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Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why is anybody still surprised.

China has no qualms invading privacy of anybody. They will try any and every way to get whatever they need and they are pretty effective at it.

Ever read about making business in China? What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there. If you point it out they will back off and try somewhere else, ad nauseam. It is practically part of Chinese culture and upbringing.

Why do you think "chinese" is practically synonym to "cheap and most likely defective"?

Just say no to Chinese phones and TVs and internet services, because you WILL be exploited. It is not a question if but rather when and whether you will or will not know about it.

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> Chinese culture and upbringing

You can't post slurs like this to HN. Nationalistic, racial, and/or ethnic flamewar is not welcome either. I'm sure you can make your substantive points without any of that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hi dang.

I have nothing against Chinese people.

On the other hand what I described is day to day reality doing business in China and is easily backed by facts.

You may not like, you may not be aware of it, it but it is truth.

See accounts of other HN users in this thread.

"I lived in China for a year and vouch for this type of behaviour. It’s just considered normal in China. "

I don't disbelieve you, but your comment definitely did not make it clear that you have "nothing against Chinese people". On the contrary, it rather it made it sound as if you did. No doubt you didn't consider this possibility because you know your own intent—but intent doesn't communicate itself. It's your responsibility to disambiguate that.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

HN readers with Chinese backgrounds or Chinese connections have just as much a right to be here as anyone else does. I invite you to consider how someone in their position would feel after reading your comment about how "Chinese culture and upbringing" includes "cheating and stealing". Even minimal empathy would make you recoil from what you posted.

HN readers with Chinese backgrounds have already been hounded off this site by prejudicial comments. That's shameful. I don't want it to happen again, and your comment crossed into that territory. Please don't do it again. As I said above, you can make your substantive points—including relating your personal experience—without crossing into prejudicial generalization. It's not that hard - you just need to be mindful of the audience. You're broadcasting to a large, diverse population when you comment here.

> Why do you think "chinese" is practically synonym to "cheap and most likely defective"?

I think this is orthogonal to china stealing/copying. A lot of stuff from china is cheap/low quality because that's where you can cheaply mass produce plastic crap. But a lot of products from china are extremely high quality, world class level. You just have to pay more for it.

> It is practically part of Chinese culture and upbringing.

Wow. Didn’t expect such blanket and shallow statement on HN.

Are you a Chinese yourself? On what basis do you base your assumptions on? Really.

> What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there. If you point it out they will back off and try somewhere else, ad nauseam.

Now this is something that is attributable to human behaviour. Pretty sure it is observable across all kinds of culture and races. But why did you single out the Chinese?

> But why did you single out the Chinese?

For my experience working with Chinese and other peoples' reports of the same?

I have worked for a company that has outsourced production to a Chinese company. They would try new trick every other month. Replacing parts for cheaper substitutes, skipping process steps, using counterfeit components. You point it out, they fix it, then they do the same when you are not looking at their hands.

Every time they are being polite about it, but you know, this happening almost every shipment is not an accident.

And even when you come with a solid proof they bend backwards to not admit they did it.

Read up on some other horror stories of outsourcing production to China.

Successfully outsourcing to China usually requires a sizable fleet of lawyers, constant presence at the production facility and inspecting every shipment for adherence to the contract.

Again, don't you understand the reason for why you buy Chinese from Chinese company and it immediately falls apart? Or tries to kill you? The Chinese companies that try to make quality products are a small minority. They do exist, my Andonstar soldering microscope and Rigol osciloscope is a proof of it, but they are an exception.

I lived in China for a year and vouch for this type of behaviour. It’s just considered normal in China. The really odd thing is that when you call them out on it, they are super polite. Eg they will always try to give foreigners fake money but after a while you can spot the fakes “zhe shi jia de!!”, you say (This is fake!) and they apologise and give you a real one. At the same time, you earn respect from them. It’s just all very odd but you get used to it. Whilst I enjoyed living in China, I don’t want to ever go back.

Yea I think parent is more worried about being PC than being truthful. All of the points mentioned were true, they just aren't PC.

Gutter oil has been outlawed for a good minute now, yet it gets into even the restaurants, I've friends from mainland China who say even if you stay away from street vendors eventually you will eat it, so people just give up worrying about it.

Myriad and many are the stories of factories taking specs and running off to start a cheaper knockoff competitor.

Sometimes the truth sucks. I used to dream of visiting China, now I'd be scared to.

Western companies and business people have been remarkably myopic over the last few decades when it comes to the reality of doing business in China. The parent comment here is exactly right... this person knows what they are talking about yet somehow companies in the West seem to persist in trying to make a go of it. They almost all eventually learn their lesson but it doesn't have to be this way. This is not new info or new behavior.

> I wonder why is anybody still surprised.

This is the kind of claim that's deep in conspiracy theory territory until the smoking gun is uncovered, and once that's out (and only then) it becomes obvious and unsurprising.

No, it is not and has not been surprising for decades.

In China there are no private companies.

There are only companies that Chinese government lets you run as long as you cooperate with the government.

Even Jack Ma was put through the wringer after questioning the CCP publicly.

> No, it is not and has not been surprising for decades.

I still recall the Supermicro backdoor chip story, and how once the Bloomberg news broke it was immediately so obvious and so clear that backdoor spy chips were undoubtedly being injected.

But a few years have blown by and the story is now a renowned hoax.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/12/supermicro_bloomberg_...

So tell me, is this sort of story also unsurprising for decades?

So... this would be like saying "We have a murderer, we have ample evidence for it on tape and multiple witnesses. But there is also this one person that lied about being witness so then it must mean that the suspect is innocent."

> We have a murderer, we have (...)

It sounds you lost track of the discussion. If you browse back through the thread you'll notice that the whole point is that without evidence this sort of accusation lies deep inside conspiracy theory territory, among all nutty baseless conspiracies. The key difference in this case is that, unlike all other conspiracy theories, there is indeed evidence that provide substance to accusations. Stating that an accusation is obvious is not evidence nor enough on itself. As I pointed out, the accusations in the Supermicro case we're also immediately obvious. Too bad they were not grounded on reality and after all these years there is no evidence to support them. But they were obvious, right?

Your post reminds me of the time people in China rioted because students were not allowed to cheat on their exams. There really is something cultural going on there.

That has because the exams were national university entrance exams and the new stronger anti-cheating measures were only being applied in one city.

The parents in that city felt that widespread cheating was normal everywhere else essentially turning admissions into a lottery with a big disadvantage to anyone who did not cheat.

That has to be the most lame excuse I've ever heard, at least it's funny!

I think the focus on China with respect to privacy is misplaced. This is a problem with many tech companies now. Just look at how smart TVs hoover up data from their customers. There's a danger to painting this as a problem with China's tech industry because it implicitly lets other tech companies off the hook for their horrendous privacy practices.

> What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there.

What about "move fast and break things"? Or Uber's skirting of labor and taxi laws in many jurisdictions worldwide? I get that this is literally whataboutism, but the above examples are considered virtuous by many here. What's the fundamental difference? To me it seems like China has just perfected the tech "hustle" culture invented in SV.

> I think the focus on China with respect to privacy is misplaced. This is a problem with many tech companies now.

Yes and no.

Yes, it is a problem with many tech companies, I agree.

But the way China does this is something completely different. Tech companies do this for their profit. China as a country exploits every single avenue to steal information and protect their position.

Stealing information and protecting their position is pretty common in the corporate world, in fact that's how many corporations ensure their continued profitability.

What you have in China is equivalent to "US Government" + "Big Tech" - "Bill of Rights".

Given the erosion in the bill of rights here, I suspect things are on a similar playing field. The main difference is the US government only censors using indirect means or by attacking the providers of information like Julian Assange.

Did we forget that the NSA is collecting most of the traffic on the internet?

I still say there is a big difference between intercepting the Internet traffic and saying that giving unlimited access to the information is a prerequisite to doing business.

Just think US government decided to imprison Apple executives and put their own in place of them unless Apple gave unlimited access to all their devices to US agencies.

Also the way China uses this information -- to control minorities, punish "thought crime", erase historical events and uncomfortable topics from public.

At least some of the groups China bans are CIA funded or are other regime change attempts by the west, but point taken.

> Given the erosion in the bill of rights here, I suspect things are on a similar playing field.

Not even close. Ready?

Joe Biden is suffering from worsening dementia. It was obvious before he took office. He's incompetent for the office. His aids constantly have to protect him from the public spectacle of his declining mental condition. The media also constantly does their part to artificially shield him. Biden was probably the candidate most capable of beating Trump (the Biden campaign mostly let Trump punch himself out), perhaps the only candidate capable of it, however he was also not mentally/physically fit for the office.

Have you seen some of the super creepy videos of him on YouTube? How about all his various embarrassing gaffs (fella from down under)? They're still on YouTube. It works in a similar way in China with Xi and the party in general, right?

I've placed this comment on a public forum, anyone can read it.

When do the authorities show up to disappear me? How many years shall I spend in prison for my comment? Will my family be safe?

Did you see what the media did to Trump during his Presidency? Did you read social media during those four years? And there is a similar playing field in the US as in China? Ha.

Very few of us can read Chinese (which explains why no one treats China like a country made of people), but I expect that in a country of a billion people many people have all kinds of rude opinions for and against the government expressed all over the internet.

Appreciate your perspective here, you're right. The insidious "filter list" in the dictionary is sensational and the meta-story is around the worldwide invasion of user privacy.

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