Apple warns suppliers to follow China rules on 'Taiwan' labeling(asia.nikkei.com) |
Apple warns suppliers to follow China rules on 'Taiwan' labeling(asia.nikkei.com) |
This should be a bigger story. He should be seen as someone who spent American money to build China's supply chain.
[edit: gotta love the Tim Cook apologists]
However, the Emirates cannot trade with Israel, and refuse to pay for any equipment labelled as coming from this country. Calling one of the officials, they asked for a solution. They told them to ship everything first to the UK. There, they should unpack every single object, and package them again with different country labels. Once the box has passed custom, nobody will raise the topic about the equipment origin.
And so this is what they do.
Citizens of many countries would be in big trouble if they have a stamp from Israeli customs on their passports. Customs apparently issue a separate document not to put a stamp on the passport as a result. This enabled many tourists who are "not supposed" to go there to nonetheless go there.
The Turkish airport in Turkish Cyprus is not recognized by Greek Cypiriot government, so if you do fly from Turkey to Cyprus, it is not considered a valid port of entry.
Thus you will get a stamp on a piece of paper, which you need to leave the country back to Turkey.
When traveling between the Turkish and Greek side of the island, the checkpoint guards will inspect your passport. As Greek Cyprus is part of the EU, EU laws require all EU Memberstates to allow free travel for any EU citizen. Likewise, due to agreements between the US, Cyprus and the EU, US citizens are too allowed free-travel. Citizens from other countries run the risk of being denied entry.
That passport is since expired (it only had 3 years on it, at time of stamping), and my new passport book will get me wherever I happen to go. The souvenir sits safely in my safe.
If the traveller happened to remove that piece of paper once the returned from Cuba, so be it.
My yearly "Business Conduct Training" (required by my employer) explicitly lists things like this as against company policy, a fireable offence, not to mention potentially illegal (circumventing embargoes, trade restrictions or sanctions).
I don't believe Israel had any issue with Emirates. It was Emirates blocking Israel (side note: this seems to have changed recently).
So, as long as you cover yourself with Emirates, you can execute that trade and not get hung up.
If, however, Israel were the one embargoing the export, you would get yourself in really deep shit.
This is no longer true. The UAE normalised relations with Israel, almost two years ago[0]. There are even Israeli VCs, like Entree Capital, funding startups in the UAE.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_Arab_Emi...
International trading is a kind of funny place. I know a women who works on a company who make also things for large gas pipes (process industrie). She said, long before the war started, funny thing happened with a lot of involved companys.
Are you able to give any examples?
Is "cannot" really accurate? Isn't it more like they voluntarily chose not to do so?
If I say, "I can't walk it the street naked", I'm expecting you to understand the underlying causes. I'm not expecting that I have to explain to you that, yes, nothing prevent me physically to walk in the street naked, but indeed, I chose every day not to do it because I don't want to pay the social and/or legal price for it.
In the same way, given that tensions in the Middle East are pretty famous and that political issues between Muslim & Jews have implications in international trades, I'm making the assumption readers understand what "cannot" means here.
that's a ruse used only internally to foment hatred against "the Jews"
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/25/the-uae-spends-big-on-i...
I’m pretty confident that’s not what the UAE are doing, and don’t support them.
> Apple has asked suppliers to ensure that shipments from Taiwan to China strictly comply with Chinese customs regulations
Duh! it's to China! You're just going to piss off your contract manufacturers who have government officials overlooking their supply.
But, it's time for US companies to pull out of China. The moral imperative to help China rise out of poverty through trade is done. They are no longer a poor country. Now we are compromising our values for something stupid ... for cheaper iPhones.
Long term our Grandchildren will all be under the boots of the CPC if we don't take the pain now.
I'm not suggesting we war with China. I'm suggesting we remove their leverage from our economies. As long as EU and America need Chinese goods to subsidize their massively irresponsible fiscal policies, Chinese dictators will have leverage over Western people.
You have to sacrifice material well-being for freedom at the right time, or you will have neither in a generation.
And then the main issue is all this cheapness is possible because workers are paid pennies a day and take meth so they can work 15 hour days doing tedious hand assembly because the person labor is cheaper than using a machine to automate. And now our media is flooded with news bites about how oppressive and racist america is while china gets away with literal slavery and everyone there believes all non-chinese are inferior.
Screw these people and their government.
Some of the suppliers in the list[1] operate manufacturing facilities in both mainland China and Taiwan, and their websites refer to a combination of "China", "Taiwan" and "R.O.C.". I do wonder how difficult it would be for these companies to deal with both governments at the same time! For example, the visa policies of each government towards each other appear to be very restrictive[2][3].
[1] https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Taiwan#Chinese_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_mainland_China#...
I guess the implication is that going along with China's stance on Taiwan is "going to far" ethically and Apple should refuse, but I can't quite see this.
And we won't see it from any big name company, since nearly everything is manufactured, in part or whole, in China.
But yes, there are nice things that the money that goes to defense budgets could be spent on, if there weren't authoritarian leaders making irredentist threats against democracies.
There's no mention of Taiwan, which is is specifically related to.
Who can rewrite titles on hackernews? Can we get an explanation who made the change and why?
just keep posting "red waaaave" on your instagram account and "blue waaaave" on your twitter account so that everyone stays in their respective echo chamber, I think at least till 2025 would be good for me, I'll probably have cleared all my US earnings from taxes and left (w/ a different excuse) by then
> Apple has asked suppliers to ensure that shipments from Taiwan to China strictly comply with Chinese customs regulations after a recent visit by senior U.S. lawmaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei stoked fears of rising trade barriers.
Am I missing something? I do not see a requirement that all package from Taiwan say they are from China.
It would be suicide for China to invade Taiwan. The economic damage this would do to China is immense. China may well collapse. Aside from that, it's not that easy either. China may well have a much larger military but a sea crossing is no easy feat.
Look at Britain. It hasn't been successfully invaded by sea in almost 1000 years (1066 being th elast time). On a clear day you can see the white cliffs of Dover from Calais (~17 miles across the English Channel) yet the might of Nazi Germany could never cross it.
Even though the US has legislation to protect Taiwan, if push came to shove, the US simply wouldn't trigger a direct war between nuclear powers in the sam eway that the US isn't getting directly involved in Ukraine.
And much of Taiwan is happy with the situation as is. Pushing independence is going to seriously rock the boat.
So everyone is happy with the situation of China having an official policy that Taiwan is part of China without anything actually changing including China.
I'm personally not a fan of Western companies being influenced by the CCP dangling the carrot of access to the Chinese market when it's a mirage. China will never allow a Western company to dominate the Chinese market. Yet we have Hollywood, for example, kowtowing to China.
China really took an L (IMHO) over the Pelosi visit. She's not the first House Speaker to visit (Newt Ginrich being the last ~25 years ago). By taking a public position, China really gave the US no choice but to proceed rather than back down. It's just mishandled all the way.
So we'll have symbolic things like "Made in --Taiwan--China" as retaliation.
OTOH, my experience (modest n) is that a fairly large percentage of people are happy to say "Shame on Apple" for such things. Vs. a near-zero percentage are actually willing to avoid buying products made in (mainland) China, or with major components made there.
Talk was cheap long before "Performative Activism" had its own Wikipedia page.
Personally, I make a sincere effort to buy products that aren't made in China. I've been doing this for years but unfortunately avoiding things made in China is surprisingly difficult. When I end up buying products made in China, it isn't because of a lack of conviction, it is because there was no alternative I could find.
Would you apply that same standard and does it hold up to other scenarios?
If people were buying textile products from the slave trade, would you say "perhaps" when other (or the same) people shamed those industries for supporting slave labor?
If people were buying nuts and fruit from exploited migrant workers, would you still be able to shame the industries for better conditions or to hire minimal wage workers?
If people were buying cobalt or lithium mined from child slaves would you be able to shame those industries into sourcing minerals in a more humane way even though people buy EVs?
Or because people bought those products those companies/industries have immunity from criticism?
You cannot avoid products made in China because of the current status quo for the same reasons you couldn't avoid textiles made with slave cotton.
That doesn't mean you can't advocate change to the status quo.
The constitution of Taiwan claims sovereignty over mainland China, although they added an amendment to differentiate “free area” citizens (Taiwanese) and citizens under control of the “rebellions” (I don’t know if they removed the specific wording yet).
You could argue that Taiwan have to agree to One China by force, as the PRC has made it very clear that the PLA (People’s liberation Army) is invading if Taiwan abandon the stance.
With that in mind, Taiwan and China situation is really similar to a civil war, Taiwan is just a secessionist. And until the situation is resolved, there is nothing wrong with label it “Taiwan, China”
We have free speech in the US. Freedom means choice, so there's still an obligation to act morally. China is more than willing to manipulate cultural messages with money, so we need some kind of cultural counter to that.
For instance, see how China manipulated the NBA and Activision Blizzard during the Hong Kong protests.
Compared to a country where companies literally buy congressman, and freely manipulate public opinion for the highest bidder?
We make decisions to curtail free speech everyday so how's this different?
No we don't. China may act peeved that foreign companies are virtue signalling, but they'd secretly relish at the opportunity of finding an excuse to boycott or ban these foreign products, so that their wealth stays circulating in their domestic economy. Look at what happened to Nike and H&M after they voiced concerns about Xinjiang. The CPC organized consumer boycotts of these companies, but happily allowed factories to continue to sell their goods to sell to them. China itself recognizes that it only makes sense to virtue signal when it is economical to do so.
The NBA and Blizzard made the correct decision to kowtow to China, economically as well as morally. Getting them kicked out of China does not help Hong Kong, but would threaten to free world as the balance of trade would make us even more beholden to China. In a complicated, globalized world, marginal thinking is the only option.
Let some other company fight the battle over what to put on the label.
When they started to support Taiwan in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek was a nationalist who imposed the martial law on Taiwan for 40 years (until the end of the 1980s!), waiting to strike back and regain "full control of China" (that's how One China principle was born, RPC has nothing to do with it! it was even in the ROC Constitution until 1992!)
Nixon changed everything when he visited mainland China and talked to Mao in 1972, that lead to the US-China trade agreement of 1979.
Until 1972 US had an agreement with Chiang Kai-shek, Taiwan "temporary" government was the only recognized China, they were bound to protect it in case of attack, they supported his claims of reunification under his ruling and the UN seat for China was that of Taiwan, even though 99% of the people of China lived on mainland.
USA has been very ambiguous since then, on one side they acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China and does not challenge that position, on the other they are formally Taiwan allied, but there's no more an US embassy in Taipei and no Taiwanese embassy in Washington.
They even moved their "One China" capital from Taipei to Beijing.
Reminder: indigenous people of Taiwan are only 2% of the original population, the rest is 97% Han Chinese, so one China is quite an accurate description.
They only differ about the alliances they made, but the mythological example of freedom for Asian countries that Taiwan should be, is just a myth
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/na... (2016, long before the actual crisis)
Also, 2021 referendum on pork ban from USA shows that to keep having the support of USA, the ruling political party in Taiwan has to to satisfy their demands, even when it (potentially) poses a risk for the entire Taiwanese population.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-16/pork-refe...
USA are not there as mere observers, but as strongly interested party, with deep economical interests.
And to exploit cheap labor, that made the fortune of Apple with their iPhone.
The truth is that until not long ago, Taiwan had access to better weapons thanks to the USA that compensated for the smaller army. Their technological superiority combined with the threat of US navy showing up at the border kept China at bay and forced them to think twice before trying to retake Taiwan.
Now that's not true anymore.
How terrible of them to adhere to the policy Taiwanese themselves prefer!
EDIT: To clarify, from what I remember the public opinion on Taiwan independence has been steadily shifting and now it’s the majority’s preference compared to becoming another province of China. At the same time the vast majority of Taiwanese prefer the option “let’s keep things as they are now”, if that option is available in the poll. Taiwan does have some special ties with continental China, particularly in economy and travel; it’s more like EU than two entirely unrelated countries.
Second, US's One China policy is only a word play. It acknowledges China's position regarding Taiwan but doesn't actually agree or disagree to it. That's why it still provide defense for Taiwan.
Third, your comment about public opinion is a complete nonsense. Taiwan is a democratic nation. If the majority prefers being a province of China, it would have already voted to do so. And the only reason people choose to "keep things as they are now" is to avoid provoking a war with China.
Either that or... are you talking about Taiwan and West Taiwan?
Mind that Taiwanese politics is not something I know a lot about, so I'm happy to be corrected.
In some ways, and I know this will be unpopular, but is it free market capitalism that enabled the CCP to rise to such power? ie "You're freedom to choose cheap shit"?
I'm certainly not arguing for communism ourselves, but I mean, China didn't force us to move manufacturing there, won't it just happen again ?
Literally every tech company stands up for good causes like BLM and LGBTQ+ rights; but the true measure of courage is when there are consequences involved with taking a stand.
Well, in the countries where it is good PR to do so. They tend not to show the same face worldwide, in countries where it would not be good PR.
And that moral stand is over the sovereignty of a country?
Even though the US government, with vastly more resources at its disposal and more ability to withstand the consequences of Chinese anger, does not make this stand?
And even if they did, that ethos does not give them carte blanch to pick and choose which laws they will adhere to.
Edit: The USA also agrees that there is one China, at least officially, though it’s not like the US doesn’t like to change its mind frequently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Communiqué
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/taiwan-china-politics-identity-inde...
The situation is akin to someone held hostage at gunpoint telling you they’re fine.
Or is it because companies generally tend to follow the law of wherever they operate?
This is not great news for Taiwan. Besides empty assurances, I am now certain that Taiwan is largely on its own.
No nuclear armed nation is going to fight another nuclear armed major power.
I'm of the belief that Hawaii belongs to the native Hawaiian people who the islands were stolen from by the US one hundred years ago, and whose descendants have been advocating that it be returned to them as a free and independent people and country.
You're in favor of that, right?
They can have a referendum and see if they would like to lose their US citizenship Medicare/Social security.
That is never the truth. They threat for armed attack like since forever 'everyday'. To the point people here just outright ignore their claim and do their daily work.
If somebody even be serious about that. Then they would need live in the air-raid shelter everyday. But who would do that?
> similar to a civil war
Hell no, in my 30 years of live, I have nothing to do with PRC at all except saw them on the TV that they will never give up attacking Taiwan.
Discalaimer: I live here.
If you had to guess, where do you expect TW/CH relations to be in 50 years? Do you still expect there to be disagreement between the two governments on respective borders and sovereignty or will they someday reach a fully amicable agreement?
this is contrary to nearly everything I have witnessed in my life regarding Taiwan (a place I visited in the earlyish 90s).
This is only a "consensus" between KMT and PRC. Even then the reading is completely different between KMT and PRC. While Taiwan is still called ROC officially, there's no policy on Taiwan or DPP side that there's only one China. DPP's stance is that Taiwan is an independent sovereign nation that is called ROC right now.
> The constitution of Taiwan claims sovereignty over mainland China
The ROC(taiwan) constitution does not define it's territory. In fact, there was a supreme court case regarding this, and the judges' ruling was that this was a major political issue, and thus they could not decide on it.
It's true that there are amendments that define the "free area" for practical purposes, but they do not define what are the other areas.
> With that in mind, Taiwan and China situation is really similar to a civil war, Taiwan is just a secessionist. And until the situation is resolved, there is nothing wrong with label it “Taiwan, China”
This is complete BS propaganda language. The situation of China and Taiwan is pretty much the same as Koreas, the only difference is that the balance between NK and SK isn't that tilted. And the world have no problem labeling Nk and SK differently.
Of course, the entire situation is vastly more complicated because, you know, the Taiwanese natives have their own ideas. And also the various factions have evolved their stances so I think there are like 4 or 5 different possibilities being tossed around.
These facts grossly do not represent the reality of today. In minimizing Taiwan sovereignty you hurt a whole nation of people only to benefit a terrible regime saving face.
Taiwan is its own country.
Discalaimer: I live here.
And basically everyone here is choosing cheaper Chinese goods so we're all complicit too.
Apple has spent many years happily profiting from cheap Chinese manufacturing, labor, electrial engineering expertise and supply chains to the point where they are now completely beholden to a foreign country. A country whose increasing rivalry with the US in economic power and geopolitical influence (along with increased tensions) has been clear for well over a decade.
Apple is diversifying a bit into India and elsewhere (Vietnam I think?), but China could throw Apple into a huge crisis tomorrow if they were cut off, since it would take years to ramp up capacity elsewhere, and sourcing many of the components would be next to impossible.
And Apple really couldn't blame anyone but themselves for it.
It also seems to me like the are diversifying more because India demanded it and for price, rather than tho reduce dependencies ok China. But that's just unqualified guesswork.
I don't buy Chinese goods just because they're cheaper. I only do so when there's no choice to buy the same kind of product from anywhere else. For example, try to find a power bank made somewhere other than China.
Why?
Because it’s a single-party dictatorship and because the interests of the State are subordinate to the interests of the people who control the State. That’s true in America too, which is why we have elections and transfers of power, and though our elections are fair and free by a reasonable metric, the deck is still stacked in favor of those who already have power. The PRC has nothing resembling the peaceful transfer of power and therefore the only means of transferring power within the PRC as it is constituted today are less than peaceful.
It's a weak excuse for a company that builds its image in last 5 years as a morally superior one. Apple was very happy to heavily impact online advertising business (not saying it was a bad thing), because of those principles (and to give them huge edge to grow their business later in that area). But they are not willing to stand up for other causes, where it impacts their bottom line.
The only way to not be complicit is to not have a phone. China makes them all.
its not like we have much choice anymore as consumers. There's hardly anything made elsewhere.
In the Cultural Revolution I remember one story about a village thief, dedicated parasite with lies passing blame and finding people's precious last reserves. You guys don't know because generally the user on HN has never felt hunger. In particular the nuance, this is marathon hunger, at a national level, long-term malnutrition under difficult work conditions. Can't say anything about it, so doggerel (like sarcastic songs, sung collectively on the field like Negro spirituals). Millions did everything right and died anyway. These thieves were cold-blooded murderers most of the time. Attempted murder in the best light.
So. The village catches him one day, really catches him and it's bad[1]. And takes him to a giant of shit. He won't open his mouth unconditionally so they open it with tongs, they feed him that shit mmm nice and full that's what you get for stealing our food, why didn't you tell us you wanted to eat our food? This is our food! He died two weeks later.
Nowadays it would be much more lax, because he wouldn't be cheating and stealing from people who are barely hanging on from starvation so...a caning for instance.
Yeah like that American in Singapore who got caned, I knew a teacher who had taught at the international school he went to and he was just BEGGING for it not just ASKING for it like WRITING LETTERS TO SANTA like how can I fuck these locals off to the point they carry out corporal punishment like I don't need to follow any law country I live because the punishment is caning and they can't cane me because I'm an American, it will make news, no amount of any anything no matter how many cops tell me what. And he did, and they did, and it did. Petulant bitchvictim.
You know I've heard stereotypes and actually met Chinese and would say...many are strictly insulting of their poverty, and slandering their correct and successful approaches for getting out of it.
Nobody sympathizes with the concept of starvation. Too well-fed to understand.
[1] I've heard a similar story about a thief on an American submarine, hard to catch but when they do catch the thief oh man.
You mean big corporations and their greedy shareholders choose for us?
Can you elaborate on this? This feels a very US centric view. The US itself has repeatedly failed to comply with its own 'rules-based order', whilst expecting other powers to comply.
And as long as the US doesn't formally recognize Taiwan, "made in Taiwan" shouldn't even be considered formally correct in the US, even if the issue with Chinese enforcement around this label didn't exist
Yes it should be picked up but the US can't just go in swinging with China. Nobody wins.
I recall an appeasement policy in Europe didn’t work so great in the 1930s.
It amazes me how many people assume China has a strong military without doing the most basic research.
Ya, and if that happens, expect a draft. The US military is having difficulty finding volunteers. They'll need a whole lot of soldiers, sailors and marines if we went all out with China.
>It seems like it's not the world leaders we have to worry about, it's the fucking commenters.
Pelosi was quite bold in her little stunt recently with Taiwan. She's willing to send our boys and girls to war for a political stunt is pretty disgusting. I'm done with all these war mongers.
I wonder what she was really trying to accomplish.
Also, seems some people stole $6B from Chinese banks. One of the accused was allowed to flee to the US.
https://menafn.com/1104402647/China-Banking-Scandal-May-Invo...
IMO, more people need to learn about marginal thinking. This is the only way we can operate in a complicated, interconnected world, and China is much better at this. When Nike and H&M voiced concerns about Xinjiang, the CPC organized consumer boycotts of these companies. Meanwhile, they happily allowed factories to continue to sell their goods to sell to Nike and H&M. China itself recognizes that it only makes sense to virtue signal when it is economical to do so.
It never was, that's why they want chip companies to build factories in the US as a backup. Until May 2022 the official state department website specifically said that the US does not support independence. Even now it still says that it's official stance is a one china policy(although China does not believe that that is indeed the official stance, hence the tensions).
But at the end of the day anyone that can read a map can see what the reality here looks like. There is that which we would like to be true, and that which is reality and unfortunately the reality looks a bit more grim.
In the case of Apple though, they should have put "made in China" on their iPhones, because that's where they were made (even in the case that the two Chinas situation is recognized by International institutions)
edit: apparently stating the obvious deserves downvotes here, I still don't know if it's Russians offended by the sovereignty of Ukraine or someone from Vatican State, one among the few to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country.
Sovereignty is something you observe, not something you declare. A regime that is successfully able to maintain control of its territory and prevent its territory from being controlled by anyone else, for a n indefinite period of time, is by definition sovereign. That is what sovereignty is.
Taiwan's regime has been able to control its territory for decades. PRC can claim that they wish Taiwan was not sovereign, and this is very true, but until they successfully invade and take it over, Taiwan is still sovereign.
Just a little English vocabulary lesson!
‘Using the phrase "Made in Taiwan" on any import declaration forms, documents or cartons’
The comparison the Ukraine is getting old, mainly because I think a lot of history has been forgotten. Taiwan's formal name is the Republic of China, a government that was in control of Beijing in WWII, and allies with the US. During the Civil War, there was a truce been the CCP and the Kuomingtang (the ruling party of ROC back then) to fight against the Japanese. After WWII, there was a civil war between the CCP and the Kuomingtang. The Kuomingtang lost military engagements and retreated to the island of Taiwan. What makes the issue of Taiwanese and Chinese soveriengty complicated is that the Kuomingtang had asserted territorial rights over mainland China, but the military reality weakens those claims year after year. By the time of the late 80s, that position over reclaiming China had become the equivalent of the right-wing politics in Taiwan.
Culturally, the Taiwanese and Chinese inherit from the same, ancient Chinese civilization, with the Taiwanese having preserved much of the Chinese history, and the PROC did not (Cultural Revolution).
Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan (ROC) is not a buffer state between two major political powers. They were a veto power in the UN before CCP-controlled China, backed by the Soviets, forced their way into the UN Security Council. It is less about Taiwan being protected by US and more about the US honoring old alliances.
It's from that lens that Apple's response is interesting.
Ukraine is not a buffer state between two powers though.
Only Americans see it like that, after they regained independence from USSR.
Ukrainians are an east Slavic ethnic group native of Ukraine, separated from Russians, who descend from Finno-Ugric tribes.
Unlike 97% of Taiwanese people, who are Han Chinese like in mainland China.
Taiwan is more like Catalonia, where Catalans insist that they are different from Spaniards, but the conclusion is that Catalans including other Spaniards and even Portuguese are the same ethnic people
EDIT: immediate downvotes are probably from Russian zealots pretending that the World is indeed 100% Russian and should stay like that.
These do not seem at all comparable to me
Absolutely, this is crazy bullshit. Let's share it everywhere, 'cause without mass highlight situation isn't going to change: Apple just picking up the side with bigger money.
Even this story was not featured: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine...
The Information is one of the most reputable sources of information (no pun) from silicon valley and it was largely ignored.
I would like a massive investigative journalism project, perhaps from WSJ with the same rigor has their Theranos investigation by John Carreyrou.
American journalism has talked about Uigher/labor issues in China, but never in the light of "Hey, look, this is the elephant in the room when it comes to China and no one cares. That's the amount of shit America consumes and depends on China".
Of cuz, because of US are exceptional, US does not abide by the international law, so Pelosi visited Taiwan as a high level official from US.
Apple need to operate in the boundary of law. That's it.
As for whether or not PRC money is immoral. For a company founded in a nation practiced slavery in modern history, performed genocide on American Indian, launched Vietnam war, and brutally supported and helped the other fellow morally coruppted war crimals to oppress Palestinian Yemen, Cuba etc.
They are part of the problem from the very beginning. They are the original sin that drives all sorts of evil.
You got the whole cause and effect reversed.
> the fact that PRC Taiwan and USA all legally recognize one China policy
Notice how you use the term "legally." You know that in fact, most nations around the world treat Taiwan as a de-facto independent nation. The USA's formal word on this is as follows: "acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China"
Notice how it does _not_ claim that the _USA_ thinks there is only one China. Only that it recognizes PRC and Taiwan do.
> Apple need to operate in the boundary of law
Apple need operate in the boundary of PRC law if they want to keep their Chinese factories, workers and profits, and that's what this critique is all about. Nobody else cares if they have "made in Taiwan" on their parts or products. In fact, I'd prefer if they did as it's more transparent!
Whose law? Whose norms? Apple may be a global company but it uses American sovereignty, intellectual property law, and influence on other sovereign nations with respect to protecting its wealth, even if a good chunk of it is generated overseas.
Forgive me for being naive here but how does Taiwan buy weapons? Are all the arms manufacturers selling to them breaking the law?
> Of cuz, because of US are exceptional, US does not abide by the international law, so Pelosi visited Taiwan as a high level official from US.
One China Policy isn't a law, at least not outside the PRC; it's a gentlemen's agreement between the U.S., China (PRC), and Taiwan (ROC) which permits everybody to save face without having to go to war. It's not written down anywhere, except perhaps on a hurried memorandum.
Furthermore, the only reason the PRC represents China in the United Nations is because of another gentlemen's agreement between the PRC and the U.S. (Nixon, Kissinger) that the PRC would abstain from forcefully invading Taiwan. Up until then the ROC had the seat and would have continued to do so. (Note that this is distinct from the One China Policy, which is a face-saving public gloss on the commitments to abstain from using military force over Taiwan.)
But-for the strategic ambiguity wrt Taiwan, the U.S. is very careful not to violate Chinese territorial sovereignty. I'm not aware of any principal of international law that is per se violated by Pelosi visiting Taiwan. Perhaps the PRC has a law on the books that says otherwise, but the PRC doesn't administer Taiwan. This state affairs exists beyond written and normative international law; it just is what it is.
Now if the U.S. were to have a military presence on Taiwan, especially a permanent presence, then that would be another story. International law wouldn't figure into it either, but it would be a much clearer violation of the U.S.-PRC agreement regarding the PRC's ascension to the U.N. and the subsequent One China Policy memorandum. AFAIK, the U.S. doesn't permit military officers to enter Taiwan, at least not in their official capacity. Unlike the President, the Speaker of the House holds no military office. From the U.S. perspective, this is the no-go line.
If you want to talk about violating clearly written international agreements, let's talk Hong Kong. But that wouldn't be very productive, either, because despite the formalities the Hong Kong situation also pushes beyond the envelop of what normative international law can speak to.
Taiwan differentiates by using “Republic of China”, RoC.
Still confusing, but technically different, purposely so.
US isn't even serious about protecting themselves.
"Given the aggression we are seeing...and the FBI director...saying that China...is the #1 threat to the U.S. in the next 10 yrs, would [Biden]...caution companies from expanding...in China?"
"private companies...make their own decisions" - John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications
https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1555282788210860034
But the administration has no problem telling business what to do when it cares about the issue, for example telling gas stations to lower prices.
I'm not Chinese but I did lived in Taiwan for 6 years and was married to a Chinese woman who's father escaped to Taiwan from China after the Nationalists lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan.
Apple's policy is exactly in line with Taiwan's own official policy.
To be sure, there is official policy and there is actual sentiment on the ground. "Made in Taiwan" reflects the Taiwan populace's growing desire to distinguish itself from China, as well as reflect the de facto reality.[4][5]
But if Taiwan itself as a country is unwilling to change their official policy, be it because they still cling to the "One China" notion, or because they are afraid of pissing off China, why is everyone here demanding that Apple do something that Taiwan is itself unwilling to do? Why should they, as an American company, push any particular angle, especially when there is position they can take that is compatible with the policies of both Taiwan and China?
If you are arguing for a world that pushes values over profit and other self-serving things, I'd give you a hug and then tell you there are far more important stands to take, including a serious and honest analysis of capitalism. Are all the people dissing Apple on this issue also willing to diss Apple for the exploitation of cheap labor in Asia all while growing to have the greatest market cap in the whole world? If you are not then I don't think you have much of a leg to stand on.
---
[1] Note the words at the top of the government's home page: "Government Portal of the Republic of China (Taiwan)" www.taiwan.gov.tw
[2] See Taiwan's own constitution, even after modern amendments, continues to hold that China is one country. https://english.president.gov.tw/Page/93
Note that the constitution also claims Mongolia and Tibet as part of the Republic of China. Even Mainland China doesn't claim Mongolia.
The amendments adopted afterwards have not rescinded the idea of One China implied by the original: https://english.president.gov.tw/Page/95
They now use the phrase "free area of the Republic of China" and specifically say, "Rights and obligations between the people of the Chinese mainland area and those of the free area, and the disposition of other related affairs may be specified by law."
[3] See this comment on this same thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32358180
[4] There is a good Wikipedia article on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan
[5] An ongoing debate within Taiwan about changing the constitution: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/05...
Raison d'être of any Corporation is shareholder profit, not whatever you think of it.
Shame on everyone involved - the Corporation, the short-sighted shareholders, the customers that enabled this behavior.
> If the US is serious about protecting Taiwan and bringing more chips to the US
It's the opposite, you want to "bring more chips in the US" so that the US is able to back off from protecting Taiwan.
There are all kinds of corporations. For example, the EFF is a corporation.
You would like Apple to... stop importing parts from Taiwan to China? That doesn't seem right, it would hurt Taiwan. Stop manufacturing in China? That's... ambitious. Ignore the situation and just accept assembly lines being halted because of lack of parts stopped at border? Other?
I don't totally see how America's future is at stake requiring current escalations to challenges to China's long-standing statement that Taiwan is part of china. You think America may cease to exist unless the government chooses right now to change their policy and refuse to let China maintain this fiction? And that private corporations start challenging it too even before the government does? Or else America may cease to exist?
Just curious, I would like to learn more about what you're looking for here. I'm curious if you are hoping for a shooting war between the US and China, if you think that would be good for "America's future"?
Apple's profit margins are so high that they'd probably still be positive even if they did this without raising prices at all. (Remember nobody's saying they should have to move manufacturing to the US. There are plenty of countries with low labor costs that are less evil than China.)
To be fair, it's not fair to use this as an occasion for Apple bashing or America bashing.
The whole Taiwan thing goes much deeper. For example, if you look at ISO3166, the country code standard.
If you look up Taiwan in ISO3166[1], you will see it listed as "Taiwan (Province of China)".
So, if a supposedly neutral international body sees it fit to maintain the link, then what hope have you got for individual countries or their companies ?
N.B. The UN does the same [2]
[1]https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW [2]https://service.unece.org/trade/locode/tw.htm
Taiwan is not a member, and been intentionally and continuously excluded.
The body was most certainly not neutral.
Please. It’s 2022 and the China buildup was funded by the American consumer over the past 3 decades.
It’s already too late but it’s easy to criticize companies that gave us they cheaper products we so desired by offshoring
This is kind of silly to blame average people on the street for buying something cheaper that shows up in their local stores. This is all on the government (both parties), and large corporations for pushing this. People didn't "want" NAFTA, slave labor, etc.
Of all the fights Apple can choose to pick, it seems like this one just isn’t worth it. Much better they pick fights about police having the ability to unlock phones or something.
Choose your battles. Let some shoe company pick that battle or something…
In my view, China acts abusively in many ways. And the country is currently important to modern global manufacturing.
In my understanding changing where a physical product company manufactures everything is horrifically difficult.
Apple very discretely talks about the ethical standards that it adheres to:
https://www.apple.com/compliance/policies/#:~:text=Apple%20t....
Yes, but if any company has the money and the power to make those changes happen, it's Apple.
Not really. Pretty much every iPhone sold everywhere is manufactured in China, and they all use chips from Taiwan.
There is no Apple without China. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals, working in Chinese-jurisdiction factories, produce Apple's products. Without the full consent and cooperation of the Chinese government, there are no Apple products. Full stop.
This rule only applies to goods manufactured in Taiwan and shipped to China.
Second - yeah, your point being?
Third - yes, it is a democratic nation, and the prevalent majority of that democratic nation wants to keep things as they are, as evidenced by polls[1]. This nation doesn’t want war. Compare this with the standard modus operandi of US. Sometimes they are the good guys, sometime they kill a million people in Middle East, but it’s always about a war somewhere far away from US.
1. Notice how different this is from Ukraine. Ever wondered why there are so many… persons equating China and Russia?
In the 60's and early 70's the GDR dropped this idea and worked towards being recognized as its own souvereign state, and insisted that there are two German states (the GDR and the FRG).
This eventually resulted in the "Basic Treaty" from 1972, and the GDR joining the UNO in 1973 (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Treaty,_1972, or the much more detailed entry in the German Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundlagenvertrag)
Made in Taiwan is, at the moment, legally like "made in California", which is a fine Beach Boys album, but not a recognized country of origin label.
Yeah I agree.
I don't think Apple is overtly advertising any morality in it's policies.
I think that's something that we have to do as shareholders of Apple. Shareholders and customers. We have to say, "Hey we don't like how your company is from our moral perspective. Please change your policies so that they conform to our morality."
This is also something they are already in the process of doing. They have been significantly ramping up manufacturing in Vietnam and India.
PRC came after when the ROC lost control of mainland China in 1949 to the communists and escaped to Taiwan.
But yes communistic names are confusing because they try to hijack existing terms and create misnomers like it's for the people.
Jokes aside, I got my impression on general history and personally deemed reputable sources. Nothing from what I said would have comprehensive references, because I am not a full-time political practitioner.
Feel free to draw your conclusion, but opaque derogatory comments help no one.
Some US territories have a parallel tax system that isn't underneath the Federal Government, whereas states are under the federal government, so a resident of a state has to pay state taxes as well as federal taxes. Although there are "categories" of types of territories, these categories are pretty much made up on the spot and each territory is its own separate case, as the US only has 5 inhabited territories all with unique tax and citizenship conditions.
Long story short, Puerto Rico has a tax system that is treated like being a foreign country, but checks the box for total Federal US tax compliance.
Under Puerto Rico's "Act 60", which mainland transplants to Puerto Rico can apply for, many transactions are taxed at zero percent, most importantly capital gains (for trades initiated while on the island and sold on the island, pro-rata based on time for longer held positions), while "PR sourced income" is taxed at 5%, or an up-to-4% corporate tax rate (so the same activity done through a corporation is taxed lower, and the dividends are tax free, and the sales of shares are tax free)
So if you want to clear all your money in the eyes of the Federal government, then living a year in PR to execute or finish a specific plan is good.
Congress has a little control over PR, but its more beneficial and easier to perpetuate division in Congress, at least at this class level, than pretend to have some other trendy cause that your friends want you to espouse.
and finally I made a reference to renouncing citizenship. If you leave "for tax purposes" then there exit taxes. So the goal is to keep more of your money at your own discretion, and then leave for any reason that isn't "tax purposes".
For one thing they have close business relationships with people in both china and Taiwan. They have employees in both countries. Vendors. Human relationships. Those might get kinda awkward if they picked this battle.
And what do they gain picking this battle? A few internet points?
It’s just not worth it.
Although we still speak chinese. The culture already differs too much to the point that there isn't any belongingness in young people.
And thing that is more interest is. Statistically, the lower the age is, the lower the belongingness to PRC they have.
When people grows. The average belongingness will be even lower.
I think that is why PRC is so eager about that currently. 'Before everything is too late.'
Re: Cotton - even if every ill-treated cotton worker suddenly became a well-treated union member, there's still the huge moral problem of how much of the Earth's scarce fresh water and farmland are devoted to growing cotton - when millions of poor people face grim shortages of food and safe water. I admit that being an old geezer makes it easier, but my approach is to buy far fewer new clothes & textile products than the average American. That strategy completely fails to grant me 100% moral purity on the issue. OTOH, it does far more good than fashionable kids decrying the deplorable status quo.
Second, I was talking about the textile industry both in the past and today, ie: the transatlantic slave trade and Ughyur slave labor in China today.
Sometimes you can't boycott because the entire industry is doing the morally corrupt thing.
I and many people I know avoid Chinese products, but sometimes it's impossible. At the same time we can also voice our concern.
There's not much a normal person can do other than boycott and protest, and I'm suggesting both. You're suggesting only one.
Most prominent example: Germany Launches €10 Billion Bailout for Gazprom’s Local Unit
Since I also don't know any names by myself, I can't tell much more.
But it was the only example in the media.
Also interessting is, but I never read why somewhere, Rheinmetall Defense for ex., they made year for year the same amount of money (10 years back). Until two years before the war, they made much more and one year before the war, more much more money again.
Also I know a guy who workes there sometimes. He said they had all hands full of work ti produce munition at least a year before the war started.
~100% of Apple's manufacturing depends on China continuing to permit hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals in Chinese factories (Foxconn's plants in Zhengzhou and elsewhere) building Apple products.
I'm not sure what you mean by "knuckle under" in this context, but Apple is, today, wholly dependent upon Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturing (for chips, and assembly, respectively).
If there is a war between China and Taiwan, or China and the US, Apple stands to lose the most of any single organization, I think.
Would that be true based on market cap? Cause I’m sure countless auto manufacturers, airplane manufacturers, elevator manufacturers, consumer goods manufacturers, and god knows what else would be equally fucked. But by market cap none of them would be as fucked as Apple.
Hmmm. Weird…
Even if the US wins a war over Taiwan, it'd probably take a long time to resolve, and trade would be disrupted for long enough that nothing is getting off the island until peace is re-established. Right now, if nothing changes with the US-China trajectory, war is coming. If the trajectory changes, that might change.
What we have today is working fine.
A global company that wastes resources engaging in hysterically overblown State Department propaganda is a company that compromises the credibility of its leadership to make intelligent strategic decisions.
We're out of the unipolar era, and companies that are stuck it in it will get outpaced.
These false equivalence’s are really tiring. China’s control of public speech and media is on a wholly different plane.
It’s not even remotely comparable to manipulation in the West.
I mean, some people believe there are no public elections in China, so…
Can a US citizen go on media, or organize a public protest, in which they call Joe Biden or Donald Trump, bad people, with bad policies? Yes, US citizens can publicly call for the highest level politicians in the land to lose their jobs, and with no real repercussions.
People on social media can scream "Let's Go Brandon" or meme like crazy about Biden. But Weibo, Wechat, Bilibili, Douyin, frequently censor even the most milquetoast sarcastic remarks about the CCP or Xi, including the infamous Baozi and Panda blocks.
Can a famous Chinese public individual/celebrity/intellectual, in China, tell a huge crowd and media, that I think the CCP are horrible and that Xi Jinping needs to be booted from power?
Stop trying to draw false equivalencies.
> I mean, some people believe there are no public elections in China, so…
Sure, where the CCP select and approve the candidates, control the election progress, and there is no free media coverage or transparency free of state control. Practically no real international election monitors. And no direct nationwide elections. Rather, a many levels of indirection process, effectively controlled by a President for life. Let's see what happens at Beidaihe and the 20th national congress in November. Think anything will change? I don't.
There's practical no competing, transparent system in these so called 'democratic elections' making them in effort, a Potemkin village with the veneer of popular will, but in fact, nothing of the sort. There are about 50 individuals in the US congress worth more than $10 million, and not a single one who is a billionaire. Trump was the only billionaire to have office. Meanwhile, there are 100+ CCP members in the Congress who are billionaires.
Does this look like a system chosen by public debate, awareness, and discussion?
For all of the flaws in the Western systems, and there are a vast number, it is really tiring seeing tankies try to say "everything's the same" with zero nuance, as if none of it matters.
One option is of course to say that nobody should be neutral in the conflict between China and Taiwan, but the obvious objection is that Taiwan does not want this. Taiwan's economic links with the mainland are enormous and it's absolutely routine for Taiwanese businesses to export to China or do business in China under Chinese regulations. (For example, you may be familiar with Foxconn, a Taiwanese company with over a million Chinese employees.)
Fox news might not be reliable on this matter. Nor myself, or any other unidentified HN visitor.
The best my comments can give is for someone who is genuinely interested in learning history to spend time to look for reputable sources.
HN for things outside of tech industry generally offers sharply lower quality. So you generally should not treat anyone here including myself too seriously.
[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-pa...
There may well be other combinations of countries that justify a person having multiple passports.
I had never heard the term before today, but did appreciate its cleverness.
Regular people don’t have the right level of knowledge to make those decisions and it’s not realistic to expect that of them. I would much rather talk about the party who not only had the right level of information but was also the one who actively made the decisions that lead to this situation to begin with.
At the end of the day Apple have a lot more to answer for than regular consumers.
I'm sorry, can you remind me when companies offered the same product made outside of China and in China, as an alternative choice? The companies decided to go offshore, not the consumers.
But, it misses the critical historical heritage for the event and the actual international laws at the time of the end of WWII.
The situation is more like the China domestic war was not ending, and US intervened China's unification out of the strategic goal of contain communism. PRC of cuz had been the Vanguard of political insurgency across the east Asia.
One China policy is recognized by international law not because of US, one China policy is derived from a series of international treaties after ww2. Those are the laws actually has the most legitimacy.
And the other so called general men's agreement of PRC's representation of this one China. That's just an automatic derivation from that fact that PRC inherits the ROC seat in UN. You are reversing the cause and effect. But this is quite common for people living in US, as they tend to view everything as if they were always under US leadership, and claimed that a lot things that actually sanctioned under check and balance of geopolitical struggles into some kind of US concession out of necessary strategic goal that eventually US are going to revert.
Precisely that's one wrong lesson of geopolitical struggling. You can always claims a moral superiority and legal high ground from ones own perspective. That's the case for US, Taiwan, PRC, and even for Japan's refusal to admit it war crimes. But the underlying facts of power and strength, which has always been the driven force of geopolitical struggles, is always the foundation.
And all of that to expose it to China's anti-ship missiles and dare them to shoot. Seems like a terrible way to spend that money.
The only reason she went was because the US military deemed it safe to do so. No one wants a war right now.
> I wonder what she was really trying to accomplish.
Why not listen to her words?
"We must stand by Taiwan, which is an island of resilience. Taiwan is a leader in governance … . At the same time, Beijing is squeezing Taiwan economically, pressuring global corporations to cut ties with the island, intimidating countries that cooperate with Taiwan, and clamping down on tourism from the [mainland]. In the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s … accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom."
The same military that said Afghanistan wouldn't fall until months after we left? The same DoD that convinced us WMDs existed in Iraq? How many times will we buy into this garbage?
"Our commitment to democracy is tested in China. That nation now has a sliver, a fragment of liberty. Yet, China's people will eventually want their liberty pure and whole. China has discovered that economic freedom leads to national wealth. China's leaders will also discover that freedom is indivisible -- that social and religious freedom is also essential to national greatness and national dignity. Eventually, men and women who are allowed to control their own wealth will insist on controlling their own lives and their own country."
W. Bush said similar things when trying to manufacture content for invading Iraq. You know how that worked out. Don't buy what they're selling like I did 20 years ago. Warmongers need to go. A draft to fight China will destroy an entire generation. She has no business saber rattling like that.
>No one wants a war right now.
You sure about that?
Do you have any source saying that China's military is not as strong as it appears to be?
If Apple had somehow managed to make iPhones in Vietnam instead of Shenzhen, would they really be facing the premium tier competition from Huawei they face in the EU?
Yes. Yes they can.
For that matter, I've received written correspondence from people while doing genealogical research with the return address listed as "Mobile, Alabama, Occupied CSA". There are definitely cultural norms that come into play here, but in that particular case - it was from an officer of a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and contained photocopies of Confederate military records - I was amused by it. I kept the envelope and included it in my own archives.
Now even if it is allowed, suppose this was a Federal government procurement. Will Feds buy something with such flags? Nope. Once that happens, it can be easily demagogued.
Actually, probably. If the item meets the specs and the price, that's what matters.
Just as there is no shortage of federal buildings, and even military installations named after Confederate things.
This HN discussion illustrates how bringing up Confederate themes, you can really tell when someone isn't an American.
The Confederate flag is a bit weird because there's enough of the population that apparently doesn't see it that way, so some stores will even display products that have it. (Personally I find it to be an awful symbol and wouldn't stick around if I saw it displayed).
An example that is more like what you've described is something like a Nazi swastika -- technically you can sell something with a swastika on it (I'm 99.9% sure) but almost no stores would be willing to put it on the shelves, certainly no major chains or whatever.
I would also like to make it clear that mainland China is the only one that has ever put these claims (except for Mongolia) into practice.
[1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/05... [2] https://english.president.gov.tw/Page/93
So then the answer is no, those weapons companies are not breaking the law. They have been selling weapons to taiwan for decades, and they do not have to worry about international law.
Taiwan until around 1990 froze into place representatives from all the mainland provinces in its legislature, thereby effectively nullifying the democratic voice of the people who lived on the island.
Taiwan's "外生人", those born on the mainland and who fled to Taiwan at the end of the civil war, took over the government, suppressing the views and interests of the "Taiwanese", the Chinese who speak the local Chinese dialect and who lived there before. You know, kinda like what Russia wants to do with Ukraine.
The Taiwanese themselves previously took over the island, suppressing the view and interests of the aborigine people, who are Austronesian, not Chinese. Again, kinda like what Russia wants to do with Ukraine.
So if we're going to talk about democracy and freedom and sovereignty, we need to be less tribal/self-serving about it and more honest.
If we're going to castigate China, are you also going to castigate America about Hawaii? If not, then I don't think that's honest. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I recommend you read about what Native Hawaiians feel about America. There's also Puerto Rico. And the US taking the Southwest form Mexico, and then closing its border, treating migrant workers from south of the border like shit, all the while looking the other way as we can make them work for below minimum wage and no protections all so we can have cheaper produce and have cheaper restaurants and all the other things that depend on cheap brown labor. We can go further and talk about Europeans taking it all from the indigenous people.
I'm not defending China or Russia. I'm pointing out the huge amount of self-serving cherry-picking and hypocrisy.
If anything, it was the Slavs in that region that expanded eastward and resettled conquered territories e.g. Tatars(Crimea) to the eastern parts.
Taiwan was inhabited by Austronesians, some of which were butchered by the dutch when they first drove them out, then by Portuguese, later by the Japanese (for a while a lot of Taiwanese considered themselves Japanese, while others on that Island fought of the invaders in the east) and sometime in between all that Hakka and other Han Chinese settled the island.
After loosing the civil war as you know Chiang Kai-shek settled there while running a brutal dictatorship where the first thing he did was take all the local currency and reissue his own. I think the biggest giveaway on how problematic Taiwans history with China is, is that some of the biggest treasures that Mao tried to destroy are in the national history museum in Taipei.
I agree with you that Taiwan never accepted changing it's own constitution(i.e. passports are still issued as RoC, not as Taiwan), but you absolutely cannot compare Ukraine to Taiwan. Neither in geography nor in history.
That makes no sense.
From Wikipedia:
> Around 6,000 years ago .... Austronesian ... Han Chinese fishermen began settling in the Penghu islands in the 13th century.
That's 800 years ago.
Are you going to motivate an attack and invasion and war today, with what others did that far ago?
And then:
> In 1626, the Spanish Empire landed on and occupied northern Taiwan [...] 1642, when the last Spanish fortress fell to Dutch forces.[83] The Dutch then marched south, subduing hundreds of villages
That's Spain and the Netherlands, not Taiwan, occupying ... Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
You could have the whole world be at war with itself everywhere, by looking back some hundred years and motivating conflicts today with what you then find.
So the US is English?
I would bet that many shoppers buying products fullfilled by Amazon, an American company, don't realize that they are buying from China 99% of the time.
I think the case is that most people don’t actually care, and most people can’t be bothered to look at the origin of the products they’re buying. And I think unfortunately most people would rather have a $1,000 iPhone instead of an $1,800 iPhone.
It’s kind of like gas prices. You see the reaction once they went higher. Frankly I think it’s bewildering how cheap gas is considering what it is, what goes into producing the product, and what it takes to get it to the gas pumps. And that says nothing of the negative externalities of course. But cheaper than a gallon of milk from a farmer nearby? Always surprising to me. Every time I think about it I think the “real” price is probably like $30-$40/gallon.
Now, from reading your comments, I'm going to assume you are in good faith, and you simply can't see what consequences they can face.
Although we can't know for sure such things without being an expert in middle-east politics, one can understand that if two groups of people have been at odds with each others for a long time, suddenly doing business with the opposite party is going to have political consequences.
E.G: assuming you are American. If you are a republican group, you can get financed by a left-leaning institution, but this will have political consequences.
I don't think that's a short way of saying the same thing though, for the kind of consequences you mean at least. Imagine if I were a vegan for ethical reasons. It'd be fine for me to say "I don't eat meat", but a lie to say "I can't eat meat", since I'd be perfectly capable of doing so, and be fine if I did, and just not want to anyway. Contrast this with if I had alpha-gal syndrome and someone me offered me a steak. In that case, I could truthfully say "I can't eat that".
political issues between Muslim & Jews
There are no political issues between muslim and jews. You maybe meant :
- there are political issues between the jewish state and it's muslim majority neighbours
- there is a conflict between jews and muslims in Palestine and IsraelThere's a conflict between the settlers/gentrifiers (and their police State, military industrial complex, and security apparatus) and the rest of the population. From what i hear there is still an anti-nationalist/anti-colonization/anti-war jewish movement in Israel, what remains of a once-strong internationalist socialist/anarchist jewish movement.
Do you know of any counter examples where a company was able to make a successful bid with a product that had good fit, but an inconvenient non-functional addon like that?
There is nothing "by definition" when talking about the legality of sovereignty of countries.
Is Palestine a sovereign State, if "it is by definition"?
> Sovereignty is something you observe, not something you declare
You are confusing sovereignty (or trying to confuse the readers on purpose) with being a recognized sovereign country, which is a legal construct, we have developed International legal frameworks for that, we enforce them, using the force if necessary, or I could declare the land where my house is built upon "a sovereign country".
I clearly can't, can I?
If China attacks Taiwan, technically it's not really an invasion.
It makes a big difference.
> Taiwan's regime has been able to control its territory for decades
So has done Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
edit: technically the Taiwanese one is not a regime, it's an elected government.
> Just a little English vocabulary lesson!
maybe you should focus more on "text comprehension" than on the vocabulary.
No, neither I nor the parent were talking about "legality" just sovereignty. This "legal" sovereignty is a concept you and you alone have introduced to the discussion, and frankly I think it's a pretty useless and nonsense concept in practical terms. (There is no world government, after all, and laws are different in every country, so legality at an international level is a kind of meaningless philosophical question in the absence of someone able and willing to enforce it)
Please look up "sovereignty" in the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sovereignty
moving the goalpost much?
I specifically talked about "sovereign countries recognized by the UN"
So yeah, I introduced it, because it's the only thing that matters.
Nobody cares about sovereignty outside of legal borders and international recognition.
Are Catalans sovereign in Catalonia?
Nobody cares unless they can get international recognition.
Are Lombard sovereign in Lombardy?
Who cares?
Nobody, unless they can obtain the recognition of the UN.
I'm sovereign in my bedroom, too bad nobody cares.
Anyway you wrote "Taiwan is a sovereign country by definition", no, it's not.
It's a disputed territory, the matter is very complex, there are strong opposing interests of various natures conflicting over it, for a part of the World there are humanitarian reasons to support their claims, but technically it's still part of China (PRC), the one the international authorities recognize.
Why is there the US army to defend them against a Chinese take over, if there is no way to enforce anything internationally?
Also, go and read about the 2021 referendums
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on the island of Taiwan has been criticized for selling the interests of the people of Taiwan out in exchange for US support of its secessionist political pursuit
[...]
Taiwan residents have expressed great concern over the import of pork containing ractopamine, an additive banned by many countries, as this issue impacts the health interests of every Taiwan resident, Zhu said.
Thousands of people flooded Taipei's streets in late November for a protest march, with much of the anger focused on the DDP authorities' decision to ease restrictions on imports of US pork.
The DPP authority has allowed the import of thousands of tons of ractopamine-contaminated US port since January 1, according to media reports.
This is enough to expose the fact that the DPP has ignored the interests of the people on the island, and is aimed at currying favor with certain political and economic forces in the US
What do you think would happen if at the next elections a President pro reunification with mainland prevails?
So their sovereignty is still not "by definition" in any sense.
No matter what side you are on.
> There is no world government, after all
There is, however.
The fact that you don't recognize it, it's irrelevant.
If tomorrow New Yorkers declare themselves sovereign over the NY territory, do you think the US government will let them print money and elect a president?
Enlighten me on why not, please.
> No, neither I nor the parent
the parent wrote
"Imagine if Apple told Ukraine employees to label Russia on their badges"
and I explained why it would be different.
Made in Ukraine it's a thing, because Ukraine is recognized as sovereign Nation, while Russia is another country, currently trying to occupy Ukraine by force.
Made in Taiwan no, not legally, it's like made in Palestine, made in Catalonia, made in Sicily or made in Calgary.
If it's made in Taiwan, it's made in China, if it's made in Ukraine it's not Russian (at least for now)
If you are thinking of _vassal_ states, historically, Imperial China had some. A more complicated example, Qing-dynasty, Manchurian-controlled China tried to treat the kingdom of Korea as one.
As far as I know, neither Ukraine or Taiwan were or are vassal states.
That is inhabited by the same Koreans that live in the south and only exists for geopolitcal reasons.
Just like east and west Germany.
Ukraine exists because Ukranian people exist.
Belgium is more of a buffer state than Ukraine
(no, I'm not Ukranian, far from it)
It is about geopolitical situation, where states A and C happen to have state B between them. When relations between A and C go real sour, then B becomes a buffer state between them (unless B is powerful enough to kick asses of both A and C, should anything escalate). The buffer state’s role in geopolitics is to get invaded first on the way, cause an international outrage, and hopefully defuse the tensions before A gets to “C proper” territory, or at least stall the invasion.
This has nothing to do with your claims of colonialism. Some people just want Taiwan free from the CCP. Ask HK how great things are under unification.
The whole point of Taiwan's stance is that "Are the people of Taipei/Taiwan broadly Chinese, as a matter of culture and national history?" and "Should Taiwan be free from the CCP?" can in fact be separate questions. To many Taiwanese, support for "Taiwan independence" would be tantamount to denying their history and self-experienced identity. A very real sort of oppression.
Source?
I have Taiwanese sources stating the exact opposite. The Taiwanese youth does not want to be seen as Chinese.
Nevertheless, there is one smartphone made in the USA (Librem 5). None of its parts appear to be sourced by Chinese companies, but some of the parts manufacturers have factories in China (I would not be too surprised to find out that the Samsung front-camera is made in China, for example). I can't say for sure that it's lacks any china-manufactured items in it, but it's at least pretty darn close.
I don't have one because I don't want to spend $1300 on a phone. If that's not me choosing cheaper Chinese goods, then I don't know what is.
It is worse than that. The regular Librem 5 is $1300, but the one made in the US is $2000.
It's wild to watch the people who pushed for it slide down the Narcissist's Creed. It's fine! Oh, it's not fine? Then it isn't a problem. Oh, it is a problem? Then it isn't a big deal. Oh, it is a big deal? Then it's not my fault. Oh, it is my fault? Well, I didn't mean it. Oh, I did mean it? Well then you deserved it.
Not exactly:
Librem 5 USA: "The Freedom and Privacy of the Librem 5, plus Made in the USA Electronics with a Secure Supply Chain." https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
"If you want a smartphone built outside China and the walled gardens of Google and Apple, Purism's Librem 5 USA may be for you." https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/in_brief_security/
The problem is that it is $2000 and doesn't even run Android. The usability of a non-android Linux on a phone is just not there yet.
Well what would you expect? Lol that's the whole point! What you're saying is you care more about price than you do where the product is made. That's fine, but just be honest with yourself about it.
Keep in mind, the Nokia bricks of the days of yore. They were still fully functional telecommunication devices. Just because the Librem is probably a glorified Raspberry Pi doesn't mean it isn't worth investing in to help grow the domestic supply chain.
The world is bound by Physics and miracles facilitated by networks. When faced with a toxic hub node, you route around, and reinforce alternative routes.
Of course, you and I know that China is wrong and Taiwan really is an independent country! But that doesn't mean it's neutral to say so.
China does need to be “satisfied” for it to be neutral.
You can be 100% sovereign and be a buffer state and 0% sovereign and not be one (see French Polynesia)
> It is about geopolitical situation, where states A and C happen to have state B between them
then Germany is a buffer state, Poland is a buffer state, Israel is a buffer state, Afghanistan is a buffer state. Sweden is a buffer state, Finland is a buffer state, Bulgaria is a buffer state, Switzerland is a buffer state, Mongolia is a buffer state, Canada is a buffer state etc.
except that
Ukraine has been described as a buffer state between Russia and the NATO bloc, at least up to the ousting of former President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014
We let them be an independent Nation when they agreed to become a kinda democratic country.
Donbass is the buffer state there, between Ukraine and Russia.
As far as we are concerned, Russia is not at war with Europe or NATO, but with Ukraine, for reasons belonging entirely to a Russian-Ukraine conflict.
A buffer state is a "neutral area" that two powers agree on, Russia never really agreed on Ukraine independence and tried to make it a buffer between them and NATO. If Russia wins the war against Ukraine, then Ukraine will become a buffer state.
If Ukraine was really a buffer state, we would be at war with Russia now, we surely would be if Russia attacked Finland or Sweden or Bulgaria or Romania or Poland, because it's Europe, or if USSR entered west Germany or when Iraq invaded Kuwait etc. etc.
What happened when Yugoslavia (a buffer state) dissolved?
Do you really believe USA would have missed a chance to go to war, given the motivation?
Isn't the problem that online sellers (e.g., Amazon) usually don't tell you this on the website, so you have no way of finding out until it arrives?
> But cheaper than a gallon of milk from a farmer nearby?
This is only true because the government holds the price of milk artificially high.
I’d say the problem is when you (not you specifically) claim to care about buying things that are made in China and then not do any basic research on the products and their origin. Also just don’t buy from online retailers like Amazon. It’s just a digital Wal-Mart.
> This is only true because the government holds the price of milk artificially high.
Sure it was just an example.
Originally, I didn't even talk about the USA's morally dubious nature, which I think it can certainly be pointed out. But try and formulate those points in a different way next time, don't imply something others haven't said.
Nevertheless, I agree. There's a lot of hypocrisy on this, even if I think that it's for different reasons (the USA just wants to make sure they have a way to choke out China's navy through another "friend").
That's just humanity at this point.
We are full of contradictions.
Some of these things may have been fixed, but last time I looked there were multiple issues that make it a deal breaker. The battery life is not good, the phone is huge, app compatibly is not good, cooling issues, etc.
I prefer to buy Western made products even if they cost quite a bit more money. I just want to get a decent product for the price and I don't think the Librem 5 is worth anywhere near the price.
They might take Taiwan though and ruin the global economy for a few decades.
But I’m not seeing how this gets to be ww3 and not a regional war of just blowing shit up with missles. I don’t think Europe, Africa or South America would get involved unless China fired icbms or bobbed Hawaii or something.
China’s military just isn’t strong enough yet. Maybe in 20-50 years.
Meanwhile the US has failed to roflstomp much smaller and weaker countries that didn't prepare for this exact scenario. China can't take the war to the US, but they can defend their costal waters and core territory longer than the US can maintain popular support for a war.
On the flip side, what can the US do to get China to stop fighting if they don't want to give up? An invasion couldn't possibly take over the whole country and might trigger a nuclear reprisal, a blockade would take longer to work against China than Taiwan, and the economic consequences would hit the US quite hard. How many Americans want to buy war bonds and go on rationing to protect Taiwan? Especially with the current political polarization?
I don't think it's a sure fire win for China, but it's already in the realm of plausibility.
Yes, a country with nukes would get "rolfstomped". I expect this opinion from a hacker news commentator.
That is one rather weak provocation. Compare that to the CCP launching missiles over the island of Taiwan. Who is provoking whom?
Not exactly irrelevant.
This statement is just ridiculous.
> The order of succession specifies that the office passes to the vice president; if the vice presidency is simultaneously vacant, or if the vice president is also incapacitated, the powers and duties of the presidency pass to the speaker of the House of Representatives
Let Nancy Pelosi go to Catalonia on a military jet, without Spain's approval. It would be a major scandal.
Or hell, if Xi Jinping got around US government on a submarine, and appeared in Texas to support its independence.
All independence is based on having some autonomy (trivial) and no one other calling your bluff.
Any aggression, like Russian one is only and purely a result of their own choices and they are the one to bear consequences.
Not to mention not being a signatory to major treaties and conventions that are are part of that "rules based order", like UNCLoS, ICJ and ICC.
If you are looking for specific examples and further elaboration, frankly I can't provide that for you and you'll have to look at global events and decide for yourself.
If Taiwan didn't have anything to offer they'd have to rely on Brad Pitt or something instead of the US military, like Tibet.
Countries in the US sphere of influence tend to drift toward becoming democracies, in part because of the influence of free trade. Both Taiwan and South Korea started off as dictatorships propped up by the military backing of the US to contain the spread of communism, and eventually transitioned to democratic government.
As for Tibet, if it were on an island and could have been defended by the US Navy, I’m sure it would still be independent. Even if it were merely coastal it might still be independent. But it’s landlocked and mountainous, and hard to defend from the other side of the world. The invasion was also rapid, and happened at the same time the international community was responding to the invasion of South Korea.
Rules for thee and not for me.
It's become a lazy way to avoid conversation and relevant comparisons of behavior of the different world powers.
Plus it comes across as a bit of a juvenile debate tactic, IMO. I certainly became a bit of a "whataboutist" when I was younger and coming to terms of realizing that the U.S. is not "the land of the free" and that they, too, can lie.
But at a certain point you realize that things aren't great but that things elsewhere can be even less great.
And then hearing the same stuff I spouted in that whataboutist phase just kinda makes me want to hit the eject button. It's just going nowhere fast.
Frankly, I consider stuff like that to basically fall under the umbrella of "useful idiot" plays. You don't need to be a jingoistic McCarthy to feel like this kind of aimless undermining of the US government helps keep things like voter turnout and trust low, both of which are easily exploited.
Not that there isn't interesting comparisons to make, but "oh, and like the US follows the rules?" when talking about a country with Skynet and maps claiming disputed territory in this day and age, just feels a little disingenuous.
Definition of sovereignty
1a: supreme power especially over a body politic
b: freedom from external control : AUTONOMY
c: controlling influence
2: one that is sovereign especially : an autonomous state
None of those definitions apply to Taiwan.
See, there's your problem: when you realise facts don't match your beliefs, you start "are we really" instead of reconsidering those beliefs.
>Besides the fact that most of the country is firewalled off from foreign media
Foreign media is easily accessible in China using VPN. Meanwhile, Chinese (or non-western in general) media is pretty much entirely unknown in US. It's largely because of language barrier, but not only that.
>and besides the fact that only one political party is allowed
Only until you realise that party is something entirely different from what we in the West call parties. But even if it was similar, it wouldn't be much worse than the American system, where you have two parties that are very closely related and sponsored by the same corporations.
>and besides the fact that political prisoners are routinely jailed for nothing more than denying a government narrative
In US people are routinely killed on the street for nothing more than being black. Seriously though, do you really believe there's no political discourse in China?
>and I don't mean held for a day or two like in the West, but jailed for years
In US you can get jailed for years for literally nothing, simply because it's less risky to give up and go to jail for a shorter sentence than prove your innocence, and prosecutors abuse this all the time. Or for any minor infraction because the three strikes law, which was literally created to get as many people into jails as possible. And let's not forget the forced labor.
>Yes, US citizens can publicly call for the highest level politicians in the land to lose their jobs, and with no real repercussions.
... to those politicians. That's the point: in US you are allowed to say whatever you want, because it doesn't matter; the election system is already rigged, everyone knows that it's not the majority choice that wins elections, and nobody cares - because nobody can do anything about it. Compare this to China, where government officials can actually get convicted and jailed. Chinese prime minister responsible for Tienanmen spent the rest of his life in house arrest. American officials responsible for Kent State shootings, or for the bombing a city block, killing a number of random kids and shooting at survivors, which name escapes me - nobody got prosecuted.
>But Weibo, Wechat, Bilibili, Douyin, frequently censor even the most milquetoast sarcastic remarks about the CCP or Xi
[citation needed]
>Can a famous Chinese public individual/celebrity/intellectual, in China, tell a huge crowd and media, that I think the CCP are horrible and that Xi Jinping needs to be booted from power?
Can a famous US public individual, in US, tell a huge crowd and media that they believe US supreme court and Senate need to be booted from power?
>Sure, where the CCP select and approve the candidates, control the election progress
Exactly like in US; the party nominates various public officials who oversee the elections, not to mention gerrymandering.
>And no direct nationwide elections.
Just like US presidential elections. Although I'm not sure if in China it's legal to corrupt electors; in US it is and it has already happened in the past.
>Think anything will change? I don't.
So, here's the thing: things do change, all the time. If you actually read anything about Chinese political system, you'd noticed that the "old" communist party, the one which stood for Cultural Revolution, has been delegalised. China wouldn't be able to develop order of magnitude faster than US without changes to law. Meanwhile in US you can still land in prison for life just because you're out of luck.
>There's practical no competing, transparent system in these so called 'democratic elections' making them in effort
And here we go again, Americans believing there is no political discourse in other countries, and at the same pretending with straight face that the US is a functional democracy.
>Meanwhile, there are 100+ CCP members in the Congress who are billionaires.
Thank you, that's interesting. Source?
>For all of the flaws in the Western systems, and there are a vast number, it is really tiring seeing tankies try to say "everything's the same" with zero nuance, as if none of it matters.
See, here's the thing: I do understand your point; it was my point of view for the past two decades. Until I realised it just doesn't match observable reality. What you are describing is just prejudice; a colonial mindset based on a combination of racism and ignorance, which is what American exceptionalism boils down to.
Also, we're not talking about "Western systems"; there are many western countries that are proper democracies. But US is not one of them. It's a pseudo-democracy, like China, except it serves corporations, not people. That's why the quality of life in US is dropping, while in China it's skyrocketing. Ever wondered why Americans get so surprised whenever some Chinese oligarch gets into trouble? Or how comes an American court can let a convicted pedophile free because "he wouldn't feel good in a jail", assuming of course he's wealthy enough?
Example: * china is firewalled off * you: oh but there’s VPN.
you are really impacting the quality of the discussion, I would love to understand why you’re dining this though. Bored or do you have an agenda?
I mean, the fact that you're not making sense should be obvious even to you, as you can't provide even a single argument to support your "point of view".
>Foreign media is easily accessible in China using VPN
VPNs not sanctioned by the government (most of them) are officially against the law. It might be easy, but piracy is also easy. That doesn't mean there's no issue with expensive media.
> do you really believe there's no political discourse in China
There is no public political discourse. There is private dinner table discourse. And Chinese people know very well not to criticize the CCP on WeChat or Weibo.
> the election system is already rigged,
No it isn't, that's conspiratorial nonsense.
> Compare this to China, where government officials can actually get convicted and jailed.
Lots of US politicians have been convicted. You just aren't aware of it. A small sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_state_and_loc...
> But Weibo, Wechat, Bilibili, Douyin, frequently censor even the most milquetoast sarcastic remarks about the CCP or Xi [citation needed]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Two-Chinese-video-producers-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-censors-letter-n-in-cr...
And many more.
> Can a famous US public individual, in US, tell a huge crowd and media that they believe US supreme court and Senate need to be booted from power?
Yes. It's been done many many times.
> Exactly like in US; the party nominates various public officials who oversee the elections, not to mention gerrymandering.
No, not like in the US. In the US, opposing parties appoint opposing monitors. So when people are monitoring the count, you have Democrats and Republicans inspecting ballots together. It is not a single party, it is a competitive adversarial system.
>Thank you, that's interesting. Source?
https://asiatimes.com/2017/03/100-billionaires-among-chinas-...
https://indianexpress.com/article/world/china-counts-over-10...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-na...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/business/china-parliament...
>See, here's the thing: I do understand your point; it was my point of view for the past two decades. Until I realised it just doesn't match observable reality. What you are describing is just prejudice; a colonial mindset based on a combination of racism and ignorance, which is what American exceptionalism boils down to.
Are you Chinese or have you lived in China for an extended period of time? I've been married to a Chinese citizen for 20 years, my extended family is all Chinese, my two children are half Chinese, I speak Mandarin (HSK4-5) and read Hanzi, and I have lived in China, traveled to almost every province, including weeks in Xinjiang. I regularly read Chinese media (Weibo, Xinhua, Bilibili, etc).
I take issue with you attempting to call me a racist, especially since if anything, I have a deep admiration for Chinese culture (which Mao actively tried to destroy BTW)
The problem I see with your viewpoint is that there is no nuance. Anything corrupt is equal, it's all a wash. So whatever specific problems the Chinese system has, you can't criticize them, because your system's problems (which are different in scope and kind) are just as bad. Ergo, if you criticize China you're just ignorant and a racist.
But what if you're capable of criticizing both? I grew up in the ghetto in Baltimore. I lived sandwiched between two crackhouses. My sister died of heroin addiction. My brother in jail. I escaped, became a successful entrepreneur, engineer, and traveled the world.
I have been a life long critic of the US system, of the neo-liberal corpocracy. But I have strong ethics and values around coercion, corruption, and censorship, and I'm not going to just sit by and give the Chinese government a free pass on what I view as a bad autocratic regime. And I can hold that position unironically, while being opposed to US foreign policy adventures, and US corporate lobbying influence that sandbags social democratic problems.
They are two different problems, not the same. And I can tell you from living behind the great firewall, and having grown up in the US ghetto, which problem I'd rather deal with.
What I find ironic, is from your other posts, you apparently support Ukraine in the Ukraine<->Russia conflict, but China actually supports Russia, and Chinese state media parrots endlessly the 'denazification' model in Mainland China, and you see Chinese citizens on Tiktok, Weibo, parroting these claims, that Ukraine is full of nazis.
But nah, having a government in complete control of the national media and what's allowed to be said on tech platforms isn't a problem, right?
To me, if you want to be morally consistent, you have to strongly criticize both systems. You're attempting to deflect and distort criticism of China by making it into a competition/comparison with the US system.
>I have been a life long critic of the US system, of the neo-liberal corpocracy.
Okay, we're similar in that regard then. However, I don't think we can pretend that US isn't trying to manufacture consent for another war. I also don't think we should ignore the fact that western media present a very single-sided view.
>> Can a famous US public individual, in US, tell a huge crowd and media that they believe US supreme court and Senate need to be booted from power?
>Yes. It's been done many many times.
And for some of those people it ended badly - from being shunned to finding themselves killed in interesting circumstances. (Okay, perhaps not claiming literally those specific two things.)
>What I find ironic, is from your other posts, you apparently support Ukraine in the Ukraine<->Russia conflict, but China actually supports Russia
China and Russia have a common enemy, but the war made them split ways. China has pulled out from all the strategic investments, and is quite religiously following the sanctions. Even Huawei exited the Russian market.
>Chinese state media parrots endlessly the 'denazification' model in Mainland China, and you see Chinese citizens on Tiktok, Weibo, parroting these claims, that Ukraine is full of nazis.
And how's that different from Fox News?
I think they are valued, but ancillary.
> As for Tibet, if it were on an island and could have been defended by the US Navy, I’m sure it would still be independent.
I think at that point Tibet would be geostrategic. If they were in Antarctica and our Navy could defend we may be considerably less likely to unless there was oil exploration going on or it was an important position for an airbase.
Taiwan is probably going through the same process, just a bit slower since it's not just about territory but about national identity. Each generation weakens the ties to the old "Chinese" identity and strengthens a "Taiwanese" identity, until a tipping point is reached.
If you check Taiwanese opinion polls https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7801&id=6963 you'll see that there's a plurality of opinions. People who want independence outnumber people who want unification, but the majority prefers to keep the status quo, for now or forever.
One is using words and the other weapons. We should not tolerate such attempts to stifle an open dialog. I know it's popular now to say 'words are violence,' but at the end of the day they are still not military drills and missile launches.
Xi's posture is one of murder. Pelosi's (who I don't agree with on most things) is one of democratic freedom for the people of Taiwan.
People trying to compare the threat level of Pelosi speeches to Xi missile launches are almost unbelievable in their level of sophistry.
We don't actually have any options that leverage massive economies of scale and manufacture in the US, because our masters chose to ship the manufacturing overseas. Individual agency is trumped by control of the rules, that's the whole point of PD. Pretending that our wallets have agency is a con to fool us out of using the tool that would actually be effective: regulation.
You're setting up an ethical dilemma that is always going to default to one direction, and castigating those who don't go the impossible route. This is "If you don't like this government, why don't you move to another country?" or "If you don't like this platform, why don't you build one?" levels of impracticality.
But that's not how most human communication work. When people say "I cannot come tomorrow", they usually don't mean they can't. If you gave them one billion dollars to come, chances are they would.
This is a fairly common convention, and most people in the English language are using this approximation and assumption.
You can chose to ignore it of course.
I consider I've done my part in this conversation, and wish you a nice day.
It's not even how it can work. See the Malicious Genie problem for a memorable demonstration of the fundamental problem. Chasing "precision" beyond what's necessary tends to harm communication, not aid it. Norms and context are super-important.
Using the definition that you gave, yes they would be able to trade, because many of those bad consequences of trading have gone away.
It would be a terrible idea, with drastic consequences. But they absolutely can.
If the person said: "eat this steak and I'll give you a billion dollars or don't, and I'll kill everyone on this planet in the most painful way imaginable, including you", I doubt your response would be "I can't eat that".
There may be other arguments that Taiwan is Chinese, but I haven't really given you my thoughts on those (hypothetical) arguments.
China and Taiwan can share a history, but that doesn't entitle them to reconciling their differences. Much like the other commenters brought up, establishing Taiwanese independence is obviously the smartest path from here. China has had their feelings hurt for almost a century over Taiwan. Entire generations of humans have lived and died in the time Taiwan has enjoyed sovereignty. China knows it's time to let go, but they can't look weak or suffer the same fate as Russia. Continuing to threaten Taiwan is just part of their political-industrial complex, nothing more.
Mostly that sounds just funny. He can go ahead and do that.
US doesn't look kindly to someone endangering their energy supplies. Let alone territorial integrity
In fact, in Texas people make political comments about independence frequently.
In Puerto Rico, there have even been literal votes, where the people actually voted on what they want to do with this US territory, and independence was one of the options.
Further examples of these topics coming up, are the frequent comments I hear about how california, or pacific states should form up and create their own country.
And to give a more historical example, I believe a couple decades ago, there was a major Alaska independence party. This party actually even won a governorship, at one point!
People who claim that the topic of states leaving the US, is some taboo topic, that will get you sent to jail, or start a war, if people simply talk about it, are just wrong.
You are just wrong. People talk about this stuff, all the time, and there have even been official votes on this stuff. And wars aren't started over it.
I -- like many others in tech and even in HN -- don't live in the US, and don't have any obligations towards the democratic system they have over there, or their government, just like the US has been historically a mixed bag towards us Latin Americans, often undermining our own democratic institutions when they weren't aligned with Washington or various American business.
So yes, I wish you the best of democracies, hopefully one that is respectful of other countries choices and sovereignty, but I'm not responsible for it, and if my criticisms undermine US democracy or their electoral system, then how weak must they really be!
So with fresh Latin American eyes, a lot of what the US says and does reeks of hypocrisy. It's not "Whataboutism" to remind everyone about this, every time a government official says something about China, Russia or whatever country "not following the rules", ignoring or rejecting international treaties, or using threat of military force to achieve their goals. "Well, yeah" -- we can claim with knowledge of our history -- "but the US also does this."
And it's not a "rebellious phase" or Whataboutism, it's a very apt remark.
Stopping all conversations about this because "now we are talking about Afghanistan/Russia/China/Saudi Arabia, not the US!" feels lazy to me.
That being said, there might also be some soft spots considering how practically duct taped together this country has been since, always. It's...a unique situation, all things considered.
To be honest though, it still doesn't feel too productive unless the audience still holds an overly optimistic assessment of the whatabout, and even then, it's a bit...Lacking. I'm not sure, it feels like I'm lowering the standards expected overall if I'm simply comparing levels of shitiness relative to other levels of shitiness.
Also, you're sentences do not make sense. "Why you are doing this" => what is "this", you forgot to define it.
Meanwhile, China is a country where people live in fear of publicly expressing their opinion, this is well documented. 10s on the web finds this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Chin...
> Also, you're sentences do not make sense. "Why you are doing this"
That’s your sentence, I just quoted it.
>China is a country where people live in fear of publicly expressing their opinion
Just like the US - you don’t have any protections against an employer firing you for something you said in your free time, because it “goes against company values”.
You’re also mistaking freedom of press with freedom of speech, but again, that’s a minor mistake in this context.
But most of all: you still hadn’t shown any actual data to back your ideas.
Up to a point there's a cost advantage, but Tim Cook has also pointed that Apple uses Chinese factories because it allows them to take advantage of the local manufacturing capabilities, which are substantial. [0] In fact to hear him tell it those capabilities are simply not available elsewhere. I take him at his word on this topic at least.
[0] https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/apple-ceo-tim-cook-this-...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-tim-cook-275-billion-c...
One of the tooling engineers that had previously worked with Apple before they were offshored said, "Well, we couldn't wait around for him to come back to us, we have to eat too so we switched to making different things. He's welcome to invest in our production and we'll make whatever he wants"
Cook loves helping out China, not sure why. /s
While Apple may have had to spend money setting up the specific assembly line, fabrication plants, train staff, etc because they simply didn't exist prior to their requirement, the fact that they were able to set it up someplace, and continuously feed raw materials, parts, labour etc with dozens of redundant suppliers for EACH component, is what indicates manufacturing capability.
Manufacturing is more ecosystem than "capability".
This is a huge overlooked factor in all of the debate regarding the supply chain.
You can't "just move" manufacturing capabilities from one place to another, and debate the labor costs. Rather, probably more importantly, there's actually a _skills supply_ problem.
[1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/apple-in...
0: https://www.just-style.com/analysis/analysis-china-market-sh...
Want to build your own x86 Chios? Guess what? You can't because Intel/and won't let you and even if they did , if it were one of the "not our allies list" people, the govt will step in. Same for Netherlands fab machine makers. They dictate who can they sell to or not..
That is why nations are investing in stuff like risc-v.
Tomorrow MasterCard/visa can be "ordered by govt " to pull out of a country and suddenly their card economy collapses. Unless they have an alternative, like India does with rupay or UPI which is being exported to other countries as a technology they can locally implement.
Same for stuff like aws or Google or github or basically the entire american internet giants.
You know if tomorrow whatsapp is ordered to stop service in say India what will happen? Without a local alternative already in place, WhatsApp and ipso facto us govt can literally hold that country for ransom. Whatsapp is a silly example but think about it.
Sure China is bad for labour but its not like Americans aren't fighting anszon for Union rights or for $15/hour pay and benefits? I'm not trying to say they are equal, just that its a spectrum.
For non Americans and non Chinese, Be it India or Russia or Iran, these two nations are just as offensive in different manners and it's just a matter of perspective
Would not be painless for China though. The thing about trade is, it’s trade. While Apple and American consumers benefit, so does China or obviously they wouldn’t trade. They’re not making our phones as a charity to us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
I may strongly dislike China, but a relative lack of military spending is one of their strengths.
So sensible diversification is in distant future than many imagine.
[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apples-new-mac-pro-to...
Apple doesn't publish units-sold figures, but Iphone revenue is 5x that of Macs [0].
The Mac Pro is the least popular Mac. Again, I don't have number breakdowns, but Apple did say in the most recent keynote that launched the M2 Macbook Air that the Macbook Air, and the 13" Macbook Pro are their 2 most popular models.
So it's safe to say the Mac Pro represents an extreme fraction of Apple manufacturing.
[0] https://sixcolors.com/post/2022/07/apple-announces-83b-fisca...
All I see is the cognitive dissonance of worshipping the free market, except in this case where corporate America sold the future of US away in exchange for higher profit margins today.
Plus the cognitive dissonance of government action being unpalatable yet also required, since maximum profit-seekers (the highest motive possible in the system we have set up) aren't incentivized to do anything else.
If it’s politically impossible to do something that’s all the more reason for personal change. Sure you can’t buy a MacBook that isn’t made in China, but you can spend more money and buy other things made outside of China.
I don't know, you're the one who started with the "And basically everyone here is choosing cheaper Chinese goods so we're all complicit too" defeatism in the first place! And then turning around and condemning people for buying Chinese goods when 1) legislation for reducing trade dependence on China is very difficult, leading to 2) few consumer choices that have non-Chinese made alternatives in many product areas.
As a point of contention, I don't like the grandstanding I'm observing over stuff "made in China", especially here where we can all choose to buy products made in western countries and pay more money for those. Are there exceptions? Sure! But just because Apple makes the iPhone in China doesn't mean you can't buy a barbell made in Ohio or cast iron skillets made in Tennessee.
It's one thing to talk between US people on various topics. Another is for head of foreign state to covertly enter your country and espouse a topic that's controversial and could cause problems for you down the line.
> And to give a more historical example
To give a more recent historical example. Election of Donald Trump. And the role Russia played. Steele dossier non-whistanding.
From what I gather, merely buying up trolls and doing some marketing was enough for US to have hissy fit, over it.
It's not just talking though! Instead it is actual votes, in actual territories, about becoming independent from the US. Like the votes that have happened in Puerto Rico.
If there was a vote in Taiwan, and they voted to officially say that they are independent (although they are independent already, they just haven't officially said so), I can assure you that the mainland would not treat such a case as how we literally have allowed Puerto Rico to have such votes.
That's why this is a false equivalence. In Puerto Rico we literally have allowed independence votes. Whereas regarding Taiwan, if they change the name on an embassy, China threats to bomb them, even though Taiwan is already independent, and this has been the case for 70 years.
On the other side of that coin, though, China is taking us for a ride. Politically speaking, it's unwise to continue giving them power over our supply chain. Ultimately it's a monster fight with no real winners, but ensuring that world superpowers stay competitive with one another is how we prevent mutually assured destruction. Even for China's allies, I fail to see how hamstringing the CCP is a bad thing.
I think border adjustments are also a good idea, but I won't give Apple a free pass for choosing to support such poor manufacturing conditions just to make more profit.
This is a tragedy of the commons problem, you need central enforcement.
It's a valid point to think autocracy is better than corruption.
I disagree on the level of corruption in the US I think, as far as I understood you. I do not deny there is corruption though.
I would be interested in knowing the level of corruption in China but I think the autocratic grip on the press is too strong to have any valuable data.
First, I'm not convinced that US is less autocratic than China. European countries of course are, but US is not a functioning democracy anymore; it's corporations who decides how the Congress will vote, not citizens.
Second - I think we might be using a different definition of "corruption". In US many mechanisms that would normally be considered corruption are legal, and thus aren't technically a corruption.
And yeah, would be great to have more reliable numbers for China. I don't think that's due to the "grip"; rather, it's a cultural thing: Chinese don't seem to value openness same way we do. At the same time, China is absurdly huge; I'm not sure we can have reliable numbers for all of the geographical Europe, and China is twice that.
While the amount of spending money has an effect, wisely spending the money pre-war and wisely executing war plans is obviously critical. Russia is demonstrating the weakness from widespread corruption (they got stuck on roads because they did not invest in logistics and on maintaining their vehicles), combined with spectacularly poor planning in the initial attack. It would be unwise to assume China will make such mistakes.
Anyway, it is my hope that war does not break out. The one guarantee about war is many deaths.
Not really sure that comparisons of either GDP or state spending on a purpose as a share of it (even if GDP were comparable) are as meaningful as people pretend across regimes with vastly different degrees of state/industry integration both generally (because of effect on GDP measures) or in the field of interest (because of effects on spending measures.)
Unfortunately, there's not good alternative measures, either.
The part that matters is what they’ll use it for (so far, signs point to authoritarian conquest of sovereign political entities)
But yes, that could happen to other companies, which shows that consumers share responsibility for ignoring the labor and environmental conditions.
And the consumers who don't care are also voters who don't care, so the rules won't be fixed.
But a few powerful people could create huge changes all on their own. Holding them responsible is not pointless, it's our best hope for change.
It's 100% true, and we often buy from China because overwhelmingly there simply aren't alternatives, the alternatives are prohibitively difficult to find, the alternative is another developing country with similar labor and environmental policies, or the alternative is laundered through a country with good regulation (a car is "manufactured" in America but all of its components--the bulk of its value--are produced in developing countries without regulation).
> And those consumers are also voters. The rules won't be fixed because most people don't care either as consumers or as voters.
Right, but they don't have the same access to politicians that corporations do. This is a different and worse systemic problem. Moreover, corporations run campaigns to shift public opinion away from effectual policy. In the 70s bottling companies ran campaigns which argued, as you are arguing, that litter was a consumer problem rather than a industrial problem (e.g., the "crying Indian" advert). The cigarette industry ran a campaign that insisted that the high rate of home fires are caused by a deficiency of highly carcinogenic flame retardants in home furnishings. Similarly, the fossil fuel industry currently runs campaigns which seek to make climate change an issue of personal responsibility ("we don't need legislation, we just need consumers to decide to switch to veganism and give up their cars").
> But a few powerful people could create huge changes all on their own. Hold them responsible is not pointless, it's our best hope for change.
I strongly disagree. Our best hope for change is public policy, notably border adjustments. If you want to protest at Cupertino, be my guest but that's wholly inadequate.
More disposable bottles and fossil fuels are sold now than ever before. You can still buy cigarettes, and they're still as poisonous and addictive as ever, but most people don't want to buy them anymore.
Public policy worked in 0/3 cases. Changing consumer behavior worked in 1/3.
Personal choice works.