US Blacklisted China's Xiaomi Because of Award Given To Its Founder (wsj.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. officials blacklisted Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp. as a company with military ties partly due to an award given to the company's founder for his service to the state, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a legal filing. Lei Jun, the chief executive officer and founder of Xiaomi, received the award of "Outstanding Builder of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" in 2019 from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Xiaomi touts the award -- given to 100 Chinese executives that year -- on Mr. Lei's biography page on the company's website and in its annual report.
The award -- coupled with Xiaomi's ambitious investment plans in advanced technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence -- was enough for the Defense Department in January to add Xiaomi to a list of companies that support China's military, according to the filing. The designation prohibits Americans from investing in the company, the world's third-largest smartphone seller. The U.S. rationale for adding Xiaomi to its list was laid out in a court filing by the Defense Department in response to a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the Chinese company seeking to overturn the military designation. The filing, which appeared last week but hasn't previously been reported, for the first time shed light on the department's reasoning in adding a company to the list.
The award -- coupled with Xiaomi's ambitious investment plans in advanced technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence -- was enough for the Defense Department in January to add Xiaomi to a list of companies that support China's military, according to the filing. The designation prohibits Americans from investing in the company, the world's third-largest smartphone seller. The U.S. rationale for adding Xiaomi to its list was laid out in a court filing by the Defense Department in response to a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the Chinese company seeking to overturn the military designation. The filing, which appeared last week but hasn't previously been reported, for the first time shed light on the department's reasoning in adding a company to the list.
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Re: Rotary Club (Score:2)
You can't even tell socialism from communism from a dictstorship posing as communism. Just like you can't tell a fascist-libertarian oligarchy from a democracy.
So why are you talking? Dunning-Kruger effect.
Fuck China, but it will be funny once you face the reality that you are not alone on this planet.
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I don't want the US doing business with any socialists.
Good luck with that. Most countries other than the USA have an actual left wing political spectrum whose representatives regularly get elected into office or to participate in coalitions. You will limit the US to doing business with nothing but a small number of tinpot right wing dictatorships.
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Tens of Millions of people who can be forced to work for low wages, under inhumane conditions.
That is an excellent description of the US prison industrial complex except that they pay their slaves so little that even the Chinese won't compete with US prison labour.
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And the Chinese slaves don't have to put up with an institutionally supported rape system.
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And the Chinese slaves don't have to put up with an institutionally supported rape system.
You sure about that? [cnn.com]
Now, both CNN and the BBC have published deeply reported and horrifying accounts of rape, abuse, and torture detailed by Uyghur women who'd been held in China's internment camps.
Pretty sure it sucks to be locked up in either country.
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That's why you should never use a product or a service from a company like Google or Facebook that is trying to "gain access to the Chinese market" if you care at all about your privacy.
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You'd think... (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd think they'd have some actual intel... But, they just browsed the corporate website to find some lame excuse? I don't see how that can stand up to any scrutiny - unless we just admit that the US is not an open market, so any foreign company can be banned for no reason.
I for one am less actually less concerned at being spied on by the Chinese than by Google or NSA. Obviously I would not have the same opinion if I lived in China and yes, China is several levels ahead in spying its own citizens (and more), but I thought the whole point is to NOT be like China.
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Re:You'd think... (Score:5, Informative)
Xiaomi touts the award -- given to 100 Chinese executives that year
100 execs got this award. I don't know how many companies are in China, but it's entirely reasonable and probably likely that at least one other company with "ties to the military" got the same award. Which is why this justification is so thin.
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Also we have these kinds of awards in the UK too. Various honours and titles are given out to people who are deemed to have done something for the state, although more often than not it was actually just a donation to the Tory Party.
Re: You'd think... (Score:2)
Ahead of who? Not the USA, that's for sure.
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It is really lame. It seems he basically got a state prize and that was spun as cooperating with China's Military. If true it is really pathetic and stupid.
It seems similar in purpose to the US "National Medal of Technology and Innovation", except it's given to even more people each year.
Smart (Score:3)
So what, exactly, happens to boeing in chinese market in the next few weeks? Or pretty much ANY american tech company?
Re:Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
So what, exactly, happens to boeing in chinese market in the next few weeks? Or pretty much ANY american tech company?
Basically the world will be split up into two separate warring technology spheres/cultures/powers, the US one and the Chinese one. The instant you pick one, the ambassador of the other will show up and threaten your government for picking the wrong tech supplier. Any number of European countries have already lived through that for four years, The Chinese show up and issue threats about Huawei equipment being banned or restricted or the US shows up to protest that Huawei equipment hasn't been completely banned, anybody using it declared a heretic and US equipment being bought instead. It's like being the kingdom trapped between Rome and the Persian empire.
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They went a bit too far (Score:1)
You can stop reading at 'Chinese smartphone giant...'
Well, looks like another state run company.
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Absolutely, just look at the list of horrible Trump decisions that Biden's administration signaled will not reverse:
Continued illegal occupation of Syria, and strangling sanctions denying Syrian citizens access to basic necessities just as food and energy.
Continued illegal occupation of Iraq.
Not rushing to restore JCPOA deal with Iran. In fact, adding additional demands before talks resume.
Continued economic warfare on Venezuela, strangling the economy and denying Venezuelans access to food, medicine, and e
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Absolutely, just look at the list of horrible Trump decisions that Biden's administration signaled will not reverse:
Continued illegal occupation of Syria...
Trump didn't start the war in Syria. The war in Syria was a byproduct of the blood-feud between the Bush and Hussein clans.
Re:Funny how Biden continues Trump's legacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you turn things around you run over other things again.
You could have argued at the time (and I did) that normalizing trade relationships with China was bad for American workers. But after 25 years you can't just turn the clock back and expect all the unskilled and semiskilled manufacturing jobs that *would* have gone to Americans to simply appear as if we could undo the decision. There are some decisions you can't undo, at least not instantaneously.
So it's entirely consistent to say that opening up trade relations with China then was bad for American workers then, and closing them now would *also* be bad for American workers. Changes happened as a result of the original decision you have to take into account.
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If it hadn't been China, it would have been a different 3rd world sweatshop country taking all the unskilled and semiskilled manufacturing jobs.
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Sure; the argument would have been the same: cheap stuff will benefit low wage workers. And China delivered; we're flooded with cheap shit. Everyone benefits, but some people have to pay and others don't.
The problem the establishment has with China isn't that they haven't kept up their end of the bargain; it's that it's a large, powerful country with an agenda bigger than serving our needs.
I think free trade on a level playing field is a net good thing. We just went into it with no provision for the long t
Nixon opened trade with China.. (Score:2)
Drunk on "American Exceptionalism" (Score:2, Insightful)
US government is drunk on "American Exceptionalism" and is addicted to sanctions.
This is simply part of the ridiculous attempts to starve a potential rival of technology, markets, and investments. However, it's already too lake, the genie is out of the bottle. What they going to come with next? Add a company on its adversaries list because the CEO happened to be part of some kind of Chinese JROTC program in college? Of course, they will always find a "link" to Chinese government or military in any Chinese c
Re:Drunk on "American Exceptionalism" (Score:5, Insightful)
US government is drunk on "American Exceptionalism" and is addicted to sanctions.
No, it's much simpler than that. It's a large company that's within the CCP's control. Having telecom devices made by company that the CCP can control is a threat to national security because adding backdoors is too easy.
If you think this is about the US then you don't know enough about the CCP because they are fascists who kill anyone and destroy anything so that they may gain more power. Don't believe me? Just take a look at how they treat the Uighurs: they imprison, rape, sterilize and kill them. But go ahead and keep talking trash about the US like we're the evil regime if it makes you feel better about yourself.
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Just take a look at how they treat the Uighurs: they imprison, rape, sterilize and kill them.
While the human rights abuse against Uighurs[SIC] is likely real, everyone's only source of the claim that there is genocide of Uyghurs in China is based on the work of a crazed German Evangelical pseudo-researcher named Adrian Zenz. You gotta hear or read his non-China work to understand who you deal with. I am not going to reply to the rest of your drivel.
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I am not going to reply to the rest of your drivel.
Of course you won't because you have no argument against the truth.
So.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Chinese companies are not allowed to support their home country's military, but US companies are allowed to support US military?
Sounds a lot like measuring with two standards to me. Disgusting.
Two standards. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are absolutely correct. We have one standard for our enemies and one for our allies. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
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Shampoo for my real friends, real poo for my sham friends.
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Holy false equivalency, Batman! One of the two has free elections, freedom of religion, the right to post a picture of Winnie the Pooh, etc.
That said, if I were a Chinese dictator I certainly wouldn't trust the US government not to try to tamper with exported tech.
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Just comparing the population, the US might be a minority thinking those are good values.
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Re: So.... (Score:2)
Chinese companies are more than welcome to support their military. Americans and American entities are not allowed to support the Chinese military. That's what this actually says.
Unlike UK, France, Australia, and many others, the Chinese military is not considered an ally of the US.
Why is everyone in an up roar over this? China can do the same, ban Chinese from investing in companies that support the US military. This is all standard stuff. Heck, China doesn't really allow foreign companies to setup sho
Two points to keep in mind: (Score:4, Insightful)
1. This is the Wall Street Journal - they're generally in favor of anything that makes investors money, including China trade. One might have expected them to like having a businessman in office, but they opposed Trump in many ways because of his China policies. Not actually wanting Trump involved in this conversation, it's just that the example is there - they'd be in favor of anything that expanded China trade and opposed to anything that suppressed it. During the Cold War there were people at the WSJ who understood that money wasn't EVERYTHING, but those seem to be the quaint old days.
2. China is officially Communist - they themselves insist that they are. This means the only allowed political party is united with what the rest of the world would think of as the government sector AND the private sector - there IS no "private sector" in communism. As such, and going by China's own declarations about what sort of government and economy they have, Lei Jun is in fact NOT just a civilian business person honored by his nation's government (something that happens all over the free world) but is in fact part of the communist party machine that is united as one with the Communist Chinese military. Westerners simply do not "get it" because they do not live in a place where everything is united under a singular political party operating as a government, and squashing all dissent or alternate viewpoints. There is simply no separation in China between the communist party, the Chinese military, and so-called businesses - if there WERE such a division, then Communist China would not be, um, COMMUNIST.
Incidentally, we're going by China's definition of itself - which I believe to be deceptive. I believe China to be the most dangerous thing humanity has ever seen: a mono-racial (and racial supremacist), expansionist, nuclear-armed, over-populated, fascist super-state. They do NOT fit the classical definition of communism at all, having abandoned it long ago, but they certainly DO fit the actual definition of fascism, which was created by Benito Mussolini - They have united one political party with all the power of government, the media, and the corporations... and in China they have done it with racial issues tossed in, as the Germans tried about 90 years ago when they followed Mussolini down the fascist path with the racism sprinkled on top as a bonus...
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2. China is officially Communist - they themselves insist that they are.
Wrong. China is officially "Socialist with Chinese characteristics", they haven't called their system "Communism" for many decades. Only Americans and Brits still insisted on calling China (the country) "Communist" with capital C to invoke the image of Soviet Union. Many European countries, with their own socialist parties, are naturally more able to understand what socialist mean, and thus do not blindly hate China.
While the CCP has the word "Communist" in them, they are about as communist as the Repub
Do not play dishonest word games (Score:3)
Karl Marx, somewhat of an authority on this stuff, said that Communism had two phases - the first "lower phase" of communism is called socialism and the second "higher phase" of communism which is the perfect stage and is actually called Communism. Marx, who is recognized as the father of all this stuff, said that socialism was just a transition phase in which the populations would become adjusted before being moved into communism, from which there would be no turning back (i.e. the public would be permanen
What is a military tie? (Score:2)
Air Force One is literally a Boeing. Should we just ban Boeing? Or Teslas, because Elon regulary launches US spy sattelites.
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Boeing is going to be a self-solving problem, just watch. It'll be a non-optimal solution, but they've put themselves in a non-optimal situation.
The fact is that there is no hard line to be drawn between supporting the Chinese military, and not. Do they pay taxes? That's where the military budget comes from, after all. Any line drawn is an arbitrary one, probably done in the service of the people drawing it.
Capitalism is good... (Score:1)
What about Ford (Score:2)