151–160 of 317 posts
>The demonstration’s numbers fluctuated throughout the day, the two employees said, ranging from a dozen to 30, and the protesters departed sometime in the late afternoon. So less than 1% of the company? Not trying to minimize the issue here but let's also not make events sound bigger than they really are.
The Internet's reaction to this has warmed my heart a little. Overwatch and Hearthstone are among my favorite computer games. I've certainly played more Overwatch than any other game. I have made real-world and online friends in Overwatch. I met my girlfriend in Overwatch. It made me sad to have to throw all that away yesterday. But the conversations we're having as a result of this is great. The mainstream media is…
One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…
I don't disagree with your post at all, but I wanted to note that it's important to remember that companies aren't people, they're machines generally designed to maximize profit. Morals don't apply to them - only the law, and money does.
Personally I've boycotted Blizzard in response, and I hope more people do.
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It's worth pointing out that today's China is communist in name only. They literally arrested the president of Peking University's Marxist society on ideological grounds: https://news.yahoo.com/china-arrests-marxist-student-leader-... China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Edit: Fixed a broken link
> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I guess "Fascism" is a decent analogy, but its probably more accurate to just call it Legalism. Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism (while Fascism would be associated with WW2 Germany or Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…
I agree, but "legalism" has its own meaning in Western philosophy, so "fascism" is the more appropriate terminology to avoid confusion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Western_philosophy)
>Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism
This is something that most people won't know without a detailed study of Chinese history. Legalism in China won the day against Confucianism a long time ago in 221 BC, when the First Emperor of China came to power, and has never quite lost its place in Chinese political thought since.
The Internet's reaction to this has warmed my heart a little. Overwatch and Hearthstone are among my favorite computer games. I've certainly played more Overwatch than any other game. I have made real-world and online friends in Overwatch. I met my girlfriend in Overwatch. It made me sad to have to throw all that away yesterday. But the conversations we're having as a result of this is great. The mainstream media is…
One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…
“We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC“
This is not just wrong, it’s so wrong it’s not even remotely compatible with how we define freedom. To see this in writing is just disturbing and sad that after all these decades of lip service on moderation and opening up and being a global participant, China is basically no different than it was under Mao.
By far the most egregious example of western firms working with China are management consulting companies like McKinsey that work directly with governments on expensive contracts, including of course China. I mean, in those cases they are often writing the playbook for the government when it comes to implementing certain policies. Crazy that is even legal for a western firm.
I don’t do anything public sector so I don’t know what policies we do. But in reading this it feels like you are implying that McKinsey would be behind various draconian policies or censorship. I would say that’s relatively unlikely given the nature of what the firm does and does not like to associate itself with. As the only anecdotal evidence I have There was that Saudi thing from a while ago where someone did a social network analysis on political ideas, and the internal discussion was adamantly that we don’t do projects like that (identifying dissidents) for governments.
Also while it is a company founded in the west, a team serving Chinese government interests is highly likely to be 100% Chinese people, living in China, landed by Chinese partners. Both because Chinese workers tend to serve Chinese clients and I would guess that the Chinese government requires this. If you were to make such a thing illegal, what would likely happen is the firm would just split into two firms, the Chinese part and the not Chinese part, and it wouldn’t make a ton of difference because most work is driven by individual contributors on an individual basis rather than a large group effort from an entity like Google.
Boycotting Chinese products on the other hand...
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> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I guess "Fascism" is a decent analogy, but its probably more accurate to just call it Legalism. Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism (while Fascism would be associated with WW2 Germany or Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…
>The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I agree, but "legalism" has its own meaning in Western philosophy, so "fascism" is the more appropriate terminology to avoid confusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Western_philosophy) >Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism This is something that most people won't…
Ex: We could translate "Samurai" into "Knight", except a Samurai code of feudalism was completely different than a Knight's code of feudalism (even if both were forms of feudalism). There are also major differences in how the aristocracy worked between Japan and Europe. At some point, its best to just stick with the native tongue.
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You say this as though many companies are not already practicing that alternative.
Google for one. Although I think they have regretted that decision.
Google, on the other hand, walked away from China and it's business as usual for them.
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I'm not sure I understand your opinion at all here. The protesters don't want to impact Mainland Chinese citizens lives whatsoever. The demands are pretty clear and not at all an attempt to become the US/UK or fundamentally change Chinese culture. HK already views itself as culturally, economically, and politically separate from China. There is an agreement between HK and Mainland China to allow them to function inde…
> There is an agreement between HK and Mainland China to allow them to function independently for 50 years and that is not being upheld, or at least that is what is perceived by people in HK. Yeah because if you wait 50 years, HK isn't going to want to be a part of a dictatorship communist regime when they've been democratic for the past hundred years. China needs to ignore the agreement and ratchet down hard now if…
Obviously the move from China makes logical sense from their perspective, but that means that the protests are equally logical from the HK side.