Chinese activist Ai Weiwei says Credit Suisse closing foundation's bank account

"Where else could they bank? Bitcoin?"

Given that it was "economic crimes" that China charged him with, and given how China has decided to crack down on bitcoin, then sadly Ai could not easily openly do all his transactions with cryptocurrency.

Already there, this was on HN recently

https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-students-dismissal-spot...

We are actually in a present where dissidents in democratic countries are marked as outlaws in democratic countries. Sorry to tell you this, but the freedoms you thought you had were vacuumed away over the last two decades while you were not looking.

The US democracy has held Jan 6th protesters in jail without bail still awaiting a trial. This is being done to force a guilty plea before trial. Dissidents are marked as outlaws without justice even in democracies.

There you go. They can do that to anyone. Worse part is that he hasn't been formally charged or convicted of a crime.

Maybe it's time to use decentralised alternatives such as cryptocurrencies then?

Yeah! He should just make his own economy. It's a privately controlled global economic system after all.

I'll add a convenient reminder that it is possible to view flagged comments by checking the appropriate box in your profile. If you don't mind the occasional, easily identifiable spam, you too can subvert those who elect censorship as their favored form of disagreement.

The only reason why so many companies are openly in support of LGBTQ+ is that right now it costs them almost nothing and effortlessly paints the illusion of a human face onto their public image.

I don't expect that to last. There are many influential countries that are increasingly intolerant of LGBTQ+ at a government level. If one of them just so much as mumbles something about "moral values", expect all of these over-eager LGBTQ-supporting companies to quietly delete all references that they ever supported this.

> Chilling, and I suspect that western governments will do very little to prevent this kind of extra-territorial control exerted by the CCP.

The US literally locks down countries that they think misbehave.

> western governments will do very little to prevent this kind of extra-territorial control exerted by the CCP.

For the sake of discourse, could you list the countries that are allowed to extert extra-terratorial control.

It is a bit hypocritical considering how often China likes to use the phrase “Do not interfere with internal affairs!”

It's silly to equate market access with extra-territorial control. Credit Suisse wants to court PRC money, they need to be mindful of PRC interests.

Actual Chinese extra-territorial controls in the form of sanctions and other legitimate instruments will come. More foreign banks start operating in the PRC now that the financial market is opening up to foreign institutions, more coupling and ability for PRC to assert legal extra-territorial mechanisms. Until then, this is just banks being prudent out of their own volition. Like Hollywood catering to the Chinese market.

If it’s any consolation, US will probably legislate a zone of exception preventing US banks from cooperating with CCP interests.

It’s disappointing to see American companies and celebrities also cave into the CCP’s pressure. For example consider LeBron James’s spineless parroting of CCP talking points against free speech (https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/467295-uighurs-chin...) and his stance criticizing those who spoke in defense of Hong Kong protesters (https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14/us/lebron-james-nba-china-int...). All of this suggests that despite the woke bonafides of companies like Nike or Disney or sports organizations like the NBA or celebrities like LeBron or The Rock, they too ultimately care mainly about their self interests to the point that they will stand up and defend an illiberal authoritarian genocidal communist government (https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2019-10-14/lebro...). Remember these are the same people and groups that will readily attack America’s values and founding principles. I think you are right about the difficulty of criticizing China but it might be a present reality rather than a future possibility.

Western governments don't even protect their own citizens from this. In fact they encourage it if they deem you a political enemy.

There are many European political dissidents here that had dozens of bank accounts canceled on them. Sometimes the only way to have a bank account after reaching a certain level of popularity is to bank in countries like Georgia, Bulgaria etc. where nobody has heard of you. Until they, too, cancel your account and you're unbanked again and unable to participate in a modern economy.

IMO the only way out of this kind of oppression is crypto, at least in the long term.

> western governments will do very little to prevent this kind of extra-territorial control exerted by the CCP

FACTA - US legislation, impossed upon every financial institution on the planet.

> difficult to criticise China.

Given that currently it is a career-ending move in big enterprise or government to criticise the US right now, that's not unreasonable to think. Especially given that the US is (and has been) in decline.

> western governments will do very little to prevent this kind of extra-territorial control

Yeah remember Meng?

A Chinese businesswoman showed some PPT to a HK based bank, then got arrested by RCMP for "bank fraud", at a time when Canada had no sanctions against Iran.

It's only capitalism if the players are following the same rules. China cheats by abusing human rights, ecological treaties, stealing IP, and is unaccountable to any authority in any meaningful way.

It's like playing poker with a really shitty Teller at the table, with a whipped and abused Penn standing to the side, handing him aces every game. It's getting old. China is not playing on the level. They should be shut out from civilized society until our unless they change their culture.

It is abundantly clear that they will continue to act in bad faith, knowing that there are no consequences for lying, cheating, and stealing.

Where is the "first they came for the Uyghurs" outrage? Where is the relentless criticism of child labor, abuses of women's rights, or anti nuclear proliferation crowd?

They just straight up jacked ARM technology for themselves. The West can conduct business in good faith because we have a set of shared values and expectations of cooperation. We play by the same rules, and can trust each other to the extent that laws and treaties protect us. China's presence in the global markets completely undermines that trust and the underpinnings of cooperation. They are above any law and wield that fact like a club. The experiment has failed, its time to shut them out completely. Stop enabling.

What does that have to do with Switzerland? Credit Suisse is an international organization. When HSBC or Deutsche Bank are doing bad stuff that has little to do with the country where they have been originally established in.

How does capitalism (private ownership of assets) win with this? Your statement presumes government influence over all private assets. That is not a capitalist construct, quite at odds with it in freedom-loving societies.

Instead of staying, 'government influence always wins' (which is both what you're implying and what is being observed here), you've replaced 'government influence' with the word capitalism. Nonsense where words have meaning.

Canceling political dissidents.

If you don't mind me asking, how would you characterize your background and political leanings?

Are they the same person? They seem to have different names and appearance.

> Used to be a fan of him until he actively spreading lies of US election. Turned me off.

You have to look at things from the perspective of those people. They're not part of your domestic political faction, they're dissidents from a foreign country. Western politicians have been mealy mouthed and soft for decades with regards to the PRC. As far as I know, Trump was the first American president to take a hard line against them in my conscious lifetime (even though his motives were unprincipled), and they probably decided to throw their weight behind him lest things return to the status quo and they lose hope for the thing they really care about: China.

See most other Chinese dissidents given sanctuary in the US so they may be wielded as propaganda mouth pieces / geopolitical tools. Ultimately these people are more interested in undermining the land they left then the wellbeing of their host countries, i.e. survey of 300K Hong Kong Canadians living in HK indicated their primary concern during last federal election was wellbeing of HK not Canada. Countries reliant on immigration ultimately imports drama from their most vocal diasporas, but very few managed to gain clout like the anti PRC crowd who has heavy support from the US political establishment. Though hilariously, at this point, FLG / Epochtimes has caused more harm to US society than it ever did to China. I mean it's their right since they are mostly naturalized Americans afterall, but in my experience diasphora democracy activists tend not to care about democracy of their new "home" because their identity and paycheck doesn't depend on it.

He is much better than average dissidents who are usually worse on integrity. It's a very mysterious phenomenon that the dissidents, whether inside China or overseas, almost all happened to have integrity issues. A lot of them including a few famous dissednets, are quite abnormal. There's an exception named ZHANG heci who keeps his integrity but has been often attacked by his fellows.

It's also very interesting that western journalists have been hiding the integrity issues related to Chinese dissidents by portraying them as heroes until last election that a lot Chinese dissidents involved in US domestic politics. WSJ is one example.

Western public are not aware of this wired issue because most of them don't read Chinese. For those who read Chinese, here's a site that exists for almost 20 years.

http://www.duping.net/XHC/list.php?bbs=11

It's very good for homo sapien research which is not available very often. Need some patience to understand though.

He also called Germany "still a Nazi country" because one(!) Taxi driver in Berlin refused service after threw an entitlement fit. That's after he lived in Germany for many years and was supported by the government in every way possible. Dude has delusions of grandeur.

I don't understand your comment. Your link does not seem to be about Ai Weiwei.