Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#351

Post by taurath »

donw wrote: post #337
tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

The US lost that near-monopoly years ago. Broadly speaking, I think we're witnessing the birth of three distinct global powers. One is centered on the US, and consists (broadly) of Canada, Mexico, the rest of Latin America, the Commonwealth nations, Japan, Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. An American civil war would destabilize this to a large degree, so we'll have to see if that plays out. Edit, since people seem confused…

Russia is much much much smaller, but they have a large mental footprint.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#352

Post by onetimemanytime »

thewarrior wrote: post #43

Some people here are wondering about the implications of this. What this means IMO is that all Chinese investments in SV need to be liquidated at fire sale prices in the next 45 days. Regardless of how people here feel about China this is a huge escalation. The US is inflicting huge losses on Chinese companies for no clear violation of US laws on their part. The pandoras box is now open. Do countries get to do this t…

>>it was Chinas 500 billion dollar stimulus that kick started demand and pulled the world out of a depression.

unlikely. That much doesn't move the needle, world economy right now is $140+ TRILLION. USA gave out over $700 Billion for that matter in 2008-2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvest...

EU gave $200+ billion, plus each country did their own thing.

Ask FB or Google about their Chinese websites. How are they doing? This should have been done long time ago, tit for tat.

As for the rest, I doubt China can resort to stupid stuff. US and EU are not happy with them for a lot of things, including Covid, and China desperately needs them. China allowed manufacturing not to help us, but to gain taxes, employment and to steel IP.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#353

Post by kstenerud »

thewarrior wrote: post #43

Some people here are wondering about the implications of this. What this means IMO is that all Chinese investments in SV need to be liquidated at fire sale prices in the next 45 days. Regardless of how people here feel about China this is a huge escalation. The US is inflicting huge losses on Chinese companies for no clear violation of US laws on their part. The pandoras box is now open. Do countries get to do this t…

This is nothing new; it's geopolitics. The big boys have been doing this since the dawn of time.

Think of it like a playground: Everyone generally gets along, but the big kids can and sometimes do monopolize things they think are important at the time. The smaller kids make way for the bigger kids, and every now and then there's a fight between the bigger kids when they disagree strongly enough. They exchange words, jostle and block each other, or maybe it even comes to blows, and then things return to the status-quo for awhile.

That's how geopolitics work, except that it's usually a LOT more subtle or at least hidden from the public eye. Trump isn't a member of the political elite and is completely lacking in tact, so it's a lot harder to keep an appearance of calmness when he's in the room. Expect a much cleaner appearance of normalcy once he's out of office.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#354

Post by chrisco255 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #297
aey wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite all this, US tech firms still have a harder time operating in China. > A meta point I'd like to add is that currently 10 % of the earths population in the "Westosphere" controls 60 % of the worlds wealth. True wealth is really hard to measure. Stocks and dollars and euros are not wealth. They are mediums of exchange no different then dogecoin. When I am hungry, I can’t eat them directly, I can only trade them…

> US tech firms still have a harder time operating in China. It's entirely hard to believe this considering the obscene amounts of profits that US companies make by just "designing in california". Our whole era is enabled and defined by cheap chinese labor.

Clearly many companies benefit from outsourcing manufacturing to China. But they don't own the manufacturing process, they're basically using contract labor and supply chains. Software and design has proven harder to outsource or I'm sure that would be gone, too. The point is that our software apps are not freely allowed to exist there. The firewall is a thing, information is tightly controlled, and they can't allow freedom of speech so they typically ban or limit many American applications.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#355

Post by wolframhempel »

donw wrote: post #337
tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

The US lost that near-monopoly years ago. Broadly speaking, I think we're witnessing the birth of three distinct global powers. One is centered on the US, and consists (broadly) of Canada, Mexico, the rest of Latin America, the Commonwealth nations, Japan, Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. An American civil war would destabilize this to a large degree, so we'll have to see if that plays out. Edit, since people seem confused…

I feel this is a really solid summary of the world order for the coming decades. We're still in a cold war mindset that suggests there has to be US vs. X with X now increasingly being China), but in a globalized world we'll see a more fragmented landscape. The US seems to move towards the final stages of its dominance which leaves space for others, but this space can be filled by a multitude of interlinked competitors.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#356

Post by peacefulhat »

donw wrote: post #337
tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

The US lost that near-monopoly years ago. Broadly speaking, I think we're witnessing the birth of three distinct global powers. One is centered on the US, and consists (broadly) of Canada, Mexico, the rest of Latin America, the Commonwealth nations, Japan, Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. An American civil war would destabilize this to a large degree, so we'll have to see if that plays out. Edit, since people seem confused…

American Civil War 2 is an impossible fantasy. You need regional divisions in the military, which we don't have. These new alliances don't make sense either.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#357

Post by qkhhly »

jjeaff wrote: post #348
puranjay wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping Volkswagen from lobbying Germany to ban Teslas because all the cameras in it pose a "national security risk"? This is, by all account, a shortsighted move

The fact that we are allies with Germany and that the US probably buys a lot more from Germany than Germany buys from the US. With China, well, they are already blocking lots of American software companies so this would be more of a proportional response than anything else.

proportional? China gave a clear path forward to those companies if they want to operate in China (setting up severs in China, complying local laws, etc..) They chose not to do so and left. Did US gave any clear path how these tech companies can continue operate in the US other than selling themselves and giving the goverment a commission?

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#358

Post by bananaface »

chillacy wrote: post #274
rapsey wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justifications are meaningless. The US wants to curtail Chinese influence and power, so it finds some mumbo-jumbo to justify it.

This plays right into China's narrative. Now the arrest of Meng Wanzhou (Huawei CTO) starts to look a bit less principled and a bit more like a piece of realpolitik. I think it's definitely justified in the sense that it's understandable to strike back, but it's hard to take a moral high ground now.

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou was never meant to seem legitimate imo, the point was power projection. "Don't fuck with us."

I don't think the moral high ground means much in geopolitics. Power is way more important. "Better not curtail us, it'll make you seem mean..." This is the US we're talking about, known around the world for turning half the middle east into a desert. That's really not their primary concern.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#359

Post by ejanus »

puranjay wrote: post #328
tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

What's stopping Volkswagen from lobbying Germany to ban Teslas because all the cameras in it pose a "national security risk"? This is, by all account, a shortsighted move

But if Chinese social media firms are freely operating in the USA why can't the likes of FB and Twitter be allowed same free access in their market. Let's not see this as harming anybody but this is one of the ways to force China to open up and allow foreign businesses(social media) to spread in their domain. Imagine being forced to open a WeChat account just to chat with someone in China. If this kind of business model is allowed to continue only Chinese companies would thrive in the future.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#360

Post by FooBarWidget »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

The Trump administration is stirring up China hate as a means of getting reelected. Anything goes. The national security concerns may or may not be factual, but Trump doesn't care about that one bit.

It baffles me that people cannot see this very obvious fact. Just proof that his strategy is working.

Post reply on HN