You're absolutely right. But from a Chinese perspective, they see open access to American companies for what it is: neocolonialism. They don't want American companies coming in, buying up all of the local brands, and siphoning off the profits back to America. The Chinese also don't want these large American companies using their business power to direct local politics.

Just look at the attitude that Google, Palantir, and similar have for Europeans. I bet there are times that Germany wished they had their own Baidu. China is doing what it can to stop from becoming an American vassal.

Here's the best way I can think to describe this.

I've found there are largely two kinds of people in the world: those who have experienced something like food insecurity, housing insecurity, poverty or the like and those that haven't. People who have never experienced any of these tend to have a completely different outlook, attitude and relationship to money. People who have often have it in the back of their mind that at any point it can all go away. This is why you'll tend to find a lot of poorer people who will get a windfall and then splurge on a big TV or some other big purchase. It'll just whittled down by bills otherwise. And it never really matters how much you have. For many people that fear never leaves you. People who have never experienced that food insecurity (or the like) can almost never comprehend it.

I see China much the same way. Think about it. China was bossed around by the British Empire (it's literally the origin of the term "gunboat diplomacy"). With Mao's revolution there was a long period of famine. One of China's closest allies, the Soviet Union, collapsed around them.

The point of this is, from an outsider's point of view at least, there seems to be a similar kind of cultural fear, a fear of a return to instability, chaos, famine and being a plaything to the West.

So take Tibet. Many, myself included, see this as an invasion and occupation. That kind of criticism is seen through the Chinese lens as an attack on China itself, a threat to this period of prosperity and stability and a potential return to chaos.

Put another way: any criticism of China or foreign dependence of China is seem as a potential existential threat.

So I understand why China, say, protects its markets. But I also understand that China is "cheating" in an international trade sense and the developed nations don't have to put up with that. Nor should they. But developed nations and corporations are being bewitched the carrot of a market of over a billion people and that will never materialize so there's literally no point in turning a blind eye to China's human rights abuses or supporting the totalitarian regime.

Germany kinda does have its own Baidu - just in sectors it actually has competence in. Retail, heavy industry, etc is full of German brands. The problem with software is it's simply a bad fit for German culture, which is generally slow, cautious, and interested in stability over short term profit.

I don't think it's exactly vassalization - I think it's more that the 'international rules based order' was created by the USA and EU, and as such, to an extent, represents their interests. If all markets are open, it gives current market leaders and incumbents a unbeatable advantage. What's more, rich countries typically play the system for all that its worth.

China is controversial because unlike Germany, or France, it plays the system to win, but it also has the growth potential (size, population) to upturn the global order. So when France cheats the system to protect french farmers or cheese or whatever, nobody cares, or when Germany's KfW behaves in a neocolonial manner, again, it's just not a threat to the global order. When China does stuff like this, even in milder forms, it couples with their extreme lack of basic soft-power competence (listen to chinese leaders speak, they sound like assholes) to make a stink.

> The problem with software is it's simply a bad fit for German culture, which is generally slow, cautious, and interested in stability over short term profit.

Tangential point but slightly disagree: Germany has a presence in lots of fast-moving technological markets. Personally, I think the problem with software development in Germany (and many other places) is that software developers are put into the same basket as sysadmins, which in turn are still seen as glorified janitors by upper management. This is reflected in the lower salary compared to their American or even British counterparts.

> I think it's more that the 'international rules based order' was created by the USA and EU, and as such, to an extent, represents their interests. If all markets are open, it gives current market leaders and incumbents a unbeatable advantage.

This is the most succinct critique of the open market doctrine I have ever come across.

> China is doing what it can to stop from becoming an American vassal.

More accurate would probably be China is doing everything possible to create its own vassals via soft-power initiatives like Belt and Road, predatory debt lending, etc.

It’s kind of interesting you mention neocolonialism because that’s exactly how China’s actions in Malaysia have been described…

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/4/6/17206230/china-tra...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/magazine/a-malaysian-inst...

> China is doing what it can to stop from becoming an American vassal

If our countries weren't so tightly intertwined with complicated trade partnerships and mutually beneficial enterprises, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

Is it neocolonialism when American companies move into Canadian or German markets, or when ikea sets up in town, or when South Korean films displace Japanese films?

It's neocolonialism when the interest of American companies are backed by the full force of the American government at the expense of the desires of the local people.

The scale is sliding though. On one side, you have countries which have had military force used against them for denying American companies favorable access to resources (Iraq, the Banana Republics of South America). On the other side, are countries who play ball be accepting American intellectual properties laws, don't interfere with American business interests, and make enough investments in America.

The people in those countries might not want to accept IP laws designed specifically to protect Mickey Mouse, but the alternative is economic arm twisting which is too much for most countries to handle. China is one of the few countries with enough power to stand up to the USA in this respect.

> It's neocolonialism when the interest of American companies are backed by the full force of the American government at the expense of the desires of the local people.

I don't mean to defend the US, but if you replacing "American" with "China" in that statement is basically the Chinese policy in a nutshell.

It's certainly seen as neo-colonialism, or at least exploitation, by some people. Here are a couple of examples of Australian protest songs about American economic and military expansion into our country:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tl1IvmJvel0

https://youtube.com/watch?v=anx_o43Y27Y

I think it's a question of scale (and the term has historical connotations as well obviously). I probably wouldn't call it neocolonialism but as a german citizen I do think that the less dependent on american companies we are, the better.

then they shouldn't have agreed to join the WTO and abide by their rules then. you don't get it both ways. If you want access to the rest of the worlds markets you have to let yours open up too.

Neocolonialism is a made up word and really is not a thing

It is a thing. Why would it matter whether the word is "made up" even if this thread was its very first usage?

The expression is clear to the reader and conveys a conceptual expression of thought -- that of an idea of a new form of colonialism.

The opinion of whether or not, in what form, or to what degree it exists in the world are entirely different things from the word itself.

It has a wikipedia page and is used to describe when a large, powerful country uses soft power to ensure that a smaller country grant favorable economic trade concessions. This is in contrast with classical colonialism, where military force was used to achieve the same ends.

Given the context, don’t you think that wiki description of neo-colonialism is way better suited for China/third-world relations?

Aren't all words "made up" at some point? It's how language works.

you are on a hacker news site.

it generates probably 100 made up words a day.

your critique is meaningless.

True. But neo-colonialism hoax predates this site

Is there any evidence regarding that “First Man” anecdote? I remember this being a big thing in the conservative culture sphere in at the time but it seems like a manufactured controversy. Are there not American flags in all manner of big blockbusters that do huge numbers in China? The character “Captain America” doesn’t seem to have stopped the MCU movies from succeeding there. The whole thing feels like people just looking to get angry about something.

The American flag planting on the moon is one of the single most iconic and culturally significant events in American history, ever.

The movie is based off of a book written by an American.

The movie was directed by an American.

The movie was produced by an American.

For the movie to exclude this without it being a deliberate decision would be an oversight or coincidence beyond reasonable belief.

Yes, American flags appear in other movies. Captain America is a fictional character in a fictional universe. Use of the American flag in that context is not in the least bit comparable to the first time humans stepped foot on solid ground that wasn't named Earth.

The moon landing was also an iconic benchmark for world civilization as whole. Given that we have concrete knowledge of China forcing studios and actors to parrot China's values, it is certainly plausible that China did not want the crowning moment of this iconic human achievement to prominently feature America at that moment.

It's also plausible that foreign sentiment against the US at that time--not just from China-- was also a factor.

It is also possible the film creators wanted to present the moment as an achievement for all of civilization, without a focus on the US in particular.

But given the history, book, director, and importance for the US, I absolutely believe it was deliberate, and as such people upset about it do not represent a manufactured controversy. If you grew up during the height of the Cold War and the arms race with Russia and watched the moon landing, or have heard--as I have-- stories from my parents and grand parents how much that gave them hope during a very dark time, you also might be a little upset that your country's role had been erased in the crowning moment.

As an American, it seems like a perfectly reasonable creative decision to me. The film quite consciously is focused not on the moon landing specifically, or even the space program more broadly, but on Neil Armstrong as an individual. In this context having a lot of fanfare about the flag would distract from the focus of the movie and feel out of place, IMO. The idea that the only explanation for this omission is meddling by the Chinese is ludicrous to me.

My comment was intended in the context of the accusation that the situation was a manufactured controversy.

I can certainly understand your point of view and that there might have been an honest choice for that creative direction. But I also think it is completely understandable, and not manufactured, that some people were very upset by that decision, a decision that be could nothing other than deliberate.

I also think it's possible the decision was made for less than purely creative decisions. It's a business, decisions are often made on the basis of money, and it's not unreasonable to entertain the possibility that this particular decision was monetary in nature.

We nom-Americans are well aware of the "flag tax".

We know Hollywood gets tax cuts for bigger, more numerous and slower-mo shots of American flags in their films.

Clearly "First Man" was making a statement about this special treatment.

Interesting, so you have any citation links for this? I'd like to read more about this but a quick search brings up nothing.

Sorry friend. It was a joke. It's a long-running light-hearted poke at just how often Americans put flags in every piece of visual media they create.

Tank man is banned in China. Someone at bing probably was told to censor it in China but did it for the entire world instead. I really don't understand this argument that western companies shouldn't operate in China. How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo? China is too politically powerful for anything to be done, especially by activist fortune 500 companies.

Saying it's censoring China to not operate there is both a matter of semantic spin and also misses the point:

1) Operating there helps support a repressive regime that often uses the tools and services of foreign companies to facilitate that repression. I don't think a refusal to operate there is censorship, and if you do, that is a broad enough definition of censorship that the Montgomery Bus Boycott would also fall into that category.

2) It is also a bad long-term business decision. Between forced IP transfer, IP theft, piracy, and enormous subsidies for home-grown competitors, most companies are not truly growing in an emerging market, they are filling a short term gap until China can replace them with their own alternatives, bootstrapped by those short term interactions with foreign companies. At that point, it is happy to expand those homegrown options out to the rest of the world, bootstrapped by not having to make the same R&D investments, complete with its repressive values embedded in the products & services.

China is not truly interested being a partner country on the world stage. It's implicit and explicit goals are self sufficiency in service of not needing to even pretend it respects anything but its own power. This is revealed every time there's a Bing "accident" or another actor is made to embarrass themselves in kowtowing to China, or a movie changes a Tibetan character to anything but Tibetan, or a Hotel corporation like Marriot is forced offline in China until it similarly embarrasses itself.

China's goal is to have enough power to forced anyone that interacts with it to adopt its own repressive values.

Now at this point in the conversation someone will say "What about the things the US does"?

To which I respond:

1) That's irrelevant to the issue of China. Whatever the US does isn't an excuse to allow China to get away with things, and other countries and corporations are free to avoid dealing with the US in the same way I advocate they avoid China.

2) That's a false equivalence. The US may do objectionable things. But when it comes to repression of it's population, at it's worst levels of privacy intrusion it still gives it's citizens more freedom by an order if magnitude than does China.

>How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo?

Any company that does this for content in China, but "only" in China raises serious doubts when they say they are not doing it anywhere else. If you add this ability, it will be misused/abused either by "rogue" employees, being hacked, or being forced to by gov't because of "terrorism" or "the kids".

Companies have to comply with differing laws and regulations based on the jurisdictions they operate in. I honestly don't have serious doubt that Microsoft does this in the US other than because of a technical error because they simply have no incentive to.

They can add this ability at any point anyway because putting a phrase into a word filter takes about 10 minutes I guess.

What is the logical alternative here, every American company leaves every other market because they have differing censorship laws? How is that helping anyone else?

You are way too scoped in on this specific issue. View the topic of bending to CCP will in other areas of tech, not just search. Cloud providers operating in China is a big area of concern. If these providers have built in the ability for the CCP to access user data, then there's no way they could ever stand up to US gov't asking for the same access. That's just a single example.

"If these providers have built in the ability for the CCP to access user data, then there's no way they could ever stand up to US gov't asking for the same access"

There are plenty of good reasons to refuse to cede to CCP demands but this makes no sense.

The only tech company that were able to mount serious resistance against a serious data access request by the US government were Apple and a couple of things:

1. They are a trillion dollar company.

2. They are primarily a hardware company, not a cloud services company

3. There is no guarantee (and I would argue rather unlikely) that if the FBI were unable to break the encryption of that phone independently that they would not have kept mounting pressure on Apple till they cracked.

It's a complete fantasy to believe that any individual or company has guaranteed data protection in the US or indeed most nation states. Once the government really want your data, they will get it with enough time.

I'm not sure I'm following this argument here. When the US government calls any major internet company and say "Hey we found this and this information on this page of yours and it's illegal to host the information, so please take it down, or else," does anybody seriously think that these companies will say no?

* Now, I'm definitely not a fan of the Chinese government, but the truth is that every government has power to order around any corporation that wants to do business in its border. The difference is how much you agree with each particular government, not whether they do it or not.

It seems fairly common for companies to deny and disclose requests from the US government. Not only is it a good publicity stunt advocating free speech / privacy, but what can the government do if it's not illegal content?

If the provider in question is hosting publicly visible pages with "offending" content, then of course anyone is free to "report" it or "request" it. If the provider is hosting end-to-end ecrypted data, then nobody should have access to it other than those with the proper keys. That includes the provider of the services. In that case, the provider can only say no to the gov't requests. If the provider has a different version of their platform available in China so that they conform to CCP demands of being able to access user content, then the provder would be lying to the US gov't request for access to user data too. So the suspicion that a US company operating in China with CCP approval immediately brings doubt onto their entire "we protect user privacy" into question.

> How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo?

It lets the Chinese Communist Party pretend their citizens don't live in a curated bubble designed to reinforce feelings of nationalism and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.

Some Chinese are allowed to travel abroad. If they discovered a totally different Internet abroad, they might start asking uncomfortable questions back home. Instead, CCP bosses hope that they simply won't notice that the domestic Bing isn't the same as Bing everywhere else.

Your use of the word "hope" there is pretty funny. ;)

I am quite sure that Chinese people travelling abroad are 100% familiar with what they should not talk or write about once they get home.

You don't need to qualify that with "once they get home". Chinese who talk or write about the wrong things will be hunted down wherever they are in the world. China managed to get the UAE to detain a US permanent resident for almost two months when he was traveling from Istanbul to New York with a connection in Dubai.

https://apnews.com/article/europe-china-dubai-middle-east-he...

Yeah, I think very few are under any logical or intellectual delusion, but constant reinforcement and signaling affects everyone subconsciously.

Don't worry they won't let people stray that much:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

Also, they tend to have family back home that can be pressured.

Chinese people understand that their internet is censored.

It’s very frustrating when companies come up with these blatant lies.

Just say you’re censoring it on behalf of China. We don’t believe your “human error” lie, and it’s insulting to our intelligence to even try.

If it was deliberate it’s much more likely that this was an employee behaving outside their remit than it being a company policy. “Human error” can be used euphemistically like this when you aren’t prepared to throw a junior employee to the wolves.

I think China is happy to let in physical products like Apple, but it wants the internet stuff under it's control.

I m in China and while I understand where you're coming from, from my point of view, you insisting on showing an american flag on the moon is a bit what we're saying about shadow colonialism.

You only ever like or accept vassal and submissive partners. It's still hard for us, but maybe we'll give up our pride for the american money, like so many others :)

This ofc doesnt excuse the communist crimes and lack of trust in us, the population, a problem totally independent from our conflict with the US, whatever excuse the US found at the spur of the moment.

> It's widely suspect that not having the American flag on the moon landing in the movie "First Man" was to cater to the Chinese market.

I didn't watch that movie, I guess it surprised you as an (allegedly ?) American the same way it surprised many Europeans watching the numerous WW2 movies about the US saving the old-world. It's all about catering the most profitable market in the end. ( I'm not here to throw oil on fire by the way, I guess that the same... process ? )

Excuse me, "kowtowing"? Where did you pick that up from, a yellow peril poster?

Before we even get to the political side of "you will never win in the Chinese market", how do we explain that Amazon lost to jd.com, and Walmart (and a slew of other retailers) lost to local retailers? The Chinese government didn't favor the local retailers in anyway. Another case is Uber vs DiDi. The Chinese government didn't favor Didi either, yet DiDi managed to beat Uber hands down. Specifically, Didi managed to be profitable in short trips while losing money on long trips, and Uber's biz team found it out months later. Kinda shameful, if you ask me.

> how do we explain that Amazon lost to jt.com...

JTI? Of Japan? The one where the Japanese government is legally required to own at least a third?

My bad. JD.com. Updated.

>The Chinese government didn't favor the local retailers in anyway.

Do you have proof of this?

Should it be the other way around, namely do we have proof that the Chinese government interfered? I do acknowledge that it's hard to know for sure that something does not exist. It's just that there's plenty of news on how Chinese government play favors for its auto industry, for Baidu, and for media companies. But somehow I didn't see any report or even anecdote on retailing, and certainly not for Did (some cities tried to regulate both Uber and Didi).

I'm not the one who made a statement as if it were a fact.