Taiwan President's cup of coffee leads to a $165M share plunge | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan President's cup of coffee leads to a $165M share plunge

theage.com.au

16 pointsakeck6 comments

Man, if this doesn't highlight the potential threat of a large Google China business then I don't know what does. How does Google plan to both serve the Chinese market and maintain uncensored non-Chinese search engines which mostly show results asserting Taiwan is a separate country?

Am I supposed to believe the same Chinese government who, for example, sees the extradition of Jho Low to Malaysia (mastermind of a multibillion-dollar embezzlement of Malaysia's public funds) [1] as a "bargaining chip" would somehow not try to use its market access as leverage over Google's non-Chinese search results?

The more I think about Google in China, the more I'm shocked that Google either hasn't considered these scenarios or, even worse, doesn't care.

[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/malaysia-says-china-harbors-1md...

It is worrying to see China on the economic offensive in its marginalization of Taiwan. Has Beijing ever behaved so aggressively in the past?

I am sorry if you are not aware of history, but such a comment is very laughable where I am from.

Rather than laugh at them, maybe you should explain. "History" is a very broad subject, and very few people, if any, are well versed in the history of every country on Earth.

For decades, China has been gradually diplomatically and economically marginalizing Taiwan, but it seems like these are recent escalations. Pray tell, what are you referring to? The various Straits Crises? I am not referring to military escalation, which is more bluffs and threats, but concrete aggression by cutting off Taiwan's diplomatic and economic partners. Are you referring to CSSTA? As deplorable as that pact was, it was not signed with the same overt aggression that this incident, and recent moves against airlines from calling Taiwan a country, possessed.

To provide some better perspective, this link has a picture of the incident, and described in greater detail that the mechanism of action wasn’t simply some newspaper rallying for a boycott.

https://medium.com/@shanghaiist/taiwan-coffee-chain-85-c-dis...

Apparently, the parent company Gourmet Master Co. runs a chain of cafes, which used apps to facilitate orders via smart phone, leading to a drop in impulse buys?

I dunno, something tells me regular people just aren’t that rabid about territorial disputes regarding places they’ll never visit, or might only visit once or twice during a vacation.

If America were to entertain the option of trading Hawaii for Puerto Rico, as state #50, would people go nuts? I probably wouldn’t, but then again, I’m not most people.

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