4 ms·

I don't think this is an isomorphic situation. Chinese companies are different from EU/American ones because: (1) The CCP is a secretive, authoritarian governm

I don't think this is an isomorphic situation. Chinese companies are different from EU/American ones because: (1) The CCP is a secretive, authoritarian government with an established disregard for human rights. (2) China already imposes draconian restrictions on American (and EU!) companies, far in excess of the proposed restrictions on TikTok, e.g. forced "joint ventures" with Chinese firms resulting in wholesale theft of IP. (3) Unlike the EU, China is involved in a wide-reaching and pre-existing geopolitical power struggle with the US.

jiofih 6y ago
The US is also a secretive, authoritarian government with an established disregard for human rights, as recent events have shown again.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Ahh, the old moral equivalent whataboutism. I remember that in WW2 both the Nazis and U.S. put people in camps, so they must have been morally equivalent.
- tracker1 6y ago
  Okay, right now/recently China is sterilizing millions of muslim refugees and placing them in "re-education" facilities. While pretty much wholesale taking over a territory that had much more freedom. I'm not sure there are recent examples of US actions that even compare in scale or scope. -- edit: This also doesn't even get into the scale of the nation state cyber espionage activities. If you work in any government agency, or work with the government, your networks are under constant attacks.
  - yogthos 6y ago
    I get a feeling that a lot of Americans are just utterly ignorant of what their government is doing. The reality of the situation is that China is nowhere close to US when it comes to atrocities and human rights abuses. Let's start with the fact that they have the highest prison population per capita in the world, and that population is disproportionately formed of minorities. The prisoners are also often used for slave labor [1]. US has a long track record of oppressing minorities domestically, even Nazi Germany took direct inspiration from US racism and segregation [2]. US also has the most militarized police force in the world that regularly kills innocent people without provocation. And really, it's hard to think of a better measure of authoritarianism than the percentage of the population that a regime keeps behind bars. US also tortures dissidents [3] like Chelsea Manning, and uses companies like Google and Facebook to conduct mass surveillance on the population as we now know thanks to Snowden leaks. US has concentration camps on the border where children are left to die screaming [4], and a literal torture camp in Guantanamo where they're occupying Cuban sovereign land. US experimented on the population of Bikini Islands[5] seeing what effects radiation exposure would have on people and their children. Meanwhile, the citizens in US have very little say in regards to how their government is run or what happens to them. For example, here's what a Cambridge study analyzing decades of US policy has to say: > What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.[6] On the world stage, US killed millions of people around the globe in wars of aggression [7]. After WW2, US weaponized nationalism in Europe as part of American foreign policy strategy [8]. They killed over half a million [9] in Iraq alone by conservative estimates. They also used depleted uranium, which is banned by international law, that's still resulting [10] in horrific birth [11] defects to this day. They horrifically tortured people in Abu Ghriab [12]. They killed countless people in Afghanistan based on complete lies[13], and where US heavily used drone strikes resulting in mass civilian casualities[14]. Over 800,000 people have been murdered in the war on terror so far[15]. They're responsible for destroying Libya that went from being one of the richest nations in the region to a hellhole with slave markets [16]. They overthrew a secular and democratic government in Iran [17] resulting in the current theocracy. And that's just around Middle East. Go read up on Vietnam, Korea, the contras, and Pinochet. All of this is well documented publicly available information. US is currently involved in Syria, Afghanistan, Maghreb, Horn of Africa, North-West Pakistan, Somalia, and Libya[18]. US is actively participating in a literal genocide in Yemen [19] with their best buds Saudi Arabia. US is still occupying Iraq despite the Iraqi government that they themselves installed having formally asked them to leave [20]. The list of US atrocities spans over half a century [21], and they're ongoing today. China might do a lot of terrible things, but thinking that their government is the worst in terms of oppression, censorship, and subjugation of minority groups is just ignorant. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prisoner-speak-out-american-slave-labor-strike https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prison...) [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-america-taught-the-nazis/540630/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-am... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/chelsea-manning-us-torture-un-official-wikileaks https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/chelsea-mann... [4] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-cell-where-a-sick-16-year-old-boy-died-in-border-patrol-care https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-cell-where-a-s... [5] https://theconversation.com/bikini-islanders-still-deal-with-fallout-of-us-nuclear-tests-more-than-70-years-later-58567 https://theconversation.com/bikini-islanders-still-deal-with... [6] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [7] http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/Imperialism/usmurder.html http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/Imperialism/usmurder.... [8] https://yasha.substack.com/p/weaponizing-fascism-for-democracy https://yasha.substack.com/p/weaponizing-fascism-for-democra... [9] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131015-iraq-war-deaths-survey-2013/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131015-iraq-... [10] https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-documents-depleted-uranium-impacts-on-children-in-iraq/ https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-do... [11] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/o... [12] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu... [13] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/... [14] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp... [15] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/13/so-called-war-terror-has-killed-over-801000-people-and-cost-64-trillion-new-analysis https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/13/so-called-war-t... [16] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-slave-auctions-un-migration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-s... [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... [18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involving_the_United_States#21st-century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv... [19] https://www.genocidewatch.com/yemen https://www.genocidewatch.com/yemen [20] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/10/were-staying-us-tells-iraq-after-being-asked-leave https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/10/were-staying-us... [21] https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      > They also used depleted uranium, which is banned by international law Uh, no it's not. It's not even covered by one of the treaties banning weapons that the US hasn't signed up to (such as the cluster munition or landmine treaties).
      - yogthos 6y ago
        Right, US is a rogue state that doesn't respect international law.
        jcranmer 6y ago
        While I strongly disagree with my country's preference to not sign up to international treaties on the basis that it might find itself on trial, as I pointed out, this doesn't even fall under the case of such a treaty. If you disagree with me, please cite precisely which clause of which treaty prohibits the use of depleted uranium in weapons.
        yogthos 6y ago
        While you're right that depleted uranium specifically isn't covered, it's interesting to me that you focus on the legal status as opposed to the horrific effects of the weapon on the civilian population. There's also a pretty strong case that it falls under existing laws prohibiting superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering. https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/the-use-of-depleted-uranium-munition-by-the-us-military-in-syria-a-legally-gray-area-not-necessarily/ https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/the-use-of-depleted-uranium-mu...
        tptacek 6y ago
        He's focusing on the incorrect statement you made. The straightforward thing to do here, if you think the rest of your argument is more important than your mistake, is to concede the point and move on.
        6y ago
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    > right now/recently China is sterilizing millions of muslim refugees Big claims like that's require evidence? Do you have any? The UN human rights commissioner has been repeatedly invited to Xinjiang for years yet still hasn't gone. Why are a large group of Muslim countries publicly supporting China's efforts in the region to reduce extremism?[1] The more you look past the sabre rattlers the shakier all this supposedly common knowledge looks. Trace it back far enough and it all leads to Adrian Zenz, whom the BBC called a "world leading expert on Xinjiang", except Zenz can't read or speak Chinese, he's an Evangelical missionary whose "scientific" paper on Xinjiang that's so often quoted by the media contains strange Bible references, his published books are on how to survive the coming rapture and contain lot of bigoted statements against homosexuals. Just wondering if Zenz is your source here? 2019: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/china-visit-xinjiang-conditions-190107153600336.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/china-visit-xinjiang-... 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idUSKCN20K1ZE https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idU... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idUSKCN1U721X https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idU...
  - fakeslimshady 6y ago
    Most of this is white supremacist propaganda has already been disproven the rest I suspect will also be disproven in due time. Even the Turkish president taking refugees says is in the scope of thousands not millions. Secondly IRAQ war or Afghanistan regime changes kill MILLIONS. Gitmo. Hypocritical at best. CIA has funded guerilla efforts to sabotage BRI if you want to know what that truly is about
    - tracker1 6y ago
      Citation needed.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  FOIA? I dont think the CCP has an equivalent. No gov is going to be perfect, but the US looks crystal clear compared to China.

jiofih 6y ago

The US is also a secretive, authoritarian government with an established disregard for human rights, as recent events have shown again.

valuearb 6y ago
Ahh, the old moral equivalent whataboutism. I remember that in WW2 both the Nazis and U.S. put people in camps, so they must have been morally equivalent.
tracker1 6y ago
Okay, right now/recently China is sterilizing millions of muslim refugees and placing them in "re-education" facilities. While pretty much wholesale taking over a territory that had much more freedom. I'm not sure there are recent examples of US actions that even compare in scale or scope. -- edit: This also doesn't even get into the scale of the nation state cyber espionage activities. If you work in any government agency, or work with the government, your networks are under constant attacks.
- yogthos 6y ago
  I get a feeling that a lot of Americans are just utterly ignorant of what their government is doing. The reality of the situation is that China is nowhere close to US when it comes to atrocities and human rights abuses. Let's start with the fact that they have the highest prison population per capita in the world, and that population is disproportionately formed of minorities. The prisoners are also often used for slave labor [1]. US has a long track record of oppressing minorities domestically, even Nazi Germany took direct inspiration from US racism and segregation [2]. US also has the most militarized police force in the world that regularly kills innocent people without provocation. And really, it's hard to think of a better measure of authoritarianism than the percentage of the population that a regime keeps behind bars. US also tortures dissidents [3] like Chelsea Manning, and uses companies like Google and Facebook to conduct mass surveillance on the population as we now know thanks to Snowden leaks. US has concentration camps on the border where children are left to die screaming [4], and a literal torture camp in Guantanamo where they're occupying Cuban sovereign land. US experimented on the population of Bikini Islands[5] seeing what effects radiation exposure would have on people and their children. Meanwhile, the citizens in US have very little say in regards to how their government is run or what happens to them. For example, here's what a Cambridge study analyzing decades of US policy has to say: > What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.[6] On the world stage, US killed millions of people around the globe in wars of aggression [7]. After WW2, US weaponized nationalism in Europe as part of American foreign policy strategy [8]. They killed over half a million [9] in Iraq alone by conservative estimates. They also used depleted uranium, which is banned by international law, that's still resulting [10] in horrific birth [11] defects to this day. They horrifically tortured people in Abu Ghriab [12]. They killed countless people in Afghanistan based on complete lies[13], and where US heavily used drone strikes resulting in mass civilian casualities[14]. Over 800,000 people have been murdered in the war on terror so far[15]. They're responsible for destroying Libya that went from being one of the richest nations in the region to a hellhole with slave markets [16]. They overthrew a secular and democratic government in Iran [17] resulting in the current theocracy. And that's just around Middle East. Go read up on Vietnam, Korea, the contras, and Pinochet. All of this is well documented publicly available information. US is currently involved in Syria, Afghanistan, Maghreb, Horn of Africa, North-West Pakistan, Somalia, and Libya[18]. US is actively participating in a literal genocide in Yemen [19] with their best buds Saudi Arabia. US is still occupying Iraq despite the Iraqi government that they themselves installed having formally asked them to leave [20]. The list of US atrocities spans over half a century [21], and they're ongoing today. China might do a lot of terrible things, but thinking that their government is the worst in terms of oppression, censorship, and subjugation of minority groups is just ignorant. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prisoner-speak-out-american-slave-labor-strike https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prison...) [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-america-taught-the-nazis/540630/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-am... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/chelsea-manning-us-torture-un-official-wikileaks https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/chelsea-mann... [4] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-cell-where-a-sick-16-year-old-boy-died-in-border-patrol-care https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-cell-where-a-s... [5] https://theconversation.com/bikini-islanders-still-deal-with-fallout-of-us-nuclear-tests-more-than-70-years-later-58567 https://theconversation.com/bikini-islanders-still-deal-with... [6] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [7] http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/Imperialism/usmurder.html http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/Imperialism/usmurder.... [8] https://yasha.substack.com/p/weaponizing-fascism-for-democracy https://yasha.substack.com/p/weaponizing-fascism-for-democra... [9] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131015-iraq-war-deaths-survey-2013/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131015-iraq-... [10] https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-documents-depleted-uranium-impacts-on-children-in-iraq/ https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-do... [11] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/o... [12] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu... [13] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/... [14] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp... [15] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/13/so-called-war-terror-has-killed-over-801000-people-and-cost-64-trillion-new-analysis https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/13/so-called-war-t... [16] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-slave-auctions-un-migration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-s... [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... [18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involving_the_United_States#21st-century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv... [19] https://www.genocidewatch.com/yemen https://www.genocidewatch.com/yemen [20] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/10/were-staying-us-tells-iraq-after-being-asked-leave https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/10/were-staying-us... [21] https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    > They also used depleted uranium, which is banned by international law Uh, no it's not. It's not even covered by one of the treaties banning weapons that the US hasn't signed up to (such as the cluster munition or landmine treaties).
    - yogthos 6y ago
      Right, US is a rogue state that doesn't respect international law.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        While I strongly disagree with my country's preference to not sign up to international treaties on the basis that it might find itself on trial, as I pointed out, this doesn't even fall under the case of such a treaty. If you disagree with me, please cite precisely which clause of which treaty prohibits the use of depleted uranium in weapons.
        yogthos 6y ago
        While you're right that depleted uranium specifically isn't covered, it's interesting to me that you focus on the legal status as opposed to the horrific effects of the weapon on the civilian population. There's also a pretty strong case that it falls under existing laws prohibiting superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering. https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/the-use-of-depleted-uranium-munition-by-the-us-military-in-syria-a-legally-gray-area-not-necessarily/ https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/the-use-of-depleted-uranium-mu...
        tptacek 6y ago
        He's focusing on the incorrect statement you made. The straightforward thing to do here, if you think the rest of your argument is more important than your mistake, is to concede the point and move on.
        6y ago
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  > right now/recently China is sterilizing millions of muslim refugees Big claims like that's require evidence? Do you have any? The UN human rights commissioner has been repeatedly invited to Xinjiang for years yet still hasn't gone. Why are a large group of Muslim countries publicly supporting China's efforts in the region to reduce extremism?[1] The more you look past the sabre rattlers the shakier all this supposedly common knowledge looks. Trace it back far enough and it all leads to Adrian Zenz, whom the BBC called a "world leading expert on Xinjiang", except Zenz can't read or speak Chinese, he's an Evangelical missionary whose "scientific" paper on Xinjiang that's so often quoted by the media contains strange Bible references, his published books are on how to survive the coming rapture and contain lot of bigoted statements against homosexuals. Just wondering if Zenz is your source here? 2019: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/china-visit-xinjiang-conditions-190107153600336.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/china-visit-xinjiang-... 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idUSKCN20K1ZE https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idU... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idUSKCN1U721X https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idU...
- fakeslimshady 6y ago
  Most of this is white supremacist propaganda has already been disproven the rest I suspect will also be disproven in due time. Even the Turkish president taking refugees says is in the scope of thousands not millions. Secondly IRAQ war or Afghanistan regime changes kill MILLIONS. Gitmo. Hypocritical at best. CIA has funded guerilla efforts to sabotage BRI if you want to know what that truly is about
  - tracker1 6y ago
    Citation needed.
NoOneNew 6y ago
FOIA? I dont think the CCP has an equivalent. No gov is going to be perfect, but the US looks crystal clear compared to China.