[HN Gopher] Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier sta...
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Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement
Author : city17
Score : 357 points
Date : 2021-12-23 08:40 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I think we should stop using China for cheap Labour in general
| given how hostile their government are becoming. Where possible I
| try to buy Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese electronics.
| joshuajill wrote:
| Oh just because the government is hostile. So if the government
| is "friendly" we can safely keep exploiting the workers? That
| pretty much describes how the US is going.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > given how hostile their government are becoming
|
| To the extent that they are more hostile now, that would look
| like an effect of American attacks on them, not a cause. Causes
| need to precede effects.
| zohch wrote:
| That there is any controversy in this statement is insane, but
| I would be very wary of ever making this statement non-
| anonymously, because I know I'm more likely than not to be
| cancelled for it.
|
| China has mastered the manipulation of the west's successor
| ideology better than those in the west that instituted it.
| _red wrote:
| >China
|
| Its not totally fair to put this all on Chinese manipulation.
|
| Western politicians and many "tech elite" all love the
| concept of CCP-style 'social credit systems' being
| instituted.
|
| This is ultimately what vaxpass is all about.
| nix23 wrote:
| This could have been a good point until you came up with
| that sentence:
|
| >>This is ultimately what vaxpass is all about.
|
| Now it's just a stupid waste of electricity.
| _red wrote:
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Enjoy the ICU.
| dang wrote:
| Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you
| banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or
| you feel they are.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
|
| Edit: fortunately you don't seem to be in the habit of it
| (that's good).
| dang wrote:
| Please do not respond to a bad comment by breaking the
| site guidelines yourself. That just makes everything
| worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: we've had to warn you repeatedly in the past:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27875046 (July 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25826399 (Jan 2021)
|
| Continuing like this will get you banned here, so please
| don't.
| nix23 wrote:
| The comments below mine just don't look like i "made"
| something worse, quite the opposite, the comments below
| mine are leaning more in that or the other direction, i
| am fine with that i don't see a problem here...but
| anyway...accepted.
| zivkovicp wrote:
| How so? Even if the intent of such programs might be
| positive, is there not a risk of them being used to
| limit, coerce, or change user behaviour? (it wouldn't be
| the first time)
|
| Why is this such an offensive statement?
| geofft wrote:
| There's a risk of a baseball bat being used to limit,
| coerce, and change people's behavior, and there are
| documented cases of them being used in that way, but
| nobody would say that the Louisville Slugger is crypto-
| authoritarianism.
|
| Your statement isn't offensive and nobody is offended by
| it; it's just, as the comment above said, stupid. There's
| a difference.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN?
| You have a long history of doing this, even though I know
| you've also posted lots of good things.
|
| Please stick to the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| pc86 wrote:
| Social credit is offensive and freedom-limiting _by
| definition_. You can 't make any small-d-democratic
| argument in favor of a massive central social credit
| system because the two are antithetical.
|
| A vaccine passport system could turn into something
| similar, but that's not necessarily a given. It's the
| slippery slope fallacy taken to the extreme - "because
| it's possible to imagine a situation in which a vaccine
| passport system goes way beyond its usefulness and
| becomes oppressive, that means vaccine passport systems
| are oppressive." In addition to that sentiment being
| wrong, HN also has a pretty violent knee-jerk reaction to
| anything that could even _potentially_ be taken as anti-
| vax sentiment. As can be seen by this garbage[0].
|
| [0]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29659905#29661353
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Zero trolling here. I am modestly in favour of a COVID-19
| vaccine "passport". And yes, I have considered the
| oppression side of the argument. Why am I modestly in
| favour? Look at how yellow fever vaccination status is
| handled. In areas of the world where it is still endemic,
| travelers are denied entry without a recent vaccination
| and an official UN/WHO card to prove it. (Please leave
| aside for a moment the idea that these cards can be fake.
| Assume they are accurate for this discussion.)
|
| Almost by small-d-democratic definition, the yellow fever
| vaccine requirement is oppressive. However, it helps to
| reduce the spread of yellow fever.
|
| Please provide your thoughts and comments.
| pc86 wrote:
| I've never traveled anywhere yellow fever is endemic so I
| don't know a ton about it other than the vaccination
| requirements you mention.
|
| I carry my vaccination card in my wallet so I'm not
| immediately opposed to some sort of verifiable way to
| confirm one's vaccination status. There are absolutely
| some instances where it makes sense to mandate it, but
| it's wrong to try to structure society so that you can't
| take part unless you're vaccinated. There's a point at
| which mandates and guidelines aren't helpful anymore and
| they become theater. I'm not going to put a mask on at
| the entrance to a restaurant, walk ten feet to a table,
| and take my mask off. That's theater.
|
| I have unvaccinated family members. They're not changing
| their mind, I'm done trying to change it, but they're
| still in my family and they're not disowned or
| excommunicated because they happen to be wrong about
| something. Omicron seems as transmissible or slightly
| more-so, but much less deadly. That sounds like exactly
| what we thought multiple variants would lead to a year
| ago. It sounds like things are in the right track and
| we're on our way out of the forest, so to speak. But,
| government being government, I don't see mandates slowing
| or going away any time soon. I think what's here is here
| to stay, whether it works or not.
| zivkovicp wrote:
| This sounds about right.
|
| I'm not informed enough to comment on the virus or
| quality/efficacy/safety of any of the vaccines, but I am
| vaccinated, and have friends and family in both camps.
| All I know is that this is not a naive virus, I know
| about a dozen people who have had it, not everyone has
| survived, but everyone who has was genuinely afraid for
| their lives. That anecdotal evidence is enough to
| convince me to accept a vaccine/medication because I feel
| the risk/reward is favourable.
|
| I can't bring myself to support mandated vaccination or
| making pariahs out of those who don't share my
| risk/reward considerations, however, because I think
| clawing back individual liberties that we give up is much
| harder than finding the compromises necessary to hold
| onto them in the first place.
|
| I might be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time, but I
| would prefer compromise and tolerance to a knee-jerk
| reaction. There is already too much bad legislation born
| from "times of emergency" and such, no need to stoke the
| flames.
| zivkovicp wrote:
| > Social credit is offensive and freedom-limiting by
| definition.
|
| Yes, I agree. I was defending this exact point. The
| commenter I replied to originally seemed upset about the
| original comment condemning vax passports.
|
| I guess I didn't word my response clearly enough.
| nix23 wrote:
| To put a proof of vaccination on the same level as a
| social credit system is just beyond, if you don't have a
| passport you cannot travel into other country's, if your
| dog is not vaccinated against rabbis, he cannot travel to
| let's say Georgia.
|
| I am upset because a Quanon goat thinks a vaxpass is the
| same as a social credit system, and was just made for
| that "ultimately"
| nix23 wrote:
| > Even if the intent of such programs might be positive,
| is there not a risk of them being used to limit, coerce,
| or change user behaviour?
|
| Oh yes same with passports.....
| dang wrote:
| You broke the site guidelines egregiously here, and made it
| worse downthread. We ban accounts that do that repeatedly,
| and I'm dismayed to see that you've been doing it a lot.
|
| I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also
| posted good (for HN) comments like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29300291 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28987167, but to be
| honest, those are pretty slim pickings in the account's
| history. That's a problem and we need you to fix it if you
| want to keep participating here.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| cnlevy wrote:
| cancel culture doesn't originate in China. It's an evolution
| of the western idea of equality and individualism taken to an
| extreme
| pmontra wrote:
| Ancient Athens had ostracism [1]. It was against a single
| person and not against ideas but given that the numbers
| where smaller and heads carry ideas, it was more or less
| the same thing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
| quocanh wrote:
| China is famously very accepting of all ideas and would
| never ban or ostracize members of its own society for
| perspectives that disagree with the majority's belief.
|
| Yep. Definitely a western thing.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Cancel culture isn't that either. Cancel culture is a
| rebranding of 'shunning', which I bet predates humans as we
| know them. I bet our social monkey predecessors had such
| tactics figured out.
|
| Read this and tell me it isn't 'cancel culture':
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Overview
|
| Bonus: 'shadow-banning' is stealth shunning:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Stealth_shunning
| hnfong wrote:
| How about this?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Another word for basically the same thing, yes.
| Excommunication is top-down directed shunning.
| azangru wrote:
| It's probably a combination of the two. Letting the
| monkey instincts run wild while covering them with modern
| fanciful words :-)
| threatofrain wrote:
| Cancelling finds its roots in the freedom of association.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't use HN for generic nationalistic and ideological
| flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys
| what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: I had to ask you about this just recently
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29555995). Continuing
| to abuse HN like this will end up getting you banned here, so
| please don't.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| I've always thought it to be the reverse, since the west has
| the whole world at their disposal (in terms of audience and
| technology penetration)
| iszomer wrote:
| Ever bought something you believed was _Made in Japan_ but
| found out later it was actually _Made in China_?
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| I don't think inanimate objects can influence a person's
| mind. However media can, especially when you see the same
| idea repeated everywhere.
| pmontra wrote:
| If you always buy from A instead of from B, whoever they
| are, you start enjoying a familiarity with A that you
| don't have with B.
|
| Then, not about minds but about money, you are helping A
| with your money instead of helping B and A eventually
| becomes more powerful than B.
| iszomer wrote:
| It can when materialistic quality is a factor in
| purchasing decisions. For example, I recently had to buy
| a new rice cooker and based on my prior experiences of
| owning both Japanese and Chinese brands; the former
| outlasted the latter by thirty years. Just because it was
| cheap and easily sourceable doesn't discount expected
| quality assurances.
|
| I'm not saying this applies to _all_ Chinese made
| products but something I keep in mind for all future
| purchases.
| pokepim wrote:
| For one, chinese made Teslas are superior in quality to
| American ones. So looks like you are right, not every
| chinese product should be seen as inferior to japanese or
| even American.
| jtdev wrote:
| Yes, it's one reason that I let my Amazon Prime
| membership lapse and rarely purchase anything from Amazon
| now.
| drekk wrote:
| tombh wrote:
| ekianjo wrote:
| Surely the soviets killing dozens of millions of russians
| and invading half of Europe is all the fault of the evil
| West.
|
| Sounds like you went around the world with a narrative
| preset in your mind.
| tombh wrote:
| Dozens of millions? You want to talk history? How many
| slaves were taken from Africa? How many Indians did
| Churcill starve? How many Native Americans died from
| colonialism?
|
| You think you have a big number, but you don't even know
| the half of it.
| patch_collector wrote:
| Slaves taken from Africa seem to be about 12 million over
| the course of 400 years. Churchill apparently was
| responsible for about 1.5 million dying by famine, plus
| another 2-3 million by epidemics (this is dwarfed by the
| up to 73 million that died by famine in the 200 years of
| British rule that preceded Churchill). Native Americans
| who died by colonialism is harder to count, because of
| very poor estimates of how many people were around before
| 1492 -- estimates range from 15 million inhabitants to
| 145 million. Current estimates seem to be about 100
| million dying as a result of both disease and intentional
| genocide over the course of 500 years.
|
| Put all of those deaths together, and we'll say
|
| So all that to say, a lot of people have died in the
| things you've named, coming out to a little under 1
| million per year. So dozens of millions dying per year is
| still a staggeringly large number (though helped along by
| how many people lived in the 20th century, compared to
| earlier centuries -- I didn't compare using a percentage
| of the world population.)
| mikem170 wrote:
| Lots of people have narratives preset in their minds.
| Often supplied by the evening news. That applies to both
| the U.S. and China. So it's interesting to hear a
| different perspective, isn't it?
| dang wrote:
| Flamewar comments like this are not ok on HN. Please
| don't take threads further into generic flamey hell--it's
| repetitive, predictable, and tedious. And definitely
| please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of
| how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. That's
| seriously not cool.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mikem170 wrote:
| It appears to be the nature of large governments that they
| turn into bullies. Pretty much whatever they think they can
| get away with.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Your downvotes are not because of propaganda. They are
| because your entire argument is whataboutism. When someone
| says X is bad and you respond with "but Y is also bad,"
| that's not an argument--it's off-topic and irrelevant.
|
| Any time I want to show someone what whataboutism is, I
| send them to a China thread on HN or Reddit. It's evidently
| one of the only tactics left in the "defend China" toolbox.
| tombh wrote:
| Whataboutism has become the very thing it sought to
| avoid. You are the one who has now taken this off topic.
| The comment above me is not a _direct_ response to the
| article, it is a response to a suggestion to boycott
| China. And my comment is a response to that comment,
| _specifically_ about the fact that they are being
| downvoted.
|
| You embody exactly that which Whataboutism seeks to
| overcome.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't invoke canned arguments like "whataboutism"
| as flamewar ammunition on HN. It's a classic type of
| generic ideological tangent that the site guidelines ask
| to avoid. It's also bad logic, despite how often and how
| eagerly people repeat it.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism%20by:dang&date
| Ran...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sure thing dang. I should know by now it's pointless to
| get involved in these particular threads. Good call.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| China is involved in no less than 18 different border
| disputes. Is encroaching on India territory. Bribed Solomon
| Island government to switch. Refuses to abide by the law of
| the seas. Is debt trapping nations in Africa and claiming
| they aren't because they don't directly take control of the
| projects and instead have Chinese businesses buy large
| portions of ports and natural resources. Abusing trade
| agreements. Threatening everyone under the sun. Lied about
| covid. Tried to cover it up. Spreading propaganda about how
| it started everywhere other than China. Holding Canada
| citizens hostage. Persecuting races and religions and ethic
| minorities. Destroying religious buildings under the guise of
| "illegal structures". Building wind and solar farms on land
| stolen from farmers.
|
| List could go on forever.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't use HN for generic nationalistic flamewar.
| It's exactly what this site is not for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this a ton - in fact
| you may even be using HN primarily for nationalistic battle
| at this point. That's seriously not ok (regardless of which
| country you have a problem with) and we ban accounts that
| do it. If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix
| this, I'd appreciate it.
|
| Edit: this has been a problem for a long time:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29407968
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22893867
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22880789
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827321
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827309
|
| As I seem to have already told you more than once, I don't
| want to ban you because you've been here for a long time
| and also made good contributions. But if you persist in not
| using the site as intended, we're going to end up having
| you. So would you please fix this?
| tombh wrote:
| You are so out of your league here. Whilst you state facts,
| it is comical to imply that China can hold a candle to the
| West's atrocities. 18 different border disputes, 18!?? I
| mean how can you seriously think that's a big number? Just
| take the American continent itself. Honestly, think about
| it for a second, what if North America was inhabited by
| Mandarin-speakers from northern China and South America was
| inhabited by Cantonese-speakers from southern China? Of
| course with the occasional "Euro-towns" scattered around
| selling pizzas. It sounds like a dystopia doesn't it, so
| why was it ok for Europe to do that? Don't you see how
| blinded by propaganda you are?
| ChrisClark wrote:
| You seem to be attacking Western governments assuming we
| want to defend them?
|
| Our identity it's not tied to our governments, unlike
| you, we criticize them ALL the time. They do horrible
| things, but because a Western government has done
| horrible things doesn't mean China gets to do it too.
|
| We are not attacking you as a Chinese citizen, we are
| attacking the governments who do wrong.
|
| This comment chain is specifically about China's
| government's atrocities. If every time we criticized one
| government, we had to include all of them in the same
| post, that would be insane trying to list every single
| thing.
| tombh wrote:
| It seems you may think I'm Chinese? I'm actually 100%
| British.
|
| I think something to bear in mind with the topic of
| comparing the West and China is that they aren't actually
| 2 independent entities that have now come of age, each
| imposing its unique stamp on the world. What China is
| today is fundamentally defined by European colonialism.
| Chinese culture is actually thousands of years older than
| European culture, and for the majority of human history
| was the most advanced, richest and successful, at least
| certainly in comparison to Europe pre and post the
| Romans. Now recall what Europe did to Native American,
| African and Australian cultures, which cover almost half
| the planet. China has something called The Century of
| Humiliation[1]. Those colonial forces that banished the
| Cherokee, the Inca, the Mbundu, the aborigines, to the
| pages of history, eventually arrived in China, and I
| think quite understandably China fought tooth and nail to
| avoid the same fate.
|
| So when I criticise those in the West that criticise
| China, I'm not just trying to equalise the argument to
| include criticism of all governments. China is not just
| another evil empire. Modern China is specifically what
| happens when you have the desire, and more importantly
| means, to defend yourself against the forces of Western
| colonialism. China famously burnt its colonial fleet in
| the 15th Century[2], they are actually not a naturally
| colonial culture. A metaphor could be something like:
| when you punch so many people so hard, that most of them
| die, it's impossible for them to criticise your
| behaviour, because they're, well dead. So when one of
| them, after seeing all the dead people, and then getting
| punched themselves, manages to survive, and even starts
| to return punches in order to survive, those "fists" of
| criticism are an extremely understandable survival
| instinct.
|
| Pointing the finger at China's "punches" is profoundly
| ironic, because not only have we thrown more punches, and
| caused more destruction, but we incited those punches.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_treasure_voyages#Ca
| uses_o...
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I'm unsure how you can justify the present based on what
| happened in the past. It just sounds like you're making
| excuses for justification.
|
| China has a long history colonialism, just like pretty
| much any other empire in history. So unsure how you can
| claim they don't have colonial nature.
| dang wrote:
| You've broken the site guidelines egregiously here.
|
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar,
| regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
| Not only does it take the community further into hell--
| just what we don't want, and good for nobody--but you
| actually discredit your own point of view when you post
| like this. If you happen to be advocating for the truth,
| or some aspect of it, that means discrediting the truth
| as well. This hurts everybody.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
|
| I know how difficult and frustrating it is to be
| advocating a minority view whilst feeling surrounded by
| endless wrongness on the internet, but at least on HN, if
| you're going to wade into such swamps, you need to build
| capacity to do so thoughtfully, neutrally, without
| swipes, and so on. That's not easy, but we all need to
| work on it.
|
| Railing and fulminating against wrongness (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661759) actually
| feeds the wrongness you're seeking to counter. You're
| gifting it with new feelings of validation and
| righteousness when you do that. This is not in your
| interest, and it's damaging to the community (such as it
| is) here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Archio wrote:
| Don't you see that an eye for an eye makes the whole
| world blind? Hey you know what, at least we can both
| criticize the West's atrocities and not fear being
| disappeared by an authoritarian government.
| tombh wrote:
| In what way did George Floyd not disappear? Blackness
| isn't even an outspoken geopolitical position, yet
| significantly more African Americans have disappeared,
| whether literally, or effectively in prisons, than
| Chinese dissidents. I don't want to suggest your white
| and middle-class, but the world really is only
| politically safe for what is actually a global minority,
| namely the white middle class.
|
| But it's way, way worse than that. At the most surface
| level there's Julian Assange, he's not even from the
| country that he'll be disappeared in. But deeper than his
| case are the cases that he actually highlighted, US war
| crimes. The US with formal support from Europe has had a
| decades long foreign policy of violently destroying
| communism (see the history of South America and South
| East Asia). Communism has its fair share of evil, but
| like it or not, it is a fundamentally valid criticism of
| the West's capitalism. 10s of millions of innocent well-
| meaning communist supporters have been killed whether
| directly or through Western support, by the West.
|
| China is not good, but it's just not comparable in scale
| to the West's evils. Indeed I believe it shows a
| profound, albeit typical, ignorance of history to think
| that China is a comparable threat to the world.
| mikem170 wrote:
| It is interesting that nobody discusses the psychology around
| bringing up the other sides perspective.
|
| Why do these discussions tend to be so NOT nuanced or
| objective? Each side has a different view of the same events,
| different populations are fed different propaganda. Why are
| we seeing certain stories in the news and not others? Why at
| this time? Why the aggressive downvotes at the mention of
| other perspectives, with replies kind of shouting back and
| forth? Isn't there anything to be gained examining things
| from both sides? etc
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There's too many discussions in the past that have gone
| bad. I mean, there are too many times when the subject is
| what China is doing in Xinjiang, and people bring up
| slavery or US militarism or whatever, not because they want
| to compare and contrast and _learn_ , but because they want
| to distract from an honest discussion of what China is
| doing in Xinjiang.
|
| And the exact same thing happens on the other side, for the
| same reasons. Try to talk about US militarism, and people
| bring up China and Xinjiang.
|
| So when you're in a discussion about one side of that, and
| someone brings up the other side of that, the priors lean
| toward it being bad faith. Because there has been so much
| bad faith in the past, it's hard to believe that someone
| bringing it up now is doing so in good faith.
|
| If you want to actually have that discussion, you almost
| certainly can't do it in a thread that started off talking
| about one side or the other. You'd have to begin in a
| neutral place. (I don't know if you can pull it off even
| there...)
| enkid wrote:
| Don't many of these companies still do final assembly in China?
| Foxconn is notorious for it's labor practices in China, but is
| a Taiwanese company. How can someone separate Chinese assembly
| from the rest of the product?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| xwolfi wrote:
| If we can't employ Xinjian people anymore, what do you propose
| we do with them ?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar.
| It's precisely the hell we want to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Set them free.
| trasz wrote:
| splitstud wrote:
| Everything you just said is meaningless evasion. Glow
| more.
| trasz wrote:
| It's not evasion, it's a simple, easily verifiable fact
| that directly contradicts your claim.
| yorwba wrote:
| Surely being free and employed is better than being free
| and unemployed.
| drekk wrote:
| The onus is on you to show that they aren't. Have you been
| to Xinjiang? Prior to the pandemic one could simply visit
| and see for themselves
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| _" Do with them"_? That's a truly chilling way to speak of
| _people_.
| dang wrote:
| Obviously the parent was being rhetorical. Please don't
| take HN threads further into generic flamewar. It's
| precisely the hell we want to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| joshuajill wrote:
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| Why not both?
| joshuajill wrote:
| Sure, I avoid both to some extent. What worries me the most
| though is smart people taking sides based on mostly
| propaganda and feeding an escalation of a situation already
| on the brink of a war.
|
| I mean why choose between Chinese authoritarian regime and
| the US aggressive and destructive foreign policy?
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| But avoiding Chinese products doesn't necessarily mean
| taking a stand in a propaganda war. Is China using forced
| labor? If so, is that worth a response of some kind?
| These questions are orthogonal to whether the US is worth
| protesting for its own sins.
| joshuajill wrote:
| It is propagandist and borderline racist. There are
| factories in China with working conditions comparable or
| better then in the US. Remember the middle class is
| growing in China and diminishing in the US.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-state-of-
| amer... https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-
| insights/mapp...
| tomohawk wrote:
| Especially given the horrors of forced organ transplants from
| prisoners by the CCP.
|
| https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTr...
| einpoklum wrote:
| Umm, with respect - it is the US anti-Chinese rhetoric that is
| changing, rather than Chinese government policy.
|
| There are many repressive aspects to the Chinese regime (and
| government specifically I suppose); but this is probably less
| the case today then, say, 30 years ago. Certainly I doubt very
| much repression has been tightened over the past few years.
|
| If I'm mistaken - please provide references, preferably to non-
| US-aligned media sources.
|
| *Edit:* Hong-Kong situation notwithstanding.
| mrloop wrote:
| The final judgement at https://chinatribunal.com makes somber
| reading about forced organ harvesting from prisoners in China
| and its increase in the last 20 years.
| trasz wrote:
| Funny how people blindly trust a private company with no
| public mandate just because they called themselves a
| "Tribunal" and call their press releases "judgements".
| markdown wrote:
| > If I'm mistaken - please provide references
|
| Yesterday:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/hong-kong-
| pi...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The burden is on the person making a claim, not on others to
| disprove it. Furthermore, "no US aligned media sources" is ad
| hominem. Objective facts don't become falsehoods because of
| who is saying them.
|
| Since you've formed the opinion that Chinese government
| policy hasn't become more repressive, and that opinion is
| clearly educated, surely you have plenty of links to give us
| to back up your position.
| dazsnow wrote:
| Listen to the Sinica podcast. It covers China-related
| topics "without fear nor favor". You'll here politicians
| and experts talk about the increasing, and often baseless,
| hostility of Western media over the past 5 years.
| thow-58d4e8b wrote:
| To add to that - putting aside the present state of Sino-
| US relations, our prior beliefs should reflect what
| academic work on lying in politics tells us (1):
|
| * lying in official diplomatic relationships between
| countries is rather rare
|
| * within countries, democratic leaders are much more
| likely to lie to their population than autocrats
|
| * countries with imperial ambitions and long-distance
| ventures lie more often than others
|
| * within great powers, the depiction of the rival great
| powers is especially lie-ridden
|
| In other words, for a person living in the US - it's
| likely that whatever US news sources tell you about China
| (or Russia) is mostly lies or exaggerations
|
| (1) https://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/international-
| deceit/
| hkt wrote:
| Objective facts can become very hard to discern in a highly
| partisan environment though. That's the problem with how
| lots of US (and UK, etc) media works: there's obvious
| partisanship which can make it hard to extract the truth.
| Everything ends up as "the truth + highly political framing
| devices". There is no outside to observe from.
| Traster wrote:
| There's obvious partisanship in uk and us media, but the
| difference vs totalitarian states like China, is that the
| partisanship is in a thousand different directions. So in
| the US or UK you have access to all agendas and can
| reason for yourself about what is true. If Fox says
| something untrue MSNBC will point it out, if the New York
| Times gets something wrong it'll be all over OAN. If AOC
| lies about something you'll have Lauren Boebert screaming
| about it. By having a free media it allows you to form
| the correct view by holding your views and others up to
| scrutiny.
|
| In comparison, in China if the state media decides to lie
| for its partisan reasons then there is no where you can
| go to hear the truth so you never can distinguish the
| truth and we have a thousand different examples of that
| happening.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| > If Fox says something untrue MSNBC will point it out,
| if the New York Times gets something wrong it'll be all
| over OAN. If AOC lies about something you'll have Lauren
| Boebert screaming about it.
|
| And if all these media outlets say Russia/China/Iraq/Iran
| is evil at the same time, then it must be true, right?
| yorwba wrote:
| 1990 (still roughly qualifies as 30 years ago, I guess):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baren_Township_conflict
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Hong-Kong situation notwithstanding.
|
| They're currently removing the Tianamen commemoration statue.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| For other readers who are not familiar, here are two
| newspaper articles about it:
|
| https://hongkongfp.com/2021/12/23/breaking-fears-for-
| condemn...
|
| https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
| kong/article/3160744/universi...
| roca wrote:
| I have personally spoken with mainland Chinese Christians who
| report increasing persecution there.
| trasz wrote:
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _> Umm, with respect - it is the US anti-Chinese rhetoric
| that is changing, rather than Chinese government policy._
|
| 100% - but such a sentence also needs to come with a
| disclaimer explaining that it doesn't mean the CCP regime
| isn't guilty of killing millions of its own people over the
| years and that any ideology or technology they export needs
| to be viewed as such.
| cgio wrote:
| It has tightened e.g. in HK and significantly so. With these
| things it's not a matter of averaging oppression to judge the
| level. If a specific group of people, geographic area, etc.
| are being targeted you don't really judge based on how the
| rest are doing.
| pokepim wrote:
| Do you actually believe there is some sort of repression in
| HK? Black people are more repressed in the US than anyone
| in HK... I just visited HK on a business trip (had to
| quarantine) and there were no signs of oppression or any
| sort of police brutality at all.
| ratww wrote:
| Well, OP didn't really complain about government policy or
| repression, but rather about hostility. Even if there are no
| repressive aspects (but I agree with other replies that they
| do exist!), the behaviour would still be problematic in
| itself.
|
| And it's not just an US thing, btw. Many nations perceive
| dealing with China as walking on eggshells.
| logicchains wrote:
| >If I'm mistaken - please provide references, preferably to
| non-US-aligned media sources.
|
| Here's an official Chinese government source defending the
| use of labour/"re-education" camps in Xinjiang: http://www.ch
| inadaily.com.cn/a/201903/19/WS5c9033f0a3106c65c... . In past
| the Chinese government didn't send large numbers of people to
| camps based on their ethnicity.
| yumraj wrote:
| > In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers
| of people to camps based on their ethnicity.
|
| No they just occupied whole of Tibet and converted the
| whole area into a re-education camp while working to wipe
| out local culture.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The relevant section of that article is Section V.
|
| China has had a system of labor/re-education camps in the
| past, named laojiao:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/c
| h...
|
| These were supposedly abolished in 2013, but in fact many
| of them may have been rebranded using other titles, see:
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/12/china-s-re-
| ed...
|
| and this is why I was making the point that such policies
| are not new.
|
| That being said - the article you linked to really sends
| chills down one's spines, and just reading the Chinese
| government's self-justification for forced interment of
| people not convicted nor charged with any crime indeed
| serves to emphasize the repressive nature of this practice.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers
| of people to camps based on their ethnicity.
|
| In past the Chinese government did send large numbers of
| people to camps based on their ethnicity.
|
| Tibetans - since 1957
|
| Mongols - since its first years
|
| Miao/Yao - 1982
|
| Koreans - Koreans Chinese were routinely rounded up every
| time NK-China affairs were flaring up since seventies
|
| And Uighurs were in, and out of concentration/extermination
| camps many times already in the past. In 1949, 1967, 1976,
| 1991, 1998
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| First time learning about these. Any sources?
| rfoo wrote:
| > In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers
| of people to camps based on their ethnicity.
|
| Before 2003 the Chinese government just randomly pull
| people off street and if they can't prove (i.e. by showing
| an ID card) they live in this city they go to a camp [1],
| and this happened everywhere.
|
| Heck, even less than 20 years ago.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custody_and_repatriation
| zivkovicp wrote:
| This is one of those "damned if you, and damned if you don't"
| type situations.
|
| I'm sure all they really want is to maintain their margins, which
| makes turning the other cheek to potential human rights abuses
| that much more sinister... but making a commitment to higher
| ethical standards risks putting them out of business (Intel has
| been poorly managed for years already), which would make this a
| futile effort.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Perhaps Reuters is glossing over the way in which Intel's letter
| phrased things, but it certainly sounds as if they were _utterly_
| clueless about the subject being politically sensitive. Vs. (say)
| "Per U.S. law [exact, legalistic citation], signed into law on
| [date] by [President], Intel is legally forced to require that
| [dull, narrow, legalistic description of requirement, free of any
| hot-buttons]." Placed amid similar citations of other new laws -
| some of them Chinese - which affect Intel's supply chain.
|
| Arguments about whether or not the third rail should carry 10,000
| volts can be made all day. But corporate management that gets
| electrocuted because they were simply oblivious needs to be
| replaced.
| undecisive wrote:
| _> Intel, which has 10,000 employees in China, said in its
| apology that it "respected the sensitivity of the issue in
| China."_
|
| This reminds me of a recent British politics round-table
| interview, where a member of the ruling party told the world that
| we shouldn't call politicians liars - despite the current Prime
| Minister lying through his teeth at almost every opportunity
| simply because he can get away with it - because it would
| undermine people's faith in the political system that keeps lying
| to them.
|
| It seems that saying the things that need to be said about the
| political systems that need to be called out is not as important
| as getting the money (or savings) that the countries attached to
| those political systems can generate.
|
| Or, as a great man once sang: For china
| (f'china x 4) is a country that can bring us to our knees.
|
| Not sure there's a solution to this though. Power will always
| corrupt.
| namdnay wrote:
| > a member of the ruling party told the world that we shouldn't
| call politicians liars - despite the current Prime Minister
| lying through his teeth at almost every opportunity simply
| because he can get away with it - because it would undermine
| people's faith in the political system that keeps lying to
| them.
|
| I didn't follow the event, but I have to agree with whoever
| said that. There's nothing more toxic to democracy than people
| just saying "ah politicians are all liars anyway". That's
| exactly what post-truth politicians like Johnson, Trump and
| Putin want you to believe - it's all a big joke anyway, so who
| cares?
| gelert wrote:
| What's toxic to democracy is politicians lying, and then
| telling us that p;ointing out their moments of hypocrisy is
| what's doing the real damage. Describing reality is never
| bad.
| tiahura wrote:
| Politicians have been lying since the origin of politics.
| The modern press' penchant for shouting liar every time a
| politician they don't like speaks is juvenile and
| patronizing to the audience.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Why not both? The media is full of liars, yes - two words
| "Daily Mail" or "Fox News" if you are American.
|
| Politics is also full of liars. Boris Johnson being a
| prime example.
|
| I don't know what the solution is but I suspect it lies
| in removing egoism from the system. Something more like
| Switzerland's governing council rather than an individual
| leader that just attracts narcissistic individuals.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| There's a world of difference between "This politician is
| lying to you." and "All politicians are lying to you." One
| is a statement against a single incident which can be
| refuted or supported by additional facts. The other is an
| unprovable blanket statement which begs the question of
| whether the government can be trusted.
| syshum wrote:
| The question "can government be trusted" is long answered
| with a resounding NO it can not
|
| Government like fire is a useful servant, but a fearful
| master.
|
| This is why we have separation of powers, checks and
| balances, and a federalist system in the US, because we
| understand government can never, and should never be
| trusted.
|
| Government is control, government is fear, government is
| power. Power Corrupts, and the only way to prevent that
| corruption is to deny power, to check power, to
| distribute power.
| namdnay wrote:
| This is all well and nice in theory, but in practice a
| feeble government just means leaving abandoning the weak
| to the whims of the strong
| syshum wrote:
| Ironically I view giving democratic governments more
| power as abandoning the weak to the whims of the
| majority, which we have seen time and time again in
| history even recent history
|
| Democracy after all is 2 wolves and lamb voting on what
| is for dinner, a constitutional republic backed by
| distributed governance is the lamb having rights to tell
| the majority to f' off
| sumedh wrote:
| > want you to believe
|
| Are you claiming that politicians are not liars?
| namdnay wrote:
| That's exactly the kind of easy cynicism that serves no-
| one.
|
| Yes, everyone lies, politicians and non-politicians.
| "you're looking good", "our product already does this", "i
| was just about to do that", "it's our highest priority"...
| and in a job where you are constantly being asked to
| satisfy everyone, of course there are going to be fibs.
|
| But there are relatively honest politicians and there are
| absolute sociopaths like Johnson, and it's important to
| differentiate the two
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there are relatively honest politicians_
|
| Part of the problem is good politicians are agents of
| compromise. When a culture ceases to be able to find
| compromise, a direction online echo chambers and social
| media are driving ours, then a politician who wins 90% in
| exchange for giving 10% comes back a liar. They said they
| were going to get 100%!
| themitigating wrote:
| Karry Wang said he would no longer serve as brand ambassador for
| Intel, adding in a statement that "national interests exceed
| everything".
|
| That's such an insane statement. It basically says
| themitigating wrote:
| Karry Wang said he would no longer serve as brand ambassador for
| Intel, adding in a statement that "national interests exceed
| everything".
|
| Everything?
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| Yes, that's the mentality. And, by "national interests", they
| mean "CCP interests" -- there's no distinction between "the
| party" and the nation.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The civilization is the nation is the party.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Is there a list of companies who've made similar apologies in the
| past? When presented with a choice I would prefer to avoid them.
| 323 wrote:
| In fashion: Nike, Versace, Coach, Givenchy, Calvin Klein,
| Asics, Swarovski, Dior
|
| https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/article/303950...
| throw10920 wrote:
| Blizzard! John Cena (although not a company)
| johnzim wrote:
| I think it warrants inclusion, he was clearly speaking on
| behalf of his 'brand' and ought to be considered in the
| same company as other commercial entities. Or you could
| construe it as an apology on behalf of whatever movie
| studio he was working with at the time.
| tiahura wrote:
| Marriott
| ekianjo wrote:
| probably close to 100% of them. It will be difficult to
| organize a boycott.
|
| The next best thing is to rank them by order of who knelt the
| fastest to China.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| I very much doubt close to 100% of companies have issued
| apologies to china
| hker wrote:
| Check out this list on reddit:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfg1ce/list_of_co...
| "List of companies under China's censorship orders (so far).
| Credit to u/lebe"
| 737min wrote:
| " We apologise for the trouble caused to our respected Chinese
| customers.." Andy Grove, a Holocaust survivor, must be turning
| over in his grave.
| norealathrowwy wrote:
| rayiner wrote:
| In a dark way I'm enjoying this. China has these "masters of the
| universe" on a leash and isn't afraid to give a good yank to
| bring them to heel.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Did you live through the late 80s when Japan had a similar
| psychological hold on a lot of US companies and decision
| makers?
|
| It may be somewhat entertaining, but it is not a good thing.
| That said, it will be very funny if China suffers the same sort
| of historical path that Japan did after the failure of the 5th
| gen and the bubble. Housing prices as a multiple of income are
| actually worse in Shanghai right now than they were at the peak
| of Japan, Inc.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Bombing and pillaging countries left and right for more than half
| a century - totally fine, we're bringing democracy to the
| savages.
|
| Becoming an economic threat to the empire - bad, very bad.
| Anything you do is bad because human rights, environment, blah
| blah
|
| The lack of self reflection is staggering. I expect to get
| flagged immediately, of course. Can't go against the narrative
| dazsnow wrote:
| undecisive wrote:
| You're not wrong. But I think that's more a culture thing.
|
| The media - not just traditional print media - is feeling
| increasingly fragile since the shift away from newspapers.
|
| So while there's an appetite for it, news sites will cover any
| topic that needs covering. So, for example, the existence of
| Bolsonaro would have mostly gone under the radar had the septic
| spraytan not endorsed him, at which point the media felt it
| could start calling out the BS that was coming from there.
|
| But it isn't just the slimy swampcleaner salesman, when
| antisemitism scandals that mention Israel erupt, that becomes
| an acceptable time to talk about their bad behaviour, under the
| guise of "these are the legitimate criticisms that this person
| is / could be raising". Do Israel stop being human rights
| abusers when antisemitism is not in the news? Of course not.
| But it isn't seen as newsworthy enough unless something local
| has piqued our interest.
|
| When people are killed in racist attacks by american cops, BLM
| activism and systemic racism become part of the news cycle
| again. Does racism stop whenever there hasn't been a high-
| profile racist murder recently? Of course not. But without that
| hook, people looking to follow the story won't be clicking on
| every link.
|
| And unlike traditional newspaper, where you could buy the thing
| just for the crossword and the advertisers will still pay, only
| the individual stories and individual page loads bring revenue.
| And so the media can no longer afford to finance investigative
| journalism that might not resonate with the public.
|
| So I don't think it's that the rhetoric that has changed. News
| cycles are responding to what they think our attention span is,
| based on the numbers they see in the ad revenue. And in this
| specific instance, while China has had an uneasy relationships
| with the Uighurs since at least the 1950s, it's the secret and
| courtless detention and "reeducation" centres that have really
| got people riled up (shhh... don't mention Guantanamo) and
| that's only been happening since around 2017.
| rg111 wrote:
| China has got a massive consumer market, an unmatched
| manufacturing ecosystem with zero labor disputes among other
| things, minerals, arguably the most stable (in terms of violence,
| unrest, strikes, etc.) regions in the world, and more.
|
| They have got anyone by their balls who remotely wants to _sell_
| anything in China.
|
| John Cena (famous wrestler, entertainer) recently apologized to
| Chinese people after calling Taiwan a country [0].
|
| The companies and people who never go beyond their own selfish
| self-interests, will keep kowtowing to China (and KSA as well).
|
| I don't judge this. I possibly would do the same. But I am not a
| hypocrite.
|
| Apple used Chinese slave labor [1], Cook agreed to work with
| Chinese propaganda arm [2], but fired a techie for writing a
| satire [3].
|
| All actors and actresses (who says nothing against China, where
| two or three decades ago, the whole of Hollywood was very pro-
| Tibet) preach freedom, self-empowerment or whatever woke thing is
| hot in that year, and yet choose regularly to censor and/or
| change content based on China's demand [4].
|
| Intel is doing nothing new, and we will see this trend continue
| at least for a while now.
|
| [0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/actor-john-cena-
| apologize....
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/10/22428899/apple-
| suppliers-...
|
| [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/apples-
| tim-...
|
| [3]: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-
| who...
|
| [4]: https://www.cnet.com/features/marvel-is-censoring-films-
| for-...
| splitstud wrote:
| Unmatched manufacturing ecosystem? You have no idea what you
| are talking about. Like zero.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly and egregiously
| breaking the site guidelines. Seriously not cool.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| rg111 wrote:
| Care to enlighten?
|
| No, seriously.
| dang wrote:
| Flamewar comments will get you banned here. If you'd please
| review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| rg111 wrote:
| That was a genuinely genuine question.
|
| That was a serious question asked honestly.
|
| I am not a troll.
|
| Look at my past comment and post history.
| jollybean wrote:
| Surprisingly, there are a lot of strikes, labour issues, and
| general unrest in China.
|
| Instead of thinking about it like a 'Orwellian State' - think
| of it more like an Orwellian State that could go 'off' at
| anytime.
|
| Note that citizens are concerned about their prosperity - as
| long as growth is happening and money comes in - they are
| content.
|
| But they are also ultra nationalist and ultra ethnocentric to
| the point where it's quite easy for the CCP or leadership to
| simply blame 'Western Imperialism / Chauvinism' for any
| perceived slight against China including legitimate concerns.
|
| There will not be any protests in China about Hong Kong or
| forced labour. It will be about corruption, property rights,
| jobs etc..
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Surprisingly, there are a lot of strikes, labour issues,
| and general unrest in China.
|
| It only surprises people if they consider China as one of:
|
| * A harmonious socialist utopia, or
|
| * A totalitarian dystopia
|
| unfortunately, the US government and mainstream news media
| are trying to paint China as the latter of the two.
|
| ----
|
| Also, irrespective of the extent of nationalism in China,
| western or US imperialism is a thing. Before the 20th century
| it was literal empires with physical conquest, and these days
| it is a combination of economic influence and military
| interventions. Of course it also serves as a convenient
| excuse and distraction...
| jollybean wrote:
| Imperialism is different than Nationalism and nobody is
| exempt from it.
|
| But China is like the West in the 1930s with the level of
| direct control of communications and propaganda, not
| allowing alternative narratives to form.
| joshuajill wrote:
| Yes the US had (has) a part in separatist movement in China
| and it spelled disaster.
|
| https://consortiumnews.com/2021/04/08/us-funded-uyghur-
| activ...
| pokepim wrote:
| Wtf, so the Uyghur movement in the US is basically right
| wing, pro gun, pro trump organization? Also seems to be
| aligning with some qanon islamophobes as well. The irony.
| kbelder wrote:
| I have a sinking feeling that something horrible is going to
| hit China in, say, the next two-three decades. Not sure
| whether it'll be a cultural shift, economic collapse, but I
| think the way they're structured once it starts to falter
| it's going to explode in a really unpleasant way. Like
| exceeding Mao-level deaths.
|
| The West is messier, in a lot of ways, but I think they're
| more fault-tolerant.
| Proven wrote:
| alkonaut wrote:
| OK intel I know I'm probably representing less revenue than China
| but I'm avoiding your products.
|
| A _letter of apology_? To the Chinese regime?
|
| Are there any companies who are giving the middle finger to the
| regime and paying the price? Name them so we can support them.
| stevespang wrote:
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| It's interesting to see that people on both sides are angry --
| for different reasons. People on western Internet are angry at
| Intel for having issued an apology. People on Chinese Internet
| are angry because they view it as a non-apology, i.e. Intel still
| goes ahead with the ban. I see people -- including Chinese
| diaspora -- calling for banning Intel.
| yorwba wrote:
| Personally, I'm most angry that Intel refuses to properly audit
| their suppliers. They're not actually banned from importing
| goods from Xinjiang if they can prove that they weren't made
| with forced labor.
|
| If they could prove that, the US government should be happy
| (because their stated goal of combating forced labor is
| respected) and Chinese people should be happy, too (better
| working conditions).
|
| Merely restricting suppliers based on geography is a non-
| solution, since it's not like forced labor magically stops if
| you cross a provincial border.
| splitstud wrote:
| Why would I ever import from a supplier whose only positive
| is price, if I have to go to extra effort and expense -
| making them no longer competitive in any respect?
| [deleted]
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. For example BCI performed
| multiple audits since 2012 and hasn't found a single case of
| forced labor.[1][2] Despite that, they've pulled back from
| Xinjiang. Companies don't want to deal with Xinjiang just so
| they can avoid controversies, regardless of actual facts.
|
| Also, the Xinjiang Forced Labor Prevention Act is based on
| the maxim of guilty-until-proven-innocent. There is no way to
| conclusively prove a negative. Even if you perform 100
| unannounced audits you can still say "oh there's 0.001%
| chance that they fooled you 100 times"
|
| 1 https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1375456747477815296 2
| https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-26/BCI-s-China-office-
| No-...
| jedimind wrote:
| Ah yes, those are truly reliable sources we can trust. Out
| of everything you could have referenced, you decided to
| cite a random propagandist on twitter and CGTN, why not
| quote the CCP directly? This is surreal.
|
| Edit: I just checked your twitter, you are a CCP apologist
| par excellence, so you shamelessly referencing
| propagandists is not as surreal as initially perceived,
| just some casual undercover shilling.
| dang wrote:
| If you break the HN guidelines this badly again we will
| ban you. They explicitly ask you not to post like this,
| for deep, clear, and long-established reasons (which can
| be summed up like this: well over 99.9% of internet
| complaints about astroturfing and shillage are
| demonstrably unfounded, and also full of poison that we
| don't want here).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| If you want further explanation, there's many years'
| worth at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=al
| l&type=comme... and you'll find other links there that go
| deeply into the matter.
| fartcannon wrote:
| So 99.9% of the internet is manipulating the minds of
| everyone on the internet. Some of those people come to HN
| and post/upvote/downvote, and as a result of their lives
| outside of HN, they regurgitate slightly filtered PR as
| opinions or facts on HN.
|
| I guess what I'm asking is, how do you guys deal with
| second hand shilling and PR?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| >[FooBarWidget is] a CCP apologist par excellence, so you
| shamelessly referencing propagandists is not as surreal
| as initially perceived, just some casual undercover
| shilling.
|
| >well over 99.9% of internet complaints about
| astroturfing and shillage are demonstrably unfounded, and
| also full of poison that we don't want here).
|
| This is firmly in the 0.1%. https://twitter.com/honglilai
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Perhaps I need to remind you that astroturfing and
| shilling mean being paid to say certain things. Why would
| I accept such payments when I already have a well-paid
| career? My HN profile is 14 years old, and you can see
| that before 2020 I basically never posted anything about
| China. Posting about China is just a hobby, man. I have a
| day job as a software developer.
|
| There is a reason why I post these things on my public
| handle: to make the point that I'm not just a random bot.
| Unlike some other people, who post anonymously out of
| fear of being socially ostricized, and who have been
| wrongly called "bots" or "shills" merely for having a
| different opinion, I choose not to be afraid and not to
| be silenced.
|
| You should just accept that my opinions are my own, are
| genuine, and are independently constructed without anyone
| instructing me. And that merely having a different
| opinion than the one you want to accept, doesn't make
| that person a shill.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Right. Here, check this: https://apparelinsider.com/bci-
| shanghai-claims-audit-finding...
|
| Just because people and outlets have a different opinion
| than you doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, or
| "propagandists". Some people just have a different
| opinion, out of their own free will and independent
| thought, all right?
| [deleted]
| hker wrote:
| You are misrepresenting BCI by citing BCI Shanghai, which
| is a red herring in this discussion, see my other comment
| [1].
|
| The problem with what you cite is not (only) with the
| outlet (CGTN), but with the source (BCI Shanghai), and
| also with using a red herring.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666455
| exo762 wrote:
| [deleted]
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Yes people can judge for themselves. Having said that, I
| believe I also have some say in how I think I should be
| judged, and that I am allowed to push back at others'
| attempts to put me in a box.
|
| I am not "pro-CCP". I only look that way because western
| mainstream media is so full of anti-China propaganda that
| anyone who deviates from mainstream opinion look like
| pro-CCP.
|
| (At this point, some will say "we are only against the
| CCP, not the Chinese people, and you are wrongly equating
| China with the CCP". I have written extensively in the
| past why such rethoric doesn't stand to scuritiny and
| merely covers up policies that will result in the real
| suffering of common Chinese people:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29358557)
|
| So no, I'm not a CCP supporter. What I am, is being tired
| of all the anti-China propaganda that's on the one hand
| merely biased and prejudiced misrepresentations, and on
| the other hand a deliberate manufacturing of consent for
| war. I am tired of my home being constantly
| misrepresented and villified.
|
| You are right that nobody knows my situation. So I will
| hereby give you a sworn statement, i.e. you can hold me
| accountable for it in a court of law if you find me to be
| lying: my family is not held hostage by Chinese forces,
| nobody from China is threatening me and my family, and
| everything I say is entirely my own opinion based on my
| own independent research without anybody paying me to say
| these things.
| mthoms wrote:
| You may not be a paid shill (I'm certainly not accusing
| you of it - that would be against the rules) but your
| behaviour is indeed curious for someone who is trying to
| not look like one. For instance, why are you trying to
| get in touch with other HN'ers with a history of pro-
| China commentary?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615344
|
| Don't be surprised that people are suspicious. And it's
| not because of a difference of opinion - users here are
| very tolerant of that - it's because of repeated
| behaviour (another example: avoiding answering difficult
| questions regarding the alleged sexual assault of Peng
| Shuai).
| hker wrote:
| You misrepresented BCI.
|
| And there are other independent sources showing forced
| labor in Xinjiang [1][2], regardless of what BCI Shanghai
| said.
|
| BCI Shanghai is contradicting the BCI headquarter [3], and
| BCI Shanghai is not credible on this matter [4].
| While there are plenty of authentic reports, and
| investigations documented by independent research groups,
| the BCI Shanghai's statement to deny the forced labor in
| the region makes us just think how much pressure the
| Chinese team of the group faces from the Chinese
| government.
|
| It is not that rare for a local Chinese branch to
| contradict the global headquarter, possibly due to pressure
| of operating in China.
|
| For example, the local Hugo Boss in China wrote statements
| on Weibo (supporting Xinjiang cotton) which contradicted
| the global Hugo Boss headquarter (stating that Hugo Boss
| does not use Xinjiang cotton) [5], and the headquarter
| clarified that the Chinese Weibo statement was unauthorized
| [6].
|
| BCI Shanghai is in a similar situation: the local branch
| operating in Shanghai (claiming to find no forced labor)
| did not represent the headquarter [3].
|
| The problem with what you cite is not (only) with the
| outlet (CGTN), but with the source (BCI Shanghai).
|
| You are like stating that Hugo Boss is supporting the
| Xinjiang cotton, because you find a Weibo post by the local
| office supporting it [5]. This is wrong [3][4][6].
|
| And with other sources finding forced labor in Xinjiang
| [1][2], the BCI Shanghai statement is a red herring in this
| discussion.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/solar-
| chin... "Solar industry's ties to China's Xinjiang region
| raise specter of forced labor"
|
| [2]: https://www.shu.ac.uk/helena-kennedy-centre-
| international-ju... "In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced
| Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains"
|
| [3]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/31275
| 01/chi... "Chinese branch of Better Cotton Initiative
| challenges headquarters and says it has found no evidence
| of Xinjiang forced labour"
|
| [4]: https://bitterwinter.org/better-cotton-initiative-why-
| its-sh... "Better Cotton Initiative: Why Its Shanghai
| Branch is Not Credible"
|
| [5]: https://hongkongfp.com/2021/03/26/hugo-boss-tells-
| chinese-cu... "Hugo Boss tells Chinese customers it will
| continue to purchase Xinjiang cotton, whilst own website
| says it has never used it"
|
| [6]: https://hongkongfp.com/2021/03/27/hugo-boss-statement-
| saying... "Hugo Boss statement saying it will 'purchase and
| support' Xinjiang cotton was 'unauthorised,' brand says"
|
| Edited: added links [1][2][3].
| hungryhobo wrote:
| is bitterwinter.org a reliable source? or perhaps we
| should dig deeper, is adrian zenz, whom most of the
| xinjiang genocide claims originated from, a reliable
| source?
|
| https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/18/us-media-reports-
| chinese-...
| hker wrote:
| > is bitterwinter.org a reliable source?
|
| The bitterwinter.org article, which is clearly labeled as
| Op-Ed:
|
| 1. reports that BCI Shanghai contradicts BCI headquarter
| (which you can independently verify, as there are other
| news sources supporting this, such as the SCMP article I
| just added).
|
| 2. argues that the local branch (BCI Shanghai) could be
| under pressure for operating in China (the quoted text
| above).
|
| If you don't buy their reasoning (2 above), you can at
| least agree with the HKFP reporting that the local Hugo
| Boss Chinese branch contradicted the Hugo Boss global
| headquarter without authorization, and make your
| judgement call for why.
|
| > or perhaps we should dig deeper...
|
| You may want to read these sources [1][2], which I just
| added to my original comment and do not rely on Adrian
| Zenz.
|
| > is adrian zenz, whom most of the xinjiang genocide
| claims originated from, a reliable source?
|
| With those other verifiable sources [1][2], we can ignore
| the straw man question of whether Adrian Zenz is a
| reliable source.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/solar-
| chin... "Solar industry's ties to China's Xinjiang region
| raise specter of forced labor"
|
| [2]: https://www.shu.ac.uk/helena-kennedy-centre-
| international-ju... "In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced
| Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains"
| dirtyid wrote:
| Literally the first reference/citation of "Broad
| Daylight" is attributed to Zenz. The Washington post does
| no additional verification but attribute to "researchers"
| who will no doubt also quote Zenz. It's also Washington
| Post. There are no verifiable sources alleging coerced
| labour that doesn't trace back to Zenz. Bitterwinter or
| HKFP are also far from reliable, on par with Epochetimes
| bias.
|
| >Hugo Boss Chinese branch contradicted the Hugo Boss
| global headquarter without authorization, and make your
| judgement call for why.
|
| Global HQs making judgement calls due to coordinated
| pressure campaign from their primary markets, against the
| due diligence of their local branch who has on the ground
| experience. Make your judgement call for why.
| chloerei wrote:
| Skechers is a good example. They conducted multiple
| inspections and found no forced labor, so they maintained
| business dealings with Chinese suppliers.
|
| https://about.skechers.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/SKECHE...
| hrrsn wrote:
| > I see people -- including Chinese diaspora -- calling for
| banning Intel.
|
| Is this feasible? There's not all that many other options for
| x86
| T-A wrote:
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dual-chinese-zen-cpu-
| beat-...
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think AMD has less (possibly much less) in China than
| Intel.
|
| I spent about EUR200,000 on AMD servers last year. They are
| performing better than Intel ones would have done at the same
| price, so it was a very easy decision.
| dnautics wrote:
| isn't this exactly the opposite? IIRC there was a situation
| where a large-ish? AMD subdivision in china was
| nationalized and made off with a considerable amount of AMD
| IP
| formerly_proven wrote:
| You're probably thinking about ARM, whose Chinese branch
| unilaterally declared independency from the crown some
| time ago.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| you're thinking of ARM
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| I doubt it. China is not there yet w.r.t. semiconductor
| independence. There are people who say, buy AMD, but AMD is
| _also_ subject to US laws...
|
| So what will happen instead? From what I've seen so far,
| China is careful with counterattacking US because they know
| the US is stronger. I think the govt will just issue an angry
| statement but do nothing concrete internationally, while
| continuing their domestic efforts of semiconductor
| development as they already have, and also continuing with
| restructuring Xinjiang's economy (i.e. replacing foreign
| customers with domestic customers, as happened with cotton)
| e9 wrote:
| Alibaba recently announced new CPU they developed based on
| ARM: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alibaba-
| unveils-128-core-s...
| limoce wrote:
| They will choose AMD because AMD doesn't make this
| statement clear but Intel explicitly mentions "Xinjiang" in
| its annual supplier letter. I guess AMD did take this
| factor into consideration.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Personally, _I 'm_ angry at Intel for not having actual
| convictions.
|
| It looks like they're doing the ban, not because they actually
| believe that there's slave labor in Xinjiang, but because their
| stockholders will be mad if they don't. And they issued the
| apology, not because they realized that there is no slave labor
| in Xinjiang, but because they don't want China angry at them.
| They're trying to just get on with being a business. (And to
| some degree that's fair. Intel _is_ a business, not a moral
| crusader. Still, I 'd like them to either take a stand, or
| _not_ take a stand. Don 't try to "take a stand" just to make
| people happy.)
|
| ("Angry" is too strong a word. "Disappointed" might be better.
| But I said "angry" to match the wording of the parent.)
| alex77456 wrote:
| There is no reason to expect human-like behaviour and traits
| from organisations.
| notpachet wrote:
| And yet we deem it appropriate to grant them personhood in
| the eyes of the law.
| ScouterRich wrote:
| Seeing this reminds me of a link I posted recently. This youtube
| video features investigation into supposed concentration camps in
| Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI8bJO-to8I I'm posting
| it again because it seems like the kind of video that needs to be
| seen.
| lazyeye wrote:
| pjc50 wrote:
| > history of being woke?
|
| Define this in a way we could pattern-match against their
| behavior?
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| The word is pretty mainstream (at least in western countries)
| now. Check Urban Dictionary.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke
| katbyte wrote:
| your going to have to clarify, there is no consensus to be
| found in your link:
|
| * The act of being very pretentious about how much you care
| about a social issue
|
| * Deluded or fake awareness.
|
| * When you look at the simplest thing and call it racist
| because you want black people to be victims. Other
| minorities don't matter. - a black conservative
|
| * "Wokeness" occurs when a white, upper-class person
| pretends to hold opinions they imagine a black lower-class
| person might hold
|
| * To be asleep and uncritically accept whatever nonsense
| social science professors dream up to advance Marxist
| goals. As with most liberal speak the meaning of the word
| is the opposite of the word's standard meaning.
|
| * "Being completely deranged, hysterical and seeing
| racism/oppression in virtually everything."
|
| * being aware of the social. and political environments
| regarding all demographics and socio-economic standings.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| You're wrong, there is a very strong consensus. The first
| few entries are highly up voted. Take the first 2 as a
| basic definition or idea of the concept and the 3rd one
| as an example.
| ben_w wrote:
| Even if you were correct -- and the Wikipedia page shows
| the pejorative uses becoming common are a fairly recent
| step of the euphemism treadmill -- that doesn't help
| resolve @pjc50's request's the term be defined in a way
| that allows someone to pattern match against Intel's
| behaviour.
|
| The comment @pjc50 replied to has been flagged, so I
| can't be certain exactly what this is about, but the
| article is literally about a company responding to legal
| regulation which is itself ostensibly about a genocidal
| concentration camp.
|
| None of that is either (1) pretension, (2) deluded or
| fake, (3), about specifically black people.
| jollybean wrote:
| Not buying products from forced labour concentration camps is
| generally not an issue of 'wokeness'.
|
| Hypocritical wokeness (in the pejorative sense) would be Nike
| shifting from performance atheletes to SJ athletes like
| Kaeernick, who sadly has made a direct comparison between the
| NFL selection process and slave auction. And Nike of course
| sources shoes in Asia from factories with very suspect labour
| practices.
|
| The US et. al. should absolutely ban anything coming from
| districts where people are making stuff from concentration
| camps.
|
| If China were a small country, they'd never be able to get away
| with it, it's not a huge story because everyone is afraid of
| the consequences.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If China were a small country, they'd never be able to get
| away with it, it's not a huge story because everyone is
| afraid of the consequences.
|
| In Libya, refugees are carted off to "prisons" not much above
| concentration camps by the EU-financed "Libyan Cost Guard"
| [1][2], slavery and other forms of human trafficking are
| blooming across popular migration routes [3]. And no one
| gives a fuck, despite all of this happening literally in
| Europe's neighborhood.
|
| Syria's Bashar al-Assad used barrel bombs [4] and chemical
| weapons [5] against his own population, and "thanks" to
| Russia protecting him, no one has (and likely, never will be)
| been prosecuted for these crimes.
|
| No matter if you are a small or a big country, the lesson
| "never again" from the horrors of the NS dictatorship in
| Germany seem to have been forgotten entirely.
|
| [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/the-
| secretive-...
|
| [2]: https://reliefweb.int/report/libya/complex-persecution-
| repor...
|
| [3]: https://time.com/longform/african-slave-trade/
|
| [4]: https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/nine-
| years...
|
| [5]: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-
| Syrian-Ch...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| DominikPeters wrote:
| To me this sounds like a normal corporate non-apology. If I read
| the article correctly, Intel's policy to not allow suppliers to
| source from Xinjiang still stands, forced by Western regulation.
| They are just apologizing that the policy caused offence. I would
| prefer if Intel would outright condemn Chinese behavior in
| Xinjiang, but this particular event doesn't outrage me much.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| A corporate non-apology posted exclusively in the affected
| country, no less. I don't know whether it's even right to say
| that Intel the global company made the statement; the people
| running their Weibo account are presumably in China and might
| not have had an option.
| hexo wrote:
| So Intel saying "forced labour bad, mkay" is bad. After facing
| ban saying 'is not how we feel about it". Really? Mhm, mkay. Not
| sure what is worse now. Getting WW2 IBM vibes now kind of. This
| is like calling for global boycott. Come on Intel, we know you
| can do better
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Actually doing the supply chain management work on the ground to
| find individual suppliers using forced labor and getting them to
| change their practices is too much for a small company like
| Intel, I suppose.
| Guessnotgauss wrote:
| rob_c wrote:
| If they were mining rare earths there I doubt this statement
| would have made it past the "hey this sounds good and makes us
| seem friendly" stage of marketing...
| causi wrote:
| _" We apologise for the trouble caused to our respected Nazi
| customers, partners and the public. Intel is committed to
| becoming a trusted technology partner and accelerating joint
| development with the Third Reich,"_
|
| Hell, working with genocidal governments didn't hurt IBM's bottom
| line, why should Intel be afraid of it? We have zero history of
| holding companies accountable for being spineless hypocrites.
| joshuajill wrote:
| Dude the US is supporting Nazis, literally. As well as
| supporting Uygur separatists via right wing groups. So why
| should Intel care right?
|
| https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/23/us-ukraine-refuse-to-c...
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into generic flamewar
| hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it
| is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into generic flamewar
| hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it
| is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sinoue wrote:
| Sad to see Intel and others be so spineless.
| jbotz wrote:
| Corporations _are_ spineless, both literally and figuratively.
| mariuz wrote:
| Spineless corporations Reminds me of title of TV series about
| Mafia : La piovra
|
| "An epic crime saga of power, money, violence and corruption.
| the mafia controls everything through local and international
| networks like an octopus, anyone who tries to bring them down
| pays the ultimate price."
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086779
| Symbiote wrote:
| Unnecessary pedantry.
|
| Read the comment as "sad to see the Intel executives and
| others be so spineless".
| alex77456 wrote:
| It is not competitively advantageous to act in a 'spineful'
| manner
| sophacles wrote:
| What do you think the "figuratively" part of the statement
| means? I presumed it to mean exactly what you suggested. In
| my mind anyway - a figuratively spineless corporation is a
| corporations where executives and others are the spineless
| ones.
|
| Please enlighten me on what a figuratively spineless
| corporation is, if it is not that.
| perihelions wrote:
| Apple lobbied the US government *against* the anti-concentration
| camp labor bill that Intel is apologizing for in the OP,
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u... (
| _" Apple is lobbying against a bill aimed at stopping forced
| labor in China"_)
| celeduc wrote:
| Slave labor is _super_ profitable.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| This is why we need the pine phone and librem 5 so badly
| dang wrote:
| All: if you want to comment on HN on a divisive topic like this,
| please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| and make sure you're commenting in the intended spirit: curious,
| thoughtful, respectful conversation _across differences_. Note,
| for example, this guideline--we really mean it:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less,
| as a topic gets more divisive._ "
|
| Many users can't seem to resist hurling flamebait and feeding
| flamewars. Please don't be one of those. This is not a site for
| smiting enemies or being an internet warrior, regardless of how
| right your views are or you feel they are, and regardless of how
| much badness there is to denounce. None of that is what we want
| here, because it's repetitive, predictable, and self-reinforcing.
| HN threads thrive on diffs, not repetition.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| ribosometronome wrote:
| There is a diff between not being a troll and being respectful
| of alleged human rights abuses. Suggesting that we must be
| respectful in the light of massive human rights violations is
| how those human rights violations get to take place. This is
| the same sort of peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset that
| led to things like apologizing for not sourcing parts from
| forced labor in China and sites like reddit holding on to
| jailbait, involuntary porn/voyeur, and literal hate subreddits
| out of fear of taking any stance.
| pokepim wrote:
| So should we start criticizing every american company, person
| and entity in every thread concerning anything american since
| US government kills innocent civilians on an even bigger
| scale than Chinese government? Because you know that is
| exactly happening.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| If the US currently commits anything close to what's
| happening in Xinjiang, particularly with the emphasis on it
| being on a helpless minority of its own citizens, you would
| have to link to it. Many of us don't think that is
| happening.
| pokepim wrote:
| https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeath
| Tol...
|
| It's pure atrocity...
|
| Also about the US minority ( I wasn't writing about that
| in my earlier comment but since you brought that up)
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z
|
| So stop denying that systemic racism, racial profiling of
| minorities and targeted police brutality is not happening
| in the US. Did you vote for Trump? Because that would
| explain why you think those things don't exist.
| ScouterRich wrote:
| Nobody is saying that other countries haven't done
| horrible things. That's a separate issue, unless your
| argument is that it is okay for the CCP (not the Chinese
| people, this is political, not racial) to commit crimes
| against humanity. The response to the possible horrors in
| Xinjiang, and Tibet, should not be countered with
| whataboutisms. Don't we all want everyone to have a
| quality life free of suffering and abuse by others?
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| No the issue is that the Uighur situation has been
| politicized in the west as a weapon to attack China.
| Western governments have never cared about Muslim people
| (on the contrary), same as for Chinese people, and you
| want us to believe now that they care about a
| Muslim,Chinese minority out of the good of their hearts.
| This is in a world where atrocities against the Yemenis,
| Palestinians, are under-reported if not outright ignored.
| ScouterRich wrote:
| Who is attacking China? The Communist Party thugs have
| committed cultural and literal genocide since the 50s.
| Your concerns about unreported atrocities, in Yemen,
| Palestine, and other countries, is shared by many of the
| same people who view what is going on in China as
| particularly horrific, bringing to mind death camps in
| nazi germany.
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| I think the intention is more to try an avoid every comment
| just being "China bad, F*ck Intel"
|
| We all know there are human rights abuses in China, but no
| amount of emotional comments on an HN thread is gonna fix
| that. It would be more productive to have some sort of more
| thought provoking conversations.
|
| And on the theme of discussion, isn't reddit very moderated?
| I think 6% of all posts where removed last year
| (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56099232)
| dang wrote:
| I'm saying you have to be respectful of this community and
| its rules if you want to participate here. That's perfectly
| reasonable: you're getting something, so it's fair for you to
| give something in return. The HN guidelines explain clearly
| what you need to give.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Angry internet noun phrases like "peak Silicon Valley
| technocrat mindset" are a distraction from this, not to
| mention (god help us) porn/voyeur. All we're trying to do is
| have an internet forum that doesn't suck. IMO that's a goal
| that benefits everybody here, and everybody here should do
| their part.
|
| Users hurling nationalistic insults and ideological talking
| points at each other obviously goes in exactly the wrong
| direction for that. This shouldn't be hard to see. It also,
| by the way, does nothing to help vulnerable human beings, and
| invoking something noble like that to excuse garden-variety
| internet mudslinging is a smidge distasteful.
| killerdark wrote:
| [deleted]
| BobbyJo wrote:
| The maximum effect a comment on here can have is making a
| statement that changes someone's mind. Overly emotional,
| shallow, or terse responses aren't going to have that effect.
|
| I get your point, but disregard for decorum here isn't going
| to solve any of those problems. At best it's shouting into a
| void, at worst your fooling yourself into thinking you're
| part of the solution while fixing nothing.
| Borrible wrote:
| The highest entry on that 'Read Next' frame on the right of that
| website, for me is: 'Lick it up:...' that references to:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/lick-it-up-japan-professo...
|
| Do I sense some traces of humor in that news feed algorithm?
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Should we demand that companies avoid California suppliers as
| well because of the extensive use of prison labor:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-11/californ...
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2020/11/11/c...
|
| https://www.freedomunited.org/news/forced-prison-labor-in-ca...
| albertopv wrote:
| Yes. USA prison system is really awful, even more for a first
| world country, richiest country in the world.
| pjbeam wrote:
| Definitely
| vkou wrote:
| It wouldn't hurt.
| cletus wrote:
| Prison labour is the unfortunate exception to the Thirteenth
| Amendment that allowed effective slavery to continue. The whole
| system is corrupt. It allows prisons to pay prisoners peanuts
| (~25 cents/hour) and pocket the difference giving an economic
| incentive to incarceration and an unfair competitive advantage
| with people who can't choose not to work because doing so will
| generally extend their sentence.
|
| But you know the difference?
|
| I can say that without it being taken down by the government or
| some company acting on their behalf. I can say it without it
| hurting my "social credit score". I can say it without being
| "disappeared" and ending up in one of the sprawling "re-
| education" camps in Xianjing that are so prevalent you can
| track their massive growth on Google Maps.
|
| There is clearly an organized effort to extinguish a people and
| culture here, just like it has been and is in Tibet. Given the
| history of this sort of thing, it's astounding to me how many
| will defend, deflect or deny this.
|
| Every time a valid criticism of the CCP comes up some shill
| pops up and downvotes any criticism and/or leaves some "but
| what about X" lame justification. It's actually depressing.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Chinese treatment of underclass people is evil. US treatment
| of underclass people is evil. The statements are not in
| conflict.
|
| We have much less excuse for permitting our own evils,
| because we could put a stop to ours if we cared.
| ngc248 wrote:
| Is it slave labour, I mean are they being forced to do it and
| not being paid for it, then sure boycott it.
|
| If NOT, and if it is an avenue for prisoners to earn money,
| benefits, then don't boycott it
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| > _I mean are they being forced to do it and not being paid
| for it_
|
| Slavery is forced labor, which is orthogonal to being paid.
| If you are forced to work but are also paid (perhaps rare,
| but not unheard of), you are still a slave regardless of the
| pay. If you aren't being paid but aren't being forced to
| work, you aren't a slave (that's called volunteering.)
| olliej wrote:
| The problem is that privately run prisons require prisoners
| to pay for things that are realistically necessary despite
| not being legally mandated. They overcharge more than
| airports, and pay next to nothing.
|
| They suffer because of it, and non-prisoners suffer as well,
| as they're competing with what is functionally slave labour.
| nichtich wrote:
| Once you are already in prison it's hard to say whether you
| are forced to do it or not. It's not like you have a lot of
| employers and professions to choose from. And if the
| incentives include things like easier to get parole then
| refusing to participate would mean more time served. It'd be
| pretty hard to prove some labor is not "forced" in a prison
| setting.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > And if the incentives include things like easier to get
| parole then refusing to participate would mean more time
| served.
|
| So what? That's just serving the original sentence. That
| doesn't sound forced to me. Is it forced labor when someone
| chooses to take a community service option instead of being
| locked up?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Yes of course it is. You're being forced to do it or end
| up in prison. How is that not forced?
|
| It's essentially a choice between 1 option at that point.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You _earned_ the prison. Is it somehow better to remove
| the option and just lock you up?
|
| Negative prison time, applied to a legitimate sentence,
| should never count as forcing.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You pretend to be unaware of false arrest, fabricated
| evidence, bad representation, and over-sentencing of
| underclass people.
|
| US citizens are not uniquely criminal, but US
| incarceration rate is by far highest in the world. You
| don't get there justly.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't pretend to be unaware of that. I think it's a
| separate problem.
|
| Like, okay, we say that anyone improperly imprisoned is
| being forced into labor.
|
| What about everyone else? The argument above was that it
| clearly is forced labor, even when your sentence is
| completely valid. I disagree with that.
|
| > US citizens are not uniquely criminal, but US
| incarceration rate is by far highest in the world. You
| don't get there justly.
|
| It's a mix of things. Even if you fixed all the bias in
| the system, you could still have a high incarceration
| rate with harsh but not inherently unjust laws.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Nobody has a legitimate reason to _want_ a high
| incarceration rate.
|
| The only reason to _have_ a higher incarceration rate
| than any other country in the whole world is,
| specifically, because you _want_ to have your underclass
| ready to hand for slave labor. Or, generally, to repress
| them.
|
| If you are relying on threat of incarceration to
| discourage criminal behavior, having the highest such
| rate in the world is reliable evidence that your method
| is failing to achieve that aim. Other countries are
| demonstrating better methods you could learn from. If you
| wanted to, that is.
| jollybean wrote:
| " because you want to have your underclass ready to hand
| for slave labor. Or, generally, to repress them."
|
| This is not unsubstantiated.
|
| Moreover, it's upside down:
|
| The economic labour output from US prisons is negligible
| and has no material effect on the GPD or industrial
| basis.
|
| ... and those prisoners, were they outside of the prison
| systems, in 'regular jobs' - would add tremendously more
| to the GDP in terms of productivity.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I never said anything about wanting a high incarceration
| rate.
|
| There can be other reasons for harsh laws. Don't be so
| weirdly absolute. If a country does something wrong that
| doesn't mean it necessarily has the one specific
| motivation you're mad at and no other.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There are many motivations for evil action. They don't
| contradict, they add. Having more does not make it less
| evil.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Yep.
|
| Also this has nothing to do with the point I was trying
| to make, which wasn't about the US specifically.
|
| To restate it, just to be very clear: 1. find someone
| that was legitimately sentenced to a fair duration of
| prison 2. offering them the ability to labor to reduce
| their sentence is not forced labor
| jollybean wrote:
| "US citizens are not uniquely criminal"
|
| US citizens are _absolutely_ uniquely criminal.
|
| The violent gun murder rate in the US is 5x what it is
| European countries. Those are stats based on deaths, not
| criminal prosecutions.
|
| The number of 'high speed chases' etc. is considerably
| higher.
|
| In some 'high crime / poverty' areas of the US, the
| amount of crime again is multiples of those of other
| nations.
|
| Moreover, the US has the right to put people in prison
| for crimes in a different manner than say Sweden, who
| might only have someone in jail for 4 years for murder.
|
| China is putting Uyghurs in jail for their ethnicity, not
| for any crimes committed, so the issue is moot.
| olliej wrote:
| yes?
|
| Prison labour is fundamentally slave labour, especially in the
| US. The US prison system expanded massively after slavery was
| made illegal, especially privately run for profit businesses
| that are allowed to sell prisoners as laborers for below real
| market rates.
| mike_d wrote:
| In the United States prisoners are required to participate in
| "work duties," which are defined as essential functions of the
| prison. For example you can be made to wash laundry because you
| are using bed sheets and clothing.
|
| You cannot be forced into doing external work where the benefit
| of your labor falls to a private entity. Of course you can
| choose to do so and the primary benefit is not the wages (which
| are unfairly low in my opinion) but the "day for day" that
| reduces your sentence.
| ncmncm wrote:
| That is just so far from true it is hard to understand why
| you believe it.
|
| There are states that have such rules, and others
| (particularly in the South) that explicitly do not enforce
| any such rule. Often a rule exists but is meaningless; if
| they want to be able to have visitors, or to get outside to
| exercise, they are obliged to engage with outside labor.
| simonh wrote:
| The wages are paltry yes, but as I understand it US prisons
| charge absurdly high rates for basic services such as phone
| calls and even individual emails, so there's a very coercive
| incentive on prisoners to work anyway.
| Taniwha wrote:
| Well the US constitution explicitly allows slavery in this
| particular case, why not?
| jollybean wrote:
| China has a Justice System, and most people are in prison for
| crimes.
|
| China does not have a Justice System - it's entirely
| politicized (people are put to death in private trials with
| fabricated evidence), but even then, we are not banning stuff
| 'because Chinese prison'.
|
| We are banning specifically from concentration camps where
| 100's of thousands of Uyghurs are imprisoned not for any crime,
| but merely because of their ethnicity.
|
| So if Cali started taking Japanese citizens property, throwing
| them in jail, and forcing them to work and to 'retrain their
| thinking' i.e. even worse than what happened to some in WW2,
| then we could start to talk about moral equivalence.
| samus wrote:
| I think the first paragraph should be fixed. Slightly
| contradicts the rest of the comment, no? ;-)
| jollybean wrote:
| Sorry, meant to say 'Modern Nations' have Justice Systems.
| christkv wrote:
| yes
| Loic wrote:
| Definitely! Human rights are the same for all humans.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| But not for criminals in prison (think about it).
| jollybean wrote:
| You do not have a 'human right' to commit crimes, which is
| why you go to jail in nations that have a legit Justice
| System.
|
| The concentration camps in China are not for people who have
| committed crimes, they're for people who are of a specific
| ethnicity, that's it.
| Loic wrote:
| My comment refers to the specific abuse with forced slave
| work conditions for the jailed population in California.
| Nothing more.
| dennis_system wrote:
| [deleted]
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| I wish they wouldn't apologize. This was the right choice.
| viktorcode wrote:
| What is sad to see is how many Chinese are supporting genocide.
| bscphil wrote:
| I disagree. They genuinely don't believe it is genocide.
| There's even international disagreement about the proper
| characterization of it. Most countries sufficiently
| propagandize their own citizens to inoculate them against the
| view that their own actions represent crimes against humanity,
| regardless of how they come to be viewed decades or centuries
| later.
|
| I don't think the core of your idea is wrong though. The
| disturbing thing, to me, is that pro-China writers both in this
| thread and elsewhere think that disproving the charge of
| genocide (by linking to blogs or China's own view on the
| subject, mostly) they have cleared China of wrongdoing. It's
| obvious to me as someone with a modicum of moral intelligence
| that this is not really the case.
|
| As an American, I am happy to admit that my understanding of
| the situation in Xinjiang is probably tainted by anti-China
| ideas being spread in my country. _However_ , even if I take
| China entirely at its word about what it is doing, it's still
| quite obvious that this is _horrifically_ bad and wrong. I
| would support boycotts entirely on the basis of China 's _own_
| characterization of its actions.
|
| That's really the sad, disturbing thing; people are supporting
| China by "showing" that Western media characterizations of the
| camps are inaccurate. I'm happy to admit they might be, but I
| believe it is a great moral failing to not denounce China's
| actions on its own terms.
|
| What is uncontested: China is sending members (~1.3M per year)
| of a religious / ethnic minority (Uyghur) to internment camps
| for the purpose of preventing / deterring terrorism and to
| promote their social integration into China as a whole.
|
| This is _chilling_ to anyone who knows anything at all about
| the history of interning ethnic minorities. It was bad and
| wrong when the United States sent 125,000 Japanese people to
| live in camps during World War II. Anyone who protested or
| boycotted the United States for the purpose of ending that
| internment was, or would have been, justified. I am fully ready
| to apply the same standards to other countries, including my
| own, as I apply to China.
|
| Likewise, whether it fully qualifies for the term "forced
| labor" or not, work done by people while imprisoned is
| _inherently_ questionable and deserves heavy scrutiny. I
| believe that the conditions in prisons in the United States and
| the very-low-wage labor done by our prisoners are an abject
| moral horror, and it 's important to turn the same critical eye
| to China's use of Uyghur labor.
|
| Again, that's just looking at China's own view of it. The facts
| of the matter are likely to lie somewhere in between, which is
| even more concerning. It's hard not to see the shadow of some
| of the 20th century's fascistic horrors in China's
| discriminatory policies towards the Uyghur population,
| especially if anything in this piece turns out to be true:
| https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...
| ncmncm wrote:
| The US incarcerates many, many more than China, as a much
| higher fraction of its population. Probably at least as many
| are on no better pretext, and are similarly exploited for
| prison labor.
|
| Thus, a boycott-US movement would be (also!) justified, but
| better would be to check on practices and boycott specific
| companies that do not take particular care not to rely on
| prison labor in any country. That is more work, but
| supporting liberty everywhere is always going to be very hard
| work. However much, it is worth doing.
|
| I type this posting on a phone. We are all almost as
| complicit as we can be.
| whodunnit wrote:
| Does the U.S. incarcerate people based on their religion?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Does it matter? A pretext is a pretext.
|
| In fact, there have been a great many Americans
| railroaded into prison for, essentially, being Muslim,
| for refusing to try to entice other Muslims to engage in
| attempts at domestic terrorism so that they can be
| imprisoned, just to burnish somebody's resume.
|
| But mostly black people are railroaded into prison for
| being black. Do you imagine that is less bad?
| jollybean wrote:
| "A pretext is a pretext."
|
| ????
|
| No.
|
| A 'crime' is a legitimate pretext for putting someone in
| jail.
|
| Being of a certain ethnicity is _not_ a reason for
| putting someone in jail.
|
| I can't believe I am reading this.
|
| And your statements about 'putting Muslims in jail for
| being Muslim' and But mostly 'black people are railroaded
| into prison for being black' are completely false. People
| are put in jail for crimes, whereupon the justice system
| in some cases may not be fully equally applied and FYI if
| anything the Justice System is heavy in the US to the
| point whereupon supposedly privileged group face nearly
| equally excessive oversight from the system - which is
| altogether a different problem.
| celeduc wrote:
| Genocidal policies are usually quite popular with the local
| majority.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN, and
| certainly not generic nationalistic flamewar comments. It's
| against the site guidelines and everything we're trying for
| this forum to be.
|
| No, I'm not defending genocide. I'm just trying to defend this
| forum from burning itself to a crisp. There are lots of other
| places on the internet to hurl platitudes at enemies.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kwere wrote:
| sinocentrism is the belief in wich han culture is seen as
| superior and others need to assimilite or "go away". its a
| thousand old practice. most people seem compliacent with this
| view supported by the government. 92% of china is han and 56
| minorities take the other 8%.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_nationalism
| g8oz wrote:
| There has been pushback against Han supremacy in the past,
| sad to see those efforts have been forgotten in today's
| China.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Races_Under_One_Union
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Forced sterilization of an ethnicity is genocide, and there's
| no debate as to whether this is happening.
| dennis_system wrote:
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| China has a population control policy. They've exempted
| minorities from this policy for decades. That they are now
| enforcing their laws equally is not genocide.
| AIorNot wrote:
| Sad to see this - injustice and oppression must be fought against
| regardless of economic consequence
|
| https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-forced-labor-uyghurs...
| mrweasel wrote:
| I really don't understand China, but China also don't care to
| understand the west one bit. China has zero cultural understand
| about anything beyond its borders and basically only survives on
| other cultures being either extremely flexible or completely
| dependent on China for manufacturing (or both).
|
| We're basically just waiting for companies to pull manufacturing
| from China, because they can deal with the backlash at home for
| ever, or some western leader to snap and just tell China to "Go
| kill whoever you need to get rid of so we can move on".
| temp8964 wrote:
| It's really not about "China". It's all about CCP.
|
| It's also not the CCP doesn't care. The CCP does care about its
| international image. But it's making choice between domestic
| control and international image. It's obvious to CCP right now
| that the world is heavily rely on China's market and
| manufacturing power. So the CCP can use it to suppress any
| backlash, and do terrible things domestically. The whole HK
| affair has firmly proved that the western world can't do
| anything to it. Invading Taiwan is definitely in its
| calculation.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| > and basically only survives on other cultures being either
| extremely flexible or completely dependent on China for
| manufacturing (or both).
|
| yeah, china only exist since 1940, it's a known fact ;)
|
| > We're basically just waiting for companies to pull
| manufacturing from China, because they can deal with the
| backlash at home for ever, or some western leader to snap and
| just tell China to "Go kill whoever you need to get rid of so
| we can move on".
|
| the west is just waiting to make more profit from its own
| people, if that means building their factory in china and
| destroying jobs, families and lives, they'll do it
|
| in the meantime China is already on the far side of the moon
| and is about to land on the moon with its bases
|
| --
|
| if we want to improve our society, we must stop being blind and
| repeat what ever propaganda we hear in the west about China
|
| China is doing exactly what we are doing, if you mad at china,
| be mad at yourself for building this society
|
| China eradicated extreme poverty in its country, what the west
| did to its people? the US still doesn't have universal
| healthcare
|
| between the 2 model of society, China's is looking more human
| and is willing to advance humankind more
|
| i'd rather empower China than what ever the English block is
| trying to do ;)
| splitstud wrote:
| Supply chains are already moving from China as fast as
| possible. Access to western markets will disappear. No amount
| of rhetoric will change this.
| lvl100 wrote:
| US fed the beast that is CCP and now the beast can't be
| controlled. Do you fault the beast or the idiot who
| miscalculated and kept feeding the beast?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You blame both, since they're both sets of sentients capable
| of reason, not cats mesmerized by a laser pointer.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The US has never supported the CCP. The US supported trade
| with China the country and with the people of China, and also
| their freedom and rights. The trade also benefitted the CCP.
|
| It's long been believed, and many times it's happened, that
| as countries grow middle classes they become democratic and
| free (Taiwan, South Korea, etc.). So far the CCP has
| forstalled that, but despite the trend in disparaging
| democracy (also in democracies, bizarrely), there's a long
| history showing that it wasn't a crazy idea and, despite
| recent setbacks, hardly impossible.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| api wrote:
| China is in the same position as Saudi Arabia. They have
| something the rest of the world needs so they can do anything
| they want.
|
| For China it's cheap skilled labor. For Saudi it's oil, gas,
| and loads of cash.
| wyuenho wrote:
| It's not about culture. China has been interacting with the
| rest of the world for millennia. It's about mindset. It's about
| them not willing to let go of their chauvinistic imperial
| outlook they impart on themselves and to the world.
| throw44532323 wrote:
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| today, not the 19th century.
| dang wrote:
| Nationalistic flamewar is not allowed on HN and posting this
| sort of nationalistic denunciation is not ok, regardless of
| which country you have a problem with.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| jerry_cto wrote:
| pjmlp wrote:
| We can start by not buying anything Made In China as much as
| possible, however I fail to ever see that happening, as most
| are quick to forget their morals when it hits their wallets.
| blizdiddy wrote:
| Yep, who needs foreign policy when we can buy different
| sneakers? Clearly shaming consumer habits will scale better.
| If we just all act without self-interest, there is really no
| problem!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Start by being the change don't wait for it to happen.
| eitland wrote:
| > as most are quick to forget their morals when it hits their
| wallets.
|
| I realized the other day that if I saw a tray of "Made in
| China" utensils and a comparable tray of "Made in
| Africa/Europe/USA" utensils of roughly the same quality I'd
| happily pay a dollar or two extra, no questions asked for the
| ones that doesn't originate in China these days.
|
| I ended up not buying it at all since there was no
| alternative that was not made in China and I really wasn't in
| the mood for buying anything Chinese after their recent
| bullying of Lithuania.
|
| I am in the mood for buying something from Lithuania though,
| almost to the point of ordering a bag of fresh Lithuanian air
| for about $10 or $20 bucks just for the point of it if
| someone offers it.
| kgran wrote:
| It seems that pure Lithuanian air cans are all sold out. As
| an alternative, you can buy Lithuanian cow dung in a can
| here: https://dovanusalis.lt/lietuviskas-karvutes-sudas-
| skardineje I couldn't see an English translation of the
| website, so you have to translate things or guess a little
| to navigate there.
| eitland wrote:
| I guess customs aren't too happy to allow cow dung across
| the borders, but otherwise this is brilliant: at the
| moment I want to buy Lithuanian cow dung more than buying
| anything from China :-)
| tadasv wrote:
| Buy https://stores.balticvalue.com/products/electric-
| potato-grat...
|
| They ship it straight from lithuania. I got one recently
| myself. Made it Lithuania also.
|
| Then use this device to make Kugelis.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| zelon88 wrote:
| That's not going to do anything.
|
| In modern day, American companies have more to gain in China
| than they have to lose in the USA. The market they are
| chasing is 3 times larger than the US and the only
| "regulation" in sight is basically bribing local government.
|
| Don't be surprised if the companies you boycott simply move
| operations to China and cut ties with the US.
|
| China devalues its domestic currency on purpose so that
| oligarchs use the stronger American dollar as a vehicle. Once
| the companies move to China they can strengthen their
| domestic currency, shed the dollar, and then Americans will
| be making Ipads in factories with suicide nets and China will
| be sipping Starbucks wearing inexpensive "Made in USA" Apple
| watches
| foepys wrote:
| This is completely ignoring the fact that China doesn't
| want foreign companies operating inside their borders
| unless they form a joint venture with a local Chinese owned
| company that owns >50%.
|
| China is also an authoritarian regime that does not care
| about laws if a company doesn't play ball. They will just
| be shut down. This doesn't sound like a good market to put
| all your trust into.
| [deleted]
| TearsInTheRain wrote:
| 3x larger in people is not 3x larger in wealth. I think US
| and China are comparable in that regard. And I dont know if
| the opportunity going forward is so incredible given
| China's debt levels and impending population bust.
| zelon88 wrote:
| You don't understand.
|
| China is in debt because the government wants to be in
| debt. They have to be to have population control. If
| there were no debt their population would have already
| busted.
|
| The oligarchs who rule China don't use Chinese currency.
| So they are not impacted by debt levels. China also
| doesn't promote their currency internationally as a means
| of keeping domestic purchasing power low.
|
| If you threaten China they will reverse these decisions
| and actually try to compete for quality of life. That's
| where western civilization as we know it ends. That's
| where the American empire falls and the Chinese empire
| rises.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If you threaten China they will reverse these
| decisions and actually try to compete for quality of
| life_
|
| This would require political revolution. The system is
| set up and dependent on a complex net of patronage among
| the elites. Competing for quality of life would mean
| taking their chips. People don't like it when you take
| their chips.
|
| This _might_ have been possible to do peacefully before
| Xi. But he 's shown the cost of the competition is high.
| If you come in second place, you don't get another shot
| in five or ten years. You lose the chance of a lifetime,
| and will likely see yourself and your family persecuted
| by the state.
| smhenderson wrote:
| It's also become increasingly difficult, and in some cases
| nigh impossible, to avoid items from China.
|
| I'm older and don't need a lot beyond the food and shelter I
| work for, I have plenty of "stuff".
|
| But buying clothing, gifts, electronics, well, the list is
| long and I won't try to cover everything here, that doesn't
| have at least part of it's assembly provided by China is not
| easy to avoid. It's not just people's wallets, it's time,
| it's lack of knowledge and one's ability to figure out how to
| get what they need without involving China in the
| acquisition.
|
| I agree with you, but let's not pretend that we don't stop
| "buying from China" because we're all too lazy and greedy to
| do so. We could use some legislative and corporate support
| and I think a lot more people would get on board.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Hence why I took care to hint as much as possible,
| definitely there are goods impossible to get elsewhere,
| others are relatively easy to find if one cares enough.
| dnautics wrote:
| > It's also become increasingly difficult, and in some
| cases nigh impossible, to avoid items from China.
|
| I have the opposite experience. I find it's becoming
| increasingly easy. I'm finding myself surprised that most
| things aren't made in china. So far the only thing I
| haven't been able to get was a waffle maker -- I can do
| without! Or I should just actually get a $300 waffle maker
| instead of something stupid that will probably break after
| a few runs
|
| The hardest to find was a power drill.
|
| I suspect that much of this is labor costs in china going
| up and manufacturing moving to India, Pakistan, Thailand,
| vietnam
|
| Also -- I don't buy much from Amazon anymore, so this is
| going to b&m establishments
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "Or I should just actually get a $300 waffle maker
| instead of something stupid that will probably break
| after a few runs"
|
| I did this for a while but a lot of US manufacturers seem
| to like producing low quality items for a high price
| under the label "Made in USA".
| ncmncm wrote:
| "Made in USA" is often code for "made with prison labor".
| Louisiana is said to make a point of incarcerating
| particularly black citizens on made-up charges and
| excessive sentencing to maintain a ready prison labor
| pool.
|
| So, it is probably important to verify that such products
| are not from prison labor.
|
| China has is rightly criticized for unjustified
| incarceration, particularly in Xinjiang, but the US
| incarcerates many more on largely similar pretexts, which
| amounts to a much larger fraction of its population.
| Reducing US incarceration rate is a moral imperative.
| TakuYam wrote:
| That's an incredibly serious claim to make, do you have
| evidence to support your claims?
| xxpor wrote:
| It's not particularly controversial. Here's the NY
| version, for example. https://corcraft.ny.gov/
|
| There's an explicit carve out in the 13th amendment's
| slavery prohibition for people convicted of crimes.
| selectodude wrote:
| They make signs and license plates for the state. As far
| as prison labor goes, that seems relatively benign.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They do a very great deal more than that. Places with
| strong unions restrict what they do just so they don't
| compete with union labor. But that leaves enormous
| leeway, which is reliably exploited.
|
| Many private prisons have contracts with states
| guaranteeing them a quota of prisoners, on pain of
| monetary penalties. It becomes the job of police and
| courts to deliver that quota, regardless of behavior,
| because there is no money budgeted for penalties.
|
| Everybody can be found guilty of something, if you want
| to.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Even if something doesn't say "Made in China", the
| chances are that many or most of it's components were
| made in China.
|
| You have a bit better chances if you instead whitelist
| countries with stricter rules of origin (for example,
| Made in USA requires 50% of the components to be made
| here) but even then much of the supply chain for that
| item will probably trace back to China.
| dnautics wrote:
| > but even then much of the supply chain for that item
| will probably trace back to China.
|
| You're still doing one stage better; but also you'd be
| surprised how much of that supply chain _doesn 't_ come
| from china, especially now, with supply chain issues and
| manufacturers using it as opportunity to re-tool their
| sourcing.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Fairphone have an analysis on their complete supply
| chain, of every component. Lots come from China, but more
| interesting: components of components have a source too,
| raw materials too, as does travel.
|
| An example of the latter, Fairphone used trains to move
| the assembled smartphones to EU. Those trains moved from
| China through Russia, dven during and after Crimea
| conflict and MH17 disaster.
|
| Its a shame I don't have a link handy to their supply
| chain infographic. It is so detailed, includes all
| corporations and locations, that it would warrant a HN
| submission within its own. OTOH, they yet have to make it
| for their recent product, FP4.
| silisili wrote:
| > The hardest to find was a power drill.
|
| Depending on where you live and what you like....DeWalt
| and high end Craftsman make drills in the USA. Makita
| makes some in Japan. I believe Bosch does some in
| Germany, but don't quote me on that.
| dnautics wrote:
| DeWalt, Craftsman and Makita all had "made in china".
| Bosch was not (I think it's thailand). Maybe i was too
| low-end.
| chang1 wrote:
| I picked up USA made waffle iron from C. Palmer
| Manufacturing. It's super basic and almost 2-3x more
| expensive than the first few results on Amazon, but it's
| great! (https://cpalmermfg.com/waffle-irons.html) Hope
| that helps with your waffle making.
| kbelder wrote:
| It's two days before Christmas! Why couldn't I have seen
| that link three weeks ago?
| dnautics wrote:
| perfect! But I will be making chaffles =D
| MisterTea wrote:
| At first I suspected made in USA could mean assembled in
| USA from Chinese castings and other parts. But man is it
| so freaking satisfying to see at the top of the page next
| to "About us" is a link to their tool and die shop.
| They're a freaking casting shop that decided to make
| waffle makers. Fantastic.
| Tsarbomb wrote:
| Super basic? What more do you need!? It makes waffles!
|
| Also I just saw that they actually sell the individual
| parts should you need to replace something. This company
| seems like a real gem.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Clothing isn't to bad, most is made in other countries, who
| are terrible in their own way.
|
| For stuff like electronics is impossible, it's almost all
| made in China. The only solution I see it keeping stuff for
| longer or buying used.
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| For electronics in general and CPUs in particular, "Made
| in China" is becoming the Clipper Chip for the
| 2010's/2020's. So yeah, this thing with intel is very
| disturbing. They're paying for the rope that'll be used
| to hang all of us with this.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not all made per se, but assembled in China at least.
| china is not yet a powerhouse when it comes to
| manufacture top of the line SoCs for example.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| On a positive note, most modern electronics have a bunch
| of "bent metal", screws, and memory + microprocessors.
| The first two are very low value and frequently produced
| directly in China. The last two are high value and most
| frequently produced in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the
| United States, and various parts of Europe. When you look
| at the "value added" by assembly of an iPhone in China,
| it is astonishingly low. The vast majority of value (for
| hardware) is added outside of China.
| davidzweig wrote:
| Chinese companies also make low-middle-end
| microcontrollers (gigadevice etc.), passive components,
| switches and connectors (clones of Japanese designs
| mostly) that are much lower cost and 'ok'. There's also
| PCB manufacturing and stuffing, tooling, injection
| molding (using Chinese or German machines), final
| assembly. For things like Bluetooth speakers, it's all
| local.. a wifi router might me be all local appart from
| the SOC.. iPhones yeah different story.
| joveian wrote:
| I agree that legislative and corporate support would be
| helpful, however in my experience the only pretending is
| that more than a small number of people care. Look at your
| own post - on the one hand, you would be financially
| supporting genocide, on the other hand you want to buy
| gifts. That this is even a question is sign of where things
| really stand and I think you are putting more effort into
| it than most people. See also how many people aren't
| willing to take minor precautions to avoid killing their
| own family members.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo
| syshum wrote:
| It is hard if you want to say "Buy American" or something
| like that
|
| But I find it easy to avoid chinese products, for example I
| just recently was in the market for some cookware, I
| thought my choices were expensive American made pans, or
| cheap China, but in reality I found some very good cookware
| coming out of South America for very good price
| sysOpOpPERAND wrote:
| there is an app where you can scan beauty products and it
| will tell you what is in them, it gives you warnings about
| dangerous chemicals in certain products. it's called think
| dirty. there is another app for food that does the same
| thing called yuka.
|
| i wonder if there is an app where it will tell you the
| origin of a product or a rating on the company based on
| ethics. like ethically sourced rating or something along
| those lines.
| rob_c wrote:
| I wouldn't say people forget as a lot of people don't have
| the extra capital to shop for soy vegan lates every morning
| for breakfast. These decisions are firmly in the realm of the
| political economics.
|
| Either cut off the product supply through embargoes or taxes
| or build a competing supply chain...
| alexfromapex wrote:
| This is mostly the fault of big box retail stores sourcing
| most of their merchandise in China. It will take consumers
| totally boycotting Chinese merchandise in order for them to
| stop ordering more stuff from China.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Which is why consumers that care need to change their
| habits.
|
| This doesn't apply only to China sourced goods.
| tomtung wrote:
| > China also don't care to understand the west one bit. China
| has zero cultural understand about anything beyond its borders
|
| Well, consider how many people in China have learned English,
| can read articles / online discussions in English, or have
| traveled to the west. Contrast that to the number of westerners
| who can read Chinese or have been to China.
|
| China surely understands the west a lot better than the other
| way around. It just disagrees and has its own interests to look
| after.
| bhouston wrote:
| > "Go kill whoever you need to get rid of so we can move on."
|
| Israel appears to be one of the Western nations where they are
| deepening ties and not bowing to US pressure to disengage:
|
| * http://www.news.cn/english/2021-11/17/c_1310316894.htm
|
| * https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/16/us-israel-china-deals/
|
| * https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-not-expected-
| to-j...
| mpol wrote:
| If you allow me to throw in an idea, and please correct me if
| you see fit.
|
| In earlier times the Confucian pacifist ways of China were not
| up to the aggression of Western Europe, the US and Japan. In
| more recent times they learned to deal better with these
| foreign powers. The last thing they want is to give up their
| autonomy and culture and get run over by all these well meaning
| politicians that are very much after power anyway.
|
| The moslim communities might be seen as a threat to Chinese
| conformity since they often hold very tight their moslim
| culture. The same thing might be happening around Falun Dafa. I
| don't really know how it started, but where we are now, they
| might be seen as a threat as well, since they are now quite
| aggressive in their wordings towards the Chinese government.
| sharklazer wrote:
| So, it's fine to just genocide, I suppose. The Han are
| superior to all anyway. They should have the right to
| genocide "moslims" and any non-Han they feel like right?
|
| No.
|
| Your defense is farcical. Just because a group of people have
| a different culture in a different land, does not make it
| alright to go and conquer them for their land and resources
| and enslave them.
|
| This starts with that grandiosely-psychpathic imbecile named
| Mao. To him, it seemed wise to call 100+ people groups "Han"
| and united them by force.
|
| "Political power comes from the barrel of a gun" - Mao
|
| Moreover, Mao is responsible for the Great Leap Backwards.
|
| Winnie the Pooh simply continues the imbecilic behavior.
| dang wrote:
| Posting this sort of hellish flamewar comment to HN will
| get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or
| feel you are, and regardless of which country you have a
| problem with.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick
| to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it. You
| broke a ton of them here--seriously not cool.
| sharklazer wrote:
| Understood. I was going to delete it... then it got
| flagged. No excuse.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Imagine thinking you can arbitrate a different cultures
| ethical queries. Newsflash, ethics are subjective.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > In earlier times the Confucian pacifist ways of China
|
| Imperial China was not pacifist. A basic model of Chinese
| history, which IIRC came from scholars in imperial China, was
| that China repeated a three stage cycle (from memory, the
| terms won't be exactly right): ascension (of a new dyansty)
| and prosperity -> decline and corruption -> chaos (and war)
| -> ascenscion ....
|
| China's borders reguarly changed through force. Look up
| historical maps, for example. However, China had no peers in
| size and wealth nearby, and therefore didn't fight
| existential wars.
|
| I'm not sure Confucian philosophy is pacifist, regardless.
|
| > China were not up to the aggression of Western Europe, the
| US and Japan
|
| They were not up to the technological advantages of the
| industrial revolution, and took a long time to recognize it
| and to change. In the early-ish 19th century, the Qing
| emporer wrote a famous letter to the king of England saying
| that China did not need their trinkets (industrial revolution
| technology) that the subordinate king (I forget how that was
| implied or expressed) offered, apparently not realizing the
| severe disadvantage. Even after the subsequent brutal,
| imperialistic attack on China, seizure of ports, and forced
| trade, the Chinese emporers tried to minimize change, IIRC
| first trying to just buy military tech without the
| infrastructure of knowledge, training, skills, etc.
|
| Even today, the CCP seems to think it will have a wealthy
| capitalist country without a free market (which itself
| requires freedom and free thinking).
| HillRat wrote:
| Don't let the propaganda fool you -- like any other empire,
| China has _never_ been "pacifist," whether we're talking
| about the PRC that established itself through a long and
| brutal civil war, or the Qing dynasty and its endless
| internal and external military conflicts.
|
| The modern mainland state has been very clear -- all the more
| so since the 3rd and 4th plenums under Xi -- that every
| aspect of the Chinese sociopolitical superstructure is there
| to ensure the Party remains paramount. In today's China, Fa
| Zhi means not that law rules the Party, but that the Party
| rules by law.
|
| In their syllogism, any threat to Party leadership is a
| threat to the Party; any threat to the Party is a threat to
| its ability to legitimize itself to the people of China; any
| threat to their legitimation is a threat to the nation.
| Therefore, any attack on Party leadership or actions is, to
| them, existential. (I say this the same week the Tiananmen
| Square "pillar of shame" memorial came down in Hong Kong.)
|
| Thus, the big lie they're promulgating is that Intel et al.
| are disparaging the nation or government of China, rather
| than the Communist Party, because the theoretical basis of
| the state admits no light between them. Anyone doing business
| on the mainland needs to understand that they will have to
| subordinate every interest and goal they have to whatever the
| Party considers important -- hence the "we apologize for
| pointing out that slave labor is not popular" walkback.
| mrweasel wrote:
| That makes perfect sense to me. What China fails to
| understand is that this approach have it's own problem, in
| respect to their role in the world. It protects China and
| it's culture, but makes it impossible for western nations to
| depend on the country.
| joshuajill wrote:
| Interestingly, small companies like FairPhone work to improve
| their suppliers' labor conditions.
|
| Intel of all the companies is in a position to do the same or
| more. However they choose to whitewash their brand by blaming the
| chinese government of their lack of care. Their hypocrisy
| backfired, and they let China win on all counts.
|
| Ironically they ended up helping whitewash the chinese
| government.
| bogwog wrote:
| How could Intel help improve the forced labor situation in
| Xinjiang? That's an extremely sensitive political issue which
| money won't solve.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Pretty much every problem in China can be solved with the
| right economic incentives.
| joshuajill wrote:
| For once they could _try_. They can have rules for their
| suppliers and factories, and enforce those. Other companies
| do. Even a tiny company like FairPhone does. But no, they
| chose for decades the cheap labor, and now they turn around
| and say "no more" just to defend their reputation.
|
| In any case, apparently their apologies to China will not
| stop them from moving away from Xinjiang working, even if
| just for show.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Why do you write ,,even''? You are talking about a product
| where the main feature is fairness. I'm sure it misses some
| features that non-fair phones have in return. It's all
| about what the customer cares about.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| They could do a better audit of their supply chains. I'm
| guessing silica is a big thing for them? Excuse my lack of
| knowledge on raw materials for processors, just jumping to
| silica = silicon. I do know the region produces a bunch of it
| used in solar panels.
|
| Intel could also refuse to sell chips to companies that
| facilitate this genocide - and they are soon going to be
| forced to more broadly than the current sanctions list.
|
| I don't know if any companies like DJI, surveillance camera
| companies, etc use intel chips but with the new law just
| passed companies like Intel will have to do a better job
| making sure their product does not come from or is used to
| facilitate uyghur human rights abuses.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| If every major company benefitting from China got together
| and made demands I wouldn't be surprised if Chinas hand is
| forced.
| csense wrote:
| Any facility or employee on Chinese soil is a potential
| hostage of the Chinese government. "China's hand is forced"
| == your factories get nationalized and your employees'
| families get imprisoned or worse.
| elihu wrote:
| > "Intel (INTC.O) recently published what it described as an
| annual letter to suppliers, dated December, that it had been
| 'required to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labour
| or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region', following
| restrictions imposed by 'multiple governments'."
|
| As policies go, that one seems kind of clumsy. Assuming for the
| sake of argument that Uighurs are being used for forced labor in
| China (which I'm inclined to believe), then isn't "workers in
| Xinjiang region are forced labor, workers outside of Xinjiang are
| not" a bit of an oversimplification? Presumably there is also
| non-forced labor happening in Xinjiang, and probably some amount
| of forced labor happening outside Xinjiang.
|
| I suppose sometimes simple heuristics can work well enough to get
| the job done and more complicated supply chain audits might be
| too hard. (One obvious alternative is to just stop trading with
| China at all, but that's a policy that's unlikely to be enacted
| by the U.S. or other large nations for equally obvious reasons.)
| dash2 wrote:
| It's not that simple. If you're competing with local forced
| labour, your own wages will be artificially driven down.
| Unfairness spreads.
| celeduc wrote:
| _Slave_ labour.
| elihu wrote:
| That's a good point.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| > isn't "workers in Xinjiang region are forced labor, workers
| outside of Xinjiang are not" a bit of an oversimplification?
|
| Not if you knew there was no forced labor in that region at
| all, and this was all just atrocity propaganda to turn opinion
| against China. If it's difficult for western corporations to
| avoid suppliers who depend on suppliers (and so on) who have
| factories in Xinjiang, then there will be constant stories like
| this which puts this ridiculous allegation back in the news and
| social media so we can have our two-minutes hate against the
| evil empire that's ~~challenging our imperialistic grip on the
| world~~ ""committing genocide"".
| clavicat wrote:
| >Intel joined other prominent U.S. companies Monday pledging to
| do more to address systemic racism in the wake of the killing of
| an African-American man, George Floyd, by a police officer in
| Minneapolis.
|
| >"Black lives matter. Period," CEO Bob Swan wrote in a memo to
| employees Monday, embracing the rallying cry of contemporary
| civil rights activists. "While racism can look very different
| around the world, one thing that does not look different is that
| racism of any kind will not be tolerated here at Intel or in our
| communities."
|
| lmfao
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is the same as when Western branches of various
| multinational corporations redesign their logos in rainbow
| colors for the Pride month, but their Middle Eastern branches
| do not ... offending Islam or the CCP comes with enough
| downsides to make them think twice.
|
| I think the best default way how to view corporations is
| "perfectly immoral psychopathic beings always heeding the
| current Zeitgeist for maximum profit and cheap P.R. points
| among the class that locally matters".
|
| I am happy to change my mind about some of them if they prove
| otherwise (e.g. by turning down a massive contract for ethical
| reasons, or standing up to a Twitter mob sicced on by
| influential people), but this is my default view in absence of
| other evidence.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| I believe this has happened exactly once, and it's already
| widely known:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#2010-2016:_Giving.
| ..
| pxmpxm wrote:
| The worse part, at least to me, is that that these shallow
| gestures presumably work, that somehow empty posturing on
| progressive-cause-du-jour actually does buy them goodwill in
| the western world.
|
| It's either that, or this entire thing as a corporate
| strategy is run by some HR echo chamber with minimal
| forethought, and any downside is farmed out to external PR
| crisis management teams.
|
| I'm starting to think it's the latter, given the amount of
| backpedalling and policy changes as of late (think google
| employee walkouts, publishers dealing with wrongthink books,
| netflix employees trying to scuttle the company's IP etc)
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What you're seeing is a tiny peak of issues that pop into
| public consciousness essentially randomly, sometimes
| because you did a gesture and other times because you
| didn't do a gesture. Shallow gestures are common because,
| the vast majority of the time, the only response is some
| people saying "oh that's nice".
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly and egregiously
| breaking the site guidelines.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| Gupie wrote:
| What is wrong with clavicat's comment? He is pointing out the
| hypocrisy of Intel claiming not to tolerate any form of
| racist. Genocide is by definition racist.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
| chloerei wrote:
| As a Chinese, I think the logic of certain Western countries is
| ridiculous. Because Xinjiang's human rights situation is
| considered to be problematic, so Xinjiang's companies are banned.
| As an analogy, can I think that the human rights situation of
| African Americans is terrible, so I need to ban companies that
| employ African Americans?
|
| These bans will only make the living conditions of minorities
| worse, because they may lose their jobs because of the ban.
|
| By the way, Uyghurs live and work in every province in China,
| especially in the catering industry. I have never heard
| complaints about forced labor. American propaganda makes me feel
| ridiculous, but it seems to be working.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| Is there an equivalent to the NAACP for the Uyghurs in China?
| kwere wrote:
| the scale is the problem
| jackjeff wrote:
| The situation of African Americans nowadays is nowhere near
| comparable.
|
| The issue are the "jail looking" camps which are officially
| "education centers". Forced labour happens there, which is
| basically slavery. Western companies don't want to be
| associated with slavery. It's hard enough when people are paid
| almost nothing, but here they are literally not paid and
| obliged to work. The living conditions of people in the camps
| won't change regardless of what western companies do. Also mass
| sterilization occurs in these camps which is considered a
| genocide by many.
|
| I know western media bias is a thing and that most Chinese
| people have no idea this is happening and are good people. But
| this is one of these things where there's just way too much
| smoke for there to be no fire. There are too many testimonies
| and photos. As uncomfortable as it is, it is unfortunately
| true. This is not a western conspiracy.
| tgv wrote:
| You've earned your social credits for today. Pray that they
| will be of value when someone speaks out against you or your
| group.
| limoce wrote:
| There's a huge gap on the opinions of Xinjiang between the
| Chinese side and the Western side. Don't put your words for
| Chinese side on HN because no one would vote for you and your
| comment will be eventually grayed out.
| throw10920 wrote:
| I can't recall seeing downvoted comments on HN that were
| defending China while making good points, with sound logic,
| avoiding whataboutism and crazy comparisons, and being
| respectful. The problem is that almost every pro-Chinese-
| policy comment that I've seen here violates one or more of
| those things.
|
| In the specific case of the GP post, they're making a bad
| analogy in their first paragraph.
| jfax wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| > I have never heard complaints about forced labor.
|
| So does this mean they don't exist?
|
| > These bans will only make the living conditions of minorities
| worse, because they may lose their jobs because of the ban.
|
| but they are slave labour, so whether they have a job or not
| doesn't really matter? or would you say thats not the case? If
| so they could move and get a job somewhere else?
| limoce wrote:
| > So does this mean they don't exist?
|
| Given GP never hears about forced labor, GP may want to
| express that the percentage of people who are being forced to
| labor is low, or nearly impossible. "sth doesn't exists" is
| somewhat extreme.
| jackjeff wrote:
| They'd better apologize for the apology... or else...
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Western companies need to stop being pawns for the China
| Communists.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Wall St. does not care, so these companies can not care. Apple
| just gave BOE 20% of their OLED business to diversify away from
| Sanding and LG:
|
| Note that BOE is being propped up by the CCP to the tune of $100M
| a year in losses over the past decade as economic warfare against
| SK.
|
| Manufacturing is where today's wars are being fought because
| these people know it gives them the power over those that would
| complain otherwise.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Intel's supply chain now has
| components that couldn't be built without a lot of delays if the
| CCP snapped their fingers (since they have also funded the
| conglomeration of specialty materials companies: these new
| companies are cheap when all you have to do is devalue your
| currency (is. steal a few dollars from all your citizens)).
|
| Hopefully these conflicts stay entirely in the economic and
| manufacturing realm, because real war is hell.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| You can't expect an independent company to take on a nation,
| the US and other Western governments either need to admit they
| don't care about human rights or commit to flat out banning
| trade with China
|
| People talk about potential war with China without realizing
| China has been waging war on the West for decades, China's
| military doctrine counts economic warfare as equal to
| kinetic(traditional) warfare. These state backed companies are
| arms of the military being used to crush foreign nations and
| Western governments do nothing. Trillions of dollars in damage
| but they don't care because bombs didn't do the damage and many
| of the politicians got rich by allowing it to happen
| quacked wrote:
| Totally agree. In addition, billions of dollars every year
| are spent on various propaganda wars through advertising
| firms, political campaigns, and policy groups to convince
| people that the current state of manufacturing and
| nationality in the world is both inevitable and desirable.
|
| Forget about the trillions of dollars--the real casualties
| are social stability, self-sufficiency, and the overall
| individual strength of the "west". The grandchildren of the
| people who invented the modern supply chain are wholly
| incapable of rebuilding it or in most cases even
| understanding it. How many people involved in the "national
| discourse" know what a kilowatt is, or have any idea what the
| country imports and why?
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