Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps
bbc.com
bbc.com
The president isn't the be all and end all power in the USA, as some people would like to think.
Also, if the GOP controlled both chambers of Congress, the odds that Joe Biden would be sworn in on the 21st would be very slim. There is your dictatorship. You might say that we would essentially become a parliamentary system, but I don't think that's what we were GOING for.
Uhm, you might be unaware, but Poland has gotten rid of communism and replaced the ruling communist party through both peaceful protests and democratic elections. I see these comments all the time ("all uprisings have to be violent") but that's just provably not true.
On the contrary. They stayed in power for many years in various forms. Read about the deal Solidarity struck with the commies in Magdalenka. No one left. They just changed their banners.
However the reason why it happened relatively seamlessly in Poland has to do with the fact that after the transition the post-communists still held onto a lot of power and the most impactful branches of the government, like the secret services. This was part of a deal in Magdalenka. Poland never opened their communist archives because that would compromise many active politicians. They didn't get rid of the cancer like they did in Chechoslovakia or the DDR.
A good evidence of that was the fact that my Polish grandfather who was lt colonel of secret service (going after the Solidarity freedom fighters) still enjoyed his 10x higher pension and privileges than his victims even 10+ years after Poland became a "free" country.
1. Communist party members never answered for their crimes, and were free to continue their political careers.
2. Compromised communist judges continued their service in courts, effectively granting communist scumbags immunity for their crimes. Crimes which included stealing huge amounts of money, which then were used for point 3:
3. The only two private TV networks, as well as biggest newspaper were owned/controlled by former communist intelligence officers. This was a great propaganda platform.
You see, that's a downside of peaceful revolutions: you never get a chance of permanently getting rid of your former rulers. Had generals Jaruzelski, Kiszczak and maybe two dozens other top ranking communist been executed in 1989 we might have avoided this mess.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/trump-admin-dela...
The narrative he and the right wing have been building over most of the last decade - that America at all levels of society is being infiltrated and captured by leftist extremists as a pretext to some kind of communist/globalist/NWO takeover (so vote for God, Guns and the GOP) - is exactly the doomsday trigger scenario that American militias have fantasized about and wargamed over, and QAnon and many Evangelicals believe Trump has been sent by God to cleanse America of occult pedophiles and atheistic liberalism.
Sinclair Lewis may or may not have said "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross," in other words, by infiltrating American gun culture and conservative Christianity, because those are the forces that control the greatest potential for populist violence in the US. Trump may not have succeeded directly, but it remains to be seen who he's laid the foundations for in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...
This "both sides" bullshit needs to stop.
[0]https://news.google.com/search?q=trump+supporters+storm+capi...
At the same time, its a nice way to look tough on China while actually doing nothing about China...
1. Money
2. Adoration
3. Revenge
4. Preservation
The link that went round about the analogies between QAnon and LARP also seems relevant here. If someone lives in and believes their own hype for long enough, have they created their own little bubble of reality?
It's like watching someone try to perform a coup with a foam sword and a Nerf gun. On the other hand, a lot of bank robberies are done with fake guns; so the question is, how much does the plausibility of realness matter? All a bit Baudrillard for my taste.
Reality TV is a bit different in that it is intentionally deceptive.
The President seldom if ever performs for himself on big decisions. There are so many lobbies and power interests moving their hands here and there, according to the tides of power.
It's just convenient for the masses to believe the President to be some kind of idiot (despite the fact that he is the President and they are random people which couldn't get that position if their lives dependent on it - or even much easier ones to get).
Trump is just uncouth and uncultured, with no filter. On some ways it's a disgrace. On others, it's a breath of honesty - between JFKs mafia types (and general non-worthiness, he was just made President by his family's money), Nixon's tapes, Reagans disastrous economics and policies, Bush's cowboyism, Bill Clinton's scandals, sex obsession and Epstein field trips, and Obama's backtracking on promises, warmongering, and empty rhetoric) most politicians are equally crass if not more, they just know how to not show it or show it in moderation.
Since Trump doesn't come from a politics background, he hasn't internalized this automatic filtering, instead he has been brought up on sales and media businesses, so he automatically takes the role of salesman and entertainer.
The Trade War with China thing was a long time coming for the interests of certain parts of the American establishment, and will be continued by Trumps successors. It wasn't some idiot's one-off.
And in those cases, unless you're clearly on top of the other side, there are lots of false bragging and BS symbolic moves that don't amount to much, so expect more of the "Tik Tok" style gestures in the years to come.
My 2 euro-cents.
Trumps "trade war" was a storm in a tea cup at best. It was great cover for business as usual imho. I hope whoever takes it on actually fights it. He's sort of wrecked future efforts by alienating almost every other nation Ns doing nothing imho, so I understand by Biden doesn't want to "continue" it.
We'll see I guess.
It's all in the Starr report.
That was character evidence in a sexual harassment lawsuit from a different woman (Paula Jones) who claims that he tried to pressure her into non-consensual sex.
Clinton was sanctioned for perjury due to lying about that relationship in court, appealed the ruling, then later dropped the appeal and surrendered his law license voluntarily.
So there were elements of perjury and non-consensual sex here and your summary is incomplete.
People remember Clinton as being better than he was because they think he was railroaded over the BJ.
Whether or not HIPAA is a bad thing is very much a matter of opinion. That's the one thing that's keeping medical info from being whored out like all our other metadata these days.
The last uncontroversially good president we've had was born in the 19th century.
Far more damaging was NAFTA and letting China into the World Trade Association.
That probably meant the WTO.
Still, "letting"? As if it's the role of the 4% of the world to dictate whether the 18% of the world would enter a supposedly neutral global trade organization?
Imagine how easy would be to make money through stock options if you had the power to affect any stock to go up or down. Only ethics would stand in your way and if you think ethics are for loses, nothing is stopping you from doing that.
If you want reduce your risk further, you could simply get paid by your friends from Mar-a-Lago (by purchasing expensive rooms in your hotel) by letting them know your announcement ahead of time and let them do the investment. That will also reduce connections to yourself.
"It makes no tactical sense"
This is a pretty good summary of much of the last four years.
Perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Also, it's important to realize that t-bonds and USDs are basically the same thing. A T-bond is, for all intents and purposes, high-denomination dollar bill that can be exchanged for low-denomination bills on an open market.
They don't want dollars doesn't matter who prints them.
Thank you.
$1tn is a lot of money to any country, even one as large as China.
Defaulting on our debt would be a huge fucking deal for us as well, but if the stakes were high enough others would understand that we couldn't pay someone money while at war.
It sounds like a lot of money, but the US War in Iraq tallied over a trillion, with Afghanistan matching that amount.
The CARES Act is estimated to have cost $2 trillion.
Countries are not going to go to war over such a petty amount of money. The costs of such a war would be 100x that amount, easily.
"If you owe the bank a 5 million NOK and cannot pay then you have a problem.
If however you owe the bank 500 million NOK and cannot pay then the bank has a problem."
If China dumps those bonds tomorrow the US dollar would collapse instantly. China would feel some pain of course, but their internal economy is not directly tied to international markets so they can handle it way better.
Now China would be stuck selling assets (t-bonds) at a loss, and in return, they get another asset (USD) which now has a suppressed value. And since low USD makes American goods relatively cheaper, it will hurt the Chinese production economy and help the American one.
Also, China could have difficulty deploying those USDs if the US Government imposes sanctions or other prohibitions on purchasing or capital inflow to the US.
Further proving to anyone else holding bonds how worthless dollars are.
Saying China "dumping" t-bonds is bad for America is like saying that a person "dumping" CDs is bad for a bank. The seller is the one getting hosed on the deal, because they are forced to sell at a discount (otherwise, it wouldn't constitute dumping). The bank / treasury already knows they need to pay back the money at some point.
Also, a trillion dollars in t-bonds isn't that much. The Fed has purchased hundreds of billion on several occasions without much fanfare. A trillion bucks won't do much more than trigger some NYTimes articles on the subject.
Dumping bonds is not just an economic decision, but also a trust decision. You hold bonds because you trust the US. Dumping bonds means you no longer trust the US ability to pay back those bonds with dollars worth anything; that you lost hope of ever getting repaid.
And of course you lose your nominal amounts of dollars, who's arguing that? You still dump them because you are taking your loses today instead taking more tomorrow.
They are cash and cash-equivalents. Meaning, the same.
Many large business transactions are done using t-bonds. The amount of dollars in the economy is surprisingly small, thus, at some price point, it becomes necessarily to pay in t-bonds.
> Many large business transactions are done using t-bonds. The amount of dollars in the economy is surprisingly small, thus, at some price point, it becomes necessarily to pay in t-bonds.
Then they are not the same. You admit they are not the same, then deny they are not the same. If they were the same they would be called the same, and would be the same.
They can be equivalent and they are used similarly, just as a house can be used as "cash-equivalent" under certain circumstances. But they are different instruments that allow different (and some similar) uses.
I am not passing a value judgement on China or US trade relationships but from a developed nation like USA I would expect a broad policy first using which we can reliably predict how a successful Chinese company be treated in USA. That helps consumers, business partners VCs and so on.
https://reason.com/2020/11/08/peter-navarros-no-good-economi...
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/tiktok-says-its-...
> Another portion of the book describes an instance with Mr Trump’s former chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who “stole a letter off Trump’s desk” that the president intended to sign to formally withdraw the US from a trade agreement with South Korea.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
For example, on the whole China trade war. The US’s net imports from China are higher than they have been since the mid 2000s. Chinas economic strength relative to the US is higher than its ever been. Instead of the US being trading and strengthening relationships with Pacific nations until Trump ripped the TPP its now China that has those trading relationships. The EU is reducing interactions with the US and just signed a deal with China, something that may have been unthinkable for them even ( years ago. The US is absolutely non existent in Africa while China continues to build relationships ans trade links there. Thanks to the US trade war China has drastically increased trade with Brazil (to procure soybeans instead of from the US) while US relationships with South America continue to weaken.
Trump has presided over worsening relationships with literally every other continent barring Antarctica, and as a direct consequence of his actions China has greatly improved relationships in all those continents.
I honestly don't understand the point you're tying to make. Are you just complaining that it's unfair?
Anyone care to explain this to me?
[0] https://pics.onsizzle.com/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbaro...
China is stealing Western tech to gain an economic and strategic advantage. They're going to out-compete our tech and leave us in the dust. They have far more engineers that are willing to work "996". (Sure, founders might work "996", but our workforce doesn't/can't/won't.)
Playing unfair isn't great, but it's not the most worrying component of this. Our opponent has concentration camps, organ harvesting, no free press, crushes dissidents, disappears billionaires. And this is a regime that wants world domination. This gives me nightmares.
We should be doing everything in our power to disentangle and stop China.
When China has a military that surpasses the US in terms of scale and tech, they're going to start invading and taking more than they already do. They've shut off water to Vietnam, set up shop in the energy/resource-rich South China Sea, etc. They're not going to stop.
Our media is already censored and caters to Chinese tastes. None of our movies are ever critical of China. They're actively manipulating us.
Western democracies aren't primed to fight this. This is such a lopsided fight. We have to start playing hardball.
edit: I'm being censored right now. This is the game we're playing.
We’re also I’ll equipped right now to fight this, our culture is divided and most of the intellectuals in power are more concerned about seeing everything through the social justice lens. So anything we do against China for our own national safety is being chalked up as racism etc. China sees this and is taking full advantage. I hope Biden takes a strong stance on China domination so at least one end of the political spectrum can be convinced to get on board here.
We can’t just simply out battle evil regimes like we could in the past. Each major power (Russia, China, US) has weaponry that could destroy the world if unleashed against each other. We are at a turning point in world history. So we have to fight this on the economic level, banning apps is part of this strategy.
China: "Let's edit the genes of babies and make them 47% stronger."
US don't have the moral superiority to get anyone against China and that's sad and harsh but it's true. No one reading this thinks the US is any better and this is the US fault. When they starve entire countries to death over a 50 year old embassy attack, then who in the world will eagerly listen to them about which countries are good and which are bad?
This is some incredible malarkey.
> The aqueducts are still standing, but we can't build new ones.
SpaceX, Tesla, Moderna, Apple M1, Nvidia, OpenAI, Google Brain, James Webb telescope, the new Perseverance Mars rover ... what the heck are you talking about?
> The Chinese system works very well
Not for Uyghurs or political dissidents. Also, we just voted out the Republicans wholesale (!!) Can you do that in China?
I'd take our system any day of the week over being disappeared for disagreeing with officials.
As much as I dislike the anti-maskers, we have freedom. And that's so much better.
Capitalism works well both in the US and in China. Those are private companies, and I hope you don't try to list NASA projects. Elon wants to bring down the cost of space transportation to 10$ per Kg, a Space Shuttle launch used to cost 1.5B$. My point was about the public sector. Last time I checked, the high-speed railway they were trying to build in California added another billion $ to its budget. Meanwhile, feel free to look how much high-speed rail China has built in the last few years.
> Not for Uyghurs or political dissidents.
Just because a system works very well for the majority of its citizens doesn't mean it works for everyone. You are not refuting the central argument.
> I'd take our system any day of the week over being disappeared for disagreeing with officials.
You seem to have the impression I'd prefer the Chinese system. I don't. That does not mean you can't take a hard look at what they do better.
Your comment is full of (and I mean FULL, nearly every sentence) anti-Chinese assertions with zero factual evidence involved:
> The world needs to stop China.
> China is stealing Western tech to gain an economic and strategic advantage.
> Our opponent has concentration camps...
> And this is a regime that wants world domination.
> Our media is already censored and caters to Chinese tastes.
This is not an argument, it's bullshit. Oh don't get me wrong, some of it is probably true at some level, and Chinese foreign policy is just as acerbic as in the US, but without any evidence given, it's not worth reading.
Which makes it funny that there are a bunch of comments just below where people chime in "spot on!", as if the parent commenter made some EXCELLENT points with his jumbled and disjointed word-vomit.
What's going on here? Did I have a stroke or something? The words are just no longer making sense.
That's your retort?
My grammatical structure?
Okay.
Here's some sources. I mistakenly thought they were common knowledge:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests...
> That's your retort?
> My grammatical structure?
I never mentioned your grammar; you misinterpreted "structure" here. If you read past the first sentence, it's clear I'm referencing your logical structure.
GPT-2 actually produces decent grammar, but not any context-aware logical structure to the text it produces. Just a bunch of disjointed sentences with keywords that all generally lie on the same semantic vector.
More importantly, you are ignoring the entire rest of my argument. Thank you for posting some source links, those make two of your initial assertions more credible. What about the rest?
US (may) needs to stop China. For others countries it's not that clear.
Cry me a river.
Western companies went there for cheap labor. They could've rethought this any time in the past 20+ years, when it became apparent Chinese companies aren't willing to follow US IP laws and keep buying the trinkets they (and at this point, only they) know how to make at a markup. Instead, our corporations still outsource manufacturing, and solve their IP issues by telling the people to tell the government to cry foul and do something about a now nuclear-armed nation that decided to grow past being a source of cheap labor.
There are plenty of bad things to say about China as a country/government, but on the IP front, that's just funny. IP laws in the West are a ridiculous racket. For all the companies here talk about innovation, there's sure as hell more of it happening in China than over here.
You are being downvoted outside the spirit of HN downvotes.
It would be very interesting and cool of dang to investigate the accounts which are conducting this behavior.
China is an authoritarian state and it's respect for the individual rights of people is nowhere near that of the US.
And the EU does. But ironically whenever that happens Americans argue that such action isn't about privacy but instead about the EU trying to promote their own domestic industries.
Though I guess that same spin would likely be argued by those on the receiving end of the US/China ban too.
International politics isn't fair or just or honest. However that's been known since probably before written history. So of course the US will spin things with propaganda and false statements and whatever. You can't change it or impact it or do stop it directly. So blame Europe for not successfully countering it rather than the US for knowing how to play the game.
Says the bully.
Can this be applied to any situation where one party found itself (through error, inaction, incompetence, inability, etc.) in a position to be dominated or abused by anther party? Or is it only selectively applied based on personal preference or inclination? Because applying it selectively is exactly the double standards people (myself included) highlighted in this thread.
This may be pragmatic but it's also vicious towards the losing party. Politicians or corporations bribing or abusing power to get away with anything know how to play the game. The people being abused or losing everything are to blame for not successfully countering them.
Double standards are a good way to justify anything to your advantage by simply flipping the argument the way it suits you. As I wrote in a previous comment, it makes for exceptionally low quality conversation.
edit: This is the only view I see that allows the losing entity to learn from the experience and avoid it in the future. Any other view just results in the same thing happening again in the future.
The expected "relativistic" cop-out. "Massive" means nothing if your opponent has substantially more. It simply means that no matter how much you want to escalate they can take it a notch higher and you will suffer just a bit more than your opponent. There are examples literally all around you.
> This is the only view I see that allows the losing entity to learn from the experience
The only way? It is a way best used when everything else has failed, like education. Am I to understand that you learned everything from personal experience? If you truly believe things are only ever learned on your own skin then you understand close to nothing about the world, history, and consequences, not living through almost any of them yourself. Which explains the narrow view.
Any chance that it's just protectionism against Chinese companies (Huawei, Ali)?
You can see this in action with most EU countries disagreeing with many sanctions imposed on US enemies but eventually caving under pressure from the US. Or when having to switch the frequencies used for the Galileo system to something that could be more easily jammed by the US.
The US is exhibiting towards other countries the same kind of tyrannical behavior bent on maintaining power that the Chinese leadership is exercising towards its citizens. It's the age old need to maintain power, and the more power, the further you're willing to go to maintain it. From a global surveillance exercise where every human is spied on relentlessly, to meddling into most countries internal affairs to the point of changing regimes to suit them, to oppressing their own citizens. These are all publicly and officially documented issues. It's all great if and only if your interests align.
If you cannot acknowledge this then you are certainly not prepared to have a discussion beyond "we're good, they're bad".
Europe with GDPR does set its own rules for how American tech can operate and penalizes them heavily for perceived infractions. So that continent is taking the actions they want to take which is their right. Beyond that, there are more examples: Spain did effectively shut down Google News, and I don't remember any retaliation.
On the other hand the examples you gave are absolutely minor and barely noteworthy. I referred decisions with global impact, not inconsequential things like Google News being affected in Spain. Intel never payed the fine the EU imposed for unfair practices close to a decade ago. Facebook and Google barely saw a blip due to GDPR since it was basically (and legally it seems) rolled into their ToS.
The real consequential things are the public support the US demands from the EU for sanctions or wars. For political and economical issues that involve far more than you mentioned as a counterpoint. For countless human lives lost.
Even more with how our soon to be ex-president pardons convicted war criminals on a whim.
For example the US is guilty of criminal negligence during the invasion of Iraq, when an important part of the historical heritage of the entire humanity has been destroyed.
It would have been extremely easy to avoid that, and there were ample efforts to warn the US political and military leaders to take appropriate actions, but all the warnings from competent people were ignored.
A common thief or vandal who destroys one picture from a museum might rot in jail, but US presidents or generals who have destroyed historical artifacts far more valuable will never be punished in any way.
I always think of this phrase whenever questions of freedom come up.
And like you mention, all of us our free, but mostly our liberty is curtailed by external circumstances or by our own fears of retaliation.
They can also threaten economic and political retaliation. That's international politics and negotiation and diplomacy in a nutshell. It's a dirty game but the rules have been known for centuries. Europe isn't some tiny South American nation, it's a global power whose GDP rivals the US. That it's failed to successfully do this is the fault of Europe and no one else.
Europe has failed to protect itself against US power and now you seem to be upset that the US wants to not fall into the same trap in terms of China?
> They can also threaten economic and political retaliation.
Sure but threats and negotiations work if you actually have the bigger gun and leverage. Given that the US is both the largest economy and military power this feels like a moot point.
> Europe has failed to protect itself against US power
Yes, just like Chinese citizens failed to protect themselves against their leadership. They aren't just a tiny South American nation, they are 1.3bn people who want freedom. That they failed to successfully do this is the fault of the people and no one else.
But really, the fact the EU stood quietly next to the US while the US tightened its grip on the world is indeed a failure of the EU (Europe, given that this started happening long before the EU). They took the easy road of growing in someone else's shade, even if post WW2 it may have been the best or only thing Europe could have done. This doesn't change anything about my characterization of the US, it's just a tangent.
I'm not saying what China is doing is ok because the US does it too. But just like OP, I pointed out the double standards obvious even here on HN. Whether it's mis- or dis-information, ignorance, hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, or whatever else you may call it, the fact that people hold 2 completely different and opposing opinions on the same kind of action differentiated only by "us vs. them" is a massive failure of those people.
China's growing influence and Russia's influence on international politics clearly show that it's not about absolute power but how you apply it. Europe is large enough and powerful enough that the US can't invade it or cause massive economic damage without significantly hurting itself. Europe has massive leverage in negotiations and politics and diplomacy. It just fails to use it likely because it's not unified enough to fully and quickly apply it.
Please stop blaming Europe's diplomatic failures on external factors. All that does is ensure that they will continue to happen because you won't blame the government that is actually at fault.
> Please stop blaming Europe's diplomatic failures on external factors
After I clearly stated this:
>> But really, the fact the EU stood quietly next to the US while the US tightened its grip on the world is indeed a failure of the EU [...] They took the easy road of growing in someone else's shade
Is a sign that you did not bother to read, let alone understand my comment. That is terribly disrespectful and a sign that you have no interest in a discussion, just a monologue of meritless opinions.
The EU only appeared in the discussion as a reference or "witness", just like the Chinese people are used as reference for what their leadership is doing. You turning the discussion towards some EU blame for whatever isn't only a meritless distraction from the topic, it's also akin to blaming the Chinese people for not overthrowing the CCP. They are 1.3bn people, surely they have "massive leverage".
I reiterate, you have no interest in reading or understanding any of my comments. The extent to which you perverted and rewrote my words just to fit whatever narrative you're more easily able to support really makes for low quality discussion. I have more than adequately made and supported my point and will politely withdraw.
Is there evidence that a significant portion of the population really do want more freedom? While I would hope so it's possible the majority there prefer the status quo. (Of course lack of evidence doesn't prove it.)
If you look at history, the US exercises about as much control of Western Europe as Rome did. Basically the areas were free to run their daily affairs but military matters went through Rome. Similar to now.
The fiction lasted well throughout the Cold War but is starting to fray. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward.
Go ahead and say that the US does bad things. But, regardless of that, we should still retaliate against China for doing bad things to us.
And you bringing up even more bad things that the US has done is not relevant at all, to how we should definitely still stop China from doing bad things.
> we should still retaliate against China [...] we should definitely still stop China from doing bad things
You can retaliate. Should implies an obligation. Since the narrative (yours included) is that you're punishing actions ("bad things") not nationality, not following up with retaliating against your own leadership for the same "bad things" or worse means having exactly that misguided Messiah complex (misguided because you don't understand the purpose of your own country's actions) as well as holding a healthy dose of double standards or hypocrisy. You live in a democracy, this is your will. The unspoken desire to enjoy and exert dominance, followed by the inevitable rationalization that gives it a morally acceptable varnish.
As I said in my original comment on this thread:
> If you cannot acknowledge this then you are certainly not prepared to have a discussion beyond "we're good, they're bad".
That is a weird phasing. By "should" I mean that it is a good thing to call out bad things that happen, such as in this case with these apps, and I am happy when the US retaliates against bad things, such as what is happening in this example. The reason being, that these apps are doing bad things that should be stopped. You have not contradicted this point.
> established they're bad
In this specific case though, regarding these app and the actions that they are taking, they are bad though!
> You live in a democracy, this is your will.
Ok. And bad things being punished in this specific example. Thats good. And misdirection to talk about something different does not overrule the fact that it is good in this specific example that these specific bad things are being punished/retaliated against.
> gives it a morally acceptable varnish.
Specifically in this example, it is morally accepted to punish these specific bad things that these apps are doing though. So there are no problem with retaliating against these apps and actions, because in this example they are indeed bad and should be retaliated against.
- The US has at least a two party system. It’s not much, and is deeply flawed, but at least the governmental power is not completely unchecked. That and the government is ostensibly at the mercy of the people. Propaganda, disinformation, and manipulation aside, if a government does something egregious enough the people of the US still have the power to vote them out. The Chinese people do not have that power. Their government is much more top down and prescriptive. The only checking of power is the willingness of lower level people to enforce rules.
- Freedom of Speech. Nobody is above criticism. Simple as that. Not being able to question the government is an awful situation to be in. Imagine a world where you could get extradited to China for saying something critical of the CCP online. I’ll remind you that the CCP jailed 8 doctors in Wuhan last year for raising the alarm about the coronavirus, saying they were spreading false rumours online. No thanks.
- From an ideological standpoint the CCP seems to be be hellbent on reclaiming lost territory and retaliating against the evil west who have wronged them for so long. The US has no such motivation, being relatively young.
Please don’t get me wrong. I think China is a beautiful country, having visited several times, and the Chinese people and culture are both wonderful. I just do not want to live in a CCP-centric world.
I'd say it's Europe's job to protect its citizens from foreign surveillance. It's not "OK" so much as "Not my job."
Edit: parent comment said something like "Europe is a continent"
I think at present I’d still significantly prefer the US over China to secretly collect my personal data (even if I wasn’t a US citizen). It’s certainly possible that difference will further erode over time.
I don’t necessarily mean to endorse banning Chinese apps, as that seems very problematic and arguably cuts against our own value system. It’s always seemed very protectionist when China did that to us, and it seems the same when we do it to them, and comes with the same surface area for corporate corruption of our government.
53 Hong Kong democrats, activists arrested under security law: https://hongkongfp.com/2021/01/06/breaking-over-50-hong-kong...
When your domestic privacy laws are weak enough to allow a largely unregulated marketplace in personal information and to largely allow domestic apps to gather and sell personal information, banning foreign apps that also do so won’t keep such data out of foreign hands.
Can you imagine what will happen to Fan Bing Bing if she plays Chai Ling (One of Tiananmen Square student leader)?
So to answer your question - no it's not okay. But I would expect HN audience to be able to see the obvious distinctions.
This is why we need top-down decoupling. China knows we're addicted, and they've got us in a good spot to continue growing off of our market.
[1] https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/15/chinese-censorship-affect...
You may be thinking of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which also spent some time doing similar anti-Communist witch hunts, which existed until being renamed as the House Internal Security Committee in 1969, and was abolished with it's functions transferred to the House Judiciary Committee in 1975.
Alipay is the Chinese government for all intents and purposes. 100% of your information for freely to the CCP for their purposes.
We're not talking preferring one company over another, we're taking preferring a free market company over a state sponsored actor.
Governments exist to serve a specific population, not humanity as a whole.
Is this genuinely in the interest of America, or just in the interest of the person making the decision? That's a question you always have to ask, but it seems particularly pertinent in the case of a leader who has been issuing numerous baseless complaints about various opponents, whose actions have repeatedly been refused by courts, and who was denied a second term.
So while it's true that the government doesn't need to act in the interests of anybody but its own citizens, it would be nice to know if this decision achieves even that much -- or if it's just spite.
That's absolutely true, which is why we have courts, representative legislatures, and elections. Methods of mitigating the corruption of the governing class are built into the system. It doesn't work quickly or perfectly, but it's better than autocracy.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-31/china-and...
Meanwhile, I can't remember a covert operation done by China or a visible invasion of a third-party country (except putting concrete on a few inhabited islands) and then everything is done to portray them as the bad guys and ban entire industries
I can't help thinking of either racism, or politicians being controlled by Russian intelligence (possibly them not being unaware of this)
It's hard to say how much of it is motivated by racism, though it's certainly a part of it. When pols call COVID-19 "the China virus" and talk about making them pay for it there's obviously a grudge there.
Are you sure that's ethnically rooted, or that they're trying to describe the CCP and simply chose the wrong title?
A number of people calling it the "China virus" redubbed it the "CCP virus".
You can be angry at Chinese leadership while empathizing and supporting its people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cyberwarfare
Major incidents include the 2010 Google gmail hack, the F-35 blueprints hack, multiple military contractor breaches, the 2015 OPM hack which the leaked the details of most FBI/CIA agents worldwide, and the 2017 Equifax hack which stole information on 145 million Americans.
In 2014 they MITM'd iCloud. In 2018 they simply required Apple to hand over iCloud to a local state-owned company. Apple no longer controls iCloud in China, the Guizhou government does.
I don't think the surveillance in China is even remotely comparable to anything that has ever happened in the US.
The difference is, China doesn't seem to be spying on the rest of the world, while NSA is documented to be doing so.
There’s more of course, but... have you actually read that article?
Ok, here’s the deal. Ukraine had Russia as the biggest trade partner before 2014. Several companies were owned by Russians: banks, communication providers etc. and millions of Ukrainians working in Russia. Now, when 2014 comes, the armed thugs get their hands on automatic weapons and overthrow the government. And the new government is not just “not pro-Russian”, but actively anti-Russian with all the consequences for Russian capital which has been invested in Ukraine. I mean, you had to be in Kiev in 2014 to see what was going on. So saying Russia was unreasonably hostile towards Ukraine...that’s just being naïve.
Why would you expect to? Have you been watching for them? Are you privy to information the rest of us don't have? They are covert after all. "I don't remember" says more about your perception than about the underlying reality. As others have pointed out, there are many known instances of Chinese malfeasance, mostly around misappropriation of military secrets. There are surely some unknown as well.
> I can't help thinking of either racism, or...
Again, more to do with your perception than the underlying reality. That those are the first explanations you grasp for says nothing about whether they're the right ones.
There have been a few big ones that became public against western targets, e.g.:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/p...
https://gizmodo.com/report-chinese-hack-of-federal-employmen...
But many of the rest have been concealed by the victims to protect business interests with China, which is why you haven't heard about them:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/12/711779130/as-china-hacked-u-s...
US democracy can be seriously threatened by an administration incapable of using a calendar, apparently.
Since the policies were untested, they became symbolic rather than a demonstrably failed experiment.
When the first executive tries for a second term later, they can use this as an example of how they tried to do X, but their replacement didn't even give them a chance.
I've seen this exact thing done many, many times, and not just in the American presidency.
And there are indeed cases you ask yourself what might be the real motivation of the owner: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/grindr-sold-china-national...
I'm surprised AirDroid wasn't on this list though. It gives the government of China full remote access to millions of Android devices, including many in sensitive corporate environments.
What? Thanks for mentioning that. I've been using it for years (albeit in LAN-only mode, I don't like clouds). Need to re-evaluate it now (not that I trust China's gov particularly less than US gov at this point, but I prefer apps that don't give any governments obvious remote access capability). Do you know of any good alternatives for hassle-free WiFi file transfer?
Come to think of it, maybe I could just spin up a HTTP server on the phone with Termux, and serve the DCIM directory. And then wrap it into a homescreen icon via Tasker.
https://www.india.com/viral/it-has-been-banned-delhi-judge-o...
I would interpret it with the quote of Trump: "by accessing personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, Chinese connected software applications can access and capture vast swaths of information from users, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information."
I think with the idea of "camera scanning" they will require authorization and they will capture sensible informations of US citizens. I think that's the idea behind this kind of ban...
It is. But it seems that lately governments in their own silos are thinking I can do it, you cant.
PS: Not saying in any way to allow capture of vast swaths of information to anyone :)
- data goes to US corporations == fine
- data goes to CCP == not fine
So I think its the trackers part that makes it bannable.
It is beyond me why anyone would trust an app owned by Tencent and has intrusive ads, whereas the alternatives for most people (Adobe / MS) offerings are free.
America somehow seems to have this political correctness complex. There is nothing wrong being weary of such things.
Being wary because you find Tencent specifically untrustworthy is fine.
Indeed, if my social circle's "woke" parts are anything to measure by, active efforts are being made to find alternatives to made-in-china products. Most people are able to make the distinction between the despotic Chinese government and the average Chinese citizen.
Oh well. Maybe this will accelerate the move toward app platforms that can't be so easily censored arbitrarily by the state.
The proper thing would be to define due transparent process for determining legality of apps/services and subject all apps to the same set of rules.
Executive in general shout not be acting like a dictatorship.
Free trade and competition? As long as it suits the powerful.
Democracy and sovereignty? Only if they play nicely with our big players.
Human rights? If your economic interests align with ours.
It doesn't need to be like this.
"Globalization can be partly responsible for the current global economic crisis. Case studies of Thailand and the Arab nations' view of globalization show that globalization is a threat to culture and religion, and it harms indigenous people groups while multinational corporations profit from it. Although globalization has promised an improved standard of living and economic development, it has been heavily criticized for its production of negative effects. Globalization is not simply an economic project, but it also heavily influences the country environmentally, politically, and socially as well."
If the US conduct here in contravention of the mutually agreed upon World Trade Organization rules, then China should bring a case to the WTO.
Nevertheless, it is stupid, for several reasons.
One is that there are no real reasons to apply sanctions to the companies selected until now and not apply the same sanctions to absolutely all Chinese companies. As the US themselves say, all Chinese companies must obey the Chinese government and they must assist their military if ordered to, so there is no base for banning commerce with only a selected list of companies, instead of banning all.
So the only reason why it can make sense to choose just some companies for the moment is that blocking completely all the commerce with China would hurt more the US than China.
However, for the Chinese companies it is clear that these arbitrary sanctions are not correlated with any behavior that they might try to have in order to be liked by the US in order to avoid sanctions, but as long as they remain Chinese companies they may be sanctioned too at any time. So they have a single exit, to never buy again anything from the US but substitute everything with alternatives.
Sooner or later they will succeed to do that and then the sanctions would not be efficient any more. The sanctions would have been successful only if there would have been 2 possible lines of action for the Chinese companies and it would have been certain that one direction implies sanctions and the other direction means no sanctions.
In that case maybe the US sanctions would have been useful. As it is, they can just annoy the Chinese and force them to give up on buying US products, which cannot be of any benefit for the US.
The second reason why the sanctions are stupid, is that they are hurting the Chinese only because they were sudden and unexpected so they have caught the Chinese off-guard, being still dependent of various components that include parts of US provenience. All this has happened only because the US propaganda has repeated during many decades that the global free commerce is good and that everybody should not waste time and money by producing goods that might be purchased from the US either at a lower price or at a higher quality.
Now all this formerly very successful US discourse has been exposed as a pack of lies, as it appears to have been just a trap conceived to ensnare other countries to become economically dependent on the US, in order to be vulnerable to economic sanctions.
Such a trap can work only once and the time and manner chosen by Trump were not at all the best. Now all countries will try to remove their dependencies on US and the next time when the US might need to have real leverage, for a better reason than now, it will be much less likely to have enough impact.
Sure there is. The justification is that the US should do whatever is the most effective way of retaliating against these practices, even if it means that we pick and choose which companies we retaliate against.
> they can just annoy the Chinese and force them to give up on buying US products
The US is huge customers of many goods and services from china. Us no longing buying certain things from them, could cause them to lose a large amount of business.
> Such a trap can work only once
Nope. The reason being because of the stuff that the US buys from China. That is a large amount of value that the US can continue to chip away at, if there is a reason to do so.
The Trump administration sees buying t-shirts or a pencil from China as less of a risk than high-tech products so they've put export restrictions on components. Though they've put tariffs on more than just high-tech goods. This makes sense because even the manufacture of t-shirts or pencils fuels the economy of China and therefore its tax base and military so sanctioning all products of China makes a lot of sense.
> So they have a single exit, to never buy again anything from the US but substitute everything with alternatives. Sooner or later they will succeed to do that and then the sanctions would not be efficient any more.
China can and should try to do this. Even with all the resources of the state China hasn't yet built a reliable jet engine, let alone leading edge semiconductor plant.
Now they need to do all of this simultaneously. It's very difficult and it's not clear whether they'll succeed at any of these endeavors.
> Now all this formerly very successful US discourse has been exposed as a pack of lies, as it appears to have been just a trap conceived to ensnare other countries to become economically dependent on the US, in order to be vulnerable to economic sanctions.
From what I can tell most countries (like Vietnam and India) are trying to get closer to the US militarily and economically and further away from China.
The only exception is the European Union which was already very close to the US militarily and economically.
They go to their own government, which is the entity that is supposed to protect them and operate in their interest. If that’s not possible because their government is too much $adjective, that’s on them, not on the US. Peoples have the right to self-determine.
The US are “responsible” in the sense that they have played a role in causing certain eventual outcomes, but are obviously not “responsible” in the sense they should do something about those outcomes. They pursue their own foreign policy agenda, like all other nation-states do. Then the targets of that agenda have the opportunity to respond as they see fit, taking into account the relevant implications and welfare of their own citizens.
Even more so, causing significant disruption to Huawei and putting the Chinese govt in a tight spot very likely was the goal of the entire thing in the first place. Are the US evil because of this? Maybe. However that’s just how foreign policy strategies work. To think otherwise is just naif, or preposterous.
I can’t envision this Cold War ratcheting down. On the surface, Biden will wipe the slate clean on the trade war stuff, but the tit for tat stuff like this will accelerate.
I don’t know what the end result of it will be, but the movement on this front is almost like day trading for defense departments, there’s enough bullshit here to justify entire agencies and budgets (as in, Palantir is going to find some crap here to monetize).
Prediction - at least a few provisions in the near term stimulus bills, green deals, that will include funding for China containment policy.
Biden has been clear he doesn’t want China setting preconditions for companies (the precondition being we get to copy your IP), and the second bullying sovereign nations economically in it’s sphere of influence. I just don’t know what this will actually look like, but Biden/Obama had way more of a master plan policy than Trump ever did for dealing with China:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of...
I'm sure that as China gets even richer and starts polluting less, politicians will take pride in that, as if they did anything.
How Australia goes is how the rest of the world goes.
I’m very serious. Dig into the news reports. China is arbitrarily blocking Australian imports of wine, seafood, coal based on “irregularities” that require “inspection” that amazingly results in product spoilage.
China is turning the screws on Australia for past transgressions. China makes up a huge percentage of Australian exports so it’s not hard for China to economically hurt Australia at little cost to themselves.
Watch how it plays out. It will be eye opening. My opinion is this is a test case and an attempt to split Australia off from the western group of countries.
Did the Chinese navy show up on Australian shores and take the property at gunpoint? Or did a local seller conduct business with a Chinese buyer and make money?
If you feel selling to Chinese nationals presents a national security issue, then you could be more clear about that.
And yes, China is hurting a bit. Apparently the reduced coal imports are causing issues, but with wine and other food items, they have other countries they can buy from.
China is what? 20x the size of Australia? A little hurt in China means a lot of hurt in Australia.
Huh?
(Hong Kong, Democracy and the rule of law, Covid 19, lies around Covid 19, the ongoing treatment of minorities, slavery and forced labour, the aggression towards its immediate neighbours, treatment of Taiwan and other issues)
To be clear, I'm no Trump fan (he not only did nothing but lied and said he would/was taking action). I'm just saying I think presidents don't have much power over this (it's mainly economic policy) and Biden hasn't given any indication he will spend capital on this as far as I know...
Edit: now I don't know why I've been downvoted either! C'est la Vie.
I don't really draw this out to an ethical debate... But if the everybody is playing dirty (Americans, Europeans, Chinese, etc) What do the country gain by following the rules?
Maybe I'm cynical, but I really don't think any country is capable of up holding up the standards. (Even the Israelis spy on the Americans and "we" are supposed to be best friends) All countries distribute humanitarian assistance, but we all know that increase influence.s
Make a law that announces everyone in the world who can and cannot do business in the US and what's expected of them, and then follow it.
Do not ban arbitrary companies for whims and which hunts and vendettas even tho they are complying with all the same rules as the rest.
Hahahaha what is this??
With all major western internet platforms being already banned in China, Jack Ma having disappeared for weeks now after being critical of the CCP, there are still comments here why everyone can't be nice to each other, and what harm were those Chinese apps causing. The opioid crisis has so far killed more Americans than WW2, and at least some of it is caused by the evaporation of blue-collar jobs. This is a direct consequence of certain economic policies. Say what you will about the CCP, but at least it cares about its people - because they are doing the polar opposite.
It’s only fair Chinese companies in America receive some reciprocal treatment.
That doesn't mean he is wrong and China hasn't infiltrated America at every level, but it's a lost battle now that America will be rolling out the red carpet for the CCP.
Why so?
One needs to define “America” for that comment to be meaningful. Or rather, one should recognize that there is not one “America”. We need to think in terms of classes: the 1%, the other 9%, and the rest. Or even more drastically: the 0.1% and the rest.
Financial services have always been protected industries, in every country, combined with the close association with BoC and political oversight it's a huge red flag.
Importantly, it's worth noting that Trump has no idea what these apps are or what they do, this is not 'his initiative' clearly, it's from the team.
The Dems and Republicans are mostly in sync on China.
These bans are of a different kind that TikTok.
Biden may use the opportunity to try to 'reset' and the rhetoric will be softer, but I suggest these bans will remain in place.
This isn't really Trump populism, this is 'the apparatus' engaging in actual policy.
I'm against the US banning apps, but having a clear warning message detailing the risks around downloading apps Made in China (eg, history of widespread Chinese government-sanctioned economic espionage) seems reasonable and appropriate.
Then clicking the info button could then say "Data on this platform is typically hosted on servers based in the United States but may be accessed by ByteDance engineers and governmental authorities based in China. Always be careful what you share."
I think such country-of-origin disclaimers should apply to all apps (including Facebook, GMail, YouTube etc).
We have country-of-origin labeling for all other goods and services.
Clear labeling helps put the onus on the user to determine if using such an application is a risk they're willing to take.
Do you want Apple or another authority to write this?
ByteDance claims their a Cayman Islands company. But their engineers are based in China.
The text would be computer generated based on a database:
"This app is developed in $locations by $company. Data on this platform is typically hosted in $data_center_location but may be accessed by $company engineers and $country_specific_dangers."
For a remote-first company like GitLab, I would have the following text:
"This app is developed by a team of remote engineers in various countries by GitLab Inc. Data on this platform is typically hosted in geographically nearby data centers (typically Singapore, South Korea), but may be accessed by GitLab engineers, and the governments of the nations in which these engineers live"
There's only 195 countries on Earth, and maybe 1,000 popular applications.
A single individual could build such a database and open-source it. It's not a big task at all and brings much more transparency to end-users.
Personal anecdote: I worked in finance back then at London Stock Exchange. The building we were in was next to St Paul's Cathedral, where Occupy London were setup.
They were nice guys and girls, I went out to talk to them occasionally and bought them donuts and stuff. When I asked what they wanted, they couldn't tell me. I think I knew the movement was dead at that point. If you have no "demands" and what are people meant to do for you?
Even brexiteers with their self contradictory demands managed to get something done.
I think occupy was more like Woodstock (an event or experience) than a "movement" in the end...
I mean I'm sure they have some ring leaders, the people that organize the protests and do a lot of the leg work, and I'm sure they're on the Lists of the various agencies, but it's not like Trump can get on stage and do his "we got 'em" moment announcing they captured the leader of antifa.
Were Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren forced to use bitcoin for their groceries?
The real pull Wall Street has is that its a profitable industry. It makes a shit tonne of money and you want it here because you want to tax it. Compare that to car makers, a low margin industry with big externalities that can't easily decamp to some other country.
Wallstreet (The City is the UK equivalent) is also a major strategic asset. Cutting Iran off from Western listed companies and dollar transactions is a much bigger issue for them than sanctioning their leaders or blowing up the occasional general. The same for Zimbabwe or China: revoked access to capital markets is a big issue. To be able to revoke access to those markets, you need to have those markets.
Yes. Dozens of small parties and political organizations have been targeted by finance in both the US and the UK.
I agree you probably shouldn't care about Iran. I'm just saying that's why presidents and senators care. Also, you should care about all the jobs FS creates both at the top and further down. Without financial services not only would your taxes go up, you wouldn't get half as good a mortgage and there would be a lot fewer jobs across the economy...
Edit:
The only examples of account closures I can find are either for right wing groups (HSBC closed a load of those) or 1 democrat in Florida whose account was closed after she was told they couldn't accept cannabis cash and she said she'd pay that in anyway...