Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#361

Post by sebmellen » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #321

sebmellen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but I didn't say that because he's Chinese, rather because he's a person of power and a multi-billionaire, and I was comparing him to other such people (not specifically Americans).

It may be unintentional, but you ultimately did end up comparing his appearance to the standard of two other people that happened not to be Chinese, but also using this as the premise for a theory of foul play. What if his appearance ends up having nothing to do with it? Then it ends up just being insulting, especially if culturally his appearance is considered normal.

Nothing to do with his appearance, but with his surroundings and things like his video quality. It's also just one observation of a number of very odd things — the oddest thing being that a multibillionaire has reappeared after 3 months of disappearance without making a mention of it! Especially after such widespread speculation, if there were nothing going on, you'd think he'd care to comment "hi everyone, I've just been on vacation," or something innocuous like that.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#362

Post by davorak » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

dirtyid wrote: post #335

duxup wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation is weird regardless of the existence of a charity.

It's typical Chinese politics to the point of status quo. Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys. This development is what anyone with understanding of the Chinese system has repeated in past posts on the subject matter, but people dismiss in preference for rampant conspiracy theories. General commentary: if HN audience insists on flamewarring over Chinese topics, there should be some effort to learn about how Chinese…

Are there any first hand accounts or primary sources on what happens during these "contrition vacations"? Info along those lines would help illuminate why and how the current process is the status quo. I have not seen any first hand accounts or primary sources but I normally only read about these incidents when they get wider coverage like this one.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#363

Post by Razengan » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #252

crististm wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a one year problem. And it will stay that way because, as you know, HN is a corporation. Not a public forum. Maintaining these rules allow dang@co to maintain the position of control over what happen in HN. The corollary is that changing them will dilute their control. They found a local maximum of discourse level and they keep it that way. The justification that the discourse on HN is maintained at a hig…

I only partly agree with your view. It might be so, but there is a genuine reason behind not discussing the rules: they're always off-topic. For people like me who come to HN to read an interesting discussion about tech issues, anything mentioning downvoting is almost automatically useless in the sense that it doesn't bring any new information, it's not interesting, it doesn't affect me in any way. Yes, if I were in…

> The very fact that we're even having this discussion now means we prefer this place to any other in this moment. So you can't say these rules don't work.

Oh fucking boy, no. What even is that logic

We have a bunch of tabs open on a bunch of other social sites and forums. We don’t prefer HN to any other place, we just think something about it sucks badly enough to express our disdain of it.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#364

Post by BlackFly » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #287

BlackFly wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is doing exactly the thing it accuses others of doing: not understanding and painting with too wide a brush. Of course on a forum you are simultaneously going to find large swathes of people that take on seemingly contradicting viewpoints. Interpreting that to mean that all participants in these discussions are hypocrites or anti-China is either an emotional reaction or a failure to consider the truth of…

> Look at what happened to Canada after they arrested Meng Wanzhou for the rationale behind these views. The Chinese government treated the arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a political issue because it was clearly tied to the US trade war, and more generally to the US government's attempts to undermine the Chinese tech sector (which we see from the ever-widening US sanctions against Chinese tech companies). Donald Trump him…

If what you are saying is true, then why target random Canadians traveling through China? If you want to exert political pressure on the USA, then you should put political pressure on the USA. The USA doesn't care what happens to random Canadians getting arrested in China as a political reprisal.

The truth is that many more Canadians would have been sympathetic towards China and Meng--some people for the reasons you are stating--nd would have argued against the extradition (in the same grain that UK people are arguing against the extradition of Assange) if the government of China had not decided to retaliate against Canada. US sanctions against Iran are a topic for discussion in Canada, Canada doesn't stand up to Iranian sanctions as much as against Cuban sanctions, but support for doing business with Iran exists in Canada.

Most of that support for Meng evaporates when you get attacked by a foreign government for following the rule of law. The takeaway for a lot of people is that the government of China will retaliate against countries that "mistreat" their CEOs. Hence considering them as security risks.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#365

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 11:19 AM UTC

BlackFly wrote: post #364

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at what happened to Canada after they arrested Meng Wanzhou for the rationale behind these views. The Chinese government treated the arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a political issue because it was clearly tied to the US trade war, and more generally to the US government's attempts to undermine the Chinese tech sector (which we see from the ever-widening US sanctions against Chinese tech companies). Donald Trump him…

If what you are saying is true, then why target random Canadians traveling through China? If you want to exert political pressure on the USA, then you should put political pressure on the USA. The USA doesn't care what happens to random Canadians getting arrested in China as a political reprisal. The truth is that many more Canadians would have been sympathetic towards China and Meng--some people for the reasons you…

> Most of that support for Meng evaporates when you get attacked by a foreign government for following the rule of law.

This was the message that was pretty relentlessly propagated in the media in Canada, but the reality is that the extradition of Meng Wanzhou has little to do with the rule of law. It's being done because the political and economic relationship with the US is too important to risk. The Chinese government is trying to show the Canadian government that there's a cost to going along with the US when the US tries to take Chinese executives hostage for its trade negotiations with China. From the Chinese perspective, if this extradition goes through without any retaliation, then Chinese executives abroad will be increasingly targeted by the US in order to put pressure on China.

China's attempts to put pressure on Canada have backfired politically. But equally, the Trudeau government was incredibly unwise to allow Meng Wanzhou to be arrested in the first place. They could have done any number of things to avoid being placed in this situation, such as "failing" to arrest her or letting the existence of the warrant leak beforehand. When the US requested that Hong Kong extradite Snowden, Hong Kong rejected the initial request due to supposed minor technical defects, giving Snowden enough time to get on a plane. But now Canada will have to very publicly go against either the US or China.