It is time to stand up for the people of Hong Kong without apology
Stop apologising to this brutal regime you cowards!
The China Cultural Clash
71–80 of 379 posts
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#72Attempts by China to leverage market access into self-censorship by U.S. companies should also be treated as trade violations that are subject to retaliation. Thank you, Ben, for this honest appraisal which involves sticking out your neck and perhaps even harming your ability to travel to China or expand your business. Regarding this comment about Apple: And then there is Apple: the company is deeply exposed to China…
> Apple doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
Apple doesn’t have anywhere to go is a comment on the consumer market, not manufacturing. They are heavily dependent on revenue from China.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#73I see lots of Anti-China sentiment. I would be very careful here into not falling into their deliberate trap of making "The West" China's "Enemy". China in its current totalitarian form needs an "Enemy" to survive, without it, it has to deal with difficult internal questions which will force it to adapt and change - and this what scares them. Totalitarian governments rely on distraction and misdirection of the popula…
See, one thing I don’t get is when people get into their anti Russian mode (which Russia deserves), we don’t get all this pearl clutching and people feel free to say what’s bad, but oh no, China, be mindful not to be harsh...
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#74[flagged]
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world vs China? The US, Canada, the EU, and Australia make up less than 20% of the worlds population. India, the many countries of Africa and South and Central America are places I've not heard from on this. And, there is a large population there. Is it the world vs China or the parts of the world we typically listen to vs China?
China is applying economic pressure across the world to get its way. If they pull this shit on the US imagine what they can get away with with smaller poorer countries.
Large businesses often have rules around single sourcing of anything. They don't want that single source to cause them problems if something happens to it. For example, even if they buy 90% of their servers from HPE they may still get 10% from Dell to have multiple suppliers.
It would be wise for many organizations to take that idea and apply it to countries of origin for their things. That way instability in a region doesn't threaten things back home.
This doesn't help things like the NBA whose revenue model is based on bodies and eyeballs. But, it can help some industries break control... as long as they have goals other than to gain all the money.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#76Attempts by China to leverage market access into self-censorship by U.S. companies should also be treated as trade violations that are subject to retaliation. Thank you, Ben, for this honest appraisal which involves sticking out your neck and perhaps even harming your ability to travel to China or expand your business. Regarding this comment about Apple: And then there is Apple: the company is deeply exposed to China…
> That may be true of manufacturing now, but will it be true 5 years from now?
Not even a wildest guess can tell now. As for Vietnam, it's the closes substitute.
Demographically, Vietnam is incomparably better off than China. On the level of technical capability it's late nineties China. The few manufacturers venture there only for abundant skilled workforce. Big players like Foxconn and Samsung can build entire cities housing a big part of the supply chain inside, but I don't see even Samsung being that committed at the moment. Samsung's plant in Vietnam imports all components, assemblies and etc, from outside, including Samsung parts factories in China.
A lot of young bright Vietnamese are travelling for work to... China — something unimaginable even 10 years ago. In SZ, there is a serious talk going on about China importing foreign workforce by millions — again, something unthinkable 10 years ago.
The biggest appeal of China as a manufacturing destination now is its domestic industry, not Foxconn and Flextronics megaplants.
To get manufacturing appeal, Vietnam will need at foremost develop its domestic manufacturing — and that's easier said than done, in comparison to just inviting Foxconn and have them do everything for you.
To the point above, there is quite a twist now: more and more Chinese manufacturing SMEs are migrating to Vietnam, along with their customers. Even though, they outright loose cost wise, they believe that Vietnam is a better bet on demographics, and immediate gain from "trade war refugees'" clients is big enough for now.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#77World superpowers and associated people should not take tweets so seriously. People read too much meaning and emotion into throwaway comments.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#78I have an interesting take on this, from knowing a bit about Chinese culture (lived there) and for having friends and coworkers who are Chinese.
Culture in China is about unity. If you look at Chinese history, and if you watch Chinese movies, this is a recurrent theme. Unification through blood and war. This is the goal and China will get stronger and more stable over time. At what cost? Tiananmen, xinjiang, hk, the gfw, and so on... people know about it but are willing to ignore them for the greater goal.
Why this shocks us so much, as non-mainlander, is that our Overton window is much further left (the window of what is considered “normal” or “accepted” public discourse). We have lived through slavery, camps, revolutions for human rights. So there’s definitely a human asymmetry here, which makes it harder for any of us to find common ground.
I don’t think there are much solutions here, and I think that in time Chinese people will learn the same lessons we have learned.
I also think most of their distrust in western media is not because they necessarily disagree with it, but because it doesn’t promote their greater goal. And eventhough they know weibo, wechat, et al. Are heavily censored they continue to obtain their news from there, never ending the cycle.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#79The Chinese get pissed off at political statements Americans find innocuous. Europeans are angry over the dominance of American tech companies which they are unable to control. Americans are panicked at the very idea of anybody non-Western being associated with any technology they use, as we saw with FaceApp and 5G. This was all inevitable, and it's going to lead to siloed-off, separate internets for every region in…
I don't think people want a Great Firewall. I just don't want economic power being concentrated by foreign states to suppress political speech here.
This is exactly my point. You, an American citizen, call it "economic power being concentrated by foreign states". But Chinese citizens call it "ordinary people boycotting offensive speech". It's the NFL kneeling protests and boycotts again, except divided by country rather than by red/blue within the US. It's annoying to have people you don't know come in and tell you your speech is offensive, and if you want that to stop, then you want siloed national internets.
Re: The China Cultural Clash
#80The Chinese get pissed off at political statements Americans find innocuous. Europeans are angry over the dominance of American tech companies which they are unable to control. Americans are panicked at the very idea of anybody non-Western being associated with any technology they use, as we saw with FaceApp and 5G. This was all inevitable, and it's going to lead to siloed-off, separate internets for every region in…
> I always find it amusing and a bit sad when people condemn the Great Firewall, and then immediately turn around and demand their country get one too.
That's not at all what people are asking for here.