This has nothing to do with democracy, it's about trying to keep a level playing field. The US has been trying to open trade with China since the 70s, and until China stops doing this the US has to adjust trade policy to keep things fair. Free and open trade is a two way street, otherwise it's just charity to the bad faith actor.
That's because China has strongly failed to follow trade agreements under WTO, including the TRIPS agreement (which is an international agreement protecting IP rights), SCM agreement (which prohibits state subsidies of certain trade goods), the National Treatment Principle (which mandates equal treatment of imported and locally produced goods), National Treatment and Market Access commitments (China strongly restricts foreign ownership in certain sectors of their local market, including the tech industry), etc. Mind you most of these agreements were made in the 90s, so China has had plenty of time to comply. It's a bit pointless to keep using the WTO when a country isn't going to comply anyways.
I'm not saying the US is blameless either, but with China, it's nearly shameless. In the tech industry alone, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitch, Steam, LinkedIn, Dropbox, ChatGPT and Copilot, Github (partially), etc are all banned in China. Shoot, Google left a decade ago after they kept getting hacked by the Chinese government. When China was still quite poor and developing, this behavior was overlooked, but as they become a rich world power on the global stage, that's not the situation anymore.
The US has a long history of abusive trade relationships. China has seen what the US has done in Latam (and possibly in Africa) and said nope. US is used to have everyone play the US game when trading in Latam and other developing countries. China has been making the US play the China game when trading with China. And now that China is a serious world power, it is possibly a bit late to stop playing.
> whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also (Jesus)
> I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of a better one. Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one (Gandhi)
I guess the author alludes to the paradox of tolerance first described by Karl Popper 1945 in The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Sometimes deterring punishment is the only thing that keeps people from abusing tolerance or freedom to destroy that tolerance and freedom, but it needs to stay a measure of last resort.
It’s interesting indeed how tolerance and freedom interact with each other’s. To put another perspective, here’s a quote from an unrelated text (0)
> Middle Eastern Muslim culture expert Marvin Zonis notes that Arab societies value the honor and dignity of the individual more than personal liberty.
I 100% about the benefits of (sometime) punishments, but also perhaps a bit less liberty to make space for other values might have benefits. I’m not sure where to place the slider on that scale, as too much honor and dignity can be quite restrictive.
We don’t. But if we keep throwing companies into the grinder like this where all their IP is stolen and they are just replicated in China on an unfair playing field, we end up losing anyways regardless of intent.
Another way to go is not to participate in the hype cycle of pitching investors instead of pitching customers (marketing and sales) and giving away ideas and opportunities that end up being made elsewhere and not supported where the founders currently are.
Doing the market research and opportunity and presenting it on a stage can be very helpful sometimes, other times it can seem a little head scratching.
You aren't going to spread your form of "democracy" across the world by doing what the "oppressive" regimes are doing.