Miscellaneous News

azn_cyniq said:

I don't agree. It's not sneaky when those companies are clearly Chinese. Is there a single person who uses TikTok, Shein, etc. and doesn't know that those companies are Chinese?

Western companies succeeded in China because they were incredibly pragmatic. They didn't care about "Western pride" and formed joint ventures with Chinese companies. Western companies were willing to put aside their "pride" and they profited enormously as a result. At its height, Volkswagen alone was making more than $100 billion a year in China. They even shared some technology with Chinese companies. For this, they were lambasted as traitors in the West. Foolhardy companies like Facebook and Google got banned in China because they refused to comply with Chinese laws. Chinese companies shouldn't act like that.

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Tiktok spokespeople including Tiktok CEO constantly says Tiktok is not a Chinese company anymore. Its a singaporean company owned by Bytedance but not Chinese, this is how they portray it. When asked are you under the jurisdiction of Chinese government, they act sneaky and say no, no we are not.

Imagine Chinese government asking an American Company, "Will you follow your government orders?", they will say yes we follow all US laws and government executive order. They will never ever deny their Americanness for one bit.

This is the difference. Its just being sneaky to survive. Maybe its the pragmatic way, but not respectable and not showing confidence in your own nation.

Feima said:

I think you need to temper that supposed lack of Chinese soft power within China itself with the fact that CPC enjoys 90+% approval

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This study conducted in 2023 states that public support has declined to 80%. Not to mention, the Chinese government and Chinese business are not one and the same, despite what the Americans claim.

tamsen_ikard said:

Tiktok spokespeople including Tiktok CEO constantly says Tiktok is not a Chinese company anymore. Its a singaporean company owned by Bytedance but not Chinese, this is how they portray it. When asked are you under the jurisdiction of Chinese government, they act sneaky and say no, no we are not.

Imagine Chinese government asking an American Company, "Will you follow your government orders?", they will say yes we follow all US laws and government executive order. They will never ever deny their Americanness for one bit.

This is the difference. Its just being sneaky to survive. Maybe its the pragmatic way, but not respectable and not showing confidence in your own nation.

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Being a subsidiary means that in the end the money goes to ByteDance. The IP that TikTok uses is under ByteDance and is barred from export.

China did ask, they indeed got their answer, and that's why Facebook and Google got banned.

Microsoft was forced to give up their source code to China to enter the Chinese market. Much bigger deal than TikTok merely being HQed in Singapore.


Imagine if they demanded TikTok give up their source code to operate in the US. Yet that's what China did for Microsoft. Played hardball even back in 2003 and won.

FairAndUnbiased said:

70%+ of Russians support China despite basically 0 soft power investment in Russia.

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80%+ of Chinese support Russia despite Russia also investing 0 soft power in China. Russia spent way more soft power investments via RT in EU and US (which did not help them 1 bit).

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North Korea of all countries is polling higher than Japan lmao.

If the goal of soft power is to actually wield power - that is, enforce political change favorable to oneself - then US and Japan failed miserably when Russia and North Korea are polling higher.

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These are China's closest partners, no? I'm not impressed by favourability statistics in what should be strongholds. I care whether Kenyans are more inclined to send their kids to school in China or the US, to buy Chinese or American EVs, to support China or the US when armed reunification happens.

tamsen_ikard said:

Tiktok spokespeople including Tiktok CEO constantly says Tiktok is not a Chinese company anymore. Its a singaporean company owned by Bytedance but not Chinese, this is how they portray it. When asked are you under the jurisdiction of Chinese government, they act sneaky and say no, no we are not.

Imagine Chinese government asking an American Company, "Will you follow your government orders?", they will say yes we follow all US laws and government executive order. They will never ever deny their Americanness for one bit.

This is the difference. Its just being sneaky to survive. Maybe its the pragmatic way, but not respectable and not showing confidence in your own nation.

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That's simply not true. If American companies did that, they would be banned in China immediately. That's what happened to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber, etc. Microsoft literally created a separate version of Windows for the Chinese market to comply with Chinese laws.

Let's be realistic here. What exactly was the CEO of TikTok supposed to do? Like I said before, they did exactly what Western companies have been doing in China for decades. They had a choice between making tens of billions of dollars per year in the US and foolishly defending their Chinese-ness, which doesn't really matter because everyone already knows that TikTok is Chinese. They were smart and chose the first option. How is this any different from, say, Western companies, in defiance of their governments, lining up to support Xinjiang cotton when they were faced with imminent bans?

GZDRefugee said:

These are China's closest partners, no? I'm not impressed by favourability statistics in what should be strongholds. I care whether Kenyans are more inclined to send their kids to school in China or the US, to buy Chinese or American EVs, to support China or the US when armed reunification happens.

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How come US soft power was unable to make Russians look like evil invading orcs in China? Ez pz especially considering Outer Manchuria and Mongolia. Yet no.

How come it was unable to take advantage of the ridiculous amounts of 19th century style European racism in Russia to make Chinese look like the oriental horde? Easy fertile ground if they were competent.

Tesla and BYD sales are public information.

Huawei sales speak for themselves.

China is unlikely to beat US on the school metric though. El Presidentes kids can buy a slot at Harvard, while Tsinghua and Beida are meritocracies.

US most certainly has access to Tiktok source code. But that doesn't mean they sold the technology to a US entity. That's a different issue completely. Chinese govt has banned any kind of sale of Tiktok technology, but not US government access to see if there are any backdoors.

Creating a seperate version for windows is no different from Douyin creating a seperate version called tiktok.

But Microsoft, or any US company would never move their headquarter to appease China or even say they are no longer American companies just to appease China.

They will never deny that US government has jurisdiction over them or they will not follow US law.

Tiktok is now being attacked just cause they are Chinese. No matter how much they say that tiktok is a completely US version of the product. So, now they are trying to survive by saying they are not even Chinese anymore. Yes, nobody believes them, but they are still trying. That is being sneaky and not being proud of your own heritage just to survive.

Anyways, I understand why they are doing it. Its just pure survival. But I don't respect them. I don't like this culture in China where companies keep moving HQ out of China or keep trying to IPO in US stock market just to make themselves less Chinese and thus more acceptable in the west.

Why China lacks soft power. This is why. Mihoyo tries to portray its product as almost like a Japanese product. Go to a Miniso store, and you would not find a single sign that its a Chinese company. They try to appear Japanese.

Even when China creates global phenomenons, they try to hide their chineseness. That is not good in my view.

tamsen_ikard said:

US most certainly has access to Tiktok source code. But that doesn't mean they sold the technology to a US entity. That's a different issue completely. Chinese govt has banned any kind of sale of Tiktok technology, but not US government access to see if there are any backdoors.

Creating a seperate version for windows is no different from Douyin creating a seperate version called tiktok.

But Microsoft, or any US company would never move their headquarter to appease China or even say they are no longer American companies just to appease China.

They will never deny that US government has jurisdiction over them or they will not follow US law.

Tiktok is now being attacked just cause they are Chinese. No matter how much they say that tiktok is a completely US version of the product. So, now they are trying to survive by saying they are not even Chinese anymore. Yes, nobody believes them, but they are still trying. That is being sneaky and not being proud of your own heritage just to survive.

Anyways, I understand why they are doing it. Its just pure survival. But I don't respect them. I don't like this culture in China where companies keep moving HQ out of China or keep trying to IPO in US stock market just to make themselves less Chinese and thus more acceptable in the west.

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Any proof that TikTok gave up their source code? Only public demand made of them was user data being stored in the US under very strict and unusual management.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Any proof that TikTok gave up their source code? Only public demand made of them was user data being stored in the US under very strict and unusual management.

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Tiktok has been extremely transparent, but still US wants to ban tiktok just cause its Chinese


"Technical experts also draw a distinction between the TikTok app — which appears to operate very similarly to American social media in the amount of user tracking and data collection it performs — and TikTok’s approach to governance and ownership. It’s the latter that’s been the biggest source of concern, not the former."

"TikTok’s source code closely resembles that of its China-based analogue, Douyin, said Lin in an interview."

tamsen_ikard said:

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Tiktok has been extremely transparent, but still US wants to ban tiktok just cause its Chinese

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"Technical experts also draw a distinction between the TikTok app — which appears to operate very similarly to American social media in the amount of user tracking and data collection it performs — and TikTok’s approach to governance and ownership. It’s the latter that’s been the biggest source of concern, not the former."

"TikTok’s source code closely resembles that of its China-based analogue, Douyin, said Lin in an interview."

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Chew touted progress on the closely scrutinized TikTok-Oracle deal, known as “Project Texas,” on the same day that

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that Oracle employees “only have limited access” to the source code and were not conducting a comprehensive review of the app’s safety.

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