Honestly I just don't understand the short-term thinking by the West in general and companies in particular when it comes to China.
It is 100% abundantly clear that the Chinese government has no interest in "surrendering" industries to foreign competitors. If any foreign company gets reasonably successful I guarantee you the Chinese government will do something to hobble it in favour of a local competitor.
So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values and alienating a not-insignificant number of employees who feel pretty strongly about censorship and human rights to chase a buck that they will never get because the Chinese government will make sure that they don't.
The lure of a market of a billion people is an illusion. The game is very much rigged. I don't necessarily blame China for this either. But perhaps its well past due that the West restrict access to its markets to Chinese companies in some sort of reciprocal fashion.
If the Chinese government wants you to store data in China to do business there then require Chinese companies to store their data in the US to do business there. And so on.
This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
I can't hope for much more than enough people take such a stance to wake up the leadership of these companies but I'm not holding my breath.
Thanks for writing this so well.
Without taking a stance on your post, let me also add:
It is quite hard to have a fair discussion about this topic, because there is a significant amount of misinformation around.
China Daily (state-sponsored) pushes in the US a lot of pro-China-regime sentiment. (Right now on their web page there's a hagiography of Xi).
Epoch Times (Falun-Gong sponsored) appears to have gone all in for one party in the US, pushing daily misinformation and echoing lines from other countries attacking the West. My best guess at why Epoch Times has so much disinformation is because of feeling close to one group in the US due to christian identity, but I'm not fully sure.
I could not agree more, very well said. Also interesting that you mentioned the Great Leap Forward; I've found that very few people today actually know that this happened or just how incredibly high the death toll was. It was one of the greatest human tragedies of the 20th century and nobody even knows it happened!
The Great Leap Forward is known by almost every Chinese, many of whom having family members actually experienced that. That said, having millions of people starved to death has been quite common throughout the history of China. They could be caused by war, by natural disaster, by human, or a combination of multiple factors. Even in 20th century, starving has been commonplace until the economy started to improve after the economic reform in 1978 (a huge accomplishment that is often ignored by western people) It's hard for younger generations of Chinese to even imagine the darker ages.
> Even in 20th century, starving has been commonplace until the economy started to improve after the economic reform in 1978 (a huge accomplishment that is often ignored by western people) It's hard for younger generations of Chinese to even imagine the darker ages.
What was the huge accomplishment of the 1978 reforms that Western people should recognize? From my vantage point, they were basically the abandonment of a lot of Maoist ideas in favor of something that was more in line with Western economic thought.
> they were basically the abandonment of a lot of Maoist ideas in favor of something that was more in line with Western economic thought
That’s right. The government basically concluded communism isn’t going to happen any time soon and shifted focus back towards gradual economic growth, and chaned lots of policies like opening more and more markets to private companies, letting state owned companies run in the same way as private companies, etc. (Before then, everything was owned and ran by the government). 1978 was just the beginning of the series of economic reforms
What’s different from many western economies though, is that government is investing and driving a lot of these changes.
Not the reforms themselves, but what followed. China's growth since then has led to the largest poverty reduction the world has ever seen, and that didn't happen because a bureaucrat flicked his pen, but because hundreds of millions of Chinese toiled for generations to make it happen.
> Not the reforms themselves, but what followed. China's growth since then has led to the largest poverty reduction the world has ever seen,
So the content of the reforms themselves weren't really an accomplishment, but rather activity of the people that the previous policies had restrained?
> and that didn't happen because a bureaucrat flicked his pen, but because hundreds of millions of Chinese toiled for generations to make it happen.
To make what happen? Deng's reforms? Poverty reduction? The path was so circuitous and so driven by the ideology and policy of leaders that I'm not sure if much can really be said about the political intent of that toil by such a large group over such a long span of time.
It seems that government schools are not that eager to teach about how governments killed 150+ million of their own citizens in 20th century. Maybe it’s to promote the idea that the fear of the tyrannical government is somehow irrational mere 18 years later.
> So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values and alienating a not-insignificant number of employees who feel pretty strongly about censorship and human rights to chase a buck that they will never get because the Chinese government will make sure that they don't.
By this point, your argument makes no sense as Google violates every internet user privacy world-wide (a lot less in China).
Violating someones privacy and actual censorship, while both terrible, are in completely different categories. Censorship is far worse and is almost always a precursor to violence against those being censored.
Nope, it is not. Violating my privacy, they show to me "only the content they think I'm gonna like". And then, they show to me the content they/their sponsor like, allowing the biggest censorship machine of all history to work.
Completely agree. I understand the intent and sentiment of the OP, however in my mind abandoning and further isolating ourselves from China, will not be ineffective. I just don’t see the whole world lining up and agreeing to do this. This would also negatively affect the United States. Even if it did succeed in limiting China’s growth, it would be at the cost of billions of innocent Chinese people who just want to live better. The government would probably just control the story and China would become more isolated and I doubt a New Democratic government would just open up in its place.
I think the only way this is going to work is to continue investing in China. Play their game, call them out on foul play and punish China on a case-by-case basis. As the Chinese population becomes even more united, rich, educated, we have to hope that China naturally evolves towards a more open form of government and economy. It’s already making massive progress compared to where it was before.
In recap, this will be a long process of challenge and play. Any extreme action such as further or completely isolating China is not only extremely unlikely to even be possible, but also unproductive.
> This would also negatively affect the United States.
How much money are our values worth? If we're willing to prostrate ourselves in front of dictators and tyrants who twist the rules of the game and compromise our values, let's at least put a number on it.
If, on the other hands, we're willing to do business with every butcher and murderer out there, let's stop pretending otherwise and stop referring to "our values" in every corporate meeting. They clearly don't exist.
Adding to the list of reasons not to do business in China: protectionism, cronyism, poor IP enforcement, restrictions on foreign media and communication companies, forced technology transfer from foreign firms as a condition of doing business in China, threats to forcibly annex a peaceful neighboring democracy, seizure of territory in the South China Sea and refusal to abide by the findings of an international legal tribunal, mass imprisonment of Uighur men, imprisonment of citizens advocating for human rights and political freedoms, creation of "Black Mirror"-like social monitoring systems ....
However, I do not think creating reciprocal restrictions on Chinese firms doing business in the West is helpful. Chinese companies with operations or staff in other countries will, over time, bring back values and practices that in the future may support the growth of rights in China while eroding the power of the Xi dictatorship.
Sadly, the US does similar things. The current administration is particularly evil, yet why didn't Google employees resign en masse when Snowden came forward with the revelations?
Ha, likely there's a similarly sinister list of reasons not to do business with the United States. A quick glance at US foreign policy should suffice, or even just the actions resulting from Kissinger's direction.
I suppose the reason is related to the cliche "companies just do whatever they can to maximize shareholder value"; it is instead that they don't actually act to maximize shareholder value, they act to maximize future expected shareholder value. I'd imagine that the guys leading the Google push into China are well aware of how things will go, and they've likely even reported it to the top brass. But shareholders probably aren't as well-informed, so they'll happily bid up the price on GOOG on the back of stories about an imminent takeover of the Chinese search market... which has roughly the same financial impact of actually achieving something, at least temporarily.
I would spin this a little differently. There certainly are a lot of ambitious people at Google. Googlers have a lot of stock options and/or RSU's and care when it goes up. There was also Eric Schmidt's slogan, something about more revenue solving nearly all problems.
But, the company was founded by idealists and is immune from takeover. It attracts idealists (or at least, it used to). Everything is justified in terms of helping users somehow. Justifying things in terms of getting a short-term stock boost generally isn't done, at least not where ordinary employees can hear about it.
This is just ahistorical politics and jingoism under pretense of some greater cause. When China was making its great leap forward entire groups of minorities were segregated in the US and were fighting for their basic rights and continue to face discrimination.
If you have a problem with surveillance you should have an even bigger problem with 'democracies' neck deep in surveillance and arbitrary 'secret courts', 'secret orders' and 'secret processes'. Yet there is near zero mainstream dissent and protest and Assange and Snowden continue to be stranded, surely if people care so much about human rights there would be much more robust activism and genuine efforts to get these individuals back, roll back surveillance and hold people accountable?
If you want to talk about human rights you better have an explanation for the devastation of entire countries and millions of lives in the middle east starting from Iraq to Libya to Syria on entirely made up premises. And the incessant meddling in South America and other regions of the world. China has nothing compared to the scale of destruction and human misery caused in just these two regions.
No country has its hands clean. What is the problem with China developing under their own system? Democracy did not magically form here and in Europe, it took hundreds of years of struggle and its naive to think China and others will make this transition in decades. They are not threatening anyone, at this very moment the US is threatening Iran and meddling with coup plotters in Venezuela, actions that could potentially led to the loss of millions of lives, destabilize these countries and devastate entire regions. This kind of brazen hypocrisy cannot stand in informed discussion.
No.
I too once thought that NSA and other Western intelligence agencies were doing things we should avoid. But then I learned the difference between democratic and autocratic regimes' use of data collection.
In a word: rule of law. There are teams of judges that review surveillance applications. There are strong rules and laws to prevent misuse of data - NSA employees have been disciplined for violating the rules and reading data they are not supposed to. And in the West we vote for the leadership that supervises this effort - and the leadership changes. (we've had some election problems, yes - in part due to autocrats intervening in the West lately, but democracies are working to improve) It's not about people, it's about laws.
Autocratic countries don't have the same controls.
Also, in the influence campaigns autocracies have been running in the West, there's a ton of effort put into whataboutism - 'democracies do it too'. Be careful.
An oversight that rubber stamps 99% of surveillance requests from the NSA and allows it to use information sharing agreements with its allies to skirt around rules preventing surveillance of its own citizens.
That is a false talking point. The approval rate of FISA warrants does not reflect the strength of oversight. Be careful. There is a lot of disinformation out there designed to discredit democracies.
The win rate is misleading for a simple reason: The requests the FISC receives are not a random or representative sample of all cases in which the executive branch believes it would benefit from a warrant. The number and type of government requests are responsive to the level of oversight the court exercises—just as a plaintiff’s decision to litigate is responsive to changes in the law. Because it is costly to make an ex parte application (in time, resources, and reputation) and because the executive has long-running knowledge of how the FISC treats applications, there is little reason to expect agencies to submit losing requests. And while the rarity of ex parte proceedings might make this outcome seem unprecedented or extraordinary, other ex parte proceedings—like those for Title III wiretaps and delayed-notice warrants—display equally lopsided results: the government “wins” almost 100% of the time.
> This is just ahistorical politics and jingoism under pretense of some greater cause. When China was making its great leap forward entire groups of minorities were segregated in the US and were fighting for their basic rights and continue to face discrimination.
The United States learned its lesson to an extent, and our voters and leaders grappled with a moral question of how to live harmoniously in our difference. We certainly haven't solved that problem, but we have made progress, and we are trying. This is FAR better than China. China does not care whether they are evil, and feel no shame for oppressing their minorities. The very fact that in the west we have these discussions, and Chinese do not, is an indicator of the robustness of our culture.
China is actually stepping up their apartheid, using the latest technology we sold them to treat their minorities like livestock, forcing them to endure dehumanizing treatment in their own homeland.
Your post is filled with exaggeration and lies.
Yes, western countries make terrible mistakes, but then our citizens have protests and vote our leaders out. China does not.
LOL, kill thousands of its own citizens in protests? The Chinese government never did that (even the famous tank man was unharmed and was not arrested), the truth is, many soldiers got killed because they were not allowed to fire at citizens.
Even the Chinese government did kill its own citizen they learnt from the US (1932 Bonus Army, 1970 Kent state massacre, Jesus that was only 48 years ago, not mentioning almost every day someone is being shot by the police somewhere in the US. The funny thing is one shot won't even make it to the newspaper now.)
In a word, you have been brainwashed by your media. I know it's hard to wake up someone who pretends to be asleep, but it's good for you.
Insinuating astroturfing or shillage without evidence is explicitly against the guidelines, so no you should definitely not do that. Please hold the snark, as well.
Labeling someone a "propagandist" just because they have an opposing view to yours is abusive—and one of the most poisonous tropes on the internet. Doing that because someone articulated a Chinese view in non-native English adds a nasty xenophobic twist. We're here to listen respectfully to each other, not attack others when they differ—even when you know they're obviously wrong, or believe you do.
If you have evidence that someone is astroturfing, please email us with it (hn@ycombinator.com) so we can investigate. When we do find it, we act pretty severely.
If you don't have evidence, though, please stick to the guidelines and refrain from slinging accusations. Someone having an opposite view to yours does not count as evidence.
Well stated. I think it is worthwhile to ask the question,
"What does it mean when Google is willing to risk so much for additional ad clicks?"
A standard dramatic plot device is a character in situation who is acting out of character to the other members of the cast and confusing them; the audience though is let in on the secret that the character has some extenuating circumstance, a relative held hostage or a threat to lives or something, which is very important. So important in fact that our character is willing to put their values on hold until that problem is resolved.
It is relatable because it happens in a variety of ways, some minor and some major in "real life" to people. Thus the writer can tap into that experience and pull out some of the emotions of fear and anger at being trapped.
This was the analysis I shared on another list about Google going into China:
I see Google as a company that has terminal cancer but is putting on a good face while it searches for a cure. The cancer is that search advertising, the only thing that makes any money inside of Google at the margins they need to maintain their lavish environment, is dying. The symptoms that are out there for all to see; their CPC numbers (the cost per click is the money they get from advertisers for a click) has been going down for nearly a decade now, their search 'quality' (the reason that people would pick their search results over a competitor like Bing) has remained stagnant while Bing's have improved, and the amount of money they pay out per quarter for search traffic from other sources (phones, web browsers, etc) has skyrocketed. Advertising only works if you have eyeballs on your ads. Google has been adding more and more ads to their own sites, reducing the amount the pay out to partner sites, and paying more and more money to third parties to send their search traffic to Google rather than Bing. For me, I see these as signs of a dying ecosystem.
If you can accept that my view of what is going on at Google is 'true', the Chinese search engine makes total sense. There are more eyeballs in a strong economy in China than anywhere else in the world. It is the one place where Google doesn't currently play, and even if their margins on Chinese searches were half that of the rest of the world, it would be additional air in the pipeline while they continue to fight for a new business that can supply the margins they need to avoid losing their staff.
Do they know their employees would hate it? Of course they did and they tried to keep it secret. How desperate do they need to be to risk all of that? Very desperate.
If on the other hand, you believe the party line (which is the view that folks I know who are still at Google will share with you) then Google has never been stronger, and is crushing it on all fronts. Everyone wants to be "Google" and all the cool kids are there. There is no cancer here, no existential risk to the company, and no reason to worry.
The problem then is this, if you've convinced people that the company line is "true" then their argument that they are going into China with a search index that caters to the Chinese governments authoritarian whims is antithetical to everything you stand for.
That puts Google management in something of a bind, either explanation is bad. Either the company is dying and in fear for its life so its compromising its principles to extend its runway, or the company is evil and at the height of its power it is selling services in an authoritarian regime and supporting the goals of that regime for filthy lucre.
There might be a third explanation that fits all the facts but I haven't figured that one out yet.
This is a potentially deep topic and something I could say a lot about (speaking as a 6+ year Xoogler) but I’ll avoid going not the weeds.
I see where you’re going but don’t entirely agree.
For one I think extracting every dollar is true but my theory is that comes from Ruth not Sundar. I mean Ruth would’ve been brought in for that purpose but that goes up to the board and Larry.
I also see where you’re going with the terminal cancer part but again I wouldn’t put it that way. I would say that Google is in a similar position to Microsoft after the antitrust case: it was directionless. It doesn’t know what it stands for or what it’s mission is anymore. Everything is a search for purpose. And this is really a failure in leadership.
This lack of leadership is what allowed the incredibly tone deaf military AI program to happen.
I also don’t think google search has stood still or is in danger from Bing.
I agree. In discussions with current and former Googlers, I've come to the conclusion that Sundar's directive is to extract as much revenue as possible out of ads in order to maximize the runway for the things they actually care about, including the "Other Bets" that are currently losing lots of money. If that means sacrificing Google's long-term goodwill that's fine, because 20 years from now Google isn't expected to exist in its current form.
If on the other hand, you believe the party line (which is the view that folks I know who are still at Google will share with you) then Google has never been stronger, and is crushing it on all fronts.
If I told you pay x$ and you get a chance to flip a 1,000,000 sided coin which pays out 10,000,000,000,000*x you would probably think about buying that chance.
That's a super, super weird formulation here. First from the abstract standpoint, the math here is not right. Discussion: https://pastebin.com/qqQ3KGS5 because I don't want to divert from the more important point.
More importantly, you've failed to account for the externalities, entirely. It's not just a bet ("pay for a chance"). Trying the bet--in this case, allowing government censorship to control search results--has complicated to quantify, but significantly negative human rights cost.
So to summarize: I wouldn't think twice about taking your bet--I absolutely would, because the chances are absurdly in my favor (see the pastebin). But I--and generally, the people protesting this--would decline a bet that actually has the right stakes, even if there is a payout.
I doubt the externalities or the low likelihood of getting a fair shot at selling to Chinese consumers is lost on these companies. The point I’m trying to make is that from a business perspective it’s worth a shot. If successful PR can take care of the blowback.
It’s a moonshot. Despite that, in the eyes of people who are just trying their best to boost profits wherever and however they can it’s stupid not to attempt it.
Also for my game, you got one shot at playing. My formulation was not meant to be so rigorous— just trying to highlight the angle that the decision makers are taking here.
It's also the country that lifted 3-500 million people out of poverty in the last 30 years. And haven't invaded anybody in the last 60-70.
Just to provide a little balance. I'm worried about Xi's direction too, but overall we could do a lot worse as far as major powers to share the globe with.
You're 100% right about the market protectionism stuff, though.
(sidenote, the implication that Great Leap Forward was intentional is a little disrespectful, IMO -- that's not how it happened).
"The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy... They never went by that saying which you constantly hear from the wiseacres of our day, that time heals all things. They trusted rather their own character and prudence — knowing perfectly well that time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad."
There are ways to avoid the Thucydides trap, but they don't involve clapping your hands over your ears and pretending everything is fine when it is not. No matter what they like to claim, China is an aggressive expansionist power, and simply ignoring that reality is not going to accomplish anything.
I'm with you, except for that 'aggressive expansionist power' thing.
I'm seeing one 27-day long aggressive war in 1979, previous ones are 1960s or before? And some current day peaceful-yet-obnoxious saber rattling about the South China Sea? (completely oppose them on that BTW).
That's... really not 'aggressive expansionist power', as far as these things go. France, for example, has been in more war over the last 30 or 60 years. Britain MUCH more war. US and Russia? Don't get me started. China is by far the least warlike Security Council member, and it's quantifiable.
I'm all about spreading enlightenment values. Let's try not to look like total hypocritical a-holes and maybe we'll be successful.
So it's cool to invade countries next door if you have a dispute with them. But not okay if they're not your neighbors. What if they're technically not your neighbors, but still only like 100 kilometers away? Is that okay?
>So it's cool to invade countries next door if you have a dispute with them.
Straw-man much? It's not cool (and I didn't say that), but it's understandable. Neighbors have disputes, and that has been the case since forever, and it's understandable because they have common borders to settle (which are not god given), shared history, and so on.
Countries meddling with countries in the other end of the world just have imperialism and "national interests" to cheap oil and enforcing their preferred policies and ideology.
>What if they're technically not your neighbors, but still only like 100 kilometers away? Is that okay?
What if we stop asking silly questions and apply the principle of charity and/or common sense?
And yes, with nearby countries it's still natural to have disputes over e.g. this or that natural resource you both claim, this or that past war or whatever.
Now, France with Vietnam, the UK in Cyprus, or the US in Korea, not so much.
I'm sorry, I was trying to better understand your argument which seemed to be focused on geographic distance as a form of whether it was acceptable or not to have armed conflict.
No, establishing where it should have been naturally.
A country with shared borders and centuries of shared history with a nearby country is quite understandable to have disputes and even go to war with them.
With a country that had never interacted with it, and they have absolutely no reason being there (except entitlement and greed), not so much.
And by the definition of one of the two major Taiwanese political parties as well. From Wikipedia:
"The Kuomintang holds the "One China Principle" and maintains its claim that under the ROC Constitution (passed by the Kuomintang government in 1947 in Nanjing) the ROC has sovereignty over most of China (including by their interpretation both mainland China and Taiwan)...Former ROC President Ma Ying-jeou had re-asserted claims on mainland China as late as October 8, 2008."
"Ma said under the ROC Constitution, the ROC “definitely is an independent sovereign state, and mainland [sic] China is also part of the territory of the ROC.”
The interview was published yesterday.
Ma said despite the stipulation of the ROC Constitution, Taiwan cannot recognize the existence of another country, nor does China want to recognize Taiwan. In other words, under the ROC Constitution, “mainland China” is not a country."
Ma Ying Jeou and the KMT have some persuasive arguments; there was an interview on YouTube where he eloquently explained why these claims exist; the mainland Chinese Communist party came to power without being elected by the people. Also, when Japan signed its surrender papers giving up its claims to annexed territories, the sovereignty reverted to the KMT government.
I mean, the KMT of that era would have had even less of a claim of being the legitimate representatives of the people for any reasonable definition of "the people".
That's some nice revisionist history. I guess the whole "let's take over Islands in the South China Sea, and then convert them into military bases" doesn't count? Why is it that Taiwan spends billions of dollars on US weapons? Why is Japan increasing their military forces? Are they afraid of Godzilla?
China is trying to become a super power, as every great nation does. I've yet to see a nation do so peacefully. Just because they haven't yet launched a truly massive "peace keeping" mission.. well, I think it's a bit naive to believe they won't. History is a very useful tool, but you can't solely rely on an actor's past actions to predict the future.
> The lure of a market of a billion people is an illusion.
It's not an illusion. Go ask the hollywood studios. Go ask Apple. Go ask GM. Do you really believe those well paid business folks in hollywood, apple, GM, etc are banking on illusions?
> So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values
Google never had any values. The only people who believe that are the naive who fell for their marketing campaign. Google is a company out to make money for its shareholders. They are fundamentally no different from exxon or disney.
> This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
What does this have to do with business? Why is it that whenever china is mentioned, the top comments invariably have political agenda behind it? Why don't you mention that china lifted 800 million people out of poverty? Does that not fit your agenda?
Regardless, the one thing I agree with you is china is not going to "surrender their industries to foreign competitors." Just like we wouldn't surrender our industry to china. That is common sense. What is happening is that china is giving portions of their market to foreign companies in exchange for what they want.
An example of this obviously tech transfer. Or china setting aside X number of hollywood movies to show in their huge movie market. Of course hollywood is going to give something for a portion of china's movie market share.
The idea that china's market is an illusion is verifiably false. Listen in on tim cook's quarterly conference call sometime.
Or take a look at box office numbers. US companies are making serious money in china.
You're really trying to drive your point with Hollywood taking its profits in China. Do you know what kind of hoops they have to jump through to access that market?
Take Gravity for instance. The reckless nation that shoots down the satellite causing all the damage is Russia when it was China in real life.
China then saved our heroine when its the Russians we've worked and continued to work with. Why? It's because they're chasing the Yuan while giving away soft power to China.
> Do you know what kind of hoops they have to jump through to access that market?
Yes. I thought my comment made that pretty clear. But is hollywood entitled to the chinese market? You act like the chinese owe us their market like we own them.
>Take Gravity for instance. The reckless nation that shoots down the satellite causing all the damage is Russia when it was China in real life.
I know. That's why I wrote "Or china setting aside X number of hollywood movies to show in their huge movie market. Of course hollywood is going to give something for a portion of china's movie market share."
Well, it's called the chinese market for a reason. It belongs to china. Their house, their rules. Why would china give their markets to foreigners without anything in return? Do you think we open our markets without anything in return? Do you think europe does? Or russia? Every nation or bloc protects their markets and demands something in return for access. Maybe the chinese go overboard with it, but as I said, it's their market. They can do whatever they want.
How do you think China's technology and education improved so drastically just a few decades after the cultural revolution?
It was the US giving its technology, military weaponry, college education, etc. to Chinese nationals. Their entry into the World Bank was supposed to come with freer markets and other reforms. Instead they run over peaceful protestors with tanks and seize all cameras from international reporters.
China doesn't respect our patents and conduct corporate espionage at the state level. They brazenly hack our corporations and governments. They don't allow our companies to compete fairly as theirs are propped up by the state.
They can't have their cake and eat it too and I believe its time for Western powers to come down hard on China and its unfair market practices.
> How do you think China's technology and education improved so drastically just a few decades after the cultural revolution?
Because the chinese leadership decided to make it a priority?
> It was the US giving its technology, military weaponry, college education, etc. to Chinese nationals.
Oh we did? Out of the kindess of our hearts? I thought we "gave" them technology, military weaponry, college education, etc in exchange for something? What was that? Oh yeah that's right, their gigantic cheap labor force. Using your logic, china gave us the tech industry and the modern world.
> Their entry into the World Bank was supposed to come with freer markets and other reforms.
You mean the WTO. Right? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about if you don't know the difference between WTO and World Bank.
> China doesn't respect our patents and conduct corporate espionage at the state level.
Oh dear. You mean china does what is in china's interests? Do you know who doesn't respect our patents and conducts espionage? Canada, Mexico and every ally of ours.
> Instead they run over peaceful protestors with tanks and seize all cameras from international reporters.
Wow? They have a version of kent state too? And seizing cameras from foreigners? Do they owe international reporters anything? Once again, you are pretending we own china. Like I said, their house, their rules.
> They don't allow our companies to compete fairly as theirs are propped up by the state.
Like everyone else? You do realize that we accuse the EU of unfairly proppping up Airbus right? And they accuse us of propping up Boeing? There are even accusations between us and canada over their subsidizing of bombardier.
> They can't have their cake and eat it too and I believe its time for Western powers to come down hard on China and its unfair market practices.
Who are you? You believe? Yes, "western powers" are going to listen to you. We are going to base our geopolitical decisions on someone who confuses the world bank with the WTO.
If we felt that china's trade practices were unfair, we could always not trade with them? But I wonder why so many companies and industries are desperate to do business with and in china? Perhaps their business practices aren't so unfair? I don't know.
Or maybe the CEOs of trillion dollar companies like apple aren't as smart as you.
I was actually referring to the World Bank [0] but feel free to attack me personally.
I wasn't initially sure why you shifted to ad hominem all of a sudden but I see that you're on a throwaway for a reason. You don't have a base belief, you are simply shouting a tautology that things are happening because things are happening. It doesn't take a genius geopolitical expert to see that China is doing things because it's in China's best interest.
If you can't see that China has a unfair advantage in the global market and that their regime is a threat to our democratic system, then there's no point arguing. If you feel that their political system is superior to ours, I pray that you're not an ethnic minority.
China entices all business and western powers with "look, we're shifting towards free(er) markets but our big monolithic government is just slow at enacting changes" while ensuring that they fail.
Chinese government is unelected and does bad things, that is true. The current US administration is also bad — separating families seeking asylum, being the only country in the world to leave the Paris climate agreement etc.
> But is hollywood entitled to the chinese market?
No, it isn't, but in my opinion Chinese people (not their government) should have the right to decide who to accept in their market or not. Currently, they do not.
When you present it that way, it sounds absolutely reasonable. But this is almost exactly what Trump says in his speeches. He doesn't hate China, he understands why they are doing what they're doing. But now it is time for us to stand up for ourselves economically, and look out for our own best interests. Think what you will about him, but on international trade he is not treated fairly. When Trump does to China 10% of what they do to us, he is portrayed as some sort of lunatic.
I would take issue with your classification of companies as "the west" Companies like Google have a huge foreign national presence. There are thousands of Chinese employees, managers, and executives at Google.
>This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago.
Well, glass houses and stones and all that. There's a country that eliminated millions of its native citizens and restricted the little left to reservations, abducted and kept in slavery millions of black citizens for nearly four centuries, stole several huge areas from its southern neighbor, has the largest prison population in the world (25% of the world's prisoners for merely 4% the people in the world), had segregation for blacks until the late 60s, dropped two nuclear bombs (on civilians), has gone at war and/or occupied several countries all around the world that have no borders with it and had done nothing to it, has toppled foreign governments, has widespread surveillance that covers the whole world, meddles with worldwide politics, secret no-due-process prisons, regularly murders people in sovereign countries, they still have the death penalty, while the rest of the western world has abandoned, and their cops routinely kill thousands of people every year (especially black). Heck, they also bombed/invaded 4 different countries just in the last 20 years.
And they're pretending to have the moral high ground, and even point fingers to other countries! And if you point those things out, they go "but whataboutism", to restrict the conversation to some other party, which they present as uniquely bad.
Exactly correct. The history of the United States is marred with some horrible events. But that does not change the fact that there is a large faction within the Chinese government that views the US as an enemy and second rate power that must be humbled. The US should recognize this and act accordingly.
I don't dispute that, but I'm not personally concerned about them. We have our own hawks and would-be world-beaters.
I'm also not concerned about China econimically annexing Africa. It's between them, and you can't say the West has been terrific friends to the nations and peoples of that continent, can you?
And I think the renaissance of the Silk Road would be amazing. A massive river of wealth and culture spanning the whole of Eurasia, vibrant and alive again after ages fallow. Merv was considered the most beautiful city in the world for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv
My issue is with things like the sabre-rattling in the South China Sea, and the attempt to establish a stable society through mass mind-control and thought-policing. To my mind the legitimacy of the Communist government comes solely from the performance of the CCP in maintaining order. I think working toward economic well-being is a fine way to maintain order; but trying to cover up the "June Fourth Incident" is incredibly, wildly foolish.
YC just announced that they are going into China, and all I could think of was, what will you say when they ask you to call it the "June Fourth Incident" instead of "Tienanmen Square Massacre"? You're not naive, you must see that moment in the future, or have some idea to dodge it somehow? Will you kowtow?
To sum up, I like China and Chinese people; I don't like the CCP but only because of personal beliefs and preference; I don't think I'm capable of judging something so huge, that tries to run such a large and old nation. Nevertheless, some of their policies seem to me to be both odious and self-defeating. I'm alarmed that such an important source of world stability as the government of China might be acting foolishly. I mean, if we are going to elect a human cartoon character to our highest office I hope somebody is going to try to act like a grown-up, eh? The last thing the world needs is for the CCP to try to get into a dick-measuring contest with us in the sea, or demand to control the information everyone sees, or round people up into camps. Let's all settle down and make some money, because it's going to be expensive to cope with the weather from here on out, for everybody.
It is not a competition. The US did all those things (and more). It is bad, in many cases worse than China. But China is also bad and in many other cases did much worse than the US.
In my non-american opinion, tech companies doing business in China are bad for the world. The fact that the US thinks it has the moral high ground doesn’t enter into it (incidentally China also considers itself morally superior).
(Appologise for brevity and potential errors, I am typing this on a phone).
So I'm not sure what particular straw man or false equivalency argument you're trying to make but first let me point out that I'm not American, I'm Australian.
And you're right that there are grave issues (for these and many other countries) but that doesn't excuse the actions of the Chinse government. Nor does it make all such actions equivalent and the presence of such sins doesn't disqualify you from pointing out such abuses.
Let's not forget that in the US I can talk about slavery, segregation, the arguably illegal wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, taking land from Native Americans and a whole host of other issues because such information isn't censored and I'm not going to end up in a labour camp for bringing it up.
Until that's true in China, don't even try the moral equivalence argument.
>So I'm not sure what particular straw man or false equivalency argument you're trying to make but first let me point out that I'm not American, I'm Australian.
Doesn't change much. I'm contrasting the holier than thou western narrative vs China.
>And you're right that there are grave issues (for these and many other countries) but that doesn't excuse the actions of the Chinse government.
No, it just makes hypocrites of those that single it out.
>Nor does it make all such actions equivalent and the presence of such sins doesn't disqualify you from pointing out such abuses.
Sure. I posit that the actions I've described are actually worse.
>Let's not forget that in the US I can talk about slavery, segregation, the arguably illegal wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, taking land from Native Americans and a whole host of other issues because such information isn't censored and I'm not going to end up in a labour camp for bringing it up. Until that's true in China, don't even try the moral equivalence argument.
So, the idea is that it's OK to do bad things, as long as people in your country can openly talk about them?
Especially as this talk is just ignored (people talking and demonstrating about it didn't stop the Vietnam war continuing for 2 decades, or the abolition of slavery taking 4 centuries and a huge civil war).
Clearly no modern person has the moral high ground on anything when looking through the lens of history. I'm surprised the world hasn't fallen into total anarchy since no one can stand up and say "That's wrong!"
The difference is that we don't lionize the actions of our ancestors. We acknowledge that the wholesale destruction of first peoples was a horrific act of violence, and the US does not cover up the ugly parts of its history. We talk about it openly.
>The difference is that we don't lionize the actions of our ancestors
Huh? It's notorious for doing just that. From the bizarro workship of the
founding fathers, to celebrating people like Custer, to the whole Confederacy thing in the South, and so on. All kinds of dark history, from the treatment of Chinese in 19th century, to the mass murders of immigrants and workers fighting for their rights (e.g. at Ludlow) are swept under the rug.
>We acknowledge that the wholesale destruction of first peoples was a horrific act of violence, and the US does not cover up the ugly parts of its history. We talk about it openly.
Only in the sense that people don't go to jail for talking about them. Otherwise, the official histories and accounts all sidestep the ugly parts of history, wash them out in official narratives, and so on, and it takes people like Howard Zinn to make them somewhat known.
Heck, people are still taught the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagashaki where "necessary" and used to "stop the war".
Some of the ugliest parts is happening now and "you" are not openly talking about it (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Africa, military bases all over Europe, Asia, Latin America, etc).
American government is killing thousands more people yearly then Chinese for a long, long time.
I think that with all the money and power that comes with being a superpower, some bad acts are inevitable. There's just too many tendrils on the beast to control all its machinations.
Still, all things considered, I truly believe that America is relatively good, fair, and just, given the circumstances. Just imagine what the world would be like if positions were reversed, and China or Russia were the unchecked world superpower. I suspect such a reality would make you yearn for the balance we have today.
> Just imagine what the world would be like if positions were reversed, and China or Russia were the unchecked world superpower. I suspect such a reality would make you yearn for the balance we have today.
As a Latino and living in Brazil, I'm hoping for this to happen (and is happening). Brazilian business with Chinese and Russians are a lot more fair to our side than business done with US. And they don't use military force.
Now if I talk as a citizen of the world, I think the US is one of the greatest superpower of all history and brought insurmountable amount of human development (in pair with Egypt). But as a Brazilian, some if not all of our worldly known issues are because or related to the way our economic elite do business with the US.
Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria are all debated vociferously in this country, and though they have taken a back seat to the shitshow of our current presidency, they are absolutely contentious issues in academia, foreign policy circles, and in public. To say that the American people somehow don’t have these discussions is absurd. Furthermore, your implication seems to be that because the US government does things that are morally wrong, Americans who believe in human rights are somehow not credible when they criticize other governments in addition to their own. That is absolutely nonsense.
> Furthermore, your implication seems to be that because the US government does things that are morally wrong, Americans who believe in human rights are somehow not credible when they criticize other governments in addition to their own. That is absolutely nonsense.
No, what I'm saying is that Americans can't point fingers to China and Chinese while America state has a much more tighter grip on the world than China state. If you wanna fix human right problems in the world, you can have a lot more impact doing it at home than abroad.
>* Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria are all debated vociferously in this country,*
"Vociferously" as in "some pundits talk about them but nobody really cares about those things, no politician resigned because of them, no mass demonstrations anywhere, and even when people talk it's the usual hypocrisy show (when it's not just about the costs and the toll on our own soldiers), meanwhile things get on as usual..."
>Americans who believe in human rights are somehow not credible when they criticize other governments in addition to their own. That is absolutely nonsense.
Actually sounds very valid.
Makes sense, to get one's house in order before they can talk about others. In fact that's where they should have more impact (and more moral responsibility to get right).
But it's also the case that such "criticizing other governments" is used by their own government as justification for all kinds of interventions.
It's this "criticizing of other governments" that was used to justify the wars and interventions that made Iraq and Libya from stable if autarchic regimes into today's hell on earth, for example.
1) autarchic and autocratic mean two different things. The word you’re looking for is autocratic.
2) The US is a democracy, is pretty diverse in terms of opinions, and the US government does things that the people don’t like (just like in China). I don’t hold the individuals of China accountable for egregious and unacceptable human rights violations of the Chinese government. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of US society to say that the people of the US are inseparable from their government’s decisions.
3) You still have yet to seriously engage the notion that the Chinese government is perpetrating wholesale oppression of a class of people simply for having a different identity. Whatever the US does doesn’t change how morally reprehensible that is. What-about-ism doesn’t change the moral calculus here one iota.
> You still have yet to seriously engage the notion that the Chinese government is perpetrating wholesale oppression of a class of people simply for having a different identity. Whatever the US does doesn’t change how morally reprehensible that is.
The US systematically does the same to its black portion of the population since always, sometimes in extreme ways, other times in soft ways.
Agreed.
And as usual, I look for the greyed-out comments (like yours) to find a balance and objectivity, missing in the bulk of the (mostly hypocritical) thread.
Can you imagine what people would say if European currency had Adolf Hitler's face on it? Can you imagine if the Nazis were still in power in Germany?
Chinese currency has Mao's face on it, and he was a much bigger mass murderer that Hitler. The party he ran is still in power, and still actively violating basic human rights of its citizens.
If I made an equivalent comment similar to coldtea's, one detailing a list of China's sins, on Chinese social media... place your bets on whether or not this post would be removed by the government censors. I bet it would, personally. Probably rather quickly.
Some of the "counterpoints" also were strange considering we are talking about China. For instance, China executes more people than anyone else in the world, and even when adjusted at a per capita level China's rate is quite a bit higher than the United States. (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/12/china-st...) And China's internet surveillance is far worse than the United States, probably one of the worst in the world as far as this goes (eg "Great Firewall", large divisions of government devoted to censoring social media, etc.) -- it is more internal focused at this time, granted, but still.
China certainly is meddling in other nations' foreign politics too (just look at the recent politics in Asian countries with the Belt and Road Initiative, with some commentators such as this -- https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/08/28/commentary/w... -- worried about such being a "debt trap" for political purposes). And the worrying militarization of the American police force still compares nothing to what China is doing in Xinjiang (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...).
There certainly are Americans that gloss over our sins and over-promote "American exceptionalism". I don't see that in most of the Hacker News crowd -- I think most Americans on here are plenty aware of our faults and transgressions, and are often rather vocally against our own nation's suppression of dissent and free speech. But China's on another level, a much tighter authoritarian state with much more active spying and suppression. I think it's hard to argue against this.
But the question at hand is not "Which government is more evil?" (Even though I think the answer is clear even though U.S. government is horrific.) The question was "Is Google reentering China likely to do net good for the world?" China evil is directly relevant to that, U.S. evil only peripherally.
Beyond that, which-tribe-is-better arguments powerfully attract flamewars. They're a fantastic way to deflect the original question. It's a classic pattern, and so we have a word for it, whataboutism.
>But the question at hand is not "Which government is more evil?" (Even though I think the answer is clear even though U.S. government is horrific.) The question was "Is Google reentering China likely to do net good for the world?" China evil is directly relevant to that, U.S. evil only peripherally.
Well, when put in front of a question, it's good to question the question itself.
People, media, governments, etc frame questions all day in a constrained way, either because it serves some interests, or because they can't see the bigger picture, or because they're used to thinking with blinders on.
I'd say that a question like "Is Google reentering China likely to do net good for the world?" much be put into question itself.
Why would it be good or bad? What is China? How is Google's own country better? What Google already does elsewhere? Is that good? Is China the same as "Chinese government"? and so on...
So the fact that the US did not consider Native Americans citizens made their killing somewhat justifiable?
It seems to me you’re making a strong case for GPs point about how perceived US moral superiority influences one's arguments. It doesn't matter whether the US (the oppressor!) considered them citizens. It matters that they were people.
Disturbing how in the light of NSA revelations many people here were more concerned that they were spying on americans rather than the fact that they were spying on people.
Do you know what Tibet has been like before? It's a bloody brutal slavery society that majority of the population lived in a unbelievably inhumane condition.
Also, Tibet has been a part of Chinese territory for centuries.
> killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square)
I watched hours of documentations about the entire event, but seriously, the government is not the only side to blame. If it happened in the US, the policy probably would have started sending protesters to jail much earlier.
It is 100% abundantly clear that the Chinese government has no interest in "surrendering" industries to foreign competitors. If any foreign company gets reasonably successful I guarantee you the Chinese government will do something to hobble it in favour of a local competitor.
So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values and alienating a not-insignificant number of employees who feel pretty strongly about censorship and human rights to chase a buck that they will never get because the Chinese government will make sure that they don't.
The lure of a market of a billion people is an illusion. The game is very much rigged. I don't necessarily blame China for this either. But perhaps its well past due that the West restrict access to its markets to Chinese companies in some sort of reciprocal fashion.
If the Chinese government wants you to store data in China to do business there then require Chinese companies to store their data in the US to do business there. And so on.
This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
I can't hope for much more than enough people take such a stance to wake up the leadership of these companies but I'm not holding my breath.