well if you look at comments on reddit/youtube/etc, you'll find a lot of Chinese-sponsored comments ;)
look for the wumaos! too bad China don't have whistleblowers because the Chinese gov. are too effective --- it'll simply go after the family members...
We’re already starting a trade war with them over unfair business practices, and one could argue this incident would fall under that. What else do you want to see? Bombs and missiles?
I don’t disagree but many economists do agree that something should be done about China — not so much for the rest of the world. Most likely Trump just happened to get it right with China (the sentiment at least, maybe not the method) while flailing around. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Can you list some economists that agree with Trump something should be done about China? Most economists I've heard suggests the opposite, so a citation would be great.
> Technically you've started a trade war with everyone
That's incorrect. The US is in meaningful trade confict with only a few nations:
China, Germany, France, Canada, and Mexico.
While the EU operates as a whole for the most part on these matters, the conflict is overwhelmingly with Germany's extreme trade surplus.
Canada and Mexico are about NAFTA positioning primarily.
For one example, the US runs a vast trade deficit with Vietnam. So far this year there is a five to one ratio between imports and exports with Vietnam (in favor of Vietnam). For 2017, the trade deficit with Vietnam was so large it's equal to about 20% of their entire economy. The US is not starting a trade war with Vietnam, and isn't going after Vietnam as eg the EU. Do you know why? Strategic positioning. Vietnam is a valuable future and present offset to China on offshore manufacturing; to be used to debase some of China's regional economic hegemony and to build up more regional powers that the US can work with against China in the future.
Pursuing tariffs on steel and aluminum is legitimately about US national security. It's stupid to allow those industries to erode any further given their importance. You don't want to be dependent on Japan (5%) and South Korea (11%) for steel imports in the middle of a conflict with China and or North Korea. You don't want to be asking for steel from Russia (7% of steel imports) during a conflict with Russia.
Going after Canada is primarily about positioning for the NAFTA talks. Canada does in fact have some substantial barriers in their dairy and agriculture markets. The US by contrast has nearly the lowest agriculture tariffs of any nation. The trade conflict with Canada will ultimately be trivial and will be over shortly.
All other nations are universally allowed to shelter and protect all sorts of pet domestic industries, whether it's dairy or maple syrup in Canada or energy in Mexico, or practically everything in China. The US the only nation held to an entirely different standard.
> The US by contrast has nearly the lowest agriculture tariffs of any nation.
In trying to find evidence either way for this statement I came across the OECD data website, which is pretty cool. The following link shows "government support for agriculture" (which is a greater set than just tariffs) across a few select countries (though note, EU28 is treated as a single entity). Interesting stuff!
Just want to point out an often forgotten fact: the tariff imposed on dairy product by Canada that Trump keeps repeating in order to validate his new tariff is deliberately confusing. It's true that they exist and are pretty big (it's almost at 250%), but dairy products accounts for 0.1% of all trade between the two nations. It's a rounding error. Turns out even with those tariff, US has a trade surplus of dairy products. I also believe agriculture is a national security concern, but that's just an opinion.
I guess I don't understand the ulterior motive of pissing off allies over such minor concerns. The steel tariff will have an impact, but the proposed car tariff will have devastating effects on both side of the borders.
US raw sugar prices are 40% higher than world market prices, due to a complex system of tariffs, subsidies, quotas, and price supports [1].
The leading importer of steel to the US is Canada, with a 20% share [2]. I'm not quite sure how "national defense" can be used to justify tariffs on Canadian steel. (You stated that the steel tariffs against Canada are merely positioning for the NAFTA negotiations, but the White House proclamation [3] only mentions national defense).
You write: "The US is in meaningful trade confict with only a few nations". I can't be bothered to do any research to see if your list is complete, but until recently, 3 of the 5 nations you listed were considered close allies, and the 4th was considered at least friendly. Declaring a trade war on one's allies is, perhaps, not the best way of ensuring one's allies' cooperation in conflicts with one's actual adversaries.
In other words, even a hyper-power should think twice about waging a multi-front war, against allies as well as enemies, on numerous issues simultaneously.
(Edit: If the US concern is that China might disrupt its Asian supply chains, it should probably focus on high-tech components such as RAM, SSDs, displays, etc, rather than on steel. I sometimes get the feeling that the current administration is basing its industrial strategy on the lessons of World War II, which would seem to be about 70 years out of date.)
Aside from sanctions/trade wars and legal litigation, the other alternative would be a legitimate war, which would likely ensue into a world war and then maybe a nuclear war.
> Aside from sanctions/trade wars and legal litigation, the other alternative would be a legitimate war
This isn't true at all. There are many, many levers of diplomatic power, and the U.S. has far more of them than anyone (or they did before they started withdrawing from a world leadership position). There are many, many things that China wants and needs, economically, politically, in trade, in finance, in agriculture, in tech, etc. etc. The U.S. can make them pay a price in many ways without starting a trade war.
That's the essential art of diplomacy: Act without escalating to a bigger problem.
A little OT, but I think I remember reading Chinese users on quora who were a little worried about how Microsoft would handle takedown notices for sensitive topics as gitHub was pretty resistant to China's complaints.
Based on comments to previous HN links on this topic, I expect we will be seeing some whataboutism that tries to divert criticism of China.
So let ask anyone who makes such a comment, what is your political philosophy, are you for liberal democracy or Xi's brand of authoritarianism, or are you just a cynic who thinks all reform efforts are hopeless, or what?
No I don't. That's why my remark included "or what." But I listed those two because those are the two main types in the world today. Myself, I support liberal democracy in this battle.
And let me ask you back, what type do you support?
I prefer a government that stays out of the way, does not tell the people how to live, whom to transact with, or how. One that occupies itself solely with external security of the country. There aren't such any out there. We'll get there, eventually, I hope.
There’s surely a spectrum from authoritarianism to liberal democracy, but there’s also a case to be made for free vs not free countries: if you can get into a public Twitter spat with the President of your country, and not worry someone will come break your legs (or worse) the next day, I call that a free country. Everything else is not.
There are plenty of countries around the world that have real free speech. China is of course much worse than the US, but I don't think the US is the gold standard here.
>Try doing something that is actually effective - like staging a protest - and you'll be charged with "unlawful demonstrating". How is that freedom?
The 600 or so people who were arrested did so on purpose as part of the protest. They went there with the goal of being arrested and they staged a sit-in of a Senate office building in order to accomplish that goal. There were tens of thousands of other protesters marching through the streets who weren't arrested, asked to leave, or even bothered.
>There are plenty of countries around the world that have real free speech.
I don't know of a country in the world were taking over the atrium of a government building and refusing to leave when the police order you to wouldn't get you arrested. What countries are you thinking of?
> The thing with US free speech though is that it is mostly only allowed in specific, ineffectual circumstances - like Twitter or "free speech zones".
This isn't true at all. Turn on cable news and read newspapers editorials. Read HN and Facebook and Reddit. See all the demonstrations around the U.S. today. Yes, some people have more powerful voices than others - people lack the bandwidth to give equal attention to over 300 million neighbors - but pretty much anyone can say anything, anywhere.
Of course there is a spectrum
and more than one way to skin a cat, but when voicing a political opinion results in institutionalized punishment you can’t claim that the country is free regardless of any other circumstances.
As someone else said here just the fact that you can get into a Twitter flame war with Trump proves the US is a free country not otherwise.
The typical pattern for a while was something like "I'm in (or was) in China and things are fine, I had no problem using the internet...". Then some other stuff and some weird comment like "It was nice that I could walk around China freely and not have to worry about thieves unlike in the US."
China is filled with scammers, you are much less likely to get mugged as a westerner in major cities but you are in open season for the millions (literally) of thieves that use other means knowing that law enforcement is ineffective especially when it comes to foreigners as long as you don’t beat them up.
Most of the scammers appeal to ones vanity/vices. That’s why the biggest scam still revolves around lady bars. The law enforcement has a piece of the action, so they are of course ineffective.
The police just care about violent crime, anything else is fair game unless Congress is in their once a year weekly session (at least in Beijing).
> you are much less likely to get mugged as a westerner in major cities ...
Less likely than where? Crime in western cities is at long-term lows. I've walked through many neighborhoods, rich and poor, in many western cities without concern.
There are plenty of us laowai who were in China and didn’t think the internet was fine. My entire foreigner social circle at Microsoft China were unhappy with it, and no one could keep a VPN going reliably (unless they used free Azure credits).
However, most left because of the apocalyptic pollution, not because of the bad internet.
I always wondered about how much the pollution really bothers outsiders. I always thought it would be cool to work in China and see things happening except ... yeah long term exposure to that level of pollution kinda worries me.
The pollution depends a lot on where you live. Inner cities all have very dirty air, but I'm in the southern outskirts of Shanghai and the air quality is usually fine, except for a few really bad days in winter.
FWIW, I can usually get a VPN connection to work, but it sometimes gets throttled pretty heavily. Watching YouTube can get unpleasant.
About the thieves: I never had anything stolen in China, but I also never had anything stolen in Germany, so it's not the kind of thing I'd ever mention as exceptional. Where do people live that thieves are such a problem?
> "It was nice that I could walk around China freely and not have to worry about thieves unlike in the US."
Fun fact as a counterpoint: Sure you can walk around China freely without as much threat to your personal safety per se, just be prepared for that two year old child beggar on a leash will come running up to you and instinctively step sideways when you try to start walking around.
I mean, it's fair enough that China has blocked YouTube and github and Wikipedia, but the sheer whataboutism as justification blows so far past any iota of credibility.
What about think democracy and statism coexist ? And authoritarianism with proper consideration for harmony of outcomes maybe viable path to stable eudomia
> And authoritarianism with proper consideration for harmony
The evidence is overwhelming: The only path to freedom and prosperity for the people (i.e., not the ones in government) is democracy and freedom. Name a first world country without freedom and democracy.
Reading this article triggered some feelings I've been having for a while. Honestly the internet, and everything political feels like a shitshow that's exceptionally depressing.
Recently there were racial riots in Sri Lanka. The government raced to block social media, messaging, and VPN's. Hell, even mobile connections were disrupted when people were desperately trying to contact their relatives while their houses burned. The government's reasoning was that they wanted to quash rumours. No talk of what they did in the lead up to the riots when communities kept pointing out fascist groups steadily gaining more steam and operating with a middle finger held up to the law. The government also ordered a media blackout during the time.
China praised these actions. China is also heavily invested in Sri Lanka as part of its belt project.
I have no doubts that eventually we'll see similar censorship arrive in SL. Criticism of the predatory nature of China will be blocked ruthlessly with the power that the Chinese gov seems to exert over social networks. China will probably happily extend its technology to countries under its belt project too. I can't see how this wouldn't benefit them.
In the midst of this, the US is also busy fighting China's ownership of Sri Lankan resources. The result is a split of political factions that have chosen China or US. The US media is now pushing stories that Sri Lanka's previous regime took campaign contributions as under the table payments from China.
The thing is, while I appreciate investigative journalism, everything around feels like propaganda. This article feels like propaganda.
At some point it feels miserable that whatever I read is trying to manipulate me rather than inform me. And if I can't be manipulated, then I'll be controlled instead. So when I think of the Internet, I don't really think of some powerful tool in my hand anymore. At a deeper level, it's just another propaganda machine that people will use against me, or take away from me if I don't play by their rules.
45 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 91.7 ms ] threadHaving a nation state actor so publicly attack/censor a small company shouldn't be tolerated.
look for the wumaos! too bad China don't have whistleblowers because the Chinese gov. are too effective --- it'll simply go after the family members...
Technically you've started a trade war with everyone so it's hard to determine whether unfair business practices are the real reason or not.
That's incorrect. The US is in meaningful trade confict with only a few nations:
China, Germany, France, Canada, and Mexico.
While the EU operates as a whole for the most part on these matters, the conflict is overwhelmingly with Germany's extreme trade surplus.
Canada and Mexico are about NAFTA positioning primarily.
For one example, the US runs a vast trade deficit with Vietnam. So far this year there is a five to one ratio between imports and exports with Vietnam (in favor of Vietnam). For 2017, the trade deficit with Vietnam was so large it's equal to about 20% of their entire economy. The US is not starting a trade war with Vietnam, and isn't going after Vietnam as eg the EU. Do you know why? Strategic positioning. Vietnam is a valuable future and present offset to China on offshore manufacturing; to be used to debase some of China's regional economic hegemony and to build up more regional powers that the US can work with against China in the future.
Pursuing tariffs on steel and aluminum is legitimately about US national security. It's stupid to allow those industries to erode any further given their importance. You don't want to be dependent on Japan (5%) and South Korea (11%) for steel imports in the middle of a conflict with China and or North Korea. You don't want to be asking for steel from Russia (7% of steel imports) during a conflict with Russia.
Going after Canada is primarily about positioning for the NAFTA talks. Canada does in fact have some substantial barriers in their dairy and agriculture markets. The US by contrast has nearly the lowest agriculture tariffs of any nation. The trade conflict with Canada will ultimately be trivial and will be over shortly.
All other nations are universally allowed to shelter and protect all sorts of pet domestic industries, whether it's dairy or maple syrup in Canada or energy in Mexico, or practically everything in China. The US the only nation held to an entirely different standard.
In trying to find evidence either way for this statement I came across the OECD data website, which is pretty cool. The following link shows "government support for agriculture" (which is a greater set than just tariffs) across a few select countries (though note, EU28 is treated as a single entity). Interesting stuff!
https://data.oecd.org/chart/5duj
Note: I'm not making a point regarding parent's claim.
EDIT: adding parent page FYI: https://data.oecd.org/agrpolicy/agricultural-support.htm
I guess I don't understand the ulterior motive of pissing off allies over such minor concerns. The steel tariff will have an impact, but the proposed car tariff will have devastating effects on both side of the borders.
The leading importer of steel to the US is Canada, with a 20% share [2]. I'm not quite sure how "national defense" can be used to justify tariffs on Canadian steel. (You stated that the steel tariffs against Canada are merely positioning for the NAFTA negotiations, but the White House proclamation [3] only mentions national defense).
You write: "The US is in meaningful trade confict with only a few nations". I can't be bothered to do any research to see if your list is complete, but until recently, 3 of the 5 nations you listed were considered close allies, and the 4th was considered at least friendly. Declaring a trade war on one's allies is, perhaps, not the best way of ensuring one's allies' cooperation in conflicts with one's actual adversaries.
In other words, even a hyper-power should think twice about waging a multi-front war, against allies as well as enemies, on numerous issues simultaneously.
(Edit: If the US concern is that China might disrupt its Asian supply chains, it should probably focus on high-tech components such as RAM, SSDs, displays, etc, rather than on steel. I sometimes get the feeling that the current administration is basing its industrial strategy on the lessons of World War II, which would seem to be about 70 years out of date.)
[1] https://www.heritage.org/trade/report/us-trade-policy-gouges...
[2] https://www.trade.gov/steel/countries/pdfs/imports-us.pdf
[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential...
This isn't true at all. There are many, many levers of diplomatic power, and the U.S. has far more of them than anyone (or they did before they started withdrawing from a world leadership position). There are many, many things that China wants and needs, economically, politically, in trade, in finance, in agriculture, in tech, etc. etc. The U.S. can make them pay a price in many ways without starting a trade war.
That's the essential art of diplomacy: Act without escalating to a bigger problem.
So nothing would happen. Maye a soft denial of service by github itself to open source projects.
So let ask anyone who makes such a comment, what is your political philosophy, are you for liberal democracy or Xi's brand of authoritarianism, or are you just a cynic who thinks all reform efforts are hopeless, or what?
And let me ask you back, what type do you support?
Try doing something that is actually effective - like staging a protest - and you'll be charged with "unlawful demonstrating". How is that freedom?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/us/politics/womens-march-...
There are plenty of countries around the world that have real free speech. China is of course much worse than the US, but I don't think the US is the gold standard here.
The 600 or so people who were arrested did so on purpose as part of the protest. They went there with the goal of being arrested and they staged a sit-in of a Senate office building in order to accomplish that goal. There were tens of thousands of other protesters marching through the streets who weren't arrested, asked to leave, or even bothered.
>There are plenty of countries around the world that have real free speech.
I don't know of a country in the world were taking over the atrium of a government building and refusing to leave when the police order you to wouldn't get you arrested. What countries are you thinking of?
This isn't true at all. Turn on cable news and read newspapers editorials. Read HN and Facebook and Reddit. See all the demonstrations around the U.S. today. Yes, some people have more powerful voices than others - people lack the bandwidth to give equal attention to over 300 million neighbors - but pretty much anyone can say anything, anywhere.
As someone else said here just the fact that you can get into a Twitter flame war with Trump proves the US is a free country not otherwise.
The police just care about violent crime, anything else is fair game unless Congress is in their once a year weekly session (at least in Beijing).
Less likely than where? Crime in western cities is at long-term lows. I've walked through many neighborhoods, rich and poor, in many western cities without concern.
However, most left because of the apocalyptic pollution, not because of the bad internet.
FWIW, I can usually get a VPN connection to work, but it sometimes gets throttled pretty heavily. Watching YouTube can get unpleasant.
About the thieves: I never had anything stolen in China, but I also never had anything stolen in Germany, so it's not the kind of thing I'd ever mention as exceptional. Where do people live that thieves are such a problem?
If you are young and will just be there a few years, go for it. As soon as you start a family, you’ll probably need to leave for various reasons.
Fun fact as a counterpoint: Sure you can walk around China freely without as much threat to your personal safety per se, just be prepared for that two year old child beggar on a leash will come running up to you and instinctively step sideways when you try to start walking around.
I mean, it's fair enough that China has blocked YouTube and github and Wikipedia, but the sheer whataboutism as justification blows so far past any iota of credibility.
The evidence is overwhelming: The only path to freedom and prosperity for the people (i.e., not the ones in government) is democracy and freedom. Name a first world country without freedom and democracy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's zero cost to the government.
They're communists, they can take whatever they want as as much as they need.
Recently there were racial riots in Sri Lanka. The government raced to block social media, messaging, and VPN's. Hell, even mobile connections were disrupted when people were desperately trying to contact their relatives while their houses burned. The government's reasoning was that they wanted to quash rumours. No talk of what they did in the lead up to the riots when communities kept pointing out fascist groups steadily gaining more steam and operating with a middle finger held up to the law. The government also ordered a media blackout during the time.
China praised these actions. China is also heavily invested in Sri Lanka as part of its belt project.
I have no doubts that eventually we'll see similar censorship arrive in SL. Criticism of the predatory nature of China will be blocked ruthlessly with the power that the Chinese gov seems to exert over social networks. China will probably happily extend its technology to countries under its belt project too. I can't see how this wouldn't benefit them.
In the midst of this, the US is also busy fighting China's ownership of Sri Lankan resources. The result is a split of political factions that have chosen China or US. The US media is now pushing stories that Sri Lanka's previous regime took campaign contributions as under the table payments from China.
The thing is, while I appreciate investigative journalism, everything around feels like propaganda. This article feels like propaganda.
At some point it feels miserable that whatever I read is trying to manipulate me rather than inform me. And if I can't be manipulated, then I'll be controlled instead. So when I think of the Internet, I don't really think of some powerful tool in my hand anymore. At a deeper level, it's just another propaganda machine that people will use against me, or take away from me if I don't play by their rules.