←back to thread

293 points doener | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
Show context
room271 ◴[] No.23831071[source]
This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope they do so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the Chinese people themselves. And let us work to improve our example and unity too in countries where we do have these things, however imperfectly.
replies(8): >>23831103 #>>23831210 #>>23831233 #>>23831363 #>>23831375 #>>23831513 #>>23831600 #>>23833329 #
yifanlu ◴[] No.23833329[source]
Jeez as a Chinese person who lives in USA I find this comment very condescending and offensive.

> But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on.

I don’t want to get into a whataboutism debate about all the human rights violations the USA has engaged in (yes Trump but Obama as well and W before him and etc). But really I’ll just focus on “proper civil society”. Jfc is the sinophobia getting overt around here.

Even if I take the good faith argument that “it’s commentary about CCP not Chinese people” as I often hear after racist remarks, I’ll just point out I’ve been hearing comments like this all my life in all sorts condescending ways. Most of the time in bad faith. So I don’t give a shit about how you “intend” it to be.

replies(3): >>23835982 #>>23836287 #>>23836341 #
mlindner ◴[] No.23836341[source]
It's not sinophobia. I've got _zero_ issue with Chinese Americans as long as their English is good enough that their primary news sources still don't still sit in China (for example second generation or greater Chinese Americans). It's the legitimate concern about China pushing remote spying into its software and hardware that is sold overseas as well as the manipulation of people through companies like TikTok aka ByteDance.
replies(2): >>23837042 #>>23837749 #
chrischen ◴[] No.23837042[source]
There’s no way defend against your accusations. It essentially boils down to “you’ve been brainwashed.” You’ve already decided your viewpoint is right and anything against it has read too much Chinese language news (whether true or not).

The “manipulation” you speak of is more hypothetical. If anything Facebook has done more manipulative harm thus far.

One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok have to do to satisfy your accusations of them “manipulating” people? How does Huawei stop spying on Americans? If there is no answer then you can see not only how it is pointless to argue, but that your primary motivation is actually to prevent the shift of power, rather than based on any actual infractions by Huawei or TikTok. So should the Chinese just sit out of global economics because they could threaten US dominance and potentially spy on or manipulate US people? The current dialogue is centers on future power, not on any actual abuse of power by these companies. Not like the US actually spying on Angela Merkel.

replies(1): >>23841072 #
1. mlindner ◴[] No.23841072[source]
> One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok have to do to satisfy your accusations of them “manipulating” people?

Set up a subsidiary that's subject to US law and rather than Chinese law and also has majority ownership in America. It's what the China enforces on foreign companies, so fair is fair.

> So should the Chinese just sit out of global economics because they could threaten US dominance and potentially spy on or manipulate US people?

I have no problem with Chinese companies participating in global economics as long as they're not based on stolen technology. Also it's not "potential", this has already happened extensively. China rose to prominence by extensive state funded industrial espionage and US companies were too blinded by greed to counter it. The US needs more laws in place to prevent this type of behavior and more retaliatory action when it's committed.

So many Chinese people I see online seem to think that the US is scared of China becoming more powerful economical or some other nonsense. The US created current Chinese economic prosperity through extensive work by Nixon and others in that era. That was all a massive mistake based on the mistaken idea that if China became more economically powerful they would become more democratic and more freedom oriented. That has failed to be the case and it's time to rethink how the US has handled China historically.