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Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong (emojipedia.org)
1456 points by pulisse on Oct 7, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 686 comments



Can anyone actually validate that this news is true?

I live in Hong Kong and have the latest iOS updates. I still have the Taiwanese flag... same for all my colleagues, both on personal and work phones.


I am from Hong Kong, I can confirm that Taiwanese flag is not displayed in original Emoji keyboard (still appear in third-party keyboard like kaiboard). I am using HK region apple id and latest ios version


Also I can confirm. Friend of mine was in China and bought iPhone XR dual sim. And now lives at hometown – Moscow, Russia. Russian interface, Russian region is installed. But Taiwan flag is completely missing: in chats, web and keyboard.


That's important. It would be dismaying if this story spent an entire day at #1 on Hacker News and turned out not to be true.


It affects device models with “CN” or with “ZA” set as region:

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/05/taiwan-flag-emoji-disa...

It is also limited to just the keyboard and not enforced in 3rd party apps or websites:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...


How do you check this CN/ZA settings? I have an iPhone bought in HK, region set to “Hong Kong” (General -> Language & Region), iOS 13.1.2 and I see the Taiwanese flag in emojis. I test with the built in emoji keyboard in the “Notes” app.


Our phones are Taiwan models and we can reproduce it. Which iPhone do you have? If it still has the ZP region for Hong Kong instead of ZA region it will not be impacted. More here on it:

https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4855/


I see, I just checked, mine has the ZP region (Hong Kong & Macau), so that would explain why I still have the Taiwanese flag.


I can't verify this part first hand, but they indicate in the article that before the 2018 model iPhone XS was released, the region code of Hong Kong was “ZP,” but it was changed to “ZA” after the newer model iPhone XS was released.

So users with newer devices would be impacted.


I managed to find a colleague with a newer iPhone, with ZA in the model, and Hong Kong as Region. The flag appears when language is set to English but disappears when language is set to Traditional Chinese (Cantonese). The conditions to have the flag disappear are not that widespread though, but the news is indeed real :-)


This reminds me of the story about how the first release of Windows 95 was banned in India because 8 pixels of the map shown in the timezone selection control panel were colored in such a way that suggested parts of Kashmir were part of Pakistan.

https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-mi...

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42...


It’s one thing for India to censor something for a stupid reason.

It makes me uncomfortable to have China be able to influence all these other global countries into global (or in this case localized) censorship. Hollywood, News Companies, anything else that China invests heavily has no choice but to fall in line with the censorship.


Agree completely. PRC comes across a lot like a spoiled, entitled brat. Such behavior should never go unchecked otherwise we are enabling it.

On another note, it was refreshing to see South Park creators giving some love to Chinese censorship.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2019-10-...


Yes, this reminds me of a similar, but more general argument:

Free economics tends to promote liberal democracy.

This is debatable of course. Historical patterns are complex:

https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/11/06/wh...


Free economics promote colonialism too.


That makes no sense. Colonialism effectively stopped before free economics was a thing.


Colonialism (imperialism, more accurately) didn’t slow down much until WWII. Even in the 70s Portugal still controlled its African colonies and fought them in wars of independence.

What the gp is referencing is the argument that the concept of free trade has only obfuscated colonialism. Rather than colonialism by France or UK it’s colonialism by Nestle or De Beers. To someone harvesting cacao for $2/day nothing is materially different from living under colonialism, except their landowner might be some well-connected member of the regime rather than a European.


> What the gp is referencing is the argument that the concept of free trade has only obfuscated colonialism. Rather than colonialism by France or UK it’s colonialism by Nestle or De Beers. To someone harvesting cacao for $2/day nothing is materially different from living under colonialism, except their landowner might be some well-connected member of the regime rather than a European.

Ironically, China shows you exactly why that comparison is absurd. Colonial powers carefully controlled production to keep colonies from moving up the value chain. Indian raw materials were gathered by Indian labor, shipped to Britain, finished, and shipped back to India. Foreign direct investment, by contrast, allowed countries like China and South Korea to rapidly move up the value chain. Foreign investors get a return when the foreign company moves up the value chain, even if that takes business away from a company in the investor’s own country.


I’m surprised Trump’s trade war has not “escalated” to banning the Chinese emoji yet...


Related to the original discussion, I wonder if there's a story behind how Taiwan got a emoji flag in the first place. Unicode Consortium referenced ISO 3166 for eligibility. Taiwan and a few other disputed regions didn't the cut until 3166-2 revision. The maintenance agency consists of representative from only western agencies. Interesting politics.


Isn't there a pretty objective and non-political case that Taiwan is it's own country? It has its own laws and government, and has presided over its own affairs for more than 50 years. Whether the CCP wishes this was not the case doesn't affect the reality on the ground.


You must be new to this dispute. Personally I tend to agree with you but in the international game of power politics, stating explicitly what is implicitly clear to everyone can have large repercussions.


All politics is a charade to some extent, a social game humans play to achieve a result which we can't really get to otherwise; international politics is simultaneously more obviously a charade and precisely the place where keeping up the charade is most important, because the consequences are far more present.

In national politics, there's a government and that government has a police force and a military. Regardless of which political party or coalition is in control, the government goes on, day to day, running things, which includes holding elections, the magic which gives legitimacy to the process. As long as elections are real, the people are mostly willing to go along with it, so the consequences of utterly disregarding legitimacy remain remote.

International politics has no such entity, or at least none that has sufficient recognition. Therefore, it is essential that everyone play along with the norms, because deviating from those norms is more likely to spark a war.

Ultimately, a country is what a majority recognize as such; before you go away, however, consider how long you'd live if you insisted you were human but couldn't get anyone else to agree with you.


Can you unpack what you mean by ‘charade’...? In particular, why did you choose that word? Are you suggesting it is fake? Fake in what sense?

One useful definition of politics is this: systems and behavior that result from people disagreeing without violence.

Politics can occur in convincing a group of people where to go to dinner, that your technical idea is worthy of effort, or that a President must be held accountable to the rule of law.


> Can you unpack what you mean by ‘charade’...? In particular, why did you choose that word? Are you suggesting it is fake? Fake in what sense?

I'm suggesting it's fake in the sense that it pretends things are real which are not physically real, like national boundaries and countries and other jurisdictions. Los Angeles County has no physical existence beyond the people who pretend it's real.

> One useful definition of politics is this: systems and behavior that result from people disagreeing without violence.

I agree with this, but it doesn't capture people pretending administrative jurisdictions exist. How taxes work is a good example of the charade becoming useful: Services have to be paid for, so taxes must be collected somehow. How do you do that without making people feel like they're paying for a lot of stuff they're not getting? By drawing lines on a map and saying that everyone who lives within those lines pays these taxes, and everyone who lives outside of those lines pays those taxes, and so on. Poof: You have a way to pay for things which gives people some kind of choice in the matter beyond just voting. That's important because other, more real, effects of the economy can determine which areas have rich people and which areas have poor people.


Taiwan was never under the control of the PRC, so... yeah.

Don't worry, there'll be a major war to settle the issue sometime this century, I would bet.


Not only a country but Taiwan is officially the Republic of China. The government of China under Chiang Kai-shek established itself in Taiwan. If anything Taiwan is China and the PRC is the remnants of a communist overthrow.


I guess this comes down to whether a country is its government or its people.


Well, sometimes it's the land or the resources on the land. Or religion, too. Shoot, this is getting tricky.


I beleive that the unicode consortium have chosen not to say much about witch flags are there pretty much for this reason. They don't want unicode to get mixed in with international politics.


It goes beyond that; technically, there are no flags in Unicode.

Instead, there are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Indicator_Symbol — an symbol-alphabet where any pair of successive symbols from the alphabet are meant to be considered a ligature (so, a space of 36^2 = 1296 possible ligatures), where a subset of these ligatures are considered valid representations of a locale from the Unicode's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Locale_Data_Repository.

Unicode doesn't say that you should render these CLDR-valid locale meta-codepoints as flags, though. It just says they're locales. In other words, it's up to a given font to decide whether to draw these as flags, and which of them to draw as flags.

With this move, they've abdicated the political determination over to, mostly, the OS manufacturers (since right now most OSes just have one OS emoji font that gets used for the graphical-pictograph-rendering process, rather than allowing user-installed emoji font-families.)

Personally, I like this choice. No matter what any government says, Taiwan is its own locale—it has its own time zone, clock and currency display formats, etc. Locales are locales no matter who declares ownership over them. Having "locale icons" rather than geopolitical-region flags is probably the most stable arrangement we can have, even if it means that some OSes will just render a particular locale-icon as nothing.


And for additional context, I believe every major OS vendor and many apps that bundle their own locale data have modifications on top of the stock CLDR database. Those modifications are mostly handled by legal teams, not by engineering.


> Having "locale icons" rather than geopolitical-region flags is probably the most stable arrangement we can have

Agreed. The only other way to draw locales would be to country outlines: which would most certainly open a Pandora's Box of socio political issues.

What Apple has effectively done by invalidating the locale, is to remove the Taiwanese language.

As an aside though: from a personal point of view there's quite a few emoji that I'd like to see hidden, such as the poop and middle finger. There's no need for such things, & yet this locale is removed? Weird politics.


What do you have against feces and expressions of disgust/contempt?


I would rather use words to describe whether something is a contemptible pile of guano, and these cutsie images are reducing our ability to eloquently and accurately communicate. A well placed, terse word can have far more impact and meaning than the 4yr old speak that emoji bring us to. Your username is a perfect example: it's hilarious.


Unicode is a lot like a dictionary, in that both things exist to allow people to work with documents that already exist, whether the tool likes it or not. Dictionaries let you understand existing texts, by defining the words in them. Unicode preserves and faithfully transmits existing texts, by defining and fixing the meanings of the codels of those texts.

Even if a dictionary didn't define a particular word, people would still use that word. You just wouldn't be able to find out what that word means from your dictionary. The word wouldn't be harmed; only the dictionary would be made less useful.

Likewise, even without an assigned codepoint for an emoji, people would still create encodings of it—in chat programs and the like. They'd just be proprietary encodings that wouldn't be able to be copied-and-pasted to other software, and would likely suffer bit-rot. (Can any program that exists today—and that runs on a modern computer—correctly parse out the emoji-like symbols from the binary transcript files of a 90s IM program like AIM or ICQ?) The emoji symbols—at least at the time—wouldn't be harmed by this (people would still use them just as often); only Unicode's goal of "one universal text encoding" would be harmed.


Compare also AUBERGINE and PEACH, which have both picked up alternate meanings to fill in for certain popular anatomical values that Unicode has elected not to define.

EDIT: seems HN removes emoji. I understand why, but it makes discussions like this one somewhat annoying.

EDIT: I've removed a somewhat vulgar reference to what those alternate meanings are, as it seems to have upset some people. I was trying to make a real point about how users will fill in the gaps when demand exists, even if Unicode omits them.


There is no truly neutral position though. Who gets the final say then?


Have you seen unicode? They usually err on the side of including everything, including, e.g., alphabets of fictional languages.


Those fictional languages' mere existence isn't perceived as a threat by any government, though.


Whoever renders the text. Since most applications delegate to the OS for that, it's typically the OS. The OS generally follows whatever the jurisdiction it's sold in requires. In theory an application could override it by doing custom rendering of these codepoints.

The unicode standard doesn't care, as explained above, since it just defines an alphabet and takes no position in which country/locale codes are to be rendered with a flag.


I think they err on the side of including flags in case of controversy, as there are flag emoji for Kosovo and Palestine. The main exception is North Cyprus, which just gets ignored.

Of course, when I set my region to Israel, the Palestine flag is still available. Likewise for Serbia and Kosovo.


Israel does not deny existence of Palestine state, they disagree about borders. It’s completely different from between PRC: PRC claims they are the only true China, and Taiwan should be a part of it.


Man that's crazy! They must've paid real close attention to it, but I think it's partly due to low resolution screens available in circa 1995. On a low-res screen, it's impossible to draw maps completely according to the borders, so this was probably inevitable and unintentional.


Inside Microsoft, there's a whole database of geopolitically-sensitive issues that have been accrued over the years. You can see all sorts of border disputes and differences in language that you had to take into account when working on global products.

On a related note, now you have movies with different scenes in China.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y

https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chines...


During my time at Microsoft I submitted a code review with an updated mapping library we got from a 3rd party. The auto review bot flagged the the changes with a "Geopolitical Issue" or something like that. Turned out it was an icon for Taiwan's flag.

I don't remember if we deleted the icon or just renamed it, but the product never ended up shipping, so it probably doesn't matter much.


At least 30% of my enjoyment of Venom came from it being set in SF and me going “Hey look I know that corner!” or “Wow we’ve been to that restaurant, they totally used a different place for that shop front!”

Seeing your town in a movie is incredibly rewarding. Just like a musician is basically required to shout “Hello $PLACE” at some point during a performance

PS: for the downvoters, that’s what the linked article cites as the reason that movie gets extra scenes in China. Chinese audiences liked seeing their city in a scene that Western audiences didn’t care about.


A good chunk of the latest Mission Impossible movie was this for me with Paris, especially with places where I've walked around, like the seat of the ministry of finance along the Seine. Of course the path taken didn't make any sense, but that wasn't much of an issue.


Also I had a reaction like "that's not how French cops operate when moving an inmate!"


There is also that the CCP won’t approve a movie for release in China unless it has Chinese scenes.


It's not the only conditions, there's also conditions like positive portrayal of the CCP gov and no Chinese as a bad guy and so on.


Yea, it's one of the fun things about living in New York. Me watching the first Avengers: How'd they get from Upper East to Washington Sq in like 20 seconds?


It's one of the terrible things about TV shows and movies in my opinion. So boring seeing NYC over and over again, not to mention all the inconsistencies that pull you out of the movie. I'm even tired of all the Apple TV screensavers of NYC/SF/Dubai.

Let's see some new places from South America or Africa or Europe or anywhere else.


And how do the protagonists in US TV series and films always just immediately get a parking spot just in front of their destination??


They have film permits, of course.


Maren Ade’s excellent movie “Toni Erdman” [1] from a few years ago was taking place in the city I live in, Bucharest, and one of the scenes was set in a mall at whose cinema Multiplex I actually saw the film. It was strange, when that scene came up I said to myself: “hey, this is happening just a few meters away from I where bought the popcorn”.

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4048272/?ref_=m_nmfmd_dr_1


One of my favourite Youtube channels, Every Frame A Painting, talks about this in Vancouver - except that the movies are rarely set in Vancouver:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU


You have movies where the country of the 'bad guys' was changed in post-production to North Korea to appease China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2012_film)


Fawlty Towers when dubbed in Spain changed Manuel (a dumb waiter from Barcelona I think) to be Mexican.


But the Swedish Chef is still, surprisingly, the Swedish Chef in Sweden, which seems to be a cruel joke. https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/swedish-chef-what-do-swede...


In the Italian version of A Fish Called Wanda the mock-Italian is replaced with mock-Spanish.


I don't remember a lot about Looper but I feel like more exposition of JGL's "downward spiral" would have really helped clear things up for me -- for example, how anybody can go from looking like JGL to looking like 2010s Bruce Willis.


And they fixed the issue by making the highlight color the same as the normal color (so each pixel is still associated with a timezone/country) internally.

This later led to Poland going Atlantis, when MS removed its timezone instead of moving it to another timezone.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061027-00/?p=29...

https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/pos...


I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft just didn't listen to them. If they ban Windows over a petty reason like that, they're screwing over their own economy.


One simple approach would be to ban unmodified Windows sales and allow their companies to resell modified Windows distribution with changed resources.


It's something plenty of politicians everywhere have done over the years for things far more trivial than nationalism.


Microsoft employees in India would risk harsh punishments, including prison time.


I think they meant if Microsoft didn't change the map and went along with the ban, seeing as they mentioned the potential damage to the economy.


> Microsoft employees in India would risk harsh punishments, including prison time.


It's entirely pointless to copy and paste the comment I replied to instead of at least attempting to clarify in case I misunderstood.

Why would they face prison time for complying with the law?


They are not since pirated windows works just as good as licensed.



The craziest part of this article is the note at the end about airlines being forced to remove mention of Taiwan in order to do business in China. Went to Delta website to find a flight to Taipei, and sure enough every stop of trip lists city, state/country and for Taipei is just says:

Taipei,

According to the article, even this is still 'out of compliance,' because it should say 'Taipei, Taiwan China,' blown away this is how the booking page appears on the Delta website when loaded from the United States.

Makes me worry, localization takes effort, and effort often leads to blanket solutions that 'check everyone's boxes.' The most worrying examples of this in my opinion have been the superhero movies of the past decade. These blockbuster franchises were all written to accommodate distribution in China (and worldwide for that matter) as a goal. This led to simplified dialogues for translation, story lines that avoided pushing controversial buttons, and the result was a decade of moderately entertaining and decidedly safe cinema. Sure, blockbusters are not the best barometer for a nation's ability to push artistic boundaries, but they have historically spoken to the sentiments, dreams, and challenges of a time. Unfortunately with the sequels and superheros era, it seems the tone has been one of risk-averse idealism, which strikes me as a particularly low form of entertainment, entertainment that is truly disposable, unable and unwilling to stand the test of time. Possibly straying into problems with corporate consolidations, but I think it's all related as larger corporations tend to take smaller risks in efforts to appeal to broader audiences. If very few companies are able/willing to tell China no, censorship features become acceptable, and then they become normal, and then maintaining two branches becomes burdensome, so then censorship becomes the compliant option, and at that point the dream of technology empowering regular people to do amazing things, to become real superheros, fighting corruption, injustice and oppression, that dream will be truly dead. Think about how much things have changed since the Arab spring... it happens quickly.


I don’t see what the big deal is. Taiwan’s own passports say China on them.


I'm graciously assuming ignorance here. They say "Republic of China," which is the legal name of Taiwan. That is different from "People's Republic of China," which we in the west just call China.


Both “Taiwan” and “China” agree there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it, but they disagree on which government is legitimate :)


The current government of Taiwan actually openly disagrees with the one China policy [1]. This is a major reason China has ramped up their pressure on Taiwan.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/a...


The ROC “agrees” with that framing of the conflict in the sense that they recognize that the PRC has signalled that a good way to get the conflict to become an imminently mortal one would be to publicly disagree with that framing.


I'm not sure what ignorance you think I hold... both of them are "... of China". China being the entity disputed. It's not as if Delta is being made to make it say "Taipei, People's Republic of China".


In other news, when you were able to visit Google Maps in China you would see the Chinese view of the world where disputed regions are part of China, while the rest of the world would see something else.

https://qz.com/224821/see-how-borders-change-on-google-maps-...


To be fair, that's true elsewhere as well. They reflect the borders as they are officially recognized in the user's country.


This is true for every country in the world. Google Maps in the US displays borders/countries which the US government recognizes.


The U.S. doesn't recognize Taiwan as a state, but that's how it's typically shown in the U.S. Though it's also quite easy to see various alternatives. And Taiwan is hardly the only example of this.

The U.S. has no laws requiring specific depictions, nor does its government cajole movie producers to depict regions in certain ways. Many countries are similar. Map makers choose borders largely based on what they expect their audience wants or needs.


China is the only country in the world that requires Google Maps servers to be ran on Chinese government data centers by non-Google employees.


Korea has similar regulations:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/one-thing-north-k...

If you zoom in on South Korea you'll notice that the map tiles are raster-based instead of vector-based like the rest of the map. At certain zoom levels, South Korea looks like it has no roads or cities, compared to the much more industrious North. It's kind of hilarious.


Korea is different. South Korea actually does require mapping servers to be ran on SK soil, but it does not put requirements on the data center owner or the workforce running the services.

I'm sorry if this comes off as nit-picky as it is not my intention, but comparing the mapping services requirements of China and SK are worlds apart. The intent of each policy is important to think about.


What is the intent of SK's policy?


Based on the article that is linked above, its origin seems to come from laws preventing map/navigational data being exported due to national security (South Korea is technically still at war with North Korea, as the Korean War only ended with an armistice/cease-fire). The article then states how the non-Korean perspective may view this as South Korea utilizing these laws to push a protectionist policy, helping South Korean tech companies to compete with big tech.


Does South Korea also use an obfuscated coordinate system?


I disagree. You may see "contested" borders, but not outright US policy. For example, the US recognizes the sovereignty of Kosovo, but Google Maps shows it as a dotted border. And Wikipedia accurately describes it as a disputed state.


Recognition of one side or another in a foreign dispute is a little different than having your own dispute or claim.

Guantanamo Bay (disputed between US/Cuba) used to be marked as US territory in Google Maps at least when viewed from the US, although interestingly, I'm looking at it now it doesn't say Cuba / United States along the border anymore.

I can't imagine the amount of crap they must go through on the backend to deal with these idiotic human politics. Humans suck.


You assume that maps are uniform throughout the U.S., or that the U.S. government mandates certain depictions. They're not, and the government does not, except for the maps it purchases for itself.

Whatever Google depicts is what Google chooses to depict; and what they pick, at least in the U.S., is a function of what they believe people expect to see or need to see. They depict Taiwan as a separate state despite the U.S. government not recognizing them as such because it's what people expect to see. It's trivial to find maps in the U.S. depicting any alternative you desire. Equivocating popularity with government-mandated depictions is not constructive.


There is no dispute about what country Guantanamo Bay is part of: both the US and Cuba agree it is part of Cuba.

The dispute is about whether the lease agreement which allowed the US to use that territory as a naval base is still in force. Early after the Cuban Revolution, one of the US's regular rent cheques was mistakenly cashed, and the US claims this is recognition on the part of Cuba that the lease remains valid.


> Recognition of one side or another in a foreign dispute is a little different than having your own dispute or claim.

I agree. A better list of places to look in the maps are the current disputed areas between USA and Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_disputed_by_Cana... In particular, what do you see in this map? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Machias+Seal+Island/@44.33...


In China, any mapping app is ran through the government owned mapping servers. Apple Maps, Google Maps, etc., are all using Chinese servers deployed and ran by external Chinese teams.


No


Funnily enough I just watched this video about how every map of China is deliberately wrong to be compliant with an idiotic law they have:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Di-UVC-_4


South Park's latest episode was about Chinese censorship in the West.

'South Park' Scrubbed From Chinese Internet After Critical Episode https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/south-park-banned-chi...


I should get back into that show. I don't recall why I stopped watching.


Years ago when working in Microsoft SharePoint, I noticed this method: SPUtility.HideTaiwan [1], which would hide the Taiwan calendar option in China, Hong Kong and Macao.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/de...


It's easy to forget the freedom I enjoy and expect in the United States. Again brings to light the question, how much do you actually own your device?

Since I assume there is no recourse for these users on a censorship level, is there such a thing as a class action lawsuit for removing a feature in Hong Kong?


Even if there was (I don't know, am not a HK lawyer), you would probably have a few problems if you complained about THAT exact feature being removed. Of course, this is just speculation on my part.


[flagged]


That last bit breaks the HN guidelines badly. Would you please re-read them and follow them?

Such cheap accusations of brigading get made all the time from both sides and have proven to be completely unreliable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

While accusations of brigading are common, I don't think the accusation is cheap in this case, you and I are both aware that the brigading happens on China related articles - we've spoke about it directly with each other via email. I would assume per the above you're looking at the data.

The last part is a bit of a deliberate trap - I've stated a fact, that the CCP agreed to provide HK with 'a high degree of autonomy'. If the anti-democracy suspects should downmod it, because it promotes allowing HK to do what the CCP agreed, they would be accusing their masters of lying. I quite deliberately did not make any allegation that the CCP would lie.


You're finessing this, but it's not a fine point. The guideline is clear. Please stop breaking it.

> you and I are both aware that the brigading happens on China related articles - we've spoke about it directly with each other via email

That's not accurate at all, and I have no idea what I said in email that would have made you think this. I've been looking at this data for years and have basically never seen anything remotely like what you're talking about. What you posted was a perfect example of the cheap accusations that the guidelines ask you to refrain from. You broke other guidelines there too, with going on about downvotes and flamey rhetoric ("Enjoy being disciplined by your masters"—please keep that kind of thing off HN).

If you want more explanation, I spent the whole day and half the night posting about this yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200971

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21201077

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195089

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898

Previous comments on this at:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...


I didn't complain about downvotes but welcomed them (as a point about hypocrisy). You and I have personally discussed strange moderation around articles involving China, you can find them in your inbox. Nevertheless I'll refrain from discussing them here, not because I agree with you (I don't) but because you have power here and I don't like having these discussions.


People might be complaining about your use of unexpanded acronyms (CCP, PRC), or infusing a huge political stance onto a narrow legalistic question.


This is the freedom we give up when we choose proprietary systems. China has its problems with authoritarian government, which is enforced at the barrel of a gun. But we (the worldwide society) gave up our communications freedom to Apple and others willingly, for convenience.


>But we gave up our communications freedom

Nonsense. The existence of proprietary platforms in no way reduces the possibility of free and open platforms. Using iMessage or Facebook Messenger or any other closed communication platform is a choice you can opt out of right now.

Sometimes I wonder if this all-too-common "the open Internet is dead" defeatism isn't some kind of false flag to make people think the open Internet is actually dead so they don't try to leave their walled garden. That is absolutely not the case and people need to stop saying it.


Stop sucking up to dictatorships. If they don't want to do business with you because your map or flags or search engine shows something they don't like - leave. Don't censor your search engine or modify your maps to fit their worldview.


This is a simplistic view. When push comes to shove, companies don't behave with political principles. Apple is not going to throw away access to 1/6 of world's population over a political dispute. It's unrealistic to expect any company to, if they're sufficiently large. The only way to achieve political goals is to apply political pressure directly at the state level, or to work with domestic movements that seek to undermine the policies in question.


"What does it benefit to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?" - Jesus


Most famously quoted in the play "A Man for all Seasons"

"It profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... But for Wales?"

Thomas More is convicted and will be executed, on the false evidence of a man who he now sees is wearing a chain of office, he asks to see the chain (thereby establishing for the audience what the reward was for lying to secure More's conviction). The chain is for the Attorney General for Wales, prompting this line.

In reality Richard Rich was given a slightly different job with a longer title that doesn't afford such a fun line and of course we can't prove he got it for his deceits, though he does seem like he wasn't on the whole a truthful and upstanding person.


[flagged]


In that framework you are giving up something of infinite value for something of finite value, which is irrational.


I suspect the OP disagrees that souls have infinite value, because they do not exist.


The big point is to not give up something of greater value for lesser value. Human rights have greater value than increasing profit margins.


Google did.

Yea they want to head back (now that they realize nobody cared), but they pulled out of China entirely back in 2011 over censorship.


They were also hacked by the Chinese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora


That was the public reason but i’ve also heard they simply could’t compete and decided to use that excuse to save face.


by couldn't compete, i assume you mean, "didn't want to hand over all their IP to CCP, who would in turn give it to the native competitor", right?


No by couldn't compete, the OP probably means western tech companies do a remarkably poor job of understanding the Chinese market and frequently gets out innovated. When Google first entered the Chinese market, Google PinYin input lifted data from Sogou Pinyin because they couldn't get basic input prediction right. Baidu RankDex predates Google PageRank and was referenced by Larry Page when he submitted patent for PageRank. Before Youtube left China, they were the worlds top video streaming site, in China they didn't even break top 10. Same story for Twitter. Amazon today is unimpressive compared to major Chinese online retailers.

The truth is, these companies were never competitive in China because they never put in the work. Established western companies are not use to the level of competition in China. It's simplistic to say CCP is just arbitrarily picking domestic winners. Thousands of domestic companies (as in the case with ecommerce going toe-to-toe with Amazon) were busy out competing each other and western challengers. When it came to western social media bans post 2007, Chinese companies were hiring tens of thousands of content moderators with understanding of Chinese filtering rules for compliance. Western companies simply gave up and didn't learn how to scale content moderation until the last few years when social media had to deal with the same violent extremism that China did during the Tibetan and XinJiang riots that lead to FB/Twitter ban. As evidenced by current Youtube debacles, Google still can't / refuse to get human content control right. BTW both these companies can reenter anytime as long as they conform the same rules like Bing. Regardless, the government didn't have to tip the scale much to crown a domestic champion over western companies.

See AI Superpowers by Lee Fu Lee,previous head of Google.cn for an overview of Chinese competitive environments. There's lots of extremely technical fields where China is actively conducting industrial espionage and coercing tech transfers in (IC, airplane engines, military stuff). But cloning and improving software is not really one of them.


> When it came to western social media bans post 2007, Chinese companies were hiring tens of thousands of content moderators with understanding of Chinese filtering rules for compliance. Western companies simply gave up and didn't learn how to scale content moderation until the last few years when social media had to deal with the same violent extremism that China did during the Tibetan and XinJiang riots that lead to FB/Twitter ban.

I will gladly agree that Chinese companies have a competitive advantage over Western companies in terms of enforcing state-mandated censorship. I hope Western companies never get comfortable with that particular competency.


He seems so proud of it


Explaining is not endorsement.


> Western companies simply gave up and didn't learn how to scale content moderation until the last few years when social media had to deal with the same violent extremism that China did during the Tibetan and XinJiang riots that lead to FB/Twitter ban. As evidenced by current Youtube debacles, Google still can't / refuse to get human content control right.

First of all, I don't want them to do "human content control". That is stupid.

I will happily concede that China is better at nightmarish Orwellian censorship policies, congratulations, big accomplishment. I hope America never catches up.

How uncivilized must China be, if they need an army of censors to edit what everyone says? Americans have gotten along well without that. Based on how Chinese government treats its people, you must conclude that Chinese people are monsters that are constantly plotting violence. I choose to believe that the Chinese government is just too authoritarian and controlling.

Any American corporation that kowtows to the Chinese government's demands has nothing to be proud of.

It should be illegal for American companies to facilitate the evil that the PRC government commits. I don't want Google making money sending ethnic minorities to "re-education" camps.


The reality that is western social media has been increasingly censorial in the last couple years on a range of issues, particularly extremism, validating the Chinese approach which any reasonable evaluation would conclude has been prescient in retrospect. Arab Spring, Jasmine Revolution, Rohingya genocide, Hindu nationalist slayings, mass shootings, that is cost of exporting unfettered social media that I also enjoy. Contrary to your assessment of my sentiment, I am perfectly happy with unrestrained freespeech, 4/8chan etc at the cost of occasional mass casualty incidents that I think would be better addressed via responsible MSM conduct.

But the fact remains, the Chinese model promises political serenity (i.e. recent revelation of TikTok guidelines against divisive politics) which is valued in unstable countries without strong institutions, and those countries are by far the majority out the ~200 countries around the world. You many not like it, but calls for Social media accountability is obviously also happening all across western liberal democracies, including the US. People are screaming for more censorship. Techniques are converging and the only reason IMO the west can't match Chinese mechanical turk censoring is labour costs, but I surmise gig economy will eventually figure out a way to source the headcount.

This is a hard pill to swallow for western minds that hedges softpower on moral superiority. Many westerners refuse to accept that the CPC is modelling it's evil development method after what has been successful in the west, i.e. all the industrial espionage and protectionism, even the current Uyghur situation (which I do not endorse) is result of 2nd generation ethnic policy directly based off US melting pot concept and not far from indigenous residential school systems that emphasis integration. Previously it was based on autonomous soviet oblasts that tried to make distinct ethnic identities work - salad bowl - that has failed after riots and terrorism caused by unrestrained western social media (hence the bans). China will happily copy outdated, evil strategies employed by the west if it provides serenity, don't be surprised when the west copies fresh, evil Chinese innovations to address their social ills as well.


I am really only concerned about these issues as they affect my country, The United States.

Different nations have different ways of doing things. The policies that they have in China might indeed be the best thing for them. But the only time I care is when American corporations start trying to do that.

I can not disagree about the Uyghur question. The melting pot policy is stupid and must end anyway because it will fail, as we are seeing in Europe. Hopefully it will burn itself out before too much damage is done. I actually feel guilty that these stupid immigration/integration concepts have been exported to other countries.

Calls within the United States for censorship are just flimsy pretexts for consolidation of power, and actually I think are less sincere than Chinese efforts for harmony. Mass shootings and other evils would not be significantly hampered by censorship. People saying that the internet has caused the rise of extremist terrorism are absolutely wrong. Just the last few weeks they kept going on and on about chaos that would happen from the Joker movie. It is nonsense. It is very hard to connect things said on the Internet to any real world deaths here. But I can see how in less stable countries, rumors and misinformation could lead to real problems. Maybe in a place like Indonesia or The Philippines they should censor misinformation, when there is a very real chance of conflict breaking out.


Yes, I think different countries require different solutions during different stages of development and threat. US media environment and online culture does magnify and sensationalize statistically insignificant threats. I like to think we have a slightly healthier media environment in Canada, but people here seems irritatingly OK with censorship as well. Aat the end of the day, it's up to the west who values things like freedom of speech to produce a working alternative for the world to emulate. But given how things are going, I don't see anything forth coming. It's crazy how society is shaped by .01% of self-selected active online participants. I was hoping divisive culture war is just part of the growing pains of first wave of ubiquitous inter-connectivity, that people will get fatigued and adjust their behaviors eventually, a regression to mean of common decency. But it's been years and it looks like eternal September really is eternal.


Baidu would certainly like to think so, and has said as much on occasion, but do the facts really support the claim that Google left China primarily due to competition rather than ethical or security concerns?

Despite continuous friction with the Chinese government, Google's share of the search engine market in China had grown to over a third before it decided to pull out: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703465204575207...

Google hasn't pulled out of other markets where it faces strong local competitors, such as Yandex in Russia, and it remains popular in Chinese-speaking markets outside of mainland China such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. That the developers of the Google Pinyin input tool were found to have copied data (something other companies in and out of China have also been guilty of from time to time) is hardly evidence that Google in general was not competitive.

Ironically, the fact that under Pichai a return to China was seriously contemplated would suggest that financial reasons alone can't explain the original decision to leave.

Similarly, YouTube wasn't forced to pull out of other markets where it faced competition. Also, YouTube was frequently blocked by Chinese authorities even before Google decided to pull out: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703465204575207...

Competition may explain in part why Google hadn't conquered the Chinese market before it left, but conflict with the Chinese government, in the form of official censorship as well as illicit hacking, would seem to be the main reason why Google pulled out of China but not elsewhere.

Unless of course learning to comply with such demands and intrusions is included under "understanding the Chinese market".


Too late to edit, but the correct URL for the second link is: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/25/china-blocks-y...


I don't buy the story that Google left abruptly because they simply "couldn't compete". This is a huge and deep-pocketed corporation that out-rivals Microsoft in all aspects but yet, Bing could stick it out and Google couldn't?


That in itself is not a counter-claim to his arguments.

That being said, many companies fail to establish a foot-hold in certain international markets, including Yelp, Uber (which ceded southeast Asia to Grab, and China to Didi). Even Amazon does poorly internationally, and that's headed by the richest man on earth (which by your logic implies that it's impossible for Amazon not be able to dominate)[1].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...


this looks like a good read, thanks for the rec


In my opinion, this is a political issue. It should be handled on a political level similar to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that sets minimum standards for how corporations are allowed to act in foreign countries.

For-profit corporations are systemically unfit to solve this problem on their own. We should stop wishing for them to be something they cannot consistently be.


I absolutely agree, Apple needs to take a stand and end its relationship with China immediately. We need to organize boycotts until they do this.


But that would require companies to prioritise something other than profit and the incentive structure to do that simply doesn’t exist. It’s sad.


>Stop sucking up to dictatorships.

I bet people have already begun weaning themselves off Apple products!

Just kidding. Most people expect others to do something, but take no direct action themselves. Pity.


Hey I whined on a forum I think that's enough political action for one day? I have mobile games to catch up with on my iPhone now.


I feel the need to inject some perspective here.

Every country imposes requirements on manufacturers of devices or service providers that some person(s) might object to.

If you choose to do business in that country, you play ball, or you leave. How you pick which ones that are tolerable enough to live with is the question -- and don't imagine that it's moral principles that define it. It's how much a company wants to stomach the loss of that business.

Saudi Arabia (and many others) prevent the installation of Whats App, etc. on phones activated there.

Israel (and the US by the way) censor imagery of certain places on the maps shown in those countries.

Japan for chrissake even forces devices to emit a camera shutter sound when a picture is taken.

And you're singling out China for censoring the Taiwan flag emoji?

How about those other cases? Where does it start / end? Are you saying engineers should quit over every one of these infringements?


This is more blatantly political.

Do you have anything more I can read about the Isrealy/USA map censorship?



Adobe just cut off the entire country of Venezuela from the software it paid for, over a political row between the US and Venezuela.


This is in hong kong though not in the mainland


> Saudi Arabia (and many others) prevent the installation of Whats App, etc. on phones activated there.

Source?


>Japan for chrissake even forces devices to emit a camera shutter sound when a picture is taken.

This is actually pretty cool, I'm always paranoid that I'll end up on someone else's photo without knowing.


This is why I laugh when Apple tried to paint themselves as champions of anything more than their share price


They are, loosely, the champions of their customers at least, unlike most of the tech world. They have to do a good enough job to get you to spend $1k on the next year's device. Google just has to not-suck enough that you won't stop using it for free.

But yes, any true moral posturing they make is baloney.


The mobile phones are not free. Don't belittle people who pay good amount of money to purchase them. Even though some can purchase iPhone.


I'm not belittling, I'm just laying out the economic forces. Google doesn't have to give a care when it comes to services, at least, because its customers are the ones buying ads, not the ones using the products.


You are still belittling. Customers buy mobile not ads. Just ask any android users. It's like you are saying iPhone users are buying status symbols not mobiles.


"Think different. Just not too different."


The degree that China goes to censor things reminds me of kindergarten. Pull the shades down, and kids won't want to go outside? Is it simply a reminder to their people of who's in charge, at this level of pettiness?


China is showing the ability to control one of the world's largest, and most advanced companies. It isn't petty–it is scary. The U.S. and others have sold their soul to the devil for $299 flat screen tvs.


> The U.S. and others have sold their soul to the devil for $299 flat screen tvs.

This seems to suggest the populace is at fault, wanting and buying cheap gadgets no matter what the consequences are?

In truth, I think most people are simply unaware of the many problems caused both by consumerism, and the moral spinelessness of pretty much all large corporations and how that is brought about by market forces. Even in politics I'd say that there is, besides some malfeasance, also limited understanding of complicated issues. (Remember the congressman asking Zuckerberg how Facebook made any money?)


> This seems to suggest the populace is at fault, wanting and buying cheap gadgets no matter what the consequences are?

I'm sorry it came off that way, as I do not blame people for the propaganda of their government (U.S. or China).

I do absolutely believe that we shouldn't be able to off-shore environmental/worker's rights policies. If you want to sell something in California, it should be made with the same environmental standards that making it in California would require.


Environmental and human rights standards.


I'd push the blame a little further on. Many, many people are just struggling to get by, and they pay as little as they possible can for their luxury goods.

If they weren't struggling to get by on the wages they make, they could afford to be a little more picky about what they buy and how it's created.


The present piece of news goes against that argument though, as Apple devices are simultaneously the more expensive and less ethical option. These aspects don't seem correlated.


>less ethical option

Are you getting that because of this flag issue or is there more behind that? I would argue that Apple is, by far, the more ethical option.


Was speaking about this issue specifically, but I'd be interested in hearing your arguments for the opposite side.

From Apple's historically more oppressive stance against freedom of expression in their own wallet garden, and the recent actions against the HK protest movement ("legitimate" app ban, the present article), my opinion is that Apple is a less ethical choice than Android which is more permissive and respectful of user freedom.


>From Apple's historically more oppressive stance against freedom of expression in their own wallet garden, and the recent actions against the HK protest movement

I would love to see how you justify Apple's actions as "historically oppressive" when it comes to App Store rejections. Even the case that you specify in Hong Kong wasn't Apple's actions "against the HK protest movement". The App was rejected initially because it was thought to violate specific terms and it was appealed and approved within days. To try and frame that as Apple being morally or ethically deficient is really, really disingenuous.

The opposite side is that Apple is the only company that's not actively selling user data and/or using it against users. Android may be more permissive from a general standpoint but even that comes at the huge, huge cost of a lack of privacy and a completely lack of concern for personal freedom. Even from a security standpoint, I would argue that Google is less ethical simply because they don't act on nefarious actors that they know about. Being permissive isn't the same thing as being ethical.


Good point. This is compounded by the fact that people under pressure are understandably less interested in moral issues and have less time to inform themselves.

On the other hand, it would be easier for at least some of these people to get by if having a large TV or this year's smartphone wasn't part of "getting by".


Most people think if the government allows this then it is okay.

People are buying based on price, quality and for some products image.

The products purchased based on image can be shamed away. The other two cannot. No matter what some will buy the best quality and some the cheapest. Government can't help with the first but can control the second.


> I think most people are simply unaware of the many problems caused both by consumerism, and the moral spinelessness of pretty much all large corporations and how that is brought about by market forces.

I believe this is one of the fundamental flaws and challenges of capitalism. Corporations are great usability wise because serve as an abstraction for accessing a product. You put some money in and you get a widget out, without having to worry or know about where that widget came from.

But the consequence of that is that you are insulated from all of the negative externalities involved in creating that widget. You just wanted some cheap eggs, and you didn't realize you were inadvertently causing chickens to be raised in inhumane factory settings. You wanted a bottle of water and you didn't realize it was being pumped out of a national park.

It's like using some really nice, convenient API and only discovering later that every time you called getFoo(), the backend went out and killed a kitten.


> This seems to suggest the populace is at fault, wanting and buying cheap gadgets no matter what the consequences are?

I didn't read GP's "others" as "populace". One reading would have the U.S. and other [governments] have given in to excessive demands of China.

Now the "devil" in the question doesn't necessarily have to be China. It could be Global Finance -- an abstraction which believe it or not is reasonably reducible to actual people and families, the fabled "1%" [sic].


> The U.S. and others have sold their soul to the devil for $299 flat screen tvs.

I believe it's more appropriate to say that they sold their souls at 230 dollars per share.


> they sold their souls at 230 dollars per share

I realize you are referencing something specific, but I wanted to make sure I got it correctly. Current TSLA share price?



Currently, most of China's power comes from its economy. There is barely any military presence outside of the mainland, and only a few years ago they opened their first outpost. So it's not surprising that Apple is conforming to their requests. And they are not the only ones. A while back, German carmaker Daimler made an instagram post with a Dalai Lama quote [1]. They ended up apologizing for "hurting the feelings of the chinese people".

China is extremely attractive to businesses because of its gigantic market. There are tons of cars to be sold in a country with over one billion people. Tons of phones. There are tons of chinese hotel guests, chinese search requests, etc.

[1]: https://media-cdn.sueddeutsche.de/image/sz.1.3856412


Isn't that what the newest South Park was about? [0] US companies bending to the political will of China because money.

I remember a NPR broadcast a few years ago (when the female ghost busters movie came out) about how movies have become less progressive because they are targeted at world audiences. I think a lot of Westerners feel weird about this, but I think getting involved in the politics is even a step further (especially when we're seeing an human rights violations).

[0] https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s23e02-band-in-china


Came to say the same... it's pretty funny how often South Park is on point with the criticism. Love the show more the past couple years than when it first came out.


China has military control over the south China sea and a lot of the oil imports to SEA countries. Assuming the US pulls out, Japan, south Korea, Australia will all face strategic challenge from China over the next few decades.

The US refuses to see China as a strategic threat, and only as a economic challenge. Australia is looking into getting 16-32 submarines ordered right now, to cover for future defense outcomes. Aus and the SEA middle powers are having talks about obtaining nukes simply to prevent them being used against the countries.

China is projected to grow to be double the size of the US's econony. China is willing to spend those benefits in the south China sea and on BRI. Make no mistake about the military of China. It is a concern. This is as big as power politics get.


>>>The US refuses to see China as a strategic threat

Huh? The new Commandant of the Marine Corps has flat-out said it.[1] And he's not the first in the Pentagon to take China seriously.[2] And from [3]:

"Emblematic of this mistake was the roll-out of the Air-Sea Battle doctrine. First outlined in a then-classified memo in 2009, ASB became official doctrine in 2010. From the beginning, it was an effort to develop an operational doctrine for a possible military confrontation with China and then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates openly discussed the need to counter China’s growing military capabilities. The signal received in Beijing was the U.S. had hostile intentions toward China and was trying to contain it militarily. The result was that the entire pivot was seen by Beijing as part of a broader effort to encircle China."

[1]https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3031445/us...

[2]https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/15/a-novel-about-war-with-...

[3]https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/01/23/commentary/w...


That's why I said currently. I completely agree with you that the chinese military will increase in power and relevance.


China also sometimes tries to hold businesses hostage that try to leave.

https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/manufacturing/china-d...


As if the US hadn't sold their soul already? :/ I'm not trying to downplay the horrors of China, but let's not act like the US had clean hands before importing bulk electronics.


I'm not sure the average American benefited as directly to the atrocites of the past. The U.S. simply cannot change course without a serious alteration of the the ethos of the country.


"I'm not sure the average American benefited as directly to the atrocites of the past. "

We live on a continent taken from a people by violence, betrayal, and disease -- some of it intentionally spread through government policies. Sorry, the average American are direct beneficiaries of the atrocities of the past. Some of us don't know or chose to ignore it.

Update: I didn't say this to justify terrible things people are doing. We can't play this game of "only the most moral of us can criticize". Something is immoral in and of itself, it doesn't matter who calls it out.


> Sorry, the average American are direct beneficiaries of the atrocities of the past

This is true for most humans alive in nearly all nation-states today. At some point in the linear chain of humanity that allows my existence today, atrocities were committed. Whether an ancient ancestor strangling a potential threat with their bare hands, or the nation-state I was born in acquiring land through militaristic expansion.


Of course but I think the point is that we can stop supporting the continued benefit of these. Money talks and both people and corporations can talk the talk by not supporting these countries and not caving to them.


I do not support the atrocities that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committing against the people of Yemen (civilian death toll closing in on 100,000 [0]) with American purchased F-35 jets manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

How can I, as a person, talk with my money to prevent this? How can Lockheed Martin, a corporation whose fiduciary obligation is to generate profit for its shareholders, prevent this? How can the US government, who benefits greatly from a prosperous diplomatic relationship with the Monarch, prevent this?

> not caving to them

Fundamentally what I am saying is these institutions are not "caving in" - they are doing what they are doing because, from an emotionless game-theoretical perspective, it is beneficial to the success and longevity of the institution.

Apple benefits from an increasingly strong business relationship (the new diplomacy of the multinational) with mainland China - not just for their supply chain, but also for their marketshare.

These benefits have cost. For US-KSA the cost is tens of thousands of Yemeni civilian lives; for Apple the cost is decreased mindshare of the sovereign nationstate of Taiwan.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jun/20/h...


> How can I, as a person, talk with my money to prevent this?

With your personal money? You can't. Can you convince extremely wealthy people to spend their money in a way that will ultimately lose them money? Possible, but still losing odds.

See Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins for an example of what this fight looks like. (he was one of the guys who paved way for the original deals between the US and Saudi Arabia that you mention)


Thanks for that book recommendation - really appreciate it. I have been looking for a solid critical reference regarding the World Bank (and IMF, for that matter) for some time now. There were some allusions in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine that set me down this rabbit hole.


> See Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

Or, for a far less conspiratorial take on the same phenomenon, read "Globalization and its Discontents" by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

In it you'll learn how institutions like the IMF treated open markets and no currency flow restrictions as a religion regardless of whether they made sense for the stage of development of the countries on which they imposed those as terms of their loans.


That's a huge straw man and not at all what I was referring to.

Stop buying goods that support these policies. Stop supporting politicians that support these policies. Stop patronizing companies that lobby for these things. Use apps like "Goods Unite Us" to find out where your money is going.

The only way to do anything as an individual is to vote with your wallet, your feet, and your actual vote. When that cumulative change affects the bottom line of these companies, they'll have no choice but to change.


> I'm not sure the average American benefited as directly to the atrocites of the past.

This is a joke right?


Oh we definitely have, everyone benefitted massively from the "manifest destiny" attitude behind the many atrocities committed against the native Americans.

It's also not our fault, infar as we didn't literally pull any triggers. We're probably still complicit to some degree, however, by our general lack of support for reparation actions.


We all pay taxes that buy triggers and pay to have them pulled. You can argue this is compelled, but I personally have more respect for those who refuse to pay taxes and face the wrath of the US government than I have for my own cowardly position of paying taxes and continuing to complain about the horrors committed using that money.


The Good Place actually deals with this, "you can't be good and participate in society anymore because of globalization" idea pretty well IMO.


If no one paid taxes, then the governments capacity to do bad things would certainly go down. However, then there also probably would be no government and everyone would be worse off.

I'm sure lots of tax money is wasted, or used for bad things, but also a lot of good as well. Roads, police (that keep the peace), firefighters, education, foreign aid, etc.


Given all those other countries we've been bombing based on false pretenses I'd say a lack of US government funding would be a net positive. I'll take lawless anarchy over a relatively well organized state that bombs children to secure foreign oil production facilities and prop up the petro-dollar.


Children dying is always a tragedy, or any civilians really.

Here's a question for you: If the US were to collapse into anarchy, and there was suddenly a void in the world where the US military used to exist, do you think would there be more or fewer civilian/child deaths (in total, from other forces) and why?


I betting more short term but fewer long term. The immediate bloodbaths would be in America's client states that Russia and China move in on, but some of those would probably manage independence. Long term, one less bully dropping bombs on children should result in fewer deaths. The power vacuum is real, but I don't think it be entirely filled with other international bullies. A collapse of the military would probably result in some pretty dope weapon systems switching hands, as it did during the collapse of the Soviet Union. This would cause bloodshed, sure, but it also means some of those prior client states might have a better shot at independence than one might first imagine. I'll also point out that those power vacuum dynamics exhibit themselves at multiple levels of supervenience, and the US is often responsible for their disruption on smaller scales.


> I'll take lawless anarchy over a relatively well organized state that bombs children to secure foreign oil production facilities and prop up the petro-dollar.

Those are hardly the only two options.


There are parts of US history where terrible things happened. It's important to acknowledge that, and be compassionate towards those it has affected.

However, now that the US exists, it does a lot of good for many, many people. As a first generation immigrant, I'm glad that I was able to come here, as I think conditions are much better than my country of origin.

That being said, am I complicit in everything bad that has happened here simply because I'm living here now? What amount of reparations are appropriate for me to give, considering neither I nor my ancestors likely had any involvement with any of those things.

Can any amount of money even make up for what happened?


Yeah I totally agree, it's impossible to accurately split out all of the consequences of merely existing in a society, especially a global one like ours. Ooh, I walked on a street paid for by federal funding, am I now guilty of supporting the Bay of Pigs?

It's insane. The Native American example was just the first one that came to my mind that demonstrates that the "average" American of today does indeed benefit from atrocities committed hundreds of years ago.

Though I don't think it's a boolean, "Well you did it, you made up for the damage your ancestors caused" situation, but more of a, "Well now we are better equipped than we were before to handle the fallout of the damage your ancestors caused". And it's not just money (though money does fund everything), there's a lot more that the US government could be doing for the Native American people. Am I a bad person for not doing more? No. Could I probably do a bit more to help? Yeah.


> Can any amount of money even make up for what happened?

maybe not, but that is hardly a reason to do nothing instead


I wasn't trying to say do nothing, but that just giving a bunch of money just seems somewhat patronizing and wouldn't really make that big of a difference.


Money is a catch all term for investment in human capital. Paying for better schools, post-secondary training/education, healthcare for those who continue to struggle under the yoke of history would be a good place to start. And really, we ought to do that for everyone.


The average American benefited a great deal from violence toward South America in exactly the same way.

For the partisans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic (ever noticed that bananas are the cheapest fruit?)


The atrocities of the US are not strictly in the past, though our biggest and boldest known atrocities are. That being said I would say that we have benefitted from the atrocities of the past; the land I live on was once populated by people that my government participated in the genocide of. More importantly, I said nothing about people. Does the average Chinese citizen benefit directly from the atrocities of the Chinese government? Is the answer to that question even relevant to whether your prior condemnation of China was fair? Why shift to examining citizens in the case of the US but not in the case of China?


Always this same comment when anyone points the finger at China.


The comment is just pointing out to the OP that any moral bankruptcy of the US can most certainly not be blamed on China.


The comment I was replying to implicitly suggested the US had a "soul" prior to engaging in business with China, I wasn't the one who brought up the US. If I had brought up the US out of the blue I'd agree that it was an irrelevant whataboutism, but in this context I feel it was entirely appropriate and on topic.


Multinational companies conforming to local laws and customs isn't scary, it's status quo. (Most) Companies sell products and services not ideology. Sometimes prexisting ideology comes preloaded in because regionalization and cultural competence cost extra. Mostly that's an economic bug that people have conflated as a soft power feature because non-western markets were too small to advocate for themselves.

It's completely reasonable for larger countries with different values to expect customization that comport to local markets. At the end of the day China isn't forcing Apple or any other companies to make changes in global markets.


> Multinational companies conforming to local laws and customs isn't scary, it's status quo.

You are missing my point. The fact that it is status quo is the scary part.

I do not accept that companies should be let off the hook for empowering and enriching oppressive reigns because of "local laws and customs". I do accept that companies should be let off the hook for destroying environments and ecosystems because of local laws and customs.

What should a country have to do for a person / corporation(group of people) to stop supporting it? I don't expect everyone to have the same answer, or even that my answer is better than another, but if you are in a privileged life-situation you should think of your personal line and decide if it has been crossed.


Your beef seems to be companies being incentivized to maximize shareholder profit at all cost. Your solution seems to be to legislate morality and corporate conduct, which is exactly what every country including China is doing out of their respective self-interest. Unless you mean to only enforce western liberal values in which case it's an argument for subsuming companies to one nation's foreign policy goals (in Apple's case, US) - a complaint frequently levied at China. The current solution is to let the consumers decide which seems to be the least bad of all options.

Trying to tie trade to morality is exactly why Chinese influence is increasing - they are ideologically agnostic when it comes to trade relationships. That's just the new competitive environment we're in. The alternative is withdrawal and decoupling at the cost of hundreds of billions in trade and feel good points for some people at best and a long-term national security concern by pushing Chinese tech independence and future competitiveness at worst. Current administration already wasted that card IMO.

I think your real question is what does the west have to do to contain Chinese ascent which many people think runs counter to Western interests. The answer is I don't know. Though I don't think bilateral trade belligerency helps or individual action in the west. Developing countries are looking to the China model because it looks like it works - conflating the good and the bad with necessary and sufficient. I think western influence would go a long way if they managed to solve the myriad of problems at home and offer and offer an appealing alternative. Other countries aren't stupid, they're look at what works / is working. Too many things in the west is broken right now.


It's also neither local laws or customs to hide the Taiwanese flag as OP claims.


Wut. China compelling foreign companies to remove references of Taiwan in China is established policy? Even mainland Chinese companies HK/Taiwan offices occasionally get in trouble for missteps.


I would think it also has non-trivial psychological effects on the Chinese public in terms of feelings of national pride, optimism for the future, and allegiance to their communist government. From where I sit, China is executing largely flawlessly, for the maximization of their outcome that is, not the entire world's. But it's the West who made this possible, so I don't place much blame on China.


Pretty sure the escalating violence in Hong Kong would be a sign that things aren't going flawlessly.


Flawless execution does not necessarily mean everything goes perfect. Expecting everyone to go down without a fight (or even realizing they're in one in the first place) like the West seems like fairly wishful thinking.

I reckon Hong Kong is a speed bump. China could likely roll tanks in and slaughter thousands and the West would do little more than hold some important looking meetings and press conferences with Very Serious looks on their faces, before issuing some "demands" on China's behavior, that would be promptly forgotten. Western culture has become weak, we are ruled by false ideology, propaganda, and the almighty dollar. If you ask me, we deserve whatever it is we get.


Pushing back on China trade is the one and probably only thing I agree with Trump on, and I've wondered if getting rid of Clinton and the TPP wasn't actually worth tolerating Trump being an ass for four years.

All I know is that I'm glad the TPP is dead and I'll be happy if nobody with the last names Clinton or Bush ever sits in the White House again.

I say this as someone who leans more toward the 'woke' side of the present culture wars.


The TPP was designed to contain China. China wasn't a part of it.


If that's true then I'm wrong, but I'll need a reference on that.

My understanding has been that the TPP was about opening China to further outsourcing of white collar work by regularizing IP law on paper (which the Chinese would just ignore of course). This would have allowed more paralegal, contract writing, engineering, and even things like radiology (X-ray and scan interpretation) to be outsourced, further gutting the US middle class and transferring more expertise to China. In other words it would have started the outsourcing of non-physical forms of service work and more lower-level intellectual labor. What would even be left of the US middle class after that?


China wasn't a signatory.

You're right that it was corporate captured but the original goal was geopolitical.

Edit, cite: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership




I think it is petty.

At the same time it's a good gauge for them to figure out what else they can do.

Start with "hey man don't show that one pic" and the company figures "it's one pic, whatever we're not really compromising our values".

A few more steps and then it seems less dramatic when it comes to "give us that information on that one user"... and so on.

Personally I would expect an external social credit score coming soon too. It doesn't have to be all encompassing like the social credit score, but good luck getting a job with a company who wants to work with China if you're on the list...


>A few more steps and then it seems less dramatic when it comes to "give us that information on that one user"... and so on.

That has already happened. Only instead of handing over data on specific users upon request, Apple has simply handed over all iCloud data of all its (mainland) Chinese users to a government owned company:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351


Pretty scary thought, but progress being what it is, I don't see anything blocking it. I'm sure they already decline to do business with anyone that is vocally critical of China, or for example, highly complementary of the Dali Lama.


Happened just yesterday after GM of the Houston Rockets spoke out *for the HK protests: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/07/business/houston-rockets-nba-...

EDIT: s/against/for/


*for


Well if the NSA gets access why not opening up to other governments?


This is a fallacy, stop with this kind of logic. At whatever point where the requests become unreasonable is the point at which to raise issue, not because of some arbitrary "precedent setting" bullshit.

The frog, in reality, just jumps out of the pot when the water gets too hot.


If most people operated rationally, it would be correct to disregard slippery slope arguments as fallacies when analyzing the spread of ideas in society. However, most people do not operate rationally most of the time -- they use rough heuristics and perceived social signaling of others to arrive at (usually irrational) conclusions about most issues.

Empirically, slippery slopes have always been an extremely common way change is driven in mass social thinking. This has been formalized as the "Overton window": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window


I understand what you're trying to say, but it's not true or real in the sense that the counter-argument is entirely effective. Specifically, "When that thing you're worried about actually comes up, then we'll decide what to do."

Saying, "We're still three steps from my issue but this thing that, in and of itself I have no problem with, can't happen because it might lead to the thing I have a problem with." is not a valid argument.

To try and bring it back into focus, it's a real problem that this "one pic" isn't being shown. It's not a slippery slope conversation, because we're already at the thing I/we have a problem with. No need to argue the "this paves the way for worse things" because this is the worse thing! We're here!


I think the fact that they have so much power that they can micromanage incredibly petty things is indicative that CCP has way too much power.


I think most people on Hacker-News would know that Taiwan exists, even though a flag is missing on their phone. I think for the general population in the US or Europe that's not so clear.

If one would never hear about Taiwan, would we really "know" it exists?


> If one would never hear about Taiwan, would we really "know" it exists?

It's a sort of reverse branding exercise. If you can reduce exposure as much as possible there's not going to be a lot of sentiment for supporting the cause. What would be of Palestine today without the exposure that has been directed at it.


It's not like Israel is - not talking about the truth of that claim here - denying the very existence of their neighbouring states. On the contrary, palestine and part of the palestine people are branded as great evil. Being branded as _anything_ is being "known". Famously or infamously.


> I think most people on Hacker-News would know that Taiwan exists

I frequently come across, in America, people who are genuinely surprised that Taiwan is a sovereign state.


Are you sure they don't just disagree with your use of the word sovereign? I find it a strange way to describe the ROC and Taiwan.

Without a clear territory under exclusive control, recognition from other governments, or independence from the mainland, what's so sovereign about it?


> Are you sure they don't just disagree with your use of the word sovereign?

Yes, when people debate Taiwan’s sovereignty (for, independent foreign relations and a military, against, limited recognition) they understand the local context. That there is legitimate dispute with respect to its status is news to a surprising number of Americans.


>Without a clear territory under exclusive control

But isn’t there? Taiwan has borders and a military.


> Is it simply a reminder to their people of who's in charge, at this level of pettiness?

Most countries have petty border disputes.

A famous country occupies territory in Cuba where it built a military prison. Cuba claims that the military presence is occupation of territory it rightfully owns. The famous country refuses to leave; it claims it only leases it based on a hundred-year-old document, and sends $4k checks yearly. Cuba denies, and refuses to cash the checks.


China decided to take control of Hong Kong based on a hundred year old document.


A document signed with Taiwan instead of POC I would add.


Control was taken from China in the first place.


Which china? If the world was truly fair and honored the original signatories, it'd have gone back to the ROC and not the PRC. But it didn't because of might is right.

I saw you made a comment earlier that both countries say "China" on their passports missing the point of this whole conflict.

I think you should spend at least an hour reading about the history of this conflict (not through China's censored Internet).


This is so much more egregious than what China is doing within its own borders.

Famous country also blacklisted Cuba from trade and uses the prison for illegal detentions. Talk about bullying.


That's hardly an accurate telling.

Cuba started a war for independence. The US sunk their own ship, the USS Maine to get an excuse to go to war (according to the Northwoods document declassified in 1998). This kicks off the Spanish-American war where Teddy Roosevelt rises to prominence (the perhaps biggest point of note was the butchering of whole villages, mass rapes, and what were essentially concentration camps in the Philippines).

After liberating Cuba, the US government drafted the Platt Amendment as conditions for giving up the Cuban territory they had won from Spain. There were 7 conditions and one of those was the establishment of Guantanamo Bay. Fidel Castro and his chief gestapo butcher Che Guevara overthrow the previous government and then proceed to break most of the other conditions (though it could be argued that the US should have exercised article 3 and prevented the coup).

Cuba later argues that the Vienna convention on treaties overrules the previous agreement, but the Vienna convention is explicitly non-retroactive (and more to the point, agreements due to a war are by their very nature coercive). It could be argued that the US created an excuse for war isn't very savory and most Americans of the time would have opposed involvement if an honest case had been made (I agree with this). If they had not, it's most likely that Cuba would have remained a Spanish colony and that point is immaterial.

International law doesn't leave room for "pettiness" in this case. If the US were trying to pretend the Cuban government didn't exist and was trying to force non-US entities to comply with that non-reality, that go far beyond petty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base#Guan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platt_Amendment


Personally, I wouldn't use the word petty because I think it suggests that the motivation is basically about childish insecurity and that there isn't a deliberate rationale behind it.

Instead, I think China does this sort of thing to control discourse and/or to send constant reminders that certain lines should not be crossed or there will be consequences.

Both are bad things, but they are different types of bad thing.


Censorship has a natural way of forever expanding and broadening in scope.

Often because it’s the only power some groups can exert on others (in this case China's gov to western companies) so they push it as far as they can into the realm of ridiculousness. Plus people get job promotions or feel-good emotions about "doing something".

Eventually you run out of legitimate things to ban so you expand the scope. Then you can start banning people who complain about bannings, which naturally generating groups with victim complexes warranting more bannings, etc.

This is not unique to China.


The United States doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as a country. Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations. Apple's revenue in Taiwan is peanuts compared to that of mainland China. The list goes on.


The US has also never recognized Taiwan as being part of the PRC. I'm not even sure why you're bringing this up in relation to the parent's comment.


We might not officially recognize them as a country, but we do have a law called the "Taiwan Relations Act".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act


> The United States doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as a country.

That means little. The US has de-facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and has made official commitments to its defense against threats (which realistically could only ever come from the PRC), such as selling it arms. The weirdness and official ambiguity here are driven by the PRC's sensitivities, and do not represent any real commitment to the PRC's position.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act


The US used to recognise the government as the government of the whole of China and the communists as insurgents, with Taiwan holding the Chinese seat in the UN.

Obviously, at some point realpolitik caught up and they reversed their stance, though they continue to help Taiwan because... more realpolitik.


Trump enraged China when he tweeted that he talked to "the President of Taiwan" though, so clearly most people in the US think of Taiwan as being separate from China


This level of pettiness is very much the international norm for territorial and sovereignty disputes.

The only newsworthy thing is that China's a big enough market that it can compel vendors to comply.


They do it because it works. Combine censorship with a populace that is largely taught not to exercise critical thinking and you get China. Many of my Chinese colleagues who did not know about Nazi concentration camps, let alone the concentration camps that are currently running in their own country today.


Mmm, yeah, lack of critical thinking combined with a nationalist, "we're number one" media environment.

We would never be like that.. I mean, we're better than them. We're number one.


Petty would be China requesting Apple to hide the Japanese or American flag.

Taiwan is the result of a civil war. No one says Americans are petty when they try to remove Confederate flags or when Germany bans the Nazi flag.


The ROC is the successor state to the Qing Dynasty. It acquired Taiwan when the Japanese surrendered it at the end of WW2.

The PRC is the result of the civil war. The ROC never stopped existing nor did it start to exist as the result of the civil war.


Imagine that the war of 1812 had resulted a complete British/Canadian conquest of the US, which lasted for the most of the 19th century. Then imagine that Florida had successfully seceded from the US after WWII and joined the Soviet Union, along with all of Canada. Then finally imagine that the Soviet Union won the Cold War and has been the sole world superpower for the last thirty years.

How would we feel, in that world, if the US government wanted to censor people mentioning Florida? Of course there would be complicated questions about whether that censorship was ethical or helpful, and about the government's real motivations for proposing it. But I think it would be clear to everyone involved that "kindergarten levels of pettiness" wasn't the right starting point for understanding those motivations.


This is an incredibly tortured alternate history metaphor.

A much simpler real world analogy would be the DPRK forcing censorship of the South Korean flag, or the ROK doing the same to North Korea. Or something involving Israel and Iran. Or India and Pakistan.


I don't think censoring facts is ever anything but black and white. The fact that Taiwan exists, Hong Kong exists, Falun Gong, Tibet...

These are all real things. There shouldn't ever be a reason to hide the fact that they exist no matter if todays reality wasn't todays reality.


I mean, yes, I'm an American and it's no surprise to anyone that I think censoring speech is deeply problematic. (I think telling people how much money they're allowed to spend on political ads is also problematic, though most Americans seems to be cool with that restriction. It's really hard to draw black and white lines when you get into the details.)

But when I see other people (in China, in Europe, really in most places that aren't the US) supporting tighter speech restrictions than we do, I understand that that's for some reason other than them being assholes, or childish, or hypersensitive, or whatever. I probably wouldn't like their reasons if I fully understood them, but I also accept that being an American means I don't fully understand them.

[As a side note not directed at you but at some others in this thread, it sounds like trying to draw this distinction gets me labeled as some kind of communist shill. What the fuck ever.]


Facts are rarely black and white. Look at USA reporting about Venezuela or Cuba. It's factual, yet it also implicitly takes sides.

Which facts? How are they presented?


You are confusing perspective with facts. A cup is filled with water, you can say its half empty or half full. The cup has water is a fact. Whether its half empty or half full is perspective. But at the end of the day, there is still water in the cup.


I'm relating perspective to facts.

Palestine has a UN seat, Taiwan doesn't. Taiwan has control of their territory, Palestine doesn't.

Which one is more 'a country'?


Tell your bosses at the Ministry of Culture that trying to use Britain and the United States as analogies to the situation with Taiwan is going to backfire on you. At this point, Taiwan is fully-independent with its own national identity, and so saying they need to reunify with China is as ridiculous as asking Americans to "reunify" with the UK. It's not gonna happen, at least not voluntarily.


Exactly. China’s reaction is far from petty.

They had a civil war and the other side fled to Taiwan. This is a major issue for China.


The anger towards Apple in this thread is misdirected. The US government's official stance recognizes "that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China" and that "the United States does not support Taiwan independence"

From: https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/

Why should Apple be expected to take a political stance at odds with the official Chinese and US government policies?


The only way the US was allowed to trade with China is if it accepted the one China policy. The US is FORCED to not accept Taiwan.

Taiwan is not part of China. Period.


You forgot the first part of the US statement:

“The United States 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.”


The US's relationship with Taiwan is much more nuanced than that. Taiwan-US relations are actually at the closest they've ever been. For example:

1. US sells $8B of fighter jets to Taiwan (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/approves-8bn-sale-66-...)

2. US passes the TAIPEI act, which outlines the US's strategy in dissuading Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic allies from switching recognition to China. (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/340...)

3. Visa free travel in the US for Taiwanese citizens (https://www.export.gov/article?id=Taiwan-Visa-Requirements)

The US might officially not recognize Taiwan as a country, but would it sell $8B of military equipment to a country it truly believed to be China?


I'll quote the full text "the United States recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China."

I'll put the emphasis on "Chinese position"


> Why should Apple be expected to take a political stance

It is really a political stance to have Unicode Emoji 1.0 as a feature?


Apple stood up to the US government's requests to decrypt devices but capitulated to China's request to remove an image of another country's flag.

This is scarey.


In the US, we have a legal framework to resolve disputes with the government. In China, they don't.


They also denied apps which track US bombing and attacks, drone strikes and such


Do you have more information? I didn't find anything with a few quick searches but would like to know more.



Removing an emoji from a keyboard is as scary as hacking all of someone’s personal data?


> Removing an emoji from a keyboard is as scary as hacking all of someone’s personal data?

Yes. While seemly small, removing the emoji is an instance of political censorship.


I doubt Apple leadership is unbothered by the reality of censorship that some countries impose. Unfortunately China fully embraces censorship though. There is a lot of good done by giving another billion and a half people access to a non-privacy-invading mobile OS so balancing that against bowing to censorship is a tough decision.

If you think you disagree, please discuss your reasons.


> There is a lot of good done by giving another billion and a half people access to a non-privacy-invading mobile OS so balancing that against bowing to censorship is a tough decision.

> If you think you disagree, please discuss your reasons.

Because it's not going to work that way, since that "access" actually amounts to authoritarian leverage over the ecosystem. Apple feels it needs the Chinese market more than the PRC feels it needs Apple [1]. As a result Apple's already haded over the Chinese iCloud to a local company (state owned, I think), which will undoubtably hand over encryption keys to the authorities whenever it's asked. It's not inconceivable to me that the PRC may use its leverage over Apple further weaken the iPhone ecosystem (either for Chinese phones or worldwide).

[1] The PRC has many domestic manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo (~OnePlus), Vivo, etc. The domestic costs for them for banning a foreign maker with a sub-10% marketshare like Apple are approximately zero.


I have no inside knowledge but what I’ve heard is that Apple’s cloud generally does not hold any keys. Keys are derived from information available only on user devices including the user password, and do not leave the devices. There are exceptions for cases where required for some cloud based functionality but that would not include simple storage and retrieval.

However this may be different in China. Just saying it’s possible for the cloud to be kept in the dark in some cases and that’s what Apple supposedly does whenever they can. Yeah some weasel words there, I realize.


Sure but there is obviously a difference in the effect.

Hiding an emoji is tiny, turning over all of someone’s files is much more intrusive, killing someone would be far worse again.

To say they are the same seems deeply illogical.


> Hiding an emoji is tiny, turning over all of someone’s files is much more intrusive, killing someone would be far worse again.

I think you need to distinguish between actions against society and actions against an individual. Censorship is almost always an action against society; turning over files is sometimes against society but often just against an individual.


That’s a clearly false distinction.

If Apple turns over the files of one individual to the government, then whole society is vulnerable to that, and this is incomparably more oppressive than removing a one of the UI buttons that displays a particular flag.


The thing you're not getting is that removing an emoji at government direction for political reasons leaves the whole of society open to other things getting removed for similar reasons: such as books, movies, news reports, etc. That's nearly always oppressive.

Turning over files to the government can be a normal law enforcement thing, and many societies have figured out how to do that and preserve civil liberties. It can be non oppressive.


The thing you aren’t getting is that hiding a single emoji button for a flag in Hong Kong makes almost no contribution to changing the state of Chinese censorship and is enshrined in Chinese law, whereas intentionally undermining encryption on consumer products in the US At the behest of the government is both unconstitutional, unprecedented and a massive concession to authoritarianism.

You continue to make an absurd and indefensible false equivalence.


> You continue to make an absurd and indefensible false equivalence.

You're stridently insisting on your interpretation, when there's more than one way to look at it. I'm just asking you to not dismiss the emoji thing so easily.


I’m not dismissing it. I think it’s a problem.

I just think it is nowhere near comparable to the issue of giving access to someone’s personal data.


It's worth noting that the ROC flag (== Taiwan flag) was the flag flown all over the mainland before 1949. It's a part of mainland history as well.

I'm not supporting any political stance here, but just saying that it's a bit weird to ban a symbol that was part of the mainland's history as well, and on its own, carries more historical significance than just Taiwan independence.


Indeed, this flag has little, if anything, to do with "Taiwan independence".

But according to the PRC the ROC no longer exists (that's what they mean by "Taiwan is part of China" and I'm guessing that they see the flag used by people opposing the (PRC) government, so the standard procedure is to ban it.

I'm curious, though, if this comes from a specific demand or if, for example Apple has moved to releasing the same version of iOS in HK and the mainland (I'm guessing that the flag isn't in the mainland's version of iOS here, but I don't know for a fact).


The article mentions that you can still view and copy/paste the Taiwan emoji in Honk Kong, whereas you can't on the mainland.


While the US doesn’t ban the confederate flag, it is heavily discouraged and official government cannot use it. Lots of controversy over confederate symbolism too with one side arguing it is history, and another arguing it is racist symbolism.

Germany bans the swastika.

I do think it is well within the sovereign right of a nation to ban symbols of a competing government. In Taiwan’s case it is claiming itself as a rightful government to China, which is actually somewhat different than simply a historical symbol. Allowing it can be a tacit acknowledgement of legitimacy.


it's a lot more like if the confederacy won and banned the stars and bars in this case.


> if the confederacy won and banned the stars and bars in this case.

I think you meant the flag of (what would be) the preceding national government against which the Confederacy would have won, the Stars and Stripes.

The Stars and Bars is a different flag [0] that it would be odder (and not parallel to any construction of the PRC/ROC issue that I can see) for the Confederacy to ban.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_Sta...


Ubuntu was the first OS to support Kurdish in 2006[1]. We have to keep pushing for open platforms in the face of state sponsored cultural suppression. Prior to 1991, Turkey banned speaking Kurdish in public and they successfully pressured Microsoft to keep it out of Windows until version 10.

It is of increasing relevancy as imperialist governments around the world put pressure on minority populations. Just yesterday the Trump admin opened the doors to Turkish expansion into a Kurdish region of northern Syria.

1. http://www.unthinkingly.com/2006/12/07/ubuntu-in-kurdish/


Is this the same Apple that was peacocking about defying its OWN government not long ago, during the FBI iPhone access hullabaloo?

Now they're aiding the repression of an entire nation trying to defy a much more tyrannical government?

Regarding Taiwan, I haven't been there, but from what I've seen/read about the country and spoken to the people from there, their situation seems like such a shame too. They deserve better recognition. China has long been acting like a petty schoolyard bully, "If you're their friend you can't be our friend!"

I know I shouldn't be feeling this way about an entire people, but this whole situation is making me cold towards Chinese people in general, for letting such a government carry on like this for so long.


The whole "unrecognised country" nonsense should begone. Everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country (and does a reasonable job of being a decent country for the people living in it, it obviously is a better country than a number of completely recognized ones) yet it still has "limited recognition". How about recognizing the facts rather than virtual reality of politicians' imagination? Banning an entire country is bullshit.


Part of the politics is that the Republic of China still officially claims to be the legitimate government of the whole of China. So it really is recognize one or the other. Politics within Taiwan have so far prevented declaration of Taiwanese independence from China in any form, and the One-China policy that everybody agrees to prevents recognition of the PRC and establishment of two-state relationships. Until either of these political realities change, the formal fiction of unrecognized statehood is unlikely to change.


The RoK and DPRK each claim sovereignty over all of Korea, which both sides legally view as one country. That hasn’t stopped the rest of the world from recognizing them separately.

Taiwan’s partial recognition is due to pressure from China, not any logical impossibility of recognizing two different countries that officially claim to be one.


This is not very true. Taiwan, Republic of China, has made attempts to change its name, only to be met with the threat of war from the People’s Republic of China if they perform a name change to Republic of Taiwan.


I think it’s about time China gets the chance to make good on this promise, or gets defanged when it turns out they don’t have the stomach for it (they have a good thing going, shame to let it be ruined by war).

Everyone is tiptoeing around them for fear of waking the dragon.


An uneasy peace is miles better than war.


To a point. I’m not saying we should have a war. I’m saying we should stop tiptoeing around China.


When was this?


De Jure nationhood is a stupid game that ignores facts on the ground in favor of politicians vision. It is predicated on a fallacy that "legitimacy" is a vital resource and that those already in the nation club have a monopoly on it. At this point calling groups "countries" and calling other groups "terrorists" is better understood as the geopolitical equivalent of a curse word and/or a propaganda trope.

-Order of Malta. De Jure recognition, no territory or population to speak of. Basically a forgotten joke country left over from a bygone era.

-Trasnistaria. Has population, land, flag, collects taxes. Only recognized by Russia. There's a few Russian backed puppets like this, I won't name them all.

-Taiwan. Already discussed.

-Hong Kong. Mainland Chinese media calls the protestors terrorists. Yet another example of "terrorist" meaning simply "whoever the establishment wants to de-legitimize". If you follow the CCP narrative, the thing they care about isn't Democracy but separatism. "One China" is about not recognizing Taiwan and HK as a matter of ethno-nationalist principal.

-Palestine. Recognized by majority of UN countries. Still not recognized by US, Israel, and associated power block. Why? Because of the stupid belief that recognition will somehow legitimate it.

-ISIS. At their peak they had a sizeable chunk of land, a flag, a capital, civic functions like a court system, an oil industry, handed out passports, were fighting a conventional land war using conventional (not terrorist/guerilla) tactics, had a uniformed army, and the word "state" was right there in the name. But don't you dare call them a state lest someone mistake you for a terrorist sympathizer.

This is why I subscribe to De Facto nationhood instead. A nation is a nation when it satisfies the following properties:

-A plot of land with well defined borders.

-A permanent population on said land.

-A Monopoly on violence over said land.

-An organization capable of credibly making peace, declaring war, and otherwise accepting agreements with other nations.

The last one is tricky as it only specifies the capability not the actualization. For example, if the organization agrees to peace but the individual factions of the army keep fighting then this condition is not satisfied and what you have is a stateless warlord situation. For another example, the ISIS situation clearly had an organization which was capable of agreeing to a surrender or appointing an ambassador, but they never wanted to or were allowed to. The condition is still satisfied even though they never did it.


> Order of Malta. De Jure recognition, no territory or population to speak of. Basically a forgotten joke country left over from a bygone era.

Almost no one, including the Order itself, considers the Sovereign Military Order of Malta a country; it's the usual textbook example of a sovereign entity that is not a state/country by those who see it as sovereign (a point on which there is considerable dispute, despite the claim in its name and it's wide diplomatic interactions and grants of extraterritoriality, and, for it's headquarters, concurrent sovereignty with Italy.)

It's basically a NGO with a sui generis diplomatic status and disputed (among scholars) international legal status.


How would the breakaway province of Transnistria in Moldova be classified in this context?


I actually wish there were more sovereign orders like that. Any group of people sharing common values and resources sufficient to make sense this way should have a right for sovereignty even if they don't own any land whatsoever, let alone when they have legitimately bought some. Sure there should be limits on what they are allowed to do (e.g. they should probably not be allowed to assemble nukes at a member's farm) but these should be applied by means of the same procedures like with recognized nations.


I would rather put being able and willing to secure human rights and functional social-economic framework on the controlled territory among the criteria for recognition.


Based on this framework it doesn't seem entirely clear to me Taiwan is a de facto nation. Do they have the monopoly on violence over their land? From my understanding (which admittedly isn't great) they at best of a duopoly on violence in their land shared with China, and China might have a better claim to that monopoly than they do. That being said, I completely agree with your broader point De Jure nationhood is a stupid game, and it's much more sensible to simply look at reality and make your own judgments about who is and isn't a legitimate state.


I do not think China using violence over, or on Taiwan would go over well.

Taiwan can do anything it wants without repercussions inside Taiwan, thus ‘monopoly on force’.

China using force in Taiwan would just be a declaration of war.


Using that argument, any country with a foreign military presence inside its borders isn't a country.


PRC doesn't have a military presence in Taiwan


-ISIS. At their peak they had a sizeable chunk of land, a flag, a capital, civic functions like a court system, an oil industry, handed out passports, were fighting a conventional land war using conventional (not terrorist/guerilla) tactics, had a uniformed army, and the word "state" was right there in the name. But don't you dare call them a state lest someone mistake you for a terrorist sympathizer.

That's playing a bit fast and loose with the facts there. ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism.


> That's playing a bit fast and loose with the facts there. ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism.

To me that just sounds like textbook nationhood. The defining feature of the state is having the monopoly on violence within its borders.


I think the question of treating ISIS territory as an independent state, with all the international law that would imply about respecting its independence and autonomy, treating it as a peer at the UN, etc., is a textbook case of why (international-legal) legitimacy is a status not granted automatically in the basis of territory and control alone, and should not be.

The things ISIS members did to subpopulations people within that territory were almost universally condemned across the world as large-scale serious human abuse, and the territories were obtained through quite recent violence from other nations whose administrative borders had not stopped being recognised internationally.

So I think it was widely regarded that ISIS should not be granted the international respect and autonomy of legal recognition, nor should it keep any power it had of a monopoly on violence within its borders (or any borders).

That's not to say there aren't widely condemned things going on in other countries. But there is a kind of collective, sometimes grudging, but systematised respect for the autonomy of countries as nations, which I think was widely regarded as not something that would be right to grant to ISIS (or take away from the nations that ISIS had taken territory from).


>as an independent state, with all the international law that would imply about respecting its independence and autonomy.

The UN absolutely has provisions in its charter for approved wars. The Korean war was UN approved. A regime that is violent against civilians and outwardly genocidal towards religious minorities like ISIS is exactly the situation UN approved intervention was made for (designed with the Nazi's in mind).

I reject the premise that calling them a state would entail granting them anything.


Saudi Arabia also does all of the things you listed, except perhaps desecration of cultural sites. Just because a country does things you don’t like doesn’t make it not a country


I wasn't arguing that, I was just calling out the parent for saying ISIS didn't use terrorism as a tactic.

Nice whataboutism there though.


> I was just calling out the parent for saying ISIS didn't use terrorism as a tactic.

Where did they say this? I don't see anything about ISIS not using terrorism as a tactic, just that if you recognize ISIS as a state, you get called a terrorist sympathizer. Besides, plenty of countries use terrorist tactics when at war, unfortunately.


How is it whataboutism? Your criteria for being a country also apply to Saudi Arabia, which anybody would generally accept to be a country.

If I say a square is any four sided object with equal sides, is a rhombus whataboutism?


> ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force.

you mean things which "recognized" states do all the time?


> ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism.

The US has done all of these except crucifixions. Arguably, we've done all of them (except crucifixion) within the last decade. I'm not sure we can claim "not crucifying" as moral high ground when Americans did things like the following (warning: what follows is horrifying):

"He was chained by his neck and dragged out of the county court by observers. He was then paraded through the street, all while being stabbed and beaten, before being held down and castrated. He was then lynched in front of Waco's city hall."

"Over 10,000 spectators, including city officials and police, gathered to watch the attack. There was a celebratory atmosphere among whites at the spectacle murder, and many children attended during their lunch hour. Members of the mob cut off his fingers, and hung him over a bonfire after saturating him with coal oil. He was repeatedly lowered and raised over the fire for about two hours. After the fire was extinguished, his charred torso was dragged through the town and parts of his body were sold as souvenirs. A professional photographer took pictures as the event unfolded, providing rare imagery of a lynching in progress. The pictures were printed and sold as postcards in Waco."[1]

This happened in 1916--most would consider the US to have been a nation for over a century by this point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington


You've just described the Roman Empire to a <T>.

(Is that generic type notation?)


Was the Roman Empire a country?


Not really, it was the alpha version of the EU.


Thankfully many international treaties have been made in the last few thousand years and civilized nations wage war differently now. I was expressly disputing the parent poster's claim that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics, which is a statement I find difficult for anyone to really take issue with.


While I think it's clear that ISIS was/is evil, I'm not sure that its as clear that those actions (or at least all of them) were terrorism.

I'd define terrorism as something along the lines of "using guerrilla tactics against civilian targets in order to achieve political ends". I would differentiate that from atrocities committed against a state's own people in order to keep them in line (for example Stalin's purges), human rights violations (e.g. witch trials or killing homosexuals), ethnic/religious cleansing, or guerrilla attacks against targets with legitimate strategic value.

My understanding, although I am definitely not super informed on this, is that ISIS's atrocities were mostly keeping people in line, human rights abuse, and religious cleansing. Therefore I would not consider those acts to be terrorism. However, that doesn't make them any less evil.


Whether a state uses terrorist tactics is orthogonal to the issue of it being a state. Was the Russian shooting down of MH-17 not a terrorist act undertaken by a state? How about the bombing of the Beirut barracks? How about any number of acts by Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, or Imperial Japan?


Sure, I won't even dispute that. What I'm disputing is that the parent poster said that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics.

That is blatantly a false statement. I can't believe the negative reaction towards pointing that out.


What they said was ISIS "were fighting a conventional land war using conventional (not terrorist/guerilla) tactics"

You are summarising that as "ISIS did not use terrorist tactics"

I think that is a misleading summary. I don't think the poster meant to dispute that ISIS was behind terrorist attacks, both in the Middle East and also in other parts of the world. What they were saying, is that ISIS was engaging in conventional (non-terrorist) military operations against the Syrian and Iraqi governments, other rebel groups, etc. Terrorism and conventional military tactics are not mutually exclusive, one can pursue both strategies at the same time. But the second strategy is a sign that one is dealing with something having de facto statehood, as opposed to a non-state terrorist group.

If you are getting heavily down-voted, a possible explanation is that people perceive you to be engaging in an uncharitable reading of the remarks you are responding to


> If you are getting heavily down-voted, a possible explanation is that people perceive you to be engaging in an uncharitable reading of the remarks you are responding to

If they wanted to say that ISIS was using conventional _AND_ terrorist tactics that would be one thing. They specifically said "not". You even quoted.

If my options are either to stay silent or charitably read someone's claim that ISIS' tactics don't meet their definition of the word terrorism, because they're a state, then honestly I don't want an account on this site anymore.


You're getting some negative reaction because you're missing the points OP was making.

1) At points, they were waging a war that did not rely on terrorist/guerrilla tactics. OP did not claim they don't do 'terrorist stuff' at all. Waging conventional war requires control of territory, which is why this is important.

2) Saying ISIS is/controls a state would have you labeled as a terrorist sympathizer in the media or in conversation. This demonstrates that calling something a 'state' has an implicit moral connotation in popular culture. OP is arguing this should not be true.

None of OPs points were a _moral_ judgement of ISIS. I think we can all agree ISIS is bad.

For instance, I strongly believe Palestine should be an independent, free state distinct from Israel. However, the UN _recognizing_ it as a state does not mean it magically becomes one. The UN is just making a political point, but sadly one that has little impact on the reality in Palestine.


Thank you. This is exactly what I was getting at.


It's not nonsense, and "everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country" is a flawed statement. The UN does not recognize Taiwan. Taiwan is recognized as a sovereignty by 19 UN member states. It has formal diplomatic relationships with ~50 UN member states. UN has 193 member states in total. Please refrain from using subjective unprovable ideology to represent the mass.


The UN is a political organization and, importantly, highly leveraged by China for political gain. The objective reality is that Taiwan is an independent country that sets its own laws and is free to conduct its own foreign relations.


The objective reality is that most of the world, including the United States, does not actually recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. It recognizes that it exists as... Something.

I think you would be hard-pressed to argue that the Department of State, and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Japan[1], etc, etc, etc, have been 'highly leveraged by China for political gain'.

Oh, and to throw another monkey wrench in your argument, consider that both China and Taiwan believe that Taiwan is not an independent country, but that it is part of China.

What they disagree on is who is the legitimate government of China.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy


Countries that don't recognize Taiwan, the US included, do so solely because the GDP of China is much greater than the GDP of Taiwan and China is more than willing to throw their weight around in an attempt to legitimize their claim through coercion. If you hold a gun to someone's head and/or give them $100 and tell them to repeat that you are a cabbage, you don't become the cabbage, no matter how much of the world you coerce.

Both governments make claims against the other's land but that doesn't make them the same government.


I do all sorts of things, because people who have physical, or economic power over me compel me to. Just because their authority is enforced through force (Or the implicit threat of force) (Or the promise of rewards for compliance) does not mean that they are illegitimate authorities.

Compelling other people to do things, with either a carrot, or a stick, is an incredibly normal state of affairs in life. My landlord will have me out on my ass if I don't cut him a check on the first of every month - does that mean that my recognition of his authority to my apartment is illegitimate, or somehow coercive?


coun·try /ˈkəntrē/ noun 1. a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory.

Does the Peoples Republic of China currently occupy and govern the island of Taiwan?


1. I'm not sure how this has anything to do with your claim that PROC is improperly coercing the world into saying that black is white, by putting a gun to their heads. (And I still don't understand how it squares with the reality that the ROC is trying its best to do the same thing.)

2. Is Taiwan a distinct nation, or is it part of the Chinese Nation?

Both the PROC and the ROC currently seem to think that it is the latter. Most of the world agrees with them.

(Bonus points: Is Catalonia a country? What about Cascadia? What about Transnistria, and South Ossetia? What about Crimea? By your definition, it seems to quite clearly be part of Russia... Be careful where you express that viewpoint, though, it's not one shared by most of the world's governments, or most Ukranians...)


In regards to 1. I’m a bit confused. Are you claiming China is landlord to the entire world?

Or that if they were, coercing all the population to say white is black would be the normal state of affairs?


> Department of State, and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil and Japan

Anyone in these departments of state is aware that Taiwan is a separate country. They’re just not able to say it.


You can think of it this way. If the PRC were to say, "oh, by-the-way, feel free to recognize Taiwan as an independent country", every other country in the world would likely do so.


The US has "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Strait since the 1970s, but it has never supported the notion that Taiwan (and Kinmen, Taiping, etc.) is PRC territory or that the mainland is ROC territory. "China" is not a nationstate. There's only the ROC (1912) and PRC (1949).


The objectivity in your eyes is subjectivity to another. Similarly objectivity in others is subjective in yours. There is never true objectivity in our collective presence. If UN ceases to be your objectivity, that's respected.


I mean, you can take a plane to Taipei. It isn't subjective or unprovable: the ROC will check your passport. They issue the currency you will use to buy food. The police work for them. Taxes are collected, exclusively, by them.


>I mean, you can take a plane to Taipei. It isn't subjective or unprovable: the ROC will check your passport. They issue the currency you will use to buy food. The police work for them. Taxes are collected, exclusively, by them.

The question of whether or not ISIS is therefore a country is left as an exercise for the reader.


They were a country for a period of time. They had passports and a currency. I don’t see how that disproves OP’s point


It would be a better exercise to define a sovereign state first and then independently apply the test to Taiwan and IS. History is full of unpleasant governments.


I assume they were, but since most of the world was intent on squashing the country flat as a bug I doubt formal recognition would have done anything for them.


Why wouldn't everybody recognize it as a country and declare it a war?


You are technically right in that most states recognize Taiwan as a province of the PRC. However, describing Taiwan as a distinct country is ambiguous, since "country" doesn't have a strict definition. E.g., it's normal to consider the parts of the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark to be countries, although they are not independent. It's not much of a stretch to consider Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan, or Catalonia, to be countries too.

Edit: if you look at the font in question, it does have flags for England and Aruba, for example, so offering the flags doesn't imply that you are recognizing the places as sovereign states.


The parts of the Netherlands are called provinces, and are not sovereign nations.

The larger area you call the Netherlands that includes Belgium and Luxembourg is currently called the Benelux[1]

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux


I was thinking of the Kingdom of the Netherlands with its constituent countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Netherlands


Ah, my apologies. I’ve never heard ‘the Netherlands’ used to refer to the kingdom without actually specifying that part.

(And a few times to the 1700’s ish low countries, hence my confusion)


The UN was founded in 1945. I have reason to believe that countries existed long before that.


"Everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country"

Really? Does your government officially call Taiwan "a country"? Show us the proof. Considering only 15 countries in this universe still do this, it's almost safe to guess NO.


"Everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country" is referring to people, not to governments. Just because a government doesn't recognize a country doesn't mean the people under that government don't recognize the country.


Theoretically, a government should represent its people, which should be the foundation of democracy. If that foundation were broken, it is far more worrisome than these China/Taiwan/HK events.

I suggest fixing it ASAP. For example, the op can protest to urge his/her government to recognize Taiwan as a country, which will be "a beautiful landscape" as described by Nancy Patricia Pelosi.


> Theoretically, a government should represent its people, which should be the foundation of democracy. If that foundation were broken

Well, in many countries it absolutely is. And there is no way to fix this.

And even if a government was really elected legitimately and chosen not to recognize Taiwan I doubt this meant the people didn't know Taiwan is a de-facto independent country and actively wanted to keep it unrecognized. To be honest I myself have only found out Taiwan recognition is limited a couple of years ago. I always knew there is such a country and never knew about its diplomatic problems.


> Well, in many countries it absolutely is. And there is no way to fix this.

That a legal government of a modern democratic country cannot represent its people is a horrendous claim. As a strong believer of democracy, I'd rather assume that you were the minority in this case. The everyone claim may hold true for everyone you know (among the minority of your country of course).


There are countries with high corruption rates where elections are well-known to be manipulated in a number of illegal ways, e.g. by tossing in huge numbers of fake votes and by blocking opposition from participating in elections for fake reasons. And even if the elections were held correctly, an elected government which ignores its duty to protect minorities is not democratic.

As a strong believer of democracy are you naive enough to believe all the elections are perfectly fair, no party at power ever cheats to imitate democracy and that democracy is about everybody sacrificing themselves to obey "the majority"? Do you believe the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is actually democratic? Do you believe the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is liberal?


"As a strong believer of democracy are you naive enough to believe all the elections are perfectly fair, no party at power ever cheats to imitate democracy and that democracy is about everybody sacrificing themselves to obey "the majority?"

As believer of HEALTHY democracy, I've never made any such implications. Guys from US/UK/EU claiming Taiwan is a country should go protesting right away, don't let democracy down!

As I already said, if democracy doesn't work in your country, don't waste your time caring about China/TW/HK unless you actually live there.


I was writing to make it clear that it's inappropriate for minority to make such "everybody" claim. And obviously the above reasoning applies perfectly to EVERYBODY holding similar opinions, especially those living in modern democratic countries.


It took until 1979 for the United States to recognize that China was, in fact, governed from Beijing, not Taipei.

(Beijing won the civil war in 1950.)

Today, in 2019, Taiwan still does not recognize China.

Recognition is a chip in the game of geopolitics.


You made few mistakes: 1. Beijing won the civil war at 1949. 2. UN has recognized PRC at 1971 and abandoned Taiwan or ROC. And till now, only very limited countries in the world (17) recognized Taiwan as independent state


Down to 15 now, after Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched diplomatic ties in recent weeks https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3029626/ta...


This type of localization/internationalization is common place. I remember doing locale files that contained timezones for Nokia phones for Hebrew and Arabic. Notable the Hebrew files didn't contain Palestine for example. China didn't have Taiwan etc.


In a way it's a good thing that China is revealing its petulant nature to the world. Not that they hid it all that well, but until recently everybody was too busy enjoying cheap electronics to notice the monster they were feeding.

China—the people and country—are spectacular. China—the Party—is an malevolent force obsessed with self-preservation. Such is the nature of autocratic regimes.

A quote from Czech dissident Václav Havel bears repeating:

> The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies. Depriving people of information is called making it available...the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.


> In a way it's a good thing that China is revealing its petulant nature to the world.

It's probably somewhat risky strategically, but they likely realize they're now strong enough to do such things with absolute impunity, and it will make their eventual victory that much sweeter.


I think they are tired of playing crouching tiger hidden dragon. Its good for China, but not so much for the rest of the world.


The two top priorities for any institution are first to hold on to the power they have, and second to expand those powers. This is as true for the neighbourhood gardening club as it is for the Communist party of China.


Okey.. But the gardening club won't try to censorship all information out there that it views displeasing? I'm not sure what you are suggesting with your rhetoric, but there are differences when the organization at hand is either authoritarian or non-authoritarian. And I'd argue that some gardening clubs aren't even seeking for any "expansion of their power" at all. They are simply clubs to hang out and talk about gardening. You suggesting that they both share the same, ominous intent is kinda dishonest.


The whole one China policy has always been confusing to me, but haven't done too much research. Taiwan, Hong Kong and China each have different entry requirements for example for visiting, yet they are supposed to be the same country? I guess it has to do with control after their civil war though, but confusing for people who haven't been following the whole story. They are not separate, yet they are separate is like some sort of double speak.

But the US has some confusing things too going on, like people from American Samoa are considered US nationals but they aren't US Citizens. They still get US passports, but can't vote, etc. I guess they aren't technically citizens of any country then but aren't completely stateless since still considered a national. It's like they aren't really citizens anywhere but are kinda like a half citizen in a way since they still get a passport. John Oliver did a segment on this, https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE


One country can have various entry requirements for its regions. China’s own Hainan island lets me enter visa-free for 30 days while Mainland China doesn’t.

Same identical country, different rules.


Yeah I know I've heard that about Tibet too, has different rules to entering than the rest of China. Then I've heard there's even cities that ban westerns completely, but unsure if that's true.

Just a very odd concept to someone from North America. If you fly to Miami you are allowed to visit New York or Seattle all the way across the country. Same with Canada.

I know Mexico has some odd things like that too though, you can visit border towns or cruise ports but if you want to go so much more inland you need a Visitor Permit called a FMM, or tourist card some refer to it as. Read conflicting amount of miles, seems about 12 miles though in. So seems like if your cruise final departure was in Mexico and you flew back home you might need to worry about it, but a port of call at the beach seems like most wouldn't need it. However read also flights and cruises will also include it with your ticket, but if you were taking a road trip across Mexico you'd for sure need to get one yourself it seems. But seems more like a tax than anything, since not the same as a visa.


(Hopefully I get this mostly right… I'm by no means an expert, so if I've gotten something wrong, please correct me.)

For the one China thing, see Wikipedia[1]. Essentially, China split into the PRC (mainland China, referred to as just "China") and the ROC (referred to as "Taiwan"). The split was caused by civil war[2]; each side essentially views themselves as "China", the other side being a rebellion. (Though I think Taiwan is split on this, and I believe some of the politics there acknowledges the more defacto reality of two countries.)

Mainland China (the PRC), AFAICT, in propaganda really, really wants you to believe that there is really only one China (them), and that Taiwan is part of that. Hence why they would want the removal of the Taiwan flag emoji. I think to anyone with their eyes open, the de facto state of things is that there exists two countries. But b/c mainland China has a lot of political weight, and only wants everyone else to not recognize Taiwan as a real, independent nation, there is a lot of political dancing-about-the-point to maintain relations with two countries but without outright calling it as it is.

Hong Kong is weird. It used to be a British territory[3]:

> Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after Qing China ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War, and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The territory was transferred to China in 1997.

As you see, that "99-year lease" expired, and it's now part of China again. Hong Kong has operated sort of (but not fully) separately from China, see "One country, two systems"[4]. Then we come to the recent Hong Kong protests[5], in particular:

> The inclusion of mainland China in the amendment is of concern to different sectors of Hong Kong society. Pro-democracy advocates fear the removal of the separation of the region's jurisdiction from mainland Chinese laws administered by the Communist Party, thereby eroding the "one country, two systems" principle in practice since the 1997 handover.

Hence, I think, the rebellions. They (Hong Kong) are worried (I believe rightly) that they'll lose what freedoms they have.

> US has some confusing things too going on, like people from American Samoa are considered US nationals but they aren't US Citizens. They still get US passports, but can't vote, etc. I guess they aren't technically citizens of any country then but aren't completely stateless since still considered a national.

Yep. This never really made sense to me, since supposedly one of the reasons we fought for independence in the first place was things like "taxation without representation". I think you have it mostly correct: they are technically "US nationals", not "citizens". It doesn't make "sense" to me, in that it seems against the principles on which we were founded.

These sort of apply here: "The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history." "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." You have to view this with the context of history, and that there are multiple entities trying to write very different histories if they emerge the victor.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country,_two_systems

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_protests


The Extradition Bill ostensibly existed to allow extradition to ⊠⊠


Hmmm. Would I get banned by the GFW for these two characters? 0x1F1F9 0x1F1FC...? (🇹🇼)


The last time I was in China, HN was already banned.


I mean, AFAIK my blog isn't. Yet. I get visitors from China on my post about controlling the world's cheapest quadcopter from a PC via arduino and nrf24l01+...

edit: I just checked, it's accessible from mainland China, though quite slow.


If anyone else wants to check their website's accessibility from China, I run a service that lets developers proxy HTTP requests through real Chinese (and worldwide) residential ISP customers: https://packetstream.io

We have a worldwide network of real users that install a relay app on win/mac and we proxy customer requests through their home ISP connections like this:

  ```
  developer@Developers-MacBook-Pro-2:~% curl -x http://xxxx:xxxx_country-China@proxy.packetstream.io:31112 https://ifconfig.co/json
  {"ip":"223.166.106.16","ip_decimal":3752225296,"country":"China","country_eu":false,"country_iso":"CN","city":"Qingpu","latitude":31.1539,"longitude":121.1141,"asn":"AS17621","asn_org":"China Unicom Shanghai network"}
  ```
I just tested HN several times from different Chinese IPs and it is indeed blocked:

  ```
  developer@Developers-MacBook-Pro-2:~% curl -v -x https://xxxx:xxxx_country-China@proxy.packetstream.io:31111 https://news.ycombinator.com/
  *   Trying 34.234.216.249...
  * TCP_NODELAY set
  * Connected to proxy.packetstream.io (34.234.216.249) port 31112 (#0)
  * Establish HTTP proxy tunnel to news.ycombinator.com:443
  * Proxy auth using Basic with user 'xxxx'
  > CONNECT news.ycombinator.com:443 HTTP/1.1
  > Host: news.ycombinator.com:443
  > Proxy-Authorization: Basic xxxx
  > User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
  > Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
  >
  < HTTP/1.1 502 Proxy Error (destination unreachable)
  < Proxy-agent: PacketStream Proxy
  < Content-Type: text/html
  <
  * Received HTTP code 502 from proxy after CONNECT
  * Closing connection 0
  curl: (56) Received HTTP code 502 from proxy after CONNECT
  ```
If any HN users want free PacketStream credits to test their own endpoints send me an email with your PacketStream username: ronald at packetstream dot io


Oh wow that's an excellent service. Especially given the fact you provide access to actual Chinese network endpoints.

Please post the link again, this time as a Show HN link-post and put the text description as the first comment (I've noticed that increases chances of success. ) (given the fact your previous post from 6 months ago didn't get any traction). Of course, if you want.



I have mainland version of Huawei Maimang 5 and it has Taiwanese flag on the keyboard... thou, only on the last page, tucked along non-nations


To get the facts right. It isn't called "Taiwan flag". It is the flag of Republic of China. And To People's Republic of China, ROC is not legitimate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_United_Nations


The Republic of China is commonly known as Taiwan. No one is confused about the geopolitical entity you mean when you say "Taiwan".

The ROC government has for some time used some variation of "Taiwan (Republic of China)" when using English - passports, visa entry stamps, embassies, etc.


Anyone hazard to guess China's next few chess moves?


Depends on their near-term goals. If dismantling HK’s SAR status is on the list, make sure that protests in Hong Kong remain violent and feature people waving flags of USA. Use that as an excuse to intervene in order to fight terrorism and/or maintain national sovereignty against foreign powers.

Status re Taiwan is unlikely to radically change in near future, as far as my understanding of the situation goes.

As an aside, while in times like these any information may turn out to be propaganda, this looks like a thoughtful analysis of the current situation in Hong Kong (Google Translate works adequately with it): https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmUg7C7s7umWp24Qr9x9kc68zE...


Apparently the author of that article is considered pro-PRC in HK, as he supports the Greater Bay Area idea. Uhm. On the merits, though, some of what he writes makes sense.


An idea: In situations like this, encourage a whistle-blower in Apple to come forth to disclose who was involved. If the wrong doer knows they will be publicly exposed and forever branded for the wrong doing, they might be a little less likely to do it.


ROC and JP flags removed from upcoming Top Gun movie

https://twitter.com/markmackinnon/status/1152241649893945346


I really wonder about the information flow here. Does Xi Jinping call Tim Cook directly?


> I really wonder about the information flow here. Does Xi Jinping call Tim Cook directly?

I doubt it. The PRC is far more important to Apple than Apple is to the PRC. If I had to guess, I'd say the government didn't talk to Apple at all, but Apple has a department whose tasks is to proactively ensure their products do not offend Chinese government sensitivities.


I found some serious problem about Hacker News. This sharing was ranked #1 in news tab just two hours ago. But now it disappears in the list. This scares me because someone is censoring Hacker News.


Humble suggestion: Hong Kong iOS users should file a radar/feedback.


It isn't a bug, the decision is intentional. I'm sure Apple is aware of how ridiculous this is and how their users hate it.


True, but they also need to earn money. See last week's south park about exactly that.


Can you imagine if this is just a bug and you're the engineer that caused it? I'm thinking it might be a bug because the emoji is still available on the system through other means.


My understanding is that we should expect private embedded backdoors and weakened security on firmware for certain regions, and that the rights will be molded to the each local region.

That’s just the great power of influence over an American company, in spite of the clear position from its own government regarding Taiwan.

Say goodbye to all those ideals of universal rights and freedom in the cyber world as it was once long ago theorized. Somehow what sci-fi cyberpunk became almost true without bionic implants nor anarchy in the streets.


Between China censoring abroad, and today's Syrian back and forth, I've been thinking about what a non-rightist foreign policy for the US could be.

It's a really difficult problem. The world can be rightfully indignant at America's post-war history of barely paying attention to the mess it makes. From the inside, foreign policy has all this classist baggage that makes it really had to touch from the left.


Hiding the flag from the keyboard is one thing (and already pretty bad) but refusing to display the character in China is surreal.

Censoring an emoji is just insane.


Interesting how Apple's phones are a marriage of Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturing when the two countries are bitterly divorced.


In 2008, I worked at livemocha.com. I remember there was a formerly Chinese national that mentioned the same problem. The company received complaints (from users, I think).

The story also reminds me of one dev's solution to conflicting instructions on how he was to label a button. So, he hard-coded special rules for each individual boss and both thought they got what they wanted.


I consider this reason to ditch Apple next round of device purchases. Nice UI and all, but it's just a pretty face on Unix.


"Just a pretty face on Unix" is a bit of a simplistic way of viewing an operating system(s), no?


I wonder what Foxconn, a Taiwanese company and massive Apple manufacturing partner, thinks of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn


China executes an official Taiwan belongs to China stance to save face, as communist bureaucracies love to do.

In practice, their official policy lets Taiwan exist as an independently governed region more than the US even allows Hawaii or Cuba to be independent. Even Canada has more of a attachment to the US and its laws than Taiwan does.

This is probably a fact lost on most foreigners unaware of the situation.

If China really wanted to assimilate Taiwan they would not have such deeply connected bilateral trade, cross-border tourism, or give access to their market by Taiwanese companies like Foxconn, HTC, Asus, and hundreds more.

China does impose tourism restrictions to pressure Taiwan, but if they really wanted to crush Taiwan they can easily do so without raising so much as a hand gun.

The funny thing is armchair Chinese nationalists (people on the other side of the planet reading hacker news) are more up in arms about this than actual Taiwanese people because the de-jure stance has always been like this, and the de-facto independence of Taiwan has been pretty stable.


People in Taiwan can freely travel to China. But people in China can only travel to Taiwan via a tour group. So there’s no pressure to taiwan on tourism...


They often restrict tourism from Mainland China as leverage, as Taiwan receives a lot of tourism revenue from China.


The restriction of not allowing mainland into Taiwan is controlled by Taiwan. Not by China... Taiwan is the one that put the policy in place that China can only visit Taiwan via a tour group only.


Here you go: https://www.dw.com/en/taiwan-reduces-reliance-on-mainland-ch...

"Beijing's attempt to punish Taiwan by throttling tourism from the mainland hasn't made much impact. Taiwan set a new tourism record last year by successfully courting visitors from the rest of Asia."

Yes Taiwan has the sovereignty to do that, but China also has exit restrictions (USA does not have exit restrictions, which I assume is why you may be unfamiliar with this concept).


Ah ok. I haven’t been to China. I’m in taiwan right now. People here really don’t like mainland China tourists and always complain.


Huh? Hawaii is a part of the United States?

To the point that the last US president is from there.


For someone who is completely ignorant to what is going on with Taiwan / Hong Kong / China… What's the quickest way to get up to speed from a "neutral?" source?


I encourage you to talk to some Chinese-Americans, at least they will have some understanding of both viewpoints unlike all the Western and Chinese media coverage out there



Unfortunately I don't think there's any "neutral" source for news regarding China right now. Both Chinese media and Western media have biased views.


Personally I hate seeing this happen both as a specific instance in the case of HK/Taiwan but just in general with corporations and politics.

Professionally and philosophically it's another interesting wrinkle in the implications of the emoji technology.

It reminded of something we saw a couple years ago when Apple changed the depiction of the gun emoji [0]. Interestingly, that blog post's proposed solution (note: same author as the OP article):

> Hide it.

This speaks to how fragile Unicode is, that things that were written in the past may so easily be changed in the future (like the replacement for Taiwan in China) or hidden in various ways. Another article mentions how emoji might be used by e.g. fascists to minimize uncomfortable concepts [1]. Even after you apply Hanlon's razor, there's still opportunity for good old-fashioned miscommunication [2].

[1] specifically mentions the mosquito emoji being introduced for health awareness, but what if we eradicate Malaria or even the mosquito as a whole, and then the irrelevant emoji is replaced with something not widely feared or hated, or maybe even beloved (like another social awareness campaign)? Then there'd be a lot of "Man I hate :positive-thing:" messages out there.

I'm not saying let's ban emoji, it's just interesting to think about. Still, I hope the whitewashing effect mentioned in [1] doesn't gain more ground, here or otherwise.

[0]: https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ (discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12240386)

[1]: https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/07/the-absolute-denial-of-... (discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17552067)

[2]: https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m... (discussed briefly, couldn't find a better thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446047)


> This speaks to how fragile Unicode is, that things that were written in the past may so easily be changed in the future

Unicode does not define code points for individual country flags. It defines 26 code points "Regional Indicator Symbol Letter A" through "Regional Indicator Symbol Letter Z" and implementations use that to represent two-letter ISO codes as the region or country's flag. To use a more neutral example, one implementation might recognize the combination of SU to represent the Soviet flag while another might not.

This is more than a political dodge by the Unicode Consortium (though it is that too), it also uses fewer code points than the 200+ that would be needed for all countries, plus it allows new countries to be represented without a new Unicode version.


Interesting! Thanks for pointing that out, I did not know that. That being said, it seems like it's an abstraction built upon Unicode, and so can only be as strong (or weak/dangerous/whatever) as that foundation. Even moreso, if it's a convention instead of a standard (which is kinda what those articles are getting at as well: Unicode is a standard, how they are rendered is convention).


Didn't GNOME remove flags altogether due to a similar circumstance? Rather than being political about which flags are valid, they just removed all of them.


Apple and others also changed the pistol/gun emoji to a squirt gun (https://emojipedia.org/pistol/). It seems like these big tech companies generally want to make cultural/intellectual/political choices and impose their mindset/influence. This is exactly why large tech platforms should not be trusted with managing (read: censoring) speech broadly across society behind the veil of protection as private entities.


This is another reminder that we should not have corporate gatekeepers to the apps and content on our devices.


My prediction:

Two days later: Apple reinstates ROC flag emoji in HK apps just like the U-turn they did with HKmap.live


I thought Apple took the physical Taiwan flag and hid it in Hong Kong. And clicked to find out why.


It's crazy how South Park episodes play out in real life the same week they are released.


Curious, anyone in Hong Kong, what do some of the various flavors of Android do?


Why can't we just send custom emoji, and maintain a library of them?


Because it is a character, not an image so the recipient would also need the character to display it.


This may be how it is implemented, but it may not be what the user wants. The user may just want to send "image of X", where X may be something that was not predefined by some company or standards-committee, or it may be something that some company or government does not want the user to send.


Looks like the US Trade Policy is driving the car that carries the flag.


I was wondering what the next step is? Ban the VPN and extend the GFW?


Something more prosaic, like removing the gay flag emoji in countries where it's frowned upon.


This is like in 1984 and what the Minitrue is doing.


Profit > rights


I don't know if things are different now, but when I went to school in HK a long time ago, most Chinese people in Hong Kong I talked to felt Taiwan should be part of China.


1 Country 2 Systems has been shown to be a scam so things have changed. I can't speak for people of my generation but the kids are alright.


I agree, but I think the idea (then) was that people were very proud of being Chinese, and thought that Taiwan should be part of China. They may have wanted a different Chinese government, but not one that didn't rule over Taiwan.


Macau is doing fine.


I encourage everyone who has not done so to have a closer look at Taiwan's history.

The situation is markedly different from Hong Kong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#Republic_of_China_rule


[flagged]


So was South Korea.


Right


It's interesting that someone thinks that people of one region have a relevant opinion about what government people of another region should be controlled by.


Isn't that exactly what most of the commenters on this post are doing?


why is that interesting?.


Are questions against Hacker News guidelines!?!?!?!?!?


Using the US as an example: Americans defer their understanding of a region based on people with tangential relationships to the region. So in America, people's understanding of Taiwan is represented only by people from Taiwan that left. Generations ago. Same goes for "China", in whatever state it was at the time the Asian-American's family left.

This is from people that actively try to avoid being insensitive. But it means there are always limitations in perspective. It requires that any one person represent the 'truth' for an entire group of people, and never understanding if that 'truth' has consensus. Cohesion in American society means never challenging the consensus of someone representing a group that you aren't a part of.


I visit Taiwan every couple years, and when I go, I make a note to ask people I meet what they think about reuniting with China. Every single time, the answer has been not just no, but an angry hell no.


yes, but this thread isn't just about Taiwan. Its about HK's perspective of Taiwan at a certain point in time and how it is easy to miss their perspective and just assume all satellite's of mainland China have the same view of what the composition of China would be. When its not true.

In the same vein, many people in the US and abroad would find Taiwan's view of Tibet to be surprisingly uncollaborative over different points in recent history.

Many people are so focused on Greater-China satellite victim complexes such that many assume they all see each other the same way when thats not the case at all.


Today it's a flag emoji, but eventually Apple might be doing something with the Chinese government that is worse. It's a slippery slope.


Talk is cheap, show me your weapon.


For how long will the duck need to walk like a duck and quack like a duck to be finally called a duck?


For as long as the duck keeps up the payments and no one else really cares otherwise.


> replaces the flag of Taiwan with a missing character tofu ()

TIL, is it really called tofu?


Yes; for example, the Noto font family is so named as an abbr for ‘no tofu’.

(Taiwan should change their flag to �. Checkmate, CCP!)


Literally kowtowing.


Disgusting and cowardly, but if it makes a buck (or billions), am I right?


So, _that's_ what they meant by, "think different".


That's just what happens when the Communist Party of China has you by the balls. Note to other manufacturers: diversify and disengage.


We must respect the wishes of sovereign governments and the rule of law if it's capitalism and not the jungle


Does it make anyone else uncomfortable to see a fairly high number of freshly created accounts that only comment on China related threads? Specifically (read the comment history for these accounts):

* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thewholeview

* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=surajama

* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thrwy_01

* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=7u5432throw

* https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howhigh12323

* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway13372


Per guidelines, reach out to dang or so:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.


Sorry about that. I actually looked before posting, but could only find hn@ycombinator.com - is that the correct email?


No worries, I believe that's the correct address, yes.


I'll look into it tonight and report back here. If I forget for some reason, anyone is welcome to ping hn@ycombinator.com.

Edit: see reply below.


Sent you an email. Apologies for posting this meta discussion here.


We got your email and will reply, but as long as the question is here publicly, I suppose the answer should be too.

I finally got to look at this. There's no single pattern with these accounts. For starters, their comments are not all on the same political side. Some are defending Chinese policy and some are criticizing it. I don't see much of a pattern in the provenance of the accounts, either. Some are throwaway accounts being used by established users; in one case it's because we warned them to stop engaging in nationalistic flamewar, in other cases who knows. Some are breaking the guidelines by making a new account for each comment or two that they post. One account has existed for 3 years and the rest are new. To judge by IPs, one is posting from Hong Kong, one from Taiwan, and the rest from North America.

Based on the comments and other data I looked at, my best guess is that these accounts are all people who have spent time in both China and the West. Perhaps some are Westerners of Chinese background while others are from China, Hong Kong, and/or Taiwan and are either working in North America or did so in the past. Most likely they were motivated to create new accounts either because the active discussions going on provoked some reaction in them, or because they don't want their main account to get banned after we warned them, or because they're creating new accounts routinely. Some of their behavior definitely breaks the HN guidelines, but I didn't see anything that suggested more systematic abuse. Nor are they breaking the guidelines in ways that plenty of older users aren't already doing a lot of, unfortunately.

It's always possible, of course, that I missed something important. We don't know what we don't know. But we've spent years working with this data and user behavior and, to judge by the occasions when some real-world verification has been possible, have learned to make reasonably informed guesses.


Thank you for looking into - this context is really helpful.


I wrote a bunch more here, if you or anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200971


This, if accurate, is quite reflective of all online forums of discourse unfortunately.

The game is rigged.


Please see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884.

It's really, really important not to jump to conclusions about other posters. When people do that they usually make serious mistakes and sometimes quite regrettable ones, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358. In the latter case the user really was hounded off the site.


I've noticed this on Reddit as well, after a mass-shooting you get dormant accounts sharing videos like "homeowner defends herself from home invasion".

Maybe it would be possible to flag shill accounts?


Been noticing it as well. Strange indeed


Also surprising to see pretty good English in these comments given the fact that most Chinese residents absolutely suck at it.


There's no need to be mean about that. Also, please see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884. Most likely these are users of mixed background, meaning they've either grown up in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan and worked in the West, or vice versa.


What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me.

Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use my entitlement/privilege as an engineer to say "fuck off" to anyone who wants me to do things I find immoral. Furthering the needs of a power hungry regime looking to assert dominance over others? Nope. I spend all my day working to further democracy and freedom, not to enable free thought and self-determination to be squashed.

Whoever coded this change and approved this PR, shame on you.


Perhaps that engineer had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported...

I'd probably have made the same decision as you (I'm fortunate to have a safety net), but many people don't have that luxury.


Perhaps that engineer had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported...

I believe the applicable phrase here is "courage of your convictions."

I've been fired twice for refusing to do things that I thought were unethical. Neither time did I have a safety net ready. But my life still continued.

A few years ago I stood up to a middle manager over privacy issues in a feature request. It went far enough to get HR and the legal department involved. It took half a year, but I won.

Bully managers count on people being afraid to lose their jobs. If more people stood up to them, they'd be afraid to make stupid requests in the first place.


Neither time did I have a safety net ready. But my life still continued.

Did you mean safety net as in another job lined up or substantial personal savings? Having a safety net generally means that your situation might be tough but you're okay if you quit/lose your job.

Getting deported because of your H1B would be an example of "doesn't have a safety net". The definition has gray area (such as if your family in your birth country is rich), but as a rule of thumb if deportation is the likely outcome, then you don't have a safety net.

IF you are an immigrant family, this is a trolley problem. Regardless of the courage of your convictions, you are making a choice for not just yourself, but your spouse and kids. It's not purely your own choice.


Did you mean safety net as in another job lined up or substantial personal savings?

I had neither. I took menial temp jobs and short-term manual labor jobs for a while until I could get something full-time in my field. Took about six months the first time, and nine months the second time.

Getting deported because of your H1B would be an example of "doesn't have a safety net".

Is it? It's not like if you lose your job when you're on an H1B they send you to the suicide booth. You just end up back in your old country, but with a much better resume. Yes, life is harder than it was in the United States, but you start again.

That's what people do — they get back up when they're knocked down. I've done it four times now. Losing an H1B is not the end of someone's life.


Is it? It's not like if you lose your job when you're on an H1B they send you to the suicide booth. You just end up back in your old country, but with a much better resume. Yes, life is harder than it was in the United States, but you start again.

Well, depends on what you're going back to. Say it's China, and you morally disagree with a lot more of the Chinese tech industry's politics than you do the US's. Is it worth taking the one particular stand here to lose the long game?

Obviously I'm specifically crafting counterexamples, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's not purely a matter of courage of conviction.

In your case, good for you - you went further than most would. I would not have held that particular line. If that was the choice I would have to make, I would start to look for a new job at that moment, not to quit.


Reeking of privilege here. "I got born in a developed country, life goes on ".


So you were lucky. Not everyone will have the same luck.


Many people talk big game about morals and ethics, but when the chips are down, they will happily forget all that if they have to sacrifice even the smallest amount of comfort. Good for you. Seriously.


It is not obviously better to value ethics over family and community. I certainly wouldn't blame someone for putting their family's wellbeing (deportation can be traumatic) over quitting a place that's doing unethical things.


You might be a gay immigrant from a country that oppresses gay people. You might have a partner here, or friends, or family, or community.

Bring forced to move to a different community is always bad. The fact that states often force you to do it is a big reason I am an anarchist.


You say you didn't have "a safety net." What was your actual situation? For example, were you liable to be deported if you quit your job?


I agree. We shouldn't blame the engineer but the managers asking for this in the first place and knowing they can get away with any sort of "small pressures" they put on their employees.


Perhaps that manager had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported...

But seriously, moral is the thing that applies not only when it's convenient.

Disclaimer: I have no moral right to preach this.


Maybe that the engineer or the manager (or both) are not that old and still paying of their student loans and other debt babies.

Though I'd go with the ability to add or remove emojis or restrict them was a facility engineered for more moral motives and was a point and click level of solution that those with access could do such a change with ease.

Or

It was upper management...

Either way - I do not expect an announcement from Apple saying "Zach in engineering did it, his bad, sorry for that", or indeed anything at all as that would fuel this and unless it is still trending as an issue after a few weeks, then they might. But in general, such things PR wise, blow over and Apple like most have found that not fueling it with any response unless it is exactly what the populus want to hear, it is best to say nothing. At least, that is how many such comparable matters play out with such large corporations throughout history, though they have improved.

EDIT[ s/hold/old/ ]


We should still blame the engineer, but they shouldn't shoulder the majority of the blame.


Maybe if all engineers quit with the first immoral request by the management, it would actually pave way for more morally ignorant engineers to replace them. We only see what has happened, not what has not happened. What if the iOS engineers do in fact have moral values and have declined some of the management's more immoral requests many times, but this particular request seemed the lesser of two devils? Maybe those engineers don't quit exactly because they want to hinder such actions by the management.


Thanks for making an insightful comment that acknowledges the complexities of the world and tries to take into account the information, events, and possibilities that we don't see. That's quite rare. It's more much common to assume that everything we know about the situation is sufficient to pass judgment.


> it would actually pave way for more morally ignorant engineers to replace them

All the more reason why they (the replacement) should be blamed. Obviously, those who might have refused to comply and were replaced made a moral stand and deserve commendation, not blame.

> Maybe those engineers don't quit exactly because they want to hinder such actions by the management.

Perhaps. There are a lot of hypothetical scenarios we could construct that might absolve the implementor of blame but this is possible in any scenario where we're not privy to the internal process that culminates in a corporate decision.



well hypotheticals without a concrete example are not much use, I'm left to speculate that they told the engineer either we shoot and eat this baby, or you hide the flag and they heroically hid the flag.

But until I get a confirmation on this unselfish act I'm gonna go with probably didn't think much about it and took the next ticket on his list.

Which hey. I'm not on a high enough horse here to berate the guy, but not on a low enough horse to speculate how noble he must be in secret. (excuse the gender specific pronouns)


I’ve in past jobs occasionally objected to being assigned a task on ethical grounds. My manager never had a problem with it. There were 10 people on the team so he’d just reassign it to one of the other nine who had no problem with the task.

There is no unified code of ethics that all software developers must abide by, so getting unethical work done is just a matter of moving the work to the next developer in line.


> I agree. We shouldn't blame the engineer but the managers asking for this in the first place and knowing they can get away with any sort of "small pressures" they put on their employees.

If we blame anyone, it should be the CEOs, board members, and large shareholders.


Not "managers" but the AAPL board. China will ban all iPhone sales in a heartbeat, sending the stock xx% down. Go ahead and keep the Taiwan flag there then...


I put the blame on both. We have a responsibility to exercise ethical discretion in our work, and we have the power to do so. If you get fired for refusing to remove the Taiwanese flag from iOS, then take to your blog, set a fire under Apple's ass, and wait for the interview offers to roll in.


Isn’t it likely that would be an NDA violation?


Maybe, but for my part I'd break it in a heartbeat and let them sue me. Perhaps the right answer is a tech workers union.


Sadly I believe that the job offers will be limited as moat companies like obidient employers more, than independent ones who cause discomfort. You would have to have good skills to compensate. (or the willingness to move to taiwan)


Doesn't Apple employ software engineers in China?

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?location=china-CHNC&page...

Is it reasonable to believe Apple might have signed that task to a team sympathetic to the One-China policy, or just generally someone who was happy to do it?

Why do people think there was some sort of circumstance that caused the engineer to compromise on their morals?


It is the willingness to pay a price that separates standing for bedrock principles from cheap virtue signalling.


Christopher Buckley called this 'the yuppie Nuremberg defense'.


Or maybe the Engineer could have been in mainland China? The parent comments assert that an engineer would only do this if they have no morals or are under some pressure -- but it's possible that they might actually agree with this. Edit: As an engineer, I would protest being assigned this work.


A married man with a family will do anything for money.

Talleyrand


With the amount that engineers get paid in the bay area it's ridiculous that having a safety net isn't trivially easy. The real estate situation here (and everywhere) is ridiculous - it isn't right that the price of housing seems everywhere to be a little bit too much for anybody to afford.


Debt, student debt, mortgage debt, cost of living in such a high paying area do tend to be much more expensive - fiscal relativity if you like.

So not as clear cut that they can all just pack up and go walkabout.


About 8 years ago at breakfast I told my GF I had a book idea. I'd make millions on it!

Live Flat Fucking Broke in San Francisco for only $250 a Day


There is way for engineers to exercise their power to prevent things like this from happening, but it can only happen through collective action.

Getting fired for not acceding to a demand like this isn't the result of an individual manager making a decision but the entire apparatus of corporate governance coming to bear on the person. It can be only be meaningfully resisted and fought with an equally organized group of engineers.

If you're on Hacker News, and our industry's willingness to compromise on fundamental values to maintain access to "the world's largest market" upsets you -

Join or start a union.


My experience with unions has been that the engineer wouldn't be fired and they would swap out someone willing to do it in exchange for some concession.


So you’re proposing a union that engages in political activism? I presume people who didn’t agree with the political stances adopted by the union would be expected to start their own competing union to represent their own political interests. Would sure be interesting to see one union threatening action if an employer chooses to do something, with a competing union threatening to take action if they choose not to. Or perhaps this just isn’t a problem you can solve with a union, and would be better addressed by having individuals putting consideration into where they work. Something I believe people already do.


I just want to add another angle. Apple, as well as other tech companies, have many employees in China, and a lot of non-Chinese employees that travel to China regularly. Many of these changes are demanded by the PRC government and not abiding by those might risk imprisonment for those employees.

Disclaimer: I work for Apple, but I don't work on iOS.


Sure; but literally any day Tim Cook can say, "Ok China, I no longer play your game. Enjoy having no support or economic progress from us - bye".

My point wasn't a specific developer (as you point out, they might have been in China themselves and unable to do otherwise), but that anyone in the chain who is "safe" and in a position of power and privilege to not-play China's game, I find morally dubious. Engineers in the US are people I count as having this safety and privilege, but not engineers in China.

Executives, PMs and management in the US I also count as being able to tell China to shove it with their demands.


> Sure; but literally any day Tim Cook can say, "Ok China, I no longer play your game. Enjoy having no support or economic progress from us - bye".

No he cannot. He would be immediately removed at CEO and replaced with someone who played ball.

Remember, Apple is a publicly traded company. What you're suggesting is, at a whim, Tim Cook could just completely tank the company. China has far, far more leverage over Apple than Apple has over them plus it's a huge market they're making progress in.


No he cannot

Sure he can. Google bailed on China once. Apple certainly has the money and talent to do the same.

He would be immediately removed at CEO and replaced with someone who played ball.

Would he? Why do you assume that this would be bad for it share price, or that the majority of shareholders would be against it?


> Sure he can. Google bailed on China once. Apple certainly has the money and talent to do the same.

Google didn't have much of any foothold into China when it dropped. It was also purely based on software which can be toggled off relatively easy (then you just have to wind down offices).

All of Apple's products require China to produce. All of them.

> Would he? Why do you assume that this would be bad for it share price, or that the majority of shareholders would be against it?

The majority of their manufacturing and assembly is in China. China is their big growth market. Not only would it tank the share price by cutting out their huge growth opportunity but it's completely within China's power to stop almost all of their production.

The stock market reflects what wallstreet things will grow. When you stagnate your share price drops (there is no reason to hang onto it if you won't become more profitable).


All of Apple's products require China to produce

Today. But maybe not tomorrow. India, Vietnam, Brazil, and a dozen other countries are more than willing to take on that production. Heck, most of Apple's contractors in China (think Foxconn) already have manufacturing in other countries.


> Today. But maybe not tomorrow. India, Vietnam, Brazil, and a dozen other countries are more than willing to take on that production. Heck, most of Apple's contractors in China (think Foxconn) already have manufacturing in other countries.

That isn't an easy thing to do and it certainly wouldn't give Tim Cook any leverage. It would take them probably a decade to fully move their pipeline out of China and even if they did it, it would be very capital intensive so even if it was cheaper it would take quite some time to recoup those costs (and I'm not really convinced it would be cheaper overall but that's a separate exercise).


Unlike Google, Apple is hardware company and has a massive amount of manufacturing in China. It would be almost impossible for them to bail on that infrastructure.


Not really. Apple just has to do it in phases. No one is suggesting that Apple leave China overnight.


You genuinely believe Tim Cook has more leverage than China?

By what fraction do you think Apple's profits would drop if it had to rebuild all of its factories outside of China? By what fraction do you think China's GDP or tax revenue would drop if it kicked Apple out of China?

Even if that situation were reversed, Tim Cook answers to shareholders via a board of directors. He's legally obligated to maximize shareholder value. Who do you think the Chinese officials who want power over Taiwan answer to? What legal obligations of any kind do you think they are under?


> He's legally obligated to maximize shareholder value.

Is this actually true? Or just a "institutional wisdom"?


It's false. It's just that it's close to what's actually true, so it's pretty easy to pass it as a fact.

Basically, what a company is required to do is serve the BEST INTERESTS of its shareholders. This might not necessarily be the same as maximising shareholder value.

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...


Thanks for the clarification, I hadn't seen that before. Although I don't think the distinction changes the point I made.


"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI... If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock." - Tim Cook


probably more that he's obligated to do so to keep his job


Tim Cook has enough money that he doesn't need to work anymore. It's not like he's a wage ape pounding code in a cubicle all day.


>>> Enjoy having no support or economic progress from us - bye

I would expect the Chinese to laugh as they've probably already stolen sufficient institutional and technical knowledge to respond with a "Bye Felicia" of their own.


>Enjoy having no support or economic progress from us - bye".

This would have to be done on a federal level. Just because Apple stopped doing this doesn't mean China would be any worse off. Google, Amazon, and every other tech company would still get in line to do whatever it takes to get that sweet, sweet money.


Where is apple going for production of its hardware if not to china? What other country has the knowledge, capacity, experience, time-to-market, factories and workers available to build all the iphones, iwatches, imac, ipads and macbooks?


Apple's threatened moving a lot of production to India (which has its own problems, but shows moving is possible). The new Mac Pro is to be made in Texas, and I think Apple at one point was considering a chip plant there for the iPhone too.

China holds a lot of weight, but a company with a trillion dollar market cap also can make its own decisions.


That's the entire point. Even if Apple was going to be able to go somewhere else (India, US, etc.), it wouldn't hurt China much if every other tech company maintains course and/or doubles down on China. Unless China is hurt economically by their actions, nothing will change.


The tech decoupling had already happened.

Arguably the one and only big tech that has a significant Chinese stake, is Microsoft.

Google/Facebook/Netflix is banned, Amazon retreated. Oracle had just closed its research center.


Enjoy having no support or economic progress from us - bye

Make no mistake, Apple can be replaced in a sec. It needs China not vice versa.


Each truly international product has hundreds, if not thousands policies like this codified. How to render border between India and Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine, what words to exclude from dictionaries and suspend in auto-suggest, etc.

For engineer it’s just another rule, they get update like “locale X passed the law to do Y, update software to comply”. It’s not their job to do legal or ethical evaluations, and it’s unreasonable to expect it from them.

If you think it’s obvious, and any engineer should be well-equipped to do so, there is a story from inside the Big G. When Google employees had a protest-du-jour about Google planning to implement restricted version of search in China, it turned out that many Google employees of Chinese descent actually supported implemented restricted search in China arguing that restricted search is better than no search. Now, if you were an internatialization engineer working on restricting features, how would you evaluate claims of both groups and is it your responsibility to do so?


As the old saying goes, you don't create a HideTaiwan() function, you create a HideCountry() function and require Taiwan to be provided as a parameter.


Apple is based in Cupertino, which is at least half Chinese, and is a heavily staffed with Chinese overall. You assume they have Western political sensibilities.

Edit: latest demographic data from Wiki, from 2010, says 63% Asian and 26% Chinese


Oh, it is because they are 'Chinese' by look so they can't possibly be trusted with precious western political sensibilities.

Good takeaway you had.


People from Taiwan are probably counted as Chinese in the demographics.


And Cupertino is very heavily Taiwanese. Anecdotally (my wife is Taiwanese-American, grew up in Cupertino), they outnumber mainlanders. Most of the big Asian chains in Cupertino (eg. 99 Ranch, 85C, Meet Fresh, most of the restaurants in Cupertino Village) are actually Taiwanese or Taiwanese-American and have no presence in mainland China.


Ah that yellow peril coming out of the woodwork again.


Aren't most Chinese citizens actually backing the Chinese government on this?


The post references Cupertino, not Shanghai. Or are you trying to say something else?


I'm saying that it's not even remotely far-fetched to believe that Chinese Americans living in Cupertino would hold beliefs similar to those who live where they are (or were) from. Implying it's racism is frankly childish.


Why? Because they're the same ethnicity? You think they think they same way because they're the same ethnicity. To object to calling that racism is frankly childish. That kind of thinking is the how we got Executive Order 9066 despite an investigation finding no evidence of any fifth column among Japanese Americans. The fact that there are people that think like you do strengthens my belief that another Executive Order 9066 is nowhere near as impossible as people would like to believe.


It's not because they are the same ethnicity... It's because they were potentially brought up with very similar values and culture, and that shared background can manifest itself as similar attitudes to the behavior of their government. Notice how this is not even remotely controversial or racial, but because you have already decided what to believe on this politically loaded topic, you will blow your whistle and signal your virtues.

The Chinese government is known to own the media and pump worldwide propaganda to its citizens and ex-citizens living abroad. These are facts, and they are only related to race because they apply to Chinese people. Please stop with the bullshit. It's embarrassing.


> What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

What makes you think that it was an engineer in the US who made the change? Apple's got employees all over the world, including in China. If anything, my first guess was the update was made from a team based in shanghai or shenzhen, since the emoji is already banned there.


I'm absolutely 100% certain that someone in the US was aware of this change, and signed off on it. What I'm saying is that there is no circumstance in which I'd personally do that, and as someone who is comparatively "rich" worldwide as an engineer, I have that luxury of putting my foot down and not doing it. I can have a new job tomorrow that probably pays me yet more.

I don't blame anyone who is making $30k a year for going along with bad-politics at a company. But if you're making over 100k a year as an engineer? Yea, I hold you accountable for your actions and implementing bad politics.


OR... maybe the engineer doesn't give two sh*ts about politics and just wanted to give the task done and move on to something else. Not everyone cares about what is political or going on in the world. I'm glad you have this holy than thou attitude, but most could care less.


Yes. That's exactly what OP is highlighting and that not giving two shits is the problem.


Employer-dependent healthcare and visa status are powerful tools of control. Let's also not forget sky-high housing costs, ensuring an astronomical savings burn rate when unemployed.


Yea; but I'm a programmer/engineer. Last time I needed a job, I had a contract for $15k that month within two hours, and an interview for a full time position by the end of the day. People in our position have the power to do things like that, and we should use that power for good.


I'd bet my bottom dollar that >75% of readers are wishing they could all be in your incredibly fortunate shoes...


Congratulations on the good fortune, but I’m afraid your ability to get another job instantly is not shared by the vast majority of practicing software engineers, particularly visa holders. Even in these top companies, there is a relatively small number of developers who actually have this power!


That might be true. I only really know my own experiences. I don't even have an engineering/CS degree, and have just taught myself everything. But, maybe I have some special experiences that others haven't had.


Whoever coded this change and approved this PR, shame on you.

And therein lies the problem. We want to blame a programmer, or a flack. But it's never one or two people.

The real issue is a bureaucratic system or corporate culture that allows things like this to happen. Everyone can point fingers at someone else and absolve themselves internally of blame.

Taiwan should block shipments to Apple of whatever parts are made there that Apple needs. And I say this as a shareholder.


> Taiwan should block shipments to Apple of whatever parts are made there that Apple needs.

Taiwan unfortunately needs to be careful. China is just waiting for provocation strong enough to justify an invasion. Would that be it? Maybe, maybe not.


It is possible that the facilities at an engineering level was already there and initially born out of facilitating more harmonious initiatives - for example - "we need the facility to change a country flag in other countries as" this country is looking at changing their flag and want to trial it in their own country/This country wants to celebrate gay pride with a ribbon upon their flag, though they don't want that flag appearing in these countries that they do trade with but they still have laws against such open tolerance of gender freedom... Or many such possibilities. So a group of engineers, happy with the motives, brought forth the option to do this and all packaged up for the point and click management to use.

That is extremely viable how this could of played out in a tech firm. From there, such actions are in management hands. Management have a predisposition towards company loyalty and head nodding over morals and ethics - not all obviously, just from my experience - more inclined over engineers. When you have such a facility, then if management misuse it, is that the engineers fault all the time?

Let's not presume shame upon some engineer(s) who may of done such a change for other morally good reasons only to see their work abused for something they would never of intended their work to be used for. Then imagine that person reading presumptions that it was coded solely for this in mind and the hate bestowed upon them, with them already feeling bad about such abuse (as they will probably see it) and perversion of their good intentioned work.


May be some people don't agree with your stance on that matter.


Ideally the foot soldiers in charge of implementing should have a background in ethics and morals; however, the change would be made by someone else.

There might have been several resignations over this change - you do not have the full picture. However, any number of resignations would not impact this directive being implemented.

The one to implement it - yes, they are anti-democratic. But we also need to acknowledge that one of the richest, most influential institutions on the planet is also anti-democratic...


One word - H1B. It's either do as we say or get DEPORTED. We are no more than the highest paid slaves in history, we can't afford morals and personal opinions.


I'm all for this, but this is a lovely example of the American tendency to blame everything on individuals when it is clearly powerful entities to blame (Apple, the CCP, etc). If one cat refuses, who's to tell you they won't retaliate against them and get another person to do it?


Perhaps the engineer in question is a Chinese citizen, or immigrant from China who still has strong ties to their homeland. Maybe they think it was right to remove the Taiwan flag, and has been quietly annoyed for years that it'd still been there.

Or, hell, maybe the person is an American citizen, not even of Chinese descent, and agrees with the PRC's stance on Taiwan.

(Frankly I probably wouldn't get along with someone like this, but at a company the size of Apple, there are bound to be more than a few.)


but why not? It sounds like your personal opinion.


Why not what? Why do I think I'd not get along with this kind of person? Yes, that absolutely is my personal opinion; what would make you expect otherwise?

(I mainly included that parenthetical as a signal to the kinds of people on HN who would likely consider my post, without it, as some sort of support for China's denial of Taiwan's existence, which is absolutely not the case.)


> I can use my entitlement/privilege as an engineer to say "fuck off

If it's your company, maybe you have that privelege. But in the USA you're probably an "at will" employee. I would admire your moral stance but you'd probably get fired.

Refusing to do work you're asked of will probably only get the company to find someone who is willing.

So you're better off complying and using your talents to find other ways to allow users to circumvent this issue if they really wanted to.


They should have done it the VW way: make it so the flag doesn't show up for the manager in internal review, but is still visible when the OS is out in the wild.


I work at an ecommerce company and we have to do something similar for displaying Taiwanese flag icons and refer to countries as “regions” as to not piss off China. Its the deal with the devil you make when you work on an international scale, and unfortunately making some small time political message will hurt your bottom line if the Chinese market share is taken away from your customer base. Unfortunate but it’s just economics. Not sure if it’s 1-to-1 with the Apple situation but it’s my anecdote.


Reminds me of the good ol' "what kind of person would assist the ICE finding and deporting illegals". Answer: not everybody agrees with your views on politics.


You say that as if they wouldn't just easily find someone to replace this engineer without any qualms about doing this. The number of people that don't care about things like this because it doesn't affect them on a personal level is still far to large for a personal protest like this to have any impact.

Really, the pressures should be on Apple and on China, not some low level engineer who had to write the code for this.


You can easily build the feature that can be misused. Think of it as a general region filter or an emoji set to increase engagement.

You want to ensure your design team and product matches the demographic you're trying to target so you can choose which ones are approved for that area. Completely reasonable, not a malicious feature to build either.

Except when it prevents you from selling your device in China.


From what we know about how the emoji blocking was implemented for mainland China, I doubt it's a benign feature just being misused: https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x34.html

Notably, the code specifically looks for the "CN" locale, and calls "removeEmoji".


Wow, that is depressing. I would definitely be ashamed to implement a feature like that.


I could easily imagine (especially at a place like Apple where there's a ton of internal secrecy), the ticket for implementing removeEmoji() could have been pitched in a much broader fashion: perhaps there would be a "child mode" that would remove the middle finger emoji and others like that.


This might not be a coding change. So blaming an engineer might not be the right approach.

It could be configuration. Emoji settings are configured by region. So maybe someone with no dev experience could go into the iOS deployment package and simply change some config files around.


Apple is clearly focused on making money at all costs. It feels like breaking into the Chinese market is focusing all their business decisions - particularly the focus on cheaper phones, one OS to rule them all.


> What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

The same that made Adobe cancel Venezuelans accounts today: the power of government and regulation.


That's why you don't work for apple. You would fail the will you inject your own political opinions part.


#iamveryvirtuous


> What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

According to the book "Bullshit Jobs" [1] there are quite some people around the world -especially in FIRE and IT- who (partly) perform useless or downright harmful jobs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs


exactly. A lot of engineers in SV are in a good enough position to be actually able to do this without much setback for them and their families financially since they’ll be hired elsewhere right away


Hired where? We moved manufacturing to China. They can't work anywhere whose production isn't held hostage by the Chinese government, one way or another. For Apple this decision was made by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook back in 2004 or something like that. They can't get their independence back because a low-level engineer decides to be idealistic, the check was cashed a long while ago.


I don’t think it’s the engineers fault. Apple is in business to make money, and China represents a huge chunk of money. The company seems to prioritize money over human rights in situations like these. Likely they had an engineer in China do it.


Yes, when it comes to trade and financial wealth of a country, then the amount of `social/humane` crimes you can get away with does seem to have an equation waiting to be officially formulated and named.

Don't make it right, but it is a common theme by many countries and how they put business of trade ahead of moral and for the right price, will look the other way. Not singularing out any country as more righteous or guilty than others, as not the motives here or the point. Just that it does happen and sadly, I don't see that changing. Which is sad as it is in corruption/bribery on many levels and just not seen for what it is.


If you apply the idea that in order to work for a company that you must ethically agree with every single one of its decisions and associations consistently, you’ll end up with absolutely nowhere to work. This comment doesn’t represent a principled stance, only a case of moral outrage (and over an emoji). If you actually behaved like this, you’d get fired, and somebody else would simply ship this simple change (that really doesn’t hurt anybody anyway) without any further drama.


I used to think that, but after long searching I have found that there are actually companies (often non-profits, but not always) that do hold reasonable morals.

If this act didn't stand to hurt anyone, why did China care in the first place so much? Let's look at the converse, what does having a flag in a phone do that hurts China?


China is a totalitarian regime. Any form of expression against their authority hurts them. Not complying with their demands would hurt Apple who want to do business with them.

Your response doesn’t really address the issue though. Say you can find a company that conforms most to your own moral standards (which is already unlikely, depending on where you arbitrarily choose to draw that line), that’s not good enough. You need to find a company that meets those standards, that only does business with other companies who also meet those standards, and only employs people who again meet those standards. That’s simply not realistic in any way.

The real answer to this question is that in order to participate in society, you need to accept that you’re going to have to interact with people you disagree with. Otherwise you can choose between trying to exclude all those you disagree with, or excluding yourself. Neither of which are tenable. If a company goes further than you’re willing to participate in, then your only option is to not work for them. Anybody working at Apple today likely started knowing that Apple did business with China. If they can’t handle that they should leave, and prepare themselves for a difficult job search for a company that doesn’t. But trying to force others to make the same decision is just completely unreasonable.


Between this and the NBA's capitulation to making the Rockets' GM retract his statements on Hong Kong, at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior? Sure, from the individual business' perspective they don't want to risk alienating the Chinese government and losing the Chinese market, but if China sees that they can get their way by simply threatening foreign companies then it will just embolden them to push for more concessions down the road. Quite frankly this all stinks of 1930s European appeasement policy and we all know how that turned out.


You Godwinned up a huge flamewar with this. That's seriously not cool—political and nationalistic flamewar with Nazi overtones is a failure here. We'd appreciate it if you'd please read the site guidelines and take this one to heart:

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


So stating an opinion with valid comparisons is simply just flaming now, eh? Good to know the concept of "genuinely new" is up to you and you alone to decide.


It's just that it's my job to make these calls. In doing so, I look at the effects a comment has. In this case we got a dismal flamewar.

It looks like you've been creating accounts for the purpose of nationalistic/political battle. That's against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which side you're for or against. A lot of the time, we don't even look at which side an account is for or against—it isn't necessary, and we don't care.

Creating accounts to break the site guidelines with well eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


> at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior?

This seems to be US policy since Nixon's visit to China. The difference is now we're just more open about it.


I think this is as much a "business thing" as a "US policy" thing, and it's been going on much longer than the Nixon administration. IBM sold Nazi Germany the tabulators that powered the Holocaust, Chiquita (then United Fruit) ran slave plantations well into the 50's, et cetera.

Don't expect corporations to stand up for what's right, especially overseas; you're always going to be disappointed.


Someday we may regard those "achievements" as the worst strategic mistake by any sitting US president.


It wasn't a one-and-done deal between Kissinger and Mao on the first visit. While I think it's fair to assess the US's 1972-(2016? 2017?) policy toward China as regrettable overall, blame must also be put on the Carter (giving the PRC a waiver on the Jackson-Vanik amendment, 1980), Reagan (continuing those waivers), Bush Sr. (rejecting repeated Congressional motions to end that waiver after Tiananmen Square, 1989 and every year of the '90s), and Clinton (permanent normal trade relations, 2000) administrations. Successive administrations seemed to be fairly consistent on keeping China's access to US and world markets intact.


Someday? I think we already do.


A recent South Park episode parodied this quite well.


It felt weird to see such a good episode from South Park after how much they have lost touch with reality at some point.

Well .. subjectively I did not find it very funny so maybe not an all time high episode, but the critic was absolutely on point and something that very few people are talking about.

China has a lot of control on what can be included in a hollywood movie.

Propaganda is not exactly new ... after all the US army also has a lot of control when they give support to a movie and demand that they are portrayed favorably but this time it is from one country to another.


"but this time it is from one country to another"

Isn't Hollywood the same?


I am not sure I follow ?


You said, with regards to China influencing things in the US: "Propaganda is not exactly new ... after all the US army also has a lot of control when they give support to a movie and demand that they are portrayed favorably but [this time it is from one country to another]"

I'm pointing out though that the influence the US has through Hollywood is effectively global, and therefore also "from one country to another".


And as a result South Park has been banned in China.


Tegridy


As far as I remember, Germany in 30-s was underdog, deprived of colonies, territories, with failing economy and zero weight in international relations.

China is actual, undisputed world leader. They don't tolerate other nations telling them what to do on their land, and like economical expansion to neighbor states. They can afford it.

I don't see parallels.


Germany in the prewar period had the second-largest domestic economy in the world:

http://www.zuljan.info/articles/0302wwiigdp.html

China is still second in the world by nominal GDP, although they're closer to us now than Germany was then.


I can totally imagine the world which China could control the west through exerting pressure on these giant companies.


China is already doing this. They threatened Qantas, Delta and other airlines that they would ban their aircraft from Chinese airspace unless their websites were changed to show Taiwan as part of China. They also blocked the Marriott website in China when Marriott included Taiwan as a separate country in a customer questionnaire.

[1] https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/qant...


This is what the west is doing to China now.


Courage is in short supply.


Not in Hong Kong it seems, where protestors are well within the reach of the PRC.


Wow, did not hear about the Rockets thing until now. Thanks.

I am confused tho, as an NBA fan, should I support the Rockets now that the Chinese are boycotting it. Or should I boycott them cause they bowed down to Chinese pressure?


The (new) ABA has lots of teams you could support. Lots and lots of teams. If you have some extra cash, you could probably even have your own ABA team.


People really don't care.


And until people do corporations will continue to enact censorship on behalf of the CCP.


If you think 2019 China is that similar to 1930s Germany you should just come right out and say it, in my opinion. Let that argument stand on its merits.

If you didn't intend a parallel between 1930s Germany and 2019 China, there is, again in my opinion only, probably a better way of making your point.


Yeah, absolutely no parallels there. A rising military and economic power surrounded by historic enemies now weaker than them, complete with a governmental system that concentrates power in one man at the very top, a philosophy of racial superiority, governmental discrimination based on race and religion, and a growing concentration camp system... I don't know how anyone could ever think that pre-war Germany and today's China could at all be similar.


I am expecting that Japan and South Korea are going to be permitted to clandestinely nuclearize.


What exactly would you need to happen that hasn't been done in order to draw that parallel short of a swastika on their flag?

I think 2019 China is pretty damn close to 1939 Germany, the only thing required to push it over the edge is a looming economic collapse.


Assuming you argue in good faith, how about this:

1. Germany annexed the Rhineland, Sudetenland, and Austria using the justification of unifying German-speaking peoples under a single banner. The Chinese line for Hong Kong and Taiwan is the same -- you look Chinese, you are Chinese and to say otherwise is treason and will get you labeled an American lap-dog. I can tell you this firsthand as a Chinese-American and if you need a more concrete example, just look at how the Chinese treated Gary Locke.

2. Revenge for the perceived humiliation of Versailles was a core driving factor for the rise of Nazism in post-Weimar Germany. If you can give me another explanation for the state of Chinese-Japanese relations, I will eat my words.

3. Go on any Chinese social media site and the amount of nationalist rhetoric you'll find is quite disturbing. Having pride in your country is one thing, to insist on your national, racial, and cultural supremacy is another.

4. Google what's going on in Xinjiang and tell me that doesn't stink of something.

Maybe I'm wrong and just being an alarmist, and it would certainly be in the best interest for the world if I were, but ask yourself -- what are the stakes this time if I'm not?


Please stop and don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21189201


1. Germany was preparing for outright war throughout the 1930s. Conscription was introduced in 1935.Is China seriously planning to militarily annex Taiwan? Leaving aside propaganda etc.

2. This point appears to be about how unfair historical treatment can lead to fascism. Are you saying that the people of China are headed in this direction?

3. I'll defer to your judgement as I presume you read mandarin/canto, but I don't see a big difference from western social networks there, except for probably in terms of number of users (larger userbase) . I can read Korean fairly well and see those kinds of nationalist comments on Korean social media sites as well (funnily enough, they also aren't fans of Japan at the moment. )

4. I know what's happening there and am a little hurt you'd assume I'd get into a discussion like this without knowing. Human rights abuses are bad. That seems like the most one can say without getting accused of whataboutism. Are there gas chambers in those camps? (edit:clarification below)

>Maybe I'm wrong and just being an alarmist

Maybe you're right and I'm just trying to hope for the best.

My original post on this thread came mostly from shock as I was raised on the internet era where it was considered a faux pas to do blithe Nazi comparisons. so I was mildly astounded to see that the top voted comment in here boiled down to "China is Weimar/Nazi Germany."


> Are there gas chambers in those camps?

What on earth does it change whether there's gas chambers in there? If you're trying to claim they're not 1940s nazi germany, just say they don't speak german and be done with it.

If you're aware of what's happening over there then you are aware of the torture, yes?


sorry, on mobile and could have phrased that better. Does the outright extermination of the Uyghurs appear to be the PRC's ultimate goal?