His problem is he would not subjugate to the true center of power, possibly by overplaying his hand and underestimating the need of the party to exercise supreme control and its refusal to share power.
That's the question at the center of all this, isn't it. Who actually holds the power here, the state, or the company whose information they hold could severely embarrass anyone who opposes them?
I can't even begin to imagine what similar companies in NA (e.g. Facebook) have on our elected officials.
If one's willing to entertain conspiracy theories, none of that material would be put out under FAAMG branding, but rather lesser outlets would conveniently obtain a copy.
That said, the idea is pretty hard in the way of conspiracy -- simplest reduction: why would tech companies take the risk of getting involved in that way at all? When they're already making money hand over fist?
Apologies, I meant to say large public companies in my OP, i.e. those listed on the stock exchange. I'd be interested if there was any examples of those using compromising political information for leverage. I understand however that if it happened we may not have heard about it.
We shouldn't forget that Bezos himself was the one who got blackmailed very recently. It wasn't a tech company that did it, but it was a right-wing media outlet with an axe to grind.
I don't think the National Enquirer is a "right-wing media outlet," so much as a sleazy tabloid whose owner happened to be friends with Donald Trump. See e.g., https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-national-enquir..., in which the same owner tat tried to blackmail Bezos started publishing in 1999 "Why I should be President" articles from Donald Trump, during which time Trump was (briefly) a member of the Reform Party before he became a Democrat.
Did US turn against Google and Facebook? I think so. The trend is clear, the Internet giants are becoming so powerful that government feels threatened and cornered.
I’m not entirely sure that he can reliably tilt the deck on Facebook sentiment, and if so he can only push it in very vaguely defined directions. In comparison Rupert Murdoch can exert very fine grained control on specific issues and craft specific narratives to be pushed by his media empire. All Zuck can do is fiddle with algorithms and hope the results tilt one way or another. I’m not even sure he can reliably do that. I think pretty the vast majority of the effects of Facebook’s algorithmic attention trolling have been entirely accidental.
Technically Xi installed by Mr. Jiang Mr. Hu, and numerous power brokers in CCP and outside, probably US involvement was playing some negligible role as well. The power struggles happen inside the high circle of CCP. Rarely one can get the actual underlying mechanism from it. Likely wise, I doubt anyone here understands much how US high power works.
Xi also cannot dictate an election result. At least there was no precedence. As there is only one candidate for the highest position. Of course, US has 2 candidates, how much better/worse? I don't know, anyone can judge themselves.
As a matter of fact, no election can be held in China. Election was never a thing anyone can understand. Like when I was in elementary school, the classroom head was appointed. No important position was ever elected.
You might stand before Xi, and claim that Xi would be powerless if China is to hold an election. And himself and mostly everyone statistically picked on street, would look at you bewildered, probably laugh hard and walks away like anyone who encounter some lunatic. The analogy could be a Chinese run to US Senate speech, and claim that communism is better for US. The next day all the media would laugh so hard that I bet even divided as Trump's US, everyone would unit and celebrate this rare consensus that this Chinese guys is mad. Essentially, both concepts are virtually foreign to each other's mental system. They cannot process them.
What I want to say is that, China runs a system that is neither democracy nor dictatorship, in western sense.
A lot of people hate China, they often think that's because China is oppressive or authoritarian. While in fact, China is far more exotic than oppressive or authoritarian.
I often speculate that people hate China out of the deep fear of unknown. Not only unknown, China is strong enough that they basically position themselves to be unshakable in the current geopolitical system, unlike the old empire, which also claim superiority and reject inspection, but they were not really strong enough to resist.
I guess China learned the lesson since the opium war: it's important to be actually powerful than just claiming to have the mandate of the heaven.
And that's not a small difference, it's the difference between a liberal democracy (with its many mistakes and flaws) and an authoritarian dictatorship. The both-sides fallacy should be avoided here and elsewhere.
We can't honestly equate the Uyghur genocide, jailing of political dissidents, Xi's dictator for life status and the CCP's censorship apparatus to the modern US, even when factoring in the ongoing travesties e.g NSA surveillance, unequal policing, and I could even throw in Epstein's killing in there if it makes you feel better.
These are not in the same ethical ballpark, and one doesn't have to be a US nationalist to recognize this.
If China was so great the Children of the US rich would go there to study. Instead they either stay in the US, or go to Europe/the Anglosphere if they want to be more cosmopolitan.
Epstein more than likely tried to blackmail at least the British crown. You'd think that people wouldn't try and antagonize a family that owns their own torture tower and shows it off to tourists.
Regular corruption is fine in the West though, it's a victimless crime. For people who matter anyway, not the peasants who have to drink drilling oil fluid.
The point is that in the West there are clear and mostly unchanging rules that everyone knows.
In China not so much. Today you're the richest man in China, tomorrow you're an enemy of the people, next week you have tragically fallen to your death taking a selfie from a ladder. All while doing the same thing everyone else in your wealth bracket does.
Jack Ma was not foolish enough to meddle the high power. Mr. Jack Ma got this status precisely because he knows the boundary. Those dared would have already been dead long before reaching the status close to Mr. Ma.
One who think that secrets can coerce people, is treating the owners of the secrets as passive; which were never the behavior pattern of the powerful.
One who rises to the top, practices control and manipulate over others. Not the opposite.
Who's going to provide the most successfull data collection platform (Android, etc.) for CIA/NSA? Not only people around the world carry a device with a mic and a gps tracker, they voluntarily and with enthusiasm report all their whereabouts. They in fact compete with each other about who can provide a better and more detailed timeline of their life. This is better than if everyone had a gps chip implanted in them. If anything, the US will be super careful to not disrupt Google and Facebook too much.
This sounds much like astroturfed campaigns typical in authoritarian states once a public figure is deemed the enemy. It's wild how Western reporters take the "peoples comments" at face value.
Western reporters treat China the same way Silicon Valley reporters treat major tech companies. The reporters are afraid of upsetting them out of fear of retribution.
From what I've seen, all the media (and thus the majority of American people) 100% rag on China any chance they can get. They are public enemy number one, and anti-China sentiments are popular and applauded. I don't remember the last time I've seen positive articles about China.
I don’t remember the last time China did anything that warranted a positive article. That is likely a direct result of the authoritarian control China holds on information. How do you report something positive when you can’t trust the source? At least in America journalists can say whatever they want. In China, they’ll be arrested, disappeared, and who knows what other barbaric acts of punishment.
Simply put, by its very nature China instills mistrust, distrust, and critique.
How would you have any idea what China does except through various news articles? Why would an authoritarian control of information lead to only bad information getting out?
China does not have a great government, but American coverage of it is also extreme propaganda.
There is a huge Chinese diaspora in the US with family members who still live in China. They are the source of information that most in the US rely on more than news articles.
And what is extreme propaganda? Is the Uyghur genocide propaganda? Is the Murder of Tibetans, aggression against Taiwan, imprisonment of journalists, propaganda?
Show me American propaganda that does not have a strong correlation of truth, and I’ll show you concentration camps and disappeared citizens. When was the last time the U.S. government put a doctor in prison for trying to warn others about a deadly virus?
No matter the corruption of America, its corporatacracy and greed, no matter the propaganda of its politicians, nothing in the developed western world can hold a candle to the CURRENT genocide of China.
What if the Uyghur genocide is indeed propaganda? How would you know?
A lot of the Uyghur witness have been revealed to have ties to NED and the population of Uyghur minorities in china have increased. If there is an active genocide on the scale that's being reported, why have we not seen reports of mass exodus into neighbouring countries?
>nothing in the developed western world can hold a candle to the CURRENT genocide of China
Things that the developed Western world are causing are worse though. The UN had repeatedly called the ongoing Yemen situation the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis, killing over 200,000 people with millions facing starvation.
The few mentions this gets generally are only used to demonize Iran when US generals have stated that we could end this war tomorrow if we wanted to. Yet you can claim that nothing the West does can hold a candle to China's acts. That is the aim of the propaganda.
Yes, China is committing atrocities. They are not alone in this and the methods suggested to combat these actions are likely going to cause far more suffering.
I agree with you, but making statements like these will just open you up to attacks from sophisticated CCP operatives and their allies.
One very popular talking point is that mass incarceration in America has resulted in quadrupling of the prison population, putting millions of - mostly black - people behind bars. This is America's version of Uighur internment camps.
Let's not even get started on the hundreds of thousands of deaths America has been responsible for around the world.
It's hard to deny that - at least in the last 50 years (i.e. carefully avoiding Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution) - America has probably spread more misery and death around the world than China.
However. The thing that I think is important to push on, is that in America, and in other free countries, there is open dialog on these issues. Reporters report on war crimes, millions take to the streets to protest, people take their leaders to account, politicians are voted out.
Granted, history has shown that we have not been very successful at stopping these injustices, despite freedom of the press and democracy... But could they have been even worse without those freedoms? Yes. We know this because we can look at the awful record of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century.
So I think it's more effective to not take the bait and pretend that the west is nowhere near as bad... Instead focus on the accountability that democratically-elected governments in free societies have, as opposed to single-party states like the PRC.
The reporters then face prosecution or assassination, see Assange, while the war criminals receive promotions.
>people take their leaders to account, politicians are voted out.
Which sounds nice, but "taking account" means cushy private sector jobs, and both parties carry the same general foreign policy backed by generations of state propaganda.
The "Democratic society" argument isn't much better. Two parties may lead to better treatment inside the country, but as a worldwide force it's just as flawed.
You cannot draw an equivalence between America's prison population and the CCP's literal concentration camps. There's a lot you can say about the failure of the justice system, the failure of its policing system, the yawning generational failure to address race and poverty in this country. Of course black people are going to be disadvantaged to breaking. So we demonstrate for our black sisters and brothers. We rally our voices and let out our primal screams that are heard around the nation.
No screams will be heard from the Tibetans and Uyghurs. No reporters in China will tell their story. They will be broken and forgotten in silence. There is an ocean's difference between the failure and neglect of US institutions to protect its black people from harm and the determined, targeted extermination of millions of people of race not Han.
Well said. I think my post was a little misunderstood - it wasn't my intent to draw an equivalence. I was using the mass incarceration point as an example of how wolf warrior diplomats and the media in China disingenuously try to move the conversation away from injustices happening under the CCP.
A sibling comment to yours raised Assange. That's another unfair comparison, when in 2020 alone over 100 journalists have been disappeared or detained in China. Assange has just been indicted and failed to appear in court.
My point was that in order to have a constructive conversation, it might be better to acknowledge and compare the facts, rather than jumping in with emotional language in the vein of (paraphrased) "no matter how bad it is in the west, nothing can hold a candle to China".
>That's another unfair comparison, when in 2020 alone over 100 journalists have been disappeared or detained in China. Assange has just been indicted and failed to appear in court.
Assange has been indicted for his journalism acts, and there has already been a sham trial to push his extradition. This follows the years of what the UN calls torture we've already subjected him to.
Further, in 2020 alone over 100 journalists have been detained in the US.
Some of Assange's activity could be described as journalism, but a lot of it was not and clearly ran afoul of laws on the books. It is also a generationally-unique case and far from any kind of norm.
Detentions of journalists in the context of protests etc needs to be carefully monitored but also has legitimate safety impacts in some cases. The trend in the US was not good this year, but it was an unusual year in multiple ways and the trend was not that bad either. The part that matters more is that very few are being tried for anything. A short detention is not "jailing journalists" in the traditional dictatorial sense.
>but a lot of it was not and clearly ran afoul of laws on the books
Though I find this claim to be ridiculous in general, even the US argument boils down to him claiming he'll help crack a password that provided no additional data and him saying "curious eyes never run dry." And a "generationally unique case" is the kind used to build precedent, like how locking up foreign journalists critical of the US is OK.
Beyond that, you just have a baseless statement that US detention is justified and acceptable while Chinese detention is not.
Again, this is an unfair comparison, since in the US many detained journalists will not be charged, and if they are charged, they will almost certainly not be imprisoned. That doesn't mean that the Trump administration hasn't overseen an alarming increase in violence against journalists. But Trump is out, so let's see whether that trend holds up.
The Xi administration - like all previous CCP administrations - can and does hold journalists without a charge, and once charged there is a 99% conviction rate.
In the US right now there are 0 journalists in prison. In China there are at least 50 (per CPJ[0]), and possibly more if you include citizen journalists (per RSF[1]). In China, the government sends memos to the editorial boards indicating how they should report on topics. China Media Project[2] has some good insights there.
Anecdotally, there are a lot of Chinese people who have experienced first-hand both the mainstream media and social media "deleting" events from history. In the west we often think about June 4 incident (Tiananmen), but there are far more cases that never made waves overseas. In particular reporting around natural disasters in rural areas can quickly get scrubbed from the internet and written out of history, or retold to pin the blame for a poor response on a politically useful scapegoat. I can't personally speak to the accuracy of those stories, but this is what I heard from several different colleagues and friends in China.
Even just living in China through coronavirus, I was there when they literally went back and rewrote history to rename what had originally been called the Wuhan coronavirus to instead call it the novel coronavirus, a silent edit designed to quietly lend credence to growing social media rumors that suggested the virus originated overseas. This kind of manipulation of the truth is standard practice in the Chinese media, on many topics.
Countries that have a free press, where anyone can publish whatever they like, whether on Substack or WikiLeaks or wherever, where the majority of arrests are happening because reporters were tangled up in the middle of a protest (and not because the police came to their door to punish them for something they already published), it's really not the same thing.
If we were to evaluate China objectively we would have to recognize its huge achievements. Living in China for much of the last 20 years and being able to witness the changes first hand, the subject often comes up in conversation both here and overseas. Without getting bogged down in tangential statistics, I generally point out that at the beginning of the 20th century, China was roughly parallel to India in many macro-economic metrics. Now look at the difference. It is a viable superpower, a space power, the world's renewable energy technology and perhaps also deployment leader (certainly e-vehicles), the world's reforestation leader, a far more educated (eg. popularly literate and numerate) and healthy (well fed) population, a population no longer dangerously expanding, corruption is under control, world leading mobile payments, world leading logistics, and it is at the center of the world's global supply chain (and consumption!) for almost every industry.
That said, China has many problems (living here is earth-shatteringly frustrating a lot of the time), @alisonatwork's comment is on the mark, and the achievements of the 20th century do not by any means excuse the grave and terrible costs, but to suggest that its government is inept in a hand-wave is shatteringly naive.
“ Why would an authoritarian control of information lead to only bad information getting out?”
That’s the point: there is no bad information coming out of China, it’s always “positive,” like it was written by a PR team. No nation is perfect, but China works very hard so that nothing comes out of the country that is negative. By manipulating the news so that nothing is ever negative, you destroy all confidence in the accuracy of that reporting.
If China was serious about being a world power, worthy of respect, they wouldn’t work so hard to hide all the negative, censor, and punish people who speak the truth.
When you talk about China, are you talking about China as a country, or the Chinese government, or its people?
If you are disgusted by some of the things the government did, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to specify that?
The Trump administration is absolutely a disaster and “didn’t do anything warrant a positive article,” but I wouldn’t call the U.S. names because of the government.
There’s a parable here that is horrible apt: The NAZI’s ordered the murder of the Jewish people, but it was the German rank and file citizen that made the gas flow, and the ovens burn. I don’t think we can separate the government of China from its people. Did you forget about the recent leak of communist party members and how they’ve worked their way into senior government, and business positions?
Of course you can. Making equivalent what a government does to its country is myopic and racist.
American people aren’t against climate change and exited Paris Climate Accord, the Trump administration did.
Ordinary Chinese citizen did not censor the reporters, the government did.
Your Nazi example makes no sense. I assume you can put some blame on the people who made the gas if they know its purpose. But you wouldn’t blame every German national during WWII for Genocide.
Assuming for a moment that your comment is not sarcasm, I point you to first the excellent book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” by Daniel Goldhagen which makes a solid case that had it not been for a compliant German citizenry, much of the Holocaust might never have happened.
So you tell me: Who operates the Chinese concentration camps?
As a new account, can you show us some evidence to back up your claim that is not from state run media? With respect, a lot of the comments here are starting to read like the same non-native English speakers that you often see rushing to defend China.
> They are public enemy number one, and anti-China sentiments are popular and applauded. I don't remember the last time I've seen positive articles about China.
China has been in an undeclared war with the US since the 1950s. Xi was dumb enough to reveal that.
There's no "positive articles about China" because the CCP is only interested in taking from others - even your organs.
Something changed in the past 5 years or so. For a while, the American tech press was pretty doting on Alibaba and a lot of people in the west still had the hope that China was going to be a great new frontier for western products and cultural exchange, thanks to the booming middle class.
A lot of that goodwill started getting frittered away as the CCP were involved with events that appeared to threaten freedom/democracy and autonomy both in the China region and around the rest of the world. Just a few off the top of my head...
- 2016 Artificial islands and military bases built in South China Sea
- 2017 Four Corners report on CCP influence operations in Australia
- 2017 HRW report on Uighur reeducation camps
- 2018 Xi Jinping dissolves term limits
- 2018 Two Michaels detained
- 2019 Hong Kong National Security Law and protests
- 2020 Coronavirus
- 2020 Ladakh border skirmishes
There are lots more examples. Meanwhile, citizen journalists are being disappeared and foreign journalists are getting kicked out of the country, which is only making it more difficult to get independent reporting of what is going on.
Personally, I don't think it's so much that there is no positive reporting about China happening in the west any more, it's just that now the more optimistic stuff is balanced out by a more cynical take.
I wonder if HN is able to identify Chinese state manipulation of the comments here. I’ve never seen so many Sinophile defensive comments before. It’s almost like someone pushed a button and called for backup.
Have you been to China, talked to its people often, or do you get most of your sentiments online from other commenters and through news?
I'd argue there is US mass media manipulation. There's simply clear monetary (and nationalistic) incentive in riling Americans against an evil enemy. In my eyes, the US paints China as evil just as much as NK paints US as evil. Do you not think it's propaganda that all the news is one sided, have you not considered a scenario where Americans might have been planted a bias by the media?
Also, I'd be an effin' amazing impostor to act as a plant as a YC alum on HN with my username orange. Maybe China wired me some money.
With such a remote target, there will be at least two generations of party leadership in mainland China (assuming the system doesn't change), with different goals and priorities. If they had announced something for within 10-15 years, I would have been more hopeful it's more than a PR attempt
A lot of tech company reporters seem to write nothing but negative articles. David Streitfeld, for example, wrote nothing but negative pieces every week or two for years, at least the last time I checked pre-pandemic.
I contend that it’s well known in the tech community that if you bash Apple, you will not get invited to the next event. If you criticize a tech company as a tech journalist, you’re not going to get invited to the next unveiling, the next product release, and that will have a detrimental impact on your career. Some can ride that line without worry, but rank and file tech reporters DEPEND on access, and will not do anything to disrupt it.
China is an insecure authoritarian nation that desperately wants to be accepted, and seen as a legitimate, first world superpower. However their actions have made it such that for generations, rational individuals will always second-guess everything they do.
“...well yeah but, it’s China!”
It’s unfortunate but How often do we see comments like that? China has been such a brutal, oppressive nation that it’s really hard to overlook, and accept at face value anything that comes out of it.
tbf this is pretty similar to what the left in the US says about billionaires. I wouldn't completely discount it as state propaganda.
In the US, it is incredible how often reporters parrot security state talking points without any research into whether they're accurate, such as how people piled on Russia after the recent hacking scandal without any evidence shown, just a gut insinuation as far as I know.
The only advice I can give is: always be skeptical. period.
There is a huge difference in freedom of expressing your opinion online between your country and authoritarian states. I know your first instinct would be to say "yes but…", but it's not. Not even close, not even 0.1%.
People without first hand experience often do not comprehend it, even if accept the argument logically. But when you live there, you grow up with the 6th sense of political momentum. It's as natural as breathing. You are not starting to shit on a powerful person in your country unless you sense a strong political tailwind.
Jack Ma was a governmental sponsored big tech monopoly that hated by many small merchants.
Now the government decided to punish Alibaba, so the crowds cheered, for whom the saddest part is the whole thing has little to do with them from start to end
People's comments are real, and CCP's manipulation, too, is real.
Mr. Ma famously claimed that 996 is a blessing of fortune [1], despite the global outcry on 996, Jack was untouched almost entirely in the media and online circle. He probably was deemed a member of the entrepreneur class, which cannot be unethical I guess?
Jack said that he is not interested in money on CCTV (the national TV station) [2], a rather hypocritical statement.
He claimed that Chinese banking system works as pawnshop, while at the same time his Ant works like "payday loan". He claimed that Chinese financial system is not innovative enough, while Ant is repeating the same gambling practiced 10 years ago.
Jack joked that AI is Alibaba Intelligence in front of Elon Musk. Universally ridiculed in China.
Jack was a close friend of actress Zhao Wei was caught in camera of close interchanges, (Google 马云 赵薇) Mrs Zhao also participate Ant IPO through her mother. She was banned from security market for misconduct [3]. After that, Jack said they were not close at all [4].
There are plenty more. Probably most were censored already. These are just the most brazen ones I suppose.
Remember that Chinese were indoctrinated through Communism ideology. Mr. Ma can even appear in public is itself a proof that he is under the protection of CCP while he is still useful.
An ordinary citizen, showing these behaviors, would have to worry about their personal safety at all times; and would be mocked everyday online. Not for Mr. Jack Ma though.
Now let's see how far CCP wants to expose Mr. Jack Ma to the people's resentment...
Can you elaborate about the "can even appear in public" and "worry about their personal safety" parts of your comment? I'm curious and not sure I understand if I'm taking them correctly.
Are you saying that a sufficiently unpopular public figure would have a high likelihood of being physically attacked on the street?
If an public figure is considered responsible for things that harm public or people in general, then they might be target of prank or minor assault. See Baidu's Robin Li was poured water on stage [1]. Because, Baidu allowed advertisers to buy out their social groups TieBa. They then can operate the group as if that they are ordinary netizens, and publish ADs literally as normal posts.
Chinese netizens routinely make threats to public figures who make statements that are contradicting to common Orthodox. Mrs. Zhao Wei, the one I already mentioned above, and elsewhere in other posts, was once attacked by poops, because she wore clothes that has the imperial Japanese flag [3].
Then take a look at this [4], a teen used Ant's personal loan, and cannot repay, so she runs away, then her mom committed suicide.
Similar incidents happened a lot...
I am fairly sure that, some young Chinese vigilante, after reading this, had the conviction that Mr. Jack Ma probably is a bad man, and they are compelled to do something about it.
In China if you get on the wrong side of somebody powerful it's worse than jail, you end up disappearing to a "re-education camp" for an indeterminate amount of time.
Jail is for foreigners and well known people they want to silence, when they need to pretend there's a real justice system.
There's plenty of firsthand accounts of this stuff happening on the internet.
Ant Finance was incredibly "predatory" in how it was issuing high interest loans to poor people, at least in the CCP perception. They do not allow such things. It's that simple, it's detest for "payday loans".
Oh boy, you're in for a ride, read about fannie and freddie and the ownership society :). Student debt has exactly the same underwriting, all handled by the government.
I don’t think Ma was old enough to remember living under an emperor like Mao. Maybe he doesn’t realize that Xi is one now?
Xi’s reign is bad for China’s progress, but good for every other country. China will become more centralized and bad laws will be enforced which will disrupt all progress towards innovation. The danger of a Chinese metro surpassing Silicon Valley is gone for now.
The longer Xi and his allies rule, the more China will remain destined to be a giant copy machine, nothing less and nothing more.
What evidence do you have that Xi's reign has been bad for China's progress?
China's progress has been quite impressive recently. An intelligent benevolent dictator is probably the best form of government, the problem is that dictators rarely remain benevolent.
So far though, it looks like most of Xi's decisions have left China better off. Their infrastructure is now significantly better that the US. Investments abroad are positioning them well for the future, and they are even taking the lead in terms of carbon neutrality.
It’s just conjecture based on China’s history. Mainly, what happens when things decentralize vs being centralized? China’s growth has largely depended on decentralization. Now Xi is reversing course with centralization.
As for China’s current success, Xi has only come to power in recent years. If we’re being honest, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping deserve more credit For China’a current state than Xi for building the foundation and engine of China’s growth. Xi is only inheriting it, and will likely run it to the ground with his policies.
The rising dislike of the tech giants and the anti-trust investigations are extremely similar to what is happening in Europe and the US, so I don't particularly see why this is some sort of surprising thing requiring special explanation.
It's the proximity of the situation to Jack Ma's comments that tips you off as to the true reason for the actions. It's not just normal anti-trust, the timing suggests an attempt to punish any opposition to the CCP or Xi.
The opaque nature of the Chinese government makes it hard for me to tell what anyone's motivations are. I'm inclined to think this is a power play by the government to deal with someone they don't like.
At the same time I also think what I've read about Ant Group makes me think that financially their ability to loan to folks with little to no collateral and offload the risk on other institutions is unwise and risky.
Because of the power and propaganda of the government in communist country. It is very to manipulate people to turn against Jack Ma. He must have thought that he has a lot of power but the truth is he is a money making tool for politicians.
It's sort of interesting that for having the same goal of reining in tech giants' power, China uses the language of Marxism while the US uses language like the rule of law, market competition, etc.
> “An outstanding people’s billionaire like Jack Ma will definitely be hanged on top of the lamppost,”... The Communist Party seems more than willing to tap into that resentment.
I wonder given that Jack Ma hasn't been seen in two months, if the author would still juxtapose these two paragraphs in this way?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadI can't even begin to imagine what similar companies in NA (e.g. Facebook) have on our elected officials.
That said, the idea is pretty hard in the way of conspiracy -- simplest reduction: why would tech companies take the risk of getting involved in that way at all? When they're already making money hand over fist?
Good joke.
> I can't even begin to imagine what similar companies in NA (e.g. Facebook) have on our elected officials.
None, because those criminals aren't prosecuted. Look at the Bidens.
That’s not an attack, I just don’t know what you mean by power.
Xi can simply dictate the results.
Xi also cannot dictate an election result. At least there was no precedence. As there is only one candidate for the highest position. Of course, US has 2 candidates, how much better/worse? I don't know, anyone can judge themselves.
As a matter of fact, no election can be held in China. Election was never a thing anyone can understand. Like when I was in elementary school, the classroom head was appointed. No important position was ever elected.
You might stand before Xi, and claim that Xi would be powerless if China is to hold an election. And himself and mostly everyone statistically picked on street, would look at you bewildered, probably laugh hard and walks away like anyone who encounter some lunatic. The analogy could be a Chinese run to US Senate speech, and claim that communism is better for US. The next day all the media would laugh so hard that I bet even divided as Trump's US, everyone would unit and celebrate this rare consensus that this Chinese guys is mad. Essentially, both concepts are virtually foreign to each other's mental system. They cannot process them.
What I want to say is that, China runs a system that is neither democracy nor dictatorship, in western sense.
A lot of people hate China, they often think that's because China is oppressive or authoritarian. While in fact, China is far more exotic than oppressive or authoritarian.
I often speculate that people hate China out of the deep fear of unknown. Not only unknown, China is strong enough that they basically position themselves to be unshakable in the current geopolitical system, unlike the old empire, which also claim superiority and reject inspection, but they were not really strong enough to resist.
I guess China learned the lesson since the opium war: it's important to be actually powerful than just claiming to have the mandate of the heaven.
Ma on the other hand could well end up getting Epsteined.
These are not in the same ethical ballpark, and one doesn't have to be a US nationalist to recognize this.
If China was so great the Children of the US rich would go there to study. Instead they either stay in the US, or go to Europe/the Anglosphere if they want to be more cosmopolitan.
The reverse however is very true.
I'm sure it mainly came from rampant insider trading.
Regular corruption is fine in the West though, it's a victimless crime. For people who matter anyway, not the peasants who have to drink drilling oil fluid.
The point is that in the West there are clear and mostly unchanging rules that everyone knows.
In China not so much. Today you're the richest man in China, tomorrow you're an enemy of the people, next week you have tragically fallen to your death taking a selfie from a ladder. All while doing the same thing everyone else in your wealth bracket does.
One who think that secrets can coerce people, is treating the owners of the secrets as passive; which were never the behavior pattern of the powerful.
One who rises to the top, practices control and manipulate over others. Not the opposite.
Simply put, by its very nature China instills mistrust, distrust, and critique.
China does not have a great government, but American coverage of it is also extreme propaganda.
Show me American propaganda that does not have a strong correlation of truth, and I’ll show you concentration camps and disappeared citizens. When was the last time the U.S. government put a doctor in prison for trying to warn others about a deadly virus?
No matter the corruption of America, its corporatacracy and greed, no matter the propaganda of its politicians, nothing in the developed western world can hold a candle to the CURRENT genocide of China.
Things that the developed Western world are causing are worse though. The UN had repeatedly called the ongoing Yemen situation the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis, killing over 200,000 people with millions facing starvation.
The few mentions this gets generally are only used to demonize Iran when US generals have stated that we could end this war tomorrow if we wanted to. Yet you can claim that nothing the West does can hold a candle to China's acts. That is the aim of the propaganda.
Yes, China is committing atrocities. They are not alone in this and the methods suggested to combat these actions are likely going to cause far more suffering.
One very popular talking point is that mass incarceration in America has resulted in quadrupling of the prison population, putting millions of - mostly black - people behind bars. This is America's version of Uighur internment camps.
Let's not even get started on the hundreds of thousands of deaths America has been responsible for around the world.
It's hard to deny that - at least in the last 50 years (i.e. carefully avoiding Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution) - America has probably spread more misery and death around the world than China.
However. The thing that I think is important to push on, is that in America, and in other free countries, there is open dialog on these issues. Reporters report on war crimes, millions take to the streets to protest, people take their leaders to account, politicians are voted out.
Granted, history has shown that we have not been very successful at stopping these injustices, despite freedom of the press and democracy... But could they have been even worse without those freedoms? Yes. We know this because we can look at the awful record of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century.
So I think it's more effective to not take the bait and pretend that the west is nowhere near as bad... Instead focus on the accountability that democratically-elected governments in free societies have, as opposed to single-party states like the PRC.
The reporters then face prosecution or assassination, see Assange, while the war criminals receive promotions.
>people take their leaders to account, politicians are voted out.
Which sounds nice, but "taking account" means cushy private sector jobs, and both parties carry the same general foreign policy backed by generations of state propaganda.
The "Democratic society" argument isn't much better. Two parties may lead to better treatment inside the country, but as a worldwide force it's just as flawed.
No screams will be heard from the Tibetans and Uyghurs. No reporters in China will tell their story. They will be broken and forgotten in silence. There is an ocean's difference between the failure and neglect of US institutions to protect its black people from harm and the determined, targeted extermination of millions of people of race not Han.
A sibling comment to yours raised Assange. That's another unfair comparison, when in 2020 alone over 100 journalists have been disappeared or detained in China. Assange has just been indicted and failed to appear in court.
My point was that in order to have a constructive conversation, it might be better to acknowledge and compare the facts, rather than jumping in with emotional language in the vein of (paraphrased) "no matter how bad it is in the west, nothing can hold a candle to China".
Assange has been indicted for his journalism acts, and there has already been a sham trial to push his extradition. This follows the years of what the UN calls torture we've already subjected him to.
Further, in 2020 alone over 100 journalists have been detained in the US.
https://freedom.press/news/2020-report-journalists-arrested-...
Some of Assange's activity could be described as journalism, but a lot of it was not and clearly ran afoul of laws on the books. It is also a generationally-unique case and far from any kind of norm.
Detentions of journalists in the context of protests etc needs to be carefully monitored but also has legitimate safety impacts in some cases. The trend in the US was not good this year, but it was an unusual year in multiple ways and the trend was not that bad either. The part that matters more is that very few are being tried for anything. A short detention is not "jailing journalists" in the traditional dictatorial sense.
Though I find this claim to be ridiculous in general, even the US argument boils down to him claiming he'll help crack a password that provided no additional data and him saying "curious eyes never run dry." And a "generationally unique case" is the kind used to build precedent, like how locking up foreign journalists critical of the US is OK.
Beyond that, you just have a baseless statement that US detention is justified and acceptable while Chinese detention is not.
The Xi administration - like all previous CCP administrations - can and does hold journalists without a charge, and once charged there is a 99% conviction rate.
In the US right now there are 0 journalists in prison. In China there are at least 50 (per CPJ[0]), and possibly more if you include citizen journalists (per RSF[1]). In China, the government sends memos to the editorial boards indicating how they should report on topics. China Media Project[2] has some good insights there.
Anecdotally, there are a lot of Chinese people who have experienced first-hand both the mainstream media and social media "deleting" events from history. In the west we often think about June 4 incident (Tiananmen), but there are far more cases that never made waves overseas. In particular reporting around natural disasters in rural areas can quickly get scrubbed from the internet and written out of history, or retold to pin the blame for a poor response on a politically useful scapegoat. I can't personally speak to the accuracy of those stories, but this is what I heard from several different colleagues and friends in China.
Even just living in China through coronavirus, I was there when they literally went back and rewrote history to rename what had originally been called the Wuhan coronavirus to instead call it the novel coronavirus, a silent edit designed to quietly lend credence to growing social media rumors that suggested the virus originated overseas. This kind of manipulation of the truth is standard practice in the Chinese media, on many topics.
Countries that have a free press, where anyone can publish whatever they like, whether on Substack or WikiLeaks or wherever, where the majority of arrests are happening because reporters were tangled up in the middle of a protest (and not because the police came to their door to punish them for something they already published), it's really not the same thing.
[0] https://cpj.org/
[1] https://rsf.org/en
[2] https://chinamediaproject.org/
If we were to evaluate China objectively we would have to recognize its huge achievements. Living in China for much of the last 20 years and being able to witness the changes first hand, the subject often comes up in conversation both here and overseas. Without getting bogged down in tangential statistics, I generally point out that at the beginning of the 20th century, China was roughly parallel to India in many macro-economic metrics. Now look at the difference. It is a viable superpower, a space power, the world's renewable energy technology and perhaps also deployment leader (certainly e-vehicles), the world's reforestation leader, a far more educated (eg. popularly literate and numerate) and healthy (well fed) population, a population no longer dangerously expanding, corruption is under control, world leading mobile payments, world leading logistics, and it is at the center of the world's global supply chain (and consumption!) for almost every industry.
That said, China has many problems (living here is earth-shatteringly frustrating a lot of the time), @alisonatwork's comment is on the mark, and the achievements of the 20th century do not by any means excuse the grave and terrible costs, but to suggest that its government is inept in a hand-wave is shatteringly naive.
That’s the point: there is no bad information coming out of China, it’s always “positive,” like it was written by a PR team. No nation is perfect, but China works very hard so that nothing comes out of the country that is negative. By manipulating the news so that nothing is ever negative, you destroy all confidence in the accuracy of that reporting.
If China was serious about being a world power, worthy of respect, they wouldn’t work so hard to hide all the negative, censor, and punish people who speak the truth.
Then what do you consider the article this post is discussing? Or all of the stories mentioned in your other post?
If you are disgusted by some of the things the government did, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to specify that?
The Trump administration is absolutely a disaster and “didn’t do anything warrant a positive article,” but I wouldn’t call the U.S. names because of the government.
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6215946537001
American people aren’t against climate change and exited Paris Climate Accord, the Trump administration did.
Ordinary Chinese citizen did not censor the reporters, the government did.
Your Nazi example makes no sense. I assume you can put some blame on the people who made the gas if they know its purpose. But you wouldn’t blame every German national during WWII for Genocide.
So you tell me: Who operates the Chinese concentration camps?
...is a false equivalence.
China has been in an undeclared war with the US since the 1950s. Xi was dumb enough to reveal that.
There's no "positive articles about China" because the CCP is only interested in taking from others - even your organs.
A lot of that goodwill started getting frittered away as the CCP were involved with events that appeared to threaten freedom/democracy and autonomy both in the China region and around the rest of the world. Just a few off the top of my head...
- 2016 Artificial islands and military bases built in South China Sea
- 2017 Four Corners report on CCP influence operations in Australia
- 2017 HRW report on Uighur reeducation camps
- 2018 Xi Jinping dissolves term limits
- 2018 Two Michaels detained
- 2019 Hong Kong National Security Law and protests
- 2020 Coronavirus
- 2020 Ladakh border skirmishes
There are lots more examples. Meanwhile, citizen journalists are being disappeared and foreign journalists are getting kicked out of the country, which is only making it more difficult to get independent reporting of what is going on.
Personally, I don't think it's so much that there is no positive reporting about China happening in the west any more, it's just that now the more optimistic stuff is balanced out by a more cynical take.
I'd argue there is US mass media manipulation. There's simply clear monetary (and nationalistic) incentive in riling Americans against an evil enemy. In my eyes, the US paints China as evil just as much as NK paints US as evil. Do you not think it's propaganda that all the news is one sided, have you not considered a scenario where Americans might have been planted a bias by the media?
Also, I'd be an effin' amazing impostor to act as a plant as a YC alum on HN with my username orange. Maybe China wired me some money.
“...well yeah but, it’s China!”
It’s unfortunate but How often do we see comments like that? China has been such a brutal, oppressive nation that it’s really hard to overlook, and accept at face value anything that comes out of it.
In the US, it is incredible how often reporters parrot security state talking points without any research into whether they're accurate, such as how people piled on Russia after the recent hacking scandal without any evidence shown, just a gut insinuation as far as I know.
The only advice I can give is: always be skeptical. period.
People without first hand experience often do not comprehend it, even if accept the argument logically. But when you live there, you grow up with the 6th sense of political momentum. It's as natural as breathing. You are not starting to shit on a powerful person in your country unless you sense a strong political tailwind.
Jack Ma was a governmental sponsored big tech monopoly that hated by many small merchants.
Now the government decided to punish Alibaba, so the crowds cheered, for whom the saddest part is the whole thing has little to do with them from start to end
No astroturf needed to find people who hate the rich in a society that punishes the poor.
Mr. Ma famously claimed that 996 is a blessing of fortune [1], despite the global outcry on 996, Jack was untouched almost entirely in the media and online circle. He probably was deemed a member of the entrepreneur class, which cannot be unethical I guess?
Jack said that he is not interested in money on CCTV (the national TV station) [2], a rather hypocritical statement.
He claimed that Chinese banking system works as pawnshop, while at the same time his Ant works like "payday loan". He claimed that Chinese financial system is not innovative enough, while Ant is repeating the same gambling practiced 10 years ago.
Jack joked that AI is Alibaba Intelligence in front of Elon Musk. Universally ridiculed in China.
Jack was a close friend of actress Zhao Wei was caught in camera of close interchanges, (Google 马云 赵薇) Mrs Zhao also participate Ant IPO through her mother. She was banned from security market for misconduct [3]. After that, Jack said they were not close at all [4].
There are plenty more. Probably most were censored already. These are just the most brazen ones I suppose.
Remember that Chinese were indoctrinated through Communism ideology. Mr. Ma can even appear in public is itself a proof that he is under the protection of CCP while he is still useful.
An ordinary citizen, showing these behaviors, would have to worry about their personal safety at all times; and would be mocked everyday online. Not for Mr. Jack Ma though.
Now let's see how far CCP wants to expose Mr. Jack Ma to the people's resentment...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/business/jack-ma-996-china/in...
[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oVi5EGbZy1A
[3] http://www.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2018-04/16/c_129851599.htm
https://3g.163.com/dy/article/ED813TL60542805D.html?spss=ada...
[4] https://m.sohu.com/a/209719774_583509/?pvid=000115_3w_a
Are you saying that a sufficiently unpopular public figure would have a high likelihood of being physically attacked on the street?
Chinese netizens routinely make threats to public figures who make statements that are contradicting to common Orthodox. Mrs. Zhao Wei, the one I already mentioned above, and elsewhere in other posts, was once attacked by poops, because she wore clothes that has the imperial Japanese flag [3].
Then take a look at this [4], a teen used Ant's personal loan, and cannot repay, so she runs away, then her mom committed suicide.
Similar incidents happened a lot...
I am fairly sure that, some young Chinese vigilante, after reading this, had the conviction that Mr. Jack Ma probably is a bad man, and they are compelled to do something about it.
[1] https://amp.scmp.com/tech/tech-leaders-and-founders/article/...
[2] https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/90762149
[3] https://www.scmp.com/article/365213/pop-star-under-fire-posi...
[4] https://www.zhihu.com/question/265454740
Jail is for foreigners and well known people they want to silence, when they need to pretend there's a real justice system.
There's plenty of firsthand accounts of this stuff happening on the internet.
That is not how finance works in any country
Xi’s reign is bad for China’s progress, but good for every other country. China will become more centralized and bad laws will be enforced which will disrupt all progress towards innovation. The danger of a Chinese metro surpassing Silicon Valley is gone for now.
The longer Xi and his allies rule, the more China will remain destined to be a giant copy machine, nothing less and nothing more.
China's progress has been quite impressive recently. An intelligent benevolent dictator is probably the best form of government, the problem is that dictators rarely remain benevolent.
So far though, it looks like most of Xi's decisions have left China better off. Their infrastructure is now significantly better that the US. Investments abroad are positioning them well for the future, and they are even taking the lead in terms of carbon neutrality.
As for China’s current success, Xi has only come to power in recent years. If we’re being honest, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping deserve more credit For China’a current state than Xi for building the foundation and engine of China’s growth. Xi is only inheriting it, and will likely run it to the ground with his policies.
It is already a combination of Amazon + PayPal + Instacart + Netflix
At the same time I also think what I've read about Ant Group makes me think that financially their ability to loan to folks with little to no collateral and offload the risk on other institutions is unwise and risky.
As of 2021-01-04, it appears that's not all that's disappeared: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9108421/Chinese-tec...
> “An outstanding people’s billionaire like Jack Ma will definitely be hanged on top of the lamppost,”... The Communist Party seems more than willing to tap into that resentment.
I wonder given that Jack Ma hasn't been seen in two months, if the author would still juxtapose these two paragraphs in this way?