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by riq_ 2546 days ago
> Not only is China ripping off IP but companies like Apple who try to be "woke" have no buisness advocating for equality at home while doing buisness with a nation that has imprisoned thousands of religious minorities in re-education camps.

First of all: You are not wrong.

But similar things can be said about USA. USA steals a lot of stuff too. But of course the American press won't tell you about that. Or if they mention it, they will put phrase it like "America liberated the population of Irak (insert any country here) from the dictarship".

But the press on other countries could say different things about the USA:

"Not only is USA has a long history of creating coup-d'etat in foreign countries (e.g: South America), and installing governments that favor their policy and killing thousands of innocent people to achieve that. But also is known to create false evidence to invade countries to steal their oil and killing thousands of innocent people, again. And recently it has been proved that the USA spied on their allies to..."

I don't want to put in a way that the USA is "bad" or China "good", or vice-versa.

But the important thing here is: critical thinking. Don't buy what the press tells you.

Is China "bad" ? Who is telling you that China is "bad" ? Does the person that is telling you that China is "bad" gain something from it? Is that person any better than China?

Companies are driven to make money. Otherwise they would be an NGO, and not a company.

9 comments

To be clear, I am many times more critical of my own government and the history of this nation than I ever can be of a foreign nation. My user name is specifically a reference to civil war era promises to freed slaves that were broken and the legacy of reconstruction.

That being said, just because my government does it doesn't mean that I can't call a spade a spade when I see it. What the Chinese government is doing in Xianjiang should be one of the highest international issues right now, unfortunately due to corporate interests China is receiving minimal pressure on the issue.

Sure, you can call out their malfeasance, treachery, outright shenanigans, whatever, but is it appropriate to get upset about it when your own side is just as treacherous?

I’m starting to reach the point where, short of outright killing people, I just don’t care because my country of residence is just as bad as the “bad” guys. Worse, nothing will really ever change that.

Trust me, I'm an equal opportunity critic when it comes to human rights. In the same breath that I condemn the Chinese government for it's actions in Xianjiang I condemn the current administration for locking up children at our border.

Life is too grey to silence yourself on issues you care strongly about.

Just an FYI I think you mean Xinjiang, and not Xianjiang. I only mention it since you typed it the same in two different comments.
No, I think it's a very telling thing that there are people out there who comment authoritatively about a place whose name they can't even spell. There are multiple examples in this thread.
If you're comparing Xianjiang and what's happening at the border then this is not eve remotely 'equal opportunity' criticism - it's classical Chinese moral relativism.

In Xianjiang people are being rounded up for their religion or ethnicity, thrown into concentration camps, made 'non-persons', tortured, killed, if they die on trumped up charges their organs are harvested. It's Nazi-Germany level stuff.

The US is not 'putting children in prison' - the US (was previously) holding people who are trying to enter the country due literally to the prosperity of the nation. They are well treated and are free to leave any time.

Now that the rule has been discarded, migrants bring their children specifically on the dangerous journey because they know if they bring their kids, they don't have to go into detention.

This year there there has been a massive upswing in illegal migration precisely because migrants now know the golden legal loophole: bring a child - and they won't have to be held, they can immediately enter the country. And of course, the irony of the fact these people are desperately trying to get in to the country should not be lost on anyone making morally relative claims comparing that situation to Xianjiang.

The China stuff aside, I wish I had time to address all of the points made in this comment in full. Frankly it's a severely misleading explanation that edges very close to misinformation.

Quoting the grandparent comment exactly, the US is in fact "locking up children". They are also not "free to leave". Most detainees are required to wait for their hearing. In addition, no rule has been discarded. The push for zero-tolerance policy at the border led to family separation, and is precisely what's happening to these people, which makes this "golden rule" completely bunk. Further, illegal immigration isn't even as high now as it was in 2014.

This is not even taking into account the issue with illegal immigration and seeking asylum being a criminal issue, the fact that people within the US are being deported, not just those attempting to come in the southern border, and lastly, the reasons why people are fleeing these countries as well as the historical context and the US's role in that.

> This is not even taking into account the issue with illegal immigration and seeking asylum being a criminal issue, the fact that people within the US are being deported, not just those attempting to come in the southern border, and lastly, the reasons why people are fleeing these countries as well as the historical context and the US's role in that.

The difference is that the are people in the US calling out and protesting the horrors occurring and those protesters do not wind up with their organs harvested.

This is kind of a big deal and highlights the differences between the US and China.

China is carrying out forced organ donation at the moment on their prisoners. At what point will China become "bad" for you ? At the point, they start mass-murdering their 'un-desirables' in gas camps and harvesting their bodies ?

There is utterly no equivalence in comparing the USA and China wrt human rights. Any single, incident in the USA gets extra-ordinary media attention. A million incidents in China are buried under the carpet.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nightmare-of-human-organ-ha...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/18/china-kil...

china would need to step up their game if they want to reach US numbers. Killing millions by invading or instigating overthrows and torturing people to death (either directly or indirectly) isn’t exactly „good“ in my book.
>USA steals a lot of stuff too

That is a vague response to a more specific claim that China is "ripping off IP" not simply "stuff."

>But of course the American press won't tell you about that.

Are you seriously saying American media didn't report on the bad stuff that happened during the Iraq war? I know google is likely banned where you are but...

>I don't want to put in a way that the USA is "bad" or China "good", or vice-versa.

The agenda here is quite transparent....Sure we run concentration camps for muslims in Xinjiang but we all do bad stuff so let's not talk about it...

That was a really long way of not explaining what the US steals, in terms of IP, from other countries.

It was also a pretty lengthy way to mascarade the damning false equivalence. China is, undoubtely, worse, in terms of human rights and development. No, the US is not the best. China is far worse.

Why? Do you think bombing xinjiang is better?
Well, I haven't heard, lately, of a million ughyur imprisoned in real concentration camps in the US.
But made to flee their homes as refugees in middle though.
Thanks Hillary for that, and the Honduran coup.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton...

Doesn't change the fact that the US stands several steps above China in any human rights index.

That's factually incorrect. The United States has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits the US from providing information or resources to American companies obtained from intelligence collection activities.

See Why We Spy on Our Allies R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former Director of Central Intelligence.

http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm?utm_medium=referral&utm...

Yes, China is bad.
"USA steals a lot of stuff too. But of course the American press won't tell you about that. Or if they mention it, they will put phrase it like "America liberated the population of Irak "

This is complete rubbish.

The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level, where China is.

Second - geopolitical issues have nothing to do with theft of IP, and usually not even resources (at least not in Central America).

'Central American countries' or 'Iraq' definitely have nothing to offer the US or anyone else in terms of the kind of IP theft one might be concerned about in China.

America did not 'steal' anything from Iraq - their Oil is their own, they receive 100% of the revenue, not only that, they are free to partner with any company they use, in fact, they ended up going with entities like Total (France), Statoil (Russia) etc. instead of US companies. (I guess as a 'thanks' for the fact they are now free to do as they please, and the Oil belongs to the people of Iraq instead of Saddam Co.)

"China is bad" because they steal IP, there is no rule of law, there is widespread corruption, pollution, there is total control of the people by the state and people dissapear of the street for no reason.

Literally, as we speak, China is incarcerating 100's of thousands, possibly millions of people due to their ethnicity or religion, and harvesting their organs as they are killed on trumped up charges. [1]

When we use the term 'Nazi' or 'concentration camps', usually it's hyperbole - but it's not: we now have a major power rounding up people by the millions due to ethnicity and culling their organs. This is actualy Nazi level stuff.

The level of moral relativism implied here is repulsive.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/i...

> The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level, where China is.

Seriously? You are kidding right? You must be kidding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...

The most poplular examples are probably German Enercon and Dutch Airbus, but our own Belgian Lernout & Hauspie was also targeted by something you are in complete denial of.

It's Europe here, we're supposed to be allies, no? So why is your government literally stealing business using industrial espionage? That's like sleeping with your best friends wife.

So yeah, get your facts straight please.

"No I didn't sleep with your wife, I would never do such a thing! But THAT guy, THAT guy does it!"

I have no clue what level of industrial espionage takes place in the US or China but the fact that it _has_ occurred in both places does not speak to the frequency and severity that these types of actions are taken. All your examples could be true and still the Chinese govt. could be orders of magnitude worse.

To me all of this is nearly irrelevant to OP's original point which was taking an American company's manufacturing to China is a risk. I don't think OP was implicitly making the claim that moving a Chinese company's manufacturing to the US is less of a risk. That seems to be the tangent that the comment thread has taken but it was not part of the original comment. I think there is more of a risk that the Chinese government will steal the IP from Apple in China than the US government will steal the IP from Apple in the US.

I was reacting to this statement: "The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level", which is obviously false. I wanted to rectify that.
We'e asked you repeatedly to stop using HN for political and ideological flamewar. Instead, you've done more and more of it. That's a serious abuse of this site, because such flamewars actually destroy this place for thoughtful and curious conversation, its raison d'etre. Since you've ignored our attempts to get you to use HN as intended, I've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. But please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nazi level stuff? really? 100 of thousands, that’s close to how many people died in Iraq now. Why don’t we just start World War III is you all think it is really Nazi stuff.
> The oil belongs to the people of Iraq.

So they will soon be rich like the Saudis in the near future ?

You are kidding right ? This is what your medias are telling you ? Do you know what lead to the refugee crisis and other IS* organizations in the middle east ? The Banana Republics in South America ?

Why is Saudi a saint while other nations in middle east are bad actors ?

The rhetoric on China sounds like sour grapes to me.

I wonder why you aren't down voted for crying out loud that the emperor's nude. I try to see the multiple facets of a story rather than trusting medias be it wester or eastern. How many will bother to see what CNN, RT, BBC, AlJazeera and the likes of it are saying about the same story ?

When China invests in Africa, why is it a bad thing when many countries in Africa are suffering from Françafrique ?