Hacker News Reader

Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's certainly a strategic victory play. I'm not sure how much I buy the charitable aspects of this though.

I don’t get the impression that it’s intended as a charity. Also from the interview:

“Our principle is that we don’t subsidize nor make exorbitant profits. This price point gives us just a small profit margin above costs.”

Everything done in China, furthering any intellectual goal, is automatically going to be seen by most of us as a turn played in the game to become the world's #1 superpower. It's not unnatural for them to do this; I assume any nation would push for it if given the chance. The reason this causes so much suspicion is because we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world.

So, sadly, even something that seems noble and refreshing like open-sourcing their AI advancements will be treated with suspicion.

Not suspicion, just propaganda and veiled racism.

Is it "veiled racism" to point out how China continues to wield the great firewall that effectively blocks most internet users from outside news and entertainment while Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan et al. do not? The basic world view in China of 天下 -- the universal dominion of China. Hence the general unpopularity of China in Vietnam, South Korea, and japan.

I don't think it's veiled at all, to bring up these things every time there is a success in China.

I agree that the CCP's view of the world and population control is negative. But don't let that poison your opinion of all Chinese people. We're all people on Earth, and we need to be forging bonds with our intelligent and good-hearted international kin that break down the walls that those in power create to keep themselves there.

I've lived and roamed across much of China, studied in Taiwan and South Korea, and know Japan and Hong Kong well. Many Chinese are indeed great, but in the end the Chinese tendency to game every possible system, make clever use of naive 老外 to advance themselves, and just shamelessly appropriate IP ("hey, they did it too in the 18th century, and remember the Opium War!") has massively turned me off China generally. Not to mention the 50,000 RMB bounty now offered in China for reporting a "foreign spy". The recent TV drama 赤热 (English title: Silicon Wave, available with subtitles on youtube) shows the whole China nationalist tech narrative in vivid relief, including "veiled racism" against Americans, e.g. the depiction of the Chinese protagonist's American mentor at UC Berkeley. And just look at the history and career of Li Kaifu and the cavalier way he has treated all the benefits he received in the US turned into promoting the glorious 祖国. Foolish 老外 indeed.

>is automatically going to be seen by most of us as a turn played in the game to become the world's #1 superpower.

What gets me is when people present it like it's bad to play that game. Like "it's ok when we do it".

And the minute you mention it, it is "whataboutism". And it is of course very very bad and is the opposite of their noble hypocrisy.

> What gets me is when people present it like it's bad to play that game.

It's not bad. But the western superpowers, however flawed, are at least familiar. For the past 75 years we've avoided world war under this power balance. A new power balance could turn out better in that regard, but that doesn't mean it won't be scary, especially for those who value individual liberty.

Your strongest argument is 'change is scary'?

> The reason this causes so much suspicion is because we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world.

It would mean having to eschew the neoliberal ideals that impede research and development in favour of the old that made America and to some extent the rest of the West the dominant superpower in R&D for many decades. We should be familiar with it, even if we have lived all or most of ours lives in the former.

Or it would be hard to convert back and we'd have a war first.

>"we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world."

I suspect "we westerners" think of "we westerners" and do not give a flying fuck about "the rest of the world". Well, as long as they keep trading exclusively in our currency etc. etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com