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What I find most interesting about this is that US tech companies are doing what people accuse China of doing. In fact, theoretical Chinese informed was the en

by jmyeet 9mo ago

What I find most interesting about this is that US tech companies are doing what people accuse China of doing. In fact, theoretical Chinese informed was the entire (performative) justification for the Tiktok ban. The reality of course was that TikTok wouldn’t censor what the US government wanted to censor. The irony is that these companies are sowing the seeds for their own destruction and the US government is undermining US tech dominance, which is a potent foreign policy tool. I think Steve Jobs would be rolling over in his grave at Tim Cook’s capitalization. I once trusted Apple to be more user-forest than any other platform. Now? I think I’d trust Huawei more.

kdheiwns 9mo ago
At this point I think the biggest tangible difference between China and the US is that one country has high speed trains and affordable health care and the other has neither.
- mktk1001 9mo ago
  No one's murdering innocent citizens on the streets of China
  - hasperdi 9mo ago
    No the murders happen in camps eg. What's happening to the Uyghurs. That said, they also use them as slave labors. Maybe that's what ICE is going to do with the plan to setup large detention centers in the US
    - hypeatei 9mo ago
      Look up the "zero idleness" program at CECOT where the Trump administration is sending deportees.
      - SmirkingRevenge 9mo ago
        They've been successfully blocked (for now). No current deportees are headed there so far as I know. But they are busy trying to build the system right here at home. ICE detention is already beginning to resemble the Salvadoran prison system. Due process rights get violated. Detainees get shuttled around to different facilities to be lost in the system through engineered incompetence, making it difficult for legal counsel or family to find them, or even to know who has been taken. They subject them to torturous conditions, abuse, and often hold people who've committed no crimes for months. They are thwarting oversight and defying court orders left and right. And they are trying to scale up like 10x+. And once they do, the detention system won't just be for immigrants. They are going to target anyone they want. D's have successfully blocked DHS funding for now, but if they (or SCOTUS) allow any of this to go forward, things are likely to get far worse
    - t-3 9mo ago
      While it's correct to criticize China's authoritarian policies and lack of civic and religious freedoms that are often taken for granted here, it's still very much a pot-calling-the-kettle-black situation. The US's treatment, both historical and modern, of it's black, native, and immigrant populations have been just as or even more brutal than China's crackdown on Islamism. Mass incarceration and criminalization of the poorest sections of society in the US are at levels far beyond what exists in any other country in the world. Political corruption and nepotism have been normalized for decades, and the deep-seated culture of elite impunity is apparent in the total lack of consequences from the Epstein files. US citizens should not be wasting time criticizing other countries for problems our own country has yet to fix.
  - basket_horse 9mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
  - polairscience 9mo ago
    Uh.This has happened plenty. It's pretty well known that there's a lot of various abductions/disappearances of people the Chinese govt doesn't like. Including outright deaths in the streets: https://rsf.org/en/beaten-death-state-security-rsf-shocked-gruesome-murder-independent-journalist-china https://rsf.org/en/beaten-death-state-security-rsf-shocked-g...
  - AnIrishDuck 9mo ago
    This is an especially hilarious comment given what happened in June 1989 [1]. It's the prototypical example of authoritarian crackdowns and mass slaughter of innocent protestors. Discussion or even mention of it is still forbidden in China. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
    - kdheiwns 9mo ago
      Going back 35 years to point out a time when protestors were killed is always a strange thing to me. You can go back just a few weeks until you reach a point where the US killed protestors. Then there's stuff like the Black Lives Matter protests where the US government violently suppressed protests and people died/disappeared. If 1989 is all a country has as a problem, then that's a sign it's doing great.
      - AnIrishDuck 9mo ago
        There are plenty of other more recent examples in this thread. I was simply replying to the original statement that China doesn't kill protesters in the street. The notion is so risible that in hindsight it may well have been sarcasm or bait. But, if you wish to expand the scope of this discussion, sure. There are several clear distinctions between the (horrible) events you list and what happened in Tiananmen Square. The most obvious is that we are free to talk about them now. I submit that the Chinese state's continued censorship of the subject is a sign that (1) the state is still complicit in these crimes and (2) it is not "doing great". The scale of brutality is also just incomparable. I say this fully agreeing the events you list were terrible. The horrors committed at Tiananmen Square were simply on another level.
- XenophileJKO 9mo ago
  This kind of reductionist pithy comparison needs to stay on Reddit. Sure stuff is messed up here, but there are very real differences in both the degree and breadth of government abuse of power when you compare with China.
  - srcreigh 9mo ago
    Care to elaborate?
    - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
      As an American, I can freely oppose the current regime. I routinely say, both online and in real life under my government name, that Donald Trump and his cronies are criminals, that everyone should work hard to stop them from achieving their goals and ideally they should all get life sentences once we throw them out of office. I’ll never face legal or even professional consequences for saying this, and even within the most authoritarian regime in generations few officials argue that I should. Unless I’ve been severely misinformed, someone saying similar things about Xi Jinping on a Chinese tech forum would be swiftly banned and likely arrested.
      - mrguyorama 9mo ago
        Buddy what article do you think you are currently commenting on?
        SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
        I'm commenting on an article about an American advocacy group filing a lawsuit accusing high-ranking government officials of misconduct, another thing that similarly situated people in China cannot do. Again, happy to admit the possibility I could be wrong: are there cases I don't know about where Chinese citizens file lawsuits accusing the Ministry of State Security of misconduct? The content of the lawsuit argues, correctly in my view, that American speech protections are so strong they go beyond mere criticism. American citizens have a right to publish detailed information about the location of government agents, even if this information makes law enforcement harder and even if the agents fear being tracked might be dangerous for them.

by jmyeet 9mo ago

kdheiwns 9mo ago

At this point I think the biggest tangible difference between China and the US is that one country has high speed trains and affordable health care and the other has neither.

mktk1001 9mo ago
No one's murdering innocent citizens on the streets of China
- hasperdi 9mo ago
  No the murders happen in camps eg. What's happening to the Uyghurs. That said, they also use them as slave labors. Maybe that's what ICE is going to do with the plan to setup large detention centers in the US
  - hypeatei 9mo ago
    Look up the "zero idleness" program at CECOT where the Trump administration is sending deportees.
    - SmirkingRevenge 9mo ago
      They've been successfully blocked (for now). No current deportees are headed there so far as I know. But they are busy trying to build the system right here at home. ICE detention is already beginning to resemble the Salvadoran prison system. Due process rights get violated. Detainees get shuttled around to different facilities to be lost in the system through engineered incompetence, making it difficult for legal counsel or family to find them, or even to know who has been taken. They subject them to torturous conditions, abuse, and often hold people who've committed no crimes for months. They are thwarting oversight and defying court orders left and right. And they are trying to scale up like 10x+. And once they do, the detention system won't just be for immigrants. They are going to target anyone they want. D's have successfully blocked DHS funding for now, but if they (or SCOTUS) allow any of this to go forward, things are likely to get far worse
  - t-3 9mo ago
    While it's correct to criticize China's authoritarian policies and lack of civic and religious freedoms that are often taken for granted here, it's still very much a pot-calling-the-kettle-black situation. The US's treatment, both historical and modern, of it's black, native, and immigrant populations have been just as or even more brutal than China's crackdown on Islamism. Mass incarceration and criminalization of the poorest sections of society in the US are at levels far beyond what exists in any other country in the world. Political corruption and nepotism have been normalized for decades, and the deep-seated culture of elite impunity is apparent in the total lack of consequences from the Epstein files. US citizens should not be wasting time criticizing other countries for problems our own country has yet to fix.
- basket_horse 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
- polairscience 9mo ago
  Uh.This has happened plenty. It's pretty well known that there's a lot of various abductions/disappearances of people the Chinese govt doesn't like. Including outright deaths in the streets: https://rsf.org/en/beaten-death-state-security-rsf-shocked-gruesome-murder-independent-journalist-china https://rsf.org/en/beaten-death-state-security-rsf-shocked-g...
- AnIrishDuck 9mo ago
  This is an especially hilarious comment given what happened in June 1989 [1]. It's the prototypical example of authoritarian crackdowns and mass slaughter of innocent protestors. Discussion or even mention of it is still forbidden in China. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
  - kdheiwns 9mo ago
    Going back 35 years to point out a time when protestors were killed is always a strange thing to me. You can go back just a few weeks until you reach a point where the US killed protestors. Then there's stuff like the Black Lives Matter protests where the US government violently suppressed protests and people died/disappeared. If 1989 is all a country has as a problem, then that's a sign it's doing great.
    - AnIrishDuck 9mo ago
      There are plenty of other more recent examples in this thread. I was simply replying to the original statement that China doesn't kill protesters in the street. The notion is so risible that in hindsight it may well have been sarcasm or bait. But, if you wish to expand the scope of this discussion, sure. There are several clear distinctions between the (horrible) events you list and what happened in Tiananmen Square. The most obvious is that we are free to talk about them now. I submit that the Chinese state's continued censorship of the subject is a sign that (1) the state is still complicit in these crimes and (2) it is not "doing great". The scale of brutality is also just incomparable. I say this fully agreeing the events you list were terrible. The horrors committed at Tiananmen Square were simply on another level.
XenophileJKO 9mo ago
This kind of reductionist pithy comparison needs to stay on Reddit. Sure stuff is messed up here, but there are very real differences in both the degree and breadth of government abuse of power when you compare with China.
- srcreigh 9mo ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
    As an American, I can freely oppose the current regime. I routinely say, both online and in real life under my government name, that Donald Trump and his cronies are criminals, that everyone should work hard to stop them from achieving their goals and ideally they should all get life sentences once we throw them out of office. I’ll never face legal or even professional consequences for saying this, and even within the most authoritarian regime in generations few officials argue that I should. Unless I’ve been severely misinformed, someone saying similar things about Xi Jinping on a Chinese tech forum would be swiftly banned and likely arrested.
    - mrguyorama 9mo ago
      Buddy what article do you think you are currently commenting on?
      - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
        I'm commenting on an article about an American advocacy group filing a lawsuit accusing high-ranking government officials of misconduct, another thing that similarly situated people in China cannot do. Again, happy to admit the possibility I could be wrong: are there cases I don't know about where Chinese citizens file lawsuits accusing the Ministry of State Security of misconduct? The content of the lawsuit argues, correctly in my view, that American speech protections are so strong they go beyond mere criticism. American citizens have a right to publish detailed information about the location of government agents, even if this information makes law enforcement harder and even if the agents fear being tracked might be dangerous for them.