Puzzle me this - as an employee in the US, for a company paying well above market for your labor, with generous perks and the freedom to speak out against the employer (which is likely absent in China), the response of the Chinese workforce seems rather paradoxical - criticising an accommodating work environment, which, mind you, is only possible because of freedom of speech
Or, the press is out to make a mountain of a mole - most Chinese employees at Facebook are happy despite Zuks' tone against the govt.
While the specific context of this was related to journalists, I would certainly take pause with respect my actions at an employer likely to bump heads and attract the attention of that government. There is an escalation of tensions, with the US and China taking hard stances on vistor visas. It's not unreasonable to be concerned about other sanctions.
The post I replied to was specifically referring on the "employee actions". My argument was it's not reasonable to simply discard these employee's claim by somehow suggesting they are only acting because of the pressure from CCP.
But the point you made is correct, activist's family could be punishment.
> the response of the Chinese workforce seems rather paradoxical - criticising an accommodatung work environment, which, mind you, is only possible because of freedom of speech
You’re questioning, and implicitly criticizing, these workers for exercising their access to free speech, for complaining about an aspect of their employer’s position about their country of origin.
Such an implicit critique undermines the foundations on which free speech stands. Speech is free regardless of the benefits and privileges granted to those who would speak.
> Speech is free regardless of the benefits and privileges granted to those who would speak.
You're copiously misinterpreting my comment. Of course free speech is an inherent privilege, nay human right, that doesn't require granting from any entity/authority figure. I'm very much questioning the logic behind their angst against Zucks' opinions on China. If anything, the free flow of information, free speech without retaliation and the general upliftment by being at FB should convince them to argue FOR free speech in China. I was hoping they saw the clear correlation between freedoms, free-speech, etc as the foundation for equitable wealth creation and prosperity, which they very much have experienced at FB.
I'm guessing their reaction is more visceral/emotional than logical. Most people tend to love their motherland despite it's shortcomings.
Hm. I don’t think I misread or misinterpreted as much as your sparing comment leaves many lines to read between.
In any case, I my inference does not match your intended meaning and I appreciate your clarification.
Free speech should be an inherent right. I also LOVE the idea that such employees might use this as an opportunity to advocate for free speech in their hime countries.
I don’t however see such advocacy as a requirement to criticize Zuckerberg.
> You’re questioning, and implicitly criticizing, these workers for exercising their access to free speech, for complaining about an aspect of their employer’s position about their country of origin
Why is this relevant? By that definition, any time you criticize anything someone says you are criticizing them for using free speech.
There is a big difference between “I disagree with what you’re saying” and “you shouldn’t be allowed to say it”. As far as I can tell, he isn’t even hinting at the latter.
> There is a big difference between “I disagree with what you’re saying” and “you shouldn’t be allowed to say it”. As far as I can tell, he isn’t even hinting at the latter.
The GGP is not merely saying "I disagree with what you're saying" but rather "I disagree with what you're saying because you are well-compensated (and allowed to speak freely)." (The last clause is a bizarre objection, but it is present in the GGP comment.)
This is problematic because in the US, where Facebook is concerned, free speech is not granted only to the poorly-compensated but to all residents. So pointing out how well-compensated the employees are as a way of criticizing them undermines their access to free speech. It is an attempt to silence them because they enjoy privileges such as good compensation and the ability to speak freely.
And to be clear: criticizing Chinese Facebook employees for complaining about the CEO's position to their country of origin because they are well-paid is an attempt to nullify their points because they are well-paid (and allowed to speak freely). The criticism doesn't address the root of the objection but instead attacks the employees (i.e. ad hominem).
Mirror check on 'intense nationalism' - how many Americans supported or still support unlimited US military actions around the globe, not to mention CIA buggery? How has democratic activity slowed this down in any meaningful way in the last 20 years?
You are not as immune as you think to government propaganda, it's just easier to spot when it's another country.
I think everyone here is already well aware of this, considering that some variation on this same comment gets posted repeatedly every time China's human rights issues are in the news.
Hmmm....Government propaganda is one thing. But sending you to concentration camp or prison because you have different views from the government is another.
Not sure what kind of equivalency you are trying to make here.
Obama campaigned as anti-war. So did Trump. Neither of those presidents have lived up to their campaign promises, but it seems clear to me the American people don't want to keep the most insane of US military actions going but feel powerless to stop it. The tricky part is that corporate media on both sides of the aisle never saw a war they didn't love. But that's different than the American people.
You don't know what I think. Personally, I'm not even American, and have criticized the US for the stuff you mention more harshly than the average American by orders of magnitude. That doesn't mean I don't see the infinite difference between the US government sometimes sucking, and the CCP (== no elections, no free press, torture camps, putting down protests over the law being broken with force, dictating to companies what they may post in Western countries, and so on). Yeah, Snowden had to run, but we can talk about Snowden. There's American books by American publishers about American war crimes, Noam Chomsky leads a full, critical life. There's a greater risk that the Chinese government might kidnap or assassinate him, just for saying something they don't like in passing, than the US govt laying hand on him. So to even mention the CCP and the US in one sentence... again, I'm not even American, and even I know all that and more.
The only data point you're offering for what you think about the subject at hand is this "mirror check". Those are a dime a dozen, people pretending to be objective or neutral, and calling it a mirror check -- when the whole point of the exercise them getting away from their own personal stance and responsibility, while creating straw men up about a generic other.
Zuckerberg for actually having a spine when it comes to China, unlike Tim Cook
What spine? Facebook is blocked in China. It costs him nothing to take this stance. If Tim Cook tried the same, China could seize the factories and Apple would have no product to sell.
I'm sure in private Tim Cook would admit that Apple needs to diversify their manufacturing out of China as a hedge against the risk of a hostile government there. That is a process which cannot happen overnight, however, and so in the mean time it's best to tiptoe around the sleeping dragon.
Zuck’s anti China stance has nothing to do with having a spine and everything to do with Facebook’s bottom line. He is merely using China as a very convenient punching bag and foil to deflect attention away from Facebook’s own gross abuses of power.
This is exemplified in his address on free speech several weeks ago - trying to position Facebook as a defender of American values (free speech and human rights) versus big bad China.
Make no mistake, if Zuckerberg actually cared about the values of a free society he would fix his own platform. Don’t applaud him for throwing shade at an even more authoritarian regime.
He doesn't understand how, he's indoctrinated into it as well as his behaviour - he has personal work to do to open up his mind and heart before he'll develop the necessary empathy to see the holistic for what it is.
It should read “Chinese Government”, not China, too.
The Chinese government was not elected by the Chinese, is not in any sense a legitimate representative of the Chinese, and has no more right to rule over China than I do. Conflating criticism of the CCP with criticism of the country that they illegitimately rule is CCP propaganda techniques 101.
Mao Zedong was widely liked, and the Communists were seen as much better than the corrupt Guomindang [0]. They also defeated the Guomindang militarily. I think the CCP are actually the legitimate rulers of mainland China, both by peoples' choice and military conquest.
You may think the Chinese people chose poorly, but I think it is clear that they definitely chose.
And to put this in some context, China has had an authoritarian government for the past 2000 years, so it's not like choosing an authoritarian regime is that much of a change. You might as well pick the authoritarians who are less corrupt. And post-Mao the CCP has been pretty effective in building the country.
[0] traditionally spelled "Kuomintang" but Wade-Giles is a horrible romanization. You think you know how to pronounce it after looking at it, but you're wrong; it's actually worse than just having a bunch of characters, because at least you know you don't know how to pronounce them.
In the absence of free elections, due process, freedom of speech, freedom of association, opposition parties, freedom of travel, and so on, you can put me in the not convinced column.
IMO China is not ruled by a legitimate government, the Chinese government should not be granted the honor of national sovereignty any more than North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, or the like. Geographic regions ruled by gangs and thugs should not considered legal states. (Just my opinion man, I know the law doesn't agree with me.)
A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't the legitimacy of a government judged by how good it's doing its job vs. how it came into power?
Historically speaking there have been plenty of prosperous societies that was ruled by "illegitimate" governments (and I'm not even saying China is one), and plenty of government that was put into power by the people (actually the original, populist CCP government is one example) that ended up being disastrous.
Even if we want to always put democracy on a pedestal, how do we qualify it? Does only direct democracy count? What about representative democracy? How "representative" can it be before it's no longer democratic, i,e electoral college? Do any of those actually matter?
Please, save the "deriving democratic legitimacy from first principles" for a country that doesn't ban elections, have a dictator-for-life like Xi Jinping or put millions of people into concentration camps.
Fair point, it is hard to draw an exact line. But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right?
>But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right?
Absolutely. But if you are referring to what's happening in HK, debate on evidence of concentration camp aside, lately many of the protestors have been anything but "peaceful".
There's no way to really know what's going on, the CCP is acting in secret. Maybe they are disappearing peaceful protestors, maybe they are disappearing violent thugs. Once a government starts to do that (secretly suppressing, however justified), then they have also crossed a line of legitimacy.
Oh, please tell me how is burning down businesses or smashing public transportation or vandalize government buildings "defend yourself against violence".
Yes, quite a few dynasties in Chinese history for example. At a few points China had higher GDP than the rest of the world combined with much better average standard of living for its people. The early Tang dynasty comes into mind.
There were no serf class, but of course there were peasants/farmers of course since someone had to grow food.
Legitimacy comes from having been elected. An unelected Government is, as they say, just a group of thugs who just happen to be in control of a capital city.
Within that definition there’s certainly some ambiguity as to what counts as a “good enough” election to confer legitimacy. Edge cases would be things like Singapore, Russia or Hitler’s Germany... but Communist China is not close to an edge case.
Have you heard the news that Mark has learnt Chinese very hard, and even placed Xi's book at his office desk trying to please the visited Chinese officials?
He didn't have any spine, and what he's doing right now just because he failed so have to change the strategy.
It's probably easier for him to do so, given that Facebook is banned in that country. But then again, so is Google, yet they pursued Project Dragonfly.
I don't get that impression at all. Semiconductor fabs may exist overseas, but the technology is predominately domestic, from what i can tell. Micron in Idaho is an American powerhouse, for example.
My understanding is that I’m not allowed to discriminate based upon the country of origin of my employees. As long as they have the right to work, they must be considered equally. Should that be altered for Chinese citizens?
Zuckerberg is quite clearly being critical of the Chinese Communist Party, who by nature of being authoritarian, have no mandate from the people of the PRC. There is no bias against China as a country, or Chinese people. Zuck is merely judging an authoritarian government for it's own actions. Shame on those who would wish to conflate the two.
In order to understand why this conflation is occurring, you need to understand chinese culture. Chinese culture is very different in some fundamental ways that's hard for western countries to understand. First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government. this is a fundamental viewpoint of how the chinese see themselves. This of course allows the PRC to do whatever it wants without any complaints from the people because any thoughts against the PRC is tantamount to being anti-chinese. Thus when chinese people see anything that goes against the PRC they take it as a personal insult to themselves. The PRC has influenced their people to regard any idea that goes against the PRC as racism towards chinese.
Come on. That's patently not true. Seriously. I'm born Chinese and my family is Chinese. We were never "trained". I'm highly critical of the Chinese government (though I left fairly young) as are some members of my family. Some of them were born and raised there. Come on. Stop it with the stereotypes. People are complicated and have multitudes.
"People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government."
No seriously no. We aren't robots nor idiots.
"This of course allows the PRC to do whatever it wants without any complaints from the people because any thoughts against the PRC is tantamount to being anti-chinese. "
Even at the height of the Mao era there were still dissent even when it could cost you your life.
"Thus when chinese people see anything that goes against the PRC they take it as a personal insult to themselves."
It depends though, doesn't it? Are the charges being leveled fair within the context they're being viewed? Not everything in Western media is completely fair, reliable, etc. I mean, just read the articles written by the media when it comes to technology. They miss a lot of the nuances.
Is it really surprising that nationalism has an effect on people? You don't think Americans do that? Remember that fervent anti-French sentiment in some parts of the US when they criticized our invasion of Iraq? You don't think the fetishization of the military in US media is a form of propaganda? What about singing of the national anthem at NFL games? China does very similar things but perhaps more frequently. These pro-nationalist sentiments are fanned much more subtly than you've described it.
You don't really have to look much further than the US public opinion and media messaging on Israel to verify that there is a double standard in place here.
Is criticizing a government's actions tantamount to racism against the people under that government's rule, or is it not? Phrase the question around China or Israel, and you will get two different responses from many people.
how is it reasonable to take your anecdote as a decent reference point for somebody who has grown up in china, speaking mandarin, and learning about the world through CCP-funded public schooling?
Is it any less reasonable than someone claiming the totality of Chinese culture consists of blind obedience to a political party? He's claiming this kind of indoctrination starts at a young age. If that's the case I would have seen some of that. Also, as I've stated, a good chunk of my family are born and raised in China and some still live there. They're not all of one opinion when it comes to the government. Is it reasonable to believe 1.3 billion people are as one dimensional and robotic as the GP makes it sound?
I've always noticed: Even if a chinese person is critical of the chinese gov they will never say that when speaking to a non-chinese (unless it's your husband/close friend), nor speak of it out loud.
This might suit both anti- and pro-PRC propagandists, but it's not reflective of reality on the ground. Chinese people have plenty of self-conception, independent thoughts, and the ability to distinguish between themselves and their government and objectively judge government actions. At least, no less so than people anywhere.
Anyone who's ever lived in china for several years will tell you chinese nationalism is extremely intense.
Even in america, if you have a conversation with a chinese person about the PRC or even just economic conditions in china, that person will in any case, always defend the PRC under any condition, no matter what the PRC has done, even if they themselves are against the PRC and agree with what your saying.
Having dated several people from the mainland, this is not my experience. Which isn't to say we always agree on PRC politics, but the idea that they uncritically buy the Party line is simply wrong.
If mainland Chinese people are mindless drones incapable of independent thought, why does the PRC need to invest billions of dollars every year in monitoring and policing what people say and think?
I do this when people from other nations unfairly criticize the USA, even when I agree with what they are saying. So as a word of advice, when this happens...
> defend the PRC under any condition[...] even if they agree with what your saying.
Then your argument likely heavy-handed or misses the nuance of the situation. Using the USA as an example, the impression a foreigner gets from looking at gun statistics is completely different from reality. So if a person from Europe starts to lecture you on guns in the USA, you're going to get a little defensive at their incorrect assumptions, even if you agree with their stance in general.
As I pointed out, the know a bunch of facts, but they don't understand the reality between those facts. Which is to say they really don't know what they are talking about.
It's like hearing a person complain about a movie they've never seen, but they read the Wikipedia entry on it. They may understand the major plot lines, but you're not going to have an engaging discussion with them about the acting or cinematics.
> So if a person from Europe starts to lecture you on guns in the USA, you're going to get a little defensive at their incorrect assumptions, even if you agree with their stance in general.
That is very much unlike, say, "defending all American gun laws to a T, without mentioning at all what you actually think, because they made you do it for being unfair or mistaken about something". And where that is the case, how you say things doesn't really matter, you won't get anyhwere either way. So you might as well be blunt, and if they want to correct something, let them. If they want to make excuses about being offended and not correct anything, it stands as is.
I know, because I get that all the time, when Americans say "Germany doesn't have freedom of speech" or such, because glorifying Nazism is illegal. I don't start pretending Germany is perfect in response to that, I quote them some basics about freedom of speech, stuff about American law and whatnot, and try to explain how there is no "totally unrestricted" free speech anywhere there is a listener. Then they always (no exceptions so far, probably because intelligent Americans don't even say "there is no freedom of speech in Germany" to begin with) drift off into nonsense or fall silent, because their brain seems to be unable to process what I'm telling them.
Anecdote (not data, not agreeing or disagreeing, just one point):
I have good mainland Chinese friends who are members of the CCP. They don't believe in communism, they're members of the CCP because 'it looks good to have the CCP on your CV'. They know the government killed people in Tiananmen square.
They do link the CCP to the fact they're richer than their parents (I see this as the US deciding to 'open China' back in the 70s). And they value stability more than the individual.
> First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government. this is a fundamental viewpoint of how the chinese see themselves
Do people actually believe this? How could you possibly hope to put a billion people in such a tiny box?
What percentage of Chinese citizens are actual party members? Honest question, I have no idea, but if I had to wager I would guess not a very large percentage.
From some estimate they have about 80 million members. Because becoming a party member is a prerequisite to any degree of success in China, both in business or government. Being a member one has to abide by very strict internal party rules (not the kind of code of conduct/ethics you are thinking). It is a completely top-down organization. You don't get to decide your party leader, sorry!
Chinese people join the CCP not because they identify with the communist ideals. They join because it gives access to a lot of resources and power that is otherwise unavailable to outsiders. It is essentially a gangster of national proportion, and behaves exactly like one, and they own the army.
Yeah, I know that, my mom joined the Romanian Communist Party in the early ‘80s for the same thing (so that she could more easily get food for young me), but that doesn’t make that entire generation less to blame as a whole.
At the end of it all the Chinese people are supporting said regime, even if they're Party members or not, you have to take responsibility from a certain point on. And I do certainly judge my older compatriots for not having done more in order to stand up against the Communist regime in my own country (I live in an Eastern European country which technically was communist until 1989).
Culturally, should a suicide of an employee that comes from a culture that doesn't put weight on suicide really draw more attention to an issue than before?
Beijing's state policy is freedom from religion and that removes most of the mental failsafes preventing suicide.
My anti-suicide talk with some Chinese people has often been prefaced with "oh yeah our culture typically focuses on self preservation and avoidance of suicide, hope that clears things up for you" before explaining how that person's failure has other options. I wouldn't consider myself anti-suicide when it comes to other people's options, I would consider myself to have just strong self preservation skills and can perceive options for myself and other people that are considering an escape hatch.
So I think there is a cultural component to consider here, for western media wanting to cover this.
Or, the press is out to make a mountain of a mole - most Chinese employees at Facebook are happy despite Zuks' tone against the govt.