> The US and its allies continue to support Taiwan because it is a vibrant democratic state with liberal values

I agree with almost everything you said except the above. The biggest reason of supporting Taiwan is because it’s a strategic counter-balance against China.

The U.S has supported Taiwan ever since 1949, but Taiwan was a brutal military dictatorship back then ruled by KMT. We supported them because it was the Cold War and they were anti-Communists.

Taiwan didn’t have their first democratic presidential election until the 90s.

Same for South Korea. We supported them because they were anti-Communists, not because they were a liberal democracy. SK didn’t become democratic until much later after the Korean War.

Now Taiwan being a liberal democracy gives us one more reason to support them, but it wasn’t the original driving factor.

Things like “we support democracy” is what the US government uses to sell our policies to the public, but history shows that we care most and foremost for American interests. Afterall we’ve overthrown democracies to install pro-US dictatorships and even today we are ally with countries like Saudi Arabia.

> Is China really trying to improve Africa or just move their dirty stuff to a poorer place.

Both. China wants allies in the global south and it would benefit them if those allies get stronger economically, especially if they do so with China’s help.

Same reason with the U.S Marshall plan after WW2 right? We wanted to help the Europeans to recover, but a big reason is so we can have strong allies to fight against the Soviets.

> if you can’t co operate with other nations ..

What’s the definition of “cooperate” and the definition of “other nations” here?

If by “cooperate” you mean “do everything the US says like a good client state” and by “other nations” you mean the U.S and our closest allies, then yes, I would agree with you.

But if you go beyond that, the US will do everything to sabotage China’s relationship with other countries because we cannot let our hegemony be threatened by a rising global power.

For example, did you know that Israel and China always had a great relationship, so much so Israel was selling weapons tech to China until U.S stepped in and forced Israel to stop by threatening to sanction them, our closest ally in the Middle East?

China literally just brokered a historical agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic ties, thus lowering the risk for conflict in the region. But I bet you haven’t heard of that because such news tend to be downvoted in our echo chamber these days.

Either way, if you are really interested in this topic, travel a bit to some other places in the world other than Western countries and you’d suddenly realize the world view for most of the planet’s population is very different than that of the West.

The West is in an enviable position today because we hold most of the world’s wealth and power with a small portion of the population because we pillaged the whole world for a good few centuries. But it’s beneficial to go out of this bubble and get some different perspectives.

> Yes but at least they do ‘some’ policing and integration and keep the peace.

Our CIA literally overthrow a democratically elected government in South America and installed a dictatorship for the profit of one of our fruit companies for fuck’s sake.

Yes we do policing to insure our national interest.

And “keep the peace”? Were you being sarcastic since we are “celebrating” the 20th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion?

> Look what’s happening in Africa, local business is replaced with Chinese only working ones.

The impact of Chinese investment in Africa has multitudes of effects, most of them complex and there are good things and bad things that come out of them. But at the end of the day many countries still benefit overall from influx of capital and the amount of infrastructure that was built over the years wouldn’t be there without the Chinese investment.

For example a large portion of Africa now has access to internet due to the Chinese building cellular tower infrastructures. They are a continent that skipped PC and went straight to smartphones + mobile internet.

In contrary, what has the Western countries done for Africa during the period they were far wealthier and more influential than China is today?

It's up for discussion precisely because American companies are lobbying Congress to take out a major competitor of theirs lol:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

Facebook hasn't been doing too well with their Metaverse gamble, and their core social media advertising revenue is being threatened by TikTok, so...

Lol when America can't compete we just bully and sanction in the name of "national security". We literally did this to Toshiba to fuck over Japan's semi-conductor business in the 80s and they are an ally for god's sake: https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-us-prevented-japan-s-toshiba-from-becoming-no-1-chipmaker-62393

So yeah, "National Security" and "Please think of the children!!!!" are the two trump cards always played by our politicians to win over their ignorant voters. In this case both applies so it's a double whammy to win political points.

>companies like meta are lobbying HARD for a tiktok ban

Yep: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

> We’ve seen ByteDance work with the CCP very openly. As Ben Thompson says, China is using their access to push their ideals.

A lot of people say a lot of things these days when it comes to China. But at the end of the day even the US government has not presented any concrete proof as to TikTok’s collaboration with the CCP.

> allowing TikTok would be no different from the US allowing the Soviets to buy NBC during the Cold War.

Well I fundamentally disagree. The US and China are not enemies at the moment and we aren’t even in a Cold War, and the economic ties and relationship between two countries are very different from what the US had with Soviet Union. We have a lot of business interest in them as they do in us. The trade between the two countries just reached all time high: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/07/trade-china-relations-economies-00081301

You think there is a fire going on meanwhile even the best evidence brought up by the most staunch anti-China politicians so far is “there could be a fire”.

I personally think this is just the new Red Scare and we are trending toward a new era of McCarthyism. And of course SnapChat and Meta have been funding this whole effort, just look at their stock price in the past few days.

Either way I appreciate your level headed discussion, we may disagree but it’s more pleasant than most discussions I’ve on Reddit when it comes to this topic.

> China is going to treat Western companies as adversaries

But they don’t? They allow all western companies as long as they follow Chinese laws, the same laws that Chinese companies have to follow themselves. They’ve never banned a tech company just for being American.

Did you know more than 20% of Apple’s revenue is from China? Does that sound like a country that treat Western companies as adversaries?

I am for the solution to make US data privacy and political influence laws that all tech companies have to follow, foreign or domestic. But that wouldn’t happen since this whole thing started because of Meta’s lobbying in the first place.

Of course they couldn't. How could they censor Google without cooperation from the company or a blanket ban? Do you know how internet works???

In fact China's law requires American companies to have server inside China and cooperate with Chinese government for censorship. Google and Facebook didn't wanna play ball so they were blocked. Apple and Microsoft did play ball which is why iMessage and FaceTime and iCloud and LinkedIn and Skype and Bing are allowed. I bet you didn't know that.

It requires cooperation on the companys' part. Without that you can't selectively censor content.

> This isn’t a personal freedom or free speech issue, it’s a data and influence issue.

It’s both.

> If China doesn’t trust Western social networks having their citizen’s data or subject to their algorithms

That’s what China says. In reality they want a censored internet for their citizens and full control of what their people sees online. US is heading down the same path once we start banning apps and websites from countries that are not US allies.

> Why are we playing to a double standard

Because I’d very much for us to have a different standard than China when it comes to personal freedom and free speech.

> We’ve already seen examples during the Hong Kong protests of different videos showing up based on if you searched about demonstrations in English vs. Chinese characters

You serious? You can search for that in English and Chinese on YouTube and you'd get very different results. The hashtags and titles are in different languages dude.

>we should not be comfortable allowing the CCP to easily manipulating what we’re paying attention to.

That's literally China's "excuse" for banning social media from the U.S. "Malicious foreign influence" as they call it, which is par for the course for a country with no freedom of speech.

So far no one has seen any evidence that TikTok uses its algorithm for any political manipulation (in fact you can drown yourself in anti-CCP propaganda on there if you want), so start building our version of the Great Firewall when all the accusations are just things that "could" happen is very concerning.

What's next? Start banning more apps and websites from countries that are not U.S. allies?

> if it was something really bad the US government would have been busy covering it up

You think the US government could have covered up this?????

> I hear derailments are usual

When was the last time a derailment looked like this? Do you have an example?

https://i.imgur.com/BZGHPcC.jpg

> And TikTok definitely pushed the narrative of a disaster that would poison everyone on the area will the government clearly say that it wasn’t that bad and didn’t pose a threat for anyone’s health.

Again, are you for real here????

Gee, I guess without TikTok everyone who lived under that black mushroom cloud would have just took the government’s words for it, and obviously TikTok is faking all the symptoms people are suffering /s

> TikTok just pushed to the mainstream the East Palestine derailment, that was a nothing burger

Are we for real here???

> allowing TikTok was clearly a mistake so I doubt they will let something like that to happen ever again.

Should we just go ahead and ban all apps and websites from China, or in fact, non-U.S. allied countries?

What's next? Banning videogames like Genshin Impact and League of Legends because of national security concerns?

I bet companies like Activision and EA would love to lobby for it, much like how Meta lobbied for the ban of TikTok: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

> That can be true and it can also be true that TikTok has been unable to properly assure anyone that data flowing through the app isn’t able to be read/shared with the CCP.

Please read up on Project Texas. TikTok has been working toward a solution where all U.S. data are saved on Texas based Oracle servers, with ability to be audited and security verified by a U.S. government approved 3rd party panel.

From a technical perspective, such measure would sufficiently guarantee American users data don't go to China. The government was close to approve it until the recent political climate changed, so politicians want to score points now.

The concern you outlined is very much valid, but the technical response is also valid. Unfortunately this whole thing was political theater funded by Meta in the first place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

That is misinformation.

Just out of the big companies, I can think of Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Skype operate in China.

> even without a specific concern.

They do have specific concerns, a big one is their lack of ability to enact censorship on foreign platforms.

And of course, PRISM has shown that NSA has infiltrated all the major American tech companies.

> More millionaires have been created in the past few months than ever before in history.

Yeah my dude I’m gonna need some actual data beyond “trust me bro I am seeing a ton of internet posts”.

But again, this is WSB so maybe that’s how you do DD for your stocks 🤣😂