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Comment by mhermher | Hacker News Reader

Your useful heuristic is that any Chinese idea in inherently bad?

I didn’t say any and all ideas coming from China are bad, merely that we should be cautious of anything that got adopted with a wildfire speed throughout the Chinese society.

These ideas get so widely adopted for a reason, and that reason is often that a particular idea thrives in, or reinforces, a totalitarian social environment. For example, “everything apps” are a dream come true for any anti-democratic regime.

A single point where all everyday transactions and information flows through, that you can easily monitor and influence to control citizens? And it comes with free network effects that mean you don’t have to spend time eradicating or control competing ecosystems? Very useful.

Or, that a lot of things are contextual more than you’d think. This week’s best selling book in Beijing is probably written in Chinese.

Yes, any idea that's enthusiastically supported by the CCP is antithetical to human well being.

For example China has done more to make lock downs impossible to happen again in the last three months than three years of trucker convoys and freedom marches could have done.

That's a very uncharitable reading. "Works in China" in an Internet context would have to include something about having government approval and being subject to government control.

I also read it with the uncharitable reading. I think if OP's intention was this, they shouldn't talk about China in such general terms.

Even with the "charitable reading", I don't agree with OP. China is ranked better on the gender inequality index than America. This would fit in with the notion of government approval and subject to government control, or lack therefore. Similar picture with self-made billionaire women. Does that mean the United States should strive for the contrary?

I can't give them points for enslaving men and women equally.

Because the U.S. certainly doesn't use slave labor...

https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...

Did I say anything about giving the US points?

So then, should the useful heuristic include the US as well? By far, the most imprisoning country in the history of the Earth? Whose major technology companies have been clearly documented to be funneling user information to that same state's security services?

If you want to talk about the US, go start a thread about that. This was a specific comment about a specific claim made about China.

Yes. Once you get rid of nepotism gender equality suffers because you go from 'is the child of X' as the metric of success to 'did X' instead.

So China has a more equal gender distribution of both oppressors, and the oppressed? Indeed, very progressive.

The context for any general points raised by my comments is readily available from any online source of your choice. It’s widely known that in China, big tech intersects with anti-democracy, oppression and social control. I specifically mentioned anti-democratic tendencies in Chinese tech for this reason.

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