[ansy]

At the risk of sounding nationalistic, I think companies in the United States and other democratic countries should reconsider any and all business relationships with authoritarian regimes like those in China and Russia. And I say regimes because most "companies" in these countries are really just instruments of the state.

There may be money to be made, but not only are companies like Google tightening these authoritarian regimes' grips on millions and billions of people, but they are undermining the foundations of democracy by strengthening those who choose to crush it in their own countries.

I have no business of my own to withdraw from China or Russia. But if I did, I would look to send my investments to Taiwain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand instead.

[AJ007]

The US has basically done this with Cuba and North Korea. Unfortunately whether everyone is better off or not presents a non-falsifiable hypothesis.

I think there certainly should be a distinction between what is being traded. Medicine & building materials is one thing, weapons & censorship tools is another.

Google's problem here is that they are going to have a much more difficult time explaining why x,y, and z are not censored on the search engines of countries that supposedly are democratic. If they are removing nuanced items for China's regime they are going to find themselves being required, legally, to remove all kinds of things in just about everywhere. That will be a net negative to the free world.

My suspicion is that Google expects Chinese compliant censorship is much more feasible now, without an army of workers, due to machine learning. That is very concerning and if true, I think it presents a case that those involved should resign or be removed immediately.

[bobthepanda]

Honestly, they'll probably screw up something Youtube Kids style and then get blocked again, since that's what happened with their human censors several times the last time they tried running a Chinese search engine.

As far as I have seen and that I am aware, AI so far has been really bad at classifying new emergent uses of existing media (e.g., reappropriation of things for memes of a political nature or otherwise.) Are they going to be able to detect the next Winnie the Pooh-type meme lampooning Xi Jinping?

[smallnamespace]

> I have no business of my own to withdraw from China or Russia.

That's probably untrue from the face of it, just from the amount of products and goods that are produced in whole or in part in China.

In fact, for many products, good luck finding a choice that doesn't directly or indirectly lead to money ending up in the coffers of the Chinese businesses, which is just one hop away from tax revenues of the Chinese state.

But, like, everyone also directly buys or depends on gasoline, which indirectly funds plenty of unpleasantly authoritarian regimes.

What I'm curious is how anyone can have clean hands when everything is just shades of grey in a global, fully-connected economy where everyone is just a few hops from everyone else.

[klodolph]

> That's probably untrue from the face of it, just from the amount of products and goods that are produced in whole or in part in China.

That’s the same way that clothing brands deal with the problem of having their products made in sweat shops. Brand X makes their clothes in sweat shops, there’s an exposé, brand X does an investigation, finds that contractor Y hired subcontractor Z without the right controls in place, and then fires subcontractor Z. But subcontractor Z was just doing business with the actual sweatshop W, and after subcontractor Z is fired, contractor Y hires a new subcontractor Z', which then later rehires W because they’re the cheapest (after the media attention cools down).

Round and round it goes. Because there’s such a large chain, from brand X to contractor Y to subcontractor Z and finally sweat shop W, brand X has very weak and indirect control over the conditions in sweat shop W. This is by design, and it’s encouraged by the way our legal system works. Each link is an isolated domain with limited liability, than can be destroyed and replaced separately from the rest. On top of that, jurisdictional issues prevent the arm of the law from effectively addressing sweat shop W from the country where brand X exists, especially since contractors Y and Z might also be in completely separate countries. The economic pressure to be the cheapest encourages people to take ethical and legal shortcuts, to keep plausible deniability you make the supply chain long enough, and then whenever it blows up the blast radius is only as large as a single, replaceable link in the chain.

And so we get back to the idea that you can simply satisfy yourself by not personally doing business with China or Russia. The entire system is set up to pander to people who want to do things “ethically” by hiding all of the unethical behavior far away at the other end of the supply chain.

You can pat yourself on the back for not buying Kathy Lee Gifford or Nike, but you turn around and buy clothing at prices so low they can only be reliably sourced from workshops with the same terrible conditions.

I’m not arguing that the alternative is to turn a blind eye, but I don’t think outrage at individual companies that do business with the wrong countries is a meaningful choice that we can make. I’m not talking about companies like Nestlé, yes, let’s be plenty pissed off at Nestlé. But if we’re going to change this, the reach of the law should be longer. If brand X were liable for conditions in sweatshop W, financially, then that kind of hazard would be priced into all of the contracts all the way down the chain.

This is called “extraterritorial jurisdiction” and it has precedent, like Australia’s Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Amendment Act 1994.

[sologoub]

Can’t speak for China, but in Russia the greatest level of popular political activity in recent times was during the peak of the economic prosperity for the average Russian - circa 2012-2013.

People were actually driving around Moscow with stickers and banners calling the main political party out for corruption and theft of state property/funds.

Then came the sanctions and 50% plunge in value of the currency. Incomes remained nominally the same for most people or were even cut with the pretext of having to deal with economic crisis/sanctions.

The end result was that most people got scared for their livelihood and just went quiet. When you are afraid for your next paycheck and are no longer sure of the future, political dissent becomes a luxury that’s hard to afford.

Leaving the markets and applying economic blockades just makes the situation worse for the people and strengthens the regimes because these are the only beacons of stability they have.

[the_grue]

Let's get the logic straight here. Economic stagnation is a result of living under an aggressive totalitarian state, not of foreign sanctions on that state. You personally are unfortunate to live in that state and suffer from the side effects of wars it's waging, but Russians as a nation fully support the regime and have been empowering it for many years, therefore I feel they deserve what they're getting and more, until they regain their wits once again. Sanctions or not, the opposition movement of 2011-2013 in Russia had never had popular support, anyway, as the wide population chose to stick to its imperialistic ambitions and ignorance.

The same argument can be made about China. But even in badly behaving states that are not supported by their own population, the effects of foreign actions can only be viewed as a side effect, not as a central part of the narrative. Same as civilian casualties in a purely defensive war are only an unfortunate, but often necessary side effect of one state defending itself from the other.

[sologoub]

I’m an American and your logic is flawed. Try actually visiting the place and learning about/from the people.

[the_grue]

> I’m an American and your logic is flawed.

Let me show you why I consider this line genuinely hilarious. In my opinion, an American would not normally make an absolute statement of that kind, they would say "I think your logic is flawed" or at least "let me show why your logic is flawed". An absolute claim of this kind sounds very Russian to my trained ear.

> Try actually visiting the place and learning about/from the people.

Thanks, but I spent half of my life in "the place" and have firmly settled on staying away for the rest of it.

[chapium]

This is a technical forum after all. Most devs and engineers ive meant are pretty blunt.

[the_grue]

While I agree that an engineer is less likely to spend effort on politeness, they are more likely to substantiate their claims. sologub did neither in their comment.

[sologoub]

Great, now we are determining the merit of a statement based on grammar and choice of words... (Written on a phone, so your mileage may vary)

If you are in LA (Los Angeles) it’s easy enough to look me up.

[the_grue]

I am determining the merit of a statement based on the arguments, which are absent in your comment. The choice of words merely made it ironic.

[amaccuish]

> Economic stagnation is a result of living under an aggressive totalitarian state

Your logic is flawed. Try telling that to China.

[the_grue]

China's economy is already slowing down, and I expect it to hit a ceiling sooner rather than later. Its advantages over the Western countries are cheap labor, undervalued currency and the freedom from intellectual property-related litigation risks. Its disadvantages are the lack of freedom of sharing ideas, its disconnect from the rest of the world, corruption and a weak justice system. While the advantages are quickly exhausting their effect, the disadvantages are there to stay, so the point of equilibrium must be below the Western countries.

[oytis]

Russian here (also have taken part in protests 2012-2013). I believe isolating just one factor for the correlation might give deceiving results. It is true that protest movement has been much less active since 2014, it is also true that Russian economy is in crisis since 2014, but I don't think that the latter was the reason for the former.

Rather

1) As protests of 2012-2013 have failed despite the largest headcount in modern Russian history, people feel demoralized. That works pretty universally the same, (see international Occupy movement for instance).

2) The occupation of Crimea and Donbass region in 2014 made a split in Russian society deeper. Protests of 2012-2013 tried to unite liberal democrats, nationalists and communists, and most of the latter two support Russian aggression. So no union is possible any more.

3) Finally a lot of politically active people have left the country around 2014 (again because of demoralizing effect of both failed protests and successful occupation of Ukrainian territories).

So my opinion on the original topic is that it's worth limiting any collaboration with authoritarian regimes. Such regimes more often crash because of inability to solve their problems than because of successful protest movements, so it's better to increase probablility of the first scenario.

[dnomad]

> At the risk of sounding nationalistic, I think companies in the United States and other democratic countries should reconsider any and all business relationships with authoritarian regimes like those in China and Russia.

It just sounds stupid. Looking at the situation rationally it is the US that has in just the last 20 years (a) attacked several countries and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people and (b) revealed it is running the most extensive surveillance network in the history of the planet that legally and illegally attempts to surveil everybody including even allied political leaders and (c) regularly threatens to nuke and completely destroy other countries.

And somehow, despite all of this, we are supposed to think China is the authoritarian regime?

I know it's hard to imagine because Americans are completely lost in their bubble but the rest of the world understands well that it is the US, not Russia and certainly not China, that is the greatest threat to the world's peace and prosperity [1]. There's a difference between a country that is focused on exports and a country that bombs weddings and targets its own citizens for assassination on foreign soil.

Google returning to China is a good thing if only because it means the power of the US' murderous regime has over the multinational.

Realistically, it is not clear that China's censorship demands are unique outside of Asia or even Europe. China will ask Google to do the same monitoring and blacklisting that the corporation already does for Thailand, Malaysia and even Germany. None of this is new or even particularly unreasonable to the millions and billions of other people on the planet who don't live in the US. Believe it or not these people actually have their own ideas about how they want the internet to work.

[1] https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/08/07/polls-us-g...

[cageface]

You’re right that the USA has committed many sins of its own but freedom of expression in the USA is still protected to a degree unthinkable in places like China or Russia or Vietnam.

I can go on Facebook right now and post any opinion I like of my government. See how long you have to wait for a knock on your door if you try this in one of those other countries. The censorship demands made by China, for example, absolutely are of a different character and breadth than any made in the west.

[dnomad]

> I can go on Facebook right now and post any opinion I like of my government.

No you can't. Facebook regularly censors content just like every other rational organization on the planet that hosts a forum. (Though it's a bit amusing to hear how free Americans think themselves to be when so many of them struggle to get basic healthcare.)

> The censorship demands made by China, for example, absolutely are of a different character and breadth than any made in the west.

You might consider that different cultures actually have different standards about what's acceptable speech. There are certainly other Asian countries which control speech much more rigorously than China ever could. Indeed, it seems China doesn't care so much about criticism until it becomes actionable (ie protests, terrorism). Anybody familiar with China would understand there's actually plenty of criticism of the government in a nation of a billion people. Compare this with regimes where insulting the royal family can land one in jail. Yet Google happily operates in these countries.

And of course, not ironic at all, here come the proud HN free-speech defenders eager to downvote the pesky facts they don't like.

[cageface]

I didn't downvote you but what you're saying is just trivially, factually untrue and you're conflating several different things. Healthcare in the US is a mess and the evils of US foreign policy are well documented but to claim that there is no significant difference between the degree of control that China and the US exert over the internet is just silly and not at all dependent on any pesky "facts".

[amaccuish]

> the USA has committed many sins of its own but freedom of expression in the USA is still protected

So Americans being able to say what they like is more important than the chaos the American government has wrought on the rest of the world? I'm not sure what you're saying.

[cageface]

I’m saying those are two different things. Parent post was conflating them, along with healthcare, for some reason.

[sheepmullet]

> the US that has in just the last 20 years (a) attacked several countries and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people

Where do you get your anti-US propaganda from?

I think the combined civilian death toll by US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq is ~40,000.

That’s not a good number - but it’s a long way away from hundreds of thousands.

[NeedMoreTea]

Wikipedia perhaps?

"Credible estimates of Iraq War casualties range from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 to 461,000 total deaths as of June 2011"

[sheepmullet]

And did the US murder all of these people?

And are all these people innocent civilians?

Wikipedia has the breakdown.

[forapurpose]

> At the risk of sounding nationalistic, I think companies in the United States and other democratic countries should reconsider any and all business relationships with authoritarian regimes like those in China and Russia.

FWIW, that's the opposite of "nationalistic". Nationalism means that the highest principle is your nation's benefit; people suffering and dying in other nations, including at your hands, is not important. For example, current U.S. nationalists advocate ignoring human rights abuses in other countries in order to make more money for U.S. businesses (former Secretary of State and former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson openly advocated this policy).

You are advocating the reverse: the U.S. and other democracies should forgo business interests in order to help people in other countries.

I agree, but only when those measures are effective. FWIW, it turns out that using these economic tools is tricky; it's hard to get desired outcomes. First, beware of politicians offering something for nothing - we want to act against this country, but we don't want to pay or risk anything (significant money or the lives of soldiers); there's no free lunch - you'll get out what you put in. North Korea and Cuba, for example, survive under sanctions for generations and the only consequence has been harm to the non-elite in their countries; North Korea even managed to build nuclear weapons and ICBMs; Iran built nukes and is working on the missiles. Second, if you use the 'blunt' tool and eliminate all business activity, then you tend hurt the people you are trying to help: The common people lose jobs, homes, food, etc.; he powerful elite hoard the money for themselves; look at North Korea for an example. One solution is to apply sanctions directly to the elite in ways that won't affect others (e.g., block them from traveling or making financial transactions outside their country, sanction their businesses directly, etc.); this was used against Iran to significant effect, AFAIK, and is used against Russia. Finally, when you use the 'take my ball and go home' tactic, you lose further leverage over the other party - if you aren't doing business with them, why should they care what you think about the problem that arises next year? Staying engaged is very important for diplomatic leverage.

EDIT: A bunch of edits.

[carapace]

I don't think it's nationalistic, I think it's a war of fundamental values.

The Chinese Communists put control above truth. The Western World puts truth above control. The most powerful law of the most powerful Western nation enshrines as it's First Amendment the unlawfulness of force restraining speech.

For the sake of further discussion, let me set aside the moral argument, and pretend that stable human civilization demands compartmentalization of history. Maybe we do need a "Grey File" of forbidden knowledge to prevent the proles from becoming unhappy with their lot.

Here's the operational, the pragmatic problem with that: You have to control the whole story or you risk societal schizophrenia. What is the Chinese tourist to do when eventually exposed to the truth? There are two choices: instantly become at least partially a rebel -or- cognitive dissonance: go a bit insane and reject the real world in favor of the consensus reality. Rebellion or insanity.

Unless of course the airlines agree to say the right thing about Taiwan on their websites, then everything will be fine.

[nikofeyn]

> The Western World puts truth above control.

you can’t be serious about this. when has the truth mattered in the u.s. in recent times?

in the u.s., companies control the government and people. in china, the government controls the companies and people. there really isn't much difference.

[carapace]

> you can’t be serious about this.

Of course I am. It's fundamental.

> when has the truth mattered in the u.s. in recent times?

To whom?

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. In the West you can drink as much as you want freely, under the CCP even attempting to drink the wrong water will get you locked up or worse.

That's a huge difference. It's a matter of fundamental values, and beliefs about the very nature of what it is to be human, and how to live our lives together in stability and happiness.

> in the u.s., companies control the government and people.

The rich write the laws in the U.S.A., this is evident if you study the behavior and history of Congress. From the POV of realpolitik the essential control feature differentiating the Old Totalist from the Modern Western regimes is the axis of denial and permission. In the old imperial system you did what you were supposed to and didn't do anything else, everything was restricted and you needed the Emperor's permission wipe your nose. In the New World you can do whatever the hell you want but if you go off the rails you get jerked back.

The Western system allows for faster evolution. Time will tell whether that leads to thousands of years of stability. We know that the Totalist system always collapses and then has to be rebuilt after a period of chaos and anarchy. Literally dozens of kingdoms and empires have arisen and then fallen across the whole of Asia for thousands of years.

The Western permissive system is a new thing under the Sun.

[mda]

I agree about the western world and truth part. But saying there isn't much difference between them is quite a leap.

[camillomiller]

In a capitalistic world, returns on capital are worth more than ethical principles. Embargo only works towards states that wouldn’t present an incredible opportunity for pushing the sick metric of growth we all have to play along with