"What Is the Chinese Economic Model?" author reports server attacked | Hacker News Reader

"What Is the Chinese Economic Model?" author reports server attacked

tapsns.com

47 pointsilamont69 comments

While I found the original article believable and interesting, I can't help but wonder whether there's more than meets the eye to all this "Oh yeah, China is evil" movement that's developing...

The US government has been trying to get China to "behave" for quite some time. One of the very obvious points of contention is copyright law - as someone once said, "Chinese copyright is the right to copy anything they want". Now, the previous article painted this from the point of view of massive industrial IP theft - theft of patents, technologies, etc.

But we all know that there's another kind of IP that has a lot of influence over the governments of the world, and that's media IP - music, books, movies, etc.

It's clear that both are happening to some extent, but what are the proportions? Is 99.9% of the "Chinese IP problem" to do with stolen media? To do with the fact that you can buy pirated DVDs on every street corner? Or is it 99%? 90%? 10%? Basically, is the main force behind all this anti-china discussion the media lobby, or is it a somewhat more bona fide effort to protect more legitimate industry?

Cause I have to say - if I have a choice between the Chinese model of media copyright (i.e., no copyright protection) and the US one, I'll pick the Chinese one. It's a better starting point for improvement than the current US model.

It's especially interesting given that the U.S. model for IP is pragmatic rather than ideologic, i.e. temporary government-granted monopolies are a necessary evil we accept in order to further technological and creative progress for the benefit of all citizens.

Considering the opinion many here have that innovation in the U.S. is stifled rather than encouraged under the modern politicized IP model, it might be enlightening to compare how effective innovation is under each model. I am curious how much sustained innovation is happening over there versus the highly-publicized accounts of IP 'theft'?

temporary

Practically speaking, copyrights are perpetual in the US. If something is copyrighted for life plus 90 years, I'm not going to see anything made during my lifetime enter the public domain naturally.

This is true, but it was not always the case. That copyrights last so long now is the result of change due to political pressure.

Even as recently as 1998 copyright was only authors life plus 50 years, and less before that.

Pros and cons of IP aside, the fact of the matter is that American companies have the money and talent to do high quality R&D. Most Chinese companies simply don't have the capital to do R&D to the standard of a developed country, and most talents go work for western companies that have the money.

If IP laws were enforced in China, Chinese companies would be further kept at the bottom of the food chain, making cheap products in sweatshops at very low margins. The IP policies in China is meant as way to jumpstart domestic companies by letting them compete in higher-margin value-added goods when they don't have the ability to do their own research. The policy-makers know that they suck at most things, especially as a venture capitalist, so they go with the least-interfering approach.

Of course, eventually they'll have to enforce IP to sustain their own R&D, once their industries mature.

I think people are drawing conclusions too quickly. The current leadership is generally more pragmatic than this. There is benefit to rooting the activists. There's little benefit (from the eyes of the politburo) to a brazen reprisal like this. And why would they care about what some fringe foreigner says? Chinese are much more status conscious, and the ravings of some dude on the internets doesn't carry that much weight.

The younger generation is by contrast much more nationalistic and internet savvy, and a vigilante attack against an outright "Chinese are evil" article like the original is not unlikely. After all, we've seen Russian hackers doing it to Ukrainian sites.

I am not surprised by this action. Bottomline, China is a big bully. You want example?

China claims all of South China Sea http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8047206.stm

China that sent 250,000 troop over to teach Vietnam a lesson during 1979 war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War.

On and on...we need to be tough on China. American CEO needs to think long term before moving jobs to China.

You can find many examples of China or other countries playing the bully. You'll get no disagreement from me.

Your point that "American CEO needs to think long term before moving jobs to China" gets closer to where we may find a solution. The trouble is that CEOs do not concern themselves with human rights in China or Intellectual Property other than their own. They make decisions for the most part on immediate value creation for shareholders.

But he's trying to show that any company that's concerned about its IP should worry about sending jobs to China, even if it's just for self-interest.

If every CEO was a devote human, environment, and IP rights advocate and they all agreed to protecting these rights in the same manner, we wouldn't have a problem on this side of the equation.

Government and their proxy organizations, such as the WTO, are the ones that are supposed to level the playing field to ensure the CEOs have their hands bound on rules for engaging with developing countries. I do not believe we are close to handling this well.

[EDIT] It is fair to say that some foreign entities do a better job at respecting "global" thinking in regards to human, environment, and IP rights for their China engagements. As an example of worker "preference", several years ago, a poll was published (I think it was the China Daily, but I could be wrong) asking workers what boss would they rather have. The results, in order of preference: U.S., European (seen as more strict than the Americans), local Chinese, non-mainland Chinese (Taiwan, HK). These poll results seem in line with my experience.

It's remarkably ineffective bullying. Oh no, the web site was down for several minutes, and some unnecessary expenses were incurred! We're doomed!

What these guys need to learn to do is say "Fuck you, you're an idiot, and here is a coherent rebuttal:" and submit it to the news aggregators that gave the original article its popularity. There are enough contrarians that it should be easy to get a lot of people to read your rebuttal and take it seriously. Launching some half-assed attack on a server is the equivalent of just flinging poo, and it just doesn't work.

The thing is, the Chinese are fiercely nationalistic - it would not surprise me at all if many of these attacks are being done without government sanction.

I would tread carefully on news like this - it's easy to read too much into it, and it's too easy to manipulate, kind of like blaming all communists because one of them set fire to a building.

Are you kidding me? Take a look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_gSasJPs1Y. Chinese Plain-Clothes Officials Block CNN Cameras With Umbrellas In Tienanmen Square. How low can the Chinese government goes? They operated like a gang, no less.

And how does this indicate that these hack attacks are sanctioned or originate from the Chinese government?

Nobody is saying the Chinese government isn't censor-happy and oppressive, but get a grip on yourself man. Talk to some Chinese - particularly the young ones - and you will find a population very truly eager to attack the West in whatever way they can. It's more than likely that a significant number of hacks coming out of China today are occurring out of people's own free will, not by the explicit order of the government.

"Talk to some Chinese - particularly the young ones - and you will find a population very truly eager to attack the West in whatever way they can."

Why? I am genuinely curious. I can see why someone (say)in an Islamic society would want to attack the West, but why would a Chinese kid hate the West?

If you are the Chinese kid making Barbie dolls all day long, wanting one but you can't afford one on your .10cent an hour salary you might hate the people who are going to enjoy those Barbie dolls too.

That doesn't make too much sense. I live in India and there are a lot of poor people here, (poorer than the people in China). They don't really hate the west. They aspire to the West's living standards, sure.

I guess what I am trying to say is relative poverty can be a source of envy. But hate? Enough to delight in attacking the West?

Yeah, the above "they're poor" explanation doesn't really hit the mark.

It's a combination of many things, some of which I will probably miss off the top of my head:

- Propaganda: The Chinese are educated to be very wary of Western influence. Western societies in media are often portrayed as disorganized and chaotic, so naturally there is aversion to Western ideas (though strangely, not Western products).

- Fear: There is a consistent belief (not unique to China) that America unduly uses its influence to exploit other nations for its own benefit. The education system encourages the attitude of "now it's our turn" with regards to their current economic boom. When Western countries do things like, say, discuss limitations on carbon emissions, the Chinese see this as deliberate sabotage of their economy fueled by jealousy of their success. There is a fairly prevalent belief that the US is out to "get" China, and that it's China's rightful turn to be the dominant global player.

- History: The Chinese have long proclaimed to have the richest history and was in fact the most powerful empire on Earth for significant periods of time through its history. Through nepotism and corruption the Qing dynasty fell to European conquest, and China was forced to accept extremely unfavourable surrender terms, and has basically been kicked around globally since then... until now. Think of China as the bullied kid with a grudge - now he's going to fuck you up, and there's not a thing you can do to convince him otherwise. There is definitely a lot of feelings of vengeance involved when it comes to Chinese antagonism of the West.

As a Chinese, I'm really, really terrified of China - not because they have a totalitarian regime, but because they have a totalitarian regime with popular support.

Also, there is a widespread belief that nobody will watch out for Chinese interests except the Chinese... so despite the imperfections of their government, many will defend it vehemently - because everyone else is out to get them.

@potatolicious, Thank you that helped a lot

"Think of China as the bullied kid with a grudge - now he's going to fuck you up, and there's not a thing you can do to convince him otherwise. There is definitely a lot of feelings of vengeance involved when it comes to Chinese antagonism of the West."

Wow! Sounds like the world is in for interesting times, then!

"As a Chinese, I'm really, really terrified of China - not because they have a totalitarian regime, but because they have a totalitarian regime with popular support."

As an Indian I'm really really terrified of China because they are right next door and the last time we had a war we had our asses handed to us. ;-)

If China were a democracy, I'd probably go live there for a while. Sounds like a fascinating place and there's just enough of a cultural connection with India (wrt Buddhism and so on) so as not to make it a completely alien place.

This is the most ridiculous stuff I have ever heard. We Asian loves the west, especially American. I have never heard anyone hates the west like you've mentioned. Bottom line, China wants to be the center of the universe. They would do anything to score a point. They don't have systematically governance. That is why I call them a gang instead.

If they go to great length just to censure some minor stuff, what do you think they would not do?

There are a lot of varieties of Asian - which one are you? I'm basing all of the above off my experiences with the Chinese, particularly college-aged Chinese international students that I've had extensively dealings with in the past.

There is some selection bias here, but this is acknowledged: the Chinese regime doesn't enjoy a great deal of popular support from the working class (read: manual labor), but enjoys widespread support from educated intelligentsia (the sort that would send their kids overseas for education).

I've also surfed through Chinese social networks, and the amount of anti-American and anti-West media on them (and being passed around like LOLcat pics) is pretty alarming. Keep in mind that the vast majority of people on these networks are young, grew up without witnessing the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution, and are the direct beneficiaries of China's capitalism. Oh, they're educated to boot, which makes the whole deal just that much scarier.

> The thing is, the Chinese are fiercely nationalistic

Maybe you mean the Han Chinese. Certainly the native Tibetans and the peoples in the Muslim/Islamic regions may not share this sentiment (Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims are considered 'terrorist religions.' IIRC, it's illegal to be Muslim in China and all new Tibetan Buddhist monks are required to become Party members).

"IIRC, it's illegal to be Muslim in China and all new Tibetan Buddhist monks are required to become Party members."

Dude, the Muslim part is plain false. I lived in Xi'an, a city with a large population of Hui Muslims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people

I don't know where you heard about the Tibetan Buddhist required to join the communist party, but it just doesn't sound right. Joining the party is considered a privilege in China, you get all kinds of benefits, but mainly the ability to vote. I kinda doubt they would give this kind of political privilege to Tibetan monks.

The thing is, the Chinese are fiercely nationalistic

A quality they share with most nations on earth.

"it would not surprise me at all if many of these attacks are being done without government sanction"

Every Chinese compsci student seems to know who to call if they ever crack into someplace useful.

Depends on how you define nationalistic. The hundreds of thousands of students who protested at the Tiananmen Square could also be considered nationalistic in some sense of the words.

You really don't understand how the topology of the Chinese political landscape has changed since 1989 - the "new" regime has brought wealth to tens of millions, and the country has seen dramatic modernization in the past decade and half. Not to mention the majority of China's young student population grew up completely divorced from the brutality of the Cultural Revolution. Something like Tiananmen Square simply cannot happen again today, even if it were allowed, simply because you wouldn't find enough supporters.

Keep in mind that when Tiananmen Square occurred, China was still a Soviet-style backwater with numerous spectacular failures at modernization. People were frustrated, oppressed, and starving. Now they're just oppressed - and that makes a huge difference.

The Chinese are nationalistic in the sense that they will defend their government, however imperfect they perceive it to be, because the alternative is treasonous (i.e., to side with foreign interests and ideology).

This is something Westerners find difficult to understand - but is very much rooted deeply in Chinese culture.

That's actually my point. "the Chinese are fiercely nationalistic" being too big of a blanket statement, since you are including the baby-boomers who protested all over the country in 1989, and older generations who spent their adulthood under Mao.

"This would mean that China would prosecute and disavow IP theft."

There are (at least) three major areas where outsourcing to China provides economic benefit to foreign companies:

1 - Wages - Many Chinese are paid a wage that despite China having "minimum wage" laws are significantly below that of the foreign company's home minimum wages. If Chinese workers are paid a "living wage" in parity with that of the home country, the economics of outsourcing to China take a hit.

2 - Environment - China for the most part has let enforcement of environment law (the law does exist) take a back seat to capturing business. Covering the cost of protecting environment damage raises costs.

3 - Intellectual Property - Protecting IP increases cost and is for the most part a long term "foreign tax", not an initial capital investment.

Start doing the above three "right" and doing business in China becomes unprofitable for many.

The author of the article continues to express this as a one-sided problem: "We look forward to having China as a real partner in the world, not on its own private terms, but on terms well understood by global trading partners."

I support positive change in regards to doing business with China. I do not see how this can happen without more objective discussion, which would include how "global trading partners" contribute to the problems.

I'm with swombat and maxklein on this one. I'm going to start flagging HN submissions that only paint half the picture.

> 2 - Environment - China for the most part has let enforcement of environment law (the law does exist) take a back seat to capturing business. Covering the cost of protecting environment damage raises costs.

AFAIK, there are government officials and positions that care about this and try to do their job, but for example, when polluting factories are due for inspection they stop polluting long enough to pass inspection (even surprise inspections). Obviously there are other elements in the government that are subverting the process (or that just view the process as a PR campaign with the people, not really caring about the results).

I can see this being the case. One thing people miss while they are bashing the China gov about corruption and oppression is that a great deal of the "bad behavior" in China is caused by business leaders (small and large), not government. There exist fairly good laws protecting worker rights. Unfortunately, if an employer wants to be abusive, they will and its up to the employee to decide how or if they want to fight it.

The original essay was discussed extensively here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054989

As a non-ethnic Chinese who's lived in China many years, the one thing that annoys me is the sweeping access restrictions on sites and blogs related to IT. The other points are fairly irrelevant to me personally.

In May 2009, the whole of blogspot was blocked, including through proxies, feeds, etc. Two months earlier (March), Youtube was blocked, but I never used it so I didn't care. Before that, from before the Olympics to the Youtube block, was 8 or 9 months of general internet freedom. Perhaps falun gong (and similar) and porno was blocked, I don't know. But there were no noticeable restrictions on IT-related sites and blogs. Even before the Olympics, when blogs were blocked, it was only temporary, and easy to get around it with proxies.

But since May 2009, the sudden change in internet policy affects me, and my online interest in IT. I'm not interested in porno or reading about human rights while living in China anyway. So these Great Firewall restrictions, instead of blocking just what needed to be blocked, blocked far too much, blocking what I wanted to access. Not only that, China being China, sites got blocked that had no reason to be, like http://www.python.org/download and subpages. Seems someone in the Firewall staff tried to hide their mischief by keeping the main www.python.org page available. But maybe I wrong, and no-one paid anyone, instead China's just decided to promote a closer-to-home Japanese-invented scripting language by blocking downloads of a European/American one.

Some would ask, why don't I get a VPN? So far, I can't be bothered, China's a cash economy so I don't have credit cards.

As for the other points:

(1) China protects its industries from foreign competition completely. James McGregor's "One Billion Customers" is the most readable book I've read on this subject. I'm not in China run a business. If I want to make money, I'll leave first and go live somewhere business-friendly.

(2) As swombat said in another thread "if I have a choice between the Chinese model of media copyright (i.e., no copyright protection) and the US one, I'll pick the Chinese one. It's a better starting point for improvement than the current US model."

I wouldn't know where to buy or watch a legal English-language movie in China anyway, I don't think they have them outside Jingapore (=what we who live outside Beijing call it).

(3) I just assume my internet-connected PC is being accessed remotely, or at least my emails being read. At one place I lived, I was given a new phone which could listen while it was on the hook. I didn't bother complaining, they could just say it must be from a faulty batch. If I really need to keep some information private, I'll go live in a Western country.

(4) As for currency manipulation, looks like the US and China are in a deadly embrace. By the time it unwinds, the Euro will be the big winner, which was what the Euro was really about in the first place, wasn't it?

(5) Re human rights, if I decide to take an interest in that subject, I'll leave China and return to my home country and begin there. No need to preach to others while there's plenty of problems at home.

This anti-china propaganda on the internet at the moment is sickening. If you want to buy into the China Removes Avatar from Cinemas and Rides With Hitler, then go on, but I'm not going to involve myself in any more of these discussions.

China is trying to develop for 1/4 of the worlds population in a system that is different to yours, but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation.

This will be my last sentence on china related topics till this propaganda wave blows over: Just because it's different does not mean you must kill it.

China has not been conducting attacks on foreign companies via the Internet for 5000 years and it's not inappropriate to question an environment which forces US-based companies to deal with sophisticated computer attacks just because they're doing something China doesn't like.

We've been very good about ignoring what China does in China. (One could argue that Americans, myself included, are exceptionally good at this actually!) This recent wave of controversy is about what China does outside of China.

I would expect the same outcry to occur if any other country was staging the type of operations the PRC regularly conducts in foreign infrastructure. Frankly, the fact that outcry is so long in coming is the only thing that surprises most people in security.

I agree that people need to be careful to not go overboard, but your assertion that no one should ever be critical of China because they're different is equally absurd. Different systems deserve to be appropriately examined and talking about the ramifications of each is both appropriate and necessary.

Just a reality check question: Do you think for a moment that the American CIA doesn't infiltrate foreign networks if i thinks it has a security interest in doing so?

I'm very curious about your response.

I think it would be appropriate for people in China (and everyone else, for that matter) to discuss exactly the extent it was occurring and if it was hindering their enterprises there, discuss exactly the effects of such issues.

I would have no objection to stories of such things being posted on HN and I wouldn't object to those stories as anti-American. In fact, I think Americans frequently post such stories, we just often don't have good intelligence on what our government is doing.

That said, as a security researcher who has read some of the reports involved, I do think the PRC may in fact be operating on a far broader range of targets than our own government. In particularly their tendency to include any corporations they want is probably different than how we do things most (but not all) of the time. These may or may not just be stylistic differences and I would welcome a debate on which ones were more troublesome.

I would not blast such stories as racist, which is what the poster I was responding to was essentially doing.

(As an aside, just because it's a pet peeve: Please, the CIA? They're not the ones you have to be concerned with, the American government has a broad and vast array of different intelligence agencies, the CIA is not the most likely one to be doing this type of work. The CIA's job is to be one of the most visible intelligence agencies, a job they do very well.)

Those are good points. I do not disagree with any of them, and thanks for the reminder about the many intelligence agencies.

I think that if it were just about discussion and having an opinion it would be owe thing, but this anti-China meme is really growing in force, and seeming to turn into real moral outrage and disgust, which I think are not constructive emotions for understanding another country...

While I agree that the criticism is well-deserved, industrial espionage is really nothing new.

Google's move certainly deserves the spotlight, but I find the sudden shift of attention to industrial espionage a bit knee-jerking and sensationalist.

Heck, shouldn't you be more worried about military espionage, which has been happening for ages in every country?

I didn't see your handle in any of the responses to the original article. The author made a lot of points. I would be interested to hear which ones you take issue with.

I guess these are just the effects of Google's decision.

As for 'if it's different, kill it': I've noticed this in my discussions about China. Many of the people I talked to that supported China's handling of things (or were themselves Chinese) disagreed with me on a fundamental value basis which you can't argue. I value human rights far, far above nationalism, yet those people did not. I simply do not see how they could do that, and, I'm guessing, they can't see how I could consider human rights more important than national pride. The Internet is mostly ruled the by United States and Europe - if the word 'ruled' is even applicable. Anyway, the US and Europe tend to share the idea of human rights > nationalism, and are thus pushing it in other places too.

Now, my opinion. I don't think you can go with the 'he just has a different view than you, everyone's view is good' thing here. I think there is a 'good view' and a 'bad view' - where the "goodness" of a view is characterized by long term societal benefit and societal contentment. Obviously, I think the 'good-er' view is one which emphasizes human rights over nationalism, because while allowing human rights might cause some unpleasant effects in the short term, in the long term, it will result in a better country with a happier populace.

Why are there riots? Why is there a need to suppress information? Because people are unhappy. Clearly, the current system of suppression isn't working perfectly. In fact, it isn't working perfectly by definition, since if everyone were happy, this wouldn't be needed. (By my definition, of course.)

Now, I realize that my point of view may sound biased - incredibly so. Maybe even something along the lines of "I'm right because the things I say are better". But you say: "Just because it's different doesn't mean you must kill it." You don't have to, but perhaps it will be better for the world as a whole if you do?

I'd love to hear your counterargument if you're willing to write another sentence about china. (Ack, that sounded snarky. Wasn't meant to.)

"Clearly, the current system of suppression isn't working perfectly."

No argument there. How would you do it differently?

I have to ignore the history comparisons by you and more so the parent as they cover far too large time periods and I'm only familiar with China of the last 10 years.

China's leadership, for the most part, makes decisions based on controlling their own domain. I believe a balanced solution requires wealthy countries that trade with China to take a uniform stance to protect workers, environment, and property everywhere they do business. Citizens of these countries and their leaders have to push for this as China clearly is going to simply protect their side of the equation.

Which country or group of countries are going to step forward in a unified front to create balance? What conditions will force their hand? Perhaps we are seeing those conditions unfold right now. Time will tell.

I don't disagree with your views, as such. I feel comfortable judging countries on the merits of their policies and track records, etc.

However, the real question is, what do you think we should do about it?

Consider our range of options:

- learning Mandarin and translating controversial English language documents, then distributing them into China.

- Traveling to China carrying a hard drive full of uncensored wikipedia pages.

- boycotting Chinese products

- finding an activist (terrorist according to the Chinese government) charity and donating a few dollars.

- Lobbying your local officials to support trade/economic sanctions on China (sanctions create intentional non-death suffering intended to inspire political uprisings).

- Lobbying your local officials to advocate for a zero tolerance policy on human rights violations from US trading partners, etc.

All of these specify a clear course of action and have a fairly expectable outcome.

But suppose your goal is one of the following:

- To have the US send war ships into the oceans near China.

- To have the US impose sanctions on other nations that trade with China (sanctions create intentional non-death suffering intended to inspire political uprisings).

- To have the US demand the release of all Chinese political prisoners with a threat of selling arms to China's enemies if it fails to comply.

As you can see, we start from basic moral outrage and find ourselves very quickly sounding like raging neoconservatives.

My view is that we should REMOVE all trade barriers with China and increase immigration from China by 10000% over 5 years. I elaborated in the previous thread about the causes of China's behavior (and the existence of much similar behavior on the part of a slightly younger USA)...

Also, if you're concerned about censorship, consider the JFK assassination and how a major event (seemingly a very significant conspiracy of some kind to overthrow the US government) has been kept top secret, etc. Is it really that much of a stretch that China wishes to suppress knowledge of its own governmental overthrow attempt?

If, at the time of the JFK assassination, there had been dozens of Chinese journalists covering the event and getting camera footage, firsthand accounts, etc., then perhaps the US would have tried some fairly disreputable ways of censoring the info after the fact. I am no expert on this, but it seems to me that if it was just one crazy guy with a gun, then all of the information should have been declassified long ago.

Americans tend to put things like protests on a pedestal... but what about KKK protests in the US? Many Americans pat themselves on the back and support the banning of the expression of such views. I find the views of the KKK appalling, but we either have free speech or we don't... we either have full transparency or we have censorship. China is no different.

Everything you've said sounds very logical to me. We don't want to accept what China is doing and go with it, but we certainly don't want to go with embargoes or anything drastic. Things change slowly, and we need to realize that. Demanding things won't work - particularly, I think, in China's case, where responding to a demand would surely hurt their sense of nationalism which they (I think?) value highly.

I'm confused at your last statement though. What about KKK protests? They should be allowed and protected. Free speech is for everyone, regardless of opinion. That's the whole point of it.

That was my point about the KKK protests too... I brought it up b/c many people claim to support free speech but oppose some kinds of free speech, and in essence that's the sort of free speech we have in the US (the KKK has been banned from having its parades, etc.). In China, there is no pretense of free speech, yet some things are allowed and some disallowed.

I agree with you that demands won't work, and will probably make things worse. I think the danger of the sort of anti-China propaganda that we're seeing is that it's becoming an emotional groundswell quite similar to the anti-Saddam groundswel that preceeded the Iraq war. Not quite as bad, but there could always be some minor event (a plane shot down accidentally, a person detained, etc.) that would rapidly transform things into an irrational state where we'd have politicians seriously calling for warlike behavior.

I think the most important bottom line is that for the vast majority of Chinese people, the status quo will be better for their future and their families than if the US enacts sanctions or intervenes militarily. If we advocate making those people worse off (through sanctions, etc), we should realize that doing so without any cost to ourselves entails great hubris -- the core hubris of neoconservatism.

It's true... but I assume (and hope) that US politicians are not stupid enough to advocate anything actively harsh against China. China is nearly a superpower, and we do not need anything like another Cold war. (Not that it would be as bad, but two large countries in a state of conflict do note bode well for their inhabitants.)

We've caused multiple revolutions in Iran, fueled a war between Iran and Iraq, and continue to meddle in Iran's business.

I have no such confidence.

So if, say, Germany was found to have hired tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers around the world, we should just chalk it up to their "different system" and let them off with a slap on the wrist?

Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it. Why should China get special treatment? Why shouldn't we be allowed to criticize them as we would criticize anyone else who did the same things?

but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation.

There is absolutely nothing similar between China's current embarrassing actions and their glorious history prior to ~1800. Merely comparing the current oligarchy to the institutions of the past is a huge insult to China and its history.

Can you provide a reference for the tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers? Surely there would be some whistle-blowers, after all hackers are such an unreliable bunch! That's exactly what the parent is talking about: all this smells fishy. Google says it and 34 other companies have been attacked and the world goes crazy. Companies exist to make profit, government is here for security. I think it is quite realistic to assume that Google did it to make more money, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062059

Yep, here you go:

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/01/13/chinas-sophistcated-ha...

  The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army
  has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese
  military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector
  computer experts, whose mission is to steal American
  military and technological secrets and cause mischief in
  government and financial services.

Why don't we pump more money into our cyber armed forces too?

We're trying, but for the most part we haven't yet developed the type of comprehensive strategy for these types of operations that the PRC has. You should read the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission's report linked from Google's blog entry.

More like the government agencies are all falling over themselves to be the 'one true agency/military branch' that does all of the cyber-defense. I remember a few years ago about the Air Force starting up some sort of Cyber Intelligence branch which was going to be completely separate from any other branch/agency's efforts.

"Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it." If China's online censoring was like Australia's, there wouldn't be a problem. Australia makes public a list of blocked sites, with the reason, e.g. porn. China blocks http://www.python.org/download/ and subpages seemingly arbitrarily, so everyone thinks someone paid someone.

Wow, you make your point and then run away stating "I'm not going to involve myself in any more of these discussions.", how nice.

First of all, China was not communist for 5000 years, so not sure where that is coming from.

No one is criticizing China for being different, all countries in the World are different, no two are the same, yet we criticize some and admire others.

China is being criticized for:

1) Complete and utter disregard of IP of companies in other countries. Ex: Huawei vs Cisco, IP theft against Google and other 30+ companies and numerous others.

2) More example of blatant copies of cars: http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/

3) Censoring of information to its citizens. Even Iran, from what I can tell, is better than China at the moment.

4) Organized, and fairly obviously state sponsored, network intrusion attacks on other countries.

5) Human rights violations, whether in Tibet, or any other place.

6) Complete disregard to environment.

7) Hegemony of neighboring, and much smaller, states.

8) Australia blocks investment of China in Rio Tinto, within next few days China arrest Rio Tinto's China head in espionage charges.

The list goes on and goes, and none of the above is fabricated, it's all public news

If you go back in time 100 or 150 years all of those criticisms apply to the US. What is it about the year 2010 that makes your moral outrage appropriate?

The US/UK empire has done all of the same, and only after using those techniques to gain superpower and first-world status, we start criticizing others for doing it.

We can criticize it because this isn't a morality game. China doesn't rack up evil chips because the US behaved evilly in the past. There's no score to settle.

What they're doing is wrong and hurts us and the world right now, regardless of who did what in the past. We argue for principles that allow everyone to prosper. We argue for the golden rule and the categorical imperative.

You seem to be arguing that you think China's third world status and cultural history are completely irrelevant, and that just because the US has recently accomplished an arbitrarily chosen level of morality it is appropriate to harass and berate China over it.

It would be a far better use of one's time (in America) to focus on the atrocities that exist in our current system. Throwing stones at China is absurd, unless you're a neocon who wants to send the US naval fleet into the waters near China and perhaps launch targeted strikes intended at getting China to change its official policy (or, more likely, making China's leaders look bad and causing social instability).

Some modern US atrocities are:

- The prison system. Inmates are routinely, predictably raped, yet inmate safety is not improved. This is an awful situation in 2010 America that rivals what has occurred in any labor camp or gulag anywhere and in any time.

- Immigration policy. The US is an apartheid state in which the haves (aka citizens) and have-nots (aka non-citizens) are given drastically different rights. Illegals live in constant fear of deportation and are thus afraid to seek basic healthcare, law enforcement, etc., which makes them victim to untold suffering and anguish.

- Don't forget Gitmo and Abu Ghraib... two examples of severe human rights violations by the US. Unlike with US prisoners (ironically) there would be more outrage over these issues if the facts weren't censored from public view.

These are just a few. Worrying about China is a big waste of time.

OK, I'll bite.

So, per your argument, just because the Spaniards butchered the natives in the Americas and so did the early US settlers, we should not not have criticized the Nazi Germany. After all they were also different, weren't they?

If we go by your argument, the humanity will never learn from it's own mistakes and crimes of the past, because someone in the past would have done something similarly evil.

Your statement inadvertently underscores my own point.

Do you seriously think that the US entered WW2 to stop Nazi atrocities? The US entered because its interests were threatened and it focused its stateside propaganda effort on Nazi atrocities.

Similarly, the anti-China propaganda serves to ready Americans for war, etc. The fact is, most Chinese people are living happy, peaceful lives and care far more about their own family, work, and friends then they do about what results pop up in Google.

Obama has already begun a trade war with his tire tariffs... a massive embarrassment to the US and a loss of any meager moral high ground we may have had on issues of economic freedom.

There's nothing wrong with finding fault in some of China's policies. But isn't that the role of the Chinese people? With Americans being raped in prisons every day, should we really focus on Chinese human rights atrocities?

> The US/UK empire has done all of the same, and only after using those techniques to gain superpower and first-world status, we start criticizing others for doing it.

So at what specific point have they done an 'equal amount of evil' to us so that we can start criticizing them for 'doing more evil than we did?' Without an answer to this question your point is that we can't criticize China for anything ever. This seems a bit extreme to me.

In a similar vein, are you advocating that African Americans should be able to own slaves as long as they are 'white' because 'White Americans' did in the past?

[EDIT] fixed some typos

The main point is that the US still does commit some horrible human rights violations. I describe these in detail in my replies to two of your comment's sisters.

What if I also criticize the US for those human rights violations? Am I disallowed from commenting on China just because I live in the US even though I don't agree (and actively denounce) the actions of the US government?

Not disallowed, but you should question what the point of critiquing details of other countries' policies unless you seriously favor trade sanctions and all of the suffering they cause.

Part of the story we tell ourselves in the US is that our righteous indignation about other countries is reasonable... meanwhile American citizens are raped every day in American prisons and nobody suggests that other nations boycott the Olympics to nudge us toward human rights improvements.

Since Obama took power there has been tremendous pressure to harm China's export industry, and Obama did this with his recent tire tariffs. How do you convince a bunch of entitled Americans that it's reasonable to harm the economic wellbeing of Chinese tire makers (who are quite a lot poorer than any US worker)? By helping Americans believe that China is morally inferior and thus deserves to be punished.

This is the trend that is shaping up now. Google's move was foolish and plays right into the hands of US warmongers and trade protectionists... also, Google was (at least) showing which results were censored. Baidu offers the Chinese no such information.

Well put! You are right that it's just propaganda. What the propagandists hate to discuss is what we should do about it -- chances are most favor sanctions, warships in the gulf of China, and other neoconservative strong arm tactics.

Your accusations are unproven, irrelevant and baseless. Please provide concrete arguments if you disagree.

Ok, well, what should we do about China?

Also, at what point should we insist that China do what we want to the point of sending in ships, etc.?

I think those are both excellent questions. I'm not sure what we do about it, I don't think anyone is. Google's choice certainly had some flair to it, but probably isn't a general stategy for most relations with China. I'm not sure where that leaves us.

Myself, I'm working towards more research that will hopefully make it harder to attack systems, it's a hard area, but I think there's still more we can do. I think there are some levels of technological measures we can take to help with this issue, though obviously nothing is a panacea.

As for military response, it may well be that eventually that plays a role. (Hopefully at most only involving the ability to set clear lines on what merits military action to hopefully act as a deterrance.) I think many people are working hard to try and get a handle on this issue before it ever goes that far.

In my opinion, the largest problem is right now we do not have a handle on this, so it's really unclear how it all plays out.

Google's decision amounted to depriving the Chinese people of the knowledge of which search terms were being censored, information which, I think, would be tremendously valuable to any Chinese person concerned about censorship -- at least it helps him/her figure out what to be curious about.

There is probably a role for advanced crypto in helping to free information. However be careful that it doesn't get stopped by US export restrictions :) I've had some ideas about low-tech approaches to getting by censors but haven't worked on the project for a bit.

Military response is a much tougher issue. As I pointed out earlier, Americans are raped every day in American prisons. Would we want China sending an aircraft carrier near Los Angeles and demanding that the human rights atrocities stop? Or maybe you believe that such a move (if it resulted in an increased appreciation of prisoner rights) would be a good thing.

I'm enough of a cynic to realize a few things:

- Some people in China have total access to the full internet, even if it's just b/c they have a cousin in the US who downloads the articles, encrypts them, and sends them via email...

- The military angle is all about international power relations. The US sees China as an adversary and it is thus important to make sure that Americans view China as being morally bankrupt, since Americans generally prefer to go to war when they feel that they are on the side of "good".

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