I remember during Beijing Olympics, there were these "protest zones" that were created which theoretically should have allowed dissent in these areas. A pass based system was introduced to get access to these places. I remember people who applied for passes getting rounded up by the police.
In 1956, the CPC "encouraged citizens to express openly their opinions of the communist regime" and then "after this brief period of liberalization, ... those who were critical of the regime and its ideology ... were rounded up in waves by the hundred of thousands, publicly criticized, and condemned to prison camps for re-education through labor, or even execution."
In popular Western tellings of this piece of history, it's usually portrayed as a comic book evil conspiracy by the Chinese government. In actuality, it probably reflects an internal power struggle within the party at the time, where some politicians (among them Mao Zedong) were interested in a process of democratization, whereas others feared for their positions. The fact that a lot of the criticism that was made by the citizens was considerably more fundamental than even Mao had expected eventually eroded Mao's position to the point where he was forced to back down.
This obviously doesn't change the fact that the CPC at the time, like the CPC of today, is a dictatorial organization that should never be supported. But the quotes in your post very much play into the "evil conspiracy" angle, and I think it's important to tell history in a way that reflects the actual power dynamics instead of cloak-and-dagger tales.
>> In 1956, the CPC "encouraged citizens to express openly their opinions of the communist regime" and then "after this brief period of liberalization, ... those who were critical of the regime and its ideology ... were rounded up in waves by the hundred of thousands, publicly criticized, and condemned to prison camps for re-education through labor, or even execution."
> The fact that a lot of the criticism that was made by the citizens was considerably more fundamental than even Mao had expected eventually eroded Mao's position to the point where he was forced to back down.
IIRC, Mao expected the policy to bolster the regime and show how the people genuinely supported it. That didn't happen. Since the goal wasn't to actually let the people express alternative views, they cracked down hard.
I agree it probably wasn't "comic book evil conspiracy," but it's still a good illustration of how risky CCP offers of freedom of speech are.
In such an environment, anecdotes may be among the most accurate information one can get.
I've never really seen such personally. People occasionally petition the central government due to grievances, but those people are heavily monitored, strongly discouraged, and later suffer negative repercussions (I know one such individual personally).
There are occasionally protests regarding local issues: housing demolition, environmental problems. They are not allowed to persist. I've never seen these in person.
I used to very occasionally see graffiti critical of the government, but I don't think I've see such in 5+ years. I figure the omnipresence of the security cameras have discouraged this.
I once received a robocall from the Falun Gong critiquing the government. I also occasionally see Falun Gong messages stamped on paper currency.
That's about it. I'm curious about the specifics of the case(s) about which you've heard.
I wonder if this is either very recent (since I haven't been there in over 6 months) or fairly old (before Xi took power). I could hear regular complaints about corruption, governance, and even government, but not the party itself (or particularly and most recently Xi). Granted I've mostly been in northern and central/western China rather than the south, but Guandong and Shenzhen didn't seem that different except for the Canton influence.
I have not (over 20 years) had an open political conversation about the party in China and I would never ask my friends there to entertain it even in the US. There is no point. Even in the US I would only discuss US politics, although they often seemed to be effectively related.
I will say that one of the formative descriptions of Chinese history was in the summer palace next to a statue of an emperor (Ming?) who had commited suicide upon being overthrown... he was by account terrible at ruling so I asked why there was a ;large statue. The answer was that by killing himself and not forcing the soldiers to fight and mandarins to destroy records he had maintained stability. This may be apocryphal, but the stories people tell about themselves are very illuminating.
I was in Shanghai in the winter, and I definitely heard some criticism of Xi in particular. I agree that people don't really like to talk about the party, but even that depends on context and setting.
There is definitely a cultural barrier there, around what "politics" even means and the role it should play. Most Chinese people are very jaded in general, and consider all politics, in China and abroad, to be nothing but an expression of entrenched power. As a result, democracy is often seen as an unachievable ideal that also doesn't exist in the west, particularly not in the USA.
In effect, this also means that Westerner's questions about Chinese politics can appear nonsensical or even naive to Chinese people. This is also why people are more likely to talk about corruption, as that is an evil that is considered possible to fight against.
As an anecdote, i have a Tajik friend from Xinjiang who's seen friends kidnapped by Chinese authorities and never heard from again for daring to criticise the govt.
Technically China does have free speech. The problem is that the rules don't really matter. If you say something that offends a someone with guanxi with the right people, you're screwed.
It's the same reason foreign businesses struggle so much in China. If you aren't friendly with the necessary bureaucrats and your Chinese competition is, you'll find yourself blockaded perpetually for the most bullshit reasons.
Why do parents go jump through hoops and are willing to break laws to get their kids into top colleges? People often say bribery is rampant in China. We have Super PACS and political donations and revolving doors.
I get gizmos like this as gifts every now and then. I never bothered opening any of them up. What are some fun things that we can do with these things besides their intended use?
Would be a fun open source project to find the cheapest board that can fit in the box, ideally take some components (speakers, WiFi) and have similar functionality like controlling music, home devices, setting timers. I’d try to contribute if anyone is working on topics like this.
Well, probably because that's not what is happening.
The US has the right to ban companies from the country (as do other countries). What the US is saying is that the parent company (Bytedance) bust divest Tik Tok or they'll lose access to the US market. Microsoft is interested in it, but it could be a different company buying it. This is different than "you must sell this company to this other company" because the US can't force a foreign entity to do that (as long as that foreign government doesn't also cooperate due to politics of soft power reasons). In the case of China, Bytedance can absolutely refuse to sell Tik Tok, it'll just get banned from operating in the United States. Surely they'd rather take a few billion dollars instead, which is why they are going to sell it.
Actions like this or ones that are similar in spirit happen quite often. And naturally if you look at China, well, frankly, they are getting a taste of their own medicine in some sense.
Is there any precedence where the executive branch just ban a foreign company without citing the violation of law and going through court or WTO, in the last century?
"That order marked the sixth time a U.S. president has either blocked a deal or ordered a corporate selloff since Congress authorized the power to intervene in 1988."
I don't know the details of the others, but one that comes to mind (and maybe is mentioned in the article?) is the blocked acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom.
-edit-
The circumstances around some of these may not be exactly the same, but the derivation of power comes from the same source.
Also who cares about the WTO? I don't see the WTO being involved when China forces majority-owned joint ventures or outright bans US companies from operating there. Why would a court be involved either? Bytedance is welcome to sue, I suppose, but Trump (in this case) has the power to issue this order. I guess if we don't like that since it's being used now, we should have Congress vote to take that power away from the current and future presidents.
I'm in favor of this move overall. Besides the toxicity of social networking in general, I just don't see a point in letting Chinese technology companies operate in the US unless it's strictly under favorable terms for us. If they don't like it, then I guess maybe they should let US companies operate freely in their country. This will increasingly end up happening and I say good. China will grow tech companies, and the US will force them to divest or not operate in the US once there is significant money at stake until China plays fair. If they don't want to, well, that's just no big deal. We're doing just fine.
WTO accession had massive economic, political and legal implications within China. There's a good review here: [1].
Discussions in the West tend to completely ignore these changes. For example, joint venture requirements have been removed from most sectors of the economy. Or to give another example, an entire legal system to protect and enforce IP has been set up in the last two decades or so, and that system is now very heavily used (including by foreign companies).
Not fully up to date with what eventually happened but few years ago when Grindr was sold to Chinese company, US tried to get them to sell it back to US ownership because it had a lot of confidential location data of military personnel.
I think this is the real topic to discuss. I think China has been doing very poorly in the past years with all its top companies ultra-distracted by the greed of grabbing fast money from the e-commerce boom but paid no attention to basic infrastructure like chips, OS, CAD/CAE etc. It's all built on sand that can be removed at any moment.
It is not odd at all when the foreign company is one of the largest espionage threats to United States, which is one of the largest markets in the world.
Yes, the US government is mulling over the idea of banning TikTok but that is only one of the problems. The immediate problem is that US companies have seriously assessed the security risk. TikTok and China have a credibility problem in the business world.
TikTok shareholders sees the same risk and they want to protect their investment. Not odd or surprising.
OFAC is a result of political and economic realism. Not many people will do business in Venezuela, Iran and North Korea because (among other good reasons) the governments of these countries have shown a propensity of nationalize foreign firms.
Foreign companies are free to not do business with the United States if they feel their company is likely to be expropriated. In practice 300m of the world's richest consumers make the US irresistible. Thus, OFAC is tolerated.
Is it that odd? Some countries force you to partner with a local firm to enter their market. A great many use import taxes to give their home businesses a leg up in the industry. It's not fair, but it's not odd either.
Domestic ownership requirements are common throughout the world. In comparison to many other countries (look at the UAE, at least till last year) the US has traditionally been open to foreign ownership.
The thing that is notable is that the US has traditionally advocated for open markets and cross border ownership, but now is jumping on board with tactics it once campaigned against.
Is it any more odd than China strong-arming the NBA, lest they are barred from operating there?
If TikTok wants the American/European market and they’d sell the company in order to so, that’s just the reality of working within the current geopolitical landscape.
Wouldn't the logical equivalency be for China to strong-arm the NBA to sell ownership to a Chinese company if they want the NBA to continue to be watched by Chinese audience?
> Wouldn't the logical equivalency be for China to strong-arm the NBA to sell ownership to a Chinese company if they want the NBA to continue to be watched by Chinese audience?
Indeed. The real equivalent would be when China prohibited AWS from operating datacenters in China, forcing them to instead operate out of Chinese-owned datacenters.
To make it as illustrative as possible, your example is like the child of an American goes to work in China and China says, if you want to work, you need to use my shovel.
My example is like the child of a Chinese goes to work in America and America says you need to be adopted.
Not really. AWS would like to run a datacenter business in China the way they do everywhere else in the world, but that happens to be illegal in China. Only Chinese companies are permitted to run datacenters. This seems like an exact parallel of the US deciding that social media companies that want to operate in the US have to be US companies.
Oh ya, that would be. Though the OP and this whole thread is about forcing a sale of the company's ownership, not whose data center it's running on. So again, the equivalent would have been for China to force Amazon to sell it's China equities, not share part of it's China assets to a Chinese company.
business as usual. US bullying others for economic gain. sometimes with war, sometimes with sanctions. for now they threaten to ban tiktok in the US but I'm sure it wouldn't stop at that. same as with huawei. they will go door to door to bully other countries to ban tiktok as well.
