Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement | Hacker News Reader

Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement

reuters.com

399 pointscity17442 comments

All: if you want to comment on HN on a divisive topic like this, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure you're commenting in the intended spirit: curious, thoughtful, respectful conversation across differences. Note, for example, this guideline—we really mean it:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Many users can't seem to resist hurling flamebait and feeding flamewars. Please don't be one of those. This is not a site for smiting enemies or being an internet warrior, regardless of how right your views are or you feel they are, and regardless of how much badness there is to denounce. None of that is what we want here, because it's repetitive, predictable, and self-reinforcing. HN threads thrive on diffs, not repetition. Diffs are what's interesting.

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

There is a diff between not being a troll and being respectful of alleged human rights abuses. Suggesting that we must be respectful in the light of massive human rights violations is how those human rights violations get to take place. This is the same sort of peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset that led to things like apologizing for not sourcing parts from forced labor in China and sites like reddit holding on to jailbait, involuntary porn/voyeur, and literal hate subreddits out of fear of taking any stance.

I think the intention is more to try an avoid every comment just being "China bad, F*ck Intel"

We all know there are human rights abuses in China, but no amount of emotional comments on an HN thread is gonna fix that. It would be more productive to have some sort of more thought provoking conversations.

And on the theme of discussion, isn't reddit very moderated? I think 6% of all posts where removed last year (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56099232)

So should we start criticizing every american company, person and entity in every thread concerning anything american since US government kills innocent civilians on an even bigger scale than Chinese government? Because you know that is exactly happening.

If the US currently commits anything close to what's happening in Xinjiang, particularly with the emphasis on it being on a helpless minority of its own citizens, you would have to link to it. Many of us don't think that is happening.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathTol...

It’s pure atrocity…

Also about the US minority ( I wasn’t writing about that in my earlier comment but since you brought that up)

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z

So stop denying that systemic racism, racial profiling of minorities and targeted police brutality is not happening in the US. Did you vote for Trump? Because that would explain why you think those things don’t exist.

Nobody is saying that other countries haven't done horrible things. That's a separate issue, unless your argument is that it is okay for the CCP (not the Chinese people, this is political, not racial) to commit crimes against humanity. The response to the possible horrors in Xinjiang, and Tibet, should not be countered with whataboutisms. Don't we all want everyone to have a quality life free of suffering and abuse by others?

I'm saying you have to be respectful of this community and its rules if you want to participate here. That's reasonable: you're getting something, so it's fair for you to give something in return. The HN guidelines explain clearly what you need to give.

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

Angry internet noun phrases like "peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset" are a distraction from this, not to mention (god help us) porn/voyeur. All we're trying to do is have an internet forum that doesn't suck. IMO that's a goal that benefits everybody here, and everybody here should do their part.

Users hurling nationalistic insults and ideological talking points at each other goes in exactly the wrong direction for that. This shouldn't be hard to see. It also, by the way, does nothing to help vulnerable human beings, and invoking something noble like that to excuse garden-variety internet mudslinging is a smidge distasteful.

I'm not particularly educated on internet conflict except PG's disagreement hierarchy, and personal experience in hacking social expectations on Reddit (e.g., call it the "inoculation" instead of "vax" or "vaccine" to avoid tipping your political hand).

Is there any "best practices" on handling a sticky situation across an insanely diverse absurdly large crowd of individuals in a low-context communication channel? I believe this would be a #1 go-to for absolutely any social network, and I imagine there are a dozen people reading this who are looking for precisely that.

The maximum effect a comment on here can have is making a statement that changes someone's mind. Overly emotional, shallow, or terse responses aren't going to have that effect.

I get your point, but disregard for decorum here isn't going to solve any of those problems. At best it's shouting into a void, at worst your fooling yourself into thinking you're part of the solution while fixing nothing.

I think he meant to not devolve to into calling everyone a tankie bot or genocide denier if I were to ask you what non-editorial non NED or weapons manufacturer funded primary data you're referring to when you talk about "massive human rights violations".

Wall St. does not care, so these companies can not care. Apple just gave BOE 20% of their OLED business to diversify away from Sanding and LG:

Note that BOE is being propped up by the CCP to the tune of $100M a year in losses over the past decade as economic warfare against SK.

Manufacturing is where today’s wars are being fought because these people know it gives them the power over those that would complain otherwise.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Intel’s supply chain now has components that couldn’t be built without a lot of delays if the CCP snapped their fingers (since they have also funded the conglomeration of specialty materials companies: these new companies are cheap when all you have to do is devalue your currency (is. steal a few dollars from all your citizens)).

Hopefully these conflicts stay entirely in the economic and manufacturing realm, because real war is hell.

You can't expect an independent company to take on a nation, the US and other Western governments either need to admit they don't care about human rights or commit to flat out banning trade with China

People talk about potential war with China without realizing China has been waging war on the West for decades, China's military doctrine counts economic warfare as equal to kinetic(traditional) warfare. These state backed companies are arms of the military being used to crush foreign nations and Western governments do nothing. Trillions of dollars in damage but they don't care because bombs didn't do the damage and many of the politicians got rich by allowing it to happen

Totally agree. In addition, billions of dollars every year are spent on various propaganda wars through advertising firms, political campaigns, and policy groups to convince people that the current state of manufacturing and nationality in the world is both inevitable and desirable.

Forget about the trillions of dollars--the real casualties are social stability, self-sufficiency, and the overall individual strength of the "west". The grandchildren of the people who invented the modern supply chain are wholly incapable of rebuilding it or in most cases even understanding it. How many people involved in the "national discourse" know what a kilowatt is, or have any idea what the country imports and why?

Many of these large companies dont believe the claims of human rights violations in Xinjiang because the research is shoddy and funded by problematic orgs that have massive ulterior motives (mostly winning large defense contracts) .

Some of you are just as confident of what is going on in Xinjiang, with 0 evidence, as you were of Iraq's WMDs it seems. Ask yourself how much you really know.

As someone that's been there, I agree with this sentiment. I also happen to know people with cotton farms there, I even know how much they make, and nobody around is using slave labor.

(and no I do not support / happy with the CCP - this is just what I've seen/experienced)

If there are anyone who do care about Chinese workers, pleas stop using TikTok, because programmers in ByteDance are really the one working around the clock like slaves. Just check out the 996.icu project, which ranks as #1 on GitHub.

This is something that I can attest to being a problem. I visited friends in China, and when we were done with our dinner, they went back to the office... I also know of some couples that have sex like, once a month, because all they do is work.

Interestingly, small companies like FairPhone work to improve their suppliers' labor conditions.

Intel of all the companies is in a position to do the same or more. However they choose to whitewash their brand by blaming the chinese government of their lack of care. Their hypocrisy backfired, and they let China win on all counts.

Ironically they ended up helping whitewash the chinese government.

How could Intel help improve the forced labor situation in Xinjiang? That’s an extremely sensitive political issue which money won’t solve.

For once they could try. They can have rules for their suppliers and factories, and enforce those. Other companies do. Even a tiny company like FairPhone does. But no, they chose for decades the cheap labor, and now they turn around and say "no more" just to defend their reputation.

In any case, apparently their apologies to China will not stop them from moving away from Xinjiang working, even if just for show.

Why do you write ,,even''? You are talking about a product where the main feature is fairness. I'm sure it misses some features that non-fair phones have in return. It's all about what the customer cares about.

If every major company benefitting from China got together and made demands I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinas hand is forced.

Any facility or employee on Chinese soil is a potential hostage of the Chinese government. "China's hand is forced" == your factories get nationalized and your employees' families get imprisoned or worse.

Pretty much every problem in China can be solved with the right economic incentives.

They could do a better audit of their supply chains. I'm guessing silica is a big thing for them? Excuse my lack of knowledge on raw materials for processors, just jumping to silica = silicon. I do know the region produces a bunch of it used in solar panels.

Intel could also refuse to sell chips to companies that facilitate this genocide - and they are soon going to be forced to more broadly than the current sanctions list.

I don't know if any companies like DJI, surveillance camera companies, etc use intel chips but with the new law just passed companies like Intel will have to do a better job making sure their product does not come from or is used to facilitate uyghur human rights abuses.

By refusing to do any sort of business in or conduct any sort of trade with China.

A quick search shows as of 2019, Fairphone's suppliers included the Chinese company O-Film [0], which at the time was using forced labor from Xinjiang. They probably had no way of knowing this; Apple [1] was burned by the same firm. The company transported Uyghur victims to a factory southern China (Jiangxi in the Bloomberg article), so Xinjiang wasn't indicated as part of the supply chain anywhere.

How much actual impact do these kinds of corporate efforts accomplish? How much merit should we credit these "best-effort" attempts, when when's all said and then, there's still (probably) concentration camp labor in the end product?

[0] https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FP3_Lis... (page 12, "cameras")

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-17/shares-of...

>"The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in a report last year that Ofilm used at least 700 Uyghur laborers from Xinjiang at a factory in the southern province of Jiangxi. The workers were sent there in late April 2017 as part of a state-sponsored labor transfer program, the think tank said."

>"The Uyghurs were expected to “gradually alter their ideology” and express gratitude to China’s ruling Communist Party for their work assignments, the think tank said, citing Chinese-language news articles."

It's really absurd to call any labor performed by Uygur inside China forced labor. Are Uygurs so lazy to deny any labor? Or can they not prefer working in factories than, say, farming or herding cattles?

As to the ideology and gratitude part, I think people may alter their ideology if they so choose. After all, the Romans switched to Christianity, and slavery was once legal in the States. And people should be able to express gratitude to people giving them a chance to work for a better life. Even now, people from abroad are moving into the States to work, are they all forced labor?

Your comment makes no sense. No one claims that all Uyghur work is forced labour. As the parent comment and article make clear this is about actual forced labour.

And notably the roman empire doesn't exist anymore and the States have outlawed slavery as it is an abhorrent practice that should be outlawed everywhere.

It's interesting to see that people on both sides are angry -- for different reasons. People on western Internet are angry at Intel for having issued an apology. People on Chinese Internet are angry because they view it as a non-apology, i.e. Intel still goes ahead with the ban. I see people -- including Chinese diaspora -- calling for banning Intel.

> I see people -- including Chinese diaspora -- calling for banning Intel.

Is this feasible? There's not all that many other options for x86

I doubt it. China is not there yet w.r.t. semiconductor independence. There are people who say, buy AMD, but AMD is also subject to US laws...

So what will happen instead? From what I've seen so far, China is careful with counterattacking US because they know the US is stronger. I think the govt will just issue an angry statement but do nothing concrete internationally, while continuing their domestic efforts of semiconductor development as they already have, and also continuing with restructuring Xinjiang's economy (i.e. replacing foreign customers with domestic customers, as happened with cotton)

They will choose AMD because AMD doesn't make this statement clear but Intel explicitly mentions "Xinjiang" in its annual supplier letter. I guess AMD did take this factor into consideration.

Alibaba recently announced new CPU they developed based on ARM: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alibaba-unveils-128-core-s...

There are companies that are competitive in CPU design. But CPU manufacturing is a bottleneck. At the low end, they lack scale (until the new factories are built). At the high end (beyond about 14nm), they either lack an independent supply chain (and are thus susceptible to sanctions) or ability (beyond 10 nm requires EUV).

Furthermore, what we're talking about here is replacing x86. There is indeed a joint venture with AMD, but at the end of the day x86 is still US intellectual property and thus susceptible to sanctions.

It would be a different matter if they decide to replace x86 wholesale with something else, e.g. ARM or RISC-V. That is certainly more feasible today than a decade ago, with Android being a major platform and no longer being constrained to just Windows. But it's probably still a large amount of effort.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dual-chinese-zen-cpu-beat-...

I think AMD has less (possibly much less) in China than Intel.

I spent about €200,000 on AMD servers last year. They are performing better than Intel ones would have done at the same price, so it was a very easy decision.

isn't this exactly the opposite? IIRC there was a situation where a large-ish? AMD subdivision in china was nationalized and made off with a considerable amount of AMD IP

You're probably thinking about ARM, whose Chinese branch unilaterally declared independency from the crown some time ago.

Ah yes, my bad!! Sorry

you're thinking of ARM

Personally, I'm most angry that Intel refuses to properly audit their suppliers. They're not actually banned from importing goods from Xinjiang if they can prove that they weren't made with forced labor.

If they could prove that, the US government should be happy (because their stated goal of combating forced labor is respected) and Chinese people should be happy, too (better working conditions).

Merely restricting suppliers based on geography is a non-solution, since it's not like forced labor magically stops if you cross a provincial border.

I don't think it's that simple. For example BCI performed multiple audits since 2012 and hasn't found a single case of forced labor.[1][2] Despite that, they've pulled back from Xinjiang. Companies don't want to deal with Xinjiang just so they can avoid controversies, regardless of actual facts.

Also, the Xinjiang Forced Labor Prevention Act is based on the maxim of guilty-until-proven-innocent. There is no way to conclusively prove a negative. Even if you perform 100 unannounced audits you can still say "oh there's 0.001% chance that they fooled you 100 times"

1 https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1375456747477815296 2 https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-26/BCI-s-China-office-No-...

You misrepresented BCI.

And there are other independent sources showing forced labor in Xinjiang [1][2], regardless of what BCI Shanghai said.

BCI Shanghai is contradicting the BCI headquarter [3], and BCI Shanghai is not credible on this matter [4].

    While there are plenty of authentic reports, and investigations documented by independent research groups, the BCI Shanghai’s statement to deny the forced labor in the region makes us just think how much pressure the Chinese team of the group faces from the Chinese government.

It is not that rare for a local Chinese branch to contradict the global headquarter, possibly due to pressure of operating in China.

For example, the local Hugo Boss in China wrote statements on Weibo (supporting Xinjiang cotton) which contradicted the global Hugo Boss headquarter (stating that Hugo Boss does not use Xinjiang cotton) [5], and the headquarter clarified that the Chinese Weibo statement was unauthorized [6].

BCI Shanghai is in a similar situation: the local branch operating in Shanghai (claiming to find no forced labor) did not represent the headquarter [3].

The problem with what you cite is not (only) with the outlet (CGTN), but with the source (BCI Shanghai).

You are like stating that Hugo Boss is supporting the Xinjiang cotton, because you find a Weibo post by the local office supporting it [5]. This is wrong [3][4][6].

And with other sources finding forced labor in Xinjiang [1][2], the BCI Shanghai statement is a red herring in this discussion.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/solar-chin... "Solar industry’s ties to China’s Xinjiang region raise specter of forced labor"

[2]: https://www.shu.ac.uk/helena-kennedy-centre-international-ju... "In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains"

[3]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3127501/chi... "Chinese branch of Better Cotton Initiative challenges headquarters and says it has found no evidence of Xinjiang forced labour"

[4]: https://bitterwinter.org/better-cotton-initiative-why-its-sh... "Better Cotton Initiative: Why Its Shanghai Branch is Not Credible"

[5]: https://hongkongfp.com/2021/03/26/hugo-boss-tells-chinese-cu... "Hugo Boss tells Chinese customers it will continue to purchase Xinjiang cotton, whilst own website says it has never used it"

[6]: https://hongkongfp.com/2021/03/27/hugo-boss-statement-saying... "Hugo Boss statement saying it will ‘purchase and support’ Xinjiang cotton was ‘unauthorised,’ brand says"

Edited: added links [1][2][3].

is bitterwinter.org a reliable source? or perhaps we should dig deeper, is adrian zenz, whom most of the xinjiang genocide claims originated from, a reliable source?

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/18/us-media-reports-chinese-...

> is bitterwinter.org a reliable source?

The bitterwinter.org article, which is clearly labeled as Op-Ed:

1. reports that BCI Shanghai contradicts BCI headquarter (which you can independently verify, as there are other news sources supporting this, such as the SCMP article I just added).

2. argues that the local branch (BCI Shanghai) could be under pressure for operating in China (the quoted text above).

If you don’t buy their reasoning (2 above), you can at least agree with the HKFP reporting that the local Hugo Boss Chinese branch contradicted the Hugo Boss global headquarter without authorization, and make your judgement call for why.

> or perhaps we should dig deeper...

You may want to read these sources [1][2], which I just added to my original comment and do not rely on Adrian Zenz.

> is adrian zenz, whom most of the xinjiang genocide claims originated from, a reliable source?

With those other verifiable sources [1][2], we can ignore the straw man question of whether Adrian Zenz is a reliable source.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/solar-chin... "Solar industry’s ties to China’s Xinjiang region raise specter of forced labor"

[2]: https://www.shu.ac.uk/helena-kennedy-centre-international-ju... "In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains"

Literally the first reference/citation of "Broad Daylight" is attributed to Zenz. The Washington post does no additional verification but attribute to "researchers" who will no doubt also quote Zenz. It's also Washington Post. There are no verifiable sources alleging coerced labour that doesn't trace back to Zenz. Bitterwinter or HKFP are also far from reliable, on par with Epochetimes bias.

>Hugo Boss Chinese branch contradicted the Hugo Boss global headquarter without authorization, and make your judgement call for why.

Global HQs making judgement calls due to coordinated pressure campaign from their primary markets, against the due diligence of their local branch who has on the ground experience. Make your judgement call for why.

The “Broad Daylight” is an academic research, which necessarily cites related work or previous work, including of Zenz.

This is how academic research works. Citing Zenz per se does not make the the “Broad Daylight” less credible.

If people are against Zenz, please judge the “Broad Daylight” report by ignoring all reference to and evidence provided by Zenz.

If you find specific flaws with “Broad Daylight”, please list them so that we can discuss.

Saying that it cites Zenz is just pointing out how academic research works, and does not invalidate the report.

> Bitterwinter or HKFP are also far from reliable, on par with Epochetimes bias.

Bitterwinter is not used as a news source here, just an Op-Ed, because all needed reporting are supported by other news sources such as SCMP.

HKFP is just reporting what Hugo Boss headquarter and its Chinese branch are doing, with links to sources. You can follow the links to judge for yourself [1], or find alternative sources reporting the same [2]: Hugo Boss Chinese branch is making unauthorized Weibo post contradicting the Hugo Boss global headquarter.

So the local branch does not represent the headquarter [2], just like BCI Shanghai does not represent BCI headquarter (as reported by SCMP).

[1]: https://group.hugoboss.com/fileadmin/media/pdf/sustainabilit... "HUGO BOSS Statement on the Chinese region of Xinjiang"

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/china-xinjiang-hugo-boss-idI... "Chinese celebs, netizens slam 'two-faced' Hugo Boss over Xinjiang"

(And no, HKFP is more credible than Epochtimes, as [2] just validated the HKFP reporting, but this is a red herring for the current discussion.)

>Citing Zenz per se does not make the the “Broad Daylight” less credible.

Broad Daylight presumes Zenz conclusion of coerced labour as basis for rest of supply chain analysis. It can only be judged in that context, which makes it, and any research that use Zenz as starting point, less credible.>Citing Zenz per se does not make the the “Broad Daylight” less credible.

On par =/= equal. HKFP better than epochetimes, but not by much. The bias of Bitterwinter/HKFP is presuming PRC branches are going off script when acting "two faced" that gets "disavowed" by HQ is the kind of face saving behavior that multinationals do to stay in good graces of east and west. What Intel is doing here. Publishers like HKFP and Bitterwinter bias is characterizing typical corporate doublespeak as unique Chinese misbehavior.

> any research that use Zenz as starting point...

A research could be inspired by Zenz, then went on to find independent evidence supporting the same conclusion (forced labor in Xinjiang).

Getting inspired by Zenz does not make subsequent research less credible.

You need to list specific flaws in the Broad Daylight report to discredit it.

> On par =/= equal. HKFP better than epochetimes, but not by much...

With the Reuters reporting [1] linked above which reports the same as HKFP, diverting the discussion on HKFP is a straw man.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/china-xinjiang-hugo-boss-idI... "Chinese celebs, netizens slam 'two-faced' Hugo Boss over Xinjiang"

> The bias of Bitterwinter/HKFP is presuming PRC branches are going off script when acting "two faced" that gets "disavowed" by HQ...

The fact that the Chinese branch can go rogue against the global headquarter has been reported multiple times.

For an example in tech, see Arm China [2], where the damage to the headquarter is much larger than Hugo Boss or BCI.

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329731 "Arm China Has Gone Rogue"

Given your background and opinions on the matter, I'd be interested to hear what you think goes on in the large, barbed-wire lined, centers they regularly ship Uyghurs in and out of. Do you think they are genuinely good places meant to help an under privileged minority group?

If you really want to know, feel free to reach out to me in private. See my profile. Twitter preferred.

What if I just 'kinda' want to know, for instance, in a comment thread?

Then I'll be brief.

Check out this thread to get an idea: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1465863939825221632

Check out Col Lawrence Wilkerson at the Ron Paul Institute, mark 22:20, on one of the reasons why the US was in Afghanistan (which borders Xinjiang): https://youtu.be/91wz5syVNZs?t=22m20s

Check out Max Blumenthal, investigative journalist, on the quality of evidence surrounding Xinjiang: https://youtu.be/qZkxaEC1xjY

You really must be quite westernized if you can't talk about China anymore without using the US as a reference point, and have to rely on Westerners spreading lies about China in service of their own agenda to speak for you.

Well done, you completely ignored the actual argument in order to resort to ad hominem, while ignoring the fact that the first source doesn't use the US as the major comparison point, while also making evidence-free statements such as "westerners spreading lies". Exactly as I would expect from you.

> first source doesn't use the US as the major comparison point,

"The typical American answer to problems: bombs and bullets." https://mobile.twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/146586396718...

"China went a different path. They didn't fire a single bullet or threw a single bomb, instead they used books and jobs." https://mobile.twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/146586397002...

Which is a lie, carelessly slandering the policemen who valiantly risked their lives in the fight against terrorism.

新疆打掉一境外直接指挥的暴恐团伙 1人投降28人被歼 http://xjfy.chinacourt.gov.cn/article/detail/2015/11/id/4667...

natded put it very well 13 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29527720

Most of the online discussion centered around China is just US domestic political projection using an imaginary China as a mirror, or as a counterfactual which doesn't exist, and then there's the obvious propaganda too.

RnaudBertrand seems to be using China only as an imaginary counterexample to the US invasion of Afghanistan.

If you were just an average Westerner, mistaking that Twitter thread for an informed perspective would be an understandable mistake, buy I think you should be able to do better.

> Exactly as I would expect from you.

Interesting, I didn't think you'd even recognize my username.

> Interesting, I didn't think you'd even recognize my username.

You are right here, in my haste I recognized you for someone else who has been attacking me a lot lately. I apologize.

> The typical American answer to problems: bombs and bullets.

The US is a secondary supporting point, not the main point, which is Afghanistan and its terrorism problem.

> Which is a lie, carelessly slandering the policemen who valiantly risked their lives in the fight against terrorism.

This is an oversimplification rather than a lie. In the context of that tweet, what was referred to was:

1. Sending your military to foreign territory to kill the source of radicalization there.

2. The scale of the effort.

While there have definitely been fighting in Xinjiang, it cannot be compared to the likes of the War on Terror. The former's violance was at least constrained to people who shoot back, while the latter involved the killing pf many innocent people.

While you criticize the comparison with the US here, to completely take the US out of the picture in a description about Xinjiang would not be fair. For one, the US is a contributing factor in the creation of the terrorism problem in Xinjiang. Second, when one talks about counter-terrorism efforts, it only makes sense to compare the pros and cons of different approaches that have already tried. After all, it is a hard problem in which hard choices have to be made; nobody has succeeded in an approach which is completely free of violance or any kind of coercion.

I suppose you could also compare to France, but I don't think it would make sense to skip over the most high-profile example.

> This is an oversimplification rather than a lie.

When you wrote in another subthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29663197 that

> So no, I'm not a CCP supporter. What I am, is being tired of all the anti-China propaganda that's on the one hand merely biased and prejudiced misrepresentations, and on the other hand a deliberate manufacturing of consent for war. I am tired of my home being constantly misrepresented and villified.

I mistakenly assumed that you would be against oversimplification.

Hey I did try to invite him to talk to me in private where I can explain a complex situation more thoroughly. But if one is only "kinda interested, but not very interested" and wants a quick summary in an HN post then one has to be contend with oversimplifications.

I understand why you criticize me, but rather than criticism I'd like to hear solutions. I had a conversation with my contact from Xinjiang yesterday (who regularly talks to westerners to explain the situation) and he told me how basically nobody in the west is interested in the complex truth; everybody wants simplifications. Which really limits the explanations he can give.

So, what is your solution? If you have a link to a better summary that you believe is

1. more accurate,

2. able to explain things from a westerner's perspective and able to provide the paradigm changes needed for proper understanding,

3. yet short enough to satisfy readers that are only casually interested,

then I'm all ears and I'll consider recommending your source next time.

I took some time to read and watch the links and digest the info to respond:

1) I'm getting kind of conflicting signals from the sources. You promote the idea that these camps aren't what we know they are, the the third link, but the entirety of the your Twitter feed reads as a justification and comparison to the war in Afghanistan. I don't see how that would be an apt comparison unless these camps actually did exist, and actually did forcefully detain people (which means forced labor in China).

2) Let's assume they are forced re-education camps, since that's the least evil thing possible. You're comparison to Afghanistan as the 'The US uses bombs and bullets whereas China is doing things peacefully' is still bad. Afghanistan is a separate country without a government that we declared war on. The US generally follows strict rules of engagement, so it would be inaccurate to say we shot innocent people or killed them on purpose. The mission over there consisted much more of building infrastructure and public services than it did fighting. Xinjiang is within China's own borders, and benefits from already having a government and infrastructure, to a much larger degree than Afghanistan at least.

3) Let's ignore 2 and assume the US was evil in Afghanistan and China is doing everything as morally as possible in Xinjiang. Then why not let international inspection of the facilities? The UN was in Afghanistan, and oversaw a lot of our mission there. If it's the same in Xinjiang, but better, then why the secrecy?

4) People go along with the idea that evil things are happening in Xinjiang without much evidence because of two reasons: China has been caught doing everything claimed before already (organ harvesting, forced abortions, internment camps) and they don't just prove otherwise. Any international traveller can come to the US and visit any hospital, any prison (provided they are journalists at least) and any prisoner here has the freedom of expression to say anything they want to anyone they want. That isn't the case in China. Of course there is a lack of evidence of what's going on their now. That's China's MO.

(Part 1) You are raising very insightful issues. Arnaud's thread is an oversimplification. This comment is my best attempt at explaining the full picture, with the knowledge I have gathered in the past 3 years.

- There are unacceptable practices going on, but of a different scale and kind than described in mainstream western reporting. - The terrorism issue is mixed up with the issues of Uyghur identity and separatism. - The goal is to address terrorism, identity and separatism at the same time, using a variety of measures. - There is difference between official policy and local implementation. Policy implementation in China is very distributed, with significant local leeway to interpret and implement. Due to incompetency rather than malice, there is significant collateral damage and impact on innocent people.

Let's unpack the above.

---

About the measures:

- Terrorism is addressed through security: lots of weapons checks, barriers and surveillance everywhere. Though this is not the only measure.

- Terrorism, identity and separatism are addressed through deradicalization, vocational training, government job programs and economic development. The thinking goes: if people's economic prospects become better (able to find jobs, more income) then they are less likely to fall for extremism and to harbor separatist sentiments.

- Identity is addressed through patriotic education.

There are prisons, deradicalization camps, vocational schools. Those are three different things. A major source of misunderstanding comes from the fact that western reporting lump all three together into "concentration/detention camps", while Chinese media and diplomats never talk about the first, seldomly about the 2nd, and usually about the 3rd. So when foreign media ask Chinese diplomats to elaborate on "concentration camps", and the diplomats say "we don't have those, we have vocational schools" then the diplomats are technically correct but there is already misunderstanding from the first second.

Prisons are for convicted criminals and terrorists, e.g. those who set off bombs, and come with prison labor (as is usual in Chinese prisons, and many prisons around the world).

Vocational schools teach skills and patriotic education. They are indeed voluntary. Vocational schools are often boarding schools.

The most problematic facilities are the deradicalization camps. They are for people who have gotten in touch with extremism but haven't done anything concrete. They are sort of a "vocation school ++": they are mandatory and they "brainwash" you into believing that extremism is bad (e.g. they teach you ideas like: women have rights, killing people for their beliefs is bad). They are mandatory boarding schools but not prisons. This is not a contradiction: mandatory boarding schools exist in other parts of the world too. And the environment is less unpleasant than true prisons.

Deradicalization camps probably are problematic for two reasons:

1. The criteria for what counts as "gotten in touch with extremism" is prprobably too broad, and so an amount of innocent people have been undeservedly rolled into deradicalization camps.

2. The people enrolled into them may not have committed a concrete crime yet. Chinese authorities say that their goal is to prevent terrorism from taking root rather than only acting after the fact. According to western thought, this practice is wholly unacceptable. However, commentators from Islamic countries, which have had a much longer and much more savage history with terrorism, criticize the western perspectice on the grounds that westerners underestimate the impact of terrorism. From the Chinese government's perspective, safe streets and social stability is more important than anything else: they view it as their duty to ensure that streets are safe (and a lot of the population agrees).

The security measures probably come with a certain amount of racial profiling, e.g. Han can pass security checks unchecked while Uyghurs are checked more thoroughly. More on this later.

---

At the same time, there is a significant amount of misrepresentation (and even outright lies) from western media.

Some is deliberate, e.g. propaganda. Max Blumenthal highlighted the problems with the "x million" number, witness testimonies and more. There are real issues, but not to the extend alleged. Too many people have been undeservedly forced into deradicalization centers, but not "1 million" and they're neither prisons nor concentration camps. The BBC visited a vocational boarding school, painted it as a prison, then said people were not allowed to leave while literally showing footage of people leaving. There is no genocide: the population has grown quicker than Han, and it has been shown that Adrien Zenz's IUD number deliberately omitted a 0 (i.e. 80% should be 8%). Despite alleged systematic rape, killing etc by witnesses, there is a complete lack of a refugee crisis.

Other reports are accidentally wrong: misinterpretations due to lack of understanding of China. For example many of ASPI's sattelite image concentration camp locations turn out to be schools, farms, etc. It seems that the criteria for identifying a "concentration camp" is "it has high walls, barbed wires and fences on windows". But Nathan Ruser, a young fellow who just came out of school and got recruited by ASPI for doing this "research", apparently didn't know that a great many normal buildings in China have these features.

(Part 2) As for "incompetence rather than malice":

There is a saying that aptly summarizes the issue: the central government told the Xinjiang authority to cut the hair, but they cut the entire head instead.

Local governments and police forces in China tend to be overzealous in implementing central policy. This is either because they're eyeing a promotion by showing how well they've reached KPIs, or because they're risk averse and don't want to deal with being punished for allowing a terrorist to slip through the cracks.

They also tend to brush with a broad stroke, hence lots of collateral damage which catches innocents in the process.

These are long standing issues and occur outside Xinjiang too, though slowly improving over time as competency improves. But it's especially bad in Xinjiang because:

1. Competent people don't want to be in Xinjiang: they tend to move elsewhere.

2. The central government wanted the terrorism issue under control as fast as possible. Incompetent officials and policemen focus on a singular goals and can't be bothered with something like collateral damage.

It's neither a racism nor official policy issue because:

- The head of Xinjiang is a Uyghur, and lots of government officials and policemen are Uyghurs. Uyghur policemen are trying to cut corners by racially profiling their own ethnicity.

- Official policy is give minorities preferential treatmenf through something similar to affirmative axtion. Minorities were exempt from the One Child Policy and they receive extra points on university exams. Laws are applied more leniently to minorities. This is not new and has been the case since the PRC's founding in 1949.

---

Forced labor is limited to prison labor. Deradicalization centers have no prison labor as far as I know. There is no evidence of cotton, tomato or solar panel forced labor. My contact in Xinjiang is pretty furious about the recent US ban because this ban actually harms the lives of normal Uyghurs who make a living through these products.

---

Regarding comparison to the US's conduct in Afghanistan: you paint a very different picture than the one I know of. For example, this: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/af...

---

Regarding international visits and transparency: there have been international visits.

Delegations from many non-western countries (including many islamic countries) have visited and said everything was fine, even saying they're impressed by the level of safety and development. A few years ago the UN sent a counter-terrorism expert to visit, who then wrote a positive report.

Of course, there are complications:

- The US protested that the report is not valid because a human rights expert should have been sent instead. They also protested that maybe we shouldn't send anybody to Xinjiang at all, because if the report turns out to be positive then that will give China undeserved legitimacy. Hmm.....

- Visits by non-western delegations are considered untrustworthy by western countries. The rhetoric goes that non-western countries have been bought by China. But this notion deprives those countries of their agency, and ignores the fact that friendly relations between China and the global south started way before China was rich.

If you ask me, the entire situation has been so thoroughly politicized that a neutral, objective inspection by foreign countries is not possible. Western countries won't accept any other outcome than "millions of Uyghurs are being genocided". There are a lot of dishonest reporters out there.

Which brings us to the next point...

At the same time, China distrusts western countries' neutrality and objectivity, and so they are incentivized to become less transparent.

---

Regarding transparency and secrecy:

The west is essentially punishing China for being transparent. They used to divulge more about Xinjiang, but after a series of dishonest western media reports and propaganda, they became increasingly wary to the point where they'd rather shut everything down and making things more opaque. This becoming more opaque extends to issues beyond Xinjiang as well: as the US increasingly sanctions China using data obtained through transparency, China becomes more opaque in response.

China has always been clumsy in its communication with the west (though the opposite is also true). The issue of transparency is a long-standing issue. The Chinese government, and more generally Chinese people, tend to respond to any controversy by staying silent rather than through rebuttals. In Chinese culture, speaking is silver and silence is gold — a bit the opposite of many western cultures. Staying silent doesn't necessarily mean covering up: it means they gave up on communicating and are going their own way.

But of course, this behavior only makes westerners more suspicious, where silence is seen as evidence of sinister practice.

----

Regarding China's reputation of having been caught and therefore deserves a guilty until innocence proven attitude:

Is "having caught" really true? You mentioned internment camps but that very issue is under dispute. So let's ignore that one for now.

Forced abortions: if you're talking about the One Child Policy, then that hardly counts has "having been caught in the act". The One Child Policy and its implications have always been public knowledge. I find this example very weird.

Organ harvesting: these claims come from Falun Gong. But where is the evidence?

There was organ harvesting, but not the kind alleged by Falun Gong. What they did was using organs of already-executed prisoners, which I agree is questionable but it's also on a whole different level than killing random people for their organs, as Falun Gong alleged. More importantly, China stopped this practice around 2015 on its own volition.

I assert that the claim that China cannot be trusted on the grounds of past crimes, is very dubious if you look deeply into the actual evidence. There are a lot of allegations without evidence. Some allegations are based on true underlying issues, but heavily distorted. Some are straight up lies. The bad reputation is built on a pile of sand, with very few actual bricks in the pile.

I saw on the ground in China early 2020 how the entire COVID issue was massively distorted by foreign media. The entire Li Wenliang censorship story was misrepresented. Wuhan was allegedly full of dead bodies which have been covered up, and everybody was forced by the government to stay at home rather than voluntarily doing so. No.

It is true that western countries tend to be more transparent (though I question your assertion that any journalist can visit any jail; can they visit Guantanamo?). But concluding that opaqueness is automatically sinister is also a stretch. This notion is especially problematic because the US is abusing transparency of foreign countries for the sake of upholding its own supremacy and for imposing sanctions, rather than as a way to truly encourage good and just governance.

---

The end. As you can see, the Xinjiang issue is complex, and consists of a mix of many different issues. Multiple facts which appear contradictory are actually true at the same time.

I spent 2 days writing this. As you can imagine, with all this complexity it's really difficult to explain to most people what's going on.

Skechers is a good example. They conducted multiple inspections and found no forced labor, so they maintained business dealings with Chinese suppliers.

https://about.skechers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SKECHE...

Why would I ever import from a supplier whose only positive is price, if I have to go to extra effort and expense - making them no longer competitive in any respect?

Personally, I'm angry at Intel for not having actual convictions.

It looks like they're doing the ban, not because they actually believe that there's slave labor in Xinjiang, but because their stockholders will be mad if they don't. And they issued the apology, not because they realized that there is no slave labor in Xinjiang, but because they don't want China angry at them. They're trying to just get on with being a business. (And to some degree that's fair. Intel is a business, not a moral crusader. Still, I'd like them to either take a stand, or not take a stand. Don't try to "take a stand" just to make people happy.)

("Angry" is too strong a word. "Disappointed" might be better. But I said "angry" to match the wording of the parent.)

There is no reason to expect human-like behaviour and traits from organisations.

And yet we deem it appropriate to grant them personhood in the eyes of the law.

If corporations are people as the Supreme Court would have us believe, they are most certainly psychopaths. Natural people need to be clear-eyed about this. Don’t look to corporations as moral leaders. They will fail almost any moral test you can throw at them.

As long as corporations are legal persons, I'm going to hold them to a moral standard, and I think the American public as a whole has a duty to do the same. If they can contribute to politicians, then we all have a personal stake in their ethics.

Hey, my favorite CCP shill, FooBarWidget: What is your official stance on Xi's new chair?

I don't care about his chair.

Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.

Seeing this reminds me of a link I posted recently. This youtube video features investigation into supposed concentration camps in Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI8bJO-to8I I'm posting it again because it seems like the kind of video that needs to be seen.

Thanks for sharing this - it's really hard to find anything this well documented from locals

^ you may want to watch this video, an analysis of the video from guanguan, your own judgement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro9kyS-NgAY

The point of that video seems to be to dox the person who filmed the other video, probably with the intention of making his life a lot harder and less safe. That's really creepy.

That building complex at 10:50 is huge.

Is there a list of companies who've made similar apologies in the past? When presented with a choice I would prefer to avoid them.

probably close to 100% of them. It will be difficult to organize a boycott.

The next best thing is to rank them by order of who knelt the fastest to China.

I very much doubt close to 100% of companies have issued apologies to china

I would bet 100% of Western publicly traded companies that sell in China have issued apologies not to lose any revenue and mindshare from the Chinese market.

revenue > mission statement

In fashion: Nike, Versace, Coach, Givenchy, Calvin Klein, Asics, Swarovski, Dior

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/article/303950...

Marriott

Blizzard! John Cena (although not a company)

I think it warrants inclusion, he was clearly speaking on behalf of his 'brand' and ought to be considered in the same company as other commercial entities. Or you could construe it as an apology on behalf of whatever movie studio he was working with at the time.

Check out this list on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfg1ce/list_of_co... "List of companies under China's censorship orders (so far). Credit to u/lebe"

To me this sounds like a normal corporate non-apology. If I read the article correctly, Intel's policy to not allow suppliers to source from Xinjiang still stands, forced by Western regulation. They are just apologizing that the policy caused offence. I would prefer if Intel would outright condemn Chinese behavior in Xinjiang, but this particular event doesn't outrage me much.

A corporate non-apology posted exclusively in the affected country, no less. I don’t know whether it’s even right to say that Intel the global company made the statement; the people running their Weibo account are presumably in China and might not have had an option.

Sad to see Intel and others be so spineless.

Corporations are spineless, both literally and figuratively.

Unnecessary pedantry.

Read the comment as "sad to see the Intel executives and others be so spineless".

What do you think the "figuratively" part of the statement means? I presumed it to mean exactly what you suggested. In my mind anyway - a figuratively spineless corporation is a corporations where executives and others are the spineless ones.

Please enlighten me on what a figuratively spineless corporation is, if it is not that.

It is not competitively advantageous to act in a 'spineful' manner

Spineless corporations Reminds me of title of TV series about Mafia : La piovra

"An epic crime saga of power, money, violence and corruption. the mafia controls everything through local and international networks like an octopus, anyone who tries to bring them down pays the ultimate price."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086779

> "Intel (INTC.O) recently published what it described as an annual letter to suppliers, dated December, that it had been 'required to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labour or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region', following restrictions imposed by 'multiple governments'."

As policies go, that one seems kind of clumsy. Assuming for the sake of argument that Uighurs are being used for forced labor in China (which I'm inclined to believe), then isn't "workers in Xinjiang region are forced labor, workers outside of Xinjiang are not" a bit of an oversimplification? Presumably there is also non-forced labor happening in Xinjiang, and probably some amount of forced labor happening outside Xinjiang.

I suppose sometimes simple heuristics can work well enough to get the job done and more complicated supply chain audits might be too hard. (One obvious alternative is to just stop trading with China at all, but that's a policy that's unlikely to be enacted by the U.S. or other large nations for equally obvious reasons.)

It's not that simple. If you're competing with local forced labour, your own wages will be artificially driven down. Unfairness spreads.

Slave labour.

That's a good point.

> isn't "workers in Xinjiang region are forced labor, workers outside of Xinjiang are not" a bit of an oversimplification?

Not if you knew there was no forced labor in that region at all, and this was all just atrocity propaganda to turn opinion against China. If it's difficult for western corporations to avoid suppliers who depend on suppliers (and so on) who have factories in Xinjiang, then there will be constant stories like this which puts this ridiculous allegation back in the news and social media so we can have our two-minutes hate against the evil empire that's ~~challenging our imperialistic grip on the world~~ ""committing genocide"".

Apple lobbied the US government *against* the anti-concentration camp labor bill that Intel is apologizing for in the OP,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u... ("Apple is lobbying against a bill aimed at stopping forced labor in China")

Slave labor is super profitable.

This is why we need the pine phone and librem 5 so badly

Karry Wang said he would no longer serve as brand ambassador for Intel, adding in a statement that "national interests exceed everything".

Everything?

Yes, that's the mentality. And, by "national interests", they mean "CCP interests" -- there's no distinction between "the party" and the nation.

The civilization is the nation is the party.

Actually doing the supply chain management work on the ground to find individual suppliers using forced labor and getting them to change their practices is too much for a small company like Intel, I suppose.

China has got a massive consumer market, an unmatched manufacturing ecosystem with zero labor disputes among other things, minerals, arguably the most stable (in terms of violence, unrest, strikes, etc.) regions in the world, and more.

They have got anyone by their balls who remotely wants to sell anything in China.

John Cena (famous wrestler, entertainer) recently apologized to Chinese people after calling Taiwan a country [0].

The companies and people who never go beyond their own selfish self-interests, will keep kowtowing to China (and KSA as well).

I don't judge this. I possibly would do the same. But I am not a hypocrite.

Apple used Chinese slave labor [1], Cook agreed to work with Chinese propaganda arm [2], but fired a techie for writing a satire [3].

All actors and actresses (who says nothing against China, where two or three decades ago, the whole of Hollywood was very pro-Tibet) preach freedom, self-empowerment or whatever woke thing is hot in that year, and yet choose regularly to censor and/or change content based on China's demand [4].

Intel is doing nothing new, and we will see this trend continue at least for a while now.

[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/actor-john-cena-apologize....

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/10/22428899/apple-suppliers-...

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/apples-tim-...

[3]: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who...

[4]: https://www.cnet.com/features/marvel-is-censoring-films-for-...

Surprisingly, there are a lot of strikes, labour issues, and general unrest in China.

Instead of thinking about it like a 'Orwellian State' - think of it more like an Orwellian State that could go 'off' at anytime.

Note that citizens are concerned about their prosperity - as long as growth is happening and money comes in - they are content.

But they are also ultra nationalist and ultra ethnocentric to the point where it's quite easy for the CCP or leadership to simply blame 'Western Imperialism / Chauvinism' for any perceived slight against China including legitimate concerns.

There will not be any protests in China about Hong Kong or forced labour. It will be about corruption, property rights, jobs etc..

> Surprisingly, there are a lot of strikes, labour issues, and general unrest in China.

It only surprises people if they consider China as one of:

* A harmonious socialist utopia, or

* A totalitarian dystopia

unfortunately, the US government and mainstream news media are trying to paint China as the latter of the two.

----

Also, irrespective of the extent of nationalism in China, western or US imperialism is a thing. Before the 20th century it was literal empires with physical conquest, and these days it is a combination of economic influence and military interventions. Of course it also serves as a convenient excuse and distraction...

Yes the US had (has) a part in separatist movement in China and it spelled disaster.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/04/08/us-funded-uyghur-activ...

Wtf, so the Uyghur movement in the US is basically right wing, pro gun, pro trump organization? Also seems to be aligning with some qanon islamophobes as well. The irony.

Imperialism is different than Nationalism and nobody is exempt from it.

But China is like the West in the 1930s with the level of direct control of communications and propaganda, not allowing alternative narratives to form.

I have a sinking feeling that something horrible is going to hit China in, say, the next two-three decades. Not sure whether it'll be a cultural shift, economic collapse, but I think the way they're structured once it starts to falter it's going to explode in a really unpleasant way. Like exceeding Mao-level deaths.

The West is messier, in a lot of ways, but I think they're more fault-tolerant.

> I have a sinking feeling that something horrible is going to hit China in, say, the next two-three decades.

Welcome to the club, have a seat: https://preview.redd.it/1fq4rrk5ih921.jpg?width=800&auto=web...

> , but I think the way they're structured once it starts to falter it's going to explode in a really unpleasant way. Like exceeding Mao-level deaths.

A wish is not an adecuate tool to forecast the future.

> The West is messier, in a lot of ways, but I think they're more fault-tolerant.

As shown by the COVID crisis

Great, high quality, intellectually estimulating conversation in this thread.

Isn't this the risk with all totalitarian, overly centralized systems?

Perhaps Reuters is glossing over the way in which Intel's letter phrased things, but it certainly sounds as if they were utterly clueless about the subject being politically sensitive. Vs. (say) "Per U.S. law [exact, legalistic citation], signed into law on [date] by [President], Intel is legally forced to require that [dull, narrow, legalistic description of requirement, free of any hot-buttons]." Placed amid similar citations of other new laws - some of them Chinese - which affect Intel's supply chain.

Arguments about whether or not the third rail should carry 10,000 volts can be made all day. But corporate management that gets electrocuted because they were simply oblivious needs to be replaced.

I really don't understand China, but China also don't care to understand the west one bit. China has zero cultural understand about anything beyond its borders and basically only survives on other cultures being either extremely flexible or completely dependent on China for manufacturing (or both).

We're basically just waiting for companies to pull manufacturing from China, because they can deal with the backlash at home for ever, or some western leader to snap and just tell China to "Go kill whoever you need to get rid of so we can move on".

We can start by not buying anything Made In China as much as possible, however I fail to ever see that happening, as most are quick to forget their morals when it hits their wallets.

Yep, who needs foreign policy when we can buy different sneakers? Clearly shaming consumer habits will scale better. If we just all act without self-interest, there is really no problem!

Start by being the change don't wait for it to happen.

It's also become increasingly difficult, and in some cases nigh impossible, to avoid items from China.

I'm older and don't need a lot beyond the food and shelter I work for, I have plenty of "stuff".

But buying clothing, gifts, electronics, well, the list is long and I won't try to cover everything here, that doesn't have at least part of it's assembly provided by China is not easy to avoid. It's not just people's wallets, it's time, it's lack of knowledge and one's ability to figure out how to get what they need without involving China in the acquisition.

I agree with you, but let's not pretend that we don't stop "buying from China" because we're all too lazy and greedy to do so. We could use some legislative and corporate support and I think a lot more people would get on board.

Clothing isn’t to bad, most is made in other countries, who are terrible in their own way.

For stuff like electronics is impossible, it’s almost all made in China. The only solution I see it keeping stuff for longer or buying used.

Not all made per se, but assembled in China at least. china is not yet a powerhouse when it comes to manufacture top of the line SoCs for example.

On a positive note, most modern electronics have a bunch of "bent metal", screws, and memory + microprocessors. The first two are very low value and frequently produced directly in China. The last two are high value and most frequently produced in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and various parts of Europe. When you look at the "value added" by assembly of an iPhone in China, it is astonishingly low. The vast majority of value (for hardware) is added outside of China.

Chinese companies also make low-middle-end microcontrollers (gigadevice etc.), passive components, switches and connectors (clones of Japanese designs mostly) that are much lower cost and 'ok'. There's also PCB manufacturing and stuffing, tooling, injection molding (using Chinese or German machines), final assembly. For things like Bluetooth speakers, it's all local.. a wifi router might me be all local appart from the SOC.. iPhones yeah different story.

For electronics in general and CPUs in particular, "Made in China" is becoming the Clipper Chip for the 2010's/2020's. So yeah, this thing with intel is very disturbing. They're paying for the rope that'll be used to hang all of us with this.

Hence why I took care to hint as much as possible, definitely there are goods impossible to get elsewhere, others are relatively easy to find if one cares enough.

> It's also become increasingly difficult, and in some cases nigh impossible, to avoid items from China.

I have the opposite experience. I find it's becoming increasingly easy. I'm finding myself surprised that most things aren't made in china. So far the only thing I haven't been able to get was a waffle maker -- I can do without! Or I should just actually get a $300 waffle maker instead of something stupid that will probably break after a few runs

The hardest to find was a power drill.

I suspect that much of this is labor costs in china going up and manufacturing moving to India, Pakistan, Thailand, vietnam

Also -- I don't buy much from Amazon anymore, so this is going to b&m establishments

I picked up USA made waffle iron from C. Palmer Manufacturing. It's super basic and almost 2-3x more expensive than the first few results on Amazon, but it's great! (https://cpalmermfg.com/waffle-irons.html) Hope that helps with your waffle making.

perfect! But I will be making chaffles =D

At first I suspected made in USA could mean assembled in USA from Chinese castings and other parts. But man is it so freaking satisfying to see at the top of the page next to "About us" is a link to their tool and die shop. They're a freaking casting shop that decided to make waffle makers. Fantastic.

Some random niche waffle iron company just saw a spike in online sales. They have got to be wondering what just happened. You’ve been “hacker news hugged” would probably just confuse them.

Super basic? What more do you need!? It makes waffles!

Also I just saw that they actually sell the individual parts should you need to replace something. This company seems like a real gem.

It's two days before Christmas! Why couldn't I have seen that link three weeks ago?

"Or I should just actually get a $300 waffle maker instead of something stupid that will probably break after a few runs"

I did this for a while but a lot of US manufacturers seem to like producing low quality items for a high price under the label "Made in USA".

"Made in USA" is often code for "made with prison labor". Louisiana is said to make a point of incarcerating particularly black citizens on made-up charges and excessive sentencing to maintain a ready prison labor pool.

So, it is probably important to verify that such products are not from prison labor.

China has is rightly criticized for unjustified incarceration, particularly in Xinjiang, but the US incarcerates many more on largely similar pretexts, which amounts to a much larger fraction of its population. Reducing US incarceration rate is a moral imperative.

That’s an incredibly serious claim to make, do you have evidence to support your claims?

It's not particularly controversial. Here's the NY version, for example. https://corcraft.ny.gov/

There's an explicit carve out in the 13th amendment's slavery prohibition for people convicted of crimes.

They make signs and license plates for the state. As far as prison labor goes, that seems relatively benign.

They do a very great deal more than that. Places with strong unions restrict what they do just so they don't compete with union labor. But that leaves enormous leeway, which is reliably exploited.

Many private prisons have contracts with states guaranteeing them a quota of prisoners, on pain of monetary penalties. It becomes the job of police and courts to deliver that quota, regardless of behavior, because there is no money budgeted for penalties.

Everybody can be found guilty of something, if you want to.

Even if something doesn't say "Made in China", the chances are that many or most of it's components were made in China.

You have a bit better chances if you instead whitelist countries with stricter rules of origin (for example, Made in USA requires 50% of the components to be made here) but even then much of the supply chain for that item will probably trace back to China.

> but even then much of the supply chain for that item will probably trace back to China.

You're still doing one stage better; but also you'd be surprised how much of that supply chain doesn't come from china, especially now, with supply chain issues and manufacturers using it as opportunity to re-tool their sourcing.

Fairphone have an analysis on their complete supply chain, of every component. Lots come from China, but more interesting: components of components have a source too, raw materials too, as does travel.

An example of the latter, Fairphone used trains to move the assembled smartphones to EU. Those trains moved from China through Russia, dven during and after Crimea conflict and MH17 disaster.

Its a shame I don't have a link handy to their supply chain infographic. It is so detailed, includes all corporations and locations, that it would warrant a HN submission within its own. OTOH, they yet have to make it for their recent product, FP4.

> The hardest to find was a power drill.

Depending on where you live and what you like....DeWalt and high end Craftsman make drills in the USA. Makita makes some in Japan. I believe Bosch does some in Germany, but don't quote me on that.

DeWalt, Craftsman and Makita all had "made in china". Bosch was not (I think it's thailand). Maybe i was too low-end.

Yeah, on the low end you're out of luck. It's the top end stuff that's made in USA. About 120ish for a drill, vs say, 30 for some Ryobi.

Model to Google for Craftsman is CMCD720

The Bosch Professional 18V drills (blue) are made in Malaysia.

Sadly the battery packs are still made in china though.

Battery tech seems to be a big problem in general.

What's interesting there is that internally, all of them use Samsung, made in Korea batteries.

They just assemble the case and circuitry in China.

I bought a Samsung power bank recently and was surprised that it was made in china and not Korea.

If that’s just assembly that would make sense considering Samsung’s expertese.

I suspect in the next few years that will be less of an issue. There are companies currently ramping up in Japan, Germany and the UK that are making 3D printed solid state batteries that will be lighter, higher capacity, higher C rating than the current batteries. The tech exists, is safety certified but not yet in mass production.

It is hard if you want to say "Buy American" or something like that

But I find it easy to avoid chinese products, for example I just recently was in the market for some cookware, I thought my choices were expensive American made pans, or cheap China, but in reality I found some very good cookware coming out of South America for very good price

there is an app where you can scan beauty products and it will tell you what is in them, it gives you warnings about dangerous chemicals in certain products. it's called think dirty. there is another app for food that does the same thing called yuka.

i wonder if there is an app where it will tell you the origin of a product or a rating on the company based on ethics. like ethically sourced rating or something along those lines.

I agree that legislative and corporate support would be helpful, however in my experience the only pretending is that more than a small number of people care. Look at your own post - on the one hand, you would be financially supporting genocide, on the other hand you want to buy gifts. That this is even a question is sign of where things really stand and I think you are putting more effort into it than most people. See also how many people aren't willing to take minor precautions to avoid killing their own family members.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo

This is mostly the fault of big box retail stores sourcing most of their merchandise in China. It will take consumers totally boycotting Chinese merchandise in order for them to stop ordering more stuff from China.

Which is why consumers that care need to change their habits.

This doesn't apply only to China sourced goods.

> as most are quick to forget their morals when it hits their wallets.

I realized the other day that if I saw a tray of "Made in China" utensils and a comparable tray of "Made in Africa/Europe/USA" utensils of roughly the same quality I'd happily pay a dollar or two extra, no questions asked for the ones that doesn't originate in China these days.

I ended up not buying it at all since there was no alternative that was not made in China and I really wasn't in the mood for buying anything Chinese after their recent bullying of Lithuania.

I am in the mood for buying something from Lithuania though, almost to the point of ordering a bag of fresh Lithuanian air for about $10 or $20 bucks just for the point of it if someone offers it.

It seems that pure Lithuanian air cans are all sold out. As an alternative, you can buy Lithuanian cow dung in a can here: https://dovanusalis.lt/lietuviskas-karvutes-sudas-skardineje I couldn't see an English translation of the website, so you have to translate things or guess a little to navigate there.

I guess customs aren't too happy to allow cow dung across the borders, but otherwise this is brilliant: at the moment I want to buy Lithuanian cow dung more than buying anything from China :-)

Buy https://stores.balticvalue.com/products/electric-potato-grat...

They ship it straight from lithuania. I got one recently myself. Made it Lithuania also.

Then use this device to make Kugelis.

That's not going to do anything.

In modern day, American companies have more to gain in China than they have to lose in the USA. The market they are chasing is 3 times larger than the US and the only "regulation" in sight is basically bribing local government.

Don't be surprised if the companies you boycott simply move operations to China and cut ties with the US.

China devalues its domestic currency on purpose so that oligarchs use the stronger American dollar as a vehicle. Once the companies move to China they can strengthen their domestic currency, shed the dollar, and then Americans will be making Ipads in factories with suicide nets and China will be sipping Starbucks wearing inexpensive "Made in USA" Apple watches

This is completely ignoring the fact that China doesn't want foreign companies operating inside their borders unless they form a joint venture with a local Chinese owned company that owns >50%.

China is also an authoritarian regime that does not care about laws if a company doesn't play ball. They will just be shut down. This doesn't sound like a good market to put all your trust into.

3x larger in people is not 3x larger in wealth. I think US and China are comparable in that regard. And I dont know if the opportunity going forward is so incredible given China's debt levels and impending population bust.

You don't understand.

China is in debt because the government wants to be in debt. They have to be to have population control. If there were no debt their population would have already busted.

The oligarchs who rule China don't use Chinese currency. So they are not impacted by debt levels. China also doesn't promote their currency internationally as a means of keeping domestic purchasing power low.

If you threaten China they will reverse these decisions and actually try to compete for quality of life. That's where western civilization as we know it ends. That's where the American empire falls and the Chinese empire rises.

> If you threaten China they will reverse these decisions and actually try to compete for quality of life

This would require political revolution. The system is set up and dependent on a complex net of patronage among the elites. Competing for quality of life would mean taking their chips. People don't like it when you take their chips.

This might have been possible to do peacefully before Xi. But he's shown the cost of the competition is high. If you come in second place, you don't get another shot in five or ten years. You lose the chance of a lifetime, and will likely see yourself and your family persecuted by the state.

I wouldn't say people forget as a lot of people don't have the extra capital to shop for soy vegan lates every morning for breakfast. These decisions are firmly in the realm of the political economics.

Either cut off the product supply through embargoes or taxes or build a competing supply chain...

> "Go kill whoever you need to get rid of so we can move on."

Israel appears to be one of the Western nations where they are deepening ties and not bowing to US pressure to disengage:

* http://www.news.cn/english/2021-11/17/c_1310316894.htm

* https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/16/us-israel-china-deals/

* https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-not-expected-to-j...

If you allow me to throw in an idea, and please correct me if you see fit.

In earlier times the Confucian pacifist ways of China were not up to the aggression of Western Europe, the US and Japan. In more recent times they learned to deal better with these foreign powers. The last thing they want is to give up their autonomy and culture and get run over by all these well meaning politicians that are very much after power anyway.

The moslim communities might be seen as a threat to Chinese conformity since they often hold very tight their moslim culture. The same thing might be happening around Falun Dafa. I don't really know how it started, but where we are now, they might be seen as a threat as well, since they are now quite aggressive in their wordings towards the Chinese government.

That makes perfect sense to me. What China fails to understand is that this approach have it’s own problem, in respect to their role in the world. It protects China and it’s culture, but makes it impossible for western nations to depend on the country.

Don’t let the propaganda fool you — like any other empire, China has never been “pacifist,” whether we’re talking about the PRC that established itself through a long and brutal civil war, or the Qing dynasty and its endless internal and external military conflicts.

The modern mainland state has been very clear — all the more so since the 3rd and 4th plenums under Xi — that every aspect of the Chinese sociopolitical superstructure is there to ensure the Party remains paramount. In today’s China, 法治 means not that law rules the Party, but that the Party rules by law.

In their syllogism, any threat to Party leadership is a threat to the Party; any threat to the Party is a threat to its ability to legitimize itself to the people of China; any threat to their legitimation is a threat to the nation. Therefore, any attack on Party leadership or actions is, to them, existential. (I say this the same week the Tiananmen Square “pillar of shame” memorial came down in Hong Kong.)

Thus, the big lie they’re promulgating is that Intel et al. are disparaging the nation or government of China, rather than the Communist Party, because the theoretical basis of the state admits no light between them. Anyone doing business on the mainland needs to understand that they will have to subordinate every interest and goal they have to whatever the Party considers important — hence the “we apologize for pointing out that slave labor is not popular” walkback.

> In earlier times the Confucian pacifist ways of China

Imperial China was not pacifist. A basic model of Chinese history, which IIRC came from scholars in imperial China, was that China repeated a three stage cycle (from memory, the terms won't be exactly right): ascension (of a new dyansty) and prosperity -> decline and corruption -> chaos (and war) -> ascenscion ....

China's borders reguarly changed through force. Look up historical maps, for example. However, China had no peers in size and wealth nearby, and therefore didn't fight existential wars.

I'm not sure Confucian philosophy is pacifist, regardless.

> China were not up to the aggression of Western Europe, the US and Japan

They were not up to the technological advantages of the industrial revolution, and took a long time to recognize it and to change. In the early-ish 19th century, the Qing emporer wrote a famous letter to the king of England saying that China did not need their trinkets (industrial revolution technology) that the subordinate king (I forget how that was implied or expressed) offered, apparently not realizing the severe disadvantage. Even after the subsequent brutal, imperialistic attack on China, seizure of ports, and forced trade, the Chinese emporers tried to minimize change, IIRC first trying to just buy military tech without the infrastructure of knowledge, training, skills, etc.

Even today, the CCP seems to think it will have a wealthy capitalist country without a free market (which itself requires freedom and free thinking).

US fed the beast that is CCP and now the beast can’t be controlled. Do you fault the beast or the idiot who miscalculated and kept feeding the beast?

You blame both, since they're both sets of sentients capable of reason, not cats mesmerized by a laser pointer.

I wonder if they would use the same dehumanizing terms back at us? What makes you want to refer to humans as "beasts", and why use the term "beast" in the first place? Do wild animals frighten you?

The US has never supported the CCP. The US supported trade with China the country and with the people of China, and also their freedom and rights. The trade also benefitted the CCP.

It's long been believed, and many times it's happened, that as countries grow middle classes they become democratic and free (Taiwan, South Korea, etc.). So far the CCP has forstalled that, but despite the trend in disparaging democracy (also in democracies, bizarrely), there's a long history showing that it wasn't a crazy idea and, despite recent setbacks, hardly impossible.

It's not about culture. China has been interacting with the rest of the world for millennia. It's about mindset. It's about them not willing to let go of their chauvinistic imperial outlook they impart on themselves and to the world.

Nationalistic flamewar is not allowed on HN and posting this sort of nationalistic denunciation is not ok, regardless of which country you have a problem with.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

But the parent is? Han Chauvinism actually is an academic topic you know. It's not any denunciation, it's a fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_chauvinism

The parent isn't ok either. I probably could, and maybe should, have posted the same scolding there. Your phrasing seemed marginally worse to me.

Re "fact": it's of course good to be talking about facts as opposed to fantasies, but it's not sufficient for good discussion here. There are many other variables, including (1) which facts people select to talk about (there are infinitely many, after all), and (2) how they talk about them. Those things are choices, not facts. Past explanations here if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

China is in the same position as Saudi Arabia. They have something the rest of the world needs so they can do anything they want.

For China it’s cheap skilled labor. For Saudi it’s oil, gas, and loads of cash.

It's really not about "China". It's all about CCP.

It's also not the CCP doesn't care. The CCP does care about its international image. But it's making choice between domestic control and international image. It's obvious to CCP right now that the world is heavily rely on China's market and manufacturing power. So the CCP can use it to suppress any backlash, and do terrible things domestically. The whole HK affair has firmly proved that the western world can't do anything to it. Invading Taiwan is definitely in its calculation.

> and basically only survives on other cultures being either extremely flexible or completely dependent on China for manufacturing (or both).

yeah, china only exist since 1940, it's a known fact ;)

> We're basically just waiting for companies to pull manufacturing from China, because they can deal with the backlash at home for ever, or some western leader to snap and just tell China to "Go kill whoever you need to get rid of so we can move on".

the west is just waiting to make more profit from its own people, if that means building their factory in china and destroying jobs, families and lives, they'll do it

in the meantime China is already on the far side of the moon and is about to land on the moon with its bases

if we want to improve our society, we must stop being blind and repeat what ever propaganda we hear in the west about China

China is doing exactly what we are doing, if you mad at china, be mad at yourself for building this society

China eradicated extreme poverty in its country, what the west did to its people? the US still doesn't have universal healthcare

between the 2 model of society, China's is looking more human and is willing to advance humankind more

i'd rather empower China than what ever the English block is trying to do ;)

Supply chains are already moving from China as fast as possible. Access to western markets will disappear. No amount of rhetoric will change this.

> China also don't care to understand the west one bit. China has zero cultural understand about anything beyond its borders

Well, consider how many people in China have learned English, can read articles / online discussions in English, or have traveled to the west. Contrast that to the number of westerners who can read Chinese or have been to China.

China surely understands the west a lot better than the other way around. It just disagrees and has its own interests to look after.

The highest entry on that 'Read Next' frame on the right of that website, for me is: 'Lick it up:...' that references to:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/lick-it-up-japan-professo...

Do I sense some traces of humor in that news feed algorithm?

This is one of those "damned if you, and damned if you don't" type situations.

I'm sure all they really want is to maintain their margins, which makes turning the other cheek to potential human rights abuses that much more sinister... but making a commitment to higher ethical standards risks putting them out of business (Intel has been poorly managed for years already), which would make this a futile effort.

Bombing and pillaging countries left and right for more than half a century - totally fine, we're bringing democracy to the savages.

Becoming an economic threat to the empire - bad, very bad. Anything you do is bad because human rights, environment, blah blah

The lack of self reflection is staggering. I expect to get flagged immediately, of course. Can't go against the narrative

"Guilty until proven innocent" is a very drastic change of policy.

If they were mining rare earths there I doubt this statement would have made it past the "hey this sounds good and makes us seem friendly" stage of marketing...

So Intel saying "forced labour bad, mkay" is bad. After facing ban saying 'is not how we feel about it". Really? Mhm, mkay. Not sure what is worse now. Getting WW2 IBM vibes now kind of. This is like calling for global boycott. Come on Intel, we know you can do better

I wish they wouldn't apologize. This was the right choice.

I personally never understood the issues, is there any human right abuses in China? Sure.

Each citizens is free to vote with their money and boycott whoever they want.

But I am surely not gonna blindly follow the US on this. China is lying about human right issues, but they are right about the fact that it’s indeed an American tactics to hurt them economically.

Who in their right mind would follow the US on this? We all remember Guantanamo, the fake mass destruction weapons by Powell and the thousands of innocent civilians killed during an illegitimate war.

I am definitely not siding against China on this. They are lying, they are probably torturing innocent Uighur but if I had to apply the exact same logic, I would be boycotting US products and services as well (I don’t)

Karry Wang said he would no longer serve as brand ambassador for Intel, adding in a statement that "national interests exceed everything".

That's such an insane statement. It basically says

As a Chinese, I think the logic of certain Western countries is ridiculous. Because Xinjiang’s human rights situation is considered to be problematic, so Xinjiang’s companies are banned. As an analogy, can I think that the human rights situation of African Americans is terrible, so I need to ban companies that employ African Americans?

These bans will only make the living conditions of minorities worse, because they may lose their jobs because of the ban.

By the way, Uyghurs live and work in every province in China, especially in the catering industry. I have never heard complaints about forced labor. American propaganda makes me feel ridiculous, but it seems to be working.

Is there an equivalent to the NAACP for the Uyghurs in China?

You've earned your social credits for today. Pray that they will be of value when someone speaks out against you or your group.

There's a huge gap on the opinions of Xinjiang between the Chinese side and the Western side. Don't put your words for Chinese side on HN because no one would vote for you and your comment will be eventually grayed out.

I can't recall seeing downvoted comments on HN that were defending China while making good points, with sound logic, avoiding whataboutism and crazy comparisons, and being respectful. The problem is that almost every pro-Chinese-policy comment that I've seen here violates one or more of those things.

In the specific case of the GP post, they're making a bad analogy in their first paragraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

> I have never heard complaints about forced labor.

So does this mean they don't exist?

> These bans will only make the living conditions of minorities worse, because they may lose their jobs because of the ban.

but they are slave labour, so whether they have a job or not doesn't really matter? or would you say thats not the case? If so they could move and get a job somewhere else?

> So does this mean they don't exist?

Given GP never hears about forced labor, GP may want to express that the percentage of people who are being forced to labor is low, or nearly impossible. "sth doesn't exists" is somewhat extreme.

The situation of African Americans nowadays is nowhere near comparable.

The issue are the “jail looking” camps which are officially “education centers”. Forced labour happens there, which is basically slavery. Western companies don’t want to be associated with slavery. It’s hard enough when people are paid almost nothing, but here they are literally not paid and obliged to work. The living conditions of people in the camps won’t change regardless of what western companies do. Also mass sterilization occurs in these camps which is considered a genocide by many.

I know western media bias is a thing and that most Chinese people have no idea this is happening and are good people. But this is one of these things where there’s just way too much smoke for there to be no fire. There are too many testimonies and photos. As uncomfortable as it is, it is unfortunately true. This is not a western conspiracy.

When these allegations first appeared, I waited cautiously for evidence. Maybe something happened around me that I didn't know?

When the BBC interviewed Xinjiang but failed to find evidence, and then only used video filters to render fear, I questioned the authenticity of these allegations.

Later, the "evidence" displayed by the Western media had a lot of traces of forgery. After that, I didn't believe these allegations even more.

It's a pity that people who have been immersed in Western media propaganda for a long time have been implanted with a concept: China is bad. This makes any news that is bad for China seem to be true. Whoever says China is good is the CCP propagandist.

But people living in China know that Western media reports are very biased.

It's also an irony that people who have a slightest hint of saying China is not all good are easily regarded as traitors on the Chinese internet. Also some people living in China know that Chinese media outlets (all state-run) might be far more biased. But hey, I'm not playing whataboutism. It just seems so ironic to my Chinese eyes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

Do you believe this whole article is "Wester media propaganda"?

In my opinion the entire world is responsible for these atrocities, not only China.

the scale is the problem

In a dark way I’m enjoying this. China has these “masters of the universe” on a leash and isn’t afraid to give a good yank to bring them to heel.

Did you live through the late 80s when Japan had a similar psychological hold on a lot of US companies and decision makers?

It may be somewhat entertaining, but it is not a good thing. That said, it will be very funny if China suffers the same sort of historical path that Japan did after the failure of the 5th gen and the bubble. Housing prices as a multiple of income are actually worse in Shanghai right now than they were at the peak of Japan, Inc.

They’d better apologize for the apology… or else…

Sad to see this - injustice and oppression must be fought against regardless of economic consequence

https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-forced-labor-uyghurs...

“ We apologise for the trouble caused to our respected Chinese customers..” Andy Grove, a Holocaust survivor, must be turning over in his grave.

> Intel, which has 10,000 employees in China, said in its apology that it "respected the sensitivity of the issue in China."

This reminds me of a recent British politics round-table interview, where a member of the ruling party told the world that we shouldn't call politicians liars - despite the current Prime Minister lying through his teeth at almost every opportunity simply because he can get away with it - because it would undermine people's faith in the political system that keeps lying to them.

It seems that saying the things that need to be said about the political systems that need to be called out is not as important as getting the money (or savings) that the countries attached to those political systems can generate.

Or, as a great man once sang:

    For china (f'china x 4) is a country that can bring us to our knees.

Not sure there's a solution to this though. Power will always corrupt.

> a member of the ruling party told the world that we shouldn't call politicians liars - despite the current Prime Minister lying through his teeth at almost every opportunity simply because he can get away with it - because it would undermine people's faith in the political system that keeps lying to them.

I didn’t follow the event, but I have to agree with whoever said that. There’s nothing more toxic to democracy than people just saying “ah politicians are all liars anyway”. That’s exactly what post-truth politicians like Johnson, Trump and Putin want you to believe - it’s all a big joke anyway, so who cares?

> want you to believe

Are you claiming that politicians are not liars?

That's exactly the kind of easy cynicism that serves no-one.

Yes, everyone lies, politicians and non-politicians. "you're looking good", "our product already does this", "i was just about to do that", "it's our highest priority"... and in a job where you are constantly being asked to satisfy everyone, of course there are going to be fibs.

But there are relatively honest politicians and there are absolute sociopaths like Johnson, and it's important to differentiate the two

> there are relatively honest politicians

Part of the problem is good politicians are agents of compromise. When a culture ceases to be able to find compromise, a direction online echo chambers and social media are driving ours, then a politician who wins 90% in exchange for giving 10% comes back a liar. They said they were going to get 100%!

> But there are relatively honest politicians

So instead of sugar coating you just need to say they lie less compared to other politicians.

What's toxic to democracy is politicians lying, and then telling us that p;ointing out their moments of hypocrisy is what's doing the real damage. Describing reality is never bad.

Politicians have been lying since the origin of politics. The modern press’ penchant for shouting liar every time a politician they don’t like speaks is juvenile and patronizing to the audience.

Why not both? The media is full of liars, yes - two words "Daily Mail" or "Fox News" if you are American.

Politics is also full of liars. Boris Johnson being a prime example.

I don't know what the solution is but I suspect it lies in removing egoism from the system. Something more like Switzerland's governing council rather than an individual leader that just attracts narcissistic individuals.

There's a world of difference between "This politician is lying to you." and "All politicians are lying to you." One is a statement against a single incident which can be refuted or supported by additional facts. The other is an unprovable blanket statement which begs the question of whether the government can be trusted.

The question "can government be trusted" is long answered with a resounding NO it can not

Government like fire is a useful servant, but a fearful master.

This is why we have separation of powers, checks and balances, and a federalist system in the US, because we understand government can never, and should never be trusted.

Government is control, government is fear, government is power. Power Corrupts, and the only way to prevent that corruption is to deny power, to check power, to distribute power.

This is all well and nice in theory, but in practice a feeble government just means leaving abandoning the weak to the whims of the strong

Ironically I view giving democratic governments more power as abandoning the weak to the whims of the majority, which we have seen time and time again in history even recent history

Democracy after all is 2 wolves and lamb voting on what is for dinner, a constitutional republic backed by distributed governance is the lamb having rights to tell the majority to f' off

I think there's a difference between "all politicians are liars", and "several people currently in positions of power are repeated being untruthful with absolute impunity because of the system of politics that is enabling them to do so without consequences"

Which, now that I say it out loud, do sound very very similar.

But this feeling that they are all liars is not new.

In fact, at least with politicians they have a very easy "tell": You know when a politician is lying because their lips move.

(That joke has been around since before I was born, and I was born in the 80s.)

The difference isn't that the country thinks politicians are liars. That has not changed. The difference is that there has always been this "honour code" in politics, where if your sleaze was found out, you fell on your sword. But this was not ever backed up with any law with teeth, and so when the likes of Boris repeatedly lies, he can just throw another flunky under the bus to appease the crowds, or do something stupid to make the crowds laugh, and carry on as normal.

I don't think politics ever needed any outward credibility. It never had any. It needed external accountability. And without encouraging the media and the public to hold them to account when they do lie, we'll never get that accountability. In effect, the post-truth weakness you describe should never depend on public perception. In a well functioning government, repeated unrepentant deception should always trigger some form of legal jeopardy.

I think we should stop using China for cheap Labour in general given how hostile their government are becoming. Where possible I try to buy Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese electronics.

If we can't employ Xinjian people anymore, what do you propose we do with them ?

Set them free.

Surely being free and employed is better than being free and unemployed.

The onus is on you to show that they aren't. Have you been to Xinjiang? Prior to the pandemic one could simply visit and see for themselves

"Do with them"? That's a truly chilling way to speak of people.

Obviously the parent was being rhetorical. Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar. It's precisely the hell we want to avoid here.

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

Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar. It's precisely the hell we want to avoid here.

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

Umm, with respect - it is the US anti-Chinese rhetoric that is changing, rather than Chinese government policy.

There are many repressive aspects to the Chinese regime (and government specifically I suppose); but this is probably less the case today then, say, 30 years ago. Certainly I doubt very much repression has been tightened over the past few years.

If I'm mistaken - please provide references, preferably to non-US-aligned media sources.

*Edit:* Hong-Kong situation notwithstanding.

The burden is on the person making a claim, not on others to disprove it. Furthermore, "no US aligned media sources" is ad hominem. Objective facts don't become falsehoods because of who is saying them.

Since you've formed the opinion that Chinese government policy hasn't become more repressive, and that opinion is clearly educated, surely you have plenty of links to give us to back up your position.

Listen to the Sinica podcast. It covers China-related topics "without fear nor favor". You'll here politicians and experts talk about the increasing, and often baseless, hostility of Western media over the past 5 years.

To add to that - putting aside the present state of Sino-US relations, our prior beliefs should reflect what academic work on lying in politics tells us (1):

* lying in official diplomatic relationships between countries is rather rare

* within countries, democratic leaders are much more likely to lie to their population than autocrats

* countries with imperial ambitions and long-distance ventures lie more often than others

* within great powers, the depiction of the rival great powers is especially lie-ridden

In other words, for a person living in the US - it's likely that whatever US news sources tell you about China (or Russia) is mostly lies or exaggerations

(1) https://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/international-deceit/

Objective facts can become very hard to discern in a highly partisan environment though. That's the problem with how lots of US (and UK, etc) media works: there's obvious partisanship which can make it hard to extract the truth. Everything ends up as "the truth + highly political framing devices". There is no outside to observe from.

There’s obvious partisanship in uk and us media, but the difference vs totalitarian states like China, is that the partisanship is in a thousand different directions. So in the US or UK you have access to all agendas and can reason for yourself about what is true. If Fox says something untrue MSNBC will point it out, if the New York Times gets something wrong it’ll be all over OAN. If AOC lies about something you’ll have Lauren Boebert screaming about it. By having a free media it allows you to form the correct view by holding your views and others up to scrutiny.

In comparison, in China if the state media decides to lie for its partisan reasons then there is no where you can go to hear the truth so you never can distinguish the truth and we have a thousand different examples of that happening.

> If Fox says something untrue MSNBC will point it out, if the New York Times gets something wrong it’ll be all over OAN. If AOC lies about something you’ll have Lauren Boebert screaming about it.

And if all these media outlets say Russia/China/Iraq/Iran is evil at the same time, then it must be true, right?

1990 (still roughly qualifies as 30 years ago, I guess): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baren_Township_conflict

It has tightened e.g. in HK and significantly so. With these things it’s not a matter of averaging oppression to judge the level. If a specific group of people, geographic area, etc. are being targeted you don’t really judge based on how the rest are doing.

Do you actually believe there is some sort of repression in HK? Black people are more repressed in the US than anyone in HK… I just visited HK on a business trip (had to quarantine) and there were no signs of oppression or any sort of police brutality at all.

>If I'm mistaken - please provide references, preferably to non-US-aligned media sources.

Here's an official Chinese government source defending the use of labour/"re-education" camps in Xinjiang: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/19/WS5c9033f0a3106c65c... . In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.

> In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.

Before 2003 the Chinese government just randomly pull people off street and if they can't prove (i.e. by showing an ID card) they live in this city they go to a camp [1], and this happened everywhere.

Heck, even less than 20 years ago.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custody_and_repatriation

The relevant section of that article is Section V.

China has had a system of labor/re-education camps in the past, named laojiao:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/ch...

These were supposedly abolished in 2013, but in fact many of them may have been rebranded using other titles, see:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/12/china-s-re-ed...

and this is why I was making the point that such policies are not new.

That being said - the article you linked to really sends chills down one's spines, and just reading the Chinese government's self-justification for forced interment of people not convicted nor charged with any crime indeed serves to emphasize the repressive nature of this practice.

> In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.

In past the Chinese government did send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.

Tibetans - since 1957

Mongols - since its first years

Miao/Yao - 1982

Koreans - Koreans Chinese were routinely rounded up every time NK-China affairs were flaring up since seventies

And Uighurs were in, and out of concentration/extermination camps many times already in the past. In 1949, 1967, 1976, 1991, 1998

First time learning about these. Any sources?

> In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.

No they just occupied whole of Tibet and converted the whole area into a re-education camp while working to wipe out local culture.

The final judgement at https://chinatribunal.com makes somber reading about forced organ harvesting from prisoners in China and its increase in the last 20 years.

Funny how people blindly trust a private company with no public mandate just because they called themselves a “Tribunal” and call their press releases “judgements”.

> If I'm mistaken - please provide references

Yesterday: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/hong-kong-pi...

I have personally spoken with mainland Chinese Christians who report increasing persecution there.

Well, OP didn't really complain about government policy or repression, but rather about hostility. Even if there are no repressive aspects (but I agree with other replies that they do exist!), the behaviour would still be problematic in itself.

And it's not just an US thing, btw. Many nations perceive dealing with China as walking on eggshells.

> Umm, with respect - it is the US anti-Chinese rhetoric that is changing, rather than Chinese government policy.

100% - but such a sentence also needs to come with a disclaimer explaining that it doesn't mean the CCP regime isn't guilty of killing millions of its own people over the years and that any ideology or technology they export needs to be viewed as such.

> Hong-Kong situation notwithstanding.

They're currently removing the Tianamen commemoration statue.

For other readers who are not familiar, here are two newspaper articles about it:

https://hongkongfp.com/2021/12/23/breaking-fears-for-condemn...

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/3160744/universi...

> given how hostile their government are becoming

To the extent that they are more hostile now, that would look like an effect of American attacks on them, not a cause. Causes need to precede effects.

That there is any controversy in this statement is insane, but I would be very wary of ever making this statement non-anonymously, because I know I'm more likely than not to be cancelled for it.

China has mastered the manipulation of the west's successor ideology better than those in the west that instituted it.

I’ve always thought it to be the reverse, since the west has the whole world at their disposal (in terms of audience and technology penetration)

Ever bought something you believed was Made in Japan but found out later it was actually Made in China?

I don’t think inanimate objects can influence a person’s mind. However media can, especially when you see the same idea repeated everywhere.

It can when materialistic quality is a factor in purchasing decisions. For example, I recently had to buy a new rice cooker and based on my prior experiences of owning both Japanese and Chinese brands; the former outlasted the latter by thirty years. Just because it was cheap and easily sourceable doesn't discount expected quality assurances.

I'm not saying this applies to all Chinese made products but something I keep in mind for all future purchases.

For one, chinese made Teslas are superior in quality to American ones. So looks like you are right, not every chinese product should be seen as inferior to japanese or even American.

If you always buy from A instead of from B, whoever they are, you start enjoying a familiarity with A that you don't have with B.

Then, not about minds but about money, you are helping A with your money instead of helping B and A eventually becomes more powerful than B.

Not willing to see it from a socialist angle.

r/BuyItForLife

Yes, it’s one reason that I let my Amazon Prime membership lapse and rarely purchase anything from Amazon now.

>China

Its not totally fair to put this all on Chinese manipulation.

Western politicians and many "tech elite" all love the concept of CCP-style 'social credit systems' being instituted.

This is ultimately what vaxpass is all about.

You broke the site guidelines egregiously here, and made it worse downthread. We ban accounts that do that repeatedly, and I'm dismayed to see that you've been doing it a lot.

I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good (for HN) comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29300291 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28987167, but to be honest, those are pretty slim pickings in the account's history. That's a problem and we need you to fix it if you want to keep participating here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

cancel culture doesn't originate in China. It's an evolution of the western idea of equality and individualism taken to an extreme

Cancel culture isn't that either. Cancel culture is a rebranding of 'shunning', which I bet predates humans as we know them. I bet our social monkey predecessors had such tactics figured out.

Read this and tell me it isn't 'cancel culture': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Overview

Bonus: 'shadow-banning' is stealth shunning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Stealth_shunning

It's probably a combination of the two. Letting the monkey instincts run wild while covering them with modern fanciful words :-)

How about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication

Another word for basically the same thing, yes. Excommunication is top-down directed shunning.

Cancelling finds its roots in the freedom of association.

Ancient Athens had ostracism [1]. It was against a single person and not against ideas but given that the numbers where smaller and heads carry ideas, it was more or less the same thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism

China is famously very accepting of all ideas and would never ban or ostracize members of its own society for perspectives that disagree with the majority's belief.

Yep. Definitely a western thing.

Please don't use HN for generic nationalistic and ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

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

Edit: I had to ask you about this just recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29555995). Continuing to abuse HN like this will end up getting you banned here, so please don't.

Don't many of these companies still do final assembly in China? Foxconn is notorious for it's labor practices in China, but is a Taiwanese company. How can someone separate Chinese assembly from the rest of the product?

Especially given the horrors of forced organ transplants from prisoners by the CCP.

https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTr...

Oh just because the government is hostile. So if the government is "friendly" we can safely keep exploiting the workers? That pretty much describes how the US is going.

I've actually had some time to ruminate on this and as ever I think Ray Dalio probably knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. This is an extremely worthwhile watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TISMidxdZoc

We can never go to war with each other and as such should continue trading and competing (maybe on fairer terms) to avoid such things - the destruction just from cyber warfare alone would be beyond insane.

What is sad to see is how many Chinese are supporting genocide.

Genocidal policies are usually quite popular with the local majority.

sinocentrism is the belief in wich han culture is seen as superior and others need to assimilite or "go away". its a thousand old practice. most people seem compliacent with this view supported by the government. 92% of china is han and 56 minorities take the other 8%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_nationalism

There has been pushback against Han supremacy in the past, sad to see those efforts have been forgotten in today's China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Races_Under_One_Union

I disagree. They genuinely don't believe it is genocide. There's even international disagreement about the proper characterization of it. Most countries sufficiently propagandize their own citizens to inoculate them against the view that their own actions represent crimes against humanity, regardless of how they come to be viewed decades or centuries later.

I don't think the core of your idea is wrong though. The disturbing thing, to me, is that pro-China writers both in this thread and elsewhere think that disproving the charge of genocide (by linking to blogs or China's own view on the subject, mostly) they have cleared China of wrongdoing. It's obvious to me as someone with a modicum of moral intelligence that this is not really the case.

As an American, I am happy to admit that my understanding of the situation in Xinjiang is probably tainted by anti-China ideas being spread in my country. However, even if I take China entirely at its word about what it is doing, it's still quite obvious that this is horrifically bad and wrong. I would support boycotts entirely on the basis of China's own characterization of its actions.

That's really the sad, disturbing thing; people are supporting China by "showing" that Western media characterizations of the camps are inaccurate. I'm happy to admit they might be, but I believe it is a great moral failing to not denounce China's actions on its own terms.

What is uncontested: China is sending members (~1.3M per year) of a religious / ethnic minority (Uyghur) to internment camps for the purpose of preventing / deterring terrorism and to promote their social integration into China as a whole.

This is chilling to anyone who knows anything at all about the history of interning ethnic minorities. It was bad and wrong when the United States sent 125,000 Japanese people to live in camps during World War II. Anyone who protested or boycotted the United States for the purpose of ending that internment was, or would have been, justified. I am fully ready to apply the same standards to other countries, including my own, as I apply to China.

Likewise, whether it fully qualifies for the term "forced labor" or not, work done by people while imprisoned is inherently questionable and deserves heavy scrutiny. I believe that the conditions in prisons in the United States and the very-low-wage labor done by our prisoners are an abject moral horror, and it's important to turn the same critical eye to China's use of Uyghur labor.

Again, that's just looking at China's own view of it. The facts of the matter are likely to lie somewhere in between, which is even more concerning. It's hard not to see the shadow of some of the 20th century's fascistic horrors in China's discriminatory policies towards the Uyghur population, especially if anything in this piece turns out to be true: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...

The US incarcerates many, many more than China, as a much higher fraction of its population. Probably at least as many are on no better pretext, and are similarly exploited for prison labor.

Thus, a boycott-US movement would be (also!) justified, but better would be to check on practices and boycott specific companies that do not take particular care not to rely on prison labor in any country. That is more work, but supporting liberty everywhere is always going to be very hard work. However much, it is worth doing.

I type this posting on a phone. We are all almost as complicit as we can be.

Does the U.S. incarcerate people based on their religion?

Does it matter? A pretext is a pretext.

In fact, there have been a great many Americans railroaded into prison for, essentially, being Muslim, for refusing to try to entice other Muslims to engage in attempts at domestic terrorism so that they can be imprisoned, just to burnish somebody's resume.

But mostly black people are railroaded into prison for being black. Do you imagine that is less bad?

"A pretext is a pretext."

????

No.

A 'crime' is a legitimate pretext for putting someone in jail.

Being of a certain ethnicity is not a reason for putting someone in jail.

I can't believe I am reading this.

And your statements about 'putting Muslims in jail for being Muslim' and But mostly 'black people are railroaded into prison for being black' are completely false. People are put in jail for crimes, whereupon the justice system in some cases may not be fully equally applied and FYI if anything the Justice System is heavy in the US to the point whereupon supposedly privileged group face nearly equally excessive oversight from the system - which is altogether a different problem.

Your ability to believe is not salient. And, it is a fact that black people are overwhelmingly over-represented in the US prison population. It is not because they commit more crimes, but because black people are arrested more, convicted more, and sentenced more, for identically the same behavior as non-black people. If that is different from being incarcerated because they are black, the difference is too small for me to perceive.

You seem to be insisting that racism does not exist in the US. Noted.

I wonder how many people in China know facts about their country's labour camps and Xinjiang policies and still find that acceptable, not considering this a genocide.

Please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN, and certainly not generic nationalistic flamewar comments. It's against the site guidelines and everything we're trying for this forum to be.

No, I'm not defending genocide. I'm just trying to defend this forum from burning itself to a crisp. There are lots of other places on the internet to hurl platitudes at enemies.

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

Sorry, I didn't think about it. In that case I would suggest avoid the posting the news like that one, if it is against site rules.

It's not that simple. The news was on topic and it's possible to discuss it thoughtfully and substantively, so that's what users here need to do. The topic isn't an excuse for breaking the rules.

I don't mean to pick on you! this problem is obviously widespread.

>Intel joined other prominent U.S. companies Monday pledging to do more to address systemic racism in the wake of the killing of an African-American man, George Floyd, by a police officer in Minneapolis.

>“Black lives matter. Period,” CEO Bob Swan wrote in a memo to employees Monday, embracing the rallying cry of contemporary civil rights activists. “While racism can look very different around the world, one thing that does not look different is that racism of any kind will not be tolerated here at Intel or in our communities.”

lmfao

It is the same as when Western branches of various multinational corporations redesign their logos in rainbow colors for the Pride month, but their Middle Eastern branches do not ... offending Islam or the CCP comes with enough downsides to make them think twice.

I think the best default way how to view corporations is "perfectly immoral psychopathic beings always heeding the current Zeitgeist for maximum profit and cheap P.R. points among the class that locally matters".

I am happy to change my mind about some of them if they prove otherwise (e.g. by turning down a massive contract for ethical reasons, or standing up to a Twitter mob sicced on by influential people), but this is my default view in absence of other evidence.

I believe this has happened exactly once, and it's already widely known:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#2010–2016:_Giving...

The worse part, at least to me, is that that these shallow gestures presumably work, that somehow empty posturing on progressive-cause-du-jour actually does buy them goodwill in the western world.

It's either that, or this entire thing as a corporate strategy is run by some HR echo chamber with minimal forethought, and any downside is farmed out to external PR crisis management teams.

I'm starting to think it's the latter, given the amount of backpedalling and policy changes as of late (think google employee walkouts, publishers dealing with wrongthink books, netflix employees trying to scuttle the company's IP etc)

What you're seeing is a tiny peak of issues that pop into public consciousness essentially randomly, sometimes because you did a gesture and other times because you didn't do a gesture. Shallow gestures are common because, the vast majority of the time, the only response is some people saying "oh that's nice".

We've banned this account for repeatedly and egregiously breaking the site guidelines.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

What is wrong with clavicat's comment? He is pointing out the hypocrisy of Intel claiming not to tolerate any form of racist. Genocide is by definition racist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

Should we demand that companies avoid California suppliers as well because of the extensive use of prison labor:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-11/californ...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2020/11/11/c...

https://www.freedomunited.org/news/forced-prison-labor-in-ca...

yes

Definitely! Human rights are the same for all humans.

But not for criminals in prison (think about it).

You do not have a 'human right' to commit crimes, which is why you go to jail in nations that have a legit Justice System.

The concentration camps in China are not for people who have committed crimes, they're for people who are of a specific ethnicity, that's it.

My comment refers to the specific abuse with forced slave work conditions for the jailed population in California. Nothing more.

There are no slave working conditions for prisons in California.

Yes. USA prison system is really awful, even more for a first world country, richiest country in the world.

Definitely

It wouldn't hurt.

Is it slave labour, I mean are they being forced to do it and not being paid for it, then sure boycott it.

If NOT, and if it is an avenue for prisoners to earn money, benefits, then don't boycott it

The problem is that privately run prisons require prisoners to pay for things that are realistically necessary despite not being legally mandated. They overcharge more than airports, and pay next to nothing.

They suffer because of it, and non-prisoners suffer as well, as they're competing with what is functionally slave labour.

True, i agree with your point on private prisons. Anything for profit will skew the everything towards that which makes more profit

Once you are already in prison it's hard to say whether you are forced to do it or not. It's not like you have a lot of employers and professions to choose from. And if the incentives include things like easier to get parole then refusing to participate would mean more time served. It'd be pretty hard to prove some labor is not "forced" in a prison setting.

> And if the incentives include things like easier to get parole then refusing to participate would mean more time served.

So what? That's just serving the original sentence. That doesn't sound forced to me. Is it forced labor when someone chooses to take a community service option instead of being locked up?

Yes of course it is. You're being forced to do it or end up in prison. How is that not forced?

It's essentially a choice between 1 option at that point.

You earned the prison. Is it somehow better to remove the option and just lock you up?

Negative prison time, applied to a legitimate sentence, should never count as forcing.

You pretend to be unaware of false arrest, fabricated evidence, bad representation, and over-sentencing of underclass people.

US citizens are not uniquely criminal, but US incarceration rate is by far highest in the world. You don't get there justly.

I don't pretend to be unaware of that. I think it's a separate problem.

Like, okay, we say that anyone improperly imprisoned is being forced into labor.

What about everyone else? The argument above was that it clearly is forced labor, even when your sentence is completely valid. I disagree with that.

> US citizens are not uniquely criminal, but US incarceration rate is by far highest in the world. You don't get there justly.

It's a mix of things. Even if you fixed all the bias in the system, you could still have a high incarceration rate with harsh but not inherently unjust laws.

Nobody has a legitimate reason to want a high incarceration rate.

The only reason to have a higher incarceration rate than any other country in the whole world is, specifically, because you want to have your underclass ready to hand for slave labor. Or, generally, to repress them.

If you are relying on threat of incarceration to discourage criminal behavior, having the highest such rate in the world is reliable evidence that your method is failing to achieve that aim. Other countries are demonstrating better methods you could learn from. If you wanted to, that is.

I never said anything about wanting a high incarceration rate.

There can be other reasons for harsh laws. Don't be so weirdly absolute. If a country does something wrong that doesn't mean it necessarily has the one specific motivation you're mad at and no other.

There are many motivations for evil action. They don't contradict, they add. Having more does not make it less evil.

Yep.

Also this has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, which wasn't about the US specifically.

To restate it, just to be very clear: 1. find someone that was legitimately sentenced to a fair duration of prison 2. offering them the ability to labor to reduce their sentence is not forced labor

Or, as we actually do, just assume they were legitimately sentenced to what we just assume is a fair duration.

Letting somebody innocent out "early", even if we extracted undue labor from them, could be a net good. But the incentives are all in the wrong direction, and we see the effects writ large all around us. Making fine points about a theoretical situation of justice and legitimacy is a harmful distraction in present circumstances, where we demonstrably don't have those.

" because you want to have your underclass ready to hand for slave labor. Or, generally, to repress them."

This is not unsubstantiated.

Moreover, it's upside down:

The economic labour output from US prisons is negligible and has no material effect on the GPD or industrial basis.

... and those prisoners, were they outside of the prison systems, in 'regular jobs' - would add tremendously more to the GDP in terms of productivity.

"US citizens are not uniquely criminal"

US citizens are absolutely uniquely criminal.

The violent gun murder rate in the US is 5x what it is European countries. Those are stats based on deaths, not criminal prosecutions.

The number of 'high speed chases' etc. is considerably higher.

In some 'high crime / poverty' areas of the US, the amount of crime again is multiples of those of other nations.

Moreover, the US has the right to put people in prison for crimes in a different manner than say Sweden, who might only have someone in jail for 4 years for murder.

China is putting Uyghurs in jail for their ethnicity, not for any crimes committed, so the issue is moot.

Their crime is being Uyghurs.

The people convicted of crimes in the US are not inherently worse people than their counterparts in other countries. We have more crime because we have chosen to have more crime, blamed them, and incarcerated them because we have chosen to have that. In other countries people have made better choices, with a better outcome.

> I mean are they being forced to do it and not being paid for it

Slavery is forced labor, which is orthogonal to being paid. If you are forced to work but are also paid (perhaps rare, but not unheard of), you are still a slave regardless of the pay. If you aren't being paid but aren't being forced to work, you aren't a slave (that's called volunteering.)

yes?

Prison labour is fundamentally slave labour, especially in the US. The US prison system expanded massively after slavery was made illegal, especially privately run for profit businesses that are allowed to sell prisoners as laborers for below real market rates.

In the United States prisoners are required to participate in "work duties," which are defined as essential functions of the prison. For example you can be made to wash laundry because you are using bed sheets and clothing.

You cannot be forced into doing external work where the benefit of your labor falls to a private entity. Of course you can choose to do so and the primary benefit is not the wages (which are unfairly low in my opinion) but the "day for day" that reduces your sentence.

The wages are paltry yes, but as I understand it US prisons charge absurdly high rates for basic services such as phone calls and even individual emails, so there's a very coercive incentive on prisoners to work anyway.

That is just so far from true it is hard to understand why you believe it.

There are states that have such rules, and others (particularly in the South) that explicitly do not enforce any such rule. Often a rule exists but is meaningless; if they want to be able to have visitors, or to get outside to exercise, they are obliged to engage with outside labor.

Well the US constitution explicitly allows slavery in this particular case, why not?

China has a Justice System, and most people are in prison for crimes.

China does not have a Justice System - it's entirely politicized (people are put to death in private trials with fabricated evidence), but even then, we are not banning stuff 'because Chinese prison'.

We are banning specifically from concentration camps where 100's of thousands of Uyghurs are imprisoned not for any crime, but merely because of their ethnicity.

So if Cali started taking Japanese citizens property, throwing them in jail, and forcing them to work and to 'retrain their thinking' i.e. even worse than what happened to some in WW2, then we could start to talk about moral equivalence.

I think the first paragraph should be fixed. Slightly contradicts the rest of the comment, no? ;-)

Sorry, meant to say 'Modern Nations' have Justice Systems.

Prison labour is the unfortunate exception to the Thirteenth Amendment that allowed effective slavery to continue. The whole system is corrupt. It allows prisons to pay prisoners peanuts (~25 cents/hour) and pocket the difference giving an economic incentive to incarceration and an unfair competitive advantage with people who can't choose not to work because doing so will generally extend their sentence.

But you know the difference?

I can say that without it being taken down by the government or some company acting on their behalf. I can say it without it hurting my "social credit score". I can say it without being "disappeared" and ending up in one of the sprawling "re-education" camps in Xianjing that are so prevalent you can track their massive growth on Google Maps.

There is clearly an organized effort to extinguish a people and culture here, just like it has been and is in Tibet. Given the history of this sort of thing, it's astounding to me how many will defend, deflect or deny this.

Every time a valid criticism of the CCP comes up some shill pops up and downvotes any criticism and/or leaves some "but what about X" lame justification. It's actually depressing.

Chinese treatment of underclass people is evil. US treatment of underclass people is evil. The statements are not in conflict.

We have much less excuse for permitting our own evils, because we could put a stop to ours if we cared.

Western companies need to stop being pawns for the China Communists.

"We apologise for the trouble caused to our respected Nazi customers, partners and the public. Intel is committed to becoming a trusted technology partner and accelerating joint development with the Third Reich,"

Hell, working with genocidal governments didn't hurt IBM's bottom line, why should Intel be afraid of it? We have zero history of holding companies accountable for being spineless hypocrites.

Dude the US is supporting Nazis, literally. As well as supporting Uygur separatists via right wing groups. So why should Intel care right?

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/23/us-ukraine-refuse-to-c...

Please do not take HN threads further into generic flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

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

Please do not take HN threads further into generic flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

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

OK intel I know I’m probably representing less revenue than China but I’m avoiding your products.

A letter of apology? To the Chinese regime?

Are there any companies who are giving the middle finger to the regime and paying the price? Name them so we can support them.

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