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Badly written and likely fair to characterize it as dumb. It's probably more about the theatrics of politics than a real intent to pass such a stupid idea as a bill.

That said, there has always been a serious imbalance with China that has yet to be addressed as far as I know. This isn't a US-vs-China thing. This applies to every country in the world. In most nations around the world China is able to buy land, property, businesses, etc. The reciprocal isn't true. We could say a similar thing about intellectual property. Good luck enforcing yours in China. Entire industries in China have been built on the back of, to be kind, borrowed IP.

One could have made the argument to look the other way 40 or 50 years ago, when China was an agrarian society in need of economic help. That is no longer the case, by far. Why is it that residents or companies from western countries cannot fully own property in China in the same way as the Chinese can do everywhere else in the world?

This concept of lack of reciprocity extends into such things as data and privacy rights and ownership. Everyone knows that any service based around user data (TikTok, AI, whatever) based in China creates 100% exposure of that data to government entities, without any level of transparency or accountability --particularly if you are not Chinese and likely worse if you are.

I think it is good and likely necessary to call China to task on these issues and apply (or continue to apply) pressure for them to open the doors to reasonable levels of reciprocity. The relationship, otherwise, is decidedly one-sided, and this means that nobody will ever trust them. Why would anyone send AI queries and data to servers in China? Or use any current or future code generator offerings to work on projects? That would be, at a minimum, suicidal.

So, while this bill is bonkers, maybe it launches a conversation that might, in a few years, drive reform that could open China and Chinese services like TikTok and AI to the world without fear of use, abuse and repercussions stemming from the nature of their society and government. To be sure, I think China would benefit immensely from a greater degree of openness.



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