China is the only major economy that is projected to grow this year. And Corona-virus crisis is under control there whereas in eg. India it is still escalating.
Is this propaganda? Yes, production is shifting to Taiwan and other countries from China. No, it won’t happen overnight, it’ll only happen when it needs to. And China may still grow overall, but companies are leaving too and eventually the trend could overtake the growth.
But given how 2020 has unfolded. If I were a business owner and I had the option of building a factory in say India or China; then China surely has proven more stable.
Of course could I place the factory in Spain or Japan for the same cost, I would do so. But that has always been the case.
"Like minded" probably means either "white" or "vassal" states of USA. USA had a great opportunity to play a constructive role in Latin American and use their vast manpower for its benefit while benefiting those countries as well. Mexico, Brazil could have done what China did. However USA constantly tried to destabilize its neighbors and focused on playing petty games instead of constructive allies.
It's possible that we may have been able to find some in Central and South America, if they weren't squeezed by the war on drugs on one end, and state-actor-sponsored regime changes on the other.
I didn't want to say that, but for a long time I already have a feeling that there are users here in the HN community whose sole purpose is to deny any kind of criticism against China or putting it in a bad light. Almost like paid trolls, I would say. I expect lots of this kind of comments in this thread too.
If anything, it simply shows that the site is large enough to be caught on their radar. It's more or less constant background noise on any big platform these days, but it is very helpful to both be mindful of it and highlight it for others who might not be paying attention otherwise.
I'm not entirely sure what the right thing to do here is, though. Clearly these people have an agenda and they're working hard at pushing it, at the same time, they're free to use the site just like anyone else. Is it bad when you're paid to do it? Then what about people promoting their products, releases etc? I wholeheartedly agree that it's not a good thing, but I'm struggling to find a way to conceptually approach it. At the end of the day, it does shine through that HN attracts its best when it's discussing something technical, not political.
Ive noticed this too. And its not just Hacker News.
On any forum where the subject of China comes up you'll see a flood of pro-China comments regardless of the content.
If they can't argue their case convincingly they'll confuse, divert and deflect to derail the conversations as a fallback.
Something along the lines discussed here:-
You guys are simply failing to take into account that the population in these threads is much, much more diverse than you assume it is.
That basic fact easily explains nearly everything that you're seeing. People have opposing opinions because of their divergent backgrounds and experiences. On all sides, they feel extremely strongly about it, and so when they encounter each other online, they argue ferociously and draw extreme conclusions about each other.
I feel like there are more comments here complaining about chinese astroturfing, than there are actual comments that are pro-china.
Sure there's quite a bit of anti-usa, but given what trump has done for America's reputation abroad, i don't think that has anything to do with being pro-china.
Indeed, I wonder how many of these people complaining about chinese astroturfing actually get their information only from US-aligned sources.
It's really polarizing: they appear to me as mindlessly spouting propaganda, and in the meanwhile they probably dismiss any critical comment, from me or others, as just coming from chinese wumao (which is amusing, since I don't have any ties to China, and my only tie to the US is via my employer... )
I have seen a number of China-related thread reach HN's frontpage, with lots of comments, only to sink 10 pages within minutes. I believe that some users are gaming the auto-moderation tools by engaging in a downvote war in these threads to have them marked as flamebait and downranked. It doesn't have to be only paid trolls, just enough people unaware of the Tien An Men massacre and Mao's crimes.
Sadly this makes it look like HN is soft-censoring China-related threads...If I were a mod (and if I'm not wrong) I'd be very curious of the downvoting patterns in these cases.
I'm a mod, we've looked closely at the downvoting patterns, and the conclusion is that the community is simply divided. Users have different views because of their different backgrounds. That simple explanation is more than adequate to explain what we see here.
Unfortunately, when people encounter opposing views, they don't think of this simple explanation. Instead, they think nobody could possibly hold that opposing view in good faith, and therefore they must be an astroturfer, a shill, a Communist agent, a manipulator, a spy.
There is a great deal of previous discussion on this topic. If you want further explanation see these links:
dang, I think I and a lot of other HN users would appreciate it if you actually posted the results of this investigation somewhere so we have real data to look at. It's pretty clear that it at least seems like it's more than just different views at work here. When you say repeatedly that you've spent countless hours looking at the data and didn't find anything, but then don't share that data it gets really frustrating for users.
I completely understand that, but I also hope you understand how it looks from the HN user perspective. There's a sentiment that feels legitimate, but 1) it's not possible for users to prove or disprove because the data is impossible to obtain, 2) the mods tell us it's unfounded because data, but the data can't be shared, and 3) the mods also tell us if we think the concern is legitimate, prove it, except that because of (1) it's not possible to prove without basically doxxing other users.
I think you addressed it well in the link you provided, especially with the SSM argument, but I have two soft suggestions for consideration:
1) I would personally like to see a HN rule implemented that requires you to post a reply to a comment before you can downvote or flag it. It's probably naive of me to think this would help stop brigading, but it seems like a logical extension of the current downvote setup.
2) I'd like to see equal treatment in terms of flagging both pro and anti- country/political platform comments. If politically charged posts are consistently turning into flame wars in the comments, which seems to be the case, the only way to address the issue without pissing off one set of people or another is to pretty much ban such comments in both directions. I know, easier said than done.
In any case, I think you're doing a great job and I appreciate how tough it is to moderate HN with the level of egos and strong opinions (mine included) on here. Thanks for keeping HN civil.
Yeah I hear you about the frustration. Btw I just came back here to add that there is a way to get at least some partial satisfaction: if you see some specific case that you're worried about you can email hn@ycombinator.com. We always look into it, and we're usually able to say something without giving away the store. Just be aware that the HN inbox is brutal, so if something requires time to look into or properly reply to, you may have to wait a while. We look at most emails as they come in, though, in case there's something that needs taking care of immediately.
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The idea of requiring a reply for downvotes or flags comes up a lot and I'm sorry to disappoint, but we're not going to do it, because all of our experience is that it would just lead to a lot of low-quality replies.
In terms of equal treatment of flagging: flags are almost all done by users and we can't control what they do, so this is beyond our power. When we do intervene, we definitely try to do it in an even handed way [1], so if you see an unfairly-unbalanced situation, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is also an option.
I often comment against anti China comments, because they are so remarkably ill informed. Name calling is not sufficient in these times. Evidence exists of the problems in China, there is no need to fantasise about it. (I do not accuse you, I am speaking generically to my motivations)
Many industrial espionage things done by china, and in late times by soviet Russia were entirely rational reactions to trade sanctions. They were illegal but not irrational. Simply declaiming "but its spying" or "but its trade war" isn't informative.
The government of China funds the so-called 50 Cent Army [1] of paid internet trolls to modify the content of discussion across the internet. Russia does the same.
However in China specifically has implement decades of so-called 'patriotic education' and holds a tight grip on information through the Great Firewall of China.
Nationalist sentiment among products of that education (and censorship) system is very high, so it's not suprising when criticism of China gets voted down by normal people who don't receive financial compensation.
I recently wrote some comments that are contrarian in respect to this topic.
Frankly, my perspective is that the HN hive mind just downvotes anything that does not toes the US line (there are also upvotes obviously, but other topics don't elicit such knee jerk reactions).
It's really stifling discourse. I wouldn't mind it that much, if the current cold/trade war wouldn't have real world effects (and obviously, I hope it won't degenerate into a different kind of war)
This perspective, that HN "always" does $unlikeable-thing, is a function of the notice-dislike bias: since we're all much more likely to notice (and weight more heavily) the things that rub us the wrong way, people on different sides of an argument will derive completely different generalizations from exactly the same comment set.
I still think that the trend is there (in this thread, the comments aren't very nuanced and before I commented, the ratio of "against:non-against China" was 3:1, but now the ratio is much more even)
Without getting numbers for it, not much can be done to understand/address the situation
This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "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."
This is an extremely well-discussed and repetitive issue. If you want explanation about why this is not allowed and why your interpretation is inaccurate, take a look at these past comments:
Remember when the US government successfully formed a partenrship agreement with 13 countries called the TPP that would have been a strong counter to China's growing influence but Trump threw it in the trash as soon as he got into office. Making us weaker just for political purposes.
TPP seemed like a triumph of corporatism, though. A way to push legislation down our throats that no one wanted except large companies. Trump killed it for petty reasons, but well, "no one except large companies" is a very large group, and Trump and his clientele are part of it.
The same happens when some news is criticizing Israel.I have seen news in here flagged to make them disappear from the front page and when they are unmarked the get buried among other news out of the front page. Both governments have a an army of public opinion controllers.
Sorry if it sounded like that, just wanted to point out that is nothing new and not surprising. China is doing it, Israel is doing it and probably other countries too. Not big news.
Don’t buy things from China. Vote with your wallet. I’ve personally done this for the past year or two. At least to the extent that it is possible. Would love to see a USA made mobile phone though.
I've been really wanting to find something to help make this easier to do for the longest time. Its so hard nowadays to find a wide array of goods made in the US. I would love an Amazon-quality website that only sells things made in the US, or better yet, a "country of origin" label on Amazon itself. I would GLADLY pay more to buy things that are made here, just to support US businesses. However, I usually have to go scouring the comments on product listings looking for any information about where the thing I want to buy was actually made. It sucks..
So, instead of 44-0, the USA is a mere 44-1 up on the aggression front. And as I said, since we're talking about China here, swap China for North Korea. How many countries have China invaded, bombed or staged coups in, since the end of the Korean war?
I mean, you're double and triple (even quadruple and quintuple) counting on that a fair amount, and a fair number of those are pretty dubious.
But the point isn't to provide accurate information, it's to provide something that tries to makes a point and would be a huge pain to bother refuting or diminishing, as all propaganda is designed to be.
Also, as a democracy the US has released information about those events. We don’t expect the PRC to release evidence they behaved poorly (since they already forbid talking about TS)
Nope. I'm not claiming China hasn't been flexing its muscles in the South China Sea, of late [which at least could be claimed is its own back yard]. But the graphic speaks for itself. The USA has an unrivalled history of wars, military aggressions and destabilising of governments all over the globe since the end of the Korean war.
But you [and the rest of the western world] still seem to unquestioningly believe that you're the 'Good Guys' [0]. I mean, having a fondness for the land of your birth is all well and good, but it never fails to amaze me how many Americans just have this complete mental block when it comes to the actions of their own country.
If any other country had carried out a tenth of the actions that the USA has done, throughout recent history, it would be a pariah nation. But the US gets away with it, time after time, after time.
> If any other country had carried out a tenth of the actions that the USA has done, throughout recent history, it would be a pariah nation.
Considering that quite a few countries now fit in that category (you're now talking ~4 incidents), well into the double digits, you're argument is now just boiling down to "US bad!".
Not elevating the morally bereft. More like asking why one aggressive militaristic nation on the planet has a 'Get Out of Jail Free Card' when it comes to being held accountable for its actions.
I just finished a great book called "All the Shah's Men" about the history of the Iranian revolution. To have everything that happened in Iran boiled down to "countries invaded by, bombed by or had coups instigated by the USA, since the end of the Korean War" is really a stretch lacking basically all context.
As a casual reader of history I always thought US interference in Iran was a pretty clear cut example of wrong doing but now I'm not so sure.
I can't speak on the other examples in that image but knowing more now about Iran it makes me question the narrative of the nefarious motivations behind US interference.
Anything connected to the Trump administration is going look pretty dumb by default to most, and the politics of the U.S.-China spat are certainly a mess. However, there are compelling economic reasons for manufacturers to move operations to new places (Note: Likely not the U.S.).
Just for one example, compare the population age pyramid of China[1] to that of India[2]. The way in which China's long standing (but now retired) one-child policy has shaped their population pyramid into a top-heavy column is truly unreal. They have a huge cohort entering retirement age and another big cohort entering their late 30's where they're experienced rather than cheap workers. If you want young, cheap labour in China, the supply is about to start contracting
Meanwhile India's age pyramid really is a pyramid. As China's cheap labour pool shrinks, India's is set to grow massively. Factory wages in India are currently about one fifth of China's too. If you're building a shiny new iPhone factory that will need a multitude of the cheapest human hands money can hire, they're not in China anymore. The gap is going to widen substantially over the next decade or so too.
It will take a lot to break up existing supply chains and pry them out of China, but the economic incentives exist today and will become more irresistible each passing year.
Automation is, of course, a wild-card, but what might work to keep factories in China will work to bring them back to places like the U.S.. Automation works in any country, but demographics no longer favour China when it comes to the one thing that has attracted manufacturers looking to make things as cheaply as possible: cheap labour.
This may be why we've seen China becoming increasingly aggressive over the last few years. Their economic base is peaking and decline is in sight. Now is the time to grab as much power, territory, and influence as possible and try to solidify it before that economic base melts away.
Decoupling our economies, if successful (a big if), is a recipe for war.
Unfortunately, the last few remaining adults interested in and capable of doing the hard work of political and economic diplomacy, and domestic industrial policy left in 2016. Most had retired already as they were old enough to have lived through either WWII or the Korean War and thus knew what the stakes were. Taking their ball and going home was never an option for them no matter how much the opponent cheated--the task at hand was constant engagement, which however difficult and seemingly pointless was preferable to the alternative.
I don’t know. Our economy was almost completely decoupled from the Soviet Union and that never turned into a shooting war. What’s different this time that is going to overcome MAD and allow for a conventional war?
Even at its peak, USSR economy was only almost as big as the US (half the size, irrc). China is almost certainly going to surpass the US in term of total economy.
China is at or near its 21st century peak (getting old before it gets rich), and the US has a massive number of strong friends and allies, including a European Union increasingly wary of China.
It's a different Cold War from the USSR, but democracy may still again prevail against a totalitarianism.
The EU was always wary of the US. But when it comes to picking between China and the US, there’s no chance they pick China without some kind of massive currently unpredicted Chinese reforms.
Chinese GDP growth has slowed dramatically, and it’s GDP per capita is still at the level of Mexico. It’s population is projected to decline dramatically, and it has a very unfavorable age distribution.
It probably won’t get more than some small multiple larger than the US economy and it may never approach the US in GDP per capita.
My point is that the the imbalance is unlikely to get large enough that they US keep fielding a credible nuclear threat.
So again what has changed that makes conventional war between nuclear powers likely or possible.
The cold war was a massive cost to the economies of both the Soviets and the west; and a also had a series of proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam etc.) that cost millions of people their lives. Plus we were dangerously close to tipping into a full on nuclear confrontation a multiple points.
A country avoids nuclear exchanges because retaliation will also devastate it. An integrated economy isn’t going be any more of a deterrent in this respect. If a country is willing to deal with nuclear devastation they are certainly willing to deal with economically damaging themselves.
As far as proxy wars go is trade going to stop those? History has examples of proxy wars fought between countries that engaged in trade.
If you become dependent on another country to produce some good, then you become vulnerable to them withdrawing that same good. Globalisation is arguably bad security. It makes sense for democracies to favour trade with other democracies, which they're less likely to have conflicts with.
That dependency goes both ways: it’s an interdependency. I suggest you read about the European Coal and Steel Community after WW2.
The Russians want to sell Europe their gas despite being somewhat politically opposed: that money props up a huge chunk of their economy. The oil and gas oligarchs would not be happy with Putin if he stopped exports.
I suggest you read about the European Coal and Steel Community after WW2.
Post-war European democracies and CCP China are apples to oranges. Not only in the freedom and democracy ratings sense. The EU has still to makes leaps in terms of becoming a union, and they're geographically next to each other, and culturally close, to a level the US and China will never be.
The theory is trade is an interdependency that puts the brakes on war regardless of cultural differences. Europe was almost constantly warring before the formation of the Common Market. China needs the trade as much as we do
It's the other way around: it's because diplomacy and lack of war that economic interdependency can be built.
China needs to trade far more than we do. That's why there will be no war even if some decoupling happens. China can't afford it, at many levels, including the US being the oceanic route police.
Taking their ball and going home was never an option for them no matter how much the opponent cheated
This is weakness. Predators like the CCP smell it from a mile away, and exploit it masterfully. Every time the US engaged, a bunch of MBAs and connected people made billions shifting jobs to China, and the CCP infiltrated more operatives into US academia, which made them richer and more prepared. 50 years, and they haven't got any closer to being the open, democratic country they told us it'll become. Every president since Nixon is to blame, in an increasing manner. And now they have horrific technological tools to exert absolute control.
If engaging means the US has to basically sacrifice its remaining industry, job market, and patent pool, to appease the CCP, then it's not engaging, it's a protection racket, and a suicide.
was preferable to the alternative
Decoupling = war is a non sequitur. The CCP has nothing, and they know it, against US military projection. It's all a show. And many other countries, like Australia, and SE Asia ones, are waking up to this fact, and the shady oceanic CCP maneuvers.
I don't see how Taiwan and the US are like-minded at all. Taiwan is a democratic country with a decently levelheaded approach and fantastic manufacturing that led to a good coronavirus approach.
And the US is run by a wannabe dictator, authoritarian loving, narcissist that was obviously elected by a significant portion of the US population and that has a pretty reasonable chance on getting reelected. And yes, while the mail-in voting mess might have an impact on it, it is by far not the only reason.
Like-minded democracies might be the European states, but while they actually still have a lot of american products banned for food safety reasons, similar to Taiwan, Taiwan has actually caved to White House pressure on something I would hardly call a trade deal but more a bully forcing its way on country such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.
>I don't see how Taiwan and the US are like-minded at all.
We can start with a shared adversary.
>It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.
Honestly, I think the long-term plan here is relocating as much of Taiwan to the US as possible so that there's not that much left for the PRC to take in an invasion/annexation. That means everything short of actual physical territory, from people (scientific & industrial expertise) to patents, materiel, and industrial capacity.
Denying valuable personnel and equipment to the PRC could potentially be as significant as the advantage that the US gained over the Soviet Union from Operation Paperclip, where the US got the "best and brightest" Nazi scientists, and the Soviet Union got the leftovers.
The United States‘ grip on the world is starting to get much looser. A strong China is seen as the reason, but there are many more.
The US is trying to build up an alliance against China, but I guess a lot of countries will want to stay neutral in that conflict. The Chinese government is doing horrible atrocities, but the US also isn’t the paragon it portrays itself to be.
The US has a long history of hypocrisy and has its share of shameful actions, but equating it to China is just ludicrous.
That said, there a lot of countries that have their own issues with authoritarianism, persecution of minorities, privacy violations, etc and they have a partner in China that is willing to look the other way for profit. It's going to be difficult for an increasingly weak US to force those countries to isolate a cheap source of goods to placate their masses.
It was not my goal to equate the two - I’m not a native speaker so maybe I expressed myself imprecise.
America being the good and leading the fight against evil was always just a story told to the masses. In reality you were gaining a lot from aligning to one of the blocs in the Cold War and a lot of countries had common enemies with the US. All this is missing now. Already with the Iraq war unanimous support by allied countries was not there anymore and with the Trump administration the US stopped to be a reliable partner.
I don’t think you can easily say that other countries abandon their willing to try to change China. They just keep on the diplomatic way.
I'll take "not a paragon" over "puts dissidents and religious minorities into concentration camps, tortures and rapes them, conducts medical experiments on them and harvests their organs".
Somewhat related - look at the largest companies in Taiwan - a large number of them are in the advanced electronics manufacturing space (Pegatron and TSMC for instance).
TSMC - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is arguably one of the most important companies in the world, manufacturing chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and many more. The barrier to entry for semiconductor fabrication is so ridiculously high, not even Apple owns its own foundries. Intel has been struggling with 7nm processes (now delayed), while TSMC is already churning out chips using the newer EUV 5nm process for Apple’s upcoming ARM devices (including some iMac and Macbook models). The US recently struck a deal with TSMC, pressuring it to drop one of its largest Chinese customers (Huawei) in return for opening an advanced foundry in the US (a $12B dollar project with enormous tax breaks for TSMC).
Due to its critical positioning in advanced electronics, I genuinely believe the US would get involved if China were to “mess with” Taiwan. A sobering realization is the increasing significance yet fragility of the global technology supply chain - something the pandemic recently exposed. There are geopolitical risks to the United States having a dependency on other nations for something as critical as semiconductors. It’s increasingly becoming a matter of national security.
I believe there are many Chinese people, visiting HN everyday to discover and share cool stuff, and look forward to conversations that are intellectually beneficial to the participants.
If anything, I hope I'm one of these good people, not a troll.
When the situation started to get tight, the meaning of word "we" here is shifting to "we Americans", but you see, unless HN put up a rule to block Chinese users, they will be here. Still looking for fun stuff, but end up seeing the theme turning to "tension", "conflict".
They think differently. Some views may seem unfair, or don't make sense to them.
They usually just keep quiet, hide the entries and move on. But sometimes it gets too annoying, so they'll also raise a few points.
It is you who thinks defending China is not ok.
So in converse, there will be people who think it is.
It doesn't make one troll because she's not speaking in your favor.
I thought this was all fine?
Can we just, sit down and compute?
88 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadDenial of reality and downvoting the comments won't change anything.
China is the only major economy that is projected to grow this year. And Corona-virus crisis is under control there whereas in eg. India it is still escalating.
But given how 2020 has unfolded. If I were a business owner and I had the option of building a factory in say India or China; then China surely has proven more stable.
Of course could I place the factory in Spain or Japan for the same cost, I would do so. But that has always been the case.
China does have faster growth. Only time will tell if that continues.
But one does reap what one sows.
I'm not entirely sure what the right thing to do here is, though. Clearly these people have an agenda and they're working hard at pushing it, at the same time, they're free to use the site just like anyone else. Is it bad when you're paid to do it? Then what about people promoting their products, releases etc? I wholeheartedly agree that it's not a good thing, but I'm struggling to find a way to conceptually approach it. At the end of the day, it does shine through that HN attracts its best when it's discussing something technical, not political.
https://safenetforum.org/t/the-gentleperson-s-guide-to-forum...
Im almost certain that all forums of any size are monitored and email notifications go out so the ideological warriors can go to work.
That basic fact easily explains nearly everything that you're seeing. People have opposing opinions because of their divergent backgrounds and experiences. On all sides, they feel extremely strongly about it, and so when they encounter each other online, they argue ferociously and draw extreme conclusions about each other.
Sure there's quite a bit of anti-usa, but given what trump has done for America's reputation abroad, i don't think that has anything to do with being pro-china.
It's really polarizing: they appear to me as mindlessly spouting propaganda, and in the meanwhile they probably dismiss any critical comment, from me or others, as just coming from chinese wumao (which is amusing, since I don't have any ties to China, and my only tie to the US is via my employer... )
Sadly this makes it look like HN is soft-censoring China-related threads...If I were a mod (and if I'm not wrong) I'd be very curious of the downvoting patterns in these cases.
Unfortunately, when people encounter opposing views, they don't think of this simple explanation. Instead, they think nobody could possibly hold that opposing view in good faith, and therefore they must be an astroturfer, a shill, a Communist agent, a manipulator, a spy.
There is a great deal of previous discussion on this topic. If you want further explanation see these links:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
If you take a look and still have a question that isn't answered there, let me know what it is.
But there are deeper reasons. I wrote about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24356496.
I think you addressed it well in the link you provided, especially with the SSM argument, but I have two soft suggestions for consideration:
1) I would personally like to see a HN rule implemented that requires you to post a reply to a comment before you can downvote or flag it. It's probably naive of me to think this would help stop brigading, but it seems like a logical extension of the current downvote setup.
2) I'd like to see equal treatment in terms of flagging both pro and anti- country/political platform comments. If politically charged posts are consistently turning into flame wars in the comments, which seems to be the case, the only way to address the issue without pissing off one set of people or another is to pretty much ban such comments in both directions. I know, easier said than done.
In any case, I think you're doing a great job and I appreciate how tough it is to moderate HN with the level of egos and strong opinions (mine included) on here. Thanks for keeping HN civil.
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The idea of requiring a reply for downvotes or flags comes up a lot and I'm sorry to disappoint, but we're not going to do it, because all of our experience is that it would just lead to a lot of low-quality replies.
In terms of equal treatment of flagging: flags are almost all done by users and we can't control what they do, so this is beyond our power. When we do intervene, we definitely try to do it in an even handed way [1], so if you see an unfairly-unbalanced situation, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is also an option.
[1] Anyone who bothers to slog through https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... will see, for example, that we moderate all varieties of nationalistic attack and don't play favorites.
Many industrial espionage things done by china, and in late times by soviet Russia were entirely rational reactions to trade sanctions. They were illegal but not irrational. Simply declaiming "but its spying" or "but its trade war" isn't informative.
However in China specifically has implement decades of so-called 'patriotic education' and holds a tight grip on information through the Great Firewall of China.
Nationalist sentiment among products of that education (and censorship) system is very high, so it's not suprising when criticism of China gets voted down by normal people who don't receive financial compensation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
Frankly, my perspective is that the HN hive mind just downvotes anything that does not toes the US line (there are also upvotes obviously, but other topics don't elicit such knee jerk reactions).
It's really stifling discourse. I wouldn't mind it that much, if the current cold/trade war wouldn't have real world effects (and obviously, I hope it won't degenerate into a different kind of war)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I still think that the trend is there (in this thread, the comments aren't very nuanced and before I commented, the ratio of "against:non-against China" was 3:1, but now the ratio is much more even)
Without getting numbers for it, not much can be done to understand/address the situation
This is an extremely well-discussed and repetitive issue. If you want explanation about why this is not allowed and why your interpretation is inaccurate, take a look at these past comments:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
If, after taking a look, you (or anyone) still have a question that's not answered there, I'd like to know what it is.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/tpp-free-trade-globalizatio...
And only China.
Hmm.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://i.imgur.com/Lt5akKR.png
[Feel free to swap North Korea for China in that graphic. The end result is pretty much the same.]
> A total of 3,693 armed North Korean agents have infiltrated into South Korea between 1954 and 1992
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_inv...
But the point isn't to provide accurate information, it's to provide something that tries to makes a point and would be a huge pain to bother refuting or diminishing, as all propaganda is designed to be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_P...
Also, as a democracy the US has released information about those events. We don’t expect the PRC to release evidence they behaved poorly (since they already forbid talking about TS)
https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/
Which events do you deny happened?
But you [and the rest of the western world] still seem to unquestioningly believe that you're the 'Good Guys' [0]. I mean, having a fondness for the land of your birth is all well and good, but it never fails to amaze me how many Americans just have this complete mental block when it comes to the actions of their own country.
If any other country had carried out a tenth of the actions that the USA has done, throughout recent history, it would be a pariah nation. But the US gets away with it, time after time, after time.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvpvlT9pJU
Considering that quite a few countries now fit in that category (you're now talking ~4 incidents), well into the double digits, you're argument is now just boiling down to "US bad!".
I think it’s a sign you’ve gone off the deep end when you’re elevating the morally bereft.
As a casual reader of history I always thought US interference in Iran was a pretty clear cut example of wrong doing but now I'm not so sure.
I can't speak on the other examples in that image but knowing more now about Iran it makes me question the narrative of the nefarious motivations behind US interference.
Just for one example, compare the population age pyramid of China[1] to that of India[2]. The way in which China's long standing (but now retired) one-child policy has shaped their population pyramid into a top-heavy column is truly unreal. They have a huge cohort entering retirement age and another big cohort entering their late 30's where they're experienced rather than cheap workers. If you want young, cheap labour in China, the supply is about to start contracting
Meanwhile India's age pyramid really is a pyramid. As China's cheap labour pool shrinks, India's is set to grow massively. Factory wages in India are currently about one fifth of China's too. If you're building a shiny new iPhone factory that will need a multitude of the cheapest human hands money can hire, they're not in China anymore. The gap is going to widen substantially over the next decade or so too.
It will take a lot to break up existing supply chains and pry them out of China, but the economic incentives exist today and will become more irresistible each passing year.
Automation is, of course, a wild-card, but what might work to keep factories in China will work to bring them back to places like the U.S.. Automation works in any country, but demographics no longer favour China when it comes to the one thing that has attracted manufacturers looking to make things as cheaply as possible: cheap labour.
This may be why we've seen China becoming increasingly aggressive over the last few years. Their economic base is peaking and decline is in sight. Now is the time to grab as much power, territory, and influence as possible and try to solidify it before that economic base melts away.
[1]https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2019/
[2]https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2019/
Unfortunately, the last few remaining adults interested in and capable of doing the hard work of political and economic diplomacy, and domestic industrial policy left in 2016. Most had retired already as they were old enough to have lived through either WWII or the Korean War and thus knew what the stakes were. Taking their ball and going home was never an option for them no matter how much the opponent cheated--the task at hand was constant engagement, which however difficult and seemingly pointless was preferable to the alternative.
It's a different Cold War from the USSR, but democracy may still again prevail against a totalitarianism.
It probably won’t get more than some small multiple larger than the US economy and it may never approach the US in GDP per capita.
My point is that the the imbalance is unlikely to get large enough that they US keep fielding a credible nuclear threat.
So again what has changed that makes conventional war between nuclear powers likely or possible.
As far as proxy wars go is trade going to stop those? History has examples of proxy wars fought between countries that engaged in trade.
The Russians want to sell Europe their gas despite being somewhat politically opposed: that money props up a huge chunk of their economy. The oil and gas oligarchs would not be happy with Putin if he stopped exports.
Post-war European democracies and CCP China are apples to oranges. Not only in the freedom and democracy ratings sense. The EU has still to makes leaps in terms of becoming a union, and they're geographically next to each other, and culturally close, to a level the US and China will never be.
China needs to trade far more than we do. That's why there will be no war even if some decoupling happens. China can't afford it, at many levels, including the US being the oceanic route police.
This is weakness. Predators like the CCP smell it from a mile away, and exploit it masterfully. Every time the US engaged, a bunch of MBAs and connected people made billions shifting jobs to China, and the CCP infiltrated more operatives into US academia, which made them richer and more prepared. 50 years, and they haven't got any closer to being the open, democratic country they told us it'll become. Every president since Nixon is to blame, in an increasing manner. And now they have horrific technological tools to exert absolute control.
If engaging means the US has to basically sacrifice its remaining industry, job market, and patent pool, to appease the CCP, then it's not engaging, it's a protection racket, and a suicide.
was preferable to the alternative
Decoupling = war is a non sequitur. The CCP has nothing, and they know it, against US military projection. It's all a show. And many other countries, like Australia, and SE Asia ones, are waking up to this fact, and the shady oceanic CCP maneuvers.
And the US is run by a wannabe dictator, authoritarian loving, narcissist that was obviously elected by a significant portion of the US population and that has a pretty reasonable chance on getting reelected. And yes, while the mail-in voting mess might have an impact on it, it is by far not the only reason.
Like-minded democracies might be the European states, but while they actually still have a lot of american products banned for food safety reasons, similar to Taiwan, Taiwan has actually caved to White House pressure on something I would hardly call a trade deal but more a bully forcing its way on country such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.
We can start with a shared adversary.
>It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.
Honestly, I think the long-term plan here is relocating as much of Taiwan to the US as possible so that there's not that much left for the PRC to take in an invasion/annexation. That means everything short of actual physical territory, from people (scientific & industrial expertise) to patents, materiel, and industrial capacity.
Denying valuable personnel and equipment to the PRC could potentially be as significant as the advantage that the US gained over the Soviet Union from Operation Paperclip, where the US got the "best and brightest" Nazi scientists, and the Soviet Union got the leftovers.
The US is trying to build up an alliance against China, but I guess a lot of countries will want to stay neutral in that conflict. The Chinese government is doing horrible atrocities, but the US also isn’t the paragon it portrays itself to be.
That said, there a lot of countries that have their own issues with authoritarianism, persecution of minorities, privacy violations, etc and they have a partner in China that is willing to look the other way for profit. It's going to be difficult for an increasingly weak US to force those countries to isolate a cheap source of goods to placate their masses.
America being the good and leading the fight against evil was always just a story told to the masses. In reality you were gaining a lot from aligning to one of the blocs in the Cold War and a lot of countries had common enemies with the US. All this is missing now. Already with the Iraq war unanimous support by allied countries was not there anymore and with the Trump administration the US stopped to be a reliable partner.
I don’t think you can easily say that other countries abandon their willing to try to change China. They just keep on the diplomatic way.
TSMC - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is arguably one of the most important companies in the world, manufacturing chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and many more. The barrier to entry for semiconductor fabrication is so ridiculously high, not even Apple owns its own foundries. Intel has been struggling with 7nm processes (now delayed), while TSMC is already churning out chips using the newer EUV 5nm process for Apple’s upcoming ARM devices (including some iMac and Macbook models). The US recently struck a deal with TSMC, pressuring it to drop one of its largest Chinese customers (Huawei) in return for opening an advanced foundry in the US (a $12B dollar project with enormous tax breaks for TSMC).
Due to its critical positioning in advanced electronics, I genuinely believe the US would get involved if China were to “mess with” Taiwan. A sobering realization is the increasing significance yet fragility of the global technology supply chain - something the pandemic recently exposed. There are geopolitical risks to the United States having a dependency on other nations for something as critical as semiconductors. It’s increasingly becoming a matter of national security.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/economy/china-ta...
I believe there are many Chinese people, visiting HN everyday to discover and share cool stuff, and look forward to conversations that are intellectually beneficial to the participants. If anything, I hope I'm one of these good people, not a troll.
When the situation started to get tight, the meaning of word "we" here is shifting to "we Americans", but you see, unless HN put up a rule to block Chinese users, they will be here. Still looking for fun stuff, but end up seeing the theme turning to "tension", "conflict".
They think differently. Some views may seem unfair, or don't make sense to them. They usually just keep quiet, hide the entries and move on. But sometimes it gets too annoying, so they'll also raise a few points.
It is you who thinks defending China is not ok. So in converse, there will be people who think it is.
It doesn't make one troll because she's not speaking in your favor. I thought this was all fine? Can we just, sit down and compute?