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US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#451

Post by fqye »

ejanus wrote: post #390
fqye wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn't be wronger. Alibaba wasn't protected by the government at all. Ebay's then CEO bought a local e-biz site eachnet and relocated to Shanghai but still failed at competing with Alibaba. Amazon bought some local e-biz site too and failed at competing with Alibaba too. MSN was a huge player in China with far more users than QQ when it was taking off. ICQ was in China too. At the time IM wans't a big deal for…

Wrong! How come same companies you mentioned are doing well every other place except in China? Don't you see this as odd?

No. China's internet market has always been extremely competitive.

And there were some debates about why China could produce some big internet players and eventually it was generally accepted that for one China has a big, or is THE biggest single language market and the other one was because in the early 90s or 200s China's authorities, who were mostly older guys in their 40s or 50s and didn't know anything of internet at the time so they didn't regulate it but let China's and overseas players compete. It was then so many talented people returned from silicon valley like Charles Zhang and Robin Zhang and also some local guys like Jack Ma and Pony Ma of Tencent kicked off their startups. And it was those local guys who grew really big because they knew China better.

The local start ups even couldn't list in China's stock exchanges but had to go list in Nasdaq, HKEx or NYSE.

It was only when China's younger regulators took power they started to setup the GFW and all other policies. Until then it was wild west.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#452

Post by bleepblorp »

zwaps wrote: post #341
bleepblorp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much impossible for lower-income countries to develop economically without protecting their emerging businesses from being slaughtered by established foreign competition. The priority of the Chinese government is the benefit of its citizens (leaving aside that the CCP doesn't consider ethnic minorities in China to be full citizens, as this is a separate issue) and its domestic economy, not the benefit of…

But does this exact argument not also justify the US and Europe to pursue their own interests? Isn’t that what Trump thinks he is doing? I mean, there is plenty of countries around Europe that are sort of doing worse than China, but are still strongarmed by these Chinese. Maybe the EU should also get in on this, not allowing any Chinese firms onside our borders. After all, our companies are even more fragile. A call…

There's a very good case that the EU should limit both Chinese and US tech sector market access both for security reasons and to help build a viable European tech sector.

European data should be controlled in Europe, not on US or Chinese clouds and subject to the CLOUD Act and its Chinese equivalent. Lack of data sovereignty is a major threat to European sovereignty in general.

Confiscating the economic value of existing non-EU tech sector firms in Europe, as the US is doing with TikTok and WeChat, isn't the best way to make this happen, however. Buying existing assets at market value is a fairer approach.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#453

Post by sreejithr »

danboarder wrote: post #40

This is sad, we in the US are losing the little high ground we had and no longer lead by example to bring the world closer together by encouraging free markets and free people. I'm against this protectionist nationalism, it only leads to future conflict.

Not really. There are other developing economies with serious tech sectors like India which operate according to the rules based open market system we have in place.

If the US doesn't take action against Chinese protectionism, why should other countries abide by the rules and give US access to their markets? The US provides China it's market even though China closes it down for everyone.

I think US being soft on China sets a bad precedent.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#454

Post by donw »

orbifold wrote: post #420
donw wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US lost that near-monopoly years ago. Broadly speaking, I think we're witnessing the birth of three distinct global powers. One is centered on the US, and consists (broadly) of Canada, Mexico, the rest of Latin America, the Commonwealth nations, Japan, Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. An American civil war would destabilize this to a large degree, so we'll have to see if that plays out. Edit, since people seem confused…

A German, French and Russian alliance is probably the winning move and was thwarted more than once by Anglo-Saxon intervention. Right now the US actively tries to sabotage the Nordstream 2 completion ( https://www.dw.com/de/ist-nord-stream-2-noch-zu-retten/a-538... ), which would make Germany energy independent from US controlled Gas.

Is it bad that I read that as the "Nordstrom Completion", and was wondering why the Europeans needed more overpriced fashion items?

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#455

Post by Thorrez »

kortilla wrote: post #444
learnstats2 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels unequal after this was called censorship and anti-democratic, being used as a basis for propaganda against China, for years?

Unequal? You’re suggesting that blocking just monetary transactions with two companies is somehow worse than the thousands of sites blocked in China?

Yeah, "unequal" doesn't make sense. How about "hypocritical". By doing this the US loses a lot of its footing to criticize China's behavior. The US is supposed to be the land of the free, but this looks less than free.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#456

Post by mikechen233 »

exprath35 wrote: post #190
thewarrior wrote: post #43

Some people here are wondering about the implications of this. What this means IMO is that all Chinese investments in SV need to be liquidated at fire sale prices in the next 45 days. Regardless of how people here feel about China this is a huge escalation. The US is inflicting huge losses on Chinese companies for no clear violation of US laws on their part. The pandoras box is now open. Do countries get to do this t…

> Do countries get to do this to each other whenever they feel like it now ? Can China force Tesla to sell its Chinese operations because Teslas data gathering poses a national security risk ? Yes? Are you unaware that China has been doing exactly this for many, many years? Just as two examples, AWS was forced by China to sell off its Chinese operations to a Chinese company because of arbitrary national security reas…

But the big difference is that Amazon still controls aws in China, the product, the brand, the IP. And aws is developed employees in Seattle. It's just operated by the Chinese company. The Chinese company deal with servers, deployment, accesses to the servers and stuff. Amazon also get a significant share of revenue from that market. That is totally different from US gov forcing Bytedance to sell tiktok. Bytedance will no longer own tiktok. It's will have 0 shares. Zero control and no revenue sharing. Technically Microsoft can do whatever they want with tiktok in the future.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#458

Post by sreejithr »

I agree 100% with this. I mean, there are other developing economies with serious tech sectors like India which operate according to the rules based open market system we have in place.

If the US doesn't take action against Chinese protectionism, why should other countries abide by the rules and give US access to their markets? The US provides China it's market even though China closes it down for everyone.

I think US being soft on China sets a bad precedent.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#459

Post by Lambdanaut »

unishark wrote: post #450
Lambdanaut wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just" reciprocity? "Just" an eye for an eye? And when the other guy takes out our spleen, we should take out his too? And his muscles? His brain? And heart? Until we are both nothing but dust. Yes, let's reciprocate. Let us take until we are shit in the wind.

Or until both sides agree to bilaterally remove bans? Because unlike eyes, messaging can grow back.

I have a trillion eyes. When I remember that, I can stop trading eyes for eyes, and be content with the eyes I already have.

There is one of me: Life.

And I am sick and tired of this self-mutilation.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#460

Post by krn »

readme wrote: post #387
krn wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way It can be a real threat to national security[1]: > Thursday's order alleges that TikTok "automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users," such as location data and browsing and search histories, which "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information -- potentially allowing Chi…

bingo not a lot of people are indoctrinated into the world of national security, and because of that they just balk at it there's a lot going on in the world, and it's not a big happy place where everyone are friends, to put it bluntly china has other motives, I think a quick google should at least clue one in their corporate espionage activities

It is not the first time I am surprised by the complete unawareness of the world of national security in the US tech industry:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18655803

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