6 ms·

China is increasingly a home to major brands

71 points by anigbrowl 1y ago

WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
Author bought a Huawei watch and found it to be an excellent replacement for his Apple watch. That said, most the article concerns the below bit and I tend to agree with it. The China challenge is much bigger than alarmists understand. It’s not just about espionage or market share. It’s about the United States and the West more broadly losing preeminence and Chinese firms becoming reliable parts of life. From a security standpoint: When my data lands in the hands of Chinese interests and USA entities, only the latter is leveraging it against me. In the stack of data risks to be mitigated, China is at the bottom and everyone tied to the US is at the top.
- RandomBacon 1y ago
  > From a security standpoint: When my data lands in the hands of Chinese interests and USA entities, only the latter is leveraging it against me. In the stack of data risks to be mitigated, China is at the bottom and everyone tied to the US is at the top. I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage, etc; otherwise your information or information that you have about other people could be used against you, people you know, your company, your government, your interests, etc. Foreign intelligence doesn't always go after people in "important" jobs, they sometimes go after janitors or other people who have access to either facilities or people.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - itsanaccount 1y ago
    this is so silly. if chinese intelligence tries to what, blackmail me? Meanwhile silicon valley companies like Palantir are actively feeding information to cops in my county who don't like me because I walk in the pride parade. whos more dangerous to me right now.
    - UltraSane 1y ago
      " Palantir are actively feeding information to cops in my county who don't like me because I walk in the pride parade." Can you prove this?
      - metalman 1y ago
        https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/07/ice-using-repurposed-border-facial-recognition-tech-to-id-protesters-activists-and-migrants-on-us-streets/ https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/07/ice-using-repurposed-bor... close enough?
        aikinai 1y ago
        I’m not the parent but I was going to read that article to see contained evidence of the above. I couldn’t make it past the hyperbolic first paragraph though. I’m not familiar with TechDirt, but is it intending to be tech news or a political activism site?
      - const_cast 1y ago
        The Palantir giving information to cops in the US? Yes, that's their business model, or part of it. This being used to persecute minorities? IMO, nobody needs to prove this, we can assume it will happen. Why? Because world governments will always push the envelope to the furthest amount legally. Any tool that can be used for evil, will be used for evil. If you have a database of faces it's only a matter of time before that is used for some sort of profiling. Don't believe me? Look no further than War. Any invention, in all of human history, that can be used for war, has been used for war. We will develop new and innovative ways to use it. Vehicles, planes, trucks, trains, telephony, electricity, the printing press, the internet, anything and everything.
    - RandomBacon 1y ago
      > this is so silly Tell that to my former coworker in the U.S. government, that this happened to. I was the person who found out and reported it, and action was taken.
  - surgical_fire 1y ago
    > I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage, Why are we pretending that the US don't do those things?
    - repeekad 1y ago
      I’ve never seen evidence that US agents attempted to infiltrate Chinese companies to steal their secrets, meanwhile just one recent example is the FBI catching Chinese espionage on camera trying to steal glass trade secrets from Corning, also see the Google employee who tried to steal AI secrets, a while ago it was the Coca-Cola can lining formula
      - deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
        us industrialization back in the early days of the country was largely based on illegal IP theft from british factories. thats just how it is when you're behind and trying to catch up
      - bb88 1y ago
        One way to look at the world is if there's no punishment, there was never any crime. It's pretty clear the US has been doing economic spying for at least more than 3 decades [0]. One famous incident I'm aware of was the CIA spying on Thomson-CSF and delivering the intelligence to Raytheon who were competitors in a contract bid. [1] The thing about defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon is that if they do receive information from the CIA or NSA, they're not gonna talk about it for fear of losing the existing contracts they have, or losing bids in the future. I would agree that spying on China is harder than say spying on France. But I wouldn't say it's impossible. The US just has to work 10 times as hard. I would also say that because of the regime, any Chinese turncoats would be have much less loose lips. [0] https://archive.ph/YbIMy https://archive.ph/YbIMy [1] https://archive.ph/bGMZn https://archive.ph/bGMZn
      - maxglute 1y ago
        Snowden leaks -> NSA operation shotgiant infiltrated Huawei network for years. PRC ministers around then been quoted saying US had thoroughly infiltrated PRC networks. I'm pretty sure it was admitted as much in PLA Science of Military Strategy in 2010s. PRC just doesn't like publicizing how compromised they were until recently, now cybersecurity firms like QH360 regularly report on US cyber infiltration efforts. James Mulvenon, leading expert on PRC cyber who was one of the loudest sirens 10 years ago also basically said there was mutual offensive attacks - something like "We hack them, they hack us". The distinction Americans and Mulvenon like to make back then was PRC civil military fusion = PRC can economically weaponize hacking, i.e. PRC can pass hacked blueprints to companies XYZ to develop vs US can't because NSA can't pick winners. Which is fair (unless it comes to stuff like Airbus vs Boeing or other strategic industries). But that's just sour grapes for admitting that PRC has a better system for industrial espionage. Anecdotal, in PRC in the mid 90s, had dinner where diasphora Chinese at western telco was complaining about how PRC started hacking their networks, someone else at dinner worked for domestic telco (trying to poach), and used to technician in PLA sigint unit, complained about how US penetrated most of Chinese networks and lamenting how they were w decades behind in cyber.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    > you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to [...] As I read it, yes, parent does not have ties to that category of companies. TBH I don't too. In contrast we are meddled enough by the US that actively following US national news makes sense from a work perspective.
  - lmm 1y ago
    > I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage, etc; It's certainly conceivable that China-based entities might want that. It's almost certain that US- and Israel-based entities do. Hence their relative positions in the stack of risks.
  - bb88 1y ago
    The problem with security is that it's all stick based, not carrots. Nobody gets a raise for following good security practices -- just firing, fines, and jail time. Meanwhile "mass paranoia" masquerades as "security best practices". The janitor example you bring up is a great example. A decade ago Frontline had a report on female janitorial staff being raped [0]. Instead of providing job security, wage security, and physical security to allow workers to do their job without fear, we threaten them to "be secure or else." If I were China, I know straight where to go! [0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/rape-on-the-night-shift/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/rape-on-the-night...
- UltraSane 1y ago
  " the latter is leveraging it against me. " Can you elaborate on how you think that the US entities are using your data against you? And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not? I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently.
  - _lvbh 1y ago
    > I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently Well, I don't. > And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not? It's not that they aren't, but they can't really. What are they gonna do if I make disparaging statements against their dictator? Deny me entry to their country? Meanwhile America is screening people's social media with immediate effect on careers and livelihood. I don't proclaim to know whether the US will use my data against me but they certainly would have more power to do so against their citizens. Who you trust really depends on where you are and which countries exert influence in your region. I personally would rather nobody have my data and self host everything.
  - fwip 1y ago
    > I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently. This is precisely the point - it matters who the powerful people in your region are. For an American, the Chinese government has little ability and not much interest in persecuting people on the other side of the globe. The US government has lots of ability and moderate interest.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    > how you think that the US entities are using your data against you? And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not? Kinda pointing the obvious but...we're straight discussing this on a US forum managed by a US company. The major social media outlets used outside of China are US based. I'm writing this on a US designed device and OS. If you live outside of the US and China, you're probably giving up tons of data to US entities for sheer convenience while China would need to go hack it. Getting a Chinese OS smartphone would change that a bit, but still not _that_ much IMHO.
- gerdesj 1y ago
  You are not from these parts are you?
pimlottc 1y ago
@dang suggest changing the submission to use the article's less clickbaity subtitle: "My journey to a Huawei watch"
- zem 1y ago
  if you read that entire article and thought that the salient point was that the author bought a huawei watch, you quite frankly wasted a few minutes of your life! the article was a great reflection on china's increasing share of the global consumer market, and increasing overall brand value; the huawei watch was just a jumping-off point.
  - lordfrito 1y ago
    From a product standpoint, we're beginning to look at lot more like Europe did to us in the last few decades. The EU couldn't manufacture a cheap consumer item no matter how hard it tried and no matter how much the EU subsidized things. Just too much government/societal bloat. Seems to be the direction we're heading unless we can recapture the "get it done" spirit of old. I don't think we can do that while we're continually focusing on making sure everything is always fair to everyone all the time.
  - pimlottc 1y ago
    I agree, but the vague title hardly even hints at that. At least the subtitle actually mentions Huawei…
- tomhow 1y ago
  Thanks! I chose a title based on a representative phrase from the article, which is what we do if the article's own title/subtitle are too baity or misleading.
hollerith 1y ago
>(The entry-level Chery retails in Qatar for about $15,000 USD—try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000.) The competition for a $15,000 new car is the US is used cars, which are available in great abundance for under $15,000.
- mystified5016 1y ago
  Buying a used car instead of new is essentially theft from the manufacturers. Won't someone think of these poor helpless mega-corporations?!
  - bluGill 1y ago
    No it isn't. If everyone bought new they would have to sell cars for much less money and in turn make less. Most new car buyers can only afford it because of the trade in value, and this falls down the line.
- snovymgodym 1y ago
  All things being equal I'd rather have a new car for $15000 than a used one.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    But all is not equal - the used car will have a lot more features.
    - jazzyjackson 1y ago
      and a lot more shit to break. nice thing about a cheap car is it has manual seat adjustment, an AC and a radio. My friend just bought a 20 year old volvo and the locking gas cap malfunctioned while we were being shown the vehicle and testing all the buttons out. The dealer just took a screwdriver and popped the lid with a screwdriver - now the gas cap doesn't latch at all.
    - Glyptodon 1y ago
breve 1y ago
> But a new Apple Watch would cost several hundred dollars, and I can’t justify that. With the discounts, a Huawei watch cost well under two hundred US dollars. And, frankly, it looks better. So I betrayed America. Reader, I bought one. A more direct way to think about this is that you betrayed yourself by buying things you don't need, regardless of if it came from Apple or Huawei. You could have bought a Casio digital watch that's much cheaper, more robust, more eco friendly, and runs for years on the same battery with no recharging. > But since the Chinese government already has my OPM file and probably a lot more besides (I worked in the House during Salt Typhoon!), it’s not like I was risking a lot. Apathy is never a good solution.
- II2II 1y ago
  I had a watch that was sitting in the closet for a few years (cheap watch, broken strap). It was not only keeping time after several years of neglect, but the time was reasonably accurate. It did not have any high-tech features like time synchronization. It did not even have the benefit of the time being adjusted manually twice a year. But that's not really the point. For most people a smart watch has as much to do with time keeping as a smartphone has to do with telephony. The devices earned their name due to the form factor rather than the intended use.
alexjplant 1y ago
> Chery specializes in making affordable, mass-market cars that look nice. (The entry-level Chery retails in Qatar for about $15,000 USD—try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000.) This is because nobody (*EDIT: by which I of course mean relatively few) would buy it. People signal wealth, status, and even personal values by way of their vehicle in the US. Dealership financing departments ask customers how much they can afford per month in payment and work backwards from there to sell them the vehicle that they want at any cost. The average new vehicle price is around $50,000 because people are actively choosing to buy more expensive cars and trucks [1], not because there aren't cheaper ones around, and 96-month car loans are now a thing because of it. [1] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-flirting-with-record/\ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-flirting-...*
- RandomBacon 1y ago
  > try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000.) > This is because nobody would buy it. People signal wealth, status, and even personal values by way of their vehicle in the US. Speak for yourself. There are a ton of people who probably make a lot less money than you or I, who would purchase it, where transportation is more important than status. "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"
  - alexjplant 1y ago
    I don't even own a car but probably would buy one that cheap. The problem is that we're on Hacker News and aren't representative of the general car buying populace. Many people spend more than 50% of their gross salary on cars because it makes them happy. Manufacturers are giving the public what they want and what people want is bigger cars with more amenities, hence the change in price [1]. Also, as somebody else pointed out, if you value transportation more than signaling then you buy used. > "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?" I didn't buy a new car until I was well into my 20s and have driven multiple vehicles that were worth no more than their scrap value. That line would probably work better on somebody else, that is, somebody that hasn't apprehensively poured K-Seal into their leaking radiator when they had $600 in their checking account. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-their-cars-1859929 https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-thei...
budududuroiu 1y ago
Unrelated to article per se, but I’ve noticed a distinctive shift as to who tourism-dependent countries cater to. Thailand, Malaysia, etc. all shifted their tourism to cater to the Chinese tourist market, as Westerners don’t spend as big when travelling. Both places have big signs in mandarin in the airport going 友誼長存, meaning long lasting friendship (between our countries). Personally, I’ve never seen this level of glazing towards any Western country before. Similar thing with luxury brands. While Louis Vuitton is closing stores in SF, they’ve custom built a huge boat-shaped one in Shanghai.
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  This isn't a new trend. When it comes to luxury, some of this trend is even on the way out. If you at Estee Lauder's earnings calls, they are having serious issues because of the drop spending in duty free zones by Chinese. Overall you're right of course, just thought I'd add an anecdote that I happen to recall.
- hollerith 1y ago
  Chinese citizens are prohibited from investing abroad and keeping money abroad. It might be that the signs you describe are more about getting around that prohibition than about hedonism.
  - budududuroiu 1y ago
    I’m sure it’s some grey area. DBS Singapore saw some $6bn inflows from China in the first half of 2023. Regardless, I did see gold jewellery sold by weight in China too, which is much more indicative of use as an asset than a beauty piece
  - deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
    yeah i dont think this is true. where did you hear this?
- userbinator 1y ago
  While Louis Vuitton is closing stores in SF There are other reasons besides China causing them to do that.
markus_zhang 1y ago
If we want to catch up, maybe we really need to work a lot harder, and to smooth the shocking pain, some redistribution of wealth to the working class is needed.
userbinator 1y ago
There’s a smaller gap in smartphone makers, where Apple and Samsung dominate globally and in the USA, but once you look at the next manufacturers after the leaders you notice that names like Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, and Huawei together constitute a sizable global share. And, yes, those are all Chinese brands. There were a lot more Chinese Android "brands" (most of them probably OEM'd, but I digress) around 10-15 years ago. Ainol, Blackview, Cubot, Doogee, Elephone, Gionee, Goophone, iOcean, Jiayu, KingZone, Leagoo, Meizu, Nckia (yes, seriously), NO.1, Oukitel, TCL, THL, Ulephone, Umidigi, UniHertz, Vivo, Zopo... how many of those still exist today? It's rather interesting that the ones which still do have gone the same user-hostile route as Apple and Samsung. The era of Shanzhai has unfortunately mostly passed.
- dinfinity 1y ago
  Markets tend to consolidate into monopolies, or oligopolies with anti-trust laws in place.
- inemesitaffia 1y ago
  Gionee and Vivo still exist. And Transsion which neither of you mentioned is number one by sales.
blibble 1y ago
turns out if you shit on your allies, they'll start doing business with your systemic rival instead and once their consumers start buying their better products, produced at lower cost, with less political baggage, you aint getting that market share back and all it took was some facebook ads to get the US to surrender the next century to the Chinese
- Gigachad 1y ago
  It’s crazy that we got to witness the turning point which will have defined the rest of our lives.
supportengineer 1y ago
Over 10 years ago we were buying a lot of camping equipment. We had purchased some items from Amazon which looked good visually and they were from one of these mashing-on-the-keyboard brands like "kjhghjdfh". When we received the items they were of AMAZING quality. I wanted to purchase more items from this brand but of course, they were gone. Strong brands are good for the consumer.
- grg0 1y ago
  "kjhghjdfh" is such a memorable name.
  - ahartmetz 1y ago
    My Nwouiiay car battery charger / regenerator is pretty good, but how careless can you be about choosing a name?
    - ndiddy 1y ago
      The only reason why all those gibberish brands exist is that Amazon gives better placement and seller tools to sellers who have a registered trademark. Since the sellers don't care about what the trademark is, they just want to sell on Amazon, making up some nonsense by smashing letters or phonemes together lets them speed up the registration since they won't have to deal with people saying it's too similar to their trademarks. If Amazon didn't have that policy, your Nwouiiay car battery charger simply wouldn't have any brand name printed on it.
      - ahartmetz 1y ago
        Ah, right. I wonder if that does anything for Amazon or if it just seemed like a good idea and the time and now nobody there cares enough to revise the policy.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  A lot of Chinese manufacturers do not really have a fat profit margin (most goes to the distribution), so they tend to just get by and close shop when time is bad. Many of the smaller manufacturers simply do not have the mind to build a brand. The bigger ones are doing that though.
rsanek 1y ago
>try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000 you can get a Nissan versa for $17k https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html
- delichon 1y ago
  Lowest price on that site is $18,330 MSRP plus $1,140 shipping and handling, not including tax and title.
- const_cast 1y ago
  You can punch a hole in the bottom of a broken down car and Flintstone it for free. Probably more reliable than a Nissan versa.
poisonborz 1y ago
Disregarding issues with politics or privacy, I find the rise of Chinese manufacturing quality astonishing. I ordered all kinds of consumer articles in the last 20 years and the improvements have been big and steady. In recent years they also leapfrogged on the service front, like how AliExpress offers Amazon-like return policy despite having fraction of the infra and the wares under tax sanctions. I see not only more chinese cars, but construction and medical equipment. Price/performance is always excelling. One would think this would trigger some sort of revival and competing from US/EU industries, but not much had happened yet besides lobbying for sanctions.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  I’m not sure why you’re surprised. Basically since large-scale industrial manufacture started, country industrialises, quality is initially poor, a few decades later it's international standard. 150 years ago the British were marvelling at this happening with Germany and the US, but you'd think at this point people would be used to it.
hcnova10 1y ago
China has been making good for the rest of the world for decades. I thoughts it’s common sense that it’s only a matter of time before they replace the Apple logo on the phones they made with their own logo.

71 points by anigbrowl 1y ago

Author bought a Huawei watch and found it to be an excellent replacement for his Apple watch. That said, most the article concerns the below bit and I tend to agree with it. The China challenge is much bigger than alarmists understand. It’s not just about espionage or market share. It’s about the United States and the West more broadly losing preeminence and Chinese firms becoming reliable parts of life. From a security standpoint: When my data lands in the hands of Chinese interests and USA entities, only the latter is leveraging it against me. In the stack of data risks to be mitigated, China is at the bottom and everyone tied to the US is at the top.

RandomBacon 1y ago
> From a security standpoint: When my data lands in the hands of Chinese interests and USA entities, only the latter is leveraging it against me. In the stack of data risks to be mitigated, China is at the bottom and everyone tied to the US is at the top. I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage, etc; otherwise your information or information that you have about other people could be used against you, people you know, your company, your government, your interests, etc. Foreign intelligence doesn't always go after people in "important" jobs, they sometimes go after janitors or other people who have access to either facilities or people.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- itsanaccount 1y ago
  this is so silly. if chinese intelligence tries to what, blackmail me? Meanwhile silicon valley companies like Palantir are actively feeding information to cops in my county who don't like me because I walk in the pride parade. whos more dangerous to me right now.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    " Palantir are actively feeding information to cops in my county who don't like me because I walk in the pride parade." Can you prove this?
    - metalman 1y ago
      https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/07/ice-using-repurposed-border-facial-recognition-tech-to-id-protesters-activists-and-migrants-on-us-streets/ https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/07/ice-using-repurposed-bor... close enough?
      - aikinai 1y ago
        I’m not the parent but I was going to read that article to see contained evidence of the above. I couldn’t make it past the hyperbolic first paragraph though. I’m not familiar with TechDirt, but is it intending to be tech news or a political activism site?
    - const_cast 1y ago
      The Palantir giving information to cops in the US? Yes, that's their business model, or part of it. This being used to persecute minorities? IMO, nobody needs to prove this, we can assume it will happen. Why? Because world governments will always push the envelope to the furthest amount legally. Any tool that can be used for evil, will be used for evil. If you have a database of faces it's only a matter of time before that is used for some sort of profiling. Don't believe me? Look no further than War. Any invention, in all of human history, that can be used for war, has been used for war. We will develop new and innovative ways to use it. Vehicles, planes, trucks, trains, telephony, electricity, the printing press, the internet, anything and everything.
  - RandomBacon 1y ago
    > this is so silly Tell that to my former coworker in the U.S. government, that this happened to. I was the person who found out and reported it, and action was taken.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  > I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage, Why are we pretending that the US don't do those things?
  - repeekad 1y ago
    I’ve never seen evidence that US agents attempted to infiltrate Chinese companies to steal their secrets, meanwhile just one recent example is the FBI catching Chinese espionage on camera trying to steal glass trade secrets from Corning, also see the Google employee who tried to steal AI secrets, a while ago it was the Coca-Cola can lining formula
    - deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
      us industrialization back in the early days of the country was largely based on illegal IP theft from british factories. thats just how it is when you're behind and trying to catch up
    - bb88 1y ago
      One way to look at the world is if there's no punishment, there was never any crime. It's pretty clear the US has been doing economic spying for at least more than 3 decades [0]. One famous incident I'm aware of was the CIA spying on Thomson-CSF and delivering the intelligence to Raytheon who were competitors in a contract bid. [1] The thing about defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon is that if they do receive information from the CIA or NSA, they're not gonna talk about it for fear of losing the existing contracts they have, or losing bids in the future. I would agree that spying on China is harder than say spying on France. But I wouldn't say it's impossible. The US just has to work 10 times as hard. I would also say that because of the regime, any Chinese turncoats would be have much less loose lips. [0] https://archive.ph/YbIMy https://archive.ph/YbIMy [1] https://archive.ph/bGMZn https://archive.ph/bGMZn
    - maxglute 1y ago
      Snowden leaks -> NSA operation shotgiant infiltrated Huawei network for years. PRC ministers around then been quoted saying US had thoroughly infiltrated PRC networks. I'm pretty sure it was admitted as much in PLA Science of Military Strategy in 2010s. PRC just doesn't like publicizing how compromised they were until recently, now cybersecurity firms like QH360 regularly report on US cyber infiltration efforts. James Mulvenon, leading expert on PRC cyber who was one of the loudest sirens 10 years ago also basically said there was mutual offensive attacks - something like "We hack them, they hack us". The distinction Americans and Mulvenon like to make back then was PRC civil military fusion = PRC can economically weaponize hacking, i.e. PRC can pass hacked blueprints to companies XYZ to develop vs US can't because NSA can't pick winners. Which is fair (unless it comes to stuff like Airbus vs Boeing or other strategic industries). But that's just sour grapes for admitting that PRC has a better system for industrial espionage. Anecdotal, in PRC in the mid 90s, had dinner where diasphora Chinese at western telco was complaining about how PRC started hacking their networks, someone else at dinner worked for domestic telco (trying to poach), and used to technician in PLA sigint unit, complained about how US penetrated most of Chinese networks and lamenting how they were w decades behind in cyber.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  > you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to [...] As I read it, yes, parent does not have ties to that category of companies. TBH I don't too. In contrast we are meddled enough by the US that actively following US national news makes sense from a work perspective.
- lmm 1y ago
  > I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage, etc; It's certainly conceivable that China-based entities might want that. It's almost certain that US- and Israel-based entities do. Hence their relative positions in the stack of risks.
- bb88 1y ago
  The problem with security is that it's all stick based, not carrots. Nobody gets a raise for following good security practices -- just firing, fines, and jail time. Meanwhile "mass paranoia" masquerades as "security best practices". The janitor example you bring up is a great example. A decade ago Frontline had a report on female janitorial staff being raped [0]. Instead of providing job security, wage security, and physical security to allow workers to do their job without fear, we threaten them to "be secure or else." If I were China, I know straight where to go! [0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/rape-on-the-night-shift/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/rape-on-the-night...
UltraSane 1y ago
" the latter is leveraging it against me. " Can you elaborate on how you think that the US entities are using your data against you? And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not? I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently.
- _lvbh 1y ago
  > I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently Well, I don't. > And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not? It's not that they aren't, but they can't really. What are they gonna do if I make disparaging statements against their dictator? Deny me entry to their country? Meanwhile America is screening people's social media with immediate effect on careers and livelihood. I don't proclaim to know whether the US will use my data against me but they certainly would have more power to do so against their citizens. Who you trust really depends on where you are and which countries exert influence in your region. I personally would rather nobody have my data and self host everything.
- fwip 1y ago
  > I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently. This is precisely the point - it matters who the powerful people in your region are. For an American, the Chinese government has little ability and not much interest in persecuting people on the other side of the globe. The US government has lots of ability and moderate interest.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  > how you think that the US entities are using your data against you? And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not? Kinda pointing the obvious but...we're straight discussing this on a US forum managed by a US company. The major social media outlets used outside of China are US based. I'm writing this on a US designed device and OS. If you live outside of the US and China, you're probably giving up tons of data to US entities for sheer convenience while China would need to go hack it. Getting a Chinese OS smartphone would change that a bit, but still not _that_ much IMHO.
gerdesj 1y ago
You are not from these parts are you?

pimlottc 1y ago

@dang suggest changing the submission to use the article's less clickbaity subtitle: "My journey to a Huawei watch"

zem 1y ago
if you read that entire article and thought that the salient point was that the author bought a huawei watch, you quite frankly wasted a few minutes of your life! the article was a great reflection on china's increasing share of the global consumer market, and increasing overall brand value; the huawei watch was just a jumping-off point.
- lordfrito 1y ago
  From a product standpoint, we're beginning to look at lot more like Europe did to us in the last few decades. The EU couldn't manufacture a cheap consumer item no matter how hard it tried and no matter how much the EU subsidized things. Just too much government/societal bloat. Seems to be the direction we're heading unless we can recapture the "get it done" spirit of old. I don't think we can do that while we're continually focusing on making sure everything is always fair to everyone all the time.
- pimlottc 1y ago
  I agree, but the vague title hardly even hints at that. At least the subtitle actually mentions Huawei…
tomhow 1y ago
Thanks! I chose a title based on a representative phrase from the article, which is what we do if the article's own title/subtitle are too baity or misleading.

hollerith 1y ago

>(The entry-level Chery retails in Qatar for about $15,000 USD—try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000.) The competition for a $15,000 new car is the US is used cars, which are available in great abundance for under $15,000.

mystified5016 1y ago
Buying a used car instead of new is essentially theft from the manufacturers. Won't someone think of these poor helpless mega-corporations?!
- bluGill 1y ago
  No it isn't. If everyone bought new they would have to sell cars for much less money and in turn make less. Most new car buyers can only afford it because of the trade in value, and this falls down the line.
snovymgodym 1y ago
All things being equal I'd rather have a new car for $15000 than a used one.
- bluGill 1y ago
  But all is not equal - the used car will have a lot more features.
  - jazzyjackson 1y ago
    and a lot more shit to break. nice thing about a cheap car is it has manual seat adjustment, an AC and a radio. My friend just bought a 20 year old volvo and the locking gas cap malfunctioned while we were being shown the vehicle and testing all the buttons out. The dealer just took a screwdriver and popped the lid with a screwdriver - now the gas cap doesn't latch at all.
  - Glyptodon 1y ago

breve 1y ago

> But a new Apple Watch would cost several hundred dollars, and I can’t justify that. With the discounts, a Huawei watch cost well under two hundred US dollars. And, frankly, it looks better. So I betrayed America. Reader, I bought one. A more direct way to think about this is that you betrayed yourself by buying things you don't need, regardless of if it came from Apple or Huawei. You could have bought a Casio digital watch that's much cheaper, more robust, more eco friendly, and runs for years on the same battery with no recharging. > But since the Chinese government already has my OPM file and probably a lot more besides (I worked in the House during Salt Typhoon!), it’s not like I was risking a lot. Apathy is never a good solution.

II2II 1y ago
I had a watch that was sitting in the closet for a few years (cheap watch, broken strap). It was not only keeping time after several years of neglect, but the time was reasonably accurate. It did not have any high-tech features like time synchronization. It did not even have the benefit of the time being adjusted manually twice a year. But that's not really the point. For most people a smart watch has as much to do with time keeping as a smartphone has to do with telephony. The devices earned their name due to the form factor rather than the intended use.

alexjplant 1y ago

> Chery specializes in making affordable, mass-market cars that look nice. (The entry-level Chery retails in Qatar for about $15,000 USD—try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000.) This is because nobody (*EDIT: by which I of course mean relatively few) would buy it. People signal wealth, status, and even personal values by way of their vehicle in the US. Dealership financing departments ask customers how much they can afford per month in payment and work backwards from there to sell them the vehicle that they want at any cost. The average new vehicle price is around $50,000 because people are actively choosing to buy more expensive cars and trucks [1], not because there aren't cheaper ones around, and 96-month car loans are now a thing because of it. [1] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-flirting-with-record/\ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-flirting-...*

RandomBacon 1y ago
> try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000.) > This is because nobody would buy it. People signal wealth, status, and even personal values by way of their vehicle in the US. Speak for yourself. There are a ton of people who probably make a lot less money than you or I, who would purchase it, where transportation is more important than status. "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"
- alexjplant 1y ago
  I don't even own a car but probably would buy one that cheap. The problem is that we're on Hacker News and aren't representative of the general car buying populace. Many people spend more than 50% of their gross salary on cars because it makes them happy. Manufacturers are giving the public what they want and what people want is bigger cars with more amenities, hence the change in price [1]. Also, as somebody else pointed out, if you value transportation more than signaling then you buy used. > "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?" I didn't buy a new car until I was well into my 20s and have driven multiple vehicles that were worth no more than their scrap value. That line would probably work better on somebody else, that is, somebody that hasn't apprehensively poured K-Seal into their leaking radiator when they had $600 in their checking account. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-their-cars-1859929 https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-thei...

budududuroiu 1y ago

Unrelated to article per se, but I’ve noticed a distinctive shift as to who tourism-dependent countries cater to. Thailand, Malaysia, etc. all shifted their tourism to cater to the Chinese tourist market, as Westerners don’t spend as big when travelling. Both places have big signs in mandarin in the airport going 友誼長存, meaning long lasting friendship (between our countries). Personally, I’ve never seen this level of glazing towards any Western country before. Similar thing with luxury brands. While Louis Vuitton is closing stores in SF, they’ve custom built a huge boat-shaped one in Shanghai.

Fade_Dance 1y ago
This isn't a new trend. When it comes to luxury, some of this trend is even on the way out. If you at Estee Lauder's earnings calls, they are having serious issues because of the drop spending in duty free zones by Chinese. Overall you're right of course, just thought I'd add an anecdote that I happen to recall.
hollerith 1y ago
Chinese citizens are prohibited from investing abroad and keeping money abroad. It might be that the signs you describe are more about getting around that prohibition than about hedonism.
- budududuroiu 1y ago
  I’m sure it’s some grey area. DBS Singapore saw some $6bn inflows from China in the first half of 2023. Regardless, I did see gold jewellery sold by weight in China too, which is much more indicative of use as an asset than a beauty piece
- deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
  yeah i dont think this is true. where did you hear this?
userbinator 1y ago
While Louis Vuitton is closing stores in SF There are other reasons besides China causing them to do that.

markus_zhang 1y ago

If we want to catch up, maybe we really need to work a lot harder, and to smooth the shocking pain, some redistribution of wealth to the working class is needed.

userbinator 1y ago

There’s a smaller gap in smartphone makers, where Apple and Samsung dominate globally and in the USA, but once you look at the next manufacturers after the leaders you notice that names like Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, and Huawei together constitute a sizable global share. And, yes, those are all Chinese brands. There were a lot more Chinese Android "brands" (most of them probably OEM'd, but I digress) around 10-15 years ago. Ainol, Blackview, Cubot, Doogee, Elephone, Gionee, Goophone, iOcean, Jiayu, KingZone, Leagoo, Meizu, Nckia (yes, seriously), NO.1, Oukitel, TCL, THL, Ulephone, Umidigi, UniHertz, Vivo, Zopo... how many of those still exist today? It's rather interesting that the ones which still do have gone the same user-hostile route as Apple and Samsung. The era of Shanzhai has unfortunately mostly passed.

dinfinity 1y ago
Markets tend to consolidate into monopolies, or oligopolies with anti-trust laws in place.
inemesitaffia 1y ago
Gionee and Vivo still exist. And Transsion which neither of you mentioned is number one by sales.

blibble 1y ago

turns out if you shit on your allies, they'll start doing business with your systemic rival instead and once their consumers start buying their better products, produced at lower cost, with less political baggage, you aint getting that market share back and all it took was some facebook ads to get the US to surrender the next century to the Chinese

Gigachad 1y ago
It’s crazy that we got to witness the turning point which will have defined the rest of our lives.

supportengineer 1y ago

Over 10 years ago we were buying a lot of camping equipment. We had purchased some items from Amazon which looked good visually and they were from one of these mashing-on-the-keyboard brands like "kjhghjdfh". When we received the items they were of AMAZING quality. I wanted to purchase more items from this brand but of course, they were gone. Strong brands are good for the consumer.

grg0 1y ago
"kjhghjdfh" is such a memorable name.
- ahartmetz 1y ago
  My Nwouiiay car battery charger / regenerator is pretty good, but how careless can you be about choosing a name?
  - ndiddy 1y ago
    The only reason why all those gibberish brands exist is that Amazon gives better placement and seller tools to sellers who have a registered trademark. Since the sellers don't care about what the trademark is, they just want to sell on Amazon, making up some nonsense by smashing letters or phonemes together lets them speed up the registration since they won't have to deal with people saying it's too similar to their trademarks. If Amazon didn't have that policy, your Nwouiiay car battery charger simply wouldn't have any brand name printed on it.
    - ahartmetz 1y ago
      Ah, right. I wonder if that does anything for Amazon or if it just seemed like a good idea and the time and now nobody there cares enough to revise the policy.
markus_zhang 1y ago
A lot of Chinese manufacturers do not really have a fat profit margin (most goes to the distribution), so they tend to just get by and close shop when time is bad. Many of the smaller manufacturers simply do not have the mind to build a brand. The bigger ones are doing that though.

rsanek 1y ago

>try finding a new car of any kind in the United States for $15,000 you can get a Nissan versa for $17k https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html

delichon 1y ago
Lowest price on that site is $18,330 MSRP plus $1,140 shipping and handling, not including tax and title.
const_cast 1y ago
You can punch a hole in the bottom of a broken down car and Flintstone it for free. Probably more reliable than a Nissan versa.

poisonborz 1y ago

Disregarding issues with politics or privacy, I find the rise of Chinese manufacturing quality astonishing. I ordered all kinds of consumer articles in the last 20 years and the improvements have been big and steady. In recent years they also leapfrogged on the service front, like how AliExpress offers Amazon-like return policy despite having fraction of the infra and the wares under tax sanctions. I see not only more chinese cars, but construction and medical equipment. Price/performance is always excelling. One would think this would trigger some sort of revival and competing from US/EU industries, but not much had happened yet besides lobbying for sanctions.

rsynnott 1y ago
I’m not sure why you’re surprised. Basically since large-scale industrial manufacture started, country industrialises, quality is initially poor, a few decades later it's international standard. 150 years ago the British were marvelling at this happening with Germany and the US, but you'd think at this point people would be used to it.

hcnova10 1y ago

China has been making good for the rest of the world for decades. I thoughts it’s common sense that it’s only a matter of time before they replace the Apple logo on the phones they made with their own logo.