This is an outrage that we should not allow. They steal our intellectual property, create state funded companies that are given monopoly access to their markets, and then unleash their stolen products on the world market. And if American or other western companies try to compete on the ground in China, they can’t.
Would WeChat or TikTok exist if western chat and social media apps were given total access to Chinese markets??? Extreme doubt.
The eventual end result of bending over to China is a world where all of the goods, services, and software are owned by China. This imbalance that China has created is unworkable and cannot be allowed to continue.
The US gains very substantial economic benefits from being an attractive place for international companies to do business. Foreign investors know that when they invest in America, they're getting a stable regulatory environment and a reasonably trustworthy civil legal system. If America decides to undermine that trust for short-term gain, there will be a substantial long-term cost.
You might believe that hostile trade policies prevent American companies from competing in the Chinese market, but that's starkly contradicted by the number of American companies for whom China is a key market. Apple earn $11bn a year in China. Wal-Mart have thousands of stores there. Yum! Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) have 40% of the Chinese fast food market and make more revenue there than anywhere else. Starbucks have 70% of the Chinese coffee market. The shelves of Chinese convenience stores are groaning with American-owned brands.
An all-out trade war with China might be appealing, but be under no illusions that it'll be all upside for America. If China want to put the hurt on America, they have more levers to pull and more staying power. It's definitely not a fight you want to lose, but it might not even be a fight worth winning.
China aren't thinking about next quarter or next year, they're thinking about the next generation. Where does the US see itself in 2050?
China can't feed itself past subsistence level without imports. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-feeding-china/
China runs on oil just like every other modern economy, and they have pitiful amounts locally. They are the largest importer in the world and they absolutely need it to keep flowing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/10/17/china-i...
The US can feed itself domestically, and we can supply our own energy domestically. All we have to do is no longer put merchants heading toward China under the US navies protection and the CCP will be in serious trouble very quickly. Note - I'm not even saying we have to attack them, we just stop responding to any requests for help from them and let the world know.
China relies on the US enforced world order to survive in its current form. The US relies on China for convenience, not for survival.
Would it be wise to do what I just said? I don't know, and I'm not advocating for it, I just find it funny when people say China would so obviously win a trade war when they are definitely in the worse position at a fundamental level.
That's only a problem if the rest of the world sides with the US in a US-China trade dispute. There are plenty of net exporters of oil and food who would be very happy to sell to China and would be rather pleased to see the US get a bloody nose.
>All we have to do is no longer put merchants heading toward China under the US navies protection and the CCP will be in serious trouble very quickly.
China has a large, modern and highly capable navy. They are perfectly able to protect their own shipping against piracy or any state-level actor that would be insane enough to start a naval war. In the event of a direct conflict, the American navy is largely defenceless against the Chinese ASBM capability.
The US relies on China for convenience, not for survival.
US hospitals would rapidly degrade to third-world conditions without imports of Chinese-made supplies and materials. COVID-19 has revealed the fragility of global supply chains and the position of China as a manufacturing superpower. If you need a sufficiently large quantity of pretty much anything made, you don't have many options outside of China - doubly so if you need it in a hurry. If China decides to tighten the noose on American consumers, you're going to immediately see severe shortages of even the most basic goods.
A total trade war between China and the US would of course have a catastrophic impact on US export revenues because of American reliance on outsourcing - US sanctions on Huawei have had a significant but manageable impact on their smartphone business, but Chinese sanctions on Apple would be catastrophic.
China's navy CANNOT project power into the strait of Hormuz to secure their oil supply. Any one of the regional middle eastern powers could cut off their supply if they wanted to. They can defend their own shores, that's about it.
>US hospitals would rapidly degrade to third-world conditions without imports of Chinese-made supplies and materials.
Yes, for a period of a year or two until manufacturing can be brought up elsewhere. In the meantime the CCP would likely have fallen while dealing with mass riots due to a cratered economy and forced relocation of hundreds of millions from the cities back to rural areas so they could feed themselves without mass imports.
Look, it would absolutely be a terrible time to live through in the US, and whatever party was in charge during this period of time would likely lose power in the next election. But for the CCP, it would be game over, and I think they know it.
A quarter of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Three quarters does not. Oil prices are at record lows and many oil-dependent economies are desperate to sell their production. China has made a lot of friends in parts of the world where America has made a lot of enemies.
China has oil pipelines supplying imports from Kazakhstan and Eastern Siberia, in addition to two natural gas import pipelines. China is the 4th largest oil producer and has an exceptionally large strategic reserve of around 400 million barrels.
China does not want a conflict with the US. Any conflict would be massively detrimental to both parties, but there are many reasons to believe that the US is socially and politically under-prepared for coordinated action in the national interest. Is this really a fight you want to pick? What does "winning" even look like?
If this kind of analysis mattered to people, the US might be doing something differently in the Middle East.
I remember reading that the goal of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was to make sure Southeast Asian countries continued to weight American desires more heavily than Chinese desires in their own policies. Apparently there's a substantial section of the US state that views it as a priority to make sure that e.g. Vietnam doesn't "flip" over to China.
But that's completely insane. Vietnam definitely will flip to China, no matter what. A Vietnam that looked more to the US than to China would make as much sense as a Canada that looked more to China than to the US.
Iran would probably have a thing or two to say about that. And I don't think any of the Arab powers are internally stable or capable enough to take on Iran, yet alone China.
Take on would most likely a persistent guerilla warfare. It is cheaper than diect confrontation, and possible denial of plausibility. Without a strong power projection, distant gueriella warfare with minimal combatants can wreck havoc as what USSR and USA found out many decades ago in Agfhan and Vietnam.
Lmao. The US Navy has roughly 3x the strength of all the other navies in the world combined. If the US and China went to war, the US would control the seas in about a month.
The prediction that "of course America will win this war easily, look at all the kit we have" does not have a good track record.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/27/china-deplo...
First and foremost: Any argument we make is based on unclassified publicly known details related to the technological capabilities of both countries. This is an uninformed and untenable position to be making strong arguments from.
Two: There's not a lot of evidence the ASBMs can actually hit moving targets. There are a lot of impressive claims on the ASBM and ASCM front, but we have seen impressive claims from Russia and China on prior weapons that have not panned out in reality. Everyone postures about having a better hand than they actually do.
Tree: There's a lot of strategies we can employ besides Aegis. The US Navy has countered similar threats before, and can likely do so again.
This Congressional Research Service report on Chinese naval modernization is an interesting read in general, but has an appendix specifically discussing ASBMs: https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20191220_RL33153_d765d5...
China runs like every other country on oil, but a large part of that demand for oil is to produce for the rest of the world. You need to calculate the actual domestic demand for oil and related products rather than total demand. The US can supply its energy domestically, but what if the US have to reopen the factories once closed to make other products? Will the oil be fluent? Oil isn't just the thing you put in your car. You'd be surprised how many of our modern products need oil (plastic, fabric etc).
Of course, those statements are made under the same assumption that there are only China and US in the world, or that the whole world go in to isolationist status. I'd rather not make any argument here, but to suggest somehow China's continued survival depended upon the global market while the US's doesn't is nothing more than an illusion.
"Coal remains the foundation of the Chinese energy system, covering close to 70 percent of the country's primary energy needs and representing 80 percent of the fuel used in electricity generation"
...for about 20 more years, if soil quality and climate predictions are accurate.
According to Lee Kai-Fu who launched Google in China: "Chinese laws are clear about what foreign companies can do to operate in China. In TikTok's case, though, the company was left no choice but to consider a forced sale."
China doesn't not allow western companies to operate. Google proactively made the choice to exit China. I'm not arguing that they should have elected to follow Chinese laws but the actions the Chinese government took with western companies was not to either tell them to stop existing in the Chinese market or abdicate their ownership to a domestic company.
Let's debate on non-imaginary premises.
It's not as straightforward as outright "abdication of ownership to a domestic company," but the end-result is similar, and I'd argue it's more morally reprehensible.
At least TikTok is going to get a check.
Western companies that enter joint ventures in China with IP transfers are proactively done with executives who explicitly weigh the cost benefit of gaining the Chinese market and choose to do so.
An equivalent here would be for ByteDance to choose to enter the US market knowing they need to oxymoronically abdicate ownership once they do.
Plenty of Western manufacturers did fine over decades with junior partners. VW never lost its technological edge to a Chinese competitor, despite being in a joint venture since 1984.
This is simply false, yet it gets repeated on every discussion about China.
Western companies are everywhere in China, and they make massive revenues there. The presence of Chinese companies in the West is tiny by comparison (if you want proof, just look at FDI figures in each direction). Anyone who's spent time in both places can see this.
It's very difficult to discuss China-US trade issues when so many people begin from completely false assumptions about what the present situation is.
It has forced the conditions that is theirs as a totalitarian country. USA cannot enforce any condition because it is a free country. And they can come in with their values. But USA cannot go in with its value.
Continue it is the downfall of the USA and humanity. That is why China has to stop Win-then-Win again (yes Win-Win is China win two times).
Open market to assist China to limit their people freedom, that is a great move by Google if only money matter.
And as said, China is poor of everything except money. Want this bad money driven out good one.
Without reciprocity, the other country has little incentive to come to the negotiating table to reciporically remove those tarrifs, bans and visa restrictions.
In this case, since it's a communication tool, this is more freedom restriction reciprocity than regulatory reciprocity. Communication freedom is not the fire you want to fight fire with.
Also, this entire mode of argument doesn’t address the idea that this is a national security or privacy issue.
We agree that it’s standard. The interesting question is whether it’s sensible.
Personally, as citizen Denmark, if Italy puts a 50 tariff on Danish sausages, I would prefer that Denmark not put any tariff on Italian sausages.
Do you follow the logic in this case?
A very simple analogy is to that of interpersonal violence. All else equal, it's bad to point a gun at someone. But if they're threatening you with a gun first and unjustifiably, then it's no longer bad. In fact its bad not to fight back, since to not do so would allow wickedness to flourish. And any argument along the lines of "two wrongs don't make a right" is of course absurd.
The fact is that Western companies benefitted massively from China's opening-up, and that China was forced to undergo many painful reforms in order to join the WTO. An entire generation of Chinese workers lost their social safety network as a result of the breaking up of the state-run sector.
The joint venture and IP transfer requirements, which have been rolled back over time, were a small price to pay in exchange for accessing a massive pool of cheap labor and a rapidly growing consumer market.
I don't mean this to trivialize China's oppressive behavior. And sometimes the right way to punish regimes like China is with economic sanctions, even when those sanctions harm us as a side-effect - I don't know if that's the right answer in this case or not. But from a purely economic point of view, tit-for-tat trade sanctions are an own goal.
Plus, mine is but a grain of sand in China's endless beaches of data. Also, the only real solution is to use a shady VPN (that is probably owned by a government anyway).
It sucks and is terrible but I think that's just the way it is unfortunately.
That's just not true. All American tech companies can operate in China if they follow local laws, that's why Skype and iMessage are popular in China. Chinese companies have to follow the same local laws as well. Google/Facebook, etc voluntarily pulled out of the Chinese market because they don't want to follow China's draconian tech laws.
Ownership requirement is only for joint ventures. Both Apple and Microsoft operate in China in full capacity and neither companies are majority owned by the Chinese lol.
Now imagine if facebook were controlled by an adversarial authoritarian regime.
The policy that lead to that is American companies embracing globalism, which is, by the way, an American neo-liberal ideology.
What we see right now is really just the emergence of China as an economic super-power, thanks to their gigantic internal market and their technological advances. This was predicted for the past 40 years or so and it nothing to do with the problems that the US is facing. These problems are mostly internal.
American middle-class wealth has moved to upper-class rather than to outsiders.
"The recent stability in the share of adults living in middle-income households marks a shift from a decades-long downward trend. From 1971 to 2011, the share of adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points. But that shift was not all down the economic ladder. Indeed, the increase in the share of adults who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income over that period, a sign of economic progress overall."
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america...
As your quote says, it's not the wealth that has moved per say, but that people have moved upward out of the middle class and brought that wealth with them with more people moving up than moving down.
I saw some comments (in this thread and some others) that seems to be of the opinion that USA has not benefitted by embracing globalization. That opinion is in contrast to what I have seen in data analysis/reports.
So I wanted to say that maybe problem is not that USA hasn't benefitted from globalization but rather that benefit hasn't been distributed appropriately.
I'm not from USA and my knowledge comes by reading about news reports and expert data analysis so I might be missing something.
90% of their income comes from wages, not investments. The last thing they want is for American businesses to operate in China, period - because operating in China typically means that manufacturing capacity gets moved there. This unfairness is only unfair to the owner class - the middle class is actually a net beneficiary of policies that make offshoring harder.
China's policies that make foreign operation in it difficult are, in that sense, actually a gift to the American middle class.
WeChat caters to the needs of Chinese users. As far as I know, WeChat invented integration of payments in messaging apps and Western apps like Messenger and iMessage copied that. I don't think the Western apps have QR payments, which is very important to Chinese. And I don't think a Western app would have come up with the group hongbao exchange feature.
TikTok doesn't have a surviving American equivalent so, yes. Definitely it would exist.
For the same reasons that China should allow American companies to operate in China.
In fact, if the west weren't so racist I suspect WeChat would dominate just like TikTok is dominating in the west.
It's kind of absurd to think that platforms that literally dominate every single country in the world like Google and Facebook wouldn't similarly dominate in China if they were just allowed. TikTok is the first Chinese social app that's had any success in the West. That's why we're talking about this now and never needed to discuss it with WeChat.
It's absolutely crazy that Chinese companies can compete fairly in Western markets yet the Chinese government can close their markets to Western companies. IMO, a trade war with China is long overdue. China hasn't played fairly in any sense . Trade wars suck for all involved but if you're not willing to do them, why would China not play by a double standard?
The actual state of affairs is that Western companies do much more business in China than vice versa. It's been that way ever since China began opening up in the 1980s.
There are more theoretical barriers to trade in China than in most developed countries, but that doesn't change the fact that there's more actual Western investment in China than vice versa. Whether China's protectionist measures (which have lessened over time) are acceptable depends on your ideas about economic development. There's a very respectable economic tradition (stretching back to Alexander Hamilton) that says that developing countries should enact certain protectionist measures. Most developed countries got where they are today using some level of protectionist policies (the US, Japan and South Korea are a few prominent examples).
Given China's autocratic government, the conflation of economic and government interests is impossible to separate. This makes protectionist policies of China a dire risk to the West. The ability of social media in particular to undermine democratic elections should now be clear. The simple unregulated profit motive of Facebook has proved harmful enough. A Chinese controlled Facebook equivalent in the United States would be disastrous.
On the other hand, in these discussions, most people massively play up Chinese protectionism, and seem to have a wildly skewed picture of what the economic relationship between China and developed countries is. Claims that China excludes most Western companies are so massively at variance with reality that it's impossible to have a conversation after that.
> This makes protectionist policies of China a dire risk to the West.
The West has benefitted enormously from trade with China and investment in the country. The problem, from the perspective of the US, isn't Chinese protectionism, but rather the end of American hegemony. How far the US will go in order to maintain its position is something we should all be very worried about.
> The ability of social media in particular to undermine democratic elections should now be clear.
I don't think social media is undermining democracy. The hoopla about Russia after the last election really descended into hysteria, and there was never anything really significant uncovered. The Internet Research Agency had essentially zero impact on the election. The "worst" thing the Russians supposedly did (and I'm not sure if they actually did it) was handing DNC emails over to WikiLeaks. But it was good that those emails were published. They showed the DNC conniving against Bernie, which is something the public had a right to know about.
"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak" — Sun Tzu
The problem with China, again to repeat myself, is that there is significant overlap between the economic and foreign policy interests of China. Whereas American companies only care about making more money, Chinese companies want to both make money and extend Chinese influence.
This is terrible for democracies so easily swayed by unregulated emergent technologies like social media. If all you think Russia did was leak documents, I think you far underestimate their impact. An underdog candidate without majority popular support became president by the smallest margins. Democracy only works if its influenced by people who actually care if it succeeds. Foreign influence of any kind rots it at its core. This is the goal of China and Russia (although they may approve of different candidates).
This isn't a problem of America losing its hegemony in the world. It's a problem where foreign influences help elect a leader that has led to the unnecessary deaths of more than 100K Americans. The USA is no saint but China and Russia literally seek to elevate themselves at any cost. Allowing any Chinese companies influence over American citizens is an absolute disaster. They won't simply seek to make money in the USA, they will try to extend Chinese national interests at the cost of American lives.
I'm not sure if you're the type of person simply trying to seem intelligent by arguing against the popular stance or if you truly believe what you say. In either case, I don't see why a smart person such as yourself would defend the reputation of such a country. The future will judge us based on our inaction towards the suffering of the Uighurs and Tibetans.
As is the case for every country. Do you seriously believe that US foreign policy is agnostic about US companies' economic interests?
> foreign influences help elect a leader
Blaming your problems on malign foreign powers is something Trump would do. The US elected Trump. Blaming his election on Russia is ridiculous.
This really sounds like a new Red Scare. The Democrats tried it with Russia after the 2016 election, and the Republicans are trying it with China now. The US has plenty of its own problems. Blaming foreign influence is ridiculous.
> The future will judge us based on our inaction towards the suffering of the Uighurs and Tibetans.
Or on the destructive actions we were manipulated into supporting through atrocity propaganda. Every few years, the US public is told about some new ultimate evil it must face. How many times will this pattern be repeated before people learn? Iraqi society destroyed. Libyan society destroyed. Syrian society destroyed.
It ceases to be reciprocal if you distinguish groups at an only slightly higher resolution: Chinese businesses like TikTok and WeChat and American businesses like Google and Facebook in addition to the Chinese and American governments. The Chinese government demanded that all businesses censor content, but Google and Facebook had most of their users outside China, so they could choose not to comply and still survive. Whereas TikTok and WeChat didn't have that luxury and censor their Chinese users (TikTok by offering Douyin as a separate product and making TikTok unavailable in China, WeChat by censoring messages in conversations with at least one Chinese participant). So far, both Chinese and American businesses were bullied by the Chinese government. Now the US government decided to "reciprocate" and ... decides to bully businesses as well, but only Chinese ones. Great justice.
If TikTok or WeChat have done anything wrong they deserve to be punished for, then sue them, or, if it's not illegal, make a new law that requires them to stop doing whatever it is. That law should then also apply to Google and Facebook, just in case they might be tempted to try the same thing.
But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me. Maybe I'm just biased by living in a parliamentary democracy where the voting system aims for proportional representation.
This is pretty much exactly how reciprocity works in other areas like travel and immigration. We treat their nationals as they treat ours. You can see examples worldwide right now with travel restrictions.
And these Chinese companies benefit from the lack of US-based competition at home. Would WeChat ever have gotten that big without China's restrictions on US companies? It's not arbitrary to counter that benefit with a loss of access to the US.
Congress specifically gives the president the power to counter unfair trade practices by foreign governments. The president executes the laws, he doesn't dictate them.
What? Which part of our immigration system is reciprocal?
It's also a fundamental principle of the EU's visa policy: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...
Now it seems that you can do this all online, so ignoring the monetary component it was not any easier than a Brazilian person in my experience as a USC with many Brazilian friends.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Rec...
China and the US reciprocally offer certain kinds of 10-year visas to each other's citizens.
The Congress has increasingly delegated rulemaking to the Executive through various forms of Authorization Act that empower the Executive to arbitrarily dictate Administrative Law.
I wouldn't exactly rank Congress highly in being the rulemaker here. There's been no great change, upset, or active reaffirmation of the process in years.
>It's not arbitrary to counter that benefit with a loss of access to the US.
Xiaomi and Huawei competes against Samsung and Apple within the Chinese market. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, etc are just some of the big tech companies that enjoy a ton of revenue from China.
>The president executes the laws
The law specifically says he cannot use it to restrict any personal communication to foreign entities. So yeah, he has no right to do this.
Try accessing Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Google, etc...
According to the article he is planning to restrict transactions with the companies, not personal communication.
Those two sentences are mutually contradictory. Who has the power, the President or Congress. If it's the former, then he does dictate them; if the later then they don't give the power to the President. Pick one?
> The Chinese government demanded that all businesses censor content, but...
To distinguish this further:
> The Chinese government demanded that all foreign businesses engage in a significant violation of basic human rights, but...
That distinction materially impacts the rest of the argument for me.
People usually reply here with the false equivalence that the US banning misleading advertisements or child pornography is somehow equivalent to Xi Jinping's campaign against what he calls "historical nihilism" (but the rest of the world calls "history"). I don't really understand how those are the same though.
It's not a "dictatorship", because Congress (elected every 2 years, approximately) sets the laws that the President acts under, and the President himself (so far!) is elected every 4 years.
It's not, though, because the President is neither delegated general arbitrary power in law not ruling with it despite the law. While constraints on executive authority in the law have significantly broken down and one might argue that it is on the road to dictatorship, arbitrary executive action despite the law still faces meaningful checks at least by the courts. There has been significant defiance of court orders without meaningful consequence (e.g., with regard to family separation policy) but the areas where that has occurred are still limited and noticeable, however deeply problematic, exceptions.
-Julius Nyerere
It is. There's a faction in the US that believes the US has to have a dictatorship to compete with China.
We've been here before. The USSR looked like an unstoppable juggernaut until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Like China they started from a state of relative backwardness and rapidly industrialized and modernized. The pace seemed incredible until they ran out of stuff to copy.
Totalitarian systems excel at execution, but they are not creative. A vertically integrated totalitarian state will always beat a liberal democracy at "see that? do a whole lot of that!" type challenges. Totalitarianism fails utterly when the leaders are incompetent or deluded, but when the leadership has at least basic competence they can appear formidable... as long as there is a "that" to "do a lot of." When totalitarianism runs out of clear obvious paths forward, it flounders.
Totalitarian systems find it very hard to innovate because innovation is disobedience. It goes against entrenched bureaucratic and monetary interests and sometimes even laws. The latter is why states with a minimalist doctrine of law (some version of "that which is not explicitly forbidden is permitted") tend to do better at innovation.
For a real world example of above: look at how ISPs which are state backed monopolies use the law to push against competitors be they local or municipal broadband or Starlink. In a totalitarian state, those sorts of entrenched interests almost always win. Once something becomes entrenched in the power structure it is immovable and competing with it becomes effectively illegal.
During the Cold War there were always factions in the USA and Western Europe who argued that we must become more like the USSR. The right pushed for more militarization and executive power, while the left pushed for more central management and central planning. They were really pushing for "right" and "left" variants of the same thing: a vertically integrated totalitarian system like the Soviet state.
The same thing is happening now. I think a major reason many at the top of the financial and intelligence world pushed (sometimes covertly) for Trump is as an answer to Xi Jinpeng. There is always a temptation in any conflict or tension to emulate the adversary. It won't work. The real answer is to encourage and protect our ability to innovate while waiting for China to run out of things to copy.
That being said, I am all for cutting China off from easy access to inside knowledge and training. We shouldn't make it easy for the CCP to copy everything. As such I am not opposed to disengagement. We should move production to places like India, Africa, Indonesia, etc. so as not to readily share industrial and technological expertise.
Edit: I mean no racism here. The Chinese can innovate just fine. China under Xinpeng finds it hard to do anything but copy, because it's a dictatorship.
The thing is that this order is about TikTok which comes from a Chinese company, has a US company currently trying to buy it while another has just released a shameless clone of it to their users. Maybe in this situation it is different because China aren't the ones doing the copying?
Even without consciously intending to become like them, this is what inevitably happens when you focus on a competitor. Racing on beating them at whatever they are good at means you take on whatever aspects make them good at such pursuits. E.g. the space race meant centrally dumping tons into research funding, a system which of course never went away after the race was won because governments mostly only prefer to take power, they rarely give it up.
When did you last visit China? That train has long left the station :-)
Advanced materials research, Aerospace and Chip Fabs are pretty much the only areas where technological areas where I currently see US having a lead
Anyway, the US blew up SS Columbia over Texas.
I'm sure China will manage to copy a Boeing 737 pretty soon, which is 1960s technology. Meanwhile we are doing:
... and who-knows-what at places like Area 51. :)
Last I checked China's most advanced fabs were doing 28nm, but that was in 2019. By now they've probably started to get EUV working as they feverishly race to copy TSMC. I would not be surprised if Chinese fabs are literal exact copies of prior generation TSMC and Intel fabs, since it takes time to steal inside information.
I think it is hardly arguable that China has the most technologically advanced retail market in the world. - Ordering everything online from food to furniture, paying everywhere else by mobile phone, introducing state-sanctioned digital currency [3], and it is closing the gap or even pulling ahead in many other fields as well.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/03/china-land...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53504797
[3] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3096296/c...
Well, good enough is good enough. Boeing 737 is currently the most popular plane, and if China's regime manages to steal enough tech to be able build an equivalent product, even if it steals only 60s technology, then China's regime will be in a position to outcompete Boeing based on metrics that matter such as cost or soft power.
It really doesn't matter who has the cutting-edge after a point of diminishing returns. When that point is reached, good old economics start to become the leading criteria.
Having survived the Soviet Union, I say with full certainty that you could not be more wrong about the execution part.
In 1950s peasants were basically slaves who could not even leave their kolkhoz without party permission. The vast majority of citizens lived in atrocious conditions in communal flats or barracks [1] (a type of temporary housing with no sanitation and basic heating).
[1]: https://ribalych.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/baraki-_552.j... - such buildings can be commonly found in Russia even today.
I'd say it's Americans, moreso than anyone else, who took the wrong lesson from that collapse. History isn't on anyone's 'side' and destiny doesn't exist. We take too much for granted.
He thought that Russia would become prosperous by adopting capitalism. Instead, GDP shrank by 50% and Russia went from a global superpower to being encircled in its own backyard.
The economy didn't work well under either of them, but Kruschev is credited for leaving things much better than he found them.
Gorbachev liked social democracy, but the Communist Party warlords like Putin didn't disappear in the revolution, they hung back and then took over again.
WeChat is vastly more innovative than any of the American social media platforms. China makes and buys more electric vehicles than Europe, the US and Japan combined. DJI almost single-handedly created the civilian drone market. Chinese smartphone brands are regularly first-to-market with new features. The "innovative" Just Walk Out retail concept of Amazon Go is commonplace in China.
There's no doubt that China plays fast-and-loose with intellectual property laws, but the idea that they can't innovate is at least a decade out of date.
To your point "free-er" states can give rise to the lone wolf innovators who force changed by the power of a new, better idea. (and a solid business plan)
Innovative genius is older than free societies.
USA will polarise things until a war with China becomes inevitable forcing those who want to trade freely with both parties to pick a side.
So you are saying Chinese hate rest of the world so much that they have to block them from their internet?
I am ok with cutting of people who hate me. Does that make sense?
This is a spurious comparison. Every time someone accuses someone else of racism in this thread, there should be the same answer: The US (after a looong while!) is doing to Chinese companies the same China does to US companies. To ensure the benefits of globalization are not concentrated by China's protectionist policies
No, if there's some other reason you could explain it. But my working hypothesis is that you hate Chinese people for some reason: perhaps through media conditioning against anything labelled communist.
Their reason, in theory is they hate Western Capitalism. So an alternate hypothesis is that you want the oligarchic rule that Western Capitalism is heading full-throttle towards?
This is a spurious comparison. Every time someone accuses someone else of racism in this thread, there should be the same answer: The US (after a looong while!) is doing to Chinese companies the same China does to US companies. To ensure the benefits of globalization are not concentrated by China's protectionist policies
To every country which is actually in China's proximity, what China has been doing has been nothing short of imperial - in the bad sense of the word.
The "China tribe", if you look a little closely, consists of two types of people - those who are so far away that their notion of China is mostly in the abstract - in the same way I might (not at all) be alarmed if Somalia and Kenya had a war, say. The second group is the "satellite" which depends on China to counter a common enemy - a good example being Pakistan which needs China to counterbalance India's power in the region. Interestingly, but only anecdotally, I have never once heard anyone from Pakistan criticize China's treatment of Uighur Muslims, even though the world is finally catching on that something really fishy is going on. I mention this because the same folks are often seen loudly complaining about the treatment of Muslims in pretty much every other part of the world.
Its just capitalism.
Patagonia made a big fuss about facebook ads but their official policy is to no mix business with politics only when it comes to china.
Patagonia was widely celebrated( including here on HN) for their facebook ad stunt. Really pathetic hypocrites live here in USA unfortunately.
https://www.patagonia.com/static/on/demandware.static/-/Libr...
> Far more of our products are made by those Chinese suppliers than they are by the U.S factories because of their expertise and price
> We’ve made the choice not to disengage from countries on the basis of their policies.
So no - this is not it at all.
Reciprocity is a much more appropriate term.
Trade is a big deal, trade deals are big deals.
'Free Trade' deals usually imply reciprocity on all fronts, otherwise, it's a lop-sided situation.
Nation A selling services into nation B, but B not allowed to sell such services back is usually an untenable situation.
If this were any other sector this 'tit for tat' would have happened a long time ago.
It seems a little outlandish because these app bans affect our lives directly, instead of say a 'steel tariff of 50%' which we don't materially witness.
And of course, despite the legitimacy or not of this ... this is a least 50% 'Donald Trump Campaigning'.
The 'censorship' and or 'TikTok' having done something wrong are side issues.
Purely on a trade basis, this is fair.
Now enter the security issue, which is very real: China wants to control everyone's lives down to every passing thought. They observe, control, censor every single conversation in China. They have the means and wherewithal to do it around the world. Large Chinese companies are 'state organs' and the notion that TikTok data would be used for all sorts of advantage is legit. Google and FB can be used as tools of the US, but this is not remotely the same comparison.
It's a new world order, and this action only seems unreasonable because of the person doing it, and the shocking terms.
I expect a little bit more of this to happen, not less.
The national security trope really only affects the government. The global pandemic has had a far greater effect on the economy and has caused far more deaths than any national security incident or terrorist attack.
This is like saying "don't bother locking your door, you're much more likely to get mugged outside your house than robbed inside it."
B being more likely than A does not form an argument against protecting yourself from A.
The opposite - it affects everyone.
China is using their networks to steal anything they can get their hands on, influence and bully politicians, students, expats, companies, administrators, researchers.
They are surveilling and collecting information on anyone and everyone for the purposes of pursuing their strategic objectives.
For example - if you have ever spoken out against treatment of Uighurs - you may never be able to enter China. You may get various accounts banned. You may get your peers in trouble (ie WeChat requires someone to 'vouch' for you - if someone vouches for you, and you do something bad, they could face problems).
Depending on how important you are, they could lobby to have your research defunded, slander you in the press, use political leverage. You may never get a chance to work at a Chinese-owned firm.
If you have IP they will nab it, or use leverage information against you should you wish to export into China.
If they can influence your elections, or buy your politicians - they will. See: Belt and Road corruption. [1]
If you know or interact with anyone in HK, and they can use that information in any way to leverage against and compromise the democracy movement, they absolutely will.
Their strategy is bald-faced, it's right out there for everyone to see, there's nothing hidden. The only surprising issue is that there are so many Westerners who weirdly want to believe China is playing the 'modern global citizen' game - when they are obviously playing hardball realpolitik. It's fine if they want to do that, but we have to adjust accordingly.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/15/the-belt-and-road-initi...
Extremely naive view. China is a totalitarian state that can compel its companies to hand over all private data if asked. In your rosy "presumption of innocence" scenario, by the time they're proven guilty it's too late.
This is preemptive measure that is a prelude to greater 'decoupling' from China. If a hot war breaks out, you don't want the country dubbed the number one strategic threat having access to 25% of citizens phones.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/national-security-letters [2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/14/oz_encryption_backdoo...
This is literally the opposite of what is true in a democracy. Of the people, by the people and for the people. You can be cynical as hell, sure, but that will require significantly more justification and evidence to make such an incredibly broad assertion.
To give a clear example: why does the US get data from Apple, Google? To catch criminals. Why does CCP do the same?
I honestly don't see how this rhetoric is coherent or persuasive
Isn't it more like someone from the leaders of the tribe did something so we are holding leadership of the tribe responsible, given the extent that private companies are really extensions of the government?
>But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt
Plea deals means that most people never have their guilt proven, only that they are strong armed into confessing so that harsher punishment isn't given. This is already the norm in any country that practices plea deals.
Also, if "all companies in China are really extensions of the government", then what do you call this relationship where Trump forces Bytedance to sell Tiktok to Microsoft and give the U.S. government a share of the profit?
Thomas Jefferson wanted to invade Canada because of the Union Jack flag flying over North America.
We are a government based on natural rights. Part of our responsibility is to defend Western Civilization. It's dangerous to say that China bans US companies for merely failing to censor content. It is the US that is defending innate human rights -- we shouldn't diminish them.
We shouldn't even do business with Saudi Arabia nor China at any level. Then we could build a world based on broader principles.
Working with corrupt authoritarian governments and propping them up to create new markets is just a financial strategy of the US business class. It's why the world is so conflicted and unstable. The US supports any foreign power as long as they help the US. That's fundamentally wrong.
This really could be the end of the thread. For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world. The fact it has taken this long to respond with action is stupefying. China would like the benefits of an open internet, but don't want to participate.
The decision is 100% appropriate, but wasn't handled in the best manner.
That statement is a lie. Not a single one of those companies are banned in China, they voluntarily choose to not operate there, mostly due to them not wanting to comply to draconian Chinese laws. In Netflix's case they simply don't want to compete against the local streaming market.
Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD, Cisco, etc are just some of the big techs that's doing very well in China.
It's hard to have a genuine discussion when people are intentionally spreading misinformation.
That's not a wholly accurate characterisation. The internet is regulated in China, in the same way that broadcast media is regulated in the US. You might vehemently disagree with the specifics of Chinese media regulation, but the regulatory principle is the same.
Foreign media companies that choose not to go through the Chinese regulatory system are blocked from operating in China. Google and Facebook have chosen not to operate in China rather than comply with their regulations, but many American media companies have, most prominently the Walt Disney Company.
There is a fundamental difference between having a legible and uniform regulatory system and arbitrarily banning companies based on the whims of the executive. If a Chinese company started beaming satellite TV channels into the US that flagrantly violated FCC rules, we would fully expect the FCC to take strenuous enforcement action. You or I might consider Chinese attitudes to freedom of speech abhorrent, but the regulation of Chinese media is a matter of Chinese sovereignty.
And the freedom of that media is a matter of basic human rights.
Your argument can be summarized as saying it's ok for China to deny fundamental human rights (free speech) to Americans as long as it is simultaneously denying those same rights to Chinese people because it's "a matter of Chinese sovereignty." I don't agree. Fundamental human rights are just that, fundamental.
Looking at Australia, allowing foreign companies (Newscorp) free reign over the press can have incredibly negative consequences.
> Article 19.
> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The Chinese government sets their (extremely authoritarian) rules on censorship for companies to legally operate in China but the rules apply to everyone equally.
Chinese companies of course have to comply, but foreign companies have the choice to comply or not. Google chose to comply initially but decided to pull out later on. Microsoft/Apple choose to comply and are still operating in significant ways in China.
In contrast, US is proposing to ban TikTok, Huawei, DJI without clear rules: the reason to ban these companies is that they are Chinese companies. In other words, Chinese companies are "born a crime" to the US in the current climate, without the need to show what rules are violated or evidence of wrongdoing.
China also doesn't have the monopolistic power in tech that the US does: forbidding Google to operate in China it's not the same as forcing app stores to de-list certain apps globally.
It's even more absurd to force ByteDance to sell their US business to a US company. If the US feels justified that this could be done on "national security" ground, why shouldn't EU do the same to US tech companies?
I do hope that US citizens see that for much of the world, US is no longer the champion of free market, promoter of free-speech or guardian of world-order. All that matters is if these values benefit US economically or politically.
The US lost it when Japan was economically sanctioned for its competitive auto/electronic sector in 1980s. China is taking the same heat today and India would be the next target if India were to want to play its role on the international stage. The best outcome for the world would be to have multiple strong economies globally that keep each other in check; rather than one country having monopolistic power over all globally significant online forums.
Censorship requirements are the least restrictive Chinese law.
Look at industries where foreign companies are outright restricted (must form non controlling joint venture with local partner) or prohibited from operating in: http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/article/policyrelease/aaa/20120...
See: "Catalogue of Restricted Foreign Investment Industries" and "Catalogue of Prohibited Foreign Investment Industries"
Am I looking at the wrong part?
X. Art, Sports and Entertainment Industries
1. News agencies 2. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing, and importing of books, newspaper and periodical 3. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing and importing of audio and visual products and electronic publications 4. Radio stations, TV stations, radio and TV transmission networks at various levels (transmission stations, relaying stations, radio and TV satellites, satellite up-linking stations, satellite receiving stations, microwave stations, monitoring stations, cable broadcasting and TV transmission networks) 5. Companies of publishing and playing of broadcast and TV programs 6. Companies of films making, issuing, business 7. News website, network audiovisual service, on line service location, internet art management 8. Construction and management of golf course 9. Gambling industry (including gambling turf) 10. Eroticism
Nice to know the Chinese Communist Golf Course lobby is alive and effective though! :)
There's a Marxist concept called "commanding heights of the economy" which refers to things like public utilities and transportation.
Theoretically a socialist government can retain control of this limited set of industries while letting foreign capital develop the others, so that the capital can't totally control the government.
If the US were prepared to backtrack on its reputation as the leader of free market then the US could instate equivalent laws in the US: "telecom equipment must be domestically manufactured by local businesses or by companies jointly owned by American citizens" would be a generically enforceable law, that's equivalent to what you cited. Huawai would have no option other than to comply and exit the US market or find local partners.
The problem is that's not what the US is proposing to do; rather the US is making unsubstantiated claims that ALL Chinese companies are born a crime and should not operate in the US in any meaningful way.
Yeah because the Chinese government hacked them. Do they hack Chinese companies equally?
And look how Apple was treated. In 2015 their iBooks and iTunes Movies stores were first approved, but then six months later suddenly banned without warning or explanation. Why should China be surprised if the US reciprocates?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
The problem isn't that their Chinese. It's that they have implicit and explicit support from the Chinese government that give them a leg up on non-Chinese companies.
The problem isn't the ethnicity or country per se, it's the state-partnership and monopoly system (intertwining them with a totalitarian regime persecuting a million Uighurs in realtime).
The founder of ByteDance has on multiple accounts critised the Chinese government: this is not an easy thing to do in China but blaming Chinese government's behaviors on a privately owned tech startup is a bit over the top.
The other does not, and the atrocities (arguably incomparable) are in the past tense.
Iraq was terrible, but it is not the ongoing forced sterilisation and enslavement of Uighurs.
Just like I wouldn't blame US's actions in the middle east on Amazon/Google; I don't see why it's fair to associate ByteDance with what's happening to Uighurs.
There are many things going wrong in the world, the question is if we are on the right path towards solving them. I would argue the current escalation is not helping but rather stir up tribalism which is not going to be our solution.
More like Google is selling ads outside China for Chinese companies.
Google Ads market share in China is really small.
Land of the Free didn't mean the British could move in and run things.
It's not about British running things (as in other people's lives). It's about British people having rights to run their own lives.
I guess the "only for those people living within the bounds of USA." was inadvertently missed off the end there? /s
I think the 14th amendment to the Constitution strictly speaking says that "any person" (contrasted to Citizens) under the auspices of the USA should get equal treatment in law too.
>No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive _any person_ of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. //
Maybe this doesn't apply with federal laws (if so, what does restrain them??).
It is not complicated. If another country engages in negative trade actions to us, it seems reasonable to do similar trade sanctions against them, so that we are treating them similarly to how they are treating us.
This is the basis of most international trade agreements and relations.
If a country puts a tariff on you, then it is almost certain that a tariff will be put on them as well.
If you don't respond, then you are letting people take advantage of you, and it encourages them to continue to do it in the future.
This is basic trade relations, and game theory 101. This is simple stuff. This is how international relations works on numerous different fronts.
It is simple accepted, basic, and uncontroversial, that, in international relations, when a country does a bad thing to you, then there is often a response to that bad thing, and you don't just let them get away with it.
This is uncontroversial to anyone who knows anything about international relations.
To give a related, similar, but not exactly the same example, in order to demonstrate this idea of reciprocal trade relations:
If country A puts a tariff on country B, then it is almost guaranteed that Country B will put the same exact tariff on country A.
This example is used to demonstrate the principle of trade related relations.
This is how trade relations have worked for a very long time.
And actions regarding international, hundred billion dollar companies, are going to be related to this idea of trade and reciprocal trade relations.
Tariff may not have been a perfectly analogous choice, but prohibition can also be seen economically as an infinite tariff. China has put bans (infinite tariffs) on a great many US and other foreign companies' services and this is some, comparatively small, reciprocation.
You'll find even most intellectual types don't have a first clue about how the global chess board works. Or, if they have some inkling, they're too busy entertaining some idealism to be in the stage of acceptance.
You shouldn't punish someone because they have done something bad, you should rehabilitate them. But you should do something.
Doing nothing might be worse than doing the worst of the previously mentioned options.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
And if that standard just happens to be impossible for any Chinese company to meet ...
Chinese companies go to the effort of creating separate apps to comply with the laws and cultures of other countries. Why can't American companies do the same and obey Chinese law? Yet again, "American Exceptionalism" strikes again.
Also see LinkedIn and Bing, which disproves the idea that it's all some plot masterminded by Beijing to only allow Chinese companies to succeed.
Saying the US should just press forward with free trade is like saying it is X company's fault for failing when the entire reason they fail is because Y company is behaving anti-competitively, and that behavior is not being curbed by a higher power.
Except in this case there is no higher power to slap China on the wrist. So the only recourse the US (and honestly the rest of the world has) is to be protectionist right back until China realize that everyone wins if we all cooperate, nobody does if we don't.
This is classic prisoner's dilemma, except where the US has been letting China keep pressing "tattle" while the US keeps pressing "keep mum". It had to end at some point.
The current administration has had numerous unproductive scuffles with allies and trading partners to renegotiate trade agreements, after running a presidential campaign on a protectionist platform, promising to return manufacturing jobs to the US.
After these negotiations were largely unsuccessful, close to the next presidential election, the administration abruptly locks in on one of the only globally successful social media companies that isn't US-controlled and insists that it must be purchased by a US-based company in order to continue operations in the US, without even attempting to resolve the issue through regulation. Due to the size of the US market, the company is bound to give in.
Of course, I'm deliberately telling the story in a biased way, but (as someone not from the US) I do feel that the US has been steadily on the way down as a credible defender of the principles of free trade. And this is just one more incident to add to the pile.
China was pretty poor country when it opened up. When it opened, all the western companies that agreed to their terms weren't doing it just to help out but they wanted a piece of that huge marked to get rich.
China managed to get a better deal than a lot of other countries who were basically plundered. Saying China is "reaping all the benefits" is just absurd. Western countries made countless of billions in China.
All this time, I was taught that it is a positive-sum, virtuous system that improves everything it touches - and that military interventions that enforced it were purely altruistic humanitarian acts, that were done for the targeted countries' own good.
Which is it? Is it a fragile house of cards that we have spread in self-serving ways? Or is it actually a robust positive-sum ideal that we should aspire to? (And therefore, we should ignore defectors, as they only hurt themselves.)
This then leads to a "tragedy of the commons" situation, which is a fairly well-established idea.
It sounds like a failed system, then - can we move over to some other economic model, that does not require coercion or a constant threat of war to function?
Unilateral coercion is not the basis for a free society, or free relationships between societies. It is utterly incompatible with sovereignty and democracy, and the ability of countries to decide their own internal policies.
As to your addendum, I am unaware of an economic model that intrinsically solves such problems of peaceful coordination between nation states.
Insight: How U.S. spying cost Boeing multibillion-dollar jet contract https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-brazil-insight-idU...
Skype is available in a China.
For example when Google worked in China they were ripped apart for doing that, and so decided not to.
Most of these companies could work in China if they followed Chinese rules. They decided not to, so they don't.
The Chinese government installed new monitoring and censorship laws. Google didn't want to comply, so they got out.
In both cases, those companies either voluntary got out, or got kicked, based on clear conditions. You can of course discuss whether those laws and conditions are ethical, but that is besides the point. In case of the current US bans, there are no conditions. Chinese companies get kicked and there is nothing they can comply to.
Furthermore,the US govt is actively "encouraging" other countries to ban Chinese companies too. Recently they said Brazil would face "consequences" if they do not. Did China ever tell other countries to ban Facebook?
And the US govt said that if Tiktok sells, they must pay a chunk of money to the govt, which is... Unusual. China didn't do anything like this.
Never let the facts get in a way of good story
We also can’t dismiss the nature of a law. A law may be sufficiently heinous that it loses its validity, which I think many Chinese laws qualify as they are so broad they are as some CCP members have stated, being like the sword of Damocles with the specific intent to terrorize and allow the government flexibility to do what it wants under the image of ‘rule of law’ which it obviously isn’t.
Mass protests in China do happen. When people really are dissatisfied, they do speak up, and it does happen that the government listens. For example in 2019 there were mass protests in Guangdong about building a cemetery. People mass protested, some even vandalized and got arrested. But in the end, the peaceful protesters didn't get in trouble, and the government gave people what they wanted. https://mothership.sg/2019/12/news-china-protests-wenlou-hua...
The situation in China isn't as black & white, or as dystopian, as what many believe, even though there's still plenty of room for improvement.
Do you have a point?
Yeah, Google didn't play by Chinese rules, as if they could. If this is not banning, I don't know what is.
Besides, the US government did play by the rule of the US regulation. For one, did ByteDance seek clearance from CFIUS when purchasing music.ly?
"And if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you".
It's an interesting turn of events, and I'm at least curious to see how this turns out. This is definitely not the start of WW3, as some have proclaimed, just US doing the same trick as China has been doing. Tensions were a lot higher during the Cold War.
India has clamped down banning, and other nations and politicians - perhaps under pressure of their citizens, are waking up, becoming aware - or at least enough that politicians can then more safely take action without succumbing to propaganda coming from CCP and other bad actors who are consistently trying to undermine democracies.
In any case, I think that the result of this is more that TikTok will sell at an even cheaper price, since it's coming from a position of weakness, not strength. And for WeChat -- who in the west actually uses it? The impact there I believe is a slight dip in Tencent Holdings' stock price, which will quickly bounce back.
Yes, which is bad for China, because it robs the Chinese people of choice. As Milton Friedman said when speaking on tariffs, "why do to yourself what you do to an enemy at war?"
China engages in censorship and limits the freedom of their people, so we're going to do the same to stick it to them? Excuse me if I don't see the logic
George Washington, for instance, signed the Hamilton tariff of 1789 to help develop infant industries which England was preventing from getting off the ground with tarriff-less trade.
Milton Friedman's proscriptions made sense for America at the time he made them. America was in the dominant industrial position England was in in 1789, it wanted every other country to tear down THEIR tariffs too, just as England wanted America to tear down theirs. Better if everybody buys American rather than home growing industry, right?
Now that America's industrial might is waning MiltonFriedman's influence is becoming weaker and his ideas look more and more dated.
Over the long term Friedman has been proven right over and over again. Protectionism doesn't work, and the US doesn't need to piss their pants because there's one app encroaching on their market.
Giving a government with already authoritarian tendencies in the US power over means of communication is completely ridiculous. This is the same tactic the US attempted to use in the 80s/90s to stop competition from Japanese carmakers and it ruined the American car industry for a solid 20 years.
American entrepreneurs can deal with competition from China, regardless of what China does in their domestic market, there's no need to engage in the same tactics as China.
The exact same discussion btw also happened in the 60s when Samuelson predicted that the Soviet Union would overtake the US economically. Literally every generation some other autocratic country temporarily scares the crap out of Americans, then they fail, and yet nobody appears to learn anything from it.
By what? There's literally a hundred other examples like George Washington's I could point to all the way from China's meteoric rise to the Asian tigers where comparative advantage was developed with judicious application of tariffs. They all disprove Milton Friedman's hypothesis.
This isn't about TikTok. TikTok is small fry. Nonetheless, it's part and parcel (along with the Huawei bullshit) of America's dawning realization that China has not only reached technological parity on most fronts, but it is leapfrogging America. You don't roll out the tariffs when you're top dog, you patronizingly tell every other country that it isn't in their interests instead. That's what Milton Friedman did.
Further Trump didn't just say they had to be sold, but instead they have to be sold specifically to a US buyer. That is...incredible. He is effectively engaged in technology piracy. Then again he just announced new tariffs on Canadian aluminum -- leaving Russian and Chinese aluminum untouched, and just after the ratification of the revised NAFTA -- under the guise of "national security", so it's into serious parody territory now.
The US is currently a corrupt banana republic.
Regardless, China has an enormous number of US targets they can and likely will retaliate against. And when they do, be sure to thank Trump.
And when the other guy takes out our spleen, we should take out his too?
And his muscles?
His brain?
And heart?
Until we are both nothing but dust.
Yes, let's reciprocate. Let us take until we are shit in the wind.
If you really think Trumps rhetorics will end with only messaging apps, you are short sighted and have short term historical memory
Tibet, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan, India, the millions of people suffering from severe drought as a result of Chinese Mekong River dams (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam), the South China Sea conflicts, the Wuhan Virus, etc.
In an ideal world, the rest of the world would join Trump in isolating China through bans and tariffs.
Let's say China is the world biggest problem. The last few years Trump worked on destroying ties with US biggest allies thus weakening the coalition against China. Succumbing to his bully rhetoric while ignoring the amount of damage he did is dangerous.
The US probably has caused a lot more death in foreign countries than China.
I wrote this comment I'm pasting below (as to not waste it) because I could no longer post it as person deleted their comment, they seemed to have difficulty understanding that US behaviour wasn't akin to the CCP's behaviour:
Perhaps lesser of two evils argument is easier to grasp? There don't seem to be any reports of genocide being conducted against any populations in the US vs. the CCP with their concentration camps for million+ Uighurs - which the United Nations has accused the CCP of genocide at. There is freedom of speech in the US as well, and no mass censorship systems - so we can be more sure that this news would surface if it was happening - whereas because the CCP does have mass control-censorship systems, what comes out of it is more rare; "China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment" - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53650246
I am aware of Trump administration treating immigrants and people crossing the border badly, separating children from their families, etc. This would be an apples to orange comparison however, as the CCP is a longstanding tyrannical hierarchy, and Trump is a symptom of bad actors attempting to loot America for decades - leading to regulatory capture, a two party political system with spoiled politicians on both sides, etc. Trump's the wakeup call, amplified by the dangers of the pandemic not being handled well due to a wholly incompetent admin.
There is clearly a benefit to CCP having access to a global social network, let alone from the potential monetary value it has, it's also a source of potentially manipulating billions of people - or spying, limiting reach of those anti-CCP, and potentially at some point actually targeting those people online or even in person. This strategy is the Maoism and Nazi playbooks amplified and facilitated by current technology. They've also been making massive investments in developing countries in attempts to make economic footholds and have influence there; if someone can't see that they're attempting to spoil the bunch while maintaining lead control then they're blind or naive.
Fortunately India's leadership sees the danger and took steps to ban the apps. At minimum it's economic punishment for bad behaviour that isn't considered acceptable, it's notice that we're no longer going to allow them to participate in our economies nor benefit from them if they maintain this level of bad behaviour. We do have an addiction problem to low cost produced Chinese goods, primarily independent companies who moved operations there to compete at lower prices - thus forcing other companies to move operations there in order to compete, the solution being creating an artificial barrier to entry via import taxes so it's not cheaper; because there are external costs that haven't been being accounted for, in part that of giving economic power to a tyrannical organization like the CCP.
Not to mention, the ecological and humanitarian devastation that the US and its close allies have been causing around the world is probably even worse than China's horrible acts with the Uyghurs and Tibetans and in other places it is trying to dominate.
There is one of me: Life.
And I am sick and tired of this self-mutilation.
It's not an unfair question, though. But it dismisses the fact that humans usually find stopping points; that their decisions don't boil down to a series of if-then statements. We have warred for millennia, and yet we haven't totally obliterated ourselves.
Blocking access, along with blocking economic benefit, isn't akin to physical harm or violence - it's the economic pressure strategy in an attempt to avoid and sway a bad actor towards better behaviour.
Your "eye for an eye" argument is also arguably shallow fear mongering towards taking appropriate, reasonable, non-violent steps.
Of course this is tiny compared to the much more extreme human rights violations we see in China, the US, and elsewhere. But we should uphold rights and rule of law in all cases.
There are certain concerns around a particular corporate entity and a particular government directly associated with that entity, that has a track record of economic espionage, IP infringement, and denying US companies access to its country's market on competitive terms (the conditions that the US has been guaranteeing to almost every foreign business, until recently). And due to the found evidence of spying activity, and in the light of concerns about national security, the entity is denied access to the US market, as the entity seems to be an unfair player.
As for the human rights, if you are associated with CCP and are in support of it, from the moral standpoint there's no ground for treating you according to the Declaration of Independence, and not according to the Marxist norms declared in the CCP Constitution.
The US has killed thousands of civilians in its countless wars in the last decades. Just think of all the stuff that happened after 9/11 with Guantanamo Bay.
Yes, US citizens have much more right than Chinese citizens but when it comes to the rest of the world, the US so far has a worse track record than China.
> Just think of all the stuff that happened after 9/11 with Guantanamo Bay.
Name the people out there, and then we try to discern if they are terrorists or civilians.
I'm sure you haven't been under authoritarian regime once in your life, have you? I suggest you try living in Iran or Palestine for a while and then, with your first hand experience at hand, we can discuss who kills civilians by thousands.
If you haven't noticed, native Hongkongese have been begging the US to intervene recently. They know exactly how it feels when an authoritarian regime takes freedoms away from you.
I'm not sure if "you" is referring to me specifically or to people in general. I definitely am not associated with CCP and I definitely don't support it. But there is a moral ground for treating CCP supporters according to the Declaration of Independence. It says "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". It doesn't say "all men who agree with my politics are created equal, [...]".
We should hold ourselves to our own standard. We shouldn't hold ourselves to our opponent's standard.
check your premises, because the principle here should be the same as one behind the morality of an action of self-defense, when a physical force is applied on those who initiated a physical force in the first place. If the morality of CCP contradics the one that laid foundation for the Declaration of Independence, and if proponents of the former are actively seeking to destroy the freedoms that the Declaration proclaims unalienable, their actions put them outside these freedoms automatically, and retaliation is the moral action that seeks to stop the destroyers.
And you're right: This is tiny. It's tiny enough that such a big question like, "Shouldn't the right to pursue happiness prevail?" should appear unfit to ask in its context.
I'd like to ask what rights and rule of law were upheld by even permitting Chinese products in the US economy, given allowing Chinese products is in effect financing the violation of rights on the other side of the planet?
If there's a rule that Chinese apps can't be used in the US, that rule should be put into law, not enforced via arbitrary executive orders. If there's a rule that companies must store their user data onshore, that rule should be put into law, not enforced via arbitrary executive orders.
>"Shouldn't the right to pursue happiness prevail?" should appear unfit to ask in its context.
It's about precedent. Just like the FBI tried to set precedent on phone decryption on an "obviously good" case against terrorists. Once the legal overreach happens once, it will keep happening. Rights need to be protected from the very beginning.
>I'd like to ask what rights and rule of law were upheld by even permitting Chinese products in the US economy, given allowing Chinese products is in effect financing the violation of rights on the other side of the planet?
It's the rule of law of what happens in the US. If the US creates a law imposing harsh tariffs on countries that abuse human rights, then enforces that law, that's rule of law (in the US). As-is we have somewhat free trade. We can only enforce rule of law in our own borders. If we want to really enforce rule of law on other countries we'd have to invade them. We've done it before, but I'm not a fan.
Legal reciprocity is China following US laws, which it does. Functional reciprocity is forcing Chinese companies to enter JV and tech transfer - while providing Chinese companies massive land and tax subsidies. I'm sure TikTok would love that compared to forced sales.
But just to be clear, while I shit on US a lot, there's rational grounds for banning Chinese media companies only because there's such structural asymmetry, i.e. even if twitter was legal, it can't be weaponized to undermine Chinese interests because it must comply to Chinese censorship laws. But this EO is just a dumb way to do it because it opens US interests to much more global blowback. US is pissed at these companies domestically, the international resentment is even greater.
Laws in authoritarian China are the tool for oppression. It is not well written and can be interpreted as how CCP like.
>China was involved in 65 disputes with 9 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 2001 through 2018. China has been the complainant 21 times and the respondent 44 times.
>United States was involved in 279 disputes with 42 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 1995 through 2018. The United States has been the complainant 124 times and the respondent 155 times.
For comparison
>The EU was involved in 190 disputes with 28 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 1995 through 2018. The European Union has been the complainant 104 times and the respondent 86 times.
> Canada was involved in 63 disputes with 11 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 1995 through 2019. Canada has been the complainant 40 times and the respondent 23 times.
Yup, China, a massive trading nation is about as bad as Canada. US, one of the least trade dependent nations is worse than EU (2nd worst offender) a coalition of countries with their own interests, many of whom trades massively. Let that set in.
This is from CSIS that scrapes directly from WTO dispute archives. -https://chinapower.csis.org/china-world-trade-organization-w...
In terms of trade barriers US has more protectionist measures than China. -https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/pub... -https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/08/30/us-compani...
The real issue is, Chinese protectionist policies disproportionately disadvantages western tech, industries that's bread and butter of western supremacy and has huge lobbying voices. That's true everywhere for strategic industries. Canada cries in Bombardier, Boeing laughs. But absolutely threatenning if China is actually competitive in said industries, i.e. all the US anxiety after Made in China 2025 -> Huawei -> IC -> TikTok. Mcdonalds, Coke, Ford... they're doing great as were majority of western companies before tariffs. Regardless, laws are laws, every Chinese company in China learned to comply after growing pains... so FAANG with more resources can't? I mean they didn't want to before because it required a lot of expensive human moderation... which Chinese companies spend resources developing. Guess what, last few years western platforms had to build the same moderation infrastructure to deal with violence China had. That's why Google and Facebook was comfortable reentering the market. If US wants a different set of laws for Chinese companies, go legislate them, like China does. Instead of arbitrary EOs. You know how US claims Chinsese companies are subservient to CCP... except can't find evidence of it. Meanwhile US pulls entities lists on Huawei and EOs according to electioneering, proving that US companies are absolutely subservient to gov. Look hypocrisy is fine, especially if geopolitics involved, but don't try to moralize that you're any better. It looks ridiculous, especially when you're qualitatively and quantitatively worse.
Citation needed. Both are effectively completely blocked in China by the GFW.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-china-focus/face...
UN did not claim this. Adrian Zenz who works for US interests claimed it meets UN definitions to justify XPCC sanctions despite knowing full well this was going on for past 5 years when policy started. Just like how this entire narrative was started by Zenz in a presentation at a US funded panel affiliated with UN, but not UN itself. The only real UN thermometer is US getting 23 countries to support XJ as a human rights issue, and China getting 56 countries to support it as re-education. UN will never rule this as cultural genocide (what it is) let alone genocide (what it isn't).
CCP also raised 1B out of poverty and is responsible for 30% of global growth, so really on balance a few million Uyghurs+Tibetians+HKers+ eventually Taiwan getting their human rights violated isn't convincing arithmetic for billions in the rest of the developing world who relies on Chinese growth, when magnitudes more are being screwed in Middle East for no tangible gain. CCP bad, but also good.
What taking over territory? This is another narrative people claim uncritically. CCP claims (AND DISPUTES) are inherited from ROC who inherited from Qing. China had/has the most land borders in the world, and CCP settled 12/14 with a few extremely minor clashes, and all except Pakistan with MORE land concessions (Pakistan wanted to spite India). Chinese territory SHRUNK under CCP. By any measure this is the most relative peaceful ratification of that many borders in shortest period of time. The two remaining unsettled border is India/Bhutan (aka one border)... you can check India's border settlement history (or lack of) to see whose more belligerent. Maritime disputes? Reduced from ROCs 11-dash to 9-dash. All those SCS land reclamation? Out of 6 countries who dispute the territory China was the 2nd last to reclaim land or weaponize any features - Brunei is good boi. Vietnam has twice as many features. It was doing so in response to other countries prior reclamation (and US pivot to Asia). The only difference is China doing her thing at her scale will be greater, even though she's doing it with 2% GDP to military, lower than most in the region and about how much Trump wants NATO to spend. And she's doing so with greyzone tactics and very little force. The only other country with comparable economic size as China ain't advancing geopolitical interests peacefully. Nor many countries considerably smaller, see France in Africa. Sidebar: Japan has active disputes with Russia, South/North Korea, ROC, China, aka every neighbour. Wonder why they don't get any attention. Objectively, China's territorial disputes has been so far resolved in the most peaceful manner given her scale and numbers of again, inherited disputes. Unless you think CCP should abnegate territory for no reason. So US can contain it better? Giving up inherited land and security is political suicide anywhere. She already gave up >51% of land in most disputed land claims, that's down right magnanimous by historic standards.
As for growth + authoritarianism. No. CCP grew from the same model as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, harsh dictatorship -> industrialization / manufacturing -> liberalization (Manchukuo model for Asian Tigers). Except China has 1.4B people and no US protection umbrella, which all those other countries received, so naturally this will take longer. Though full democracy is pipe dream, at best single party dictatorship like Singapore with some liberal values. In the mean time, unlike other Asian Tigers it has to try to grow with an antagonist US building bases to contain her while selling arms to the others even WHILE they were dictatorships. US stopped arms export to China after Tiananmen massacre. They didn't to South Korea after Gwangju massacre. Or Taiwan during White Terror. Hmmm. The fact is CCP had to work harder and smarter than any of those countries to uplift 400m (greater than population of other Tigers combined) into prosperity and 600m above poverty and there's _still_ another 400m in poverty despite eclipsing those countries in pretty much every industry except integrated circuits. The task is that great. Oh also throw in indigenous (copycat) military, space program, nuclear program etc etc. The only other viable model in the 20th century is authoritarian petro states, that doesn't work for 1.4B.
It's not heartless to recognize this. Like acknowledging XJ is ridiculous COIN reaction comparable 911. But at the end of the day, it's <0.1% of Chinese population so... bluntly it's a relatively small atrocity being exploited by Chinahawks for geopolitical ends. My extended family went through cultural revolution, one-child policy (family planning, aka sterilization) it sucked, wasn't genocide. They all live pretty comfortably now because those times ended. And that's one saving grace about CCP, their somewhat technocratic and goal oriented, if a movement doesn't work, it will end or they'll try something else. Not actual genocide though, because that will look bad in Xi's historiography. Re-reducation movements have end conditions. And that's what they are, per leaked internal memos themselves. Only western propaganda like that you cite + Godwin delusions try to paint it as genocide. This is like if people saw Wikileaks video of "Collateral Murder" where US gunships gun down civlians and conclude US is nuking Middle East. It's smooth brained projection. Regardless, these camps will end. Best case scenario in 10 years XJ will be a secular city with developed infrastructure and the people integrated. Or they'll try something with more stick / carrot, but it won't last forever, because unlike US prison industrial complex, or indigenous camps it's not designed to keep them down. All this is to say, analyzing CCP actions is not endorsement of CCP actions. I recognize CCP uses disproportionate force in some domains, but also overall they simply use very little force since opening up, because that's what all metrics point to normalized for Chinese scale. Again CCP bad, they should strive to be less bad, but in aggregate, mostly good. Some of us who follows the subject for a long time can discuss it with nuance without fake news claims "UN accused it of Genocide when it's US propagandist wants to labelled it as such. Or" China bans western social media". Unless you're fine with another Iraq WMD escalation and the aftermath such entails, facts matter.
The theme of the CCP being flawed but the best the Chinese people can expect b/c insert some state rhetoric here and that without them they'd be at the mercy of the western powers is propaganda. Economic tides have lifted almost every country over the past 50 years because of policies and values put forth by western institutions and worked DESPITE bad governance in some of the world.
Having maintained control of china even after some of the worst public policies of all history (cultural revolution, one-child...) is precisely the reason some are not comfortable with the ccp becoming influential outside chinas boarders.
>Having maintained control of china even after some of the worst public policies of all history
Both US parties were responsible for slavery. But guess what time moves on, the last few CCP administration did a great job, lot's of progress, some regrettable regress. They're different polity, like Trump is different from Lincoln... both republicans. This is such an obvious observation but somehow all of CCP is treated as one contiguous entity and can only replicate the worst outcomes of past possibility space, i.e. frequent two-brain cell exclamations that TianAnMen 2.0 is going to happen with every incident in PRC, because somehow a massacre that happened at a time when PLA didn't have any anti-riot gear, is suppose to occur today. Or Xi's definitely going to be dictator for life, when his term has only ran for 7 years, Merkel is nearing 15. Ignoring that CCP is already grooming 6th gen of leaders (skipped 5th), aka his successor(s) are lined up. But people uneducated in the topic are too eager to eat propaganda and claim nonsense (like UN + Genocide). So here we are.
I'm curious what your take is on the concentration camps, regardless if you don't believe in the reports of genocide, or if you even know much about it - and whether you even believe any or part of it? Here are some links for you to comment on if you want some references:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-muslim-uighurs-birth-con...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53650246
And maybe you'd enjoy this conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXPVe-YHDzo - audio of Eric is out of sync for the first few minutes but eventually corrects.
Morally it's wrong.
Legally it's cultural genocide.
Domestically it's expected extreme over reaction to terrorism and separatism. There was 100+ Uyghur attacks up to 2017, verifiable on global terrorism db. Strike hard campaign to crack down and the camps didn't start until attacks moved to interior provinces, train stations, airplane hijacking, tiananmen car attack.
Practically suppressing 0.1% of the population for national security is not a difficult choice - attacks stopped after XJ system implemented.
Statistically, it's extreme but small scale human rights abuse, but not on par with actual genocide. Xi wants to be the next Mao, but better. He doesn't want 70% good 30% bad. Eradicating 1/55 Chinese minorities would be more than 30% bad. There's nothing comparable to Nazi Germany, people brought up in west too eager to jump to Godwin. These are Canadian residential schools model of cultural genocide, French deradicalization programs indoctorinate with job retraining. Just executed with Chinese modern capabilities (cameras and databases) and at Chinese scale with ultimate goal of integration. Numerically massive abuse inevitable with anything happening at Chinese scale, even if incidental, or if in relative terms it's small per capita.
Politically, Xi didn't even want these camps. Other factions pushed for it. There was debate about reforming Ethic Policy in China since previous policy based that afforded minorities relative autonomy and affirmative action failed to quell terrorism and separatism. It was the salad bowl model / soviet o'blast, aka multiculturalism. New model is based off US melting pot, everyone gets sinicized and equal treatment. I'm not a fan of Xi, but he was cornered into this by politburo the same way US was pushed into post 911 campaigns. Again, he's not all powerful, factionalism and internal politics at play.
Realistically, they're re-education / de-radicalization camps and there's a good chance they'll work. China has history with work camps and mental indoctorination. It's the industrialization and economic reforms that was difficult, because you know westernbloc sanctions during cold war. Mao was the wrong kind of dictator unlike South Korea or Taiwan. The vocational training component is real, the Uyghur slave labour narrative / aka ASPI Uyghur for sale minimizes the part where the lowest wage they could find was equivalent to Foxcon basic wage and 2x prefecture level wage from many backwater XJ regions. It's well compensated forced labor and cultural indoctrination designed to integrate not eliminate.
Geopolitically, it's being weaponized using many unsubstantiated / manufactured claims from US organizations. We're 3+ years into this and the narrative is still driven by Zenz et al. whose estimates from hundreds of thousands ballooned to 3+ million over 1200 camps with no substantiation. Actual methodological analysis from pro US think tank ASPI only found 180 camps so far. All this is well within nation state capability to verify, but still relies on questionable sources because the reality is not sensational enough to sustain a massive human rights campaign. You need some sweet FLG organ harvesting propaganda and ever changing atrocity porn for salaciousness. Per your articles: "Calls grow" aka "U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom" and a few FVEY + US aligned MPs. Uighur Model, comes with boring Zenz territory. Go geolocate his videos and pictures on the phone he somehow managed to get and see if it lines up with existing camps. 101 confirmation stuff, conveniently missing in all these stories. AGAIN, these camps exist, there's most definitely mistreatment. But convenient how the only salacious stories that make it out are US sponsored and have massive gaps, or omits info. Lot's of countries went to XJ, millions of social media posts on Chinese internet, like 20 million ppl live in the region. Chinese censorship isn't that thorough, things get out domestically ALL the time. See initial covid discontentment. Yet XJ camps... nothing? Regardless, China won't stop because again, 0.1% of the population for domestic security is no shit decision. There's is literally no amount of pressure of sanctions that will make China change. Only if the policies doesn't perform as designed. What west needs to worry about is they have no alternative model. Racial unrest everywhere in liberal world, and if China can offer a commercial package for population control within a few years while west only offers incremental improvements over decades, then west already lost. That's why China has 55 supporters, mostly Islamic. It's not debt trap. Islamic countries dealing with the same problems are curious, and frankly they want to remove "human rights" as a viable diplomatic lever.
Personally, the camps should end, though sinicization should continue. Sinicization =/= becoming Han or desecularizing. China wants to cultivate religion, it's a foreign policy goal to have more loyal Muslims for cultural exchange with predominantly Islamic OBOR countries. But sinicized Muslims with Chinese characteristics. The surveillance system should be toned back if not dismantled as with the apartheid on the ground, even though that's unlikely. Chinese companies have profit motive too, even when the trade is freedom. Prison industrial complex and surveillance is profitable. But it's within politburo power to stop. Equal family planning policy is fine. Though it does mean Uyghur population will stay at replacement level. Yeah Han chauvinists love it but ultimately China aiming for <1B population with family planning, less people is sensible for variety of reasons especially with China's resource constraints.
>Things evolve.
They do and they have. Though uneven, mostly for the better. In Kishore Mahbubani words:
>The greatest explosion of personal freedoms that the Chinese people have experienced in the past 4,000 years has taken place in the last 40 years
This is not hyperbole. Recent Harvard study: Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time. July 2020
>We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7...
Or recent democratic survey, more Chinese think democracy is important and they live in democracy compared to many western countries.
Or most Chinese people think they have "freedom of speech", freedom being the ability to say what they want privately, because under Mao's actual authoritarian rule, even private speech overheard and reported meant a ticket to the work camps. Now you get left alone. But do so publicly, get invited to cold tea, get detained and released each time over successive times until permanent shit list. It takes work to become a state recognized dissident. The average Chinese aka 95% of the population that doesn't promote separatism, is absolutely freer now than under Mao. The problem is 5% of China is still 70m people. Regardless, this is not the same playbook. Xi's kind of an idiot, but he's sincere. Wikileak's CIA assessment of him was literally, not too smart, but incorruptible. Lot's of jaded people out there who thinks is anti corruption campaign or poverty alleviation goal is all talk. But c'mon, Xi purged 100,000+ for corruption. No one has that many enemies. And poor people is how Chinese rulers loose mandate. He's serious. Maybe it's time a declining democracies elect serious leaders of their own. Take that for what you will. Bowing out of this post now.
Curious about this. Were the internal discussions leaked? Thought it's hard to tell who the factions even are, and basically impossible to find out what they want.
This is, by all account, a shortsighted move
The US stood for free markets, democracy and human rights and (at least) pretended to make international decisions based on those values. Now the fig leaf is gone and it is clear that those are mostly used to make transactions to US benefit even if it comes at the cost to others.
If you value something like free markets, you stand by it even if it comes at a cost in the near future. If opaque TikTok recommendation engines are a problem, maybe regulate them in a way that solves the problem in general? That would hurt Youtube, Facebook and co. but it also would make the EU more comfortable in the negotiation for the Privacy Shield successor.
A free market doesn’t exist if a country wants to sell their products cheaply in your country completely untaxed, while taxing your goods to the point of being unattainable. Just like a country can’t reasonably say they deserve unrestrained, free access to your social media market while banning every single product from their country.
A free market means companies compete on their own merits without imbalanced restrictions. This is balancing the restrictions.
An anti free market move would be protecting their own companies against all global competition, irrespective of country.
Edit: This comment was being voted positively (+4) until the US folks started to wake up (now sitting at 0) :)
The problem is not even the goal, but the shallowness of the approach. He doesn't appear to be surrounded by people who craft comprehensive strategies that he then understands and ponders deeply before hitting the tweet button.
He had plenty of time to organize a cohesive policy to redefine the relationship with China; this all looks like improvised reaction based on a hunch or worse based on rumors that the Tulsa rally was tanked because of a viral video on tiktok.
I'd be happy to be proven wrong, please give me some stand of hope that we're dealing with a super smart 4d chess player that just behaves like an incoherent senile showbiz person. I might not agree with policies but I'd honestly prefer a competent person to this lunacy.
This whole thing is surreal. We have a chaos-monkey pulling the strings on global economy and order, and we're discussing whether he may or may not have a point on some things. He clearly has a point on something now and then. A random number generator would resonate with parts of the populace even more.
The modern CCP bears zero resemblance to 19th-century Marxist theory.
The U.S. was unique for a long time in that they did not ask for much in return for what they did, because they wanted the power (troop deployments in Europe, Hong Kong customs status, etc.).
Recently, Canada used tit-for-tat to deal with U.S. aluminum tariffs, but they're the "nice" country. This is how it all works.
I tend to think in the trade situation, it's best to play the long game and try and stay open. Once both sides start banning each other, then it's probably never turning around without some significant leverage gain by one of the parties.
Hardly. Reciprocity is common place in all manners of international relations, be it trade, visas/travel, embassy restrictions, and even warfare. The fact that China has been allowed to conduct themselves this way with little to no retaliation is the outlier, not these new actions.
This is how trade relationships work.
If china puts a tariff on us, for corn, or steel, or whatever, then the US is going to put the same exact corn/steel tariff on them.
Reciprocity is a foundational premise of trade relations.
> The US stood for free markets
We have tariffs against many countries for many different reasons... This is nothing new. That is just how trade relations work.
That's not trade, it's politics. Any economist would point out that tariffs hurt Americans by increasing the prices they pay. Yeah, let's teach those Chinese a lesson by making goods more expensive and reducing our standard of living!
Exactly the words you should be addressing to CCP, as the modern mainland China is not involved in fair trade, doesn't respect IP laws, and doesn't treat US companies equally on its territory.
A US company recieves this company, and we get it for cheap.
It's the China government started the trend of banning apps from foreign countries so that their own companies can grow and spread outside China.
I see this ban as a late but fair move.
Governments ban apps at will? Sounds like a Communist Regime move.
A late but fair move to achieve what, exactly?
"If you punch me in the face then, later, I'll punch _you_ in the face".
This type of behavior may be par for the course in USA but how is it good for humanity?
Not saying whether I agree or not, just saying that it is, according to at least some people, a reason in and of itself.
Having to sign up with FB or Google to be able to chat with people there is really no different to me (and it was not always the case in case of Goolgle). At least in case of Google, I can still send e-mails to Google accounts from anywhere.
This business model was allowed to continue in US, and now I can't communicate with Google users as I could in the past via jabber.
That being said, China levies rules on foreign companies that are levied across all companies, and some foreign companies don't want to play by those rules. That's totally different from an outright ban based on "national security." Just think about it, how is Wechat/TikTok supposed to even comply with US demands? It's clearly a political move. Plus, Wechat users in American know they're being watched by the communist party, whereas Facebook users don't even know how much they're being watched by the US government...
There absolutely is a valid reason to be authoritarian towards authoritarians. They get what they preach and deserve. It is the same principle of morality of an action of self-defense, when a physical force is applied on those who initiated a physical force in the first place.
This is a public image question for Western world companies more than anything.
"In a statement, Apple said it had to comply with recently introduced Chinese laws that require cloud services offered to Chinese citizens be operated by Chinese companies and that the data be stored in China. It said that while the company’s values don’t change in different parts of the world, it is subject to each country’s laws."
Also note how the Chinese government effectively set up and runs this company, so the government more or less forced Apple to give their Chinese operations to them.
EU countries don't get to have "national security" that conflicts with the US to more than a trivial extent, like the Airbus/Boeing conflict. That's been a tradeoff that was accepted since the end of WW2. The US now complains about Europe not having strong militaries, having forgotten that for decades it was policy to discourage Europe from having strong militaries in case that started another war.
The US and China only get to play the national security card like this because of a high degree of conventional military and economic power.
Do german people really care about those? (besides the obvious economic benefits in the towns where those troops are stationed due to local spending)
I always thought it benefited the US more than germany (easier access to eastern europe and middle east).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstuhl_Regional_Medical_Cen....
The plan is to relocate them to other bases in Europe (mainly Italy and Belgium) so in the big picture it really doesn't matter.
With China, well, they are already blocking lots of American software companies so this would be more of a proportional response than anything else.
The real question is, why did the West went along with that bad deal at first place and allowed China into the WTO under these conditions. It was extremely short sighted.
China had to carry out massive economic reforms in order to join the WTO, such as the privatization or splitting up of many state-owned enterprises, large reductions in tariffs, opening up of many sectors to foreign investment, the creation of a legal system to protect IP, and much more. Moreover, China joined under unusual terms that allowed other countries to more easily retaliate against China - sort of a probationary status.
Western companies did extremely well in this relationship. Much of the growth in the West over the past few decades is thanks to China's opening-up.
[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/huawei-gchq-security-evaluat...
"The US argues that the pipeline will increase Europe's dependence on Russia, which both Berlin and Moscow dispute. The US proposes selling European's American natural gas shipped across the Atlantic as an alternative."
But a greater dependency on the US is fine of course. The, as a champion of free trade, should be happy about more competition right?
Germany is in bed with the US, especially the secret service.
I don't think after all this we can go back to the old world order.
Nothing. And it would not surprise me if Germany did it or at least put up a lot of barriers to help Volkswagen.
It's not so much against straight out bans, but against Germany lobbying for all sorts of regulations in the EU to limit Tesla's market access.
With Tesla now having a huge factory in Germany, suddenly Germany will lobby in favor of Tesla.
Didn't people understand from the start that this was the primary reason why Musk chose Germany?
https://forums.tesla.com/discussion/171515/not-allowing-tesl...
Politicians tend to be shortsighted (reelection, next term). That's partly why not enough has happened (or will happen, under this political paradigm) when it comes to the environmental issues our habitat is facing.
Some people will probably argue at this point that there is no right to privacy in a public place. I disagree on both moral and pragmatic grounds with such an absolute statement in light of modern technologies and what privacy means (or should mean) now, but more importantly, the culture and laws in some parts of the world disagree too.
Restricting uploads of dash cam footage would be a rational response to that situation.
And even without that, there are other laws that would make it illegal for Tesla to just download cam footage without solid reasons. Hell even GDPR would apply, as it would contain personal information (license plates), and the penalties are severe ("€10 million, or 2% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher").
It's just that as long as the power dynamic is that Trump looks like a stubborn toddler while Merkel is the responsible parent, the US won't be able to do much about Tesla taking a hit. Plus, I'm not sure how much Trump likes Musk... so maybe he's willingly accepting it.
Also, Tesla doesn't have 80 million monthly active users in Germany who are young & impressionable.
The popular opinion on reddit seems to be that this is just trump being told that tiktok users where responsible for his failed tulsa rally, and personally, that explanation seems just as likely as any of the other explanations given here...
[0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/eu-court-again-rules-n...
Broadly speaking, I think we're witnessing the birth of three distinct global powers.
One is centered on the US, and consists (broadly) of Canada, Mexico, the rest of Latin America, the Commonwealth nations, Japan, Korea, Israel, and Taiwan.
An American civil war would destabilize this to a large degree, so we'll have to see if that plays out.
Edit, since people seem confused: This would be an absolute nightmare scenario, but it is in the realm of possibility, and would massively change international political structures.
Another is centered on Germany and France, and controls Europe, parts of Africa, and the Middle East.
Finally, we've got China, which will likely control a big chunk of Africa and Southeast Asia.
Russia is a tough one, but I see them siding with China or Europe.
Contested territory will include Taiwan, bits of the Middle East, and an escalation of the border disputes with Japan. Likely bits of eastern Europe, plus conflicts on the China/India border...
What a time to be alive.
Edit: Just because somebody says that something is a possibility doesn't mean that they want that thing to happen.
Me coming down with a case of COVID is a possibility. In fact, I'm operating under the assumption that I will be infected at some point, regardless of precautions (masks, hand-washing, stepping back from my competitive doorknob-licking career, etc.)
That doesn't mean I want a case of Horribly Shitty Virus With Not-Yet Well-Documented Complications.
I'm just prepared for the worst (as best as I can), and hoping for the best (because why not?)
In such a scenario, Humpty Dumpty is not being put back together again. The US would most likely break apart, assuming some foreign power doesn't manage to conquer all of its former territory.
I would go as far as to say we're in a cold one right now.
I would not have imagined this possible four years ago, but now, given the level of division... yeah, it appears to be on the table.
That's cause for fairly grave concern, by the way.
Imagine that the election goes into a toss-up. Which it likely will. Both parties have been laying the groundwork to contest the election, between claims of "voter suppression" and "voter fraud".
I don't think either team would accept anything other than an absolute landslide victory from the other side. And even then, maybe not.
I could see the Western seaboard (plus Hawaii) seceding in the case of a Trump victory. In the case of a Biden victory, I'd expect years of domestic insurgency, which I'd still call a "civil war".
Either way, I don't see any way out for the US right now that isn't outright ugly.
I very, very much hope I'm wrong, of course, and that things calm down after November (regardless of who wins).
(I don't think all the stuff above is very likely, because I think the Trump hold on power is a lot shallower than most, but I do think there's going to be polling station violence in some places, continuing conflict between federal and state law enforcement, and a lot of lawsuits after the election contesting individual vote counts, far more so than Bush vs Gore. Especially over postal ballots.)
May I direct your attention to the Cultural Revolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
The possibility is there.
> The US military is completely unified behind the preservation of the US government.
I agree! But what happens if the question of "Who is the commander-in-chief" becomes unclear?
That is the possibility that's on the table. If there's an absolutely clear victory in the next election and the loser steps down, then we're in way better shape.
Posse Comitatus remains intact, and factional violence is left in the hands of domestic law enforcement (whatever that looks like at the time).
Which is what I'm seriously hoping for.
But if not... once again, I'm amazed to even be considering that possibility, but it's there.
That's splitting hairs.
Mao's Red Guards -- student revolutionaries and young adults -- effected a drastic shift in power, from a more liberal government to Mao (a strong authoritarian), and something on the order of three million people died as a direct consequence.
Moreover, China lost an unbelievable amount of its history, as revolutionaries purged the "Four Olds" (customs, culture, habits, and ideas).
Let me give you an examples of a Lebanese civil war
Second, it's not that US potential adversaries have ever cease attempts to recruit 5th column in the general staff.
A big double digit percentage of civil wars in 20th century were foreign power assisted, if not staged, and triggered by them.
US generals with extreme right political views are ripe for taking for a country that seemed to ace recruiting rightist elements for its cause. You know what country I am talking about.
It's the patchwork of law enforcement who are more willing to cause street-level trouble. We've already seen one protest which involved people bringing guns to a state legislature. What if there was another one, in response to an "abolish the police" candidate winning locally, and the police backed the occupiers over the legitimate state government?
Calexit isn’t supported by even half of the California population. These scenarios are nothing more than fantasies for people who like to discuss war scenarios.
Kitsap
Pearl Harbor
San DiegoBest (with non-generic probability) scenario for secession I can imagine at this point: under a foreign nuclear umbrella, the west coast agrees that (a) in exchange for retaining responsibility for the federal debt, the US gets all the nukes, and (b) Ecotopia gives the US a long term lease on the bases mentioned above, à la Subic Bay.
As Hawaii was originally filibustered in to the Union, it might be poetic justice for it to join Ecotopia, but both finances and Pearl Harbor would far more likely leave it subordinated to the haoles in DC.
(Unlike Vancouver with the Trans Mountain Pipeline, Ecotopia doesn't seem connected to the US' crude pipeline network, so that part would be easy. Financially, the west coast would find it easier to balance their budgets if they were independent. I doubt Ecotopia would retain any inland territories, but under capitalism and in the absence of blockades, money gets you through times of no food much better than food gets you through times of no money.
I've discovered the items above en passant, so I haven't bothered running down the rest of the feasibility arguments — but I'm sure someone, or even multiple someones in multiple jurisdictions, has.)
[1] Note that the B-52s have recently been relocated from Guam to somewhere in flyover country without, according to the USAF, affecting their missions. (What mission a 70-year old design could still have is above my pay grade.)
Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs
Only the US wants Germany to buy American gas because $$$
Russia's very much opposed to a more united EU and matters such as a joint energy union. Stuff like Nord Stream is mostly a consequence of it's successful subversion (see Gerhard Schröder) and playing of members interest against eachother (see Bulgaria's pipeline being blocked) which allows it to keep higher pricing and even use it's pricing as a political tool.
Russia will do it's own thing i believe as it has been doing. Allying and inserting itself where possible in the likes of Syria, etc striking deals with Egypt, china, etc wherever it suits it because despite being largely a terrible oligarchy it has managed to steer itself well in the governments self interest under Putin.
These countries are trying to get Facebook to pay a regional tax, not rebelling against sixty years of NATO. I don't understand how you can consider them a distinct global power from the US, and I'm unclear what these non-contested regions you think are part of their base.
For both Orwellian and cultural reasons, I could easily see russia modifying some laws and joining Eurasia.
By far not a precedent. USA has been doing this even with its Western European "allies" for as long as NATO existed.
As for Chinese cos. Forced sales at firesale prices are not unprecedented too: Sany
As long as they contribute to the local economy, provide a service, and operate within the bounds of the law, that should suffice.
Banning them is just worse for everyone.
US have just joined the rank.
There's already various international issues with CCP-affiliated companies, but there must be some ulterior motive to go after TikTok and WeChat with such urgency right now, as opposed to any other time in the last 4-5 years.
* Personally, I think the result of what happens to TikTok, WeChat, or US app stores over Chinese apps doesn't matter in the end. What matters is that demands on Chinese apps to come to a deal with the US by September gives Trump more firepower to work with - if the deal happens, Trump paints himself as a US savior from Chinese meddling; if the deal doesn't happen, Trump blames China entirely as the bully and pushes America to retaliate.
b) Small nations can't feasibly have their own social app networks to any degree of scale.
c) The US is not China. For the most part FB is not a national security risk, whereas the Chinese apps could become that. China uses it's apps to observer and control every aspect of behaviour in China - the wherewithal, mans, intent etc..
d) This is tit for tat: China does not allow foreign social media in it's house.
I'm not so sure I agree with this, but it's not so outlandish.
There are much more obvious national security threats, but this is kindergarten tit for tat politics for ratings. So don't expect any action on those.
Or any understanding of second order consequences for the US. Or a coherent national IT security strategy, which is what the US and EU really need.
It baffles me that people cannot see this very obvious fact. Just proof that his strategy is working.
This (ordering companies such as Apple and Google to sever all business with TikTok and WeChat's owners and by extension removing them from all app stores) is a cannon that only can be fired once and will be so loud that it will fundamentally damage the centralised app store model.
This is similar to the muslim travel ban and will be overturned by some court and the Trump administration probably expect this. But does this anyway for the purpose of political communication.
It can be a real threat to national security[1]:
> Thursday's order alleges that TikTok "automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users," such as location data and browsing and search histories, which "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information -- potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage."
It has nothing to do with other Western nations. It's about protecting your citizens from aggressive foreign states that operate based on completely different values.
I would consider going even further, and banning all Chinese researchers from the top US schools[2]:
> Seventy-one institutions, including many of the most prestigious medical schools in the United States, are now investigating 180 individual cases involving potential theft of intellectual property.
> Almost all of the incidents they uncovered and that are under investigation involve scientists of Chinese descent, including naturalized American citizens, allegedly stealing for China.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/politics/trump-executive-orde...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/health/china-nih-scientis...
They might pose a national security risk to China. And that's why all the US-based social networks are banned in China.
Also, the US intelligence agencies could have just validated these public claims by themselves[1]:
> For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell aren't outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is. It's like comparing a cup of water to the ocean - they just don't compare.
And the US and India are not the only countries with deep concerns here. The investigations into TikTok's data collection practices have also been launched by the governments of Australia, Japan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the EU[2].
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/03/its-not-just...
Show me the Frida or Wireshark logs showing that TikTok collects more than, say Facebook. Link to actual evidence that China uses it to spy on Americans.
> Link to actual evidence that China uses it to spy on Americans.
That's not how national intelligence works, I'm afraid. The actual evidence is often provided only to the decision makers, and not to the general population.
And even if TikTok wasn't doing anything wrong at the moment, the risk assessment might have concluded, that it could technically turn into a national security nightmare overnight.
Or that it is completely impossible that any widely distributed proprietary software developed in China could pose any national security risks?
Was it highly improbable that Saudi crown prince could hack into Bezos's iPhone? Yes, it was. Nevertheless, that's exactly what happened[1].
Now imagine what Chinese government could do with TikTok.
Also, application sandboxing and permissions can mean nothing at all[2]:
> A billion or more Android devices are vulnerable to hacks that can turn them into spying tools by exploiting more than 400 vulnerabilities in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip, researchers reported this week.
> The vulnerabilities can be exploited when a target downloads a video or other content that’s rendered by the chip. Targets can also be attacked by installing malicious apps that require no permissions at all.
> From there, attackers can monitor locations and listen to nearby audio in real time and exfiltrate photos and videos. Exploits also make it possible to render the phone completely unresponsive. Infections can be hidden from the operating system in a way that makes disinfecting difficult.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/technology/jeff-bezos-hac...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/snapd...
not a lot of people are indoctrinated into the world of national security, and because of that they just balk at it
there's a lot going on in the world, and it's not a big happy place where everyone are friends, to put it bluntly
china has other motives, I think a quick google should at least clue one in their corporate espionage activities
This is not normally a word with positive connotations.
Because the US is a free speech country, people can be aware that quite a lot of stuff done in the name of national security, especially since 9/11, is highly questionable. And the current administration has its own national security questions to answer relating to Russia.