I think most mainlander Chinese like me would appreciate the vision of the politicians who chose to engage with the Communist Party—-We’re glad we don’t live in a West Korea as a result.

The real problem came when the Beijing model began to free-ride on the openness of the West: internet companies can go West but not East; same with some cultural exchanges, media and information. Trade rules failing to address unique tricks the Leninist party-state is able to pull. Failing to see the risk of the system generating mini-Mao-style dictators. To be fair before Xi we were on a somewhat benign track with regular transitions of power.

The agreement was never a symmetric "free trade" agreement. Everyone knew China wasn't going to be as open to imports as the US was. Chinese consumers, in the late 70s, were so poor that it didn't matter anyway. Mcdonalds and Coke were symbolic outliers, but all the negotiators knew these things.

US negotiators did get what they actually wanted, US "FDI" investments in China protected by western style corporate laws.

Foxcon-Apple stuff is exactly what both parties had in mind. Foxconn (Taiwan is pax americana) invest in building the factory, funded by Western/US banks. Apple own the IP and gain most of the equity. China gets jobs, a trade surplus, and builds foreign currency reserves.

The game has been played for a while, and all parties got a lot of what they wanted. Foxconn really does generate a ton of equity for Apple. China really has built up a ton of foreign currency reserves. Etc.

I'm not saying this is good. China should stop being so surplus oriented and let salaries rise. The US should give some attention to domestic labour, etc.... That's my opinion though. It was not the opinion of negotiators in the 70s and 80s.

Trade agreements don't need to be symmetric to be beneficial for both parties. Even if China didn't buy a single American good, it is beneficial for US to sell to china.

Export is what you pay for import. If China sells goods to US they will get dollars in return. These dollars are worthless except for buying American goods.

Even if China can't buy American goods, they can buy some other country's goods using their newly acquired dollars. Eventually someone somewhere will use those dollars to buy American goods.

Sure, the USD is the world's reserve currency. And, while it's also the currency of the international trade, the US's share of China's import isn't as significant -- in 2019, China imported over $2T, or $2,000B, worth of goods and services globally and, of that, only $163B, came from the US. In fact, the US is not even the biggest import nation, it's South Korea, followed by Japan and Taiwan.

Those dollars aren't necessarily used to purchase American goods but rather to acquire ownership stakes in American assets.

This is one of the best HN comments I've read on the China issue. Finally a fair comment.

Cheers.

This topic actually really depresses me. The whole "crisis" is unnecessary. The US and China can easily, and probably should renegotiate trade terms amicably. It just seems to be politically impossible to say "we got what we wanted then, but now we have different priorities." It doesn't seem possible to actually spell out priorities, or admit that in a negotiation, the other party has priorities too.

Geopolitics, or humans rights issues are a different matter. There are real dangers at play, now that the two countries are equal rivals. China's way of disciplining companies (eg Nike when they made a Xinjiang, or John Cena's little speech) is directly at odds with the US' MO. It's quite zero sum. I don't see how that gets resolved, in a way that doesn't (for example) have the potential knock a whole $trn off Apple's market cap.

> Internet companies can go west but not east.

Also native Chinese here. I do not quite agree with your view on that. Yes, Facebook and Google were censored in China, but were eBay and Amazon blocked in China? Neither of them found a way to do business well in the China market.

I'm totally against censorship, too. But blaming all things on the GFW is unreasonable to me. I think the reason here is that most educated Chinese people CAN speak, or at least read, simple English, while very few western people can speak Chinese. Getting into a market that speaks a language you understand is much easier than getting into a market with different language.

Everything invented in the silicon valley will be shared and discussed in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen in almost no time. There are even Weibo accounts just reposting HN headlines, arxiv papers, etc. Each of these accounts has a huge amount of followers. How many westerns can read Chinese and know what is happening right now in China? China is far behind the western world when it comes to science and technology, but with a 1.4 billion population, I'm sure there are a few great ideas. However, westerners are hard to get them not because of the "closeness" of the east, but for the language barriers.

When I see a technical post on HN, the comments are always meaningful and profound. But the comments in political posts are often too simple, sometimes even naïve. I wish we could think as hard as we do when discuss the newest technologies.

Too simple, sometimes naïve. I see what your did there ;)

I pointed out GFW as one example, and actually agree with you that it’s not the only reason exchanges are so limited.

However, I do notice that examples of failed Western attempts to penetrate China usually stops at Amazon and eBay: after these, popular platforms have been so pro-actively blocked that it’s impossible to know what outcome would be if they were given to chance to freely compete. And the internet turned social, which in nature runs against the Party’s grip on speech.

I personally think the GFW is a good thing, for now, that other developing countries may have an interest in copying. Free flowing mass communication in nations without fully developed public (security) services can be a disaster... the conflicts (and even genocides) that arose from poorer countries adopting FB come to mind.

Also a foreign entity with suspicious partners having direct access to naive citizens around the world should be viewed as an attack vector especially if the locally accepted values don't match those of foreign entity.

You can argue same thing for Korean/Japanese, but they have no GFW.

Could you expand on what you mean by "West Korea"?

Thanks!

A country as bad as North Korea.

Ok that would make sense. Thanks!

I was wondering if there was in some sense a hybrid of North and South envisioned that would be not desirable for Chinese citizens but my limited experience with China kinda makes me feel like it actually is somewhere between the two in some sense.

GP probably meant North Korea.

How common do you think your view on "the real problem" is amongst your peers on the mainland? From my view in HK, it's

a) hard to see many agreeing with your view, and b) also very difficult to form an accurate picture

Agree with you on both. Rare I think. And those who share it are becoming more and more afraid to express them.

> all our western countries

Even Poland of Warsaw pack joined NATO. I wonder if western means the same thing to people.

It has evolved to mean North America and European democracies ?

But we're not. All our western countries have, in the past, committed heinous crimes against out fellow human beings. All those western countries admit to these heinous crimes and teach them to our children today. Where are the schools in China that teach of the CCP's own heinous crimes?

If the Westerners have done it before, surely China can do it now, right? That's like saying Israel can continue its campaign of infanticide and oppression because hey, it happened to them!

In Washington State I was educated from childhood for the next decade in the genocide of our native people. I am well aware of our sins. The Chinese people and the world's are lied to, from Tiananmen to Tibet to Taiwan in a ruthless campaign of disinformation that warps the narrative every moment we draw equivalence to such tawdry narratives as US prisoners for hire equivalent to a genocide as large as half (I'm including the numbers for the estimated half-million Tibetans sent to camps [1]) the number of all Native Americans in the US at their height.

If the CCP wins this global narrative we are condemning these people to their erasure forever in the memory of the world. This is carte blanche for these abuses to continue.

I stand with all human beings, everywhere, as my sisters and brothers. May none of them come to harm.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_camps_in_Tibet

Past? Libya is in shambles 2 million fled a country of 3 million. The richest country of Africa just a few years ago. The secretary of state bragged about the killing of its leader. He was impaled on a spear! Afghanistan is a place where people see other kids killed in the streets. Syria has had most of its old metropols destroyed by people where the US "accidently" dropped their military equipment on. Iraq is still birthing countless mutilated children due to the use of depleted uranium. Lebanon is in freefall. It's but one example of 20 years of constant war with millions of people thrown into misery.

Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are so weak on protecting their own borders, because the US actively sabotaged their domestic defence.

I'm no friend of China and much less the Soviet Union, but if anything, you can see that the reason why North Korea at the beginning of their war basically steamrolled the South was because the Soviets left them with a functional military and the US did not.

Keep in mind that the US didn't work against China receiving nuclear weapons, but actively sabotaged any nuclear development in Taiwan, both locally and at the UN.

China actually started releasing a human rights report on the US a few years back.

I'm not saying China is right. I'm saying that if you want to be taken seriously by the global south you better get your act together. But I actually fear it's too late. One thing Trump did well was drop the curtain on the whole Charade albeit probably not intentionally. Remember when he said they're leaving Syria, but will still occupy the oil fields?

How many troops did the Americans send into Libya during its revolution? And what American units were responsible for killing Gaddafi?

Why does America always get blamed for the Libya when we (and the rest of the world) were just spectators to a country falling apart due to an internal revolution? America supported the revolution, sure, they even provided some air support, but it was by no means much of a military player in it, it didn’t set it into action. China was only pissed off about this because they had lots of deals with Gaddafi at the time, they didn’t care how unstable the regime was (most authoritarian regimes that aren’t China are incredibly unstable) and got burned for it.

The same with Syria. Again, nothing started by the USA or any other country, internal revolution caused by unstable authoritarian regime, which coincidentally made a lot of business deals with China because everyone else was wary of dealing with them. We’ve seen this before, we will see it again. They’ll happen regardless of whether the USA or Russia get involved.

"NATO flew 26,500 sorties since it took charge of the Libya mission on 31 March 2011."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...

"The U.S. dropped an average of 72 bombs every day — the equivalent of three an hour — in 2016, according to an analysis of American strikes around the world."[1]

US, UK and France dropped so many bombs on Lybia they ran out and Germany happily restocked them.[2]

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-bombed-iraq-syria-pak...

[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/86...

Yes, air strikes. A sortie could just be a drone, do you really believe those made the revolution successful?

Are you genuinely trying to argue that air strikes had no impact on the war in Libya?

No, just that they didn’t make them successful. Without the rebels, the revolution would have failed, and even with them, it would have failed if they weren’t numerous enough. I don’t think the air strikes did much more than show some support for them, they were useful and made things easier but not material in its success.

I find this back and forth weird. It seems to me that you are saying that the air strikes did not make the revolution successful because it also needed troops on the ground to be successful.

You are also saying that they were not material in its success. I would argue that the revolutionary ground troops would have suffered more losses if Gaddafi had had air support but the revolution didn't. Nevermind the tanks and such destroyed by NATO via air strikes. Potentially enough to make the revolution fail.

Is that not material?

You should read some more about the Libyan war, because you're significantly misinformed.

The airstrikes were absolutely crucial to the rebels victory, and no one with any idea of how the war progressed would try to claim otherwise.

Before the airstrikes qadaffis forces were overrunning the rebels and were well on their way to benghazi off the back of their armored corps and air superiority, it was the airstrikes that put a stop to that.

We'll never know, but at that number of sorties, you figure we destroyed the regime's air power and mechanized units, aka the edge they have over a popular revolt.

> China actually started releasing a human rights report on the US a few years back.

This is exactly my point. Why would I be interested to read anything the CCP has to put out when there is no freedom of the press in China? So long as we allow the CCP to have its equivalencies we will never know of the total harm inflicted and these people will die, erased.

You have also neatly sidestepped my very first question asking where China's own schools are that teach these human abuses?

There's freedom of the press in USA?

That is unironically written on a website hosted in the us were it is fully possible to write information as critical as you want about any American political party or more or less who you want.

That's freedom of expression.

When responding to criticism against China, people who point out that western countries human rights records are also very problematic, or people who point out that western propaganda is at work, are often accused of whataboutism. The reasoning is that misconduct by western countries doesn't make their criticism against China invalid.

If we accept that, then the reverse should also apply: Misconduct by China doesn't make China's criticism against the US invalid.

Indeed, the blatant subtext of whataboutist arguments is that these things are ok, they're fine, they're normal and justifiable or should be, and here's a reason why.

How would you like me to respond? I have not declared any argument whataboutism. I am only interested in sources from governments which guarantees and exercises a free press.

You cannot write a piece of paper in bad faith and declare it legitimate if you are the only source of legitimacy.

You could focus on what China actually accused the US of, and whether that accusation has a point, rather than on the fact that the accusation came from China. Where it comes from doesn't matter: only the content matters.

> All our western countries have, in the past,

"The past" being 2020? https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/immigration-dete... Or 2018? https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzj8z/social-workers-forced...

Exactly. The past is past. Want to dig into what China done in the past too?

The forcibly sterilized immigrants you cite, based on the ongoing investigation, point to a rogue doctor from a single camp. This does not excuse these actions but it's such a far cry from genocide that it appears disingenuous.

I agree with your sentiment about the relative scale of current US and Chinese detention crimes, but you may want to rethink just how genocide happens.

It was not official policy to torture children in Canada, and yet St. Anne's residential school had an electric chair. And so Canada refused responsibility, instead deflecting blame to the Catholic Church and "rogue" nuns. Eventually you need to accept that depraved individuals acting with impunity is part of the plan.

Consider just how hard ICE works to keep lawyers and journalists away to limit oversight. It is a recipe for abuse. Congressional leadership, and the president were very clear -- dissuasion through vindictive treatment was the goal.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/st-anne-residential...

That's almost an overly-simplistic view on the matter, it wasn't because it's a good idea, just because it's cheaper. American likely would not have any global hardware company like Apple without outsourced labor since the dollar-priced device would be way too expensive for the rest of the world and maybe Americans too. And much of the comfort Americans depend today rely on China's cheap labor (or elsewhere for that matter). When a shared bedroom in SF cost two thousand dollars, most people who earn four thousands can live a considerably comfortable life because they are getting paid in dollars but buying with Chinese Yuan, so to speak. but if they are only allowed buy things made by their fellow Americans, it simply would not be enough.

I'm sympathetic to this view but, respectfully, it too is a simplification. There are so many factors at play here probably no one person truly understands it well.

Take for example that even if there was labour available at costs close to China within the US there would not be the incredible supply chain in terms of flexibility and speed that exists in China. Something that Apple is trying slowly, without drawing too much attention, to change because being that reliant on one political territory is very dangerous.

That supply was slowly built and a similar one existed in the US (for that time) before. That’s not something specific or special to China.