[csense]

There's too much money to be made by doing business in China for Western society to be willing to take a principled stand.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

On a not-unrelated note, I'm thinking about buying some South Park DVD's. Just a small way to vote with my wallet on the China issue.

[blacksmith_tb]

I wonder what happens when a factory in China gets an order to produce those South Park DVDs... I suppose it could be windfall for factories in Vietnam or Malaysia if they won't take the business.

[aeternum]

Consider that doing business with China may be the best way to prevent this kind of thing.

It's very likely that going to war with China or imposing economic sanctions would cause more of this rather than less. Doing business with other countries and promoting inclusive political institutions and labor opportunities is the best way we've found of ending these types of abuses.

[ebg13]

> Consider that doing business with China may be the best way to prevent this kind of thing.

I'm tired of hearing this refrain. We've been doing business in China for almost 50 years, and they're still doing shit like this, and the whole country is censored, and anyone with any kind of voice gets an immediate visit from the police. When does it end? When have we ever achieved any degree of government liberalization by doing business in China? What exactly does us giving them our money and our jobs and our realestate and our technology and our support in propagandizing their totalitarian regime accomplish?

When the entry requirements are "you must not attempt to liberalize our society or else", one no longer gets to pretend that business will liberalize their society.

[aeternum]

Hasn't it worked though? I'd much rather be a Chinese citizen now vs. 50 years ago. There are many ways to bypass the censorship and the majority of those are only possible because of business needs for SSL.

[ebg13]

> I'd much rather be a Chinese citizen now vs. 50 years ago.

You would not be saying that if you were Uyghur right now.

[athriren]

This is the argument people had when Nixon opened relations with China. If it hasn’t worked in half a century, I doubt it’s going to start working now.

[artsyca]

Here we go again with downvotes-as-disagreement; completely understand the sentiment behind this post and it ought to read 'proper' business, not mutual exploitation

You'd think all the free thinkers on this website would understand the value of thinking differently

[cirgue]

That worked in China when they needed us more than we needed them. Now, we’ve demonstrated ourselves to be unwilling to use the leverage we’ve built, so right now engagement doesn’t mean a damn thing.