
Beijing is banning all foreign media from publishing online in China - vincvinc
http://qz.com/620076/beijing-is-banning-all-foreign-media-from-publishing-online-in-china/
======
rdlecler1
Any non-Chinese company that insists on tying its fortune to the Chinese
market is taking on tremendous risk. The goal posts are always changing , you
need to constantly worry about IP theft, you can easily get on the wrong side
of the government, and they strongly protect local interests. Investment is
welcome, but as soon as you actually start making a lot of money and recouping
your investment some barrier of sorts is bound to appear and you'll be phased
out in favor of a local player. This is going to come back to haunt China at a
time when growth is slowing and when they are going to need investment the
most.

~~~
gman83
Not entering the market is also a risk. Say you're an app developer and you
don't publish your app on Chinese app stores, chances are someone else will do
it anyway and steal the revenue. Good luck finding it and getting it taken
down. (Off course chances are it'll still be stolen even if you publish it
yourself there)

~~~
ISL
Working real hard and getting shut down is more personally-negative than doing
nothing and having someone else profit.

Both ways, you get no revenue, but one way, you waste a lot of time first.
It's not worth compromising your principles in order to capture 18% of the
world market. 82% is a lot bigger than 18%.

~~~
snnn
How do you think of Google is putting their best effort to head back to China
? They were working real hard and getting shut down.

~~~
iBzOtaku
They are? I thought they left China for good.

~~~
frankzinger
No, [http://9to5google.com/2016/01/11/google-play-services-in-
chi...](http://9to5google.com/2016/01/11/google-play-services-in-china-2016/)

------
dageshi
Sounds like the normal thing in China. Make something illegal, don't enforce
it, if someone's saying something you don't like then enforce it specifically
against them, keeps everyone else in line.

~~~
sharetea
echoing what vpalan2 said below:

"If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would
pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation
or incident."

These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has
foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians
who know they are one mass protest away from having all their families
disposed. These are fat and lazy billionnaires who have siphoned off local
schools, hospitals, people, environments, and is about to abscond with riches.
These are the people that see their debt-fueled economy collapsing, and know
there's no more workers to be paid in pennies to be exploited.

"In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich
List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion. By comparison, the median
wealth of American politicians was just over $1 million in 2013, according to
CNN Money. " [http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-
rich-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-rich-2015-3)

~~~
mey
For those who don't want to do the math

463.8/(106+97) = avg of ~2.28 billion per china congress critter

Edit: as pointed out below, the math is more complex as there is 2987 seats in
the NPC and I can't quickly find numbers for the number of total seats in the
CPPCC, so the average is certainly drastically lower than the above.

~~~
skewart
Those are the numbers of people who are on the rich list, not the total in
those political bodies.

To get the average per "congress critter" you'd have to get the total in each
body, and get the net worths of the ones not on the rich list. I suspect it's
less than 2.28B, but still a good bit higher than in the US.

------
11thEarlOfMar
This is pure insanity: "Quartz contacted the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology from Hong Kong asking for further clarification on how
the rules would work, but the ministry said it could only reply to faxed
questions that came from a reporter with a mainland press card."

~~~
rodgerd
The government censor in New Zealand wants web sites to submit their material,
item by item, to the censor's office for approval.

Australia and the UK already have firewalls that filter all Internet traffic
which "my bad, so sorry" seem to keep "accidentally" including all sorts of
sites their backing legislation doesn't justify (at least as far as anyone can
tell - the Australian government list is confidential). The UK is trying to
roll out laws requiring all citizens to register with the government to view
R18 material.

China is just playing catch-up at this point.

~~~
aembleton
I'm in the UK. Can you give me a URL that is blocked by the national firewall?

~~~
luwh
All the pirate sites like kickass are blocked in UK

~~~
aembleton
[http://kattorrents.us/](http://kattorrents.us/),
[http://kickasstorrents.eu/](http://kickasstorrents.eu/) works for me, I'm on
Plusnet. They're just ones I found by Googling for them, is there a specific
URL that doesn't work?

[https://pirateproxy.pw/](https://pirateproxy.pw/) also works.

------
SCAQTony
I am not a sociologist, political scientist, or an economist. It appears that
China is too big to govern and has become a diseconomy of scale. China has 160
cities with over 1-million people in them (US has 10 cities) and I think it's
a miracle that the lights still work and they have running water.

When you double the size of a plane it it becomes 4-times heavier (Observe
what it takes to fly a B-52).

The PRC seems to be circling the wagons to protect from some unknown enemy
that the free flow of information will allow the arrows to strike.

~~~
flatline
China has historically been too big to govern. Few regimes over the last 2500
years have managed to hold any major portion of what is modern day China under
a single rule for any amount of time. While the PRC may make token shows of
aggression on the world stage, all of their arrows are really pointed inwards.

~~~
smacktoward
Outward aggression can have internal reasons, too. War with a "foreign
aggressor" is a pretty good way to get a fractious polity to pull together,
historically speaking.

The trick is to find a "foreign aggressor" who's powerful enough to scare
people into putting their internecine disputes aside, but not _so_ powerful
that they stomp your regime like a bug.

~~~
codeisawesome
I'm based in India and you make me want to hide.

~~~
newjersey
I don't think China has any intention of attacking and occupying India. I'm
sure they are more than capable if they wanted to but there is just no
incentive.

~~~
hackuser
> I don't think China has any intention of attacking and occupying India. I'm
> sure they are more than capable if they wanted to but there is just no
> incentive.

They do not. Conquering and occupaying a country with the size, population,
and nuclear weapons of India would be a massive undertaking, I think the
largest such war in history. And remember that China would have to cross the
Himalyas to reach India, maybe the most difficult geopolitical obstacle in the
world. Finally, China is just developing its military and their capabilities
are limited (but growing quickly); many experts believe Japan is more
miilitarily capable than China, for example.

~~~
1stop
Japan? The country that has in its constitution that it cannot hold an
offensive military, nor take part in researching/developing offensive military
technology... Which expert believes that?

Or do you mean historically? (Pre WWII)

I would hazard a guess that China's korean war "Human wave" tactics would be
sufficient against Japan (assuming US was not also involved).

~~~
hackuser
> Japan? The country that has in its constitution that it cannot hold an
> offensive military ...

The consequences of that are not what one might think. Japan has the 7th
largest military budget in the world, and it's been high for a long time
(i.e., they've accumulated quite a bit). Much of what they own, from fighter
planes to warships to submarines, could just as well be used to attack as to
defend. The current Japanese government has been stretching the bounds of the
pacifist Constitution greatly; they are not going to sit by and watch China
dominate them and the region, and they want Japan to take its place in world
affairs commesurate with its population (10th largest) and economy (3rd). For
example, they now take part in multinational military operations, they are
equipping and training their marines to storm islands, they are exporting
Japanese military equipment, etc. Also, remember that Japanese companies are
world-class in technology; they can build some pretty good equipment.

Japan long has been considered to have one of the finest militaries,
restrained by policy - and that policy is fading away.

> I would hazard a guess that China's korean war "Human wave" tactics would be
> sufficient against Japan

They'd get pretty wet. Also, that doesn't work in wars against modern
countries whose air power is so accurate (the Gulf War is considered the
turning point in military history on this issue). The Chinese, and many other
large countries, have been shrinking the number of soldiers in their military
as a result.

------
Animats
China's leadership seems to be becoming more paranoid. Yet China has no
serious external enemies other than the ones they make for themselves, the
economy is stressed a bit but production is in great shape, and the standard
of living has been rising for years. Why?

~~~
Mikeb85
Because the west has been stepping up propaganda.

I remember 5 years ago, most outlets had very pro-China things to say. Now
it's undoubtedly taken a very negative turn. Daily stories about China's
impending economic collapse, their various 'crackdowns', and so on. Even this
article. To be honest, half of the stuff they want to ban isn't even allowable
in Canadian media (literally, 3 out of 6 bullet points are strait up illegal
in Canada), and we're hardly a totalitarian state.

But when western media and NGOs are stepping up the propaganda and support for
violent secessionist groups (Occupy HK took a violent turn recently, some
Uighur groups are strait up terrorists with US support), China has to do
something. A collapse would be catastrophic, yet that's exactly what the US
government is trying to achieve (as evidenced by Syria).

Edit - Anyone want to address these points? Or is the propaganda working too
well?

~~~
ascorbic
Coverage has taken a negative turn because events have taken a negative turn.
Growth is weakening. Shares have fallen sharply. Exports are down. And they're
doing things like this.

~~~
Mikeb85
It's funny, I see this all the time in the media. Yet observers whose opinions
I trust far more, have differing thoughts. [http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-
thinking/macroeconomic-insig...](http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-
thinking/macroeconomic-insights/growth-of-china/)

And of course, China's stock exchange is holding steady now, around their long
term growth average. It was overvalued before, now it's corrected, and
definitely hasn't crashed.

~~~
zipwitch
roflmao

Goldman Sachs lies to people who pay them millions, and you think that
anything they publish for free is reliable?
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/how-goldman-
ex...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/how-goldman-execs-
screwed-their-clients-and-lied-to-congress-20110511)

Any report from Goldman Sachs is designed to advance Goldman Sachs' interests.
Any resemblance to reality it might hold is sheer coincidence.

~~~
Mikeb85
A 2011 article from Rolling Stone proves what? Furthermore, it's not
particularly well written or objective.

The point is, they're pretty spot on when it comes to forecasting. More so
than pretty much any media outlet. If they say China isn't going to descend
into Mad Max style anarchy in the next decade, I believe them.

------
song
Well, ever since the change of government China has been closing back on
itself again and censorship has been stronger and stronger. It's not
surprising and tells me I made the right choice to leave the country in
2013...

~~~
JPKab
Are you a Chinese national?

Just wondering what your thoughts on the reasons for this move are.

~~~
justaman
It seems that the wealthiest Chinese are quickly leaving China for the US. I
believe that this will have negative impacts on their long term growth.

~~~
logfromblammo
I always wondered why the US has never seemed all that concerned with their
trade deficit with China. Imports and paid for with exports, after all.

It turns out that the US has been playing a long game. America imports cargo
containers filled with manufactured goods, and exports one-way, first-class
plane tickets to America (and Vancouver), for use by the Chinese nouveaux-
riches.

Brilliant. Devious and brilliant. The dollars never need to be exchanged into
yuan, because they come back inside immigration-curious pockets. Export the
factory; import the tycoon carrying the factory profits. And if China tries to
stop it in the usual way, the brain drain only worsens. It's more like a brain
siphoning.

But taking the foil hat off, it's probably just entirely accidental. Not that
the US wouldn't milk it for maximum benefit anyway, but it's just too much
like the outcome of a cursed monkey's paw wish to have been planned that way.

------
outside1234
How is this not a World Trade Organization treaty violation? Serious question.

------
xjp250
Xi Jin Ping is worse than King jong un. He is a stupid and arrogant leader. He
want people in China to call him "习大大(xi big big)", but actually we like to
call him "习包子(xi bao zi)"

~~~
x0x0
I don't speak chinese; can you explain why xi bao zi is not flattering?
Thanks!

~~~
artemisyna
Bao zi = buns, like pork buns.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozi)

Basically, he's got a nickname that resembles "little piggy". (By intent, not
literal translation.)

------
chrischen
Any move China takes that blocks foreign competition can be seen as an extreme
version of an import tariff. Instead of protecting low level industries like
corn producers either subsidizing domestic production or taxing foreign
imports, China focuses on higher level industries like technology companies,
culture companies, etc.

While China doesn't have the benefit of Google in the short term, by blocking
them it gives it a chance for local companies to develop the technology and
catch up.

Also take the example of TOMs shoes giving away free shoes replacing local
markets and producers. These poor countries of weak governments, and even a
small foreign company can impact the local the economy in uncertain ways.
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economic...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economics-
toms-shoes)

If you can understand this you can understand the viewpoint of Chinese
officials. We come in with the viewpoint of "how can I have my fair and equal
opportunity to extract wealth from China" while the capitalists in China are
thinking "how can I extract wealth from China and prevent the foreigners from
doing so." In reality the playing field isn't level. Our counterparts in China
don't have the same education, quality of life, and financial status.
Therefore a foreign company with foreign talent would already enter the market
with an upper hand. By the time local companies are ready, they'd be fighting
an uphill battle against foreign incumbents, or worse yet, not develop at all.

If you're familiar with Star Trek, there's the concept of the Prime Directive.
It's principle is that the developed races must never contact or interfere
with an undeveloped race because doing so would alter their natural
development.

Foreign companies don't have an inherent right to the Chinese market. If they
feel they do, or want to enter, it's because they feel there is profit in it.
The profit comes from exploiting the opportunity in the local market, and in
an underdeveloped market such opportunities are ripe. This isn't exactly fair
if mature companies are allowed unfettered access.

~~~
prewett
This isn't about money or protectionism. This is about information control.
The government states what they wish the truth were as if it were true. This
is not believable if there is other evidence, or even a broad discussion.
Hence, viewpoints contrary to the government's "truth" must be stamped out.

Apparently Xi's predecessors did not think this was as important, but Xi seems
to be old-school.

I do not think this is a good idea for China or the government. It seems like
the government only has one solution for a problem: more control. More control
is like pressurizing a container. The more pressure you put, the bigger the
explosion when the container eventually ruptures. I don't think this is in the
interest of anyone in China, so I hope they rethink things before the pressure
gets too high.

~~~
chrischen
China's still not developed enough. Foreign media and foreign freedom of the
press doesn't mean all press are publishing good things, or things good for
the public.

In a developed nation this is OK because the public has fewer problems to
worry about and can devote the time to punish bad press or filter out bad
actors. In China where people worry about many things including clean water
and corruption, having to have to worry about a large portion of the
population being swindled by a bad acting foreign media propaganda is a real
concern. In the US if some nazi propaganda publication gets published its ok.
Most people know well enough to dismiss them. In an undeveloped country this
could potentially result in a nazi takeover. See impoverished Germany after
World War I as an example.

This doesn't mean the Chinese government isn't spewing its own propaganda, but
at the least its working well enough to drive economic growth at the moment,
and they don't want to derail that with chaos or dissent.

~~~
majewsky
> In China where people worry about many things including clean water and
> corruption, having to have to worry about a large portion of the population
> being swindled by a bad acting foreign media propaganda is a real concern.

And how are they gonna act against poisonous water and corruption if they
cannot form a movement through some sort of free media?

> In an undeveloped country this could potentially result in a nazi takeover.
> See impoverished Germany after World War I as an example.

Do you really consider 1930s Germany undeveloped? Even a developed country is
not impenetrable to propaganda. Just look at all the radical nationalists
across all of Europe.

------
contingencies
I've worked for foreign publishers here in China. I've worked for foreign
publishers that have been raided and shut down by the publishing bureau in
China. I've continued to work for the same foreign publishers, operating
essentially the same business, even after they were raided, and seen them
continue successfully for more than a decade.

There are rules and there is implementation. Reality in China is not so cut
and dried.

I share pbkhrv's sentiment about this possibly being a preparation for a rash
of bad economic news late this year. I have it on very reasonable authority
that the RMB will tank at least 15% by end of year.

The view from here in China is basically the same as ever... nobody with money
really cares about foreign journalism and reporting, only food prices
(steadily increasing), education (crisis), health (crisis), pollution (huge)
and inflation (big). Transport is also a problem. They just try to get their
money out.

The Chinese government has a difficult job. They don't really do too badly
when all things are considered.

------
qihqi
It looks like China will change the 'blacklist' model of the Great Fire Wall
to a 'whitelist' model. That is the only way they can enforce this law.

Maybe they got tired of having banned content mirrored by un-blocked IP ranges
and constantly having to hunt them down.

------
SeanDav
From the Chinese government point of view they have several good reasons (for
them) for doing this, chief among them (in my opinion) saving face and
controlling mass opinion.

When China was the huge success story it was, until recently, they were far
more tolerant of criticism. Even then, the Chinese Government would clamp down
very quickly on criticism. Right now their tolerance is pretty much zero. They
do not want to admit or even hear that they have done anything wrong or that
China has significant problems.

They also greatly fear any kind of mass action. During the boom years, with
high employment and everyone happy, there was little chance of mass action.
Now with entire industrial areas becoming ghost towns, high unemployment, no
pensions and growing poverty, mass action becomes a real threat.

------
superbatfish
This seems like a huge deal. How does this not have 100's of upvotes on HN? Am
I missing something?

~~~
kolencherry
At the time of this comment, the article was posted less than an hour ago.

~~~
kawera
First mention of the subject posted 10 hours ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131742)

------
est
please note this also includes online gaming. Blizzard, Valve and Steam would
be in some trouble

~~~
abecode
How about Riot games, which is based in the US but owned by Tencent, a Chinese
company, and played significantly in China?

~~~
xenihn
I'd suspect LOL no longer counts as foreign media...

------
MrKristopher
To me this looks like a big win for companies based in China. The social media
companies for the billion people in China will be employing local people, and
the advertising revenue will stay within China. Not that this is the main goal
of the ban though..

------
natch
There are some qualifiers around this alarming headline.

According to this story [[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-
set-to-ba...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-set-to-ban-
all-foreign-media-from-publishing-online-a6883366.html)]:

'This ban covers words, pictures, maps, games, animation and sound of an
"informational and thoughtful nature" \-- unless they have approval from the
State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.'

Still it's very onerous but not a complete shutdown.

~~~
ripdog
Uh, exactly what part of a foreign-invested news site would NOT fall under
those criteria? The site map? This is a wholesale ban.

~~~
natch
You're only focusing on news sites, which of course are important. And yes
it's (effectively) a ban on news sites, but not necessarily on non-news sites.

------
vpalan2
If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would
pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation
or incident.

~~~
vikiomega9
Can you explain to me why (like I'm 5 :D)

EDIT: Context for my question is that of rule of law and how much can get away
without actually having an effect at the top.

~~~
omegaham
Here's how I would explain it to a 5-year-old - when you make laws like this,
you make everyone else not want to do business with you. This means that you
only get to business with people in your own country. 7 billion people with
ideas is going to be much better than just one billion people with ideas. The
7 billion people have more money, more ideas, and more people to make cool
things, and you're stuck with your one billion people. You will be left
behind.

~~~
longcheng
well, with this law, you got stability and can focus on things important. With
1 billion well educated ppl, I am not too worried about shortage of talent.

~~~
prewett
You _might_ get stability. But if the population is already disillusioned with
you, you might get less stability. The way I understand it, many people
already don't believe what the government says; what happens if you have a
large population of people who assume the government is not tell the truth
whenever it opens its mouth? Whatever it is, I don't think it is stability.

I have heard it said that people don't need to get their way, but they do need
to feel heard. The more you can't express yourself, the more things can get
out of control quickly when an opportunity finally arises to vent.

A laser gets its coherence from the atoms being in an inverted population:
they are all excited, so when one drops down and releases a photon, that
photon triggers a chain reaction of all the other atoms to release theirs. I
worry that this is what will end up happening. Someday, something will happen
and maybe the censors are a little behind or something, like the high speed
rail crash near Shanghai, and it triggers everyone's pent-up disillusionment
and feeling unable to change anything. I don't think this would be a happy
time for anyone, and, ironically, is just the sort of thing that the control
is intended to prevent.

I hope the government reconsiders this idea.

~~~
vikiomega9
> I have heard it said that people don't need to get their way, but they do
> need to feel heard.

But this is in itself an illusion no? It's equivalent to not being heard
anyway, just that you could be heard.

Now that I think about, yes I agree that's how I would prefer to feel.

------
paulddraper
"banning all foreign media from publishing online in China"

Seems like a contradiction. Are you publishing online, or in China?

~~~
ripdog
Uh, I think this means the firewall will block you unless your investment is
100% mainland and you have a license.

------
yuanotes
You guys really don't know how things work in China.

As a Chinese I don't give a damn about these new ridiculous rules since we
always have ways to bypass them. And theses things changes very fast in this
country.

We have laws, and the way them work are different than that in western
countries.

------
nvk
They have to handle the devaluation of the Renminbi and a slumping economy
somehow /s

------
longcheng
Chairman Mao once said, "our enemy would attack us with pen & gun". Looks like
Beijing is taking the pen away from its enemy. :-)

~~~
majewsky
The variable in this equation is the definition of "our enemy".

------
_snydly
Will Hacker News be blocked? It looks like it's currently available:
[http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com](http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com)

~~~
PakG1
Based in China. There are occasional times I'm unable to access HN without
VPN. No idea if that's because it's being blocked or packets just aren't being
given priority. Admittedly, China's pipes to the rest of the world are not
very large.

~~~
troebr
They don't block foreign VPNs?

~~~
snnn
Certainly they do. They use a machine learning DPI algorithm to block oversea
VPNs and HTTPS/Socks proxys. So you can't hide your proxy in SSL or ssh
tunnels.

~~~
Aloisius
How common are VPNs and proxies in China? Is there a lot of demand for getting
around the great wall?

~~~
snnn
Almost all foreigners has a vpn to access their facebook and gmail.

And for the demand, let me show you an example: Several months ago, a malware,
XcodeGhost, infects EVERY large internet company in China. The attack worked
by tricking developers into using a fake version of Xcode, Apple's software
development tool, to build apps. So their apps were published to Apple App
Store with hidden malicious code. This virus also has a android version. You
may wonder why these developers didn't download the xcode and android sdk from
apple and google's website directly. They are the top class developers in
China. But the fact is they rarely use these websites and services. You can
live without google even you are an android developer.

~~~
PakG1
They didn't download XCode from the Apple store because of slow download
speeds, something that Apple has tried to improve.

[http://www.cso.com.au/article/585378/apple-ween-chinese-
ios-...](http://www.cso.com.au/article/585378/apple-ween-chinese-ios-devs-off-
pirated-xcode-faster-downloads/)

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Seems absurdly broad, if this article is correct. Doesn't this basically mean
Chinese would be unable to read or view anything we can? Including this site?
With the exception of Chinese published/created information.

~~~
ktRolster
Most Chinese don't read English, so they can't access this site anyway.

------
davesque
And people wonder why their stock market is tanking...

------
restalis
"acquisition of an online publishing license"!?

"How do you license media in an age when everyone could become a writer and
publisher?" As far as I can imagine - you don't, that's the thing! Maybe they
won't do you anything for now, but if they don't like what you're publishing
they will have a ready-available "legal" reason for detaining you for
publishing without a publishing license (which of course could be claimed to
be totally unrelated to your published content)!

~~~
ommunist
This is how business is conducted in mainland China. Want to publish your blog
- apply for a state license first.

------
pbkhrv
This might be one of the things they are doing to prepare for a wave of
negative news about the state of their economy.

------
a3n
And this is the country that we're looking to, to bring North Korea back into
the fold.

------
tonyferguson742
It's getting harder every single day to run a business in China as a foreign
company.

------
lukasb
does that mean no Stack Exchange?

~~~
snnn
If Stack Exchange were allowed to post Chinese, it will be blocked
immediately. The Great FireWall filters contents by keywords.

------
curt15
The govt is just aiming to completely rewrite history. Tiananmen square? Never
happened!

~~~
ommunist
Fortunately for the China, it did not happened.

------
rahimzayid
This is not that rare .. pretty much the same applies for Arab countries in my
eys.

------
invaliddata
Does anyone know to what extent this affects news organizations in Hong Kong?

~~~
sdm
No effect. For now at least. One country two systems. These restrictions would
violate Basic Law.

------
sharetea
And so it starts. Economic collapse will prompt the dictatorship in China to

\- Increase anti-foreign rhetorics in media. Don't like it, Microsoft? tough

\- Ban Foreign services. Don't like it, Uber? tough

\- Devalue Yuan by 50%. Don't like it, Apple? tough

\- Nationalize foreign assets. Don't like it, Ford? tough

~~~
danmaz74
> Devalue Yuan by 50%. Don't like it, Apple? tough

Why wouldn't Apple like this? Their manufacturing costs would become much
lower, and they would rack up even more billions in profits.

~~~
jimbokun
Apple is looking to China for further sales growth. Fewer Chinese buying
iPhones is probably a bigger problem for them than higher manufacturing costs.

Tim Cook has already made a big deal about "currency headwinds" to explain
Apple's slowing revenue growth.

~~~
phil21
Why would they care? They are selling a Chinese made product to the Chinese.

Maybe not as profitable due to exchange arbitrage, but still profitable since
the costs go down exactly as much as the retail price does. Engineering for
the Chinese market already exists due to all the other markets, so it's
essentially money left on the table if they don't.

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venomsnake
I think that China's openness (or lack of) in internet affairs is strongly
correlated with the health of their economy. It could be a nice proxy.

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smegel
I would say bad China, but given how polarised and politicised the Western
media is, I find it hard to fault them.

Unbiased journalism seems such a quaint concept these days, and as the
divisions between right and left take on an almost war like characteristic,
everything becomes propaganda.

Hell, I might even move to China to get away from it all.

~~~
gohrt
Are you joking? In China, non-propaganda is explicitly forbidden by law.

~~~
smegel
At least they are honest about it, and I dont read Chinese.

On the other hand, watching political agitators with an axe to grind
masquerading as journalists makes me mad.

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ommunist
This is imperial. I especially like the notion that Ministry only answers to
reporters with mainland press pass. The China is the center of the civilized
world again, the world where the US is a barbarian outskirt.

Will the foreign websites published in Mandarin be banned to view from
mainland China?

~~~
jcyw
Ban the sea trade and the tea. History repeats.

