7 ms·

The problem was started by our own disfunctional system of crooks who convinced us all a few decades ago what a good idea shipping all the factories to China wa

The problem was started by our own disfunctional system of crooks who convinced us all a few decades ago what a good idea shipping all the factories to China was. It will take half a decade more for this lesson to sink in Second we need to take a close look at ourselves, examine ourselves in a mirror. If we don’t accept and attempt to repair our flaws in thinking and human virtues and actions we’re not going to get better anytime soon. All our western countries that are now threatened by China are guilty of the same abuses that China is inflicting right now.

schuke 5y ago
I think most mainlander Chinese like me would appreciate the vision of the politicians who chose to engage with the Communist Party—-We’re glad we don’t live in a West Korea as a result. The real problem came when the Beijing model began to free-ride on the openness of the West: internet companies can go West but not East; same with some cultural exchanges, media and information. Trade rules failing to address unique tricks the Leninist party-state is able to pull. Failing to see the risk of the system generating mini-Mao-style dictators. To be fair before Xi we were on a somewhat benign track with regular transitions of power.
- jahnu 5y ago
  Could you expand on what you mean by "West Korea"? Thanks!
  - ComodoHacker 5y ago
    GP probably meant North Korea.
  - Jabbles 5y ago
    A country as bad as North Korea.
    - jahnu 5y ago
      Ok that would make sense. Thanks! I was wondering if there was in some sense a hybrid of North and South envisioned that would be not desirable for Chinese citizens but my limited experience with China kinda makes me feel like it actually is somewhere between the two in some sense.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  The agreement was never a symmetric "free trade" agreement. Everyone knew China wasn't going to be as open to imports as the US was. Chinese consumers, in the late 70s, were so poor that it didn't matter anyway. Mcdonalds and Coke were symbolic outliers, but all the negotiators knew these things. US negotiators did get what they actually wanted, US "FDI" investments in China protected by western style corporate laws. Foxcon-Apple stuff is exactly what both parties had in mind. Foxconn (Taiwan is pax americana) invest in building the factory, funded by Western/US banks. Apple own the IP and gain most of the equity. China gets jobs, a trade surplus, and builds foreign currency reserves. The game has been played for a while, and all parties got a lot of what they wanted. Foxconn really does generate a ton of equity for Apple. China really has built up a ton of foreign currency reserves. Etc. I'm not saying this is good. China should stop being so surplus oriented and let salaries rise. The US should give some attention to domestic labour, etc.... That's my opinion though. It was not the opinion of negotiators in the 70s and 80s.
  - MperorM 5y ago
    Trade agreements don't need to be symmetric to be beneficial for both parties. Even if China didn't buy a single American good, it is beneficial for US to sell to china. Export is what you pay for import. If China sells goods to US they will get dollars in return. These dollars are worthless except for buying American goods. Even if China can't buy American goods, they can buy some other country's goods using their newly acquired dollars. Eventually someone somewhere will use those dollars to buy American goods.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Those dollars aren't necessarily used to purchase American goods but rather to acquire ownership stakes in American assets.
    - tooltalk 5y ago
      Sure, the USD is the world's reserve currency. And, while it's also the currency of the international trade, the US's share of China's import isn't as significant -- in 2019, China imported over $2T, or $2,000B, worth of goods and services globally and, of that, only $163B, came from the US. In fact, the US is not even the biggest import nation, it's South Korea, followed by Japan and Taiwan.
- HKCM852 5y ago
  How common do you think your view on "the real problem" is amongst your peers on the mainland? From my view in HK, it's a) hard to see many agreeing with your view, and b) also very difficult to form an accurate picture
  - schuke 5y ago
    Agree with you on both. Rare I think. And those who share it are becoming more and more afraid to express them.
- ospider 5y ago
  > Internet companies can go west but not east. Also native Chinese here. I do not quite agree with your view on that. Yes, Facebook and Google were censored in China, but were eBay and Amazon blocked in China? Neither of them found a way to do business well in the China market. I'm totally against censorship, too. But blaming all things on the GFW is unreasonable to me. I think the reason here is that most educated Chinese people CAN speak, or at least read, simple English, while very few western people can speak Chinese. Getting into a market that speaks a language you understand is much easier than getting into a market with different language. Everything invented in the silicon valley will be shared and discussed in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen in almost no time. There are even Weibo accounts just reposting HN headlines, arxiv papers, etc. Each of these accounts has a huge amount of followers. How many westerns can read Chinese and know what is happening right now in China? China is far behind the western world when it comes to science and technology, but with a 1.4 billion population, I'm sure there are a few great ideas. However, westerners are hard to get them not because of the "closeness" of the east, but for the language barriers. When I see a technical post on HN, the comments are always meaningful and profound. But the comments in political posts are often too simple, sometimes even naïve. I wish we could think as hard as we do when discuss the newest technologies.
  - schuke 5y ago
    Too simple, sometimes naïve. I see what your did there ;) I pointed out GFW as one example, and actually agree with you that it’s not the only reason exchanges are so limited. However, I do notice that examples of failed Western attempts to penetrate China usually stops at Amazon and eBay: after these, popular platforms have been so pro-actively blocked that it’s impossible to know what outcome would be if they were given to chance to freely compete. And the internet turned social, which in nature runs against the Party’s grip on speech.
    - bingbong70 5y ago
      I personally think the GFW is a good thing, for now, that other developing countries may have an interest in copying. Free flowing mass communication in nations without fully developed public (security) services can be a disaster... the conflicts (and even genocides) that arose from poorer countries adopting FB come to mind. Also a foreign entity with suspicious partners having direct access to naive citizens around the world should be viewed as an attack vector especially if the locally accepted values don't match those of foreign entity.
viztor 5y ago
That's almost an overly-simplistic view on the matter, it wasn't because it's a good idea, just because it's cheaper. American likely would not have any global hardware company like Apple without outsourced labor since the dollar-priced device would be way too expensive for the rest of the world and maybe Americans too. And much of the comfort Americans depend today rely on China's cheap labor (or elsewhere for that matter). When a shared bedroom in SF cost two thousand dollars, most people who earn four thousands can live a considerably comfortable life because they are getting paid in dollars but buying with Chinese Yuan, so to speak. but if they are only allowed buy things made by their fellow Americans, it simply would not be enough.
- jahnu 5y ago
  I'm sympathetic to this view but, respectfully, it too is a simplification. There are so many factors at play here probably no one person truly understands it well. Take for example that even if there was labour available at costs close to China within the US there would not be the incredible supply chain in terms of flexibility and speed that exists in China. Something that Apple is trying slowly, without drawing too much attention, to change because being that reliant on one political territory is very dangerous.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    That supply was slowly built and a similar one existed in the US (for that time) before. That’s not something specific or special to China.
emptysongglass 5y ago
But we're not. All our western countries have, in the past, committed heinous crimes against out fellow human beings. All those western countries admit to these heinous crimes and teach them to our children today. Where are the schools in China that teach of the CCP's own heinous crimes? If the Westerners have done it before, surely China can do it now, right? That's like saying Israel can continue its campaign of infanticide and oppression because hey, it happened to them! In Washington State I was educated from childhood for the next decade in the genocide of our native people. I am well aware of our sins. The Chinese people and the world's are lied to, from Tiananmen to Tibet to Taiwan in a ruthless campaign of disinformation that warps the narrative every moment we draw equivalence to such tawdry narratives as US prisoners for hire equivalent to a genocide as large as half (I'm including the numbers for the estimated half-million Tibetans sent to camps [1]) the number of all Native Americans in the US at their height. If the CCP wins this global narrative we are condemning these people to their erasure forever in the memory of the world. This is carte blanche for these abuses to continue. I stand with all human beings, everywhere, as my sisters and brothers. May none of them come to harm. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_camps_in_Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_camps_in_Tibet
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > All our western countries have, in the past, "The past" being 2020? https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/immigration-detention-and-coerced-sterilization-history-tragically-repeats-itself/ https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/immigration-dete... Or 2018? https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzj8z/social-workers-forced-indigenous-girls-under-10-to-get-iuds-canadian-lawyer-alleges https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzj8z/social-workers-forced...
  - emptysongglass 5y ago
    The forcibly sterilized immigrants you cite, based on the ongoing investigation, point to a rogue doctor from a single camp. This does not excuse these actions but it's such a far cry from genocide that it appears disingenuous.
zaphirplane 5y ago
> all our western countries Even Poland of Warsaw pack joined NATO. I wonder if western means the same thing to people. It has evolved to mean North America and European democracies ?

schuke 5y ago

I think most mainlander Chinese like me would appreciate the vision of the politicians who chose to engage with the Communist Party—-We’re glad we don’t live in a West Korea as a result. The real problem came when the Beijing model began to free-ride on the openness of the West: internet companies can go West but not East; same with some cultural exchanges, media and information. Trade rules failing to address unique tricks the Leninist party-state is able to pull. Failing to see the risk of the system generating mini-Mao-style dictators. To be fair before Xi we were on a somewhat benign track with regular transitions of power.

jahnu 5y ago
Could you expand on what you mean by "West Korea"? Thanks!
- ComodoHacker 5y ago
  GP probably meant North Korea.
- Jabbles 5y ago
  A country as bad as North Korea.
  - jahnu 5y ago
    Ok that would make sense. Thanks! I was wondering if there was in some sense a hybrid of North and South envisioned that would be not desirable for Chinese citizens but my limited experience with China kinda makes me feel like it actually is somewhere between the two in some sense.
dalbasal 5y ago
The agreement was never a symmetric "free trade" agreement. Everyone knew China wasn't going to be as open to imports as the US was. Chinese consumers, in the late 70s, were so poor that it didn't matter anyway. Mcdonalds and Coke were symbolic outliers, but all the negotiators knew these things. US negotiators did get what they actually wanted, US "FDI" investments in China protected by western style corporate laws. Foxcon-Apple stuff is exactly what both parties had in mind. Foxconn (Taiwan is pax americana) invest in building the factory, funded by Western/US banks. Apple own the IP and gain most of the equity. China gets jobs, a trade surplus, and builds foreign currency reserves. The game has been played for a while, and all parties got a lot of what they wanted. Foxconn really does generate a ton of equity for Apple. China really has built up a ton of foreign currency reserves. Etc. I'm not saying this is good. China should stop being so surplus oriented and let salaries rise. The US should give some attention to domestic labour, etc.... That's my opinion though. It was not the opinion of negotiators in the 70s and 80s.
- MperorM 5y ago
  Trade agreements don't need to be symmetric to be beneficial for both parties. Even if China didn't buy a single American good, it is beneficial for US to sell to china. Export is what you pay for import. If China sells goods to US they will get dollars in return. These dollars are worthless except for buying American goods. Even if China can't buy American goods, they can buy some other country's goods using their newly acquired dollars. Eventually someone somewhere will use those dollars to buy American goods.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Those dollars aren't necessarily used to purchase American goods but rather to acquire ownership stakes in American assets.
  - tooltalk 5y ago
    Sure, the USD is the world's reserve currency. And, while it's also the currency of the international trade, the US's share of China's import isn't as significant -- in 2019, China imported over $2T, or $2,000B, worth of goods and services globally and, of that, only $163B, came from the US. In fact, the US is not even the biggest import nation, it's South Korea, followed by Japan and Taiwan.
HKCM852 5y ago
How common do you think your view on "the real problem" is amongst your peers on the mainland? From my view in HK, it's a) hard to see many agreeing with your view, and b) also very difficult to form an accurate picture
- schuke 5y ago
  Agree with you on both. Rare I think. And those who share it are becoming more and more afraid to express them.
ospider 5y ago
> Internet companies can go west but not east. Also native Chinese here. I do not quite agree with your view on that. Yes, Facebook and Google were censored in China, but were eBay and Amazon blocked in China? Neither of them found a way to do business well in the China market. I'm totally against censorship, too. But blaming all things on the GFW is unreasonable to me. I think the reason here is that most educated Chinese people CAN speak, or at least read, simple English, while very few western people can speak Chinese. Getting into a market that speaks a language you understand is much easier than getting into a market with different language. Everything invented in the silicon valley will be shared and discussed in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen in almost no time. There are even Weibo accounts just reposting HN headlines, arxiv papers, etc. Each of these accounts has a huge amount of followers. How many westerns can read Chinese and know what is happening right now in China? China is far behind the western world when it comes to science and technology, but with a 1.4 billion population, I'm sure there are a few great ideas. However, westerners are hard to get them not because of the "closeness" of the east, but for the language barriers. When I see a technical post on HN, the comments are always meaningful and profound. But the comments in political posts are often too simple, sometimes even naïve. I wish we could think as hard as we do when discuss the newest technologies.
- schuke 5y ago
  Too simple, sometimes naïve. I see what your did there ;) I pointed out GFW as one example, and actually agree with you that it’s not the only reason exchanges are so limited. However, I do notice that examples of failed Western attempts to penetrate China usually stops at Amazon and eBay: after these, popular platforms have been so pro-actively blocked that it’s impossible to know what outcome would be if they were given to chance to freely compete. And the internet turned social, which in nature runs against the Party’s grip on speech.
  - bingbong70 5y ago
    I personally think the GFW is a good thing, for now, that other developing countries may have an interest in copying. Free flowing mass communication in nations without fully developed public (security) services can be a disaster... the conflicts (and even genocides) that arose from poorer countries adopting FB come to mind. Also a foreign entity with suspicious partners having direct access to naive citizens around the world should be viewed as an attack vector especially if the locally accepted values don't match those of foreign entity.

viztor 5y ago

That's almost an overly-simplistic view on the matter, it wasn't because it's a good idea, just because it's cheaper. American likely would not have any global hardware company like Apple without outsourced labor since the dollar-priced device would be way too expensive for the rest of the world and maybe Americans too. And much of the comfort Americans depend today rely on China's cheap labor (or elsewhere for that matter). When a shared bedroom in SF cost two thousand dollars, most people who earn four thousands can live a considerably comfortable life because they are getting paid in dollars but buying with Chinese Yuan, so to speak. but if they are only allowed buy things made by their fellow Americans, it simply would not be enough.

jahnu 5y ago
I'm sympathetic to this view but, respectfully, it too is a simplification. There are so many factors at play here probably no one person truly understands it well. Take for example that even if there was labour available at costs close to China within the US there would not be the incredible supply chain in terms of flexibility and speed that exists in China. Something that Apple is trying slowly, without drawing too much attention, to change because being that reliant on one political territory is very dangerous.
- tartoran 5y ago
  That supply was slowly built and a similar one existed in the US (for that time) before. That’s not something specific or special to China.

emptysongglass 5y ago

But we're not. All our western countries have, in the past, committed heinous crimes against out fellow human beings. All those western countries admit to these heinous crimes and teach them to our children today. Where are the schools in China that teach of the CCP's own heinous crimes? If the Westerners have done it before, surely China can do it now, right? That's like saying Israel can continue its campaign of infanticide and oppression because hey, it happened to them! In Washington State I was educated from childhood for the next decade in the genocide of our native people. I am well aware of our sins. The Chinese people and the world's are lied to, from Tiananmen to Tibet to Taiwan in a ruthless campaign of disinformation that warps the narrative every moment we draw equivalence to such tawdry narratives as US prisoners for hire equivalent to a genocide as large as half (I'm including the numbers for the estimated half-million Tibetans sent to camps [1]) the number of all Native Americans in the US at their height. If the CCP wins this global narrative we are condemning these people to their erasure forever in the memory of the world. This is carte blanche for these abuses to continue. I stand with all human beings, everywhere, as my sisters and brothers. May none of them come to harm. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_camps_in_Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_camps_in_Tibet

bigbillheck 5y ago
> All our western countries have, in the past, "The past" being 2020? https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/immigration-detention-and-coerced-sterilization-history-tragically-repeats-itself/ https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/immigration-dete... Or 2018? https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzj8z/social-workers-forced-indigenous-girls-under-10-to-get-iuds-canadian-lawyer-alleges https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzj8z/social-workers-forced...
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  The forcibly sterilized immigrants you cite, based on the ongoing investigation, point to a rogue doctor from a single camp. This does not excuse these actions but it's such a far cry from genocide that it appears disingenuous.

zaphirplane 5y ago

> all our western countries Even Poland of Warsaw pack joined NATO. I wonder if western means the same thing to people. It has evolved to mean North America and European democracies ?