Comment by paxys
4 years ago
People are going to reply to you with the usual "we are better than them", "we are a democracy" etc., but reciprocity clauses are very common in areas like international trade, travel, disarmament treaties, emissions control and lots more. In fact China would never have been allowed into the WTO (which happened in 2001) had they not made sweeping changes to their economy and assured the world that they would compete on a fair playing field, rules that they still (mostly) have to follow today. Requiring that American software companies have the same opportunities in China as Chinese ones enjoy in the USA is a perfectly sane position to take. In fact it is the fair and democratic one.
Of course politicians don't really understand tech enough to realize how quickly (and how unfairly) China is growing to dominate the space.
> Same with housing, why can Chinese nationals buy housing here, while I can't do so there?
Housing is a completely different conversation, and the answer there is that existing homeowners would never allow the influx of foreign cash into their local markets to stop, and they are the ones with all the influence in this country, not the renters or aspiring buyers.
"had they not made sweeping changes to their economy and assured the world that they would compete on a fair playing field, rules that they still (mostly) have to follow today. "
This is really quite false.
Rules are broken all the time, they are difficult to arbitrate, and often they are not.
The CCP requires foreign entities to surrender critical IP, then hand it off to a state-backed competitors, they don't allow full ownership of local companies, there's direct political interference including the requirement for all companies to directly hire CCP members as oversight, and if it's important enough, to have the CCP right on the board.
All of this in addition to the death by a thousand cuts the system can make for foreign competitors via local bureaucratic requirements at every level.
This applies not only to commerce but critical institutions such as WHO which are directly compromised by China (i.e. not allowing any material investigation into 'lab leak origins' etc. etc..)
The OP presented the situation very clearly: there is no way in any scenario that China would allow an American company to have a TikTok like app used by large swaths of the Chinese population, controlled by the US.
Neither would Russia.
On some level, that kind of thing is a bit understandable, I don't quite mind if China would not allow 'Facebook' to be the #1 communications tool in China, that said, it should be reciprocal.
And for other things, like high-speed rail etc. China has been grabbing IP using leverage that never should have been allowed.
>Neither would Russia.
Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram worked pretty well here, to the point where almost every teenager has an Instagram account, so I think this is proven to be false. The only reason Instagram is banned now is because of the ability to use it to spread pro-Western propaganda instead of pro-Russian one.
Yes, they banned some and restricted others, that's my point.
>they don't allow full ownership of local companies
That isn't completely true anymore.
"Foreign investors are now allowed to establish wholly foreign-owned enterprises for whole vehicle manufacturing, including special purpose vehicles, new energy vehicles, commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles."
https://www.iflr.com/article/2a647jipe3beiloc6xeyo/primer-ch...
The wisdom of reciprocity also is older than all governments today.
See Golden rule and Silver rule.
There were governments when those rules were formulated. Unless you mean, "Older than all governments in existence today," which might be true.
Reciprocity predates humanity by many millions of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism
Of course there was reciprocity between people prior to the first government. It almost certainly wasn't called the golden or silver rule, but of course it existed.
Look, I'm no fan of the Chinese social construct, but in terms of investment and development in an area I've tried to work in for the past 20 years, namely high-tech renewable energy development, the USA has dropped the ball while China has run with it. The US response has been tariffs on Chinese monocrystalline silicon PV panels, in a rather pathetic attempt to prevent them from gaining market share, while promoting nonsense like CdTe panels and so on. GW Bush and Barak Obama blocked DOE money going to renewable R&D just like Reagan, Bush and Clinton did, because the USA is mostly a petro-state economy (just look at CVX and XOM profits recently FFS)..
So China ran away with renewable tech developement because greedy Wall Street executives didn't want competition to their lucrative fossil fuel investments. Fucking retards.
I thought Obama was blamed for giving too many loans to renewables? https://www.energy.gov/articles/president-obama-announces-mo...
This is why we have fallen a decade behind on semiconductor dominance. the next wars will be won not by who owns the oil, but who owns the semis to drive the robots..
Why is it unfair?
Because non-Chinese companies cannot compete in the Chinese market place without strict handicaps. Some cannot participate at all.
However the true question here is more likely to be "what does unfair mean".
There are tradeoffs to protectionism that are inherent disadvantages in the strategy itself that doesn’t need someone to make it a disadvantage. Otherwise all countries would be protectionist all the time.
Tik tok dominating is just good old outcompeting the competition.
Protectionist strategies create less domestic competition, resulting in underdeveloped industries that would die off in the face of real competition. So if Chinese companies are insulated from outside competition then in theory they should have a harder time developing globally competitive products. If we continue to allow TikTok and other Chinese products it is not without inherent benefits of increased competition driving better domestic competitiveness.
Of course it just all looks like we are getting screwed because TikTok is outcompeting despite all this, but banning or hobbling it will just make Facebook et al complacent and likely even less competitive in the global market.
We need the competition, basically, if for no other reason than the fact that a competitive market is what underpins healthy capitalism.
Plus, subsidies are simply another form of protectionism and the US heavily engages in this too. We can’t pick and choose when protectionist policies are applied because everyone is doing it in certain industries.
I make widgets, you also make widgets. I can sell my widgets in your location, minimal to no restrictions.
You can't sell your widgets in my location. Would you as a seller of widgets think that is fair?
I know the reality is more nuanced than that but people are talking about reciprocal agreements to at least ensure some sense of fairness.
Taking a random stab: one argument could be that competition drives down profit margins. By reducing competition, China makes their tech artificially profitable locally, allowing them to compete in international markets on an uneven playing field.
It’s basically a subsidy to their tech and AI industry. Same effect as US corn subsidies making American junk food exports endemic.
US companies like Meta, Google, are banned in China. Chinese companies are not banned in the US. US investors are barred from making controlling acquisitions of Chinese companies. Chinese investors are free to gain ownership in any US company they like.
The rest of the world is generally playing on a level globalist playing field of free trade and open competition. The theory for decades has been that if the world treats China like every other country and then over time they will become more open. But this theory has been disastrously wrong. China’s communist party is a mercantilist country where the government and private industry act together as one.
> Chinese companies are not banned in the US
Huawei/China Telecom/etc. notwithstanding, though they are not exactly social media competitors vs. Google/Meta.
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> reciprocity clauses are very common in areas like [...]
Distributing software for you to run on your own hardware is speech, though, and it's protected by the first amendment. You can license the distribution of your own software if you want, but you can't tell me I can't give you software if you want it.
Basically: how do you think this would work, in a way that wouldn't also make Linux or gcc or whatever available only at the whim of the government?
We aren't talking about TikTok as an open source software repository. Their registered business, operations, leases/property purchases, payroll, advertising, data mining, international currency transfer and lots more are all not covered by the first amendment and can absolutely be regulated under a million clauses.
I'd be OK with all of that. Sanctions are a thing. Regulation of data storage is a thing. There's space for debate here. But none of that involves logic like "You can't distribute software in my country if you don't let me distribute software in yours", which was the first amendment violation you started with.
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The first amendment applies to US law and the rights of US residents, not to foreign multinationals. The USA can and does restrict the speech of non-Americans in America, such as with respect to political campaign funding.
Plus, criminal speech can be restricted in any case. If it's determined that the TikTok app is violating the law or facilitating the commission of criminal activity, the distribution of that app could itself be deemed a crime, or even worse for app stores, subject them to civil liability.
> Distributing software for you to run on your own hardware is speech, though, and it's protected by the first amendment.
This definitely needs a reference.
This is a strawman argument. No one is telling to stop them from distributing software. Just remove the TikTok servers from operating.