine how the world would react if the US required Huawei to give up all it's IP, held it up in bureaucracy for years, while they gave the IP to Cisco, and then the Treasury and the Fed financed Cisco and their international customers, while the US diplomatic corps acted both as a sales team for Cisco, and did economic espionage to thwart competitors outright? That would be 'fair'. There is a Canadian company [1] that lost a contract to the Canadian government for airport scanners - the Chinese bid was 25% lower. The complaint was that the Canadian company would never be allowed to bid on such a sensitive contract in China, moreover, there were state subsidies. How on earth is this fair or free trade? It's not. If China won't allow external bidders for airport security tools - we don't allow them either. It's really almost a paradox to understand why even China has been able to maintain such a lop-sided advantage. It started 30 years ago, when China was so poor that the West basically accepted the asymmetrical terms of trade. Like a frog in cool water that's getting warmer never thinks to jump out - Western entities have not been able to 'get it together' to change the terms. China has been acting very aggressively against anyone who speaks out, and of course, we have the useful idiots in the West who will proclaim that any antagonism towards China must be 'racism' etc.. It's just only right now starting to cross a tipping point wherein you see bits of world leaders actually starting to push back collectiely. Merkel or Trudeau might say one small thing, then they see the reaction, then others will say something else. COVID and the China coverup has presented basically a catalyst for this, wherein it has been fully legit to publicly criticise China because they did act poorly and it cost ostensibly a lot of lives. Though the Dems actually have not really been against Trump's China aggression, they may not be likely to spearhead it. They are just far to 'systematically naive'. Even if many Dems individually realise what needs to be done - they do not, organisationally, have the political will. Biden might say a few things here and there, but the momentum is unlikely to continue. It takes a certain kind of 'political courage' and consistently so - with a lot of people on board to re-articulate the relationship with China - I'm wary that Biden & his team will be able to do it. Their economic team I feel just won't have enough true hardball players and I don't mean 'jerks for the sake of being jerks' - I mean 'realpolitik' players who can apply the hard rules necessary with China, that would otherwise seem out of place in a modern world. Have a quick glance at the difference between Obama/Trump trade advisors Froman [2] and Navarro [3]. Night and Day. (FYI I'm not saying I support either, just highlighting the difference) [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned-firm-wins-6-8m-contract-to-supply-security-equipment-to-canada-embassies https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned-firm-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Froman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Froman [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro
ativzzz 6y ago
They criticize and mock the government, yet they do what the govt tells them anyway, because money. Looks like Chinese businessmen are willing to do the same.
oh_sigh 6y ago
This sounds like the tat in tit-for-tat. Would the tat have happened if the tit didn't?
rtx 6y ago
I don't think primary driver for this move is US it looks like to be coming from the Indian ban. India had 120 million active TikTok users. It was one of the fastest growing apps there.
- volgo 6y ago
  Not really. India really has very little clout in today’s digital economy. There’s a ton of users, but very little money to be made there since it’s a relatively poor country
mrtksn 6y ago
Which also means USA is doing with it's citizens what China did with theirs. You will regret having the government choosing your apps and websites. Your jubilee will turn into sorrow, the Chinese way of life business is not a good life. You will regret becoming a China.
- orangecat 6y ago
  You will regret having the government choosing your apps and websites. I agree, but this isn't far off from the GDPR and similar laws that take the view that individuals aren't competent to decide for themselves what privacy policies are acceptable.
moneywoes 6y ago
Can you fill us in what they did for those who are uninformed?
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  Chinese government didn't allow people in China to use US services (Google, Twitter, FB) and instead invested and marketed Chinese "clones" of these businesses (Tencent, Weibo, Baidu). Now that the Chinese owned TikTok is such a desirable app to use in the USA, the US government is blocking it in a similar fashion. To be honest it's all quite petty.
  - hh3k0 6y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/fmuko1m/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...
  - temporalparts 6y ago
    I wouldn't call it petty; these platforms control access to information and there's a huge ideological (figurative) battle between the US and China.
    - dalbasal 6y ago
      Access to information is a euphemistic way of putting it. Another way of putting it would be control over the delivery of information... It's all getting very Orwellian.
  - slowmovintarget 6y ago
    Where have you heard the US government is blocking the app? The gigantic security issues have been because the US government doesn't block apps like this. It can forbid government workers from using it on government-provided devices. This is sensible due to the capabilities for arbitrary code execution and the full permissions to the device the app requires of the user. Amazon has done that with their employees as well. But the US government doesn't have a Great Firewall. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't ban or block it. Edit: Apologies. I mistook the unlikelihood of anything like this being effective as reason enough for no one (let alone the President) to make statements like this. I stand corrected.
ktln2 6y ago
Chinese always has the freedom to criticize and mock US government - as long as you are not targeting Chinese government you are fine ;-)

by pknerd 6y ago

jorblumesea 6y ago

I don't think the US is necessarily doing it permanently. Likely this is a short term geopolitical tactic to get China to play a little fairer on the field. It was always weird how this double standard existed where China would block Western companies but demand free access to Western markets. This is just tit for tat. Also, I don't think this is a "Trump" thing (although he has accelerated the process), relations between the US and China were already on the decline starting with Obama's first term. I don't think it will be successful, I think China has made it very clear they will continue to play the US time and time again until they are dominant. The CCP will accept nothing but that. But that's the thinking behind the current moves.

xeromal 6y ago

Oh how the turn tables

vmception 6y ago

Careful there, someone is going to dismiss your completely valid observation because it happens to be a geopolitical context.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bigpumpkin 6y ago

AirBnB's business in China doesn't look so attractive anymore.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

China shouldn't expect a free pass while it continues to abuse global trading.

seebetter 6y ago
You can't speak truth on HN -- too many here are infected with Chinese money. Kevin Mayer at TikTok, Neil Bush supporting Chinese aerospace companies -- it's just standard business. But wait, they can justify their "globalization" with authoritarian powers because 1) it makes them rich and 2) they don't believe in principles like classical liberalism. https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/28/neil-bush-china-agreement-space https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/28/neil-bush-china-agreement...
horsemessiah 6y ago
Congress should pass laws in retaliation then, not the President.
- khuey 6y ago
  Congress has passed a number of laws delegating a substantial amount of power to the President on matters of international trade and national security, e.g. IEEPA.

RavlaAlvar 6y ago

If US successfully force China to open market, that would be a win for everyone. Of course though, this situation would only occur in fantasy land.

robert_foss 6y ago
Thinking that US market forces will open the chinese market after decades of failing to have that effect seems rather naive.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Active versus passive approach
- jariel 6y ago
  It's not 'US market forces' that will open China, and it never was. It was the opportunity to expand into global economic markets, with a certain perspective in mind, ballpark along the lines of Western Liberal Democracy and Economy. The Asian countries that followed this path after WW2 were enormously succesfull: South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. They are basically beacons of prosperity surrounded by economic mayhem. China chose 'it's own path' - which is fine - and there are probably many advantages to the central planning early on (those other nations did that, Korea was an authoritarian state and then opened eventually, kind of 'part of a plan') - but of course the CCP has another agenda, they don't want to cede power, and China has a different historical view of itself which is not just a function of CCP propaganda. I think it is literally at this very point wherein the 'advantage' of autocracy is starting to be a disadvantage, and that a degree of opening up would actually beneficial. Basically - once you get the 'easy investments' done - like roads, bridges, and you succesfull rip off everyone else's IP and are 'to some extent caught up' - then the plan starts to falter. At some point, you have to 'lead' - and it takes a different kind of approach. At least in many areas, though we should not underestimate them. There are no obvious economic choices for China now and their 'old plan' won't work. Putting Uyghers in jail, grabbing S. China sea, getting into pissing matches with India and Japan - none of this will bear fruits. The 'Belt and Road' is actually one 'grand strategy' that a central power like China could have that America could never have (takes a couple decades of consistent vision) - but it seems that the heavy handedness and deep corruption of the system won't allow for it. Geopolitically, people 'love to hate on America' in the press and in propaganda, but when 'push comes to shove' there is nobody who doesn't understand what side they would rather be on, both pragmatically and for the sake of the good of everyone. Though Trump is a dufous and blow-hard (sorry), he is actually the only Western leader with the 'crazy like a fox' to take on China, and he's absolutely right to ban TikTok and other entities. Basically - the West needs to apply trade rules with China that are exactly tit for tat: China doesn't allow foreign competition in certain areas - then we ban that. They don't allow ownership, then we ban that. They have a lot of controls over content, then we do as well - we ban everything remotely related to the Chinese state. They require foreign companies to fork over IP, and then give it to local champions - then we do as well. Imagine how the world would react if the US required Huawei to give up all it's IP, held it up in bureaucracy for years, while they gave the IP to Cisco, and then the Treasury and the Fed financed Cisco and their international customers, while the US diplomatic corps acted both as a sales team for Cisco, and did economic espionage to thwart competitors outright? That would be 'fair'. There is a Canadian company [1] that lost a contract to the Canadian government for airport scanners - the Chinese bid was 25% lower. The complaint was that the Canadian company would never be allowed to bid on such a sensitive contract in China, moreover, there were state subsidies. How on earth is this fair or free trade? It's not. If China won't allow external bidders for airport security tools - we don't allow them either. It's really almost a paradox to understand why even China has been able to maintain such a lop-sided advantage. It started 30 years ago, when China was so poor that the West basically accepted the asymmetrical terms of trade. Like a frog in cool water that's getting warmer never thinks to jump out - Western entities have not been able to 'get it together' to change the terms. China has been acting very aggressively against anyone who speaks out, and of course, we have the useful idiots in the West who will proclaim that any antagonism towards China must be 'racism' etc.. It's just only right now starting to cross a tipping point wherein you see bits of world leaders actually starting to push back collectiely. Merkel or Trudeau might say one small thing, then they see the reaction, then others will say something else. COVID and the China coverup has presented basically a catalyst for this, wherein it has been fully legit to publicly criticise China because they did act poorly and it cost ostensibly a lot of lives. Though the Dems actually have not really been against Trump's China aggression, they may not be likely to spearhead it. They are just far to 'systematically naive'. Even if many Dems individually realise what needs to be done - they do not, organisationally, have the political will. Biden might say a few things here and there, but the momentum is unlikely to continue. It takes a certain kind of 'political courage' and consistently so - with a lot of people on board to re-articulate the relationship with China - I'm wary that Biden & his team will be able to do it. Their economic team I feel just won't have enough true hardball players and I don't mean 'jerks for the sake of being jerks' - I mean 'realpolitik' players who can apply the hard rules necessary with China, that would otherwise seem out of place in a modern world. Have a quick glance at the difference between Obama/Trump trade advisors Froman [2] and Navarro [3]. Night and Day. (FYI I'm not saying I support either, just highlighting the difference) [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned-firm-wins-6-8m-contract-to-supply-security-equipment-to-canada-embassies https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned-firm-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Froman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Froman [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro

ativzzz 6y ago

They criticize and mock the government, yet they do what the govt tells them anyway, because money. Looks like Chinese businessmen are willing to do the same.

oh_sigh 6y ago

This sounds like the tat in tit-for-tat. Would the tat have happened if the tit didn't?

rtx 6y ago

I don't think primary driver for this move is US it looks like to be coming from the Indian ban. India had 120 million active TikTok users. It was one of the fastest growing apps there.

volgo 6y ago
Not really. India really has very little clout in today’s digital economy. There’s a ton of users, but very little money to be made there since it’s a relatively poor country

mrtksn 6y ago

Which also means USA is doing with it's citizens what China did with theirs. You will regret having the government choosing your apps and websites. Your jubilee will turn into sorrow, the Chinese way of life business is not a good life. You will regret becoming a China.

orangecat 6y ago
You will regret having the government choosing your apps and websites. I agree, but this isn't far off from the GDPR and similar laws that take the view that individuals aren't competent to decide for themselves what privacy policies are acceptable.

moneywoes 6y ago

Can you fill us in what they did for those who are uninformed?

sushshshsh 6y ago
Chinese government didn't allow people in China to use US services (Google, Twitter, FB) and instead invested and marketed Chinese "clones" of these businesses (Tencent, Weibo, Baidu). Now that the Chinese owned TikTok is such a desirable app to use in the USA, the US government is blocking it in a similar fashion. To be honest it's all quite petty.
- hh3k0 6y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/fmuko1m/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...
- temporalparts 6y ago
  I wouldn't call it petty; these platforms control access to information and there's a huge ideological (figurative) battle between the US and China.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Access to information is a euphemistic way of putting it. Another way of putting it would be control over the delivery of information... It's all getting very Orwellian.
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  Where have you heard the US government is blocking the app? The gigantic security issues have been because the US government doesn't block apps like this. It can forbid government workers from using it on government-provided devices. This is sensible due to the capabilities for arbitrary code execution and the full permissions to the device the app requires of the user. Amazon has done that with their employees as well. But the US government doesn't have a Great Firewall. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't ban or block it. Edit: Apologies. I mistook the unlikelihood of anything like this being effective as reason enough for no one (let alone the President) to make statements like this. I stand corrected.

ktln2 6y ago

Chinese always has the freedom to criticize and mock US government - as long as you are not targeting Chinese government you are fine ;-)