4 ms·

This is not a good analysis. Their proposition is that anything that is for Freedom of Expression is banned in China. I think their examples: Google, Xhamster,

This is not a good analysis. Their proposition is that anything that is for Freedom of Expression is banned in China. I think their examples: Google, Xhamster, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit, Bitcoin are examples that that is not what is happening at all. I don't think any of these promote freedom of expression, whatsoever. Especially when you consider that these companies have recently made it a their mission to influence politics and culture in the United States. This is China wanting to stop foreign influence, and also more importantly protect their own companies. China has video sharing and micro blogging and social networks. Is it really evil intent that China allowed these local companies to form instead of ceding to foreign monopolies? Bitcoin while proponents talk about how its freedom and the revolution to tech that the blockchain will be, has produced nothing more than something to gamble on in the stock market.

PicassoCTs 5y ago
Bitcoin mainly was used to escape the limitations of currency transfer. Gambling on the chinese stockmarket is of very limited value.
jhedwards 5y ago
Why not both? The CCP has strong state censorship on all native platforms. If they allowed Reddit or Google, that would allow their populace to access unmoderated (from their point of view) platforms, which is not acceptable. They allow expression, just with more and stricter limits than in the west.
nprz 5y ago
> has produced nothing more than something to gamble on in the stock market So then why did China ban it?
autokad 5y ago
> "This is China wanting to stop foreign influence, and also more importantly protect their own companies. China has video sharing and micro blogging and social networks. Is it really evil intent that China allowed these local companies to form instead of ceding to foreign monopolies?" what is a bit confusing to me is how they are crushing any company that gets successful. I invested in alibaba because I figured China realized having a strong and successful tech sector is critical to their goals of hegemony, but then they just crushed them and any other company that pops up. So when my friend said 'what about Didi', I was like stay away, china will hit them like the next wakamole, and they did within days. I really don't know what their game is, but they are up to something.
- abystander 5y ago
  > I really don't know what their game is, but they are up to something. Their game is absolute power. It's not hard to see that anything that strays from the party line or amasses any degree of power that poses a potential risk will be squashed. People ridicule with "all news is good news for Bitcoin" but it's somewhat obvious that this is a credit to the power of Bitcoin - they wouldn't take swift action against something harmless.
- lhorie 5y ago
  It's really not my intention to turn this into a political flame wars, but isn't there stuff in the works by the Biden administration now to clamp down on industry hegemonies (e.g. "big tech") in the name of healthy competition? How's that different? IMHO, what China is doing strikes me as having the same rationale, with it looking like protectionism against foreign powers being just a side effect. EU doesn't look too kindly on the American flavor of corporate warfare either, for example. With this said, I think the CCP's rationale for Alibaba is different from their rationale for crypto. One other commenter mentioned something that I think is quite valid: China has a capital exodus problem; there are a non-trivial number of people who got rich through corruption who want to hide money outside of the country and China has been aggressively clamping down on this via exchange controls and other measures. Brazil has a similar problem (though not to the extent of banning the purchase of foreign capital over a threshold) and it tries to keep track of it via taxation. Brazil started to treat outgoing crypto like it does foreign currency purchases, China just looks to be doing the same, but using China's policy framework.
  - autokad 5y ago
    > "How's that different?" How does that matter? I am not speaking on Biden's actions or intentions, I am speaking on China's. I am also not speaking on what is 'right' or 'wrong'. just that is confusing given their stated goals.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      IMHO, it matters precisely because if we don't ascribe preconceptions of right vs wrong (particularly when that tends to be married to US-vs-China narratives), neither of the efforts seems like illogical courses of action, nor all that different at all in the first place. Is it really confusing that a communist government doesn't like monopolistically-inclined companies? How so? Shouldn't that be a given, all other things considered?

PicassoCTs 5y ago

Bitcoin mainly was used to escape the limitations of currency transfer. Gambling on the chinese stockmarket is of very limited value.

jhedwards 5y ago

Why not both? The CCP has strong state censorship on all native platforms. If they allowed Reddit or Google, that would allow their populace to access unmoderated (from their point of view) platforms, which is not acceptable. They allow expression, just with more and stricter limits than in the west.

nprz 5y ago

> has produced nothing more than something to gamble on in the stock market So then why did China ban it?

autokad 5y ago

> "This is China wanting to stop foreign influence, and also more importantly protect their own companies. China has video sharing and micro blogging and social networks. Is it really evil intent that China allowed these local companies to form instead of ceding to foreign monopolies?" what is a bit confusing to me is how they are crushing any company that gets successful. I invested in alibaba because I figured China realized having a strong and successful tech sector is critical to their goals of hegemony, but then they just crushed them and any other company that pops up. So when my friend said 'what about Didi', I was like stay away, china will hit them like the next wakamole, and they did within days. I really don't know what their game is, but they are up to something.

abystander 5y ago
> I really don't know what their game is, but they are up to something. Their game is absolute power. It's not hard to see that anything that strays from the party line or amasses any degree of power that poses a potential risk will be squashed. People ridicule with "all news is good news for Bitcoin" but it's somewhat obvious that this is a credit to the power of Bitcoin - they wouldn't take swift action against something harmless.
lhorie 5y ago
It's really not my intention to turn this into a political flame wars, but isn't there stuff in the works by the Biden administration now to clamp down on industry hegemonies (e.g. "big tech") in the name of healthy competition? How's that different? IMHO, what China is doing strikes me as having the same rationale, with it looking like protectionism against foreign powers being just a side effect. EU doesn't look too kindly on the American flavor of corporate warfare either, for example. With this said, I think the CCP's rationale for Alibaba is different from their rationale for crypto. One other commenter mentioned something that I think is quite valid: China has a capital exodus problem; there are a non-trivial number of people who got rich through corruption who want to hide money outside of the country and China has been aggressively clamping down on this via exchange controls and other measures. Brazil has a similar problem (though not to the extent of banning the purchase of foreign capital over a threshold) and it tries to keep track of it via taxation. Brazil started to treat outgoing crypto like it does foreign currency purchases, China just looks to be doing the same, but using China's policy framework.
- autokad 5y ago
  > "How's that different?" How does that matter? I am not speaking on Biden's actions or intentions, I am speaking on China's. I am also not speaking on what is 'right' or 'wrong'. just that is confusing given their stated goals.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    IMHO, it matters precisely because if we don't ascribe preconceptions of right vs wrong (particularly when that tends to be married to US-vs-China narratives), neither of the efforts seems like illogical courses of action, nor all that different at all in the first place. Is it really confusing that a communist government doesn't like monopolistically-inclined companies? How so? Shouldn't that be a given, all other things considered?