Letting the CCP export its censorship back into the West in the hopes that Google will improve life in China is a hell of a gamble.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...
Or how they then nationalized the company that has access to all the iCloud encryption keys for accessing Apple user messages, pictures, videos, files, etc. at rest:
https://mashable.com/article/china-government-apple-icloud-d...
This is concerning but not surprising. After the Snowden leaks, a buddy of mine kept telling me that it was the tip of tmthe iceberg, that the private sector was even more dangerous than prism. I guess this is what he was talking about.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/googles-sensorvault-ca...
Airlines only remove Taiwanese paraphernalia when flights operates in China - you know complying to domestic Chinese laws. That's completely reasonable stuff that doesn't extend beyond Chinese borders. Has Bing exported censorship back to the West. Has EU right to be forgotten even made it's way to US and Canada? This is just fear mongering.
> Airlines only remove Taiwanese paraphernalia when flights operates in China - you know complying to domestic Chinese laws. That's completely reasonable stuff that doesn't extend beyond Chinese borders.
Three biggest US airlines bow to China Taiwan demand as deadline passes https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-44948599
Giving In to China, U.S. Airlines Drop Taiwan (in Name at Least) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/business/taiwan-american-...
Airlines switching to ‘Taiwan, China’ https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/21... Associated Press found 20 carriers, including Air Canada, British Airways and Lufthansa, that now refer to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing considers Chinese territory, as a part of China on their global websites.
>Three biggest US airlines bow to China Taiwan demand as deadline passes
That was interim solution, if you check AA / United / Delta, they removed references of "China" for Chinese/Taiwanese cities name altogether. Also asking companies to conform to UN recognized sovereign states as bullying is pretty silly.
Your argument appears to be "an independent body also recognizes Taiwan as part of China so airlines should do the same". Here's the problem: the United Nations did so at the behest of China and thus your argument becomes "China dictated that the United Nations recognize Taiwan as part of China and the airlines should bow to the same request." This is circular logic at best.
Which would be true if it weren't a unilateral decision. Obfuscating that through the United Nations doesn't change anything.
You are also incorrect that AA / United / Delta removed references to "China" for Chinese cities. I just tried them, Beijing, Shanghai etc all continue to mention China. Only Taipei's autocomplete does not include a country name. Again, I'm in California, so this contradicts your claim that: "Airlines only remove Taiwanese paraphernalia when flights operates in China".
I'm trying to understand your position. Is it that having ethical reservations about UN resolutions is childish, and the mature thing is to treat UN resolutions as ethically authoritative? Is it that resistance to treating Taiwan as a Chinese possession is childish? Something else entirely?
I honestly don't understand why US whataboutism comes up in every China thread. I have no relation to the US, and we hardly drink their koolaid here in Germany.
Cold hard cash already rules most of the world, including the UN (Saudi Arabia on the Human Rights Council, anyone?). That doesn't mean we have to accelerate this trend for the sake of consistency.
That's factually incorrect making your whataboutism in this comment and one where you replied directly to my comment seem like a deliberate attempt to rationalize the Chinese censorship apparatus.
https://www.newsweek.com/american-airlines-bows-china-delete...
> rationalize the Chinese censorship apparatus.
This is easy to rationalize, though I don't endorse how far China went - China started internet censorship apparatus in response to calls of ethnic violence after the XinJiang riots a decade ago. Facebook and Twitter was blocked post incident primarily because they refused to censor/filter these calls for violence (from both sides). Domestic terrorism doesn't fly in the west anymore, you can say China was prescient in this regards and many western companies lost out due to misplaced naivety. Now Google wants to crawl back when winds in the west is shifting.
Who fucking cares? The PATRIOT Act was in response to the worst terrorist attack on US soil in US history. Three thousand people. I have friends who were in New York then. The Japanese internment camps were in response to Pearl Harbor. If an action is wrong, the impetus doesn't fucking matter, the action is still wrong.
6-4 (Tiananmen) was not ethnic violence, do we agree on that? And the Chinese government does use internet censorship to suppress discussion of it, are you going to deny that?
As far as information control in terms of individual freedom, folks in PRC can just grab and VPN and shitpost or find competing narratives abroad. Access is possible and not even inconvenient. People in the west believes the effects of censorship is so overwhelming that it cannot possibly be circumvented to reach the "truth" that only they can attain. But most PRC folks are complacent with being ignorant. Similar to the plurality of low information readers in the west, who has access to diverse sources but somehow converges to western propaganda talking points comparable to the effects of censorship. Someone posted a western brand awareness and usage article yesterday, where 17% of Chinese internet users regularly use facebook and are aware of western perspectives. Do you think 17% of the west would go out of their way to learn the Chinese perspectives? Potential to be informed =/= informed citizenry.
???
The West recognizes what? The West now endorses Chinese Internet censorship? Western governments now also enforce Internet censorship? Did the White House start calling to Build The Firewall? What are you talking about?
> Access is possible and not even inconvenient.
The Chinese government spends billions of dollars on a system that doesn't work?
> Someone posted a western brand awareness and usage article yesterday, where 17% of Chinese internet users regularly use facebook and are aware of western perspectives.
Who cares about Chinese internet users' fucking Western brand awareness? I care about Chinese people knowing our own history, warts and all.
If you're ignorant about how trivial it is to access vpn and outside info in China then I'm not sure to say. The firewall and grey legislation around vpns is calibrated that low information audience gravitates towards party line while those seeking information has access.
Usage not brand awareness. The numbers suggests more Chinese people are aware of western and Chinese perspectives than vice versa. Leading me to ask, in general, who is actually more informed? Being immersed in both media landscapes allows better critical appraisal of what is actually happening then to pretend that just being in a free media environment somehow makes one more informed.
The structure is what matters. Kings and despots throughout history have frequently ruled fairly and justly. Out of all the decisions they made in that role, they probably made many more fair ones than unjust ones. But their making the right call in any particular case is not a reason they should have had that much power in the first place.
Western social media is stepping up moderation of harassment and calls for violence, but they're making an effort to do so in an accountable and transparent way while doing so. And I don't think even they are accountable enough; I hope that Instagram and WhatsApp really do get split off from Facebook.
> The firewall and grey legislation around vpns is calibrated that low information audience gravitates towards party line while those seeking information has access.
Am I understanding correctly that your position is that this is a good thing, or at least fine? Because this placates the masses which tend more towards violence or other destabilizing actions, while allowing elites to continue to have a robust debate? Is that an accurate characterization of your position?
> The numbers suggests more Chinese people are aware of western and Chinese perspectives than vice versa. Leading me to ask, in general, who is actually more informed?
I'm not worried about American awareness of Chinese perspectives. I'm worried about Americans' missing or inaccurate understanding of American history, e.g. the Lost Cause.
I'm not worried about Chinese awareness of American perspectives. I'm worried about Chinese suppressed or sanitized understanding of Chinese modern history, e.g. June 4th.
I don't give a fuck about Chinese people being able to read Americans' sanctimonious takes on Tiananmen. I want Chinese people to be able to read Liu Xiaobo's take on June 4th, on Charter 08, on 996.
This is actually crux of the issue for me. People are losing their minds over alt-right operating openly and undermining western institutions without applying the parallel to China. China is not a woke place. Chinese nationalism is legitimate problem - widespread calls for retaliatory killings after Uighers terrorist attacks, extreme dissatisfaction with foreign/white privileged of expats, out of control anti-HK/Taiwan/Korean/Japanese sentiment during diplomatic spats - all this is suppressed for civic order and development, and occasionally, very judiciously weaponized. Social media in the last few years have demonstrated that a broadly unfiltered public commons is not conducive to social order. See the shitshow that is Indian MSM nd increasingly runaway Hindu nationalism for the alternative. It's not that I don't value western liberal values, I just don't think China is ready for it now. Escaping middle income trap is more pressing than liberalization in the mid term. Also consider that the Chinese demographic pyramid is dangerously composed of angry, unmarried men. We're all familiar with that demographic right? So yes, the current system is fine in my opinion.
Brief touch on other points: I'm not inclined to give western corporate posturing brownie points until they actually deliver, which by and large China has. Doesn't matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. Well one cat's not catching mice.
>Chinese people to be able to read Liu Xiaobo's take on June 4th, on Charter 08, on 996.
Again, any Chinese person can read this via VPN that takes 10 minutes to setup, by and large the people who are interested does. There's something to be said about the greater Chinese cultural apathy towards politics deliberately engineered by the CPC, but to insinuate that a curious person in the mainland can't be just as informed as someone in the west is false. Personally, I'm more worried about misinformed Americans with enfranchisement and the ability to select loony presidential candidates that upends world order every 4 years than a revisionist Chinese state that has every geopolitical interest to continue the current world order, albeit with a more influential role.
Taiwan lost their seat at the United Nations in an attempt to appease mainland China. So, no, the United Nation isn't an objective source of naming conventions for Taiwan. And, yes, that is absolutely bullying.
And now imagine this comment goes on the top:
> Our best surgeons in the U.S. should fly to China to help them with organ transportation. Without us, they will do organ transportation using those organs anyway. But we have better technology and higher successful rate. So why don't we just go there to help them save more lives?
It's easily forgotten that the nation currently lead by Donald Trump already has this power of international censorship. Doesn't even need hypothetical scenarios to be scary.