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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

Cooperating with China is cooperating with authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

So what's the US's (and the world's) excuse post Nixon's visit to China? The world could have easily continued to isolate China like they do North Korea today.

I don't see why a non-state actor like Apple should try to act like the State Department.

Money, obviously.

I don't know the exact status of iOS in China, but, for example, if iMessage still works there and iOS is still secure then personally I'd call it a victory. Being able to provide a dystopian society with privacy, end-to-end encryption, etc, at the cost of censoring a flag. "Ends justifying the means", etc, etc. We all know the arguments. But the real world is messy.

For reference, I've been to Taiwan. Beautiful country. Censoring their flag in China is a cheesy move on China (and Apple's) part. But again, I'll take that in exchange for the other pro-privacy victories Apple can make.

Nobody uses iMessage in China because SMS is expensive. iCloud data in China is stored in a datacenter in China where the Chinese government can access any data any time they want with no warrant whatsoever.

iMessage isn't SMS so I don't understand your first sentence. That's like saying "Nobody sends email because postal stamps are expensive".

As for the second sentence, iMessage isn't iCloud. And even if the iMessage data is stored in the same data center (which I have no idea), it's end-to-end encrypted so that doesn't help China.

If Apple needs to comply with China's demands, do you think that Apple would refuse to break encryption if China requested it?

Yes. I think Apple would disable iMessage in China entirely before breaking its encryption.

I disagree. But say the option wasn't to disable imessage, but rather break the encryption or stop selling in China? Or stop using your own encrypted icloud storage and use one run by China or stop selling in China?

To buttress your belief, is there any circumstance where they didn't cave to requests from the Chinese government? Or anywhere where they publicly disagreed at least? Honest question as I'm unsure if it has ever happened.

China can't mandate that Apple run an unencrypted messaging system in China. They could demand that Apple not run an encrypted one, but it would be complete nonsense to say "you must operate a message network or you can't sell phones!"

> To buttress your belief, is there any circumstance where they didn't cave to requests from the Chinese government?

I don't see how I could have an answer to that question, because Apple doesn't publicize the times that China asks them to do something and they say no. I would certainly imagine that China has probably asked them to break the encryption on iMessage.

I meant that because iMessage fallback to SMS and you don't know if sending an iMessage to someone will go through iMessage or SMS which might cost you money, that's why nobody uses iMessage.

iMessage isn't iCloud, but iMessages are stored in iCloud, Apple also stores iCloud encryption keys in China. See https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/apple-moves-icloud-encrypt...

it’s pretty easy to disable the fallback

Your response only contributes to the problem, not the solution. If we share wealth (rather than refusing to cooperate or even starting a war to "free" the poor people (war always knows at least one losing side, often two)), the people will be able to have a better life than if we do not. If we refuse to cooperate at all, we shouldn't trade and send things like iPhones (in this case) at all. Sure, they can build their own, but we already have them. Why reinvent the wheel? It goes the same for all other goods and services.

Things like ammunition for the government is different, but in general, goods and services offered to people anywhere usually makes both sides be better off, because that's why people trade: they're both happy with what they receive. Refusing to cooperate because of something that the trading partner (such as an individual in China) cannot easily change... that's not unlike selecting based on someone's skin color.

And this is how extremism wins.

The world's economy has been inter-connected for some time; some part of that computer or phone that you're typing that on, is probably made in China.

Would you please not post flamebait to HN threads and especially not nationalistic flamebait? These discussions are all the same and don't belong on this site.

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

So much bullshit. As a Chinese citizen that lived in America for a long time, I found US government being so much worse than China.

Can't agree more

I'm curious because I don't know a lot about China (other than what Western media reports, which is colored): what was worse in the USA compared to China in terms of government, oppression, etc.?

(I am not from the USA by the way, so don't worry about offending me or anything!)

Wow. That's retarded.

So is working with the US, or Britain, or like 90% of the governments in the world (hell, probably closer to 100%)

It's bad to ignore countries who are actively participating in human rights abuses, but it's not nearly as bad as actively participating in human rights abuses.

Even though the US does participate to some degree (vast homeless populations, the whole separating families at the border thing, etc), it's no where near the scale/magnitude that you see in China.

The US has the largest number of imprisoned citizens despite China and India having populations that are multiples larger as well as how the US deals with collateral damage with things like drone strikes, actual concentration camps for children after it was taught in schools about how bad it was last time the US put japanese in camps, police black sites in Chicago, and various other abuses.

China is not good but the US has zero ground on to say it's better.

If you are a business operating in either nation you are actively participating in human rights abuses or you close down ala Lavabit

In China, they just kill many potential prisoners rather than, you know, inprisioning them. So if you want to compare some unrelated metric, go ahead.

In America they just enslave them and have them work dangerous jobs.

I don't see much difference morally

  #1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.
  #2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
  #3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
  #4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.
  #5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.
  #6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.
  #7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
  #8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
  #9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
  #10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.
  #11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth
  #12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.
  #13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
  #14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.
  #15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.
  #16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
  #17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
  #18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.
  #19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.
  #20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.

I'm not really sure about the point of this post? What are you getting at?

Some of these points I see backing up the issue about China and the US being equivalent morally, based on US morals, but other points don't fit that view.

I mean, you could make an argument that the UK or Germany might not participate as much as China, but the US is certainly one of the world leaders in stomping on human rights. Forget the homeless population and separating families, just look at our mass incarceration programs. We have something like five times the percentage of our population in prison as opposed to China.

My point isn't to say China is good, only that participating in human rights abuses and authoritarianism are endemic to all the major powers and there's no point in singling China out here. If you're working for the government chances are you're working for an organization that is authoritarian and abuses human rights.

It's very easy to criticise US from the high moral ground of your home, where your safety and freedom are guaranteed by the same US of A. But let me ask you: would you rather be a dissident in China or an anti-establishment protester in US?

My safety and freedom aren't guaranteed, they are rewarded by me working in a lucrative job. If I wasn't fortunate to have the career I do there would be no safety or freedom. I'll agree it's easier to be critical of the US in the US as opposed to being critical of China in China but that's not the only thing that matters if you're talking about authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

Nothing is guaranteed, however I can't see how this leads to US - China equivalency w.r.t human rights.

> that's not the only thing that matters Maybe, but you prefer to ignore it altogether when equating China and US

Ya know we kill people in Afghanistan and other countries indiscriminately. Where’s their safety and freedom?

Let's just forget Guantanamo, Iraq, Kuwait, Vietnam, South America, etc. and just focus on the recent border thing, that is way way tamer than what China has done or is doing you know. The truth is there's plenty of guilt to go around many times over probably centuries back in both cases, but let's blame a cellphone company for oppression, that seems logical.

This reminds me of the time when the Taliban were all driving stolen Toyota trucks and congress asked them to explain why they were aiding terrorism. The makers of the automatic rifles they were carrying were never even mentioned of course.

Because they were Klashinkakovs, a Russian design and not made by the American War Machine.

Toyota is not an American company.

I'd wager the trucks came from Texas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Manufacturing_Tex...)

I'd also wager the AKs didn't.

I'm not making a case either way, I'm not entirely sure what your argument is.

That factory is mainly for the american market. The trucks paramilitary groups love is the Toyota Hilux, not sold nor produced in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux#Use_by_militant_g...

-Sent from my iPhone. Made in China.

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