[Barrin92]

The hilarious thing about this is that China is at the same time cracking down hard on its own tech sector for reasons of domestic competition and concentration of power.

So on the one hand you have the country of freedom that must preserve its monopolistic structures and accept the lesser evil to fight the enemies abroad but the communist security state is busy... reigning their giants in?

Probably a good time to quote Sheldon Wolin who thought of the American system as 'inverted totalitarian'

"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

[lambdasquirrel]

I don't think China's doing it out of the good of their heart, or because they're less monopolistic. They strike me as being 1. smarter about it and 2. already having whatever control they want, through implicit means.

Somehow, I think that the CPC knows that the Chinese internet companies won't run without Alibaba, but I also think they know a lot of the Chinese engineers who work for Alibaba don't really have too many other places to go. So important players like Alibaba will probably stand regardless of the level of crackdowns they have taken. For the sake of competitiveness – and to keep Jack Ma erstwhiles in line – some random flogging may be in order. I think China is also concerned about the brain drain caused by having a tech sector that's too economically prosperous compared to the rest of the economy. (How they acted on that is another thing).

The U.S., meanwhile, evidently doesn't care very much about the long-term health of its tech economy.

I'm really uncomfortable about the situation that this presents. In the U.S., Apple has usually pushed against the establishment making it easier to crack their phones. And there are worse social networks than FB and Twitter. There are better ones too, but if I find myself wanting to defend Apple against the government (even though I'm sure they're taking their stance out of selfish reasons), then the overall situation seems like it is inherently balanced against U.S. competitiveness in tech.

[stjohnswarts]

This is only because the CCP wants full control over these entities and to shut out any Western/Non-CCP approve opinions and messages quickly and permanently.

[pessimizer]

Why would they care about Western opinions if they already have absolute authoritarian power and believe in nothing? Are they demons?