China isnt doing the US any favors, lets not pretend any nation state of that size on either side has alturistic intentions.
But I am wondering why you are framing it like its no bid deal. How much does China share with the US?
There is a history of IP theft, and its not for the betterment of mankind it's self interest. You could point fingers but then the whole world goes blind.
Nationalism is blindness, better to be patriotic but not blind.
The British pretty much did nothing to stop it nor protected their IP. They certainly didn't strongly enforce it.
Contrast that with Chinese theft; as soon as counterfeit products or patent infringing ones make it to US soil they are promptly seized and destroyed if found to be infringing the laws.
I'm no fan of Chinese IP theft, but it is not true that the British did nothing to protect their IP. When Francis Lowell [1] went to Britain to learn about cotton mills, he could find nothing printed, and I believe it was illegal to take notes out of the country. At any rate, he was searched when he left, but he had studied the machinery and memorized plans for it. When he got back, he built the first textile mill in the US.
I think publishers in the young United States, having no copyright laws on sheet music, blatantly copied sheet music from British publishers. However, I'm not able to find a source on that.
> but he had studied the machinery and memorized plans for it
Did he? There's no evidence for that.
To me, it sounds like a smart Harvard grad just figured out a few missing pieces required to get textile manufacturing going. Wasn't his first time doing industrial processes at scale either: he successfully ran a distillery before that.
It's also interesting to remember that it happened at a time England was in open war against the United States. It's not really the same right now with Chinese companies trying to get into the US market and vice versa. Both countries claim to be allied but there's a clear disregard for the laws of one particular country!
Maybe a better analogy to what Francis Lowell did would be operation paperclip. The US did steal technology from Germany at the end of the war [0].
Germany was stripped by vultures, the AK-47 is also said to have come from Germany design, methadone is a nazi drug, our warming methods for people submerged in cold is from human experiments on tortured and frozen prisoners.
Regardless of attitudes towards commercial IP, most countries take it pretty seriously when defense-related research is stolen. You might get off the hook in China for stealing commercial IP, but I doubt you'd get the same response for violating research agreements with the PLA.
The US extradited the guy from Canada who did it and put him in federal prison, there were increasing threats of sanctions, and Obama met with Xi to talk about it.
So threats, no real sanctions, not that the steel sanctions did anything, somehow Vietnam started selling us all their steel after we sanction China for other reasons.
That's not true. France constantly steals US Defence tech. China constantly steals Russian tech and they are still on good terms. The US probably also tried to steal what it can from everyone, and we know the US facilitated industrial espionage of German companies.
Also, China is pretty different in that the PLA allows their researchers to publish a lot of research that gives away their capabilities in sensitive domains like EW and submarine warfare. I'm not sure they would react massively to something that doesn't even entail any information leaking.
I don't mean that it doesn't happen or that defense agencies keep everything a secret -- I mean that people routinely go to prison for leaking defense tech that wasn't supposed to be leaked.
> That's not true. France constantly steals US Defence tech. China constantly steals Russian tech and they are still on good terms. The US probably also tried to steal what it can from everyone, and we know the US facilitated industrial espionage of German companies.
Can you tell me more or what to look for? I just remember an Israel stole some classified stuff and was sent to prison, an ally stealing secrets but I thought it was a rare occurrence.
Sorry what? I post stories about the FBI harassing academics with Chinese connections while not finding any crime, and you accuse me of framing IP theft as something mild?
Have you also spent most of last year accusing George Floyd protesters of downplaying the importance of paying for cigarettes?
China historically didn’t have IP law, just property of the state. It’s why you don’t see many inventions there aside from government contracted ones like gunpowder. No profit= no incentive.
A friend of friend, a doctor of Chinese origin was caught under Trump administration for stealing "critical IP" and giving it to Chinese scientists. I do not know all the details but later it was revealed that the Doctor who was treating child cancer patients in USA shared the best practices and treatment plans that seems to have worked better than others to his doctor contacts in China.
> The NIH and the FBI are targeting ethnic Chinese scientists, including U.S. citizens, searching for a cancer cure. Here’s the first account of what happened to Xifeng Wu.
> Her resignation, and the departures in recent months of three other top Chinese American scientists from Houston-based MD Anderson, stem from a Trump administration drive to counter Chinese influence at U.S. research institutions. The aim is to stanch China’s well-documented and costly theft of U.S. innovation and know-how. The collateral effect, however, is to stymie basic science, the foundational research that underlies new medical treatments. Everything is commodified in the economic cold war with China, including the struggle to find a cure for cancer.
> Ways of working that have long been encouraged by the NIH and many research institutions, particularly MD Anderson, are now quasi-criminalized, with FBI agents reading private emails, stopping Chinese scientists at airports, and visiting people’s homes to ask about their loyalty.
Like in above case where the person is being entangled into an IRS tax evasion case, these people are being ethnically targeted, questions, harassed, their constitutional rights being trampled upon.
I don't know why this is downvoted. This is talking the most sense out of anyone in the thread. Talking about American companies choosing to outsource labour to China as if it's some kind of casus belli is absurd.
Check out some of my other posts here! Most of the people have been fed propaganda, they probably think the tank man was run over. I can't believe that enabling China to take advantage is seen as an evil, the companies sold out America for cheaper labor, even after they cut benefits, and now cry about stolen IP from a country that in popular culture is know to copy products (poorly). Slavery is now seen as an expensive mistake, and so is outsourcing work to a poor country that copies designs, none of this is a suprise. They could have stayed and enriched the workers, paid them well so the economy did well, and kept their secret designs in a country that respected IP laws. The US as a culture lacks long term planning, like in infastucture, the length of the next elections, these companies saw short term profits mattered more and slaying the golden goose was the genius move.
Oh come on. China has clear ambitions to be the worlds superpower. I have my gripes about the US, but China is clearly a much worse outcome for human rights. It’s not that they are the “enemy”, it’s that it would be flat out unacceptable for the CCP to control the entire planet. What’s plaguing American academia, and America at large, is China’s influence and bribes.
But controlling the planet is an american concept. They frame China as a competitor and China react with absurd misunderstanding because they're not seeing each other and the planet the same way.
Here in China (Im an imigrant), what matters is the forced march to progress at all cost, even human rights, under the guidance of the glorious leader Xi. Nobody in the party or the population gives a flying fuck about invading countries and all international propaganda is made not to submit to China as an individual but to repeat the glorious mission statement for the party internal work when speaking only about China. I disagree with the party's method because they forget that we ll pay the price of the crunch once the middle class is emancipated and need to start being politically responsible: as long as we ask monkeys to program computers we wont expand so we need to accept having free citizens or to not progress.
However the US truly aim at facilitating the expansion of its companies via cultural assimilation, MUCH more than what China does now (it could come later ofc), and entire countries are transformed via soft propaganda (movies and such) to adapt and start consuming american products that wouldnt matter otherwise. It's better than the Camps in Xinjian, but the camps are IN Xinjian, not in Normandy where I grew up under american influence.
So meh, balance. Both should compete until the end of time so they leave us alone.
I don't agree exactly with this. People in the west need to use VPNs to bypass bans, Chinese do too. Choice is said to be done of free will, but what is free will, and if you don't think outside influences can affect it, I disagree. If I have a subscription to videos, I am being given an illusion of choice, they are serving me what they choose for me, that is the same effect in China. Spotify, Apple, Pandora, Deezer, and Youtube are made of algorithms that give you their choices, you don't really have a choice, and now that YT took away dislike, its harder to even affect it.
>Put another way, Americans listen to K-pop and watch Parasite because it's good and they want to.
People listen to kpop because its played everywhere, its recommended in playlists, others play it, not because its good or they want to.
> China has clear ambitions to be the world's superpower
>> That is not clear to me. @worik
>>> The “dispute” regarding the construction of 11 Chinese buildings on the Nepali side of the territory in Humla came to the fore after Indian newspapers reported Chinese encroachment in June 2020...
>>> The most recent skirmish - on 20 January - left troops on both sides injured. It took place along the border in India's Sikkim state, which is sandwiched between Bhutan and Nepal. The year 2020 was particularly violent. The June clash in the Galwan Valley - fought with sticks and clubs, not guns - was the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975. India acknowledged its deaths. China did not comment on reports it also suffered fatalities.
>>> Malaysia has said it has summoned China’s ambassador to protest against the “presence and activities” of Chinese vessels in Kuala Lumpur’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea off the island of Borneo. Chinese vessels, including a survey boat, were operating off the coasts of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in contravention of 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Monday.
>>> China's growing economic footprint in Ukraine may already be producing geopolitical consequences that put the country at odds with core European priorities. Zelensky decided earlier this year to withdraw Ukraine's condemnation of Chinese government crimes against the Uighurs of Xinjiang, in what bore all the hallmarks of a quid pro quo to ensure deliveries of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines.
... these are just tidbits of the overall overarching theme of China dominating everyone everywhere in everything. These and other incidents seem to put the lie to the phrase: 'That is not clear to me.'
Either you're the least informed citizen in your country, you don't /ever/ read news, or you're outright lying. None of those are good options.
In any case, just the tiniest bit of searching would reveal China's hostile intent world-wide. To state otherwise is to be willfully ignorant.
No ambition is clearly false when we examine their recent actions of territorial claims and seizures from the entire South China Sea (the name has little to do with who it historically belonged to) to sword rattling for Taiwan to violent takeovers of land borders residing in India to straight up seizure of Tibet and the forced disappearance of the next Dalai Lama, literally the future head of the most peaceful faith on the planet.
>literally the future head of the most peaceful faith on the planet.
Tibet was a much poorer place that was mostly serfs.slaves before China invaded. They lived in worst conditions. It is only in pop culture is is a religion of peace.
Unfortunately I would advise you to learn more about Tibet's dark history. I used to think that Buddhists were all peaceful until they justified rape, killing, theft and other genocidal actions towards the Rohingya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
Religions can be good, but they can also make good people do evil things. There is not a religion I know that has never had been used for evil. Do not group relidions, see people as individuals.
>sword rattling for Taiwan
They do not want to destroy it, they want to capture its infrastructure. The weather will force China to take it over in basically 2 weeks or withdraw due to the weather too treacherous.
> Yes, the Taiwanese Army projects that it can only hold off its enemy for two weeks after the landing—but the PLA also believes that if it cannot defeat the Taiwanese forces in under two weeks, it will lose the war! Yes, the disparity between the military budgets on both sides of the strait is large, and growing—but the Taiwanese do not need parity to deter Chinese aggression. All they need is the freedom to purchase the sort of arms that make invasion unthinkable. If that political battle can be resolved in the halls of Washington, the party will not have the power to threaten battle on the shores of Taiwan.
> Tibet was a much poorer place that was mostly serfs.slaves before China invaded. They lived in worst conditions. It is only in pop culture is is a religion of peace.
I'm afraid the only pop culture at work to justify a violent takeover is the one invented by the CCP. No one denies the violence perpetrated by Buddhist-affiliated factions in Burma and Sri Lanka.
> Religions can be good, but they can also make good people do evil things.
There is one greater evil at work here, that of political atheism, which, when summing up the terrors of other atheist parties throughout time lead to the greatest human death toll committed by other humans in all of human history. I'm speaking of the Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, and the Nazi Holocaust.
Not to say that they are justified in doing so, but if you look at a map of territorial waters, it's pretty obvious why China might want to control land in the South China Sea for reasons other than an ambition to annex the entire world, because they are almost completely surrounded unless they can control some territory that has its own claim to territorial waters.
Land and sea disputes with neighboring countries come from an ambition to increase national security by weakening local competitors and creating buffers as well as acquiring advantageous geography. This explains the invasion of Tibet, the disputes in the SCS, and the land disputes with India (of course, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Indian disputed territories also have a historical component).
This is very different from policies that attempt to control the entire world, from the US, the USSR and some European powers. By and large China doesn't care what you do in your own country, unlike the USA.
Also, Tibetan Buddhism is VERY FAR from the "most peaceful faith on the planet". The reason why the Chinese were able to take Tibet so easily is because the Buddhist elite were incredibly brutal with the majority of the population, with widespread slavery and massacres. They were absolutely hated. It doesn't justify their seizure but we don't have to whitewash one of the most horrific political systems for it.
> Also, Tibetan Buddhism is VERY FAR from the "most peaceful faith on the planet". The reason why the Chinese were able to take Tibet so easily is because the Buddhist elite were incredibly brutal with the majority of the population, with widespread slavery and massacres. They were absolutely hated. It doesn't justify their seizure but we don't have to whitewash one of the most horrific political systems for it.
These are common CCP talking points, in fact primarily devolving from Chinese sources, which seek to turn Tibet into a nation in need of saving by debasing it into barbarism. Whatever half-invented, invented or factual casus belli the invaders invoked, half a million Tibetans were marched last year into work camps by CCP occupiers. [1]
In terms of historical accuracy, I stand by my claim: the Islamic and Christian faiths each hold a history of violence that squarely puts Buddhism at the top for peace. I do not deny the violence by the Buddhist Brigade and other factions proclaiming Buddhist faiths in Sri Lanka and Burma happening today but on the historical whole, no major faith comes closer.
What makes a superpower? What is the definition of human rights?
> What's plaguing American academia, and America at large, is China's influence and bribes.
What is plaguing the US in money is not bribes but appeasement to the Chinese market like Hollywood superhero movies, Apple kowtowing, and newpapers refusing to critique it in a truthful way. Academia is more plagued by internal politics, publish or die, p hacking, and a desire not to be canceled. China supports sciences and people who don't have funding for their interests do not have laboratories that can support their kind of interests. The US needs to fund STEM better.
What exactly is wrong with considering China as the enemy? China is a genocidal, totalitarian state that actively tramples over human rights. IMO it is the closest thing to pure evil in this world next to the DPRK.
It says "chinese" for a reason dude, and the problem is obviously that you are harassing innocent people.
And if you don't see that as human rights problem, consider you're wasting your finite intelligence resources on dead ends and so you're not finding the traditional spies that's just some dude that's been bribed.
Charles Lieber is not Chinese. So what is your point?
On a more general note:
Your style of argument is really tired. Who is going to commit wrongdoing on the part of the Chinese government if not mostly Chinese people? You can always try to reframe the issue as one of discrimination, since most of the offenders are bound to be Chinese. It’s pointless.
So far, the "China Initiative" cases have not gone well for the government, though they have still done a lot of damage to innocent people who were targeted.[0]
It's also clear that ethnically Chinese people have been specifically targeted.
Anming Hu is a Canadian citizen born in China, who was a professor at the University of Tennessee. The FBI got him fired before he even went to trial by telling the University he was a spy. In the end, all the FBI actually had on him was that he hadn't reported a small speaking fee on an official form. It wasn't even obvious if reporting the fee was necessary. The whole thing turned out to be a racially motivated fishing expedition by some local FBI agent, and Hu was acquitted. But the FBI majorly screwed up his life and career and smeared him in public first.
A lot of the cases have turned out to be like this. See Gang Chen's case at MIT. That one is almost Kafkaesque, when you read the charges and then read the background.
The word "genocide" has to stop being thrown around so lightly.
Nobody is alleging any mass killing in Xinjiang, so use of the G-word is obvious hyperbole. The people using it know that nobody wants to be labeled a "genocide denier." Ironically, by making such an exaggerated claim, they shield themselves from criticism.
I think using the word "genocide" as a cheap rhetorical attack is cynical, and robs the word of the gravity that it should have.
The Uyghur population is increasing. The birth rate is similar to that of the Han majority. Uyghur life expectancy is increasing. Incomes and literacy are increasing.
"Genocide" means a systematic attempt to physically destroy an ethnic or religious group. The 3-child policy in China (which applies to the Han majority as well) does not even come close to being anything like an attempt to physically eliminate the Uyghur people.
It's extremely cynical to call this a "genocide." It completely devalues the word.
> The Uyghur population is increasing. The birth rate is similar to that of the Han majority. Uyghur life expectancy is increasing. Incomes and literacy are increasing.
>”Genocide" means a systematic attempt to physically destroy an ethnic or religious group. The 3-child policy in China (which applies to the Han majority as well) does not even come close to being anything like an attempt to physically eliminate the Uyghur people.
There is no basis for your claim that the forced sterilization/abortions of the Uyghur people occurs at similar rates within the Chinese majority, or that it is merely an enforcement of the three child policy.
All of the sterilization / birth control claims are sourced to Chinese government data. That's the best data available.
Given the large economic investment in Xinjiang (which is part of China's attempt to decrease dissent) and the very visible improvements in living standards there, it makes sense that life expectancy is increasing.
> There is no basis for your claim that the forced sterilization/abortions of the Uyghur people occurs at similar rates within the Chinese majority
Up until a few years ago, forced sterilization / abortion was something that basically only the Han majority was subject to. The Uyghurs were exempted from the 1-child policy, just like most ethnic minorities.
Over the last few years, China has loosened the policy, so families can now have 3 children, but it has started applying it to ethnic minorities as well.
> There is no basis for your claim [...] that it is merely an enforcement of the three child policy.
No basis? There's no basis for believing otherwise. If you pay attention to the reporting, the horror stories are mostly about people who have had more children than the policy allows. You can very legitimately oppose China's 3-child policy, but calling it "genocide" is obvious hyperbole.
"Genocide" is an extremely serious accusation. It means an attempt to physically annihilate a people. It evokes images of death camps and crematoria. Yet you're now arguing about whether or not the Uyghurs might be subject to harsher enforcement of the 3-child policy or not. That's not genocide. The word should not become a cheap rhetorical tool.
At this point it is clear you are merely regurgitating CCP propaganda. All of your claims map 1:1 to those made solely by the Chinese government, and have been refuted in outside reporting.
“Documents from 2019 reveal plans for a campaign of mass female sterilization … Xinjiang planned to subject at least 80 percent of women of childbearing age in the rural southern four minority prefectures to intrusive birth prevention surgeries (IUDs or sterilizations), with actual shares likely being much higher.”
I'm making what are pretty obvious, factual claims. I don't think that any of the factual statements I'm making are even controversial. It's just the interpretation that has suddenly dramatically shifted in the US and some of its allied countries.
The UN Genocide Convention is very clear about what is and is not genocide. There's no possible way to construe a situation like this, in which the population and life expectancy of the group is increasing, as genocide. In fact, describing it as genocide sounds like propaganda.
If the Chinese government were trying to physically annihilate the Uyghurs, which is what the very serious word "genocide" means, it would be obvious. We would not be discussing whether or not the 3-child limit was being more aggressively enforced on Uyghurs. We would be discussing mass death.
I don't need the CCP to tell me that "genocide" implies mass killing and physical annihilation of a people. I'm perfectly capable of seeing that the word "genocide" is being misused in a highly manipulative way in the political discussion nowadays, and of pushing back against that.
I have no proof of it but considering the account you are arguing with is less than a day old, I wonder if its IP address wouldn't resolve to some VPN endpoint used by paid posters to bypass the Great Firewall [0].
>What exactly is wrong with considering China as the enemy? China is a genocidal, totalitarian state that actively tramples over human rights.
Can that not also be leveraged against the US, and how others feel about it? America is the world's bully or policeman.
>IMO it is the closest thing to pure evil in this world next to the DPRK.
Check out Eritrea, commonly called the North Korea of Africa. They will extort foreign family members for money so they don't kill their family in Eritrea. I know a programmer in Australia, sends lots of money back money to a country he hates so they don’t kill his family. China doesn’t even do that. Of course the US also double taxes. ;)
You forgot that last part. China's trade dealings are outright hostile. China's overlooking slave-wages, and suicides tied to working conditions or lack thereof.
China must be considered /by all/ to be an enemy of the rest of the globe.
This is not saying that the Chinese populace are enemies, but the Chinese Government, which controls the populace, is most definitely so.
This is a mostly western view since westerners engaged in a zero sum conflict with the oldest super power on the planet to gain temporary economic advantages for the last 100 years or so... most of the world doesn't agree with that view of China even with the $ billions ($trillions?) of anti-Chinese propaganda spending by the west.
I think what they did in Africa is fantastic compared to what the western powers did for over a century, building infrastructure (mostly for extraction, but also civilian use) is much better than the western world funding warlords to capture mines for slave labor to fund our electronics fetish. Instead of causing more harm they gave them a bad deal, but much better than anything the west offered in which they funded groups of militia that caused harm to the common people. If you consider the alternative, it is much kinder, I wish the US would use less shock and awe, but when it refuses to build infrastructure even in its own country, what do you expect? The US is not a building civilization, its power and culture is warmongering and resource extraction, not long term planning outside the US or internally.
America as the world police/bully and China leverages itself by being slightly better. The US should offer a better deal than China can, its better than bombing the shit out of people, scaring them with weapons, and having them hate us for killing their countrymen or family.
China is the country forcing small states to cut ties with Taiwan.
And don't even think about saying it is not forcing them, because I have lived in two such countries in Central America where Taiwan was a hefty money donor.
What does this have to do with how its benefited Africa? Taiwan has few allies, but I still fail to understand what does it gain from sending money to Haiti?
From a realpolitik standpoint, you can choose a small island that makes mostly advanced microchips or a large country that makes everything. Are you going to say they didn't make a rational choice in allies?
It's part of China Initiative targeting US academia, mostly failed in terms of exposing spies. But IMO the real goal was mccarthyism and generating fear over collaboration with PRC science going forward, in which case, working as intended.
"The Trump administration said at the time Lieber had signed a five-year contract with the Wuhan University of Technology and was paid up to $50,000 a month to set up a joint Harvard-Wuhan research lab."
Wuhan again for the win! Let the conspiracy theories begin....
Yup, expect a downvote for this comment too. And it is ok. Comments should add something. A "plus one" is insufficient and can just be an upvote. Conversely, a plus one with an anecdote or link to data or similar content is usually well received.
As for the comment that got downvotes above, the general view is that low hanging humor will degrade the site experience and I agree. Slashdot was a popular tech site but you could always expect upvotes for "first post," or "i for one welcome our new humor-avoiding overlords." A lot of quality slipped over time.
Some humor is tolerated on HN. It took me a while to get the feel for what us and isn't acceptable. There is humor, it just has to be well constructed (being tech related doesn't hurt either)
>"Lieber also joined China's Thousand Talents Plan, a Chinese-government run program designed to entice scientists and researchers in the United States to share their research expertise with China," said U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, announcing the charges. "Boston is an especially attractive target for this kind of exploitation and universities must become sensitized to this threat."
But why is this a threat in the first place? Its never explained and assumed to be bad because "China"? This is completely absurd. I can understand the hiding the income angle for tax purposes, but sharing scientific information is not a threat. This is absurd
These professors who take money from these programs such as Confucius institute are given a list of subjects they are either not allowed to comment on or they have to echo the party line. The CCCP government is writing mainstream US curriculum because they own all our schools and profs.
Is it normal for researchers to get paid that much money directly to one of their bank accounts for collaborating with outside universities? If it's not normal, doesn't that smell a whole lot like a bribe to you?
It could be benign I guess but it definitely could also be a state sponsored or run operation to steal tech. It's not like China doesn't and hasn't pilfered outside businesses for their own interests.
IP law is what it is, but you can make very good arguments that it (esp patents) doesn't actually help society at large, and that it shouldn't exist in its current form. I think you'll find a lot of people on HN who would back that.
Somehow when it comes to China, people grab for any excuse to criticize them and "stealing tech" is one of them. Certainly it is possible to come about knowledge by nefarious means, but that doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate for China to try to learn things from other people.
As for some professor getting paid, tech profs can be a pretty hot commodity, so it's not in itself surprising that a prof is making big bucks teaching people about his subject and perhaps also introducing his network.
This is all very nice and for example Apple could share all their IP and give away their iPhone IP to china IF THEY WANT TO. It's a free world (in the US anyway).
But that's not what is going on here. In the current framework we live in, there is IP and there is knowledge and that knowledge is funded and worked on under certain rules. If you break those rules there are consequences.
That is not the framework we have. National sovereignty exists and if the Chinese don't want to follow IP law in some way that is their right. Most third world countries wish they couldn't, they just get strongarmed.
It's not a free world when the US and Europe are trying to impose their laws on you, and if you refuse to follow their laws then their citizens are prohibited from dealing with yours.
Then you can try to convince the WTO to impose consequences if it really is the framework. In reality while this would work for a weaker developing country it probably won't work here.
There is an excellent argument that IP law doesn't help society at large - that is why China is ignoring IP law. They need to grow their economy ASAP to protect themselves from the United States military, and the strategy seems to involve technical dominance. They can't do that if they weigh themselves down with IP laws; they already have enough problems with innovation.
That observation is entirely consistent with the US wanting to be exceedingly careful about IP exfiltrating to China.
One actively cultivated a culture of establishing an absolutist surveillance state resulting in the death and torture of tens of millions, often at the hands of their own children, in the course of a decade or so, is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate, treats their population like cattle, and exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power.
There is no comparison of morality between the US and China. For all its faults and failures the US is unequivocally a more moral and just nation.
Let's not just leave it at that. I won't let you deceptively downplay the egregious evil China is and has been responsible for. It's directly responsible for multiple events that when measured over the course of history, are the most insane human atrocities ever committed.
China Oana monstrous regime to its own people, and has been exporting the technology and know-how for their monstrous treatment more and more.
However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations - Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Irak, Cuba, Palestine, Cambodia and many others.
They are both immoral, but i d different ways at different times, like all empires have been and forever will be, from the Romans to the Arabs to the Mongols to the French, Dutch, Belgians etc.
There are lots of places where your argument is nonsense, but I feel like the most important thing to address is this:
> However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries
That's just inaccurate. The founding of the current communist regime resulted in more deaths within China's borders than all of the US's military campaigns (and espionage) since WW2 combined. I've seen it said a lot that the "US kills more!" So I wonder if that's just a talking point the CCP is trying to disseminate to distract from their current genocide.
I meant the US has killed more people abroad than China has killed abroad. So, if I were a citizen of China, I have many reasons to fear the Chinese government; if I were a citizen of the USA, I would not have much reason to fear the US government.
But, if I am a citizen of, say, Lebanon, I have many more reasons to fear the USA than I have to fear China. I'm much more likely to be killed by the US government than the Chinese government.
Without context it is a pointless statistic. The US was involved on the just side of the two largest wars in modern history. That's where the overwhelming majority of its foreign killings comes from. And while regrettable, they were lawful and necessary. You can't call someone a murderer for defending themselves from attack.
I don't see how something can be both regrettable and necessary? Also, as well as the two wars that the US was on the 'just' side of, it's also been on the quite-hard-to-call-just side of many others, where it was not exactly defending itself either.
>However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations
You are very clearly uninformed about history. Especially if that's your list of brutalized countries with zero insight into the many factors stimulating US intervention in most of them and the aftermath resulting from failed or cessation of intervention, especially in those supported by the CCP.
El Salvador and Cuba
I will grant that the clandestine support of a coup and refusal to condemn an oppressive, violent junta that came to power was inexcusable on the part of the US, but its involvement still has nothing compared to the CCP and USSR involvement in mass genocides and democides across the globe. The guerillas weren't benevolent liberators either.
Nicaragua
Another good example of the faults and failures of the US historically, but incomparable to the CCP, and aligned with global economics at the time. A victim of the intense geopolitical tensions and climate in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks in large part to the fallout from the Spanish-American War.
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. The collapse of the Ottomon Empire was the motivating factor in harsh and enduring political tensions in Central Asia. Not US intervention.
US involvement in Afghanistan all started with solicited intervention by the populace for help against imperial actions by the USSR. Continued intervention was not purely political or economic in nature, and certainly not genocidal or democidal.
Taking just Cambodia - the Khmer Rouge regime was of course supported by China with massive resources. However, the US has also killed tens of thousands of Cmabodians directly in bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War, between 30,000 and 150,000 (likely committing the war crime of Aggression, as they were not in a state of war with Cambodia); this helped galvanize the population towards joining the enemies of the US, helping the Khmer Rouge attain power.
Later on, in 1979 when the re-united Vietnam attacked the Khmer Rouge, both the US and China condemned the actions of the Vietnam liberators, and helped defend the Khmer Rouge from international opinion (since Vietnam was being supported in this by the USSR). The US sent lawyers to defend Pol Pot himself from the tribunals in the newly liberated Cambodia, and both China and the US helped keep Khmer Rouge affiliates on the UN seat for Cambodia until 1993. Of course, China went further and launched a retaliatory war against Vietnam for their liberation of Cambodia.
You also seem to be greatly minimizing the US involvement in many of these places. The US occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, installed a military dictatorship that ruled it for 50 years, and then trained, armed and directed guerillas that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of civilians to try to stop the revolution that took down the Somoza dictatorship. Much of the rest of South America saw similar treatment from the US: coups taking down socialist popular movements and installing military dictatorships instead, then supporting violent militias if counter-revolutions started.
In the middle east, while many of the problems started with the British handling of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the USSR also led brutal wars of oppression, the US has picked up the torch in the last 30 or so years as the major source of strife in the region. They are responsible for:
- arming and training the Taliban
- installing Saddam Hussein in power, arming him, and directing him to attack Iran, even accepting his use of chemical warfare
- squashing Iran's brief democracy under Mossadegh, installing a military dictatorship under the Shah, starting the Iran Nuclear Weapons program, arming them (and then losing control to the islamic revolution)
- funding and arming Saudi Arabia and allowing it to spread its demented form of islamic fundamentalism, supporting even as we speak their invasion of Yemen
- supporting the Israeli apartheid state, illegal nuclear weapons arsenal, and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories
- invading Afghanistan in 2001 and killing thousands in the process, causing the deaths of as many as 100,000 civilians overall in the conflict
All of these things are adequately accounted for in my previous post except one which I find laughable every time I hear it, and provides sufficient evidence to me that you are an ideologue not concerned with realistic representations of history or current political events.
>Israeli apartheid state
Apartheid states do not let the oppressed class have massive representation in their representative government at all levels.
They do not have members of the oppressed class sit on the bench of the highest court in the land.
They do not mandate, at a federal level, that ALL state enterprise MUST have a member of the oppressed class on their board of directors.
They do not consistently have individuals from the oppressed class as cabinet members.
They do not have ambassadors belonging to the oppressed class.
They do not have members of the oppressed class as some of the highest ranking generals in their military, or as commanders of, hilariously, the border police.
Members of the oppressed class in apartheid states do not have the highest standard of living and quality of life compared to members of the same religious and ethnic groups in the region.
Apartheid states do not bend over backwards to accommodate, preserve, and enable the cultural and religious practices of the oppressed class, even when its members openly call for the genocide of the predominant ethnic group in the locale, refuse to participate in coalition governments, and reinforce sectarian, segregationist cultural policies and beliefs.
If you sincerely think Israel is an apartheid state, you are woefully uninformed, and a fool that has fallen for blatant propaganda.
The oppressed minority are not Arab citizens of Israel, they are the citizens of the Palestinian territories, whose property (and sometimes even lives) are considered expandable by Israeli authorities, who routinely destroy or seize these.
Israel is very obviously leading a campaign to eradicate the Palestinian population and take their land without taking the people.
They are violating all two-state solution guarantees through their obviously illegal settlements. And they do not want to simply occupy the Palestinian territories and go for a single-state solution, because that would leave Palestinian Arabs a majority (or at least extremely large minority) of the population, which contradicts the dream of an Isareli state controlled by God's chosen people.
All of your examples of how the minority Arab citizenry of Israel is treated well are entriely irrelevant, and if you know anything about the history of calling Israel an apartheid state, by people like Noam Chomsky, you would definitely know this, so I can only assume you are arguing in bad faith.
Palestinian Arabs are exactly who I'm describing in the previous examples. They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.
Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century. You're regurgitating ignorant nonsense. The ruling parties and majority population of Palestine are VOCALLY genocidal when it comes to the Jews, but you'd rather ignore that and accuse Israel of subversively carrying out a genocide against people it has in its highest levels of government. Then you have the audacity to accuse ME of bad faith. How many Jews are in Palestinian leadership positions?
I couldn't care less what Noam Chomsky says or thinks on this subject, he's one of the worst ultracrepidarian clowns in contemporary history.
And yet, despite this enlightened love of Israel for its Palestinian citizens, Israel is one of the developed nations of the world, while Palestine (the Gaza Strip and West Bank) live in squalor, are blockaded with not even the Red Cross being allowed to freely bring medicine in, and have to endure planned bombardments from Israel whenever a terrorist attack happens, all while their land is taken away by colonists flying the Israeli flag.
How exactly do you square this circle?
> Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century.
This is twisting history. UN resolutions for a two-state solution have always been approved by Palestine, with the USA being the veto against them. The idea of recognizing the state of Israel has been accepted by Palestinian leadership since the 1970s. But, the specific proposals that have usually been on the table have been almost universally laughable: taking away even more of Palestinian territory, limited access to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, limited access between the two halves of the Palestinian state and many other issues.
Not to mention, almost all of these negotiations were "arbitrated" by Israel's single biggest ally in the world, the USA. This would be as if you'd expect peace talks between Ukraine and the Donetsk separatists arbitrated by Russia to go well.
> They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.
And looking a little bit into this, it's amazing you can claim this, as the truth is precisely the opposite. 90% of the Arabic population of Palestine before the war did not qualify to become Israeli citizens. Now, not only do they not have any special right to become Israeli citizens, they don't even have the right to enter the country, even if they have a spouse or property there, unless they meet some other conditions.
By contrast, any person of Jewish decent or that converts to Judaism has the right to become a citizen of Israel with minimal other conditions. They will also likely receive property from the JNF if they wish to settle in Israel.
> The massacre at Huế came under increasing press scrutiny later, when press reports alleged that South Vietnamese "revenge squads" had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle, searching out and executing citizens that had supported the communist occupation.[10][11]
This feels like the classic 'barrage of bullshit' strategy, where a load of dubious claims are thrown out in the knowledge that it's near impossible to refute them all, and refuting part of them will come across as "well, this one might be contested, but look at all the others!".
Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) the US is not a very moral or just nation, especially with how it has used its military power & (2) the US is a more moral and just nation than China, especially with how they use military power.
This isn't a whataboutism equivalency. It is a statement that one needs to first be honest about ones own shortcomings before disparaging another.
> absolutist surveillance state
I'm pretty sure that neither Google nor the rest of the world is thrilled about NSA warrantless mass surveillance programs.
> is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate
State supported ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the 19th century. State supported subjugation and murder of African Americans in... well, improving, but still counting.
> exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution...
Extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, and torture in third party countries and at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
> ... against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power
20th century voting rights struggles, in which African Americans were systemically disenfranchised with the goal of preserving white political and economic power.
---
I'm a proud American, support the use of the US military on the global stage as a force for increasing moral good in the world, and consider the Chinese model of authoritarianism incompatible with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness owed to every human. I believe the US holds individual freedom and equality before the law as much higher ideals, and delivers on them more often and fully, than China does.
But there's a reason Martin Luther King Jr. talks about "self purification" as one of the three prerequisite steps before direct action, and it's because easy hatred corrupts true justice.
Enumerating the ways in which your opponent looks like you, and the ways in which you've fallen short of your own ideals, isn't an argument for inaction, but a clarification and sharpening of action. 1960s racial injustice in the United States provided an embarrassing talking point while the US lectured the USSR on individual freedom. Using the evil that another does as justification for righteousness requires first accepting the evil that one has done.
You're belittling the Soviet Union's gulags when you describe 1960's racial injustices. The difference, if you can't register, is the the latter nation has the civilized means for progressing its justice through political means. It's astonishing how negligent this basic truth is when doing nation-state comparisons over the last century.
The USA stole tech from the British Empire when the US was trying to build itself up. This is just the natural order of things, and I'm very anti-China and very pro-Taiwan.
Industrial espionage is different from ignoring IP laws. I would be fine with China doing away with IP as a concept, but that’s not what their doing.
I don’t support the Chinese government due to their active genocide along with the horrific subjugation of the population, but it’s a judgement on a case by case basis.
> The USA stole tech from the British Empire when the US was trying to build itself up.
The US contributed as much new, prominent technology to the industrial revolution as any other nation. A quick trip down the list of prominent US inventions of the era nicely demonstrates that. There's no foundation to claim that the US stole more technology than Britain did going the other direction. It's a Reddit-knowledge bumper sticker claim that is almost exclusively utilized in threads like this one, and is never substantially supported in discussion (because it's exceptionally difficult to prove that US technology theft was meaningfully out of line with what eg major European economic powers were doing during the industrial revolution).
China has contributed a huge amount of technological development as well. Just look at Huawei's leading role in developing 5G.
China didn't care about IP law 30 years ago, but it does now. Yet when Westerners discuss this issue, they usually talk as if we were still in 1990 or 2000, when China was the Wild West of IP. In 2021, that's no longer the case. For a developing country, China actually has pretty strong IP laws and enforcement. There's just as much IP litigation in China as there is in the US, and foreign companies have a pretty good success rate in Chinese IP courts.
In the first half of 2019, foreign companies won 68% of their cases in the Beijing IP court.[0] Foreign companies are much more often plaintiffs than defendants, though the balance is supposedly shifting (Chinese companies are becoming more assertive about their own IP rights).
An example: John Deere has won judgments against a bunch of Chinese companies that used similar names to it.[1]
The fact is that the US industrial revolution began with an act of industrial espionage against the UK. That the US did end up contributing to the industrial revolution is neither here nor there, as it's also true that China is contributing meaningfully to the technological advancement of humanity now as well.
This is a standard case of one rising power coming up agains the incumbent. They'll do what they have to do to catch up, just as you did what you had to do ~150 years ago. Saying that, I hope China isn't ultimately successful due to their total disregard for human rights, but getting all bent out of shape over this trade secrets stuff is silly.
The US invented the modern concept of intellectual property law. It didn't exist beforehand so its inaccurate and disingenuous to claim that they stole anything from anyone.
> IP law is what it is, but you can make very good arguments that it (esp patents) doesn't actually help society at large, and that it shouldn't exist in its current form. I think you'll find a lot of people on HN who would back that.
Software patents generally suck and most IP laws grant monopoly for too long.
But also, some IP law is needed. I'd be willing to bet 90+% of HN would sign on to that.
> Somehow when it comes to China, people grab for any excuse to criticize them and "stealing tech" is one of them
I'd rather they not be relaxed for the express purpose of sharing technology and methods with an authoritarian government that promotes itself as the US's rival. Again, I'd be willing to bet most of HN would cosign that.
I'm always really frustrated by comments that are like "HN/group always says X but now they're saying Y! So inconsistent!" Like it's somehow mandatory to completely disregard context and degree when forming opinions. It's not. You can say no to sex with someone without committing to celibacy.
I'd be perfectly comfortable showing up on capital Hill and yelling that Biden shits his pants, but I would not be comfortable showing up in Beijing calling Xi Winnie the Pooh. It's ok if that informs my level of comfort supporting the technological progression of the respective institutions.
> As for some professor getting paid, tech profs can be a pretty hot commodity, so it's not in itself surprising that a prof is making big bucks teaching people about his subject and perhaps also introducing his network.
Tons of professors make good money. Great money. That has nothing to do with why this guy is in the news.
The Thousand Talents Plan is a transparent attempt by the CCP to accumulate economic and military power. It isn't bad because "China," it's bad because it increases the power of an authoritarian, imperial-minded, genocidal government.
It is a part of the industrial policy of China that broadly raises living standard and wealth of the society. It also opens up the Chinese society for foreign influence and sends millions abroad for studies.
The idea that this is to "increase the power of the CCP" is only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity. In classic dictatorship thinking sending your best students abroad and accepting foreign educators is the last thing you would want to do.
Sending your best abroad while you hold their family at gunpoint locally is how you cultivate absolute loyalty and subvert adversarial thought and nations. The best way to defeat your enemy is to understand them.
That's why you consistently see Chinese born, US citizens with decades of time in the states prosecuted for espionage.
> It is a part of the industrial policy of China that broadly raises living standard and wealth of the society.
I agree. It doesn't contradict what I said, though. Both are true.
> only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity
No. It also gives them better weapons, AI, surveillance technology, etc. It literally increases their power, both abroad and within their borders.
CCP's popularity is guaranteed because it is criminal in China to tell negative truths about them. Their popularity is irrelevant because they have control over the entire country's military and surveillance networks. If they can intern and slaughter millions of Uyghurs, it's almost impossible for a rebellion to overthrow them.
> It isn't bad because "China," it's bad because it increases the power of an authoritarian, imperial-minded, genocidal government
You’re literally repeating the “China bad” argument
I’m not going to argue that the CCP is benign. But either the thousand talents program is specifically harmful in some way, or you’re against it because “China bad”. And you appear to be arguing the latter.
My opinion of thousand talents is it’s an attempt to reverse brain drain. I personally know a Chinese immigrant with a green card who was struggling to find funding for some kind of cancer research here in the states, then found funding working as a regional thousand talents back in China and now runs some lab or startup or something in Anhui.
Of course, hiding funding and income is another matter altogether.
Right but there’s a difference between “X is bad because China is the one doing X” and “X is bad for reasons A, B, C that would also apply if it were not China doing X”
> “X is bad for reasons A, B, C that would also apply if it were not China doing X”
Reasons A, B, and C can (and should) acknowledge the beneficiary of the thing that is being done.
If the beneficiary is power-hungry and genocidal, that is a valid reason for "thing" to be a bad idea.
Similarly, it's better for, let's say, Norway to become a nuclear power than for North Korea to become a nuclear power.
The accumulation of military power by a non-aggressive democracy is less dangerous than by an authoritarian regime that has shown recent interest in conquest.
> You’re literally repeating the “China bad” argument
The CCP is not China. China is not the CCP. China is not bad and Chinese people are not bad.
The CCP is, unequivocally, one of the most evil and dangerous organizations in the history of humankind. With enough technology, it will be literally impossible to organize a rebellion against them and return China to something like democracy. It will be like `1984` (and is not far off from that type of dystopia even today).
With enough military power, they can annex more and more countries, and no one will be able to stop them. Hong Kong and Taiwan are templates for the future.
> But either the thousand talents program is specifically harmful in some way, or you’re against it because “China bad”. And you appear to be arguing the latter.
I was very clear why I was against it. It's explicitly a program to exfiltrate scientific knowledge (which translates into military, surveillance, and economic power) from non-authoritarian countries to an authoritarian one.
The US has its share of horrific history, and I wish it weren't so powerful and dangerous, but I am always opposed to power flowing from a democratic country to an authoritarian one.
> My opinion of thousand talents is it’s an attempt to reverse brain drain. I personally know a Chinese immigrant with a green card who was struggling to find funding for some kind of cancer research here in the states, then found funding working as a regional thousand talents back in China and now runs some lab or startup or something in Anhui.
I'm not going to argue that nothing good comes of this program. The problem with regimes like the CCP is that they abuse well-intentioned people, and they use a façade of "for the people" to do things that are purely for themselves.
As I said above: I'm much much more worried about the USA invading my country than China invading my country.
The "they can annex more and more countries" is pure speculation (besides the obvious case of Taiwan). Do you think they'll annex Thailand? Vietnam? Russia? Japan?
>The US has its share of horrific history, and I wish it weren't so powerful and dangerous, but I am always opposed to power flowing from a democratic country to an authoritarian one.
I agree that the CCP is dangerous, but the foreign invasion is a really poor argument, both because there's no evidence that China will invade other countries (again, besides the obvious Taiwan case) and because the USA has invaded multiple countries in the past 50 years...with horrific consequences to the population
I agree with the authoritarian part, but "imperial-minded"? How many countries has China invaded in the last 20-30-40 years? How many has the USA?
Not trying to use a "what-about-it" argument; I'm worried about China, but in terms of imperialism I'm much more worried about the USA, so I'm not sure if I prefer China stealing IP or the USA keeping that IP.
(An an aside, and mostly because I'm curious: are you from the USA? I feel like many people in the USA don't realize that in most countries the USA foreign policy isn't seen as something more virtuous than China...on the contrary, it's usually seen as worse. The USA's internal policy (human rights, democracy) is seen as better though)
Notice that I said the CCP is imperial-"minded" and not necessarily imperial yet. We should hope that they don't try to take more territory after Hong Kong and (likely) Taiwan, but we should also be afraid that they will -- as we should be afraid of any nuclear power, including the US, doing the same.
> in terms of imperialism I'm much more worried about the USA
The US hasn't added/conquered territory since 1947, and it hasn't acquired a large, populated territory since 1898[1]. Whatever you want to call US foreign policy (certainly disastrous in the 20th century and early 21st), it's not imperial in the traditional sense of conquest and annexation.
> How many countries has China invaded in the last 20-30-40 years? How many has the USA?
The US hasn't unilaterally invaded any country since Panama in 1989[2]. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrific human rights disasters and unforgivable crimes, but they were not what I would call imperial. You may disagree.
China is in the process of taking over Hong Kong, and they already occupy Tibet, parts of Nepal, and parts of India[3]. They have shown aggression on many disputed borders in the last few years, and they have increased their naval presence in many parts of the world.
We should expect to see Taiwan annexed in the future, per Xi himself, although it's hard to know when or how they'll do it[4].
> in most countries the USA foreign policy isn't seen as something more virtuous than China...on the contrary, it's usually seen as worse. The USA's internal policy (human rights, democracy) is seen as better though
I am from the US and I do realize this. US foreign policy is certainly worse and more deadly than China's, but (as I've said in other comments) the US is not actively taking over new territory.
The two main differences are:
- US foreign policy trajectory is toward fewer wars, partly because we are a democracy and citizens are extremely against starting new wars now; Chinese policy is in the direction of aggression
- the US is not a dictatorship capable of ethnic genocide (at least in the modern era)
Weird you can’t see the issue when the university he was a professor in AND the grants he received from the federal government explicitly forbid taking outside money without notification/approval.
>The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health do allow professors to be part of foreign talent programs, but require they disclose it.
So the issue is not the country (China) or the fact that he joined a foreign program. The issue is the nondisclosure.
From my first quoted example, the tone implies that the issue is China itself which is where I got that impression.
China has surpassed the US economically, it has made it clear it wants to dominate the technology space.
While we are in denial, it is clear even to naive Chinese that they are at war with the US when it comes to technology. The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.
It looks like the professor was targeted to transfer this expertise to the Chinese. No different from flying a chief scientist from your competing company to help setup a lab like the original, IP at risk or not is irrelevant.
> China has surpassed the US economically, it has made it clear it wants to dominate the technology space.
What? Should the stun their growth so that they can show their obedience?
This does not make any sense.
> While we are in denial, it is clear even to naive Chinese that they are at war with the US when it comes to technology. The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.
It's quite obvious why they want to have tech on their own, since that's basically what makes a nation first world. That doesn't mean that there's any war going on. Do you think you're at war with the EU, too, due to the Euro and their economic growth?
1. Military build up since WWII, including global logistics and bases. For example, the F-15 is 104-0, and no one has come even close to the F-22 (arguably not even the US with the F-35)
2. The best infrastructure (and supporting services) in the world
3. Reserve currency (for now).
It's important not to forget these while on the China hype train.
One of the bigger downsides that the US has is that we are used to a higher standard of living compared to other countries. This was possible by the aftermath of WWII, where everyone else was destroyed. Not so much now, as global infrastructure/development is catching up and we are starting to revert to mean, which means down.
Yep! The potential for a massive demographic crisis has to be worrying for the CCP we well. The current generation will know a higher standard of living and have higher expectations than their parents and if/when growth slows that could be a serious difficulty
A complex system like F22 is one step away from loosing global dominance.
Our technology is accelerating exponentially, I wouldn't be surprised if manned fighters become obsolete in a decade.
Germany produced some of the most sophisticated weapons in a short span during their time because they were focused. While we are busy optimizing clicks and politicizing gender pronouns, China has shutdown all kinds of virtual industry.
I mean we're all at war with the US economically and technologically, no need to be too dramatic.
I'll tell you, from a non-US perspective (Im French) it's extremely important we have a balance so that even if the US becomes irrational and untrustworthy (think an even worse Trump) we dont all start starving and disconnecting the internet lol
I chose to emigrate to China instead of the US exactly for that reason and China chose to open its door much more easily to me also because they understand they have to compete.
China has political flaws we cant deny, but the US, dude, dont get me started on its potential, or even its current ability, to do great damage. And so far the negative american impact on France is much larger than the Chinese one, so it's not always obvious to me we should blindly follow the US in their little showdown.
If you’re pro-French, why emigrate at all? Theoretically you have value to offer, which is why China wants you in the first place. Thus you’re helping them instead of your homeland, and China is playing for keeps.
I think you also miss that the CCP being in control through a terrifying regime of absolute control over a population certainly has its negative impacts. That and their financial system and banking systems have been having some incredibly serious problems which would then be de-stabilizing for the party in control.
I feel like as someone on HN you should know the adage well ... don't believe the hype. I will add, think for yourself in the mix.
when country A inserts itself into the affairs of country B, especially internal structures like the academic establishment, that is a material threat to country B no matter how you slice it. if enough influence is gained on the part of country A then it becomes an existential threat and so keeping these kinds of things to a minimum is an objectively high priority for any country that wants to preserve itself. There are no two countries that can trust each other completely because the global geo-political landscape is always changing and changing in unpredictable ways. what is absurd is your juvenile understanding of international affairs, history and game theory.
It is absolutely a threat if it can be weaponized. It’s also a threat to give an authoritarian country that has every ambition to become the global superpower, our scientific discoveries. Let’s be real, what info is China sharing with us? Or is it really about China amassing information and not really about sharing at all?
There’s a massive legal and societal infrastructure built up around controlling access to information: patents, copyright, trademarks, libel, “cancelling”, obscenity, non-disclosure, trade secrets, security clearances, professional licensing, peer review.
China is a threat to this to the extent they can build up a second independent system that rivals it.
As far as I can tell, the issue is specifically about making false statements. Lieber was involved NIH funding, and as part of that had to disclose any foreign links, so being involved in thousand talents counts.
It’s unclear to me whether there would have been any issues or failure to obtain funding if Lieber had identified himself as associated with Wuhan University of Technology and with the Thousand Talents as the indictment claims he should have.
Of course the case has opened the doors for the ubiquitous “China bad” vs “China good” culture war
Assuming he is guilty of not declaring 600K/year in income, he needs to go to jail and the US treats tax evasion very harshly. Second, he should be fired and not allowed to work in an academic or research role as he clearly isn’t trustworthy or ethical. No need to mix in a China espionage angle, the guy is bad news.
“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”
Ah I see that now, forgive me for being so cynical as to believe that someone on HN would openly admit "we can't have those anti-CCP folks getting any more ammunition."
My point was that truth and facts have an uneasy relationship.
We may have 100 numbered facts. If I tell you all 100 facts, you probably arrive at something close to the truth.
If I tell you 5 facts, then {2,45,67,89,90} will give you one perceived truth and {68,69,70,71,72} another. Most of the time, you're only told 5 facts.
Propaganda can be truthful. In fact, truth makes for the best propaganda, as it is easy to defend. For example, someone might opt to amplify truths that support their position, even if they're inconsequential, meaningless, or flimsy in the conclusions drawn.
(but for the record, I am not saying that this is propaganda)
Truth ain't got nothing to do with it. People wrongly assume the definition of propaganda is a government telling lies to push its agenda. That's not correct. Propaganda is merely the government promoting its agenda. It can be truthful or deceitful.
"He broke tax law not declaring income."
"Oh well where did that income come from?"
"He is Chinese spy, but that's not relevant or important"
"Oh... ok. So then, didn't he also break some other laws by spying for China?" "Yeah maybe, but we don't want to explore that."
I wouldn't call this McCarthyism. How is being a tax cheat being put on trial equate to McCarthyism unless all you are trying to do with that post is gaslight the conversation with pro-communism sympathies (i.e. china funding this guy).
I am far more suspect of your using the term mccarthyism when not related whatsoever.
Emphasis is put on the fact it's money from China and involvement with China. Combined with unrelated other news stories during the last years, months, weeks we see clearly a blind rage when it is about Russia and China. US media (and politics) is running on fear and completely stopped investigating or analyzing when it is about Russia and China. And this is to me the essence of McCarthyism. Replacing analysis with fear and accusations. If tax evasion would be the real driver here a lot of other stories about high profile tax crimes should brake. But that is not the case either.
I think what is notable about this case vs other tax cheats that makes it less mccarthyism and more public interest. This is the head of one of the most prestigious universities chem department hiding over $500000 usd per year from being taxed and lied to the FBI.
Mccarthyism is making up BS on people about their supposed communist leanings and raking them over the coals in public sham hearings / blacklisting them from working (ie hollywood).
What makes it worse for the professor is that he took those funds from a country with which his own government has a very fraught relationship and whom is actively trying to espionage technology. Theres more to break on this i would wager but don't call it mccarthyism.
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It’s a sad fact that the US always needs to create an enemy to fight … look at the wars we got involved, the lives and money costed … we should get out of this type of traps …
199 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadBut I am wondering why you are framing it like its no bid deal. How much does China share with the US?
There is a history of IP theft, and its not for the betterment of mankind it's self interest. You could point fingers but then the whole world goes blind.
Nationalism is blindness, better to be patriotic but not blind.
It's not also anywhere near as clear cut in self interest as you say. Even within China, Chinese companies aren't given that much IP protection.
In the end 1.4 billion people are better off for it. I struggle to see how mankind isn't better off for it.
Was it really stealing?
The British pretty much did nothing to stop it nor protected their IP. They certainly didn't strongly enforce it.
Contrast that with Chinese theft; as soon as counterfeit products or patent infringing ones make it to US soil they are promptly seized and destroyed if found to be infringing the laws.
I think publishers in the young United States, having no copyright laws on sheet music, blatantly copied sheet music from British publishers. However, I'm not able to find a source on that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Cabot_Lowell
Did he? There's no evidence for that.
To me, it sounds like a smart Harvard grad just figured out a few missing pieces required to get textile manufacturing going. Wasn't his first time doing industrial processes at scale either: he successfully ran a distillery before that.
It's also interesting to remember that it happened at a time England was in open war against the United States. It's not really the same right now with Chinese companies trying to get into the US market and vice versa. Both countries claim to be allied but there's a clear disregard for the laws of one particular country!
Maybe a better analogy to what Francis Lowell did would be operation paperclip. The US did steal technology from Germany at the end of the war [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
What is the US response? I don't even know.
>increasing threats of sanctions
So threats, no real sanctions, not that the steel sanctions did anything, somehow Vietnam started selling us all their steel after we sanction China for other reasons.
What happened? Nobody will be discouraged by such a short term sentence, and be emboldened by its opportunity cost.
Also, China is pretty different in that the PLA allows their researchers to publish a lot of research that gives away their capabilities in sensitive domains like EW and submarine warfare. I'm not sure they would react massively to something that doesn't even entail any information leaking.
Can you tell me more or what to look for? I just remember an Israel stole some classified stuff and was sent to prison, an ally stealing secrets but I thought it was a rare occurrence.
Have you also spent most of last year accusing George Floyd protesters of downplaying the importance of paying for cigarettes?
Yes. The betterment of the human race is an unintended consequence. Real but.
> The NIH and the FBI are targeting ethnic Chinese scientists, including U.S. citizens, searching for a cancer cure. Here’s the first account of what happened to Xifeng Wu.
> Her resignation, and the departures in recent months of three other top Chinese American scientists from Houston-based MD Anderson, stem from a Trump administration drive to counter Chinese influence at U.S. research institutions. The aim is to stanch China’s well-documented and costly theft of U.S. innovation and know-how. The collateral effect, however, is to stymie basic science, the foundational research that underlies new medical treatments. Everything is commodified in the economic cold war with China, including the struggle to find a cure for cancer.
> Ways of working that have long been encouraged by the NIH and many research institutions, particularly MD Anderson, are now quasi-criminalized, with FBI agents reading private emails, stopping Chinese scientists at airports, and visiting people’s homes to ask about their loyalty.
Like in above case where the person is being entangled into an IRS tax evasion case, these people are being ethnically targeted, questions, harassed, their constitutional rights being trampled upon.
They manufacture all the American goods for cheap, to benefit themselves but to say there is no partnership is not honest.
>How much does China share with the US?
They use manpower, for IP they ignore the IP laws usually, so if you mean sciences, there are frequent collaborations.
>There is a history of IP theft
The US did not enforce IP laws until they had a sizable amount to use as leverage, I see China doing the same.
>and its not for the betterment of mankind it's self interest.
Self interest does not have to be a zero sum game. Oil baron enriched themselves and also provided cheap oil.
Outsourcing labor to China has diminished the US so much. It is like the Heroin of economics for Americans.
Whose fault is that? China's for taking the deal?
Here in China (Im an imigrant), what matters is the forced march to progress at all cost, even human rights, under the guidance of the glorious leader Xi. Nobody in the party or the population gives a flying fuck about invading countries and all international propaganda is made not to submit to China as an individual but to repeat the glorious mission statement for the party internal work when speaking only about China. I disagree with the party's method because they forget that we ll pay the price of the crunch once the middle class is emancipated and need to start being politically responsible: as long as we ask monkeys to program computers we wont expand so we need to accept having free citizens or to not progress.
However the US truly aim at facilitating the expansion of its companies via cultural assimilation, MUCH more than what China does now (it could come later ofc), and entire countries are transformed via soft propaganda (movies and such) to adapt and start consuming american products that wouldnt matter otherwise. It's better than the Camps in Xinjian, but the camps are IN Xinjian, not in Normandy where I grew up under american influence.
So meh, balance. Both should compete until the end of time so they leave us alone.
For the most part global citizens choose to watch Netflix and Disney and listen to Lil Wayne.
Different story with internment camps.
Put another way, Americans listen to K-pop and watch Parasite because it’s good and they want to.
>Put another way, Americans listen to K-pop and watch Parasite because it's good and they want to.
People listen to kpop because its played everywhere, its recommended in playlists, others play it, not because its good or they want to.
No? Nobody does.
> People listen to kpop because its played everywhere, its recommended in playlists, others play it, not because its good or they want to.
So everyone is recommending this music to their friends and playing it... but they don't think it's good.
Something here doesn't add up.
The algorithms are suggesting it. Is pop music good if radios play it all the time?
That is not clear to me.
AFAICT they want the respect due to a super power.
>> That is not clear to me. @worik
>>> The “dispute” regarding the construction of 11 Chinese buildings on the Nepali side of the territory in Humla came to the fore after Indian newspapers reported Chinese encroachment in June 2020...
>>> The most recent skirmish - on 20 January - left troops on both sides injured. It took place along the border in India's Sikkim state, which is sandwiched between Bhutan and Nepal. The year 2020 was particularly violent. The June clash in the Galwan Valley - fought with sticks and clubs, not guns - was the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975. India acknowledged its deaths. China did not comment on reports it also suffered fatalities.
>>> Malaysia has said it has summoned China’s ambassador to protest against the “presence and activities” of Chinese vessels in Kuala Lumpur’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea off the island of Borneo. Chinese vessels, including a survey boat, were operating off the coasts of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in contravention of 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Monday.
>>> China's growing economic footprint in Ukraine may already be producing geopolitical consequences that put the country at odds with core European priorities. Zelensky decided earlier this year to withdraw Ukraine's condemnation of Chinese government crimes against the Uighurs of Xinjiang, in what bore all the hallmarks of a quid pro quo to ensure deliveries of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines.
... these are just tidbits of the overall overarching theme of China dominating everyone everywhere in everything. These and other incidents seem to put the lie to the phrase: 'That is not clear to me.'
Either you're the least informed citizen in your country, you don't /ever/ read news, or you're outright lying. None of those are good options.
In any case, just the tiniest bit of searching would reveal China's hostile intent world-wide. To state otherwise is to be willfully ignorant.
Tibet was a much poorer place that was mostly serfs.slaves before China invaded. They lived in worst conditions. It is only in pop culture is is a religion of peace.
https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-truth-about-tibe...
Unfortunately I would advise you to learn more about Tibet's dark history. I used to think that Buddhists were all peaceful until they justified rape, killing, theft and other genocidal actions towards the Rohingya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
Religions can be good, but they can also make good people do evil things. There is not a religion I know that has never had been used for evil. Do not group relidions, see people as individuals.
>sword rattling for Taiwan
They do not want to destroy it, they want to capture its infrastructure. The weather will force China to take it over in basically 2 weeks or withdraw due to the weather too treacherous.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...
> Yes, the Taiwanese Army projects that it can only hold off its enemy for two weeks after the landing—but the PLA also believes that if it cannot defeat the Taiwanese forces in under two weeks, it will lose the war! Yes, the disparity between the military budgets on both sides of the strait is large, and growing—but the Taiwanese do not need parity to deter Chinese aggression. All they need is the freedom to purchase the sort of arms that make invasion unthinkable. If that political battle can be resolved in the halls of Washington, the party will not have the power to threaten battle on the shores of Taiwan.
I'm afraid the only pop culture at work to justify a violent takeover is the one invented by the CCP. No one denies the violence perpetrated by Buddhist-affiliated factions in Burma and Sri Lanka.
> Religions can be good, but they can also make good people do evil things.
There is one greater evil at work here, that of political atheism, which, when summing up the terrors of other atheist parties throughout time lead to the greatest human death toll committed by other humans in all of human history. I'm speaking of the Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, and the Nazi Holocaust.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Territori...
This is very different from policies that attempt to control the entire world, from the US, the USSR and some European powers. By and large China doesn't care what you do in your own country, unlike the USA.
Also, Tibetan Buddhism is VERY FAR from the "most peaceful faith on the planet". The reason why the Chinese were able to take Tibet so easily is because the Buddhist elite were incredibly brutal with the majority of the population, with widespread slavery and massacres. They were absolutely hated. It doesn't justify their seizure but we don't have to whitewash one of the most horrific political systems for it.
These are common CCP talking points, in fact primarily devolving from Chinese sources, which seek to turn Tibet into a nation in need of saving by debasing it into barbarism. Whatever half-invented, invented or factual casus belli the invaders invoked, half a million Tibetans were marched last year into work camps by CCP occupiers. [1]
In terms of historical accuracy, I stand by my claim: the Islamic and Christian faiths each hold a history of violence that squarely puts Buddhism at the top for peace. I do not deny the violence by the Buddhist Brigade and other factions proclaiming Buddhist faiths in Sri Lanka and Burma happening today but on the historical whole, no major faith comes closer.
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-forces-500-000-tibet...
> What's plaguing American academia, and America at large, is China's influence and bribes.
What is plaguing the US in money is not bribes but appeasement to the Chinese market like Hollywood superhero movies, Apple kowtowing, and newpapers refusing to critique it in a truthful way. Academia is more plagued by internal politics, publish or die, p hacking, and a desire not to be canceled. China supports sciences and people who don't have funding for their interests do not have laboratories that can support their kind of interests. The US needs to fund STEM better.
And if you don't see that as human rights problem, consider you're wasting your finite intelligence resources on dead ends and so you're not finding the traditional spies that's just some dude that's been bribed.
On a more general note:
Your style of argument is really tired. Who is going to commit wrongdoing on the part of the Chinese government if not mostly Chinese people? You can always try to reframe the issue as one of discrimination, since most of the offenders are bound to be Chinese. It’s pointless.
It's also clear that ethnically Chinese people have been specifically targeted.
Anming Hu is a Canadian citizen born in China, who was a professor at the University of Tennessee. The FBI got him fired before he even went to trial by telling the University he was a spy. In the end, all the FBI actually had on him was that he hadn't reported a small speaking fee on an official form. It wasn't even obvious if reporting the fee was necessary. The whole thing turned out to be a racially motivated fishing expedition by some local FBI agent, and Hu was acquitted. But the FBI majorly screwed up his life and career and smeared him in public first.
A lot of the cases have turned out to be like this. See Gang Chen's case at MIT. That one is almost Kafkaesque, when you read the charges and then read the background.
0. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-09-16/why-trump-...
Nobody is alleging any mass killing in Xinjiang, so use of the G-word is obvious hyperbole. The people using it know that nobody wants to be labeled a "genocide denier." Ironically, by making such an exaggerated claim, they shield themselves from criticism.
I think using the word "genocide" as a cheap rhetorical attack is cynical, and robs the word of the gravity that it should have.
The Uyghur population is increasing. The birth rate is similar to that of the Han majority. Uyghur life expectancy is increasing. Incomes and literacy are increasing.
"Genocide" means a systematic attempt to physically destroy an ethnic or religious group. The 3-child policy in China (which applies to the Han majority as well) does not even come close to being anything like an attempt to physically eliminate the Uyghur people.
It's extremely cynical to call this a "genocide." It completely devalues the word.
According to who? The Chinese govt?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur...
>”Genocide" means a systematic attempt to physically destroy an ethnic or religious group. The 3-child policy in China (which applies to the Han majority as well) does not even come close to being anything like an attempt to physically eliminate the Uyghur people.
There is no basis for your claim that the forced sterilization/abortions of the Uyghur people occurs at similar rates within the Chinese majority, or that it is merely an enforcement of the three child policy.
All of the sterilization / birth control claims are sourced to Chinese government data. That's the best data available.
Given the large economic investment in Xinjiang (which is part of China's attempt to decrease dissent) and the very visible improvements in living standards there, it makes sense that life expectancy is increasing.
> There is no basis for your claim that the forced sterilization/abortions of the Uyghur people occurs at similar rates within the Chinese majority
Up until a few years ago, forced sterilization / abortion was something that basically only the Han majority was subject to. The Uyghurs were exempted from the 1-child policy, just like most ethnic minorities.
Over the last few years, China has loosened the policy, so families can now have 3 children, but it has started applying it to ethnic minorities as well.
> There is no basis for your claim [...] that it is merely an enforcement of the three child policy.
No basis? There's no basis for believing otherwise. If you pay attention to the reporting, the horror stories are mostly about people who have had more children than the policy allows. You can very legitimately oppose China's 3-child policy, but calling it "genocide" is obvious hyperbole.
"Genocide" is an extremely serious accusation. It means an attempt to physically annihilate a people. It evokes images of death camps and crematoria. Yet you're now arguing about whether or not the Uyghurs might be subject to harsher enforcement of the 3-child policy or not. That's not genocide. The word should not become a cheap rhetorical tool.
“Documents from 2019 reveal plans for a campaign of mass female sterilization … Xinjiang planned to subject at least 80 percent of women of childbearing age in the rural southern four minority prefectures to intrusive birth prevention surgeries (IUDs or sterilizations), with actual shares likely being much higher.”
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/22311356/chi...
I will not be responding further.
The UN Genocide Convention is very clear about what is and is not genocide. There's no possible way to construe a situation like this, in which the population and life expectancy of the group is increasing, as genocide. In fact, describing it as genocide sounds like propaganda.
If the Chinese government were trying to physically annihilate the Uyghurs, which is what the very serious word "genocide" means, it would be obvious. We would not be discussing whether or not the 3-child limit was being more aggressively enforced on Uyghurs. We would be discussing mass death.
I don't need the CCP to tell me that "genocide" implies mass killing and physical annihilation of a people. I'm perfectly capable of seeing that the word "genocide" is being misused in a highly manipulative way in the political discussion nowadays, and of pushing back against that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
Can that not also be leveraged against the US, and how others feel about it? America is the world's bully or policeman.
>IMO it is the closest thing to pure evil in this world next to the DPRK.
Check out Eritrea, commonly called the North Korea of Africa. They will extort foreign family members for money so they don't kill their family in Eritrea. I know a programmer in Australia, sends lots of money back money to a country he hates so they don’t kill his family. China doesn’t even do that. Of course the US also double taxes. ;)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You forgot that last part. China's trade dealings are outright hostile. China's overlooking slave-wages, and suicides tied to working conditions or lack thereof.
China must be considered /by all/ to be an enemy of the rest of the globe.
This is not saying that the Chinese populace are enemies, but the Chinese Government, which controls the populace, is most definitely so.
This is a mostly western view since westerners engaged in a zero sum conflict with the oldest super power on the planet to gain temporary economic advantages for the last 100 years or so... most of the world doesn't agree with that view of China even with the $ billions ($trillions?) of anti-Chinese propaganda spending by the west.
America as the world police/bully and China leverages itself by being slightly better. The US should offer a better deal than China can, its better than bombing the shit out of people, scaring them with weapons, and having them hate us for killing their countrymen or family.
And don't even think about saying it is not forcing them, because I have lived in two such countries in Central America where Taiwan was a hefty money donor.
From a realpolitik standpoint, you can choose a small island that makes mostly advanced microchips or a large country that makes everything. Are you going to say they didn't make a rational choice in allies?
Wuhan again for the win! Let the conspiracy theories begin....
Or it has to be more cleverly disguised and passable as a substantive comment
Stick around, you’ll see
As for the comment that got downvotes above, the general view is that low hanging humor will degrade the site experience and I agree. Slashdot was a popular tech site but you could always expect upvotes for "first post," or "i for one welcome our new humor-avoiding overlords." A lot of quality slipped over time.
Cheers and welcome to HN
But why is this a threat in the first place? Its never explained and assumed to be bad because "China"? This is completely absurd. I can understand the hiding the income angle for tax purposes, but sharing scientific information is not a threat. This is absurd
It could be benign I guess but it definitely could also be a state sponsored or run operation to steal tech. It's not like China doesn't and hasn't pilfered outside businesses for their own interests.
Somehow when it comes to China, people grab for any excuse to criticize them and "stealing tech" is one of them. Certainly it is possible to come about knowledge by nefarious means, but that doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate for China to try to learn things from other people.
As for some professor getting paid, tech profs can be a pretty hot commodity, so it's not in itself surprising that a prof is making big bucks teaching people about his subject and perhaps also introducing his network.
But that's not what is going on here. In the current framework we live in, there is IP and there is knowledge and that knowledge is funded and worked on under certain rules. If you break those rules there are consequences.
It's not a free world when the US and Europe are trying to impose their laws on you, and if you refuse to follow their laws then their citizens are prohibited from dealing with yours.
They literally agreed to an IP framework.
That observation is entirely consistent with the US wanting to be exceedingly careful about IP exfiltrating to China.
Protect themselves from the US military how? When they start imperial subjugation campaigns...or?
China's malicious aspirations are the only thing the US is concerned with.
It's clear enough to note that China has short-term aspirations of invading a sovereign state, and leave it at that.
There is no comparison of morality between the US and China. For all its faults and failures the US is unequivocally a more moral and just nation.
Let's not just leave it at that. I won't let you deceptively downplay the egregious evil China is and has been responsible for. It's directly responsible for multiple events that when measured over the course of history, are the most insane human atrocities ever committed.
However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations - Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Irak, Cuba, Palestine, Cambodia and many others.
They are both immoral, but i d different ways at different times, like all empires have been and forever will be, from the Romans to the Arabs to the Mongols to the French, Dutch, Belgians etc.
> However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries
That's just inaccurate. The founding of the current communist regime resulted in more deaths within China's borders than all of the US's military campaigns (and espionage) since WW2 combined. I've seen it said a lot that the "US kills more!" So I wonder if that's just a talking point the CCP is trying to disseminate to distract from their current genocide.
But, if I am a citizen of, say, Lebanon, I have many more reasons to fear the USA than I have to fear China. I'm much more likely to be killed by the US government than the Chinese government.
You are very clearly uninformed about history. Especially if that's your list of brutalized countries with zero insight into the many factors stimulating US intervention in most of them and the aftermath resulting from failed or cessation of intervention, especially in those supported by the CCP.
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Southeast Asia Aftermath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_...
https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochina_refugee_crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/post-war-vietnam/#Purges...
El Salvador and Cuba I will grant that the clandestine support of a coup and refusal to condemn an oppressive, violent junta that came to power was inexcusable on the part of the US, but its involvement still has nothing compared to the CCP and USSR involvement in mass genocides and democides across the globe. The guerillas weren't benevolent liberators either.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-18-mn-12349-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/cuba-fidel-castros-recor...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121496498705421951
Nicaragua Another good example of the faults and failures of the US historically, but incomparable to the CCP, and aligned with global economics at the time. A victim of the intense geopolitical tensions and climate in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks in large part to the fallout from the Spanish-American War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. The collapse of the Ottomon Empire was the motivating factor in harsh and enduring political tensions in Central Asia. Not US intervention. US involvement in Afghanistan all started with solicited intervention by the populace for help against imperial actions by the USSR. Continued intervention was not purely political or economic in nature, and certainly not genocidal or democidal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1992%E2%80%9...
Taking just Cambodia - the Khmer Rouge regime was of course supported by China with massive resources. However, the US has also killed tens of thousands of Cmabodians directly in bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War, between 30,000 and 150,000 (likely committing the war crime of Aggression, as they were not in a state of war with Cambodia); this helped galvanize the population towards joining the enemies of the US, helping the Khmer Rouge attain power.
Later on, in 1979 when the re-united Vietnam attacked the Khmer Rouge, both the US and China condemned the actions of the Vietnam liberators, and helped defend the Khmer Rouge from international opinion (since Vietnam was being supported in this by the USSR). The US sent lawyers to defend Pol Pot himself from the tribunals in the newly liberated Cambodia, and both China and the US helped keep Khmer Rouge affiliates on the UN seat for Cambodia until 1993. Of course, China went further and launched a retaliatory war against Vietnam for their liberation of Cambodia.
You also seem to be greatly minimizing the US involvement in many of these places. The US occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, installed a military dictatorship that ruled it for 50 years, and then trained, armed and directed guerillas that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of civilians to try to stop the revolution that took down the Somoza dictatorship. Much of the rest of South America saw similar treatment from the US: coups taking down socialist popular movements and installing military dictatorships instead, then supporting violent militias if counter-revolutions started.
In the middle east, while many of the problems started with the British handling of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the USSR also led brutal wars of oppression, the US has picked up the torch in the last 30 or so years as the major source of strife in the region. They are responsible for:
- arming and training the Taliban
- installing Saddam Hussein in power, arming him, and directing him to attack Iran, even accepting his use of chemical warfare
- squashing Iran's brief democracy under Mossadegh, installing a military dictatorship under the Shah, starting the Iran Nuclear Weapons program, arming them (and then losing control to the islamic revolution)
- funding and arming Saudi Arabia and allowing it to spread its demented form of islamic fundamentalism, supporting even as we speak their invasion of Yemen
- supporting the Israeli apartheid state, illegal nuclear weapons arsenal, and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories
- invading Afghanistan in 2001 and killing thousands in the process, causing the deaths of as many as 100,000 civilians overall in the conflict
>Israeli apartheid state
Apartheid states do not let the oppressed class have massive representation in their representative government at all levels.
They do not have members of the oppressed class sit on the bench of the highest court in the land.
They do not mandate, at a federal level, that ALL state enterprise MUST have a member of the oppressed class on their board of directors.
They do not consistently have individuals from the oppressed class as cabinet members.
They do not have ambassadors belonging to the oppressed class.
They do not have members of the oppressed class as some of the highest ranking generals in their military, or as commanders of, hilariously, the border police.
Members of the oppressed class in apartheid states do not have the highest standard of living and quality of life compared to members of the same religious and ethnic groups in the region.
Apartheid states do not bend over backwards to accommodate, preserve, and enable the cultural and religious practices of the oppressed class, even when its members openly call for the genocide of the predominant ethnic group in the locale, refuse to participate in coalition governments, and reinforce sectarian, segregationist cultural policies and beliefs.
If you sincerely think Israel is an apartheid state, you are woefully uninformed, and a fool that has fallen for blatant propaganda.
Israel is very obviously leading a campaign to eradicate the Palestinian population and take their land without taking the people.
They are violating all two-state solution guarantees through their obviously illegal settlements. And they do not want to simply occupy the Palestinian territories and go for a single-state solution, because that would leave Palestinian Arabs a majority (or at least extremely large minority) of the population, which contradicts the dream of an Isareli state controlled by God's chosen people.
All of your examples of how the minority Arab citizenry of Israel is treated well are entriely irrelevant, and if you know anything about the history of calling Israel an apartheid state, by people like Noam Chomsky, you would definitely know this, so I can only assume you are arguing in bad faith.
Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century. You're regurgitating ignorant nonsense. The ruling parties and majority population of Palestine are VOCALLY genocidal when it comes to the Jews, but you'd rather ignore that and accuse Israel of subversively carrying out a genocide against people it has in its highest levels of government. Then you have the audacity to accuse ME of bad faith. How many Jews are in Palestinian leadership positions?
I couldn't care less what Noam Chomsky says or thinks on this subject, he's one of the worst ultracrepidarian clowns in contemporary history.
How exactly do you square this circle?
> Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century.
This is twisting history. UN resolutions for a two-state solution have always been approved by Palestine, with the USA being the veto against them. The idea of recognizing the state of Israel has been accepted by Palestinian leadership since the 1970s. But, the specific proposals that have usually been on the table have been almost universally laughable: taking away even more of Palestinian territory, limited access to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, limited access between the two halves of the Palestinian state and many other issues.
Not to mention, almost all of these negotiations were "arbitrated" by Israel's single biggest ally in the world, the USA. This would be as if you'd expect peace talks between Ukraine and the Donetsk separatists arbitrated by Russia to go well.
> They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.
And looking a little bit into this, it's amazing you can claim this, as the truth is precisely the opposite. 90% of the Arabic population of Palestine before the war did not qualify to become Israeli citizens. Now, not only do they not have any special right to become Israeli citizens, they don't even have the right to enter the country, even if they have a spouse or property there, unless they meet some other conditions.
By contrast, any person of Jewish decent or that converts to Judaism has the right to become a citizen of Israel with minimal other conditions. They will also likely receive property from the JNF if they wish to settle in Israel.
The PA and Hamas have repeatedly rejected two state solutions, refuse to recognize Israel, and openly call for genocide.
You failed to answer my question too. This discussion over
> The massacre at Huế came under increasing press scrutiny later, when press reports alleged that South Vietnamese "revenge squads" had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle, searching out and executing citizens that had supported the communist occupation.[10][11]
This feels like the classic 'barrage of bullshit' strategy, where a load of dubious claims are thrown out in the knowledge that it's near impossible to refute them all, and refuting part of them will come across as "well, this one might be contested, but look at all the others!".
Wikipedia editors at work
This isn't a whataboutism equivalency. It is a statement that one needs to first be honest about ones own shortcomings before disparaging another.
> absolutist surveillance state
I'm pretty sure that neither Google nor the rest of the world is thrilled about NSA warrantless mass surveillance programs.
> is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate
State supported ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the 19th century. State supported subjugation and murder of African Americans in... well, improving, but still counting.
> exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution...
Extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, and torture in third party countries and at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
> ... against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power
20th century voting rights struggles, in which African Americans were systemically disenfranchised with the goal of preserving white political and economic power.
---
I'm a proud American, support the use of the US military on the global stage as a force for increasing moral good in the world, and consider the Chinese model of authoritarianism incompatible with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness owed to every human. I believe the US holds individual freedom and equality before the law as much higher ideals, and delivers on them more often and fully, than China does.
But there's a reason Martin Luther King Jr. talks about "self purification" as one of the three prerequisite steps before direct action, and it's because easy hatred corrupts true justice.
Enumerating the ways in which your opponent looks like you, and the ways in which you've fallen short of your own ideals, isn't an argument for inaction, but a clarification and sharpening of action. 1960s racial injustice in the United States provided an embarrassing talking point while the US lectured the USSR on individual freedom. Using the evil that another does as justification for righteousness requires first accepting the evil that one has done.
I guess that's why they called it the Civil War?
They wouldn’t need protection but for reneging on Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan, taking over Tibet, or their Ughyur re-education camps?
I don’t support the Chinese government due to their active genocide along with the horrific subjugation of the population, but it’s a judgement on a case by case basis.
The US contributed as much new, prominent technology to the industrial revolution as any other nation. A quick trip down the list of prominent US inventions of the era nicely demonstrates that. There's no foundation to claim that the US stole more technology than Britain did going the other direction. It's a Reddit-knowledge bumper sticker claim that is almost exclusively utilized in threads like this one, and is never substantially supported in discussion (because it's exceptionally difficult to prove that US technology theft was meaningfully out of line with what eg major European economic powers were doing during the industrial revolution).
China didn't care about IP law 30 years ago, but it does now. Yet when Westerners discuss this issue, they usually talk as if we were still in 1990 or 2000, when China was the Wild West of IP. In 2021, that's no longer the case. For a developing country, China actually has pretty strong IP laws and enforcement. There's just as much IP litigation in China as there is in the US, and foreign companies have a pretty good success rate in Chinese IP courts.
An example: John Deere has won judgments against a bunch of Chinese companies that used similar names to it.[1]
0. https://www.ccpit-patent.com.cn/node/11255
1. https://www.kwm.com/en/cn/knowledge/insights/final-judgment-...
This is a standard case of one rising power coming up agains the incumbent. They'll do what they have to do to catch up, just as you did what you had to do ~150 years ago. Saying that, I hope China isn't ultimately successful due to their total disregard for human rights, but getting all bent out of shape over this trade secrets stuff is silly.
Software patents generally suck and most IP laws grant monopoly for too long.
But also, some IP law is needed. I'd be willing to bet 90+% of HN would sign on to that.
> Somehow when it comes to China, people grab for any excuse to criticize them and "stealing tech" is one of them
I'd rather they not be relaxed for the express purpose of sharing technology and methods with an authoritarian government that promotes itself as the US's rival. Again, I'd be willing to bet most of HN would cosign that.
I'm always really frustrated by comments that are like "HN/group always says X but now they're saying Y! So inconsistent!" Like it's somehow mandatory to completely disregard context and degree when forming opinions. It's not. You can say no to sex with someone without committing to celibacy.
I'd be perfectly comfortable showing up on capital Hill and yelling that Biden shits his pants, but I would not be comfortable showing up in Beijing calling Xi Winnie the Pooh. It's ok if that informs my level of comfort supporting the technological progression of the respective institutions.
> As for some professor getting paid, tech profs can be a pretty hot commodity, so it's not in itself surprising that a prof is making big bucks teaching people about his subject and perhaps also introducing his network.
Tons of professors make good money. Great money. That has nothing to do with why this guy is in the news.
The idea that this is to "increase the power of the CCP" is only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity. In classic dictatorship thinking sending your best students abroad and accepting foreign educators is the last thing you would want to do.
That's why you consistently see Chinese born, US citizens with decades of time in the states prosecuted for espionage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_spy_cases_in_t...
I agree. It doesn't contradict what I said, though. Both are true.
> only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity
No. It also gives them better weapons, AI, surveillance technology, etc. It literally increases their power, both abroad and within their borders.
CCP's popularity is guaranteed because it is criminal in China to tell negative truths about them. Their popularity is irrelevant because they have control over the entire country's military and surveillance networks. If they can intern and slaughter millions of Uyghurs, it's almost impossible for a rebellion to overthrow them.
They don't need this program for popularity.
You’re literally repeating the “China bad” argument
I’m not going to argue that the CCP is benign. But either the thousand talents program is specifically harmful in some way, or you’re against it because “China bad”. And you appear to be arguing the latter.
My opinion of thousand talents is it’s an attempt to reverse brain drain. I personally know a Chinese immigrant with a green card who was struggling to find funding for some kind of cancer research here in the states, then found funding working as a regional thousand talents back in China and now runs some lab or startup or something in Anhui.
Of course, hiding funding and income is another matter altogether.
Reasons A, B, and C can (and should) acknowledge the beneficiary of the thing that is being done.
If the beneficiary is power-hungry and genocidal, that is a valid reason for "thing" to be a bad idea.
Similarly, it's better for, let's say, Norway to become a nuclear power than for North Korea to become a nuclear power.
The accumulation of military power by a non-aggressive democracy is less dangerous than by an authoritarian regime that has shown recent interest in conquest.
The CCP is not China. China is not the CCP. China is not bad and Chinese people are not bad.
The CCP is, unequivocally, one of the most evil and dangerous organizations in the history of humankind. With enough technology, it will be literally impossible to organize a rebellion against them and return China to something like democracy. It will be like `1984` (and is not far off from that type of dystopia even today).
With enough military power, they can annex more and more countries, and no one will be able to stop them. Hong Kong and Taiwan are templates for the future.
> But either the thousand talents program is specifically harmful in some way, or you’re against it because “China bad”. And you appear to be arguing the latter.
I was very clear why I was against it. It's explicitly a program to exfiltrate scientific knowledge (which translates into military, surveillance, and economic power) from non-authoritarian countries to an authoritarian one.
The US has its share of horrific history, and I wish it weren't so powerful and dangerous, but I am always opposed to power flowing from a democratic country to an authoritarian one.
> My opinion of thousand talents is it’s an attempt to reverse brain drain. I personally know a Chinese immigrant with a green card who was struggling to find funding for some kind of cancer research here in the states, then found funding working as a regional thousand talents back in China and now runs some lab or startup or something in Anhui.
I'm not going to argue that nothing good comes of this program. The problem with regimes like the CCP is that they abuse well-intentioned people, and they use a façade of "for the people" to do things that are purely for themselves.
The "they can annex more and more countries" is pure speculation (besides the obvious case of Taiwan). Do you think they'll annex Thailand? Vietnam? Russia? Japan?
>The US has its share of horrific history, and I wish it weren't so powerful and dangerous, but I am always opposed to power flowing from a democratic country to an authoritarian one.
I agree that the CCP is dangerous, but the foreign invasion is a really poor argument, both because there's no evidence that China will invade other countries (again, besides the obvious Taiwan case) and because the USA has invaded multiple countries in the past 50 years...with horrific consequences to the population
Not trying to use a "what-about-it" argument; I'm worried about China, but in terms of imperialism I'm much more worried about the USA, so I'm not sure if I prefer China stealing IP or the USA keeping that IP.
(An an aside, and mostly because I'm curious: are you from the USA? I feel like many people in the USA don't realize that in most countries the USA foreign policy isn't seen as something more virtuous than China...on the contrary, it's usually seen as worse. The USA's internal policy (human rights, democracy) is seen as better though)
> in terms of imperialism I'm much more worried about the USA
The US hasn't added/conquered territory since 1947, and it hasn't acquired a large, populated territory since 1898[1]. Whatever you want to call US foreign policy (certainly disastrous in the 20th century and early 21st), it's not imperial in the traditional sense of conquest and annexation.
> How many countries has China invaded in the last 20-30-40 years? How many has the USA?
The US hasn't unilaterally invaded any country since Panama in 1989[2]. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrific human rights disasters and unforgivable crimes, but they were not what I would call imperial. You may disagree.
China is in the process of taking over Hong Kong, and they already occupy Tibet, parts of Nepal, and parts of India[3]. They have shown aggression on many disputed borders in the last few years, and they have increased their naval presence in many parts of the world.
We should expect to see Taiwan annexed in the future, per Xi himself, although it's hard to know when or how they'll do it[4].
> in most countries the USA foreign policy isn't seen as something more virtuous than China...on the contrary, it's usually seen as worse. The USA's internal policy (human rights, democracy) is seen as better though
I am from the US and I do realize this. US foreign policy is certainly worse and more deadly than China's, but (as I've said in other comments) the US is not actively taking over new territory.
The two main differences are:
- US foreign policy trajectory is toward fewer wars, partly because we are a democracy and citizens are extremely against starting new wars now; Chinese policy is in the direction of aggression
- the US is not a dictatorship capable of ethnic genocide (at least in the modern era)
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acqu...
2. https://www.thoughtco.com/american-involvement-wars-colonial...
3. https://theprint.in/theprint-essential/not-just-india-tibet-...
4. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/china-taiwan-inv...
So the issue is not the country (China) or the fact that he joined a foreign program. The issue is the nondisclosure.
From my first quoted example, the tone implies that the issue is China itself which is where I got that impression.
While we are in denial, it is clear even to naive Chinese that they are at war with the US when it comes to technology. The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.
It looks like the professor was targeted to transfer this expertise to the Chinese. No different from flying a chief scientist from your competing company to help setup a lab like the original, IP at risk or not is irrelevant.
What? Should the stun their growth so that they can show their obedience?
This does not make any sense.
> While we are in denial, it is clear even to naive Chinese that they are at war with the US when it comes to technology. The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.
It's quite obvious why they want to have tech on their own, since that's basically what makes a nation first world. That doesn't mean that there's any war going on. Do you think you're at war with the EU, too, due to the Euro and their economic growth?
And the ability to draw and assimilate global talent.
1. Military build up since WWII, including global logistics and bases. For example, the F-15 is 104-0, and no one has come even close to the F-22 (arguably not even the US with the F-35)
2. The best infrastructure (and supporting services) in the world
3. Reserve currency (for now).
It's important not to forget these while on the China hype train.
One of the bigger downsides that the US has is that we are used to a higher standard of living compared to other countries. This was possible by the aftermath of WWII, where everyone else was destroyed. Not so much now, as global infrastructure/development is catching up and we are starting to revert to mean, which means down.
Our technology is accelerating exponentially, I wouldn't be surprised if manned fighters become obsolete in a decade.
Germany produced some of the most sophisticated weapons in a short span during their time because they were focused. While we are busy optimizing clicks and politicizing gender pronouns, China has shutdown all kinds of virtual industry.
I'll tell you, from a non-US perspective (Im French) it's extremely important we have a balance so that even if the US becomes irrational and untrustworthy (think an even worse Trump) we dont all start starving and disconnecting the internet lol
I chose to emigrate to China instead of the US exactly for that reason and China chose to open its door much more easily to me also because they understand they have to compete.
China has political flaws we cant deny, but the US, dude, dont get me started on its potential, or even its current ability, to do great damage. And so far the negative american impact on France is much larger than the Chinese one, so it's not always obvious to me we should blindly follow the US in their little showdown.
Like this…
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3159492/underst...
I feel like as someone on HN you should know the adage well ... don't believe the hype. I will add, think for yourself in the mix.
Not that we are going to war anytime soon, but we are definitely in a war on economic and technology dominance.
Well, there's an issue there too. The Thousand Talents program has a pattern of paying people to break US laws.
If there’s nothing fishy going on, then why lie about it when asked?
China is a threat to this to the extent they can build up a second independent system that rivals it.
Interesting philosophy from someone with their open source projects on their profile...
It’s unclear to me whether there would have been any issues or failure to obtain funding if Lieber had identified himself as associated with Wuhan University of Technology and with the Thousand Talents as the indictment claims he should have.
Of course the case has opened the doors for the ubiquitous “China bad” vs “China good” culture war
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176261
“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”
― Catherine Aird
If there is legitimately a China espionage angle, then it absolutely should be in the mix. Why should that be left out or not relevant?
We may have 100 numbered facts. If I tell you all 100 facts, you probably arrive at something close to the truth.
If I tell you 5 facts, then {2,45,67,89,90} will give you one perceived truth and {68,69,70,71,72} another. Most of the time, you're only told 5 facts.
(but for the record, I am not saying that this is propaganda)
NASA public outreach is technically propaganda.
"He broke tax law not declaring income." "Oh well where did that income come from?" "He is Chinese spy, but that's not relevant or important" "Oh... ok. So then, didn't he also break some other laws by spying for China?" "Yeah maybe, but we don't want to explore that."
I am far more suspect of your using the term mccarthyism when not related whatsoever.
Mccarthyism is making up BS on people about their supposed communist leanings and raking them over the coals in public sham hearings / blacklisting them from working (ie hollywood).
What makes it worse for the professor is that he took those funds from a country with which his own government has a very fraught relationship and whom is actively trying to espionage technology. Theres more to break on this i would wager but don't call it mccarthyism.
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.