Hacker News Reader

Comment by PixyMisa | Hacker News Reader

It's a China vs. the world issue. China has been spying on everyone, for years. Political, military, commercial, makes no difference.

View on HN

For the EU it's really just the question if you want to be spied on by the US or by China. In recent years, trade with China has probably helped the economy much more than trade with the US. At the same time, China (while certainly acting out of self interest), is somewhat predictable in their actions.

Europeans are really critical of China and their policies (esp. their human rights record). But they don't like the US that much more (apart from the Brits) and with a struggling economy you really don't want to make them choose between money and ideology.

As a european, I'll take US over China any day.

Anti-US circlejerk is mostly confined in Western europe (sans Brits). Eastern europe has totally different sentiment.

>China, is somewhat predictable in their actions

Yeah, wow, it must be completely impossible for someone without decades of US residency or decades of intense interest in the US to understand the US government!

I like to flatter myself that after 58 years of living in the US, I have recently started to be able to predict most of the major decisions of the US government. (Youtube videos of speeches and interviews by Peter Zeihan and George Friedman helped me in my understanding. Most of the senior editors and reporters at, e.g., the New York Times and the Washington Post, although passionately interested in the US government, have only a shallow understanding of it IMO.)

Correct me if I’m wrong but if you get an Apple phone you’ll be spied on by no one. Relatively speaking, of course.

Seems like we have forgotten all about Snowden.

You can easily find examples where you can replace China with the US. And now with the current American leadership I can't say personally that I trust the US more than China at this point.

Would you prefer daily life like in US or China?

I haven't been to US, but all my friends that visited it were quite disappointed with quality of life there (coming from Poland). But I've recently spent a few weeks in China and I'm really impressed with how advanced it is in terms of infrastructure and technology, I don't think US or even EU is anywhere near where China is right now. So it's not as simple a comparison as it first appears.

It's not only about QoL. Personal freedom, government accountability and democracy is as important. If not even more important. Coming from ex-Soviet state you should be aware of that (saying this as your neighbour from Lithuania).

Even if democracy in West (or at home) is far from perfect, it's lightyears ahead of China.

My guess is that during your visit you never left the Tier 1 cities of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing.

Your guess is wrong, other than big cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Xi'an) I've also visited smaller cities (under 100K) and villages in central China.

I wouldn't want to live in either country, but for entirely different reasons for each.

lol you watched too many hollywood movies growing up that you can't imagine daily life an another country being as good or better than living in America you silly goose

They weren't talking about simply any other country, but China specifically. In terms of government interference and freedom of thought, at this point I think the US is still pretty clearly the better place. From the point of view of the EU, though, it is edging closer to China.

I'll take cleaner air and no social score thankyouverymuch.

Why would you live on those countries? US taxation law implementation is like the Chinese suppression of your other freedom.

So has the US.

> It's a China vs. the world issue. China has been spying on everyone, for years. Political, military, commercial, makes no difference.

So has the US though, even on it's allies as Snowden showed us.

Yep, and China has been playing the same game with its neighboring countries for a while. Remember how China responded when South Korea brought THAAD for missile defense?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com