It's sad that techies who champion knowledge, freedom, righteousness, supports a country like China that openly rejects democracy, openly and brashly monitors its people and assign them scores, holds 're-education/concentration camps' for its minorities the Uighur, threatens democratic countries like Taiwan, house arrests many of its own citizens and nobel prize winners, spews its pollution into the ocean and to other countries airspace, supports a crazy dictator in North Korea who seeks to destroy US and Japan, etc etc etc
Taking HN into political and nationalistic flamewar is a bannable offense, and we've banned this account.
All: please don't spoil this thread still further by taking this kind of bait. If you want a poster child for what happens, look below for a reductio ad absurdum in two steps: (1) bickering about wars of aggression (yes they were no they weren't); (2) relitigating Vietnam. If this is what you want to do on the internet, Hacker News is not the site you are looking for.
By visiting Silicon Valley am I supporting the US government's covert wars, extrajudicial drone strikes and interference in the affairs of other countries? Not in any meaningful way. This is an absurd argument.
It's a hypocritical argument, not an absurd one. One could argue that it's also wrong to uncritically celebrate the technological achievements of Silicon Valley.
Well over a million people have been killed in U.S. wars of aggression (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) and there are very direct ties between SV high tech funding and the Pentagon. Exhibit A: DARPA.[1] Even more direct than in China. A lot of what SV does is commercializing military technology developed at taxpayer expense. Autonomous vehicles and Siri are just a couple recent examples.[2][3]
Vietnam was not a US war of aggression: the US came at the request of the French presence as the communist north tried to take the French allies in the south. The result was a mess, sadly, predictably.
Nonsense. As if one colonial power asking another to come slaughter the population would make it any less aggressive.
The French agreed to leave and support elections with the Geneva Accords. The U.S. propped up a dictator and organized a campaign of brutal suppression and terror, then outright bombed the hell out of peasants in the south starting in 1962 under JFK to block a political settlement. That's as aggressive as it gets.
Are we talking about the American-Vietnam war or the Sino-Vietnam war? If the latter, China wanted to give Vietnam a taste of Chinese freedom for something going on in Cambodia.
Granted it's hypocritical unless the original commenter applies the same principle to every country that he or she visits — which would be an absurd way to live.
To me, he didn't seem to be supporting China - he seemed to be shopping in Shenzhen. He didn't make a single positive comment about the regime, and in fact spent a lot of the article complaining about the hassles caused by the Great Firewall.
Even if you were to avoid explicitly giving money to Chinese businesses, it's probably impossible to buy any moderately complicated manufactured good without indirectly supporting China's economy.
Why do new accounts pop up to shittalk China every single time someone writes a piece like this. Paid Taiwanese shills?
Not taking either side here, but a boycott doesn't have to be 100%.
I can choose to ride my bike to work when its convenient. Oil companies will lose a little bit of money. I can choose not to eat meat 3 days per week. A few more animals will live (or not be born), and slightly fewer greenhouse gasses will be emitted.
Likewise, I can choose not to purchase something made in China when a meaningful alternative exists, and I will be ever so slightly hurting China's export industry, and thus the tax receipts and influence of the Chinese government.
Of course a boycott doesn't have to be 100%. I think the only person in this entire thread that has suggested as such is the poster that I originally responded to.
I'm definitely not part of the China Internet Defense Force that seems to troll many parts of the web but I find it interesting that whenever China comes up on HN some green username usually shows up to chastise everyone for not participating in a boycott that is 100%.
we are techies, if we can program artificial intelligence, we can figure out ways to avoid giving money to an evil entity that produces concentration camps that today houses China's minorities, tomorrow maybe your children.
You can’t program AI, just some mindless feedback models that have the name “AI” slapped on them. You also can’t sway a group of skeptics with corny lines such as, “tomorrow your children...”
Get real. I don’t want to live in China right now, but evil? I live in a country that has destabilized country after country after country in the name of ideology, fear, and greed. This country kills civilians on a regular basis, and calls it acceptable.
We’re all evil, if you want to be hyperbolic about it, or human I’d you want to be realistic. Pointing fingers at external “devils” is just a non-starter to anyone with a rational bone in them.
The world is shades of gray. Some are good but had to do evil, and some are true evil.
you seem to be a young jewish man who lives in US. I hope you will look up reeducation camps for Uighurs in China, and look up concentration camps that maybe your relatives have been in. And have some empathy.
We've banned this account for using HN for political and nationalistic battle, which is not allowed here. Stooping to personal details (real or imagined) in a political argument is also not allowed.
Because I own lots of stuff made in China (even 10 years worth of stuff from living there) and I'm not boycotting them like grandparent might be. Heck, my son is half Chinese (technically made in China), my MIL in the other room doesn't even speak a word of english (and her Mandarin is heavily accented), etc...
It's not as bad as the way many French intellectuals directly supported Maoism[0] - at least our "techies" don't (usually) claim to be experts on the political/philosophical side. (Ideally we would have a functioning intelligentsia in the US, but I really think this is more of a symptom of not having one than it is of having a morally decrepit one.)
You seem to have a very distorted view of the world that's almost identical to what the media feeds you. Have you ever visited China and experienced it yourself, or do most of the things you say come from what organizations tell you? Not saying everything in your post was incorrect, but it's a very unrealistic view.
Moral superiority is a huge myth, usually its use is coupled with what aboutism fallacies anyways.
There is much that China can improve irrespective of the situation in other countries. Besides, when someone criticizes the USA, no one ever points out that China is worse, even when it obviously is. It isn't relevant.
> China may have its problems yet for every point you make one could find a negative point in most other countries in the world. Especially if you choose the other country to be the US, which really can't claim moral superiority over many nations in the world (probably not even North Korea).
This is ridiculous.
I agree with the general point when you say that all countries have problems. But some have way more problems than others – and I wouldn't call whatever happens in North Korea just "a problem".
While the US foreign policy leaves much to be desired, you cannot compare the way US citizens are treated versus how Chinese or North Korean citizens are. So yes, the US CAN claim moral superiority in many areas.
> So yes, the US CAN claim moral superiority in many areas.
Oh really?
The biggest patriot of the US is forced to live in Russia because he pointed out, that the US has built an apparatus for mass surveillance. That man is Edward Snowden. If he would go back home he would be killed, legally, that is, because your highly moral superior nation allows to sentence people to death (just like China, which is such a worse place to be).
In general people that speak against the US are threatened. The US actually goes out of their way to try and silence these voices. Even as far as bullying other countries into their crap. Look at Julian Assange, who is forced to live in a tiny room for years now, because the US made sure to catch and extradite him as soon as he leaves the embassy in London. Which by the ruling of the United Nations in against basic human rights, yet Assange is sentenced to death in the embassy (just like dissidents in China).
North Korea is bullyied by the world (on behalf of the US) because they have not opened to capitalism and they have a nuclear bomb. Which by the way the US has, yet the US arsenal is not only one bomb but more like one hundred bombs per country of the world. To be honest, I am more afraid of the lunatic in the white house to launch one of those bombs than the fatty in North Korea.
The US always points at the free press and free speech, yet they created such an environment of leftist propaganda, that Sam Altman feels more safe to say things in China than in the Valley. The free press is so damn broken that they spent the last year talking about Russians manipulating their elections that Donald Trump can slip everything he wants into congress without anyone actually noticing.
And while NYT, WashPo, LATimes, etc. keep talking about the bad Russians your nation turns into shit.
Oh and I did not even mention the broken capitalism and lobbyists yet... I could do this for hours. The point is, nope moral high ground is long gone for you guys, in fact I think after Hiroshima you never had it.
The US (along with the democratic free world) may have its own problems but it absolutely can claim some sort of moral superiority in many areas.
You cite Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Well, you can freely support, advocate, demonstrate or petition for their cause, in the open.
Let me know how it goes for you if you were to try defending political dissidents in Russia, China or North Korea.
The fact that we can debate these things in a public forum is proof of our moral superiority.
This does not mean there aren't plenty of things we need to learn from these non-democratic societies.
We just don't need to reject our moral beliefs to do so.
> your highly moral superior nation/ nope moral high ground is long gone for you guys
Let me start this by saying that I am not a US citizen. Also not Chinese.
> The biggest patriot of the US is forced to live in Russia because he pointed out, that the US has built an apparatus for mass surveillance.
I understand his motivations. However, can you point to me a single country in the entire planet where theft of classified information would not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law?
> If he would go back home he would be killed, legally,
You don't know that. I don't know that. That is for the legal system to decide.
> In general people that speak against the US are threatened.
No they are not. There is a very big difference between "speaking out against" and actively leaking classified information. Go try it yourself, book a plane, go to the white house and go speak out. Nothing is going to happen to you, and you will find that you won't be the only one doing that.
> yet Assange is sentenced to death in the embassy
This hyperbole deserves no comment.
> North Korea is bullyied by the world (on behalf of the US) because they have not opened to capitalism and they have a nuclear bomb
There are other countries which share the same description and are not being "bullied". What the 'people's democratic oxymoronic country' has is a deranged lunatic, playing with weapons and oppressing his people.
> To be honest, I am more afraid of the lunatic in the white house to launch one of those bombs than the fatty in North Korea.
Checks and balances. You should look up those.
> The free press is so damn broken
I'll concede this point. Actually, we could say that the press is too goddamn free, to the point where channels can spread outright lies and nothing ever happens. But then again, you can choose who to listen to, there is no state propaganda (even though there is one network that would love to become one).
> in fact I think after Hiroshima you never had it.
Oh by the way, I love Japan. Been there, great country. But it is not like they were minding their own business in WWII and got surprise attacked with a new type of weapon. They were at war.
Please, leave your couch, go to the US, see for yourself. Then do the same for other countries. I bet that at least some of your tone is going to change.
Nationalistic chest-beating and political flamewar are poster children for the kind of comments that do not belong on Hacker News. Would you please not do this again, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are?
China has created "exclusive economic zones" like Hong Kong and Shenzhen that are more free than the United States. Mainland China may be a shithole, but at least they have places where capitalism can thrive, better that even the United States.
Shenzhen is a Special Economic Zone and Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous Special Administrative Region under "one country, two systems". There may be more economic freedom that the US but still less freedom of speech and press.
HK had plenty of freedom of speech and press until very recently. With the bookseller abductions, that is obviously over, but it did exist at one point.
