You're well intended here, but ignorant of how China operates. There is literally no way to enforce what you suggest.
I lived in China for many years.
(Edit: I didn't mean that they should be treated better because they live in the West. Obviously they should be treated better regardless of where they live. I mentioned HN's Chinese users who live in the West because they're an important part of China-related threads, which is not widely understood. Routinely they get accused of being communist shills, etc., when what they're actually doing is trying to bridge the gap between two worlds—an unenviable position as the gap grows. No one is required to agree with their views, but they absolutely should not be abused for this, and the HN users who do abuse them are behaving shamefully.)
However hard we try, it seems impossible to get a large segment of the community to behave any better, and the slurs are getting worse as the geopolitical trend (and associated things like media coverage) continues.
No, I'm not a secret communist supporter or any of the other silly things people come up with about this. Nor do I agree with the GP commenter; I've barely skimmed their posts. I simply want HN users to follow the site guidelines, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and not form xenophobic mobs.
People have literally been hounded off this site by comments like these. Is that the kind of community you all want to be part of? I can't believe it is. It's the default collective outcome, though—not that any of you want that outcome, but it's the group ugliness that posts like this add up to.
Denouncing people who provide that other half as "suspect" is itself an attempt to ensure only one half of the picture is heard/accepted.
Freedom of speech affects freedom of thought. If you can't say something then nobody else will hear it. And if you can't hear a certain viewpoint then you are less likely to consider it.
So you have to imagine the missing comments from China, firstly the person who wanted to criticise the government but was too afraid to say it, and secondly the person who never had a chance to consider criticising the government because they live in a place where that criticism is taboo.
Only with enough publicity. For now, in order to summon something which can threaten your real life, you have to at least post the criticism on Twitter, and have several people "reporting" it by making it go viral. Posting on HN is far more below than that bar, yet people imagine this is what's happening in a "reversed FUD" way.
> And if you can't hear a certain viewpoint then you are less likely to consider it.
True, but mind you HN is blocked by GFW. So if a Chinese citizen appears here, it means he can read whatever he want, sans the language barrier. Surely he can't have high profile public debate with his peers, but I've seen really healthy talks about these topics on "underground" communities, usually on blocked messenger services e.g. Telegram.
> So you have to imagine the missing comments from China
There are real reasons why people may not prioritize freedom (not saying that I agree with this) and are happy to accept an alternative narrative about China. OP talked about his own observations of whats happening on their state-owned media, and the general reception of these contents, then made his prediction on what would happen if the U.S. ban TikTok, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me and pointed out a potential weakness of the CCP narrative. It is usually a mistake to dismiss these words and fill the blanks with your imagination.
>The government can mandate spy code be inserted and any data they want.
Essentially true for US government with US companies too
In fact it's more about ensuring that data is living inside their legislative boundaries.
The servers are not owned by China/EU/US states; they're still owned by the companies that operate them, just the data isn't exfiltrated to be outside the reach of the police.
Jumping from authoritarian state, to "all companies are subject to secrete control by the state", that is already a quantum leap. If you believe what Soviet Union's state controlled economy collapsed, because it's impossible for state to control that much of details of the economy, then you must be having a great faith in Mr. Xijinping being a literal Super human, who can control "all companies".
Then to "branches of the military"?! Now you are saying that Mr. Xi Jingping is just a puppet of the military?! And Chinese military is so brilliant that they not even developed a powerful military force second only to US & Russian, and meanwhile, they actually runs "all companies"?!
I just cannot see any logic in this short statement...
Edit:
Note that CCP does ensure private firms provide support for employees who are also party member to organize relevant activity.
State-owned company obviously has party committee, and except great control on personnel, like kind of a board.
China has discarded many of the Communist philosophies which held the USSR back. It is somewhat difficult to organize an economy when you intend to abolish money. And even harder when you refuse to optimize for profit! The PLA is under no such restrictions.
> And Chinese military is so brilliant that they not even developed a powerful military force second only to US & Russian, and meanwhile, they actually runs "all companies"?!
Then you haven't been paying attention, because yes, the People's Liberation Army owns and runs many businesses, with active duty officers serving as executives. State-owned enterprise is basically the only part of the whole Communism thing left.
I don't think anyone said Xi Jingping was a puppet other than you, but he remains president in part because the military supports the idea. Selling off their toys and firing officers from their side gigs risks losing that support.
And to be precise, "People's Liberation Army owns and runs many businesses" this is almost certainly a misunderstanding of the organizing structure.
Mr Deng Xiaoping deliberately not disallowing military involving business activities [1], in part it's because the military is starved from support and resources, and they need some form of self-sustaining to maintain the basic infrastructure, especially ensure the continuation of the talent development relevant to high-end military capability.
That was banned in Jiang Zeming's rule [2]. In part, just like the purge done by Xi, was because military with its own finanical sources will become a plitical risk to the party head.
Today, there isn't any military owned business, officially. There are state-owned military equipment companies and research institutes. But their relationship with military is not too different from Locke-martin & US government & US military. (I mean, US system works better, right? Then CCP will happy to copy...)
Of course, there could be grey areas, and exceptions. But it should be common sense, here I repeat, military personnel cannot have financial support in their own control, that threatens the political leaders' authority.
If you can name one "active duty officers serving as executives", I'll be very surprised...
[1] http://congressionalresearch.com/98-197/document.php?study=c... [2] http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/981596.shtml [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/xi-tells-chinas-military-to-...
The US will continue to shed international credibility so long as we Americans continue to engage and enable mainstream discussion of conspiracy theories and populist applesauce. This Trabant quality excuse of an administration is just a symptom of that.
Honestly, I would not be surprised if the sole reason that this executive order is being banded about is because of TikTok users claiming they helped overinflate turnout expectations for that flameout of a rally in Tulsa.
I mean it is no different than the EU requiring US companies to host data in EU data centers.
China has banned so many US companies - why is it unfair to retaliate?
The use of economic power shouldn’t only be acceptable when done by corporations. Governments with a backbone should use it too (like the EU has done when appropriate)
Also it appears the 'national security' threat of tik-tok seem way overhyped, it is like a country speaking of Instagram as a national security threat.
Neither apple not Google has found TikTok problematic enough to pull it from their app stores.
Such claims of threat to 'national security', needs to be viewed with a certain skepticism, as these seems to get easily accepted by US lawmakers without sufficient, dispassionate analysis.
Also in general banning apps/services should not be the purview of the government under any reason. Why should the government dictate which apps an individual can use on their own phones/computers?
Why?
Stuff like this has happened all the time in plenty of democratic countries across the world. Not sure I see the issue (like my EU example). It’s just a state wielding economic power as opposed to a corporation.
Consistent rule of law allows economic actors to make proper planning and decisions. If the US wants to ban Chinese apps, it should pass a law saying that.
Right, isn’t that what a sale to Microsoft would essentially do?
The metaphor here doesn’t cover the fact that China has banned tons of American companies — should the US not respond in turn? I don’t know what the right response is tbh but I don’t think they should feel compelled to just shrug it off.
I don't know about China, but US executive and legislative have limits to their authority and I doubt such arbitrary bans are within that.
US seems least bothered about US apps/companies not being allowed in China and other countries, and retaliation for such does not seems the motive for US actions in this topic.
Anyways such straight reciprocal actions are often the naivest, and most simplistic of possible responses anyway.
No you misunderstand - Read the article, TikTok would sell off to keep operating in the US (just like Amazon had to sell off data centers to operate them in the EU). The US government wouldn’t be forcing Microsoft, just saying if you want to operate with American data you have to be on American soil.
> Anyways such straight reciprocal actions are often the naivest, and most simplistic of possible responses anyway
But you haven’t offered an alternative. They should respond, I don’t think this is an unreasonable way to do it.
More over I don't think President has power/authority to ban anything at all, let alone apps on privately administered app stores. President isn't a dictator elected by the people.
There might be legitimate grounds to take action against an app/service like data breaches or copyright infringement, even terms of right violations, but nothing of that seems to be the case. Even if it was the case, it would have to go through the legal justice system.
From what I have seen, the theory of threats to national security being bandied about isn't substantial nor concrete enough to hold in courts.
So if TikTok does not run afoul of our laws, there shouldn't be grounds for banning that or any other app citing vague and theoretical national security considerations.
You're saying amazon don't own their EU data centers? That's surprising to me. Got a source for that?
There are not such limits on the authority of the Chinese government.
I do not buy that we should do anything by breaking our own constitutional guarantees, by letting the executive mislead the public in assuming powers that they simply do not have.
The President don't have authority to do this, and should not be having it in good sense.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-moderna...
America has never been a pure "free market," it's a mixed market, just like every current economy in the world.
The question is about how can something that isn't illegal or that hasn't evidently broken laws be banned, and that too without even a semblance of a fair process.
Was TikTok investigated, if so what was found? Have they been asked to show cause? Have they broken laws?
See: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/24/trump-cant-ban-tiktok-f...
You see, China built the Great Fire Wall. A bizarre thing is more and more countries are considering to do the same seriously.
So what's next? There are also a lot of reports about the concentration camps. I don't know how accurate are those horrible reports, but you definitely don't want your country competing on building more concentration camps.
No it won't change a thing. And to be fair, forcing a sell (which is just forcing it to exit all stakes in the US market) is a far cleaner move than trying to end the company globally like it's doing for Huawei.
> This act is pure bullying and imperialism.
This is nothing compared to overthrowing Iran's democratic government to instate a puppet monarchy, helping the despot build 23 nuclear power plants, losing the puppet to revolution because the CIA assisted secret police killed too many people, claiming the built power plants are evidence of nuclear ambitions, sanctioning the country against UN resolutions, then using the economic aggression as justification to chain imperialize against other people such as Meng Wanzhou who was arrested unlike the CFOs of Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS, Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank, Standard Chartered, Wells Fargo, Ericsson, Nokia who all transact with Iran.
And this is an arrest based on the accusation that she did not disclose (she did, on page 6 of her HSBC powerpoint) Huawei's transactions with Iran in her HSBC loan. The same HSBC with a non-arrested CFO who transacted with Iran and whose drug trafficking heat from the US magically disappeared after snitching their client.
The world will sleep through this like the world slept through the same round of tariffs, executive arrests, banning suppliers and technologies like we did to Japan in the 80s.
Iran has one nuclear power plant, and it opened in 2011. It was built mostly by the Russians.
This is the first sentence
By 2012, Iran had roughly 400 power plant units
The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000.[24] In March 1974, the Shah envisioned a time when the world's oil supply would run out, and declared, "Petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn ... We envision producing, as soon as possible, 23,000 megawatts of electricity using nuclear plants."[25]
Advertisement from the 1970s by American nuclear-energy companies, using Iran's nuclear program as a marketing ploy US and European companies scrambled to do business in Iran.[26] Bushehr, the first plant, would supply energy to the city of Shiraz. In 1975, the Erlangen/Frankfurt firm Kraftwerk Union AG, a joint venture of Siemens AG and AEG, signed a contract worth $4 to $6 billion to build the pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. Construction of the two 1,196 MWe, and was to have been completed in 1981.
Can't tell if the GGP is disagreeing because it's suggesting that the US can only impose "nuclear ambitions" sanctions on finished commercially operational nuclear power plants rather than nuclear development in general.
TikTok is operated by the TikTok office in the U.S. ByteDance is incorporated in Cayman islands so Chinese laws do not have any jurisdiction over TikTok office. There is no way for Chinese government to force their censorship rules and steal data from TikTok data stored in the US. Unless tiktok employees in the US office hands the data to China. But TikTok employees in the US office are all American. The CEO of TikTok is Kevin Mayer. The content regulation team is staffed with American employees. Data is stored in US servers and backed up in Singapore. TikTok is hiring more in the US office to develop TikTok going forward. TikTok also plans to experts can observe our moderation policies in real-time, as well as examine the actual code that drives our algorithms. Source: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/fair-competition-and-trans... Source: Bytedance corporate structure https://www.bytedance.com/en
But the US gov is not giving TikTok any opportunity to explain themselves. Whatever Bytedance management can do, there is no way for them to shake off the belief that TikTok sends data to the US government.
As for ByteDance, the founder of Bytedance is a Chinese national. But the board member also includes non Chinese people. Chinese people do not all agree with the government. And Chinese people definitely do not want to work for or help the government unless absolutely required under Chinese law. Chinese people enjoy freedom and distance from Chinese government as well. A lot of Chinese people admire the US for its rule of law, its innovation and the general classiness when doing things. This is especially true in the entrepreneur and technology scene in China, where the US is often looked up to. People want to be friendly. No one wants to undermine the U.S. No one wants to be associated with the government or work as a spy to steal data.
I have been following the creation and growth of tiktok and douyin since the beginning. There are many interviews and news story about the company and the founders. The creation of tiktok is to spread happiness, creativity, raw human ingenuity through music, dances and user generated video. And all the founder wanted to do is develop a business from that and earn money from that. They worked really hard to develop the product, the marketing and the user base. The least they wanted is to be tied with politics, ideology wars, fake news, disinformation, political propaganda. The founder, zhang yiming, is a technologists and software engineer, not a politician, not a ccp ideologist. He has always displayed a general likeness and admiration towards the US since the beginning. I mean, why won't he? He studied C++, Javascript, big data, coding for IOS and Android. All of that comes from the U.S. And he has collaborated with US business people since the beginning. I guess his friendliness and admiration to US is why he entered the US market, step up office in the US and hired US employees.
But now they are caught between politics in China, ideology battle, and geopolitics.They are seeing their hard work going down the drain, and asking themselves "Probably my biggest crime is born in mainland China". No matter what they do, they cant shake off people's belief that they work for the Chinese government. Its a profound feeling of hopelessness.
It is hard for me to feel bad for one Chinese company banned from operating in the US when China has banned thousands of US companies.
The founders of TikTok should blame Chinese government, it's 100% their fault that the US is retaliating. I am glad US is finally standing up to their unfair restrictions.
Which companies are you talking about?
> This is pure retaliation against China for not allowing US companies to operate there.
American companies have a massive presence in China. There's nothing comparable to it in the US. Imagine walking into a mall in an American city, and half the stores being Chinese. The reverse is the case in China.
Citation needed. And just because they're American doesn't mean that they won't send data to China.
I think Trump administration is them problem. It is amazing to see how much a single term of an irrational president could damage a country in almost every aspects.
Quote: Eventually what happened was that, as China’s domestic copyright industries found themselves competing with cheap knock-offs of foreign goods, they pressed the Chinese government to fortify the IP enforcement process on its own. (To put this in perspective, this is also what happened a century earlier in the US, which until 1890 failed to protect foreign works, and then waited yet another century before joining the major international copyright treaty.)
Let's just not pretend that IP theft was not prosecuted, and IP was not protected in China. That's simply not possible in such a fast-growing economy, which we can all agree that can only be sustained through innovation.
I think the fear is the manipulation that social media platforms can easily do of discourse and emotions. This is not as simple as just selling word processing software.
We have seen manipulation on US's own social media platforms by actors not even inside the company. Imagine a government which has supreme control on the companies on its own soil, imagine what it can do. I would say the fear is well founded, the solution to is not.
In case of the companies under free governments and justice systems, this becomes hard as any FB employee can go out and use the free press to expose if any manipulation like this is ordered.
The US was really the shining city on the hill before 2008 financial crisis. I personally was huge admirer of the US system. I even spent about 1 year in DC just to study the political system of the US.
Before the 2008 financial crisis, China tried to copy everything from the US, from finanical market regulations to education system and to some degree, political system reform. There was a period when academics and even some very senior CCP members called for small government, separation of party and administrative system, and they even used the term 'put power into cages'.
The 2008 financial crisis that started in the US made China's elites within the party and outside of the party think hard if the US system is really the answer. Trump administration, the handling of covid-19 and the BLM protests further changed the view towards the US and made it impossible for those friendly with the US to promote the US value system in China now.
Tiktok is considered a national pride because it thrives by open competition in the US and the world. This act of forced selling without a due process for Tiktok to defend itself from accusation of spying for China would absolutely be another huge blow to the credibility of the US in China.
It has nothing to do with financial crises or BLM or whatever. Financial crisis also happened in 2001 and 80's, they happen all the time. BLM protests are insignificant, US has protests constantly because they are not restricted by government.
Handling of COVID is bad, and most of us don't like Trump. But Xi's anti west propaganda is very real and influences all Chinese news and social media. Xi has massively ramped up rhetoric against the west and especially US. That is why majority of Chinese don't respect the US anymore.
You can see Xi saber rattling with US, building basesin South China Sea. Troop fights with India. Bullshit with Tibet Dali llama. Uighur re-education camps. Crackdown on Hong Kong. There's many more. This is why relations with US are going bad. Xi is pissing everyone off to drum up patriotism in China and make Chinese direct anger at foreigners instead of problems with Chinese government
I don't know where you got that from. CCP stopped long ago painting the US / western countries as enemies and sources of today's problems of China.
The fact is, Chinese and China in general are much less ideology sensitive now. Given current hostilities from the US, CCP propaganda and China's new medias still haven't called for hate of the US at ideology level. There were hash words against the US, but all targeting very specific actions, for example shutting down of Huston consulate, and specific person, for example Pompeo. There is no ideology level attack.
It is a very large topic to discuss why and when Chinese people stopped admiring the US. I would only say it all started in 2008 financial crisis. It was then China's elites, here I mean both the ones educated in the western countries and the ones with no foreign education background, started to question the soundness of the financial market regulation system of the US and corruption of the US politicians, and then everything else. And when China could produce its own hero startups and entrepreneurs, like Jack Ma of Alibaba, Pony Ma of Tencent, Yiming Zhang of ByteDance, Lei Jun of Xiaomi etc., Chinese people feel more confident that its own system might just work. And Trump administration and the handling of covid19 are the latest blow. CCP doesn't really need to do anything.
All the other matters you mentioned like South China Sea, disputes with India, Xinjiang etc. aren't new problems. They have been there for ages. They are not the factors driving the changes.
A wave of nationalism has swept the western world. From Trump in the US, to Brexit, to numerable populist nationalist parties turning mainstream in Europe (AFD, Front National, Sverigedemokraterna etc.) all stemming out of the frustration of lack of prospects for the common man.
Rather than going to the root cause populist nationalism blames the other; the Chinese, the immigrants, the scientist, the media. And let conflict drive the agenda.
Incredible that it is a widely held view in the west that it is changed Chinese politics (the rise of Xi) that has bought forward the change.
Unfortunately I don't think things will get better any time soon.
They might even accelerate further.
Except the law is essentially "whatever CCP wants to do" since the only political entity which can affect its legislation process is CCP. And yes, it's intentionally vague so it can allow CCP to exercise its power in an arbitrary way.
Just like the double standard on delaying the election, it's ok to delay election due to COVID in US, but it's perfectly fine to condemn other places for doing the same.
It would be very interesting to see how how ppl or historian view this 10 years later.
This is for tit for tat. The United States is an open society. Why should we let an authoritarian regime gains influence over my country?
And to do personal attack doesn't make you look smart.
But it is not like PRC makes it easy to do business there. There is a well known episode of a breach orchestrated by PLA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
If you are worried about data leakage to China, you set rules and law and enforce them. That is what China is doing. They asked Apple and other cloud service provider to store data in China. The US could setup clear rules and regulations about where to put data of US users and if it is allowed to send the data to third country like China and then enforce them.
And China asked companies to set up jv in some sectors before they entered China market. They didn't do it after they were already here. Microsoft destroyed China's local word and spreadsheet editor software developers and China didn't ask MS to sell its China local business.
This act is pure bullying and imperialism. After that happens, the US wouldn't be able to command any support from Chinese people when it accuses CCP of anything.