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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

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".

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> 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.

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.

> "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...

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 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...

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.

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...

> 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.

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