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Go to China and violate a serious law. Do you think they will ignore it? Or someone from Mainland China who comes to the US who violates a serious law here. Wil

Go to China and violate a serious law. Do you think they will ignore it? Or someone from Mainland China who comes to the US who violates a serious law here. Will they be arrested and possibly convicted? Every country has laws that others find terrible. Every multinational business has to deal with laws in multiple countries that may be incompatible with others. Take, for example, all the issues between the US and the EU regarding privacy and control of personal information. It had to be negotiated for each side to agree. China may not be interested in negotiation, but that is their business. If you want to do business in such a country, you must find a way to deal with it. If you abandon every country where you might have issues, you have a US-only business (and you might not like some of our laws either). Imagine a foreign business wanting slavery instead of employees in the US; they might be fine with it, but we aren't. Should they do it anyway?

mschuster91 2y ago
> Every multinational business has to deal with laws in multiple countries that may be incompatible with others. Indeed, but why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity? It's one thing to operate in an economic/political sphere that shares a reasonable set of common political and economic values, and deal with the relatively tiny differences (tax codes, data protection laws, content moderation, advertising restrictions, ...). Hell even with larger differences (EU GDPR vs US laissez-faire), US megacorps can still freely operate in Europe. In contrast, it's a completely different thing to operate in China - either you are outright banned (Meta, Twitter, Google, ...) or you have to have a corporate entity where the foreign party must be below 50% ownership, and in some cases you have to install a parallel governance structure of the CCP [1]. [1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees/ https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity? Money. China knows that the only thing the west (and arguably humanity) ultimately cares about is wealth, and so China's playing that game far better than anyone else. We are literally funding our own demise, hoisting our own petards, hitching our own nooses. I find the coming Pax Sino era terrifying and how well they play the world like a flute astonishing.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    At least a bunch of large companies have begun to wake up and to reduce Chinese dependency in their supply chains. Some because Chinese labor prices have risen to the point where the savings make it worth the effort, some because they fear a repeat of what went down during Covid, and some because they don't want to risk being stuck in China should the Taiwan situation explode. And then there are others like BASF or Volkswagen, who already showed bad decisionmaking in Russia, who now double down on China. Complete and utter madness - it's time for politics to step in here.
moistness 2y ago
The problem is that “serious laws” in China are unacceptable in the west. You can be in serious trouble for talking about Winnie the Pooh, think about that. That’s just one example.
- vbezhenar 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tweets-01232020164342.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tweets-01232020164342... > China Jails Student For Tweets Sent in US Showing President as Winnie The Pooh
    - vbezhenar 2y ago
      So, even if that's true, he was jailed for posting dozens of "comments and inappropriate images insulting to the leader of this country". Not for posting pictures of winnie the pooh.
      - moistness 2y ago
        That’s still unacceptable by western standards. In the US, which is not as free as it declares, there’s a whole category of TV shows insulting the president. Zero repercussions.
        throw28372 2y ago
        [flagged]
        vbezhenar 2y ago
        That I do not understand. Insulting a president is indirectly insulting half of the country which chosen him. That's OK. At the same time, insulting black people or homosexuals is not OK, despite them being a small minority of the entire population. Also I think that if we will focus on this particular thing: whether there are legal repercussion for insulting a country leader, that might reveal plenty of countries where it's not allowed. So China might be not an outlier. Here's some wikipedia that I've found about this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9 and while most western countries allow to insult their leader, that's definitely not all of them.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Every multinational business has to deal with laws in multiple countries that may be incompatible with others. Indeed, but why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity? It's one thing to operate in an economic/political sphere that shares a reasonable set of common political and economic values, and deal with the relatively tiny differences (tax codes, data protection laws, content moderation, advertising restrictions, ...). Hell even with larger differences (EU GDPR vs US laissez-faire), US megacorps can still freely operate in Europe. In contrast, it's a completely different thing to operate in China - either you are outright banned (Meta, Twitter, Google, ...) or you have to have a corporate entity where the foreign party must be below 50% ownership, and in some cases you have to install a parallel governance structure of the CCP [1]. [1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees/ https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...

Dalewyn 2y ago
>why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity? Money. China knows that the only thing the west (and arguably humanity) ultimately cares about is wealth, and so China's playing that game far better than anyone else. We are literally funding our own demise, hoisting our own petards, hitching our own nooses. I find the coming Pax Sino era terrifying and how well they play the world like a flute astonishing.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  At least a bunch of large companies have begun to wake up and to reduce Chinese dependency in their supply chains. Some because Chinese labor prices have risen to the point where the savings make it worth the effort, some because they fear a repeat of what went down during Covid, and some because they don't want to risk being stuck in China should the Taiwan situation explode. And then there are others like BASF or Volkswagen, who already showed bad decisionmaking in Russia, who now double down on China. Complete and utter madness - it's time for politics to step in here.

moistness 2y ago

The problem is that “serious laws” in China are unacceptable in the west. You can be in serious trouble for talking about Winnie the Pooh, think about that. That’s just one example.

vbezhenar 2y ago
[flagged]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tweets-01232020164342.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tweets-01232020164342... > China Jails Student For Tweets Sent in US Showing President as Winnie The Pooh
  - vbezhenar 2y ago
    So, even if that's true, he was jailed for posting dozens of "comments and inappropriate images insulting to the leader of this country". Not for posting pictures of winnie the pooh.
    - moistness 2y ago
      That’s still unacceptable by western standards. In the US, which is not as free as it declares, there’s a whole category of TV shows insulting the president. Zero repercussions.
      - throw28372 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - vbezhenar 2y ago
        That I do not understand. Insulting a president is indirectly insulting half of the country which chosen him. That's OK. At the same time, insulting black people or homosexuals is not OK, despite them being a small minority of the entire population. Also I think that if we will focus on this particular thing: whether there are legal repercussion for insulting a country leader, that might reveal plenty of countries where it's not allowed. So China might be not an outlier. Here's some wikipedia that I've found about this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9 and while most western countries allow to insult their leader, that's definitely not all of them.