China says if you want to set up a factory in China you need to transfer IP. They aren't forcing western companies to invest. Most companies invested voluntarily. And this was seen as mostly OK when the rivalry wasn't as heated.
Tolerated by whom? Those companies aren't owned by the public, or by the US government. The owners/executives of those companies tolerated the practice, because they believed that they could still be profitable and that the risk was acceptable. And profit they did. Do you think they care one bit about ideology?
I find it rather strange that so many people throw around the "tolerate in order for China for open up" rhetoric, as if companies invest in China for ideological reasons. Ironically, by forcing those western companies to not do business with China, you are infringing on those companies' freedom to choose for themselves, and violating liberal values.
Furthermore, as someone who came from China, that "China did not open up" is completely false. In the past 30 years, China opened up immensely. In the 70s, Chinese could not choose what to wear, could not choose to travel abroad, people could randomly be caught on suspicion of colluding with "the enemy". All of that has changed. Even the latter: the practice of being "reported by your neighbor for suspicious activities" no longer happens, the Cultural Revolution madness is over. Heck, even "not allowed to criticize the government" is no longer true: there are official channels for publishing constructive criticism (emphasis on constructive), and government officials post official replies in the public, and the criticism is listened to without getting you into trouble (the caveat being that you are not allowed to instigate mass protests, or call for overthrow of the government). Sure, it's not equivalent to western democracies, but it did change for the better even if there's still room for improvement. But for some reason, many western people completely ignore this fact and buy into the rhetoric that "China did not open up". It's not even a small fact, it's a huge boulder staring in your face, and people don't see it.
China enacted a new foriegn investment law. It no longer require joint venture, IP transfers. Tesla is able to use this law to built an wholly owned subsidiary and factory in China. A lot of big autos in China are now buying back their ownership in joint venture, previously they were 50% 50%. BMW now fully owns all their operations in China. Also for 50% 50% joint venture, it actually has benefits for foreign companies because it reduced their capital expenditure and split the risks when Chinese market was not a known factor during the early 2000s. For IP transfers, they would most likely be evaluated against the risk and rewards. It's basically buying market access with IP. Companies don't transfers their best IP, but an outdated version. But for Chinese at that time it's still valuable.
What does this "open up" actually mean? A bunch of American companies have set up shop in China, which was not possible 50 years ago. Now it's common for huge entertainment properties like blockbuster movies and the NBA to get a massive share of revenue from China. Video game consoles are now legal. And of course, China is now essential in the production of most American products.
Open up means become a modern democratic state with respect for human rights, or at the very least, be on the road to one. The opposite has happened and the pundits from the 90s look pretty silly right about now.
This is absolutely fair whataboutism because it shows the US's first priority has consistently been commerce over human rights. You couldd still say the US values "free people" a little bit, but values "free markets" more, and thus we get Deng Xiaoping > Mohammad Mosaddegh.
The irony of these trite whataboutist responses is that China would be in such a better position as global leader if it were open or democratic. Unfortunately for the Chinese people, the Party is more interested in maintaining personal power than charting a good path for humanity.
> China would be in such a better position as global leader if it were open or democratic.
Certainly. And the CCP hinders that. But the point of my above comment is to illustrate that it's an open question whether China would be 'allowed' to be open and democratic.
I don't believe the West is actually concerned about CCP's human rights violations. They're simply concerned about China's rise as an economic and military power, we would not support the Saudi regime if human rights was a concern.
One of the major reasons the CCP got a foothold in China was because there was a sense that for over a century China was subservient to Western powers.
The CCP was fine as far as the west was concerned as long as it was primarily a dumb factory for us. But now they have ambitions to go beyond that.
I think that's the crux of the animosity towards China today, not human rights violations, as gross as they are.
I could imagine China being somewhat of an EU and democratic and as long as they buy enough western products, be left alone. But if they actually wanted a truly independent foreign policy for example, that would not fly. See the Iran Deal for how dependent EU foreign policy is on the U.S. one.
P.S. That does not mean the CCP is good. It's not. But pretending that western leaders actually care about its human rights abuses is silly.
I think this viewpoint is pretty one-dimensional and oversimplifies the complexity of geopolitics. The US is like any other country in that faces a constant struggle between its idealistic values and the realities of the world. To say that “the West doesn’t care about the human rights violations” is absurd, as if you could paint nearly a billion people (Europe plus US) with a single brush. The idea that by supporting one repressive state you forfeit your ability to critique other repressive states is also absurd. The world isn’t that simple.
To give you an example: in retrospect, keeping Saddam in power and not invading Iraq is considered a fairly reasonable opinion; i.e. even though we got rid of a dictator, the consequences were arguably worse.
The reality is that the West tends to not get involved politically if the state in question is insular enough to not affect other countries. This isn’t because they condone abuses in these countries, but because a long history of failed colonialism and wars has rendered the West extremely hesitant to get involved in any sort of ‘just’ war that isn’t provoked by the state in question (see Iraq and Kuwait for example.)
The contemporary populist rise of American hostility to China is also linked directly to offshoring jobs from the Rust Belt, so again, there are clearly groups of people who have issues with China that aren’t merely “crush the rising competitor.”
In any case I don’t disagree that the West has sunk democratic movements which were against its interests, but that to say all such attempts will be shut down is overly-simplistic.
> To say that “the West doesn’t care about the human rights violations” is absurd, as if you could paint nearly a billion people (Europe plus US) with a single brush.
It should be pretty clear from the context that I am talking about western governments, not people.
Also, as an European, it doesn't look to me like we have much in terms of independent foreign policy.
> The idea that by supporting one repressive state you forfeit your ability to critique other repressive states is also absurd.
One? Please. We support plenty of other dictators all across the world. Or is Egypt's Sisi not a dictator? What about the UAE, Qatar etc.?
What about human rights violations by democratic countries? We don't seem to care much about illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
> in retrospect, keeping Saddam in power and not invading Iraq is considered a fairly reasonable opinion; i.e. even though we got rid of a dictator, the consequences were arguably worse
The assumption that the goal at the start was to get rid of a dictator because he was one is fairly well established to not be true. Basically a bunch of neocons who were bitter we didn't dispose Saddam in the FGW wanted to settle scores.
> The reality is that the West tends to not get involved politically if the state in question is insular enough to not affect other countries.
Really, what about the likes of Venezuela/Nicaragua?
> I don’t disagree that the West has sunk democratic movements which were against its interests, but that to say all such attempts will be shut down is overly-simplistic.
Let's talk about human rights
There is an actual genocide going on in Yemen , and it's perpetuated by a Saudi dictator . The same dictator who dismembered an American journalist in foreign embassy.
Now Americans are selling weapons to the dictator to continue the genocide because human rights are selctive
His comment is in no way whataboutist or trite. It is providing counterexamples to the claim that the goal of US policy is to get countries to "open up", by citing countries that did start opening up until the US stepped in to prevent that from happening.
Forget about pundits, Bill Clinton made this argument: "The American people support this agreement because they know it's good for jobs in America and good for human rights and the development of democracy in China." https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/textonly/library/hot...
Now, did he really believe that? Was he just selling the American people a bad deal? The end result anyway is that this is precisely the argument that was made, and thousands believed it.
Comparing the treatment of black people in the US to the treatment of Uyghurs (ethnic muslim Chinese) is not a realistic comparison at all. Currently Uyghurs in China are forced into prison camps for nothing other then being Uyghurs. They are then forced into labor or in some cases even have their organs harvested. Yes the US did enslave black people but that was stopped long ago and generally Americans agree that was wrong.
>Can you show me such a video of Uyghurs in China.
>I will answer it for you: no you can't.
All your doing is proving that China has no freedom of speech. The reason The reason I cant show you such a video is because of Chinese censorship. Such a video would never be allowed to circulate. The fact that a video of George Floyde being murdered can be shared in the US proves that in US we tolerate speech even when it shows the US in bad light. Also the cops who did this to Floyde are being prosecuted.
Even something as simple as a picture of Winnie the Pooh is banned in China because people compared Pooh, a children's cartoon to China's leader. Imagine the leader of a country having his feelings hurt by a child's cartoon so bad that he bans the cartoon.
a)Allowing US Internet companies to compete fairly instead of using the firewall as an excuse to promote state controlled tech monopolies.
b) Having a fair and transparent judiciary to handle cases of intellectual property violations.
Open up would mean an open fiscal policy, namely allow money to leave the country. Companies and especially individuals can't invest and then pull the money back out of the country very easily.
It might have been seen as OK on the business community, but people in the national security community have been freting over it for a long time. For reasons good and bad those views are now in the ascendancy in the political sphere.
