Dealt with is the founders / team / investors losing out of the $2B. That’s the punishment from China.
Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.
I don't claim to know what's going on outside of what's being reported, but I'm reminded of other individuals who have "stepped out of line" (as determined by Beijing) and were also either barred from the country or mysteriously disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to randomly reappear at some point singing a different tune.
Feels like Guantanamo Bay all over again.
Assuming the best of intentions.
https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/michael-caster-on-chinas-for...
For example how Japan can hold and question people without access to a lawyer, outside of police stations.
Pure speculation on my part, but i would be surprised if China didn't have our equivalent of export control laws, not difficult to fabricate a crime and pin it on founders.
Worth mentioning though that this is not how America functions, nor our rule of law.
Not sure we can give any lessons to the world.
But Americans are under the impression that what the world sees is what they mostly see -- the domestic side. And to a certain extent, they do thanks to its cultural influence. This democracy/rule of law, however, is completely absent in way it behaves outside its borders and it's now clearer than ever to everyone that the US is the biggest source of instability in the world. More than Russia. Certainly more than China.
I'm sorry to be that blunt but if you don't understand the value of rule of law, the difference in incentives, the consequences of separation of powers, I can't even grasp what kind of perspective you can build. It's genuinely baffling to me.
“No new US trials are currently planned for the Epstein cases because there has not been credible evidence“
Application of the laws genuinely depends of how much money you have.
We also see it with companies, like if you are OpenAI or Nvidia it suddenly becomes ok to copy pirated works.
Rich people pay damages, poor people go to prison.
Out-of-court settlements are prime definition of such.
Technically, yes the law is followed.
The same with gifts you can officially make to judges in Texas.
Anywhere on this planet where people who have connections can influence the outcome, no matter what is written on a paper, and the US is not exempt.
I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management.
This seems like a side issue from the question of whether the charges are legitimate.
Every person has a nationalistic solipsism that renders them incapable of understanding events that occur outside of their own country. China and the US are two countries where this tends to be most severe, people outside these countries seem to believe they possess a profound and innate understanding of events there that renders them capable of offering a complete opinion (and, in reality, that opinion will almost always be entirely self-referential, 20% of the comments on this thread seem to be talking about the US).
At a high-level, the characterization of China as a lawless dictatorship is undermined somewhat by the higher levels of crime in almost every other country. You will see this interpretation of China from people in the US who live in places where there are constant, visible signs of crime.
Team coca-cola and team pepsi are both evil and illegitimate.
The number of, presumably, left-wing people who advocate for the most extreme forms of libertarianism is truly incredible.
I myself find the numbers that engage in political reductionism and sophism to be truly incredible .. easily a double digit percentage of any population, actual billions in total globally.
Wait, is that actually "incredible" though, or just merely "expected"?
You are falling back on whataboutism. This is irrelevant. If we were having a similar debate in the middle ages, you would probably say something like:
> Every church is burning witches and heretics at the stake. Doing it is a central function of having a church.
The CCP has abducted these individuals and is preventing them from leaving the country. This is not ok. You can't justify this by saying "yeah, but they're the government, so it's their right to abduct whoever they want". A government is just a corporation with a bit more power than the others, not some sacred entity that sits above us.
Well yes, a government doesn't need to be sacred to sit above you, it need only have more power. It's legitimacy is conditional on maintaining a monopoly on violence.
“Beneath me” is _my_ value judgement that I pass on this government and its appendages as in “it has been weighed in the balance and has been found unworthy”. That this government has more power than me doesn’t make it sit above me as a moral absolute, and it doesn’t magically give it legitimacy.
The government's legitimacy comes from it's stick being bigger than yours. It's not sacred, it's not magic. It's a bigger stick. Your value judgement would have weight if your stick was bigger. The guy with the bigger stick decides what you (or Jack Ma) is worthy of.
By the same argument, are Somalian warlords and Mexican drug cartel also legitimate in the territories they control? I don't think "legitimate" is the word you are looking for to describe pure power dynamics, since "legitimate" is imbued with a moralistic judgement (look up is vs ought etc.). But yes, in practice, if I have a gun pointed at my head, I could be forced to do things that go against my judgement (within limits!).
So long as the warlord can make good on that agreement, you have political order. Over time many abstractions emerge, but backing it all up is the big stick. Now, I'm with you, from a moral standpoint it's all abhorrent. As an anarchist I view civilization to be a hack on the human condition, and I see all states as fundamentally authoritarian.
So it's all just game theory to me. China blocked the Manus acquisition as a matter of national interest. The US also ignores international law on matters on national interest at its own convenience.
If a law is unenforceable is it really a law? Anybody can declare a law. It is only meaningful if it can be enforced.
There are regions of Mexico where cartels hold the monopoly on violence, and the longer they maintain that control the more legitimate they become.
I think we are not really in disagreement, it's mainly an argument over the semantics of "legitimate" at this point :) Rousseau and Hobbes were both right.
I would definitely rather be a trapped Chinese trying to escape than a trapped American.
The reason why NK have stopped is largely either NK enforcement or being caught while in the PRC without permission to reside in the PRC. Both of which are highly mitigated for PRC citizen (PRC citizens can have issues spending time in cities they're not authorized to live in, but less so with merely "visiting" countryside).
This is standard operating procedure for the CCP. They are a truly ruthless, sinister group who have no scruples about ensuring compliance and using leverage on behalf of Chinese interests. Just look at what happened to Jack Ma.
It's standard procedure in every country for some investigations.
Outside of immigration issues, you can only be made to surrender your passport if you have been arrested and indicted for a crime, as a part of bail. That power can only be granted by a judge.
China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever.
What makes you think there's no legal process for blocking nationals from leaving China?It's a very common instrument and in a bunch of countries it's an administrative measure with even less scrutinity than a judicial mandate. Do you consider France or the UK to be a countries without rule of law or due process?
But to the point in the US, for example, the government can just issue a warrant for you as a material witness or flag your passport and then you can't leave; these are hardly due processes and more like legal workarounds to do exactly the same thing; the US has disappeared plenty of people in much more sinister ways than that, however, so I agree that there's no equivalence here: the US is worse.
This has historically not been the case, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig_v._Agee and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson
> The Child Support Enforcement Passport Denial Program was enacted as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. While authorized in 1996, the program was jointly implemented by the U.S. Department of State and the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement in June 1998.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_support#Enforcement
[1]: "The [US] Child Support Enforcement Passport Denial Program" https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12660
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._ratification_of_the_Conve...
Is it possible that they are merely pawns in a political dispute between two rival countries?
It's one thing to block an acquisition because you don't want your rival to gain an advantage, an action which is not limited to the CCP.
It's another thing to detain an individual when no crime was committed.
I'm just pointing out the bar isn't much different except dressed up in a think of the children meme. I'm not justifying either one.
With these Chinese founders, I'm not sure it's quite so simple.
As for your second case, US schools teach about the perils of McCarthyism. You neglected to link to the subsequent Supreme Court ruling in 1958 overturning the confiscation of the passport over protected speech. Note how long ago that was and how it's taught as a black stain on US history.
They seem to be the poster children for a flight risk.
Manus was built in China and all of its development happened there. In order to skirt Chinese review of the deal they tried to close down shop there and move to Singapore.
I don't think China is being unreasonable. I'm sure the US would act exactly the same way if an American tech company raised money from China and then tried to close down in the US and move all of its IP and technology to a different country so that it can be bought out by Alibaba or Bytedance without having to deal with US approval
"Legal Strategy for Commercial Hostage-taking and Business Exit Bans" https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/SJIL_60-...
What a mic drop.
> Nippon Steel's acquisition of U.S. Steel can be stopped by the US President based on a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), citing risks to national security under Section 721 of the Defense Production Act.
National security risks. Exactly what China is citing. It's literally the exact same situation.
EDIT: In fact, the US regularly stops acquisition of US companies by China https://hvmilner.scholar.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf2...
https://hvmilner.scholar.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf2...
Is that what these two founders did?
Ma's voting rights were reduced from 50% to 6%.