8 ms·

It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US

• api 6y ago
  > But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me. It is. There's a faction in the US that believes the US has to have a dictatorship to compete with China. We've been here before. The USSR looked like an unstoppable juggernaut until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Like China they started from a state of relative backwardness and rapidly industrialized and modernized. The pace seemed incredible until they ran out of stuff to copy. Totalitarian systems excel at execution, but they are not creative. A vertically integrated totalitarian state will always beat a liberal democracy at "see that? do a whole lot of that!" type challenges. Totalitarianism fails utterly when the leaders are incompetent or deluded, but when the leadership has at least basic competence they can appear formidable... as long as there is a "that" to "do a lot of." When totalitarianism runs out of clear obvious paths forward, it flounders. Totalitarian systems find it very hard to innovate because innovation is disobedience. It goes against entrenched bureaucratic and monetary interests and sometimes even laws. The latter is why states with a minimalist doctrine of law (some version of "that which is not explicitly forbidden is permitted") tend to do better at innovation. For a real world example of above: look at how ISPs which are state backed monopolies use the law to push against competitors be they local or municipal broadband or Starlink. In a totalitarian state, those sorts of entrenched interests almost always win. Once something becomes entrenched in the power structure it is immovable and competing with it becomes effectively illegal. During the Cold War there were always factions in the USA and Western Europe who argued that we must become more like the USSR. The right pushed for more militarization and executive power, while the left pushed for more central management and central planning. They were really pushing for "right" and "left" variants of the same thing: a vertically integrated totalitarian system like the Soviet state. The same thing is happening now. I think a major reason many at the top of the financial and intelligence world pushed (sometimes covertly) for Trump is as an answer to Xi Jinpeng. There is always a temptation in any conflict or tension to emulate the adversary. It won't work. The real answer is to encourage and protect our ability to innovate while waiting for China to run out of things to copy. That being said, I am all for cutting China off from easy access to inside knowledge and training. We shouldn't make it easy for the CCP to copy everything. As such I am not opposed to disengagement. We should move production to places like India, Africa, Indonesia, etc. so as not to readily share industrial and technological expertise. Edit: I mean no racism here. The Chinese can innovate just fine. China under Xinpeng finds it hard to do anything but copy, because it's a dictatorship.
  • mcintyre1994 6y ago
    > The real answer is to wait until China runs out of things to copy. The thing is that this order is about TikTok which comes from a Chinese company, has a US company currently trying to buy it while another has just released a shameless clone of it to their users. Maybe in this situation it is different because China aren't the ones doing the copying?
    • api 6y ago
      TikTok is a copy of Snapchat and Instagram. The only reason it's such a juggernaut is money. It's been very heavily and cleverly marketed, especially to younger demographics. Schools are flooded with TikTok swag, and they've hired domestic marketing agencies to push it. It's really obvious that someone has dumped enormous amounts of money into shoving TikTok at kids and teens.
      • k12sosse 6y ago
        Why is this downvoted? Are you all child-less?
      • mikechen233 6y ago
        Tiktok has a completely different concept than Instagram and Snapchat. The entire product philosophy is different.
        • novok 6y ago
          More accurately, a copy of vine :p
      • ptenk 6y ago
        You obviously have never used TikTok. Possibly the most ridiculous comment on HN.
  • sfifs 6y ago
    > The real answer is to encourage and protect our ability to innovate while waiting for China to run out of things to copy. When did you last visit China? That train has long left the station :-) Advanced materials research, Aerospace and Chip Fabs are pretty much the only areas where technological areas where I currently see US having a lead
• jhanschoo 6y ago
  I've heard that foreign investment and foreign companies face difficult regulatory red tape. Can someone with a better understanding on it weigh in on whether that is applicable to this?
• unishark 6y ago
  > It ceases to be reciprocal if you distinguish groups at an only slightly higher resolution: Chinese businesses like TikTok and WeChat and American businesses like Google and Facebook in addition to the Chinese and American governments. This is pretty much exactly how reciprocity works in other areas like travel and immigration. We treat their nationals as they treat ours. You can see examples worldwide right now with travel restrictions. And these Chinese companies benefit from the lack of US-based competition at home. Would WeChat ever have gotten that big without China's restrictions on US companies? It's not arbitrary to counter that benefit with a loss of access to the US. Congress specifically gives the president the power to counter unfair trade practices by foreign governments. The president executes the laws, he doesn't dictate them.
  • salawat 6y ago
    >Congress specifically gives the president the power to counter unfair trade practices by foreign governments. The president executes the laws, he doesn't dictate them. The Congress has increasingly delegated rulemaking to the Executive through various forms of Authorization Act that empower the Executive to arbitrarily dictate Administrative Law. I wouldn't exactly rank Congress highly in being the rulemaker here. There's been no great change, upset, or active reaffirmation of the process in years.
  • woopwoop 6y ago
    > This is pretty much exactly how reciprocity works in other areas like travel and immigration. We treat their nationals as they treat ours. What? Which part of our immigration system is reciprocal?
    • mortehu 6y ago
      Visa free travel usually, and special work visas like the deals between US and Canada or US and Australia. It's also used for retaliation in other ways, like when China revoked visa free travel for Norwegian citizens after Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace prize, or Brazil photographing and fingerprinting only US citizens on arrival.
• factsaresacred 6y ago
  > But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me Extremely naive view. China is a totalitarian state that can compel its companies to hand over all private data if asked. In your rosy "presumption of innocence" scenario, by the time they're proven guilty it's too late. This is preemptive measure that is a prelude to greater 'decoupling' from China. If a hot war breaks out, you don't want the country dubbed the number one strategic threat having access to 25% of citizens phones.
  • xvector 6y ago
    By your logic we should start arresting citizens that are likely to commit crimes. It goes against every definition of justice there is.
    • exclusiv 6y ago
      Every country has different rules for their citizens versus those for foreign entities.
  • zb1plus 6y ago
    Funny, both the USA [1] and Australia [2] can compel its companies to hand over all private data if asked and regularly exploit the security systems of their own companies with little to no due process to obtain data on people. Nation-states interests are disjoint from those of its people. We need global unity, not petty tribalism if we are to make the world a better place for all. The internet can be a powerful tool for unity, but state actors and other narrow minded selfish actors are currently seeing the value of it and manipulating it to support their political objectives. We need to unite and quash this menace to free societies and global free economies. Recent measures by the current US regime stoop to China's level and usher an era of balkanization that will ultimately destroy the competitiveness of US companies and promote petty nationalism and racism. [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/national-security-letters https://www.aclu.org/other/national-security-letters [2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/14/oz_encryption_backdoor/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/14/oz_encryption_backdoo...
• dominotw 6y ago
  > It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". It also works if we divide the world into "China tribe" and "rest of the world tribe" . Infact thats the way it always have been, now china is getting kicked out of "rest of the world tribe" . India and USA are just taking the lead, rest will follow. I am ok with that.
  • hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
    What is this comment trying to say, by putting China outside of the "rest of the world tribe"? Does this mean that Chinese people are a different species, or what?
    • dominotw 6y ago
      > Chinese people are a different species, or what? Yes according them, maybe. They created their own internet.
      • ctrl-alt-zen 6y ago
        Your overwhelming racism is starting to smell. This is not a defensible, logical or human line of reasoning, dominotw, and you cant go full Trump here, or if thats how HN is perhaps I should leave for good
    • cloverich 6y ago
      It is countering OPs assertion that this is US vs China. They are arguing China is drawing a line around themselves (to keep competition out), and the US is merely recognizing it (by keeping competition in) and still participating with the rest of the world economy.
  • sinoskeptic 6y ago
    I am from India, and I created an account to agree with exactly this, and add a few more comments. To every country which is actually in China's proximity, what China has been doing has been nothing short of imperial - in the bad sense of the word. The "China tribe", if you look a little closely, consists of two types of people - those who are so far away that their notion of China is mostly in the abstract - in the same way I might (not at all) be alarmed if Somalia and Kenya had a war, say. The second group is the "satellite" which depends on China to counter a common enemy - a good example being Pakistan which needs China to counterbalance India's power in the region. Interestingly, but only anecdotally, I have never once heard anyone from Pakistan criticize China's treatment of Uighur Muslims, even though the world is finally catching on that something really fishy is going on. I mention this because the same folks are often seen loudly complaining about the treatment of Muslims in pretty much every other part of the world.
• SkyBelow 6y ago
  >Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. Isn't it more like someone from the leaders of the tribe did something so we are holding leadership of the tribe responsible, given the extent that private companies are really extensions of the government? >But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt Plea deals means that most people never have their guilt proven, only that they are strong armed into confessing so that harsher punishment isn't given. This is already the norm in any country that practices plea deals.
  • hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
    WeChat isn't some app for government leaders. Its userbase in America are ordinary people in the Chinese diaspora who use it to stay in contact with family and friends worldwide. Like banning Kakaotalk for Koreans or Line for Japanese. Also, if "all companies in China are really extensions of the government", then what do you call this relationship where Trump forces Bytedance to sell Tiktok to Microsoft and give the U.S. government a share of the profit?
• jariel 6y ago
  "It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. I used to think the Western world had abandoned that kind of collective punishment, but apparently not." So no - this is not it at all. Reciprocity is a much more appropriate term. Trade is a big deal, trade deals are big deals. 'Free Trade' deals usually imply reciprocity on all fronts, otherwise, it's a lop-sided situation. Nation A selling services into nation B, but B not allowed to sell such services back is usually an untenable situation. If this were any other sector this 'tit for tat' would have happened a long time ago. It seems a little outlandish because these app bans affect our lives directly, instead of say a 'steel tariff of 50%' which we don't materially witness. And of course, despite the legitimacy or not of this ... this is a least 50% 'Donald Trump Campaigning'. The 'censorship' and or 'TikTok' having done something wrong are side issues. Purely on a trade basis, this is fair. Now enter the security issue, which is very real: China wants to control everyone's lives down to every passing thought. They observe, control, censor every single conversation in China. They have the means and wherewithal to do it around the world. Large Chinese companies are 'state organs' and the notion that TikTok data would be used for all sorts of advantage is legit. Google and FB can be used as tools of the US, but this is not remotely the same comparison. It's a new world order, and this action only seems unreasonable because of the person doing it, and the shocking terms. I expect a little bit more of this to happen, not less.
  • u801e 6y ago
    > Now enter the security issue, which is very real The national security trope really only affects the government. The global pandemic has had a far greater effect on the economy and has caused far more deaths than any national security incident or terrorist attack.
    • Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
      Non-sequitur. This is like saying "don't bother locking your door, you're much more likely to get mugged outside your house than robbed inside it." B being more likely than A does not form an argument against protecting yourself from A.
• sukilot 6y ago
  Words have meanings. It's not a "dictatorship", because Congress (elected every 2 years, approximately) sets the laws that the President acts under, and the President himself (so far!) is elected every 4 years.
  • Ygg2 6y ago
    Even de facto, US is an oligarchy not a dictatorship.
    • mullingitover 6y ago
      “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” -Julius Nyerere
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    Dictatorships can be elective, so raising elections is irrelevant,and they can result from a legal delegation of arbitrary authority to the dictator (both election and legal delegation were absolutely the case for the Roman office of Dictator, which “dictatorship” is a generalization from.) If the President rules arbitrarily without meaningful constraint, despite being elected and despite that arbitrary power being explictly delegated in law, it is a dictatorship. It's not, though, because the President is neither delegated general arbitrary power in law not ruling with it despite the law. While constraints on executive authority in the law have significantly broken down and one might argue that it is on the road to dictatorship, arbitrary executive action despite the law still faces meaningful checks at least by the courts. There has been significant defiance of court orders without meaningful consequence (e.g., with regard to family separation policy) but the areas where that has occurred are still limited and noticeable, however deeply problematic, exceptions.
• seebetter 6y ago
  >That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes... Thomas Jefferson wanted to invade Canada because of the Union Jack flag flying over North America. We are a government based on natural rights. Part of our responsibility is to defend Western Civilization. It's dangerous to say that China bans US companies for merely failing to censor content. It is the US that is defending innate human rights -- we shouldn't diminish them. We shouldn't even do business with Saudi Arabia nor China at any level. Then we could build a world based on broader principles. Working with corrupt authoritarian governments and propping them up to create new markets is just a financial strategy of the US business class. It's why the world is so conflicted and unstable. The US supports any foreign power as long as they help the US. That's fundamentally wrong.
• thirstywhimbrel 6y ago
  I agree that distinctions are important. > The Chinese government demanded that all businesses censor content, but... To distinguish this further: > The Chinese government demanded that all foreign businesses engage in a significant violation of basic human rights, but... That distinction materially impacts the rest of the argument for me. People usually reply here with the false equivalence that the US banning misleading advertisements or child pornography is somehow equivalent to Xi Jinping's campaign against what he calls "historical nihilism" (but the rest of the world calls "history"). I don't really understand how those are the same though.
• ikerdanzel 6y ago
  Read USA law and constitutions. It is given in the law he can do this way before his presidency. And read up what happens on the other side to understand what really is "dictatorship" by changing laws to suit. Proportional system looks great on paper but consistently produce "proportional" government that can't act strongly due to political parties in-fighting. There is reason vast majority of people whether American or not accept the concept of manifest destiny. None ever accorded to GB, France, Spanish, Portugal, Italian or Germany even during their height of military superiority.