Really this move seems nothing related at all to US companies not having sufficient access to China. If then why this 10 year gap from action to reaction. Many here seems to take this particular view of this move being a retaliation of some sort, but I feel that is a naive view of what US is doing here and how it will be perceived around the world.
Put in specific data protection/privacy laws and regulations applicable to all players, not hound a single company without being able to prove any wrong doing in their part, or offering them a fair, due process.. it seems all arbitrary, discriminatory.. wrong in principle.. yet seems to cheered on by some, merely because it gives a semblance of going one up over a perceived adversary.
Retaliation or not, it is essentially arbitrary act, insufficiently justified in an open society.
International politics being driven with the ethos of a school playground.
> If then why this 10 year gap from action to reaction.
Perhaps due to a change in administration to one that is willing to engage in retaliation because globalisation is less popular with its voter base.
> Put in specific data protection/privacy laws and regulations applicable to all players, not hound a single company without being able to prove any wrong doing in their part,
The argument here is that china's protectionist trade practices should normally be addressed through the WTO but that was seen as ineffective because any compliance efforts were in name only.
TPP might have addressed some of this, but that was also dropped due to public opinion.
China was never part of the TPP. But any treaty or international norm has and will be disregarded if it has any downside to them. Their own domestic laws are only selectively enforced.
Politics moves slowly. 10 years is barely more than 1 presidency.
China bans Facebook despite the company offering to comply with censorship/propaganda rules (and Zuckerberg even offering Xi to name his child). The ban is unambiguously due to strategic concerns over a foreign company having access to user data. The change in US policy towards Chinese apps is not retaliation, it's just the US coming to the same conclusion as China that letting rivals foreign powers control media companies is unwise.
> The ban is unambiguously due to strategic concerns over a foreign company having access to user data
So Europe/India/everyone else should ban US apps? It becomes a slippery slope.
> the US coming to the same conclusion as China that letting rivals foreign powers control media companies is unwise.
If you’re worried about a foreign company manipulating media then put in laws and regulations. That way American companies can be hold accountable to the same standards by other countries as non-American companies and creating a level playing field.
If Europe is concerned that the US is a threat to its collective security they might want to start with getting rid of all our military bases and alliances before worrying about comparatively trivial matters like apps.
> So Europe/India/everyone else should ban US apps? It becomes a slippery slope.
Are Europe and India concerned by a US company controls popular social media companies? Evidently not enough to ban them, and if in the future if they are then that's their prerogative.
> If you’re worried about a foreign company manipulating media then put in laws and regulations.
They did: The US put laws in place that allows the executive to block commerce when it is deemed a strategic threat. And now those laws are being exercised against a media company controlled by a geopolitical rival.
I don't think FB agree to comply the China's Internet data law.
There were negotiation and Zuck showed the flexibility of a seasoned political acting genius (I am sure he will regret this segment in his life eventually). But there were never fully public conformation that FB intends to bend over the law in China.
Please provide a link.
If GB indeed plan to comply the law, then I can assure anyone that Zuck intends to use it's business empire to advance his political ambition. That probably would be worse than Hitler's ascension...
China can do whatever it wants, US can do whatever it wants. Whatever a country wants to do has nothing to do with how it governed, law or not. Law is a set of communally mutually agreed upon rules, so a society can function. However, the key is the word "communal", as in - which community is agreeing upon this law. China can complain that the new laws in the US is illegitimate, but the laws are made by Americans for Americans. Of course the law is not going to extend outside US, for example, they do not dictate what some Canadian company operating in Canada can do. But, in the US, these laws are there for Americans, for American soil, under the territory that the US government formally rules over. Of course, the US makes these rules, because it is its sovereign right to do so. China has no authority over how or why this law is made. Just like the US has no authority to say how Chinese government creates laws.
But then again, China likes to say “Do not interfere in our internal matters”; the US can say the same thing.
I am not American by the way, so have no beef in this.
So hey, I am all popcorns on this at the moment. The next few years are going to be interesting.
Us corps have access to Chinese market. Otherwise they wouldn't have been so courteous to Chinese pressure and sentiment. For example, Apple draw > 10% from mainland China.
There is a common misconception that corps like Google Facebook were banned without legitimate reason. The truth is that China has outrageous internet law that Google Facebook would violate their meal standard in order to operate inside China. Google claims Chinese government hacked their corporation data centers.
How else would you negotiate with a bully like China? America is a bully too, but without Uighur concentration camps, fleets of fishing vessels farming the sea to extinction, outrageous claims over the South China Sea, etc.
You can only turn a blind eye so long to a competitor’s unreasonable actions (in this scope, IP/trade secrets and the like). As a US citizen, I endorse any actions intended to remove or subdue CCP influence, power, and control (domestically or internationally).
None of this comment should be construed as a sleight against the Chinese people in aggregate.
> America is a bully too, but without Uighur concentration camps, fleets of fishing vessels farming the sea to extinction, outrageous claims over the South China Sea, etc.
but with Guantanamo Bay detention camp, bombming Iraq with fabricated evidence and killing hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqi people.
Oh, let's not forget how Uncle Sam extended their territory by slaughtering Native Americans since 15th century. You even have a festival to celeberate the genocide and conquest of Native Americans by colonists.
dang, apologies this was flagged for your attention, I don’t understand why it was flagged but I’m actively seeking alternative forums [1] where this sort of discussion is welcome.
Which means that they emit much less per person. Or should countries be compared with no refrerence to their population, in which case Saudi Arabia is doing great?
Additionally, USA has had decades of relative prosperity to clean up its emissions, but did nothing.
Meanwhile China has more electric busses than the rest of the world combined, more hifgh-speed raio than the rest of the world combined, lead the world in investment in renewables and nuclear and are on track to meet their Paris accord commitment, unlike US.
Looking at it per population is kind of ridiculous when it's very obviously corporations and manufacturing responsible for most green house gasses. The average person barely makes a difference both in regards to pollution, resource consumption and plastics.
You have a point, but population is still the key metric. Corporatuons are, after all, made up of people. Whether those people produce emissions in their private life, or in their jobs.
Furthermore this is a production based accounting of CO2, if you instead do consumption-based accounting of CO2 then you will see a dramativally more savage picture.
Does comparing the total always make sense? How about we take the average? Twice the amount means each Chinese person emit about 1/5 greenhouse of an American does. Man are created equal and Chinese people have the equal right to emit for their own prosperity
Reminds me of some downplay of China’s progress by looking at averages
Prosperity is not a right. Past emissions by some do not create future emissions allowances for others. We should all be held accountable for future emissions, as the climate cares little for equality concerns.
With that said, it’s entirely feasible to transition faster to not needing to emit carbon to raise or maintain quality of life. As I mention above, everyone should be accountable for that.
Past emissions allowed countries to build wealth, and if wealthy countriss are failing to clean uo their act, why do you wxpect poorer countries like India or Vietbam to make a sacrafice?
If we directly translate this to Chinese, the statement doesn’t make any sense. Is “pursuing prosperity” a right?
Looks like between the two cultures there might be quite a diverge Of the definition of “right”
Otherwise though I agree with what you said and China probably has been making a good progress already. Believe it or not, low Carbon life style is promoted by the official media
Trump's top advisor on China is a complete nutjob who knows nothing about China: Peter Navarro, author of "Death by China."
Navarro doesn't speak Chinese, and before he joined the Trump administration, he had hardly even been to China. In recent months, he's been promoting anti-Chinese conspiracy theories about CoVID-19. He's an ideologue who believes that the US is in a death struggle with China.
So if you're wondering why US policy has changed, looking at who's in office is a start. The scary thing is how successful the Trump administration has been in promoting its views on China among the public.
It's not related to anything China has done over the past years. It's the fact that TikTok users embarrassed Trump, so sympathetic conservatives are looking for any and every Trump-free reason to support the president unilaterally banning something. Mind you, these are the same people that scream about "free speech" when YouTube or Twitter deplatforms Nazis and other right-wing white supremacists.
Put in specific data protection/privacy laws and regulations applicable to all players, not hound a single company without being able to prove any wrong doing in their part, or offering them a fair, due process.. it seems all arbitrary, discriminatory.. wrong in principle.. yet seems to cheered on by some, merely because it gives a semblance of going one up over a perceived adversary.
Retaliation or not, it is essentially arbitrary act, insufficiently justified in an open society.
International politics being driven with the ethos of a school playground.