China

> Note: if you are interested in conducting an independent review of the factuality of the claims expressed in this article, please contact me.

Since the author reads HN, I'll assume this comment counts.

> The Chief Executive of Hong Kong (Carrie Lam) is elected directly by the mainland Chinese government, and the people have no representation in the election whatsoever.

The Chief Executive is elected by the Election Committee. While that includes some members representing China's National People's Congress, the majority is made up of a carefully gerrymandered selection of company representatives and professional associations, similar to the Legislature Council. https://www.elections.gov.hk/ecss2016/eng/figures.html

Also, if you intend to e.g. prevent Chinese developers from using your products, I'd advise against it. Foreign code hosting platforms are a major way for Chinese developers to organize where they can't be reached by the government.

Hey yorwba, thanks for the comments. I received similar comments from HKers earlier wrt the Chief Executive office. Minor corrections are on the way out.

The changelog for this article is here:

https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com/log/master

I have no plans to block Chinese citizens from using my services, though I wouldn't be surprised if the great firewall had other plans.

I am not trying to troll but genuinely interested in figuring out the boundaries of these proposed boycotts.

What is the difference between "accept investments from China" and allowing Chinese citizens to pay for your service?

This article does not call on US companies to stop selling to China. There seems to be a baseline assumption that creating (from the US point of view) trade deficit will destroy freedom and that a trade surplus does not. Intuitively it makes some sense, but I think it is good to explicitly discuss this question.

It seems like your real issue is with US companies that "kowtow", but having your own company accept a Chinese customer or a company accept Chinese investment does not require kowtowing.

As pointed out in the above comment, some forms of trade can promote freedom, and others can contribute to its destruction, so I am wondering if an approach that was rule-based rather than blanket would make more sense (but I have no idea how to make such rules).

>I am not trying to troll but genuinely interested in figuring out the boundaries of these proposed boycotts.

No problem, I'm grateful for your comments.

The difference is subtle but important. First of all, the Chinese users of my service or a minority of a minority. Their participation has little to no effect on the direction of the site. Their $5/mo subscription fee is not going to move mountains. The kinds of investments I'm referring to are much larger, and require treading softly to avoid insulting the Communist Party of China.

Second, because I've pubically condemned China, these users will have to go out of their way to use my services, which would amount to tacit agreement with these principles. I would be happy to support them. It's not individual Chinese citizens that I have a problem with, it's the actions of the government as a whole.

Then the principle would be that it is okay to do business with China if you don't kowtow. That works well for selling to China but it can only work for buying if there is a distributor outside of China which would just encourage buying direct from China. A general boycott doesn't work with the kowtow principle because an individual or company in China isn't in a position to be able to state their opinion of the government.

The problem is that in general for most companies, especially related to discretionary spending, the proportion of customers who are from China is increasing. Over time they end up kowtowing because the Chinese users threaten to boycott them unless they "respect China", which usually means doing whatever they are told to do.