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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Agree! I just ordered a custom made guitar ("NK headless guitars" on aliexpress for those who are interested). While's there's a bit of a language barrier, there's no way I could get close to the level of customer support and quality for the price ($500). You can't even start a conversation with a US/EU company for less than $2000k USD for a custom guitar build. This Chinese company started off cloning a well known brand (Strandburg) but eventually came up with their own very unique design. And not only that, they can customize things unlike the big brand.

I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1101096166?spm=a2g0o.detail...

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> I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?

It is 100% possible to see China as a long term economic (and possibly military but I doubt that) threat, abhor their human rights violations, love Chinese people and despise the CCP all in one go.

So true. Even the CCP wasn’t so clearly problematic until Xi.

The CCP has been clearly problematic since Mao.

It seemed to be getting better between Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao. Obviously not great, but it took a much darker turn with Xi.

Not anti-China, anti-CCP. China has an amazing culture with deep history and they have shown themselves to be astounding competent. But autocratic systems are self-defeating. When leadership is sound, it seems like a great idea. But because power is absolute it just takes one wrong turn to wreck everything, which is what is happening now. Under Hu, Chinas ascendancy seemed inevitable. Not anymore.

Hu Jintao was a pretty weak leader who satisfied neither traditionalists nor reformers. He opened up China for the Olympics than snapped it shut. Say what you want about Xi, but he is seen as a strong leader at least.

Doing business with Chinese counterparties you have to worry they will renege on contracts if the market goes too far against them and you will have no recourse. Sometimes you get great value like your custom guitar, sometimes you get screwed. It pays to be a little cynical when doing business with Chinese companies has such a variance.

Well, Strandburg probably has some thoughts on why they dislike China.

This builder creates their own unique design. And Strandburg used to open source their designs: https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/3lb8pm/strandbe...

That reddit link reaches out to a page [0] that puts the license as CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, meaning non-commercial. Looking at the updated strandberg site[1] and some Ali clones, they look identical[2]. Maybe there are tweaks to the design, but it sure looks like the IP has been lifted entirely.

[0] https://guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com/

[1] https://strandbergguitars.com/

[2] https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-headless-guitar.html

The only similarity is that they are headless. The NKs are a pretty different body carve now.

> I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?

There are plenty of reasons for anti-China sentiments, some don't like to deal with China because of animal rights abuses, others because of mistreatments of the Uyghurs, what the CCP did to Hong Kong etc. I would rather buy the same item when it says Made in Vietnam/India/Thailand over the one that's made in China, and that's not because of bad craftsmanship or racism.

Isn't Vietnam openly (C|c)ommunist and Thailand authoritarian?

I never see people hating on Switzerland even thought it's effectively legal to eats cats and dogs in some places (and horses for my us readers) and its beeing done. One meal even named 'meow meow'

Yet I never hear people cancel Switzerland for animal right abuse

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