Zoom Closes Account of US-Based Chinese Activist After Tiananment Event (axios.com) 160
The U.S. video-conferencing company Zoom closed the account of a group of prominent U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held a Zoom event commemorating the 31st anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre, Axios has learned. From the report: Zhou Fengsuo, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Humanitarian China and former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, organized the May 31 event held through a paid Zoom account associated with Humanitarian China. About 250 people attended the event. Speakers included mothers of students killed during the 1989 crackdown, organizers of Hong Kong's Tiananmen candlelight vigil, and others. On June 7th, the Zoom account displayed a message that it had been shut down, in a screenshot viewed by Axios. Zhou has not been able to access the account since then, and Zoom has not responded to his emails, he told Axios. A second Zoom account belonging to a pro-democracy activist, Lee Cheuk Yan, a former Hong Kong politician and pro-democracy activist, was also closed in late May. Lee has also received no response from Zoom. "We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a U.S company," Zhou and other organizers told Axios in a statement. "As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic."
Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Insightful)
You are all members now.
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:4, Insightful)
So true. It's sickening to see US companies knuckling under to the CCP.
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Insightful)
What else do you expect when we're running an enormous trade deficit [census.gov]?
Companies like Apple and Amazon send raw materials to China, they ship them back as imports. Who gets rich? The megacorporations who outsourced our manufacturing jobs to another country, kowtowed to their laws, and took the profit from us. Now China owns the US Treasury, and these corporations effectively have complete control of the US government [wikipedia.org].
On top of all that upheaval in the power structure, they've also found it useful to keep the Constitutionally protected slave system in conjunction with an incomprehensibly large array of criminal laws, allowing them to enslave not just black people, but poor people of any race. Even if a white consumer, with their white privilege, gets uppity, they can be beaten into custody, overcharged, plead out, and left to rot in prison, as well as penalizing them for the remainder of their lives.
Wake up, you wankers. Your political parties, left or right, don't matter when they have megacorporations with their arms shoved up every politician's ass to work the puppets' mouthpieces. Who do you think is paying for all of this?
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Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Informative)
1st Amendment violatio ?
As it turns out, no. As I'm sure many people are going to point out, the 1st Amendment applies to government suppression of speech. Zoom is a private company; they can cancel the accounts of anybody they want and not violate the 1st amendment.
I am just wondering where is the ACLU is ?
Busy worrying about government violations of civil liberties.
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Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:4, Insightful)
Dunderhead, is there some impoverished religion that has been banned and whose rights are being violated? Or do religions experience vast deference from the State, and there are no cases to even ask the ACLU about? Ahh, there we have it. All you have are cases that are actually about some other policy issue that somebody says "but my religion!" next to. Some dishonest bullshit. Actual religions are well funded in the US, and they defend their rights by hiring lawyers. There is no reason for the ACLU to take up those cases.
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Yep and human sacrifice is also illegal :-(
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Re: Welcome to the CCP (Score:2)
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Are brown people involved?
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Interesting)
The U.S. economy is one of the most self-contained in the world (reliant on domestic trade rather than international trade). That makes it incredibly resilient against potential hostile actions of any single trade partner. Total International trade (absolute value of imports + exports) is only $3.89 trillion [wikipedia.org]. That puts the U.S. close to the bottom of countries by international trade vs GDP [wikipedia.org]. In the case of China, since the U.S. is predominantly the buyer rather than the seller, the U.S. can just take its business elsewhere, and manufacture in Vietnam, Thailand, India, etc.
The only real threat China has over the U.S. is the ~$1 trillion in treasury securities it holds. If China were to dump those, it could drive up the price for the U.S. to acquire more debt (sell off more new securities). Basically it means it becomes more expensive for the U.S. to go into deficit spending. But that's only good for one shot. Once China sells them, it doesn't have them anymore so can't sell them again.
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" If China were to dump those, it could drive up the price for the U.S. to acquire more debt (sell off more new securities). Basically it means it becomes more expensive for the U.S. to go into deficit spending"
Except a) it is still pretty cheap for the US to issue new debt, and b) a large dump would depress the market price China could get. By managing the terms over which the US issued new debt it is plausible they could trade the new debt for old.
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You thought bonds were stocks, is what you're saying.
Stocks give ownership.
Bonds are a promise to pay some money in the future. The person who received the promise is not empowered by that; they've taken a risk.
Please, sell it! There is excess demand, it makes the market unprofitable. Why is the US stock market so high right now, even while everybody says that uncertainty is high and everything is overpriced? Because there is no safe haven right now. Bonds aren't profitable, because only US bonds are high q
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:4, Informative)
Google has hardware manufactured in China but also refuses to cooperate with China, hence most of its services are blocked there. It would actually be a huge source of revenue if they could open China up, most phones are already running Android but without the Google stuff, but they won't cooperate on censorship.
Apple and Microsoft don't seem to have a problem implementing CCP filters though.
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worse than that. Some of the western media have praised sports stars who knuckle under because of Hong Kong and dollars in their pocket, as showing "wisdom". The same media whose lifeblood is freedom of the press.
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Yep! So many are bowing and scraping to that CCP money. Hollywood is one of the worst! Can't screen a movie in China unless part of it was filmed there these days. Or unless it openly slobbers on the glorious CCP. Make me ill.
As every day passes, I watch less and less TV and movies, and read more and more books.
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Interesting)
How long has it been since we've heard "Free Tibet!" from anyone in Hollywood? I mean, other than Richard Gere, who is admirably one of the last holdouts, and who has paid a professional price for it.
Most corporations these days are just as bad, willing to accept Chinese investment with apparently no thought of what that actually entails - being economically beholden to an authoritarian regime that is ideologically hostile to the US.
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Insightful)
What really gets my goat is when a US company boldly resists the requests of the US government, but bends over backwards to help out the Chinese government. Fighting all oppressive governments is one thing, but if you're going to bend the knee, at least dance with who brung ya.
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The difference is that US government spook requests can be legally challenged, vs. a Chinese censorship request where you either comply quickly or your site gets cut off from all Chinese web traffic. From a legal and practical business standpoint it makes sense. If the US was similarly authoritarian, sites would comply with US government surveillance requests just as quickly and easily.
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Indeed, the profit motive is a powerful motive. I dunno, has Zoom ever presented itself as one of these socially conscious progressive Bay Area companies? I mean, if they're up front about profit being their highest goal, at least I'd give them points for honesty.
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What really gets my goat is when a US company boldly resists the requests of the US government, but bends over backwards to help out the Chinese government. Fighting all oppressive governments is one thing, but if you're going to bend the knee, at least dance with who brung ya.
Just name it: Apple [wired.com].
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:4, Interesting)
It's okay, Zoom decided not to enable encryption for free accounts just to help out the US government.
That company has a strong authoritarian streak.
Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:5, Informative)
Zoom is a US company in name only. It's was started by a member of the ChiComs along with development being done in China.
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Re:Welcome to the CCP (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism demands it. It was inevitable once an authoritarian regime's market made up a large fraction of the global market.
I'm sure lots of other countries aren't happy about their web services having to comply with FOSTA-SESTA either.
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Huh (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how "The company has acknowledged that much of its product development has been based in China" correlates with the FedRAMPed ZoomGov which promises that only US citizens touch it....
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I also wonder how they square calling themselves "a U.S company"
Re: Huh (Score:2)
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Simplest answer: they lie. In normal times, this might be something that just gets tisk-tisked at. But these are not normal times. I don't think people understand the size of the hornet's nest that just got kicked over in this country over the past three months.
Zoom? Lie? Never. [slashdot.org]
Trump needs to know about this! (Score:2)
Trump needs to know about this!
Re:Trump needs to know about this! (Score:5, Funny)
I can hear it now... "IS The SITE like TWITTER?"
Zoom's owner tells the story (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zoom's owner tells the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad the protesters who died at Tiananmen square weren't black. Apparently then all of these companies (including Zoom apparently [twitter.com]) would have thought their lives matter. Yes, I'm being flippant, but it really does show how pathetic and hollow these companies are that they'll care (well pretend to mostly) only when it's politically convenient.
That's flexible! (Re:Zoom's owner tells the story) (Score:2)
bend over backwards to kiss the ass
That comment created an "interesting" mental image.
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Too bad the protesters who died at Tiananmen square weren't black. Apparently then all of these companies (including Zoom apparently) would have thought their lives matter.
No they wouldn't. There are still black slaves in Africa today. The only black lives that matter are the ones in the West who are the most privileged blacks who've ever lived.
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Too bad the protesters who died at Tiananmen square weren't black. Apparently then all of these companies (including Zoom apparently [twitter.com]) would have thought their lives matter. Yes, I'm being flippant
Flippant or not your point is valid. In the UK we have mobs pulling down statues of long-forgotten slave traders while ignoring actual live modern slavery in the same city. But that's not what their demagogues have told them to be outraged about this month.
People are very disappointing sometimes.
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Both Black and Uyghur people have good reason to disagree with you.
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If black lives mattered so much then DNC controlled city of Chicago wouldn't have such an outrageous and utterly ignored black on black murder rate.
Black people are going to kill black people. Black people are going to kill white people. White people are going to kill white people. White people are going to kill black people. Also, Hispanics, Asians and Indians, Oh my!
Cops (of any color) killing unjustifiably large numbers of people (of any color) is a problem. No need to make it about race, but props to BLM for being the ones to speak up rather than bending over again and again.
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A young black American male's most dangerous encounter will be with another young black American male Non-cop. Fact
Did you notice that the average American isn't paying the salary of the "another young black American male Non-cop" for this encounter ?
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Again, young black men are the greatest human danger to young black men in the US. BY FAR.
Well if you think that is a bigger problem you should get out there and do something about it. That said, nothing stop us from working on multiple problems at the same time. Fixing the broken police culture will probably be far easier than fixing the underlying reasons many minorities are second class citizens in your country.
I suspect you are part of the latter problem.
It's not the ratio you moron! (Score:2)
It's not the ratio we're talking about. It's holding the police accountable when they do illegal things. Like Minneapolis police murdering white people too https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
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Not sure why this is flamebait. We have video evidence of both actions and until recently there were little if any repercussions.
Re:Zoom's owner tells the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so simple. Where do Mr. Yuan's parents, siblings and other relatives live? What about his wife and her family? If they are in China, that changes things. Don't be too quick to knock a guy protecting his family.
Re:Zoom's owner tells the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody put a gun to his head and forced him to operate a business in US. If he wanted to do business here in this country, he should have known this day will come. Stealing may have been a forgivable offense, but treason is definitely not. He lives here since 97, he should have known that.
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Eric Yuan, Zoom's CEO, was born and educated in China. Tells you all you need to know as to where his loyalties lie when you see actions like this
May I add to your statement that this guy was one of the startup engineers of Webex. He continued working at Cisco for a long time after the acquisition until he came out on his own startup. Literally, he didn't just steal/censor for his own government, but also he stole from his previous employer to make his own product. There's no doubt some core part of zoom comes from webex.
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https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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Good point. Is there any chance the reason is more benign and yet horrible; does he have family they can threaten on China?
Re:Zoom's owner tells the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Tim Cook was born in the USA and Satya Nadella was born in India. They both cooperate with the Chinese government too, so where do their loyalties lie?
I'm sorry but this is just xenophobia, it has nothing to do with where he was born and everything to do with that very American goal of making as much money as fast as possible.
Faux outrage in 3 ... 2 ... 1 (Score:2, Insightful)
How many times are we going to have to hear about a company bowing to China's demand that there should be no dissension, no reporting on its corruption, its oppression of various groups, and people get upset for two minutes then go back to buying all those Chinese-made products?
This is like hearing about the ills of Amazon with its working conditions, low pay, asking the customers to pay for employee sick leave, the lack of reporting of infections and deaths due to covid-19 and people keep on buying from th
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We will hear about it as many times as is necessary. That is the job of a free press, and why the Chinese dictators jail them.
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just like we have been hearing about police brutality for years. we will keep hearing about it until something breaks down, because no one is doing anything about it yet.
just wait for apple to unlock an phone for china! (Score:2)
just wait for apple to unlock an phone for china! and then they better do the same for the USA.
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It's pretty easy to not use Zoom. There are a number of good alternatives, some better, some worse
I’m curious - how many of the good alternatives are worse?
The People deserve to know (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm up for mandatory labeling on US companies that "this corporation censors its product on mandates from dictatorships outside of the dictatorship."
For that matter, lets see how you feel about your next big blockbuster movie when it opens with that disclaimer for 10 seconds.
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Hell, for films, you don't even need to go that far, as active censorship might be hard to prove. I'd imagine Hollywood is getting pretty good at self-censorship by now in anticipation of China's tastes. Reshoots cost money, after all
"This film's content has been reviewed and approved by the People's Republic of China."
100% verifiable and indisputable. If they submit a script or film to China, then the film should should, by law, be required to disclose that fact. Put that sucker right after the ratings
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You might run into some First Amendment problems with that. If a private company *chooses* to remove content because China being mad will hurt their bottom line, they actually have a right to do that.
Totally fuck Zoom (Score:2, Insightful)
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No, no, the internet is made of porn, it's a trap! Pull up! It's a trap!
Apple is an Irish company? (Score:5, Interesting)
Zoom is a US company in the same way that Apple is an Irish company: in no way that matters.
Everything that makes Zoom Zoom is in China.
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good argument for banning certain software within the boarders of a given country. ( china does it , why don't others). Not the way I'd like to see the world go, but I'd rather we have no need for armies either. ( Still doesn't mean we don't) .
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We need armies so we can wave our handies.
It's a private company ... (Score:3)
... and the US is doing all it can to protect private companies from the Constitutional restrictions that are applicable to the US government .
Zoom is right there with Facebook, Twitter, and other private companies.
Activists should know about Jitsi et al. (Score:5, Informative)
Jitsi [jitsi.org], for example, is a free open source solution that anybody can host - or most easily use one of the many readily available public Jitsi instances [github.com] - which does not require any IT expertise.
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Good luck having a decent quality conference with more than 5 people on this...
I'm all for open source, but I've not seen any solution scale as much as zoom. I attend seminars with 25+ people several times a week and the only ones that work are on zoom.
If you know of a software that is open-source, cross-platform and works for 25+ people all having video enabled at the same time and all allowed to share their screen (not at the same time of course), I'll take it.
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I also do this and find Teams and GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar to work easily as well as Zoom. Teams has other superior organizational integration features as well, of course.
Re: Activists should know about Jitsi et al. (Score:2)
Re: Activists should know about Jitsi et al. (Score:5, Informative)
One problem with Jitsi is that changing the branding is a bit of a chore. Also, integration with a directory service like LDAP maybe a hassle.
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Good luck having a decent quality conference with more than 5 people on this...
I already participated in Jitsi-based video conferences with > 10 participants. Worked quite well. For participants that have narrow Internet connections, it makes sense to disable the "thumbnails" on their screen (press "f" or via menu), so they just need to receive the video from the current speaker.
Unlike the commercial services that want to eavesdrop on your video signal, there is no need for the Jitsi server to decode/encode the video signals, thus it requires quite moderate CPU resources.
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This, commercial services largely can't afford to baulk China's censorship requests these days, Zoom has even basically admitted that moving E2E encryption capability to paid accounts only was for the purpose of policing content, and this is one form of content policing they must do to maintain access to the Chinese market. Don't like it? Self-host with FLOSS.
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This, commercial services largely can't afford to baulk China's censorship requests these days, ...
I think a more accurate statement is "commercial services see the size of the Chinese market and consider the possibility of large future profits from there to be more important than taking a principled stand now".
Plus, with Zoom, they're relying on cheap Chinese labor for all of their development. If the Chinese government were to intervene, Zoom would be forced to hire much more expensive coders from other countries, like the US.
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Either way. They'd lose not only the possibility of future profits but also existing Chinese customers (when their service gets blocked by the Great Firewall), and the advantage of access to the Chinese market to any competitors that comply with Chinese censorship requests. Whether they can currently absorb the costs or not, they'd be hamstringing themselves.
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Ahh yes the good old OpenSource that is "easy".
I wonder how easy this will be. Last time someone suggested an open source alternative to an off the shelf product with incorporated cloud service it required you to buy a raspberry pi, have a separate PC to flash a memory stick, and get a Cisco certification in networking to punch holes through your NAT.
*note this isn't a criticism of open source as much as it is a criticism of how complicated we've setup our networks, how damaging NAT is to the concept of end
Re:Activists should know about Jitsi et al. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Activists should know about Jitsi et al. (Score:2)
Creating the firewall rules in AWS wasn't complicated either.
I opted to use Jitsi because it was the only solution that I could deploy quickly and meet client IA requirements. I'm not in the IT
Sue (Score:2)
Unless the contract permits them to terminate the account because they feel like it, in which case you should not have been using it in the first place.
Censorship is on thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Slashdot hypocrisy (Score:3, Insightful)
Twitter shadowbans conservatives and issues a "warning" label on president Trumps tweets designed to drive people away, and Slashdot cheers. Slashdot comes back with "Twitter is a private company, and can do what they want."
Zoom blocks Chinese activists and Slashdot gasps in shocked horror. "They are a private company and have a duty to unbiased service."
If what is done to president Trump and conservatives is fair, then what Zoom is doing is fair and commendable. If not, please explain the difference. If you respond that Trump is dangerous and sometimes untrue, okay fair enough (I don't agree, but I can agree it is debatable). Zoom can say the same about Chinese activists based on complaints by the Chinese government.
See, I solved that for you.
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While I haven't heard about the twitter bans, putting fact-checking links or warnings on a tweet isn't the same as suppressing a movement by deleting an account.
Personally I wish twitter could add their fact-checks to all accounts being used by public figures, but this Trump stuff just feels like they want to annoy him specifically.
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Twitter employees bragging about shadowbanning conservatives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Twitter admits error in Shadowbanning a journalist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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If what is done to president Trump and conservatives is fair, then what Zoom is doing is fair
I agree with your argument that Twitter should ban Trump instead of giving him special treatment by only adding a warning to his bullshit.
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Zoom has the right to do so. Please check their service agreement -
"You agree that You will not use, and will not permit any End User to use, the Services to... ...engage in activity that is illegal, fraudulent, false, or misleading". These Chinese protests are definitely illegal according to Chinese authorities. So this isn't negative special treatment by Zoom against Chinese activists. This is just the same as Twitter, except now it is against the cause you support.
It kinda stings when it happens to your
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It's even simpler than that. Zoom can kick anyone off its platform it wants, for whatever reason it wants.
If people don't like it, they can switch to Zoom's competitors.
Same goes for Twitter. They can moderate, flag, or gate anything they want for whatever reason they want. They don't have to have a good reason, nor do they have to be fair and consistent in how they do it.
Now you can argue, like Zuckerberg does, that social media companies moderating political content is not a good thing. You might be r
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I said Trump, not the government which is the democrats and the Deep State
Just to be clear here: (Score:2)
Zhou Fengsuo is now a US citizen, residing in the United States.
Re:Just to be clear here: (Score:4, Funny)
You don't own an American citizen because of their former nationality. That country is acting as a terrorist if they're demanding allegiance from Americans based on their race or national origin.
Just close the fucking border, don't let ships bring products from there to here, don't let them own businesses here. We can solve the whole problem in a day.
When they're ready for fair trade under modern trade ethics, we can negotiate. But lets take some time apart first.
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Sounds good in theory until you release leading american tech companies manufacturing is based in China, Cisco? Made in China, iPhones? Made in China.. Google Pixel? Made in.. well you get the idea..
So yeah, You could do that - you'd be shooting yourself in the foot, but yeah.. you could do that.
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Are you sure you know what happened? (Score:3)
Some interesting reading here, with references to follow up:
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019... [worldaffairs.blog]
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Propaganda Warning
bullshit do not click
Re:Are you sure you know what happened? (Score:4, Informative)
What the BBC really says about the Tiananmen Square Massacre
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Party officials disagreed on how to respond, some backing concessions, others wanting to take a harder line.
The hardliners won the debate, and in the last two weeks of May, martial law was declared in Beijing.
On 3 to 4 June, troops began to move towards Tiananmen Square, opening fire, crushing and arresting protesters to regain control of the area.
...
How many people died in the protests?
No-one knows for sure how many people were killed.
At the end of June 1989, the Chinese government said 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died.
Other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands.
In 2017, newly released UK documents revealed that a diplomatic cable from then British Ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, had said that 10,000 had died.
Do people in China know what happened?
Discussion of the events that took place in Tiananmen Square is highly sensitive in China.
Posts relating to the massacres are regularly removed from the internet, tightly controlled by the government.
So, for a younger generation who didn't live through the protests, there is little awareness about what happened.
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Ooh, THAT'S a convincing argument.
freedom of the press (Score:2)
Maybe read up some on Hegel's and then Marx's dialectics: the two "opposing" viewpoints need to be carefully controlled and presented so that the sheeple arrive at the wished-for conclusion (some compromise mid-point between the two extremes) "all on their own". Exce
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I imagine Congress will hold them responsible next year.