Is Beijing beginning a campaign against Apple?
forbes.com
forbes.com
In all seriousness: why is every little disagreement labeled as "war" by the US media? Does it just make "good" headlines?
It just makes for a good headline. Look at the military spending figures and I think a pattern will emerge...
It's being upvoted and thus draws traffic. That's all that matters.
In any case, calling it a "little disagreement" when a government launches a propaganda campaign against a company seems pretty disingenuous.
The only evidence I see of government influence is in the outrage against usury being directed at the makers of aspirational products, rather than the predatory lenders. If the bank essentially is the government... you can't really bark up that tree directly. But, again, they dont' seem to have been fabricating charges against Apple.
[1] That said, I understand Apple's bind; they need lower costs and lower prices for China. So they have to do something. But it certainly sounds like they took a brand-damaging anti-user approach. (And Apple didn't seem to deny any of it.)
Most certainly. Selection bias is bias. The media is never going to cover every fact about a company, and there are different facts that will portray anyone in a different light. See: If-by-whiskey.[1] And if you're worried about affecting their image instead of the speaker's, you pick one side and silence the other. If you decide you like someone, you report only the positive facts about them and viewers like them too. If you decide you don't like them you report only the negative facts and viewers don't like them either. You can do this without telling a single lie, and it's enormously effective because no one can disprove anything you report since it's all true, it's just intentionally incomplete.
Yes. "Propaganda" simply means the dissemination of information (true or not) with motivation other than simply helping people to be informed. If the information is being put out in order to hurt Apple's reputation, it's propaganda. And that's generally not much to worry about if it comes from activist groups, corporations, and other sources with transparent biases, but when it's coming from a government (or government controlled media, which equates to the same thing), it's a different situation - especially in a climate where dissenting opinions are quashed.
>Even evidence of a TV Show paying a celebrity to juice impact of their story is hardly evidence of government involvement.
Except that the Chinese government has tremendous control over the media in China. Add to that the censorship of thousands of whatever Weibo calls "tweets", and it seems pretty obvious that government shenanigans are at work.
>The only evidence I see of government influence is in the outrage against usury being directed at the makers of aspirational products, rather than the predatory lenders.
That's the only evidence you can see? I would point out all of the other pieces of evidence in the article, but I feel like I'd be just copying and pasting large chunks of it into my comment. Maybe you should just reread it?
> "That's the only evidence you can see?"
That's the only evidence I see, yes. I see lots of other things that might be a result of government involvement, but those things have plausible mundane motives as well. So I'm hesitant to identify them as definitive proof of a government plot.
e.g. I would expect a Chinese consumer protection sort of program to single out Apple's involvement in any widespread activity for the same reason every western news outlet and blog singles out Apple's involvement in the same situations.
Foxconn's labor conditions have always been overwhelmingly reported as an Apple problem, despite their near universal contracts across the industry. And this despite Apple being the only major player who's ever acknowledged problems or taken steps to improve things. This is done because Apple stories get attention to a degree that brings non-trivial monetary incentives.
So I wouldn't see Chinese news organizations doing the same exact thing as necessarily evidence of a coordinated government smear campaign.
There's the lynchpin right there. It's not just any government involvement. CCTV is a state-run broadcaster which is notorious for having its content directly controlled by the Chinese government. This isn't "sometimes the Chinese government leans on CCTV"; it's "the Chinese government exerts continuous editorial control over the content on CCTV."
> I see lots of other things that might be a result of government involvement, but those things have plausible mundane motives as well. So I'm hesitant to identify them as definitive proof of a government plot.
There seems to be some confusion about what constitutes "evidence". Evidence does not have to be definitive proof. The mere utterance of a statement on CCTV is evidence that that statement aligns with China's political goals. Add that to a whole bunch of weird shenanigans, like the weibo censorship thing, and you have a pretty suggestive picture.
Try this: when a girl you don't find attractive asks you out, joke with your colleagues afterwards that "she totally raped you". This makes "Rape" sound casual, which it absolutely shouldn't. Neither should "War" sound casual.
I guess what we need is a new word that really means "fighting with machine guns and tanks while lots of mothers grieve over their dead children".
"active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words."
Chinese people don't look at all foreign brands the same. Sure, Yum foods can be attacked and that can hurt their sales. But don't forget Yum sells a cheap product as well eg. KFC, Taco Bell.
Audi, Mercedes, Apple... these are all premium brands Chinese people love. If you have money (or aspire to look like one who does), buying a Chinese brand just makes you look ordinary in a place where every corner is selling some Chinese-alternative lookalike.
Disclaimer - I'm Chinese, but raised in America.
But China needs to move up the value chain and I suspect this is a general campaign to get Chinese consumers buying from domestic brands.
Disclaimer - not Chinese and the Chinese I met were obviously the more well off Beijingers.
I know that's hard to believe from the vantage point of the U.S., where KFC and Taco Bell are pretty low on the food quality scale.
He famously speculated in a book that he wrote in 2001[1] that China would collapse in 2006 due to hidden and non-performing loans of the state banks.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/...
Why are these posts continually upvoted?
20,000 sounds high but is only 2% of Wuhan's tertiary student population, the city with the most tertiary students in all of China. According to http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2011-04/29/content_12... "The total number of university students in Wuhan has surpassed Beijing and Shanghai since 2008. Up to 1.06 million people in Wuhan's 10 million population are in universities and various labs and research centers."
Facebook doesn't exist at all.
Android in on notice http://www.cnbc.com/id/100521504
So is Apple.
Microsoft seems safe, so far, and until they (or if they) clone Windows.
Rules, international agreements and fairness aside: It all makes sense. Why would China want their people spend a month's salary to buy a foreign product (assembly doesn't count)? Or why would the most popular sites be non-Chinese? Block the non-Chinese ones and local ones, totally controlled by China's gov, would pop up. If they could get away with it, a lot of other countries would do the same, they just don't have the 1.x billion people, trillions in Forex and audacity to try it.
Indeed, it makes sense.
Americans often take offense to this logic, but then again, almost all the "public internet" we use is American. From the domain registries, to Google, Facebook, Apple, MS, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. So it's easy for them to play the tolerant, and allow for the occasional foreign success story.
But they would be singing a totally different tune if the most popular sites and services were to be, say, British. Much more if they were Chinese, German, etc.
They would be all over for protectionism and enforcing their local alternatives if that happened.
It's easy to ask for "openness" if it just means others opening to YOUR stuff (and getting a trade deficit to use it, give your government information control over their citizens, and get washed in a US point-of-view --political, historical, cultural etc).
As far as being culturally closed, the US is at the top of the list. Just an example: even in Mongolia, people watch American movies. How many foreign, non anglophone, movies make it into the US theaters? Even in France people listen to American music (as well as music from all over the world). How many non-American (and non anglophone, e.g British) bands ever make into the top 10?
It pretty much only happens with two things: novelties and anime (which are comics and animation, so not that far from the respective american forms anyway, and of course cross-breed with them).
Those who disagree can get any cultural good they want. There's all kinds of foreign movie theaters in ethnic enclaves, and when there's a critical mass of people the market serves them rather well - for example, television networks like Telemundo.
It's not like you need one book of poetry per year, and since you have american poetry you don't have a need for French or Chinese. That might make sense for cars, tables, cheese and the like, but cultural exchange is not about "goods" and "quantities". Either you are curious about what other nations cultural offerings or you are not.
The US market, generally, is not curious at all.
>Those who disagree can get any cultural good they want.
Closed culturally is not about "availability". Especially ever since the internet where everything is available everywhere. It's about actual consumption of foreign cultural goods. Which, with the exception of anime and some such, is nearly zero.
>There's all kinds of foreign movie theaters in ethnic enclaves, and when there's a critical mass of people the market serves them rather well - for example, television networks like Telemundo.
How does the presence of "foreign movie theaters in ethnic enclaves" and some tv networks for the latin community in Florida, negate that the US is culturally closed?
It only reinforces it: the foreign movie theaters are, as you say, targeted to their respective ethnic communities.
Cultural openness would be for the average american to listen to foreign music, watch foreign movies, and such. Not for some Mexican immigrants in LA to listen to Mexican music.
This is pretty far off the mark. American subscription to free market orthodoxy has many flaws but protectionist hypocrisy isn't high on the list. There are many categories (including, I might add, smartphones!) where foreign companies reign and there's almost no protectionist sentiment. I've never heard anyone recommend a Vizio TV over a Samsung because Vizio is US based. You'd be amazed at how many Honda, Toyota, BMW and Kia cars you'll find in Detroit.
The US spent the 80s and 90s loudly excoriating the world for not signing up to the endless free lunches of free trade (read: import US stuff). Once the world signed up, the US started putting up domestic protectionist barriers. The most high profile case I remember is the steel import restriction debacle, but the rest matter too.
Don't forget that the Japanese car companies had to move production to the US in 1981 to pacify the government, and for a long time they imposed "voluntary" limits on themselves to stave off the eventual US trade restrictions.
The US has to live with us from the EU.
From the EU example, you might note that the democratic world (including the US) is not a monolith with one face.
...all of whom have manufacturing plants in the US.
Oh, it very much is I'd say. The US pays lip service to the "free market" but subsidies their agriculture big time. It gives billions (trillion?) to it's car industry. And most important of all, it uses its military and diplomatic might to secure favorable trade agreements and cheep resources. The very term "banana republic" was coined for whole countries with pro-American corporations puppet governments. All this is using the country's money and power to ensure a favorable trade outcome. Nothing "free trade" about it.
But I was talking less of mere products (of which American can consume easily, a chair is after all a chair) and more of cultural consumption (foreign movies, music, etc).
But even for mere products you have people seeing Japanese car buyers as not "buying American", articles and politicians asking why Apple is not producing stuff in the US, lamenting the outsourcing of jobs, etc.
I think there's something about cultural similarity.
[1]: This is a term by anti-americanists against anything relating to the USA, it's not my intention, I saw exactly the same thing happening in the UK, France, Israel, Germany, Ireland, Australia and Brazil., where I live
For me, it was Joplin, Missouri (SW corner of the state, not considered to be a cosmopolitan part of the country), in the '70s (graduated from high school in '79). I had no access to TV beyond the network affiliates of the big 3 (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Yet somehow I was able to get interested in Japanese culture from the Kurosawa samurai movies one or more showed late at night.
The funny thing for me is that I'm married to a Japanese-Brazilian girl, although I'm not interested in Japanese culture at all.
I stand corrected, but as I pointed out my experience comes from 4 years.
Well, there's Gotye, for starters.
Oh, wait, they're not allowed to speak English? Uh, how about PSY? Or Selena? Or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or any of the various Hong Kong Jackie Chan movies that were very popular over here? Or the insane popularity of K-pop and J-pop?
Or Keith Urban, the NZ/Australian country music star?
Whatever else you might say, it's not protectionism that's keeping foreign media off the shores. In the U.S. we don't "import" web sites simply because we don't have to, nothing more or less.
>Or Keith Urban, the NZ/Australian country music star?
Australia and NZ are considered anglophone.
Because we're arguably the best at making movies people enjoy. Turns out people love things like gangster movies and robots fighting. Maybe we should ask where is the french Transformers or the Greek Godfather?
We're also the best at software. Where is the Chinese Apple and Google? Where are their wonderful interfaces and search innovations?
Its incredible how an asset becomes a liability when it comes this type of politically correct thinking. Also you're playing up this "sophisticated foreigner" stereotype that just isn't true. Yes, the US is a bit more insular, but we produce tons of entertainment and in a language many understand as either their second or primary language. Most French people watch french movies. Most Greek people watch greek tv, etc. They'll see English/American imports that are noteworthy the same way your mom has an Amelie DVD. Its just we make so many more big-budget crowd friendly movies and have the marketing muscle and demand to push them onto the world.
>and get washed in a US point-of-view --political, historical, cultural etc)
Show me what wonderful enlightened country doesn't do this.
>They would be all over for protectionism and enforcing their local alternatives if that happened.
Meh. Half the things I own are foreign. No one is giving me grief about it.
I work in a Chinese popular site (douban.com) and I have to say that you are wrong.
There is some limited damage control tools, but Chinese sites and Chinese internet as a whole are far from totally controlled by the government. Quite the opposite actually: internet memes and rumors are spreading like bush fire and local and central government have very hard time playing firemen, and there is no week without its new scandal or revelations.
1. You need a license from the government to run a web server
2. You need a chinese ID # to sign up for Weibo
3. QQ, Weixin, Weibo, RenRen, etc censor massive amounts of content at the whim of the government
4. The great firewall is getting smarter about detecting and blocking VPN connections, and VPN operators in China must be specifically licensed by the government
I can list more, but I think these alone paint a pretty convincing picture that 'totally controlled by China's gov' is closer to true than false.
But in English and in normal discussions, "totally" means "in totality", or "in the sum and all its parts". Related totalitarism means "control of every part of people's life". We need not to look very far to see an example of a "totally gov-controled internet": North Korea is just like that.
But China is not. The sheer number of posts by minute means it cannot be realistically "totally controlled", because automatic filters are easy to circumvent, and human filters are not fast enough. A simple rumour of ex-ex-president Jiang's death would spread like fire and no deleting can stop it. The only way to stop that would be to shut down internet, and /this/ would push everyone in the streets.
What I mean is that the Chinese Internet is now a heavyweight social force that is already out of Chinese government control (or anyone else, for that matter). They have to live with it, and adapt themselves.
You're under radar and they haven't needed to knock on your door yet, so far. When they do let us know...if you can.
Douban is nowhere near as large or influential as, say, Weibo. Sensational topics discussed on Douban may spread, but their spheres of influence are restricted to the cyberspace, or remain within the confines of its demographic group, the young men and women who generally do not have a voice in a society defined by filial piety.
Popular social networking site like Weibo, on the other hand, has a very tight grasp on what can and cannot be posted on its pages. Weibo's users consists of people from all walks of life, from corporate CEOs to devote followers to the new party chairman. Unlike Douban, sensational topics posted on Weibo can sway public opinions and cause social tensions, and sometimes even press for policy changes in local governments, which is why it is being utilized by CCTV as part of its campaign against Apple in the first place.
And it's not just the government taking control of the Chinese Internet, it's that sites self-censor heavily, or else they risk of being shut down by the government without any prior notice (see the whole Yanhuang Chunqiu debacle from earlier this year). Publishing houses do the same - they are not directly forced by the government to censor stuff, but they have to do it themselves or they get shut down. (though I hear the self-censorship's been loosening up a bit - the new book written by Ezra Feivel Vogel about Deng Xiaoping's policies was recently released in mainland China and in it some passages about the Tiananmen Square incident remained intact, though still heavily-edited.)
Douban also suffers from self-censorship. Brad Pitt's Seven Years in Tibet does not have an entry on the site; Richard Gere's Red Corner used to have an entry, but it did not allow comments, and was recently removed; Lou Ye's Summer Palace also used to have an entry and got removed. (I'm just bitter that I can't add all the movies I've seen to my collection on Douban, because of the permanently-missing entries.)
I agree that a topic must be echoed on Weibo to become "sensational" but many of these topics started in Douban or other less noisy places.
> [Weibo has a] very tight grasp on what can and cannot be posted
There are automated filters, which are easy to circumvent, and human censors, who are not fast enough in many cases. And there is a fluctuent red-line that most influencial posters know and play with. I think the beast is now becoming stronger than its tamer. Which means either it will be shot in the head (shut down), which would trigger a gigantic turnmoil(#), or society and government will adapt to this new social force.
(#) turnmoil is what the government is trying to avoid, so turning off Weibo would be a medication worse than the illness.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/23/china-chooses-ubuntu-for-...
http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-stand...
I'd say Microsoft is in the most danger, because they actually have a big business there (well if you disregard all the piracy of Windows) - that they stand to lose.
"China" should not want anything in particular. Either the Chinese are free or they are a highly manipulated and virtually enslaved population. Clearly these are extremes. The truth lies somewhere in between. If a person wants to literally burn a month's salary --literally set it on fire-- no government should have the right or ability to interfere with that.
I find it disturbing to see how a portion of this thread has turned anti-US. We are not the problem.
So who told Ho to post “around 8:20”? For China’s noisy netizens, there was only one suspect: CCTV. Weibo users immediately pounced, noting that there were other anti-Apple postings around that time. By 8:45 P.M. comments criticizing the inattentive Mr. Ho were overwhelming the anti-Apple postings.
Ho, at 10:08 P.M., deleted his original posting and then denied he authored the attack on Apple, claiming that someone had “hacked” his Weibo account. Just about nobody believed the denial. Users began posting acerbic comments with the #PostAround8:20 hashtag. Weibo censors later deleted tens of thousands of postings with that hashtag.
Surreal.