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Comment by ucha | Hacker News Reader

A free trade agreement must be abided by both parties.

By prohibiting Chinese companies from operating on US soil, Americans aren't renouncing their values or losing the moral high ground as long as companies from other free countries are allowed to operate. The actions of the US admin are long overdue and Europe must muster up the courage (and incur the costs) of taking a similar position now.

Saying if some countries aren't allowed to freely trade on American soil then none should is a non-sequitur.

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If this policy was applied across the board there would be a lot less complaining, but this is obviously targeting a company because they pissed off the president.

The united states is in no way making this a universal policy, and is clearly just doing favoritism.

One way of interpreting is that this is a private company which pissed off the president.

Another way is that this is a company beholden to our geopolitical adversary that intentionally interfered in our domestic politics.

Yep, what so sad is things have become so transparently partisan. If it were Telegram or Yandex interfering on behalf of Putin, there would be endless hours of call outs about the abuse and need for sanctions, but because it’s China (who have economic sway on a lot of corps and pols), it’s unfashionable to call them out and castigate them (by most media and pols).

> it’s unfashionable to call them out and castigate them

This is an exaggeration. Anti-China sentiment has been surprisingly uncontroversial and bipartisan. It’s actually one of the only things the American left/right can agree on right now.

Really the problem is reducing countries, China or America, to a single entity with a single will as if this was the middle ages and each was being run by a monarch.

The problem is that China has done some specific extremely bad things - Uighurs, Hong Kong; as well as some normal things (competing against US companies) and some things that may be normal but are opaque (how many social networks are beholden to US intelligence services? how many apps snoop the clipboard?). Conflating them all into "China bad" makes it harder to make specific demands that can be widely supported.

Putting kids in cages isn't as bad as the Uighurs? Separating families at the border isn't similar? C'mon... we are just as shitty in the US as other countries any more.

Unfortunately the treatment of the Uighurs is even worse.

It's either unregulated social networks are a threat to free and fair elections or they are not.

If you have the former position, which seems to be embraced by the majority of HN users, you can't accept to have Tik Tok, a chinese controlled social network, taking over everyone under 30 in the US.

How would this not be a major threat? As opposed to bot farms on FB/Twitter controlled by foreign actors?

> How would this not be a major threat? As opposed to bot farms on FB/Twitter controlled by foreign actors?

Bot farms are symmetrical - you can use them to support Democrats or Republicans.

TikTok is asymmetrical - it can be used by the owner to support one side or the other, but users of the platform have no influence on this.

FB and Twitter aren't owned by someone?

Also, if bot farms can sway elections I would either want them to be pliable to more than just Democrats and Republicans.

Facebook and Twitter are both owned by someone, but the primary driver of what content you see is your social graph, not their magical algorithms. (though this is decreasing with both)

With TikTok, the primary determinant of what you see in your feed is what they choose to show you - and it could be from anyone in the world, with any degree of separation from you.

> Another way is that this is a company beholden to our geopolitical adversary that intentionally interfered in our domestic politics.

Does "that" in this sentence refer to the geopolitical adversary (China), or the company beholden to them (Tik Tok)?

(Linguistically it could be either, but I'm wondering if I missed a story about Tik Tok interfering in domestic politics)

The “that” I intended is TikTok, a reference to this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/07/tiktok-...

TikTok tends to be apolitical and heavily moderated, so having this go viral was unusual.

I think we all know that geopolitical adversaries interfere on USA domestic politics mainly using USA owned social network, in particular Facebook and Twitter.

As far as the united states intelligence agencies are concerned, so did russia in the 2016 elections. We seem to be cozening up to them with no issue.

I don't think you're making a fair comparison.

Russia bought ads on Facebook, a US owned platform.

China has actual state actors in leadership at Tiktok's parent company Bytedance, a Chinese owned company.

In Tiktok's case there is unlimited potential for the Chinese government to influence the platform.

Didn’t Russia do a lot more than buy ads? I thought they ran a huge fake account network and intentionally radicalized US citizens.

Seems pretty serious to me.

> geopolitical adversary that intentionally interfered with our domestic politics

Pot, meet kettle.

"Intentionally interfered in out domestic policies"

Which ones, pray tell?

I don't think that's particularly obvious. Lots of people raised serious concerns about TikTok, and lots of organizations banned it, long before the President started leaning in.

Since Chinese companies are partially owned by the Chinese government, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.

Having sat in meetings with Chinese companies, in China, with their 'party member" representative directing the meeting and talking about the "desires of the state."...........

What are you even talking about? Where's the law that Chinese companies cannot freely operate in the US? They can but they have to abide by the local laws. Just like US companies in China, European companies in the US or American companies in Europe.

I really hope Europeans take a closer look at Tesla. Just force them to sell their European business to VW or Daimler or ban them from the market. The horrendous privacy laws in the US should be enough of a justification - those are completely against European values anyway. And even if they aren't, it's not like fact or proof matters anymore. Just accuse and then force them to sell. Maybe that has to happen before other Americans see how ridiculous all of this is.

>What are you even talking about? Where's the law that Chinese companies cannot freely operate in the US? They can but they have to abide by the local laws.

It's probably related to the forced technology transfers[1], or requiring that chinese operations must be a under a joint venture with a local partner controlling at least 50%

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/forced-technology-transfer-ftt-...

Maybe I missed something but an American law would be required to answer the question I asked.

> Where's the law that Chinese companies cannot freely operate in the US

CFIUS [1]. Exon-Florian [2].

The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act [3]. Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 [4].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investm...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exon–Florio_Amendment

[3] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents...

[4] https://www.ustrademonitor.com/2018/08/foreign-investment-ri...

It doesn't apply to China specifically. The end result is for the rest of the world to understand that operating in the US is as risky as operating in China... BTW if I was tik tok I would sell myself to a European entity.

> doesn't apply to China specifically

FIRRMA was drafted specifically to deal with China.

> operating in the US is as risky as operating in China

False equivalence. American laws need to be debated and passed. Party decisions don't. American actions are constrained by the Constitution. Party actions are not. Et cetera.

> if I was tik tok I would sell myself to a European entity

Tik Tok are almost certainly in flagrant violation of GDPR.

> A free trade agreement must be abided by both parties.

Is there a free trade agreement that China infringes?

> Americans aren't renouncing their values or losing the moral high ground as long as companies from other free countries are allowed to operate.

If you support your "values" only on a reciprocal basis, essentially you renounce them. And you certainly lose the moral high ground when you try to get others to adopt these values.

>If you support your "values" only on a reciprocal basis, essentially you renounce them. And you certainly lose the moral high ground when you try to get others to adopt these values.

I can't agree with that at all. I hold non-violence as a value, but I'm also going to defend myself if attacked and I don't think that means I renounce my values or lose any moral high ground.

There are plenty of situations where supporting a high-minded value requires reciprocation.

Then you don’t hold absolute non violence as a value. You hold non violent unless violence is necessary as a value.

If you did hold absolute non violence as a value, then yes, you would not respond to violence against you with violence even in defense.

Values are not binary.

So who said America holds free and open trade as an absolute value that we'd uphold even when faced with partners not willing to uphold that value?

You just decided to add extra constraints to my argument for no reason.

Is there a free trade agreement that’s being broken?

From what I can see, China does not allow free trade. While the US did.

And because this was so “unfair”, the US decided “fuck it, we don’t want free trade either”.

It won’t gain the US much, and will drastically hurt it going forward, especially considering how much the US has benefited from its open business environment in the past.

Honestly, this is pretty much the definition of childishness. You don’t find something fair so you react to it, instead of actually considering the benefits and downsides of an action before making it.

It’s the immaturity and short sightedness of the American government’s behavior, which is the complete opposite of how the US has acted in the past as far as business is concerned, at least, is what will hurt it the most.

> And because this was so “unfair”, the US decided “fuck it, we don’t want free trade either”.

The US didn't do anything like that in fact. You're inventing that premise, broadening what's going on as though it applies to every context when it really applies specifically to China.

As one prominent example, Shopify hasn't required permission to build their $128 billion juggernaut ecommerce platform, riding the US economy like it was a native US company to do it. Neither has Spotify, Trump isn't threatening to ban them.

And you don't need permission to use eg Stripe Atlas to start some giant new tech start-up, riding the US market to great riches. You can just go do it, right now. Just like you could ten years ago. You won't have to pay bribes to anyone to be allowed into the US market, or to be allowed to stay in the US market.

I can freely access eg Baidu and Yandex from the US, despite the context with China and Russia. How does that work the other direction from inside China? Can you freely sign up for Facebook while inside of China?

You can build the next Twitter, KiK, Viber, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Reddit, Imgur, etc. - riding the very comprehensive and strong US free speech protections - without the permission of the US Government. Try that in China and you won't get very far.

The US should treat China as it treats the US, and no better.

>The US should treat China as it treats the US, and no better.

TikTok would love that 50/50 JV with a FAANG / with tech transfer instead of sale, if only treatment were proportional and reciprocal.

Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook ALL operate in China without being SOLD to the Chinese government. So, why should we enforce a ban on TikTok only...?

I know this isn't the forum for it, but I'll just put the FACT out there: Trump has been continually bullied and mocked on TikTok. Trump is an autocratic dictator wannabe sooooo. 2+2 people.

Google, Twitter and Facebook are all fully banned in China.

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