Between this and the NBA's capitulation to making the Rockets' GM retract his statements on Hong Kong, at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior? Sure, from the individual business' perspective they don't want to risk alienating the Chinese government and losing the Chinese market, but if China sees that they can get their way by simply threatening foreign companies then it will just embolden them to push for more concessions down the road. Quite frankly this all stinks of 1930s European appeasement policy and we all know how that turned out.
Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
511–520 of 730 posts
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#512This is like in 1984 and what the Minitrue is doing.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
No by couldn't compete, the OP probably means western tech companies do a remarkably poor job of understanding the Chinese market and frequently gets out innovated. When Google first entered the Chinese market, Google PinYin input lifted data from Sogou Pinyin because they couldn't get basic input prediction right. Baidu RankDex predates Google PageRank and was referenced by Larry Page when he submitted patent for Pa…
> When it came to western social media bans post 2007, Chinese companies were hiring tens of thousands of content moderators with understanding of Chinese filtering rules for compliance. Western companies simply gave up and didn't learn how to scale content moderation until the last few years when social media had to deal with the same violent extremism that China did during the Tibetan and XinJiang riots that lead t…
He seems so proud of it
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#514China executes an official Taiwan belongs to China stance to save face, as communist bureaucracies love to do. In practice, their official policy lets Taiwan exist as an independently governed region more than the US even allows Hawaii or Cuba to be independent. Even Canada has more of a attachment to the US and its laws than Taiwan does. This is probably a fact lost on most foreigners unaware of the situation. If Ch…
People in Taiwan can freely travel to China. But people in China can only travel to Taiwan via a tour group. So there’s no pressure to taiwan on tourism...
They often restrict tourism from Mainland China as leverage, as Taiwan receives a lot of tourism revenue from China.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UN is a political organization and, importantly, highly leveraged by China for political gain. The objective reality is that Taiwan is an independent country that sets its own laws and is free to conduct its own foreign relations.
The objective reality is that most of the world, including the United States, does not actually recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. It recognizes that it exists as... Something. I think you would be hard-pressed to argue that the Department of State, and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Japan[1], etc, etc, etc, have been 'highly leveraged by China for political g…
You can think of it this way. If the PRC were to say, "oh, by-the-way, feel free to recognize Taiwan as an independent country", every other country in the world would likely do so.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
De Jure nationhood is a stupid game that ignores facts on the ground in favor of politicians vision. It is predicated on a fallacy that "legitimacy" is a vital resource and that those already in the nation club have a monopoly on it. At this point calling groups "countries" and calling other groups "terrorists" is better understood as the geopolitical equivalent of a curse word and/or a propaganda trope. -Order of Ma…
Based on this framework it doesn't seem entirely clear to me Taiwan is a de facto nation. Do they have the monopoly on violence over their land? From my understanding (which admittedly isn't great) they at best of a duopoly on violence in their land shared with China, and China might have a better claim to that monopoly than they do. That being said, I completely agree with your broader point De Jure nationhood is a…
I do not think China using violence over, or on Taiwan would go over well.
Taiwan can do anything it wants without repercussions inside Taiwan, thus ‘monopoly on force’.
China using force in Taiwan would just be a declaration of war.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#517It's crazy how South Park episodes play out in real life the same week they are released.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
De Jure nationhood is a stupid game that ignores facts on the ground in favor of politicians vision. It is predicated on a fallacy that "legitimacy" is a vital resource and that those already in the nation club have a monopoly on it. At this point calling groups "countries" and calling other groups "terrorists" is better understood as the geopolitical equivalent of a curse word and/or a propaganda trope. -Order of Ma…
> Order of Malta. De Jure recognition, no territory or population to speak of. Basically a forgotten joke country left over from a bygone era. Almost no one, including the Order itself, considers the Sovereign Military Order of Malta a country; it's the usual textbook example of a sovereign entity that is not a state/country by those who see it as sovereign (a point on which there is considerable dispute, despite the…
How would the breakaway province of Transnistria in Moldova be classified in this context?
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#519This reminds me of the story about how the first release of Windows 95 was banned in India because 8 pixels of the map shown in the timezone selection control panel were colored in such a way that suggested parts of Kashmir were part of Pakistan. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-mi... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42...
Picture of the actual map http://www.flowjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Image-...
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the politics is that the Republic of China still officially claims to be the legitimate government of the whole of China. So it really is recognize one or the other. Politics within Taiwan have so far prevented declaration of Taiwanese independence from China in any form, and the One-China policy that everybody agrees to prevents recognition of the PRC and establishment of two-state relationships. Until eithe…
This is not very true. Taiwan, Republic of China, has made attempts to change its name, only to be met with the threat of war from the People’s Republic of China if they perform a name change to Republic of Taiwan.
I think it’s about time China gets the chance to make good on this promise, or gets defanged when it turns out they don’t have the stomach for it (they have a good thing going, shame to let it be ruined by war).
Everyone is tiptoeing around them for fear of waking the dragon.