A lot of people in this thread are complaining that the US does this to but does anyone seriously believe that having Huawei tech embedded in American infrastructure is a good idea?
- I genuinely think that the Huawei stories are by and large protectionist fearmongering and that Huawei products would win in a free and high-information (and high-correct-information, of course) market. I think better, cheaper products are good for the US.
- If Huawei is actually using their products to spy, or there is even a belief of such, that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that don't trust routers, open-source and verifiable devices for end users, etc. If it's just the US government, there's a strong pressure on US companies not to treat their own government as an adversary, which creates the danger that it's easy for the government to become an adversary (even if they are not today, it can change hands quickly).
- I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico circuit, and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object to infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese government.
> I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico circuit, and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object to infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese government.
One big problem is that there is no recourse against China. Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
Say what you want about the USA's intelligence organizations but at the end of the day there's a path for change. We elect a new top of the house every four years and all our intelligence agencies (are supposed to...) report to our civilian leaders. China's is a black box that's only getting darker over time.
The evidence suggests that blanket surveillance is a thing, and that's it very clearly unconstitutional.
Of course in this situation it's always possible to appeal to "national security" but that's an unconvincing legitimisation unless it can be proved that national security has been enhanced to an extent that warrants the suspension of constitutional protections.
So far as I know this has never even been tried in court, never mind proven.
It's shown up in court, but defendants have had a tough time showing legal standing [1]. Keep in mind that the state secrets privilege [2] is judicially mediated. Given the lack of demonstrable, specific harm, the matter is--rightly, in my opinion--deferred to the political branches as a political question (as opposed to a legal one).
That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed. That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
> Given the lack of demonstrable, specific harm, the matter is--rightly, in my opinion--deferred to the political branches as a political question (as opposed to a legal one).
I'm not sure how it can be relegated completely to political representatives, given that the secreacy means that the check on representative desicions (an informed populace voting for their representatives) isn't present.
> That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed.
You can freely debate specific policies in China, and broadly unpopular policies in China are suspended.
That can't be said for the US, where whether a law is passed has more to do with whether the ruling class supports it, rather than it's broad popularity.
> That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
The whole 'Xi is a dictator' thing is severely overblown in Western media. Oh no, he has the same term limits as Angela Merkel now. Literally a dictator.
PS: linking to the states secrets wikipage to increase your number of citations is lol inducing.
Doesn't the fact that it's a "political question" effectively argue that the US is more like China here?
The claim from upthread was:
> Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
It genuinely seems like the most productive way for me to end this legal, constitutional spying (and China's spying is also legal and constitutional, mind you) is to spend 25 years being a wildly popular politician or entertainer, run for president, and issue an executive order, or to spend 25 years as an activist changing hearts and minds until there's support for a constitutional amendment banning it. There's clearly no direct way for me to apply pressure in the US.
... and if you say there's no demonstrable, specific harm, doesn't that support my claim at the top that I don't mind China spying on my traffic? Or does Chinese surveillance have demonstrable, specific harm in a way that US surveillance doesn't?
What pressure was put on the NSA and what is the outcome[1]? Let's include all the FVEY[2] countires. Look at Australia's encryption laws[3]. It is actually better to live in China than in AUstralia from this point of view. I do not think that you can use the argument that we can apply political pressure to intelligence agencies or governments and have a better outcome. At least this is not the reality in many cases.
> - I don't think China is any more evil than the US.
In my opinion, citizens of China have it far worse, due to things like the Great Firewall. I'd much rather live in the US than China, at least it's vaguely democratic.
Yet, citizens of China have enjoyed a steady increase in the quality of life across the board, while the opposite has been happening in US. Meanwhile, US is an oligarchy and not a democracy. A long term study from Princeton shows that the main predictor of any law being passed is whether it's favorable to the rich. The public opinion does not matter:
>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
citizens of China have enjoyed a steady increase in the quality of life across the board
3 million Uyghurs in internment camps have increased quality of life? ~400 million still stuck ineural farms? The gap between the to 1% in China and the bottom is vastly larger than in the US. And of course it is easy for China to “improve” coming from the ruins of the cultural revolution. There was nowhere to go but up.
This comment is regurgitating stats and numbers without much context.
I feel that over-priveleged peoples in the West with a really good life and pretty much every comfort available, often tend to just look at these superficial charts and numbers and tend to gloss over the context in these other countries.
It's pretty sad really that you are comparing China to the USA in this way just by mentioning that the USA is a oligarchy and somehow that's worse than being in China. The US at least has the option. Chinese people do not.
This worshipping of communist governments and downplaying the USA's freedoms and comforts really need to tone down a bit.
I find the US, the UK, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all absolutely horrific in different but often surprisingly similar ways. Europe, Japan, and a few smaller nations less so - moderately, but not trivially.
There are superficial differences in the tribal totems and rhetorical promises used to promote conformity, and in the mechanics of manipulation and repression.
Beneath that, the dynamics are very similar.
Life can be quite pleasant in any of the above if you're upper-middle class.
If you're on the wrong side of any of these regimes and on the receiving end of institutionalised government violence, it really isn't.
So - as an overprivileged person in the West, I believe I am happier living in the US than in China. There are a lot of freedoms and comforts available to me as an upper-middle-class person. Were I not, I suspect I'd be happier in China.
And there's no shortage of e.g. college students from China who want to return after their studies instead of trying to stay around America and get a work visa. They're smart, and they're under no Chinese censorship when in America, so it seems to me that one is not vastly better than the other.
(Also the unspoken question is how China, the USSR, Korea, etc. would be were it not for their economic suffocation by the US. I didn't bring this up in the context of the Great Firewall, but if we're talking about quality of life it's absolutely relevant. It's important for the US to buy Huawei because not doing so when they have a better product is just repeating the same immoral economic suffocation.)
20 years of indoctrination, obvious and covert, tends to produce a very strong national identity. This coupled with a sufficiently different culture at home makes one unwilling to settle in a country full of strangers worshipping money and freedom of individuals. They come to the US to learn from the best and replicate what works back home for the country.
Of course, there are those that don’t. That’s beside the point, there always are.
Majority of Chinese students would want to stay in the US. Based on my very informal unscientific study over the last many years.
Recently the visa backlog implicitly pushes people away, no lack of demand. In fact too much demand.
This is getting downvoted but it’s an important sentiment. You can argue that America and China are equally bad (I disagree), but regardless, you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.
I'm not sure it's true though, paradoxically if you're an American subject to Chinese surveillance or vice versa you're probably better off than being under domestic surveillance, because at least you're out of the respective jurisdiction.
Like, what is Huawei going to do if it has information on you and you live in Boston, compared to the local police?
From the perspective of individual liberty it seems better to be subject to surveillance by someone who doesn't have legal authority over you than be subject to someone who does. I'm not sure the American prison population or minority groups have to fear a foreign government more than their own.
> Like, what is Huawei going to do if it has information on you and you live in Boston, compared to the local police?
It could to take what your local industries you are researching and give it to a Chinese company that will take it into the international market. Is that not harmful? Do you think the US government would similarly take your work and send it to a Chinese competitor before it is made public?
> From the perspective of individual liberty it seems better to be subject to surveillance by someone who doesn't have legal authority over you than be subject to someone who does.
Well, this idea is false. The CCP has power in the U.S. over people they surveil, through the information gained with that surveillance. It doesn't take much to compromise ordinary people, if you can watch a lot of what they do.
> I'm not sure the American prison population...
They're already in prison.
> ...or minority groups have to fear a foreign government more than their own.
Not sure what kind of minority you're talking here, but foreign governments can compromise you and take over your life just the same regardless of the colour of your skin.
Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans? It's a daily occurence for marginalised people in the US to get arrested for minor drug offences, or be stuck in airport security or police checks, or more and more relevant facial recognition systems.
What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.
> What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.
Sure, your own government is responsible for not trampling on your civil liberties; that doesn't mean it's somehow not worse to be also surveilled by the Chinese government, in addition to your own.
When China is spying on you, that doesn't mean the U.S. isn't; it means they both are.
As far as I can tell, your argument is: Because governments in the U.S. don't recognize some things you consider civil liberties, like smoking cannabis recreationally, you don't care that the Chinese government is also spying on you, and you don't think the U.S. government should take a stance on that spying?
It seems pretty incoherent to me.
> Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans?
Roughly since they have had intelligence services. It's not like the Soviets invented Kompromat, and it's not as though they were the last to use it.
I simply responded to the point literally made in the post above which was
>you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.
Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government. And it's also not incoherent in a general context, because using China or some other cold war enemy as a strawman to divert attention from domestic civil rights violation is as relevant as it has always been in the US. The Soviet Union was no danger to ordinary Americans either (well nukes aside), because by definition ordinary Americans are.. well ordinary and entirely uninteresting.
Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government. As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
> Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government.
I didn't say the thing you are refuting, that was somebody else paraphrasing my more precise statement.
I said that the Chinese government is more willing to be evil to Americans than the U.S. government. The outcomes are a matter of proximity and control.
The reason I made this distinction is because right now we are at a crossroads, deciding whether or not to potentially give the Chinese government more proximity and control when it comes to ordinary Americans. My point is that they really don't have your best interests at heart.
> Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government.
This is not an either-or sort of situation. Americans would do well to pay close attention to both the domestic actions of the U.S. government (and their local and state governments), and equally close attention the foreign actions of the government of the PRC.
> As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
I'm not even convinced there's much of a market for 5G in the U.S; but sure, there is a competitive angle to this. Tell me, though, why Huawei is so interested in making the carrier equipment, but the modems so much less so?
So, I am an American, but my primary loyalty is to humanity as a whole. I think we should do what's best for the world, not what's best for Americans, if those two are in conflict. I don't think promoting the American intelligence apparatus is good for the world, and I think it has little enough value to Americans that I'm willing to abandon it.
(I think you can construct an argument that America treats the rest of the world better than China, though. I don't think I believe it right now but I could be convinced.)
It's always disturbed me how Americans use the word Americans when humans would be much more apt. It shows that deep down the rest of the world is nothing but a resource to be exploited in the minds of many Americans.
> So, I am an American, but my primary loyalty is to humanity as a whole.
Being able to say that sort of thing with a straight face is the tremendous privilege of being an American.
> I don't think promoting the American intelligence apparatus is good for the world
In a vacuum I would not promote them, but in a counterintelligence scenario, I side with U.S. and Canadian intelligence services over the PLA, 100%.
The thing I try not to do is believe the CIA when they say somebody is committing an act of war against the U.S, because their track record on that is not great. ;- )
> (I think you can construct an argument that America treats the rest of the world better than China, though. I don't think I believe it right now but I could be convinced.)
Well, look into it. I don't think you can compare the callousness and limitless self-interest of the CCP (and the culture of the people they empower) abroad to even the greatest excesses of modern U.S. foreign policy. China is ruthlessly raping the developed world of its natural resources, and leaving superfund sites in its wake, and nobody is tempering that; some because they're afraid, others because they simply never cared.
When the U.S. has an interest abroad, at least Americans feel they have a right and duty to keep tabs on it. That is a huge step up from most of the world. That doesn't mean that American businesses and U.S. government organizations don't do bad things abroad, but it does mean that ordinary Americans can say and do something about it.
There's a false dichotomy here between trusting U.S. intelligence services, and trusting the PLA. If you don't trust either, you may still be surveilled by U.S. intelligence services in America; if you "equally distrust both", you will be surveilled by both, in America.
You're right, the US government would never violently expand its borders and encourage settlers from the majority race, oppress the existing people with police brutality, and track people through their smartphones.
these points are all out of a reasonable time frame or far exaggerated against American government vs the Chinese government
Like, yeah, we have police brutality, and it’s a real problem. But did we crush a bunch of student protestors into human pancakes and then forbid anyone from talking about it? No.
Did you know about the Jackson State massacre or the Orangeburg massacre, in both of which the police killed college and high-school students? Or the 1985 police bombing of a residential neighborhood in Philadelphia that killed six adults and five children and destroyed 65 houses?
The US doesn't need to suppress people from talking. There's enough social control that people don't talk in the first place. The information is all out there and technically public, which against the US populace is more effective in making sure people don't think of the police as they should.
But you're not forbidden from talking about what you mentioned, that's why you're posting here, no? Try to post anything about Tiananmen on any forum based in China. To me this is the key that makes CCP strictly worse than the US govt.
I hadn't heard of these incidents before, but when I read your comment (which would have been censored in China) I searched for "philadelphia 1985" and quickly found an old clip from Frontline reporting on the events (which would have been censored in China) on YouTube (where it would have been censored in China, setting aside that YouTube is blocked entirely).
Wikipedia (which is blocked in China) also has an article (which would have been censored in China if not already blocked), saying that the police first evacuated the surrounding houses and there was a protracted gunfight before they bombed "a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof". This is not quite comparable to the military killing thousands of unarmed protestors.
Those are not similar events. All of them have been condemned and appear to have largely been driven by individual reckless actors. Excuses about police believing they were under fire are dubious, but the fact that the excuses indicates the mentality behind how these actions are viewed (not ok).
Police brutality is a serious problem. But it’s not the same problem as those enabled the TS massacre.
> The US doesn't need to suppress people from talking. There's enough social control that people don't talk in the first place. The information is all out there and technically public, which against the US populace is more effective in making sure people don't think of the police as they should.
You have all the right facts and stats and information but alarmingly lacking the right context in which these facts and stats apply.
I am seeing this as a sign of a person living in absurd comfort (includes me too) and trying to understand a developing nation without having to go through any of the difficulties.
I only said slightly worse but I'd rather my government oppress someone outside my country if I had to choose. In either case, don't give up your guns.
>that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that don't trust routers
That doesn't work for metadata. Also, confidentiality is only one aspect of security. You also want availability, which can't be assured with clever crypto.
To a significant extent you have to fear US if you are planning on blowing things up and you have to fear China if you have valuable IP. I don't have to like it, but hit me up with Room 641A over PLA Unit 61398 any day of the week.
You don’t think an authoritarian regime that claims human rights are “Western rights” and denies most aspects of classical liberalism is worse than the US?
No man is wrong except the man who says he’s right...
Today is a Lucky 10000 day for you. We'll start with human rights in China [0] and look at some highlights. (Yes, every citation is to Wikipedia today. You've earned it.)
* There are millions of people imprisoned in China. Could be as few as 1.5mil, but likelier around 3.5mil, [2] including likely over 1mil in "re-education" concentration camps in the Western region of Xinjiang. [1] By comparison, while the USA's legendarily held the highest per-capita incarceration rate for decades, presumably this is because we are more honest than China about our rates. (Not to mention Russia.) Also, consider this map of incarceration per state in the USA. [3] Thanks, Louisiana.
* The Internet is neither Free nor neutral in China. [4] You can expect not just to be spied upon, but also to have lots of non-Chinese literature removed from your view, and also to face social consequences from your Internet browsing choices. You would already be known as outspoken for your posts, which would not be hidden or pseudonymous, and which would travel through both automated and manually-reviewed filters before being published. Rumor has it that both Russia and China are researching ways to construct their own Internet-like sub-networks and infrastructure so that they can disconnect entirely from the rest of the world.
* A family-and-caste system, hukou [5], is used to systematically deny freedom of movement to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. While the system has experienced reforms since Deng, in the time of Mao, hukou was an oppressive tool, and to this day, one must apply for a permit to move to large cities in Eastern China like Beijing. Worse, if I understand correctly, the hukou permits can be zoned within a metropolitan area, so that one is only permitted to move to certain parts of Beijing. As a reminder, for contrast, the USA has a strong history of legally supporting the right to freedom of movement since 1823 [6], even if we have often failed to ensure those rights. [7]
* The USA has freedom of religion written into the Constitution, in the First Amendment. China does not have freedom of religion. [8] Party members must be atheists. Christians must belong to state-run churches. [11] Tibetan Buddhism is state-managed; lamas must fill out permits for reincarnation [9] and the Panchen Lama has been kidnapped and replaced with a state-chosen impostor. [10] Falun Gong has been systematically persecuted. [12]
* Tibet. [13] Additionally, Hong Kong. [15]
* In more recent fields of human rights: Homosexuality and non-binary sexuality are only recently permitted, within the past few decades, and associated rights like marriage/civil unions are still forthcoming.
* Meta: The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants, to promote their ability and right to do whatever they like to the people of China, to dismiss individual human rights as deleterious to the Party and its state, and to concentrate power arbitrarily. Compare and contrast with the USA.
Please do not haul pre-existing lists of links and talking points into HN threads. These discussions are supposed to be thoughtful conversations. Boilerplate kills that.
Also, nationalistic battle is off topic here, even in a thread like this one, and your comment is a huge step in that direction.
Also, please don't snark. That's in the site guidelines too.
I am honored to have been mistaken for boilerplate! Thank you. In truth, this morning I woke up, read the claim, "I don't think China is any more evil than the US," and decided to examine it. What followed was 100% my own words, off the cuff, based on reading Wikipedia and their citations and sources. (For what it's worth, not much of this resembles what I remember studying when I was younger; "modern" Chinese history focused on Mao and Deng.) I stopped after I realized that no amount of refactoring would revive footnote 14.
Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you think that these aren't fresh words, then please explain where they came from.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have commentary on the state of human rights in China?
I'm sorry I mistakenly assumed your words weren't freshly written. Still, please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want it here, and there has been a dismaying surge of it lately.
> The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants ...
This is the principle of democratic centralism[1]. A case could be made for conceptions of democracy other than the western one, but with the abolishment of term limits China is not making that case very well.
I'll say this: my gut says "no" BUT if the US uses Huawei as much as China uses Cisco et al then there is one very good thing that can happen--economic interdendence which tends to encourage peace!
The key is for balance and competitiveness on both sides to be maintained.
China backs its companies with government support more aggressively than the US does (in recent decades anyway) which means the US could lose its edge and end up totally reliant.
That would be fine in an ideal world where both sides have good faith, but in our real world China is doing everything it can to ratchet into dominance rather than mutual reliance.
Yes. It is a good idea to have Huawei tech embedded in American infrastructure.
First. The allegations against Huawei are BS driven by internal US politics.
Secondly where does this weird nationalism lead us? To a world where there is no Chinese router or chipset in American infrastructure. And by extension no American router or chipset in Chinese infrastructure.
That is a world which is a lot poorer and filled with unconstructive paranoia.
Yes. I did. Honestly it is rubbish. Secret methodology. No baseline comparison (how does Huawei compare to other similar sized companies?). This is not social science. It is politics.
Every thread that paints China in a negative light on HN always follow the same pattern:
- USA whataboutism
- Mass flagging (resulting in the story getting knocked off the frontpage despite having a great upvote, comment and submission ratio)
- Comments negative towards China receive 1-5 quick downvotes before slowly climbing back to normal again
It’s really unfortunate that an otherwise well moderated community is so easily defeated by this abuse, and that there appear to be nothing being done to fix it despite many obvious and simple solutions (ignore flags and downvotes by those who abuse them, ban shills that resort to whataboutism from posting in threads containing /China/Chinese keywords).
That is not at all an accurate description. This is a classic example of how people feel like the site is biased against their point of view even when it's the dominant one. It's known as the hostile media effect: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
Your comment also broke the site guidelines against insinuations of astroturfing. People having opposing opinions on divisive topics is evidence of nothing other than that the topic is divisive. But the insinuation poisons discussions badly. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN. More on that from a few minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20370575.
This is a ridiculous suggestion. There is never a huge amount of posts that criticize the US gov, so it doesn't get enough viewing time even though there are a huge amount of horrendous actions the US are doing and elsewhere (UK etc).
Banning comments about whataboutism? LMAO. Censorship because people comment about how bad the US are? And youre bothered about Chinese ruling?
