Take any knowledge you’d like with you in your head.
Now think what is going to happen if you export these thoughts from your mouth to your North Korean best friend.
Now the same with Israeli best friend.
Same laws, just one extra entry on the list arbitrarily made by politicians, not independent courts.
Therefore the export-control laws of USA obviously make illegal the export of "thoughts".
An even more clear example if that any US citizen who knows classified information or even just a trade secret of some private company and who would tell that information to China would do something illegal.
In this case China argues that the IP has been created in China and its transfer to Singapore does not make it eligible for transfer to USA.
This is the same argument that USA has used multiple times in the past, e.g. for forbidding ASML to sell equipment to China and for forbidding TSMC to have Chinese customers for its advanced fabrication nodes, despite the fact that in both cases the IP that originated in USA some time ago was only a very small part of the products sold by those companies.
If USA may do this, then China is certainly also entitled to do the same. This is not whataboutism, but both countries must be treated equally, either such actions should be forbidden for both under the international laws, or they should be permitted both to do whatever they please.
There is absolutely no doubt that USA is the country who has invented this concept that its laws can be applied outside its territory and they can be applied to things that are the property of non-US entities, as long as they have any component, no matter how small, which has originally been sold to them, directly or indirectly, by an US entity.
I consider any legal interpretation of this kind as abusive and ridiculous, but no American may criticize a foreign country that does nothing else except imitate what USA does.
Are you trying to push a red herring?
notably china isnt doing this either: they are barring exit, not detaining, and the reason for barring exit was not reported, so its a stretch to say that its to prevent the sale of the company overseas.
The US:
- makes broad claims of jurisdiction - has export control, which is listed in the article as a potential reason for blocking the sale, and - restricts exit from the country when it wants to make sure certain people are available to chat
I dont see whats so exciting about pushing on this specific case. There's an error of, "who's tried to export controlled IP by selling their company to a foreign adversary?"
I dont see what's so exciting about this case that the US definitely absolutely wouldnt take a pretty similar approach to china - bring the CEOs to testify before congress and keep them in the country til the government is satisfied. What's so out of the ordinary that makes this interesting? This is the stuff that goes into work compliance courses.
you might instead want to answer which high tech defense contractor for the US has successfully been bought out by say, iran, china, north korea, or russia, that the US has given the OK on?
I expect there's a lack of data either way. It doesnt come up because people generally move their companies to the US, not out
why is this the hill to die on?
Still, I'll concede since that's not what's relevant to me. I'm more curious about the claim that USA would do the same. I can see congress calling the CEO to testify, but keep them in the country until the government is satiafied? How? AFAIK congress has no such power, and the executive may try, and they might be struck down by the courts.
While US has export controls, this wouldn't be a company incorporated, or running, for that matter, in the US (so the Supermicro already doesn't qualify). It would be a company, say, incorporated in the UK. Even if the company started in the US, this, AFAIK, would be unprecedented. Hence the relevance of showing a prior case.
And, make no mistake, I'm not here to say USA is better than China, but these "China is just doing what USA does" claims are getting ridiculous.
Like this isn't complicated, the difference is Manus was full blown retarded enough to transparently circumvent PRC export controls after PRC closed loopholes and politely signalled them to stop, which they didn't, i.e. they broke actual export control laws. Like Manus didn't try to sell, they fucking sold, sign and dotted, despite being told not to, because its against export control laws.
Even US companies rarely this blatantly dense. Americans getting exit banned for selling controlled hardware is LESS serious then what Manus tried to do, i.e. lesser (relative) export control crimes in US getting same treatment.
1. The U.S. has had a long-standing, extremely public policy that you Cannot Sell Nvidia Chips to China since 2022. Supermicro is an American company (based in San Jose, California), and they sold chips to China from 2024-2025, and they got caught, so they were arrested.
2. Manus founders created... an agent harness? And their company was incorporated in Singapore, not in China. And after they sold their Singaporean company to Meta, China decided that selling Singaporean agentic software "violated export controls" (and even the CCP representative couldn't list which supposed control it violated), and detained them all in China and is attempting to force the Singaporean company to unwind the sale.
These are not really comparable. The Supermicro folks are running a company in America and knew ahead of time, for years, that what they were doing violated American export controls. In the case of Manus, they weren't a Chinese company, no one knew they were supposedly violating unwritten export controls, and China decided post-hoc to detain them all and attempt to force the (Singaporean!) company to unwind the sale.
Quite simply this has never happened in corporate America. America is very friendly to corporations and you'd have to be wildly, knowingly in the wrong to get arrested for an M&A deal.
1. US had wiffle waffle export control policies on what TIER of compute that was exportable. When policies were unclear and compute threshold shifted, Biden admin signalled blank understanding of "presumption of denial" in interregnum while policy figured out exact controls. Nvidia stopped exporting until clarity. That's what due diligence / compliance means.
2. Manus created AI algo in PRC and hence under PRC purview. Fired their PRC team and thought incorporating in Singapore was loophole to transfer PRC controlled tech to US for fat paycheck. PRC was signalled before sale finalizes the Singapore loophole was not some lawfare gotcha to circumvent export controls. This was PRC version of presumption of denial. Ultimately PRC gets to decide if Manus technology CREATED IN PRC is exportable, and under what conditions. PRC company in Singapore fine, using Singapore to transfer to US... not fine. The amount of signals Manus got was similarly clear. PRC writings were talking about art13 of PRC export controls being triggered long before sales. Manus did the retarded and illegal (treasonously) thing and decided to go through with sale and forced PRC hand, when due diligence meant you know, not. AKA Manus did a supermicro but more egregious.
America so friendly they have to export control PRC... prevent US talent from working in PRC semi amirite. Oh wait, turns out when it comes to national security / duo use tech both sides are wildly not business friendly and can play the same geopolitical game. This hasn't happened in America, because quite frankly US businesses are not retarded enough to flaunt US national security instruments due to US gov extraterritorial reach. Manus thought they can do so with PRC who has less extraterritorial = reach, and now PRC slapping them as example. Also no one's arrested yet, just exit ban for ongoing investigation. But would not be surprised if they do end up getting arrested, because they wildly, knowingly in the wrong.
Your grasp of subject matter and timeline is actually, complete nonsense.
When the US does it, you can appeal with an independent court.
When China does it those options don’t exist.
But you cannot seriously hold America up as blameless when we've wielded our economy as a cudgel against anyone we remotely disagree with (sanctions against Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc; tariffs against everybody), have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice, regularly park our navy off foreign shores to coerce desired outcomes, and dronestrike civilians as a final saber-rattling before full-fledged conflict.
The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell, take a look beyond the past thirty years of history and there's a glut of incidents where empires used this sort of leverage to achieve outcomes - including the United States! We've traded political prisoners to achieve negotiated outcomes repeatedly, we just use different words to make ourselves feel better about it. We've propped up entire puppet states to ensure American corporate interests were served instead!
Like, holy shit, why do I have to teach you naysayers what's already outlined in history books just because you can't be bothered to do the assigned reading?
You should have just left it at that.
Whataboutism, used effectively, is meant to draw parallels rather than excuse behavior. Fuck China for what it's doing here, but also fuck the countries and entities who have used similar tactics in the past to great effect. Don't just conveniently put on blinders for what's happening/happened at home all because the government-labelled "baddie" did it too.
When the US does something reprehensible, people rarely come up in droves going on and about China's enablement of the North Korean regime or the many abuses enacted on its population, but every single time the US does anything we had to read a whole lot on how "at least China doesn't invade countries" as if the prime reason as to why China doesn't tend to involve itself militarily isn't precisely American hegemony. The rate at which the country is portrayed as some paragon of human rights, equality and peacefulness is either insane, deluded, or paid for.
The media is almost daily full of China scares. Also, the comments here are not talking about who started this war, with the GPU sanctions and the arrest of the daughter of Huawei's founder.
Does it mean the Chinese are the good guys? No, because there are not good guys, but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.
That gets repeated a lot. Is there any source?
> there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.
Ask the Taiwanese about it. Or most countries dealing with border disputes with the PRC.
Have you not been reading The Economist for the past 20 years of the WSJ since its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch? They've been predicting the downlfall of China every other month.
It ain't that hard!
So yeah, if you have wold claims, you better back them with sources.
Obviously none of us are committed enough to this internet discussion to do a formal study to prove our impressions but I think the majority of regular readers would also agree. Asking for sources for what is common knowledge is just a silly way to shut down discussion instead of engaging with it
The reality is that it's a lie and the Economist is quite balanced about China (even while they are banned from publishing there!). For instance, their latest cover was quite positive about the country: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/04/01/how-china-hopes...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2015/08/29/the-great-fall-...
^ they literally had a magazine cover with "GREAT FALL OF CHINA"
https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2025/11/12/the-chi...
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/03/t...
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/02/12/w...
FFS none of you actually read The Economist yet I'm the one who has to google for you.
The first, from 2015 (year of the 2015-2016 Chinese stock market turbulence), is an analysis of the response of the other countries to the aforementioned issue. With that context, its cover seems to be the usual attention grabbing shit other journals do, lest you want to conclude that the Economist also has a vendetta against USA for some of its covers.
The other articles simply show specific issues they noted: the second is about the effect of the trade war and how that will slow China but it'll be fine otherwise; the forth is repeating a concern of some authrorities, but it has no tone of "this will end China".
The third one is the closest, being about discrepanciea between the numbers reported by the top officials and the local governments. It mentions the possibility of being worse than it appears, but, at the end, it also posits whether it actually is given the lack of worry from party officials.
In all, doesn't seem that different from the average doomerism you see for other countries (including the US). They, to me, appear much more likely to be clickbaits than actual propaganda pieces.
Given the dates of these results, I suspect you specifically searched for the Economist saying anything negative about China's economy. If so, not exactly a good starting point for measuing bias. Now, to be fair, Google results can be different from user to user and you did at least post some actual the Economist links, in contrast to that bogus Reddit post you linked.
What's actually impressive is how you are baffled for doing the bare minimum. "That's common knowledge" is just a cheap excuse for ending discussions. But I'll elaborate on that on the other chain.
Now, for comparison, here are my 3 top results from searching "The Economist china" in Google:
1) https://www.economist.com/topics/china
2) https://www.economist.com/china/2026/04/27/xi-jinping-wants-...
3) https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/04/29/...
So far, it just looks like the usual news media shenanigans.
As bit-anarchist points out[1], you obviously did a simple google and you're bullshitting about articles you didn't read. This sort of bad faith argument doesn't belong on HN.
If all you do is come, claim that the Holocaust happened in a certain way, and hoped to call it a day without any proof nor evidence, that's just a demonstration of your own bad faith and intolerance.
Luckily for many, the internet is filled with evidence about it, so any good faith argumenter should have little difficuty doing so.
The only people averted to do so are people not interested in a proper discussion, at which point, they should just leave rather than spout baseless claims. Even if their conclusion is correct, poor arguments do nothing more than hurt the pursuit of the truth (normally for spreading intolerance, which helped the Holocaust happen).
If by "common knowledge" you mean "common sense", I refer you to search about the appeal to common sense fallacy. Here's a link:
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-...
Nothing can dissuade discussions more than fallacies.
Anyone who actually reads The Economist is well aware of the constant articles about China's imminent collapse. What's happening in this thread is a bunch of people who clearly don't read it very often are asking for proof of something that is obvious to anyone who does actually read but is hard to prove without a formal study. I can, and have, link(ed) you many articles but no single article will change your mind anyways.
If you genuinely cared you would just google it yourself. But you don't. You are a time suck. There is nothing to be gotten from this exchange except to waste energy into the void of the internet.
(and you give anarchism a bad name. You're probably more similar to ancaps then you'll ever admit)
You speak for others as if you are a representative for them. Somehow, it doesn't go through your mind that other people might have different readings and perspectives from articles or papers, and you default to accusing them of just not reading. A view that's possibly amplified by certain social bubbles. Evidence of that lies in your, basically gratuitous, accusation of sinophobia.
This ties to the "common knowledge" issue. Due to diversity, there is no such thing as objective "common knowledge", thus it is always subjective to social groups. Best case scenario, appeal to common knowledge is simply an intolerant way of uncritically asserting your biases onto others, who might not even belong to any of your social groups. Worst case scenario, it's used by bad actors to gaslight their way through a discussion.
Someone asked you to fetch the current month's article (not a study) to use as a sample. Instead of just quickly googling and linking it, allowing the conversation to go forward, you kept trying to dismiss and avoid doing your due dilligence. Only after many posts, you managed to post a analyzable sample. If that's not a waste of energy, I don't know what is.
If you genuinely believe this was a total waste of energy, you could've just left. If your arguments were solid, no further comments would take them down (that is, if you made actual arguments, not just claims before).
I'm not here to change your mind (specially given how you treat all your proof as "common knowledge", which indicates that is so enshrined in your perspective, that only a serious event can actually change), but to either: present a point or debunk bogus/baseless claims (primarily this one). Other people can read through our posts and reach their own conclusion.
>If you genuinely cared you would just google it yourself. But you don't. You are a time suck.
If you cared you'd read the article you're mentioning, but you didn't. You're a time suck.
> you give anarchism a bad name.
No, shilling for the CCP does that.
Also bringing up the Holocaust in this context is just fucking weird.
Talking about 'Taiwan' and 'border disputes with the PRC' meanwhile the USA is doing a maritime blockade of Cuba and Iran. And that it's without talking about bombing countries or military deployed thousand of miles away from their borders, of God forbid, unconditional support to Israel, who just displaced one and a half million people.
But, let's forget about all those small details, don't you see how the Chinese are very bad?
"But, let's forget about all those small details, don't you see how the Americans are very bad?"
It's not the Chinese? You sure? There's probably nobody more economically aggressive in the planet and they just threw a hissy fit at the EU the other day for doing something they've been doing since forever.
I care not for "the media", I care that I don't have enough fingers to count the amount of people trying to justify this in this very comment section. I'm sure western media is not favorable to Chinese interests, I'd be utterly baffled if Chinese media was favorable to western interests. I do not expect public sentiment to follow a party line because we are better than that, but I do expect a certain reticence to go all out and justify opposition in intellectually rotten ways.
There is a massive difference in degree and kind here. Mixing them up at this level is spherical cow territory.
Who would you rather be world police? One or more of Cuba, Iran, China, Russia?
I wonder how that came about?
What’s that fence analogy called?
Chester-what?