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Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by echelon on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @07:57AM (#25657292)
I'm a liberal, but I agree with Trump on this. The world needs to stop China.

China is stealing Western tech to gain an economic and strategic advantage. They're going to out-compete our tech and leave us in the dust. They have far more engineers that are willing to work "996". (Sure, founders might work "996", but our workforce doesn't/can't/won't.)

Playing unfair isn't great, but it's not the most worrying component of this. Our opponent has concentration camps, organ harvesting, no free press, crushes dissidents, disappears billionaires. And this is a regime that wants world domination. This gives me nightmares.

We should be doing everything in our power to disentangle and stop China.

When China has a military that surpasses the US in terms of scale and tech, they're going to start invading and taking more than they already do. They've shut off water to Vietnam, set up shop in the energy/resource-rich South China Sea, etc. They're not going to stop.

Our media is already censored and caters to Chinese tastes. None of our movies are ever critical of China. They're actively manipulating us.

Western democracies aren't primed to fight this. This is such a lopsided fight. We have to start playing hardball.

edit: I'm being censored right now. This is the game we're playing.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by TeMPOraL on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @09:03AM (#25657788)
> China is stealing Western tech to gain an economic and strategic advantage.

Cry me a river.

Western companies went there for cheap labor. They could've rethought this any time in the past 20+ years, when it became apparent Chinese companies aren't willing to follow US IP laws and keep buying the trinkets they (and at this point, only they) know how to make at a markup. Instead, our corporations still outsource manufacturing, and solve their IP issues by telling the people to tell the government to cry foul and do something about a now nuclear-armed nation that decided to grow past being a source of cheap labor.

There are plenty of bad things to say about China as a country/government, but on the IP front, that's just funny. IP laws in the West are a ridiculous racket. For all the companies here talk about innovation, there's sure as hell more of it happening in China than over here.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by AlstZam on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:30AM (#25657531)
> The world needs to stop China.

US (may) needs to stop China. For others countries it's not that clear.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by projektfu on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:42AM (#25657607)
In the West it's commonly believed that working too many hours reduces creativity and productivity in the long run. So that feature of the Chinese economy may be good for Western competition.
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by consumer451 on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @09:03AM (#25657795)
> edit: I'm being censored right now. This is the game we're playing.

You are being downvoted outside the spirit of HN downvotes.

It would be very interesting and cool of dang to investigate the accounts which are conducting this behavior.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by Ialdaboth on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:02AM (#25657339)
Good point.
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by notsureaboutpg on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:07AM (#25657378)
The US has a decades long history of using it's vast military to crush anyone, even people living in literal caves with all the brutality of black sites, torture, murdering of entire villages of civilians, etc.

US don't have the moral superiority to get anyone against China and that's sad and harsh but it's true. No one reading this thinks the US is any better and this is the US fault. When they starve entire countries to death over a 50 year old embassy attack, then who in the world will eagerly listen to them about which countries are good and which are bad?

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by freeone3000 on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @10:59AM (#25658829)
Really? You're going to out-compete? What happened to the free market? What happened to the advantages of capitalism? You're worried about them becoming economically dominant because they work harder? Why does the US deserve to remain dominant then?
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by zthrowaway on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:01AM (#25657332)
Yup this is exactly the point. Everyone can throw around all the whataboutism they want in this discussion (which there will be plenty) but this remains true in the end.

We’re also I’ll equipped right now to fight this, our culture is divided and most of the intellectuals in power are more concerned about seeing everything through the social justice lens. So anything we do against China for our own national safety is being chalked up as racism etc. China sees this and is taking full advantage. I hope Biden takes a strong stance on China domination so at least one end of the political spectrum can be convinced to get on board here.

We can’t just simply out battle evil regimes like we could in the past. Each major power (Russia, China, US) has weaponry that could destroy the world if unleashed against each other. We are at a turning point in world history. So we have to fight this on the economic level, banning apps is part of this strategy.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by sergiotapia on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @01:05PM (#25660370)
US: "It's now latinx!"

China: "Let's edit the genes of babies and make them 47% stronger."

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by MrBuddyCasino on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:10AM (#25657406)
Eventually this will become a battle of systems, and it is not clear that this time, freedom will win. The Chinese system works very well, and in some regards much better than the western model of governance. It feels very much that the western world is in decline - we can no longer coordinate on large-scale projects, or produce beauty. The aqueducts are still standing, but we can't build new ones.
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by echelon on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:15AM (#25657435)
> we can no longer coordinate on large-scale projects, or produce beauty

This is some incredible malarkey.

> The aqueducts are still standing, but we can't build new ones.

SpaceX, Tesla, Moderna, Apple M1, Nvidia, OpenAI, Google Brain, James Webb telescope, the new Perseverance Mars rover ... what the heck are you talking about?

> The Chinese system works very well

Not for Uyghurs or political dissidents. Also, we just voted out the Republicans wholesale (!!) Can you do that in China?

I'd take our system any day of the week over being disappeared for disagreeing with officials.

As much as I dislike the anti-maskers, we have freedom. And that's so much better.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by MrBuddyCasino on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @12:01PM (#25659569)
> SpaceX, Tesla, [...] what the heck are you talking about?

Capitalism works well both in the US and in China. Those are private companies, and I hope you don't try to list NASA projects. Elon wants to bring down the cost of space transportation to 10$ per Kg, a Space Shuttle launch used to cost 1.5B$. My point was about the public sector. Last time I checked, the high-speed railway they were trying to build in California added another billion $ to its budget. Meanwhile, feel free to look how much high-speed rail China has built in the last few years.

> Not for Uyghurs or political dissidents.

Just because a system works very well for the majority of its citizens doesn't mean it works for everyone. You are not refuting the central argument.

> I'd take our system any day of the week over being disappeared for disagreeing with officials.

You seem to have the impression I'd prefer the Chinese system. I don't. That does not mean you can't take a hard look at what they do better.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by trasz on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:51AM (#25659446)
You voted between two parties that are largely the same. Not much different from China, tbh.
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by craftinator on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:30AM (#25657528)
Jesus, this reads like GPT-2 output. In a light skim it looks fine, but then you start actually looking at the structure or the writing and it falls apart.

Your comment is full of (and I mean FULL, nearly every sentence) anti-Chinese assertions with zero factual evidence involved:

> The world needs to stop China.

> China is stealing Western tech to gain an economic and strategic advantage.

> Our opponent has concentration camps...

> And this is a regime that wants world domination.

> Our media is already censored and caters to Chinese tastes.

This is not an argument, it's bullshit. Oh don't get me wrong, some of it is probably true at some level, and Chinese foreign policy is just as acerbic as in the US, but without any evidence given, it's not worth reading.

Which makes it funny that there are a bunch of comments just below where people chime in "spot on!", as if the parent commenter made some EXCELLENT points with his jumbled and disjointed word-vomit.

What's going on here? Did I have a stroke or something? The words are just no longer making sense.

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by echelon on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:31AM (#25657538)
Seriously?

That's your retort?

My grammatical structure?

Okay.

Here's some sources. I mistakenly thought they were common knowledge:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54277430

Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by f6v on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:53AM (#25657710)
I’ve skimmed the articles you’ve linked to. However, I have an honest question: how do I decide whether the linked sources are trustworthy? Ok, there’s a book by a guy who claims to have interviewed Chinese doctors and policemen. But why should I trust him?
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by hungryhobo on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @12:51PM (#25660219)
remember Nayirah? how can i make sure this isn't another case of US falsifying testimony to justify it's own agenda?
Re:Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps by craftinator on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:09AM (#25658940)
> Seriously?

> That's your retort?

> My grammatical structure?

I never mentioned your grammar; you misinterpreted "structure" here. If you read past the first sentence, it's clear I'm referencing your logical structure.

GPT-2 actually produces decent grammar, but not any context-aware logical structure to the text it produces. Just a bunch of disjointed sentences with keywords that all generally lie on the same semantic vector.

More importantly, you are ignoring the entire rest of my argument. Thank you for posting some source links, those make two of your initial assertions more credible. What about the rest?