Thank you, Ben, for this honest appraisal which involves sticking out your neck and perhaps even harming your ability to travel to China or expand your business.
Regarding this comment about Apple:
And then there is Apple: the company is deeply exposed to China both in terms of sales and especially when it comes to manufacturing. The reality is that, particularly when it comes to the latter, Apple doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
That may be true of manufacturing now, but will it be true 5 years from now? Surely Cook et al saw the writing on the wall years ago when it articulated some of its core values around privacy. Conflict is inevitable, and the risk associated with having all your manufacturing eggs in one basket is too great. We saw the announcement of Apple's manufacturing initiative in Texas, and there are other locations for electronics sourcing and assembly throughout Asia. How much of Apple's supply chain could be relocated elsewhere?
Apple assembles iPhones in Brazil and I believe India now, but these are mostly for high tariff reasons. Much of what goes into an iPhone isn’t made in china (and what is made in China can easily be made elsewhere), but they are mostly made in east Asia, so having assembly done somewhere in the region. Apple could always go to Taiwan (labor is more expensive, but they could maybe rely on automation more) or Vietnam. However, whatever they would do would cost them, a cost they could pay if needed but probably not one they want to pay right now.
A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that Taiwan actually has low-cost but high-end (university-educated) labor. Ph.D. graduates abound.
It is an advanced economy yet wages are surprisingly low due to its export-focused strategy and various other structural causes. Cost of living in Taiwan also appears to be pretty low, which makes low wages bearable. It is a low-growth economy and it doesn't have the glitziness of Hong Kong, but everything feels 1st world (clean, technically advanced, efficient) so I'm not sure how the balance sheet there actually works out.
(that said, I understand many recent TW graduates tend to seek their fortunes in mainland China, where the pay is better.)
For the last years a lot of Apple's supply chain companies were getting visits from their Chinese C-level, with a question if they can think of relocation somewhere else. It's not a secret at all in SZ that Apple is leaving, and not only mainland China, but possibly Foxconn as well. For that reason, it's said that Foxconn now tries to lure them back to Taiwan with "incredible offers."
I know a fair lot of engineers working in both Foxconn plant, as well as Apple itself. It's funny to hear that it would be a company like Apple who would completely ignore the risk of supply chain dependence. From what I heard, for the last 10 years, Apple didn't do anything, but hope for bad things to not to happen.
Their screen glass, a surprisingly high tech product, is made in China by an American company. Their PCB's are locally made. Bodywork and plastics has been outsourced by them since Iphone 4. Some passives are made locally, some come from Taiwan. Most importantly, a point Apple doesn't like to be public about, is that they heavily rely on outsourced and captive engineering in China.
Maybe a few people who just gotta have the newest, latest, and greatest gadget will switch to a Flagship android because they can't wait for the new iPhone. But most people are pretty loyal / trapped into their mobile ecosystem.
I doubt it would materially affect Apple's market share or their revenue long-term. Isn't the entire manufacturing cost of an iPhone $9? Even if it doubled, their profit on iPhones would only drop by like 5%...
I think their latest pricing experiments have shown that there really is a limit to how much people will pay for a new iPhone, and they've found it, so I don't think they could pass the price onto the consumer. But it's only $10 on a $900 phone...
Apple probably should pay. They aren't a hardship case and being so dependent on an authoritarian regime isn't a good look right now [1]. Plus geopoltical risk is a thing and it would be smart for them to mitigate it.
[1] I have the world's smallest violin right here if they want to complain about screw manufacturing again. Didn't they setup all kinds of specialized factories in China already? They can build all the a screw factories they need.
Not even a wildest guess can tell now. As for Vietnam, it's the closes substitute.
Demographically, Vietnam is incomparably better off than China. On the level of technical capability it's late nineties China. The few manufacturers venture there only for abundant skilled workforce. Big players like Foxconn and Samsung can build entire cities housing a big part of the supply chain inside, but I don't see even Samsung being that committed at the moment. Samsung's plant in Vietnam imports all components, assemblies and etc, from outside, including Samsung parts factories in China.
A lot of young bright Vietnamese are travelling for work to... China — something unimaginable even 10 years ago. In SZ, there is a serious talk going on about China importing foreign workforce by millions — again, something unthinkable 10 years ago.
The biggest appeal of China as a manufacturing destination now is its domestic industry, not Foxconn and Flextronics megaplants.
To get manufacturing appeal, Vietnam will need at foremost develop its domestic manufacturing — and that's easier said than done, in comparison to just inviting Foxconn and have them do everything for you.
To the point above, there is quite a twist now: more and more Chinese manufacturing SMEs are migrating to Vietnam, along with their customers. Even though, they outright loose cost wise, they believe that Vietnam is a better bet on demographics, and immediate gain from "trade war refugees'" clients is big enough for now.
Good part is (ironically) China won't lost control because of its one party system. It's also powerful enougth that US and Western countries can not bomb it like they did in Middle East.
Yes. Apple is never going to leave China. They've already expanded assembly to other countries like Brazil and India to get around protectionist barriers, but there's never going to be a time in the next 5 or 10 years where no assembly takes place in China. The scale Apple is operating at is just too big. And just like Brazil or India, China can implement its own protectionist barriers at any time so there'd still be a reason to do assembly locally.
Apple doesn’t have anywhere to go is a comment on the consumer market, not manufacturing. They are heavily dependent on revenue from China.
exactly, i've read somewhere that they are trying to move further to south/south east Asia, like India , Philippines etc..
It will most definitely be true 5 years from now. It may not be true 15 years from now if Apple start investing heavily elsewhere today.
However westners themselves are not aware of the issue. They believe that's a human rights and freedom of speech issue.
Free trade is a two way street. If a trading partner is engaging in unfair practices then it's reasonable to support sanctions and tariffs and other means to get them to stop, even if you're a free trade supporter.
In fact this is the whole premise of the WTO, which supports free trade. If you don't engage in free trade, you get slapped with tariffs.
Similarly, after WW II, the US was dominant and free trade served us well. However, as other nations develop their competitive advantages, free trade is not so popular in the US.
The only reason this fight has come at all is because of a bunch of displaced factory workers (and areas that did manufacturing) that have been hurt by this trade, and their government had failed to redistribute any of the eggs from the golden goose to them.
As a layperson watching from the sidelines in the software world, but fascinated by welding, electrical/electronics, mechanical engineering, CNC, machining, etc., it is incomprehensible to me why US business leaders would so willingly cede manufacturing to competitors (Chinese in this thread's context, but could be anyone really, even within the same nation). As a dilettante, I'm seeing parallels in manufacturing to what I experience in software, but maybe I'm just not seeing what those leaders see, so perhaps someone can help clear up my misunderstanding.
To think you can divorce yourself cleanly from manufacturing and adopt a "throw it over the fence" mentality, and expect to maintain industry leadership, seems to me as misguided as thinking you can divorce yourself from coding and operational support as a software company, "throw it over the fence", and expect to stay a software leader. That might work for one or three iterations of product lifecycles over a few decades, but there are crucial insights into customer needs and market directions that come about from knowing about what those trenches deal with, that disappear in the fenced-off abstraction layer. You gradually disconnect from your market, your sales and marketing teams lose a critically-grounded, no-bullshit feedback loop from those areas, you lose understanding of the complexities to properly analyze the business problems, you lose metrics those areas gather to inform sales and marketing analytics.
Maybe all those factors simply don't matter, or I'm simply wrong about them being factors at all in manufacturing business? In which case, I put on my value investor's hat and ask, what precisely is the defensible moat about giving up in-house manufacturing knowledge (and often accompanying core support functions) and only specializing in design, sales, and marketing for a manufacturer? I've never been able to figure that one out, either. Seems to me in-house manufacturing secrets are easier to come up with (see Japanese electrolytic caps) and protect than this year's trends and important customer segments, but again, I'm just a layperson, so I'm just left wondering what I'm missing.
Culture in China is about unity. If you look at Chinese history, and if you watch Chinese movies, this is a recurrent theme. Unification through blood and war. This is the goal and China will get stronger and more stable over time. At what cost? Tiananmen, xinjiang, hk, the gfw, and so on... people know about it but are willing to ignore them for the greater goal.
Why this shocks us so much, as non-mainlander, is that our Overton window is much further left (the window of what is considered “normal” or “accepted” public discourse). We have lived through slavery, camps, revolutions for human rights. So there’s definitely a human asymmetry here, which makes it harder for any of us to find common ground.
I don’t think there are much solutions here, and I think that in time Chinese people will learn the same lessons we have learned.
I also think most of their distrust in western media is not because they necessarily disagree with it, but because it doesn’t promote their greater goal. And eventhough they know weibo, wechat, et al. Are heavily censored they continue to obtain their news from there, never ending the cycle.
AFAIK the culture is more like loyalty to your family and village, and "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away". Heck even the languages of china are mutually unintelligible. Maybe in the end, china should split up into several separate countries, like the khmer region split up into thailand, cambodia, laos and vietnam. Maybe it should be split up into beijing-land, shanghai-land, guangzhou-land, tibet and xinjiang-land.
This is because the governments (ROC and PRC) deliberately construct and promote this ideology. The idea of Chinese nation 中华民族 did not exists until roughly 100 years ago.
Having grown up as a Chinese immigrant, I think this is true in ways that I wish the more fervent Americans could appreciate.
By that I mean I wish Americans respected the more general principle of enfranchisement more, but these days in practice that's just a straight up criticism of the GOP and anyone who votes for them, due to their gerrymandering and voter suppression practices.
This is well said and something everyone in tech should remember. Unintended consequence is a law with teeth.
If we could only "dissolve" all those parts of society and culture that are mostly pure friction, and spin the wheels 100x faster to the future...
Reduction of friction is not clearly beneficial! That's exactly the point. Superficially it appears to be, but it absolutely isn't the case. Reducing friction lets things happen faster. Both good things and bad things. And since the meaning of 'good' depends on where you sit, you can't claim that it's purely beneficial.
Reduction of friction accelerates harms as well as benefits, it's not “clearly beneficial” without further knowledge of context.
Sure, it makes scientific progress faster, but it also makes genocide faster.
Sometimes in conversation I hear people talk about how we have to save the world, interfere with other countries, etc. I think this should never be done unilaterally. If something really bad and evil is going on in the world then many countries should agree and cooperate to try to fix things.
The trouble with unilateral intervention is that it can so easily devolve into just serving the needs of special interests.
I think of the current regime in China as more an authoritarian single party regime. We have tolerated or been allied with authoritarian single party regimes in earlier decades such as Taiwan under the KMT, Japan under the early LDP, and South Korea under Rhee.
China places a higher priority on enforcing social harmony than the US, but China has a history where there have been multiple periods of severe social disturbance causing 10s of millions of deaths, such as the Taiping Rebellion. In actual practice most people have quite a lot of freedom on most subjects most of the time since, "Heaven is high, and the Emperor is far away."
> Twitter is banned in China.
I didn't even realize until now. They are simply censoring (mainly)American social media posts. On the internet.
Foreign companies are sanctionned by the US for dealing with Iranian entities even if their countries have no issue with Iran. (Huawei's executive was even arrested in Canada on behalf of the US for that).
My point is, why should we hold companies accountable for enforcing a certain national policy when A, companies have always done awful things in the name of their owners/shareholders and B, the US itself uses companies as a proxy for its policies?
First, to your question. Ostensibly the executive order is due to an illegitimate leader refusing to cede power and causing a humanitarian crisis. This is not dissimilar to how countries sanction North Korea. I would absolutely have preferred such actions to be passed in a democratic manner, and in fact the whole executive order mechanism needs serious rethinking, but the underlying concept is different.
Second, your B) question is a tu quoque fallacy, as you're appealing to hypocrisy. Just because the U.S. does it doesn't mean we should accept it from China. We also should be (and many are) angry at the US' actions.
If the NBA was blocked, would passionate Chinese NBA fans (of which there are many) fall in line? Or not?
You probably didn't shed a tear when Alex Jones was deplatformed, because he's a scoundrel, and if this really did escalate to a full block of the NBA (which seems unlikely), by that point many Chinese citizens would probably think the same of the NBA.
Deplatforming is deplatforming. If one supported the deplatforming of Alex Jones, and doesn't also support China on this, then they are a hypocrite engaging in severe cognitive dissonance.
Freedom of speech is not some "loophole" that allows people to say nasty things. It's a bulwark against authoritarianism. The ones who forget that need to study world history when it comes to freedom of speech and expression.
As I said in a different comment, Alex Jones is not that relevant to this discussion unless somebody can show that the United States government had a role in the deplatforming.
I do have to take issue that this is a cultural problem. I don't regard the Communist Party of China to be guardian of culture in China. The country did rather well for thousands of years before it's existence and will no doubt do well for thousands more after it's demise.
Here’s the deal - China is a totalitarian state bent on reclaiming what they see as their rightful place in the world. They will stomp on anyone they have to, friend or enemy, real or imagined, foreign or domestic, to make that happen.
At the same time, the rest of the world, including the West and its allies, have the ability to force China to abide by international norms and the right to defend themselves from China’s aggression.
You may think it hypocritical, but from where I’m sitting the US and its allies have the moral high ground in this instance and no amount of bleating about everyone’s historical crimes is going to distract everyone from the realities of China’s ongoing atrocities against its own people, it’s Nine Dash Line, it’s blatant political and economic attacks on the free world and its disrespect for and undermining of centuries of international laws and norms.
For what it's worth, I know of multiple Chinese companies that are themselves moving manufacturing overseas, primarily to South East Asia. I'm not convinced that the multinationals have nowhere else to go.
Samsung is making most of their phones outside of China. It's clear you can push most multinational manufacturing back out of China. There are several dozen countries to redistribute that manufacturing to. I've probably read 50 or 60 articles in the past year that touch on the varied types of companies moving out of China, from bicycles to bathroom fixtures to clothing to tires.
The far bigger Apple issue, is that they don't want to lose the consumer side of the Chinese market. It's trivial for the Chinese authorities to snap their fingers and make Apple persona non grata in China. It wouldn't even take very long, a short duration of total disruption would be enough to wipe out Apple's market share. They'd never get it back, there are plenty of good domestic alternatives.
For a company the size of Apple, losing half their position in China could mean losing half a trillion dollars in revenue over the next ~20 years. Beyond the hardware, China's extremely large consumer market is no doubt perceived to be very important for Apple's services shift over time.
Musical.ly was a Shanghai-based company targeting the western market, once considered as a case study for similar types of companies.
This was all inevitable, and it's going to lead to siloed-off, separate internets for every region in the world. I always find it amusing and a bit sad when people condemn the Great Firewall, and then immediately turn around and demand their country get one too. Neutrality is impossible; no platform can please everybody.
That's not at all what people are asking for here.
The primary purpose of this is to enforce security for connections. Not every large organization employs content filtering, and those that do mostly only enforce a minimal standard of what is acceptable for work.
It all started a few months ago when someone committed a crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong. To prevent HK from becoming a safe haven for criminals, the Chief Executive of HK proposed a new law to facilitate extradition of these crime suspects from HK to various jurisdictions in the region, including Taiwan and mainland China.
The proposed law even explicitly stated that it's not applicably to crimes political in nature. But some HK people were nevertheless concerned that it might be abused by China to target political dissidents in HK.
So they have taken to the streets to protest that law. As a result, the law was quickly suspended before it had a chance to pass, and a few weeks ago the HK Chief Executive officially announced the withdrawal of the law.
However, despite the concession from the HK government, the protesters pressed on, demanding four more concessions from the government, chief among them universal suffrage, or the direct election of the HK Chief Executive, who up to this point have been nominated from a narrow pool of Beijing-approved candidates, then voted on by a committee.
It's not entirely clear that China even had anything to do with the proposal of the law which started this ordeal. But the protesters have been shrewd to paint a picture, to great effect, of big bad China stomping on the poor helpless people of HK.
What I cannot stress enough, is the rampant violence and destruction from these protesters, which has done this great city, and many innocent citizens, unimaginable harm. Feel free to support their peaceful protests, but please don't simply pile on and encourage these violence and destruction.
(EDIT: If anything I said is untrue, please correct me. Use the truth to argue your side, don't be a coward and hide behind your downvote.)
Between harmony and human rights, it's absolutely clear to a westerner which one is more important.
From your tone, it is also absolutely clear which one you would choose.
> If anything I said is untrue, please correct me
It's possible to only say true things and still be biased. This is probably the most common way of spinning a story for "fake news". Some major events I would definitely include are:
- The 2015 Causeway bay disappearances which justified the fear of extradition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearan...
- Carrie Lam doesn't actually have autonomy and needs confirmation from beijing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOft2Y6mH_g
- Escalation of force, hiring triads to attack citizens, blinding journalist with rubber bullets, shooting live ammo at students in the chest, etc etc.
There are a lot more I can add but halfway through I realize the details don't really matter. The difference in cultural values will make the interpretation of these events irreconcilable anyway.
To an individualist, the only fact that matters is that at least 2 million in a city of 8 million want the right to their own destiny. To a collectivist, the only fact that matters is that the government is building a more harmonious society so the ends justify any means.
What have been the human rights violations from the government, aside from responses to protester violence?
Labeling yourself "human rights" does not automatically make you right.
> It's possible to only say true things and still be biased. This is probably the most common way of spinning a story for "fake news".
Certainly. And you are immune to biases and spinning "fake news" ... how?
> Escalation of force, hiring triads to attack citizens, blinding journalist with rubber bullets, shooting live ammo at students in the chest,
"triads"? "fake news" much?
What else from this list is anything but a response to protester violence? Or do you think the policy should just stand still and take the beating?
> To an individualist,
Keep throwing labels around all you want, it doesn't make you right.
Your freedom to shine your laser light ends where another person's eyes begin.
Plenty of people in the US hate the current government, but you don't get protests to this degree (i.e. widespread violence) in part because some degree of accountability exists.
And not speaking on something does not mean you support it.
He's donated to both sides of the aisle, including a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton last election: https://fortune.com/2016/08/24/apple-tim-cook-fundraiser-cli...
But, the U.S. companies like this equation - don't they? It helps them generate more profit to their shareholders and give them access to that scale of manufacturing. This led to the growth of the US economy. Now, you have a new player in the game who doesn't like to play by the old player's rules and the old player doesn't like it.
The US of course doesn't need to like it, but it seems a tad silly to expect that a country that is very much still developing to act like a free-trading developed nation.
China in its current totalitarian form needs an "Enemy" to survive, without it, it has to deal with difficult internal questions which will force it to adapt and change - and this what scares them.
Totalitarian governments rely on distraction and misdirection of the populace in order to survive. Without it to use as ammunition to unify the people against a commonly perceived "enemy", the very nature of its limiting rule forces the populace to start questions to try and improve their own condition. Questions like "freedom" and "censorship". Totalitarian governments are not equipped to satisfy difficult questions like this and will either adapt or crumble.
Thus the best way "oppose a government that is the sworn enemy of values you regard as precious" is to allow it to face its internal discord without giving it the "enemy" it so desperately needs as ammunition to use against you.
EDIT: There are many comments that I think are misguided attacking this concept, here is rebuttal to them:
Proposition: If China wants to make the west an enemy, it will do so with or without us by the total control it has over its populace.
Rebuttal: So the best counter plan is to help them in doing so?
Proposition: So the solution is don't speak out about real issues because you don't want to piss off Chinese citizens and make them think you are the enemy?
Rebuttal: Obviously not, but rhetoric implying war or xenophobia is hardly the answer either.
Proposition:Most totalitarian governments fail on the battlefield. Think of Genghis Khan, Napoleon, the empires that fell during WW1, or the Axis powers in WW2.
Rebuttal: Just because totalitarian regimes have fallen on the battlefield before, does not mean they will do so in the future. Not only is this proposition utterly foolish and dangerous but its not even remotely true in the nuclear age.
Proposition: Even if you watch or read the heavily controlled Chinese media, it's never about fighting anyone or pointing the finger at anyone.
Rebuttal: This is almost categorically untrue and uninformed. In fact, in times of political tension anti-west and anti-Japanese sentiment in the government controlled media is used almost without fail. No protests are allowed, but anti-west and anti-japanese protests are manufactured by the state.
Proposition:Should we allow economic coercion and suppression of political speech in the US by a state power? Can we not speak out in favor of those protesting in Hong Kong that were promised 50 years of "one country, two systems"?
Rebuttal: Of course NOT! But we should act on the defensive, and prudently, with our own best interests in mind.
Proposition:This theory has proved wrong. China has been welcomed into the WTO over the last 20-30 years and it has not reformed. It is now extending it's economic superpower into political and cultural power. It's not about making an enemy, it's about limiting this unwanted influence.
Rebuttal: To say the theory has proved wrong is premature, China took advantage of one sided trade agreements that created a competitive advantage for itself, subsidized by us. Limitations of its political and cultural power should be in the form of leveling out this competitive economic playing field, and not escalation into xenophobia or coercion.
If the CCP wants to make the US out as China's enemy, they'll make us out to be their enemy, even if they have to lie and distort to do so. The CCP has near-total control of the PRC's domestic media can easily block foreign media if it doesn't already, so there's little stopping them. For instance, IIRC, they're currently pushing a false theory to domestic audiences that the HK protests are just a CIA orchestrated plot.
> EDIT: There are many comments that I think are misguided attacking this concept, here is rebuttal to them:
Why don't you post your rebuttals in replies to the comments in question?
> Proposition: If China wants to make the west an enemy, it will do so with or without us by the total control it has over its populace.
> Rebuttal: So the best counter plan is to help them in doing so?
You misunderstand: if they're going to do it anyway, it's foolish to try to constrain you actions in an attempt to control them. You gain nothing and only give them more control of the situation.
For instance: the CCP tries to blur the lines between the CCP, the PRC government, and the Chinese nation. An action against the CCP could be presented as an action against the nation in Chinese domestic media, do you think that should stop actions against the CCP? Similarly, the CCP will interpret actions to support Taiwan as hostile to it, does that mean the US should abandon (democratic) Taiwan to avoid some kind of censure in Chinese state-controlled media?
Not at all. The whole premise of Chinese policy and the key to the Party's survival is not about fighting enemies. It's simply about developing the country and putting it on an equal footing with the other superpower(s).
Even if you watch or read the heavily controlled Chinese media, it's never about fighting anyone or pointing the finger at anyone. When that happens it usually in response to a perceived attack.
They know they have enough to do without inventing themselves enemies to fight against. Their policy is to avoid clashes as much as possible.
I should also point out that the condition of the Chinese 'populace' has massively improved over the last 40 years and they are actually quite proud of it.
This backsliding to authoritarianism under Xi is sure to lower GDP per Capita growth over the medium and long run -- you need inclusive economic institutions for economic innovation and creativity to be fostered.
This isn't historically accurate. China mostly been under a centralized authoritarian government since antiquity. In fact, there is a strong argument that China (literally "Center Kingdom" or "Middle Kingdom" in Chinese) became authoritarian because it had no rivals for thousands of years.
By contrast, European nations always were in a community of relatively equal rivals - a society of nations if you will. This rivalry forced nations to be somewhat competitive in terms of meeting the needs of their population, and adapting to new methods or technologies developed by their neighbors since they were always in danger of being overtaken by a rival.
If anything, the existence of strong rival nations weakens the cultural Chinese claim of being the center of the world.
Every media organization aligned against Saddam when the intelligence agencies (US govt) signaled it, with 0 evidence.
I suspect you're thinking specifically of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations during the 90s. There's a conflating factor there though: communism breaks up under internal pressures without an external enemy. (This is a pattern also replicated within many Latin American countries, as well as within smaller-scale communes within the United States.) Communism is one form of totalitarianism, but it's not the only one, and it's not the one currently practiced by China (which switched over to state capitalism in the 70s).
Most of modern China's advances came in times of freewheeling Jiang-Hu era, and Xi mostly coasts on inertia. Domestic electronics manufacturing has been on retreat for the last decade, being supplanted by government pushed initiatives. Billions are being bamboozled on "O2O," "AI," "5G," "Big Data" by people who don't have even a remotest idea of what those are besides nice CG animations.
Industrial parks that made local makes famous during Shanzhai era are being bulldozed year after year to be replaced by campuses of firms brandishing current tech fashion trend buzzword. This severely impacts the output of local original products. Things like cheap LED lighting, battery banks, vapes, selfie sticks, hoverboards, quadcopters, stick computers, damn fidget spinners, portable audio amplifier, loads of bluetooth gizmos, tons of cellphone accessories, and so on — all that stuff was originally a product of Chinese garage industry. I can not imagine anything like this coming in such amounts in current cultural and business climate.
Some of you genuinely care about us and I can appreciate that, but as a whole, I find the Westerners' altitude towards us disturbing.
Reasons:
1. Knows very little about China except from cherry-picked news by Western media, but pretending to know everything about us, better than us. This makes many of your arguments baseless and extremely annoying to the eyes.
- How many of you have lived in China for more than 1 year and know the language and the culture? I have been in the US for 9 years, by your logic I am so qualified for the next POTUS.
- When was the last time you saw bad news about Taiwan on your media? Does this mean Taiwan is heaven on earth?
- Have you read Henry Kissinger's On China? Do you know who Edgar Snow is? Have you heard of the 1938 Yellow River flood and know its cause? If you answer no for all three questions, it is unlikely that your opinion about China worth a read.
- I saw one HNer wondered if any of us mainlanders know what's happening in HK. Excuse me? HK is physically connected to other parts of mainland China, Luohu port alone served 83.2 million passengers in 2015.
2. Double standard in just about everything.
- Terrorist attack in Paris, everybody mourns; terrorist attack in Kunming, freedom fighters!
- US fights with {UK, USSR, North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, China, whoever-it-is-this-week}, we are just spreading freedom; China fights with the US (with no blood shed), you are just hiding your own problems.
- Care to explain why are Francis Cabot Lowell and Samuel Slater your hero if you care so much about intellectual property and fair trade?
- I see at least one post about HK on HN every single day, since June. So either the people from Kashmir don't deserve your attention, or being your ally means one can get away with this.
3. General arrogance towards us.
- For you internal affair, clearly there are always multiple parties involved, people should make observations from different perspectives and critical thinking is required. When it comes to us, well, you Chinese are all borgs that think and act alike. Apparently all the 90 million members of the CCP share the same brain, there cannot possibly be any conflict inside the party which affects its actions.
- I have witnessed multiple times, on HN, where people say that they can't wait to see a revolution happen in China or a joint military action that overthrows our government. Yes, millions of Chinese are more than welcome to die ASAP just so you can be more confident about Western values.
- When it comes to battling the climate change. The US citizens should do nothing and keep their current life style. How dare the Chinese want to eat beef like we do, owning big houses and lawns like we do, and drive pick-ups like we do. Per capita carbon emission and meat consumption is the wrong metric to use!!!!!!1111 You Chinese should just stick with bicycles and eat more rice.
(HN is especially bad in these regards. Seriously, even the 4chan folks are much more adorable than HNers, at least they know they are shit talking.)
The CCP treats us like shit. But when I see Westerners have discussions about China, I don't feel like you want to help us because your discussions are almost always filled with Western propaganda, misinformation, and utter ignorance. All I see is a massive circlejerk based on half-truth, half-misunderstanding. I know some of you fantasize that if more and more Chinese come to the West or see online discussions like this one, they will accept Western value and the CCP will collapse in no time. But the reality is, based on the reasons above, you only humiliate yourself and push us further away from you. Feel free to deny all your faults and blame the CCP for brain-washing us into disagreeing with you (as you have always did), but more and more mainlanders are agreeing with me.
Yes I registered to post this, yes I am a Chinese, yes I am saying something bad about you Westerners. I know some HNer can't wait to point these out and accusing me of being a wumao, sorry I took you chance :P
You may down vote me now.
Instead of letting contention escalate to coercion and violence we should focus on setting mutually agreeable rules of economic competition, and let whichever system is more successful in producing value succeed.
Important side point regarding intellectual property - our system here is also messed up and copyright/IP laws will no doubt be changed soon. The important part regarding that is setting common rules of engagement, and allowing those that are responsible for development of new methods and ideas to capture some part of the value that they created, without enforcing through the coercion of law an arbitrary monopoly. Such rules are in both of our interests, as Chinese people should also be able to capture the value that they create through innovation - perhaps why some think the innovation curve is so low in China is because there is not enough incentive for there to be more (There would be if we formed some kind of rules for innovators to be allowed to capture some value from the product/services they create).
I hope you realize, I am NOT anti-china, I am anti-Totalitarianism, because I think its not in both of our long term best interests. But I also think that if some are happy to live under what I would call "totalitarianism" I am 100% okay with that as long as I am allowed the same prerogative to chose what system I want to live with.
You are purporting a collection of statements from just one side of the argument, seemingly on purpose.
I am asking you, if you truly want this issue to progress to a healthier path, do not continue to push adversarial position, even though many in the west might do so.
Do you have the faintest idea how many European countries talk shit about Germany and Germans 24/7? Only German Neo-Nazis pay close attention to any of that, nobody else would use it as excuse to vote for the extreme right-wing. Reason is not suffering from an inferiority complex, other than said right-wingers.
And trust me, as a German there's a lot to feel shit about, and not much to be proud of. But I still can laugh when people trash talk Germany, and nothing a foreigner says about Germany could make me angry, so I don't have to invent things about them, either. If you want to see me angry, have a German deny the Holocaust, or say that might is right, I'll be teetering on the edge of what is legal to say in no time, certainly on the edge of what the rules of any online forum would allow.
> I know some of you fantasize that if more and more Chinese come to the West or see online discussions like this one, they will accept Western value and the CCP will collapse in no time
With those cherry picked straw men about all Westerner you haven't even scratched the surface. As has been written decades ago, totalitarian revisionism requires control of the whole planet. The CCP is demonstrating it really wants to try going for that. It doesn't want just to bullshit you and leave us alone, it wants to silence us, as well, so we'd rather fight back.
We care about our own freedom, from that follows solidarity of all people who want to be free, too, but our own is the bedrock driving force here, and I don't think you fully grasp it, it's not merely buzz words because you've seen a bunch of hypocrites or people paying mere lip service. And the main question isn't so much how the CCP treats obedient or harmless citizens, anyway, but rather how it treats dissidents. One innocent person who gets tortured outweighs even a thousand billion people who look the other way. Until that is clear to you as well, you have understood little about the lessons of the 20th century from the perspective of serious Westerners. No words can change anything. Not even military force could. You can kill us, but not change this.
If you don't want solidarity, that's fine, but you can't give it back on behalf of others. Those dissidents still have it, and we will speak freely.
> blame the CCP for brain-washing us into disagreeing with you (as you have always did)
What precisely are you even disagreeing with? You agree the CCP treats you like shit, but you haven't said whether you agree with supporting resistance against being treated like shit. Being offended so deeply seems to override everything else, but that is essentially blackmail, not an argument.
There is not a way to help China deal with their internal questions; it is now a matter of pushing back.
At the same time, is passive opposition ethical? Should we allow economic coercion and suppression of political speech in the US by a state power? Can we not speak out in favor of those protesting in Hong Kong that were promised 50 years of "one country, two systems" and just want to cash that check? What about the Uyghurs in camps?
I suspect that a rational, measured response to these issues is enough to be the boogeyman interfering in internal affairs that China wants.
No wonder they're getting results completely unrelated to basketball.
The US started off the game with a lot more technology, knowledge, and power than the Chinese. I'm kind of iffy that developing nations should open their markets entirely to the largest multinational corporations especially if that means steamrolling the local companies. A lot of Chinese companies would not have been able to start if they instantly got out marketed by large American ones.
I agree that the tenths article on the same topic that doesn't really add new information and produces largely identical comments isn't too interesting, but I don't believe that it's coordinated in any way. People like outrage, and they like to signal to each other that they are part of the same group, so they upvote and comment "I too am outraged".
And then there's just the randomness of the NBA, South Park and Blizzard happening yesterday/today, had those happened a week apart, it would have looked differently.
StackOverflow's PR disaster that unfolded over the last two weeks or so was similar in amount, but it was stretched over 10 days so there would only be one or two posts on the front page (granted: they did get flagged down and/or were removed by mods more quickly than the topics about China, possibly because there's more flame-war-potential in StackOverflow's actions than in "The West's" reaction to Chinese outrage).
Iraq was destroyed not only because of WMD as a lie but the biggest factor is that Westners as human rights activits collectively supported their government based on the belief that they own truth and have "moral responsibilty" meaning they are the judge but not god to decide other peoples fate by liberate them from evil human right abuser i.e. Saddam and Gaddafi. They are able to do that because western countries have more bombs while the "evils" can not defend themselves.
In today's world, Hitler doesn't create threat because it's obvious wrong and will be easily destroyed. The real threat is mobs of human activists that believe they stand on a high moral ground. They are more deceptive. They create chaos around the world. They show no remorse for the suffer of Iraq and Libya people because they don't think they cause the disaster.
Blaming the lie of WMD is another lie. The Western people collectively supported their countries to bomb Iraq and Libya that evetually created the chaos and disaster. That's the real root cause.
Human rights and democracy is the last cult in the world after communism collapse. I'm not saying HR and democracy themselvs are bad. But because the believers have done a lot of damages without knowing it's their crime that cause millions of death. The stupidity of mordem human only recognizes direct killing as a crime but never admit bigger scale crime indirectly caused by their "good" intention
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200971
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195089
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898
More comments on this at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
I've tried asking through official channels for a couple months, so I thought I'd ask casually here.
I don't care about my old accounts. This one is fine.
Statements, yes. Conversations, no. It's just a bunch of echo chambers, when people occasionally come out of their favorite chamber they simply yell at each other with their ears covered.
Go ahead and downvote because facts make you angry.
> Stratechery is written by me, Ben Thompson. I am based in Taipei, Taiwan, and am fully supported by my work at Stratechery.
I think it's important to know the perspective of the author, being situated in Taiwan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan,_China
"the People's Republic of China (PRC) ― which is widely recognized by the international community as the legitimate representative of "China" ― does not currently exercise jurisdiction over areas controlled by the Republic of China (ROC)."
I think the much bigger story here is how China's state capitalism is being used to probe structural weaknesses in Western free market capitalism. Under free market capitalism, the private sector and the state are fundamentally opposed. The government's proper role is to act as a guardian of the system and establish the rules of play so that the "free market" can flourish and the role of companies are to compete to the maximum extent inside the constraints of regulation. State capitalism comes from a totally different set of first principles, under state capitalism, the private sector is a collaborator with the state and the work in concert to further the goals of the nation. Companies are allowed to compete when it would be beneficial to the state that they compete and forced to co-operate when it's beneficial to the state that they co-operate. Both systems start from a very different set of first principles and they each have their own pros and cons but China knows how to exploit the cons of free market capitalism much better than the US knows how to exploit the cons of state capitalism.
One structural weakness of free market capitalism is that it has intrinsic difficulty dealing with co-ordination problems arising from prisoner's dilemma situations. Take the recent "Taiwan, China" airline thing. China announces that all airline websites must list the destination as "Taiwan, China" or risk losing rights to access the Chinese air market. Now, this risk is a total paper tiger, any sober minded analysis could demonstrate that China would be hurt way more than losing flight volume than they would gain from words on a webpage. If all US airlines stood up in unison and said they opposed the change, China would rapidly back down, the whole "hurt feelings" stuff is just window dressing for political negotiation. However, if all but one airline caved, that airline would get all of China's flight volume, China would not be meaningfully hurt but every other company would be damaged.
The problem is, there's no effective mechanism under free market capitalism to do that. The "right" mechanism would be for the government to simply pass a law saying all US airlines must not refer to Taiwan as Taiwan, China and China would have immediately backed down. The problem is
a) The US is utterly incapable of passing legislation these days.
b) Even if it were capable, this would be something considered a massive overreach by the state and would be dragged into lawsuits for years.
c) Absent legislation, such co-operation would be arguably even illegal as it would run afoul of anti-trust as cartel like behavior.
So, as China predicted, you had airlines folding one by one over an utterly trivial issue because the fundamental bedrock assumptions of free market capitalism do not allow them to do otherwise.
The difference with the Houston Rockets case is that the NBA does exist as a mechanism for there to be a unifying voice of the league. China initially played this the same way it always does, by performing a surgical culling of the Rockets specifically, they were expecting the rest of the league to be cowed and force the Rockets to back down. What they didn't realize was that professional sports in the US are run as a socialist collective and sports leagues are one of the only areas of American life which are explicitly sanctioned to run as a cartel. Thus, the NBA has the freedom to say fuck you to China in a way that movie studios and airlines cannot because they realize China needs the NBA more than the NBA needs China.
I was with you right up until this point. How is that?
There's a common misconception in the West that because China is an authoritarian state, it doesn't need to care about happiness of its citizens which couldn't be further from the truth. The CCP's legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed and the Chinese people know that.
RTHK is the public broadcaster in Hong Kong: https://www.rthk.hk/?lang=en
SCMP is owned by Alibaba Group: https://www.scmp.com/
HKFP is funded by donations: https://www.hongkongfp.com/
My support has changed, and I can’t help but think that this is about the ego of Chinese leadership, since it seems like they are making some poor decisions. Perhaps even stupid decisions.
I also wonder what the effect of President Trump has had in the poor decision making process of Chinese leadership since Trump also makes a lot of bad decisions and has lowered the bar on skill in diplomacy.
This is a sad situation since I really hope for lots of trade, travel between countries, and respect for other countrys’ rights to their own culture and autonomy.
It is and isn't. I grew up in China and I think the Chinese government is overacting to this NBA statement. If the Chinese fans decide to boycott NBA that's their choice and rights, but the government should not ban NBA in China.
At the same time, I am frustrated to see so much misconception and lack of empathy in the discussions here. The territorial integrity of China has a very important place in the minds of many Chinese citizens if not all given the recent 100 years of Chinese history. HK is globally recognized as part of China but yet we have seen all western media's efforts to spread anti-HK police sentiment and turn a blind eye on the violent activities carried out by so-called protestors.
I've lived in the US for over a decade. Before coming here, I had no idea how sensitive racial comments are. Over time I learned about the history and never made a racial joke in public or private occasions. It's not the best analogy, but I want to point out that Morey's HK tweet is out of line and doesn't deserve NBA's endorsement.
We'll be probably seeing more of that rather than less: http://arnogruen.net/the_need_to_punish_--_article_by_arno_g...
Which part of freedom of speech is still unclear even after supposedly you've "lived in the US for over a decade"???
"and doesn't deserve NBA's endorsement."
The NBA did not endorse nor reject Morey's words.
And the western world has been incredibly naive and uncoordinated when it comes to dealing with China. We've all accepted the incredibly one-sided deal, in some kind of idealistic hope that the Chinese would latch on to "western" values of democracy etc just by trading with us.
Edit: World -> Western world.
For example, in Charlottesville 2017 [1] the local government tried to prevent Neo-nazis from using a park for a protest but ACLU sued the gov and got approval. From there the police actively protected their right to protest.
Which really highlights the massive gap between the US and China. It's not just 'don't silence them' but they have a right to speak and be protected while protesting on public grounds by the state from violence by other government organizations and citizens who disagree with them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally#Permits_...
I normally find the "hate speech is free speech" argument to be pretty tiring, but it's also true that once you start carving exemptions to free speech you can easily carve one out that says "criticizing the government is like hate speech", and then you can justify anything.
(Of course it's always under the guise of "harmony". F*ck, we're beginning to resemble the PRC.)
If the foreigner doesn't feel it, they'll at least find it funny.
To expand on this, the history of economic and democratic development were thought to go hand in hand. Not only had it borne out in Western Europe, it also showed traction in post-war Japan and India. So the hypothesis, that a wealthier China would become more stable and democratic wasn't insane.
That hypothesis has been proven false. Part of this is the reduced number of people required to hold on to power in our age of digital surveillance. Part of it is the unique culture Mao's Cultural Revolution left behind.
The moment of reckoning came when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. Prior to that, China had been lurching towards mastering peaceful transitions of power under intraparty politics. There was legitimate hope it would think and plan for the long term. With a dictator, however, short-term political survival dominates all else. And so we get the absurdity of a billion peoples' productive power being channeled into stamping out Winnie the Pooh imagery.
I think it's a little early to definitely say that this hypothesis has been proven false in China. Keep in mind that China's growth has really only taken off since the mid-to-late 90's. That's less than one generation. Look at the path that comparable economies in Asia took who developed much earlier. Korea's economic miracle took off in 1960, but it was basically ruled by military dictatorships in all but name until 1987. Taiwan saw it's main burst of economic growth in the 60's and 70's, but it was also ruled as a dictatorship by the KMT since they lost the Chinese Civil War. In fact, the first opposition party was not formed until 1986, and martial law, which had been in effect since 1949, was not lifted until 1987, a year before Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai Shek's son and successor, passed away. Singapore's government all during its economic miracle was famously authoritarian.
I think the jury is still out. China has a long way left to develop and a huge populace still toiling without the benefits of that wealth. And some of the ways the economic development has happened are IMO temporarily and not durable.
> There was legitimate hope it would think and plan for the long term. With a dictator, however, short-term political survival dominates all else. And so we get the absurdity of a billion peoples' productive power being channeled into stamping out Winnie the Pooh imagery.
In fairness, I'm not sure that's a huge fraction of the billion peoples' productive power. ;P
Is it the world vs China or the parts of the world we typically listen to vs China?
Some of us were paying attention in the '90s and we're still paying attention.
Here are some interesting items to review:
1 - McDonnell Douglas (yep the same gang that ruined Boeing): https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/29/business/mcdonnell-dougla...
2 - "Pentagon Blessing" https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB832727883654550000
3 - https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/20/us/us-indicts-mcdonnell-d...
4 - https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-bill-clinton-and-amer...
5 - https://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/12/24/report-israe...
6 - https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-tech-transfe...
"naive and uncoordinated"
It has always seemed rather coordinated to this observer. No comment regarding "naive".
"We've all accepted the incredibly one-sided deal"
Who is this "We"? Did we take a vote on this? This was decided on high up per some undisclosed calculus like everything else substantial while the corporate media beguiles "Us" with peripheral, low brow, histrionics.
(And yeah, I feel like I have been personally aware at least during the past ten years or so. Things move slowly.)
Don't misunderstand me, I'm certainly on US side in this one - but Russia, India, Brazil, and many, many other world powers aren't particularly opposed to China on this one. They're trying to implement the same domestic capabilities, and indeed agree with China's opinion on national sovereignity and limitations of speech.
It was a great time, when US could dictate the world it's values and the world listened - as much as HN public loves to bash US government (I guess, a concious person is always critical of his own country), it's still one of the best democracies in the world. But that time is gone. Liberal consensus is not "the world"'s opinion anymore.
China's not the first nation state to be at the butting end of this debate and they won't be the last.
Is that really so idealistic though? Like most folks I'm sure, I've worked with a ton of chinese nationals and expatriots over my career. And not one of them was ignorant of this nonsense. They all know it happens. They agree in principle that it's bad, they just tolerate it as part of the cost of growth. And that's not even arguably a bad trade given China's history over the past century.
As the PRC's growth slows and it reaches parity with the rest of the world, we'll start to see more tension in this space (arguably that's exactly what's happening in Hong Kong right now). And there's danger there, obviously.
But the problem isn't one of "ideals", "values" or "free speech". The values are already there.
The biggest threat is the cult because the cult will cause conflicts. Keep it for yourself would be good. Spread it all over the world and claim it's universal so you have right to judge others inferior "value" and even try to enforce your "value" when the other countries are weaker , literally is the same pattern as ISIS.
Trust me, most Chinese people believed the same thing when they deal with other nations.
You either need to label all of them being stupid and naive; or you are saying Chinese are so smarter than anyone else...
The deals are never one-sided...
This is liberalism vs totalitarianism. Totalitarians are successfully using the tools of liberalism against itself. It's time that we in the free world wake up to what's happening and fight back.
Please don't include the majority of the world that is benefiting from a new benevolent economic actor on the block.
What people don't understand is that Western democracy is the only and best way to run the world. I mean look at public transport infrastructure in the United States. Public transport in the United States is so fair and democratic that it's been over two decades and they still haven't been able to ring the Bart around the bay or build a high speed rail thanks to the government being fair and balanced.
I mean look at chinas lack of human rights. They throw a few people out their homes to build an entire high speed rail network across the entire country. More people may benefit from this but it is a serious violation of human rights to move a couple people to another place. Literally borderline evil. Lifting an entire population out of poverty isn't worth giving up a fair and balanced democracy where everyone can fairly debate about a policy for 20 years before anything gets done.
I'm not saying that the US is perfect. But china needs to take a good hard look at the US and realize that their way isn't the only way of doing things. I mean people in the United States aren't so biased as to insult china on every opportunity as an economic rival. People in the west are actually unbiased and have a fair and balanced outlook on the world just like the parent poster. Literally china is like a small child saying that it's the entire world against the United States. This is an immature way of solving a problem or working together.
This is like many things in the current world, vicious cycles, the more unsympathetic ordinary Chinese perceive outside China, the more they will embrace the CCP and strongmen, the more powerful the party will be.
And solution seems don't exist. Xi said "You don't eat the meal then break the wok", So there's only one question:
Who's next?
> Who's next?
Well, Blizzard, already. So more like, who's after that :-)
The rules serve to further US diplomatic and corporate interests, not openness or trade.
Communism is not a culture. This isn't a
time to break up, on all fronts.
By this logic, should Israel have a moral right to put half of German population into gas chambers today because of Hitler?
