China’s Dystopian “New IP” Plan for a New Internet

We need to write laws now that prohibit this.

We also need our own tech and our own supply chains so this stuff doesn't sneak in.

Bankers are only interested in my actual identity because the government force them to.

Amazon is only interested in my identity to sell me stuff.

In the UK at least a pre paid sim is 99p if you buy it from a shop, you can pay with cash and there's no registration procedure. I doubt we're the only country in the world that works like this.

This is clearly false here in Canada. Open and free Wifi is everywhere, and you can purchase sims with cash and no id.

This is just wrong. Whenever I travel I just get a 30 day or so SIM card. They've available everywhere. Not to mention WIFI access points here and there, e.g. at hotels, coffee shops etc.

You didn’t, and it reeks of upmost arrogance to even assume that you could “force” the world to do such a thing.

Theo Lebryk is an intern at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, where he is pursuing a Master’s in China Studies. His research focuses on media in China. He previously graduated from Harvard University with a joint concentration in Social Studies and East Asian Studies and a minor in Computer Science. After graduation, Theo was awarded a Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship to explore homeless and food culture in Hong Kong.

Me: I’d say he did his homework well.

You're not addressing any of the dystopian points.

China is a tyranny that treats its people like cattle, and when they present a tool that would give them absolute control over their population, all you can do is attack the technical aspects?

But you repeat yourself

We would have to further "break" the fungibility of goods and money to truly enforce this, and ensure we have full provenance and reporting along the supply chain. This does exist in a lot of cases but is complex to enforce and subject to laundering.

Chips from X, materials from Y, finished in country Z. Of course complex modern products can have hundreds of suppliers or more in a tree fanning backwards. Compositions backwards in supply chain can change quickly based on cost of materials or output of Bangalore factory vs Taiwan factory in a particular month, for example.

"Comes from China" is not a binary proposition and if you try to assign a percentage you can come up with many different numbers, all of which can vary over time.

Also, is Taiwan part of China in the labelling scheme? Who makes the decision that e.g. Xinjiang uses slave labour? Is the information provided to the consumer "value neutral" and then you provide a lens on top? Or is there a political body writing the values? Who, exactly? If it's an international forum, is China invited?

Consumers might want to decide based on their sense of global justice, their environmental awareness, their opposition to authoritarian regimes, the presence/absence of potentially harmful substances, religious preference or along many other axes.

Companies with ESG frameworks are having a bear of a time just eliminating e.g. modern slavery from their supply chains, and they have a bunch of leverage with their suppliers and more insight than their customers.

I don't like the lack of information about what we buy either but I'm not sure that fully politicising every purchase is an easy answer.

I care, but the situation is much like conflict minerals. China is going to be relevant in the supply chain of almost any technological product, or at the very least, the tools that went into making it.

Personally I would pay double for products to avoid China, but I do not believe most people can even afford that trade-off if it was practical (and didn't require heaps of upfront research when buying everything from washing machines to batteries).

Unfortunately in practice other considerations get more weight.