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

511–520 of 1001 posts

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

#511

Post by est »

dannyw wrote: post #376
echevil wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Google operated in China for more than a decade and never got a major market share, and they already did fairly well compared to others. Facebook was largely unheard of after being available in China for many years before finally got banned in 2010. Amazon has been operating in China forever but is basically irrelevant to most Chinese. Most American companies did terrible job in localization and I see no chan…

As a Chinese expat, Google China (back when it was operating) was multiple times slower than Baidu and would get blocked by the GFW arbitrarily frequently.

google.cn is located at its Beijing datacenter. If it's multiple times slower then Google's network optimization was really shit. GFW only works for cross-border connections.

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

#512

Post by blisseyGo »

bas wrote: post #237
peteretep wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely the end of one-sided free markets. There's no suggestion that the US is about to pull the same shit on countries that don't try and hobble US tech companies.

Given the current regime, how can you be sure?

Putting tariffs on other country products is a lot different than what's happening here. Every country puts tariffs. It's business and trade.

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

#513

Post by asa4akj »

osrec wrote: post #317
thewarrior wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats how world wars break out.

I dismissed it as mere hyperbole in 2016 when people suggested this to me. Now I feel it has a significant probability of actually happening. Also, I recently watched a documentary on the start of Nazi Germany. The parallels with current political movements are astounding. Fake news, discrediting experts, ignoring protocols, validating xenophobia, using disasters to grab more power - we've seen it all before.

China already has concentration camps, heavy censorship, its a dictatorship and forcefully controls the population, and it's not just he "one child policy", its the sterilization of Uyghur men, and the forced marriage of their woman. All evidence points to china treating Uyghurs worse than Nazis treated Jews pre-war (Final solution was during WW2)

I the only difference between China and Nazi Germany from a human rights perspective, is that China hasn't declared any war.

Still, here in the west Nazis is the greatest evil ever, while China is complicated, and even some communist genociders are loved.

I'm not defending Nazis, I'm just staing that their evil is not unparalleled, and there exists a current nation that reeks of the same evil, and there doesn't seem to be a way to stop it.

Sure, the west is a mess with all the political tensions, but all that is just blinding to what is happening outside.

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

#514

Post by ookdatnog »

hintymad wrote: post #381
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…

Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.

If you claim to stand for free trade, you can't go along in these protectionism wars without losing a lot of credibility and, along with that, soft power.

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

#515

Post by ghostwriter »

Thorrez wrote: post #467
hintymad wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.

Reciprocity doesn't justify repressing human rights. The pursuit of happiness is a human right. Some people pursue happiness by making dancing mobile apps and earning money with them. If China decides to limit that right it doesn't justify the US also limiting that right. Of course this is tiny compared to the much more extreme human rights violations we see in China, the US, and elsewhere. But we should uphold right…

The US doesn't limit human rights. People who pursue happiness are still free to do it.

There are certain concerns around a particular corporate entity and a particular government directly associated with that entity, that has a track record of economic espionage, IP infringement, and denying US companies access to its country's market on competitive terms (the conditions that the US has been guaranteeing to almost every foreign business, until recently). And due to the found evidence of spying activity, and in the light of concerns about national security, the entity is denied access to the US market, as the entity seems to be an unfair player.

As for the human rights, if you are associated with CCP and are in support of it, from the moral standpoint there's no ground for treating you according to the Declaration of Independence, and not according to the Marxist norms declared in the CCP Constitution.

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

#516

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

aey wrote: post #148
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…

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…

It's become clear over the past year or so that US policy is essentially to ban Chinese tech companies from the US. ZTE, Huawei, ByteDance, WeChat, and surely more to follow as the election approaches and Trump tries to escalate tensions with China further.

On the other side, American tech companies do massive amounts of business in China.

The relationship is very lopsided, and at some point, China is sure to take action against American tech firms in China.

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

#517

Post by est »

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_sovereignty

US have just joined the rank.

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

#518

Post by yorwba »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #475
dirtyid wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is banned, you follow domestic censorship laws you get to play. Every domestic companies has to, it's onerous, and level playing fields. FB, Google still sell billions in ads to China, they were engineering compliant services to return. Legal reciprocity is China following US laws, which it does. Functional reciprocity is forcing Chinese companies to enter JV and tech transfer - while providing Chinese compan…

> FB, Google sell billions in ads to China Citation needed. Both are effectively completely blocked in China by the GFW.

Google the search engine is blocked in China. Google Ads aren't. It used to be the case that if you visited a website with Google Ads from China without VPN, most of those ads would be for VPN services. Last year, Google stopped showing VPN ads in China to comply with Chinese regulations: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-vpn-ads-in-china/

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

#519

Post by mytailorisrich »

hintymad wrote: post #381
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…

Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.

This is a fallacious argument.

For example when Google worked in China they were ripped apart for doing that, and so decided not to.

Most of these companies could work in China if they followed Chinese rules. They decided not to, so they don't.

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

#520

Post by keiferski »

est wrote: post #506
keiferski wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can China force Tesla to sell its Chinese operations because Teslas data gathering poses a national security risk ? China can force any company out of the country for any arbitrary reason whatsoever. As far as I know, they are still banning Houston Rockets games because Morey supported Hong Kong in a tweet.

> As far as I know, they are still banning Houston Rockets games because Morey supported Hong Kong in a tweet. As far as I know, you trust media reports more than a random search on Chinese video sites. https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4534875236007949 It's the Rockets vs Trail Blazers math on 4th Aug.

According to this link from two weeks ago, it still hasn't been resolved.

https://www.scmp.com/sport/basketball/article/3092980/nbas-c...

Even assuming they revoked the ban, I also don't see how it's particularly relevant to the point I was making; they still banned the entire franchise for months because he wrote a single message on Twitter. Censorship isn't somehow acceptable if it only lasts ~8 months. It's perhaps the definition of arbitrarily abused power.

Post reply on HN