301–310 of 648 posts
Edit: This is not a justification or defense of internet censorship. It is an explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict government controls than the West. While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back thousands o…
Edit: This is not a justification or defense of internet censorship. It is an explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict government controls than the West. While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back thousands o…
Chinese philosophical roots include both Confucianism and Taoism, as well as the imported schools of though associated with Buddhism, and more recently quite a lot of modern Western ideas (particularly Marxism). Taoism is anti-authoritarian in the extreme. Buddhism is significantly more neutral on the subject but is definitely aligned closely with personal liberation and at minimum it does not make special exceptions…
Would you count Mozi/Mohism among them?
And what about after the Han synthesis? Confucianism and legalism seem to have tempered the anti-authoritarian Taoist ideas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only users of WeChat have strong ties to China, and use it for those ties (e.g. WePay). Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons. WeChat working in the US is like UnionPay working in the US. Ya, its great if you are a Chinese tourist or an expat with a Chinese bank account, but it is irrelevant if you aren't, UnionPay isn't going to start taking over the American ATM card market.
> Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons. Before someone asks, the approximate equivalent of WeChat in Taiwan is Line. Don't know what it is in HK.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another alternative is that you may get a Galapagos island effect where Chinese firms do innovate, but their innovation is tied to the cultural and regulatory norms and not very applicable outside of China. The same effect was seen with Japanese cell phone companies pre-smartphone era.
If Chinese start an economic and cultural expansion which includes PRing their culture, movies, tech, products and building special relationships with developing world in Asia, Africa, south American and Europe they may end up being the globalization leader.
Creativity is inhibited when you have the cost of wondering whether what you've written or what you'll say will land you in jail. This problem is multiplied 1000x if you work in anything related to media or art. Consequently mainland entertainment will always be safe and boring. It's not going to see success like say South Korean or Japanese media industries
It's super obvious that the state of the mainland China entertainment industry is so terrible when you have most Chinese pirating foreign media
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the last years have show us anything it is that the USA government (and others) can create the legality that they think more convenient. For instance, you can invent a new category in order to avoid detaining people like criminals or war enemies if none of the laws applying to those are convenient.
True, and I wouldn't put it past them, but I know of no current legal mechanism for that. Emphasis on legal , of course. It does make me wonder what they'd use for justification - prior to the current administration. The current administration would just use nationalism and protectionism, I'd think. I'm not sure how the previous administration would have framed it in order to make it politically feasible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So if the strategy is have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too why does the rest of the world play along? As opposed to what? Economic sanctions have a wonderfully consistent track record of making things worse for everyone. China is too powerful for 'destroy the country and slaughter its people in a fit of pique' to work the way it did in Libya and Syria, which is just as well because that also makes things worse for everyone…
Unique tit-for-tat regulations of Chinese companies of what is shown in practice? "Our companies don't have freedoms X,Y,Z vs Chinese corps in china, so Chinese corps and investors will get the same special treatment in our country too".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a China hawk, but this is what has been happening and what will continue happening unless something massively more drastic than blocking a single minority foreign app happens. I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers and to underestimate the Chinese market. It's almost laughable that people think blocking WhatsApp will make any difference to Chinese…
> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) > eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector Doesn't China have bigger aspirations than just the mainland? People are missing the bigger point. I'm not talking about the…
China would rather be in control of tracking/surveillance internally, rather than let it be done by foreign companies and nations. Thats all
What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g. Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but it happens a lot more often since the…
> The people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. There are more people in China than in the United States, Europe, and Russia combined. China already manufactures your clothes, chips, computers, phones, and missile chips. I don't think it's correct, given the world's dependence on China, to say China is somehow behind the times…
It's interesting that for so long there was conventional wisdom suggesting a large reason the Soviet Union economy failed due to inefficiencies of communism and oppression. We now know not only did that not stop China, it's not clear that the ceiling of economic success of their system has been determined.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…
China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.
they already do. China wields strong economic influence and pressure over her southeast asian partners, some of whom need to be convinced to give up significant portions of maritime control and territorial rights in an effort to redraw the american sphere of influence in the south china sea region, and further out to establish a new economic status quo in africa and S. Am, where the traditional western world's influence is more political than economic.