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What gets me is that people think that China's business-political environment is a carbon copy of the US. People think that because they understand how things

What gets me is that people think that China's business-political environment is a carbon copy of the US. People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach, that China functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach. Which is completely not the case. China is essentially a dictatorship. With one leader of one party that dominates everything, kangaroo courts and disappearing family, the works.

johngalt_ 3y ago
> That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach That worked great in the case of PRISM et al
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  Okay, look. Can we at least recognize that these are not the same? It’s like saying the US has done a bad thing and China has done a bad thing so the US and China have the same number, kind, and quality of oppressions of the public. This is not true!
- jonfw 3y ago
  An important difference is that the US government doesn't have a "god credential", they have to request the data (and there is a process to request the data involving courts, etc.) Meanwhile, govt officials in China appear to have unrestricted access
  - CrackerNews 3y ago
    An opaque process of secret courts with secret decisions may be different legally, but in spirit it does not seem that significantly different to me in terms of preventing overreach and abuse.
    - black_puppydog 3y ago
      Especially if you happen to not be a US citizen, in which case there are no actual safeguards anyhow. IMHO this mirrors nicely the situation of a US citizen being concerned that the Chines govt won't protect their rights. This is how most of the world sees the US "checks" and "balances".
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
        Even though I loathe spying, I must admit that the US (or any country for that matter) does not really have any natural or legal obligations to respect privacy of foreigners abroad. It is their own business to protect it themselves.
        black_puppydog 3y ago
        Yeah, but then don't expect people to show much compassion when the same thing happens the other way around and the US immediately cries wolf.
        inglor_cz 3y ago
        Not an American, and I don't. Big countries throwing tantrums is somewhat ludicrous anyway.
    - salawat 3y ago
      The "secret" part there undoes pretty much your entire contention. That which doesn't see the light of day may as well not even exist.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      How many families are disappeared annually for the wrong political statements in the US?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - sfjailbird 3y ago
    > the US government doesn't have a "god credential" Why are you so quick to believe they don't, and that China does? > process to request the data involving courts Secret courts that rubberstamp agency requests without oversight.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    unless they slap “patriot act” on it. I’ve lived in Iran, I really don’t see much of a difference in how the US operates. The U.S. just does more paperwork to justify their shit.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    What's the practical difference between AT&T "god credentials" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ?
- conjectures 3y ago
  To test the hypothesis that China is worse than the US, it doesn't suffice to point out that 'US bad'.
- dralley 3y ago
  PRISM was not a backdoor into company networks, it was a system by which the companies involved submitted data that was requested through the normal legal channels. You can dispute how valid those legal channels are, but the point is this is widely misunderstood. Comparing it against the government having "god credentials" to the entire backend is disingenuous.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    There are some logical weaknesses there. Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels. The government knows about this and isn't about to prosecute anyone. The US government is spying on literally everyone. You can't name anyone who has a web presence and isn't caught in the dragnet.
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      The CCP is the Chinese government. They are one and the same. I don't think you seem to understand much at all about the sophistication of Chinese electronic surveillance.
    - ngc248 3y ago
      >>> Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels. CCP is the Chinese government. They are the law. when you say normal legal channels, it is not the same "normal" as in democratic countries.
  - woooooo 3y ago
    No legal channels necessary for non-US citizens. The government just asks and the companies just comply, because why not.
mint2 3y ago
Don’t forget that the people who’ve convinced themselves the US government is bad so they look at China doing something far worse or far more extreme and try to argue it’s the same - it’s because of predictable cognitive biases that more self awareness would easily alleviate.
lumb63 3y ago
Really, the primary difference is that the US has covert god credentials, as where China has overt god credentials. “Functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach” don’t apply against agencies with qualified immunity. That applies to most every three-letter agency here in the US.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hungryforcodes 3y ago
  Exactly. In the US they have a secret court where the government can get a secret warrant and issue it to a company demanding basically anything. The whole concept of a "warrent canary" came from this. How is this any different than a "god mode"? I'm not defending China -- but let's face facts....
danpalmer 3y ago
If anyone wants to get more of a feel for this, listen to the Huawei episode of the Acquired podcast. They get a bit more into the weeds on the practical differences between companies in the US/Europe and in China, and what it means for how they're run, how they compete, etc.
CrackerNews 3y ago
The difference is more like the US is held by corporate business interests while China is under firm control by the Party. They both however end up having opaque government apparatuses for surveillance and control (with differing characteristics of course).
endisneigh 3y ago
> People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. So to your own point - Why should we believe what you say about China? Are you even Chinese? Maybe you’re a Chinese expert? Given how few Americans properly understand how the American government functions I’m skeptical Americans understand the Chinese government and its nuance.
- a_subsystem 3y ago
  It seems logical to me that we should believe the Chinese expats over others, since they are the ones who had first hand knowledge. Though it seems they don't necessarily thoroughly understand the exact details of the functioning or policies of the Chinese government, they do understand the effects of the decisions made and actions taken by the government. When the 'nuances' repeatedly involve torture and horrific authoritarianism atrocities we would do well to more than raise an eyebrow. There are many such accounts by numerous expats.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    The poster did not indicate they are a Chinese expat, or have any particular knowledge on China for that matter.
    - a_subsystem 3y ago
      I'm not claiming we should believe the poster, but the poster is relaying information expressed by numerous expats.
      - endisneigh 3y ago
        The entire post is framing skepticism about people who think they know China… yet we should believe they know China, why, exactly?
- azinman2 3y ago
  This is well supported and well documented in endless ways.
smugma 3y ago
I’ve never heard anyone say they think the US and China have similar business environments.
LatteLazy 3y ago
>people think that China's business-political environment is a carbon copy of the US. Wait, who thinks that?!
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  Looks like lots of folks replying to they parent comment believe it
NickC25 3y ago
>People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach, that China functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach. Which is completely not the case. China is essentially a dictatorship. With one leader of one party that dominates everything, kangaroo courts and disappearing family, the works. Having worked with a Chinese University and had a Chinese business as a client, I can attest that this is indeed the case. It's not essentially a dictatorship, it IS a dictatorship. Except it's not by one person, it's by a political party that has ingrained itself at every level of one's life in that country. In the US, there is the government, there are private companies who don't interact with the government at all, there are public companies who don't directly work with the state but still have influence on the state (think large scale food providers or airlines or car makers), and there are public companies that sometimes can blur the separation line due to how ingrained they are with the state's infrastructure (for example, Lockheed-Martin or Microsoft). Sometimes any of these different types of entities might be asked to do the state's bidding, but they can refuse (in some cases) or negotiate, or get things in return (tax breaks, etc). In China, there is The Party. That's it. Everything is intentionally an arm of the state, directly or indirectly. The Party controls everything and every action any organization of any meaningful size whatsoever is directly done to aid The Party's goals. The Party has a representative at the highest level of every major company in China, and said representative isn't just there to be in meetings, they are there to control the company to make sure said company is doing what The Party wants them to do. Keep in mind that China's goals != The Party's goals....despite what The Party wants you (and its citizens) to think. Jack Ma fucked himself off the Ant Financial deal because The Party representatives at Ant were also the heads of the Chinese state bank. He talked shit to their faces, so The Party decided that he was too big, so they took him to task and made him "donate" a few billion to The Party. Imagine if Zuck told the government regulators to pound sand on national TV, and the government basically responded with "ok, well, you can donate 25% of your net worth to our political party, or the world will never hear from you again". That's China.
- paddw 3y ago
  You're right it's much worse in China, but if Zuck did in fact tell regulators to "pound sand" on national TV, I think it's pretty likely Meta would start to see some new interpretations of laws enforced against it... There is no country in the world where you can insult powerful people for free
Convolutional 3y ago
[flagged]
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  The opium wars didn’t involve the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
  - Convolutional 3y ago
    So who was fighting the Chinese during the Battle of the Barrier Forts?
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      So? Just because it overlapped in time doesn't mean the US played a role. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barrier_Forts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barrier_Forts > Sailing off the Chinese coast, USS Portsmouth and USS Levant had received news of the beginning of the Second Opium War. The two sloops-of-war were tasked with protecting American lives by landing a 150-man detachment of marines and sailors in Canton.
      - Convolutional 3y ago
        Aha, so during the Opium Wars, in this battle, the US invaded China, killing hundreds of Chinese soldiers and capturing four forts, but you have some definition in your mind where "the opium wars didn't involve the US". The Chinese have a different opinion. Also, "the US invaded the country to protect Americans there" is one of the oldest excuses for an invasion in the book. Just thinking of the Caribbean in the span of a few years, it was the stated reason for the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, and then Grenada in 1983 (the latter following days after the US invasion of Lebanon). Also this was just one battle in the Opium Wars. The US fought alongside the English in the Battle of Taku Forts, as well as other skirmishes.
segmondy 3y ago
I don't think they believe that, they are just gaslighting us. Anyone that thinks so, can go to China and call our the leadership. Or go to Middle East and call out their leadership and see what happens. They can easily do that in the US, you can get on social media, go on TV, write an article about why the president, the supreme court, senate are a bunch of idiots and keep living your life with your freedom. Try the equivalent else where if you believe it's the same. They don't and they won't because they know it's not.
- Convolutional 3y ago
  > Or go to Middle East and call out their leadership and see what happen The US and Europe have spent over a century backing despots in the Middle East and putting down or helping put down popular movements by force. The US doesn't even seem to mind if they dismember Washington Post reporters in their embassies. The US sends billions to Netanyahu every year to put down the Palestinian mass movement. Funny how the US props up these despots, then points to them as a point of supposedly flattering comparison.
  - w0de0 3y ago
    Hey man, if gas is expensive you vote for the other guy. Democracy can be evil like that.
    - skissane 3y ago
      Once the majority of Americans have electric cars, will US policy towards the Middle East change dramatically or stay largely the same?
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Cheap fossil fuels means cheap everything else. Flights, plastic products, clothes, shipping, etc. Even cheap electricity for the electric cars.
  - everdrive 3y ago
photochemsyn 3y ago
The business-political leadership in the United States shares the same goals as the Chinese leadership - maintaining tight control over their own power and wealth - but each uses quite different tactics to achieve that goal. Both are equally alarmed by political movements that seek to weaken their status, in particular. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China The U.S. government is pretty steadily pushing towards adopting many elements of the Chinese model, such as censorship of social media (although more often by the tactic of amplifying some themes and suppressing others, shadow-banning and so on). Does anyone really doubt that the current political leadership would jump at the chance to assign everyone a 'social credit score', for example, that would influence their ability to travel, get a job, etc., based on criteria that they themselves determined (e.g. support for US foreign policy decisions, domestic economic programs, positive attitudes about a two-party political system largely controlled by a small number of wealthy donors, etc.)? The U.S. is more in danger of becoming like China, than the other way around.

johngalt_ 3y ago

> That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach That worked great in the case of PRISM et al

AbrahamParangi 3y ago
Okay, look. Can we at least recognize that these are not the same? It’s like saying the US has done a bad thing and China has done a bad thing so the US and China have the same number, kind, and quality of oppressions of the public. This is not true!
jonfw 3y ago
An important difference is that the US government doesn't have a "god credential", they have to request the data (and there is a process to request the data involving courts, etc.) Meanwhile, govt officials in China appear to have unrestricted access
- CrackerNews 3y ago
  An opaque process of secret courts with secret decisions may be different legally, but in spirit it does not seem that significantly different to me in terms of preventing overreach and abuse.
  - black_puppydog 3y ago
    Especially if you happen to not be a US citizen, in which case there are no actual safeguards anyhow. IMHO this mirrors nicely the situation of a US citizen being concerned that the Chines govt won't protect their rights. This is how most of the world sees the US "checks" and "balances".
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      Even though I loathe spying, I must admit that the US (or any country for that matter) does not really have any natural or legal obligations to respect privacy of foreigners abroad. It is their own business to protect it themselves.
      - black_puppydog 3y ago
        Yeah, but then don't expect people to show much compassion when the same thing happens the other way around and the US immediately cries wolf.
        inglor_cz 3y ago
        Not an American, and I don't. Big countries throwing tantrums is somewhat ludicrous anyway.
  - salawat 3y ago
    The "secret" part there undoes pretty much your entire contention. That which doesn't see the light of day may as well not even exist.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    How many families are disappeared annually for the wrong political statements in the US?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- sfjailbird 3y ago
  > the US government doesn't have a "god credential" Why are you so quick to believe they don't, and that China does? > process to request the data involving courts Secret courts that rubberstamp agency requests without oversight.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  unless they slap “patriot act” on it. I’ve lived in Iran, I really don’t see much of a difference in how the US operates. The U.S. just does more paperwork to justify their shit.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  What's the practical difference between AT&T "god credentials" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ?
conjectures 3y ago
To test the hypothesis that China is worse than the US, it doesn't suffice to point out that 'US bad'.
dralley 3y ago
PRISM was not a backdoor into company networks, it was a system by which the companies involved submitted data that was requested through the normal legal channels. You can dispute how valid those legal channels are, but the point is this is widely misunderstood. Comparing it against the government having "god credentials" to the entire backend is disingenuous.
- roenxi 3y ago
  There are some logical weaknesses there. Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels. The government knows about this and isn't about to prosecute anyone. The US government is spying on literally everyone. You can't name anyone who has a web presence and isn't caught in the dragnet.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    The CCP is the Chinese government. They are one and the same. I don't think you seem to understand much at all about the sophistication of Chinese electronic surveillance.
  - ngc248 3y ago
    >>> Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels. CCP is the Chinese government. They are the law. when you say normal legal channels, it is not the same "normal" as in democratic countries.
- woooooo 3y ago
  No legal channels necessary for non-US citizens. The government just asks and the companies just comply, because why not.

mint2 3y ago

Don’t forget that the people who’ve convinced themselves the US government is bad so they look at China doing something far worse or far more extreme and try to argue it’s the same - it’s because of predictable cognitive biases that more self awareness would easily alleviate.

lumb63 3y ago

Really, the primary difference is that the US has covert god credentials, as where China has overt god credentials. “Functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach” don’t apply against agencies with qualified immunity. That applies to most every three-letter agency here in the US.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hungryforcodes 3y ago
Exactly. In the US they have a secret court where the government can get a secret warrant and issue it to a company demanding basically anything. The whole concept of a "warrent canary" came from this. How is this any different than a "god mode"? I'm not defending China -- but let's face facts....

danpalmer 3y ago

If anyone wants to get more of a feel for this, listen to the Huawei episode of the Acquired podcast. They get a bit more into the weeds on the practical differences between companies in the US/Europe and in China, and what it means for how they're run, how they compete, etc.

CrackerNews 3y ago

The difference is more like the US is held by corporate business interests while China is under firm control by the Party. They both however end up having opaque government apparatuses for surveillance and control (with differing characteristics of course).

endisneigh 3y ago

> People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. So to your own point - Why should we believe what you say about China? Are you even Chinese? Maybe you’re a Chinese expert? Given how few Americans properly understand how the American government functions I’m skeptical Americans understand the Chinese government and its nuance.

a_subsystem 3y ago
It seems logical to me that we should believe the Chinese expats over others, since they are the ones who had first hand knowledge. Though it seems they don't necessarily thoroughly understand the exact details of the functioning or policies of the Chinese government, they do understand the effects of the decisions made and actions taken by the government. When the 'nuances' repeatedly involve torture and horrific authoritarianism atrocities we would do well to more than raise an eyebrow. There are many such accounts by numerous expats.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  The poster did not indicate they are a Chinese expat, or have any particular knowledge on China for that matter.
  - a_subsystem 3y ago
    I'm not claiming we should believe the poster, but the poster is relaying information expressed by numerous expats.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      The entire post is framing skepticism about people who think they know China… yet we should believe they know China, why, exactly?
azinman2 3y ago
This is well supported and well documented in endless ways.

smugma 3y ago

I’ve never heard anyone say they think the US and China have similar business environments.

LatteLazy 3y ago

>people think that China's business-political environment is a carbon copy of the US. Wait, who thinks that?!

rockemsockem 3y ago
Looks like lots of folks replying to they parent comment believe it

NickC25 3y ago

>People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach, that China functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach. Which is completely not the case. China is essentially a dictatorship. With one leader of one party that dominates everything, kangaroo courts and disappearing family, the works. Having worked with a Chinese University and had a Chinese business as a client, I can attest that this is indeed the case. It's not essentially a dictatorship, it IS a dictatorship. Except it's not by one person, it's by a political party that has ingrained itself at every level of one's life in that country. In the US, there is the government, there are private companies who don't interact with the government at all, there are public companies who don't directly work with the state but still have influence on the state (think large scale food providers or airlines or car makers), and there are public companies that sometimes can blur the separation line due to how ingrained they are with the state's infrastructure (for example, Lockheed-Martin or Microsoft). Sometimes any of these different types of entities might be asked to do the state's bidding, but they can refuse (in some cases) or negotiate, or get things in return (tax breaks, etc). In China, there is The Party. That's it. Everything is intentionally an arm of the state, directly or indirectly. The Party controls everything and every action any organization of any meaningful size whatsoever is directly done to aid The Party's goals. The Party has a representative at the highest level of every major company in China, and said representative isn't just there to be in meetings, they are there to control the company to make sure said company is doing what The Party wants them to do. Keep in mind that China's goals != The Party's goals....despite what The Party wants you (and its citizens) to think. Jack Ma fucked himself off the Ant Financial deal because The Party representatives at Ant were also the heads of the Chinese state bank. He talked shit to their faces, so The Party decided that he was too big, so they took him to task and made him "donate" a few billion to The Party. Imagine if Zuck told the government regulators to pound sand on national TV, and the government basically responded with "ok, well, you can donate 25% of your net worth to our political party, or the world will never hear from you again". That's China.

paddw 3y ago
You're right it's much worse in China, but if Zuck did in fact tell regulators to "pound sand" on national TV, I think it's pretty likely Meta would start to see some new interpretations of laws enforced against it... There is no country in the world where you can insult powerful people for free

Convolutional 3y ago

[flagged]

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
The opium wars didn’t involve the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
- Convolutional 3y ago
  So who was fighting the Chinese during the Battle of the Barrier Forts?
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    So? Just because it overlapped in time doesn't mean the US played a role. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barrier_Forts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barrier_Forts > Sailing off the Chinese coast, USS Portsmouth and USS Levant had received news of the beginning of the Second Opium War. The two sloops-of-war were tasked with protecting American lives by landing a 150-man detachment of marines and sailors in Canton.
    - Convolutional 3y ago
      Aha, so during the Opium Wars, in this battle, the US invaded China, killing hundreds of Chinese soldiers and capturing four forts, but you have some definition in your mind where "the opium wars didn't involve the US". The Chinese have a different opinion. Also, "the US invaded the country to protect Americans there" is one of the oldest excuses for an invasion in the book. Just thinking of the Caribbean in the span of a few years, it was the stated reason for the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, and then Grenada in 1983 (the latter following days after the US invasion of Lebanon). Also this was just one battle in the Opium Wars. The US fought alongside the English in the Battle of Taku Forts, as well as other skirmishes.

segmondy 3y ago

I don't think they believe that, they are just gaslighting us. Anyone that thinks so, can go to China and call our the leadership. Or go to Middle East and call out their leadership and see what happens. They can easily do that in the US, you can get on social media, go on TV, write an article about why the president, the supreme court, senate are a bunch of idiots and keep living your life with your freedom. Try the equivalent else where if you believe it's the same. They don't and they won't because they know it's not.

Convolutional 3y ago
> Or go to Middle East and call out their leadership and see what happen The US and Europe have spent over a century backing despots in the Middle East and putting down or helping put down popular movements by force. The US doesn't even seem to mind if they dismember Washington Post reporters in their embassies. The US sends billions to Netanyahu every year to put down the Palestinian mass movement. Funny how the US props up these despots, then points to them as a point of supposedly flattering comparison.
- w0de0 3y ago
  Hey man, if gas is expensive you vote for the other guy. Democracy can be evil like that.
  - skissane 3y ago
    Once the majority of Americans have electric cars, will US policy towards the Middle East change dramatically or stay largely the same?
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Cheap fossil fuels means cheap everything else. Flights, plastic products, clothes, shipping, etc. Even cheap electricity for the electric cars.
- everdrive 3y ago

photochemsyn 3y ago

The business-political leadership in the United States shares the same goals as the Chinese leadership - maintaining tight control over their own power and wealth - but each uses quite different tactics to achieve that goal. Both are equally alarmed by political movements that seek to weaken their status, in particular. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China The U.S. government is pretty steadily pushing towards adopting many elements of the Chinese model, such as censorship of social media (although more often by the tactic of amplifying some themes and suppressing others, shadow-banning and so on). Does anyone really doubt that the current political leadership would jump at the chance to assign everyone a 'social credit score', for example, that would influence their ability to travel, get a job, etc., based on criteria that they themselves determined (e.g. support for US foreign policy decisions, domestic economic programs, positive attitudes about a two-party political system largely controlled by a small number of wealthy donors, etc.)? The U.S. is more in danger of becoming like China, than the other way around.