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Comment by almatabata | Hacker News Reader

I think technically you could probably have a western social media app in China. Just you would need to partner with a Chinese company, have all the data on chinese servers, give the chinese government access on demand and censor what they don't like. Most western companies logically think that handing over your IP, all the control and half the local profits is not really worth it.

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Zuckerberg had big push in 2015s to reenter PRC, Google had Dragonfly, but IIRC they were killed internally because employees protested at least for Google. Bing's still in China. PRC fine with western platforms, as long as they censor like domestic PRC platforms and hand over dissident info, where dissident is whoever PRC says it is. Morally it's complicateded, economically it's probably not that profitable in long run, but regulatorily, it's straight forward. If anything PRC would love to have that leverage and try to get western platforms to extend censorship to PRC dissidents abroad.

> If anything PRC would love to have that leverage and try to get western platforms to extend censorship to PRC dissidents abroad.

Reminds me of that episode with activision/blizzard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

In this case its the fear of losing business with China that is pushing the platform to apply standards to people who are not Chinese citizen.

Bingo, media is really one of those sectors where PRC has assymetric advantage in exploiting western corporations vs western corp in PRC will never get PRC media filtering to budge. Hence TikTok ban/divestment is really about just pushing TikTok out of US/or world with app ban, there's too much risk to a mediated outcome where PRC can still exert assymetric influence.

> Bingo, media is really one of those sectors where PRC has assymetric advantage in exploiting western corporations vs western corp in PRC will never get PRC media filtering to budge

They really do. The idea was that by doing business with them they would shift away from authoritarianism. If you look at the last years it is clear that exactly the reverse has happened. Companies are mainly profit driven and not by morals. They will happily compromise on their morals in the name of profit. In contrast the PRC will happily compromise on profits to keep control.

Ergo, it's fine for the US to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok if they do not follow American laws.

Obviously, when did I suggest otherwise? The only difference is TikTok has more lawfare room due to 1st amendment shenanigans. Otherwise they'll be forced withdraw, no way PRC going to normalize US forcing PRC origin companies from divesting due to US pressure. The only other consideration is weighing benefits of banning TikTok vs cons for such behaviour spreading to other global jursidiction in the future against US platforms/interests.

It wouldn't be half the local profits, it would be the whole thing in the end.

They start with the scenario you mention, then they push the weakened foreign entity out of China entirely. They did that to numerous, huge US brands/companies, including McDonalds and AWS. They make it inhospitable to continue to exist at all in China, then a ditch sale becomes the only viable option for the US company.

McDonalds? They seem to invest. They are terrible though compared to the US variants and really expensive compared to real food in restaurants localy.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-continues-china-ex...

A case where "technically" doesn't align with "realistically".

Some companies do like Microsoft Bing as mentioned by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39695746.

I think Valve still has a version of steam: https://www.engadget.com/steam-china-launch-133119511.html?g...

Activision/blizzard used to have a partnership with netease to release overwatch in China.

It is technically and realistically possible as companies do it all the time.

These are obviously enormously restrictive conditions and effectively no different (worse?) than a tariff. Under normal conditions (not now, but way back when when govts used to act in the national interest) tariffs would always be reciprocated and a trade war would commence I think.

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