This is a hilarious scaremongering article written for those who are clueless. No surprise as it turns out it is from the comically named neocon outfit Foundation for the Defense of Democracies which is the most bellicose warmongering think tank in DC. They never met a poor third world country that they didn’t want bombed.
As for 6G the reason we have no leadership is that Lucent was run into the ground by a mindset of constantly meeting Wall Street earnings expectations.
Huawei surpassed the Europeans (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens etc...) because they invested and innovated and bet the farm on the foundational technology invented by Erdal Arikan.
> Huawei is proposing a fundamental internet redesign, which it calls “New IP,” designed to build “intrinsic security” into the web. Intrinsic security means that individuals must register to use the internet
We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet. You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID. You used to be able to get prepaid SIM cards in most countries till we put pressure on them.
> Instead, Huawei has worked through the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU), where Beijing holds more political sway.
The ITU is the right address that most countries accept as the standards bodies for telecommuncations interoperability. By the way we don’t have to abide by the ITU or the world as we routinely ignore the UN anyways.
In fact there is precedence of us going our own way. We adopted CDMA and majority of the world adopted GSM in the first phase of the digital mobile adoption. They only truly converged on a mass market level about 15-20 years later with 4G.
Theo Lebryk is an intern at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, where he is pursuing a Master’s in China Studies. His research focuses on media in China. He previously graduated from Harvard University with a joint concentration in Social Studies and East Asian Studies and a minor in Computer Science. After graduation, Theo was awarded a Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship to explore homeless and food culture in Hong Kong.
It's extremely easy to get anonymous Internet in the United States. Open wifi access points are everywhere and prepaid SIMs don't require any sort of ID or registration.
They are proposing New IP system that requires people to register with their real ID in order to use the internet anywhere, not just in China. That’s pretty dystopian in my book.
> We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet. You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID. You used to be able to get prepaid SIM cards in most countries till we put pressure on them.
In the UK at least a pre paid sim is 99p if you buy it from a shop, you can pay with cash and there's no registration procedure. I doubt we're the only country in the world that works like this.
And the store staffs won’t be able to activate the SIM if his place of residence and driver’s license or national ID card together can’t be verified at the other end of the FAX machine.
Even when I signed up for DSL in the UK, they didn't ask for personal details that could be verified. Didn't need a credit check either. I'm sure somebody there could make the connection to me but it's not like I needed to show any kind of identification.
Most free public Wi-Fi in the US (libraries, universities, airports, malls, hospitals) don't require ID to use, and usually only require accepting a ToS.
You're not addressing any of the dystopian points.
China is a tyranny that treats its people like cattle, and when they present a tool that would give them absolute control over their population, all you can do is attack the technical aspects?
> We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet.
This is just wrong. Whenever I travel I just get a 30 day or so SIM card. They've available everywhere. Not to mention WIFI access points here and there, e.g. at hotels, coffee shops etc.
American exceptionalism all too often seems to cut both ways.
Particularly in the US citizens who have grown up in the aftermath of 9/11 amid their hyper power at the height of its power having a decade long meltdown, I have noticed a near complete lack of perspective regarding the agency of other countries, especially allies.
That's egregiously against the site guidelines. We've asked you not to post like this multiple times before. Not only have you kept doing it, you've mostly been posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, so I've banned the account.
I hate to ban an account that has been around for over 10 years, but you can't vandalize HN like this. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
>Q: But isn't this an important world situation?
A: Sure—more important than most of what's on HN. That doesn't mean that HN's rules stop applying or that flamewar becomes ok. Also, people angrily yelling on the internet has nothing to do with helping oppressed peoples. It is about activated tribal emotion, and in that sense belongs to the problem rather than any step toward solution.
That's pretty convenient if you ask me.But CCP is not some world event not having any impact whatsoever on majority of the people.This is CCP we are talking about not a military coup in Myanmar or North Korea.
People have been laid off or harassed because they spoke in favor of HK or Taiwan.
>Q: Are you secretly a spy, foreign agent, communist, astroturfer, racist, or sympathizer thereof?
A: No; see step 4 of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365. We're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck. The idea of HN has always [1] been to avoid becoming scorched earth [2] or at least to stave off that fate for a while longer [3]. Scorched earth is not interesting, and threads like these are unfortunately a fast road to hell.
Yes the possibility of CCP that has its hands in almost any industry sector would not possibly favor those that willingly censor critics of the CCP.
Also there is nothing nationalistic when it comes to critique of CCP.
CCP != Chinese people.
You completely avoided the main point of the article which is people having their internet access revoked becoming equivalent to losing your drivers license. Right now you cannot be banned from the internet, the only way government can withhold internet access is through imprisonment, the internet should be open for all.
I am some what confused by this being called dystopian. As more and more Westerners call for people being canceled due to a small but vocal minority on Twitter and other platforms, wouldn't this design play right into that? Rather than wasting time defending Twitter, the reasonable social justice warrior would simply petition the sympathetic State functionary to flip the bad-person's Internet connectivity. For example, right now people are trying to silence Candice Owens. Rather than doing that publicly, all they would need to do is find someone within the network admins that agrees and shut her off like Duysak did to Trump's Twitter.
This kind of social reform would be made all the more effective due to the fact that the wrong-thinkers would not be able to personally connect to any of their Internet based accounts. Sure, they could still use the debt card to get cash, or their credit card to spend, but only in the physical world. People could easily track the wrong-thinkers and shout them out of restaurants. They couldn't connect to Amazon, Walmart, or even Costco. They would ever increasingly be forced to capitulate to the right-thinkers, or, more appropriately, the Neo-liberal betters.
This is not dystopian, this is the way it should be. The original designers of the Internet failed to see how many people would fall out of line with the common, known truths. We should take this page from the Chinese and thank them for their leadership. We all know that no right is absolute. We also know that the wrong-thinkers, because they are in fact wrong thinkers, need guard rails on their speech. We need to use this plan to limit the 1st US amendment, and the equivalent EU laws. Otherwise wrong-think will prevail. People will believe they have the right to autonomy and free thought. They don't. They have the right to think what the Neo-liberal thinkers think. There is no land between these sides. All else are fascists.
My ability to detect sarcasm was irreparably mutilated on EFNet IRC in the '90s. For me, posts like that one exist in a superposition of sarcasm and non-sarcasm until something forces a collapse.
Honestly, it's a little of both. There are loud groups of people online that will be fine with this kind of logic. In fact there is a good number of those individuals right here on HN. Essentially I outlined what their talking points will be.
At the same time, I'm tired of arguing for rights. I'm partially willing to let people burn the system to the ground to prove how right they are with removing rights from those they think to be undesirable.
I assume this comment chain, at least mine, will be hidden by dang by the end of the weekend.
"Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift"."
I guess that’s one of the “silver linings” of China’s ascendancy to a global superpower - it will put their system up against liberal democracies and the choice will be clear - either a system where the rights of the individual are front and center or a system where they are not.
China has made it’s position clear - the west can continue with liberal democracy if they want. China is taking a new path - a better path if you ask them. The government will play a key role in guiding the country - the economy, social norms, education, etc. The rights of the individual will be subservient to those of the needs of the country.
And make no mistake - they believe their system will win in the end.
> We need to use this plan to limit the 1st US amendment, and the equivalent EU laws. Otherwise wrong-think will prevail.
Nothing good happens when government tries to regulate thought. Nothing good comes of the government pointing a gun at citizen's head that can be fired without due process.
New IP is an attempt to redesign IP into a top-down governance model. It is not a new "internet protocol." It is a "new internet" protocol where central authority is part of the design.
The CCP can force Chinese to use this, but why would anyone else use it? I can’t see the USA or EU changing architectures unless our governments mandate it, and I see no moves in that direction. We are barely able to get people to implement IPv6 after 20 years of kicking people in the ass to do it, so it will not happen organically.
Money. Australia is heavily influenced by Chinese policy, look at their stance on privacy / encryption /
etc. Eventually this will percolate to the rest of the world. It will take decades but I’m sure it will happen. Younger generations are already pro censorship.
That statement of AU PM is definitely worthy of retard. But why do you think it is caused by Chinese influence? From what I understand being able to have "master key" is a wet dream of every government without exception even if said government wants to have nothing to do with China.
The next big destination many people have with respect to internet penetration is Africa. And CCP is ahead of west in capturing African market by working best with dictators and being competitive. For example they sold their telecom towers very cheap, and they work best with only chinese phones. With this cycle, china owns major share of African mobile business in just a few years. It would be easier to to get their IP in there.
Dictators aside, the Chinese are considered fairer trading partners than most (possibly all) western countries. ~1000 years of African history makes this point very clear.
Is there any infrastructure value added by western trade that rivals Chinese investments?
My understanding is there isn't and western countries have had a lot longer to prove the opposite. The relationship is mostly extractive (not in a benevolent sense) where western countries are concerned.
What's the Chinese-in-Africa equivalent of the CIA/MI6 wanting shiny rocks and orchestrating a genocide to secure them?
> What happens when trillion-dollar American luxury device manufacturers are no longer able to contact their manufacturers in China?
The relationship is mutual and losing manufacturing contracts with large international companies would deeply affect the Chinese economy.
Admittedly, the Chinese government has very long range vision compared to other governments and can unilaterally enforce austerity on their working class population in ways democratic regimes cannot.
That doesn't mean that China can alienate its international business partners with impunity.
Have a translation layer in between? That's basically the situation right now, with GFW sitting in between the chinese internet and the rest-of-the-world internet.
Everything you buy is from China. If China says it's the new standard, your iPhone or Android or Dell or HP or Playstation or Smart TV will support it.
China also provides foreign aid all over the world. I would guess quite a few countries would be willing to consider this in exchange for subsidized infrastructure.
US's DMCA laws and Disney-promoted extended copyright terms infected the rest of the world despite not technically being mandatory. I can see more than a slight parallel here whereever a country is within China's sphere of influence.
I wonder is it possible to isolate a whole country from the rest of the Internet? There are so many services in China that are almost exclusive to people with a Chinese phone number and a WeChat / Alipay account. That sealing the rest of the Internet does not affect Chinese residents using those services.
I don't get why you're being downvoted. WeChat has turned into an OS thanks to its mini-programs. It's also integrated with mass surveillance and censorship technology as a built-in.
The Web is bad as it is. Replacing it with a proprietary extension of the Chinese government (or any government, for that matter) through slow adoption would be a tragedy.
It's becoming clear that their values are completely different from the west. Unfortunately the problem is that consumers here love low prices, but they also love employment rights, social security, free healthcare and other signs of an advanced civilisation - which costs money. The hypocrisy of the society is that they don't care if the product they buy was made in a country that don't respect human rights and was probably made by forced labour or children. As long as they don't see the exploitation, then it does not bother them.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to create a campaign that would show consumers how they are condoning human rights abuse by buying these products, because big corporations would have to lose a big stream of money.
I would love to see the law changed, so that companies would have to print country of origin of the product, and additional information kind of when you buy eggs, you can see if it is from free range hens or caged. So it should be mandatory to write if product was made using forced labour, children or low paid workers.
Next step, I would like to see mandatory filters in online stores, where you could filter out products made in countries that abuse human rights. If you want to buy something on Amazon, that is not coming from China it is extremely time consuming - it should be easy.
Finally, products coming from such countries should have a levy, so that the cost of making product in China would be similar as if it was done locally.
If we are going to continue supporting China, all the things that they do, will become appealing to sociopathic politicians here and eventually they'll be copying it.
> The hypocrisy of the society is that they don't care if the product they buy was made in a country that don't respect human rights and was probably made by forced labour or children. As long as they don't see the exploitation, then it does not bother them.
I care, but the situation is much like conflict minerals. China is going to be relevant in the supply chain of almost any technological product, or at the very least, the tools that went into making it.
Personally I would pay double for products to avoid China, but I do not believe most people can even afford that trade-off if it was practical (and didn't require heaps of upfront research when buying everything from washing machines to batteries).
I think looking at the "new IP" proposal and concluding that "the Chinese have really different values then the west" is myopic. The chinese government is authoritarian and has a clear agenda. Assuming it reflects the values of the people is stupid. The chinese people may be goaded into nationalism and tricked (via propaganda) or pressured into supporting the government, but I think it's not correct to conclude from the government's actions anything about the people's values
I think the propaganda is on the other side. The government gained support over its recent initiatives in building strong economy, city infrastructure projects, vastly improved public services which affects most people’s daily routines.
Yes, people like it when their lives improve. Sure this has convinced some people the chinese government is doing a good job and will continue to do a good job. But they doesn't change the values of those people. The chinese government is a draconian dystopia. Saying "the propaganda is on the other side" implies that the Chinese government doesn't do propaganda, which is a pretty stupid thing to imply in my opinion. Dictatorships like China do not generally do well for their people for very long.
The complex reality of global supply chains works against this.
We would have to further "break" the fungibility of goods and money to truly enforce this, and ensure we have full provenance and reporting along the supply chain. This does exist in a lot of cases but is complex to enforce and subject to laundering.
Chips from X, materials from Y, finished in country Z. Of course complex modern products can have hundreds of suppliers or more in a tree fanning backwards. Compositions backwards in supply chain can change quickly based on cost of materials or output of Bangalore factory vs Taiwan factory in a particular month, for example.
"Comes from China" is not a binary proposition and if you try to assign a percentage you can come up with many different numbers, all of which can vary over time.
Also, is Taiwan part of China in the labelling scheme? Who makes the decision that e.g. Xinjiang uses slave labour? Is the information provided to the consumer "value neutral" and then you provide a lens on top? Or is there a political body writing the values? Who, exactly? If it's an international forum, is China invited?
Consumers might want to decide based on their sense of global justice, their environmental awareness, their opposition to authoritarian regimes, the presence/absence of potentially harmful substances, religious preference or along many other axes.
Companies with ESG frameworks are having a bear of a time just eliminating e.g. modern slavery from their supply chains, and they have a bunch of leverage with their suppliers and more insight than their customers.
I don't like the lack of information about what we buy either but I'm not sure that fully politicising every purchase is an easy answer.
You could automate product filtering so you only ever see those that meet your personal ESG preferences. Such smart filters could eventually use supply-chain blockchains for verification.
Presumably the protocol would also embed this data into the very connections you're establishing to other servers. IPv4 and IPv6 have ways to correlate data, but putting it directly into the connection is on a whole new level when censorship is implemented.
The whole article is about the political impact of the proposal, but did not discuss the technical details. What the hell is the New IP? How is topdown governance achieved under this new protocol? That is what I want to know. Not sentences like CCP is evil.
china is one of the countries that we in america get propagandized to about. when i hear things about china, russia, venezuela, north korea, cuba, iran, and probably some i've missed, i assume i've recieved no information from what i've heard.
Does anyone have a link to the actual details of the proposal? For a tech focused forum like HN, I would expect to see the actual technical detail rather than just political commentary.
I am genuinely curious about CCP plans if they do become a dominant influence in the world. They are attempting to reprogram Tibetans and Uighurs to erase their culture and make them Chinese. Is that the plan for all other cultures? Is the goal to make us all Chinese speaking Chinese?
Unlike the Soviet Union they could care less about other countries except for Taiwan , protecting the dominance of the CCP and being able to trade without interference.
Is it only me, or are half of the companies interested in a similar model.
Media streaming, online shopping, banking, or social media are all very interested in your real identity and a strict controlling their interaction with you.
Some social media is interested in my real identity. Reddit, and to some extend twitter is not. Reddit doesn't even care if you have multiple accounts, as long as it is not to evade bans.
Bankers are only interested in my actual identity because the government force them to.
Amazon is only interested in my identity to sell me stuff.
105 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadAs for 6G the reason we have no leadership is that Lucent was run into the ground by a mindset of constantly meeting Wall Street earnings expectations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucent
Huawei surpassed the Europeans (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens etc...) because they invested and innovated and bet the farm on the foundational technology invented by Erdal Arikan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdal_Arıkan
https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-5g-polar-codes-data-break...
> Huawei is proposing a fundamental internet redesign, which it calls “New IP,” designed to build “intrinsic security” into the web. Intrinsic security means that individuals must register to use the internet
We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet. You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID. You used to be able to get prepaid SIM cards in most countries till we put pressure on them.
> Instead, Huawei has worked through the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU), where Beijing holds more political sway.
The ITU is the right address that most countries accept as the standards bodies for telecommuncations interoperability. By the way we don’t have to abide by the ITU or the world as we routinely ignore the UN anyways.
In fact there is precedence of us going our own way. We adopted CDMA and majority of the world adopted GSM in the first phase of the digital mobile adoption. They only truly converged on a mass market level about 15-20 years later with 4G.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio...
We can create our own version of 6G and ignore other approaches.
Theo Lebryk is an intern at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, where he is pursuing a Master’s in China Studies. His research focuses on media in China. He previously graduated from Harvard University with a joint concentration in Social Studies and East Asian Studies and a minor in Computer Science. After graduation, Theo was awarded a Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship to explore homeless and food culture in Hong Kong.
Me: I’d say he did his homework well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There’s plenty of ways to browse internet anonymously in Switzerland.
In the UK at least a pre paid sim is 99p if you buy it from a shop, you can pay with cash and there's no registration procedure. I doubt we're the only country in the world that works like this.
Go to any bestbuy, the "registration" procedure is a joke: you can basically tell them your name is Rosie O'Donnell and live on the moon.
Most free public Wi-Fi in the US (libraries, universities, airports, malls, hospitals) don't require ID to use, and usually only require accepting a ToS.
You're not addressing any of the dystopian points.
China is a tyranny that treats its people like cattle, and when they present a tool that would give them absolute control over their population, all you can do is attack the technical aspects?
This is just wrong. Whenever I travel I just get a 30 day or so SIM card. They've available everywhere. Not to mention WIFI access points here and there, e.g. at hotels, coffee shops etc.
This is clearly false here in Canada. Open and free Wifi is everywhere, and you can purchase sims with cash and no id.
You didn’t, and it reeks of upmost arrogance to even assume that you could “force” the world to do such a thing.
Particularly in the US citizens who have grown up in the aftermath of 9/11 amid their hyper power at the height of its power having a decade long meltdown, I have noticed a near complete lack of perspective regarding the agency of other countries, especially allies.
I hate to ban an account that has been around for over 10 years, but you can't vandalize HN like this. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363
... there's even a simple algorithm which will help you answer it for yourself in the future:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365
That's pretty convenient if you ask me.But CCP is not some world event not having any impact whatsoever on majority of the people.This is CCP we are talking about not a military coup in Myanmar or North Korea.
People have been laid off or harassed because they spoke in favor of HK or Taiwan.
>Q: Are you secretly a spy, foreign agent, communist, astroturfer, racist, or sympathizer thereof? A: No; see step 4 of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365. We're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck. The idea of HN has always [1] been to avoid becoming scorched earth [2] or at least to stave off that fate for a while longer [3]. Scorched earth is not interesting, and threads like these are unfortunately a fast road to hell.
Yes the possibility of CCP that has its hands in almost any industry sector would not possibly favor those that willingly censor critics of the CCP. Also there is nothing nationalistic when it comes to critique of CCP. CCP != Chinese people.
This kind of social reform would be made all the more effective due to the fact that the wrong-thinkers would not be able to personally connect to any of their Internet based accounts. Sure, they could still use the debt card to get cash, or their credit card to spend, but only in the physical world. People could easily track the wrong-thinkers and shout them out of restaurants. They couldn't connect to Amazon, Walmart, or even Costco. They would ever increasingly be forced to capitulate to the right-thinkers, or, more appropriately, the Neo-liberal betters.
This is not dystopian, this is the way it should be. The original designers of the Internet failed to see how many people would fall out of line with the common, known truths. We should take this page from the Chinese and thank them for their leadership. We all know that no right is absolute. We also know that the wrong-thinkers, because they are in fact wrong thinkers, need guard rails on their speech. We need to use this plan to limit the 1st US amendment, and the equivalent EU laws. Otherwise wrong-think will prevail. People will believe they have the right to autonomy and free thought. They don't. They have the right to think what the Neo-liberal thinkers think. There is no land between these sides. All else are fascists.
At the same time, I'm tired of arguing for rights. I'm partially willing to let people burn the system to the ground to prove how right they are with removing rights from those they think to be undesirable.
I assume this comment chain, at least mine, will be hidden by dang by the end of the weekend.
a "swifty" ?
China has made it’s position clear - the west can continue with liberal democracy if they want. China is taking a new path - a better path if you ask them. The government will play a key role in guiding the country - the economy, social norms, education, etc. The rights of the individual will be subservient to those of the needs of the country.
And make no mistake - they believe their system will win in the end.
Nothing good happens when government tries to regulate thought. Nothing good comes of the government pointing a gun at citizen's head that can be fired without due process.
I am morally opposed.
Chinas influence is strong enough to cause the AU PM to say stupid things: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170714/10385237789/aussi...
Especially since any penetration of encryption within Australia would likely be turned against foreign agents (including the Chinese).
Also AFAIK we're still stuck in an unequal trade war with the PRC so they're not exactly flavour of the month around here.
I guess the West should improve their track record on "working best with dictators".
My understanding is there isn't and western countries have had a lot longer to prove the opposite. The relationship is mostly extractive (not in a benevolent sense) where western countries are concerned.
What's the Chinese-in-Africa equivalent of the CIA/MI6 wanting shiny rocks and orchestrating a genocide to secure them?
The PM is basically mirroring the position of the Five Eyes alliance of which Australia has been a member for longer than Communist China has existed.
The relationship is mutual and losing manufacturing contracts with large international companies would deeply affect the Chinese economy.
Admittedly, the Chinese government has very long range vision compared to other governments and can unilaterally enforce austerity on their working class population in ways democratic regimes cannot.
That doesn't mean that China can alienate its international business partners with impunity.
We need to write laws now that prohibit this.
We also need our own tech and our own supply chains so this stuff doesn't sneak in.
The Web is bad as it is. Replacing it with a proprietary extension of the Chinese government (or any government, for that matter) through slow adoption would be a tragedy.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to create a campaign that would show consumers how they are condoning human rights abuse by buying these products, because big corporations would have to lose a big stream of money.
I would love to see the law changed, so that companies would have to print country of origin of the product, and additional information kind of when you buy eggs, you can see if it is from free range hens or caged. So it should be mandatory to write if product was made using forced labour, children or low paid workers.
Next step, I would like to see mandatory filters in online stores, where you could filter out products made in countries that abuse human rights. If you want to buy something on Amazon, that is not coming from China it is extremely time consuming - it should be easy. Finally, products coming from such countries should have a levy, so that the cost of making product in China would be similar as if it was done locally.
If we are going to continue supporting China, all the things that they do, will become appealing to sociopathic politicians here and eventually they'll be copying it.
Unfortunately in practice other considerations get more weight.
I care, but the situation is much like conflict minerals. China is going to be relevant in the supply chain of almost any technological product, or at the very least, the tools that went into making it.
Personally I would pay double for products to avoid China, but I do not believe most people can even afford that trade-off if it was practical (and didn't require heaps of upfront research when buying everything from washing machines to batteries).
We would have to further "break" the fungibility of goods and money to truly enforce this, and ensure we have full provenance and reporting along the supply chain. This does exist in a lot of cases but is complex to enforce and subject to laundering.
Chips from X, materials from Y, finished in country Z. Of course complex modern products can have hundreds of suppliers or more in a tree fanning backwards. Compositions backwards in supply chain can change quickly based on cost of materials or output of Bangalore factory vs Taiwan factory in a particular month, for example.
"Comes from China" is not a binary proposition and if you try to assign a percentage you can come up with many different numbers, all of which can vary over time.
Also, is Taiwan part of China in the labelling scheme? Who makes the decision that e.g. Xinjiang uses slave labour? Is the information provided to the consumer "value neutral" and then you provide a lens on top? Or is there a political body writing the values? Who, exactly? If it's an international forum, is China invited?
Consumers might want to decide based on their sense of global justice, their environmental awareness, their opposition to authoritarian regimes, the presence/absence of potentially harmful substances, religious preference or along many other axes.
Companies with ESG frameworks are having a bear of a time just eliminating e.g. modern slavery from their supply chains, and they have a bunch of leverage with their suppliers and more insight than their customers.
I don't like the lack of information about what we buy either but I'm not sure that fully politicising every purchase is an easy answer.
That makes JustSecurity a credible source of Huawei misdeeds, unlike the US Gov.
But you repeat yourself
Media streaming, online shopping, banking, or social media are all very interested in your real identity and a strict controlling their interaction with you.
Bankers are only interested in my actual identity because the government force them to.
Amazon is only interested in my identity to sell me stuff.