As much as I like Apple products, it looks like the privacy buck stops at China.
The western world needs to desperately work on making their supply chains independent of the CCP, lest they'd like their supply chains to be poisoned at some point in the future.
I'm a big fan of Purism and everything that they are doing. I hope their software and hardware matures with the same level of polish we've come to know and expect from Apple products, and will be an early investor if they ever decide to IPO.
You'll see how the west is going to "rebrand" globalization from the "world savior" to "a dependency issue". We're going back.
Everyone thought that as new countries got richer, they would follow in the steps of western values (democracy, free markets, etc.). Yet, all we really achieved is to fund the CCP. And now they're not letting investors get their money out and they're putting military bases where they swore they would never. Great.
Of course, the world is more "equal" in general, but not in the concrete edge cases. For already developed countries, it's a nightmare that destroyed the industry and the middle class. For developing countries, it's a nightmare where a powerful few (CCP) have more resources than ever to suppress their people and relinquish power.
The only way forward is back. Let's keep the diversity and the share of information and progress. Let's reverse the economic dependency hell we've cornered ourselves into.
P.D: I have nothing but sympathy for the Chinese people. I admire their resolve and creativity. I hate the CCP and how people all over the world have come to relativize even our core values as a society (democracy, freedom of speech, etc). We're really close to a middle-ages screw up if we don't remember what we stand for.
>Everyone thought that as new countries got richer, they would follow in the steps of western values (democracy, free markets, etc.).
Maybe the markets enthusiasts were sold that idea, but even if I was too young to be into politics, I do remember that some circles (leftist) were pretty skeptical of the globalization push, which was seen as imperialism and a way for the elites to enrich themselves. After all these years, not only the pro-market camp's promises didn't came true, but maybe the chinese were also keen to participate trying not to come too affected by the imperialism.
> Everyone thought that as new countries got richer, they would follow in the steps of western values (democracy, free markets, etc.).
This is the key idea that has failed: the idea that prosperity equals or leads to social liberalism and human rights, or that the two are interdependent.
This idea appears to be wrong, having been disproven by China.
Totalitarianism and prosperity can co-exist just fine. Totalitarianism and capitalism can even co-exist to a degree, with the totalitarian tendency to kneecap the extremely wealthy being outweighed by the totalitarian ability to forcibly suppress workers' rights movements and pushes for higher wages. Totalitarians can also backstop the economy, stepping in in the event of a crash and forcing number to go up by edict. That benefits the investor class at the expense of the working class by effectively writing down wages and inflating assets.
This means utilitarian arguments for freedom and human rights fail. That's a big deal and undermines at least a half century of libertarian and neoliberal talking points. It means human rights must be argued for on purely spiritual, moral/ethical, or hedonic grounds, not utilitarian grounds.
I think the collapse of this key idea is as much a driver of the global push-back against globalism as working class economic concerns and cultural xenophobia, if not more. Human beings are philosophical beings and coherent narratives and ideas matter to us. When China showed that you could have totalitarianism and prosperity, the bottom fell out of the argument for the whole project.
Yes, pretty much agree. I'll say that in the end people want their freedom.
I didn't believe this until the lockdown. Being told what to do is something that makes you instantly appreciate freedom.
There will always be revolt, given enough time. CCP have outdone themselves in that department though. They've learnt from USSR and Cuba.
In USSR/Cuba people know. They talk to outsiders and realize the don't live like they're better. China has learnt and told their citizens that they're bullied everywhere so the CCP was made to protect them. Genius really.
The CCP is also building a surveillance state that may allow them to preemptively shut down any dissent before it gains any traction and do so in real time. Unlike most Western states there isn't even a pretense of legal or constitutional restraint. They can surveil with total impunity and more importantly use that data with total impunity. Western governments are at least constrained on the second part if not the first.
That is fucking scary. We have invented a set of technologies that could be used to create an un-overthrowable dictatorship and permanently enslave the human race... to get people to click ads.
Why do you think that? Do you think those at the top who set the national strategy are mediocre? China's present position could not have been achieved by mediocre members.
It has been achieved thanks to the heaps of cash that the entire world has thrown at China. Part of what made it work was some good ideas "some" people at the very top had, but they've reverted those decisions and the effects are starting to show (you now need contacts in the government to start new stuff, didn't use to be the case).
Of course, with time, any approach expires. The new approach is lacking. Not surprising considering the finger-picked positions.
Do people want their freedom? For many people even today there’s a strong desire for comfort, familiarity, duty, etc over freedom. We aren’t allowed to urinate in public, even if we are careful to avoid making a mess, a health hazard, or to flash anyone - because we’ve deemed that freedom not worth the costs to comfort in walking your streets without people peeing in public. You can’t own military grade artillery anymore, you can’t curse on the radio, you can’t work as a child, you can’t purchase cigarettes under 18, you can’t even legally drive or even prove your capable of driving safely before 16 (much less vote). There’s plenty of freedoms we forgo for some degree of security and comfort, and we wanted a different balance of freedom, security, and comfort just a few years ago, or decades ago, and we’ll likely want a different balance in 10 more years. Plenty of people in 2020 were totally fine with fines and enforced curfews in light of protests, riots, and pandemic. Freedom doesn’t seem like a true north for humans
Certain extreme expressions of subjective human freedom can harm people more broadly. Someone building an atomic bomb in their basement is a threat to my human rights, as is a company blowing unfiltered coal smoke all over my town. Enough people emitting enough fossil CO2 globally might threaten the rights (and damage the property) of a vast number of people. Enough people refusing to vaccinate might even be a threat (though this has to be evaluated carefully), since they're increasing my odds of contracting a disease.
Balancing absolute freedom with human rights and the broader experience of liberty and prosperity is as we would say an "AI hard problem." There exists no simple set of rules that when followed will always yield a positive result. It requires a continuous input of fully engaged intelligence and a continuous deliberative political process.
What we can say is that certain things do not do this. One-party totalitarian surveillance states, grievance-based populism, fascism, or Russia-style mafia-theocracy do not do this.
I don't think it's correct to say that the idea of prosperity and liberalism being linked has been disproven. China is very concerned generally with appearing prosperous, but they're generally not very forthcoming about the wellbeing of their citizens. If you're a Uighur right now, for example, things might not seem so rosy to you.
Uighurs are not in a rosy situation because they have not chosen submission to the rulers and their directives. If they had, do you think they would have it hard?
It’s a bit late for that. Not sure if it is too late though. Without changing a few essential philosophies such as consumerism the whole world is dependent on China’s manufacture strength. Without scooping heavily into the resouces of the top 1% who benefited most from
globalization this whole thing is also impossible to achieve. Without taxing the corporations a higher rate the middleclass won’t be able to recover. I don’t see anything being done about this.
Oh, it's super late! In the short term, China will definitely be the largest economy (it's just about demographics + GDP).
The only thing that could challenge that is:
1) World war (please no)
2) China is chopped up (but that's why they crack down on Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc)
So I think we might see another rebranding about what it means to be the n1 economy. Or they might come up with a new metric hehe.
The fact of the matter is that China's rule won't last long because:
1) It's governed by a bunch of hand picked corrupt and ignorant bunch called the CCP (although they've done propaganda and brainwashing far better than the USSR, I'll give them that)
2) There's a demographic bomb incoming for China (not enough children).
How about the top down governing approach that works in some situations and is a disaster in others? Currently favorable but times change.
Second, we should not hope that an opponent does worse than us to make us look better but we should simply better ourselves in the first place. Currently I'm seeing only decline and disunity in the western civilization, very short term thinking and lack of vision, but I'm aware that's just a phase that is possible to flip anytime.
That would be good for Chinese themselves in terms of human development, this growth has been stunted quite a bit but not sure if overall China would ever see such growth they had during the CCP. And that is part due to policies of IP theft and nationalism and so on. In the long term CCP is terrible for China but the last few decades it really worked well for them.
Pair (2) with a lack of immigration, which is what bails out the US from this problem (though it wouldn't be as extreme in any case). Wikipedia says China let in 1800 people in to US' 1.2 million in 2016.
This lack of immigration probably wouldn't be easily reversed, because Chinese governance and perhaps culture aren't well suited to absorbing heterogeneous groups.
China's total new births last year was ~10 million. Lowest on record but still multiples more than US + immigration will replenish. Chinese scale = enough new birth/talent without immigration to rival entire OECD block until 2050s.
IMO China doesn't need immigration to survive the demographic crisis, it needs excess labour to manage the transition, declining / smaller total population is the goal - simply too many people right now. Tons of labour can be arbitraged between poor and rich provinces or imported from poorer neighbors on remittance basis without the massive welfare commitments of immigration. Western countries with comprehensive social welfare systems sustained by massive immigration have greater risk of collapse - note all the protests happening in first world countries due to system already fraying. Versus China where the bottom 50% will incrementally improve because they're barely above poverty in the first place. The income gap is so massive that it takes relative less resource redistribution to maintain stability. When 600M / 40% of the population accounts for 7% national GDP, a few years of "slow" national growth @5% generates enough wealth to increase their welfare by 40%. Compared to west where all signs indicate each generation will struggle more than the previous, combined with massive immigration and you have recipe for political instability. Unsustainable social safety net and demographic change due to immigration is as much of a ticking time bomb as declining demographics.
> The western world needs to desperately work on making their supply chains independent of the CCP
The western world can't. The world is only so big and the remaining sites of refuge for cheap, exploitable labor and Potemkin regulatory regimes are few. Almost any alternative place you might cite is either already beholden to China (the viable parts of Africa) or too unstable (due to endemic corruption, external threats, etc.) to risk.
Insourcing is obviously out of the question; the wealthy Western establishment is violently intolerant of industrial expansion.
> Insourcing is obviously out of the question; the wealthy Western establishment is violently intolerant of industrial expansion.
As far as I can tell, it’s simply more expensive to insource, taking into account wages, labor regulations, and environmental regulations. If and when other countries catch up to the production costs in the US, then there won’t be a reason to ship things halfway around the world.
It's frequently not cheaper and occasionally more expensive. One reason it is popular is that it gives the managers who oversee it a lot more power and control:
Managers can't force people to buy products based on how they like power and control. They either deliver an acceptable price to value ratio, or people buy something else.
I couldn't figure out what point the article you linked to was trying to make, but the fact that pretty much everything you buy is not stamped with "Made in USA" means that the cost to make it in the US was higher than elsewhere, and presumably people would choose to not buy it.
It wasn't because there was a manager's convention and they all agreed to send the work abroad so they could have more power and control. It's because if they didn't, their competitor would have, and Walmart would have chosen to put that cheaper product on their shelves rather than yours.
Products low on the value chain that are unskilled-labor intensive are almost universally cheaper abroad. It wouldn't make economic sense to make t shirts in the US unless consumers paid a premium.
Products high up on the value chain - the kind you don't dress up in your best slacks to go and buy at Walmart are a different story, however.
I can count several software projects that were outsourced off the top of my head that were ostensibly done for cost savings purposes and were utter disasters. These disasters are routinely covered up and bullshitted, too.
This has at the same time not dampened the appetite for outsourcing software much. Coordination (i.e. management) costs are higher. Consulting companies can bill millions for these projects.
This is the point the article was making - pretty cogently.
It's less of a smoke-filled room conspiracy and more of a mundane "conspiracy" to shape the supply/demand curve.
I'm not sure if you've been paying attention, but supply chains have been moving to Vietnam/Malaysia/Indonesia/India/Mexico for the last few years, and the trend is only increasing.
There's literally a growing military alliance (US, India, Australia, Japan) against China right now. Also not to mention other countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, US) actively incentivizing their companies to onshore or move out of China. And because South China Sea is crucial to the growth of SE Asian economies, now France/UK/Germany along with Japan/US have warships sailing there to stop China's expansion.
Agreed - I suspect Apple (and others) are doing this as fast as they can to de-risk.
They can't blow up their existing relationships in the mean time, but they can blow them up once they have another option in place. At the very least, they'll have more leverage in negotiation.
Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. Success breeds complacency and labor unrest. This isn't just a China-thing (I have no idea what your Potemkin regulation is or why you would mix those metaphors).
When Westerners see an absurdly profitable company, they think, "why aren't they paying their employees more??!" and start a union to parasitize earnings.
When Asians (including the Japanese and Koreans) see an absurdly profitably company, they think, "why are they able to charge such high prices???!" and they kneecap the company's ability to exploit their market.
It's an important difference for manufacturing physical things and it's why the West loses out to Asia in manufacturing outside cutting-edge tech. It's defective wetware in our heads and how we think about wealth and creating value, so don't expect manufacturing supply chains to return to Western countries any time soon.
>When Westerners see an absurdly profitable company, they think, "why aren't they paying their employees more??!" and start a union to parasitize earnings.
Saying that employees expecting a livable wage is "parasitizing earnings" is a pretty outrageous claim.
>It's an important difference for manufacturing physical things and it's why the West loses out to Asia in manufacturing outside cutting-edge tech.
The West lost out to Asia because their standard of living was so much lower that it was basically slave labor for a decade. You apparently have missed out on the repeated protests at factories across China with their workers demanding better working conditions and wages.
Expecting to be able to be able to do something more than just not starve to death isn't a western ideal, it's a human ideal. When the company you work for is printing money and you're living in poverty, something eventually gives. As has happened at literally every point in human history to date. Sometimes through violence, sometimes through government intervention. But the "unwashed masses" won't stay ignorant forever.
Saying that employees expecting a livable wage is "parasitizing earnings" is a pretty outrageous claim.
More defective programming in the wetware. Why is pay the only part of the equation? When Japan realized that their housing market was undermining living standards in the late 90’s, they cracked down on NIMBYism and took housing and land zoning authority away from cities. The housing market almost immediately corrected itself and housing prices in suburban Tokyo have been in free-fall ever since. You can get a 2000sqft family home for the equivalent of about 200k just 30 minutes outside downtown Tokyo today. We don’t do that because... why?
The West lost out to Asia because...
Again, more defective wetware. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan - these are democratic states with a high standard of living that have been able to control costs in ways that the West hasn’t. More people are homeless in the US per capita than any of those countries and it has everything to do with defective programming and talk of “liveable wages”. Of course everyone needs to be able to afford to live. But your own mistaken assumptions are emblematic of the political and social dysfunction of the West. Until we address that, no - those supply chains won’t be returning.
>More defective programming in the wetware. Why is pay the only part of the equation? When Japan realized that their housing market was undermining living standards in the late 90’s, they cracked down on NIMBYism and took housing and land zoning authority away from cities. The housing market almost immediately corrected itself and housing prices in suburban Tokyo have been in free-fall ever since. You can get a 2000sqft family home for the equivalent of about 200k just 30 minutes outside downtown Tokyo today. We don’t do that because... why?
The world does exist outside of Silicon Valley. I can get exactly what you're describing in over half of this country, pick your state including the entirety of the midwest.
>Again, more defective wetware. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan - these are democratic states with a high standard of living that have been able to control costs in ways that the West hasn’t. More people are homeless in the US per capita than any of those countries and it has everything to do with defective programming and talk of “liveable wages”. Of course everyone needs to be able to afford to live. But your own mistaken assumptions are emblematic of the political and social dysfunction of the West. Until we address that, no - those supply chains won’t be returning.
The median income in South Korea is $3,000 less than the US. And they have universal healthcare.
Someone's wetware is defective, it isn't mine. You might want to do some research before showing up with that kind of condescending attitude.
>The world does exist outside of Silicon Valley. I can get exactly what you're describing in over half of this country, pick your state including the entirety of the midwest.
This is equivalent to saying sky-high housing prices in Tokyo didn't need fixing, since folks could always just live in Hokkaido--a pragmatic absurdity.
A city is a giant organism that needs people to play a variety of roles in order to thrive. All those people deserve (and arguably, for the health of the city, need) to be able to earn enough to live with some dignity. If only the wealthy can afford decent housing near a city, that city is no longer a functional community--it's a NIMBY bubble that creates a feedback loop of socioeconomic disparity.
>This is equivalent to saying sky-high housing prices in Tokyo didn't need fixing, since folks could always just live in Hokkaido--a pragmatic absurdity.
It isn't even remotely the equivalent of saying that. The land mass of Japan is a fraction of the US, and the jobs are highly concentrated in their large cities. The US, as a whole, is nothing like that.
Regardless, it was a pointless argument for him to make in the first place, he was just moving goal posts by trying to equate calling employees parasites to San Francisco zoning laws. There was absolutely no point going down that path other than to distract from his original (disgusting) statement and implying that somehow people wanting more than minimum wage should really be blaming the Mayor of San Francisco for high housing prices. Which again... is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of the population of the US.
It isn't even remotely the equivalent of saying that. The land mass of Japan is a fraction of the US, and the jobs are highly concentrated in their large cities. The US, as a whole, is nothing like that.
Most US industrial production is concentrated in about 5 regions. The US isn't that different.
Regardless, it was a pointless argument for him to make in the first place, he was just moving goal posts by trying to equate calling employees parasites to San Francisco zoning laws
Nonsense. Housing costs are the great misery-multiplier in the West and it isn't specific to SF. Look at Berlin or London or Paris or Toronto. Everywhere the dysfunction is the same and everywhere the working poor live with crushing housing insecurity, in spite of living in thriving job markets. With reasonable urban housing prices and rent most of the people in the "working poor" would advance to middle-class status and a lot of the inequality issues we have would be tractable. Instead, we just keep ignoring pricing theory and we just keep dumping more wealth into supply-constrained markets and we just keep wondering why these problems don't get any better.
There was absolutely no point going down that path other than to distract from his original (disgusting) statement and implying that somehow people wanting more than minimum wage
Ptooey! Pardon me, but I had to spit out all of the words you're stuffing in my mouth. I said nothing about minimum wage. You did. This is the same neurotic defective programming I'm talking about. The projection of intent in your response is what's disgusting.
Which again... is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of the population of the US.
Go look up what a lower-middle class family needs to pay for rent in suburbs in Atlanta or Austin or other cities with good job opportunities.
We're not dropping prices in NA in good part because our governments are dysfunctional and don't want to intervene, and because large landowners see such interventions as contrary to their benefit.
And besides, relaxing zoning is far from enough - you need to build vast and performant public transit systems, and in the case of Tokyo you need to make housing a depreciating asset.
South Korea was not a democratic state during most of its crucial growth period either - it was only after a revolution in the 80s, and even then democracy is a very gracious word for a country that was literally ruled by a cult for half a decade.
Taiwan also was in quasi-dictatorial KMT rule for most of its rise, and Japan to this day on the national level is basically ruled by the LDP in perpetuity.
But crucially, Japan, SK and Taiwan aren't where the kind of production China does happens. They are just as economically beholden to China as we are, sometimes moreso.
We're not dropping prices in NA in good part because our governments are dysfunctional and don't want to intervene, and because large landowners see such interventions as contrary to their benefit.
And besides, relaxing zoning is far from enough - you need to build vast and performant public transit systems, and in the case of Tokyo you need to make housing a depreciating asset.
Yes - and as I said, this is the defective programming in minds of Westerners. The government does what we tell them to do and most people want this. It's everywhere - it's the entitlement to a suburban home and the subordination of all other interests, even the concept of personal property, in service to this. The fact that the media doesn't discuss these things in spite of the fact that smart people like Warren and others write about it is evidence of the bad programming.
South Korea was not a democratic state during most of its crucial growth period either - it was only after a revolution in the 80s, and even then democracy is a very gracious word for a country that was literally ruled by a cult for half a decade.
Taiwan also was in quasi-dictatorial KMT rule for most of its rise, and Japan to this day on the national level is basically ruled by the LDP in perpetuity.
Is it your contention that these countries aren't democratic and prosperous today? Is that your claim? Is your claim that their citizens live in near slavery, as the previous poster's was?
But crucially, Japan, SK and Taiwan aren't where the kind of production China does happens. They are just as economically beholden to China as we are, sometimes moreso.
The company that I worked at previously had to assess manufacturing alternatives to China in the wake of Trump's tariffs. Most of the parts on the BOM could reasonably be sourced by other Asian countries like those three at a small premium. US manufacturers either weren't available or were completely priced out. If the West could even just get their manufacturing costs in parity with those three - TW, SK, and JP - that in itself would be huge progress.
You’re making a lot of bold claims. It would be nice if you justified at least one of them before chaining them together to reach a pre-ordained conclusion.
> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating.
It's much more to do with the steadily increasing complexity of products due to humanity having become very much a global species with heavy interdependence.
Look around the room you are sitting in: There will be items in it manufactured all over the world, from components also coming from all over the world.
That's not only how we manage to make these things so affordable, that's how we got them at this scale and complexity in the very first place.
The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Isolationism like that doesn't lead to progress or innovation, it leads to North Korea style impoverished hermit kingdoms.
It's mind-boggling how few people seem to understand this reality in the year 2021, we are so interconnected that we can instantly communicate with somebody on the other side of the planet by just pulling a small device out of our pocket, it's considered the most normal thing in the world.
Instead we get shortsighted and small-minded nationalist blowback in the form of Brexit and "America first!" politics.
Even with the EU showing that economic cooperation and integration is one of the best and most constructive ways to ensure peace, stability and prosperity, particularly vs the alternative of alienation and vilification of whole nation states and their people as "enemies" that need to be fought in every way possible.
And these 50+ nations have their very own industries that grew out of a demand for them to the scale of the demand for them with interdependence reaching all the way into Chinese tech manufacturing.
If you retool all of that to suddenly do something else, than you will be missing something else.
Because it's not like these 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP are just sitting there and wondering what to do with all of that productivity, they are already plenty busy doing those things that got them all that GDP, the things they are good at.
That's why it's not really a "straw man", as the original argument implies globalized supply chains that emerged out of a given supply&demand could be artificially transplanted and rebuild in "the West", however that's even defined, to somehow reverse the reality of globalization.
Except that it is a straw man. This "childish" nation that seeks to thrive with no foreign trade ("in complete isolation") is a fiction inside your head that you're sharing as a target for your argument. It doesn't exist except as a straw man.
You're right, except that it is not unionized workers parasitizing profits (unions are decreasing in numbers everywhere), it is shareholders parasitizing companies to extract whatever value they can. This is the big difference. In Asia, shareholders don't have the power to parasitize profits, and they allow ample competition between manufacturers. See, for example, the absurd situation of Apple. Americans think it is nice to have a single company nearly monopolizing device production, as if it were their right. In Asia people would have already started hundreds of companies to fight their monopolistic advantage (as they currently have in China).
Nations such as China erect fig leaf regulatory regimes that are both ineffective and corrupt and are designed to attract Western capital that are avoiding the regulatory burdens (environmental regulation, labor regulation, etc.) in Western nations. These are Potemkin structures in that they offer plausibly deniable cover to the Western establishment for the purposes of trade agreements and other international instruments.
I'd presume by Potemkin regulation, he means that regulations in terms of worker health & safety and consideration of the local environment are for show.
There is the other aspect of copyright violation and clones of products built when something is observed selling in the market. Still unresolved.
That said, when a few Chinese companies shipped consumer facing products that contained chemicals or other material that effectively poisoned people, my remembrance was that the management was executed.
Terms like "parasitize earnings" don't sound like seeing both sides of the equation. Why's your anger and blame focused there for not seeing both sides?
The people who outsourced things weren't simply trying to reduce gains made by unions, they were looking at price differences that could not exist in the US due to cost and standard of living. They certainly weren't looking at both sides of this in terms of long term effect either!
Terms like "parasitize earnings" don't sound like seeing both sides of the equation
I don't want employees to get those earnings. I don't want investors or shareholders to get them either. I want consumers to get lower prices.
they were looking at price differences that could not exist in the US due to cost and standard of living
Again, what does that mean, "standard of living"? That we indulge industrial labor monopolies and pay more for manufactured goods than we need or want to like the 60's? How do you feel about paying $5000 for that computer? Or that we reward landlords and enrich landowners for participating in the creation of dysfunctional regulations?
I agree - Western industrialists have been able to play both sides of the equation - outsourcing production to places where industrial cost-control is effective and selling in to markets where there's a large upper-middle class of well-compensated credentialed professionals like us and entitled land-owners.
But I don't think that the solution is to give more power to industrial labor unions. My own pet solution is German worker councils - if only because they empower workers and make managers and industrialists accountable to employee needs, but at the same time can't coordinate labor demands across an industry. Managers can't ignore employee welfare but also employees can't gang up on consumers. But no one else wants this - industrialists hate the idea of inviting unions in to C-level planning and unions at their core want labor monopolies.
> Again, what does that mean, "standard of living"? That we indulge industrial labor monopolies and pay more for manufactured goods than we need or want to like the 60's? How do you feel about paying $5000 for that computer? Or that we reward landlords and enrich landowners for participating in the creation of dysfunctional regulations?
It means something very plain: nobody in the US would have accepted those wages to prevent profit-based outsourcing. So it wasn't a question of union parasites forcing people overseas, it just was something that would not have worked, structurally.
Consumers getting lower prices forever and ever is a single-dimension focus, like you otherwise seem to be decrying, since you're not answering any of the other questions there about how to prevent profiteering or powerful wealthy people from playing both sides. You're looking at just one side but proclaiming it as a secret insight that is the only way to move forward. I don't think worker councils would've done anything to let US production and labor prices compete with offshore labor prices in the past 50 years... if you can make t-shirts cheaper by stripping those labor costs to the bone, but the cost of everything else those workers need is untouched, how will it fix it?
China doesn't just provide supply chain anymore. They are also a huge market now because of its growing middle class. China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.
China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.
"Choose to" tap into that market. No company "needs" to be in China.
Just like there are thousands of companies in Europe that do not do business in the United States, and thousands of companies in Brazil that do not do business in Russia.
You're getting kind of semantic. Theoretically, No company "needs" to be in business at all.
If Chinese consumer market growth continues as it has been, it may the biggest market for Apple. Hard to be the largest luxury goods company in the world without the largest luxury goods market...
OP is right. This gives China influence. Supply chain influence is a minor thing, relative to "I'm your biggest customer" influence.
Why I don't like the "needs to" framing, especially as it comes to business decisions, is that I think it takes the agency out of the process. Too many of my friends and family seem to assume that just because there are customers willing to pay or cheaper labor, a company must automatically do a certain thing unless the government makes a law to prevent them from doing it.
I guess that's why I like the "chooses to" framing because it highlights that leaders of companies can choose to not pursue markets or go with higher priced suppliers if they can make the argument as to how it might help them in the long term.
How do you avoid a situation where companies making ethical choices are bought or outspent by companies (or in fact by shareholders) that got rich by exploiting every profitable opportunity that is legally available to them, including unethical ones?
From the point of view of any particular company the choice you're talking about may well exist, especially where the company is founder-led. But that doesn't mean the outcome you're hoping for can be achieved on a purely voluntary basis.
It may work in exceptional cases though, Apple being one of them.
IDK if the philosophy of it matters all that much. Apple is, likely, going to grow in China. We don't have to solve the "agency question" to know this.
That said, I think there is a decent amount of determinism at play here. It's like the "why are all politicians such politicians?" problem. The companies with an interest in entering the Chinese market will, mostly, do it. It's predictable. Predictable isn't determinism, but it's en route.
For a more poetic take, I'll paraphrase leonard cohen on "do you believe in free will?":
I think free will exists, but I think it's over-rated. Mostly, we act because we are compelled to.
China consumer market is bigger than than the US. It will be for public companies to justify they they won’t sell in China to their stockholders outside of IP theft and PR issues.
They can choose for a year or two, but they will lose on scale. Apple can pull off their own processor because they are big enough. If companies don't sell in China, only Chinese companies are big enough to have fancy new components and production processes.
And how big are these European or Brazilian companies? That's all fine if the US wants to become a 3rd tier economy. But if the country wants to expand, it has to trade with China.
There is however a huge problem with sanctions: you need to have a realistic plan for what you want to accomplish with your sanctions, or else it does little more than adding some friction to trade.
That means that if you want to actually change the behaviour of a nation using sanctions, you need to have modest goals, an acceptance of compromise, and a readiness to let the other side come out looking like a respectable partner. These are basically things the US cannot muster in the relationship with Iran and North Korea, and the American violation of the JCPOA has significantly eroded US ability to persuade other countries to impose their own sanction.
For China and Russia, the US alone cannot impose any important amount of sanctions and have them be upheld by third parties, the USA trying to block all imports from China would just mean the rest of the world needs to switch to using Yuan or Euros because that volume of trade simply cannot be replaced.
One reason, good or not depending on your views, is that China’s GDP is 10x Russia’s, 20x Iran’s, and 1000x North Korea’s (and I have to suspect that’s generous towards NK).
US has started to, with sanctions on xinjiang related companies, with sanctions on chinese officials over hong kong.
It's just a matter of time before more sanctions arrive. Because dictatorships are short-sighted and incapable of change. So let's say China tries to prod Taiwan with some military approach and fails. Or escalation of border war with India or Vietnam or Japan. Or increasing purchases or Iranian goods.
When there's a mini-war started by China in Asia, you will see a full worldwide sanction on China.
They're also now the market that all movies must target in order to be successful.
It depends on your definition of "successful."
You can have a successful movie and not distribute it in China. It won't make the absolute maximum number of dollars possible on planet Earth, but it can still be a successful movie.
> You can have a successful movie and not distribute it in China. It won't make the absolute maximum number of dollars possible on planet Earth, but it can still be a successful movie.
The business success or failure of a movie is entirely determined by how much money it makes. To maximize that success (or even to be considered a success), you must publish in China.
The business success or failure of a movie is entirely determined by how much money it makes
Even without your movement of goalposts, a movie can still be successful without being in China.
The most successful movies in history were released, and massively profitable, before China's market opened to the rest of the world.
To maximize that success (or even to be considered a success), you must publish in China.
This is simply false. There are plenty of successful businesses, movies, video games, and other enterprises that never touch China. I hate to break it to you, but China is a non-factor for the vast majority of businesses on the planet.
Apple has a $2T market cap. Do they truly "need" China? I know, I know, they have a responsibility to their shareholders, blah blah. But Two Trillion Dollars.
The pine phone is afaik built around a pretty off-the-shelves system-on-a-chip and made in China, exported with a Hong Kong company. Sadly a SOC far from what you’d get in a smartphone by Samsung or Apple, as they can swing with much larger wallets. If anyone knows the specific SOC version I’d appreciate the product ID
Americans need to realize that, outside the US, nobody really cares anymore about the trope "China is tracking mobile apps". The reason is that everyone knows that US agencies are already doing this (remember Snowden?). So non-US customers feel that is just fine for competition if other countries can provide them with technology, even with the downside of the sporadic spying thing. It basically is better to have competition than being in the hands of a single superpower which, as Donald Trump has shown, can easily become out of control.
By the way, nothing was better for China than the big show provided by Trump and his minions in the US during the last four years. It showed that nobody can trust 100% on the US to uphold democratic values.
For those who wants to stop supporting China, don't lose hope. Supply chains are migrating, due to tariffs, sanctions, and hatred towards CCP. Don't let naysayers who may have a vested interest in China talk you down. Just keep checking where the product you are buying is coming from.
- check https://chinalawblog.com and you will see that companies are indeed moving out of China at a quick pace. In fact, the site advocates that you do not think of China as the default manufacturing...
- No one wants to go to China right now. If you want to go, you are subjected to an anal swab covid test, mandatory spyware on your phone, plus visa incentive that requires you to use their state covid vaccine (50% efficacy!). Not to mention foreigner kidnappings and disbar from leaving the country. No company in their right mind would send their staff to China to increase footprint there
This is what made me stop using Apple products altogether. Their privacy and security bit is all smoke and mirrors, and I'd much rather just directly understand what my privacy model looks like instead of trying to surmise what's going on through the other side of the frosted glass. Their compliance with China's Uighur roundup is despicable, and I don't trust them in the slightest to defend tech in the long-term. They're out to make money, which is why they're the most profitable business in the world.
> They're out to make money, which is why they're the most profitable business in the world.
Everyone I know is out to make money. Apple is the most profitable because they’re selling something with high demand that people are willing and able to pay for.
Apparently it means "CAA Advertising Id", where "CAA" appears to be the "Creative Artists Agency", some sort of Chinese advertising group. (edit: wrong organization, it's actually "Chinese Anonymization ID", not a group. the group behind it is https://trackingio.com/)
Searching "CAA Advertising Id" yields more Chinese PDFs.
From what I can tell here, "CAID" is a partnership between Chinese industry and Chinese government to track users across apps for better tracking.
The issue here does not seem to be that they've bypassed a technical restriction, but that the developers of major apps are using a shared identifier that Apple doesn't like.
In the US, the analogy would be if apps had tracking SDKs in them, that fingerprinted users across apps, in order to better target them for advertisements, and then the US government can pick up that data and do whatever they'd like with it.
The strange part to me, is that this actually is the situation today in the US.
I don't want to shill for China, but why is this a story? This has been a US industry since at least Doubleclick was invented.
edit:
It's a story because they're using the iOS keychain API to persist and share the tracking identifier. As far as I know, this is a new technique in the wild, but has been theoretically possible since iOS launched. It's only now being seen as necessary because of the iOS14 privacy changes.
It's curious that American ad companies seem to understand Apple's intent and are opting not to risk their business by expanding their SDKs to use keychain sharing techniques, even though they're surely aware you can do this. Chinese ad companies seem ok with risking their clients apps being banned on the app store.
Apple can mitigate this by giving users control of the data and sharing related to keychain services.
You can tell from the code that the "exploit" here is abusing keychain sharing.
iOS has a feature where you can pack a surprising amount of generic data into keychain storage, intended for passwords or auth credentials.
iOS also lets app developers opt-in to shared credential storage, so that if you have multiple apps, the user only needs to login once. Here's a blog post on how to do it: https://evgenii.com/blog/sharing-keychain-in-ios/
A little-known quirk of the iOS keychain is that it persists across app installs. This is useful because if multiple apps share credentials in the keychain, you don't want uninstalling one app to log you out of other apps.
If an American company tried this (looking at you Branch.io), would it be banned by Apple? Maybe? That seems to be the controversy here.
Perhaps Apple needs to rethink its keychain sharing API and make the user opt-in to credential sharing.
Also a keychain management tool would be nice, so users can see what data apps are permanently storing on their devices (even if the app is uninstalled).
Credential sharing only works between apps registered to the same developer. So no, this does not allow an tracking ID usable by all apps.
And remember, any trick abused to create tracking IDs stands the risk of being detected and blocked by Apple in the next iOS update. It has been announced, it has happened, it will keep happening.
> Credential sharing only works between apps registered to the same developer.
That's right, but it does allow persisting an id through reinstalls of the same app, and sharing that id between apps of the same developer.
> So no, this does not allow an tracking ID usable by all apps.
It effectively does though. For example, imagine a mobile game company with 10 games. With this technique, you can track that user across app re-installs in each of those games.
Now imagine another game company doing the same trick. If both companies send up their independent tracking IDs to a central server along with any other info they can get about the user (email, screen name, IP, whatever), then you can strongly correlate users across multiple tracking IDs. The user has no way to reset these IDs even if they delete and reinstall the apps using them.
Apple tried removing the keychain persisting in an iOS beta a while back and there was a big outcry from developers as it broke their ability to detect and ban users across app reinstalls. Apple reverted that and responded by adding a new feature where developers could permanently track 2 boolean values for a device (per app) but I don’t know who has bothered to switch to that mechanism.
The story is that major Chinese companies and the state are working together to develop an alternative to Apple’s IDFA. While aggressively pushing back against companies in the U.S. tracking users, Apple seemingly doesn’t mind having a double standard for China.
It's a bigger choice than that for them, or for anyone. If the government requires pervasive tracking, it's either allow it or stop selling phones in China, the world's biggest market for cell phones. And given that economies of scale matter (for things like swallowing flat rate development costs for those nice SOCs they design), it's hard to say goodbye to half your market.
Samsung certainly won't take a principled stand on this and stop allowing app tracking. And in a competitive market, deciding to not sell cell phones in China means less development capital for designing the next generation of hardware. They'll start circling the drain and wind up like Motorola or HTC.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be consistent - just that choosing to not sell in China will mean losing everything outside of China eventually.
A part of Google tried to do so and the majority of its employee (enough to scare its senior executives) fiercely rejected that attempt, so it gets overturned.
Is that really the story? When the USG requires Apple to access something on the basis of legal intercept then Apple will comply, as they did with the FBI and that mass shooter guy: Apple granted the FBI access to the iCloud account, the FBI botched it and then wanted access to the data on the physical phone, which Apple couldn't provide due to not knowing the encryption key.
The only other "big stance on privacy" that Apple has is that, unlike their main competitor Google, they are not an advertisement business. So they have no real financial motivation to add tracking to their devices and software vs a Google were advertisement and user tracking are pretty big pillars of their financial income.
Infrastructure like that is trivial to hijack for surveillance once in place, which privacy wise makes Google devices and software by default the worse choice unless using specifically cleaned and hardened custom roms.
So while these two issues are related, legal intercept and privacy, they are not as easily conflated as you make it sound when you claim Apple is having "double standards" when they really are not "double standards" but simply abiding by local laws and regulations.
In the US, the analogy would be if apps had tracking SDKs in them, that fingerprinted users across apps, in order to better target them for advertisements, and then the US government can pick up that data and do whatever they'd like with it.
I've never really thought about it before, but it would be pretty easy for a three-letter agency to set up an online advertising company for this purpose.
They start their own airlines (Air America, JANET, etc.), so starting an adtech company should be a walk in the park.
But they don't even need to do that - they just approach an existing adtech company with a FISA warrant and get their data. If they started their own adtech company, eventually they would be out-ed and exposed. But with a FISA warrant, it's mostly business-as-usual for everyone.
> But they don't even need to do that - they just approach an existing adtech company with a FISA warrant and get their data.
Depending on who they approach, they won't even need a FISA warrant because in the US information voluntarily given to third parties has "no reasonable expectation of privacy" [0]
> I've never really thought about it before, but it would be pretty easy for a three-letter agency to set up an online advertising company for this purpose.
There's no need to set one up when you can break into many/all the existing advertising companies; remember "SSL added and removed here :^)" written on an NSA slide, referring to Google's clear-text internal data-center traffic? Also, the NSA spent a fuck-ton of money on compute to factor enough primes to trivially break 20-40%[1] of SSL traffic of the day...in real time.
1. This was about 6 years ago, I can't remember exact percentage, but it was definitely at least 20%, IIRC, the attack was on the key-exchange step
This reminds me of how Linkedin and many others used to upload entire phonebooks to unecrypted endpoints, making it simple for US agencies to analyze social networks of foreigners with impunity.
Ha, good question. Generally, everyone switched to HTTPS. But that doesn't protect against situations like with Yahoo, where the agencies were tapped-in after the SSL termination. I guess it's not a stretch to assume it's still going on.
From what I understand, this CAID will be an effective replacement of Apple's IDFA. It will allow partner advertising groups to tag iPhone users directly without relying on any of Apple's identifiers.
It's additionally concerning that the US has little exposure to China-sourced data. This imbalance where the CCP knows far more about the average American than the US knows about the average Chinese person is deeply concerning. The more that is known, the larger the training data set, the more people can be influenced in ways that suit an openly hostile[0] government.
Is it a composite fingerprint based on how the device works, or an alternate ID that Apple isn't restricting yet? Would be nice to get some details about what exactly TikTok plans to do beyond "they found a way to get around it".
Or is that information just not available yet? I can't find anything online detailing what the attack is.
I sympathize with that sentiment. One of the few things I can tell myself is my role isn't involved in this side of things. The only thing that has helped from getting totally disillusioned is having hobbies that are not tech related.
"Three people with knowledge of briefings between Apple and developers also said the Cupertino, California-based company would be wary of taking strong action, despite a clear violation of its stated rules, if CAID has the support of China’s tech giants as well as its government agencies."
That's chilling.
I tend to have a good opinion of Apple regarding privacy protection, even though I'm not an Apple user, but if even them bow down like this, I'm not sure which company would have the backbone to stand up to the CCP.
There's about 85.3 billion reasons a year for them to not stand up to the CCP and in the end Apple's interest in privacy is mostly a tool to differentiate its offerings from the competition so they can sell people stuff.
It's a $2.2 trillion dollar company with $200 billion in cash. They can easily afford to do the right thing. If they offered a private device and said to all governments "take it or leave it" then those governments would answer only to their people if they banned the device.
Of course, name one public corporation that would leave a little cash on the table, ever, to do the right thing.
I think China has some extra leverage to deploy here: China can respond "We leave it. Oh, one more thing: our domestic market is off limits to you. Pray we don't alter the deal further by kicking your manufacturing out too."
Kicking out Apple manufactoring won’t happen, because it’s actually dangerous to Chinese manufactoring. Apple is currently one of the only companies who could deal with being banned in China. It won’t be cheap or easy, but Apple could move manufactoring. They already have a deal with an Indian company who makes older iPhones for the indian market.
Apple is also one of the few companies who can either absorb the additional cost or even pass it on to customers.
But IF Apple was to move manufactoring it would set a dangerous precedence for other companies and potentially start a supply chain completely outside China.
> Kicking out Apple manufactoring won’t happen [...] it would set a dangerous precedence
Ah, but if you don't care about setting a public example, you can punish them in more subtle ways.
The traditional trick in corrupt countries is to have a bunch rules that aren't enforced and everyone breaks all the time - then if the leaders decide they don't like you they just start enforcing the rules on you.
A corrupt regime would simply announce they were shocked - shocked! - to find parts of Apple's Chinese supply chain had low environmental standards.
You're assuming the shareholders would support such decision.
Keep in mind there's a legal mandate for public traded companies to increase share holders value. It's grey-ish legal requirement but I don't think the executive management wants to risk the legal consequences of doing the right thing.
Edit: it's shareholders and not stakeholders that matter.
> Keep in mind there's a legal mandate for public traded companies to increase share holders value. It's grey-ish legal requirement but I don't think the executive management wants to risk the legal consequences of doing the right thing.
What are the legal consequences? I keep reading about these mysterious laws that require management to maximize shareholder value or profits or whatnot, but I’ve never heard of a court punishing management for not doing so (never mind the fact that it’s impossible to define and prove per legal standards).
If Apple was kicked out of China, leaving them with no Chinese manufacturing... ? In that case the shareholders have no option, it's either that or sell no new devices.
If you mean that the shareholders would rather please the Chinese government, rather than risk getting kicked out of China, then yes, I think Apple would go a long way to not piss off China.
You can make an argument that it increases shareholder value long term because if China increases human rights, it increases the shareholder value of the world in monetary terms because people will be better off.
Exactly. Whether a major corporation technically could do ”the right thing” at the expense of their own bottom line is a moot point, and it’d take a fundamental shift in our society for that to change. Rather, getting them to act in a way that’s beneficial to as many people as possible is a matter of economic incentives and regulation.
Google completely pulled out of China and practically all their products are banned & blocked in China as a result. Although considering most people don't even mention it and are happy to excuse companies like Apple, it's more of an example of how utterly meaningless it is for a company to do something like this. I'm sure Google, Apple, and their competitors will never repeat this mistake again.
If you are in mainland china, a state owned telco owns the keys and the data stored in iCloud, so you really don't have any privacy with Apple if you are in China. It more or less ruins my opinion of Apple's stance of privacy.
I don't think Apple should care about CAA. It is a private organization, although it may have ways to lobby the government, it is far from CCP's business. Of course, it has all the big companies' support, it might be a problem for Apple.
Also I don't think Apple's policy would be a big problem for CAID. After all, you just need to ask your user's permission when loading your game, I am sure people will just click yes. If they don't, they are not your target user anyway.
I hope Apple hold a strong stance on this. Previous Tencent refused to pay Apple 30% of payment made to authors on WeChat, they resolved it by Apple backing down by not asking for the cut for those payments. It was a big story for a while. Apple's decision would be based on market.
there's literally no such thing as a private Chinese organization that is far from the CCP. It is a totalitarian government that regularly exerts control over even the most minute aspects of life. Believing that a large tech organization has no ties to the CCP is absurd.
>I tend to have a good opinion of Apple regarding privacy protection
The Apple privacy push is for Apple protecting your data from 3d parties. Apple still collects plenty of information by itself.
From a consumer standpoint, there should be no difference if you care about privacy.
If you really want control over your data, you need a rooted Android phone running a custom rom with no Google apps, and use something like Firefox Focus for web interfaces to all the apps that you use.
That’s called business. Entity A provides a product or service to entity B. The price entity B pays Entity A is greater than the price entity A pays to create the product or service.
I'm not sure its outcompeted in the traditional sense if production doesn't follow environmental standards and pollutes the world. We love to buy cheap stuff because once it ships over the pacific the pollution isn't our problem. At some point we will pay for cheap electronics from the asian world.
Say it with me. You cant be a mature service economy AND an ultra cheap manufacturing economy. It's not said, its far more lucrative to to be the former than the latter. This is just an odd consequence that their investments are so concentrated in a single place. and that place is peak antithetical to fair economic fights.
This hasn’t played out yet. I’m curious who put this into multiple news streams this week. Apple doesn’t want to unilaterally block TikTok for using a state-backed solution. But if Washington requires it to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I wonder how that fits with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's recent notice to 136 companies to stop their excessive collection of user data by March 17 or cease operation: https://www.miit.gov.cn/xwdt/gxdt/sjdt/art/2021/art_7e5c3fa7...
Maybe the kind of collection CAID enables is considered acceptable? Or it's just a case of different departments planning past each other.
So basically TikTok is saying "please take us off the app store" except the hard way. Apple still hasn't budged on Epic trying to get rid of their cut on all Fortnite Fun-Buxxx sales through iOS, what makes TikTok think announcing they are going to blatantly violate the spirit, and possibly the letter, of Apple's no-tracking rules isn't gonna result in their app getting pulled?
I guess maybe they're hoping for a decision in the Apple-Epic trial that leaves Apple hurting? Looks like the trial's coming in May. And maybe Facebook's suing them over being forced to reveal how much tracking they do, too.
Well, having serious support in China (including from the CCCP) is one way. Epic wouldn’t matter here since China is an extremely important market for Apple.
not just an important market, an integral part of their supply chain. Without China, Apple wouldn't be able to make a single product as it stands today. China has all the power in that relationship.
The writing on the wall has been clear for years... China won't play nice. It's far past time Apple and every other serious tech player gets the heck out of China.
This is a story because it's fashionable to hate on China. This has been going on in the US for years already. Using terms like CAID without an explanation to what it is makes the reader scared that China has somehow been able to infiltrate iOS to track users, this is bad journalism. CAID is a simple advertising id used across apps, there is no hacking of iOS or an incredible technical prowess on the the side of China that we should all be afraid of, etc.
The term "state-backed" in the title should be removed, HN is not a political battleground.
>there is no hacking of iOS or an incredible technical prowess on the the side of China that we should all be afraid of, etc.
Claiming China (or the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.) does not have incredible technical prowess and hacking abilities is silly. Though if you're simply claiming this specific example is not evidence of that prowess, I'd agree. I also agree that US companies are doing very similar types of cyber stalking, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it when we find other countries such as China doing it
More than anything, we see the absolute moral failure of Western Capitalism with regard to where you have things built and who you sell to.
-Every firm that builds their products in China.
- Every tech firm that depends on Chinese labor and rolls over to provide the government with whatever they want in terms of data access.
- Any major Sports organizations (looking at you NBA)
- Hollywood making films that adhere to Chinese censorship to make a dollar.
- Hollywood lining up with China & Saudi Arabia to finance films
- Hollywood saying NOTHING about the Uighurs and their cultural annihilation.
- Apple+ refusing to finance any film or series that portrays China in a negative light.
They all want that cheap labor that can work 24/7 on anything.
They all want their products to sell there and now depend on China for significant revenue %.
The writing on the wall has been clear for years. Apple and every other tech company that cares at all about privacy (should be any tech company) needs to get the heck out of China... We desperately need supply chain diversity.
1. People outside doesn't understand how Chinese government works.
This CAID is a project by advertising association, yes it is state backed. But these associations in China are commercial only and looks out to commercial interests.
In western public opinion, "state-backed" has negative connotations and government is a necessary evil. But in Chinese political philosophy that is not the case. Government has a positive role. Government can unite groups, form common interest, work across conflicting interests to create a win-win situation for everyone. In China, in a lot of situations people actual seek leadership from the government to create standards or common approaches. A lot of the industrial policies documents people outside have a problem with are actually demanded by private parties, and government is just answering their demands.
In this case it looks like the industry is driven by commercial interests to develop this technical solution. If the Chinese government wants to impose this kind of tracking to track people's activities online, it will need to use its executive power. And that involves the following steps: 1. Chinese central government announces direction to create this kind of tracking system. 2. Departments in state counsel start draft 《管理条例》and releases it public solicitation 3. 《管理条例》goes into effect 4. national people's congress drafting and passing laws. All of these will involve public disclosure. But there is no sign of any of this from the government.
People can debate whether the tracking involved here is okay or not. But there is no sign here saying the government is designing this and mandating it in order to track people.
Also Apple could try to close the "loophole" used here. Maybe the Chinese advertising industry will get pissed and demand the government to do something. But I doubt any legal actions will be taken. First, legally Apple doesn't break any Chinese laws. Second, Chinese government needs to be law abiding and rule based to attract foreign investments, which is crucial to the economy.
2. This article is accusing Tiktok of implementing this. But this is a project under discussion within China, likely only to be used within China, and Bytedance's apps in China, like douyin. Tiktok and Douyin are separate apps, run by separate management. TikTok by TikTok US, while Bytedance China runs all Chinese related business. The parent Bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. Hence Chinese laws do not apply to the parent and TikTok US. TikTok US is ought to follow US laws, customs, expectations and values. Of course its fine to pressure TikTok and Bytedance to not implement this in China as well. But this article's tone is implying Chinese government controls these entities and trying to track people everywhere. That is simply not true. The government 1) is not pushing to do so 2) doesn't have the means to do it. Even if Chinese government is tries to force Bytedance to share tiktok data, Bytedance can refuse, what can it do? It could only arrest Bytedance management or fine the company. Is there any of that happening? I am seeing a lot of anti-china ccp videos on TikTok. Just because the company is founded by a Chinese person doesn't mean it will be political and abide by the rules in china.
Apple needs Biden to step in and threaten to shut down Tiktok again if they go ahead with this. Hell, maybe he should just shut it down preemptively in the US and the EU should sue them over GDPR to make sure China gets the point.
It is totally asymmetric for Apple to try to take on China in this and given their dependence on China for manufacturing (which I hope they are reconsidering now) they really can't afford to take them on.
Easy to say when you're bloviating on the internet. Hard to do in real life. I know, because I try.
I end up buying a good amount of vintage stuff to keep from supporting China. But there are a lot of things that aren't available at any price where I live that aren't made in China.
I went through this a couple of years ago looking for a toaster. The only non-Chinese option available where I live was $900.
Maybe that toaster is a good metaphor. Lots of people are willing to buy domestic if it's quality and costs a little more. It's not inconceivable to make a US$100 toaster outside of Asia.
This isn't possible to follow on the individual level, even if you wanted to. Those 'Made in America' labels on product boxes aren't even accurate either, the parts can be built in China but assembled here, and still have that american label attached.
Not sure why purism is implied in the answer here. If anything, sentiments like these are akin to "reducing your carbon footprint" by taking more "environmentally conscious measures". Same language, same sentiment. While no one can reduce their carbon footprint to 0 for an extended period of time, the act of _trying_ to can prove real results when performed en masse.
Yeah, trying to avoid buying things with any components or work, or even most of the components from China is basically impossible.
Still, it is sometimes possible to find alternatives that put proportionally more work and production into products outside China. I try to buy these things when I can, even when inevitably the materials or components come from China. Better than all the dollars going there, I figure...
Have you missed the last decade where companies from all around the globe do this exact thing all the time because gathering your information is their business?
Google and Facebook get caught doing it constantly. Just this week a lawsuit against Google was given the green light for gathering data when they were not supposed to. And isn't Facebook currently trying to illegally merge WhatsApp and Facebook data? Didn't the last US president complain about the EU stepping in to protect their citizens about this? Don't pretend this is some "evil China" problem.
"China's new drive for repression is being underpinned by unpre-cedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conver-sations, the monitoring of app use, and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions, including food deliveries and online purchases, are fed into vast databases, along with everything from biometric information to social media activities to methods of birth control. Cameras (so advanced that they can locate a single person within a stadium crowd of 60,000) scan for faces and walking patterns to track each individual's movement."
That's according to "I know China evil" or is this based on anything? We know that China was playing catch-up when Snowden leaked his stuff so they might have caught up. Can you link the corresponding leaks? I'd love to read some of the Chinese ones because the most recent big things I could find were Snowden leaks.
I will repost a comment I made about Apple and China in another post like 1.5 years ago:
"Apple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think the bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won’t have anything to sell, anywhere! I’m sure Apple execs know this and I hope they’re quickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency."
It's not that simple. China doing such a drastic step would make every industry flee instantly. Lots of companies already do transfer tasks to India and Vietnam, Apple included.
Apple will soon start flagship iPhone 12 production on Indian soil for local customers, the company said on Tuesday
Apple supplier Wistron recently began trial production of the iPhone 12 at a new facility near Bengaluru, with full production set to begin soon. The iPhone 12 will be the seventh iPhone model to be manufactured in India, but the first high-end device to do so.
The western world needs to desperately work on making their supply chains independent of the CCP, lest they'd like their supply chains to be poisoned at some point in the future.
I'm a big fan of Purism and everything that they are doing. I hope their software and hardware matures with the same level of polish we've come to know and expect from Apple products, and will be an early investor if they ever decide to IPO.