Odd that this is being posted now. The article is a month and a half old and comments on the proposed regs were due nearly 2 weeks ago. I was actually thinking it's weird that I haven't seen much talk about this here - it's a huge issue, but has barely gotten mainstream discussion.
I'd like to see this scrutiny extended to real estate investment as well - commercial and residential. If CCP has strategies for investing in Tech to make them behave in a way more favorable to their interests, it makes sense that they would have a real estate strategy to capitalize on that as well.
I can see a few reasons for taking this approach, the most mundane of which is the federal government actually has clear authority to regulate investment and existing regulatory frameworks to draw from.
Trying to regulate technology with ITAR or arms export laws is I think more likely to receive backlash to the point of facing constitutional challenge. The finance laws also probably risk this, but a lot less.
It's about time that the US start standing up to China's unrestricted warfare [1]. It's amazing that most Americans don't realize that China views the US as an adversary and has been quietly waging a war against the West. Why there are people who welcome the rise of Chinese/CCP hegemony when they are actively looking to crush [2] "Western values" is beyond me.
Yes, US should take China more seriously, but don't conflate US geopolitical interests with the West. China seeking security via regional hegemony is not an attack on Western values. Undermining US supremacy is not an attack on "the west" - western bloc countries have various interests that doesn't align with American interests, i.e. ME wars, Nordstrom 2, The fact that 3/5 FiveEyes countries haven't banned Huawei. But chief among them is exporting "western values", which has been globally destabilizing including the migrant crisis in Europe.
Document 9 is an paper for domestic policy about curtailing "western" influence within China, prescient after the shitshow happening in HK. China doesn't waste effort spreading the Chinese system outside it's claims, because technocrats knows it doesn't work without scale of 1billion people and they see how counterproductive this strategy is in terms of cost and domestic sentiment. The takeaway of Unrestricted Warfare isn't that China views US as an adversary in a totalwar scenario, but a competitor that has to be challenged using existing world systems. China doesn't seek to dismantle global systems, which it has benefited from, but modify it in manner commiserate with her influence. As the worlds largest exporter and driver of global growth, that's a completely reasonable expectation.
There's a reason China preaches cooperation while US is withdrawing from the world stage. Geopolitically, US is the only developed country in the world that can afford to isolate itself. The economic and demographic future of western countries are not good. Demographically neither is China, and cooperation is the only way forward. Western countries aligned with US postwar because Bretton Woods system + US security guarantee was a formula for economic prosperity. That era appears to be ending and the ensuing misery will make for strange bedfellows.
Again, if you're an American, you should take China more seriously out of self interest. But you should also vote for candidates that takes allies and the world more seriously as well. US foreign, not domestic policy is what can curtail China's rise.
It's disappointing that you were downvoted so much without a response. Really i think you just hurt the egos of Americans.
I believe a stronger Europe and stronger western bloc is key to curbing China. The USA is close to peak economic and military might, but we only have 310 million people. China has 1.4 billion. Extrapolating current trends, it is inevitable that China becomes the world super power. Most likely bankrupting the USA in the process. Similar patterns to USA overtaking the UK, or USSR.
To make a stronger Europe, Europe should federalize its military. Then to make a stronger western bloc, there should be tighter economic integration between Europe and US. This would involve freer movement of people and some kind North Atlantic economic zone. Then the western bloc has close to a billion people powering its might. That is a good counter weight to China. But if everyone deals with China individually, we all loose.
What I don’t understand is how we got into this situation in the first place.
We know how powerful the US intelligence agencies are. The fact that the CIA has been able to install leaders in previously hostile governments shows their competence. Aside from Iran, most of their operations were successful. Even in their missteps, they were able to limit its influence in the region.
So how did it come to this? Why does it feel like the CIA dropped the ball on China?
How do you fall from being able to change the course of world history with shadow governments, to failing to even install operatives in the country?
> Last year, an F.B.I. employee pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent for years, passing sensitive technology information to Beijing in exchange for cash, lavish hotel rooms during foreign travel and prostitutes.
Falun Gong is basically the only resistance left here, and you can see the line between CCP Chinese and non-CCP Chinese by walking down a major street: you can see where the Shen Yun posters end, and the Mandarin-only prints begin.
Simply put, defense isn't sexy. It's always easy to find people who want to discover a way to, for example, make foreign centrifuges blow themselves up. It's less easy to find people who want to spend eight hours a day preventing, say, ignorant government employees from clicking every link that shows up in their e-mail. Infiltrating a foreign telecom provider to use its smartphone OS update mechanism to hijack the phone of its head of state's wife and record secret conversations is sexy. Monitoring the behavior of apps installed on your own personnel's phones for potential hostile behavior is not sexy. Building a 1.5 trillion dollar fighter jet is sexy. Stopping China from repeatedly stealing all the project files is not.
> So how did it come to this? Why does it feel like the CIA dropped the ball on China?
1) I don't think the CIA has ever has been that powerful and 2) the US political establishment got arrogant and lazy after the fall of the Soviet Union.
> What I don’t understand is how we got into this situation in the first place.
Some Americans love to watch America suffer, because it makes them feel better about themselves; a similar thing to the British intellectuals who celebrated every British loss and defeat of the second world war, though they would not enjoy a total defeat.
> Perhaps it's because Big Tech is full of people who favor Chinese ideals over Western Enlightenment/American ideals, such as:
I think you're onto something, but some of your examples are off.
I'd say Big Tech has a disproportionate share of people who:
1) believe they are part of the elite (by being able to command a high salary due to their skills) or aspire to join the elite (by winning the startup lottery), and therefore tend to take the perspective of elites against that of commoners, and
2) tend to focus far too much on economics, business, and technology.
Those attitudes can interplay to result in attitudes that can be pretty favorable to the CCP (e.g. trade/business profits can't be sacrificed for moral or democratic considerations). However, I wouldn't go so far as saying those tech people "favor Chinese ideals over Western Enlightenment/American ideals."
I have always wondered what people mean by "Chinese ideals". As a Chinese person myself, all 4 of your options are things that I oppose. I find myself consistently on the side of individuality, privacy, free speech, and self defense, when arguing against Americans that disagree. In fact I'm doing that right now in another thread in the process of defending yet another undefendable scoundrel, Facebook.
Do you actually have something concrete in mind here, or have you instead considered that this is merely an example of calling the enemy tribe every bad name you can think of?
>Do you actually have something concrete in mind here
Ideals codified in law. For example, the 1rst and 2nd Amendments.
When generalizing with national boundaries, I of course do not mean to imply that literally everyone born within those imaginary lines thinks the same.
Are there more specific categories I could use for these ideological classifications?
>Article 35. Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
The reasons why people in both societies enjoy those rights differently is much more complicated than just whether they are codified.
GP can do something very simple as a test. I’ll go to Washington and he’ll go to Beijing. We will both hold up a sign criticizing each leader. I wonder what will happen...
I’ll go to London, Berlin, and Paris and do the same thing. Maybe I’ll need a permit in the US/Europe and do it for a week.
It's easy to tell all kinds of crazy stories about would happen in China, but do you have direct evidence? I don't, but I know for a fact that expat communities usually bitterly hate the government, and blast those opinions publicly all over the internet.
My extended family over there knows perfectly well what happened, they just don’t like to talk about it. And my parents know exactly what happened because they were there, and nobody’s coming after them. So without further evidence it seems to be equivalent to certain very contentious political topics in the US, which people are aware of, but you certainly cannot bring up.
Can your extended family research any of it? (search online, read about it in books, etc) Can they speak about it without being persecuted? Can anyone who isn't your extended family find information about it other than through informal channels?
> to certain very contentious political topics in the US, which people are aware of, but you certainly cannot bring up.
Like what? Please elaborate specifically?
I'm so confused on what your stance is here. You realize there is a big difference between being persecuted by others for saying something or "knowing something" and being persecuted by the government for saying something or "knowing something"?
I think it’s probably better to think of those enlightenment ideals as not something particularly western in nature as they were opposed violently for centuries by the entrenched power structures of the west.
I’m not saying it didn’t originate in Europe. I am saying that most Europeans opposed it for centuries and it’s barely holding on in a lot of Europe even today. There’s nothing about the western mind or western culture that makes it more suited for institutions based around those principles. It was a long struggle to achieve them and it will be a long struggle to keep them. People of the west were no more well suited to them then the Chinese were especially well suited to invent or use gunpowder and paper money.
Ah, I suspect we're in violent agreement with each other.
The Enlightenment certainly originated in the West (Western Europe), and while there are certain cultural aspects that are more compatible with Enlightenment ideals -- primus inter pares and such -- there is no reason why those ideals couldn't find a new home in some other region (Asia, Africa, etc.)
Not intending to speak for others, but I believe that the original poster intended "ideals as practiced by the CCP" (e.g., Cultural Revolution, Red Guards, etc), and it sounds to me like you are espousing the Chinese culture of the 1911 revolution, which does indeed support the rights of individuality, privacy, free speech, and self defense.
This is and has been more of an intellectual and ideological battle more than anything. The Founders had very little in common with ancient Greeks and Romans in terms of ‘tribe’ and ‘national boundary’. I am an immigrant as well and have these very same discussions that you have - awkwardly explaining to Americans the benefit of their constitution to themselves.
Those aren't non-Western ideals, lots of people in all countries strive to achieve power either via the imposition or in order to impose those qualities on their particular citizenry.
tl;dr: your category error invalidates your entire point.
Using large geographic/national boundaries to generalize ideological categories is of course inherently erroneous to a degree; it's like the Zen Buddhist teaching of "a finger pointing at the moon". You seem to be getting hung up on the finger.
People were hoping that closer ties would open up China to democracy, that capitalism and democracy would go hand in hand. But it hasn’t happened and in fact, is going in reverse. The trend has been obvious for a long time. I remember reading books about the threat in the 90s.[1] In the military, China was the major adversary we trained against in the 2000s, not Russia. But the business opportunities helped mask the growing divide. It’s easy to hope for the best when profit is at stake and the outcome of cooperation (peace and trade) is so much better than the alternatives. But now people are being forced to choose between profits and values, the NBA is just one example.[2] It will take time but the tide has turned and many people will not be looked upon favorably by history, similarly to the Nazi sympathizers prior to WW2.[3] And it’s important to differentiate China and the Chinese people from the CCP. Both the CCP and their apologists in America would like to conflate the two. But Americans and the Chinese have fought together before and can hopefully (and peacefully) overcome the tyranny that currently afflicts the country.[4]
War was lost a decade ago. The United States is completely dependent on China. Big companies need China because it’s the only place left they can get double digit growth and small companies need China because it’s the only place they can get things made—either in part or in whole—and be competitive.
Capitalism ate itself. All China had to do was play the game.
Nobody is arguing whether nations should or should not be trying to impose their values on other nations. The issue is, do you really want to stand on the sidelines while a rising nation with no qualms about murdering its own people is touting values counter to freedom and fairness?
Yeah, some very bad things have happened. Not excusing that. But also things have worked out really really well for a lot of countries the US has imposed its will on. Countries it went to war with and could have utterly raped and plundered without resistance or really any objection.
You think China is going to do better? Will it be more fair? The regime in China is willing to hurt anyone who even debates its track record. Will China even allow its failures and excesses to be documented on Wikipedia? Or will it just censor it all, and disappear anyone who complains?
Well... why wouldn't they? China since the time of Deng has been acutely aware of the risk of becoming an imperialist power[1]. Even if they have arguably crossed that line at some points (the South China Sea...), they're clearly attempting to take a markedly alternative path to becoming a superpower.
I think the media tends to portray individuals in the Chinese government as uniquely sinister and amoral, and the assumption is if given the opportunity, they'll commit all the same crimes the West did. But I find this to be quite a cynical view.
The Chinese government has already re-created concentration camps for religious and ethnic minorities. We might stand to benefit by considering if those with cynical views might have, in this case, found a measure of wisdom.
Is it cynical? And is it's path really that different to the one taken by the US? The US didn't project power on a large scale until it became a major economic power and involvement in major military conflict drew there.
There are still Chinese people today who remember the pain of the Cultural Revolution. This is a history that isn't denied & only lightly censored if at all. Yet, they don't begrudge Mao for it. Probably because they realize that without having united as a country, and without having built that industrial base (as painful as that was), the good years they're seeing today would never have happened.
But you and they are calling maoism and dengism "basically the same thing". That's about half a degree from calling communism and capitalism the same thing. With Chinese characteristics for both, of course.
Anybody who knew China would know exactly why I picked 40 years. It's 2 very different governments.
So I get that you'd consider them "the enemy" in both cases but could this be a teachable moment?
How has America typically done when we wade into shit we don't understand, perfectly convinced that we're the good guys?
How has it typically worked out for the 'liberated'?
People are upset that China isn't honoring their agreement and are dismantling the democratic system and free speech HK is enjoying now, these are universal human rights. Rather than China learning from what made HK so prosperous, as they were for a while, the new leadership is heading back towards the old Maoism policies that lead to the massive starvation and famine and lost generation. Any foreigner living in China is treated terribly, can't do basic things, can't become a citizen, and is constantly checked in on or followed by police. They keep all their citizens in a social credit system, they send religious minorities to labor and reeducation camps, harvest organs from them, etc. Not surprising from a country that teaches about and speaks of Hitler in a positive light, you can't really criticize Hitler without criticizing one's own self and past policies. The US at least admits the things it has done that were anything close to that were wrong as they oppose our own values.
To say nothing of Taiwan, an independent country with its own government and system that China still claims is part of their domain, rather than simply accept reality. It has become imperialistically aggressive towards Taiwan and demands airlines and hotels, media, sporting events etc not show the Taiwanese flag, refer to it by its name, or do anything that indicates the reality that exists now, which is that Taiwan is its own separate country and an example of what would have happened if the democracy had taken root in China, where you'd still have free practice of religion and Chinese values, a strong economy, good health care system, free access to information, etc. If you want an example of Chinese imperialism, look no further than Taiwan, the only reason they haven't invaded Taiwan is because they know they can't without serious consequences.
The old wars were at least excused as staving off invading forces that were seeking eliminate democracy. South Korea is its own country now, they have democracy, look at the DPRK versus SK, we were literally fighting evil and SK is better off for it. Same for the other countries. We're pretty crappy at imperialism if that's the goal since none of those countries are part of any kind of empire and we barely have any influence over them. Thankfully Vietnam didn't end up like DPRK and adopted capitalism at least or a much less dictatorial version of communism.
At least in the US, you're allowed to read about the ills of imperialism and criticism of past and current government actions. In China, you can't even compare the leader to a cartoon character without serious consequences. If the government is doing something wrong, you as a citizen wouldn't know about it and wouldn't be allowed to speak publicly about it, much less organize a protest against it.
China has threatened to invade them if they relinquish their claim on the mainland. They view that as effectively declaring independence. Saying that it's the position of the ROC isn't the entire story.
The Taiwanese are hardly unified around those ideals of the ROC, many still see it as an invader even if they can now express those sentiments at the ballot box.
Believe it or not, the average Chinese has a better grasp of their recent history than the average HN reader.
How come nobody cared about 'universal human rights' for HK residents until it was a way to kneecap China? Again, check the record: 95 years of colonialism with less rights than they have now. They got their limited democracy in the last few years of British rule. Thatcher and Reagan never gave a shit.
Watch their hands, not their mouths, that goes for all politicians.
Xi has a lot of problems in general on the rights front, he's moving things in the wrong direction, but we have no leg to stand on regarding HK.
4x longer than the British did, in any case. The CCP hasn't even proposed rolling back HK's limited democracy (so far, 22 years). And they've, so far, killed far fewer protestors than the British did.
As far as the first part.. you know this is living memory, right?
This perspective is the definition of relativism. You think an authoritarian regime who views human rights as “Western rights” is equal to the US? If you’re arguing liberalism has failed, that’s one thing. But let’s not argue that all things are the same.
I wouldn't say I welcome the rise of Chinese hegemony, but I do welcome the rise of a more collaborative world, and that requires middle ground where there hasn't been with US hegemony due to lack of competition:
I know that I can't expect to do business in the US or Europe if I opine on Jewish sovereignty issues
I know that I can't expect to do business in China if I opine on Chinese sovereignty issues
The result isn't that different just because the former is [mostly] private sector ostracizing and the latter is direct sanctioning from the government. It's cognitively negligent for that specific nuance of private sector deplatforming vs public sector sanctioning to be the line in the sand for people's ideology when the result is the same for doing business in a specific region.
Although Chinese rule of law is totally arbitrary, they've been very consistent that discussion of Chinese sovereignty is not covered and this has nothing to do with any ideology or desire that causes you to say anything about it.
I don't expect this to garner consensus, but the parallels are quite clear. Everyone here already censors themselves to fit with American values on things that greatly disturb them.
Yeah, there are consequences for challanging establishment views on certain topics, but nobody is throwing critics such as Noam Chompsky in jail, taking passports away from his family and restricting their movements, or doing the same to those who openly share his views.
And such abuses of power, which have happened without a doubt, are in time recognised and documented as the wrong and shameful excesses they are.
They have freedom of speech codified in law and very many exceptions.
Opining on issues of sovereignty being one big exception. Its an unexpected one to Western audiences, coupled with a non-existent appeals process and no distinction between private and public sector in state-planned system.
So you’ll be deplatformed by private sector - just like if you have non establishment views in countries you respect - and also sanctioned by public sector.
The point is that to them it wouldn’t be viewed as freedom of speech not being upheld. Just like if things you did were ruled “obscene” or “hateful” or imminently harmful in the US: there is an appeals process in US but the courts might not support you. Just add “secession” to the list and maybe itll all make sense?
It's pretty obvious. It's like appeasement all over again. It's Cognitive dissonance simply to feel like you don't have to face a problem you've created
I wonder, given the current administration, if this is partly driven by the allegations against the Clinton Foundation concerning the Skolkovo Institute.
They should consider that too, yes. Taiwan especially. South Korea, too has advanced lithography capabilities, so add it to the list. China doesn't have domestic lithography beyond 28nm IIRC. Which, to be clear, is not a joke either, but it's 1/16th the density of the state of the art.
High bids are not strong evidence of ulterior motives. They reflect the fact that many US companies prefer not to take on foreign investors, so those investors have to bid much higher to get the deal.
> They reflect the fact that many US companies prefer not to take on foreign investors
There is no evidence for this being the cause of the price premium. There is substantial evidence that capital flight predicts which countries overpay for foreign assets. Russia and China are better explained by the capital flight hypothesis.
Economically it'd be both. Capital flight increases the supply of loanable funds available for foreign investments. Unwillingness to take on foreign investors decreases the demand for this. High supply + low demand = a poor price.
It could be both. We only have evidence for the supply hypothesis (i.e. capital flight). American companies requiring a higher price for foreign investors sounds plausible. But it's a guess for which we have zero evidence, particularly at a systemic level.
(Fixed demand and higher supply still lower prices.)
One test might be found in comparing pricing and flows for foreign investors around investment vectors companies have discretion around (e.g. private investment or M&A) to vectors with which they don't (e.g. public markets). You'd have to control with prices and flows from American investors in those markets, too, which makes it difficult.
There is a lot of unwanted money sloshing around. If you’re an oligarch or kleptocrat with billions to invest, you’re gonna have to accept lower returns.
One reason that Ivy League endowments get consistently above-market returns is that everyone is comfortable taking their money.
EDIT: I sort of conflated foreign and kleptocrat money there, saying they both have to outbid preferred sources. Most foreign money is not from kleptocrats, of course.
Everyone panicked about the Japanese buying up American assets, too.
It's all about 'rising tides lifting all boats' until there's a chance of someone else's boat being almost as high as ours. Then all of a sudden it's about the foreign threat, ulterior motives..
In this case, someone else's boat has been ramming ours while some of our ship crew conveniently looked the other way. People have been shouting "foul" on China for a while now but it was the greed of many members of American congress and financial elite who were profiting from business deals with China that caused them to look the other way. Thankfully, we've gotten to a point where people aren't willing to put up with China's antagonistic behavior any longer.
Many of my scientific works were plagiarized by Chinese researchers. However, I still don't buy the hate on China that is dominant in media and here on Hacker News. Basically,
i) the US wants to forbid other countries to have a chance to win in pure capitalistic games. Thus, it will block strong investors from certain countries but let itself to invest in the same countries.
ii) the US (e.g., agencies and private firms) currently controls the entire world via political and electronic backdoors installed everywhere. So it sounds like a bad joke when people claim that China is inventing some surveillance mechanisms like if it is a new one.
I believe that we first hand observe how propaganda (here, against China) works. While China does some shitty things, the most precise short description I can come up with is that "the West" wants China to be its slave. I have no doubt this will happen to some extent in the same way it happened to Japan in the 80ies (no slavery, but drastic decay). In 2040 we will be told to hate India. In 2060 it will be replaced by some growing African country.
> i) the US wants to forbid other countries to have a chance to win in pure capitalistic games. Thus, it will block strong investors from certain countries but let itself to invest in the same countries.
Don’t you mean China instead of the US? They invest in America what they won’t let America invest in China, especially in tech. China is hardly an open market itself.
China is the largest country after all, but foreign investment is still heavily restricted, and investment tech companies even more so. The days of most investments into China going through HK are long gone.
I am talking about economic slavery when you get 10 cents for a $1 product that you produce. The rest is taken by intermediates and tariffs of various kinds.
Everything stated here applies the other way around.
i) China wants to forbid other countries to have a chance to win in pure capitalistic games. Thus it will block strong investors from outside but let itself invest in the same countries
ii) China (e.g., CPP) currently controls the entire world via electronics equipment sold globally at an undercut price. So it sounds like a bad joke when people claim that U.S.A is inventing some surveillance mechanisms like if it is a new one.
It's not unsubstantive or flamebait. It's fact. Chinese companies have been throwing a lot of money at Western companies for years, which gives the CCP a crazy amount of influence over wide swaths of the economy. But yeah, let's squabble over what's flamebait while the CCP slowly takes over the world.
If you continue to use HN for nationalistic flamewar we will ban you. That is because of the degrading impact it has on discussion here, and it goes regardless of what country you have a problem with.
HN users can, and do, make thoughtful points on such topics from many different viewpoints. "China has their fingers in everything" is not that.
On one hand, it’s refreshing to see this HN guideline and mods asking to follow it. On the other hand, you’d never, ever see anything like this in mainland China. Quite a conundrum.
Like these personal data collection “ad tech” companies that are staffed by foreign nationals who send the data back to their homelands. Most Americans (not in tech) don’t get that there’s a dossier on everyone.
Repeating it doesn't make it sound more plausible. If you have evidence, please take it to a journalist - this would be an explosive and worthwhile story! In a comments section, though, it's indistinguishable from mere slander against immigrants.
Thanks for the feedback. I feel bad that I offended people. I'm sorry; it wasn't my intention to imply all immigrants are problematic. It's only the state-sponsored immigrants, and they're only a tiny, tiny fraction.
I don't think most people care, honestly. Plus, as the parent poster said, this has been going on for 10 years. Not much can be done about it now.
But, if a journalist does happen to reads this and is interested, post your contact info. I'll reach out.
