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I think we should stop using China for cheap Labour in general given how hostile their government are becoming. Where possible I try to buy Taiwanese, Korean an
by andy_ppp 5y ago
I think we should stop using China for cheap Labour in general given how hostile their government are becoming. Where possible I try to buy Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese electronics.
- zohch 5y agoThat there is any controversy in this statement is insane, but I would be very wary of ever making this statement non-anonymously, because I know I'm more likely than not to be cancelled for it. China has mastered the manipulation of the west's successor ideology better than those in the west that instituted it.
- marderfarker2 5y agoI’ve always thought it to be the reverse, since the west has the whole world at their disposal (in terms of audience and technology penetration)
- iszomer 5y agoEver bought something you believed was Made in Japan but found out later it was actually Made in China?
- marderfarker2 5y agoI don’t think inanimate objects can influence a person’s mind. However media can, especially when you see the same idea repeated everywhere.
- iszomer 5y agoIt can when materialistic quality is a factor in purchasing decisions. For example, I recently had to buy a new rice cooker and based on my prior experiences of owning both Japanese and Chinese brands; the former outlasted the latter by thirty years. Just because it was cheap and easily sourceable doesn't discount expected quality assurances. I'm not saying this applies to all Chinese made products but something I keep in mind for all future purchases.
- pokepim 5y agoFor one, chinese made Teslas are superior in quality to American ones. So looks like you are right, not every chinese product should be seen as inferior to japanese or even American.
- pmontra 5y agoIf you always buy from A instead of from B, whoever they are, you start enjoying a familiarity with A that you don't have with B. Then, not about minds but about money, you are helping A with your money instead of helping B and A eventually becomes more powerful than B.
- iszomer 5y agoNot willing to see it from a socialist angle. r/BuyItForLife
- jtdev 5y agoYes, it’s one reason that I let my Amazon Prime membership lapse and rarely purchase anything from Amazon now.
- _red 5y ago>China Its not totally fair to put this all on Chinese manipulation. Western politicians and many "tech elite" all love the concept of CCP-style 'social credit systems' being instituted. This is ultimately what vaxpass is all about.
- nix23 5y ago
- _red 5y ago
- scoopertrooper 5y agoEnjoy the ICU.
- dang 5y agoBreaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Edit: fortunately you don't seem to be in the habit of it (that's good).
- zivkovicp 5y agoHow so? Even if the intent of such programs might be positive, is there not a risk of them being used to limit, coerce, or change user behaviour? (it wouldn't be the first time) Why is this such an offensive statement?
- pc86 5y agoSocial credit is offensive and freedom-limiting by definition. You can't make any small-d-democratic argument in favor of a massive central social credit system because the two are antithetical. A vaccine passport system could turn into something similar, but that's not necessarily a given. It's the slippery slope fallacy taken to the extreme - "because it's possible to imagine a situation in which a vaccine passport system goes way beyond its usefulness and becomes oppressive, that means vaccine passport systems are oppressive." In addition to that sentiment being wrong, HN also has a pretty violent knee-jerk reaction to anything that could even potentially be taken as anti-vax sentiment. As can be seen by this garbage[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29659905#29661353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29659905#29661353
- cnlevy 5y agocancel culture doesn't originate in China. It's an evolution of the western idea of equality and individualism taken to an extreme
- BrazzVuvuzela 5y agoCancel culture isn't that either. Cancel culture is a rebranding of 'shunning', which I bet predates humans as we know them. I bet our social monkey predecessors had such tactics figured out. Read this and tell me it isn't 'cancel culture': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Overview Bonus: 'shadow-banning' is stealth shunning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Stealth_shunning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Stealth_shunning
- azangru 5y agoIt's probably a combination of the two. Letting the monkey instincts run wild while covering them with modern fanciful words :-)
- hnfong 5y agoHow about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication
- BrazzVuvuzela 5y agoAnother word for basically the same thing, yes. Excommunication is top-down directed shunning.
- threatofrain 5y agoCancelling finds its roots in the freedom of association.
- pmontra 5y agoAncient Athens had ostracism [1]. It was against a single person and not against ideas but given that the numbers where smaller and heads carry ideas, it was more or less the same thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
- dang 5y agoPlease don't use HN for generic nationalistic and ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I had to ask you about this just recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29555995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29555995). Continuing to abuse HN like this will end up getting you banned here, so please don't.
- xwolfi 5y agoIf we can't employ Xinjian people anymore, what do you propose we do with them ?
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y agoSet them free.
- BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago"Do with them"? That's a truly chilling way to speak of people.
- dang 5y agoObviously the parent was being rhetorical. Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar. It's precisely the hell we want to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- einpoklum 5y agoUmm, with respect - it is the US anti-Chinese rhetoric that is changing, rather than Chinese government policy. There are many repressive aspects to the Chinese regime (and government specifically I suppose); but this is probably less the case today then, say, 30 years ago. Certainly I doubt very much repression has been tightened over the past few years. If I'm mistaken - please provide references, preferably to non-US-aligned media sources. *Edit:* Hong-Kong situation notwithstanding.
- mrloop 5y agoThe final judgement at https://chinatribunal.com https://chinatribunal.com makes somber reading about forced organ harvesting from prisoners in China and its increase in the last 20 years.
- trasz 5y agoFunny how people blindly trust a private company with no public mandate just because they called themselves a “Tribunal” and call their press releases “judgements”.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoThe burden is on the person making a claim, not on others to disprove it. Furthermore, "no US aligned media sources" is ad hominem. Objective facts don't become falsehoods because of who is saying them. Since you've formed the opinion that Chinese government policy hasn't become more repressive, and that opinion is clearly educated, surely you have plenty of links to give us to back up your position.
- dazsnow 5y agoListen to the Sinica podcast. It covers China-related topics "without fear nor favor". You'll here politicians and experts talk about the increasing, and often baseless, hostility of Western media over the past 5 years.
- 5y ago
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> given how hostile their government are becoming To the extent that they are more hostile now, that would look like an effect of American attacks on them, not a cause. Causes need to precede effects.
- joshuajill 5y ago
- mxmilkiib 5y agoWhy not both?
- joshuajill 5y agoSure, I avoid both to some extent. What worries me the most though is smart people taking sides based on mostly propaganda and feeding an escalation of a situation already on the brink of a war. I mean why choose between Chinese authoritarian regime and the US aggressive and destructive foreign policy?
- mrtranscendence 5y agoBut avoiding Chinese products doesn't necessarily mean taking a stand in a propaganda war. Is China using forced labor? If so, is that worth a response of some kind? These questions are orthogonal to whether the US is worth protesting for its own sins.
- joshuajill 5y agoIt is propagandist and borderline racist. There are factories in China with working conditions comparable or better then in the US. Remember the middle class is growing in China and diminishing in the US. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-state-of-americas-middle-class-in-eight-charts/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-state-of-amer... https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/mapping-chinas-middle-class https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/mapp...
- enkid 5y agoDon't many of these companies still do final assembly in China? Foxconn is notorious for it's labor practices in China, but is a Taiwanese company. How can someone separate Chinese assembly from the rest of the product?
- alisonkisk 5y ago
- drekk 5y ago
- tombh 5y ago[flagged]
- ryandrake 5y ago[flagged]
- tombh 5y ago[flagged]
- dang 5y agoPlease don't invoke canned arguments like "whataboutism" as flamewar ammunition on HN. It's a classic type of generic ideological tangent that the site guidelines ask to avoid. It's also bad logic, despite how often and how eagerly people repeat it. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism%20by:dang&dateRan... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ryandrake 5y agoSure thing dang. I should know by now it's pointless to get involved in these particular threads. Good call.
- ekianjo 5y agoSurely the soviets killing dozens of millions of russians and invading half of Europe is all the fault of the evil West. Sounds like you went around the world with a narrative preset in your mind.
- tombh 5y ago
- tomohawk 5y agoEspecially given the horrors of forced organ transplants from prisoners by the CCP. https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTribunal_JUDGMENT_1stMarch_2020.pdf https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTr...
- joshuajill 5y agoOh just because the government is hostile. So if the government is "friendly" we can safely keep exploiting the workers? That pretty much describes how the US is going.
- andy_ppp 5y agoI've actually had some time to ruminate on this and as ever I think Ray Dalio probably knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. This is an extremely worthwhile watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TISMidxdZoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TISMidxdZoc We can never go to war with each other and as such should continue trading and competing (maybe on fairer terms) to avoid such things - the destruction just from cyber warfare alone would be beyond insane.