The only real solution to your problem is to move to a free country. Take it while you till have that option.
As far as technical solutions, how good are they at tracking down individual, private VPN sessions? Setup OpenVPN on a friend's server and don't advertise it.
Just don't get so hung up on the politics and you'll find that the water's warm :)
By not caring about the politics, you enable the problem. The CCP is making a mint off the US and becoming unstoppable. Society is crumbling and the rights and freedoms of the average citizens are falling as quickly. Culture? Where does the CCP fit into that? Communism, when did that become China's culture?
Stepping on 1 billion people to raise up 300 million is not progress.
If you have absolutely no ability to adapt to local food and need to have everything as you had it at home, then it will definitely cost you. Immigrants to the west can't always find their favorite food or products, either.
About the CCP making a mint off the US: Keep in mind that is the US that's selling treasuries.
Actually that has more to do with Chinese currency manipulation than anything else. By refusing to adjust their currency appropriately, foreign goods are unaffordable to most domestics. This is the reason their economy is growing at amazing rates -- it's not magic. Long term this will cause problems, such as local property bubbles and potentially tariffs imposed on their exports as other countries get pissed.
I suppose having functional health care might make up for spotty connectivity.
Actually - could you email me? I'd like to get an idea of cost-of-living in different cities in China. I'm a technical translator (and do some sysadmin) and so continual connectivity is drop-dead necessary for my livelihood, but about a year or two from now I'd really like to go to China for a year or two to poke around and get to know it.
Tough choice. Somewhere in the 'hackers hobbies' threads someone details that he had to pay $100K out of pocket for medical expenses.
As for the connectivity, simply set up a VPN on a box that you alone own and use and I'm sure you'll be fine.
But, I guess you are back in the safety and security of the good ol' USA, so it ain't your problem anymore.
As far as "quality" IT solutions go. Well, lets see here: I helped the Shanghai gov make an e-workflow solution for procurement. This cut down on costs and kickbacks a lot. I helped several Chinese banks become online banks. Some of my middleware code processes billions in transactions without breaking a sweat.
I'm sorry you don't feel safe and secure in China. I was at Home Depot last week with my son. About an hour after I left, a guy shot and killed another man on isle 13...same isle we were on. I never feared for the safety of my family in Shanghai.
--Ben F
I think that may be very much debatable. No videos, no blogs, no web 2.0 could also mean less distractions to get real, technical work done.
The 'red scare' seems to be alive and well.
Lack of connectivity is a problem, but it is a technical problem. The suggestion that someone in China would go to jail or worse for asking a question is what got me irritated.
It's simply misinformation and fear mongering.
If you went all out against the government as a foreigner I still think they'd just run you out of the country, rather than jail you to avoid a diplomatic incident.
The people that are most at risk in China from the government are the dissidents that openly confront the government about various issues and the people that chip away at the powerbase from below.
Of course it is absolutely reprehensible that free speech is not protected and that there are so many corrupt officials there, but the problems are rather deep seated and for the most part it will be the Chinese people that will one day solve this.
Compared to the implosion of Russia and the abject poverty as well as the rise of the Mafia that you can directly trace back to the 'vlasti' in the former Soviet Union China is doing reasonably well, they could have done a lot worse.
They also could have done significantly better than they're doing today but for that to happen they first have to get rid of the old guard and they're not going to let go without a real fight.
The play the ruling class in China is making is one where they try to give the people just enough bread and games that they won't rise up against them in the longer term. It's a fine line they're riding and I think in the long run they'll lose. Time will tell.
Anybody that goes to China to live there from the West has my blessing, they're the people that are entrepreneurial at heart, seeking out new frontiers and gambling their fortune on it.
Why? Two of my friends are doing the exact same thing (only their businesses are registered) and they're doing just fine. One moved there from the Netherlands, the other from Hungary.
> And trying to run a business off the books? The punishment for that is severe enough here in the US, I cannot imagine what it is there.
Neither can I, but that's not the same as having information.
> The only real solution to your problem is to move to a free country.
His s.o. wants to be in China, that's a tough choice you're giving him there.
You mean a free country like the US perhaps:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-08/betonsports-ex-c...
> Take it while you till have that option.
Are you suggesting they will restrict his ability to travel? Jail him perhaps?
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-08/betonsports-ex-c... "
I don't find it difficult to distinguish a country which by and large abides by the rule of law---even if one thinks upon occasion that the law is an ass---with a country that barely pretends.
And we don't know what's going to be the long term consequences of the PRC's steadily increasing crackdown on the Internet. The current ruling class is clearly determined to not see a repeat of Tiananmen Square; not getting in their way strikes me as a very good idea, even if that means running a normal Internet business has become impossible.
Running an Internet business in China is not impossible. I ran and helped others run them for 10 years. The Internet censoring can be a problem at times but is not a top factor in your success or failure as a business.
I worked for a client in Shanghai to clear him of Fraud allegations (just to get it out of the way; he was beyond clearly innocent - competitors had planted "evidence" and reported him). One of the most memorable things he said (and I feel this sums up Chinese hierarchy to a tee) was:
The legal system here is absolutely great. It's when they decide not to use it that things get dicey
As to what your client went through...all I can say is there are bad people everywhere. Rule #1 for me in China is "Don't do business with shady people or in market segments dominated by shady people". I think you can apply this rule anywhere.
There's the crucial difference I feel.
(though on the other hand it's not as bad a picture as some people like to paint. You just have to be sensible and keep your head down)
Heck, he could have joined Antigua in bringing this before the WTO in 2003: http://www.antiguawto.com/WTODispPg.html
The law was published, well publicized and I find it very difficult to believe he didn't know or ever question why 98% of his business was as a result of it. That's different in nature from web sites steadily disappearing due to the Great Firewall of China. You could of course assume that any access you have to the outside will disappear some day, but you then wouldn't build a business that is based on international Internet access.
Having reasonably clear constitutions (big C and small c), laws and rules allows one to plan for the future and focus on serving customers and the like instead of worrying if the state will inadvertently shut you down (I assume we're both assuming that what the poster is trying to do as a business is not against PRC state policy, it's just collateral damage).
The human right violations in China notwithstanding the majority of the people there have roughly the same ability to plan their lives and the future ahead of them as a person in the US would.
It's just that instead of relying on laws and judges they rely on corruption to stay out of trouble.
China is slowly improving in this respect, the laws are applied more consistently and corruption is slowly reduced in the eye of the public as the means to a way to deal with authorities.
It will take at least another lifetime, or maybe longer, after all it took a long time to mess it up so it will take a long time to repair it.
But anybody that is seriously comparing the situation in China today with 1989 is really out of touch with what is happening in China.
The Chinese government is caught between a rock and a hard place too, they have serious problems of their own making that they can not repair easily without risking a Soviet style melt down. Their information policies are an exponent of an older faction in their government that wants to go back to the past or at a minimum freeze the situation as it is today. But the seeds of market forces have been planted and there really is no reversing the trend.
Compare with the RIAA in the United States for a good analogy, their 'business model' is mostly dead but they're holding on for dear life and using every trick in the book to make it last as long as they can.
Eventually, they will lose, and the trend is irreversible, the people in China will never give up the rights they've gained in the last 20 years.
Sorry if the question sounds kinda narrow, but it seems like a bottleneck to a lot of problems. In my limited knowledge of Chinese politics from surfing, it seems that the faction of engineers among the newer generation of Chinese politicians happen to be quite enlightened, though they have to compete with the children of the previous communist leaders who came to power through nepotism.
It just reminds me of the whole thing Europe had to go through not so long ago.
When Mao Zedong died in '76 he left behind a mixed bag of good and bad, he managed to keep China together in spite of serious internal pressures between ethnic groups, but in the process killed millions (some estimates run as high as 80 million people) and left behind a country that was on the brink of economic collapse.
After Deng Xiaoping took over the focus became the economy, less the ideology, which I think was more seen as a way to remain in power, rather than as a real guide to how to run the country. The 'party' became a device rather than a place for true believers.
Over the last 30 years then, slowly but surely Chinese officials have tried to both hold on to their power while staving off a revolution of a dissatisfied populace by giving them access to elements of the 'free market' in a piece-meal fashion.
The real benefit of this gradual release has been that a Soviet style implosion was avoided, the downside is that many of the old power structures remain, and that corruption is, in spite of a serious effort to combat it still a huge problem.
The ruling class in China is limited to a relatively small group of people (as compared to the size of the Chinese population), not unlike the Bush and Kennedy families in the United States, only without the nicety of a public election.
One of the reasons why I think Chinese people in power are so scared of all this communications power their underlings have is that it would allow them to effectively organize a protest that could not be struck down so easily.
Every so many years the 'old guard' dies off and has to be replaced by new people, and - surprise, surprise - these tend to be family members of the previous old guard, who apparently are the only Chinese people that are able to govern this country. It's a dynasty in anything but name.
The nepotism you allude to is alive and well at the highest levels, but below there is slowly a real change of the guard happening, and these people are not satisfied with being relegated to just being 'implementors', they want real power.
And they'll sooner or later get it, but I don't know if that's on a timescale of 20 years or 100's of years.
All that's needed for that to happen is a connection between the potential mob and the higher cadre of the government below they dynasty figures, and the thing that holds it off is gradual economic reform. If they manage to turn China around to the point where the economy is strong enough that a large majority of the Chinese populace is satisfied with their lot it will remain a peaceful transition and those that brokered it will probably remain in power for a long time.
If they mess up, if China gets hit by a severe economic crisis or if they overplay their hand then all bets are off.
From this post, you are indicating that if the law is published and clear, then its ok? I've found it very easy to understand Chinese laws. What's your point?
Perhaps some web sites are being blocked as a competitive measure. Are you saying a country and government must engage in free and open trade? What if they choose to play the international trade game different?
There are enough other sites with information on China's civil rights abuses that you should be able to duck Duck Go it ;)
Living in a country with little or no respect for the law and expecting a reasonable outcome is not rational. You cannot extrapolate the experiences of your friends to cover the whole system, you don't have enough data. History shows us that China can be very ruthless in enforcing their idea of laws.
Simply asking for resources with a statement that you'll be forced to leave if you can't work will most likely not result in a jail sentence or even any action at all.
Without proof that's just scaremongering about China.
We all know China has human rights abuses, but if you read the charter on human rights then you'd know that there is almost no single country that does not have their share of that.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/us-human-rights/page.do?id=1011100
Of course I can not extrapolate the experience of my friends to the whole system, but neither can you extrapolate the other way around and say that there is absolutely no reason in China at all and that a mere request would get you punished.
Unless you can back that up with proof.
In some 'free' countries it is even illegal to talk about the state muzzling you or turning over information:
I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiments, but alot of the arguments and especially analogies you're using in this discussion are intellectually dishonest.
And it's not the only example of such a law, and not all of them have been ruled un-constitutional.
I don't know what you mean with 'intellectually dishonest', all I'm trying to do is to point out that there is plenty wrong in China but we in the so-called 'free west' have enough beams in our own eyes to preclude us from going all 'oh my' about China without qualifications.
The anti-China sentiment here seems to be for the most part based on media and fear of the unknown rather than on solid facts, and you could make exactly the same case about the US and various other 'free' countries.
I'm all for criticizing human rights violations, but then let's be fair and even handed about it, instead of suggesting that a simple request could get you in trouble with the law in China, which as far as I know from those that I know that live and work in China is simply not true.
I also note that I was the one to step up and actually do something about this particular problem in this particular instance.
While I'm painfully aware that the US is at a point on the spectrum far from what I consider to be ideal, that point is very much closer to my ideal than the point China occupies, and even the point most other western democracies occupy (that last was hugely disappointing to me when I realized it).
The comment that struck me as most intellectually dishonest was the parallel you drew between the arrest of the British(?) businessman engaging in business which is illegal in the US, with US customers residing and present in the US when the business was conducted, with the arrest of a US citizen and/or foreign provider of marijuana in which the transaction occurs completely outside of the US where they claim no jurisdiction. To be sure there are many cases in which the US Govt oversteps its jurisdictional boundaries and they are not hard to find, so I found that comparison to be questionable.
Lastly, I saw lower down in the comments that you volunteered your services to the OP and found it admirable, but I fail to see what that has to do with anything.
Edit: I'm also not sure why you're getting downvoted on valid comments, even if I don't agree with them.
If you're just as up-to-date to Dutch law as I am on the laws of the United States and you're an American than my hat is off to you ;)
Once again, apologies.
The things that most bother me about the US is the increased collaboration behind the scenes when it comes to telcos and the NSA, most of that is invisible but every now and then you get a glimmer of what's going on and it is simply scary.
Furthermore, the US intelligence services have already at least once in the past used their information to conduct industrial espionage on behalf of a US company abroad (search for enercon).
The fact that any or all of that is in the past makes little or no difference to me, it suggests strongly that there is stuff going down today, just that we won't know about it for a while, if ever.
As for the Marijuana/Betonsports analogy, I think it is perfectly legal, in both cases the United States has nothing to do with what is going on, they are illegally projecting their laws to have effect outside of their borders.
The real reason why this case went down the way it did is not because betting in the US is illegal, the US government would simply like their cut. Here in NL the exact same thing is happening and I'm as much against it as I think betonsports should have been allowed to operate.
A government should not have any say in how a foreign company runs its business.
> Lastly, I saw lower down in the comments that you volunteered your services to the OP and found it admirable, but I fail to see what that has to do with anything.
As for what that has to do with anything, I thought that it showed that I concede there is a problem, but instead of berating the OP for making stupid choices in life (which I think he has not made, even though I suggested that he could move, but that's some of the sentiment above) instead of the 'wise' ones to go and live in a 'free' country instead I chose to act. Talk is cheap.
> I'm also not sure why you're getting downvoted on valid comments, even if I don't agree with them.
As for the downvotes, it goes with the territory, HN used to be the place where you could have an argument and be on the un-popular side of it without a bunch of downvotes but that time is mostly gone.
I agree with you that China and the US are not at the same point when it comes to 'freedom', but both have a long way to go (as do most other countries), and the situation in China is not nearly as bad as some here would have you believe.
That's just fear mongering.
Many things that our intelligence agencies do disturbs me as well, and in fact the policy on the NSA telecom cooperation case as well as other areas where I consider the government to be acting unconstitutionally are my biggest gripe with the Obama administration.
Back to marijuana betonsports: I still disagree. That type of betting is strictly prohibited, and while I think that law should be removed, it is a perfectly valid law to enforce, despite its being driven by a desire for tax revenue and a large dose of hypocrisy. The fact that the provider of the service is not in the US means that they generally will not be gone after as long as they remain outside the US (assuming they are not breaking their own country's laws) unless their own country agrees for some reason that they should be extradited. However once they set foot on US soil the US govt is well within its rights to arrest them. They did break a US law interacting with people under US jurisdiction. The appropriate marijuana comparison in my opinion, would be when a US citizen mail ordered marijuana from someone who is allowed to export it under their local laws. Ignoring any illegal actions taken by other people to get the drugs into the US, should the marijuana dealer be immune to arrest when they enter the US?
As far as the "must leave china" comments, I agree, and now I see why you made that comment. I sometimes tend to disconnect specific comments I want to respond to from the larger discussion, so please don't take any comments I made as implicit agreement with the people you're already arguing with. ;) And I'd tend to say that just about everywhere is much more towards the middle of the freedom spectrum than most people believe. Its just so much easier to think in black and white than all those greys that make up the real world.
I disagree with you there, it was the people in the US that were under US jurisdiction, betonsports was not an American company and so American jurisdiction does not apply to them. The fact that the guy was arrested on a sealed warrant is quite telling, if he was really in violation of the law in his jurisdiction they would have applied for his extradition instead. The US would like its law to extend to all the countries in the world, but in turn does not even allow its citizens to stand trial abroad when for instance accused of war crimes.
Incidentally, I feel the same about France trying to apply its laws to Yahoo! and Ebay, and Italy trying to apply its laws to Google (though, in both cases the company involved did have a presence on the soil of those countries, but said presences were absolutely not involved in the perceived transgressions).
I prefer to see the grays :)
Keeps me sane and stops me from going all out about 'how great' the place where I happen to live is, a bit of perspective is badly needed.
> They did break a US law interacting with people under US jurisdiction. The appropriate marijuana comparison in my opinion, would be when a US citizen mail ordered marijuana from someone who is allowed to export it under their local laws. Ignoring any illegal actions taken by other people to get the drugs into the US, should the marijuana dealer be immune to arrest when they enter the US?
Good question. My point of view would be 'absolutely not'.
And my main reason for feeling that way is that it should not be a requirement of a business abroad to even be aware of all the laws and statues of countries where they are not based when doing business over the internet. If the bets were legal in England it doesn't matter whether a US person visits in person or the transaction takes place online.
The drugs scenario you describe is being acted out every day by the way.
Thats why I used it. And it makes those dealers criminals in the US. I didn't mean he was under US jurisdiction when he broke the law, I meant he broke a US law which had effect in the US where the law applies. The US acknowledges that he did not break the local law where he was at the time, but he was one half of an action (or actually I guess millions of actions) that was in violation of US law and took effect under US jurisdiction. I can't remember what it is called, but someone in a reddit or HN discussion a few weeks ago introduced me to the legal concept whereby being a party to such a transaction extends personal jurisdiction to include you. Since he was not breaking UK law he could not be extradited, but once he was on US soil he could be arrested for the crime he committed.
I was discussing at work the other day how I am what I described as an "internet libertarian" so I'm also opposed to all of those laws being enforced against actions on the internet, but I don't dispute the legal right they have to do it.
>it should not be a requirement of a business abroad to even be aware of all the laws and statues of countries where they are not based
Unfortunately, as with laws in most places (I'm not aware of any such places actually), ignorance is not a defense. While it may be taken into account while determining your punishment, it does not absolve you of guilt. The judge in that case specifically addressed, when a request for a lesser sentence was made, her belief that the defendant knew what he was doing was a violation of US law.
>My point of view would be 'absolutely not'.
From your explanation I take it you misread the question, and actually believe that this person should not be arrested (and should be immune). Lets take it to the extreme then, and suppose that I live in a country where hiring contract killers is legal and only the actually murderer can be punished. If I paid for someone in the US to be murdered, the US government should not be able to arrest me when I come to the funeral?
The internet does make it much easier to do business with people all over the world, and that should be taken into account when trying to apply local laws to foreign actors, but saying that a sovereign state should have no right to take action against people who violate their laws (in which part or all of the action takes place or has effect within their territorial jurisdiction) goes way too far.
I think he meant to say, "while there are still free countries in this world".
Ask any of your black friends if they think they live in a free country. Ask latinos in Arizona. Ask gay couples who want to get married.