if you've been to China, you'll know that they ban all western products: facebook, google, etc etc and replaced them with their own variants. If they want to run around free-range without any restriction with their own products then they should respond by loosening restrictions in their own country.
This is an absolute no-brainer. If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger. Am I missing something?
> Personally I don’t think ‘totalitarian government does it, so should we’ is a super compelling reason.
How about “make economic power and one of our main competitors” does it? Just because China is a totalitarian government didn’t mean they can do the “right” thing.
Exactly. Leadership isn't following with tit-for-tat pettiness.
What would be US leadership would similar to what Ro Khanna is saying with data and personal information privacy standards like a nationwide US GDPR but with the teeth of something like HIPAA. Data brokers should be put out of business.
Give me a break... what, you'd rather just let said totalitarian government pump their propaganda into the US? This is a great example of following your moral principles right off the cliff.
If it's sold to a US company then it will be our intelligence agencies pumping the propaganda, not theirs. Which is an outcome I'm more amenable to, considering that our intelligence agencies generally have more of an interest in the stability of American society than the intelligence agencies of China.
Have you been to China? I've been to China and had no problems using all the things you're mentioning with the help of a VPN. Was it as easy as in Europe? No. Did it feel like a ban? Also no.
The story back in the ancient history of ~1989->2021 was our free open liberal system was so obviously superior that we were just going to wait around for China to realize their dumb mistake and join us at the end of history. Their great firewall would cripple their economy until then. The new story is we're copying China's tactics because China did it first and it works great.
I mean, sure, go with that. But it doesn't negate the irony.
> The story back in the ancient history of ~1989->2021 was our free open liberal system was so obviously superior that we were just going to wait around for China to realize their dumb mistake
That story worked out fine until US companies started sending all their IP over to China for manufacturing which resulted in 3 key outcomes that broke the initial strategy:
1. It funded and supported the buildout of China's manufacturing base. China now has the best manufacturing base in the world, and in some cases is the only place in the world certain things can be feasibly made.
2. It guaranteed an export market for Chinese goods which helped to drive their economic engine.
3. It allowed unfettered industrial espionage. There is a reason that nearly every product in existence has a Chinese clone/counterfeit available within a week of launch.
The strategy failed, because the Great Firewall only keeps information out of China that the government wants kept out of China, but any other information goes in, but it prevents pretty much all information from flowing out. Firewalls are not binary, they are tunable with policy, and the Chinese government has historically had a strong strategy and nuanced policy, which has allowed them to see great economic success despite reducing freedom of information. Fundamentally, it's economics that drives the rise and fall of governments.
Reciprocation is actually the policy more likely to get China to open up. As long as they can impose rules on US companies with impunity, while we stand back and give them free reign in our market, they have a zero likelihood of compromising.
I don’t see this as reciprocation, I see it as a continuation of an existing policy that requires US media to be owned by Americans.
I do agree with you though that the capitalism=democracy experiment was a pretty obvious failure. You can have pretty free markets with or without democracy. The US emerged from the Cold Wa with ideological battle scars which prevent us from doing what’s best for the people because that might be communism. We are gradually finding out that concentrated corporate power is potentially an even greater threat.
The rejection of realpolitik is at the core of modern liberalism (indeed, in international relations, liberalism is antipodal to realism which is realpolitiks namesake), so the irony persists.
And given the repeated examples of how realpolitik has led to conflict escalation, war, economic collapse, etc., the superiority of modern liberalism should be obvious.
It seems fairly clear to me why this is the case: complex, conflict-prone relationships often involve prisoner's dilemmas, and alignment on fundamental principles is an effective method for avoiding the worst-case outcome of a prisoner's dilemma. Abandoning principles for a purely situational approach to conflict makes the presumptive lose-lose outcome much more likely.
While modern liberalism rejects realpolitik in theory, in practice the structures it has set up have often been ignored by purportedly liberal actors, so your argument from experience is very tenuous.
As far as prisoner's dilemmas, its a lot more complicated than that. A purely pragmatic approach can lead to win-win outcomes that would be impossible in a purely idealist framework - realist IR scholars would, for example, argue (and could back it up far better than the alternative) that if it wasn't for Bush and Cheney's idealism, the 2003 Iraq war would never have occurred.
The realist counterpoint to the prisoner's dilemma is that it's not just due to conflict prone relationships, but because it's impossible to know what the intentions of other actors are, which is not something that international liberalism can solve in practice. In theory, liberalists would argue that two liberal states can communicate their true intentions well because their intentions reflect the intentions of the population, but this has conclusively been proven to be untrue in the case of foreign policy (not very surprising due to the way intelligence has to be set up), and therefore the liberalist rebuttal to uncertainty of intentions seems much weaker now than it did originally.
As a result, realists argue that following realpolitik can actually reduce the likelihood of war, as agents will be careful to act in such a way as to avoid seeming as to pose a threat in the absence of knowledge of their intentions, while a liberal actor, acting according to their ideals, would act in a way such that an actor who is unsure of their true intentions would have to perceive as a threat.
This means that you just can't assert easily that realism is more likely to cause lose-lose outcomes. It's a complicated argument where this kind of ironclad certainty just isn't justifiable.
> The rejection of realpolitik is at the core of modern liberalism
why do you believe so?
i see no reason why rationalism and political pragmatism are mutually exclusive with liberalism. in fact to me it seems they complement each other well
Realpolitik and rationalism are not the same thing. Realpolitik is the idea that politics (esp. international politics) is ultimately dominated by power politics where each actor is trying to maximize their power and self-interest, and is generally an idea of the realist school of politics
While that might arguably be compatible with liberalism within a society where there is a relatively benevolent monopoly of power imposing a certain number of rights and rules molding the self-interest of all in such a way as to be compatible with civilization, within the international system there is no monopoly of violence, and therefore norms and rights are contingent on countries not acting purely in their self-interest and therefore to maximize their power.
Since modern liberalism is inherently internationalist (arguably since Woodrow Wilson, some called his approach to diplomacy "idealpolitik"), modern liberalism does have to reject realism as a school of thought.
The debate between liberalism and realism as it pertains to international politics is the main topic of contention in international relations theory.
More generally, you can also argue that liberalism assumes the good faith of powerful people not to destroy the liberal system to maximize their own power, but this is far easier to argue against in the domestic setting than in the international setting.
Nonsense. A free and open system does not require foreign adversaries to be given free access to manipulate and control the population. That's not an open system, that's pure stupidity.
> If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger.
Reciprocity isn't the main reason. It's become a legitimate national security problem. We're no longer in the early 2000s where we could delude ourselves into thinking China wasn't a rival. They're clearly revisionist, with their aggressive approach to resolving border disputes and rhetoric about forceful reunification of Taiwan being on the table. They are bolstering strategic reserves of oil beyond normal peacetime levels, appointing Taiwan hawks to the Politburo, increasing PLA presence near Taiwan, running war games involving an embargo of Taiwan. They doubled their trade with Russia, filling in gaps left by sanctions. They are overtly hostile to the maritime sovereignty of a treaty ally of the US.
The world has changed a lot, and few here realize it because they're stuck in this weird libertarian bubble where everyone's interests are the same and foreign policy doesn't exist and it's cynical intentions all the way down. You are all in for a rude awakening to wake you up from your hypnosis just as Europe was back in 2022.
The US will legislate according to its interests, and that is what it's appropriately doing here.
> their aggressive approach to resolving border disputes
China hasn't fought a war in 40 years. In recent years, there have been some border skirmishes with India between unarmed soldiers (it's not even clear which side initiated them) and some naval confrontations about a few islands with no shots fired, but that's about it. Meanwhile, the US has been fighting wars all around the world.
The risk is information warfare. It's difficult to know whether they've used it for that purpose yet, because there's a lack of transparency, which is actually part of the problem. But regardless, the risk is unacceptable, especially if the Taiwan or Philippines/Vietnam situations boil over. There's no historical precedent of a rival having such massive control over domestic consumption of information. The one thing we do know from the history of conflict is that all available tools will get used for that purpose (e.g. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8197).
I don't disagree, but for clarity, you appreciate this is totally contrary to the (formerly) popular "free speech" meme that used to be a source of pride for Americans?
Isn't it a bit funny that America can't manage to educate[1] its citizens so they are resilient to propaganda? Do you think it is all that difficult to do, if the government set it as a priority"?
[1] It's worse: they can't even try to. To me, this is peak hilarity, doubly so when combined with the conversations in this thread...which themselves are a consequence of the root problem. Oh my, the layers of irony.
It's the same one. The answer is yeah it is difficult. It is evident based on the fact that no country in the history hasn't been able to achieve.
"Making citizens to be resilient to propaganda"?
While we should try to do our best, it's also not mutually exclusive to remove bad propaganda. Yet you make it sound like the 2 actions are mutually exclusive for some reason.
Are you saying that it is a fact that it should necessarily point me in the direction that you think it should? It is literally not possible that the actions being taken toward TikTok are not a net good idea?
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Before this, the European polity were stuck in this "End of History" mindset where great power conflict was a relic from the past and everything could be solved through negotiation and institutions. The sooner laypeople realize we're in the Second Cold War (as the foreign policy types have) the less these kinds of moves (banning TikTok, restricting Nvidia exports to China) will come as a surprise, and you may even start to appreciate them.
I was always in favor of banning it for this reason, but I'm concerned that Biden is now banning it for a different reason. The timing is interesting. Certain lobby groups have been urging Congress on this due to TikTok videos about the war in Gaza. Then again, Trump was also trying to ban it for his own reasons.
Yep. TikTok is the only major social media app in the US that does not downrank pro-Palestinian content. No one in the US government cared about TikTok until the latest conflict in Israel. This is the only reason for the ban.
Yes, you and another user have claimed that but provided no sources or proof. For my part, I'm a dem and it always seemed that Dems weren't very vocal about it but were highly concerned about Tik Toks data sovereignty. They've kinda had bigger issues in their face since 2016.
He is one of the best political game player. Look at immigration (he does not allow bipartisan law to smooth the issue out) and abortion (he enabled it but does not want this to be the matter during election year).
Agree his policy might many of us not. But player great he is.
I don't think it's accurate to say Biden is banning it. The vote in the House was very bipartisan. R's were like 92% in favor and D's more like 75%.
Yes: 155 D + 197 R
No: 50 D + 15 R
On Monday the White House clarified its position:
"We do not want to ban apps like TikTok. What we want – and what the
legislation we support would do – is ensure that TikTok becomes owned by an
American company so that our and our children's sensitive personal data stays
here instead of going to China and so that Americans' understandings and
views can't be manipulated by algorithms potentially controlled by the PRC."
so they want to outsource to nations where paucity of labor and environmental laws give corporations higher margins, but is ready to force a ban if US laws cannot control the narrative and influence people. Okay
Yeah, the White House doesn't pretend it's not about influencing public opinion. So it's a natural question, what opinion are they worried about. Maybe there's no particular one, but idk.
The bill gives the US President, currently Biden, the ability to designate social media apps as sufficiently popular and its owning nation as adversarial, mandating a forced sale. Biden approved the law and chose to use it on TikTok. So you could say it's to be sold or else banned (and China has already said they won't sell), but anyway it's in Biden's hands.
AIPAC wants Tiktok gone because young people are getting objective information rather than the propaganda of mainstream "responsible" media. [1]
Tiktok is not a good thing for Genocide Joe either! He has been an Israeli puppet for decades. Thanks to Tiktok, being an Israeli puppet has become a political liability because Israel has lost its control over American minds.
Free trade and reciprocity agreements don't depend on a country's political leanings. You either play ball with the world or you don't. Can't have it both ways.
I think that's a concept that is thorny enough to merit a word on what we mean by that. I personally don't know what it actually points at (is there any "free trade" ever happening in real life ?), or my naive interpretation would be trade with absolutely no rules, but I assume that's not what you're pointing at.
Please don't call me deranged. How much do you know about China?
As vague and imprecise as the term "most capitalist" is, it is a blatant ignorance of the way Chinese people (have to) live, especially in cities, to think that it isn't a consequence of an extreme form of capitalism: enormous gaps between the wealthy and the poor and materialism.
China is as much a communist country as Congo is a republic.
Edit: Reading the other comments, it seems like we might all value different aspects of the country to define whether it is capitalist.
China's national bourgeoisie has a seat at the table, but there are plenty of recent examples of them being brought to heel by the CPC. So, while they definitely have some capitalist productive relations I'd hardly call them capital-C Capitalist in the "ruled by capitalists" sense of the term.
Compare with the US where the capitalist class not only has a seat at the table: they are the table. And the chairs around the table, the room the table is in, the building the room is in, the property the building is on, the people who go in and out of the building, and the bullets that shoot anyone who tries to enter the building who isn't supposed to. The US is "more capitalist" in all the ways that count - what might be confusing you is that China has more sustainable and powerful relations of production which is why they're overtaking the US. But that doesn't make them capitalist.
IDK about that but you are correct that it is explicitly not communist. It's ruled by the "communist" party that wants to "establish communism" but it is very explicitly only on the path to communism even according to its own propaganda.
It's a "communist country" in an aspirational sense, not in a descriptive sense. When we call countries "capitalist" by contrast, we usually mean that in a descriptive sense. This tends to lead to a lot of confusion: nothing that China does is "communism", it's at best something that is done with the justification of being part of the pursuit of communism. Whether or not the CCP is truthful or honest in its claims about its aspirations is a different question.
All other countries have heavily state sponsored economies. We just call them "subsidies", "research grants", "tax rebates" etc.
Many industries wouldn't be where they are without decades long government intervention, and govs will also apply extra scrutiny on who owns which company, and pick up the winners as needed for national interests.
China is the most transparent about it, but being transparent and being the most engaged in it are two different things.
To be clear, I think that's just the natural state of things. Real free markets are chaos and we want countries to actually think about where they're going.
Yes, you are missing something. Because you're seeing tiktok as a product, not as a community of millions of people. There are tens of thousands of small family-owned businesses that are only able to survive because of Tiktok. For a lot of the younger crowd, Tiktok is part of social culture. Cutting out a part of someone's life like that is not a decision that should be taken lightly at all.
There’s tens of thousands of families that depend on income from meth production or trading. Meth is part of the social culture for a significant subset of people.
How is it false equivalence to refer to two products that people use/sell to provide for their families, yet the product has been proved to cause great harm to communities, especially children [1]?
It's a community of millions of people, but which are seen by the millions is subject to the CCP's algorithm.
Just search for "Uighur genocide" and see how many negative Tiktoks you find.
Now go on any western social media platform, search for any contentious topic, and notice what's banned. It's not stuff that's harmful to the government (eg. Gaza/Israel topics) it's stuff that advertisers think is harmful (racism, unlabeled porn, etc.).
Also, restraining from banning a platform because some people can't be arsed to also post to IG reels or other platforms is their own fault as entrepreneurs.
Out of interest, I just tried this. "Uighur genocide" was the fifth auto-completed search result. In the "Top" tab, the first video was a (maybe Chinese) guy saying he never saw any discrimination against Uighurs and maybe Americans should ask about the Hawaiian cultural genocide. The video next to it was from (presumably) Uighur people saying that they were suffering cultural genocide and China was selling their organs. Below that was a snippet from Wikipedia saying that China had been committing cultural genocide against the Uighurs.
The prominence of the Chinese guy "denying" the cultural genocide was interesting - I wouldn't assume he's a plant (it's equally likely he's just a rabid nationalist) but the placement of the video does strike me as a little odd. It had 300 likes, but rates higher than the second video which had 5000 likes? Does smell a bit.
This is from Singapore, by the way. I assume geography makes a difference.
The Tiktok search ranking does this for every query. There is no obvious rhyme or reason for the sort. There's a filter button to change how it's sorted, but by default I can never figure out what it's doing.
Then it's time for them to move on to a new platform.
The fact that people have become dependent is no good argument for keeping the platform around.
And, with that said, if TikTok disappears - a new platform fill its void, as well as other platforms absorbing users. If there's a demand, someone will supply.
This is an absolute no-brainer. If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger. Am I missing something?