191–200 of 275 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's absurd for Chinese government to call itself Communist whilst its leaders have such immense personal wealth publicly visible.
In the original sense of the word, yes. The sense has evolved with the self-described communists though...
Does anyone know to what extent this affects news organizations in Hong Kong?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the normal thing to do in the States too. Quote stolen from another thread: "Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age of beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick,…
and with that, I suddenly regret not reading me some Ayn Rand
The overall message is that laws and government is an obstruction to be ignored or demolished.
As i get older i learn that while it is good to question laws and regulations, many of them have actual factual reasons to exist. So blanket dismissal is as much a wrong as unquestioning obedience.
Government is a system, and like all systems it will require maintenance. And sometimes the job the system was constructed for is no longer there.
But just tossing the system out because it is in your way is as useful as throwing out a random server just because you need the rack space.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
echoing what vpalan2 said below: "If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident." These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their…
> In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion. Ummm... The NPC has 2987. Put in context 97 of 2987 are rich or 3%. That's a far better stat than you'll find for the US senate or congress. The CPPCC is larger. Add to that the comparison to the median wealth all A…
A senator averages about $3M, a house rep is about $800k.
Any non-Chinese company that insists on tying its fortune to the Chinese market is taking on tremendous risk. The goal posts are always changing , you need to constantly worry about IP theft, you can easily get on the wrong side of the government, and they strongly protect local interests. Investment is welcome, but as soon as you actually start making a lot of money and recouping your investment some barrier of sort…
Not entering the market is also a risk. Say you're an app developer and you don't publish your app on Chinese app stores, chances are someone else will do it anyway and steal the revenue. Good luck finding it and getting it taken down. (Off course chances are it'll still be stolen even if you publish it yourself there)
Both ways, you get no revenue, but one way, you waste a lot of time first. It's not worth compromising your principles in order to capture 18% of the world market. 82% is a lot bigger than 18%.
While China doesn't have the benefit of Google in the short term, by blocking them it gives it a chance for local companies to develop the technology and catch up.
Also take the example of TOMs shoes giving away free shoes replacing local markets and producers. These poor countries of weak governments, and even a small foreign company can impact the local the economy in uncertain ways. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economic...
If you can understand this you can understand the viewpoint of Chinese officials. We come in with the viewpoint of "how can I have my fair and equal opportunity to extract wealth from China" while the capitalists in China are thinking "how can I extract wealth from China and prevent the foreigners from doing so." In reality the playing field isn't level. Our counterparts in China don't have the same education, quality of life, and financial status. Therefore a foreign company with foreign talent would already enter the market with an upper hand. By the time local companies are ready, they'd be fighting an uphill battle against foreign incumbents, or worse yet, not develop at all.
If you're familiar with Star Trek, there's the concept of the Prime Directive. It's principle is that the developed races must never contact or interfere with an undeveloped race because doing so would alter their natural development.
Foreign companies don't have an inherent right to the Chinese market. If they feel they do, or want to enter, it's because they feel there is profit in it. The profit comes from exploiting the opportunity in the local market, and in an underdeveloped market such opportunities are ripe. This isn't exactly fair if mature companies are allowed unfettered access.
Sounds like the normal thing in China. Make something illegal, don't enforce it, if someone's saying something you don't like then enforce it specifically against them, keeps everyone else in line.
Yes, the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_gao,_Huangdi_yuan
I am not a sociologist, political scientist, or an economist. It appears that China is too big to govern and has become a diseconomy of scale. China has 160 cities with over 1-million people in them (US has 10 cities) and I think it's a miracle that the lights still work and they have running water. When you double the size of a plane it it becomes 4-times heavier (Observe what it takes to fly a B-52). The PRC seems…
China has historically been too big to govern. Few regimes over the last 2500 years have managed to hold any major portion of what is modern day China under a single rule for any amount of time. While the PRC may make token shows of aggression on the world stage, all of their arrows are really pointed inwards.
This is meaningless. How could this statement be possibly falsified for any given region of the world?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_gao,_Huangdi_yuan
Mountains?
Any move China takes that blocks foreign competition can be seen as an extreme version of an import tariff. Instead of protecting low level industries like corn producers either subsidizing domestic production or taxing foreign imports, China focuses on higher level industries like technology companies, culture companies, etc. While China doesn't have the benefit of Google in the short term, by blocking them it gives…
The actual research paper is here: http://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005.... In it, the authors say "After controlling for household and parental characteristics as well as ADP-level fixed effects, we can uncover no statistically significant negative impact on shoe purchases in local markets."