Comment by palata
16 days ago
Totally. I find it very interesting that we tend to criticize China for their protectionism, but as soon as something out-competes US companies, it gets banned: Huawei, DJI, TikTok.
Of course it cannot be said like this, because "free speech" and "democracy", so the official reason is "national security".
This claim is incompatible with the reality that the U.S. runs an enormous bilateral trade deficit with China.
Also Japanese cars
well china does it too with google,fb etc back then, and other nation do it too
albeit not outright banned it all together but sometimes they prefer homegrown company/technology
> albeit not outright banned it all together
No they absolutely do just ban them.
It's not just that Google or FB can't operate Chinese-specific sites as a business within China, from within China you can't even get to the foreign/international versions of those sites, because they're blocked by China's firewall. Wikipedia has a whole list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
Sure. I just noted the irony that the US discourse has sounded a lot like "we are better than China, we are more free" for decades.
But we are, there is no irony. China has the great wall and massive corporate espionage games to steal state and corporate secrets. The US and its various federal intelligence agencies have certainly done nefarious things but never quite as documented at the level as China's. They actively monitor all of their Social Media, block most foreign social media. I can easily go to any Chinese social media/website from the US.
In some ways, this is still true, even surrounding this decision.
Do you think there were many people standing outside of government buildings in Beijing protesting the potential ban of Facebook and Google while politicians of different political parties were debating the ban in the country's primary legislative body? Do you think you could launch a campaign for office on repealing said ban in China?
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> "we are better than China, we are more free"
Anyone who disagrees with this is either not being honest or is not aware of what extent China restricts it's citizens.
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I mean, let's be clear: Facebook and Google are very much banned in Mainland China.
Mercantalism begets Mercantalism. If their mercantalist policies become successfull then unfortunately we'll need to also assume similar policies to protect ourselves, aka Beggar Thy Neighbour, and everyone loses in an arms race of tariffs and subsidies.
That's exactly why free trade proponets oppose those policies, but the CCP didn't want to reform so we'll go the opposite way.
It's important to say that the US had TikTok with Vine, but is so corrupt that it let Facebook buy it to shut it down.
I cannot argue on the TikTok as strongly but I can see strong arguments on why Huawei and DJI are national security risks. Some of this is more educated guesses so not defensible with numbers. We know most major companies in the Chinese market have extremely close ties to the CCP. No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms but I believe the CCP takes it to a next level. We know for a fact that the CCP and chinese entities play extremely hardball when it comes to corporate espionage. Some of the stories we have seen almost read like a spy novel. Certainly Huawei and DJI make some incredible products but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure, I do believe it warrants major concern for national security.
I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy compared to the easier explanation, China is a fairly crafty bad actor in a lot of cases. 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked, just the ones that have very significant national security risks.
> 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked
because it's impossible.
the US offloaded low-added-value manufacturing to China, exchanging paper dollars for cheap industrial goods. When China tries to upgrade to high-added-value industries, like chips, guess what? National security risks!
just enjoy cheap goods and nature resources from 3rd world...
I am not sure I follow your point. There have been both National Security risks as well as protectionist economic policy enforced against china that benefits domestic players. In a lot of those protectionist cases, there is either a case of China flooding the market or there are cases where the government makes a choice that its beneficial to keep domestic manufacturers alive.
In the above provided examples its quite clear that there are possible national security risks involved with China being involved in US infrastructure and technology. If DJI was from the EU there would not even be a discussion.
If you have better example beyond hyperbole I am all ears.
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Read some of the many stories out there about the NSA, please. They have backdoors into internet infrastructure. If any country is a threat to information security, it’s the USA.
Did you read my comment? I explicitly called out backdoors, you should read comments closer. It most definitely happens within the US but the ties between the US government and corporate entities are no where as perversely intertwined as they are in China.
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> I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy
I am not proposing a conspiracy, I am merely noting some irony in the fact that the US are doing protectionism here.
> No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms
Well, most of the Western Internet goes through the US, and we know for a fact that the US try to extract as much as they can from whatever they can (remember Snowden?). Also the US are very fine with US companies owning all the data of a big part of the world, and they would be really pissed if some country started banning them "for national security reasons".
> but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure
You don't need to connect the drone to the Internet. Technical solutions would most definitely exist, I am convinced of that. The reason DJI is being banned is because DJI is 7 years ahead of anyone else, and the gap is getting bigger every year. It really, really sounds like the US drone companies have been lobbying a ton because they just can't compete.
Huawei has been caught stealing more than enough trade secrets to justify a ban. I'd be happy if they banned a lot more Chinese firms for that, or just in response to China's own bans. But TikTok seems to be uniquely about censorship.
> But TikTok seems to be uniquely about censorship.
Censorship, or protectionism because TikTok is eating the lunch of the big US social media?
Gallagher (the bill sponsor) and several other lawmakers made it sound like censorship, and the timing also matches.
Yup. China has been kicking Silicon Valley's butt for some time now, and I don't see any signs of that changing any time soon.
This drives the point home:
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38242135-ai-superpowers
It was with the 2020 version of the algorithm till they changed things see https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
I'm not referring exclusively to TikTok but tech in general. China makes SV look entitled and lazy.