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This is a paranoid vision of how China works. TikTok is a private company that wants to make money. If it could make more money by showing Chinese audiences mo
by DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
This is a paranoid vision of how China works.
TikTok is a private company that wants to make money. If it could make more money by showing Chinese audiences more trashy content, it absolutely would. And in fact, it does show a great deal of mindless content in China.
However, as is well known, China has recently been trying to regulate children's use of the internet (e.g., time limits on internet gaming). If companies were already willingly doing what the Communist Party wants, the Chinese government wouldn't have to pass these new regulations in the first place. And guess what happens when the government passes these sorts of regulations? Companies immediately start looking for ways to skirt them.
> legally obligated to have dedicated Chinese Communist Party representatives overseeing
No, at least legally, these committees have no oversight role in private companies. Companies with over 50 employees are required to allow a Party committee to organize and meet, but it doesn't have a role in management.
There are far too many grand statements nowadays about how China works, coming from sources that don't actually seem to be very familiar with the country. There is a very strong tendency in the West now to view everything about China through a paranoid lens. The truth is usually much more boring.
In this case, the truth is that Douyin (TikTok in China) has plenty of trashy content, but that there's more government regulation than before.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago> This is a paranoid vision of how China works. The more I read about China the more paranoid I get. I don't think they haven't earned it.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoI recommend going to China and seeing for yourself. What you read from afar and what you see on the ground are very different. Imagine if all you heard about the US were constant stories about gun violence, drone strikes and homelessness. You'd have a very distorted view of life in America. That's basically the situation with China, if your only point of reference is what you read in the English-language media.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoI don't know what the subject we were discussing (whether TikTok is part of a plot to dumb down Americans) has to do with Xinjiang. > every single message you have posted is defending China I just comment on what interests me at the moment, and because of the rising level of paranoia about China (paranoia which I think is dangerous), I've been commenting more on these sorts of issues - which I happen to know a bit about. Shill accusations go against HN rules, by the way.
- nradov 4y agoOnly an idiot would risk traveling to China at this point. You could be detained and held as a political bargaining chip. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/19/families-biden-administration-americans-china-00040706 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/19/families-biden-admi... I should have visited China back when it was opening up and relations were relatively friendly. But now that we have entered a new Cold War it's too late, I missed my chance.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoAbout 150 million tourists (or shall we call them "idiots"?) travel to China without incident every year. I don't know what, specially, is happening in the 200 cases described by the Politico article you linked to. Politico mentions one accusation of drug trafficking and another of spying.