China
drewdevault.com
drewdevault.com
Already on the international front, China is in trouble. The pro-China KMT party in Taiwan may suffer greatly in the next election because of what's going on in HK now (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3037040/tai...), making China's aggressive demands for forced unification even more unlikely in the medium term. This week, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a HK rights bill (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-usa/us-...) that, if it becomes law, will put China through an annual review, which will further erode the Sino-U.S. relationship for years to come. There have been calls for a boycott of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing which seems fringey now, but won't be if China sends in the troops.
There's also the internal question. Ordinary people in China are getting censored news, but some of the raw information about what's going on is getting through via social media. What does this mean for sentiment in Cantonese speaking areas of southern China, or for areas of China where provincial officials are resented for unjust or unfair treatment of citizens?
Yeah I don't have any sympathy for him or for the CCP. Appealing to nationalist sentiment to amass political power is making a deal with the devil, and we know how that goes. Let's just hope the US doesn't need to learn this lesson as well.
The sad fact is that when these kinds of authoritarian regimes rise to power, it takes years of abhorrent violence to tear them down. The West naively thought the "free market" would liberalize China (and Russia) and we were very wrong. We're reaping the consequences of that policy mistake on a global scale.
It's the rule of law and human rights that are liberalizing (which careful readers will realize is a tautology). The West needs to stop legitimizing and funding regimes that don't respect these fundamental ideas, and here I'm thinking of China, but also other totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia. Furthermore we need to build alliances against these regimes across the world.
We have all heard this idea thrown around now for some time. It’s only in the last few years it seems people have accepted that it wasn’t going to work.
In the context of the trade war and everything lately, I’ve really been thinking about this theory.
On one hand, we know the current reality. An ascendant authoritarian country looking to return to great power status. We have a trade war as a result of years of toxic codependency. It remains to be seen how far the trade war goes and wether or not it is the catalyst for some future war.
Now on the other hand, what direction would China have gone had Nixon not gone to China to open up trade negotiations in the 70s.
It’s impossible to know, but I can imagine quite a number of scenarios that are far worse than a trade war with China. Imagine a North Korea type situation where the country is much larger and influential and does not have such a co dependent trading relationship with the United States.
Is that really a better outcome?
Also important noting that China already had nukes when they began joining international trade in the 70s.
The situation could’ve been much worse.
- The US foreign policy of regime change and bullying hegemony was a complete failure, and totally counterproductive.
- We should have deployed soft power, like aid, diplomacy, and the Peace Corps, to places that were vulnerable to falling into authoritarian rule long term, and invested in the development of poorer countries.
- We should have more seriously considered deploying hard power to places that initially fell into authoritarian rule. I know Cuba was a failure and I know military action has serious consequences (especially for civilians), but compared to authoritarian governments wielding vast nuclear arsenals and ponderous economic weight... it's a tough choice.
- We should internalize that as the US goes, the world tends to follow. Whenever we violate sovereignty, human rights, or our own values and laws, the world takes notice. Like it or not, we're responsible for showing the world how a liberal superpower behaves. We need to take that responsibility seriously.
I'm impressed how you blatantly assume that marching into some foreign country, guns blazing, will magically turn them into a liberal democracy.
I mean, your track record is abysmal. There are exceptions (eg Japan) but generally when the US puts boots on the ground somewhere, the place turns to shit.
It is important to realize that experts believe the NK situation would be totally unsustainable without China.
Ergo, if China were like NK, it wouldn’t last long, because there is no big-brother economy that could support the (disaster) situation.
The free market did not turn either country into an efficient democracy, that's true. It did not improve the tolerance to dissent to Western levels (sadly, not a particularly high mark recently). It did not prevent an authoritarian regime in either country, too.
There's no silver bullet.
Isn't it ? I mean, I don't respect China much but this is not a false statement.
Obviously if you define "Western media" as newspapers providing a certain viewpoint then by definition your argument would be correct. But that isn't an interesting argument.
Moreover, using the Internet people in the US can read diverse points of view, including e.g. those of pro-China websites. This is not possible in China, except for a small minority who have access to VPN and similar technology.
I want Beijing to have universal suffrage just as much as I want the Cantonese to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsWa9fieWSU
This interview was in Melbourne, Australia. Many of the interviewees were mainland students in Australia.
Not saying your associates and colleagues must be like one of them. Just offering one possible explanation.
You can also test their knowledge, by asking them about the Five Demands of Hong Kong protestors, and also Hong Kong legislative and government structures. Some of the answers can be found in the original article.
Props to China though for having a pretty effective system.
If you step back and think about it, if this protest were to happen in the US, with subways burned, shops destroyed, road blocked, for 6 months. What is going to happen? Compare this hypothetical scenario with what happened in Hong Kong.
Where’s the gap? In 2019 we’ve been accustomed to export thinking to other people and import outrage from the cheapest source. And it doesn’t take a dictatorial government to push a narrative.
If the same protests happened in the US, with a quarter of the population marching peacefully on June 16 (as it did in Hong Kong), the government has to immediately respond to its people’s demands, for otherwise the current government will lose in landslide in the next election. And all the subway burning, shops destruction, etc will be avoided — these events happened at least three months into Hong Kong protests in September, long after the mega march on June 16.
Thank you for pointing out Hong Kong has no genuine democracy, which is directly related to one of the five key demands.
It's not hypocritical because the US has democratic avenues and Hong Kong (and China) doesn't, disruption is their only option.
When Hong Kong has universal free and fare elections I'll think about joining your condemnation.
Both in the US and in China people work in media voluntarily. In neither case they have freedom to publish anything they want, they have to push specific narratives coming from the top. In China narratives come directly from the government, in the US indirectly through the system of "manufacturing consent".
So true, since its inception with GHW, its execution and realization through Clinton and then once fully engaged the timid, supplicant responses from GW and BO, China has contributed to the stagnation of the blue collar worker on America with the full complicity of Democrats, Republicans and most of Industry and even unions who didn’t oppose their cozy politicians. They all only saw starry dollar signs...
That’s where we are now. People have had enough. That’s why they put up with the guy no one likes because he’s willing to sever that codependent relationship.
Now, if you ask any pol running for the nomination who the greatest threat to America is... it’s not going to be China...
On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations. Economists are highly certain on this, with uncharacteristically few people responding "uncertain" on the survey [0]. You can go through the other surveys on the IGM Forum to see what more common distributions looks like.
The thing is: economists are hardly unbiased and neutral. Their theories are far from scientific truth, and typically embed significant political content.
For instance: "benefit" can be a highly political term. How do "economists" define it and is that the definition we should be using?
This is an interesting article on the subject:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/economists-globalizatio...
> ECONOMISTS ON THE RUN
> Paul Krugman and other mainstream trade experts are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization: It hurt American workers far more than they thought it would. Did America’s free market economists help put a protectionist demagogue in the White House?
So, well, I would add disclaimer to not blindly trusts the economists on this one. Their opinion are probably much better than the one from the average Joe, and also much better than anything you'll get out of the news or a politician's mouth, but not completely reliable either... and the most certain a economist is of it, the less I would trust him.
The current buffoon political administration has identified a surface problem, but not the causes and certainly not a solution. The only solution I see comes in two parts: 1) The world needs to make China persona non grata. 2) Shareholders and corporate boards need to hold corporations accountable, not just on a moral basis, but also in terms of good business. Foreign companies cannot win there because the playing field isn't fair.
Thus, while yes we need politicians who can defend American interests, we also need to hold their corporate masters accountable.
Also, it goes without saying of course that it would also hurt the Chinese workers who are equally deserving of good employment as their American counterparts, and it's not clear why discounting their welfare is anything other than tribalism.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs...
[2]https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/how-much-would-an-all-america...
On the other hand, perhaps a reduction in frivolous consumption would be good for an ailing planet.
> it's not clear why discounting their welfare is anything other than tribalism.
They are citizens of an authoritarian regime, and for the most part, deeply nationalistic. Their labor produces the regime's prosperity, and enables the very economic influence that leads the international community to constantly turn a blind eye to its human rights abuses.
I don't think it's controversial or inhumane to suggest that we should allocate resources to those who play by (or belong to groups that play by) fairer rules.
I, and I’m sure many many others, would be willing to pay a little more if I know that money is staying here and supporting families in this country. I can do without more plastic crap from China, and I consider it strategically important that high tech manufacturing comes back to the US. For defense reasons, among others. I’m sure someone will link the Wikipedia page with some neat plots from “economics 101”, which is fine. But some things are worth paying a little more for.
https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
And it wouldn't matter one whit, because 90% of the expenses of the average American aren't going into buying consumer goods.
They go into buying transportation, medicine, education, food, and housing (With the price of housing rising to consume all of the middle class's economic surplus). None of those things are made in China.
Housing is the most fun one, because no matter how much people save, the price of houses rises to eat all of those savings. The only reason for why a house can cost a million dollars, is that people have saved that amount of money up. If that money weren't there, housing prices would be lower.
You know what, I’ll start caring about their wellbeing soon as they give two shits about the American workers they have displaced.
It’s their economy, they can fix their own problems.
The world has too many people to support as is, so it is beneficial if automation reduces the number of workers needed in the long run. But sending all of the factories out of the US benefits no one.
This is a binary choice dem or repub any other choice is a vote for the incumbent
Misrepresenting him as "willing to sever that codependent relationship" is harmful. He's just as complicit if not more than most politicians, and most of his actions involving China have been inconsistent and self-serving.
I think what we're seeing is a president who is at odds with the intelligence and diplomatic communities. It's truly testing the ideas of who's actually in charge.
The president assumes since he was elected and runs the executive branch that he has the final say on what will be done, and will go "off-script" in direct communications with other leaders to forward his agenda. The diplomats/intelligence have long-established precedents and procedures and want everyone, including the president, to not rock their boat.
When they are unable to work together, you will see these inconsistent decisions being made.
Praising him doesn't mean he likes him or he'll make of him his friend. It's more of a respect thing. He respects the man for working on the interest of his country.
But if all you have is trump saying "good strong leader", then you don't have much. Show actions not words.
Well, that's not exactly true. There is at least one person who ran his campaign saying exactly that- China was America's greatest threat... He's "the guy nobody likes"... he is the current President!
Given the condition of the lowest of our nation, "traitors" isn't an unreasonable way to describe the 1%, and no one in the 1% has ever seen a firing squad or the electric chair. Not even lethal injection. If they aren't subject to the same rules as Americans, are they really Americans? If they have a higher amount of wealth than sovereign countries, can they be considered anything but sovereign?
This leading argument is not specific to China at all and would equally apply to India and most poor countries. Severing trade with all those countries would severely hurt their economies and their citizens.
It's the same logic behind "dey terk er jerbs" but somehow made reasonable by throwing accusations of fascism.
If China is an ocean instead it’s still gone, forever, either to other cheap country or robots.
It’s currently politically convenient to hate China, but quit blaming every woe on China.
Because the expenses that are killing us (housing, health care, education) aren't outsourced at all.
As far as I can tell (and according to most economists), the idea that "we can fix the middle class by going after China trade" is intuitive, simple, and wrong. And it's popular on both sides of the aisle. And historically, it's always been easier to find some group to blame than to fix structural economic issues.
So I think the further we go along this path, the less likely it is we will end up fixing our actual problems, and the more likely countries will be distracted by trade wars and maybe real wars in various parts of the world as those problems increase, and various groups are blamed instead of fixing economic policy.
This is separate from the human rights issues. But I think if we want to put penalties to try to address the human rights issues, we should be clear about that. Because if the penalty is for other political reasons it doesn't add an incentive to improve human rights, since that wouldn't make the penalty go away.
Well, they asked a similar question during one of the democratic party debates [1] and some candidates said Trump but others pointed out climate change, Russia meddling in elections, China, etc. But the question was greatest "geopolitical threat" so I guess it's not exactly the same.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/2020-democratic-debate-respo...
The biggest issue with him is how he's destroyed our system of alliances, which administrations of both parties have defended and cultivated over decades. See, for instance, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/18/china-signs-defe....
This is disastrous. It's insane that the US is losing South Korea to China, considering we sacrificed tens of thousands of soldiers and considered starting nuclear war to prevent it in the 1950s. And people just shrug, because to the extent people care about politics right now, it's to focus on impeachment hearings, which themselves are happening because Trump blackmailed an important ally.
The core foreign policy of whoever is President should be recognizing China as our most formidable strategic competitor and working to maintain and build upon a system of alliances to limit its power and reach. Instead Trump is just a thug trying to shake down our allies for cheap wins and PR releases based on an idiotic understanding of American foreign policy interests.
Allegedly blackmailed, which nobody who was actually involved corroborates, to investigate exactly how it is that Joe Biden's son managed to get a very high-paying make-work job on the board of a Ukrainian oil company, and Joe Biden bragged on videotape about how he did infact blackmail the Ukrainian Government to fire the prosecutor who was investigating that.
What we're discovering is not that Trump is that out there. It's that the entire US Government and political elite has been that out there for many years now, and the entire mainstream media conspired to ignore it and cover it up. As they are continuing to do now.
i understand that gives you a certain amount of power that other employees, say of Apple, may not have. kudos to you for using it fruitfully - sincerely.
i am sure this will come across as tin foily, but i would advise you to monitor your digital assets and maybe even personal ones for probing/attack/etc. you're publishing an anti-CCP piece on a widely trafficked web property and are easily identifiable. you are making an enemy of a powerful adversary.
appreciate the piece and best of luck.
If you really care, reach out directly to the merchants you buy from. Tell them you used to be a loyal customer, but you won't buy from them again until they stop carrying products made in China. Get your friends and coworkers to do the same, and keep the pressure on. If they go for it, follow through by rewarding them with your loyalty, and broadcast that win as publicly as possible. Talk about it, hashtag it, whatever. Organize.
Changing individual consumption habits rarely amounts to much more than virtue signalling.
And don't toss your existing stuff. You already paid for it, so it's not helping China anymore, and throwing it away doesn't hurt them. If anything, selling it to someone else reduces demand for new products (by exactly 1 unit).
Anything else sets up a perverse incentive to execute more undesirables.
That's a part of the problem here. People speak their mind, disappear into a black bag and end up donating their organs to a Party member's daughter five months later.
The other major part being that there's very little due process, or fair justice, not in the way that you or I would expect it. Certainly not with lives on the line.
Worrying about wasted organs misses the point by an absurd distance.
We should not feel threatened to criticize a foreign country. Speak up fearlessly against China. Now is the time.
One nitpick: Hong Kong has its own legal definition of "rioting". It's from the Public Order Ordinance[1], and carries a maximum 10 years jail sentence. The entire law itself is quite draconian and was struck down in the final days of British rule, but was reinstated immediately after the handover.
https://qz.com/1110266/two-years-later-the-last-of-the-vanis...
But there's one thing that's fundamentally wrong in your article. Trading with China is, for now, beneficial to EVERYONE, including you, Drew DeVault, and the top 1% richest. Specialization and trading are the fundamental ways to advance the economy. Surely there will be blue collar workers in the US losing their jobs, but that's just how economy goes. We care about individuals, and it's a tragedy that anyone loses job, but looking at the big picture every working individual should be able to learn new skills and ready to move to new industries if the current industry no longer provides enough jobs.
When Samsung moved its factories out of China and into Vietnam, lots of Chinese workers lost their jobs. One day if Samsung pulled their factories out of Vietnam and moved to an even cheaper country, workers in Vietnam will lose their jobs too. What should those workers do? Learn new skills and move on to other industries. That's a cold thing to say but that's how the economy works. Workers in country A lose their jobs because of the trading with country B does not mean trading with country B is wrong.
If you hate (and you should) what the Chinese government has been doing, the right thing to do is work together to move factories, plants, and companies out of China and to another country, if and only if they can still provide the products/services at the same or even better quality with a lower cost.
Maybe having a gigantic trade deficit is natural and okay, but when it is being used to fund the CCP it is problematic. America may have to take a short term hit, but if it moves its factories out to India, Thailand, Taiwan, Mexico, even back to America the marginal loss in wealth due to trade will be outranked by the substantial benefit to society we will get from not fuelling a nation that seeks supremacy at the cost of humanity.
No, it's beneficial from an idealized economic perspective for economies.
Economics makes no guarantee that all individuals within an economy benefit economically benefit from free trade. And if you look at the actual average effect for US workers over the past few decades (period of opening trade with China), their purchasing power hasn't increased: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
How can this be? "The economy" is still growing on average because the top 1% have been getting richer and richer. Also China devalued its currency to protect its own industry (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/beggarthyneighbor.asp). Not exactly "free trade"...
But coming back to this:
> every working individual should be able to learn new skills and ready to move to new industries if the current industry no longer provides enough jobs.
Yes, from an economic ideal perspective, working individuals "should" do that to maximize their own income. And in the US, people have been doing it for a while, leading to a drain of talented individuals from rural communities to urban areas and repeatedly disconnecting people from their friends and families as they chase economic opportunities around the country. Now everyone is lonely and depressed, there's a huge political divide between rural and urban areas, and, well, Trump happened.
So I don't think chasing the shiny economic ideals is necessarily going to lead where we want to go as a society.
As a US citizen, I try to consider how the rest of the world may view our actions (glass houses and all). Following the logic here it would make sense for the rest of the world to cutoff trade with the United States due to the Iraq war, which has caused many civilian deaths.
But if you agree that the rest of the world should have sanctioned the US for the Iraq war (among other things) then there might be a consistency with trying to sanction China.
Comparing the two is just an excuse to do nothing.
In the meantime, feel free (pun intended) to protest misdeeds by the U.S., vote for new leaders, organize with like-minded individuals, or buy weapons.
(Aside: many people feel like buying weapons is completely futile against oppression. But it reduces your dependence on the government for protection, and makes it harder for the federal government to convince local police to carry out their dirty work. Also, really bad governments never seem to want citizens to be armed, so perhaps there's a reason for that.)
"We are not perfect, but we can't stand by. We have sins of our own that we are trying to rectify, but we cannot allow what you're doing."
The flaw in mutual criticism without admission of guilt is that saying "we're good" even in comparison is so obviously self-serving that it gives your opponent a trivial excuse to dismiss you.
So even though the US has absolutely no moral high ground - I still think that it is important for individual Americans to take a stand against atrocities around the world. I don't think we can discredit Drew's post based on the fact that the US government is just as (or more) evil than the Chinese government.
I do think that special care needs to be taken to avoid the hypocrisy and call out US atrocities as they happen - but calling out the Chinese crimes is very important in the current global climate.
Should it support popular coups (that promise elections as soon as they take over) or dictatorships?
This post is much the same way. A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom. This happened in South Korea, which many forget used to be a brutal military dictatorship.
We've been testing that theory for decades with negative results.
Maybe it works other places, but it doesn't seem to be working in China.
I think collapse of the current government is more likely than a peaceful ROC-esque (Taiwan) transition from dictatorship to democracy.
This was the lie told to the American people in the 90s to justify PNTR with the PRC. We know it was a bald-faced lie now. Why are you saying this?
They never knew, if lying by omission is a crime, all media is guilty of it.
The fact that I, a non-citizen can live in US and call out its mass killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan denotes the difference between US and China.
Its seems to be a very recent American phenomenon.
Where I live it is shameful and very damaging to one's credibility to be exposed for maintaining double standards.
Sitting here in a former eastern block country I completely disagree. It is absolutely obvious that communism is by far humanity's greatest moral failure and China just proves it again.
United States would need need to start dropping nukes on cities to even approach communism's death toll. A regime change, however misguided, here and there won't be enough for centuries.
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.
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.
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).
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.
I also don't think that the economic miracle that has happened in China is a bad thing, and they could of been more singaporean/south korean authoritarian vs. genocidal authoritarian to achieve it. I really want china to become another Japan or Korea eventually.
I do agree with you that China is basically a modern day nazi germany, pre WW2 at this point.
This narrative basically can be taken verbatim by the CCP as propaganda material. “The west didn’t like our political system that made great economical progress, and they will try to destroy your livelihood. By the way, they think the economical success of China is entirely a gift of the west. It has nothing to do with your hard working.“
this wasn't logic but faith.
But it's also the case that the US (and most of the West) is experiencing levels of income and wealth inequality not seen since the beginning of the 20th century. The profits from these economic miracles is indeed going largely to a very small number of people, even in the aforementioned countries (China's poverty statistics are frightening, for example, even by their laughably low standards).
I look at this from the perspective of the rust-belt. It doesn't really help that you can buy a Chinese-made couch for only $500 if you've long since lost your job at the furniture factory.
I remember in public school, the janitor (before the whole title inflation took hold) made enough money to raise a family.
That doesn’t happen much any more. That job has been outsourced to cheap labor. Cheap because of two things people in mfg don’t have a job and will work for less and two low skilled labor coming in and adding downward pressure to wages.
Other parts have become ascendant, such as our software & service industries. The american auto industry also killed themselves, mostly because peaceful Japanese competitors out competed them.
Extreme wealth inequality is making life difficult for many, many people today. Cheap goods from China make it easier for them to tolerate this situation, and therefore less likely to take action to change it. One view of this would be that cheap goods are helping people. Another would be that cheap goods help the wealthy elite to continue unchallenged, furthering wealth inequality over time, and making overall quality of life much worse for everyone else in the long run.
That's part of my frustration with all of this w.r.t. the Hong Kong riots. China has been this way for _decades_. Finally we get some western exposure to just how determined the CCP are to control their citizenry. I hope the resistance and world exposure keep pressure on the CCP, but honestly I don't see them caving. (If you think western politics has it's problems look no further than the CCP as an example of what real dogma is all about). I know an all-out civil war would leave a country full of wonderful people in ruins, but I don't see any other way around dismantling the CCP.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_sch...
And please don't call them "boarding schools". It is so disrespectful for the Uighurs who have to endure the physical and mental torture in these camps. Japanese-American internment camps during WWII were concentration camps, and CCP's "re-education" camps in Xinjiang are concentration camps too.
> $155B worth of electronics, which we already have domestic manufacturing capabilities for [4]
The citation here is to the effect that the manufacturing technology is already present in the US. This does not at all translate to the capability to produce these goods, in at least three respects:
* Capacity of production (an industry manufacturing billions of goods requires at least new plants to be built)
* Logistics network (transportation, special zones with enough industry concentration to generate economies of scale)
* Skilled and experienced labor. Take whatever item you can think of, the people who have been in the manufacturing business for that specific item for over a decade have skill and experience above and beyond the mere technological capability to produce.
All of these things would translate at least to higher production costs (regardless of thoughts on currency exchange), market shrinkage from lower affordability, and potentially shortages as well.
The real economy is not as easy as software - you can't just install a new OS and run, it takes decades to transform industries at this scale.
And if the US wants to get serious about the use of trade sanctions against human rights violations, there are a lot of places closer to home that it could look at. Not to mention the laws against boycotting a certain country for its human rights violations.
There's also the fantasy of assuming that China's next move after the trade sanctions would be a de-escalation. There's a lot of escalation opportunities for them. Like Taiwan.
(Let's be clear, this is not an apology for the human rights violations by China, which are very real especially in Xinjiang; what I am asking for is the same to be applied consistently and not driven by straightforward nationalism)
Completely agree. I very much empathize with the author and this issue is the only one where I feel some sort of connection with the current POTUS, but the engineering-at-scale capacities in the United States pale in comparison to China for a variety of reasons - some due to a cheaper labor force and more "flexible" labor laws, and some simply due to culture.
We do not have this capacity now and it is dubious that we can build it quickly without serious governmental subsidies and efforts not seen since World War 2. I'm personally good with the change, but it will cost billions if not trillions of dollars in lost productivity and marginal costs over the next decade or two, and this is not something to handwave away.
We were very worried about the USSR for the same reason. But there was an iron curtain, and you had to actually be invaded to lose your freedom.
Now, the CCP seems able to curtail worldwide freedom through its trade policy, which is a weird thing nobody expected.
In 1997 HK had 1/3 of the GDP of mainland China and was the only way for Western companies to interact with China. Today HK has 3% of the GDP of mainland China and a huge part of this is because China has opened its borders to foreign investment. Shenzhen has a thriving economy because if you're a western company and want to do business with China, you can just go there and do business. In the past you would have had to go through Hong Kong to make this happen.
The Hong Kong riots were sparked because China wanted to extradite someone who murdered his girlfriend in Taiwan and then went to hide in HK to avoid extradition. If the same thing happened in the united states we would be equally furious. Of course I'm not stupid, I know that this extradition is part of a growing feeling of increasingly powerful influence of China on HK, and I know this because this how independent nations feel when the US similarly puts extradition pressure on other countries. Look what happened with Julian Assange!
But the protests in Hong Kong aren't just about some emergent "evil" coming from China. Their part of the economic and social anxiety that comes from having your economic power completely change in the span of 20 years. In America we know power and independence go hand in hand.
I'm equally as wary of growing Chinese political power as I am of US Hegemony. But the current strife in Hong Kong is perfect propaganda fuel for both the US and China. Both nations essentially get to stoke the flames of nationalism while HK suffers. I strong encourage people to at least question the prevailing narratives from both sides and start to look at the economic realities of what's happening.
[0] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/Hong-Kong-s-tariff... [1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/183...
First, 93% of protesters were angry due to the lack of universal suffrage. That’s the number one reason for anger, according to a survey. (http://theconversation.com/hong-kong-protesters-dont-identif...)
Do you have any poll/survey results to support your claim that Hong Kongers keep on protesting because they feel economically less important to China? How can you attribute the protests to purely economic reasons and ignore this even more important political factor?
Second, Hong Kong is still extremely important economically to China:
* It accounts for about 70% of foreign direct investment (FDI) to China (https://santandertrade.com/en/portal/establish-overseas/chin...).
* Lots of mainland companies opt to list at Hong Kong stock exchange rather than Shanghai, e.g. Alibaba
Other reasons why Hong Kong is important:
https://www.piie.com/blogs/china-economic-watch/why-china-st...
> Hong Kong riots where sparked because China wanted to extradite someone who murdered his girlfriend in Taiwan and then went to hide in HK to avoid extradition.
This was an excuse that has been debunked:
http://shanghaiist.com/2019/06/16/taiwan-lambasts-hong-kong-...
There are no protests there. They were also a former Westen colony and now under 1 country, 2 systems like Hong Kong.
The only difference is their GDP per capita is almost twice that of Hong Kong’s.
We don't need China. Increasing automation, and with other countries picking up the slack, China will become more and more irrelevant. We don't need to support in any way the completely amoral CCP.
Also tech people: Vehemently oppose helping the US DoD with their highly-sought after skills, sign online petitions, protest and/or quit their high-paying jobs at <insert tech company that provides value to US DoD>.
Serious question for these tech people: What are you exactly doing to help solve the issues you've ranted about?
I'd like to hear thoughtful responses that are not the typical fallacies (e.g. ad hominem, ad populum, straw man, etc.)
If you're referring to the NSA or CIA they're both organizations that ignore the US constitution so there's great reasons to not work for them.
So, that is your opinion. The whole point of having a credible option to use violence, is that one is willing to use it. Otherwise, there is no credibility in the threat, which defeats the entire purpose of peace and security that is backed by the potential use of violence. In that sense, if one misses a court ordered appearance, one shouldn't be surprised to see law enforcement knocking on one's doorstep with the threat of violence for legal non-compliance.
Do black hat cyber attacks constitute an "invasion"? If you say no, then that's what Russia / China is banking on, because they're doing it, and betting that the US won't resort to conventional military use of force in retaliation. Since there's no real threat of painful retaliation, they can continue hacking away with no consequence then?
If you say yes, then you're saying that the US should respond to cyber attacks with conventional military use of force, tanks, planes, boots on ground, etc. because you see cyber attacks as no different than a conventional attack by those countries.
Regardless, the US needs more cyber security professionals and other technical professionals (e.g. machine learning etc.) to help with the defense against these actors, but that's hard to do with all this backlash from techies.
Rather than the DoD, i could see what you mean if instead we were talking about other federal and local departments of trade, labor, environmental policies, etc. Exerting soft power instead of hard, military force. NGOs with a focus of international labor organizing might be applicable too.
No. Have you not heard about the tech workers who voluntarily quit their civilian day jobs in protest of their employer, because their employer was working (or planning to work) with the DoD?
This is the tragedy so silently born by The many that eludes the “but Wal-Mary lowered prices” crowd that is enriched by free trade.
edit: DDOS on sr.ht starts in 3... 2... 1...
- Millions of Chinese people (lot of whom have nothing to do with HK or goverment or human right violation) instantly lose access Blizzard products. Their lives become unequivocally shitter.
- Blizzard loses a ton of money and have to downsize significantly firing half of their staff. They can't affort investing in new projects at the scale they used to. Their products become cheaper and lose in quality. Maybe the company even have to shut down due to not being able to sustain itself. It's pretty shitty for Blizzard on all fronts here.
- A lot of Blizzard employees lose their jobs, stop paying taxes and participating in economy at the rate they could afford while being employed by Blizzard. Seems pretty shitty for them and their communities.
- Millions of consumers all over the world miss out on new Blizzard titles, stop buying their games and participating in events organized by Blizzard because company ceases to exist or can't afford to maintain the quality of their products due to less budget. This is a significant impact on the economy as a whole when a huge company generating wealth out of thin air ceases to exist or loses its steam.
- Chinese goverment is not affected by any of this and keeps doing whatever it's doing.
Overall, seems like the move will hurt everyone involved, except for the Chinese government. Remind me please, why we keep demanding Blizzard to punch themselves in a dick for no benefit whatsoever?
I'm not necessary defending Blizzard here, really. I'm just pointing out that the situation is a lot more complicated than shallow takes like in the one in the linked article tend present to it to be.
(1) banned from the current tournament (2) forfeit any prize money (approximately US$4,000 by that point) (3) banned from other Grandmaster tournaments for one year
By contrast, Overwatch League player Josh "Eqo" Corono made a racist gesture and said "I am Korean" on a stream, and was suspended for three games and fined $3000. [2]
Not that Blizzard cannot penalize Blitzchung. Just not out of proportion.
> Millions of Chinese people (lot of whom have nothing to do with HK or goverment or human right violation) instantly lose access Blizzard products. Their lives become unequivocally shitter.
Judging from China’s ban on NBA’s that lasted only two days, China’s ban on Blizzard may be equally short-lived. [3]
> Blizzard loses a ton of money and have to downsize significantly firing half of their staff. They can't affort investing in new projects at the scale they used to. Their products become cheaper and lose in quality. Maybe the company even have to shut down due to not being able to sustain itself. It's pretty shitty for Blizzard on all fronts here.
Only 12% of Blizzard revenue comes from Asia-Pacific, which includes China but also South Korea, Taiwan, etc [4]. Some sources say only 5% comes from China [5]. Even if Blizzard loses Chinese market completely, I don’t see why they need to downsize significantly and fire half of the staff.
The same goes for your remaining claims.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy
[2] https://www.usgamer.net/articles/blizzard-is-in-an-internati...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-basketball-nba/exci...
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activis...
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/dp1py7/blizzard...
All three elements—moderators, users, software—comprise HN's moderation system. The system works this way because if it didn't, the front page would be dominated by politics and flamewars, which can't coexist with HN's organizing value of intellectual curiosity: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
That doesn't mean that all political topics are excluded here, as anyone who pays attention to HN is aware. The main things we're looking for are whether there's overlap with intellectual curiosity, and whether the topic is one that hasn't been discussed recently. Those two criteria tend to support curious conversation.
In this case, the topic has been heavily discussed in recent months—indeed it's one of the most-discussed topics on HN at present and there has been a huge number of flamewars about it—so we would tend toward downweighting the thread. On the other hand, the discussion on this one has managed to stay relatively thoughtful—far from perfect, but we didn't get a wretched flamewar, which is unusual with so provocative a post, especially on a nationalistic topic, which is probably the most inflammatory of all domains these days. So I've reduced the downweight.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Based on how we work as moderators, I'd say it happens to a lesser extent the further the post is about tech—but that's not really what we're looking for either way. What we're looking for is topics that are intellectually interesting and can support intellectually curious discussion. Topics that have already been debated to death are much more likely to get penalized whether they're about tech or not. Initial discussions about the Damore thing spent much time on HN's front page, just like the Snowden thing in 2013, and the Stallman thing a few years later.
Why do we tend to penalize topics that have already been debated to death, unless a story contains significant new information? Because curiosity withers under repetition and people's responses become predictable. In other words, moderating this way is a simple consequence of intellectual curiosity being HN's organizing principle. That's the one thing we optimize for in everything we do here.
Even with all that, I'd say we barely get by in terms of having an intellectually curious site—but there are so many strong forces acting against it, that barely getting by is probably the best one can do. From the beginning, the idea of HN has been to stave off decline for as long as possible. I've always liked that goal, as it seems modest enough to have a chance.
We all make deals with monsters for economic safety, or because there is near nothing we can do about it. That includes China AND the US.
The real flaw of the strategy is fundamental misunderstanding of root cause and how human society works. Killing didn’t reduce the capability of the terrorists. The growth of terrorists out paste target drone killing numbers. Killing cause more growth. That’s why US eventually talk to Taliban. The failure is on another level not accuracy of drone target killing.
4: https://www.lg.com/us/press-release/lg-electronics-to-build-...
4: http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/22nm/pdfs/Global-Int...
This is a truly perplexing argument, especially the sourcing to "make" the argument. Ones an article about a single factory that LG opened for washing machines in the US, the other that Intel has chip manufacturing plants in the US. This does not make the argument that America has the resources, both human and raw materials, to pull off a China manufacturing pull-out.
A lot of the article, especially the parts on who gets rich off this arrangement and the human rights components are very much on point. But making it out like a China manufacturing break would just be simply accomplished because LG makes some washing machines here is pretty ridiculous. It would be very difficult, and it would require a lot of government assistance & policy encouragements to develop people, acquire access to rare earth minerals, and lay out vast sums of upstart capital to get factories built. It would take time. Making it out like it's a simple fix is convenient and simple, but like most complex things that are made out to be simple & convenient, it's just flat-out wrong.
Edit: After reading responses, I realize that there is a better question to ask: What people in the US in general do to help (vote a certain way, write to certain politicians, change purchasing habits), and how can I specifically participate in that?
One idea would be to run workshops for children/or families teaching them how to repair their devices, and which devices to get if they want them to last (think upgradability, battery-replacement, similar). If we're wanting to lessen China's power over the working class, making people capable of maintaining electronics in the same way they can maintain cars will go a long way. Bonus points if you teach them how to reinstall operating systems without bricking their systems.
Another idea would be to use your programming ability to create software to help people: think getting past censorship, keeping communications secure, similar. China and Hong Kong both are more or less tech wonderlands, solving the UX issues that stop anyone from throwing a single-board computer (think Orange/Raspberry Pi) online and using it to communicate over the open web and store data without fear of it being compromised in some way by doing nothing more than flashing an OS image and booting would mean that almost everyone would gain, but especially people in those countries.
Seems like a pretty big omission, given that it's what smart people were putting together to give us some better leverage against them without "going cold turkey", which would tank the economy in a massive way that would absolutely crush those who are not so well off.
Personally, my thoughts are in line with the author’s, but realistically we need to be looking at unified trade sanctions on key goods and potentially clamping down on foreign investment in both directions.
People who are gainfully employed do not have a problem with the cost of general goods like food and electronics; this stuff is cheap.
The problem (not only in the US) for most is under/unemployment and the cost of housing.
Because the jobs have been shipped offshore.
An otherwise fact-driven post is undermined with this claim. Even if true, it would be very hard to support this claim.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16868838/el...
US's exports will decrease when manufactured in the US since China's cheap labor is allowing US goods to have a not-that-high price. So really the net-import from China is just something that US should embrace to get the net-exports to other countries.
For one rare earth minerals are dominated by China making domestic electronic manufacturing impossible.
Second, less profit means stocks go down,economic recession is likely. People loss jobs,savings,etc...
China will be hostile, they have infiltrated US institutions extensively.
I agree the west should move away from China but only because of China's hostility and this needs to be done slowly!
The best remedy is to undermine the Great Firewall. And the easiest to hide censored content* in sites that are not filtered (like this one). Just hide it well enough that Baidu etc. cannot get to it.
*: That can include proxies to news sites, facebook etc.
What is true is that this will not meaningfully impact lives of ordinary westerners. There is no reason other than corporate greed for the status quo.
I would buy usa made stuff because I have the means to, currently typing this on a Realforce keyboard wearing USA NB sneakers. But I'm pretty sure it would put a huge dent in retail sales across the board. Maybe higher volume in manufacturing would lower usa-made prices and create more jobs in the usa which might tip the revenue flow from the 1% to everyone else.
I’m sure this thread will have a lot of whataboutism. Remember what your parents always told you: two wrongs don’t make a right.
Arguably, the trade war may have nothing to do with trade and, together with financial decoupling, everything to do with deliberate monetary strangulation.
The Trump administration holds all the cards, the CCP holds none. The challenge is getting the job done without more people getting killed.
https://mises.org/wire/china-trouble
https://mises.org/wire/chinas-biggest-problem-isnt-trump-its...
https://thesoundingline.com/chinas-money-supply-has-outgrown...
I'm not sure if that's enough to say trade with China is a good thing.
But it should turn your idea of a very simple answer into a much more complicated picture.
> Let’s lay out the facts: China is conducting human rights violations on the largest scale the world has seen since Nazi Germany.
Even if you ignore events like the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer rouge or the Rwandan genocide, on the basis that, while far more intensive, they affected a considerably smaller population, China's own cultural revolution was a far greater human rights violation than what is happening now in China. (Arguably, in terms of scope, it was even worse than anything than the Nazis did, even if its intentions were probably more benign.)
I'd recommend changing the quoted sentence to something to the effect of "one of the largest scales".
But, yes, both are far greater human rights violations than what is happening now in mainland China.
Actually, the cynic in me thinks that this was by design. By reinforcing the power of the communist party, american corporations wouldn't have to worry about the chinese workers fighting for better labor and environmental conditions, thus keeping costs low.
Uh. His goals were to further American interests in Cold War geopolitics and increase his personal stature as a statesman. Friendly American relations with Chinese Communists put more pressure on Soviet Communists.
Free trade has nothing to due with it. You're forgetting that Nixon went to China in 1972, but the Chinese economy didn't start opening up until 1978 under Deng (and long after Nixon).
I'm pretty sure China had been already committed human right violation on that scale before.
Yeah throw away every piece of electronic you have including Apple products.
I don't think the US joined the war out of concern for the welfare of Europeans so much as out of fear of Germany's continually-expanding borders (and as a reaction to that Pearl Harbor thing)
This, right over here, might explain why Hitler got away with what he did for a long time before the international community decided it's time to do something.
TVs should cost $5000, washing machines $2500, etc... that will create a domestic repair industry, be better for the environment, create skilled jobs that don't require college, and improve our national self-sufficience and thus security, and deprive a totalitarian government of revenues.
The Hong Kong human rights and democracy act if enacted only supports the central government's position on Hong Kong. The unrest is an opportunity for Beijing. The media discourse suggests otherwise... only to the benefit of Beijing. Understand the true meaning of your position, so as not to look so foolish.
Or not, and keep supporting China ( I thank you ) but thinking you're not.
The world doesn't have to be unipolar.
This is certainly an... interesting assertion. HK is the financial conduit that made Chinese rise possible, and the engine that powers Chinese financial influence abroad. HKers enabled this, not so much the generation that's protesting mind you, but most remotely affluent HK migrant in the past 30 years was the beneficiary to this arrangement.
Overall, fairly lazy and unsophisticated, Reddit tier analysis from generic American exceptionalism lens. Just to touch on XinJiang briefly, since people in the west are quick to draw on Godwins law and make ridiculous Nazi + genocide comparisons. The leaked NYT reports confirms if anything that the CPC motivations is consistent with their past claims of de-radicalization and de-secularization. There's no intention to eliminate if only because killing all the Uyghurs means China has to revise 56 minorities into 55, that would look bad on Xi's legacy. What is happening is an extremely immoral and excessive COIN strategy, you know the kind US embarked on post 9/11 that continues to this day. Each using instruments to their strength - US bombs, Chinese infrastructure. At best it would be classified as cultural-genocide, which is basically undefined and unenforceable in UN. The silver lining is that since the motivation is counter-terrorism, there's a chance China will pivot away from the harsh strategies. Mandatory disclaimer that explanation doesn't not mean endorsement.
Regardless, it's always a little cringe to see Americans try to play the moral Trump card. Argue security, argue hegemony, argue influence, but don't argue morals like that has any weight anymore. HK rights bill passed on the same day US changed stance on West Bank settlements. Chinese containment is cold geopolitics. The appeal for international condemnation is particularly out of touch. China is a driver for global growth, economically and demographically, most countries including the majority of developed g20 has their future prosperity pegged to China. US is the least trade dependent major economy int he world with enviable geopolitical posturing that enables her to disengage with China on a long enough timeline, no one else has that benefit, and they have even less incentive to as US is becoming increasingly unreliable and withdrawn from the global order that she created. There's a reason why, including US, only 2/5 and 3/195 countries in the world banned Huawei despite years aggressive US posturing. South Korean just signed a defense agreement with China. Being near peer power with US means China is afforded the luxury of getting away with crimes against humanity like the US have.
Want the world to shun the future Chinese order? Propose and _demonstrate_ a better one.
Let's start with the very simple "have more than one viable political party". The CCP would never tolerate that. The rest of your comment is casual dismissal of "cultural genocide" and whataboutism. Rather than try and distract with transparently propagandist techniques, you should really consider reforms that the CCP could undertake to adhere to the rule of law and respect human rights in China. That at least would be constructive.
Starting with the western values as endpoint for reform is not constructive but "transparently propagandist". Different countries apply different models at different points in development - "rule of law and respect human rights - is simply not a priority for China or many developing nations, where the moral calculus is better spent on attaining other freedoms, chiefly the freedom from want.
> casual dismissal of "cultural genocide" and whataboutism
The point is cultural genocide is something that gets pragmatically dismissed everyday in the interest of geopolitics. Just like how people like to causally assert "whataboutism" whenever the brazenly obvious is pointed out: China gets away with abuses and will continue to because America led the way. If Americans want human rights to apply to large countries, start at home and demonstrate that international rule of law applies to everyone. No one takes hypocrites seriously except hypocrites themselves.
We do not need them, and we absolutely should not permit their behavior, or allow them to profit from it. The time for a stand has come.
This needs to stop. I see this behavior on HN, which is frustrating, counterproductive, anti-free speech and extremely left-winged.
Another problem is to try being a moderate in these liberal pockets of America. The moment you pick out a couple of things that I agree about what Trump is doing, I get intense opposition, lose friendships, get judged, etc.
The Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, the 3 trillion dollar neighbor of America is a suffocating place for anyone who has dissenting opinion about some liberal concepts.
Silicon Valley people think that moderates and right-wing folks hate gays, lgbt community and loves guns, hates China which is far from the truth. Then they feel to justify themselves by overcompensating, supporting China and smearing the truth. Ironically, they make fun of right-wing echo chambers.
If your political ideology looks away from objective truth, you need to question it. No matter how “conservative” or “liberal”.
This is from my personal experience, your MMV.
This kind of censorship isn't even targeting hate speech, and it drives me crazy. Why downvote them?
I also understand that this may not apply to other people's experience in the Silicon Valley, thererfore I said that your mileage may vary.
The bigger question is - Why should we allow Chinese nationals in America (even more so in Australia) to supress free speech and promote CCP ideals? Its one thing to do it inside China, a whole another level to spread it across the world as immigrants.
I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
It's not censorship, censorship would be 'dang doing it.
The downvote really suppressed free speech. I agree with you on that part. But that's the reality everybody need to accept.
For extreme examples: "I don't vaccinate my kids because I don't want them to have autism" is both contrarian and sort of actively disproved by evidence, so downvoting on the latter grounds is entirely reasonable. If you want to run a worthwhile discussion site, the discussions have to be meaningful to discuss. "The open-source movement is a mistake and the world would be better served by changing the Open Source Definition" is a contrarian, unpopular opinion, but there isn't clear evidence either way as to its merit (among other things, it's more of a straight-up opinion than a report of facts), so it's worth discussing, and shouldn't be downvoted just for being contrarian.
The comment above mostly made testable claims about Silicon Valley's culture. "I feel like the SJWs have gone too far" is an opinion. "People cannot criticize the Chinese government in lunchrooms" is a claim that can be proven or disproven.
"There is a definite right-libertarian bias on HN" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21432833
"If you go against any kind of socially conservative or libertarian perspective it will get down voted and very likely flagged" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643695
"chilling effect on discourse from leftists" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804464
"a leftist can't have a sane discussion on this website" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15926162
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...
I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.
What a weird statement. We buy Chinese goods because it makes us better off. "The US is full of idiots that engage in voluntary transactions that make them worse off" is a hard claim to accept.
Obviously some people are worse off because of trade with China. And some are worse off because of technology. And a much larger number are worse off because of domestic competition. Open source software has killed lots of commercial software jobs. That's a good thing for most of us.
It’s absurd to spend one’s moral indignation on foreign countries that are marginally worse than the US in a handful of ways.
Organ donation in the US is hamstring by one main factor: Christianity.
American views on US atrocities are colored by one main factor: the religion of American Exceptionalism.
The essay’s take on the economic consequences of economic freedom is utter rubbish, but the larger issue is the absurd and misplaced moral indignation. What a shameful, naive rant. Wow.
We have a higher percentage of people in jail then China by a lot (5x). Many of them are in jail for political/racial reasons (the Drug War, Immigration).
We have the NSA spying on all of us. As well as Google, FB, etc.
We treat our protestors horribly as well, look at what the FBI did to black rights protesters or look at how the Dakota Access pipeline protesters were treated.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with Drew on this article, and I'd support a boycott, but in the words of someone I'm not a fan of: "Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world."
Crack cocaine carried a much harsher sentence then Cocaine, a law that very clearly targeted black people. [2]
Marijuana use is the same between white and black people, but black people are 3.73x more likely to be arrested for it.[3]
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/other/cracks-system-20-years-unjust-fed...
[3] https://www.aclu.org/report/report-war-marijuana-black-and-w...
Really? I didn’t know protesters targeted the local tycoons who made their lives unbearable in the past 20 years. Not to mention the humanity of laundering money for the worst thugs in the world. Perspective.
If you think the protesters support tycoons because they oppose the CCP, you ought to reconsider whether those are really opposites.
But this post grossly underestimates the short term economic effects that cutting trade ties with China would have. Companies would go bankrupt. It is quite likely that the US and possibly the world would enter a recession or depression. These events will have devastating effects on people around the world far beyond the 1%.
We are part of a world economy. We are dependent on China and China is dependent on us.
Surely there are better ways to effect change in China than waging economic war. War of any kind will cause suffering.
I disagree with the premise that starting an economic war is the right way to get China to change its policies.
I see how quickly this gets down voted. I guess the media is not to be blamed for fabricating all kinds of lies, for it what does is only a reflection of what the western audience wants to see. The world is dividing just as quickly as the US is dividing internally. I would not doubt the possibility of another cold war, if the US bloc continues down this path by painting rivaling nations with a different ideology as a heretic against US' version of democracy and freedom, as an ultimate evil to be crusaded, its people as mindless zombies brainwashed and eager for a quick dose of freedom drug. After all, the zealous fever commits all the worst atrocities with the most self-righteous goals. History has repeated itself enough times to not see the obvious.
When disagreeing, try to respond neutrally and with specific, better information. I know how hard that is to do when representing a minority/contrarian viewpoint, but it's even more important to do it in that case. If instead you lash out and break the rules, you discredit your own truth and reinforce the other side's perception of it.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
A bit disingenuous to only call out the Western lies. What do you think about the Chinese lies?
I don't think you're any more honest than the guy who wrote this article. Neither of you are being forthright. Perhaps that's ignorance? Or maybe willful deceit? Either way, you're not to be taken seriously either.