Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.
It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. I used to think the Western world had abandoned that kind of collective punishment, but apparently not.
It ceases to be reciprocal if you distinguish groups at an only slightly higher resolution: Chinese businesses like TikTok and WeChat and American businesses like Google and Facebook in addition to the Chinese and American governments. The Chinese government demanded that all businesses censor content, but Google and Facebook had most of their users outside China, so they could choose not to comply and still survive. Whereas TikTok and WeChat didn't have that luxury and censor their Chinese users (TikTok by offering Douyin as a separate product and making TikTok unavailable in China, WeChat by censoring messages in conversations with at least one Chinese participant). So far, both Chinese and American businesses were bullied by the Chinese government. Now the US government decided to "reciprocate" and ... decides to bully businesses as well, but only Chinese ones. Great justice.
If TikTok or WeChat have done anything wrong they deserve to be punished for, then sue them, or, if it's not illegal, make a new law that requires them to stop doing whatever it is. That law should then also apply to Google and Facebook, just in case they might be tempted to try the same thing.
But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me. Maybe I'm just biased by living in a parliamentary democracy where the voting system aims for proportional representation.
> It ceases to be reciprocal if you distinguish groups at an only slightly higher resolution: Chinese businesses like TikTok and WeChat and American businesses like Google and Facebook in addition to the Chinese and American governments.
This is pretty much exactly how reciprocity works in other areas like travel and immigration. We treat their nationals as they treat ours. You can see examples worldwide right now with travel restrictions.
And these Chinese companies benefit from the lack of US-based competition at home. Would WeChat ever have gotten that big without China's restrictions on US companies? It's not arbitrary to counter that benefit with a loss of access to the US.
Congress specifically gives the president the power to counter unfair trade practices by foreign governments. The president executes the laws, he doesn't dictate them.
Visa free travel usually, and special work visas like the deals between US and Canada or US and Australia. It's also used for retaliation in other ways, like when China revoked visa free travel for Norwegian citizens after Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace prize, or Brazil photographing and fingerprinting only US citizens on arrival.
although the Australian visa deemed to match the US work visa for Australians is available without regard for nationality. I think reciprocity is common, but many states work in their own self interest first.
As an example from my personal experience, up until last year, Brazil required Americans to get a tourist visa. They also charged identical visa fees based on what Brazilians have to pay to visit the US as a tourist. On their website they made it plain that the whole motivation for the visa and fees was reciprocity. It stood out in my mind as funny because it seemed so petty.
I suspect one less petty motivation is to encourage the US to reduce visa restrictions for Brazilians. It wasn't actually reciprocal in practice because as far as I know the process of paying the fee as a USC visiting Brazil was far less involved than the process of applying for a US tourist visa (correct me if I'm wrong), not to mention an argument can be made that the fee on average has a lower impact on people from a higher-income country.
I think it is fairly onerous for both parties speaking as a US citizen who visited Brazil a number of years ago. Until recently you had to visit a Brazilian embassy and bring a postal money order as well as printed passport style photos and conduct a financial interview (to make sure you had enough money to leave).
Now it seems that you can do this all online, so ignoring the monetary component it was not any easier than a Brazilian person in my experience as a USC with many Brazilian friends.
For certain countries like Cuba and Iran, where relations are colder, there are "reciprocity tables" which give fees and restrictions for immigrants from there based on making comparable requirements to what their country requires of Americans.
Many countries are reciprocal to the US—ie, US citizens are made to face the same restrictions/difficulty entering country X as country X's citizens face entering the US.
>Congress specifically gives the president the power to counter unfair trade practices by foreign governments. The president executes the laws, he doesn't dictate them.
The Congress has increasingly delegated rulemaking to the Executive through various forms of Authorization Act that empower the Executive to arbitrarily dictate Administrative Law.
I wouldn't exactly rank Congress highly in being the rulemaker here. There's been no great change, upset, or active reaffirmation of the process in years.
There are no Chinese restriction on U.S. companies. Why do you think iMessage and Skype are popular in China? If FB/Google doesn't want to operate in China because they don't want to comply to the same law that applies to everyone, then good for them. There are no explicit bans on Facebook and Google.
>It's not arbitrary to counter that benefit with a loss of access to the US.
Xiaomi and Huawei competes against Samsung and Apple within the Chinese market. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, etc are just some of the big tech companies that enjoy a ton of revenue from China.
>The president executes the laws
The law specifically says he cannot use it to restrict any personal communication to foreign entities. So yeah, he has no right to do this.
>Congress specifically gives the president the power to counter unfair trade practices by foreign governments. The president executes the laws, he doesn't dictate them. //
Those two sentences are mutually contradictory. Who has the power, the President or Congress. If it's the former, then he does dictate them; if the later then they don't give the power to the President. Pick one?
It is not contradictory at all. The parent comment stated that Congress has the power to pass the laws, which give the president the power to counter unfair trade practices. It is how the U.S. government (and most forms of democratic government) is structured, with separate legislative branch and executive branch.
> The Chinese government demanded that all businesses censor content, but...
To distinguish this further:
> The Chinese government demanded that all foreign businesses engage in a significant violation of basic human rights, but...
That distinction materially impacts the rest of the argument for me.
People usually reply here with the false equivalence that the US banning misleading advertisements or child pornography is somehow equivalent to Xi Jinping's campaign against what he calls "historical nihilism" (but the rest of the world calls "history"). I don't really understand how those are the same though.
Read USA law and constitutions. It is given in the law he can do this way before his presidency. And read up what happens on the other side to understand what really is "dictatorship" by changing laws to suit. Proportional system looks great on paper but consistently produce "proportional" government that can't act strongly due to political parties in-fighting. There is reason vast majority of people whether American or not accept the concept of manifest destiny. None ever accorded to GB, France, Spanish, Portugal, Italian or Germany even during their height of military superiority.
I've heard that foreign investment and foreign companies face difficult regulatory red tape. Can someone with a better understanding on it weigh in on whether that is applicable to this?
It's not a "dictatorship", because Congress (elected every 2 years, approximately) sets the laws that the President acts under, and the President himself (so far!) is elected every 4 years.
Dictatorships can be elective, so raising elections is irrelevant,and they can result from a legal delegation of arbitrary authority to the dictator (both election and legal delegation were absolutely the case for the Roman office of Dictator, which “dictatorship” is a generalization from.) If the President rules arbitrarily without meaningful constraint, despite being elected and despite that arbitrary power being explictly delegated in law, it is a dictatorship.
It's not, though, because the President is neither delegated general arbitrary power in law not ruling with it despite the law. While constraints on executive authority in the law have significantly broken down and one might argue that it is on the road to dictatorship, arbitrary executive action despite the law still faces meaningful checks at least by the courts. There has been significant defiance of court orders without meaningful consequence (e.g., with regard to family separation policy) but the areas where that has occurred are still limited and noticeable, however deeply problematic, exceptions.
> But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me.
It is. There's a faction in the US that believes the US has to have a dictatorship to compete with China.
We've been here before. The USSR looked like an unstoppable juggernaut until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Like China they started from a state of relative backwardness and rapidly industrialized and modernized. The pace seemed incredible until they ran out of stuff to copy.
Totalitarian systems excel at execution, but they are not creative. A vertically integrated totalitarian state will always beat a liberal democracy at "see that? do a whole lot of that!" type challenges. Totalitarianism fails utterly when the leaders are incompetent or deluded, but when the leadership has at least basic competence they can appear formidable... as long as there is a "that" to "do a lot of." When totalitarianism runs out of clear obvious paths forward, it flounders.
Totalitarian systems find it very hard to innovate because innovation is disobedience. It goes against entrenched bureaucratic and monetary interests and sometimes even laws. The latter is why states with a minimalist doctrine of law (some version of "that which is not explicitly forbidden is permitted") tend to do better at innovation.
For a real world example of above: look at how ISPs which are state backed monopolies use the law to push against competitors be they local or municipal broadband or Starlink. In a totalitarian state, those sorts of entrenched interests almost always win. Once something becomes entrenched in the power structure it is immovable and competing with it becomes effectively illegal.
During the Cold War there were always factions in the USA and Western Europe who argued that we must become more like the USSR. The right pushed for more militarization and executive power, while the left pushed for more central management and central planning. They were really pushing for "right" and "left" variants of the same thing: a vertically integrated totalitarian system like the Soviet state.
The same thing is happening now. I think a major reason many at the top of the financial and intelligence world pushed (sometimes covertly) for Trump is as an answer to Xi Jinpeng. There is always a temptation in any conflict or tension to emulate the adversary. It won't work. The real answer is to encourage and protect our ability to innovate while waiting for China to run out of things to copy.
That being said, I am all for cutting China off from easy access to inside knowledge and training. We shouldn't make it easy for the CCP to copy everything. As such I am not opposed to disengagement. We should move production to places like India, Africa, Indonesia, etc. so as not to readily share industrial and technological expertise.
Edit: I mean no racism here. The Chinese can innovate just fine. China under Xinpeng finds it hard to do anything but copy, because it's a dictatorship.
> The real answer is to wait until China runs out of things to copy.
The thing is that this order is about TikTok which comes from a Chinese company, has a US company currently trying to buy it while another has just released a shameless clone of it to their users. Maybe in this situation it is different because China aren't the ones doing the copying?
TikTok is a copy of Snapchat and Instagram. The only reason it's such a juggernaut is money. It's been very heavily and cleverly marketed, especially to younger demographics. Schools are flooded with TikTok swag, and they've hired domestic marketing agencies to push it. It's really obvious that someone has dumped enormous amounts of money into shoving TikTok at kids and teens.
> During the Cold War there were always factions in the USA and Western Europe who argued that we must become more like the USSR. The right pushed for more militarization and executive power, while the left pushed for more central management and central planning. They were really pushing for "right" and "left" variants of the same thing: a vertically integrated totalitarian system like the Soviet state.
Even without consciously intending to become like them, this is what inevitably happens when you focus on a competitor. Racing on beating them at whatever they are good at means you take on whatever aspects make them good at such pursuits. E.g. the space race meant centrally dumping tons into research funding, a system which of course never went away after the race was won because governments mostly only prefer to take power, they rarely give it up.
Did you see the spaceship launch from China (https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21256484/china-rocket-deb...)? The debris pathway fell right across two major cities and landed near a village in Africa. I still think there is a lot of areas China needs to catch up. edit:spelling + added African village
Those are innovative fields. The US has a clear lead in aerospace and is among the leaders in materials. We've lost our lead in chips not to China but to Taiwan, a comparatively more liberal Asian country. The gap is not huge (yet) so it's possible that the US will regain its fab lead... if we want it. I think it's more likely in the short term that the US will make deals to get TSMC to build high-end fabs here for strategic reasons.
I'm sure China will manage to copy a Boeing 737 pretty soon, which is 1960s technology. Meanwhile we are doing:
Last I checked China's most advanced fabs were doing 28nm, but that was in 2019. By now they've probably started to get EUV working as they feverishly race to copy TSMC. I would not be surprised if Chinese fabs are literal exact copies of prior generation TSMC and Intel fabs, since it takes time to steal inside information.
In 2019 China landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. [1] Two months ago, China successfully launched its first rover to Mars [2]
I think it is hardly arguable that China has the most technologically advanced retail market in the world. - Ordering everything online from food to furniture, paying everywhere else by mobile phone, introducing state-sanctioned digital currency [3], and it is closing the gap or even pulling ahead in many other fields as well.
Just look at how reliant the US is on the antiquated ACH transfer system. We're in the year 2020 and it's literally faster to mail someone cash in many cases.
> I'm sure China will manage to copy a Boeing 737 pretty soon, which is 1960s technology. Meanwhile we are doing:
Well, good enough is good enough. Boeing 737 is currently the most popular plane, and if China's regime manages to steal enough tech to be able build an equivalent product, even if it steals only 60s technology, then China's regime will be in a position to outcompete Boeing based on metrics that matter such as cost or soft power.
It really doesn't matter who has the cutting-edge after a point of diminishing returns. When that point is reached, good old economics start to become the leading criteria.
What about the USSR in the 1950s? I understand that by the 1980s it was a basketcase, but there was a time when it at least seemed to be the most rapidly advancing nation.
USSR had rapid progress in some areas only because of the systematic plundering of the workers. Behind a majestic facade, it was a country of extreme poverty.
In 1950s peasants were basically slaves who could not even leave their kolkhoz without party permission. The vast majority of citizens lived in atrocious conditions in communal flats or barracks [1] (a type of temporary housing with no sanitation and basic heating).
I see this pattern of comparisons to the USSR again and again. The USSR collapsed a long time ago, and China saw it happen. Why would they go the same way?
I'd say it's Americans, moreso than anyone else, who took the wrong lesson from that collapse. History isn't on anyone's 'side' and destiny doesn't exist. We take too much for granted.
"Collapse" is a bit too passive to describe what happened to the USSR. Gorbachev was a pro-American advocate of Social Democracy (aka the Denmark-style state that Bernie likes).
He thought that Russia would become prosperous by adopting capitalism. Instead, GDP shrank by 50% and Russia went from a global superpower to being encircled in its own backyard.
Sure, but the fruit was pretty rotten at that point after 18 years of Brezhnev. Maybe if Gorbachev had followed Kruschev, it could've been done without a chaotic mass selloff to gangsters.
The fruit was rotten under Kruschev too, the difference between him and Brezhnwv is that his administration picked a lot of low-hanging fruit that the public approved of (Apartments, and a relaxation of absolutely insane Stalinist repression.)
The economy didn't work well under either of them, but Kruschev is credited for leaving things much better than he found them.
China did manage such a turnaround, though. Of course, they had the contemporaneous USSR collapse to point to as well as maoism in living memory, so that probably made it more politically possible.
GDP dropped 50% when honestly reporting facts stopped becoming a criminal offense.
Gorbachev liked social democracy, but the Communist Party warlords like Putin didn't disappear in the revolution, they hung back and then took over again.
>China under Xinpeng finds it hard to do anything but copy, because it's a dictatorship.
WeChat is vastly more innovative than any of the American social media platforms. China makes and buys more electric vehicles than Europe, the US and Japan combined. DJI almost single-handedly created the civilian drone market. Chinese smartphone brands are regularly first-to-market with new features. The "innovative" Just Walk Out retail concept of Amazon Go is commonplace in China.
There's no doubt that China plays fast-and-loose with intellectual property laws, but the idea that they can't innovate is at least a decade out of date.
Innovation can be hard for entrenched businesses in Capitalist states as well. One could argue that large corporations are a form of totalitarianism. Witness big auto in the west struggle to keep up in the EV field.
To your point "free-er" states can give rise to the lone wolf innovators who force changed by the power of a new, better idea. (and a solid business plan)
Why are you OK with that. Why is division between groups of people a good thing for you, is it that you want oligarchic rule to beat one-party dictatorial rule? Or you hate the Chinese fifth of the World population?
USA will polarise things until a war with China becomes inevitable forcing those who want to trade freely with both parties to pick a side.
Your reply makes sense, but you are buying into the notion that there is 'hate' and 'racism' involved.
This is a spurious comparison. Every time someone accuses someone else of racism in this thread, there should be the same answer: The US (after a looong while!) is doing to Chinese companies the same China does to US companies. To ensure the benefits of globalization are not concentrated by China's protectionist policies
>So you are saying Chinese hate rest of the world //
No, if there's some other reason you could explain it. But my working hypothesis is that you hate Chinese people for some reason: perhaps through media conditioning against anything labelled communist.
Their reason, in theory is they hate Western Capitalism. So an alternate hypothesis is that you want the oligarchic rule that Western Capitalism is heading full-throttle towards?
> Or you hate the Chinese fifth of the World population?
This is a spurious comparison. Every time someone accuses someone else of racism in this thread, there should be the same answer: The US (after a looong while!) is doing to Chinese companies the same China does to US companies. To ensure the benefits of globalization are not concentrated by China's protectionist policies
But the reasons usually are bracketed with 'what China is doing is wrong' ... so then doing the same is also wrong for USA. It's just about the money; in the past it seemed USA was about the ideals - of the declaration of independence, for example.
What is this comment trying to say, by putting China outside of the "rest of the world tribe"? Does this mean that Chinese people are a different species, or what?
It is countering OPs assertion that this is US vs China. They are arguing China is drawing a line around themselves (to keep competition out), and the US is merely recognizing it (by keeping competition in) and still participating with the rest of the world economy.
I am from India, and I created an account to agree with exactly this, and add a few more comments.
To every country which is actually in China's proximity, what China has been doing has been nothing short of imperial - in the bad sense of the word.
The "China tribe", if you look a little closely, consists of two types of people - those who are so far away that their notion of China is mostly in the abstract - in the same way I might (not at all) be alarmed if Somalia and Kenya had a war, say. The second group is the "satellite" which depends on China to counter a common enemy - a good example being Pakistan which needs China to counterbalance India's power in the region. Interestingly, but only anecdotally, I have never once heard anyone from Pakistan criticize China's treatment of Uighur Muslims, even though the world is finally catching on that something really fishy is going on. I mention this because the same folks are often seen loudly complaining about the treatment of Muslims in pretty much every other part of the world.
"It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. I used to think the Western world had abandoned that kind of collective punishment, but apparently not."
So no - this is not it at all.
Reciprocity is a much more appropriate term.
Trade is a big deal, trade deals are big deals.
'Free Trade' deals usually imply reciprocity on all fronts, otherwise, it's a lop-sided situation.
Nation A selling services into nation B, but B not allowed to sell such services back is usually an untenable situation.
If this were any other sector this 'tit for tat' would have happened a long time ago.
It seems a little outlandish because these app bans affect our lives directly, instead of say a 'steel tariff of 50%' which we don't materially witness.
And of course, despite the legitimacy or not of this ... this is a least 50% 'Donald Trump Campaigning'.
The 'censorship' and or 'TikTok' having done something wrong are side issues.
Purely on a trade basis, this is fair.
Now enter the security issue, which is very real: China wants to control everyone's lives down to every passing thought. They observe, control, censor every single conversation in China. They have the means and wherewithal to do it around the world. Large Chinese companies are 'state organs' and the notion that TikTok data would be used for all sorts of advantage is legit. Google and FB can be used as tools of the US, but this is not remotely the same comparison.
It's a new world order, and this action only seems unreasonable because of the person doing it, and the shocking terms.
I expect a little bit more of this to happen, not less.
> Now enter the security issue, which is very real
The national security trope really only affects the government. The global pandemic has had a far greater effect on the economy and has caused far more deaths than any national security incident or terrorist attack.
I think by 'trope' you mean another word ('canard'?) but it doesn't just affect 'government'.
The opposite - it affects everyone.
China is using their networks to steal anything they can get their hands on, influence and bully politicians, students, expats, companies, administrators, researchers.
They are surveilling and collecting information on anyone and everyone for the purposes of pursuing their strategic objectives.
For example - if you have ever spoken out against treatment of Uighurs - you may never be able to enter China. You may get various accounts banned. You may get your peers in trouble (ie WeChat requires someone to 'vouch' for you - if someone vouches for you, and you do something bad, they could face problems).
Depending on how important you are, they could lobby to have your research defunded, slander you in the press, use political leverage. You may never get a chance to work at a Chinese-owned firm.
If you have IP they will nab it, or use leverage information against you should you wish to export into China.
If they can influence your elections, or buy your politicians - they will. See: Belt and Road corruption. [1]
If you know or interact with anyone in HK, and they can use that information in any way to leverage against and compromise the democracy movement, they absolutely will.
Their strategy is bald-faced, it's right out there for everyone to see, there's nothing hidden. The only surprising issue is that there are so many Westerners who weirdly want to believe China is playing the 'modern global citizen' game - when they are obviously playing hardball realpolitik. It's fine if they want to do that, but we have to adjust accordingly.
> But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me
Extremely naive view. China is a totalitarian state that can compel its companies to hand over all private data if asked. In your rosy "presumption of innocence" scenario, by the time they're proven guilty it's too late.
This is preemptive measure that is a prelude to greater 'decoupling' from China. If a hot war breaks out, you don't want the country dubbed the number one strategic threat having access to 25% of citizens phones.
Funny, both the USA [1] and Australia [2] can compel its companies to hand over all private data if asked and regularly exploit the security systems of their own companies with little to no due process to obtain data on people. Nation-states interests are disjoint from those of its people. We need global unity, not petty tribalism if we are to make the world a better place for all. The internet can be a powerful tool for unity, but state actors and other narrow minded selfish actors are currently seeing the value of it and manipulating it to support their political objectives. We need to unite and quash this menace to free societies and global free economies. Recent measures by the current US regime stoop to China's level and usher an era of balkanization that will ultimately destroy the competitiveness of US companies and promote petty nationalism and racism.
> Nation-states interests are disjoint from those of its people.
This is literally the opposite of what is true in a democracy. Of the people, by the people and for the people. You can be cynical as hell, sure, but that will require significantly more justification and evidence to make such an incredibly broad assertion.
To give a clear example: why does the US get data from Apple, Google? To catch criminals. Why does CCP do the same?
>Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible.
Isn't it more like someone from the leaders of the tribe did something so we are holding leadership of the tribe responsible, given the extent that private companies are really extensions of the government?
>But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt
Plea deals means that most people never have their guilt proven, only that they are strong armed into confessing so that harsher punishment isn't given. This is already the norm in any country that practices plea deals.
WeChat isn't some app for government leaders. Its userbase in America are ordinary people in the Chinese diaspora who use it to stay in contact with family and friends worldwide. Like banning Kakaotalk for Koreans or Line for Japanese.
Also, if "all companies in China are really extensions of the government", then what do you call this relationship where Trump forces Bytedance to sell Tiktok to Microsoft and give the U.S. government a share of the profit?
>That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes...
Thomas Jefferson wanted to invade Canada because of the Union Jack flag flying over North America.
We are a government based on natural rights. Part of our responsibility is to defend Western Civilization. It's dangerous to say that China bans US companies for merely failing to censor content. It is the US that is defending innate human rights -- we shouldn't diminish them.
We shouldn't even do business with Saudi Arabia nor China at any level. Then we could build a world based on broader principles.
Working with corrupt authoritarian governments and propping them up to create new markets is just a financial strategy of the US business class. It's why the world is so conflicted and unstable. The US supports any foreign power as long as they help the US. That's fundamentally wrong.
>Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.
This really could be the end of the thread. For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world. The fact it has taken this long to respond with action is stupefying. China would like the benefits of an open internet, but don't want to participate.
The decision is 100% appropriate, but wasn't handled in the best manner.
>For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world.
That statement is a lie. Not a single one of those companies are banned in China, they voluntarily choose to not operate there, mostly due to them not wanting to comply to draconian Chinese laws. In Netflix's case they simply don't want to compete against the local streaming market.
Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD, Cisco, etc are just some of the big techs that's doing very well in China.
It's hard to have a genuine discussion when people are intentionally spreading misinformation.
Political structure has nothing to do with the economics of the situation: one country has access two large markets, the other to only one. Which do you think will succeed in the long run economically?
if normal people can participate in government, is that still a dictatorship?
there is a standard way in which chinese people can become a government official if they choose to.
There is a standard way to join a street gang. That doesn't meant that the street gang rules the neighborhood according to a representative democracy, under which people have constitutional rights.
That's not a wholly accurate characterisation. The internet is regulated in China, in the same way that broadcast media is regulated in the US. You might vehemently disagree with the specifics of Chinese media regulation, but the regulatory principle is the same.
Foreign media companies that choose not to go through the Chinese regulatory system are blocked from operating in China. Google and Facebook have chosen not to operate in China rather than comply with their regulations, but many American media companies have, most prominently the Walt Disney Company.
There is a fundamental difference between having a legible and uniform regulatory system and arbitrarily banning companies based on the whims of the executive. If a Chinese company started beaming satellite TV channels into the US that flagrantly violated FCC rules, we would fully expect the FCC to take strenuous enforcement action. You or I might consider Chinese attitudes to freedom of speech abhorrent, but the regulation of Chinese media is a matter of Chinese sovereignty.
Calling China's firewall "regulation" is a bit of an understatement, and framing it as Facebook and Google have "chosen not to operate" is very clever. At best it's an oversimplification rather than straight up propaganda but either way it's not one would call especially accurate because the principles aren't the same. While I'm sure the FBI, DHS, and DEA would love to get their hands on everyone's private communications, the courts, even at their most egregious, have resisted legalizing the blanket dragnet of the plaintext of American citizens' private communications that the Great Firewall is designed to enable of Chinese citizens. (Which is their right to do as a sovereign nation.) Thus calling it the same thing is like saying that a card board box is the same thing as a McMansion - they both provide shelter, but upon closer inspection, they're clearly not, in any way, equal, unless you wilfully ignore the details.
> the regulation of Chinese media is a matter of Chinese sovereignty
And the freedom of that media is a matter of basic human rights.
Your argument can be summarized as saying it's ok for China to deny fundamental human rights (free speech) to Americans as long as it is simultaneously denying those same rights to Chinese people because it's "a matter of Chinese sovereignty." I don't agree. Fundamental human rights are just that, fundamental.
> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The Chinese government sets their (extremely authoritarian) rules on censorship for companies to legally operate in China but the rules apply to everyone equally.
Chinese companies of course have to comply, but foreign companies have the choice to comply or not. Google chose to comply initially but decided to pull out later on. Microsoft/Apple choose to comply and are still operating in significant ways in China.
In contrast, US is proposing to ban TikTok, Huawei, DJI without clear rules: the reason to ban these companies is that they are Chinese companies. In other words, Chinese companies are "born a crime" to the US in the current climate, without the need to show what rules are violated or evidence of wrongdoing.
China also doesn't have the monopolistic power in tech that the US does: forbidding Google to operate in China it's not the same as forcing app stores to de-list certain apps globally.
It's even more absurd to force ByteDance to sell their US business to a US company. If the US feels justified that this could be done on "national security" ground, why shouldn't EU do the same to US tech companies?
I do hope that US citizens see that for much of the world, US is no longer the champion of free market, promoter of free-speech or guardian of world-order. All that matters is if these values benefit US economically or politically.
The US lost it when Japan was economically sanctioned for its competitive auto/electronic sector in 1980s. China is taking the same heat today and India would be the next target if India were to want to play its role on the international stage. The best outcome for the world would be to have multiple strong economies globally that keep each other in check; rather than one country having monopolistic power over all globally significant online forums.
> The Chinese government sets their (extremely authoritarian) rules on censorship for companies to legally operate in China but the rules apply to everyone equally.
Censorship requirements are the least restrictive Chinese law.
It's cool you linked a first hand source! But what are you trying to point out specifically? A quick look seems the list is rather reasonable and not very long. It's some "cultural heritage" stuff like tea, ceramics, etc... some military related things and a very limited subset of resource extraction and chemical/biomedical production (things that aren't cutting edge from what I can tell)
Catalogue of Prohibited Foreign Investment Industries
X. Art, Sports and Entertainment Industries
1. News agencies
2. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing, and importing of books, newspaper and periodical
3. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing and importing of audio and visual products and electronic publications
4. Radio stations, TV stations, radio and TV transmission networks at various levels (transmission stations, relaying stations, radio and TV satellites, satellite up-linking stations, satellite receiving stations, microwave stations, monitoring stations, cable broadcasting and TV transmission networks)
5. Companies of publishing and playing of broadcast and TV programs
6. Companies of films making, issuing, business
7. News website, network audiovisual service, on line service location, internet art management
8. Construction and management of golf course
9. Gambling industry (including gambling turf)
10. Eroticism
Nice to know the Chinese Communist Golf Course lobby is alive and effective though! :)
Yeah, the tea and herbs part is the first part, near the middle and end you start to see things like heavy industry.
There's a Marxist concept called "commanding heights of the economy" which refers to things like public utilities and transportation.
Theoretically a socialist government can retain control of this limited set of industries while letting foreign capital develop the others, so that the capital can't totally control the government.
I'm definitely not saying that the Chinese government is in anyway a good example worthy of our compliments. That discussion however is off topic here.
If the US were prepared to backtrack on its reputation as the leader of free market then the US could instate equivalent laws in the US: "telecom equipment must be domestically manufactured by local businesses or by companies jointly owned by American citizens" would be a generically enforceable law, that's equivalent to what you cited. Huawai would have no option other than to comply and exit the US market or find local partners.
The problem is that's not what the US is proposing to do; rather the US is making unsubstantiated claims that ALL Chinese companies are born a crime and should not operate in the US in any meaningful way.
And look how Apple was treated. In 2015 their iBooks and iTunes Movies stores were first approved, but then six months later suddenly banned without warning or explanation. Why should China be surprised if the US reciprocates?
>. In other words, Chinese companies are "born a crime" to the US in the current climate, without the need to show what rules are violated or evidence of wrongdoing.
The problem isn't that their Chinese. It's that they have implicit and explicit support from the Chinese government that give them a leg up on non-Chinese companies.
The statement "they have implicit and explicit support from the Chinese government" is really indistinguishable from "the problem is they are Chinese".
The problem isn't the ethnicity or country per se, it's the state-partnership and monopoly system (intertwining them with a totalitarian regime persecuting a million Uighurs in realtime).
What does ByteDance has to do with the persecution of Uighurs more than what Amazon/Google/Microsoft has to do with the killing in Iraq/Iran/Middle East incurred by the US? I don't have evidence for the latter but it seems like neither do you for the former?
The founder of ByteDance has on multiple accounts critised the Chinese government: this is not an easy thing to do in China but blaming Chinese government's behaviors on a privately owned tech startup is a bit over the top.
I think it's not very productive to discuss if one form of atrocity is worse than the other. It's terrible that we have to compare them at all.
Just like I wouldn't blame US's actions in the middle east on Amazon/Google; I don't see why it's fair to associate ByteDance with what's happening to Uighurs.
There are many things going wrong in the world, the question is if we are on the right path towards solving them. I would argue the current escalation is not helping but rather stir up tribalism which is not going to be our solution.
Funny enough, it is not. Of course, one of the reason Google got banned was because Baidu, its competitor watches it all the time, and every time it is not following the law, Baidu will file a complaint for it. Foreign businesses make good money in China.
Yeah, "unequal" doesn't make sense. How about "hypocritical". By doing this the US loses a lot of its footing to criticize China's behavior. The US is supposed to be the land of the free, but this looks less than free.
>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. //
I guess the "only for those people living within the bounds of USA." was inadvertently missed off the end there? /s
I think the 14th amendment to the Constitution strictly speaking says that "any person" (contrasted to Citizens) under the auspices of the USA should get equal treatment in law too.
>No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive _any person_ of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. //
Maybe this doesn't apply with federal laws (if so, what does restrain them??).
Thats not unequal. They did it to us, so we are doing it to them. This is how trade relations have worked since forever.
It is not complicated. If another country engages in negative trade actions to us, it seems reasonable to do similar trade sanctions against them, so that we are treating them similarly to how they are treating us.
This is the basis of most international trade agreements and relations.
If a country puts a tariff on you, then it is almost certain that a tariff will be put on them as well.
If you don't respond, then you are letting people take advantage of you, and it encourages them to continue to do it in the future.
This is basic trade relations, and game theory 101. This is simple stuff. This is how international relations works on numerous different fronts.
It is simple accepted, basic, and uncontroversial, that, in international relations, when a country does a bad thing to you, then there is often a response to that bad thing, and you don't just let them get away with it.
This is uncontroversial to anyone who knows anything about international relations.
The person you responded quite clearly stated it was an approximation to other trade situations. Your response reads as a little disingenuous given the text above, but if it was genuine the "trade" is the provision of services for the exchange of money with Chinese-owned apps. Providing software services like any other service, and indeed like physical goods, is trade all the same.
Tariff may not have been a perfectly analogous choice, but prohibition can also be seen economically as an infinite tariff. China has put bans (infinite tariffs) on a great many US and other foreign companies' services and this is some, comparatively small, reciprocation.
> This is uncontroversial to anyone who knows anything about international relations.
You'll find even most intellectual types don't have a first clue about how the global chess board works. Or, if they have some inkling, they're too busy entertaining some idealism to be in the stage of acceptance.
HN wouldn’t have a first clue about most things, global or not. Comments around any controversial article/topic turn into a dumpster fire. It’s amusing and depressing to see. Not sure when it got this bad or if it was like this from the beginning.
I think reciprocal would be more like the 50% local ownership plus government oversight just like China does. It just doesn't look good that they're singled out to be sold off 100% seemingly for being successful with their only issue being that they have been hoovering up data which isn't that unusual for an app.
China didn't ban them, they just asked them to play by Chinese Rules. I think it should be the same. Instead of Banning the US should setup what US rules they expect international companies to play by, as should the EU etc.
Incorrect in the case of Apple. The government first approved their iBooks Store and iTunes Movies, then six month later, in 2016, shut them down, in what the NYT called a "startling about face". Apparently the Chinese authorities could not abide by the possibility of a foreign company purveying books and movies in China. There is nothing straightforward about "playing by Chinese rules".
If you read the executive orders it's clear that "don't be controlled by or an instrument of the Chinese Communist Party" is the rule they're going for.
And if that standard just happens to be impossible for any Chinese company to meet ...
Netflix is not banned explicitly. They just can't get a license to operate in China. In addition, VPNs are actively hunted down by the Chinese government so legally speaking VPNs are banned in China, which means a Chinese resident won't be able to watch Netflix anyway -- that is, Netflix is practically banned.
There's douyin for china and tiktok for everywhere else.
Chinese companies go to the effort of creating separate apps to comply with the laws and cultures of other countries. Why can't American companies do the same and obey Chinese law? Yet again, "American Exceptionalism" strikes again.
Also see LinkedIn and Bing, which disproves the idea that it's all some plot masterminded by Beijing to only allow Chinese companies to succeed.
If you claim to stand for free trade, you can't go along in these protectionism wars without losing a lot of credibility and, along with that, soft power.
And you can't operate free-trade style in a world where you have bad actors like China reaping all the benefits while being protectionist and therefore preventing their trade partners from seeing the same benefits.
Saying the US should just press forward with free trade is like saying it is X company's fault for failing when the entire reason they fail is because Y company is behaving anti-competitively, and that behavior is not being curbed by a higher power.
Except in this case there is no higher power to slap China on the wrist. So the only recourse the US (and honestly the rest of the world has) is to be protectionist right back until China realize that everyone wins if we all cooperate, nobody does if we don't.
This is classic prisoner's dilemma, except where the US has been letting China keep pressing "tattle" while the US keeps pressing "keep mum". It had to end at some point.
Sure, if it were a clearly communicated retaliation to a specific protectionist act of China. But it's not, and it is relevant to consider the context in which this measure happens to understand how this can be perceived.
The current administration has had numerous unproductive scuffles with allies and trading partners to renegotiate trade agreements, after running a presidential campaign on a protectionist platform, promising to return manufacturing jobs to the US.
After these negotiations were largely unsuccessful, close to the next presidential election, the administration abruptly locks in on one of the only globally successful social media companies that isn't US-controlled and insists that it must be purchased by a US-based company in order to continue operations in the US, without even attempting to resolve the issue through regulation. Due to the size of the US market, the company is bound to give in.
Of course, I'm deliberately telling the story in a biased way, but (as someone not from the US) I do feel that the US has been steadily on the way down as a credible defender of the principles of free trade. And this is just one more incident to add to the pile.
> And you can't operate free-trade style in a world where you have bad actors like China reaping all the benefits while being protectionist and therefore preventing their trade partners from seeing the same benefits.
China was pretty poor country when it opened up. When it opened, all the western companies that agreed to their terms weren't doing it just to help out but they wanted a piece of that huge marked to get rich.
China managed to get a better deal than a lot of other countries who were basically plundered. Saying China is "reaping all the benefits" is just absurd. Western countries made countless of billions in China.
I did not realize that free trade is such a failed system, that it completely breaks down when not enforced by gunboat diplomacy.
All this time, I was taught that it is a positive-sum, virtuous system that improves everything it touches - and that military interventions that enforced it were purely altruistic humanitarian acts, that were done for the targeted countries' own good.
Which is it? Is it a fragile house of cards that we have spread in self-serving ways? Or is it actually a robust positive-sum ideal that we should aspire to? (And therefore, we should ignore defectors, as they only hurt themselves.)
No, it breaks down when an actor realizes that they can get all of the benefit and then some if they don't participate in good faith yet everyone else continues to do so.
This then leads to a "tragedy of the commons" situation, which is a fairly well-established idea.
So, it always has to be enforced through gunboat diplomacy?
It sounds like a failed system, then - can we move over to some other economic model, that does not require coercion or a constant threat of war to function?
Unilateral coercion is not the basis for a free society, or free relationships between societies. It is utterly incompatible with sovereignty and democracy, and the ability of countries to decide their own internal policies.
No, it needs to be enforced by either a higher power (which doesn't currently exist for the world) or by not allowing countries to do this. This can happen either through gunboat diplomacy or by economic actions like the ones this entire thread is about.
As to your addendum, I am unaware of an economic model that intrinsically solves such problems of peaceful coordination between nation states.
The question is who is the actor with good faith though. The US is arguably the player with the most foreign aggressive interventions (often economic) since WW2. The US is all about free trade when it benefits them but the second that is no longer the case, it's over with fair free trade.
People outside US and other super powers, like the Soviet Union and now China, has always preferred the US as the lesser evil. But we have no illusions that there is a leveled playing field, the US is using all its might to land deals in its favor.
I stand for free trade, but it's not "free" when trading with a country that doesn't share our values. How someone can advocate for a minimum wage or health and safety protections for a European or US company, but then turn around and advocate trading with a country with no such protections baffles me. There is no outcome except that our economy will become disadvantaged while at the same time encouraging the erosion of democracy and human rights around the world.
This isn't free trade. There would be no point of other countries existence if they share same values. The reason so many countries exists is because they don't share the same values. The US famously fought its independence war because it doesn't share british values where there is no delegation even paying taxes for colonies
Exactly. We should look at results, not legal frameworks -- they are different in the two countries anyway. Plus, free trade is all about be fair. Why would the US let Chinese company make huge amount of money when the US companies can't be treated quid pro quo? For the ideal of "free trade" or "globalization is good" or "one globe one people"? I respect that, but I don't want to be the person who sustain the loss.
Not sure why people downvote the above. Do they dispute the truth of the parent's statement? Google and Facebook were in fact active in China, until the 2009 Urumqi terrorist attacks happened. The Chinese government then asked for Facebook to release personal details of suspects. Facebook refused. They only got banned after that.
The Chinese government installed new monitoring and censorship laws. Google didn't want to comply, so they got out.
In both cases, those companies either voluntary got out, or got kicked, based on clear conditions. You can of course discuss whether those laws and conditions are ethical, but that is besides the point. In case of the current US bans, there are no conditions. Chinese companies get kicked and there is nothing they can comply to.
Furthermore,the US govt is actively "encouraging" other countries to ban Chinese companies too. Recently they said Brazil would face "consequences" if they do not. Did China ever tell other countries to ban Facebook?
And the US govt said that if Tiktok sells, they must pay a chunk of money to the govt, which is... Unusual. China didn't do anything like this.
I see your view, but I think you’re comparing a US company operating in China on equal footing with a Chinese company operating in the US which they aren’t either because of monopoly reasons, state backing, or cultural advantage (US company in China has to deal with Uighur backlash and censorship which is intolerable, but not so for Chinese businesses).
We also can’t dismiss the nature of a law. A law may be sufficiently heinous that it loses its validity, which I think many Chinese laws qualify as they are so broad they are as some CCP members have stated, being like the sword of Damocles with the specific intent to terrorize and allow the government flexibility to do what it wants under the image of ‘rule of law’ which it obviously isn’t.
Yes, the nature of the law shouldn't be dismissed. But don't you think it's up to the citizen of that country to judge the validity of that law, and not up to outsiders?
Mass protests in China do happen. When people really are dissatisfied, they do speak up, and it does happen that the government listens. For example in 2019 there were mass protests in Guangdong about building a cemetery. People mass protested, some even vandalized and got arrested. But in the end, the peaceful protesters didn't get in trouble, and the government gave people what they wanted. https://mothership.sg/2019/12/news-china-protests-wenlou-hua...
The situation in China isn't as black & white, or as dystopian, as what many believe, even though there's still plenty of room for improvement.
Well, double standard obviously. Just in 2020, there are already quite a few cases that China did something deemed evil and some western country did something similar maybe almost the same but viewed as righteous. Then here comes the question, are there good evil and bad evil? If no, how to explain such a difference?
No, that's not true. Google was hacked by Chinese government, multiple times. Google was harassed by Chinese government, multiple times. And I'm not talking about some conspiracy theory. Let me give examples that were publicly reported. Did you know that Google's DNS was hijacked and redirected to baidu.com? Did you know that Google was forced to stop its business because of a single phone call that Google's search results returned so called porn pictures, when baidu hosts millions of more? Did you know that the Chinese government never gave Google a list of blocked phrases, yet it expected Google to come up with the ones that met their "regulation". When Google couldn't, Google was punished.
Yeah, Google didn't play by Chinese rules, as if they could. If this is not banning, I don't know what is.
Besides, the US government did play by the rule of the US regulation. For one, did ByteDance seek clearance from CFIUS when purchasing music.ly?
It forces the other party to change their behavior or at least gives you leverage to make a deal where both parties would agree on some equal set of rules. Here, the freedom to use US social media apps in China and vice versa.
It's an interesting turn of events, and I'm at least curious to see how this turns out. This is definitely not the start of WW3, as some have proclaimed, just US doing the same trick as China has been doing. Tensions were a lot higher during the Cold War.
Technically this is the beginning of the next WW3, we're in the negotiation and economic pressure strategy stage - like starting to take away toys and access from a child who is behaving badly or unacceptably; easiest to reference the concentration camps the CCP is operating for million+ Uighurs, where the United Nations has accused CCP of genocide.
India has clamped down banning, and other nations and politicians - perhaps under pressure of their citizens, are waking up, becoming aware - or at least enough that politicians can then more safely take action without succumbing to propaganda coming from CCP and other bad actors who are consistently trying to undermine democracies.
In one way, yes, it seems like reciprocity, but the impact here seems to be larger than a diplomatic dispute: China is communist, US is free (in terms of public imaging). So in that positioning, while China as a communist, authoritarian nation would be the type to ban online services, the US is supposed to be "better than that."
In any case, I think that the result of this is more that TikTok will sell at an even cheaper price, since it's coming from a position of weakness, not strength. And for WeChat -- who in the west actually uses it? The impact there I believe is a slight dip in Tencent Holdings' stock price, which will quickly bounce back.
>Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media.
Yes, which is bad for China, because it robs the Chinese people of choice. As Milton Friedman said when speaking on tariffs, "why do to yourself what you do to an enemy at war?"
China engages in censorship and limits the freedom of their people, so we're going to do the same to stick it to them? Excuse me if I don't see the logic
Milton Friedman really didn't seem to understand that tarriffs are used to develop comparative advantage. This could be because viewed comparative advantage as static and immutable.
George Washington, for instance, signed the Hamilton tariff of 1789 to help develop infant industries which England was preventing from getting off the ground with tarriff-less trade.
Milton Friedman's proscriptions made sense for America at the time he made them. America was in the dominant industrial position England was in in 1789, it wanted every other country to tear down THEIR tariffs too, just as England wanted America to tear down theirs. Better if everybody buys American rather than home growing industry, right?
Now that America's industrial might is waning MiltonFriedman's influence is becoming weaker and his ideas look more and more dated.
The US power isn't waning. TikTok literally is the only Chinese app that even has made it outside of China, because their isolationist nature has essentially made every other product entirely unattractive, while US tech dominates the globe.
Over the long term Friedman has been proven right over and over again. Protectionism doesn't work, and the US doesn't need to piss their pants because there's one app encroaching on their market.
Giving a government with already authoritarian tendencies in the US power over means of communication is completely ridiculous. This is the same tactic the US attempted to use in the 80s/90s to stop competition from Japanese carmakers and it ruined the American car industry for a solid 20 years.
American entrepreneurs can deal with competition from China, regardless of what China does in their domestic market, there's no need to engage in the same tactics as China.
The exact same discussion btw also happened in the 60s when Samuelson predicted that the Soviet Union would overtake the US economically. Literally every generation some other autocratic country temporarily scares the crap out of Americans, then they fail, and yet nobody appears to learn anything from it.
>Over the long term Friedman has been proven right over and over again.
By what? There's literally a hundred other examples like George Washington's I could point to all the way from China's meteoric rise to the Asian tigers where comparative advantage was developed with judicious application of tariffs. They all disprove Milton Friedman's hypothesis.
This isn't about TikTok. TikTok is small fry. Nonetheless, it's part and parcel (along with the Huawei bullshit) of America's dawning realization that China has not only reached technological parity on most fronts, but it is leapfrogging America. You don't roll out the tariffs when you're top dog, you patronizingly tell every other country that it isn't in their interests instead. That's what Milton Friedman did.
Google "surrendered" multiple times before backstepping their decision, most recent of which was the project Dragonfly that was shut down less than two years ago.
I don't think that's reciprocity. China has punished its citizens for being born in China by banning FB et al. In response, the US has punished its own citizens by banning WeChat et al. Reciprocity would mean that Xi is banned from using Facebook while Trump is banned from WeChat.
This "we'll be like the worst examples in the rest of the world" is not a winning strategy. It is simply remarkable that anyone in the US, much less anyone learned, could cheer this nonsense on.
Further Trump didn't just say they had to be sold, but instead they have to be sold specifically to a US buyer. That is...incredible. He is effectively engaged in technology piracy. Then again he just announced new tariffs on Canadian aluminum -- leaving Russian and Chinese aluminum untouched, and just after the ratification of the revised NAFTA -- under the guise of "national security", so it's into serious parody territory now.
The US is currently a corrupt banana republic.
Regardless, China has an enormous number of US targets they can and likely will retaliate against. And when they do, be sure to thank Trump.
Because this bully behavior breeds more bullies. It's a viscious cycle that typically ends with bloodshed. We should know better after two devastating world wars caused by the exact same mentality.
If you really think Trumps rhetorics will end with only messaging apps, you are short sighted and have short term historical memory
But if war is inevitable then better it occur sooner rather than later (as the CCP are becoming evermore powerful and aggressive). Imagine how much death could’ve been prevented if the world had stood up to Hitler earlier.
Tibet, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan, India, the millions of people suffering from severe drought as a result of Chinese Mekong River dams (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam), the South China Sea conflicts, the Wuhan Virus, etc.
In an ideal world, the rest of the world would join Trump in isolating China through bans and tariffs.
In an ideal world us companies wouldn't move all operations to China since the 90s thus giving China the power they wield now.
Corporation greed and uber-consumerism brought us here, not China. China's the symptom.
People warned about this in the 90s. But the messages were ignored because of shiny products. Are you willing to think harder now given the prices we pay for not doing so?
Let's say China is the world biggest problem. The last few years Trump worked on destroying ties with US biggest allies thus weakening the coalition against China.
Succumbing to his bully rhetoric while ignoring the amount of damage he did is dangerous.
Best it occur under competent leadership, not those more towards incompetence and war mongering who will use the guise of the cost (monetary and life) of war to loot society even further.
I wrote this comment I'm pasting below (as to not waste it) because I could no longer post it as person deleted their comment, they seemed to have difficulty understanding that US behaviour wasn't akin to the CCP's behaviour:
Perhaps lesser of two evils argument is easier to grasp? There don't seem to be any reports of genocide being conducted against any populations in the US vs. the CCP with their concentration camps for million+ Uighurs - which the United Nations has accused the CCP of genocide at. There is freedom of speech in the US as well, and no mass censorship systems - so we can be more sure that this news would surface if it was happening - whereas because the CCP does have mass control-censorship systems, what comes out of it is more rare; "China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment" - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53650246
I am aware of Trump administration treating immigrants and people crossing the border badly, separating children from their families, etc. This would be an apples to orange comparison however, as the CCP is a longstanding tyrannical hierarchy, and Trump is a symptom of bad actors attempting to loot America for decades - leading to regulatory capture, a two party political system with spoiled politicians on both sides, etc. Trump's the wakeup call, amplified by the dangers of the pandemic not being handled well due to a wholly incompetent admin.
There is clearly a benefit to CCP having access to a global social network, let alone from the potential monetary value it has, it's also a source of potentially manipulating billions of people - or spying, limiting reach of those anti-CCP, and potentially at some point actually targeting those people online or even in person. This strategy is the Maoism and Nazi playbooks amplified and facilitated by current technology. They've also been making massive investments in developing countries in attempts to make economic footholds and have influence there; if someone can't see that they're attempting to spoil the bunch while maintaining lead control then they're blind or naive.
Fortunately India's leadership sees the danger and took steps to ban the apps. At minimum it's economic punishment for bad behaviour that isn't considered acceptable, it's notice that we're no longer going to allow them to participate in our economies nor benefit from them if they maintain this level of bad behaviour. We do have an addiction problem to low cost produced Chinese goods, primarily independent companies who moved operations there to compete at lower prices - thus forcing other companies to move operations there in order to compete, the solution being creating an artificial barrier to entry via import taxes so it's not cheaper; because there are external costs that haven't been being accounted for, in part that of giving economic power to a tyrannical organization like the CCP.
You know what would've stopped Hitler? If after WWI the winners weren't bent on humiliating and destroying Germany's economy, thus creating a perfect ground for anti democratic nationalistic regime that offered stability as opposed to the chaos democracy supposedly brought.
Well, the bigger concern for the world right now should be the US, and their vicious campaigns to undermine any sort of fight against global warming, the most pressing concern our civilization has ever faced. China is at least officially part of the Paris accord.
Not to mention, the ecological and humanitarian devastation that the US and its close allies have been causing around the world is probably even worse than China's horrible acts with the Uyghurs and Tibetans and in other places it is trying to dominate.
I normally hate it when people bring up the slippery slope fallacy, mostly because they don't actually understand it, but that's the sort of argument that you are making.
It's not an unfair question, though. But it dismisses the fact that humans usually find stopping points; that their decisions don't boil down to a series of if-then statements. We have warred for millennia, and yet we haven't totally obliterated ourselves.
This is all-or-nothing thinking and not comparable.
Blocking access, along with blocking economic benefit, isn't akin to physical harm or violence - it's the economic pressure strategy in an attempt to avoid and sway a bad actor towards better behaviour.
Your "eye for an eye" argument is also arguably shallow fear mongering towards taking appropriate, reasonable, non-violent steps.
Reciprocity doesn't justify repressing human rights. The pursuit of happiness is a human right. Some people pursue happiness by making dancing mobile apps and earning money with them. If China decides to limit that right it doesn't justify the US also limiting that right.
Of course this is tiny compared to the much more extreme human rights violations we see in China, the US, and elsewhere. But we should uphold rights and rule of law in all cases.
The US doesn't limit human rights. People who pursue happiness are still free to do it.
There are certain concerns around a particular corporate entity and a particular government directly associated with that entity, that has a track record of economic espionage, IP infringement, and denying US companies access to its country's market on competitive terms (the conditions that the US has been guaranteeing to almost every foreign business, until recently). And due to the found evidence of spying activity, and in the light of concerns about national security, the entity is denied access to the US market, as the entity seems to be an unfair player.
As for the human rights, if you are associated with CCP and are in support of it, from the moral standpoint there's no ground for treating you according to the Declaration of Independence, and not according to the Marxist norms declared in the CCP Constitution.
The US has killed thousands of civilians in its countless wars in the last decades. Just think of all the stuff that happened after 9/11 with Guantanamo Bay.
Yes, US citizens have much more right than Chinese citizens but when it comes to the rest of the world, the US so far has a worse track record than China.
> The US has killed thousands of civilians in its countless wars in the last decades.
> Just think of all the stuff that happened after 9/11 with Guantanamo Bay.
Name the people out there, and then we try to discern if they are terrorists or civilians.
I'm sure you haven't been under authoritarian regime once in your life, have you? I suggest you try living in Iran or Palestine for a while and then, with your first hand experience at hand, we can discuss who kills civilians by thousands.
If you haven't noticed, native Hongkongese have been begging the US to intervene recently. They know exactly how it feels when an authoritarian regime takes freedoms away from you.
>As for the human rights, if you are associated with CCP and are in support of it, from the moral standpoint there's no ground for treating you according to the Declaration of Independence, and not according to the Marxist norms declared in the CCP Constitution.
I'm not sure if "you" is referring to me specifically or to people in general. I definitely am not associated with CCP and I definitely don't support it. But there is a moral ground for treating CCP supporters according to the Declaration of Independence. It says "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". It doesn't say "all men who agree with my politics are created equal, [...]".
We should hold ourselves to our own standard. We shouldn't hold ourselves to our opponent's standard.
> But there is a moral ground for treating CCP supporters according to the Declaration of Independence.
check your premises, because the principle here should be the same as one behind the morality of an action of self-defense, when a physical force is applied on those who initiated a physical force in the first place. If the morality of CCP contradics the one that laid foundation for the Declaration of Independence, and if proponents of the former are actively seeking to destroy the freedoms that the Declaration proclaims unalienable, their actions put them outside these freedoms automatically, and retaliation is the moral action that seeks to stop the destroyers.
I agree if TikTok is infringing on other people's rights, something should be done to stop that. If TikTok is violating current laws, they should be dealt with according to those current laws they are violating. If they are not violating any current laws, that should be rectified by writing laws to protect the rights of the people who are having their rights violated by TikTok.
They can do those things on other apps, perhaps apps not published by Chinese companies that offshore user data to circumvent privacy rights.
And you're right: This is tiny. It's tiny enough that such a big question like, "Shouldn't the right to pursue happiness prevail?" should appear unfit to ask in its context.
I'd like to ask what rights and rule of law were upheld by even permitting Chinese products in the US economy, given allowing Chinese products is in effect financing the violation of rights on the other side of the planet?
>They can do those things on other apps, perhaps apps not published by Chinese companies that offshore user data to circumvent privacy rights.
If there's a rule that Chinese apps can't be used in the US, that rule should be put into law, not enforced via arbitrary executive orders. If there's a rule that companies must store their user data onshore, that rule should be put into law, not enforced via arbitrary executive orders.
>"Shouldn't the right to pursue happiness prevail?" should appear unfit to ask in its context.
It's about precedent. Just like the FBI tried to set precedent on phone decryption on an "obviously good" case against terrorists. Once the legal overreach happens once, it will keep happening. Rights need to be protected from the very beginning.
>I'd like to ask what rights and rule of law were upheld by even permitting Chinese products in the US economy, given allowing Chinese products is in effect financing the violation of rights on the other side of the planet?
It's the rule of law of what happens in the US. If the US creates a law imposing harsh tariffs on countries that abuse human rights, then enforces that law, that's rule of law (in the US). As-is we have somewhat free trade. We can only enforce rule of law in our own borders. If we want to really enforce rule of law on other countries we'd have to invade them. We've done it before, but I'm not a fan.
Nothing is banned, you follow domestic censorship laws you get to play. Every domestic companies has to, it's onerous, and level playing fields. FB, Google still sell billions in ads to China, they were engineering compliant services to return.
Legal reciprocity is China following US laws, which it does. Functional reciprocity is forcing Chinese companies to enter JV and tech transfer - while providing Chinese companies massive land and tax subsidies. I'm sure TikTok would love that compared to forced sales.
But just to be clear, while I shit on US a lot, there's rational grounds for banning Chinese media companies only because there's such structural asymmetry, i.e. even if twitter was legal, it can't be weaponized to undermine Chinese interests because it must comply to Chinese censorship laws. But this EO is just a dumb way to do it because it opens US interests to much more global blowback. US is pissed at these companies domestically, the international resentment is even greater.
You do know that China is SIGNIFICANTLY better than US in trade fairness according to WTO statistics right? Like it's NOT EVEN CLOSE. Even if you normalize for accession time, and the fact that China had more onerous accession protocols. China has 1/3 of the complaint of US. Also go look up dispute resolution adherence. China also adheres to rulings more consistently than US, who by the way is locking up the WTO dispute resolution system by blocking judges, despite being the largest abuser of the system. Again, by far.
>China was involved in 65 disputes with 9 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 2001 through 2018. China has been the complainant 21 times and the respondent 44 times.
>United States was involved in 279 disputes with 42 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 1995 through 2018. The United States has been the complainant 124 times and the respondent 155 times.
For comparison
>The EU was involved in 190 disputes with 28 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 1995 through 2018. The European Union has been the complainant 104 times and the respondent 86 times.
> Canada was involved in 63 disputes with 11 Economies from the time it acceded to the WTO in 1995 through 2019. Canada has been the complainant 40 times and the respondent 23 times.
Yup, China, a massive trading nation is about as bad as Canada. US, one of the least trade dependent nations is worse than EU (2nd worst offender) a coalition of countries with their own interests, many of whom trades massively. Let that set in.
The real issue is, Chinese protectionist policies disproportionately disadvantages western tech, industries that's bread and butter of western supremacy and has huge lobbying voices. That's true everywhere for strategic industries. Canada cries in Bombardier, Boeing laughs. But absolutely threatenning if China is actually competitive in said industries, i.e. all the US anxiety after Made in China 2025 -> Huawei -> IC -> TikTok. Mcdonalds, Coke, Ford... they're doing great as were majority of western companies before tariffs. Regardless, laws are laws, every Chinese company in China learned to comply after growing pains... so FAANG with more resources can't? I mean they didn't want to before because it required a lot of expensive human moderation... which Chinese companies spend resources developing. Guess what, last few years western platforms had to build the same moderation infrastructure to deal with violence China had. That's why Google and Facebook was comfortable reentering the market. If US wants a different set of laws for Chinese companies, go legislate them, like China does. Instead of arbitrary EOs. You know how US claims Chinsese companies are subservient to CCP... except can't find evidence of it. Meanwhile US pulls entities lists on Huawei and EOs according to electioneering, proving that US companies are absolutely subservient to gov. Look hypocrisy is fine, especially if geopolitics involved, but don't try to moralize that you're any better. It looks ridiculous, especially when you're qualitatively and quantitatively worse.
Hmm given all the intellectual theft and bootlegs and knock offs, I suspect the WTO complaints reflect a reality that US complaints mean something and Chinese complaints are a waste of time, thus there are fewer because nothing will be done.
You don't need to suspect or post rationalize. There are literal academic books and many papers analyzing Chinese WTO compliance record in Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), and several explicit compares and contrast US with China and EU, by western researchers. TL;DR: China isn't the devil. The latest one is literally called: China’s Implementation of the Rulings of the World Trade Organization (2019), but studies goes back a decade.
Google the search engine is blocked in China. Google Ads aren't. It used to be the case that if you visited a website with Google Ads from China without VPN, most of those ads would be for VPN services. Last year, Google stopped showing VPN ads in China to comply with Chinese regulations: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-vpn-ads-in-china/
Chinese buys FB ads to sell in other regions, same with Google. They have other business presence there too. It's small relative to global operations, but point is, if they follow the law, they can operate legally. Like Microsoft.
The question isn't if you can participate but if you should participate which is arguably directly or indirectly supporting and/or benefiting from an economy run by the CCP who also have been accused by the United Nations of genocide at their concentration camps for million+ Uighurs.
> accused by the United Nations of genocide at their concentration camps for million+ Uighurs.
UN did not claim this. Adrian Zenz who works for US interests claimed it meets UN definitions to justify XPCC sanctions despite knowing full well this was going on for past 5 years when policy started. Just like how this entire narrative was started by Zenz in a presentation at a US funded panel affiliated with UN, but not UN itself. The only real UN thermometer is US getting 23 countries to support XJ as a human rights issue, and China getting 56 countries to support it as re-education. UN will never rule this as cultural genocide (what it is) let alone genocide (what it isn't).
CCP also raised 1B out of poverty and is responsible for 30% of global growth, so really on balance a few million Uyghurs+Tibetians+HKers+ eventually Taiwan getting their human rights violated isn't convincing arithmetic for billions in the rest of the developing world who relies on Chinese growth, when magnitudes more are being screwed in Middle East for no tangible gain. CCP bad, but also good.
>Don't you think China's growth could have been possible without all of their tyrannical mechanisms, nor genocides and taking over other people's territory?
What taking over territory? This is another narrative people claim uncritically. CCP claims (AND DISPUTES) are inherited from ROC who inherited from Qing. China had/has the most land borders in the world, and CCP settled 12/14 with a few extremely minor clashes, and all except Pakistan with MORE land concessions (Pakistan wanted to spite India). Chinese territory SHRUNK under CCP. By any measure this is the most relative peaceful ratification of that many borders in shortest period of time. The two remaining unsettled border is India/Bhutan (aka one border)... you can check India's border settlement history (or lack of) to see whose more belligerent. Maritime disputes? Reduced from ROCs 11-dash to 9-dash. All those SCS land reclamation? Out of 6 countries who dispute the territory China was the 2nd last to reclaim land or weaponize any features - Brunei is good boi. Vietnam has twice as many features. It was doing so in response to other countries prior reclamation (and US pivot to Asia). The only difference is China doing her thing at her scale will be greater, even though she's doing it with 2% GDP to military, lower than most in the region and about how much Trump wants NATO to spend. And she's doing so with greyzone tactics and very little force. The only other country with comparable economic size as China ain't advancing geopolitical interests peacefully. Nor many countries considerably smaller, see France in Africa. Sidebar: Japan has active disputes with Russia, South/North Korea, ROC, China, aka every neighbour. Wonder why they don't get any attention. Objectively, China's territorial disputes has been so far resolved in the most peaceful manner given her scale and numbers of again, inherited disputes. Unless you think CCP should abnegate territory for no reason. So US can contain it better? Giving up inherited land and security is political suicide anywhere. She already gave up >51% of land in most disputed land claims, that's down right magnanimous by historic standards.
As for growth + authoritarianism. No. CCP grew from the same model as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, harsh dictatorship -> industrialization / manufacturing -> liberalization (Manchukuo model for Asian Tigers). Except China has 1.4B people and no US protection umbrella, which all those other countries received, so naturally this will take longer. Though full democracy is pipe dream, at best single party dictatorship like Singapore with some liberal values. In the mean time, unlike other Asian Tigers it has to try to grow with an antagonist US building bases to contain her while selling arms to the others even WHILE they were dictatorships. US stopped arms export to China after Tiananmen massacre. They didn't to South Korea after Gwangju massacre. Or Taiwan during White Terror. Hmmm. The fact is CCP had to work harder and smarter than any of those countries to uplift 400m (greater than population of other Tigers combined) into prosperity and 600m above poverty and there's _still_ another 400m in poverty despite eclipsing those countries in pretty much every industry except integrated circuits. The task is that great. Oh also throw in indigenous (copycat) military, space program, nuclear program etc etc. The only other viable model in the 20th century is authoritarian petro states, that doesn't work for 1.4B.
It's not heartless to recognize this. Like acknowledging XJ is ridiculous COIN reaction comparable 911. But at the end of the day, it's <0.1% of Chinese population so... bluntly it's a relatively small atrocity being exploited by Chinahawks for geopolitical ends. My extended family went through cultural revolution, one-child policy (family planning, aka sterilization) it sucked, wasn't genocide. They all live pretty comfortably now because those times ended. And that's one saving grace about CCP, their somewhat technocratic and goal oriented, if a movement doesn't work, it will end or they'll try something else. Not actual genocide though, because that will look bad in Xi's historiography. Re-reducation movements have end conditions. And that's what they are, per leaked internal memos themselves. Only western propaganda like that you cite + Godwin delusions try to paint it as genocide. This is like if people saw Wikileaks video of "Collateral Murder" where US gunships gun down civlians and conclude US is nuking Middle East. It's smooth brained projection. Regardless, these camps will end. Best case scenario in 10 years XJ will be a secular city with developed infrastructure and the people integrated. Or they'll try something with more stick / carrot, but it won't last forever, because unlike US prison industrial complex, or indigenous camps it's not designed to keep them down. All this is to say, analyzing CCP actions is not endorsement of CCP actions. I recognize CCP uses disproportionate force in some domains, but also overall they simply use very little force since opening up, because that's what all metrics point to normalized for Chinese scale. Again CCP bad, they should strive to be less bad, but in aggregate, mostly good. Some of us who follows the subject for a long time can discuss it with nuance without fake news claims "UN accused it of Genocide when it's US propagandist wants to labelled it as such. Or" China bans western social media". Unless you're fine with another Iraq WMD escalation and the aftermath such entails, facts matter.
It seems like you're operating with a different value system to most of the west and at the same time want approval from what is a mostly western message board. This is super apparent in "ends justifying the means" comments on XJ. You're also recycling a bunch of Chinese state media rhetoric on these topics.
The theme of the CCP being flawed but the best the Chinese people can expect b/c insert some state rhetoric here and that without them they'd be at the mercy of the western powers is propaganda. Economic tides have lifted almost every country over the past 50 years because of policies and values put forth by western institutions and worked DESPITE bad governance in some of the world.
Having maintained control of china even after some of the worst public policies of all history (cultural revolution, one-child...) is precisely the reason some are not comfortable with the ccp becoming influential outside chinas boarders.
I'm not seeking approval, nor saying end justify the means. Merely end is inflated by west to justify their means if you follow developments. Which state media topics am I recycling exactly? Every claim can be verified in western literature by subject matter experts and not lazy bylines uncritically accepted during a period of heightened tension when all parties are spewing propaganda. The rest is basic verifiable facts (border ratification) and math (incarceration rate / # hot wars over time). And TBH all I see is people in the west quote their propaganda. And for reference I'm from the west, I just recognize different values and systems and how each has a purpose, i.e. how democratizing too early is how most developing countries get stuck, essentially without exception. Whereas starting authoritarian at least has a few working models. Chinese/ASEAN geopolitics is just something I follow extremely closely for a long time, so I'm able to trace events and sequences properly unlike most people who just quote the latest talking head. Economic tides have not lifted everyone equally. Or else China would be India, or one of the other BRICs that failed to take off. The point is CCP did a great job relatively peacefully, all things considered measured relatively to other parties. CCP is the worst form of government for 1B+ people, except the for all the others. West is never going to be comfortable losing their preeminence, and US its hegemony. That's human nature, bad self rationalization is part and parcel. Take this this conclusion:
>Having maintained control of china even after some of the worst public policies of all history
Both US parties were responsible for slavery. But guess what time moves on, the last few CCP administration did a great job, lot's of progress, some regrettable regress. They're different polity, like Trump is different from Lincoln... both republicans. This is such an obvious observation but somehow all of CCP is treated as one contiguous entity and can only replicate the worst outcomes of past possibility space, i.e. frequent two-brain cell exclamations that TianAnMen 2.0 is going to happen with every incident in PRC, because somehow a massacre that happened at a time when PLA didn't have any anti-riot gear, is suppose to occur today. Or Xi's definitely going to be dictator for life, when his term has only ran for 7 years, Merkel is nearing 15. Ignoring that CCP is already grooming 6th gen of leaders (skipped 5th), aka his successor(s) are lined up. But people uneducated in the topic are too eager to eat propaganda and claim nonsense (like UN + Genocide). So here we are.
Things evolve. A small group of white men in America created the Constitution as a framework - which got rid of slavery, eventually women were allowed to vote, etc. and there's more to do - more evolution toward the ideal system that supports freedom and allows everyone in society to thrive. We've seen this playbook of CCP - Maoism combined with Nazi Germany - just amplified, intensified with modern technology.
I'm curious what your take is on the concentration camps, regardless if you don't believe in the reports of genocide, or if you even know much about it - and whether you even believe any or part of it? Here are some links for you to comment on if you want some references:
They exist, the leaked papers attest to it. Literature on them existed for years prior, and I've been following and disagreeing for years.
Morally it's wrong.
Legally it's cultural genocide.
Domestically it's expected extreme over reaction to terrorism and separatism. There was 100+ Uyghur attacks up to 2017, verifiable on global terrorism db. Strike hard campaign to crack down and the camps didn't start until attacks moved to interior provinces, train stations, airplane hijacking, tiananmen car attack.
Practically suppressing 0.1% of the population for national security is not a difficult choice - attacks stopped after XJ system implemented.
Statistically, it's extreme but small scale human rights abuse, but not on par with actual genocide. Xi wants to be the next Mao, but better. He doesn't want 70% good 30% bad. Eradicating 1/55 Chinese minorities would be more than 30% bad. There's nothing comparable to Nazi Germany, people brought up in west too eager to jump to Godwin. These are Canadian residential schools model of cultural genocide, French deradicalization programs indoctorinate with job retraining. Just executed with Chinese modern capabilities (cameras and databases) and at Chinese scale with ultimate goal of integration. Numerically massive abuse inevitable with anything happening at Chinese scale, even if incidental, or if in relative terms it's small per capita.
Politically, Xi didn't even want these camps. Other factions pushed for it. There was debate about reforming Ethic Policy in China since previous policy based that afforded minorities relative autonomy and affirmative action failed to quell terrorism and separatism. It was the salad bowl model / soviet o'blast, aka multiculturalism. New model is based off US melting pot, everyone gets sinicized and equal treatment. I'm not a fan of Xi, but he was cornered into this by politburo the same way US was pushed into post 911 campaigns. Again, he's not all powerful, factionalism and internal politics at play.
Realistically, they're re-education / de-radicalization camps and there's a good chance they'll work. China has history with work camps and mental indoctorination. It's the industrialization and economic reforms that was difficult, because you know westernbloc sanctions during cold war. Mao was the wrong kind of dictator unlike South Korea or Taiwan. The vocational training component is real, the Uyghur slave labour narrative / aka ASPI Uyghur for sale minimizes the part where the lowest wage they could find was equivalent to Foxcon basic wage and 2x prefecture level wage from many backwater XJ regions. It's well compensated forced labor and cultural indoctrination designed to integrate not eliminate.
Geopolitically, it's being weaponized using many unsubstantiated / manufactured claims from US organizations. We're 3+ years into this and the narrative is still driven by Zenz et al. whose estimates from hundreds of thousands ballooned to 3+ million over 1200 camps with no substantiation. Actual methodological analysis from pro US think tank ASPI only found 180 camps so far. All this is well within nation state capability to verify, but still relies on questionable sources because the reality is not sensational enough to sustain a massive human rights campaign. You need some sweet FLG organ harvesting propaganda and ever changing atrocity porn for salaciousness. Per your articles: "Calls grow" aka "U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom" and a few FVEY + US aligned MPs. Uighur Model, comes with boring Zenz territory. Go geolocate his videos and pictures on the phone he somehow managed to get and see if it lines up with existing camps. 101 confirmation stuff, conveniently missing in all these stories. AGAIN, these camps exist, there's most definitely mistreatment. But convenient how the only salacious stories that make it out are US sponsored and have massive gaps, or omits info. Lot's of countries went to XJ, millions of social media posts on Chinese internet, like 20 million ppl live in the region. Chinese censorship isn't that thorough, things get out domestically ALL the time. See initial covid discontentment. Yet XJ camps... nothing? Regardless, China won't stop because again, 0.1% of the population for domestic security is no shit decision. There's is literally no amount of pressure of sanctions that will make China change. Only if the policies doesn't perform as designed. What west needs to worry about is they have no alternative model. Racial unrest everywhere in liberal world, and if China can offer a commercial package for population control within a few years while west only offers incremental improvements over decades, then west already lost. That's why China has 55 supporters, mostly Islamic. It's not debt trap. Islamic countries dealing with the same problems are curious, and frankly they want to remove "human rights" as a viable diplomatic lever.
Personally, the camps should end, though sinicization should continue. Sinicization =/= becoming Han or desecularizing. China wants to cultivate religion, it's a foreign policy goal to have more loyal Muslims for cultural exchange with predominantly Islamic OBOR countries. But sinicized Muslims with Chinese characteristics. The surveillance system should be toned back if not dismantled as with the apartheid on the ground, even though that's unlikely. Chinese companies have profit motive too, even when the trade is freedom. Prison industrial complex and surveillance is profitable. But it's within politburo power to stop. Equal family planning policy is fine. Though it does mean Uyghur population will stay at replacement level. Yeah Han chauvinists love it but ultimately China aiming for <1B population with family planning, less people is sensible for variety of reasons especially with China's resource constraints.
>Things evolve.
They do and they have. Though uneven, mostly for the better. In Kishore Mahbubani words:
>The greatest explosion of personal freedoms that the Chinese people have experienced in the past 4,000 years has taken place in the last 40 years
This is not hyperbole. Recent Harvard study: Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time. July 2020
>We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction.
https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7...
Or recent democratic survey, more Chinese think democracy is important and they live in democracy compared to many western countries.
Or most Chinese people think they have "freedom of speech", freedom being the ability to say what they want privately, because under Mao's actual authoritarian rule, even private speech overheard and reported meant a ticket to the work camps. Now you get left alone. But do so publicly, get invited to cold tea, get detained and released each time over successive times until permanent shit list. It takes work to become a state recognized dissident. The average Chinese aka 95% of the population that doesn't promote separatism, is absolutely freer now than under Mao. The problem is 5% of China is still 70m people. Regardless, this is not the same playbook. Xi's kind of an idiot, but he's sincere. Wikileak's CIA assessment of him was literally, not too smart, but incorruptible. Lot's of jaded people out there who thinks is anti corruption campaign or poverty alleviation goal is all talk. But c'mon, Xi purged 100,000+ for corruption. No one has that many enemies. And poor people is how Chinese rulers loose mandate. He's serious. Maybe it's time a declining democracies elect serious leaders of their own. Take that for what you will. Bowing out of this post now.
> Politically, Xi didn't even want these camps. Other factions pushed for it.
Curious about this. Were the internal discussions leaked? Thought it's hard to tell who the factions even are, and basically impossible to find out what they want.
