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

Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

here.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 157 posts

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#61

Post by FredPret »

emsign wrote: post #54
FredPret wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic freedom is second among the freedoms only after physical safety. With enough money you can buy all the others, and all the others exist primarily to ensure you can be safe and end up with enough money. This fact is ignored, overlooked, or pooh-poohed by those whose ambitions for society requires a large state. To maximize human freedom, there's an optimal balance to be struck between a stateless society and…

Economic freedom can only be enforced with police, meaning the state protecting the assets of the rich. So no, it's not as simple as you say.

My comment clearly, if not explicitly, makes allowance for police.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#62

Post by datadeft »

bjornsing wrote: post #40

Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense. Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenien…

"If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria."

This applies to the context of west vs China. Everything China does is because of oppression and everything the west does is because of democracy and protecting you.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#63

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aragonite wrote: post #39
Retric wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism need not be binary. As one example, Chinese users of Google and many foreign companies websites hosted inside China experienced random slowdowns making them significantly less appealing to users. This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China.

I remember when those complaints surfaced. However, re: > This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China ... I'm reasonably sure that happened after Google's exit from China, and the slowness complaints were about accessing Google services outside the GFW either in HK or abroad. (Not all Google services overseas were blocked: for example, Google+ was ac…

Google.cn would put you in a penalty box sometimes depending on what you searched for, so would Google.HK, I assume that was happening via the GFW and not via Google itself, but Google could have been complicit? Bing did the same thing, but eventually Bing.cn was harmonized and I didn’t have to worry about penalty boxes anymore.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#64

Post by ookdatnog »

FredPret wrote: post #49
bjornsing wrote: post #40

Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense. Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenien…

Economic freedom is second among the freedoms only after physical safety. With enough money you can buy all the others, and all the others exist primarily to ensure you can be safe and end up with enough money. This fact is ignored, overlooked, or pooh-poohed by those whose ambitions for society requires a large state. To maximize human freedom, there's an optimal balance to be struck between a stateless society and…

Your entire argument is nonsensical, but this part:

> With enough money you can buy all the others

is particularly easily falsifiable. A billionaire in China does not have freedom of speech and cannot buy it.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#65

Post by seanmcdirmid »

makeitdouble wrote: post #21
eru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a thriving hardware industry. Partially built on not enforcing restrictions. The rest of their tech sector is so-so. They do have a big internal market and a population eager for technology. It would be interesting to tease apart how much the restrictions hinder in some places, and perhaps help in a few others.

I kinda wonder how do you evaluate a thriving software economy in China's case. A bit like Japan, I feel they're not going straight at the OS vendors (Microsoft/Apple) as these will bend over backward to accomadate them anyway, and in every area they've been actively blocked they made their own rival version (e.g. cloud services) Is there anything we can point at to say "Chinese don't have the skills to do it" ?

That weird to say. Many of the SWEs working on OS in the west are Chinese. They have the skills, but it’s just too easy for China to use Android or Linux, or to get the nice Apple experience, then to spend much investing in making their own OS for nationalistic reasons. They have larger problems in terms of semiconductor development and jet turbines that need gobs of resources and have much more national security impact.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#66

Post by ignoramous »

datadeft wrote: post #62
bjornsing wrote: post #40

Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense. Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenien…

"If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria." This applies to the context of west vs China. Everything China does is because of oppression and everything the west does is because of democracy and protecting you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_miser Folks prefer simple mental models and tend to place their faith in simpler beliefs. Kahneman warned us. In fact, the replication crisis sort of proved him right (and wrong at the same time?)

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#67

Post by FredPret »

ookdatnog wrote: post #64
FredPret wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic freedom is second among the freedoms only after physical safety. With enough money you can buy all the others, and all the others exist primarily to ensure you can be safe and end up with enough money. This fact is ignored, overlooked, or pooh-poohed by those whose ambitions for society requires a large state. To maximize human freedom, there's an optimal balance to be struck between a stateless society and…

Your entire argument is nonsensical, but this part: > With enough money you can buy all the others is particularly easily falsifiable. A billionaire in China does not have freedom of speech and cannot buy it.

I'd love to see your well-developed argument against economic freedom.

Our billionaire Chinese friend can escape to the free world, or buy political influence at home.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#68

Post by isaacfung »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44
isaacfung wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tried to prove these are not independent moves by providing a few incidents out of a 1.4 billion country over a span of several years. One comment in the first article you linked said 99% of software engineers in china use github. The CCP is 100% aware that people use vpn to access foreign websites.

> CCP is 100% aware that people use vpn to access foreign websites And Washington is 100% aware that people do crack. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a systematic law enforcement effort to stamp it out. Just because Beijing isn’t squishing every last developer doesn’t mean China hasn’t fundamentally changed since Xi became dictator.

If they really want to catch these people, you wont be seeing only a few examples over half a decade. As mentioned in the article, even Hu Xijin (the former editor-in-chief and party secretary of the conservative popular media Global Times) has a youtube channel. Most top universities like tsinghua, SJTU and tech companies like alibaba have official github accounts.

There is no way to implement complete censorship without killing your own tech industry.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#69

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pca006132 wrote: post #23
throwaway4good wrote: post #16

I don't actually understand the Chinese rules on uncensored internet access. When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet. Surely this is according to Chinese rules. Likewise all the expats and Chinese I have met all used whatever they wanted of US social media plus they had a shit ton of pirated(?) American TV shows and movies. Perh…

> I don't know but this particular case sounds like a very modest fine (200 yuan) for using a VPN and sizeable fine for not reporting (and being taxed on) a foreign income. I read this kind of comments in mainland's internet forums as well. People opposing this theory said that it should be the national tax authority handling this, not a local police department. Considering the local government did something crazy pr…

Taxes in China are collected locally. There is no IRS in China, each city (or province? I’ve never worked in a province before) will collect income taxes and then send off a large portion to the central government. Since the central government usually has a huge take on income taxes and VAT, localities are often very starved for funding (they used to make most of their budget via land transfer and development fees).

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#70

Post by bjornsing »

raverbashing wrote: post #45
bjornsing wrote: post #40

Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense. Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenien…

> But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud And where in the world do you think this would not be the case? (except maybe in 3rd world countries with bribable authorities) (such a fine of 100k is probably on the higher end for most places though)

Sweden goes further than most western countries in this case though. For example, the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits dubble punishment for a single crime. Most European countries interpret this to mean that you can be either criminally prosecuted, or administratively sanctioned with "extra tax", but not both. Sweden however has a fondness for doing both.

So in Sweden a very realistic scenario in this case is that this guy goes to prison for half a year. During that time the tax authority decides he owes 100000 USD in taxes, and 100000 USD in "extra taxes". Whether he has the money or not is irrelevant. If it's more than he made, that's irrelevant. And the interest on those 200000 USD is 18.75%.

Also, you can't declare personal bankruptcy in Sweden, so this guy is essentially turned into a slave of the government: whatever money he makes is taken from him, except for a very small amount necessary to "exist". If he is a good slave for five years, his debts can be discharged. If not, then he's stuck in this situation forever. It's game over, economically.

Also, Sweden probably has a more efficient "bailiff authority" (Kronofogdemyndigheten) than most countries. So game over really is game over. They will come to your home, with the police if necessary, and take everything of value there.

Post reply on HN