I reverted it, but then reverted my reversion. The submitted title is marginally less baity, so I'm thinking ilamont did a good job of following the guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
The USG is crazy. It's another red scare. Ofc, as a promoter of global capitalism, it's hilarious to see the government complaining that the multinationals that they cultivated are doing business internationally.
For those of you downvoting, explain to me how language like "pawns of Chinese influence" isn't just insane propaganda?
EDIT2: For what it's worth, I do have a bone to pick with China over their treatment of Xinjiang province, but lol if you think the USG ever uses human rights as anything other than a stick to beat enemy countries over.
Put another way: CIA guy whose ex-OSS dad gave Jeffery Epstein his first fake job teaching math is now ginning up fake nationalism. News at 11.
We opened completely free trade to China so businesses could cut labor costs decades ago. It's just built into our system. What did everyone expect?
You're absolutely right that this is another red scare. It's honestly reminiscent of post 9/11 domestic support of the majority of USA population to bomb the middle east. You're not even allowed to talk about China in US society anymore unless you're furious with rage for them.
I'd like to see an experiment where the united states stops killing people at the border, just letting people in prison die from COVID, and attacking peaceful protestors with military equipment. See how that works? Let us not forget the founding of the country was based on genocide and slavery.
We ally with regressive states like Saudi Arabia and formerly places like nuclear apartheid South Africa. Only protests and rebellions move the needle on how shitty the government is here.
If you think the government is making an argument in good faith here, I have a bridge to sell you.
EDIT: Responding below: I'm unable to parse your intention, but that's what people typically say when they want to agree but still support the thrust of USG policy.
You bring up a very good point about Saudi. We're friendly allies and I absolutely never see the rage for them and their human rights violations that I see against China. It's almost as if there's some manufactured consent occurring.
I would recommend watching different sources. The corporate press in the US is basically always going to support the war machine. The major political parties are only nominally against war when they're not in power. Tim Pool and Jimmy Dore come to mind as two news commentators who are consistently anti-war. Tim is center-left and Jimmy is far left. If right wing/extreme libertairan anti-war is more your style, you might like Dave Smith.
I have watched Jimmy Dore before and I enjoy a few of his videos and coverage of more obscure but important events, but he comparatively doesn't have a large audience compared to the corporate press. He's friends with Tiabbi, Greenwald, and others doing great work that you won't see in corporate press and frequently has them on his show for interviews. Big fan of Chris Hedges too and I typically watch those interviews.
They need to be called out. The amount of virtue signaling these companies do in the US does not excuse their actions elsewhere.
This is not confined to the US either, countries in other parts of the world will engage in actions for the Chinese government they would not do at home or without great public fanfare about how they are against it.
I think virtue signaling would be saying something to stave off public criticism with no direct monetary benefit, and marketing would be like companies that support gay rights because it means they can sell a bunch of rainbow colored merchandise during pride month.
What motive would a company (of sufficient size) have to signal virtue if not in pursuit of profits? Companies without an all powerful strongman on top are amoral, and primarily in the U.S. are only concerned with their shareholders as opposed to all stake holders in the chain's long term value and health.
Some companies have real action behind their words, so while they may be saying "We're doing X" with a long term view of profits due to virtuous behavior, this should be viewed distinctly from saying "We're doing X" when there's not actually a long term strategy backing the statement
I think profits are still involved, but the virtue signaling would be about preventing loss of profits. For example, reddit making its logo black, or Activision adding a splash screen in CoD saying they support black people. They don't stand to make any extra money with their change, but they are less likely to have a twitter mob call for a boycott due to not supporting their cause.
It depends on the company - Disney needs to signal virtue because virtue is part of their brand and everyone knows who they are, Thomson Reuters is not that well known and only need to signal virtue to their valuable employees who might not want to stay at some place they found too scummy (but who knows, money is a great persuader), Monsanto - I don't know, I somehow feel virtue is not on-brand where they're concerned and signalling would make people uneasy.
I think you could argue this is also about money. Disney parks have already won nearly every family in America. Most families would like to take their kids to Disney. Pride month probably only minorly affects that. Now how will Disney Parks keep showing a healthy growth rate? Well, they'll need to tap into new markets. What kind of tactics can they use to lure those new markets to the parks?
I just don't believe altruism or pure evil exists in these large orgs. I'm sure there are exceptions to prove the rule, but it's rare you'll see an action by a large corporation that can't be explained by money and growth.
There's almost always a direct monetary benefit to staving off criticism - it keeps people that might otherwise boycott buying your products. I think this is a difference without distinction - for most companies "virtue signalling" is marketing. This is apparent from their political contributions which rarely align with their stated positions.
Companies need to stop doing business if the leaked drone footage of Uygher Muslims is true. But this is likely a statement from Barr made because Trump himself is about as effective as a burnt noodle in a gunfight in terms of foreign policy right now. The best he can do is act through others.
Please keep this tired trope off HN. It's fallacious to begin with [1], and canned arguments are not what we're looking for on HN—if you think about it, comments like this are covered by the site guideline:
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I’m calling out a government who could care less about foreign influence and only cares about the fact that tech companies won’t kiss the golden ring. I’m calling out the government’s motives.
Do you think they would call out the Koch brothers?
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Where it leads is equal parts predictable, nasty, and dumb. We're trying for better than that here.
It’s a post about the government calling out tech companies for being influenced about China but it is inappropriate to call out the same government’s hypocrisy?
A post about the government is going to be political by definition.
There's a simple economic explanation for this. There are more black (and BLM sympathizers of other races) customers in the US for these companies than there are Chinese customers and especially Chinese customers affected by CCP injustices. On the flip side the CCP gates access to the enormous Chinese market. Result: in the US signaling support for civil rights issues is probably a net win, while for China sucking up to the CCP is probably a net win. I don't think personal opinions factor into it much, especially for large publicly traded companies.
Yes, the person you're replying to probably knows _why_ the companies make the conflicting statements they do, and is choosing to give criticism to whomever made that decision.
> Barr suggested that Apple iPhones “wouldn’t be sold (in China) if they were impervious to penetration by Chinese authorities.” He suggested American tech companies were imposing a “double standard.”
IIRC, last year Apple setup a server within China for holding the iCloud security keys for the Chinese-owned iPhones? Definitely some collaboration there..
Well, that just makes it sound like iPhones sold in China were vulnerable for penetration by Chinese authorities because the decryption keys for those were stored in China, not that iPhones overall were vulnerable. Which makes that whole argument by Barr very weak.
iCloud in China is operated by Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd, which is owned by the Guizhou provincial government. As I understand, it isn't Apple's servers at all.
China has some strict protectionist policies for a fairly decent list industries, not just tech. Many foreign companies that operate in China have to do so through joint ventures or other partnerships with domestic Chinese companies.
The list of sectors that require joint ventures and majority Chinese ownership has been decreasing over time. Most sectors do not have such restrictions nowadays.
For several decades, there has been a general trend - which was greatly accelerated by China's WTO accession - of barriers to trade decreasing in China. In popular discussions of China's trade and economic policies in the West, there's rarely any recognition of this fact.
Average tariffs have been reduced to about 3.4%, which is about the same level as the US applied as recently as the mid-1990s. Much of the state sector was privatized and the majority of the economy is now private. Intellectual property enforcement is way up - it's been completely overhauled in just the last 6 years, with specialized courts set up and a very large volume of IP cases being heard every year now. There have been huge changes, which most of the public in the West has little to no idea bout, and which find no reflection in the popular discussion.
Meanwhile Barr is insisting that all encryption tools, in order to be legal in the US, need to give copies of the keys to the government... you know to keep us safe from terrorists. And tax cheats. And pirated movie bootleggers.
Bingo. It's worthwhile to ask to what degree U.S. corporations should be doing business in Chinese markets, but it's also worthwhile keeping in mind that no U.S. administration is a purely disinterested party when they're raising these criticisms -- and this administration in particular, and this U.S. attorney general in particular, has a pretty strong track record of deliberately stoking partisan flames and finding "enemies" both within and without. China is the chosen foreign enemy, but tech companies are increasingly the chosen domestic enemy.
I’m not sure how that invalidates the point. If companies like Apple are going to declare themselves defenders of privacy in America, and then turn around and give China what it wants in order for access to their markets, then they have indeed become pawns.
What it really comes down to is determining if we are doing the Cold War thing or not.
To many of us, the cold war is over, and the other 300 years of rolling the nation state concept across the world is over too. As it is very easy to operate in a borderless global economy - at least between major economic unions - if you are privileged enough.
If you absolutely need people to pick a side again, just say so. Otherwise you need to realize that its all in your head, not everyone is looking at the world the same way, both/all major countries are very similar and this will always be a "trigger" for you when people point it out.
But if this is really so irreconcilable and necessary for people to pick a side because we're doing the cold war thing again, then you need to say so. Americans will pick America if thats what its coming down to. But just assuming we are in that state and that everyone else is assuming the same thing, thats just going to go nowhere.
US leaders need to make it clear how they expect Americans and American countries (edit: I meant companies) to act, via new and existing legislation and orders.
Absent that, the incentives just aren't there. There is a way to do business/life in China where you aren’t exposed to the things we disagree about with China, and its also now a very large market based economy with all the trappings and comforts of being rich in the west....
or its extremely lucrative while people stuck in the 80s aren't even considering tapping into those other markets in a self-limiting philosophy.
I mean, that's exactly what is going on.
Hollywood and big tech accessing all trade routes available as formerly marxist parts of the world turn out to be pretty good at market based economies and rival the size of the always-capitalist markets, with growth potential for much more.
If some other thing needs to happen, the executive branch and Congress better say so because it obviously doesn't matter, and there is an art to dealing with China, just like there is an art to dealing with any market. Anyone thinking otherwise was never really playing the game to begin with, they are stuck in an antiquated protectionist business model in their local market.
It doesn't really matter how anyone feels about that, what I described is what's happening.
sound good until you realize there are more than two players and both sides have proxies to act through deny-ably. There is a reason North Korea has survived its so when cCina wants to threaten the US without repercussions they just let whichever Kim is in power act out. We do something China doesn't like Kim Jung Un throws a fit and drops some artillery shells in South Korea or attacks a Japanese fishing boat. geo-politics is a bitch. We get upset China says don't look at us it was North Korea. We threaten Kim, then China goes: Don't you do anything to them they are our ally we wont let you put troops on our boarder. We back off. repeat.
I think one point the grandparent is alluding to is that there are more than two ways to slice up the world. Cold-War thinking assumes a bipolar world - Allied vs. Axis, U.S. vs. Russia, NATO vs. Warsaw Pact, now U.S. vs. China.
But that's not the only way to look at the world. Even restricting yourself to dualities, you could also view it as Commerce vs. Guardians [1], people who think for themselves vs. people whose opinions come from those around them [2], zero-sum thinking vs. positive-sum thinking, or those who divide people into two groups vs. those who don't. With many of those lenses the nation-state as a social organizing principle is obsolete: people look out for their own interests and make contracts with each other when it's mutually beneficial.
I think this is a particularly useful worldview when it comes to large mega-corps. Apple is on Apple's side, and to some extent on their customer's side; both the CCP and the AG dislike them.
Grandparent poster here, this is exactly what I was aiming to say regarding the nation-state as a social organizing principle being obsolete and the dualities being equally irrelevant.
The final thing I would say is that communism lost, except in name alone, so that makes this perspective so much easier! All major powers reformed to market based economies and dropped the strict marxist ideologies, even if some teach it and don't point out the contradictions.
that's exactly what I am referring to, they do teach marxist ideals but they don't teach the contradictions to their populace while their free trade zones and market based reforms grow and grow and are wildly popular
this is very easy to integrate into, compared to not having 7 special economic zones and administrative regions, and massive metropolitan areas supporting those zones.
It's relevant to understand that China's government/business relationship and their IP enforcement + state-sponsored hacking is considered the normal course of business in their (current?) value system. In the USA, the government/business relationship is (ostensibly) very different (although campaign finance + lobbying makes this claim dubious), so the US could easily misinterpret Chinese actions in this new "5th domain" as an act of war. When one of two actors believe that they are both at war, it doesn't take much for both actors to believe they are at war.
Also, I suspect with the 4 simultaneous crises (disease outbreak, economic depression, civil unrest, political loggerheads during this election year) the USA is having right now, China may well be able to outlast us and might end up the only "superpower" in a decade or two. A significant portion of the US population still thinks we are the "greatest nation" while our world rankings continue to slip below other OECD nations in {literacy, education, health, longevity, happiness, affordability, etc}. I suspect the "new cold war" is actually between two tribes in the USA. China just has to outlast our simmering civil war without galvanizing the two American factions together against them in battle.
In African markets (there are many), there is often instability and for the foreign entrepreneurs the way to navigate that is just knowing that there will simply be a different strongman to pay.
From a Chinese perspective, America must just be the same and on a more predictable 4-year cycle.
Conveniently left out are all the Republican-friendly companies and industries which do the same (and more). Automobile, equipment manufacturers, aircrafts, fast food, clothing, sports leagues...everyone bows down to money. This is the obvious result of our capitalist system. What's the point in calling out a handful of tech companies?
Critiques of the “capitalist system” would be better if you articulated a system that worked better on balance. In other words, a system that solves for these problems, but which introduces many other, worse problems (e.g., famine, ethnic cleansing, imprisonment/execution of political dissenters, etc) is not a better system on balance. If we struggle to find such an improved system, it probably means that the current capitalist system simply needs some reform in order to optimize it—perhaps this means better regulation of the markets, more socialization in a few key areas (e.g., healthcare, etc), or reducing government corruption. This would make for a much improved conversation, IMHO.
EDIT: a lot of people seem to be taking issue with this comment, but I don’t understand the gripe. Presumably the logic is sound that critiques are more interesting if they discuss tradeoffs? Or maybe there is some obvious system that lacks all of the problems of our current system and introduces none of its own? Surely no one is downvoting this because they don’t like our current system but can’t identify a better one...
No it would not necessarily be better, on balance. A critique of a system is not meant to be an attack on it nor an argument that there is necessarily some other better system. In fact, I would argue that the difficulty with having these conversations nowadays is precisely your response.
In the American context at least, most of the time when people point out the failures in Capitalism people mean it more in the way that you might point out edge cases that need to be accounted for. The problem in having these conversations is people take it as some rhetorical device meant to actually promote Communism or some other philosophy.
The point OP is making here, as I understand it, is that there is a paradox in a Capitalist system in that if self-interest and profit are at it's core, then by definition that self-interest will override any other consideration to the point that any company will be more than willing to sacrifice any other concern for the possibility of making money.
We have known for the past 30 years at least that China is on a trajectory to surpass or challenge American supremacy and yet corp after corp was willing to send them technical knowledge and jobs that grew their economy to the point that they can build artificial islands in the South China Sea. Let me remind you that we won WW2 primarily on the strength of being able to outproduce our adversaries, not on technological superiority.
So now though, we're super concerned about Chinese influence in the tech industry, specifically. I am worried too, of course you have to be. But it's tremendously silly to act like now it's suddenly a concern and single out one sector or company (e.g. NBA) as if the sacrifice of values in order to make money is not an inherent characteristic of Capitalism.
It's not just that capitalism encourages sacrificing other values, it punishes keeping those values since one of your competitors will make the sacrifice and profit
Because they have inordinate influence, same as with all the movie studios that are now heavily reliant on China for money. Most countries don't do great stuff constantly, but China is definitely outdoing itself the last few years:
- Hong Kong
- Organ harvesting
- Enslave/sterilize Muslim minorities
- Sinking Vietnamese fishing boats
- Killing Indian soldiers
- Coverup of the whole virus situation until it was too late
- Constantly threatening invasion of Taiwan (likely to happen this decade)
Saying "but muh business" is wrong. Either you think these actions are fine, or you think they are wrong and you can see the clear path where these are leading. Last time we kept on appeasing a dictatorial ethnostate the world took a while to recover.
The US is currently:
bombing several countries, putting asylum seekers in high density prisons, blatantly ignoring a global pandemic, assassinating foreign leaders, disproportionately killing and imprisoning black people, using its currency to maintain global hegemony, starting trade wars with pretty much everyone, allies included, spying on the entire world, allies included, emitting a disproportionate amount of carbon, actively rolling back environmental protections, etc etc
The US isn’t that different than China, some might consider US imperialism to be a greater evil. If it is wrong for companies to operate in China, how can you justify them operating in the United States?
No. Chinese imperialism is worse. They've already shown their fearful grasp over authoritarian censorship and surveillance technology by locking down Xinjang and throwing Uyghurs into concentration camps. There is no freedom of speech there, and the population has to endure repeated brainwashing through the education system, etc. China's Belt and Road initiative, saddling African countries with debt, and takeover of the South China sea may not be fully military conquests, but represent worrying economic warfare. The US has its fair share of problems, but we are by no means the authoritarian nightmare dystopia that China is.
I'm not sure this is true. Many tech companies I've worked for in the past have had a lot of trouble operating in China. Some don't even try.
The NBA on the other hand. I love Steve Kerr. He tweets daily about Trump and how he abuses human rights, but ask him about HK and he gets quite really quick. If a man that rich is afraid to say something - thats a tremendous amount of power. I just don't see this type influence on the tech industry.
Employing your line of thought - noone should condemn anything unless they condemn everything antithetical to their principals/views.
Furthermore, Kerr is an employee and whatever statement he makes on HK would be inconsequential but also extremely harmful to his employer and co-workers. If actual change is wanted then we should divert our attention to the government where the real change happen.
> Employing your line of thought - noone should condemn anything unless they condemn everything antithetical to their principals/views.
Yes, it is called hypocrisy.
The individual in question has a powerful speech platform due to his role. Such power should be used responsibly.
Moreover, why aren’t statements against the USA government harmful to businesses? Because we have free speech. We should protect it, and denounce the actors in the world trying to censor us.
Steering this back to Google's decision to pull out of China after exploits - the Tech Industry has expressed views that have cost it significant amounts of revenue. We've fought back unlike other industries.
Google is a big organization. There is clearly tons of employees there protecting free speech, but there are also other people who are okay just taking the cash. It’s hard to treat Google as an entity only on one side of the fence.
It's funny to see Google/Facebook get slagged over China. Anyone who truly cared about companies doing business in China should try to discriminate between companies that are actually doing what they are arguing for and the ones that aren't, but often I think it's just another hammer to bash the companies they don't like.
Barr didn't seem too concerned about foreign influence when it came to a national security advisor lying to the government about cash payments from Turkey and illegal coordination with Russia.
According to this, Judge Sullivan rejected the assertions of FBI entrapment and prosecutorial malfeasance:
> Similar to Horowitz’s findings, the court ruling undercut arguments that the FBI investigation or Justice Department prosecution of Flynn was unjustified or improperly handled.
> Refuting Flynn’s claims that he was misled into unwittingly pleading guilty to charges, Sullivan wrote that it was undisputed that Flynn told the same lies to the FBI, Vice President Pence and senior White House officials, who repeated them to the American public, leading to his firing in February 2017.
> “The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty to making materially false statements to the FBI,” Sullivan wrote.
...
> “Arguably, you sold your country out,” Sullivan told Flynn during Flynn’s initially scheduled sentencing hearing, on Dec. 18, 2018. Sullivan cited Flynn’s admissions that he hid the substance of talks with Kislyak and lied when he said he did not know the extent of the Turkish government's involvement in work his firm had obtained and when he claimed an op-ed he wrote for the Turkish president’s benefit was done at his own initiative.
It’s amazing how the law and order types who are always standing up for law enforcement are the first to say that the justice system unfairly pressures defendants when its one of their own.....
Oh and by the way, “The Hill” is definitely not part of the “liberal media.”
When following the case at the time most ppl had the impression that the plea deal was excellent for Flynn and he didn't get charged with the heavy stuff (turkey..) because he cooperated in several investigations.
Many commentators also said that in such cases getting charged and pleading to a lesser process crime (lying to the FBI..) is pretty standard.
Flynns tactic in fighting this process crime and winning seems somewhat strange.
If Trump loses in November, there will be new charges the next day and the first piece of evidence will be Flynns written testimony admitting to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNZSwafPAFc&list=PL35erRp2I3...
Speaking specifically about the Russian contacts, since I haven't read up on the Turkey stuff.. Flynn was a member of Trump's transition team, and it's understandable that foreign officials would be looking to meet with him and get a sense of how policy will change after Obama leaves office. For example, Obama had imposed sanctions on Russia two weeks before Trump's inauguration. Russia was wondering if Trump planned to double down on this course of action or reverse course, so they sent their ambassador to meet with Flynn.
It's arguable that Flynn violated the Logan Act, which criminalizes private citizens negotiating with foreign governments. However, that act (which dates back to John Adams) has not been invoked in court since 1852 and has never been applied to an incoming administration official going through an entirely predictable "get to know you" phase with foreign officials.
It's telling that Flynn was indicted for the lying and not the Logan Act violation. I honestly have no idea why he lied, but if he'd just told the FBI to go away, that probably would have been the end of it.
The allegations about turkey are certainly not false. Flynn was being paid ~600k$ during the campaign to lobby for turkey. This for example was an oped he released under turkish supervision on election day: https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021...
He only declared this conflict of interest some months later. Nobody disputes this. The only question is if it can be proven that taking money from a wealthy turkish business man and friend of erdo to further turkish national interests constitutes working for the turkish gov.
He continued his pro turkey stance in his short term as NSA and tried some shady stuff like selling nuclear tech to the saudis while enriching himself and some friends.
This is the problem with the entire Trump administration. To me they seem to be right about some issues related to China.
But it’s hard to take anything they say seriously when they’re so deeply pro-corruption, and the commander in chief can’t stand in front of a camera and be honest about what he had for breakfast this morning.
Oh, I forgot to mention that if it’s Goya, it has to be good!
Most of these are publicly traded companies. They aren't owned by the U.S. government.
Companies will act in the best interests of the company and only it's largest shareholders.
U.S. citizens need to get it through their heads that they can't count on companies to be patriotic.
Republicans are selling out the U.S. to corporations, but they have this false notion that corporations are loyal to a government for some stupid reason.
We'll unless they are Chinese companies, because all Chinese companies are partially owned by the Chinese Government so they are loyal to China, or else.
IBM cooperated with Nazi Germany, as did GM, Ford and dupont, etc. GM and Ford were dragging their feet converting factories in the U.S. for war production, but they did so willingly in Germany.
Publicly traded companies wouldn't exist given Chinese government rule. It is a short term interest to support that government, when long term, it could ultimately lead to the shareholder's removal or dilution by the government.
I see the East Coast power centers having waning influence on the Pacific Rim states of the West Coast, who are uniquely positioned to work with Asian countries
I see that the global center of capital is continuing its millenia long westward migration. Past the US west coast, and into China. From Prometheus Rising:
> Brooks Adams also noted that centralized capital (the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few inter-related families) seems to have been moving steadily West throughout recorded history. The first major accumulations are to be found in Sumer; the center of money-power then shifted to Egypt, to Greece, to the Italian peninsula, to various parts of Germany, and then to London. At the time Brooks Adams was writing (c. 1900) he saw the balance teetering between London and New York, and he predicted that the decline of the English Empire would shift the balance to New York within the first half of the 20th Century. He seems to have been right. Brooks Adams had no theory as to why this Westward movement of wealth had been going on for 6000 years. He merely observed the pattern. The shift is still continuing, in the opinion of many. For instance, Carl Oglesby in The Cowboy vs. Yankee War, sees American politics since 1950 dominated by a struggle between “old Yankee wealth” (the New York-Boston axis, which replaced London after 1900) and “new Cowboy wealth” (Texas-California oil-and-aerospace billionaires). As of 1997, it looks like the Cowboys are winning; which is what one would expect if there were a real “law” behind Adams’ East-West migration of capital.
I think the mechanism behind that is a sort of "colonial expansion" essentially where the newer area of development and wealth have less legacy, regulatory capture, and less sunk costs into the status quo similar to general anti-cannabalization of old and large companies falling behind. That and other forms of consolidation of power to slow the overall systems down.
Californication is an old idea that has come and gone. I'm talking about the West Coast. The 2 richest men in the world live in Seattle. The West Coast is a very powerful place, otherwise AG Barr would not somewhat impotently be complaining about it.
That quote relies on a Euro-centric view of world history (and some bad geography) and completely ignores centuries of history during the middle ages where knowledge and wealth was being concentrated in the Islamic world and basically all of Asian history.
It should be very clear that the US government wants to manufacture consent towards a trade war or cold war rather than actually care about human rights or national security. They’re so quick to pull the trigger to ruin Hong Kong’s economy, but they have yet to do anything to support asylum seekers.
> Barr suggested that Apple iPhones “wouldn’t be sold (in China) if they were impervious to penetration by Chinese authorities.” He suggested American tech companies were imposing a “double standard.”
He has a point there, but I am not sure I’d want to support Apple opening up to government authorities here.
I detest Trump (voted for Clinton) and most, if not all, senior members of his administration, including Barr. But that doesn't prevent me from ultimately being OK with some of their statements/actions, even if they're all for the wrong reasons. The regime in China represents evil on a scale that is probably unprecedented in Earth's history, and anything that can stop or slow its world domination should be welcomed or at the very least acquiesced to. That regime is bad for the overwhelming majority of Chinese people (regardless of race and religion), bad for everyone else, and bad for the planet.
The above paragraph risks triggering some knee-jerk "what about the US/NATO?" responses. Let me save you the trouble: the West is guilty of countless crimes, especially against non-White people. But at least for some periods in history, most citizens of most Western countries were not systematically disenfranchised, monitored, disappeared, tortured, and killed. Yes, living in America while being Black, Hispanic, Arab (that's me), Muslim (ditto), etc. there's still a lot of anxiety, discrimination, and even danger. But it's incredibly naive to think the people of China are not orders of magnitude more oppressed and in constant fear for their livelihoods, lives, and loved ones.
I feel the same as you. I am also an immigrant that came to the USA escaping a country where people were suffering after decades of oppression and a string of socialist dictatorships. Seeing the actions of the CCP being normalized and defended in the USA concerns me a lot.
I didn't immigrate to the US, my parents did. From Syria. I lived there for a few years, and it's absolutely infuriating how some Americans equate their government with Assad, CCP, Khamenei, Putin, Kim, Duterte, etc.
Exactly its not as if we do not have issue in the USA and we did have a dark history (slavery for example). I think many Americans do not know how good we have it. In some ways our worst enemy is ourselves.
Not going to address this post directly, but a quick glance at hungryhobo's comments shows that at least the first three pages (i.e. the most recent comments) are exclusively about defending the regime in China. If that's not trolling, I don't know what is.
Have you? How many cameras are there in the train station from HK to GZ? I lost count at 50. How many times do you go through a complete search as you take the metro trains?
How many WeChat messages just never quite show up? Only pooh bear knows.
A set of rules that benefitted my family and hundred of millions of others, I'm sorry that your family was left out, surely the US is taking good care of you now
I can assure you that most Chinese citizens are not systematically disappeared, tortured, and/or killed (and enfranchisement is not as valued there as it is here).
The regime has been objectively _good_ for the overwhelming majority of Chinese people. The economic growth and societal stability is what's unprecedented. This is not an excuse for the wrongs they are perpetrating, it's an acknowledgement of facts.
Did you know if the Uighur s were to take the university entrance exam in china they would get extra points due to the fact they are minority?
Despite what the western media reports (in this case a opinion piece lol, where the proof is a spreadsheet) there is a system in china that actually sets minority up for success.
>In China there is no freedom of speech. Foreign companies can have their IP taken from them
Lolz if you look on Weibo you can find tons of voices critical of the government,
It's so painful to discuss China online. The claim I was responding to - that you called "correct", if you needed the reminder - was that most Chinese citizens are being systematically disappeared, tortured, and killed. It is not correct. Let's not get emotional or move the goalposts?
What you are saying is factual (though you may be surprised to what lengths you can go to re: speech). I challenge you to find where I said otherwise. I was refuting OP's counterproductive hysteria. What you have mentioned here is unrelated.
The original poster that you responded to and that I was saying was correct never said "most Chinese citizens are being systematically disappeared, tortured, and killed". I think you moved the goal post.
>> But at least for some periods in history, most citizens of most Western countries were not systematically disenfranchised, monitored, disappeared, tortured, and killed. Yes, living in America while being Black, Hispanic, Arab (that's me), Muslim (ditto), etc. there's still a lot of anxiety, discrimination, and even danger. But it's incredibly naive to think the people of China are not orders of magnitude more oppressed and in constant fear for their livelihoods, lives, and loved ones.
If "most citizens of most Western countries were not systematically disenfranchised, monitored, disappeared, tortured, and killed" is meant to be contrastive with China (otherwise what's the point?) then the implication is that most citizens of China do suffer from that and thus "in constant fear for their livelihoods, lives, and loved ones".
Of course if you think that's terribly hyperbolic and not a charitable interpretation of the original poster's statement, then there's no actual disagreement.
>> he regime in China represents evil on a scale that is probably unprecedented in Earth's history
Yeah, Nazi is now the cute one in the room, given China is here, right? At least the Nazis are white.
I don't know, maybe killing Native Americans for their land, enslaving the black, and selling opium to weaken a whole nation for their silver are all less evil than what the Chinese are now doing. But who knows, people have forgotten those deeds haven't they?
Unless you're referring to something else, I think you misunderstood the quote from the article. These companies suspended response to _government requests for user data_ in Hong Kong, not the accounts of Hong Kong protestors. That is, they are refusing to hand information to the CCP. Barr is actually praising this action and saying they should unite to resist in more ways.
Top athletes, celebrities from Hollywood etc all virtue signal while ignoring the problems going on in China and are willing to sell out to China. Since the COVID, China has been blatantly racist towards blacks and the US embassy had to notify people about the "Discrimination against African-Americans". Yet this got ZERO attention:
> China McDonald's apologises for Guangzhou ban on black people
> In response to an increase in COVID-19 infections, officials in the Guangzhou metropolitan area escalated scrutiny of foreign nationals. As part of this campaign, police ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin. Moreover, local officials launched a round of mandatory tests for COVID-19, followed by mandatory self-quarantine, for anyone with “African contacts,” regardless of recent travel history or previous quarantine completion. African-Americans have also reported that some businesses and hotels refuse to do business with them. The U.S. Consulate General advises African-Americans or those who believe Chinese officials may suspect them of having contact with nationals of African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice. Without advance warning, officials might require such individuals to submit to a COVID-19 test and undergo 14 days of supervised quarantine at their own expense.
> All U.S. citizens in China are subject to local law. If you violate Chinese laws, even unknowingly, you may be arrested, expelled, or imprisoned. The Chinese legal system can be opaque, and the interpretation and enforcement of local laws may be arbitrary. The judiciary does not enjoy independence from political influence. U.S. citizens traveling or residing in China may be subject to heightened scrutiny by Chinese local law enforcement and state security. They should carry identity documents at all times.
What's the concern that's being identified in all these stories? It would be good to have an enumeration of clear concerns.
Is it that:
1) the companies are letting Americans' hardware be controlled / data escape and be monitored in China, or
2) that people in China subject to their laws (un-American as those laws may be) are being monitored (and worse)?
Because if it's the first topic, how do we not manage to buy/require/put in technical safeguards against our own people being monitored, or our equipment being taken over remotely? If we can't even do that, then how is any equipment we buy safe? But if we do, then is the argument that we're helping China get stronger by contributing to their economy or technological dominance? And that's undesirable to have a power shift that decreases our standing?
Who's responsible for deciding what standing we want to have in the world? Who's guiding that steering wheel and what's the destination? I daresay it's odd for the administration to be speaking up about this one thing, when it's mute on so many other factors that set our technological dominance.
Or if the 2nd argument, how far do our laws extend? Is that a principle to be applied to all countries by us, that they should not do things to their own citizens that would be illegal here? If we want universally respected laws to apply to other countries, I would think we could do ourselves a favor by respecting other laws and organizations that we currently choose to say are not in our convenience to follow.
Or is it something else? If you want me to be patriotic, tell me what I'm signing up for.
The specific concern here is cultural manipulation by the CCP with far-future-looking roadmaps to undermine and dominate their economic rivals.
For example, Disney as a Yuan-focused propaganda engine for CCP values cannot produce a remake of Robin Hood, which is a strongly indvidualistic narrative.
Driving a generation of strongly "powerful, central government is the best way to solve problems" values to children and young people paves they way for teens and twentysomethings to adopt CCP-sympathetic narratives in media and social media.
FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with the CCP. <joke> You communist. </joke>
So, if I were being sarcastic/cynical -- I would say, "so we object to China trying to become a global superpower by investing in the arts, media, technology, and a slew of other things that cause economic gains for their people?" How dare they stoop to such tactics.
I would actually feel more in earnest about the above joke if it didn't come with (or was trying to mask) the torture, economic espionage, etc.
> FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with the CCP. <joke> You communist. </joke>
This breaks the site guidelines—quite badly actually. Insinuating that someone is a "collaborator" is...well, it's hard to believe that we've returned to an age where people do this kind of thing, however trivially on the internet. Adding joke tags doesn't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Edit: so far, every comment your account has posted has been using HN for political/ideological/national battle. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do this, so please don't misuse HN this way. No, that's not because we're communist collaborators—it's because we're trying to protect HN from flamewar, regardless of which angle the flamebait flies in from.
[edit] Retracting my unnecessary jab around the moderator's comments being modified several times and their moderation leaving a lot to be desired. The latter was rude and uncalled for.
I'll refrain from commenting on you personally, but I will say that I've been here for around a decade and dang's moderation has been excellent over that entire period.
Sometimes it has even been aimed at my comments, and I cannot really cite a single example where I feel dang has been unfair.
I would also note that you failed to even attempt to say why you think dang's moderation was lacking, here.
Oh it's true that I build my comments by posting an initial stub and then adding to them bit by bit. That's the process that works, for whatever reason. But I'd never do that to create a misleading impression—on the contrary, in such cases I'll always add "Edit". If you replied before I added the bit about joke tags, I didn't see that and I'm sorry.
I actually have the 'delay' field in my profile set to allow time for such incremental edits, but not for long enough to mask all of them.
Robin Hood isn’t exactly in line with American principles either. Guy against the law robs from the rich to give to the poor. I feel like Peter Pan is the replacement figure.
Cultural manipulation is a little woolly, does it have other names you like?
Robin Hood is actually quite aligned with American values. Standing up to, or outright rejecting unjust laws/taxation was a major factor in the birth of the country. It also embraces aspects of the American psyche that value the act and social contribution of the subversive. always had a place near and dear to the American cultural heart, in spite of what the law and order crowd would have you believe.
It has, however, aged poorly, as the arm of the law has lengthened, the voice of the town crier become nigh-unignorable, and the medium of the truly successful in the sense of magnitude of value extracted vs. value provided by has become far harder to assail since it is generally a private individual doing it instead of an authority figure.
Multinational corporations have no loyalty to anything except their shareholders. Politicians should not feign surprise when they do not align with national interest.
That's only because they choose to. The "Fiduciary obligation to shareholders" thing is not only wrong, but it isn't the way a system needs to work.
A corporation, which is a legal entity that owns capital, production and services, is composed of people. Those people could use the powers of the corporation to advance the well being of its community.
A corporation can go against the grain. But what incentive would it have to do so? It's not coincidence that corporations tend to aggressively pursue profit, it is the intentional structure of capitalism.
The best defence for Taiwan against China is to be an indispensible trading partner. Once China is self sufficient in IC fab. then increasingly aggressive moves against Taiwan could be more likely. I fear for Taiwan in the long term.
US foreign policy often turns out to be short sighted.
The US Attorney General gives a lot of indicators of corruption. At the very least, the current US Presidential administration gives a lot of indications of unfairly favoring some companies over others. Why should we believe the US Attorney General on this?
I'm not sure any major company has either 1) not done business with China or 2) not seriously tried to do business with China.
The massive emerging market there was too much of a $$$ opportunity for them to ignore.
Yes, there's a difference between, say, a fast food chain that tries to get a foot hold in China and a technology company that helps provide tools used to limit rights of free speech etc. However, this is a matter of degree, not kind.
All business with China that helps advance their economy helps to legitimize their regime, and also gives China a significant bit of influence over even companies' non-China businesses. When a company's business is China is so critical to lose that it will subject itself to China's will even outside of China, that company is complicit in the same way, just to a lesser degree, as these tech companies providing more direct support.
But it sounds like you think that the bad things about China (you specified limiting free speech) differ not in degree but in kind from bad things about other countries. Is that the case?
I wasn't at all making a comment on bad things done by other countries. The topic of "bad things that countries do" is a bit too broad to tackle in a single comment.
I meant that presumably you don’t advocate a total refusal of all economic participation with most other countries like you are recommending with China.
>Yes, there's a difference between, say, a fast food chain that tries to get a foot hold in China and a technology company that helps provide tools used to limit rights of free speech etc. However, this is a matter of degree, not kind.
I disagree.
Giving bad people money in exchange for hamburgers is different in kind than giving them the tools they need to continue doing bad things. Hamburgers are a commodity they can get from anyone. Tools are not.
It's not buying hamburgers that's the problem. It's the company itself giving China a bit of control over itself even outside the borders of China. It allows China to impose it's authoritarian actions outside of China.
The profit made from every Big Mac is money that leaves China and goes into the pocket of a foreign investor. This is infinitely more valuable than McDonalds making a tweet that supports Hong Kong. China knows this, which is why it's so hard for a foreign company to do business there even if you don't consider all the censorship laws.
Is believe MacDonald's China its owned by China, they sold all their assets a few years ago because their business model is largely real estate and you can only lease hold land for 99 years in China.
There is so much to unpack here that it's difficult to even get started. The US government has encouraged companies to work with China for decades. I remember it being big news when GM opened a joint venture in China in 1997.
This continued unabated through the Bush and Obama presidencies, even as it became increasingly clear that US relations with China were going off the rails. There were significant signs that the Chinese government was not playing fair, particularly around IP theft, but the legislative and executive branches did nothing visible about it. Hundreds or thousands of American companies (including google) were hacked into or had intellectual property stolen with no legal recourse.
Tech companies, like google, are acutely aware that the current Chinese government is extremely capricious and will block an entire company from the country to incubate their own competitor. Many tech companies want to work in china, but of major american companies, they seem to be the most cautious.
Given all this context, for Barr to turn around and say that US tech companies are "pawns" is infuriating. Virtually every large american company needs clear laws on working with China. They are not getting those laws out of Congress or the Justice Department, and everyone is the worse for it.
Historically the US trade relationship with China was based on a principal that doing so would encourage the adoption of democracy there. Seeing as how that hasn't happened, this kind of rhetoric could just be an attempt to course correct (maybe overly so).
I'm sure the upcoming elections also play a part in this. The article briefly mentions that as well.
Encouraging the adoption of democracy is never a true goal to any geopolitical decision. It's only used to deflect criticism from naysayers. The US has used the same justification to bomb nations and install fascist dictators. "You oppose going to war with Iraq? So you hate democracy then?"
In China's case, "spreading democracy" just meant "remove from Soviet sphere." We broadly used the same term at the same time to open trade with China and fight the Vietnam War.
For sure, it's much easier to sell any decision if you package it in terms of values and ideals that your population is willing to embrace. It's as true for the US as it is any other country in the world.
Exporting our broken form of governing, which is rife with corruption, mismanagement, unresponsive to the majority of the population, and defaults to redirecting money from the poorest to the richest, is the goal of western monopoly capital.
Basically "Our broken system allowed capital to rob 400 million people, let's utilize it in robbing 1.4 billion Chinese people next..."
Any idea that the American and European elite are pushing this for "benevolent purposes" flies in the face of a few centuries of well documented western history.
I'd invite you to look at https://ourworldindata.org/, and in particular the effects of capitalist and democratic reforms on the health, wealth and happiness of nations.
Every claim you make here has no basis in fact. And is mostly just symptomatic of a partisan political disagreement in a western democracy.
> Virtually every large american company needs clear laws on working with China.
I partially agree. Yes, the Federal government should heavily regulate trade with China.
But companies don't need to wait on the Government to do what is right. Companies could have ignored any Government push to do business in China.
Outsourcing ethics to Government regulation is just plain wrong.
> Outsourcing ethics to Government regulation is just plain wrong.
This is a category error. Companies have an existential incentive to chase profits (and their managers can be sued by the shareholders for doing anything less). Their incentive to avoid violating laws, morals, and ethics is far lower.
> is just plain wrong
What is the consequence? Does anyone in the USA strictly avoid buying anything from any company with dubious ethics?
We all have knee-jerk reactions to outrage, but where we either (1) don't have enough transparency to know or (2) don't have reasonable alternatives, there is no ability for individual non-governmental entities to shape those incentives. The closest we get are internet mobs organizing boycotts, but lots of people reject that method for completely rational reasons.
> This is a category error. Companies have an existential incentive to chase profits (and their managers can be sued by the shareholders for doing anything less). Their incentive to avoid violating laws, morals, and ethics is far lower.
Holding firm to a strong sense of ethics and morals is a risky thing to do. Whether you're representing a company, or just acting as an individual. But that risk does not justify NOT holding firm.
So, if you run a company, and you're afraid of getting sued by your shareholders for not pursuing profit at the expense of your ethics and morals, I'd suggest finding a new job. Or, just maybe, your shareholders aren't so blinded by greed that they would not support your company doing what is right.
>So, if you run a company, and you're afraid of getting sued by your shareholders for not pursuing profit at the expense of your ethics and morals, I'd suggest finding a new job.
Maybe this is what happens, and the people who are left in charge at those companies are the ones who don't care?
I agree that's how things should work, but I agree with a sibling comment that the fitness function of companies right now in the USA doesn't select for the attributes you are describing.
I act that way, but I've never worked for any of the most successful companies in my industry. That's probably not a coincidence.
> So, if you run a company, and you're afraid of getting sued by your shareholders for not pursuing profit at the expense of your ethics and morals, I'd suggest finding a new job.
Who’s to say that’s not exactly what normally happens? In which case it should surprise no one that those who remain are disproportionately lacking in ethics and morals.
There's broader context to all this. The central banks knew that their system would break down eventually due to inflation, and so one way to extend its life was to offshore manufacturing to make products cheaper and more affordable on a weaker dollar.
To keep everything from imploding on America, manufacturing had to be wrested from China at the same time the Federal Reserve was shut down.
225 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 270 ms ] threadBut it also doesn't make him any less of an asshole -- Barr is a shady character.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Attorney General Barr Takes Aim at Hollywood, Disney For Censoring Films to Appease China
For those of you downvoting, explain to me how language like "pawns of Chinese influence" isn't just insane propaganda?
EDIT2: For what it's worth, I do have a bone to pick with China over their treatment of Xinjiang province, but lol if you think the USG ever uses human rights as anything other than a stick to beat enemy countries over.
Put another way: CIA guy whose ex-OSS dad gave Jeffery Epstein his first fake job teaching math is now ginning up fake nationalism. News at 11.
You're absolutely right that this is another red scare. It's honestly reminiscent of post 9/11 domestic support of the majority of USA population to bomb the middle east. You're not even allowed to talk about China in US society anymore unless you're furious with rage for them.
We ally with regressive states like Saudi Arabia and formerly places like nuclear apartheid South Africa. Only protests and rebellions move the needle on how shitty the government is here.
EDIT: Responding below: I'm unable to parse your intention, but that's what people typically say when they want to agree but still support the thrust of USG policy.
This is not confined to the US either, countries in other parts of the world will engage in actions for the Chinese government they would not do at home or without great public fanfare about how they are against it.
https://www.inc.com/maureen-kline/why-debate-over-stakeholde...
https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2020/06/recognize-pri...
I just don't believe altruism or pure evil exists in these large orgs. I'm sure there are exceptions to prove the rule, but it's rare you'll see an action by a large corporation that can't be explained by money and growth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
I’ll take virtue signaling over dog whistling any day.
I bet he doesn’t call out Apple after Cook kissed the golden ring during the photo op last year.
The US government can’t exactly stand up tsk tsking with any type of moral authority on anything.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Do you think they would call out the Koch brothers?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
A post about the government is going to be political by definition.
If you want to read more about how we moderate this sort of thing on HN, I've written lots about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
"Silence is not an option" and
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"
While happily doing business with the CCP, and keeping mum about Chinese human rights abuses.
China has some strict protectionist policies for a fairly decent list industries, not just tech. Many foreign companies that operate in China have to do so through joint ventures or other partnerships with domestic Chinese companies.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/11/WS5a56a3cca3102e5b1...
For several decades, there has been a general trend - which was greatly accelerated by China's WTO accession - of barriers to trade decreasing in China. In popular discussions of China's trade and economic policies in the West, there's rarely any recognition of this fact.
Average tariffs have been reduced to about 3.4%, which is about the same level as the US applied as recently as the mid-1990s. Much of the state sector was privatized and the majority of the economy is now private. Intellectual property enforcement is way up - it's been completely overhauled in just the last 6 years, with specialized courts set up and a very large volume of IP cases being heard every year now. There have been huge changes, which most of the public in the West has little to no idea bout, and which find no reflection in the popular discussion.
We know he wants the US to get the data, too. We know that neither should.
To many of us, the cold war is over, and the other 300 years of rolling the nation state concept across the world is over too. As it is very easy to operate in a borderless global economy - at least between major economic unions - if you are privileged enough.
If you absolutely need people to pick a side again, just say so. Otherwise you need to realize that its all in your head, not everyone is looking at the world the same way, both/all major countries are very similar and this will always be a "trigger" for you when people point it out.
But if this is really so irreconcilable and necessary for people to pick a side because we're doing the cold war thing again, then you need to say so. Americans will pick America if thats what its coming down to. But just assuming we are in that state and that everyone else is assuming the same thing, thats just going to go nowhere.
Absent that, the incentives just aren't there. There is a way to do business/life in China where you aren’t exposed to the things we disagree about with China, and its also now a very large market based economy with all the trappings and comforts of being rich in the west....
But given the companies we’re talking about maybe subconsciously I meant what I wrote
I mean, that's exactly what is going on.
Hollywood and big tech accessing all trade routes available as formerly marxist parts of the world turn out to be pretty good at market based economies and rival the size of the always-capitalist markets, with growth potential for much more.
If some other thing needs to happen, the executive branch and Congress better say so because it obviously doesn't matter, and there is an art to dealing with China, just like there is an art to dealing with any market. Anyone thinking otherwise was never really playing the game to begin with, they are stuck in an antiquated protectionist business model in their local market.
It doesn't really matter how anyone feels about that, what I described is what's happening.
But that's not the only way to look at the world. Even restricting yourself to dualities, you could also view it as Commerce vs. Guardians [1], people who think for themselves vs. people whose opinions come from those around them [2], zero-sum thinking vs. positive-sum thinking, or those who divide people into two groups vs. those who don't. With many of those lenses the nation-state as a social organizing principle is obsolete: people look out for their own interests and make contracts with each other when it's mutually beneficial.
I think this is a particularly useful worldview when it comes to large mega-corps. Apple is on Apple's side, and to some extent on their customer's side; both the CCP and the AG dislike them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival
[2] http://paulgraham.com/orth.html
The final thing I would say is that communism lost, except in name alone, so that makes this perspective so much easier! All major powers reformed to market based economies and dropped the strict marxist ideologies, even if some teach it and don't point out the contradictions.
They/He still thinks China are winning according the Communism/Socialism principals and not before the Deng's market reform 30/40 years ago.
this is very easy to integrate into, compared to not having 7 special economic zones and administrative regions, and massive metropolitan areas supporting those zones.
https://www.ft.com/content/3e37af94-17f8-11e9-b191-175523b59...
there is no assurance of private enterprise there
regardless, it is possible to operate in the here and now and stash resources and titles in the caymans as fast as you can
It's relevant to understand that China's government/business relationship and their IP enforcement + state-sponsored hacking is considered the normal course of business in their (current?) value system. In the USA, the government/business relationship is (ostensibly) very different (although campaign finance + lobbying makes this claim dubious), so the US could easily misinterpret Chinese actions in this new "5th domain" as an act of war. When one of two actors believe that they are both at war, it doesn't take much for both actors to believe they are at war.
Also, I suspect with the 4 simultaneous crises (disease outbreak, economic depression, civil unrest, political loggerheads during this election year) the USA is having right now, China may well be able to outlast us and might end up the only "superpower" in a decade or two. A significant portion of the US population still thinks we are the "greatest nation" while our world rankings continue to slip below other OECD nations in {literacy, education, health, longevity, happiness, affordability, etc}. I suspect the "new cold war" is actually between two tribes in the USA. China just has to outlast our simmering civil war without galvanizing the two American factions together against them in battle.
In African markets (there are many), there is often instability and for the foreign entrepreneurs the way to navigate that is just knowing that there will simply be a different strongman to pay.
From a Chinese perspective, America must just be the same and on a more predictable 4-year cycle.
For reference EARNIT act
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates-c...
EDIT: a lot of people seem to be taking issue with this comment, but I don’t understand the gripe. Presumably the logic is sound that critiques are more interesting if they discuss tradeoffs? Or maybe there is some obvious system that lacks all of the problems of our current system and introduces none of its own? Surely no one is downvoting this because they don’t like our current system but can’t identify a better one...
In the American context at least, most of the time when people point out the failures in Capitalism people mean it more in the way that you might point out edge cases that need to be accounted for. The problem in having these conversations is people take it as some rhetorical device meant to actually promote Communism or some other philosophy.
The point OP is making here, as I understand it, is that there is a paradox in a Capitalist system in that if self-interest and profit are at it's core, then by definition that self-interest will override any other consideration to the point that any company will be more than willing to sacrifice any other concern for the possibility of making money.
We have known for the past 30 years at least that China is on a trajectory to surpass or challenge American supremacy and yet corp after corp was willing to send them technical knowledge and jobs that grew their economy to the point that they can build artificial islands in the South China Sea. Let me remind you that we won WW2 primarily on the strength of being able to outproduce our adversaries, not on technological superiority.
So now though, we're super concerned about Chinese influence in the tech industry, specifically. I am worried too, of course you have to be. But it's tremendously silly to act like now it's suddenly a concern and single out one sector or company (e.g. NBA) as if the sacrifice of values in order to make money is not an inherent characteristic of Capitalism.
Saying "but muh business" is wrong. Either you think these actions are fine, or you think they are wrong and you can see the clear path where these are leading. Last time we kept on appeasing a dictatorial ethnostate the world took a while to recover.
The US is currently: bombing several countries, putting asylum seekers in high density prisons, blatantly ignoring a global pandemic, assassinating foreign leaders, disproportionately killing and imprisoning black people, using its currency to maintain global hegemony, starting trade wars with pretty much everyone, allies included, spying on the entire world, allies included, emitting a disproportionate amount of carbon, actively rolling back environmental protections, etc etc
The US isn’t that different than China, some might consider US imperialism to be a greater evil. If it is wrong for companies to operate in China, how can you justify them operating in the United States?
The NBA on the other hand. I love Steve Kerr. He tweets daily about Trump and how he abuses human rights, but ask him about HK and he gets quite really quick. If a man that rich is afraid to say something - thats a tremendous amount of power. I just don't see this type influence on the tech industry.
Furthermore, Kerr is an employee and whatever statement he makes on HK would be inconsequential but also extremely harmful to his employer and co-workers. If actual change is wanted then we should divert our attention to the government where the real change happen.
Yes, it is called hypocrisy.
The individual in question has a powerful speech platform due to his role. Such power should be used responsibly.
Moreover, why aren’t statements against the USA government harmful to businesses? Because we have free speech. We should protect it, and denounce the actors in the world trying to censor us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
Google is a big organization. There is clearly tons of employees there protecting free speech, but there are also other people who are okay just taking the cash. It’s hard to treat Google as an entity only on one side of the fence.
What are some examples of positive impressions of CCP that people possess now, but not before the tech companies started working with China?
It seems in US at least, more people are hating China. More people protest against CCP.
If China is actually trying to exert influence, their exertion seems to be quite counter-productive.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/defense/4217...
This is an incredible scandal which didn't come to light since the DOJ dropped the case against him.
The prosecutors colluded with his own law firm to deny him justice.
This has all come out since Syndey Powell took his case.
Any citations?
According to this, Judge Sullivan rejected the assertions of FBI entrapment and prosecutorial malfeasance:
> Similar to Horowitz’s findings, the court ruling undercut arguments that the FBI investigation or Justice Department prosecution of Flynn was unjustified or improperly handled.
> Refuting Flynn’s claims that he was misled into unwittingly pleading guilty to charges, Sullivan wrote that it was undisputed that Flynn told the same lies to the FBI, Vice President Pence and senior White House officials, who repeated them to the American public, leading to his firing in February 2017.
> “The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty to making materially false statements to the FBI,” Sullivan wrote.
...
> “Arguably, you sold your country out,” Sullivan told Flynn during Flynn’s initially scheduled sentencing hearing, on Dec. 18, 2018. Sullivan cited Flynn’s admissions that he hid the substance of talks with Kislyak and lied when he said he did not know the extent of the Turkish government's involvement in work his firm had obtained and when he claimed an op-ed he wrote for the Turkish president’s benefit was done at his own initiative.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/michael-fl...
Oh and by the way, “The Hill” is definitely not part of the “liberal media.”
I don't see how someone with that kind of education could be so easily mislead.
What am I missing?
You're missing the transcripts of what Flynn told the FBI, provided by someone other than the FBI.
It's arguable that Flynn violated the Logan Act, which criminalizes private citizens negotiating with foreign governments. However, that act (which dates back to John Adams) has not been invoked in court since 1852 and has never been applied to an incoming administration official going through an entirely predictable "get to know you" phase with foreign officials.
It's telling that Flynn was indicted for the lying and not the Logan Act violation. I honestly have no idea why he lied, but if he'd just told the FBI to go away, that probably would have been the end of it.
He continued his pro turkey stance in his short term as NSA and tried some shady stuff like selling nuclear tech to the saudis while enriching himself and some friends.
This guys corruption is pretty impressive.
This is the problem with the entire Trump administration. To me they seem to be right about some issues related to China.
But it’s hard to take anything they say seriously when they’re so deeply pro-corruption, and the commander in chief can’t stand in front of a camera and be honest about what he had for breakfast this morning.
Oh, I forgot to mention that if it’s Goya, it has to be good!
Companies will act in the best interests of the company and only it's largest shareholders.
U.S. citizens need to get it through their heads that they can't count on companies to be patriotic.
Republicans are selling out the U.S. to corporations, but they have this false notion that corporations are loyal to a government for some stupid reason.
We'll unless they are Chinese companies, because all Chinese companies are partially owned by the Chinese Government so they are loyal to China, or else.
IBM cooperated with Nazi Germany, as did GM, Ford and dupont, etc. GM and Ford were dragging their feet converting factories in the U.S. for war production, but they did so willingly in Germany.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/n...
> Brooks Adams also noted that centralized capital (the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few inter-related families) seems to have been moving steadily West throughout recorded history. The first major accumulations are to be found in Sumer; the center of money-power then shifted to Egypt, to Greece, to the Italian peninsula, to various parts of Germany, and then to London. At the time Brooks Adams was writing (c. 1900) he saw the balance teetering between London and New York, and he predicted that the decline of the English Empire would shift the balance to New York within the first half of the 20th Century. He seems to have been right. Brooks Adams had no theory as to why this Westward movement of wealth had been going on for 6000 years. He merely observed the pattern. The shift is still continuing, in the opinion of many. For instance, Carl Oglesby in The Cowboy vs. Yankee War, sees American politics since 1950 dominated by a struggle between “old Yankee wealth” (the New York-Boston axis, which replaced London after 1900) and “new Cowboy wealth” (Texas-California oil-and-aerospace billionaires). As of 1997, it looks like the Cowboys are winning; which is what one would expect if there were a real “law” behind Adams’ East-West migration of capital.
Californication has come and gone.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/business/china-capital-flight...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-11/china-hid...
Californication is an old idea that has come and gone. I'm talking about the West Coast. The 2 richest men in the world live in Seattle. The West Coast is a very powerful place, otherwise AG Barr would not somewhat impotently be complaining about it.
He has a point there, but I am not sure I’d want to support Apple opening up to government authorities here.
The above paragraph risks triggering some knee-jerk "what about the US/NATO?" responses. Let me save you the trouble: the West is guilty of countless crimes, especially against non-White people. But at least for some periods in history, most citizens of most Western countries were not systematically disenfranchised, monitored, disappeared, tortured, and killed. Yes, living in America while being Black, Hispanic, Arab (that's me), Muslim (ditto), etc. there's still a lot of anxiety, discrimination, and even danger. But it's incredibly naive to think the people of China are not orders of magnitude more oppressed and in constant fear for their livelihoods, lives, and loved ones.
I'm 99% sure you've never been to China given what you wrote.
But I think it's just as important having people with different opinions on this platform, I think you kinda prove my point
Too bad the regime you defend isn't as enlightened as you are.
How many WeChat messages just never quite show up? Only pooh bear knows.
I mean do people of GZ look oppressed to you?
I can assure you that most Chinese citizens are not systematically disappeared, tortured, and/or killed (and enfranchisement is not as valued there as it is here).
The regime has been objectively _good_ for the overwhelming majority of Chinese people. The economic growth and societal stability is what's unprecedented. This is not an excuse for the wrongs they are perpetrating, it's an acknowledgement of facts.
So some being systematically disappeared, tortured, and or killed is okay?
Here are a few recent examples of human rights abuses in China.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/a-sp...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests...
In China there is no freedom of speech. Foreign companies can have their IP taken from them.
In China you can go to prison for years for simply saying what I am saying right now. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838#:~:text=U....
>In China there is no freedom of speech. Foreign companies can have their IP taken from them
Lolz if you look on Weibo you can find tons of voices critical of the government,
https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4461664625535361
What you are saying is factual (though you may be surprised to what lengths you can go to re: speech). I challenge you to find where I said otherwise. I was refuting OP's counterproductive hysteria. What you have mentioned here is unrelated.
If "most citizens of most Western countries were not systematically disenfranchised, monitored, disappeared, tortured, and killed" is meant to be contrastive with China (otherwise what's the point?) then the implication is that most citizens of China do suffer from that and thus "in constant fear for their livelihoods, lives, and loved ones".
Of course if you think that's terribly hyperbolic and not a charitable interpretation of the original poster's statement, then there's no actual disagreement.
Yeah, Nazi is now the cute one in the room, given China is here, right? At least the Nazis are white.
I don't know, maybe killing Native Americans for their land, enslaving the black, and selling opium to weaken a whole nation for their silver are all less evil than what the Chinese are now doing. But who knows, people have forgotten those deeds haven't they?
Just shows you how genuine their motives are, in case you had any doubts
> China McDonald's apologises for Guangzhou ban on black people
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52274326
https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/health-alert-u-s-consul...
> In response to an increase in COVID-19 infections, officials in the Guangzhou metropolitan area escalated scrutiny of foreign nationals. As part of this campaign, police ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin. Moreover, local officials launched a round of mandatory tests for COVID-19, followed by mandatory self-quarantine, for anyone with “African contacts,” regardless of recent travel history or previous quarantine completion. African-Americans have also reported that some businesses and hotels refuse to do business with them. The U.S. Consulate General advises African-Americans or those who believe Chinese officials may suspect them of having contact with nationals of African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice. Without advance warning, officials might require such individuals to submit to a COVID-19 test and undergo 14 days of supervised quarantine at their own expense.
> All U.S. citizens in China are subject to local law. If you violate Chinese laws, even unknowingly, you may be arrested, expelled, or imprisoned. The Chinese legal system can be opaque, and the interpretation and enforcement of local laws may be arbitrary. The judiciary does not enjoy independence from political influence. U.S. citizens traveling or residing in China may be subject to heightened scrutiny by Chinese local law enforcement and state security. They should carry identity documents at all times.
Is it that:
1) the companies are letting Americans' hardware be controlled / data escape and be monitored in China, or
2) that people in China subject to their laws (un-American as those laws may be) are being monitored (and worse)?
Because if it's the first topic, how do we not manage to buy/require/put in technical safeguards against our own people being monitored, or our equipment being taken over remotely? If we can't even do that, then how is any equipment we buy safe? But if we do, then is the argument that we're helping China get stronger by contributing to their economy or technological dominance? And that's undesirable to have a power shift that decreases our standing?
Who's responsible for deciding what standing we want to have in the world? Who's guiding that steering wheel and what's the destination? I daresay it's odd for the administration to be speaking up about this one thing, when it's mute on so many other factors that set our technological dominance.
Or if the 2nd argument, how far do our laws extend? Is that a principle to be applied to all countries by us, that they should not do things to their own citizens that would be illegal here? If we want universally respected laws to apply to other countries, I would think we could do ourselves a favor by respecting other laws and organizations that we currently choose to say are not in our convenience to follow.
Or is it something else? If you want me to be patriotic, tell me what I'm signing up for.
For example, Disney as a Yuan-focused propaganda engine for CCP values cannot produce a remake of Robin Hood, which is a strongly indvidualistic narrative.
Driving a generation of strongly "powerful, central government is the best way to solve problems" values to children and young people paves they way for teens and twentysomethings to adopt CCP-sympathetic narratives in media and social media.
FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with the CCP. <joke> You communist. </joke>
I would actually feel more in earnest about the above joke if it didn't come with (or was trying to mask) the torture, economic espionage, etc.
This breaks the site guidelines—quite badly actually. Insinuating that someone is a "collaborator" is...well, it's hard to believe that we've returned to an age where people do this kind of thing, however trivially on the internet. Adding joke tags doesn't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow.
Would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN in the intended spirit? Note that they include:
Assume good faith.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Edit: so far, every comment your account has posted has been using HN for political/ideological/national battle. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do this, so please don't misuse HN this way. No, that's not because we're communist collaborators—it's because we're trying to protect HN from flamewar, regardless of which angle the flamebait flies in from.
Sometimes it has even been aimed at my comments, and I cannot really cite a single example where I feel dang has been unfair.
I would also note that you failed to even attempt to say why you think dang's moderation was lacking, here.
I actually have the 'delay' field in my profile set to allow time for such incremental edits, but not for long enough to mask all of them.
Cultural manipulation is a little woolly, does it have other names you like?
It has, however, aged poorly, as the arm of the law has lengthened, the voice of the town crier become nigh-unignorable, and the medium of the truly successful in the sense of magnitude of value extracted vs. value provided by has become far harder to assail since it is generally a private individual doing it instead of an authority figure.
Then again, timea are a changin'.
A corporation, which is a legal entity that owns capital, production and services, is composed of people. Those people could use the powers of the corporation to advance the well being of its community.
A corporate charter can be revoked, and the laws of the corporation can be modified. We don't have to be fatalistic about this.
US foreign policy often turns out to be short sighted.
The massive emerging market there was too much of a $$$ opportunity for them to ignore.
Yes, there's a difference between, say, a fast food chain that tries to get a foot hold in China and a technology company that helps provide tools used to limit rights of free speech etc. However, this is a matter of degree, not kind.
All business with China that helps advance their economy helps to legitimize their regime, and also gives China a significant bit of influence over even companies' non-China businesses. When a company's business is China is so critical to lose that it will subject itself to China's will even outside of China, that company is complicit in the same way, just to a lesser degree, as these tech companies providing more direct support.
But it sounds like you think that the bad things about China (you specified limiting free speech) differ not in degree but in kind from bad things about other countries. Is that the case?
I disagree.
Giving bad people money in exchange for hamburgers is different in kind than giving them the tools they need to continue doing bad things. Hamburgers are a commodity they can get from anyone. Tools are not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM
The Clinton administration pushed hard to increase trade with China and make it easier for American companies to outsource manufacturing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Re...
This continued unabated through the Bush and Obama presidencies, even as it became increasingly clear that US relations with China were going off the rails. There were significant signs that the Chinese government was not playing fair, particularly around IP theft, but the legislative and executive branches did nothing visible about it. Hundreds or thousands of American companies (including google) were hacked into or had intellectual property stolen with no legal recourse.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-probes-hundreds-of-china-s...
Chinese military groups also hacked into the employee database for the US federal government.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-25-million-affected-opm-...
Tech companies, like google, are acutely aware that the current Chinese government is extremely capricious and will block an entire company from the country to incubate their own competitor. Many tech companies want to work in china, but of major american companies, they seem to be the most cautious.
Given all this context, for Barr to turn around and say that US tech companies are "pawns" is infuriating. Virtually every large american company needs clear laws on working with China. They are not getting those laws out of Congress or the Justice Department, and everyone is the worse for it.
I'm sure the upcoming elections also play a part in this. The article briefly mentions that as well.
Basically "Our broken system allowed capital to rob 400 million people, let's utilize it in robbing 1.4 billion Chinese people next..."
Any idea that the American and European elite are pushing this for "benevolent purposes" flies in the face of a few centuries of well documented western history.
Every claim you make here has no basis in fact. And is mostly just symptomatic of a partisan political disagreement in a western democracy.
But companies don't need to wait on the Government to do what is right. Companies could have ignored any Government push to do business in China.
Outsourcing ethics to Government regulation is just plain wrong.
The corporations are the ones that wanted it.
This is a category error. Companies have an existential incentive to chase profits (and their managers can be sued by the shareholders for doing anything less). Their incentive to avoid violating laws, morals, and ethics is far lower.
> is just plain wrong
What is the consequence? Does anyone in the USA strictly avoid buying anything from any company with dubious ethics?
We all have knee-jerk reactions to outrage, but where we either (1) don't have enough transparency to know or (2) don't have reasonable alternatives, there is no ability for individual non-governmental entities to shape those incentives. The closest we get are internet mobs organizing boycotts, but lots of people reject that method for completely rational reasons.
Holding firm to a strong sense of ethics and morals is a risky thing to do. Whether you're representing a company, or just acting as an individual. But that risk does not justify NOT holding firm.
So, if you run a company, and you're afraid of getting sued by your shareholders for not pursuing profit at the expense of your ethics and morals, I'd suggest finding a new job. Or, just maybe, your shareholders aren't so blinded by greed that they would not support your company doing what is right.
Maybe this is what happens, and the people who are left in charge at those companies are the ones who don't care?
I act that way, but I've never worked for any of the most successful companies in my industry. That's probably not a coincidence.
Who’s to say that’s not exactly what normally happens? In which case it should surprise no one that those who remain are disproportionately lacking in ethics and morals.
Things change. The world has changed since 1997. China has changed since 1997.
In 1942 Germany was the enemy. Today, Germany is our friend.
That may have been true a few years ago. The way the US is treating its allies, I'm not sure what the state of the "friendships" are anymore.
And yet the 2003 Chery QQ was such a copy of the Chevy Spark that you could pull a door off the QQ, put it on the Spark, and the air seals were fine.
To keep everything from imploding on America, manufacturing had to be wrested from China at the same time the Federal Reserve was shut down.