I on the other hand think that splitting countries into allies and enemies is stupid. China is a huge country, and excluding a billion people from your company just because their government does questionable things sounds like a pretty bad idea.

If you are really concerned about the confidentiality of your data, don't store it unencrypted in some SaaS where every customer service rep has full access to all your data. At that point you're already so vulnerable that exluding potenential employees from a whole country is just pointless security theater that some suit with an MBA thought up to justify his position.

> China is a huge country, and excluding a billion people from your company just because their government does questionable things sounds like a pretty bad idea.

People have to do what the state they live in and belong to orders them to do. That's part of the point of having a state. So if you can't trust a state you can't trust its people either.

> you are really concerned about the confidentiality of your data, don't store it unencrypted in some SaaS

I don't think dissolving the company is on the table.

> I don't think dissolving the company is on the table.

Zing! Solid line but it misses the point. As with any other data, you can encrypt source code. It's perfectly easy to envision a setup where Gitlab employees in country X can only see plaintext Gitlab data they could already see over the public internet.

> People have to do what the state they live in and belong to orders them to do. That's part of the point of having a state. So if you can't trust a state you can't trust its people either.

So, I could say that American is sucks if I think Trump is sucks?

That is ridiculous. The first is that 'state is unauthentic' is a subjective speculation. And the most funny is that the conclusion 'people is unauthentic' is came from your first thought.

I can not say American is terrorist if Hillary wanna burn other country. Am I right?

If your world view is based on separating entities into good and bad, nuanced statements will appear ridiculous.

>The first one is flattening China with nuclear weapons (conventional war is impossible to win) which is obviously inacceptable, the second one is totally excluding China from any and all international trade.

The world had had more invasions, interventions, toppling of legitimate governments, etc, from the US than from China. And while the US keeps democracy internally (unlike China) they have supported all kinds of dictators abroad.

So there's that.

The mere fact that you were even considering "flattening China with nuclear weapons" to bring democracy (even to discard it) is telling of the US imperial mindset...

And the same is for the interventionist idea of "totally excluding China from any and all international trade".

Yeah, let's risk internal chaos, power struggles, civil war, famines, etc in a sovereign nation like China, because they don't have a system of government we approve of.

As if intervention to "bring democracy" worked so well in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other places besides, who cares for the million out of their homes, rising fundamentalism, killed, etc, they're not white enough...

When does some countries finally understand the concept of "mind you own effing business"?

China has a long history of war. The US doesn't even have a long history. Your historical view is zoomed in too far.

All large nation states are guilty of aggression, that's how you become a large nation state.

It's incredible how many people miss this basic point. Land is a fixed quantity. Every square inch a state controls was at some point take from some other state or group of people. Big states were just better at this.

> China has a long history of war. The US doesn't even have a long history.

Please don't move the goalposts. We're talking about the current State of China, which came into being in the mid 20th century, and is thus a lot younger than the current US state which traces its founding to around 1776. By that measure, the US has been involved in far, far more invasions and wars than the Chinese state.

Right...perhaps you should ask the good people of Tibet, or the Muslims in western China if they feel that the Chinese government "minds its own effing business".

I have several friends from Xinjiang, yes, they complain about some (who don't complain about their government in life? As far as I know, Utopia is still a dream on the planet), but they feel good, even proud of their government. One of them, a girl, even volunteered in the rehearsal for the National Day parade.

For Tibetan, the government freed them from the old cult (you may don't know their nobles used to wear slave skin clothes and drink from human skull bowl), build railways accelerate their economy, lower the university score for them to help them get educated, enfranchise them to vote, propose new proposal in People's Congress, etc. So how do they feel about their government? I mean those Tibetans who live in China.

What's more, Tibetan, Muslims in western China, they are all Chinese people, so their issue IS the Chinese government's own business.

Your friends are presumably not detained for continuing to believe in the religions of their parents, so they're going to have a more positive outlook based on the state of the economy.

Even if you think that it's desirable for the government to try to accelerate secularization with its "re-education camps," the implementation is guaranteed to cause a lot of suffering. The rushed timeline for construction, involuntary detention in the resulting cramped quarters, guards and teachers who were hired quickly with essentially zero training... all of this is just setting things up for physical and psychological abuse of inmates. Just look at the cases of 杨永信 and 豫章书院 torturing children to cure them of internet addiction to see how far people are willing to go if there's no oversight and their aims are supported by mainstream opinion. That the government tries so hard to suppress negative reporting doesn't exactly inspire confidence that abuse will be prosecuted.

My personal prediction is that the majority of inmates are going to come out of "re-education" traumatized and with a justified hatred of the government. I'm sure they'd prefer it if the government stuck to their business of modernizing the economy, instead of trying to force loyalty in the most ham-fisted way possible.

In reply to the flagged reply:

1. While the Constitution of the People's Republic of China does protect religious freedom, this is only under the condition that the religious beliefs in question do not disturb the social order, cause bodily harm or obstruct the national education system. That means in practice, people will be detained for beliefs that are considered too extremist.

2. Would you believe me that they exist if I called them "education centers" instead? Try searching for 教培中心 in http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2019-03/18/c_1124247196.ht... It is described quite clearly that people can be brought to these centers even if their extremist beliefs do not otherwise amount to a crime.

3. I specifically brought up "杨永信" and "豫章书院" because they don't involve minorities. I didn't mean that they were mainstream in the sense that most people would approve of their methods, but there's definitely widespread concern about students spending too much time on the internet and too little studying. It's just that most schools take a less brutal approach to the problem and confiscate their student's phones instead of using torture.

Given your statement that

> Many Chinese people hope the government put an end to "杨永信" and "豫章书院", but I don't know why they don't.

consider that many Uyghur people hope the government put an end to the conditions in those "education centers" and don't know why they don't.

4. Do tell me if any of this is unconvincing. I'm still working on an airtight argument that is acceptable for someone with the perspective that the CPC is trying to do good in principle.

1&2. Oh, sorry I forgot the extremist. So what would you do when you face an extremist? Ignore him so he can stab innocent people in a railway station? Or you show him why he shouldn't do that, maybe even teach him some skills so he can make a living and become a part of society? The latter is exactly what "education centers" do according to the link. And it is described quite clearly that the center is not a prison or Auschwitz (go back home regularly). So I answer your question directly: I believe "education centers" exist, but it's not a synonym referring to the fabricated "re-education centers".

3. Your refute is valid only if the presumption is real, I applause sincerely for you, but how can you stand for many Uyghur? I live with Chinese every day so I can present more or less their thought, did you get in touch of some Uyghur or you just surmise their thought from, let me cite Trump, "Fake News"?

4. I really hope to read your airtight, immaculate, irrefutable argument!

> Ignore him so he can stab innocent people in a railway station?

Maybe not, but not all beliefs that are defined as extremist are of the stabby kind. It's a bit hard to get information on which specific beliefs are covered; http://www.xjnj.gov.cn/jgdj/flfg/201502/09174829hwdu.html talks mostly in general terms, but does explicitly mention "活佛转世". Belief in reincarnation is not exactly a violent ideology, but it does create a separate hierarchy (of reincarnated lamas) that does not directly answer to the CPC, which I guess falls under the "social order" exception. Also, various kinds of headscarves and beards seem to be forbidden alongside the Turkish/East Turkestan flags: http://xjtzb.gov.cn/2017-06/19/1121167392_14978365485711n.jp... (I realize the image is watermarked by some random WeChat account; but the reposting by the Xinjiang branch of the United Front seems like an endorsement.)

> maybe even teach him some skills so he can make a living and become a part of society? The latter is exactly what "education centers" do according to the link.

I don't have a problem with that in itself, but that's contingent on the implementation. Making the plan work requires lots of resources, not just the one-off construction of buildings, but also teachers, guards and other supporting staff. There's already a shortage of teachers in poorer regions of China, so where are all those teachers coming from? How are they trained? The inmates aren't going to be economically productive for some time, so how are their living expenses paid? What about the loss of income to their family members?

These are all difficult problems to solve, and I'm not sure the Chinese government has actually solved them.

> the center is not a prison or Auschwitz (go back home regularly)

I agree that comparisons with concentration camps are not appropriate, because the purpose is not genocide, but ideological assimilation. However, I'm not too sure about the "going home" part. Only one of the three groups are voluntary signups; what's the point of sending someone there involuntarily if they can just go? They might even end up stabbing someone.

> did you get in touch of some Uyghur or you just surmise their thought from, let me cite Trump, "Fake News"?

Unfortunately, Uyghurs are a bit rare where I live. It's certainly possible that the Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims who have appeared as eyewitnesses in Western media are just making everything up, or maybe their experience was simply atypical. After all, among a million people, finding one who had to live in a room with ten people because the new dorms weren't finished yet, or who was hit by a frustrated teacher, or who was raped by a drunk guard, is kind of to be expected. In that context, a statement from the government that they're investigating those crimes and will punish those responsible would be much more reassuring than a complete denial that anything bad ever happened.

Maybe you could ask some of your Uyghur friends if they know anyone who went to one of these centers and what they thought of the experience. I guess that'd be much more informative than debating with me.

> The third way (trade brings democracy) has been disproven over the last decades.

This is often claimed, but I fail to see the disproof. The standard of living in China has improved considerably as a result of trade. That new prosperity means that now more people can afford to support journalists, lawyers and activists working to expose and curtail abuses of power.

This is not limited to underground organizations or something; the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims is run by the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, probably funded by government grants. http://www.clapv.org/about/index.asp

It's also not limited to action in China; as Chinese companies get involved in large-scale construction abroad, so do Chinese NGOs who have experience mediating between those companies and the people negatively affected by them. https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/2019/10/28/interview-can-chi...

You may think that internet censorship is a sign that things are regressing, but there used to be no internet at all. Nowadays anyone with a grievance can publish an article or a video to raise awareness; by the time the censors notice the outrage, it's already too late for the government to pretend that nothing happened.

30 years ago, the Tiananmen Square protests lasted barely over a month before they were crushed by the military; the protests in Hong Kong have been going on for half a year and the military hasn't been involved so far.

China hasn't turned into a democracy overnight, but neither did South Korea or Taiwan. So far, the trend seems to be positive.

I'm sorry you're being down voted despite making some very cogent points.

Are you in USA? Should other countries refuse to employ USA citizens because of actions of the government - things like pulling out of Syria to enable the Turkish murder of the Kurds to continue.

>China has been using our money ...

The best way is to vote with your money then?

Well, the US government wont make my family disappear if I don’t cooperate, for starters.

I find it intellectually dishonest to compare the USA’s foreign policy with a dictatorship government that forces compliance through threats on local relatives, etc.

> Well, the US government wont make my family disappear if I don’t cooperate, for starters.

Right, if you're a U.S citizen maybe not, otherwise they'll do that and worse, read on "enhanced integrations", kidnappings etc.

So the U.S is better domestically, (still employs prisoners as effectively slave labor, treats minorities harshly, lets people die due to lack of healthcare...), but it is worse in terms of foreign policy, so in the end it seems to be a bit of a wash, doesn't it?

Is the US worst in terms of foreign policy? Seems like the peoples of the South China sea, Tibet, and Hong Kong might have different opinions on that matter.

Also all the nations in Africa with newly built debt trap infrastructure.

The US has done some truly shit things abroad, but we’ve also been the dominant superpower during a period of unprecedented stability, prosperity, and peace when you look at the numbers.

Sure Iraq was a shit show, and I’m of the opinion that war crimes were committed during enhanced interrogations.

But the entire history of the world before WWII is just one long history of war basically everywhere. Open market slavery.

The US isn’t perfect, but the alternative filled with constant regional conflicts everywhere certainly seems like a worse alternative to me.

Edit: not sure why I waded into this conversation.

Curious though, I’m seeing the 4x prison population for USA per capita number bandied about.

On one level, I see that number slowly improving as we stop arresting people for smoking marijuana.

And on the other, I’m really curious, and have no idea, are China’s Uighur population which are in “reeducation camps” counted in China’s numbers?

Aren’t they harvesting people’s organs in those places?

Rough. America’s always had a lot of outright and systemic racism but my feeling is that it slowly but surely keeps getting better.

I have a feeling Generation Z is going to be pretty open about things whether it’s sexuality, skin color, gender, or whatever.

Ultra PC and call out/cancel culture is another thing with it’s own warts, but yay for a society where an entire generation can push forward this new ideology of being whatever the hell you want to be.

The boomers are dying out, the evangelicals and religious are losing people every day.

I have faith we’ll be fighting for human rights and climate change accords soon.

I really hope at least.

So to conclude, my opinion, we’re no paragon of morals and values, but our history shows a slow but steady stride towards an ideal, one of freedom, and individuality, and opportunity, for all.

We take steps back, we make awful mistakes, but over the long term, we always move forward.

That’s the America I believe in. I hope I’m not wrong.

This is very U.S. centrist, I'd grant you the relative peace and stability if you're in the West. But 70 years isn't that long and you could find empires with long stretches of time where relatively nothing was fundamentally changing for the dominant population of some of the long-lived empires. The U.S. in its modern form and position isn't around even as long as the golden age of democratic Athens was around.

Sure, there were historically always some tensions at the border regions of these empires, but there are pressures of such nature felt in Europe now too, (the U.S. has the advantage of being physically very, very far from the regions in unleashes its worst policies on, so of course it's less felt there).

Also, all empires saw themselves as in some way policing, keeping peace and bringing their enlightened values to what they saw as the lesser. If we see that kind of thinking now as wrong, then I really don't see how the U.S. is so much different from the empire model of old.

As for China, I agree its regional foreign policy is not great, the problem is the U.S. doesn't just keep it regional. It treats the whole world as its backyard.

If you're a non-U.S. citizen, the unipolar world is not so great. I don't want China to say replace the U.S. as the dominant superpower, I want it to offer a counter-balance. I want the EU to be its own great power, offering counter balance to both, bringing both democratic values & a more humane treatment of its own citizens than the U.S. has, especially the less fortunate.

a free press and free elections make it not so much of a wash

Expect the 'free' press is more akin to 'corporate press' & the elections results in the person getting the most votes not being elected President.

I don't understand how these things somehow result in there being no difference between the US and China. Of course it's an imperfect system.

Try handing out flyers about civil rights in Washington DC and then try it in Beijing.

Of course it's easy to criticize the electoral college but look at the results of direct democracy recently, Brexit, the initial rejection of the FARC peace agreement in Columbia. There's a reason representative democracy is prefered to direct, it's just difficult to get a balance. Odds are that the Electoral College will be gone in my lifetime.

Is the authoritarian Chinese system better? Of course not.

> Of course it's easy to criticize the electoral college but look at the results of direct democracy recently, Brexit, the initial rejection of the FARC peace agreement in Columbia.

The obvious counter-example to this argument is Switzerland, which has been a direct democracy (or as close as you can get) for more than 120 years.

Brexit wasn't caused by the system by which the vote was conducted. It was a genuine public sentiment that had been cultivated through decades of media propaganda and scapegoating by politicians. Yes, the fact it was a single-issue vote made the issue more prominent, but it's entirely possible that the same result may have occurred through a general election if the right parties had been galvanized in the same manner.

> There's a reason representative democracy is prefered to direct, it's just difficult to get a balance.

I wonder which group of people overwhelmingly prefers such a system. Political apathy is rampant throughout the world of representative democracies, with a prevailing sentiment that people's views aren't being represented. Two-party politics results in elites being able to control the scope of options available to the electorate.

> Odds are that the Electoral College will be gone in my lifetime.

We can only hope, but that won't solve the two-party problem (or any of the other problems in American democracy such as the rank corruption).

> Is the authoritarian Chinese system better? Of course not.

Is anyone arguing that? The whole point being made is that America is in no position to take the moral high-ground. The US financially (and usually militarily) backs 70% of the world's dictators.

It's always a small group of people apply forces on the rest. In communism, it's the party members. In capitalism, it's the board of directors. communism prioritizes fairness. capitalism prioritizes freedom. People who want fairness hate capitalism. People who want freedom hate communism. Too much fairness but too little freedom bankrupts communism: people die in a fair manner. Too much freedom but too little fairness crashes capitalism: people die from voluntarily killing each other. Stop feeling superior to anyone else, but start acting. Western society has a lot of fairness problems to solve. Let's start solving them.

> I find it intellectually dishonest to compare the USA’s foreign policy with a dictatorship government

... yeah, about that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...

This is a thread where Americans are debating whether we should "flatten" a billion people via nuclear bombardment because they don't govern themselves the way we think they should.

I'd pick a different spot to call us morally superior. Like, any other thread.

Are we? I’ve seen a reasonable discussion so far on policy and ethics. There will always be trolls.

I never said anyone was completely superior. But in this specific case.. we are, because American citizens (and their families) don’t disappear for criticizing their government or for refusing to spy on other countries.

That's awfully cherrypicked if you're going to limit things to specifically political prisoners.

We have LOTS more prisoners, btw, 4x as many per capita, with a nasty racial bias. And that's before you get into all the dead Arabs and Latinos who dared to have a government that wasn't freedomy enough for us.

What's your exchange rate between those? Do you value the tiny number of people speaking out against the state's legitimacy that much, when were talking millions of other innocent lives?

Becoming suddenly sure that we MUST kneecap our rival for totally sound moral reasons is soooo American. I feel like I'm living in groundhog day and nobody else can tell.

So because the US government isn’t perfect, US based companies and US citizens are not allowed to espouse opinions on policy?

I can’t change what my government has done, and I can’t really change what it’s doing besides voting, but I can have my own opinion.

You can have an opinion, of course.

A mob opinion that our chief rival must be kneecapped in the name of freedom and justice is super suspect, is what I'm saying.

Americans want American hegemony, and that's fine, but please don't preach about values while you're doing it.

> must be kneecapped in the name of freedom and justice

I think we can talk without hyperbole, no?

>Americans want American hegemony,

Sorry if that's what you think.

There's a pretty significant online mob who really want to split HK off of China. I'd call 'kneecap' reasonably apt.

As far as hegemony.. I'm sorry you don't believe that :) Why is specifically China the Big Bad Guy if it's not about hegemony? Why aren't we focused on cleaning our own house first if it's about justice and freedom?

Like, if this isn't about power, we could at least stop actively supporting the horrible regimes that are useful to us? That seems like a pretty easy thing to do. Why hasn't it happened?

> here's a pretty significant online mob who really want to split HK off of China

There are significant online mobs dedicated to anything. That's not really a convincing argument. People who are advocating independence don't understand the situation, nor do they even understand what the protestors actually want (it's not independence).

> Why aren't we focused on cleaning our own house first if it's about justice and freedom?

It's almost as if America isn't comprised solely of 1 person! Not to mention, why can't people focus on both? This argument is basically "america has issues, so it can't point fingers". Not only is this an unconvincing argument, it doesn't make sense because what is "america"? Is it me, a singular US citizen? Is it Gitlab, a company headquartered in America with ~50% American employees? Is it just the US govt?

> Why hasn't it happened? Because people aren't informed and don't vote based on that. That is another complex discussion in and of itself, but most people that I know are against it, so I don't really get what your argument is.

It is complex! You're right.

It's also complex over there, where Americans don't speak the language or understand anything about the culture or history. Our lack of understanding does not make them 1-dimensional movie villains in reality.

Why does this argument appear over and over?

1. I do not need to comprehensively understand a country's culture to know about security risks and totalitarian governments. In fact, both of my grandparents and parents lived in and fled from a communist country, so I know a thing or two about that. 2. I do not need to comprehensively understand a country's culture to understand when human rights abuses are happening.

This argument is a form of -gatekeeping-. "Only X people can really discuss this issue", except you can move the goalposts whenever necessary.

People often don't understand American culture or history (and sometimes don't English either) but that doesn't seem to phase them when discussing America, etc.

Of course they're not 1-dimensional movie villains. China quite literally doesn't allow that, and Hollywood cooperates with this demand.

Where you're wrong is that while both countries have skeletons in their closets, only one of them is blatant, espouses and has no qualms about kidnapping/murdering/torturing their own people, and is many factors more evil despite us not even knowing the full extent of their actions due to the opaqueness of their government. Hint, it's China. Last time I heard, the US doesn't have a Nazi-era concentration camp in 2019 enslaving 2,000,000 minorities, harvesting their organs, torturing them, erasing their culture, desecrating their graves, and forcing the women to marry into Han families. The irony is that you can only make these ignorant attacks on America because there is freedom of speech in the US while in China, you'd be silenced the moment you hit send.

USA has been a dictator around the world for a century. So many unethical wars involved. So many radical movements are cultivated by US propaganda. Now these fear fed propaganda are dividing itself and destroying the future. People who are blind to all these are the ones full of fake Democracy ideology.

> the US government wont make my family disappear if I don’t cooperate,

Don't be so sure of that. If you hold valuable information on a foreign state, you will be accused and quickly convicted under various national security laws if you don't co-operate.

You severely under-estimate the power of a state, especially one as powerful as the US. If they want something from you, they will get it. Have you broken a minor law? Maybe you've been stellar, but some member of your family hasn't. The likelihood of being in an entire family with spotless records is very very low.

Even in that example, the US government would not make my family disappear. Please cite any reputable sources that you have to the contrary, because anything else is a spurious claim. I'm not going to argue over various conspiracy theories.

Corruption and unfair things exist in every single country, but we do have the right to freedom of press, speech, assembly, and due process.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for any such conspiracy theories. All I'm saying is that the State can go after you and your family if you refuse to co-operate with it on important enough subjects.

I do agree that the barrier for that may be lower in more authoritarian states, as they're not restricted by the system of laws in the US. Maybe that's the best we can get.

How do you reconcile this with drone strikes that take out entire weddings just to get one individual?

Or the infamous “signature strikes” that target individuals based on metadata? [1]

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

Just because my kitchen's on fire doesn't mean I shouldn't report the murder occurring at my neighbor's house. I can be concerned with both, and should be. So while I'm trying to put out my kitchen fire, I should also probably be on the line with emergency response. I am not my government, nor is my government going to disappear me for loudly criticizing it and supporting politicians that would work to stop our moral failings.

> Are you in USA? Should other countries refuse to employ USA citizens because of actions of the government

This is done in China BTW.

> Are you in USA?

No, Germany, which also faces massive problems with Chinese buy-outs and industrial spionage.

> Should other countries refuse to employ USA citizens because of actions of the government - things like pulling out of Syria to enable the Turkish murder of the Kurds to continue.

I would wish so, but I'm realistic enough to know no government wants to put themselves into the spotlight of Trump's Twitter account and trade war threats.

>> China has been using our money ...

> The best way is to vote with your money then?

We as individuals can't do shit about international trade. No matter if I live vegan or not, pigs will be slaughtered in inhumane conditions. No matter if I drive an SUV or not, climate change will grow. Systemic issues need to be dealt with those who have been elected for this job.

> things like pulling out of Syria to enable the Turkish murder of the Kurds to continue

That's an incredibly disingenuous take. America has no business being there in the first place, so there is nothing wrong with having US troops leave that region.

By your logic, the US is responsible of all the atrocities in the world where it doesn't have special operators acting as human shields.

Besides, your FUD is a bit dated. Kurds simply went seeking protection with Syria and Russia and in the end, not much happened.

The Germans of today have as much to do with the Holocaust as I do with American slavery.

Should Germany have been isolated in 1939? Sure. Does that apply 80 years later when things have changed? Of course not.

I think Turks have the right to defend their borders

By invading another country? I guess that's what the U.S. tends to do.

I believe people have a right to self determination. Borders are just lines on a map. I know America doesn't believe that, and that's a valid viewpoint too, just one I disagree with.

Turks and PKK have this issue for a long time. Having precautions on the other side of Turkish border is not an one-nighter.

Rojava is no threat for the Turkish borders.

They didn't use free trade against you, they used the American corporate greed and bottom line mentality. It was a cooperation. We got plenty of cheap shiny plastic nikanks to keep complient while corporations sold out on local economies. Now that it is proven to be unsustainable they beat the war drums and want us to fight for them.

This is an old story

> totally excluding China from any and all international trade

I don't have an opinion whether this is the right thing to do or not.

But regardless of my opinion, how does not hiring chinese citizens help with that? This just sounds like harassing chinese people because of their government.

If you really wanted to change something, hiring chinese people and showing them what the western world is like would be the best thing to do.

Harassing chinese people because of their government, and at the same time buying all the stuff their factories produce, sounds like the most idiotic course of action if you want to change the status quo.

If you are a citizen of a state that is known to coerce its people to work for it, you are not an individual, you're a state-level actor.

If you are known to directly or indirectly provide assets to a government and said assets are a critical part of the infrastructure, you're responsible for the safety of the government in your dealings.

An American company refusing to recruit people from China is just the US government refusing to hire the Chinese government to run the country, not companies discriminating against individuals. This holds true even if you swap the states in the previous sentence.

For the record, I'm not a citizen of either of the aforementioned countries but my home country has a similar relation with its neighbor.

> If you are a citizen of a state that is known to coerce its people to work for it, you are not an individual, you're a state-level actor.

You are putting collective blame on a billion people for the actions of their dictatorial government. This is not a reasonable position to hold in a supposedly enlightened society, it is rather just a thinly veiled excuse for run-of-the-mill xenophobia.

Nobody blames anyone here. The point is that anyone who lives (or has family) in a dictatorship can be easily blackmailed by its own state, with no legal recourse.

> Harassing

Harassing : the action of subjecting someone to aggressive pressure or intimidation.

Where do you see any harassment ?

Gitlab has no Chinese or Russian employee so far -> so nobody got pressure or intimidate, ffs.

China is harassing the rest of the world. China is systematically spying with state wide support. China is bullying with military, economic or soft power. China is a threat.

* Recently, in France, concerns were raised by the intelligence community about the outsized number of young Chinese students flirting / marrying with military & defence engineers. You don't even need to spy, really, just marrying people to stop any aggressive ideas toward China spreading. I mean, you would not push to war against your wife's birth place where you are now visiting every year, right ?

* Apple spotted 2 cases, how many are missed ? https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203718/apple-self-drivi...

* Lol, there is a whole wikipedia page on the topic, just for the USA : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Unite...

* In the European Union, they buy big companies from small countries to get leverage on EU decision making process. https://www.ft.com/content/d7145792-4743-11e9-b168-96a37d002...

Gitlab is simply pragmatic and clear-minded, their teams works in transparency and trust, they can't handle potential threats without a deep rework. I think it's much more than just having permissions baked in their systems, it's the whole defence industries layering that they would need to acquire.

Western players are now actively reducing their Chinese exposure (buying less critical stuff from their factories, cf. Huawei's affairs, moving factories to others countries). I am afraid it's too little too late.

While western people, and even more highly educated western people, have low levels of nationalism, Chinese people are brain-washed into thinking it's the best country in the world, best ever. Helping China is very important and their authorities have lots of leeway to push this.

Currently using Gitlab, I am glad they are aware of the issue and of their limited capacity to stop it from inside. Putting the fox in charge of the hen house, am I right ?

> if you really wanted to change something :

It's not West mission to bring democracy in China, it's not our country, they are grown up already and will keep finding their own way. It's typically USA ego to think the whole world must be awoken to USA values. The rest of the world is fine, thank you very much. We witness South America's fate in the XX century and Middle East's fate in the XXI. China just want western technology : buying, trading or spying it.

The most idiotic course of action has been followed already by moving the whole factories chains to China and thinking we could keep the knowledge here while it is applied there.

> Gitlab has no Chinese or Russian employee so far -> so nobody got pressure or intimidate, ffs.

Actually, they do have employees there. There are at least 5 Russians and 1 Chinese listed here: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/

There are no Russians at the role that had been debated though.

Good comment. A truly ideological person with high moral ground should help instead of blame. Media's double standard is a deal with evil.

> If you really wanted to change something, hiring chinese people and showing them what the western world is like would be the best thing to do.

The Western world has tried this and ended up with Chinese students harrassing and intimidating pro-Hongkong protestors. This path has failed.

> This path has failed.

Has it? Not convincing 100% of Chinese students is not automatically a failure. What about Chinese pro-Hongkong protestors?

In china, not from China. The former is easy to justify, and would affect even Americans of non Chinese descent. The latter would be incredibly difficult to justify, and could easily be seen as unwarranted discrimination.

Discriminating someone because of their Chinese ethnicity would be hard to justify but what about Chinese citizenship (especially if it's the only one) or ties to China like family living there? Those would make someone vulnerable to pressure by the Chinese government.

No. As long as someone has a green card or citizenship, who cares where their family lives? The only exception would be for national security clearances, and those affect Americans as well.

The argument made in the thread is that someone could be pressured by the foreign government into leaking sensitive information.

Where an employee's family lives seems like the single most important point to consider...

Is it legal for a private US company to apply (some of) the same tests used to determine national security clearances in its hiring decisions? Or is the government the only entity allowed to make decisions that way? I'm genuinely asking, I haven't thought about this conflict before.

Well, technically it is discrimination, but not racism. I.e. you can still hire a Japanese developer, and with a Chinese regime change you might be able to hire Chinese developers. However, federal law prohibits discrimination based on national origin. This is a touchy subject, but maybe this no longer makes sense? As burfrog pointed out, a Chinese employee living in America isn't free from Chinese control; the gov't will do bad things to his family if he gets a request for, say, information or access and doesn't comply. I'm hesitant to endorse allowing discrimination by national origin, but on the other hand, it doesn't make sense to allow the Chinese access to any kind of important data.

It doesn’t matter. As long as a security clearance isn’t required, discriminating based on notational origin is a big no no from an ethical perspective, even if it was legal.

I hope we learned our lesson during WW2.

> discriminating based on notational origin is a big no no from an ethical perspective

However, discriminating based on exposure to coercive pressure from aggressive and hostile foreign powers is probably OK, even if such exposure is heavily correlated with national origin. The key is that the discrimination must be based on an individual analysis of the applicant and his/her life circumstances.

It's not OK to blanket deny any person of Chinese ancestry.

Denying such a person access to sensitive data or positions might be OK, however, if that person is exposed to coercive threats by, e.g. having family located in a jurisdiction known to use its power over expatriates' families as leverage to recruit sources and agents.

So long as the intent is genuinely to serve a compelling interest in protecting against security threats and the vetting policy is as narrowly tailored as possible to minimizing insider risk from applicants with vulnerability to certain threat actors, I think such a policy could pass ethical and (IANAL) maybe legal muster.

I disagree completely. By that reasoning, a presidential candidate of Chinese descent who was a natural born American citizen but had relatives back in china would be disqualified, and that is nowhere justified by the constitution. A private company likewise shouldn’t be able to discriminate on speculative threats alone. What if they had a relative in prison, a hostile coercive environment by any measure?

I accept that I do not qualify for a high security clearance because I’m married to a Chinese national. I don’t think that should have any bearing on any other jobs that don’t require such clearances (nor my wife nor my son should be subject to such restrictions).

> By that reasoning, a presidential candidate of Chinese descent who was a natural born American citizen but had relatives back in china would be disqualified

Not so. The Constitution is very clear on eligibility requirements for the President. A natural born American citizen of Chinese descent who otherwise satisfies the requirements in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 is perfectly eligible to run for the office. If there is concern about potential leverage foreign states have over that candidate--as there rightly would be if our natural born American had close family in PRC--voters might vote for someone else. My position is that such a motivation on the part of the voters is ethical.

> I accept that I do not qualify for a high security clearance because I’m married to a Chinese national. I don’t think that should have any bearing on any other jobs that don’t require such clearances (nor my wife nor my son should be subject to such restrictions).

First, I agree that your or your son's relationship to a Chinese national should not be sufficient grounds to deny you or your son any given job. My position is that a narrowly tailored policy to reject candidates with high risk of coercion from sensitive positions, or to limit such employees' access to sensitive data, is probably OK. Having close family residing in PRC unfortunately does raise the risk of coercive pressure being applied. If your wife has no surviving close relatives in PRC and she never goes to visit, you and your son should be assessed to have no greater vulnerability to coercion than any other citizen with otherwise similar circumstances (debts, addictions, etc.).

Second, I am curious why you disagree completely, yet accept that your relationship with your wife may disqualify you from holding a government security clearance. That means you accept that the government has an interest in protecting classified information from foreign powers, and that your relationship raises your risk profile. Do you not accept that private companies have an interest in protecting their IP and customer data from theft or sabotage? Or do you not accept that your relationship also raises your risk profile for these positions? Just because a position may not require a clearance does not mean that position is not highly sensitive to a potential insider threat. And unfortunately the PLA's targets are not restricted to intelligence agencies; they target virtually every sector of our economy.

> Second, I am curious why you disagree completely, yet accept that your relationship with your wife may disqualify you from holding a government security clearance.

This has to do with companies making their own rules about what is right or wrong without any checks, balances, or voter feedback. Security clearances are actually defined by law, I’m against corporations becoming their own extra judicial entities.

> This has to do with companies making their own rules about what is right or wrong without any checks, balances, or voter feedback.

As far as I understand, companies are generally free to make their own hiring decisions, so long as they do not amount to discrimination against a protected class. That limitation, by the way, stems from federal legislation--so companies are very much not extra-legal entities operating without any judicial accountability. If a state or federal Congress decide to further regulate companies' hiring decisions, they are free to do so.

I don't understand what exactly you would like companies to do: Simply ignore potential security risks? Do you have a specific process you advocate should be used to evaluate risks? What different kind of restrictions on companies' personnel decisions would you like to see? Do you just have a problem with a focus on risk from family members in PRC as opposed to a broader vetting process where that is only one risk factor?

> Security clearances are actually defined by law

I am not sure that an exact formula for grant/deny decisions exists in statute. These decisions strike me as inherently subjective, although certain facts are obviously pertinent to the decision. I would be very interested to read the relevant laws and regulations, though, if you'd be so kind as to point me to them.

As long as companies are operating faithfully within the law, they’re free to do that. And you’re free to criticize it and boycott it.

Companies like Apple and others should be allowed to be concerned about theft of sensitive data just as much as the government. Just because it’s not a matter of national security doesn’t mean it’s okay.

Nobody here is trying to discriminate against a race. The problem is having ties to relatives living under a government that is known for making people disappear. The same would apply for a white person with many relatives there, etc.

Your argument of companies not being allowed to take cautionary steps against a foreign government doesn’t hold water.

> I’m against corporations becoming their own extra judicial entities.

They already are, with most disputes being settled with Binding Arbitration rather than via the court systems.

Others have already pointed out though, that a company needs to act in its own interests and one of the things it would certainly find interesting is whether an individual is capable of being coerced into sabotaging/sharing corporate trade secrets.

> By that reasoning, a presidential candidate of Chinese descent who was a natural born American citizen but had relatives back in china would be disqualified

If large numbers of voters felt that, then they would never get elected.

> nowhere justified by the constitution

The voters are entitled to vote however they like; that's implied by the constitution.

> I accept that I do not qualify for a high security clearance because I’m married to a Chinese national

Then you essentially agree with me.

> I don’t think that should have any bearing on any other jobs that don’t require such clearances

I agree. The question is, which jobs should require such clearances?

The Title of Nobility / Emoluments Clause [1] and the natural born (and age) qualifier are fairly specific as to what the framers thought were overly corrupting influences for the office of president.

They notably did not include "or family".

The expectation presumably being that foreign powers were clearly enough signalled to tread carefully with regards to exerting pressure on government officials.

At high levels, that seems reasonable. At lower levels, where there's less scrutiny and less opportunity for diplomatic redress? "Reasonable" measures seem murkier.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/sec...

Constitutionally speaking, the President does not require a security clearance; the President ex officio has unlimited access to classified information. If there are concerns the President may be vulnerable to foreign influence, the constitutional processes to address those concerns are election and impeachment not security clearances.

Is it a constitutional principle that no secrets may be kept from the President? Or is it just that the “security clearance” system is currently based on executive orders that the President issues, rather than Congress exercising its power to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval forces"?

According to the Congressional Research Service, "By virtue of his constitutional role as commander-and-in-chief and head of the executive branch, the President has access to all national intelligence collected, analyzed and produced by the Intelligence Community"

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20110113190609/http://feinstein....

I think if Congress tried to pass a law limiting the President's access to classified information, the Supreme Court would likely find it to be unconstitutional.

True. Trump wouldn’t have qualified for high security access anyways just given his public relationship history, not even considering what an FBI clearances check would dig up.

The situation with presidential qualifications is one-of-a-kind special. Hiring at tech companies isn't spelled out in the constitution.

Constitutional requirements can also be changed, and it is long past time that we do so. The country has been around for 2.5 centuries, and now has hundreds of millions of people. We wouldn't suffer a shortage of presidential candidates if we required that all 4 grandparents (determined all possible ways) and all descendants and spouses have been born in the USA, along with all living ancestors and descendants of all of those. The job is simply too important to allow otherwise. (this would disqualify the most recent two, along with failed candidates like Romney and Cruz)

For tech companies we shouldn't be quite so extreme, but it also isn't good to ignore the problems.

Here's a very clear restriction you're faced with: You could never become a Chinese citizen. Why must be pretend that it's ok for this to be entirely one-sided? We should give what we get, imo.

You can't assume what ethical choices a person will make, before they make them. A Chinese citizen in that situation might find a way to get their family out of China, or otherwise find a way to avoid the issue, or just flat out refuse. You can't just take it for granted that you can't trust someone without much more specific evidence. That's a very greasy slippery slope towards justifying highly constructed justifications for discrimination.

> So long as the intent is genuinely to serve a compelling interest

"Your honor, of course my intent was genuine ..."

Therein lies the rub ;)

> I hope we learned our lesson during WW2.

You can rest assured that we did not, I have zero doubt that if there ever was another war at that scale we'd have internment camps for nationals of the enemy before the end of that war.

Have you ever been to China? Such discrimination happens left, right and center. If you’re of an “acceptable” origin and have the right skin color, you might be ok...

I lived and worked in China for almost 10 years. I get that the foreigner glass ceiling is much lower there than here, and things like naked officials are actively discriminated against in government. That has nothing to do with the USA, however.

Well, it does. Because they will use your ethical values against you to slowly boil you like a frog in a pot 'til you find yourself in a concentration camp having your organs harvested. Sometimes bad things have to happen to prevent worse things.

Verwoed

and where it's different? look at distribution of people of color among boards of directors, senate etc.

Because there are less people of ethnic minorities than in the majority demographic. That’s why they’re called minorities. The key point is that they have a chance.

If a security clearance requirement suddenly makes it allowable it argues that it maybe isn't unethical, unless the argument is implicitly that it is ok to ask for unethical things when involving a security clearance?

> discriminating based on notational origin is a big no no from an ethical perspective

Yes it is. You know what's also a big no-no from an ethical perspective? Letting China win so they turn the world into a global dictatorship with concentration camps, organ harvesting and ubiquitous surveillance.

Sometimes you have to do a bad thing to prevent a worse thing.

Depends "national security" is much more than defence industries back when I worked BT the team leaders on some projects where getting positively vetted for SC clearance - That's top secret in US terms.

Arguably now the FANGS are now CNI - which is going to suck if your on a H1B or Green Card.

Lessons are getting unlearned by concerning enterprise customers.

Yes, this is old school racism wrapped in company policy. Bigoted leadership in this country gives this kind of activity permission.

The wiser among us know historically garbage thinking when we see it.

China seems to have noticed how accusations of racism, xenophobia and "white supremacy" are a very effective button to push to try and get western countries to act against their own interests.

The thing is, coming from a country that is practicing cultural genocide against various ethnic groups, we can probably take those accusations and survive.

Better place them all into internment camps. Just in case.

Are we seriously going 9066 here?

I never thought I'd see this level of xenophobia becoming widely acceptable in the United States. For everything educated Americans loathe about Trump, the one thing they've taken on board from him is fear of the Yellow Peril - which is probably the most dangerous aspect of his Presidency.

It’s not xenopohobia, it’s a hard problem. China actively exploits American tolerance for their own gain, and we have no good way to stem corporate espionage other than a blanket ban.

Even then, good old corruption of non-Chinese is still possible.

I'm sorry, targeting Chinese people on Green Cards is xenophobia. I'm not interested in whatever rationalizations are given for this sort of discriminatory behavior. The US is sadly headed down a path towards socially acceptable racial discrimination, justified by the new bogeyman - China.

The same argument would apply if the person was white and had many relatives in China. Or real estate, or other leverage that can be used against them.

You can’t ignore the fact that the PRC uses those things as leverage against people abroad in order to get information. Until that stops, what are companies and governments supposed to do? Roll over and allow espionage because we’re so tolerant?

I could use the exact same argument to propose banning Americans from GitLab. I'd also have much better empirical grounds for doing so, given how much is known about the extent of US espionage.

There's a growing hysteria in the US about China, which is leading to increasing signs of discrimination and harassment of Chinese people in the US. This sort of demonization of an entire country and the politics behind it (preservation of the US as the world's dominant power by containing China) are very dangerous. The thing that makes it most disturbing is the way people across the political spectrum have bought into the idea of the Yellow Peril, and are now okay with discriminatory policies, the trade war, and challenging Chinese territorial sovereignty.

I don't buy it. Yes there's a growing hysteria of China, but that's due to their government. It's not against the people in general. (Yes, yes, there's always an example of someone being racist/xenophobic. My response is there are always idiots who are racist/xenophobic. Citing them as an example of the populace at large is just lazy.)

People don't care about people from the ROC, aka Taiwan, aka China*. If people in our extremely polarized political environment are uniting on this, it's because it's a Serious Issue that needs to be addressed.

The ban applies to people living in China or Russia, not on chinese or russians.

Any american or european living in either country would similarly be affected by the ban. Untwist your knickers please.

It very quickly escalates to discrimination against Chinese people in the US, as evidenced by the highly upvoted comment I originally responded to. I'm sorry if I get my knickers twisted about people proposing an entire race of people pose a national security threat, but this sort of xenophobia has rarely gone well in history.

Chinese and Russians living outside of China and Russia will not be affected by the ban.

You keep calling it xenophobia even after you've been proven wrong when you claimed this is targetted at green-card holders. You are absolutely disengenuous and have no intention at good-faith discussion.

Read the GP comment, which says this is a good first step and then muses about expanding the ban to Green Card holders: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21438366

I then suggest you edit out your erroneous personal attacks.

I would fully defend Russians against this sort of xenophobia as well. They just don't seem to be the enemy du jour. Complaining about Russia is so 2018. America has a short attention span, and has moved on to the next great evil.

> Regardless, the GP does raise a valid point that if you have family living under the heel of a totalitarian dictatorship they can and will be used as leverage.

Okay, so now you can edit our your attacks above, because you see that the post I was responding to did discuss targeting Chinese and Russian people living in the US.

> Your whinging won't change that fact, and it has nothing to do with them being Chinese (or Russian!), and everything to do with their country's government.

Regardless of the rationale, they're still being targeted on the basis of their nationality. The general impression is being created that all Chinese and Russian people in the US are potential national security threats, whose employment should be restricted. I don't see any functional or moral difference between that and xenophobia. It reminds me of the generalized suspicion of Muslims after 9/11. It's not a pretty thing, and it's sad to see it gaining currency.

Unfortunately I can no longer edit my reply - please take my apology for misunderstanding your argument.

Back on topic of green cards: whether you want to bury your head in the sand or face the reality that foreign dictatorships will use their own citizens to infiltrate their rivals is up to you. If you want to take the high road you can, and likely be excluded from government contract work.

Don't get me wrong on one thing, the west is in a precarious situation of openly doing the same thing in certain cases - eg: Australia's draconian backdoor law. I will not hire or recommend hiring an autralian dev working in Australia - and you can call me a racist or xenophobe if you want, it will not change the reason for the decision.

Fortunately for an australian immigrant abroad they are not going to have their family black-bagged for failure to submit to their government. I don't have this confidence for Russia, and especially not China.

We're really getting into the realm of fantastical scenarios now. The idea that the Chinese government would kidnap the family of a US-based employee in order to force them to hand over data is completely hypothetical, and to my knowledge not backed up by any known case. If they're willing to go to those lengths, they could just as easily blackmail or bribe any random employee. They surely have the power to do so, as does every government with any intelligence service to speak of.

What I do know is that there's an increasing atmosphere of generalized suspicion against Chinese people in the United States, and even of people of Chinese descent. There are lots of recent examples, but to give you just one chilling one: US government pressured Emory University to fire two US-citizen medical researchers of Chinese origin, for the non-crime of pursuing research collaborations in China. The two are leading researchers into Huntington's disease. At the time they pursued their collaborations in China, such collaborations were encouraged by the university, and they pursued them openly. Their entire lab was closed down, and the more junior researchers from China were sent home. This is not an isolated case.

I can't see what's changed to warrant this crackdown in the last few years, other than the quite open discussion in US foreign policy circles about the need to maintain US hegemony, and the long-term threat to that hegemony from a rising China. This has been accompanied in recent months by increasingly hysterical media coverage. One of the most consistently frustrating things about the US is the susceptibility of the public to these periodic campaigns of demonization. Obama laughed about Russia in 2012, but in 2016, Americans suddenly discovered that Russia is the root of all evil in the world - they're even responsible for racial tension in the US! Something similar is happening with China now, and it's reached such proportions that even a Chinese app that teenagers use to share lip-sync videos is a national security risk.

That you find this scenario so fantastical is naive...and yes, the Chinese government openly threatening its own citizens abroad is documented. What do you think of the following article, is it cause for concern for you, or do you believe it's just our media misrepresenting China?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/think-of-your-...

They also have no problem black-bagging non-compliant citizens, no matter how high-profile they seem to be:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45806904

Blackmailing any random employee (with their family safely in the US or another western country) is absolutely not the same as blackmailing an employee with the family still living in China or Russia.

If you have family in China and you have access to government information or IP they want it is not at all far fetched they will do this.

Threatening the families of separatist activists is definitely wrong and despicable, but it's very different from what we're discussing here. I haven't heard of any cases similar to the type of scenario you're suggesting.

I can't see how you think there's absolutely no connection here. The Chinese government has demonstrated very clearly it will coerce their citizens' compliance - they're not going to be immune to this just by not being activists.

If you have something they want - or are able to do something they want - it's quite obvious they will use your family as leverage.

That hasn't been demonstrated. You're citing the treatment of Chinese people abroad who are affiliated with CIA-funded separatist organizations and drawing conclusions about how random people working for tech companies will be treated. I don't think these situations are analogous.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

What about second order effects?

If I ran state security for a poor African dictatorship, I would find all successful expatriates in the .US/.EU/.AU and sell their details to other nasty outfits and offer to "apply my heel" to their families for a fee.

And the optics would be on my side.