Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m in Beijing right now and it’s nowhere as bad as you describe (which is how it was ten years ago). Electric cars and scooters are everywhere. China really seems to be trying to get their environmental shit together, it’s just a big project that takes time
I was there yesterday for a few hours and the air looked terrible. didn’t check the actual numbers, but wow was the air ugly.
China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
271–280 of 283 posts
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#272China continues to force the world to bend to its totalitarian demands: changes to Hollywood movie plots and editing, arbitrary keyword bans and FAANG helping to "accommodate" their platforms to facilitate censorship.
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soon, if you don't play a certain amount of time and don't swear loyalty to the party regularly enough, you won't be able to buy food. https://www.cnet.com/news/china-turns-to-tech-to-monitor-sha...
This is completely unfounded speculation not found in that article or in any other writing on the topic(s) (of social credit scores and the study the great nation app). Or possibly it's an attempt at some dark humor through hyperbole. Either way, I see a lot of these sort of extreme claims on HN whenever China comes up, and I think we'd all do better to discuss what's actually happening rather than our wildest fears.…
Cellphones
https://www.sfgate.com/business/amp/China-requires-ID-to-buy...
Trains
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g297411-i3650-k1024500...
There are official confirmations
http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2019/02/22/china-social-credi...
They also officially admit they can:
Throttle your internet speed
Ban your kids from some schools
Banning you from certain jobs
Taking your pets away
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-pu...
I think that predicting possible restricting ability to buy food is not “unfounded speculation” but rather pointing out something that can literally be one step away. If you help someone with a low social credit score who has been restricted, your score also lowers. The AI can track where you’ve been and who you helped. Uyghur markets are gone. Their freedom of movement has been restricted as they are in the re-education centers for years.
Are you really taking issue with the suggestion that food can be next, how much hyperbole is it given the scale of what happened in 2018 and 2019 thus far alone?
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've even got totalitarian apps: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/world/asia/china-xi-jinpi... >Schools are shaming students with low app scores. Government offices are holding study sessions and forcing workers who fall behind to write reports criticizing themselves. Private companies, hoping to curry favor with party officials, are ranking employees based on their use of the app and awarding top performers the…
And that app is only used by / required for (? not sure) CCP party members. I know this because I have confirmed with personal Chinese acquaintances, including one party member and several non-members. While many Chinese nationals are party members, the vast majority aren't, so the app has nothing to do with them. The article doesn't mention that at all. Also, I was told by the one who actually use the app that many…
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, the few times I've tried to bring it up with Chinese students at USA universities they have all been blasé about it. They have all been, "that's just the way it is." That could be because they just don't want to talk about it. Or because they are mostly from rich families and so they really don't care. Or only kids from loyal families are allowed to go to school overseas.
I have asked many as well. I believe it is partly cultural pressure to conform, but mostly because they all have family back in China still and care about what happens to them. I have also heard, but have not been able to verify, that any Chinese student who studies abroad must become a member of the Communist Party.
Not true. Being a Chinese student who studied in the US in the past, I never joined, or was asked to join the Communist Party. In fact, the majority of Chinese students in the US that I know are not Communist Party members. A passport (and a valid visa) is all you need to go abroad.
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is completely unfounded speculation not found in that article or in any other writing on the topic(s) (of social credit scores and the study the great nation app). Or possibly it's an attempt at some dark humor through hyperbole. Either way, I see a lot of these sort of extreme claims on HN whenever China comes up, and I think we'd all do better to discuss what's actually happening rather than our wildest fears.…
Consider that already, purchases for mobility and communication are restricted based on social credit scores: Cellphones https://www.sfgate.com/business/amp/China-requires-ID-to-buy... Trains https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g297411-i3650-k1024500... There are official confirmations http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2019/02/22/china-social-credi... They also officially admit they can: Throttle your internet speed B…
"Extreme claim not based in fact, stated as fact"
[link, implied to support the claim but doesn't]
When you do this, some percentage of people are going to take what you're saying at face value and believe that this is actual policy, especially since you seem to have provided a source (even though clicking on that source reveals it to be a paper thin cnet article that provides no support for what you're saying).
Frustratingly, you're doing it again here - you say "purchases for mobility and communication are restricted by social credit scores", and then you provide two links - one for cellphones and one for trains - that just say you need to use IDs to sign up for mobile plans and to buy train tickets in China, describing policies that existed long prior to social credit scores and have nothing to do with social credit scores. Those are also policies that exist in a lot of other countries, the first link you provide even says this in the first sentence:
"...joining many European and Asian countries in curbing the anonymous use of mobile technology."
Also, at least in my personal experience, you need an ID to buy a train ticket in the US as well. Also your source for that is a comment in a trip advisor thread about needing an ID to buy bus tickets, not train tickets, and consists entirely of people speculating and things they've heard second hand - a truly horrible source if ever I've seen one, and not in support of what you're saying even if it was a good source.
Without going through it, as I think it's pretty clear at this point that you're being very sloppy with your sources, that business insider article doesn't say what you're saying it says either.
Even looking past the many false claims here completely unsupported by the links you're providing, you can't just list a few things you don't like that seem "unfree" to you and then say you think that predicting keeping people that don't use an app regularly enough from buying food is a reasonable prediction. Or rather, go ahead and say it if you want but please just make it clear that it's your prediction rather than a fact like you did above, and be careful that the links you provide as supporting sources actually relate to what you're saying.
And please, please, please, be careful with how you summarize linked content - the way you do it here and appear to be doing it in your previous post is so inaccurate and so mixed with your own predictions and fears that I'm giving you a lot of benefit of the doubt by saying it's "sloppy" rather than "intentionally deceptive".
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider that already, purchases for mobility and communication are restricted based on social credit scores: Cellphones https://www.sfgate.com/business/amp/China-requires-ID-to-buy... Trains https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g297411-i3650-k1024500... There are official confirmations http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2019/02/22/china-social-credi... They also officially admit they can: Throttle your internet speed B…
I don't want to have a big debate over what will and what won't happen in China in the future as I see you and I are working from very different assumptions and have very different approaches for extrapolating into the future. I'm just taking issue with the form of your previous comment, which took your personal fear of a Chinese policy that has not been suggested by the Chinese government, any China scholars, or eve…
We’re talking about a country that has extrajudicial detention facilities to detain for years and re-educate huge numbers of people who committed no crime, based not on due process but on their religion alone, including Falun Gong and Uyghurs and probably some underground Churches and Buddhists. They probably already have the food-based control I’m talking about. I mean, the trajectory and overton window is REALLY worrying. What I said is coming to be within that window.
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#278Why are discussions surrounding Chinese Politics permitted but no other political discussions? Seems like a double standard. Just quickly looking at the removals here's a 4 hour old Mueller report thread instantly removed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712217 .
As for Mueller, the report itself is off topic here on the grounds of (a) would they cover it on TV news? yes (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and (b) there is no intellectual curiosity left in any such discussions. But articles tangential to it have continued to appear and not been moderated. (Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704347.)
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that app is only used by / required for (? not sure) CCP party members. I know this because I have confirmed with personal Chinese acquaintances, including one party member and several non-members. While many Chinese nationals are party members, the vast majority aren't, so the app has nothing to do with them. The article doesn't mention that at all. Also, I was told by the one who actually use the app that many…
If you read it, the article clearly states it goes beyond party members. They did not forget or not mention that fact... they claim it is something else entirely.
The article does say there are >100M users of the app, and according to Wikipedia, CCP has ~100M members, so the numbers appear in line.
More detailed anecdata: the aforementioned acquaintance who use the app is employed at a Chinese university, and according to him they do have an institution-wide rank (among employees; students not included); party members are ranked, but non-party members are not (because they're not required to "study", as I already pointed out). He even told me he's ranked at around 30% at the moment, lol.
Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
To what end? It was 30 years ago. The Eight Elders are all dead. You really think a bunch of westerners tutting at China about lowlights in their history will do anything other than galvanize Chinese nationalism?
It's important to speak up for as long as they seek to censor and imprison any person who dare to mention it, and use their economy to force foregn companies to help them censor/rewrite history. Staying silent, or defending their tantrums, is what allows the Chinese to make it impossible for Macs sold in China to display Taiwan's national flag, to justify Mariott firing an employee for liking a tweet thanking the com…