China does it, so it is okay for us to do it is just a very weak defense of this behaviour for us looking at this from outside of China and the US.

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.

This is how trade has always worked.

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.

US banning Chineese apps is an anti-China move and not an anti-free market move.

An anti free market move would be protecting their own companies against all global competition, irrespective of country.

They are protecting their own companies against all global competition, irrespective of country. It just happens that only China represents a serious threat to US hegemony in this market.

Edit: This comment was being voted positively (+4) until the US folks started to wake up (now sitting at 0) :)

+4 to 0 is not THAT much of a difference to be called out tbh. So not sure if it tells you enough about US folks starting to wake up.

It is both, and in its arbitrary application, it's even worse than a purely anti-free-market move, because it's not even principled. Isolationism and domestic protectionism, if those were the given reasons, would at least be principled.

The principle is that if you are in support of CCP, you get what you preach, and should be treated according to Marxist norms. Free market is for those who respect and support free market and fair competition.

The principle is just whatever Mr. Trump personally sees and understands as being something that hurts him personally or allows him to make a move that projects his personal image of strong man.

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.

By that logic the US should ban transactions related to oil and gas supplies originating from OPEC countries.

The modern CCP bears zero resemblance to 19th-century Marxist theory.

This is how realpolitik works.

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.

It's a challenging situation a lot like freedom of speech and tolerance. The intolerant people who want to remove freedom of speech are given the freedoms to make those arguments.

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.

> China does it, so it is okay for us to do it is just a very weak defense of this behaviour for us looking at this from outside of China and the US.

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.

> China does it, so it is okay for us to do it is just a very weak defense of this behaviour for us looking at this from outside of China and the US.

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.

>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!

I used to be on this train that tariffs are always bad, but when other countries have them I think there is a benefit to the US having them. It allows the US to capture some of the benefits that this other country is taking. Yes everyone is worse off than without tariffs, but the US is slightly better off from the world where only other countries have them. There is also the additional caveat of industries moving to other countries because of cheap export back to the US - there is a benefit to keeping people employed especially when other countries don’t have ethical labor laws. This results in more expensive goods, but prices in externalities like workers not working in sweatshops.

> That's not trade, it's politics

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.

In this situation we would be taking one of their companies though, which benefits Americans.

A US company recieves this company, and we get it for cheap.

Agreed.

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.

> I see this ban as a late but fair move.

Governments ban apps at will? Sounds like a Communist Regime move.

>> I see this ban as a late but fair move.

A late but fair move to achieve what, exactly?

Reduce CCP's influence on the world.

Wouldn't that lead to USA having more influence, in the world? When it comes to such things as surveillance, I'm not sure they're any better. Behind, yes, but not by choice and not by far, either.

Pretty sure that's a goal of the US. Regarding surveillance of own citizens China is on a whole different level at the moment which is crazy considering the US is basically a lost cause in that regard too. Everywhere is if we're to be honest with ourselves.

CCP basically equals China and for most intents and purposes, Chinese people. Limiting their influence is just a way of saying to limit the rise and influence of China and the companies/people there, because there's no way for any Chinese person or company that has vested interests in the market there to escape the accusations and comply with any demands from the West except to completely cease operation of business there. Any person from China, or company from China, can simply be canceled by saying "they are a subject of the communist party."

China is far older than the cancer of the CCP and the Chinese people will cut that cancer out eventually. The CCP have been doing it to everyone else and their own for years. The difference is they go to far greater extremes to cancel everything and everyone who doesn't tow the party line. They deserve what's coming to them.

Regardless of how or why, the CCP has majority support by its citizens, even if you as a foreign national disagree. Even if they do not have democracy, they can still vote with their complacency.

How do we have any way of knowing this when punishment for dissent is so severe?

Nope. You don’t get to use false equivalence to conflate CCP with all Chinese people. You can’t equate adversity towards the Communist Party as an attack on all Chinese people. It’s sad that their government has such authoritarian control that it works that way, but it’s the Chinese people’s problem to solve if their government causes unacceptable consequences for them.

Maybe to show benefits of natural law.

What are the benefits? In this context they are not clear to me.

"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?

May I offer my apologies for saying the USA act violent and dominant. You're not all violent and dominant. I'm sorry. Friends?

I've been asking the same question about Black Lives Matter causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.

“Tit for tat”.

Not saying whether I agree or not, just saying that it is, according to at least some people, a reason in and of itself.

Yeah, show them the power of the free world by checks notes banning all their apps, which is only constitutionally possible because the app stores are controlled by two American companies, and the ban technically works on the companies rather than banning the apps directly, proving the value of a sophisticated Western legal system!!!

You can't show them anything anyway, it's all censored there.

What do two companies have to do with constitutionality?

This is just wishful thinking in the current situation. Don’t expect Chinese government to reverse what it has been doing for years in this political shitshow. Chinese living in US are unfortunately sandwiched in the between and helpless.

I recall that FB, Twitter, and Google were all available in China at one point, but they left because they didn’t want to follow China’s information and data laws.

yeah and fb and google still have ads revenue from China

The problem is lack of use of open protocols, not any single company in particular.

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.

And how does following suit not in fact ratify the business model because now banning on security grounds is legitimate? (Note that nowhere is the justification or condition stated to be one of reciprocal market access.) Isn't it interesting that there are laws on the books and authority vested in a single man to do this already? If this isn't struck down by the courts, then it just shows to the world, not for the first time, that America's vaunted values are a pretty thin veneer, conveniently discarded when it suits.

This is nonsensical. Even if China bans American social media apps for no reason, that's no reason for us to copy their authoritarian, speech-suppressing tactics.

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...

> Even if China bans American social media apps for no reason, that's no reason for us to copy their authoritarian, speech-suppressing tactics.

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.

It's not going to work. It's just going to cut off Chinese in America from talking to their friends and family. Evil.

US companies are not forbidden to operate, they don't want to comply with Chinese surveillance laws... Apple who decided to comply indirectly by letting a Chinese company manage the data, is offering all their services there.

This is a public image question for Western world companies more than anything.

The whole reason Apple let a Chinese company manage their customers' data is because the Chinese government changed the law to forbid them operate those kind of cloud services for Chinese customers themselves, the same reason other companies like Amazon have to let Chinese companies run their version of AWS: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

"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.

I guess, like China, USA is becoming authoritarian state. It is not about reciprocity. USA was considered the beacon of success and role model compared to China. Recent actions by USA justify other countries to do the same against foreign products and services. USA has no leg to stand on when other countries block US products and services. Good luck creating new Apple, Google, and Facebook scale companies.