Absolutely agree, it's time for American video games to stop publishing in China. It's not worth the Chinese influence on our society.
replies(7):
Blizzard has been bending over backwards for some time with regards to China but this is the first time I remember them taking action against someone who does not work for them.
the simple matter is, you cannot pick and choose, all the companies must be shamed into not bending to China's censorship because it won't be long before such actions suddenly show in law; not that some of the speech regulations in the EU aren't close as it is with regards to what you can and cannot say with regards to religions
Companies as big as Blizzard should be prepared to lose 5/10/15% of their playerbase to defend free speech, the thing is they do not care about free speech. All these companies care about is revenue.
If we elevate authoritarian countries to our level, democracy may be in for a rough future.
We should be learning a lot from the China situation. Modern China proves that authoritarian capitalism works and that you don't need freedom or liberty for your citizens. And that's incredibly scary.
Imagine if that meme spreads to democratic countries...
We need to be handling this situation with urgency. As bad and as pressing an issue as climate change is, this is much more terrifying.
For some definition of "works". China has recently (2017) became richer than Brazil, what is a feat, but well, Brazil isn't a liberal democratic paradise and whatever democracy we have is very recent.
All the stable democratic countries are much richer than China.
Would Amazon stop selling 1984 if China asked it to? Hopefully not.
For a struggling game company, it can also mean "winning the game," as it were.
Outside of legal constraint (which is unlikely, since China is a US frenemy given the close international economic ties), it's unlikely we'll see the entertainment industry voluntarily embrace such a boycott anytime soon. Market's simply too big; too much money left on the table.
Rather, I think a consistent and humane stance on ethics and human rights abuses would help and address the real issue here.
They have the right to deny people access to their services and nothing they do is essential, but they do and will very obviously grab a lot of negative attention when they cut someone off for supporting the liberation of a group that's being brutalized by a major world power's corrupt police force.
Does anyone know how that fits into the picture?
Nature of a publicly traded company in a nation that deifies capitalism. Blizzard is on the S&P 500, for pete's sake.
If the CEO prioritized something other than profits, he'd be replaced by the board for breaching his obligations to the shareholders.
I don't think the idea is to introduce democracy, because it's cheaper if the people making our consumer goods had less rights. It was like that with the original banana republics, and it's like that now. Sure we the people may want democracy and we may elect people who want to spread democracy (like Obama or Merkel bringing up the topic of human rights in talks with China) but corporations run the world. And we the people prefer having cheap phones and clothes rather than pay the "made in a democratic country" tax.
You bring up climate change, well, maybe the Chinese government was wondering if they could keep up their oppression, but maybe they also think, "well, just 30 more years, and the world's going to end after that anyway."
They had a substantial headstart, China is really only about two decades into this, and they're just getting warmed up. If things continue more or less along the same path, and I see little to expect otherwise (China only gets stronger, it's citizens more allegiant) Let's see where they are 10, 20 years from now. Especially now that they are actively exploiting one of the West's biggest Achilles heels: our unique combination of greed + the sense of individual freedom + corporate control of the economy. China is demonstrating how easily they can control Western corporations, and in turn individual people. What percentage of the American public works for a corporation with interests in China? This control may not be that sophisticated yet, but give them some time.
And what plausible recourse do we have?
- Government sanctions? The trade abuses were far more obvious than this, and look what a shitstorm of half-informed but hyper-emotional arguing that turned into.
- Corporations recognizing they are strategically putting themselves into a situation that threatens their long term existence, or, thinking beyond a 5 year window? It seems unlikely.
- Western society collectively recognizing there is a genuine existential threat and banding together to do something about it? We can't even get people on forums to even remotely agree, so seems unlikely.
It's going to take time, but my hunch is this capability will be a big part of China's eventual checkmate on the West. And all executed within a timeframe of < 50 years. History in the making.
Well, at least you left out the "legally required" part. The board most certainly has a responsibility to shareholders. It can be a long and tiring argument, but from my POV there is only "responsibility" not "fiduciary responsibility". Now, most of the time the shareholders want more money. But AFAICT, there is not a law on the books that says that the board must maximize profits above all else. For instance, and perhaps it's a poor example, but Costco says they will make 15% profit. That's it. You want more money, sell more stuff. Doesn't the board have a "fiduciary responsibility" to bump that to 16% if they can get away with it? Apparently not.
Jokes aside, I believe they would if China was a large enough market for them. They are complying with local laws, and often that means pulling a product world wide, because they don't want to go through the trouble of making sure it's only unavailable in the US. Since Amazon has never managed to gain traction in China, they likely don't care too much about China's wishes.
The reality is that while a "shareholder" title means you want dividends from your holdings, that title attaches to a real human being or entity run by human beings, and the moral or immoral consequences of your policy as shareholder DOES affect the world.
It's time for shareholders to put their money where their morals are. And for those who choose to support immoral policies to be called on it.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/nba-china-hong-k...
Corporations have a strong incentive not to piss off the rest of the world to serve one country. They've been able to get away with it for a while but the demands from China will naturally keep growing and growing (as all censorship does once you give in to it).
The eagerness of companies to completely abandon free speech and differing opinions will eventually have real consequences.
I am all for people running away from investing in these companies, but in reality that is a conflicting request of an investor and not something anyone who is focusing on returns will have much patience for or interest in. I just don't think it's going to convince real investors.
https://thewire.in/government/home-ministry-believes-in-inte...
If it was really capitalist, it would have stopped being cheap long ago.
In the 1960s the economy of North Korea was outstripping the South. Cuba seemed also to be doing well. The US was terrified of a “domino effect” where countries would turn communist one by one. That’s one reason it got involved in Vietnam. But look at the North now.
Sure China is doing well right now. But let’s see how they handle boom-bust cycles.
I would argue HN has one of the highest concentrations of informed logical minds in existence, yet go into any thread on HN on any topic of this general nature, and marvel at the inability of people to even remotely agree upon what the facts are that we're dealing with. Now imagine the general public, and our comically theatrical political system, somehow coming up with remotely optimal solutions to deal with the massively complex issues modern existence is forcing upon us (China is but one). If we can't even have reasonable conversations here, I speculate that it will always be far worse in our broad political and social spheres.
The long term risks (risks are always potentials) of the rise of China should have been clear to any logical and informed person for many years, but it's really just the last year or so that this idea has started to creep into the mainstream discussion. Remember how Trump's trade concerns were utterly mocked in the media and on forums like this at the start ("Trump thinks trade is a zero sum game, hahahaha what an idiot!!"), until magically something changed and the media simultaneously all got onto a different page.
We often hear how the American military has numerous scenarios & reactionary plans planned out "just in case", and the typical reaction to that tends to be "but of course, it's only logical". How likely does it seem that no one in past administrations were considering and planning for the possibility that democracy wouldn't magically bloom in China once they became wealthy? And yet, are there any signs that there were, or conversation among the serious political talking heads (whoever that might be)? Is this incompetence, or something else? No one knows, we can only speculate, but we seem to be not even doing that. Too conspiratorial.
I speculate that time is not just ticking, but accelerating. Each day China becomes richer, extends their sphere of influence, moves further up the technology chain, becomes ever more clever at global propaganda and skilled in exploiting the many obvious weaknesses in the Western system, and in Western minds. And they are moving fast, way faster than democracies could hope to even when they are operating at their very maximum efficiency. I speculate that an intelligent (yes, easier said than done, but this idea that only democracies can be successful is a meme, not a fact), authoritarian state will beat out a democracy every time, in the aggregate (which is what matters in such situations). Add in all their other advantages: 4x the population of any other single powerful state, a nearly completely ideologically aligned populace (as compared to our incredibly emotionally polarized populations), media/government/educational/corporate organizations of your "opponents" operating propaganda campaigns (to some degree) in your favor, the eye of the tiger, and so forth and so on.
Honestly, I simply don't see how China loses, short of some sort of unexpected shock to their system. I speculate that modern Western civilization is literally unable to counter this threat, short of military conflict. We would have to fix so many fundamentally broken things in our systems and thinking, and fast, to even hope to be able to compete. That seems incredibly unlikely to me. But hey, this is all speculation, maybe the wildly popular meme-based Pollyanna predictions will actually turn out to be correct after all. I am perfectly happy to consider that possibility. But I suspect very few are willing and able to even consider the possibility that my less optimistic predictions might turn out to be right. Rather, I speculate that the very reading of ideas such as this will provoke a very strong emotional reaction and an immediate, extremely confident mindset that this person is wrong, self-evidently and to such a degree that no counter reasoning is even necessary. This behavior is one of the broken things I refer to, by the way: emotions completely overpowering rationality, very often in even the most rational of Western minds as is the norm here on HN. I speculate that we have largely lost the ability to even think clearly (particularly on topics of a particular kind) at the individual level, let alone at the collective level.
Something could be done about this, and HN in theory seems like one of the better places on the planet to start, but for the above stated reasons I suspect it would be passionately and overwhelmingly opposed. That the genuinely intelligent refuse to think is perhaps the primary reason I see no hope.
The interesting thing is, how would we know that they haven't already handled them, and in such a way that we don't even recognize they occurred?
Also, let's not forget: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
[0] https://qz.com/224821/see-how-borders-change-on-google-maps-...
I don't think that kind of exaggeration is productive. People have been saying that for decades, and now climate change deniers are using it as evidence for the whole thing being overblown, even though we're already suffering from the effects of climate change and they're getting progressively worse
It's not technically going to be the end of the world, it'll just be a much crappier world for most of the people living on it
Irony of ironies.
One obvious reason is cost. Why is it so much cheaper to manufacture in China or Vietnam?
1. Labor costs. Democracy can lead to safer, healthier, more expensive working conditions.
2. Environmental protections. Democracy can lead to safer, healthier, more sustainable, more expensive pollution controls.
If you want to push production out of China and into Malaysia or Vietnam or wherever instead of into your own backyard, I question your real commitment to democracy or human rights.
I am as guilty as anybody else. I want to purchase $2 SOCs and $0.01 resistors for my hobby. I don't buy them from Texas because anything produced in Texas is too expensive. (Read: more expensive than alternatives.) I buy from some place with undrinkable water, unbreathable air, and children missing fingers and eyes. If you show me pictures of those children I might try to pay a tiny bit more (but only a tiny bit) to buy from some place that doesn't yet have reporters taking pictures.
The truth is that I don't know anybody producing MCU in Australia or USA or Norway. I'm not sure it's even possible with the restrictions those governments impose. If it is possible to do it, it is not practical.
If I support a government that makes it that difficult to impossible to manufacture domestically in an irresponsible manner--and I do whole-heartedly support such governments--why am I willing to support manufacturers outside those requirements? Why do I drive misbehavior out of my neighborhood and embrace it in other neighborhoods?
Conversely, if you and I are willing to accept the behavior of manufacturers in Thailand or Laos, shouldn't we allow that same behavior from manufacturers in our own backyards?
Edit: a word
If you look at the recent US-led debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even the results of all the Arab Spring protests, I think it's fairly obvious that you can't just take a people with no background and hard-fought experience in governing themselves through elections and say poof, you're good. The west tends to forget this - but you have the legacy of Greece and Rome from thousands of years in the past; The Magna Carta started to limit monarchial authority in England beginning in 1215; The French had not one but a whole series of revolutions from the late 1700's through the 1800's. And yet, in between, there were decades and centuries of backslides into fiefdoms and dictatorships and absolute monarchies; even when progress was made, it was incremental - giving political say first to landed aristocracy and clergy, then men, then women. Human progress almost never goes in a straight line, and sometimes, slow and steady and making sure you build a base of support in the general population for the change you're making can work better than monumental sudden changes the populace may not be ready for (look at the different paths, for instance, the acceptance of gay rights and abortion have taken in the US).
Also, keep in mind that China's growth has really only taken off since the mid-to-late 90's. That's less than one generation. Look at the path that comparable economies in Asia took who developed much earlier. Korea's economic miracle took off in 1960, but it was basically ruled by military dictatorships in all but name until 1987. Taiwan saw it's main burst of economic growth in the 60's and 70's, but it was also ruled as a dictatorship by the KMT since they lost the Chinese Civil War. In fact, the first opposition party was not formed until 1986, and martial law, which had been in effect since 1949, was not lifted until 1987, a year before Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai Shek's son and successor, passed away. Singapore's government all during its economic miracle was famously authoritarian.
China's the most populous countries on this planet. I just tend to think that things like this take time, that in fact, sometimes it works out a little better with a certain base level in the population at large. Also, overwhelming consensus in the foreign policy establishment always seems to be wrong - they were wrong in the 90's about the path and speed that liberalization would occur, and now that everyone concurs that it will never happen....well, I tend to think that they might be wrong there too.
What narrow and immature notion of free speech? What the player said or what I have said?
Of course a consistent and humane stance on ethics and human right abuses would address the real issue. I do not believe for one second that its own employee's believe in the stance Blizzard has taken. Will some not care? Of course, it is their right to not care.
Is it feasible to think Blizzard has done risk analysis on the outcome of these events depending on which stance they've taken? What would they lose by taking a negative stance on the matter (which they have done)? They've currently created a situation where players of their games, whom aren't even located anywhere close to China have decided to step down from any blizzard game. What would they gain by taking a positive stance on the matter? Say the Chinese were to cut them off entirely, revenue loss of 25-30, perhaps 35%?
I understand the decision from a management perspective, I truely do. I do not understand the decision from a neutral, humane perspective. Blizzard entertainment does not have roots in China Blizzard entertainment's main focus is entertainment, fictional entertainment. Can u imagine a game, based on a pseudo-reality where free speech is non-existent? I for one can't..
I'm not sure where I'm going with my reply, I just wanted to write out these few sentences.
People here lack so much perspective on geopolitical issues.
Actually, thinking about it a bit more, I'd bet my money (but of course, pure speculation) that China would continue to take a path of minimizing risk, with little concerns for so-called "human rights". So, the same treatment the Uyghurs are currently getting I expect would eventually be applied to all groups that could be plausibly considered to be non-conforming. Considering the typically independent thinking personality of a lot of Westerners, I expect we would eventually be in for a bit of that ourselves. Whether some old scores are settled (Japan) is another wildcard.
Of course, all of this is not only speculation, but a work in progress - even if I do turn out to be mostly right, it is all subject to a combination of which particular person is running the show in China at the time, the general nature of Chinese culture (including how that changes over time as things progress), as well as whether there are complications in terms of pushback or natural disasters. So....who knows. But a lack of certainty in no way means risk management is a completely pointless exercise...if we'd been doing any for the last 20 years, we needn't have ended up in this current predicament where we hold very few of the cards, and any path we choose almost certainly comes with massive pain.
This Canadian youtuber has some interesting commentary on the matter now and then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0aCI3d0D8
The 2:40 point where he opines on China's approach to the Uyghurs is very interesting. Trigger warning: it is not quite compliant with the "facts of the matter" as dictated to us by all right thinking Western institutions.
I like watching these sorts of opinions on YouTube from people that actually know something about the world, rather than spending all their time in a classroom or TV studio, it shows how silly the "facts" of how we "should behave" are, and how it's just a bunch of largely empty ideology that's been drilled into Western people's heads through several vectors over decades. Chinese people have been subject to propaganda as well, but a completely different kind than us. We've been told ad naseum that all cultures think like us, and want the same things we do, but it simply isn't true. Going into battle for superpower status of the world with a head full of utterly delusional ideas doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me, but then maybe I need some more schooling.
You're saying that China was happy about that because China wanted Google out anyway and needed an excuse? If China didn't need an excuse, China could have blocked Google from the start. China has blocked things it considers offensive without an explicit action from that party (such as Winnie the Pooh).
If Google was obeying China's censorship, what would China find offensive about Google?
Does China find a similar level of offensiveness in the NBA and Blizzard, such that China is disappointed that they censored themselves and thus China doesn't have an excuse to block them?
A conflict of interest indicates that you have a choice between two goals. Choose money, and you've lost my respect. And business, when it comes down to that.