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The China Cultural Clash

stratechery.com

201–210 of 379 posts

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#201

It helps to know a little bit about what's been going on in Hong Kong, before you all line up and take your daily dump on China. It all started a few months ago when someone committed a crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong. To prevent HK from becoming a safe haven for criminals, the Chief Executive of HK proposed a new law to facilitate extradition of these crime suspects from HK to various jurisdictions in the regi…

This picture you're painting makes it sound like the protests are an overblown response to a minor grievance, like WW1 was an overblown response to the assassination of a minor archduke, without taking into account decades of cultural clashes and building tensions.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#202

One misstep of the American education system is the lack of attention paid to Chinese/Asian history. I believe a big part of the indifference and ignorance of American citizens to the China problem, let alone policy makers is that they don't understand how Chinese people think. This is evident by the blunders by Bush and Clinton that brought us to where we are today with regards to China's rising hegemony. Our idea o…

> the Chinese mindset is extremely subtle, resourceful, calculated, opportunistic, and oftentimes underhanded. This is dark and is the type of claim that could be applied to almost any group of people without evidence (i.e. the American mindset is extremely subtle, resourceful, calculated, opportunistic, and oftentimes underhanded).

It's true that this claim could be applied to almost any group of people, but I think the point here is the people in the US (or the west generally) don't have the history knowledge hence the empathy about how important and sensitive territorial integrity of China is to both Chinese people and Chinese government.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#203
post #81

I'm curious as to what happens if the NBA does in fact get banned from China. I've always wondered whether, as the Chinese economy grows and living standards rise, individuals would ever feel more entitled to individual rights. Of course maybe this is just a western bias. If the NBA was blocked, would passionate Chinese NBA fans (of which there are many) fall in line? Or not?

I'm always bemused to have to say this, but: nobody likes censorship because they enjoy "falling in line". People everywhere support censorship exactly to the degree that they agree with the censors. You probably didn't shed a tear when Alex Jones was deplatformed, because he's a scoundrel, and if this really did escalate to a full block of the NBA (which seems unlikely), by that point many Chinese citizens would pro…

I agree with your first point. My anecdotal experience of talking to people from China is that there is a very real sense of nationalism that results in deference to the government. The idea is that under this regime the economy has grown strong, and everybody has jobs and food. That is worth the silencing of dissent in a country where mass starvation exists in very recent history. But how long does that last? At some point the people no longer agree with the censors, but the censors likely don't step aside and relinquish power. And to be clear the point at which this happens is probably not losing access to the NBA, but it does exist, and this NBA situation is an interesting barometer.

As I said in a different comment, Alex Jones is not that relevant to this discussion unless somebody can show that the United States government had a role in the deplatforming.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're arguing is that, since China was previously a victim, China is incapable of being imperial. That's no comfort to countries which are staring down a gauntlet of Western imperialism being replaced with Chinese imperialism.

An enemy (eastern imperialism) of your enemy (western imperialism) is your friend. China was a victim in the Opium wars and then again to Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. This is all important context that needs to be considered. To be clear I don't support China or Eastern imperialism in (significantly) Africa, the ME, or the US. But if you want to fight it you have to be informed, history repeats itself.

Also to be clear I don't support China's activities or posture around the world. I think they are building an empire, and its execution and culture are antithetical to western values. I'm just saying that the West cannot claim a moral high ground in how we've treated China, and in the US, Chinese immigrants.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Cook became CEO because of his logistics and operations work in China, so there is a lot of legacy to go on. Apple assembles iPhones in Brazil and I believe India now, but these are mostly for high tariff reasons. Much of what goes into an iPhone isn’t made in china (and what is made in China can easily be made elsewhere), but they are mostly made in east Asia, so having assembly done somewhere in the regio…

But they don't own any factories, right? Wouldn't it destroy Foxconn and only defer revenue a bit for Apple? Maybe a few people who just gotta have the newest, latest, and greatest gadget will switch to a Flagship android because they can't wait for the new iPhone. But most people are pretty loyal / trapped into their mobile ecosystem. I doubt it would materially affect Apple's market share or their revenue long-term…

Foxconn is Taiwanese company. They could figure something out if push comes to shove.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#206
post #47

I'm curious as to what happens if the NBA does in fact get banned from China. I've always wondered whether, as the Chinese economy grows and living standards rise, individuals would ever feel more entitled to individual rights. Of course maybe this is just a western bias. If the NBA was blocked, would passionate Chinese NBA fans (of which there are many) fall in line? Or not?

They do. It is a nationalistic rhetoric, much like what we saw here as well. At the end of the day, the legitimacy comes from some kind of populist support. Very unfortunate turn of events.

Yeah I think you are right. But that populist support is not guaranteed forever, and I wonder what happens then.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#207

One thing you learn from spending time studying China is that the Chinese state has an asymmetric advantage in much better understanding the US than the US understands China and being very good at deliberately structuring their systems and policies in a way that consistently exploits the weaknesses in how Western liberal democracies are organized. I think the much bigger story here is how China's state capitalism is…

Seems like you could continue to take advantage of individual agents by bootstrapping the CBA with billions of dollars and offering insane salaries to slowly lure top NBA players over and creating your own league.

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#208

Anti-China propaganda machinery is in full force today. So many anti-China propaganda articles in a technical news site. This isn't what I was expecting when I joined Hacker News. I was expecting to see Hacker news, not this rubbish that has littered the front page today. I am even ready to be removed from this site today. I am not even Chinese. I have never visited China but I am able to see anti-China bullshit that…

How is this anti China propaganda? These are legitimate complaints that haven't been properly addressed nor called out for years.

Not really propaganda. It's real reaction from large portion of people. But the belief of mass is not always right.

Iraq was destroyed not only because of WMD as a lie but the biggest factor is that Westners as human rights activits collectively supported their government based on the belief that they own truth and have "moral responsibilty" meaning they are the judge but not god to decide other peoples fate by liberate them from evil human right abuser i.e. Saddam and Gaddafi. They are able to do that because western countries have more bombs while the "evils" can not defend themselves.

In today's world, Hitler doesn't create threat because it's obvious wrong and will be easily destroyed. The real threat is mobs of human activists that believe they stand on a high moral ground. They are more deceptive. They create chaos around the world. They show no remorse for the suffer of Iraq and Libya people because they don't think they cause the disaster.

Blaming the lie of WMD is another lie. The Western people collectively supported their countries to bomb Iraq and Libya that evetually created the chaos and disaster. That's the real root cause.

Human rights and democracy is the last cult in the world after communism collapse. I'm not saying HR and democracy themselvs are bad. But because the believers have done a lot of damages without knowing it's their crime that cause millions of death. The stupidity of mordem human only recognizes direct killing as a crime but never admit bigger scale crime indirectly caused by their "good" intention

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genghis Khan was neither a totalitarian leader nor did he fail on battlefields.

> or they fail when the charismatic leader dies and his heirs are not so charismatic. As for totalitarianism - it's complicated, since totalitarianism in pre-modern societies looked very different. He would generally allow people in captured territories some degree of self-rule, as long as they sent the requisite taxes to support his war machine and didn't threaten his rule. But that's not all that different from the…

[flagged]

Re: The China Cultural Clash

#210

counterpoint: anglo-sphere internet is very hostile towards right-winged content, with the exception of a few special purpose "containment"-websites and social media personalities. but these people are also pretty much ignored. this is defacto censorship, or more accurately, a publication ban.

counter-counterpoint: much right-winged content is associated with hate speech and violence. Further, many users of websites such as this are young and tend to skew more left of center, and therefore will gravitate toward that content anyway.

Something to think about:

> “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.

Hate speech is off the table in the US because historically it's been used to stoke ethnic tension in a diverse society, people get hurt and die, and breaks social cohesion.

Is it fair to say that criticizing the government is off the table in China because historically revolutions have caused so much death and destruction, and breaks social cohesion?

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