I don't know why people keep expressing surprise at things like this.
Contrary to what the U.S. Supreme Court would have you believe, corporations are not people and do not have morals or values. They are organizations that seek to maximize profit and grow.
Any values a corporation projects are merely reflections of whatever the dominant moral force is in a given time and place.
American corporations in the U.S. in 2022 project values of wokeness because the woke left is presently the dominant cultural force in the U.S. In 1950's America, the dominant cultural force was cultural conservatism and patriotism so naturally corporations projected conservative and patriotic values. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a large corporation operating in China in 2022 will reflect the values of the CCP.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but expecting a corporation to have meaningful morals in the same way a human does is like expecting your dog to do the dishes. Based on what they are, they're simply not capable of the task.
>corporations are not people and do not have morals or values
The irony of this is that all corporations and all decisions and actions taken by corporations are made by people. If anything corporations are the most clear and unmistakable reflection of what it truly means to be human without the masks we wear in daily life.
This isn't true when the people making the decisions are atypical humans in terms of morality. Consider two identical corporations where one has a normal morally conscious person and the other has a sociopath. If the second corp has an edge in business you could see how it could lead to non-average decision makers.
Attaching a term like "wokeness" to minority dissent over decades or centuries of systemic, cultural, economic, political discrimination, oppression, or abuse in an attempt to group every type of challenge that doesn't fit within a certain criteria of "conservatism and patriotism" is a false narrative. It seems that everyone is trying to find a scapegoat for their own failures or lack of mobility. Arguably, where and how you start in life makes a big impact on where you end up. Therefore, discrimination and oppression with historical basis, spanning generations, in one form or another, is very much more difficult to overcome or to endure.
Corporations ARE amoral entities; reacting to consumer sentiment that often shifts based on cultural or political trends. Their aim is to make a profit for shareholders and other stakeholders. During the times of "cultural conservatism and patriotism" it was enough to say "made in America", albeit unnecessary, since globalization's effects were not an issue. Company leadership being labelled as communist sympethizers may have stoked fears and anger. Being a former supporter of the Nazi party or the KKK (morally objectionable sentiments) meant little. So, was it corporations that were immoral or the lack of outrage from the majority conservative patriots that could explain this difference better?
The CEO is elected by a board and the board is chosen by shareholders. If the board and CEO don't perform they can be fired.
The threat of termination is what causes someone "typical" to act "atypically." Survival instincts kick in, and anything goes.
Or you could be right. The CEO in such a position refuses to act immorally and is than fired by the shareholders for not hitting performance metrics. They then hire another and another... until they find a CEO willing to throw away his morality to hit those performance numbers.
> corporations are not people and do not have morals or values. They are organizations that seek to maximize profit and grow.
They are however made up of people who make moral decisions based on their values, including in their businesses. Plenty of corporations choose to do or not do things based on their ethics and morals. And acting as an agent of a corporation doesn't free you from moral peril when making those decisions.
I don't expect Intel the Corporation to have values, but I do expect the people within Intel who choose where they manufacture or purchase manufactured goods to have qualms about using slave labor for it, supporting a genocide in doing so.
>I don't expect Intel the Corporation to have values, but I do expect the people within Intel who choose where they manufacture or purchase manufactured goods to have qualms about using slave labor for it, supporting a genocide in doing so.
Human behavior is remarkably different depending on whether or not I'm the sole person on stage responsible for an action or whether I'm a single anonymous vote.
> Human behavior is remarkably different depending on whether or not I'm the sole person on stage responsible for an action or whether I'm a single anonymous vote.
This is exactly it. In a large organization, everyone can mentally offload any responsibility to someone else.
The rank and file can say "It's not my decision, the execs told me to do this".
The executives can say, "It's the board pushing me to do xyz and if I don't do it then someone else will, so I might as well just keep my job".
And the board can say, "Well, we just told the execs to maximize shareholder value, we didn't tell them to do anything unethical."
So you end up with a situation where no one feels like they bear any responsibility for the actions of an enterprise and you have a group of individuals who, as individuals, are moral but are contributing to an organization that is acting immorally in the aggregate.
>are moral but are contributing to an organization that is acting immorally in the aggregate.
I would argue that the individuals are immoral and the corporations foster conditions that reveal this fundamental immorality that is usually hidden. We only act moral if there's a consequence detrimental to ourselves.
That's not the definition of morality. That's self-interest or self-preservation. Adhering to a set of guidelines or rules with empathy, regardless if it doesn't immediately register as detrimental to ourselves is more like it.
Granted. Nevertheless, "survival" might be subjective as well then. Anyway, I'll either have to come back to this at another point or leave it alone :D lest I go too far down the rabbit hole. Thanks
Doing the right thing morally and doing the right thing for business are not mutually exclusive. Actually, this case is a good example.
Please see these comments [0]. But essentially, Intel is in a medium and long term losing position in CCP China regardless of whether it glosses over slave concentration camps. It seems to have chosen to value CCP China supply chains. It will face a capricious CCP that will disrupt those supply chains sooner or later. It will face the creation of a CCP China national chip champion with a monopoly on local sales.
This will be bad for business. It is of course still bad to play semantic public relations games with slave concentration camps.
Had it maintained a moral position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps, it would have been pushed to look for alternative supply chains. This in turn would have put Intel in a better position to whether storms created by CCP when using trade policies as foreign policy instruments.
Good business and some basic moral decency go together. It is so sad for humanity to believe otherwise.
> It apologised last month for the "trouble" it had caused, saying that its commitment to avoid supply chains from Xinjiang was an expression of compliance with U.S. law, rather than a statement of its position on the issue.
So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
To what extent are Intel chips designed and manufactured in China? Presumably, they are primarily designed in the USA and manufactured in Taiwan. And Intel is opening chip factories to boost production in the USA [0].
Why would Intel not take a position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps if presumably most of the supply chain does not depend on it? Would it be that much "trouble"? Or has some unrelated "trouble" been created for Intel that was not discussed in the article?
Just yesterday someone commented on the google's union efforts with the following:
> Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position.[1]
The discussion whether it's true or not is less important at this point than the fact that Governments is responsible for making sure that there are rules to be followed. The main problem here is that most governments themselves are also run by the same profit-seeking entities/people. The whole situation right now is based on the fact that everyone moved their production to china with complete disregard for everything but short term gain.
Amazons Bezos is in fact not wrong when he says that he's not going to pay tax out of some altruistic ideas, but that it is in fact up to governments to make proper legislation. It's just that governments are busy doing nothing but talking for the most part(or at least have learned to do nothing over the past decades). I actually had a social democrat party member tell me a couple years ago, that the politicians have a really hard job travelling around talking, and having to read consultant written legislation. This is in effect not that different from tech ceo's scheduling 4 hours of meetings every day and calling it work.
Most people don't actually want to change the status quo, they just want to put blame on someone.
Intel and most multinationals' sanitized position is going to be "slave/coerced labour" doesn't exist in their supply chain according to their (lax) audits and oversights. But they're forced to comply with US blanket sanction on the region. Because at the end of the day, a US company operates no differently than a PRC company that is completely beholden to the state security apparatus. Sorry to PRC market for being US SOE and arm of US foreign policy.
> Intel not take a position against Xinjiang
Because PRC position is coerced labour doesn't exist. It's decades old rural labour transfer programs + vocational training that pays multitudes more than regional norms and competitive with national wages is being portrayed as slave labour by US propaganda. If you want to make money in PRC, comport with PRC position or at least figure out messaging to pave over contradictions and save face. Ergo, US companies are forced to comply with US laws and holds no position on which narrative is correct.
Just because they take no outward "position" ... doesn't mean that internally they are not perfectly aware of what is happening in Xinjiang - and of the moral dimensions of their complicity in it.
Or internally these companies could be aware that US propaganda perpetuated under Mike Pompeo as head of state is just that, propaganda for US interests and there's no point attaching any morality and complicity to it. It's about compliance and drafting up PR to minimize fallout from useful idiots in both markets. Any company operating in PRC for 20+ years knows of rural labour transfer programs, even have reluctant suppliers pressured to take Uyghur workers by CCP because they're over compensated and underqualified. Half the reason terrorism exploded in XJ 2009 is due to drama caused by one of these programs (Shaoguan Incident). Companies with established supply chains in PRC knows these coerced labour stories are bullshit. There's about 400M other rural poor Chinese who will work for less than how much these transfer programs designed to boost minorities are paying. And they don't even need to be retrained for literacy skills.
It’s absolutely not backwards. When you have a million people in a concentration camp in a given region, and China is known for shipping these slaves around their country to work in factories, to make sanctions and targeted policies more difficult to apply, can you maybe see why a rule of thumb has been created black listing an entire region? This is their choice. Cause. Effect.
“A million people in a concentration camp” says US state agencies who tried to prevent the UN from investigating and Adrian Zenz commissioned by the BBC.
Let’s ask the UN what they think about China’s response to terrorism in Xinjiang after investigating.
> Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers. Now safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded. The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security.
> What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the media. We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang.
So not "the UN" as you misrepresent, but rather: some operatives from some of the planet's most brutally repressive regimes (after the PRC, of course) -- specifically: Bahrain, Belarus, Cuba, Eritrea, Djibouti, Iran ... there's too many to list, but I'll just add one more: the DPRK -- get together and sign a petition denying the abuses happening in another country (China) which just so happens to be a big, rich, pal of theirs, and on top of that, praising its leadership to the rafters, as it were:
"We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by
adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause."
And you're suggesting that we're supposed to take this seriously?
> In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly. After receiving the allegations, no disbursements were made on the project.
> The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations.
> The review did not substantiate the allegations.
Sorry, but did you read this properly? They could not substantiate that the partner schools abused project funds, but still closed the funding for them, because of too much risk. Probably because reporting standards didn’t match. They do not deny the “situation in Xinjiang” - they say that particular report did not substantiate the purchase of body armor/security gear etc in partner schools.
Is that why US also sanctions John Deer from selling tractors to XJ when XJ wanted to automate cotton harvesting because paying "slave" labours high wages was unprofitable. Almost like US wants to XJ to rely on manual labour to perpetuate coerced labour myth. Cause. Effect.
There's media of Uyghurs working in XJ cotton fields as part of local cotton industry released by PRC media that got repurposed as coerced labour with zero evidence. It's like how videos of XJ transfer workers from their own douyin accounts got repurposed as "leaked" evidence of slave labour. Yes Zenz claims are basically myths, trying to portray extremely well known and studied rural labour transfer programs as coerced labour and connect any piece of mistreatment - of which there inevitably will be for a program this large - to fabricate myth of XJ coerced labour.
US sanctioned XPCC in charge of XJ cotton, ergo John Deere can no longer sell advanced cotton picking machinery to XJ cotton industry despite 4000% increase in orders year prior. 70% of XJ cotton was automated already, predominately in North. XPCC wanted to buy harvesters to automate 30% of XJ south cotton that relied more on manual labour until "slave labour" programs paid enough that manual labour no longer profitable. Because slave labour involves compensation so high that importing expensive US machines becomes more economic. So why would US not want John Deere to sell XPCC machines that would eliminate alleged coerced labour... oh wait.
Every country and company on the planet should of course assume the worst - until free and independent media is free to report on it.
Are Intel execs given objective reports by independent journalists who are given access to all areas and are free to write an report as they want on it? Until then, Intel execs should assume that any rumor of wrongdoing in the province is true. It's as simple as that.
One simply doesn't get the benefit of "no wrongdoing until proven" without a free media.
It's rhetorical -- the US has been ramping up a trade war with China for years now. The US sanctions on Xinjiang damage the region economically and cause more suffering for the people who live there.
If the US gov't was truly concerned about human rights abuses, then they would not be so biased against China in particular while turning a blind eye or directly funding other very egregious human rights violations.
> ...the Coalition is conducting an ongoing campaign of genocide by a ‘synchronised attack’ on all aspects of life in Yemen, one that is only possible with the complicity of the United States and United Kingdom.
> The US sanctions on Xinjiang damage the region economically and cause more suffering for the people who live there.
So do most sanctions no matter how justified. The well being of those people are the responsibility of the Chinese government. It would be pretty easy to allow transparent media reports in the province if one wanted to show the world that there is nothing bad going on.
What the US (or anyone else) does in any other corner of the world is a separate topic and uninteresting in this context.
Look at this from a larger perspective. US killed a million random civilians in an attempt to to squash terrorism - and largely failed. China appears to have achieved this in an incomparably more humanitarian way. If this works out, this means:
1. USA failed (again)
2. They committed world's largest genocide since WW2
3. For no good reason
This is an absolutely terrible outcome from PR point of view, so it's natural for US to try to prevent China from being successful in doing that. And pretending that temporarily imprisoning people is somehow more evil than killing them seems to be working, even here on HN.
> To what extent are Intel chips designed and manufactured in China? Presumably, they are primarily designed in the USA and manufactured in Taiwan.
Intel has fabs all over the world, including many in the US and some in China[1]. Whenever people talk about chip manufacturing they seem to only think about high-end cutting edge processes, when in fact the majority of quantity of chips produced are at non-cutting edge fabs that are spread all over the world and made by many companies that you haven't heard of, but also Intel.
However this was never about Intel manufacturing chips in Xianjing, it was about the long long tail of supply chain that goes into these ships from mines through to chemical supply companies up to industrial machinery supply and everything in between.
Intel doesn't have any fabs in China, the Dalian facility is for NAND and was sold to SK Hynix recently. Shanghai/Chengdu are assembly/test.
It's just Chinese politics, and a very large market. It was a huge mistake to use the term 'Xinjiang', one that other companies like Apple are careful to avoid.
Is there any critical non interchangeable raw material that goes into Intel chips for which CCP has exclusive global control?
Xinjiang has some silica mines [0] which may go into silicon production. Presumably, that is a critical material for Intel. Can it be sourced elsewhere? Is that the leverage the CCP has over Intel?
Silica is not an issue. Intel executives getting kidnapped(err arrested for illegal blah blah), local managers disappearing, sudden "corruption" investigations etc.
There are 2 choices, clear out everything and everyone associated with Intel out of PRC or comply.
Funny how China doing something are always in the future tense. Whereas the ones who have committed the atrocity of actually illegally detaining an executive by putting pressure on a friendly country is the USA.
So? A criminal country with the worst instances of human rights violations and violation of international law all across the world illegally detains the CFO of a company because of their country; and you expect that her country is not going to take action on that?
It wasn't an illegal detainment. The company was working with Iran. Oh and she lived in a mansion in Vancouver throughout the whole thing. I'm sure she had endured much hardship getting a free vacation for a couple years.
Illegally detaining an executive is not an "atrocity". Violation of international norms, perhaps, but not an atrocity. Atrocity takes a lot higher standard than that.
I would also ignore or mildly chuckle at any government that thinks they can force me to have an opinion. Ignore for small market, mildly chuckle at big market.
If they want me to color an island on a map the same color as another landmass, or make a statement about my extended supply chain, I will do so and not pretend like it's any different just because some of my friends happen to respect one country slightly more all because they repeated a creepy chant every day as children in grade school.
Intel apologized specifically for mentioning Xinjiang. This implies that there are no slave concentration camps in Xinjiang. Otherwise, there would be no need to apologize.
There are two dimensions to that revised statement. If it had not been accompanied by an apology, then it could be taken as clarification of a genuine position.
As it stands, it is a contradictory mish mash of public relations that suggests there are no slave concentration camps in Xinjiang while saying generally Intel is against slave labour.
A clarification of the Intel position is in order. More to the point, Intel should be asked whether it deems Xinjiang to have slave concentration camps. What made it explicitly specify Xinjiang as an example of slave labour? Does removing Xinjiang reference mean that Intel now believes there are no slave concentration camps?
Hence, the clarification question about Intel's position is in earnest. But, it was just a succinct form of all these follow up questions. Sorry if that was unclear.
Associated Press says those camps are closed and that was back in October.
It is entirely possible that the US Congress was just too late on their grandstanding, yet their addition to the US law requires companies to say in/accurate things anyway.
So which is true? A Congress operating on outdated information just because they have a laundry list of fairly inconsequential laws to pass for their constituents who also have outdated information, or the Associated Press reporting up to date things with their own limitations on gathering information in Xinjiang.
I don't think it matters, same for Intel who just is in a place to respond.
Apologizing is the way to maintain standing in China, whether the statement is accurate or inaccurate. The Chinese constitution is being leveraged in a clear way that explains the behavior of everyone that has to make a strange-to-us apology. Specifically, if you read it, is the part about treating China as inseparable and not doing anything that would undermine that idea. It allows for broad interpretations on every action on every facet of life. Think about it like a super-interstate commerce clause, but maintaining status in that society is not that confusing to me.
The corporation and the management have no actual opinion and I don't require they do. They're apathetic and respond to regulation. They responded, and then responded better. Everyone else now knows how to respond better, in order to avoid the PR issue.
If you think this fiasco requires them to make an opinion, for you, its not going to happen, and hopefully the above explains why.
> The corporation and the management have no actual opinion and I don't require they do.
You presumably want capable management as leadership of a corporation. The issue is whether Intel really needed to apologize.
Most chips are not manufactured in China. Foreign access to Chinese market is heavily restricted by CCP. There does not seem to be much to gain from apologizing for calling out slave concentration camps.
When considering this latest Xinjiang issue, as well as growing competition from Arm and the lack of a meaningful response from Intel, from a purely financial perspective, you can question the leadership of Intel.
If you are holding some Intel stock, it is probably time to revisit that position regardless of your views about corporations and ethics. Incompetence in public relations statements does not mean there is not general incompetence that can adversely affect the bottom line.
That's an interesting point, I think it comes down to nobody knowing what contractors in their extended supply chain do.
This also moves Intel's problem to their first shareholder letter. Basically they should have never said it if it didn't apply to them. Then they chose to apologize to maintain standing in China for who knows what reason.
Whats clear to me is that they realize it is basically inconsequential in the US and their other markets, while it is consequential in the China market. It's easy calculus. Sure some people want it to be consequential but nothing is going to happen, a few patriotic fellows are going to put them on the same mental list they have Lebron James on and you'll just hear about it at a party or in a bar a few times. That's the definition of inconsequential to me.
You need to factor in time horizons. Things can be inconsequential for a while and then become very consequential.
Yes, in the short term, there are consequences in China for Intel in terms of speaking out against slave concentration camps. Medium and long term, CCP will champion a national chip that will replace Intel. No amount of CCP praising or glossing over slave concentration camps will prevent this outcome for Intel.
So choosing to bend the knee for CCP will not net a gain in a longer time horizon. And with the rise of ARM, Intel is no longer the only chip on the block.
The Intel leadership may think things are inconsequential outside of China. But, this might push them to not consider alternative supply chains. With increasing trade wars, and the CCP looking to be very aggressive with trade policies as a foreign policy instrument, it is probably a good idea to divest from China supply chains.
Yet, Intel seems to really value their China supply chain. So it is reasonable to expect them to face the adverse consequences in the future. This can be very swift just like the sidelining of Jack Ma and AliBaba as well other Chinese tech giants.
In other words, just because you do not see the consequences now, it does not mean that there will not be heavy consequences later. You can have some basic human empathy for Uyghurs in slave concentration camps. Or you can evaluate the competence of Intel leadership in a cold manner. Either way, things seem to point to a sell order for Intel stock if you trade.
It is for it's suppliers and partners. Examples of this would be Intel supplying chips to Lenovo, who are based in Beijing and who may have some components sources from that region, or Intel's fabs sourcing Silicon or other manufacturing materials (or their suppliers) from that region.
Supply chains are broad and it's not hard to have goods that pass through or originate in those regions even if all your parts are produced outside that and you have no direct partnerships there.
Partners is a separate issue from suppliers. The letter was to suppliers. However, partners may have indeed caused "trouble" for Intel by threatening to source chips from somewhere else.
But as far as suppliers, and chips in particular, CCP has very little leverage. Most chips are manufactured in Taiwan [0].
That graph says nothing. It's just talking about revenue. TSMC obviously has the biggest slice of the cake, but they produce the highest volume of premium chips. Most of what the world consumes are not in fact premium chips.
Pie charts gone wrong. You think there's meaningful information in there, but there isn't.
Do you have data on the quantity of chips rather than overall revenue? You claim this figure is meaningless. In the absence of reliable data, we can make a reasonable assumption, perhaps flawed, that revenue is matched by quantity of chips. But, it is certainly not meaningless.
> we can make a reasonable assumption, perhaps flawed, that revenue is matched by quantity of chips
No, most institutions don't publish what their production capacity is. There is an article claiming that TSMC makes "92% of world's most sophisticated chips". Define most sophisticated. You can't just throw in revenue graphs and pretend they show anything of value, just because north america measures success solely in revenue and growth.
The burden of proof is not on me, it's for you to substantiate your claims.
EDIT: Interesting to see people bring in random graphs from CNBC. Things that would not even be considered investment advice and present it as scientific evidence without any sort of due diligence on their. Sad that this is the kind of discourse that we have to have.
Things are not automatically true, valid, or contextual just because a big media corporation published them.
Your claim is that revenue evidence is meaningless. The burden of proof is on you.
You are suggesting that the majority of low quality chips are manufactured outside of Taiwan. You have not defined your operational definitions for chip quality. You do not even have evidence on the quantity of chips.
In the absence of any data that would contradict this, we can reasonably assume revenue figures are a sensible proxy for quantity of chips.
The goal is that both partners (downstream) and suppliers (upstream) are aware that they should not be sourcing/supplying these regions, and that if Intel is made aware of it, they will have to enforce such embargos in both directions.
Not an english speaker, so is Is "slave" correctly used here or is more like a "metaphor"?, In my mind a slave is someone you own, you can sell or kill.
Someone you keep in prison is called different and people kept in prison for political reasons have also different label, religions/race imprisonment might also have a different label.
> Not an english speaker, so is Is "slave" correctly used here or is more like a "metaphor"?
"Slave labor" is a phrase used in English to express morally unacceptable working conditions where the workers have little to no power, as if they were slaves. It's commonly understood that those workers are not slaves in the legal sense.
It's atrocity propaganda exaggerate by useful idiots, even if out of genuine ignorance. The perpetuator of the original allegation, Zenz, used the label of "coerced labor", which goes through the euphemism treadmill to become forced labor by state department and now slave labor by the even less informed, because that's how propaganda snowballs.
Labour transfer programs in XJ, like elsewhere in PRC are employment programs. Yes there's pressure by recruiters to fill roster. Or it could be part of parole / work release programs. And there may be exploitation, but that's statistically inevitable for a social program that employs 10s of millions from every region of PRC over decades. Also consider these programs are typically well compensated compared to west due to economic disparity of developed and underdeveloped regions in PRC. And they're contracts with limited duration measured in months.
Analogue example is work program that recruits from rural town /rust belt with zero prospects and average income of 20k and paying them 45k to do manufacturing in a more well developed state for a year. Or apply that to work/release for an inmate incarcerated on low level drug charges. Some of these placements are exploitative because capitalism. In aggregate the programs alleviate poverty and promote development. That's the tier of exploitation being misconstrued as slave labour with the XJ propaganda push.
Not idiots, "useful idiots" who can be and are frequently intelligent. It's not meant to be disrespectful, but as a descriptor like WuMao. Who BTW only operates domestically, within PRC and not abroad. And even then WuMaos don't write analysis, they distract with platitudes.
>In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically used by the cause's leaders.
Wikipedia mentioning a thing and citing the same propaganda does not make it so. Forced labor in laogai sure. Claiming XJ is a parallel laogai program when it's part of Rural Labour Transfer Program is misinformation. It's a paid work program with contracted terms. It's far removed from Laogai slave labour on the spectrum of slave-voluntary work. It's also one of the interventions that aligns with poverty / development strategies around the world versus actual cultural genocide / security state shenanigans going on. But it gets disproportionately maligned regardless.
E: over comment limit, it's not splitting hairs, it's accepted jargon/term. But apologies if it offends, the same way calling/insinuating POVs from PRC perspectives are wumao. Which you have been doing throughout this entire thread. As for sources, I've dropped the relevant subject matter for those interested to research on their own. The fact people can comfortably allege XJ is slave labour based on western sources and have no passing familiarity with context of transfer programs in PRC for poverty alleviation reflects how staggering gap in understanding is.
This is unbelievable. When the dictatorship controls the only "truth" about its country--shutting down dissent internally; preventing access to outsiders...--calling any negative information as propaganda; effectively whitewashing history in the making, etc. It is understandable that there are gaps in knowledge by design, as it helps to control the narrative.
I'm still puzzled how/why some of these comments on here are down-voted; e.g. the comment pointing to wikipedia articles and asking for better discourse.
Idiots or useful idiots. You are splitting hairs. Do not call people idiots period. You should apologize for that.
You still have not specified your sources of facts. So it does not seem to be worthwhile to engage in a genuine constructive conversation on your points.
The tier of exploitation is forced relocation, analogous to PoW camps. PRC makes use of capitalism to develop and grow while relying on force (through coercion, intimidation, violence, discrimination...) for "efficiencies"--for the greater good.
We've seen this kind of thing many times before. Rule with an iron fist; if caught, deflect, lie, blame it on low-level leadership, corruption, or just statistics.
> capitalism to develop and grow while relying on force (through coercion, intimidation, violence, discrimination...) for "efficiencies"--for the greater good.
This is why the entire PoW/force labour accusation is entirely stupid.
Undereducated/underqualified Uyghurs with poor mandarin skills are frankly shit workers that's a massive hassle to exploit for economic efficiencies. There's a reason XPCC had a hard time developing XJ. On top of onerous security, movement, reeducation and other requirements, the amount of money poured into these labour transfer programs for Uyghur worker opportunities are much better spent on Han/other integrated minorities. It doesn't pass the most basic of smell test except by useful idiots who don't know the economics behind labour transfer programs, that again, affects 10s of millions from every province (45M across country in just 2000s). There are 100s of millions poor rural Chinese idle workers with prerequisite language skills that could fill theses roles easier and cheaper. XJ labour transfer is an expensive privilege - these programs are publicized by CCP loudly as wank for poverty alleviation, which is what they are considering the amount of subsidies required to rationalize giving XJ these programs in the first place. It takes extreme ignorance and brainwashing to misconstrue it as PoW slave camps for capitalism. Which is what you'll find on wikipedia citing propaganda sources that some people post like it's impartial while claiming anyone who disagrees is a wumao.
> In my mind a slave is someone you own, you can sell or kill.
It varies a lot place to place and era to era what exactly is a slave and what isn't. Servants? Serfs? Even in a single era and a single place, as soon as one of the laws changes, things are not the same. Like in China, after the Unification, Chin Han called his administers what Westerners call "servants" or "slaves". I think this is a Western thing. Really, a better translation would be they were his "perkins," a Chilean word that basically means "someone who does what someone else says." But it doesn't have a definition, don't think in terms of definitions, think in terms of the relationship between words. That's the thing, the West is big on titles, I suppose the East is to a degree, but it's really meaningless. I wonder what they call Emperor Augustus in Chinese, what else it means. Ultimately, it's not what your title is, it's what you can do. Same with slaves, the word is just a word, the question is what will you have to do.
EDIT: In general there actually are laws against killing them. Sparta declared war on the Helots about every year, because killing just like that, openly, for no reason, just raw murder, was just too gross. Just the level of cruelty. Even in the American South there were laws that said if a master just can't get a slave to submit, he's tried everything (I can't get an authoritative quote on this, what I'm giving you is the desert island version[1]), then in that case, the master can kill them. But I think it doesn't say kill, it's some other word. Of course, that's the law, the reality is different, the limit is far too low but there is a limit. Super basic stuff and difficult to prove, but for another example masters couldn't practice Satanism with their slaves, we're talking like egregiously egregious stuff. Which does occasionally happen.
[1] The desert island version of a text is what you remember without being able to search for it online, or review your notes, nothing. Like if it were you and I, dear reader, on a desert island, the Bible is what we remember, that's it.
This comment seems in earnest. So I will assume, as a non native English speaker, you have probably heard the expression "that I feel like a slave at work".
This is not what is meant by slave in this context. It is not a feeling. Modern slavery is a fact [0]. Xinjiang concentration camps count as modern slavery. Of course, China is not the only country concerned. But it does not mean that we should not point it out in China.
There are some comments that this should be described as something else - perhaps forced labor. Uyghurs in Xinjiang are deprived not only of their labor rights but also every other right from reproductive to cultural and everything in between.
Slaves essentially have no rights. Uyghurs essentially have no rights. So no, forced labor is not the right term.
The term slavery is used in the correct way. It is not only labor rights that are denied in Xinjiang but every other right. Uyghurs essentially have no rights. Slaves have no rights. Therefore, Uyghurs in Xinjiang can be considered slaves.
Modern slavery is a fact [0]. China is not the only country concerned. But it does not mean that it does not apply to China or that we are forbidden from using the term when describing Xinjiang.
The way I would define it is that if a person is told to do some job and they literally aren't allowed to quit and/or are physically disallowed from leaving the premises, then they're slaves.
There are also what are called "wage slaves" who can quit in theory but can't afford to.
Literally owning a person or having the right to kill them are kind of an extreme form of slavery. I think situations could be considered slavery even in situations where those don't apply.
There are some situations that are like slavery but they're kind of corner cases that society handles differently. Soldiers generally aren't allowed to quit in the middle of a war. H1B visa workers in the U.S. have more severe repercussions if they quit a job than ordinary workers; they can be kicked out of the country. I don't know what the legal status of forced labor in the U.S. prison system is, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of those situations are effectively slavery. The people who employ undocumented workers can use the threat of reporting the workers to the authorities as leverage to get them to do what they say and not complain.
> I don't know what the legal status of forced labor in the U.S. prison system is, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of those situations are effectively slavery.
Don't ever forget that the part of the US constitution banning slavery has an explicit carve-out for this.
I understand is evil, but in my language a different word/phrase would be used, like maybe deportation/labor camps/political prisoners. I would prefer something more clear, otherwise someone mentioned that "slave labor" could be used for a job where you are threated bad and you have no actual choice to quit.
...That is factually incorrect. In fact, conviction for a crime is the only Constitutionally valid circumstance under which one can be enslaved in the United States.
So there is, in fact, involuntary forced labor in the United States. It does also cause issues, as prison conscripted labor can undercut any semblance of normal rates for menial/unskilled labor.
That being said, the previous posters advising this does not negate the enormity of Chinese misconduct, or one's calling it out with similar domestic issues is not an effective or valid form of rhetorical dismissal. The drunk, as it were, is still right to call you out to hand over your keys after a few too many drinks.
That is such a disingenuous malevolent comment that i want to preserve it and the context in case you get downvoted off the screen.
"So essentially something that's considered perfectly normal in American prisons. Bit of a double standards, don't you think?"
by trasz
in response to
"They are rounded up, regardless of their crimes. 1M+ people have been put in a camp where they are raped, beaten, medically experimented on, re-educated and indoctrinated to praise the CCP, shipped to factories around the country to work without pay, if they escape their families are punished. While Uyghur men are in these camps, Han Chinese men move in with the families left behind and treat the women and children as slaves. They literally buy them. It’s disgusting. It’s evil. See this: https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/ohob7b/uyghur_wom..."
So your claim is that prisoners in USA have never been "raped, beaten, medically experimented on, re-educated and indoctrinated to praise the CCP, shipped to factories around the country to work without pay"? (I've skipped the obviously absurd part, although if you count the slavery...)
Essentially: try to distinguish between information about facts - which is largely true - and the narration being built around it.
Modern slavery is a fact [0]. Xinjiang is specifically mentioned. Wu Mao is also a fact [1]. Both sources are wikipedia. What is your preferred source of facts?
> So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
This is the very definition of a straw man argument.
Very few people actually cares about what really do happen in Xinjiang, hopefully this relatively balanced reporting by Associated Press can shed some light:
Most people would be unequivocally against slave concentration camps. Do not confuse lack of action with lack of caring.
Effective action may require collective action. But individually, most people care. Yet, collectively, they cannot seem to do anything meaningful. You are making a statement that is the definition of an ecological fallacy [0]
The article you pointed out is hardly balanced. The access of journalists is heavily restricted. Naturally, any information that comes out from a standard news outlet with government sanctioned offices like Associated Press will sound like government propaganda. CCP will not let AP have access to any information that counters the narrative of the propaganda.
For a different take on things, and an outlet that does journalism differently without official representation with CCP, have a look at this piece from VICE [1].
The "look at your own backyard first" is a common technique used by Wumao [0].
It is used to reduce the force of any criticism of CCP. Human rights are universal and know no national borders [1].
That being said, thanks for qualifying the often repeated statement in this thread about US prisons. Surely, more needs to be done. That does not mean we need to be silent about Xinjiang slave concentration camps.
We have satellite photos, eye witness testimony and even the Chinese government admits the facilities are there but has some nonsense about the people there choosing to be in a barbed wire facility with armed guards.
Are you really suggesting keeping criminals who have had a trial and been found guilty by a jury of their peers is at all the same as a genocidal racial based campaign to remove an ethnic minority?
I'm sorry, but your state media lied to you again: nobody is claiming those institutions don't exist. They do exist - and they are mostly similar to western youth correctional facilities. (Except in China you can't get imprisoned there simply because you wealthy parents wish so - differently from the US, where the "troubled teen camps" are a proper industry.)
Sure, every country on earth keeps their ethnic minorities in a barbed wire facility where they can't leave and are kept under watch by armed guards. Yes, very normal. Nothing to see here. Ignore the DOZENS of facilities with tens of thousands of inmates who have stories of forced sterilization.
Parent comment may not care. But just wanted to thank you for the link. Had just seen one documentary piece on VICE. I was not aware of these other pieces.
Good question. The two things that seem to work are:
(1) Provide correct information in a way that is more substantive and more respectful than the comment you're replying to;
and/or
(2) Chalk it up to the internet being wrong about everything and walk away (silently—not with a swipe).
As a side point, you'll usually end up at #2 anyhow, because #1 usually provokes more of the same, so after a certain number of iterations you'll find yourself in a tit-for-tat entanglement, which is greatly to be avoided.
The question is what is the optimal number of iterations. Probably it's 1. Maybe 2. Not 3. 4 is right out.
My comment is at the top of this thread. So naturally, I have made a genuine effort to reply to replies.
You constantly try to debase the conversation. Someone even reposted your comments to highlight how disingenuous your comments are [0]. Others have repeatedly pointed out how your comments have nothing to do with the current subject matter [1] or are simply regurgitating CCP talking points [2].
Clearly, engaging with your comments is not constructive. You are not interested in a genuine conversation. You attempt to deflate a potentially constructive conversation thread at every turn and trigger a flame war.
But it is a testament to Hacker News that by and large, the community has recognized your comments and efforts to derail the conversation for what they are.
No idea about Wumaos, in the west it might have been popularised by the Bible ("a beam in ones eye"). Still, pointing out that the accuser is doing it simply to deflect attention from much worse crimes they have committed seems universal.
Seems like some people insist on being loud even when it doesn't happen in China.
The entire mass internment propaganda drive was concocted on less media access to XJ than the what APNEWs article reporting of it's dismantling. China like most countries, are not US, they don't need to maintain forever prison industrial complexes. BTW the same western analysts that alleged mass internment in XJ also concluded that mass internment phase is over, with ~50k transferred to long term internment and masses back out with gen pop in an elevated security environment, but no longer interned. The persistent allegations now is that labour rural transfer programs that's been ongoing for 20+ years throughout the country is somehow coerced labour when there's no to weak evidence.
> So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
It would be very important to have some movement to avoid and boycott products made with slave labour from prisions, including the hundreds of thousands of slave labour from US prisions. This would be an important movement to end remaining slavery.
> So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
Maybe their position is that they have not established as a fact that there is slave labour in concentration camps in Xinjiang? Have you considered that as an alternative possibility?
From the article:
> The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced, debt bonded, prison, indentured, or slave labour throughout your extended supply chains."
That automatically covers Xinjiang is there is slave labour there, in additional to all other instances of slave labour, no? That sounds like a better wording than the original.
I could not agree with you more, it amazes me the mental gymnastics some will go through in the quest to convince themselves otherwise of something wholly obvious. Sure, you could take the CCP’s word for it (because their behavior is not at all suspicious and they have a great track record when it comes to human rights). And sure, to some that might hold a lot of weight. However, even if rumored, don’t you want to be the one that doesn’t support genocide regardless?
The even bigger tell is when the UN wanted to go into China to independently investigate, the CCP denied access. They don't want to be a team player in the global society/economy.
Intel has no motive to falsely allege forced labor use in China. In fact, Intel has every motive to ignore abuses so as not to alienate the CCP. So, your implication that Intel jumped the gun and made false accusations without proof lacks motive, at the very least.
The motivation was likely some compliance move with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act according to the TFA. There is no indication that Intel's initial wording was prompted by their own investigations in Xinjiang.
Clearly they believe (as do you) that specific mention of Xinjiang was not required for compliance. Is the theory that Intel intentionally added the word to make some moral or at least political point, at China's expense? I guess I don't buy that, because one of the upsides of being a ruthless corporation out only for profit is that you don't do things that risk profit.
"The year after she was arrested off the street, still in China, she was summoned to a police station and told that she needed to complete her training. "
if it's the same as prison rape in the US then what prison is she in? Further, prison rape is a crime.
"Her story is, tragically, not uncommon for members of the minority Uyghur religion, with Turkish roots, in President XI Jinping’s China. Since around 2016, they have been pulled off the street and sent to reeducation camps — where reports have surfaced about people being tortured, raped and even killed. They are sent there under the auspices of learning a trade and having their patriotism reinforced."
your attempt at equating this with the crime of prison rape in the US is reprehensible.
Interestingly enough, if something is bad in the US, it can also be bad elsewhere.
Even worse though, there are indications that this behavior is institutionally supported and desired in China. After all, if the local governors make rules to force non-Uyghur men to sleep in the bed of Uyghur women (even married ones) and offer forced sterilization otherwise, perhaps - just perhaps - you are peddling a false equivalence.
By the way, the latter meets the definition of genocide. In case you care.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. The parent is talking about rape and forced sterilization by people in positions of power in these camps. Your link is just talking about prison rape. There's no mention of forced sterilization. There is discussion of it talking about guards (4% of inmates are sexuality assaulted and <10% of those cases are by facility members) but the data is both old and low and the article talks about the US extending legal rights to inmates (2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act) whereas China's official claim is that there's nothing bad happening (they're just "reeducation campus"). No one is condoning prison rape in the US, especially prison rape by facility members. But these are drastically different things.
I don't know how someone can compare these things with a straight face.
This is just whataboutism. You can care about both these issues, it's allowed.
You've been breaking the HN guidelines egregiously with this sort of post. We ban accounts that do that. Please see these other explanations I just posted, and please don't do any more of this, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are.
So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
You read correctly. That is exactly their position.
Not that they are fans of slave labour or of what is happening to the Uyghur people, per se. Just that in the scheme of things - as long the sales channels remain open and unimpeded - they consider it perfectly acceptable to do business in countries where genocide is happening right there, in plain view, for all to see. And will even go so far as to obsequiously apologize to the authorities in these countries for showing event the slightest hint of a suggestion that they felt otherwise.
Very much like back in ... certain countries at certain times that we're not supposed to make comparisons to.
If slavery, segregation, religious prosecution, mass killings and forced sterilizations took place in the West at some point, does it make those things OK for the remainder of humanity’s history?
No one was perfect at all times from day 1, but we should try to hold our partners, and by implication ourselves, to higher standards now that we have agreed to put the aforementioned actions at the extreme left side of the bad-to-good scale.
Wait and see. Maybe they just need to get their version of the Holocaust to get it out of their system. Deep down, they are good people doing horrific things. So, we just need to let them catch up while they repeat history's horrific acts with impunity.
It’s unclear whether without strong worldwide recognition and condemnation it will ever be out of the system, and I’m afraid what made Holocaust to be recognized and condemned is that those who did it started and lost a violent war against other nations.
It's fascinating how one can actually believe Intel is manufacturing stuff using "slave labour in concentration camps" purely because his state propaganda tells them so.
I'd guess they are comparable, but one difference is that US state propaganda is spread around the whole world, while the Chinese one stays in China.
The mere fact that Americans believe Chinese somehow cannot criticize their country's flaws - despite how obviously idiotic this belief would be - shows that.
(Or the belief that China is somehow trying to eradicate Winnie the Pooh, despite Chinese Disneyworld being a thing.)
Indeed - one of them can be, at least in theory, controlled by society. That’s what’s happening in China. The other is where corporations essentially own the state, as is the case in US.
They aren’t lying. It’s hair that there is similar amount of people with similar experiences in, say, American prisons. Propaganda is how you somehow pretend those are different.
OK, so as an example, based on your logic here, Muslim detention camps ("re-education centers") with forced abortions and sterilizations are either lies and propaganda OR they rise to the same level of cruelty as incarcerations and systemic racism in US? Having lived through systematic executions and genocide personally, believe me when I say there is a huge difference. I'm not entirely sure if you are making a purely misguided intellectual argument here or, truly, have an ulterior motive in making these assertions. In any case, and for what it's worth to you or anyone else bothering to read these comments and reactions, your comparisons are outside the realm of reality.
>Why would Intel not take a position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps if presumably most of the supply chain does not depend on it? Would it be that much "trouble"?
Why would they? Corporations have two choices now. Bend the knee and stay in the good graces of a government that controls access to the largest consumer market in the world, or take a moral stance and win meaningless social brownie points. There's not even a decision to be made.
CCP may arguably control the world's largest consumer market. That is debatable when considering the European Union as a single market or even India. Considering either consumption level or sheer number of consumers, it is not entirely clear that China is the world's largest consumer market.
But, let's presume that it is. CCP simply does not allow genuine access to sell goods or services. There is a reason why Google and Facebook and so many other dominant companies are practically non existent in China.
So the benefit of access to a supposed largest consumer market that is heavily restricted to foreigners seems largely inconsequential. Is this a wrong interpretation?
How much longer will it be accessible for Intel and Microsoft though? CCP does not think twice about pulling the rug on local tech giants [0]. Why would it hesitate for Intel and Microsoft? It seems like only a matter of time.
As far as chips in particular, CCP is pushing hard to make chips locally [1]. So again, just a matter of time before Intel gets replaced in China.
Is the Intel leadership being incredibly short-sighted besides of course being devoid of ethical common sense?
To me it sounds less morally consistent. It says they are against slavery on the paper but will not do anything concrete to avoid profiting from slave labour in practice.
> The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced, debt bonded, prison, indentured, or slave labour throughout your extended supply chains."
> “Intel’s cowardice is yet another predictable consequence of economic reliance on China,” Rubio said in a statement on Monday. “Instead of humiliating apologies and self-censorship, companies should move their supply chains to countries that do not use slave labour or commit genocide.”
So is it known whether any companies in Intel's supply chain uses US prison labor? Certainly Intel operates in a state which uses prison labor to fight its escalating wildfire issues, and is in that sense a beneficiary of prison labor.
I don't mean to create a the appearance of a false equivalence; these are different situations. But if the effect of the rewrite is to call out the broader classes of transgression rather than single out a specific instance, premised on the idea that human rights should in fact be universal and some standards must be consistently upheld everywhere ... then surely we must look at the ongoing practices in our own country.
The premise of this article is that Intel was intimidated out of mentioning Xinjiang and instead opted to list categories of practices to be excluded from its supply chain.
Why is it not appropriate to discuss the ways Intel and other US companies are already beneficiaries of some of those practices?
The revised letter is a good instruction manual on how to maintain standing in both societies, they just should have thought of it initially. Thanks for taking the L, InteL.
We were happy to embrace the philosophy of sociopathic capitalist companies when it meant getting our cheap electronics built in factories with suicide nets. Now that it means giant companies care more about China's opinion than ours we want to posture about loyalty and moral responsibility.
I don't recall anyone but the investor class being happy to embrace offshoring. But it took the economist and investor class the longest to realize the drawbacks that others knew instinctively. And now you use "we" to describe their opinion and lobbying?
Every person who walks into a Walmart or orders from Amazon is happy to embrace off-shoring. Every single one of those products has a label declaring where it was made. We made that decision over and over.
Does every retired boomer living quite well off their 401K retirement plan represent a member of 'the investor class'? How many would be willing to accept a cutback in dividend payouts if it meant corporations would instead invest that money in rebuilding manufacturing in the United States?
> Does every retired boomer living quite well off their 401K retirement plan represent a member of 'the investor class'?
That is an academic argument at best. Just because someone buys a Vanguard index fund with several thousand companies in it does not imply they enthusiastically approve of everything those several thousand companies are doing. This is one reason (among many) why we have laws and regulations. It is simply not practical for you and I as individuals to conduct in-depth research into each and every thing we buy.
The investor class being those that have significant political influence. I sure don't recall any large boomer political movements demanding more offshoring. In fact, a politician promising the exact opposite was quite popular.
But because they reap some minor, incidental payoff from a policy they did not choose, you're going to claim that means they were in favor of it??
People want money, in my experience. Cut their money flow and they get upset. Any effort to rebuild manufacturing in the USA will require corporations - major blue-chip outfits that pension funds invest heavily in - to spend billions of dollars building new factories and hiring employees at wages a good deal higher than what it costs in mainland China, Indonesia, Mexico, etc. This will cut dividend payouts to pension funds. Boomers riding their 401Ks off into the cruise ship sunset will get upset about that I imagine.
You imagine incorrectly - most Americans believe outsourcing hurts the economy:
On the one hand, the polls largely confirm that most Americans are mercantilists at heart. The Ipsos poll shows that 69% of Americans believe that outsourcing hurts the country -- and only 17% think it helps the economy. --https://foreignpolicy.com/2004/06/09/public-opinion-about-of...
I don't understand where you get your certainty from. I've hardly ever seen offshoring referred to positively, the attitudes towards globalization itself are lukewarm at best, politicians ride into office on rhetoric of tariffs and bringing back jobs, but you just know, because some economists claimed stock yields would be 30% lower in the short-term if the US doesn't massively export its hard-won technological and manufacturing know-how, that all this outsourcing was driven by popular sentiment, and that people will revolt against any attempts to stop or reverse it? Based on what? Widespread pro-outsourcing protests and grassroots activism?
As for rebuilding manufacturing - it wouldn't need to be rebuilt if it hadn't been exported in the first place. What kind of argument is that? "We did something unpopular, but undoing it would be painful, and pain is unpopular, therefore what we did was popular"?
>I don't recall anyone but the investor class being happy to embrace offshoring.
Maybe not quite "happy to embrace" people of a certain political persuasion were doing a heck of a lot to not get in the way of it because eliminating those jobs reduced the wealth of people who opposed them and made those people more receptive to what they were peddling.
To be fair, this was a bipartisan lie we were all sold in the 1990's. Democrats and Republicans alike convinced Americans that globalization would result in everyone having better jobs in what is now known as the "creative class". As a country we bought this hook, line, and sinker and are still paying the price, and likely will be for quite some time.
Suicide nets were a result of western over reaction to relative few cases of suicides which happened at lower rates at factories than the general public. Don't get me wrong, the actions of the CCP in Xinjiang are horrific, but we need not embellish.
Did you miss "which happened at lower rates at factories than the general public"? Or do you just want to imply that people who point this out think that suicide doesn't matter?
Or maybe we're generally okay with these companies exploiting the Chinese to our benefit, but not with China exploiting the resulting situation to theirs.
Say what you want about China, but their ability to weaponize capitalism and make multi-billion dollar companies cower and self-censor in ways they would never do for Western governments is remarkable.
"When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract".
In China the government tells companies what to do in the furtherance of state aims. In America and elsewhere companies tell government what to do in furtherance of corporate aims. For instance the overthrow of governments on behalf of banana companies and oil companies. What we see now is China exerting influence and power and we aren’t accustomed to having another country do this toward our companies/interests.
This is a rather skewed and incorrect view of history. In America and elsewhere companies do not dictate policy. They can help edge it in a direction they want, but the large swings of policy are out of their control. More so you're generalizing America to the entire west and excluding other Asian countries like Japan.
Clearly what I wrote was a broad over simplification but I think the essence is roughly correct. As it stands now companies in China are definitely subservient to the state. The communist party there is definitely in the driver seat. In America corporate interests dominate policy making. U.S. foreign policy has definitely been bent to serve corporate interests and domestic policy in many areas are enacted to serve corporate interests. There are many instances of corporations mostly dictating policy in the U.S. I don’t claim all policy is at the behest of corporations.
Roughly speaking one can view the difference between China and the U.S. as follows. In China corporations serve CCCP interests and in the U.S. government serves corporate (highest bidder) interests.
I should not have said “other countries” in my original post. There are, currently, no other countries than China and the U.S. in terms of scale and influence.
> I should not have said “other countries” in my original post. There are, currently, no other countries than China and the U.S. in terms of scale and influence.
One might perhaps reasonably compare the EU, which I would suggest is somewhere between the US and China on the where the control lies.
Intel shareholders can now vote to ensure Intel takes a stand against China, if they choose. But it seems those individuals do not want that. So Intel is doing what it is supposed to do -- operate in accordance with wishes of the shareholders.
Counterpoint: the human beings that run Intel are not "supposed to" do everything possible to make their shareholder more money, regardless of the cost. I accept that they're going to do that, but there's nothing forcing them to, there's just a general cultural acceptance of greed.
No one is saying that. They do what the shareholders want because that's who they legally work for. Shareholders can say screw China, take a stand and they will. They can't unilaterally say screw the shareholders we're going in this direction.
A company is a group of people coming together for a purpose. Management can't destory the group in pursuit of their own values. A ship's captain can't risk the ship because of their own values.
They haven't even asked what the shareholders want. They don't think they need to, because they believe that everyone will naturally share their belief that money is their highest priority.
Management doesn't ask shareholders for approval on every decision.
They have a duty to act in the best interest of the shareholder. Generally that means not having reduced revenue. This is what most people accept. If shareholders want them to do something different they can let them know.
> Generally that means not having reduced revenue.
I think this is the fundamental disagreement we have, and it's probably too big of a conversation for a comment thread. In my philosophy of determining "best interest", revenue is an important consideration, but not the only one and not the most important one. There is certainly no legal duty to increase revenue or stock price or anything like that.
Shareholders haven't resolved that Intel must or must not use slave labour.
And a court isn't going to second-guess the management if they judge the cost savings of using slave labour don't outweigh the potential for reputational damage.
I would argue that 'shareholders' aren't able to influence these decisions at multi-national mega corporations, because many don't even know they are shareholders. Think about Joe Blow from the US. He has a managed 401k or some such investment. He has no idea the 'low-risk' fund offered through Edward Jones invests in Intel or Google or whoever. He has no idea he plays a part in this.
I would argue that 'shareholders' aren't able to influence these decisions at multi-national mega corporations
There's such a thing as activist investors, and they seem to be gaining influence lately. From what I read in the newspaper, they're behind a lot of the changes that are starting to happen at certain multi-national oil companies.
A flaw in the system to be sure. As a former INTC owner, I dumped my stake a while ago.
I think there should be far more shareholder involvement in general. We are far too acquiescent as a group.
If you polled every direct and indirect INTC holder (you may be one, unknowingly) about slavery and concentration camps, you’d walk away with a near 100% mandate for taking all measures against it.
> Intel shareholders can now vote to ensure Intel takes a stand against China, if they choose. But it seems those individuals do not want that.
Too early to conclude this. These tensions present not only a reputational risk for Intel, but financial ones as well, particularly if tensions escalate. Managers might not care, but there is precedence for shareholders taking a longer view [1].
I think the shareholders SHOULD take a stand, at Intel, Disney and other companies. The point I was making was that the power is in their hands, not management.
Intel is chopped up into tens of millions of tiny slices, and everyone with any form of retirement savings has a handful through some sort of fund.
Generally these people barely know they're shareholders, they receive none of the paperwork needed to vote at the AGM, they have a slice several orders of magnitude too small to exert any influence, and they have no way of identifying or contacting other shareholders to take any sort of coordinated action.
Anyone who expects X to be done by shareholders is going to be disappointed.
Which again goes to my point. People who care about Intel taking a stand against China should actually buy shares from the existing investors and make them.
If no one wants to do that then what is all these kvetch about "capitalism" and "greed" corrupting companies and our values when it is the people who do not care. Certainly not enough to pay up for the shares.
in my case I was waiting for disgruntled shareholders to sell because an aggregate stance was not taken by management or other shareholders, and then when sold it goes to people more or less apathetic.
in your case you want people to buy the shares at any price but likely a premium, in order to exercise a goal, which I frankly think is absurd.
so guess the market has priced everything in well enough, as an aggregate opinion on its own.
If the American consumers of Intel chips -- the people and government actors -- are unhappy with Intel's stance then they can also not buy their chips. This is basically what the Chinese are doing (without owning shares). Now granted the Chinese people have little say in it but the government is ostencibly acting on their behalf. Even if China was a democractic country and the CCP could not ban Intel outright then the government or the people could say that they would not buy Intel chips.
So if Americans did the same to uphold their own belifes then Intel would suffer here and that would reduce the stock price, which would make it easier for people who want to take them to take the progressive position to buy the stock and force them to reverse their position.
The key take away is that there is no scenario in which both sides actuall care about the issue and Intel stock doesn't drop.
Since it doesn't it means that Americans do not care about it as much as the Chinese, or do not know how to express their displeasure :)
I would fundamentally disagree with the idea that you don't "actually care" about an issue if you're not boycotting people over it. Why can't I genuinely care about Intel doing the right thing here without building a blacklist of Intel-backed AWS instance types I won't use?
I meant it in the sense it is used in economics not in the colloquial sense.
If A cares enough about an issue and is willing to deal with the consequences and B does not then A wins and B loses.
Everyons is willing to commit something for a cause they care about. It could be as little as taking time to convince others by writing an article or a tweet, or as much as being able to commit violence for it and deal with the consequences.
One aspect of life, from negotiations to geopolitics to convince your opponent that A) you would be willing to pay a higher price than they are for your position B) you CAN pay that price.
In case of Intel v China, CCP has something to lose by banning Intel but they've demonstrated or at least convinced them and most other companies that they're willing to pay that price and CAN pay it (by the virtue of being the CCP and having absolute authority). A nation with less resources may not be able to convince a mega corp in order to get concessions.
So in this case if Americans care more about this issue they have to convince the Chinese that they're willing AND able to pay a higher price than they are.
Collective action problems are not solved through capitalism. Unfortunately, Western countries are gripped by misguided reactive individualism right now and governments are very hamstrung.
And this happens when the Chinese economy is still smaller than the US along with their lack of mastery in certain state-of-the-art semiconductor and aerospace tech. When the Chinese economy and tech hopefully match the US, the pressure gonna be enormous. Can't wait to see that day, my newsfeed will be so exciting.
Quote Investigator says that Major George Racey Jordan was the source of this wording in 1955, but he attributed it to Lenin. In 1931, however, S. Dmitrijewski wrote something similar (while talking about Maxim Litvinov):
> In the autumn of 1905 he founded, together with Krassin, the newspaper New Life; the necessary money being given by millionaires, who thereby helped weave the rope from which many of them should hang later on.
Intel wouldn’t massage the wording of their shareholder report to avoid criticism from the American public? I’m skeptical. They almost certainly have review processes designed to anticipate and prevent that from happening in the first place.
Its pretty clear what happened, Intel doesn't have an aggregate stance on anything, US legal saw the new US federal law regarding Xinjiang and wanted it included in US securities regulatory risk statements and also needed that in circulars. That happened, then reality set in that there are consequences - something lawmakers are shielded from - and at that point Intel took a look at the circumstance holistically and reworded it.
Companies are going to have to hire geopolitical experts to play cross cultural word games now that they are being saddled with it the consequences.
My previous comment got flagged, so I'll rephrase in a way that's less sarcastic.
Intel is doing the exact same thing to help Xinjiang as the government which is absolutely nothing. Yet somehow anti-capitalists will only focus on the former. Governments do tend to virtue signal more, but that's because they don't face any negative repercussions for doing so.
I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Are you blaming capitalism for the moral failures of a communist regime?
Maybe you're just suggesting capitalism isn't capable of "solving" the wrongdoings of communism? If so I would agree. A society that accepts the evils of communism is a difficult thing to solve externally.
what he is saying is that chinese gov adopted capitalism but state is actually controlling it them - semi indirectly.
And they are big enough to be able to influence other big countries and foreign corporations to the point that they are now setting directions of where things are going.
Case and point Holywood and self censorship in movies to pander to chinese market
They are not saying comunism is good or bad, just stating reality of what is happening
The Chinese gov't adopted capitalism? I'm not sure I can believe that anyone believes that, much less agree with it.
This is a very direct example of a communist government controlling the messaging of a company, which is antithetical to capitalism.
As I understand it, this is happening because Chinese corporations are coerced by the communist regime such that Intel would lose business if they didn't follow the rules coming thru their Chinese partner corporations. Intel is still very much capable of freely choosing to obey those demands or not, which makes them capitalists, but the Chinese corporations being coerced into doing PR for the CCP is not capitalism.
> I'm not sure I can believe that anyone believes that, much less agree with it.
You can believe in whatever you like, it doesn't change the reality and facts.
Its not my opinion, china is a capitalist country run by communist (with Xi totalitarian) government.
The companies adhere to market laws/regulations and operate like any other capitalist western corporations.
Of note is the fact that as corporation gets to certain size their board must hire certain number of party official who will oversee the business operations.
Those people ensure the company is heading in the broad direction set by the party. If they dont, party will bring out the knives and it doesnt matter if you are jack ma or not.
Yes, their party has communist in its name and socially they portray (Authoritarian!-)Communist ideals. But calling their economy communist is really not the whole truth.
It's closer to a highly regulated semi-free market like Singapore, many European countries etc.
China is interesting in that they seem to take a more data-orientated decision making process when it comes to determining areas where free-market like behaviors would increase efficiency while keeping strategic capabilities under public funding (despite the efficiency losses).
I think most other governments manage this balance poorly, in recent decades mostly tending to over-privatize things like utilities and infrastructure.
If China manages to continue on it's path of market regulation and paying attention to health of competition etc (it's recent work on giving the SAMR teeth) they are going to be in a very strong position in the coming decades while others play catchup after the privatisation overcorrection.
People seem to forget that free markets -require- strong regulation. The tending towards deregulation in US markets has lead to a serious degradation of market competitiveness and thus freedom.
My hope is the success of China will drive Western economies to do better so that we can say that democracy is at least as good as autocracy but preferably better. But to do that we need to stop throwing stones from glass houses and actually get down to the business of matching them.
> in recent decades mostly tending to over-privatize things like utilities and infrastructure
That's exactly what bothers me about our western democracies, I fail to see why critical things like education, medicine, food and infrastructure(including internet-access) should be privatized. These things should belong to the people. Private companies can feel free to produce and sell other things, but they should, in my opinion, keep their hands from certain things.
> they are going to be in a very strong position in the coming decades
No doubt. What I currently wonder, is how afraid of this I should be. I'm not from the US so I don't really get emotional when thinking about the US getting weaker, compared to China. And although the US do things I find to be absolutely not okay, China seems even less compatible with my values.
> People seem to forget that free markets -require- strong regulation
Yes!
> But to do that we need to stop throwing stones from glass houses and actually get down to the business of matching them.
Totally. All I hear currently are politicians and other high-profile people constantly whining about China, while simultaneously manufacturing everything over there and profiting from their cheap labour. That's also something I find comical about the US - Publicy they denounce China, are constantly fighting in a trade war with each other. But so many things are then imported from China, just think about what Silicon Valley would do if China decides to keep their resources for themselves, or to just block the US.
Of course China would probably also have troubes, if the US would then in turn block them. But all I am trying to say is, that I hate the hypocrisy of this so called trade-war.
And now, to try to prove that I am not a shill for either side,
Tiananmen Square was a tragedy, what's happening with Hong Kong and Taiwan is a bit depressing, Xi Jinping and Winnie Pooh look very similar and what they do to Uyghurs is evil.
The US should face more consequences for their oil-wars which they label as "bringing freedom and democracy", patriot act and guantanamo bay are sickening, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange should be freed and given awards, your political "two-party" system is very outdated and overall the US has a really over-blown ego for all the issues it has. Healthcare, social security, wealth-gaps etc.
Maybe this was a bit unnecessary, but I notice that you can't say anything not 100% Anti-China without raising suspicion of being a state-sponsored troll or whatever. Maybe I could be labeled as a russian troll, but believe me, I could rant about their government as well.
Before I forget, last disclaimer: I am mostly criticizing these countries governments and elites, I have 0 issues with ordinary american or chinese citizens as a whole.
Which parts of the Chinese economy are not subject to a complete hostile takeover from their government, including but not limited to disappearing the companies leaders?
Just because state officials aren't directly managing day to day operations does not mean that company isn't owned by the state, because in China, that company is always owned by the state.
What is this nuance you seem to be referencing but not explaining?
> The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced, debt bonded, prison, indentured, or slave labour throughout your extended supply chains."
Companies receiving US government subsidies should manufacture finished goods domestically (or with its allies where not otherwise possible). Especially companies of strategic national interest.
Intel wants a multi-billion dollar grant/bailout from Uncle Sam. Make onshoring of manufacturing a condition of receiving such funds.
> Expecting moral courage from a big corporation is probably an exercise in inevitable disappointment though.
I agree about the fact that it is. But why do we accept that? Corporations are made up of people. We certainly do expect people – even groups of people – to exhibit moral courage. Of course, they do sometimes disappoint us, but the expectations remain reasonable in a good society.
>I agree about the fact that it is. But why do we accept that?
Diffusion of liability. It's basically the whole point of a corporation. If you break evil acts down into small unrecognizable chunks that can be turned into a job description and hired for, you're able to run what would otherwise be a detestable business to any single individual person.
My guess is it's easy to "spread" guilt around, so that everyone feels like it's out of their hands and they're not entirely responsible for the facts.
Doesn't work with crimes, for instance. Or with poor performance of the company – the shareholders sure won't throw up their hands and say "oh well, we can't figure out why we're not seeing any returns, so we'll just let it slide".
Corporations are made up of a large number of cross-pressured people. It’s not even a purely economic problem for Intel - if they take a hard line on Xinjiang, how many of their Chinese staff will go to prison?
What I find most dangerous about the United States bending to the will of China via their corporations is that it's affecting our story telling. The stories we tell define how we remember history, who our heroes are and what we think is worth fighting for. In 2012 the script of Red Dawn (a remake) was changed so that it was the North Koreans invading the US rather than the Chinese. This was done to avoid provoking the ire of the Chinese market, a critically important market for our film industry, much like it's a critically important market for Intel. This trend has continued and worsened.
You'll notice there are no courageous well known film makers tackling the humanitarian abuses in China. It's a career killer.
And yet the most popular film in China in 2021 is The Battle at Lake Changjin which depicts the Chinese fighting American soldiers and winning. It's also the highest grossing film in Chinese history and the second highest grossing film world-wide in 2021. It's also the highest grossing non-english film of 2021.
America has lost the narrative and the Chinese have gained it without question. Our free market economy and desire for continued access to the Chinese market is destroying our freedom of expression and has left what used to be a community of courageous filmmakers shining light in important issues cowering in a corner.
People are tribalistic and end of the day whether you like it or not, the fact is that hundreds of millions of people (vast majority) are happy to live under ccp, just as {insert number} are happy to live under {insert country}.
We can try to convince ourselves this isn't the case, but I don't exactly see progressive programmers giving up their massive Big Tech salaries as protest. No, they're happy to support whatever corporate campaign sounds good to them while ignoring that the machines they build on are built with slave labor, or that their company willingly censors and bends the knee with countries where LGBT rights don't exist and women can't go out on their own. To me, it is the same kind of thing as the Chinese situation. People will do all sorts of stunts for their team, and never take an L for an external actor because why should they?
The best thing you can do is sit back and watch everyone argue (the best show that's live 24/7), while you enjoy a beer. Best case scenario you sell both sides something that they enjoy, so that you can enjoy your life.
A few years ago, I would recommend anyone (in the US) who had the opportunity to visit China do so. It's an eye-opening experience seeing the comfortable middle-class lifestyle in China for yourself (and of course the general cultural differences), meanwhile being aware of the abuses perpetrated behind the scenes. Provides a different perspective on the narrative about China you read about in the west. Not saying that narrative is wrong, necessarily, but neither is it the entire story, and the entire story sheds light on the story of the west in return.
The reason US isn't doing that is because currently everyone in the west is essentially using China to build stuff that's too toxic or dangerous to build here. It would cost a fortune to produce plastics and other cheap things in the west with regulations and labor laws. We also know the harms of industrialization having gone through it in the past, so offshore it. The west sends it off to the lowest bidder (China), and leave them to deal with the repercussions.
Similar to how the British Empire introduced opium to the Chinese in the 1800s to extract silver and trade, the US/West is taking moral Ls to just use the Chinese once again. In turn, the Chinese do their version of this in S. China Sea and Africa.
If played right, there's a possibility of making the opposing side implode, so its no surprise all sides engage in the game. Supply chain issues, wars, pandemics - these suck but they're nothing new to human history.
Ignore the noise you hear on twitter, and elsewhere. Very similar to work settings, where the public channels are all fabulous and cheery to keep the workers going but the cold, tough decisions are made in private channels or offline.
Also that money is good, and China is the world's largest market. It's extremely ironic that China has managed to leverage capitalist interests against the US.
My wife is Chinese, and my son is half-Chinese, born in the USA. I want my son to grow up feeling American, not like an outsider. I don't want movies depicting China invading the USA, teaching his young and impressionable classmates that "Asian = evil invader". I don't want guys that look like him getting gunned down on TV by guys that look like Chris Hemsworth. As you said, the stories we tell shape our national psyche.
I agree the jingoistic CCP-controlled Chinese media does not depict Americans or whites with respect and tact. That's a problem. But it doesn't make it OK for the American media to do the same.
At the very end of this sentiment is the fact that all movies depicting invasion should only be made if it's Alien invasion. In that way, no one's sentiment would be hurt and no one would be portrayed evil. At some point you have to ask yourself, do you want to remember history, it's atrocities, invasions, war-crimes etc and learn from it or do you want to forget all of that and be happy always?
There's huge a difference between a WW2 documentary accurately depicting the axis and allies, and the US films of the 1980's that were all anti middle-eastern / north african propaganda of wars that never happened.
I believe the comment you are replying to is addressing the latter.
"Any kid can conquer Libya just give him a fighter plane." - Dead Kennedys, "Rambozo the Clown"
I think that the point I'm trying to make is a bit different. If you do make a movie that's not a documentary and follows the traditional recipe of good vs evil, then there must be some evil that has to be portrayed. You make movies about "Mafia", then it might be the Italians, you make movies about "Cartels", might be Mexicans, make movies about "Jihadists", Afghans and so on.
At some point, a realization and acceptance that yeah, something along the lines of what's being shown happened but it's probably a bit spiced up cause it's a movie is needed. Either that or my original point i.e. make movies about Aliens exclusively. (Until their existence is proven anyways).
I agree many movies are offensive to one group or another, but maybe that means we should be more careful of offending people instead of less. Other common bad-guy groups like Muslims and Russians probably don't like being used as villains in movies; their voices just go unheard because they don't have the economic clout that the Chinese do.
And every group of "bad guys" is a little different. The enemy governments of Nazis, Japanese, Soviets, and British Imperialists are gone, those conflicts are over, and those countries are now American allies; the mafia and cartel movies tend to glorify those lifestyles; the European bad guys never faced as much racism in the USA as the Asian ones; etc.
I don't want to be the fun police... But the USA (unlike most countries) advertised itself as a multiracial immigrant country in the past 50 years, and a lot of multiracial immigrants signed on, so I guess we should be tasteful when making movies about shooting their relatives.
In that case I would argue that one shouldn't use North Koreans either. Though I honestly do feel this way. Sci-fi and fantasy give you this escape mechanism where you can talk about these issues without making it about race (well at least race in humans). We know Ender's Game and Starship Troopers are Cold War era books about Russians without them saying Russians or depicting them. There's a requisite maturity needed to read between the lines that hopefully one is able to distinguish between countries and races, despite correlations, by that point.
Your son or his children might actually have to decide what side to be on eventually. IMO the US will go to war with China outside of economic and cyber warfare we have going on already.
> I agree the jingoistic CCP-controlled Chinese media does not depict Americans or whites with respect and tact. That's a problem. But it doesn't make it OK for the American media to do the same.
The problem is that it's a zero sum game and who wins is just as important as moral correctness. If China is able to turn the narrative against the US and enable authoritarian regimes and censor US companies and tech, what does it matter if we're the "good guys"? If we lose a war of culture, will our children see ourselves as doing the "right thing"? History books are are written by the winners, after all.
Contemporary Chinese ideas would see your point of view as weak, just to put that in perspective.
International relations is a dirty world and the power struggle is real.
What you say is understandable, for your son and family, but under no circumstances should it be used as a justification of or argument in favor of self-censorship of free expression against an honestly repulsive state power in media and elsewhere. Movies have been made for decades with all kinds of nations and their agents being portrayed as the "bad guys", and without hysterias about violent demonization of regular people in real life from these countries coming true. Why should China be an exception?
(1) Hopefully part of raising your son to feel American involves instilling a sense of "Americanness" that is orthogonal to one's racial identity. And conversely, hopefully he could distinguish between "Chinese people in general" and "soldiers of the chinese communist party". Not that I'm defending cheesy, overly simplistic good-guys-vs-bad-guys type media, but I hope the objection is about something more than just skin deep for you.
(2) There is certainly a middle ground between avoiding cliche bad-guy-china-vs-good-guy-america and, say, Intel removing any references to Xinjiang from its shareholder report. Or all of Hollywood carrying water for the CCP, perhaps most humorously (in a depressing way) illustrated in how they will edit movies to display the south china sea / other disputed territories in precisely the way China wants
The same companies have no problem making 100s of Nazi movies or Japan Pearl Harbor movies. Yet they are afraid to touch any Chinese topic. That is the problem.
That's fine but China's ultimately shooting themselves in the foot. "If they're not talking about you to your face, they're talking twice as much behind your back". No one is vacationing to China, no one is immigrating to China, no one willingly invests in China when alternatives are present. They're only going to prosper until they can no longer bully the world around economically and then they'll be post-Soviet Russia 2.0.
No one is vacationing to China? Some Americans who might have picked China in the past are no longer vacationing to China. Massive amounts of people of Chinese descent still vacation to China.
The difference between them and Soviet Russia is people. There are a billion and a half Chinese people. There was less than 300 million people in Soviet Russia. You don't need tourism or immigration when you have a billion+ people with now a healthy middle class.
Indias middle class makes up a much smaller percent of their population when compared to China. They will likely have similar influence if they continue to expand their middle class, as China spent the last 20 years doing.
You'd be missing out if you don't. China is huge and it is far more than the injustices the media always likes to portray it as. Yeah I'm mostly on the side of the media but you have to consider that China is a complex country that exploded and grew into the technological super power it is today at a speed and rate no other civilization has achieved in the history of human kind.
This sounds like how people talked about Trump in 2016: assuming that everyone else can see what you see while ignoring the animosity the US earned by throwing its weight around. Some countries, maybe with less societal concern for individual rights, might see it as beneficial to their bargaining position to have a little competition in the superpower space.
Wow, I had no idea about that movie. The trailer and its popularity really makes it clear they are mentally preparing their population for war with the US in a big way.
They're very advanced in that effort. Their relationship with US media is deep, and the messaging US audiences see and hear is very soft on China and the CCP. Where is the Hollywood movie that criticizes their behavior at all? I can think of none.
Xi has great ambitions outside China, whereas our attentions have turned inward. With us seeing the adversary as being within our own ranks, he has a distracted and weakened opponent.
China is very willing to play hardball and throw multinational corporations out unless they cooperate. The US is only just starting to consider actions like that (cf. Huawei and TikTok). I wonder if that's the next big shift in international politics - countries realizing that in the name of ideology (free trade) they've been freely giving away something very valuable - access to their domestic consumer market - which they could have been "charging" corporations quite a bit more for if they wanted to.
Is it possible that this "highest grossing film" figure is inflated?
I actually found a copy of the film and watched it over a month ago. While there were no subtitles for English, based on the production quality, I don't think it's a form of entertainment that would pass for "great" in the west or many other countries. Not that it's poor quality, but there are aspects of it that were cheap-ish. I'm talking explosions and artillery impacts that clearly look like squibs going off on cue, which is something most mainstream entertainment has either moved beyond or done a better job of making look realistic. The acting in some parts appeared over the top, while on the other hand they clearly struggled to find good White actors who could speak English and wanted to appear in this film.
To be fair, I the film appears to be of decent effort and wasn't the sort of disaster I was expecting it to be.
If you're a Chinese citizen and your dear leaders want you to see this film, are you not going to see it? And if you're in another country like Russia, wouldn't The Battle at Lake Changjin be at least a neat curiosity in that there's finally a film where the Americans aren't just the good guys?
Even then, should we not also suspect some form of shenanigans? I don't have evidence for it, but the CCP isn't really known for being not corrupted. They certainly have an interest in making sure its population is on board with a conflict with the United States.
All that to say that I think we should keep these things in perspective. There was a time when a film being the highest grossing meant something. Does it still mean the same thing in the streaming era? Does it mean the same thing in China as it does in the US?
The Battle at Lake Changjin was the first time a non-Hollywood film was the highest grossing film worldwide since like the 1910s or 1920s. (We don't have good records before then, when a bunch of French silents were popular.)
i am not an american or chinese so a third party. here is my question.
does "America has lost the narrative and the Chinese have gained it without question" this mean till now it was america who was defining what the rest of the world saw and remembered, making history for "everyone" not just for themselves. remember rambo and the mujahideen?
america has for long used its power to influence narrative across the world. asl a random person on the street anywhere in the world about iran and "anti-israel muslims, evil" would be the answer 7/10. why was that? because american hollywood has made boogeyman out of american military enemies.
now china is doing the same so why is this a big deal? why can't americans live with this?
uh, "destroying our freedom of expression " more like free market with power and tested capability to use as a propaganda tool because "hey. we support freedom of expression so anything we say is correct".
i am not criticizing you personally. just saying americans should come down a step from their self proclaimed high horse of world saviors and be like the rest of the folk.
It's not an America vs. China struggle as you put it. The "rest of the folk" around the world are not content with China's deliberate attempt to conceal, twist, and even completely rewrite the history either.
Yes, America has enjoyed its massive worldwide influence over the past few decades and it has definitely gotten away with abusing it's power at times. Much of it was because the flow of information wasn't as free back than as it is today, but it was also because America, for all its faults, really did at least try and do a lot of good as a "self-appointed world leader".
My opinions aren't exactly unbiased having grown up in South Korea (recipient of lots of good will from the US), but the situation isn't simply that America has lost its edge over China and is complaining - it's more that Chinese government is really aggressive in promoting their agenda and are much more willing to sacrifice certain ideals (freedom of expression, etc) to get there. I can say this as a person who have attended a secret Christian worship meeting in China: Say what you will about the US, but it's not China.
sure. i have my hands full you know. i currently live in a place where posting a video or tweeting is seen as a threat to the country and journalists are being arrested left and right. just yesterday. https://thekashmirwalla.com/kashmiri-journalist-charged-for-...
i remember a time when religious folks used to feverently talk against "communism" as if it was a plague and all those dried up once ussr collapsed. turns out usa was funding anti-ussr sentiments in my hometown because why not.
sure. i do not enjoy "freedom of expression", living in a similar place like china.
i get your point. china is pushing their agenda aggressively but the way i have seen it in the last 40 odd years, 20 with the whole "war on terror" and "wmd" and even "gaddafi" and "arab spring", i find america just as dirty. you may not like it but remember, gaddafi wanted to trade in gold and not in american dollars and he was killed for that. same for saddam.
i personally believe having seen some action, no country, india, china, usa, france is willing to uphold "freedom of expression" if it threatens its interests, business interests. thats a simple fact. unless you face that
Definitely a given that American movies have comical stereotypes for "bad guys". I don't know what to say except that America's pretty divided right now. In some parts, you won't find a lot of love for Israel and the Iran nuclear deal was a good idea. It's hardly a monolith.
But I would contest this notion that China is a free market. This is not people voting with their wallets and the government often threatens direct economic retaliation against companies for even minor "infractions" of speech, like listing Taiwan as a country in a dropdown box. International companies do not have a level playing field in China, if they can legally operate there at all (e.g. joint venture requirements). Hell, even domestic companies need to watch where they step if they get too big like Jack Ma.
visa is complaining to usa demanding that india not give preferential treatment to their own card network because india knows usa can unilaterally kill a country's card infrastructure by simply telling visa/mastercard to stop their services. that is abuse of power and not "free market".
>like listing Taiwan as a country in a dropdown box.
I suppose all I could offer in defense is that the Iran sanctions were over nuclear technology, ISIS, etc; not speech or "loss of face". Ugh, still, the Middle East makes the US lose its damn mind.
I hadn't really followed anti-BDS laws (not a thing in my state). Looks like they get slapped down pretty easily by the courts for violating free speech.
need i remind you iran had a coup organized by cia and british inteligence because the ruler decided to nationalize oil and not give in to shell? what happened in 79? there was no nuclear threat back then. it was just oil and control.
funny you mention nuclear tech. the iran deal was supposed to prevent that and it was usa who shot that down, not iran and you blame them for trying?
you may not know this but the reason for sanctions on iran is to specifically install a government that is kind to israel because israel lobbies for that in us congress and they have installed the whole "oppose israel=support holocaust=hitler bad".
they could not do arab spring there so more sanctions.
The example in your comment is not specific to China, or even to present days. If you look at the history, the media narrative aligns to the status quo.
One difference is that nowadays China gained enough political and economic power to be part of the world leaders. So companies doing business there care about not offending their audience.
Take a look how movies in the 80s depict enemies: Latin America (all narcos or corrupt), Russia or Eastern Europe (cold and ruthless KBG agents), China (mafias that love occultism or rare rituals). Besides the occasional killer, it’s rare to find a big Hollywood production that offends the US or Western Europe audience. Producers will not risk to put tons of money in a script that may be offensive or politically uncomfortable.
The longer China keeps their domestic markets effectively closed through severe restrictions to foreign competition, the weaker their hold will become. This will become less of an issue given Xi's general policy direction of closing.
This is indeed a hard problem, when you have a country like China, with a long term strategic plan and control over its companies and a country like US in which companies are more focused on keep Wall Street and media happy.
The US government has long had the authority to limit trade with China. Can't blame companies for acting rationally, but you can blame the government for failing to tackling national security threats.
Counter-point: All of that changes if their economy weakens or becomes toxic.
This could, and probably will, happen in a number of ways. They are blatantly expansionist; asserting control over HK was a mildly toxic event, but a move into Taiwan would be beyond reproach. They have a growing population that is overwhelmingly lower-class, by western standards. They hold a Tremendous amount of foreign-denominated debt (~$1.3T USD just from the USG) (holding a mortgage gives the bank power over you; holding sovereign debt gives the sovereign power over you), while issuing most of their debt internally, with very poor bookkeeping practices. They have very few notable Allies, and none won out of an emotion beside fear. The US has positioned itself for the next decades to aggressively improve at-home manufacturing & infrastructure.
These are just public statements by American executives; they mean nothing, and they don't represent the exertion any Real Power. No one is lying to themselves about China; but the shit hasn't hit the fan yet. Until it does, western companies extract and export Tremendous value from China, effectively weakening their natural resource reserves and domestic corporations while increasing their reliance on western technology. When that changes, western economies will take a hit; but China will be decimated.
China doesn't export any real culture (their top grossing film was a poorly made war propaganda film? lol Disney can puke out the sixteenth spiderman movie and make more. and No Way Home hasn't been released in China yet). They don't meaningfully export technology or intellectual property (ok: Tik Tok). One thing they do export: their children, to western universities. And you talk to many of these kids who have grown up in the west, and they don't want to leave. They buy houses here, build families, drink with their white, black, and brown friends, work in American companies... It's Just Better Here.
And sure; they export Influence; its the echoes of an untapped market with really cheap manufacturing. My western value systems says Intel should be more harsh with China; that they shouldn't mince words. But simultaneously, when speaking about global power dynamics: Why? Profiting from slave labor is horrible, but that's exactly what Intel is doing: Profiting. I wish they wouldn't, but doing so doesn't meaningfully make China stronger. If anything, it further striates their already overwhelmingly lower-class population; unrest can't just happen in authoritarian countries, it tends to.
And while all-out war is unlikely; if that happens, everyone will be decimated. We can drum all we want, but global military tech has react the status of Perfect Killing Machine. War, in the past, was a tool countries used to assert influence and escape dire economic situations. The tools have changed; you can't assert influence if there's no one left to have influence over, and your dire economic situation will just be made worse after coastal population center bombardment and grain field irradiation. We'll just kill each other off, and most war is rational somewhere in the reasoning matrix.
It's something I've stated repeatedly: The most dangerous part of China is not its military or nukes (they're actually hardly an offensive threat at all). It's how effective their global propaganda, cultural warfare, and data harvesting techniques are. You don't need nukes when you can destabilize and divide an entire country from within while having everything you need and more to psychologically manipulate the population however you want. Even better because they gave you this information voluntarily
>Haven't there been some recent reports that the U.S. might actually not fare so well against China in direct conflict?
By CCP propagandists and agency leaders trying to retain or increase their funding, sure lol. China has nowhere close to the supply chain, materiel, experience, or quality tech necessary to challenge the US in direct conflict. They have virtually no original military R&D. It's just poorly reverse engineered tech from incomplete stolen plans. Remember China has an interest in trying to convey how "good" its military tech is on the global stage. The US does not. Any time you find out about some "new" scary Chinese military capability, just remember it's decades old stolen garbage from a nation that is better off holding its cards close to its chest.
> China has nowhere close to the supply chain, materiel, experience…
You mean the country that manufacturers virtually everything Americans buy can’t handle supply chain logistics?
> Remember China has an interest in trying to convey how "good" its military tech is on the global stage. The US does not.
You seriously don’t think the US has an interest in impressing the rest of the world with its military might? Why do you imagine we keep building aircraft carriers?
>You mean the country that manufacturers virtually everything Americans buy can’t handle supply chain logistics?
Yes, there's a massive difference in military logistics and shipping the latest knock off kitchen appliance via a third party. Global economic sanctions on China would be far more detrimental to China than the US. There's plenty of alternatives.
>You seriously don’t think the US has an interest in impressing the rest of the world with its military might? Why do you imagine we keep building aircraft carriers?
You're right, we should just declassify everything the second a contract is awarded and it enters development.
I'm talking about new R&D, not aircraft carriers. The US is very slow to unveil military capabilities on the global stage. Meanwhile China unveils their F-35 copy the second they can to try to "beat" the US.
>Shrug. All evidence is that the Chinese have managed to create plenty of military tech. Stolen IP or not.
They really haven't. There's no original R&D. It's just rushed, terrible copies.
Yes, there's a massive difference in military logistics and shipping the latest knock off kitchen appliance.
> This is a hell of a non sequitur.
I don't think this means what you think it means. Most of China's military capabilities presented on the global stage are rushed to the public eye as soon as possible. That's the point. The US has no interest in doing this because of adversarial nations like China. They have no need to prove they're ahead of the game or unveil what they're capable of, it's just accepted that they are and have private capabilities that far exceed what is publicly known (because that's the case).
China has tons of domestic military R&D. For example, for decades the US dismissed hypersonic antiship missiles on the basis that the plasma would hinder terminal guidance.
A few years ago China demonstrated the first hit of a moving target by a ballistic missile, which works out to have been in hypersonic flight during terminal guidance.
A few years later, the Russians are now demonstrating routine strikes of moving targets using hypersonic cruise missiles, which demonstrates that they managed to fix the issue.
A few days ago, some data came out on how exactly they managed to do this - not only did the Chinese managed to get active radar working through hypersonic flight at lower altitudes, they also apparently managed to get optical/infrared sensors working by redirecting airflow and injecting chilled air in order to disrupt plasma formation.
Meanwhile, the US is still trying to figure out sustained hypersonic flight (and failing most tests), while the Chinese and Russians have long since moved on to making guidance more reliable.
If you read various publications from the US Navy, they claim that hypersonic missiles will be defeated by killchain disruption (ie, jamming and staying far enough away). This entire strategy is predicated on the assumption that optical guidance of a missile in hypersonic flight is impossible. Now that the Chinese seem to have demonstrated it, there is no feasible defence.
So while they're not better than the West at building jet engines, they clearly are ahead in multiple technologies, and they are clearly trying to use these novel technologies to seize an advantage without needing to catch up on everything that came before.
Another scenario where this has been done. If the US was indeed somehow able to get legions of 5th generation aircraft close enough to disrupt Chinese operations, conventional doctrine would be to make your own, better, fighter aircraft, and duke it out.
Now the Chinese don't want to do that. It would be expensive, and the US already has a lead. So instead of developing stealthier and better fighters with technology it would take years to achieve, they instead made a fighter that is moreso stealthy from the frontal aspect, but much more superior kinematically - the J-20 flies much higher and faster than the F-35. From this kinematic advantage, it is designed to impart an advantage to an already much better missile, which is then designed to strike EW/AWACS aircraft from afar (300+km) without being detected until it's much too late. And by all accounts this would work.
Once that is done, they are in a position where they have the most advanced air defences on the planet, and in mind-boggling numbers. From there on, the combined advantage from both air defences and competent air forces means that it will be very difficult for anyone else to operate. So by focusing on other technologies, where they have gained an advantage, they can exploit their unique situation (operating near their borders) to nullify US technological advantages in other fields.
Beyond that, the US does have an interest in trying to convey it's military strength. Their are US Generals on public record stating that they are trying to portray US military technology as scarily as possible to intimidate foreign actors and to boost sales.
All in all, this kind of reasoning is stupid, wrong, and is probably exactly what the Chinese would love to hear.
The GP was an unsubstantive flamebait comment, but yours breaks the site guidelines egregiously. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I wasn't trying to argue or debate, I was trying to put your exaggerated comment into context
>You don't need nukes when you can destabilize and divide an entire country from within while having everything you need and more to psychologically manipulate the population however you want.
Your comment seems so silly, when USA has routinely destabilised countries throughout history. It's not even comparable actually.
You think that the existence of some black lives matter activists proves the moral superiority of USA?
How are you going to cancel someone if they already aren't listening to you? Gunna place thousands of calls to their employer? Mail them awful things in the mail? Un follow them? I know you were joking but come on. There's no way to cancel something external. In order to cancel them, they need to buy into your system and have shame, something the CCP does not have.
The same way any cancellation works: refuse to buy stuff made in China. Boycott Amazon until it stops selling Chinese stuff. Don't watch Chinese movies. And so on.
The subject of the cancellation doesn't have to use Twitter. The consumers should - which is perfectly the case here.
And I'm also irritated that in the US many convicts (not just inmates) lose their right to vote, a human right that in Europe you'd only lose for direct attack to the democracy (like the Jan 6 mob, or voting fraud, and even then only for a limited period of time).
Well, better never take an Uber ride again either as Saudi Arabia dumped $5 billion into that corporation, didn't it? I see way too many people displaying hypocritical selective outrage over such issues. Starvation and genocide in Yemen is okay with such people, apparently, it's only if China is involved that they get upset? Come on.
I don’t really consider using the services of a public company with thousands of different investors the same thing as directly purchasing the fruits of slave labor. If Uber drivers were slaves themselves, then that would be more comparable to me.
I am only upset at Han scoundrels in China right now, deal with it. The world is broken, we are in triage mode, and your accusations of hypocrisy have no sting.
Bravo Intel for opposing slavery. You are doing more right than wrong these days and I love you for it.
> From looking at the downvotes on this post, I believe they are on this thread downvoting posts that no moral people should have business downvoting. Just be aware. voicing an opinion that doesn’t get upvotes doesn’t mean it isn’t agreed with.
If someone looks at this OP, you see most of the flagged and dead posts are from the few people who question the continual US anti-China (anti-Iran, anti-Cuba, anti-Venezuela, anti-Palestinian...) rhetoric. So it is pretty much all posts raging about China, with the few posts questioning this killed off, but the paranoia is about "infiltration" against the US China bashing, when anyone can just look at this whole post and see the opposite is true.
The US military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about sucks away my taxes to do evil on other lands, its propaganda organs saying US workers and taxpayers like me questioning its parasitism and belligerence is alien.
It's amusing how the US's coup de grace in Afghanistan was a massacre of innocent Afghans, and the corporate press and pundits tear their shirts we're still not there killing Afghans, yet their heart bleeds for China dealing with a terrorism problem within China. The US can go around the world and bomb whoever it wants, but China is not allowed to deal with a terrorism problem within its own borders.
The problem is that it is not just paid Wu Maos partaking in mindless burying of China criticism. Often times, you'll get hyper nationalist Chinese people who just want to help their homeland and they're not getting paid to astroturf. It's not limited to the Chinese - I have seen the same pattern for posts that are critical of India/Indians in engineering boards. I believe that trust is largely gone on large forums due to astroturfing and bots.
Meta-comment: can the mods shadow-ban the Pooh Patrol already? They are agents of a hostile foreign power that has no respect for human rights at all. You don't need to give them space to spew their bullshit here.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
These perceptions are notoriously unreliable because they're driven not by evidence (someone else having a different view from you does not count as evidence), but rather by the passions of the perceiver. Basically, people who feel strongly on a topic can't imagine that someone who feels the opposite could possibly be in good faith, so they make up stories about manipulation, astroturf, shillage, spies, foreign agents, bots, and/or trolls, to explain what feels inexplicable. It's an extremely common dynamic on the internet, and it's also extremely poisonous, so we don't allow it here.
That's not to say there's no such thing as real abuse—just that there needs to be something objective to go on before making any such claims, and people on the internet having different opinions than you does not come close to clearing that bar. On the contrary. I've written many detailed explanations about this, some of which are listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod, if anyone wants to read more.
+1 Genuinely wanted to have a conversation about the intricacies of the Intel supply chain that may have led to such an apology. Certainly, some hacker news community members could have shared some insight from practical experience.
Instead, the conversation was constantly being derailed in a concerted manner. [0]
its commitment to avoid supply chains from Xinjiang was an expression of compliance with U.S. law, rather than a statement of its position on the issue
So, if it wasn't for federal government regulation, Intel would be OK with slave labor.
What kind of sick people are running things at Intel?
But you need your iPhone 13 Max (I know, Apple, not Intel) to virtue signal on Twitter though. It's much easier to just complain about Western colonialism or something.
Or tax incentivize final manufacture of finished goods in the US for high value and strategic goods (semiconductors, electronics, mechanical equipment, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agricultural equipment, etc.)
Make a policy like,
"""
Companies that onshore will pay the following taxes
for the next 25 years if they follow our onshoring
program:
company profits: 0% tax rate
CEO capital gains: 1% tax rate
shareholder capital gains: 2% tax rate
Also, companies can transfer international profits
back to the US at a rate of up to $10B a year with
no taxation.
"""
First make it apply to 10% or some low critical threshold of products, but then ramp it up annually. Over ten years, the percentage should be closer to 50% for companies to remain in compliance and to receive the tax advantaged status.
Don't punish China and make them angry. Reward US manufacturing activities handsomely.
Call your legislators and ask for this. They'll be into the tax thing.
An interesting side effect: companies that manufacture in the US will be worth significantly more. They can use their valuation to make continued investments: loans, acquisitions, hiring, etc.
Perhaps a new trade agreement could be made amongst key trading partners? China would probably get mad, but if China is able to keep foreign firms out or put them at a disadvantage, then we should be able to provide benefits to our own domestic firms.
There need to be motivations for companies to do more on our own soil.
With the expectation from American companies to always be growing, it’s inevitable for them to end up kowtowing to the Chinese market, even at the expense of all other markets.
I would like to see recognition from American shareholders that not only is expanding to China bad for the product but it also undermines our cultural values vis a vis problematic manufacturing.
Interned prisoners in Xinjiang, China are detained with no due process without having ever committed a crime. They are systematically forced to abandon their religion, their culture, and their identity. They are tortured physically and mentally, with beatings, and electric shocks, and waterboarded. They are forcibly sterilized. They are brainwashed as a condition to even be fed, which they are often not. There is forced hard labor, and if they refuse, they are beaten or killed. Many of the workers are children in elementary school. They are medically experimented on. When they die from the torture, or the cold, or starvation, their organs are harvested and sold for profit. Journalism about what goes on in these camps is suppressed, and those who speak out about it are imprisoned. Dissent is illegal and those who do are imprisoned.
Prisoners in Xinjiang are systematically gang raped and sexually tortured, sometimes publicly. If you look in the wikipedia link you will find details on exactly what the sexual torture involves. Unless you have a thick stomach I would not recommend reading it.
This isn't even half of the crimes against humanity in that region. Men, women and children. All of these claims have been corroborated by multiple independent observers. One million people, none of which are convicted of a reasonable crime. Just...let's step back and realize what we're talking about here.
Knowing this, do you believe there is a valid moral equivalence between this and even the most steel-manned, critical interpretation of US-prison-labor? Do you believe that the existence of US prison labor, even with all its (far more nuanced than you may give it credit for) problems precludes or somehow invalidates boycott and criticism of products connected to atrocities in Xinjiang? If so, why?
>I'm not saying who's worse, I'm saying we need to do better before we critic others.
But you ARE saying they are morally equivalent. In your own words, "the pot calling the kettle black". And...one of them is so insanely worse than the other that to dance around the issue like that is absurd.
If Hitler rose from the dead tomorrow and started another Holocaust, would you be against critique or action against it because "we need to do better about our flawed prison policy at home before we criticize others"? "Hitler just killed another million people in the gas chambers, but sometimes innocent people get the death penalty in America too, we can't criticize their concentration camps until we fix our problems at home"?
We're talking about the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't try to stop a genocide because the US criminal justice system has some notable flaws and we need to fix them first? Am I understanding you correctly? Even after reading the part about the mass rape and sexual torture of an entire culture of people?
> The investigations sparked by her case, which is featured in the documentary Belly of the Beast, showed hundreds of inmates had been sterilized in prisons without proper consent as late as 2010, even though the practice was by then illegal.
This is still different - the article you post is a state acting in a way that is, by the quote you posted, illegal in the country it was performed. The actions in China are sanctioned and performed by the government, and are thereby legal.
In fact, the article you post is literally about the state offering monetary recompense for the act - hence, doing the very thing you asked for in your first post.
America is not as bad as China. These false equivalences are supporting genocide.
You've been breaking the HN guidelines repeatedly and egregiously. We ban accounts that do this, so we need you to stop that now. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
Bottom line: the simple explanation is that people have different views they do because they have very different backgrounds, and attacking others with this sort of internet poison because of that is not acceptable on this site. In fact, it leads to ugly mob behaviors that we don't want here. It's not the sort of community we want to be.
I have a really hard time understanding how we're supposed to stop this kind of thing, not just on the internet in general and not this comment in particular but on this site in particular.
HN has rules against accusations of bad faith, and they work 99% of the time, and I try hard not accuse an individual comment of being in bad faith even if I strongly suspect it. But it seems so obvious by looking at any thread about the Uyghur Genocide on Hacker News that there is a pattern when looking at the whole thread, the whole site, in aggregate. I'm not suggesting 50-cent-army-type astroturfing either -- I don't think it's 1 person with 100 accounts spreading FUD for malicious reasons, I think it's 100 people with 100 accounts spreading FUD about the Uyghur genocide because they are nationalistic and proud of their country for personal reasons.
I think this is bad, and needs to be stopped because the genocide in Xinjiang is too important, but I think that HN's policies about not accusing people of bad faith or astroturfing may actually make it harder to have honest discussions on the topic. It's a conspicuous failure case for a site where normally things don't get this bad. I'm not sure what a better policy would be either, which I suspect might be the reason why nothing has changed.
I apologize is this comment is considered rule-breaking, and I will remove it if it is. I just can't stand watching this kind of thing happen.
I mean anytime someone whataboutisms literal ongoing genocide, it's bad faith, period. Whether it's someone working directly on behalf of the CCP or an individual self-motivated nationalist or even a foreigner that's fallen for CCP global propaganda is irrelevant. It's bad faith, and in my opinion, outright malicious.
I think "bad faith" suggests you are not being honest, like you know you're wrong or making a fallacious argument but you're saying it anyways. In that sense, an individual nationalist, a foreigner who's fallen for the propaganda, both cases would not necessarily be "bad faith". I agree that denying or minimizing an ongoing genocide is pure evil.
Aren’t people in prison to get rehabilitated? They don’t really repay anything to society by working for pennies for a prison run by a private company.
In fact you could argue that prisoners are stealing job from others by working for next to nothing.
You also create strange perverse incentives to keep as many people in prison as possible.
And those people in prison working for pennies per day ,as you've alluded, take jobs from free people. If you want to see peak absurdity, California has legions of prisoner firefighters.
But you can be a firefighter with a felony on your record, so while the state of California is fine with paying them peanuts for risking their lives, it won't make them full-fledged firefighters once they're released.
If any other country was doing this, our various propaganda agencies would be crying foul.
What is a crime depends on local legislation. Being homosexual is a crime in many countries, hence there is still nothing wrong with 'criminals' performing forced labour?
This phrase was not meant to be taken literally and more supposed to be understood as "if peoples do engage in trading that makes wars between those nation states way less likely."
It was a cute phrase but I see how it might lead to missunderstandings. Thanks for pointing that out. As for whether that more elaborate position applies to the Russian-Ukranian situation. Yes it does
The Russians have not declared war on Ukraine. They are engaging in a purely illegal invasion. Ukraine has not declared war on Russia and has not attempt any occupation of Russian territory.
You would need the Wall St, corporate globalists, and their backers on board with that, which is impossible given that they own all of the dominant American politicians and institutions
Contrary to what the U.S. Supreme Court would have you believe, corporations are not people and do not have morals or values. They are organizations that seek to maximize profit and grow.
Any values a corporation projects are merely reflections of whatever the dominant moral force is in a given time and place.
American corporations in the U.S. in 2022 project values of wokeness because the woke left is presently the dominant cultural force in the U.S. In 1950's America, the dominant cultural force was cultural conservatism and patriotism so naturally corporations projected conservative and patriotic values. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a large corporation operating in China in 2022 will reflect the values of the CCP.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but expecting a corporation to have meaningful morals in the same way a human does is like expecting your dog to do the dishes. Based on what they are, they're simply not capable of the task.