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> “This ties into another common misconception about China - the idea that the government wants to track everything you do at all hours of the day” > “I was in

> “This ties into another common misconception about China - the idea that the government wants to track everything you do at all hours of the day” > “I was involved in a project that uses face recognition to track residents going in and out of communities … Data from such a system was also entirely managed at the local level and not automatically shared with the provincial or central governments.“ > “In all fairness, I consider it to be extremely easy to stay off China’s social credit ‘blacklist’ - just be reasonable and avoid breaking the law.” It went through the whole progression from “it’s not happening” to “it might be happening but it’s not a big deal” to “it’s happening and you deserve it” in just a few paragraphs. Impressive.

arisAlexis 5y ago
Yes will sound bad but I have no idea about Chinese culture but it's objectively a biased look as OP is himself raised by Chinese parents although in another country. It's not like an Italian guy is describing these issues from a Western point of view.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  I'm German and I lived/worked in China for several years. I don't see much bias at all in the post. The foreign perspective is straight up cartoonish and the "all seeing superpowered computers monitor you 24/7" narrative could be straight up out of futuristic Japanese anxieties of the 80s. In reality life in China today is not much different than it is anywhere else. And I think it's borderline bizarre if not straight up insulting to suggest that the author does not have a 'Western point of view' despite living in the US since he was three years old. Chinese parents, like the Chinese state, contrary to popular imagination do not have brain altering superpowers.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    The CCP-as-omni-scient/-potent has the same feel as 90s American conspiracies about their government. It takes Olympic level mental gymnastics to get to "all-seeing and all-powerful secret government" from "my local DMV can barely fill out a form correctly." I'm sure all world governments would function much better if there were in fact a limitless supply of extraordinarily capable employees willing to work for government salaries.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      It doesn't take omniscience or omnipotence or a limitless supply of extraordinary employees to effect severe oppression. North Korea exists. The KGB, now called the FSB, exists. The Great Firewall exists. Xinjiang internment camps exist. Operation Fox Hunt exists. WeChat & Douyin censorship exists. The Gestapo used to exist. American government-enforced chattel slavery used to exist. American Japanese internment camps used to exist. So tell me, how do you get there from "my local American DMV can barely fill out a form correctly"? Because it happened. And it will continue happening if we forget history.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Severe oppression wasn't the the topic of the comment I was replying to. It was regarding unreasonable fantasies of competence in government oppression. You can construct an oppressive regime simply by dedicating enough people to it, but they still can't exceed the fundamental ceiling of wage:job_tenure:performance. Consequently, every example you mentioned routinely failed. In aggregate they accomplished oppression, but emotional pleas about "forgetting history" don't change the fact that we're talking about bureaucracies. And bureaucracies only ever approach a semblance of competency via brute force, either in resources or manpower.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jollybean 5y ago
    "The foreign perspective is straight up cartoonish and the "all seeing superpowered computers monitor you 24/7" narrative could be straight up out of futuristic Japanese anxieties of the 80s." It's 'cartoonish' for someone who has not yet been on the receiving end of the negative externalities of such system to fathom that it doesn't exist. Why don't you, as an 'Enlightened Ex-Pat in China' go around making posts about the history of Tiananmen, or write a critical piece about the police state in Xianjing, and then see what happens? Or any number of other things? "In reality life in China today is not much different than it is anywhere else." Of course it is - because most of us are preoccupied with normal things. Life in Russia is 'mostly the same as everywhere else', even right now, as we speak, isn't it? And yet, witness what is happening in Ukraine. 'Life in China is mostly the same as everywhere else' is true, just as up to a million people are being interned on the basis of their ethnicity. The OP is effectively correct: although 'bias' may not be the correct term, certainly the simple participation in absolutist and totalitarian systems without oversight is a problem, and the attitude that somehow this is 'normal' and 'without externalisations' is what OP was referring to as 'bias'. Your own dissonance is similar, and it's at the root of the problem. "My life is normal, ergo, the system is relatively normal" is the myopia that allows for these things to happen.
  - arisAlexis 5y ago
    You are participating in the HN community and can't see how regulated to the ground are all tech companies there much like state companies? That Xi abducted the CEO of Alibaba? You are also confusing ability with intent. Yes the CCP wants to but can't monitor everyone. So that's good now? How simplistic can this viewpoint be really.
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      >can't see how regulated to the ground are all tech companies there much like state companies but they aren't. Regulation of tech really only started in earnest only a few years ago. Before that there was barely any privacy frameworks, there was hardly any oversight into anything, and as a result the Chinese tech sector was basically in a Wild West state which accounts for much of its very rapid growth. The state was so absent that private tech companies tried to sabotage each other to gain advantages. One interesting example from the last decade is the "3Q War" between Tencent and Qihoo, which ended in Tencent essentially blocking use of its own messaging client when they detected that people used Qihoo 360. It's as if Youtube decided to stop operating on any device that had TikTok installed. There's countless of startup stories like this that would have ended in front of a judge or regulator anywhere else within a week, but in China for a very long time nothing really happened. Chinese 'growth hacks' and profit driven behaviour makes SV look well behaved in comparison. This completely wrong idea that somehow every aspect of the Chinese economy is strictly regulated is one of the results of this distorted overhyped view people have of the Chinese government.
      - arisAlexis 5y ago
        Repeat after me. Jack Ma was abducted by the CCP
heavyset_go 5y ago
I don't know why he'd think that, as a foreigner, he'd be allowed to work on projects that touched state security. It's like working at BlueApron and claiming that the NSA definitely isn't spying on Americans because they aren't tracking their meal plans.

arisAlexis 5y ago

Yes will sound bad but I have no idea about Chinese culture but it's objectively a biased look as OP is himself raised by Chinese parents although in another country. It's not like an Italian guy is describing these issues from a Western point of view.

Barrin92 5y ago
I'm German and I lived/worked in China for several years. I don't see much bias at all in the post. The foreign perspective is straight up cartoonish and the "all seeing superpowered computers monitor you 24/7" narrative could be straight up out of futuristic Japanese anxieties of the 80s. In reality life in China today is not much different than it is anywhere else. And I think it's borderline bizarre if not straight up insulting to suggest that the author does not have a 'Western point of view' despite living in the US since he was three years old. Chinese parents, like the Chinese state, contrary to popular imagination do not have brain altering superpowers.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  The CCP-as-omni-scient/-potent has the same feel as 90s American conspiracies about their government. It takes Olympic level mental gymnastics to get to "all-seeing and all-powerful secret government" from "my local DMV can barely fill out a form correctly." I'm sure all world governments would function much better if there were in fact a limitless supply of extraordinarily capable employees willing to work for government salaries.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    It doesn't take omniscience or omnipotence or a limitless supply of extraordinary employees to effect severe oppression. North Korea exists. The KGB, now called the FSB, exists. The Great Firewall exists. Xinjiang internment camps exist. Operation Fox Hunt exists. WeChat & Douyin censorship exists. The Gestapo used to exist. American government-enforced chattel slavery used to exist. American Japanese internment camps used to exist. So tell me, how do you get there from "my local American DMV can barely fill out a form correctly"? Because it happened. And it will continue happening if we forget history.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Severe oppression wasn't the the topic of the comment I was replying to. It was regarding unreasonable fantasies of competence in government oppression. You can construct an oppressive regime simply by dedicating enough people to it, but they still can't exceed the fundamental ceiling of wage:job_tenure:performance. Consequently, every example you mentioned routinely failed. In aggregate they accomplished oppression, but emotional pleas about "forgetting history" don't change the fact that we're talking about bureaucracies. And bureaucracies only ever approach a semblance of competency via brute force, either in resources or manpower.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jollybean 5y ago
  "The foreign perspective is straight up cartoonish and the "all seeing superpowered computers monitor you 24/7" narrative could be straight up out of futuristic Japanese anxieties of the 80s." It's 'cartoonish' for someone who has not yet been on the receiving end of the negative externalities of such system to fathom that it doesn't exist. Why don't you, as an 'Enlightened Ex-Pat in China' go around making posts about the history of Tiananmen, or write a critical piece about the police state in Xianjing, and then see what happens? Or any number of other things? "In reality life in China today is not much different than it is anywhere else." Of course it is - because most of us are preoccupied with normal things. Life in Russia is 'mostly the same as everywhere else', even right now, as we speak, isn't it? And yet, witness what is happening in Ukraine. 'Life in China is mostly the same as everywhere else' is true, just as up to a million people are being interned on the basis of their ethnicity. The OP is effectively correct: although 'bias' may not be the correct term, certainly the simple participation in absolutist and totalitarian systems without oversight is a problem, and the attitude that somehow this is 'normal' and 'without externalisations' is what OP was referring to as 'bias'. Your own dissonance is similar, and it's at the root of the problem. "My life is normal, ergo, the system is relatively normal" is the myopia that allows for these things to happen.
- arisAlexis 5y ago
  You are participating in the HN community and can't see how regulated to the ground are all tech companies there much like state companies? That Xi abducted the CEO of Alibaba? You are also confusing ability with intent. Yes the CCP wants to but can't monitor everyone. So that's good now? How simplistic can this viewpoint be really.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >can't see how regulated to the ground are all tech companies there much like state companies but they aren't. Regulation of tech really only started in earnest only a few years ago. Before that there was barely any privacy frameworks, there was hardly any oversight into anything, and as a result the Chinese tech sector was basically in a Wild West state which accounts for much of its very rapid growth. The state was so absent that private tech companies tried to sabotage each other to gain advantages. One interesting example from the last decade is the "3Q War" between Tencent and Qihoo, which ended in Tencent essentially blocking use of its own messaging client when they detected that people used Qihoo 360. It's as if Youtube decided to stop operating on any device that had TikTok installed. There's countless of startup stories like this that would have ended in front of a judge or regulator anywhere else within a week, but in China for a very long time nothing really happened. Chinese 'growth hacks' and profit driven behaviour makes SV look well behaved in comparison. This completely wrong idea that somehow every aspect of the Chinese economy is strictly regulated is one of the results of this distorted overhyped view people have of the Chinese government.
    - arisAlexis 5y ago
      Repeat after me. Jack Ma was abducted by the CCP

heavyset_go 5y ago

I don't know why he'd think that, as a foreigner, he'd be allowed to work on projects that touched state security. It's like working at BlueApron and claiming that the NSA definitely isn't spying on Americans because they aren't tracking their meal plans.