US Expands Blacklist To Include China's Top AI Startups Ahead of Trade Talks (reuters.com) 70
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. government widened its trade blacklist to include some of China's top artificial intelligence startups, punishing Beijing for its treatment of Muslim minorities and ratcheting up tensions ahead of high-level trade talks in Washington this week. The decision, which drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing, targets 20 Chinese public security bureaus and eight companies including video surveillance firm Hikvision, as well as leaders in facial recognition technology SenseTime Group Ltd and Megvii Technology Ltd. The action bars the firms from buying components from U.S. companies without U.S. government approval -- a potentially crippling move for some of them. It follows the same blueprint used by Washington in its attempt to limit the influence of Huawei for what it says are national security reasons. The Commerce Department said in a filing the "entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups." "The U.S. Government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China," said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.
In response, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the U.S. should stop interfering in its affairs and that it will continue to take firm and resolute measures to protect its sovereign security.
In response, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the U.S. should stop interfering in its affairs and that it will continue to take firm and resolute measures to protect its sovereign security.
Embargoed countries (Score:1)
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Good. I don't like Trump, but we need to stop the Chinese government. They are not our friends.
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here here
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Still have to figure out some way to deal with them. China is a big problem for us. We and the rest of the world have spent the last twenty years tying our economies to theirs. They scare-quotes "represent" nearly 1 in 5 people on Earth; we're about 4% of the world's population.
Normally if we wanted to put pressure on them we'd coordinate with our allies, but that's a non-starter. Our relations with the rest of the world are bad.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally if we wanted to put pressure on them we'd coordinate with our allies, but that's a non-starter. Our relations with the rest of the world are bad.
I'd say it's less that than our allies are inextricably tied to China, too, and those governments have varying degrees of willingness to upset the apple cart. If you go hard against China there will be retaliation, and political blow back from any economic disruptions this causes are a source of existential fear for politicians of all kinds.
Just look at all the shit Trump gets for not seeming to care about the impact of his trade war. No ordinary politician can withstand that kind of push back, or at least they don't believe they can.
Re: Good (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:2)
I wouldn't bet on Xi being overthrown, I'd say he's very far from it. China has such strong control over the media that regular Chinese citizens have no concept about what really goes on beyond their borders. Compare most of Asia's views of North Korea to a typical Chinese person. They all think North Korea's nuclear program is bad, but only the Chinese believe that Americans are somehow at fault for it. Most people in China really have no idea of just how little North Korea could continue to operate such a
Re: Good (Score:1)
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Look at how the EU handles China.
We have plenty of trade with them. We also have plenty of influence through using trade as a carrot and through soft power. Take RoHS for example, the rules on stuff like lead and other nasties in electronics and consumer goods. China has basically adopted those rules because the EU is a big enough market to make it in the best interests to do so.
So if you want to help China improve then trade with them, but also develop rules that change their behaviour.
It works too. Despit
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Look at how the EU handles China.
We have plenty of trade with them. We also have plenty of influence through using trade as a carrot and through soft power.
Seriously?
Ok. Use that plentiful influence and soft power to protect the people of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, the Uighur minorities, etc... Maybe you can save some lives.
Whats that? You can't? You don't actually have any influence and power? Yeah, that's what I thought.
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How is the US protecting the people of HK? How are the tariffs helping?
There is only so much any of us can do.
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These are startups owned and run by Chinese citizens. Yes yes you can claim that the Chinese government runs all companies in China, but it doesn't.
Anyway, this is likely to screw the United States in the long term. If you don't work with Chinese companies they they will just develop their own technology and replace yours. Your operating systems, your cloud services, your CPUs, all of it. They aren't going to just give up, they will ditch your stuff and sooner rather than later their own replacements will b
LOL (Score:1)
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
This is entirely about Mr. Trump's trade war. Which are good, and easy to win.
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I don't know. There is another relatively well known example of the US having something to say about a country rounding up masses of people into concentration camps and engaging in systematic genocide. There is something of a pattern.
I can't imagine that anyone who has met someone with a number tattooed on them really thinks stopping China is wrong regardless of what excuses have to be leveraged to get support.
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Yeah, as an overreaction to unprovoked Japanese suicide bombing of the entire pacific fleet. First that is on the basis of nationality not race, second those people were detained and cared for. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison with genocide death camps where they harvest organs for the highest bidder.
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Yeah, interesting claim that. The Falun Gong says (without any actual evidence) that more of their followers are killed each year for organ harvesting than there are actual organ transplant operations in all of China. That has worked so well that every other persecuted group now claims the same thing. What are they doing with all those organs, making Soylent Green Sausage? Where can I buy some?
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The Falun Gong are barking mad, but they understand that whatever story they concoct, our media will buy it.
Re: LOL (Score:1)
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Yeah, as an overreaction to unprovoked Japanese suicide bombing of the entire pacific fleet.
Actually, it was an overreaction to the Ni'ihau Incident [wikipedia.org]. On Dec 7th, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese pilot made an emergency landing on the Hawaiian island of Ni'ihau, and several ethnically-Japanese American citizens helped him destroy maps, obtain weapons, and take hostages. Several people were killed, including the pilot and one of the Japanese-Americans.
Despite the shock of these American citizens betraying their country, the internment program was never applied to Japanese-Americans liv
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"None of that is happening in the Xinjiang camps."
Says the mouthpiece of Chinese state propaganda on Slashdot (or maybe just a believer). I suppose that is true if you take the Chinese governments word for it and ignore all the people who say otherwise. There is more and more evidence leaking out all the time. This is very similar to the crazy rumors leaking out that even people within Germany discounted at the time. If you are just a believer history will end up judging you the same way, "there is no way t
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There is more and more evidence leaking out all the time.
Please provide a citation for the evidence of genocide or organ harvesting occurring in the camps.
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Ok, I'll bite:
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com.au]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://endtransplantabuse.org... [endtransplantabuse.org]
http://www.ishr.org/countries/... [ishr.org]
And a quote if you don't get it:
As of 2014 Organ tourists to China report receiving kidney transplants within days of arriving in China.
By way of comparison, the median waiting time for an organ transplantation in Australia is 6 months to 4 y
Re: LOL (Score:2)
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There is another relatively well known example of the US having something to say about a country rounding up masses of people into concentration camps and engaging in systematic genocide.
If you're alluding to Nazi Germany there were many Americans who were very pro-Hitler, including your very own Charles Lindbergh, a prominant member of the America First Committee, which was basically Fascist in nature.
There is no guarantee the US would have even declared war on Germany after Pearl Harbor but of course Hitler declared war first, making the point moot.
To be fair, the US had already used concentration camps of their own in the Philippines, when those silly Filipinos decided they wanted in
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There is another relatively well known example of the US having something to say about a country rounding up masses of people into concentration camps and engaging in systematic genocide.
If you're alluding to Nazi Germany ...
I thought he was referring to the American run death-camps where hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were exterminated during the American conquest and pacification of Philippine Islands.
The Nazis studied the American death camps when designing their own.
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There is another relatively well known example of the US having something to say about a country rounding up masses of people into concentration camps and engaging in systematic genocide.
Yes. And what the US said was "we'll pretend the holocaust isn't occurring for months even though we have solid intelligence that it is, because selling war supplies to the Reich is very profitable."
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You don't get to call "false equivalence" unless you state what's wrong with the equivalence. If you simply object to our actions being compared per se, that's special pleading.
Re: LOL (Score:1)
Re: LOL (Score:2)
lol (Score:2, Informative)
The U.S. government widened its trade blacklist to include some of China's top artificial intelligence startups, punishing Beijing for its treatment of Muslim minorities
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Remember Trump's Muslim ban? This is 100% not about treatment of Muslim minorities. This is about Trump's trade war. It's the only thing he's doing that has any bipartisan approval whatsoever — there's plenty of liberals who don't enjoy the trade situation with China.
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"Remember Trump's Muslim ban? This is 100% not about treatment of Muslim minorities."
From whose perspective? Trump's? I'm not sure a flight ban which was only overturned because it interfered with Tech company H1B abuse is fairly compared to concentration camps and genocide but either way those are bad things and need to be stopped. The only sad thing is that if it weren't for economics we wouldn't even be hearing about it just like China's abuses for the last 20 years haven't been considered newsworthy. We
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You might not be a fan of the way Trump has conducted the trade war but something needed done and nobody else had any better plans.
Even Trump had a better plan: just put the same restrictions on China that they put on other nations. Annnnnnd done. Now, the criticism of this strategy is that this runs counter to WTO rules, but so what? China is doing it, and the WTO isn't doing anything to them, so clearly there are no penalties of that type for superpowers. If we do the same thing and the WTO wants to complain, we insist that they crack down on China at the same time. Instead he's playing these bullshit who-can-hurt-who-worse games tha
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Anything that is going to work hurts both sides. There is no magic answer which doesn't come with a price tag. For us it is temporary while our companies detangle from Chinese dependencies. Some individuals or companies fare worse than others and where they fall others will pop up. Within a decade or so we don't end up breaking even we end up far ahead. In the meantime we pay a little more on some goods but that money just goes into strengthening us nationally so it isn't a net loss.
If you don't think China
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he's playing these bullshit who-can-hurt-who-worse games that hurt both nations.
If you don't think China is hurting you are crazy.
You can't read, but they still let you use Slashdot. What a pity.
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The administration will change by 2024 at the latest, and Trump’s shit will be undone. China can afford to play the long game.
The tariffs were just a way to shift some of the tax burden from the wealthy (who got a break under Trump’s tax scam bill), to the middle and lower classes (who buy the majority of consumer crap from China). Anyone who truly believes this was done to benefit American businesses is drinking the kool aid. Look to the farming industry for a real example of what the govern
Re: lol (Score:1)
Snopes remembers that (Score:3)
Snopes remembers the "Muslim ban". It's right there next to "Bill Gates will pay you $1,000 for forwarding this email".
What Trump DID do, is pause for 120 days entry under one specific program from seven specific countries which support terrorism against the United States, until the appropriate security measures could be implemented. Note that NONE of the top five Muslim countries were included, and only one of the top ten. If it was supposed to be a list of "Muslim countries" somebody didn't Google, becau
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What Trump DID do, is pause for 120 days entry under one specific program from seven specific countries which support terrorism against the United States, until the appropriate security measures could be implemented. Note that NONE of the top five Muslim countries were included, and only one of the top ten.
Note that the country that actually sent us the 9/11 hijackers wasn't included, the primary country which has engaged in terrorism against the United States. It's obviously not about terrorism.
Article 4 of the Constitution protects California (Score:2)
While the lead hijackers had indeed been living in California, Article 4 unfortunately prevents the president from separating the Peoples Republic from the United States.
But seriously, we already replaced the government of
the country where al-Queda was based, where the terrorists lived and trained before coming to California and Florida. Afghanistan was no longer ruled by the Taliban by the time Trump took office, so it wouldn't make much sense to block people from Afghanistan. It *had* been home to the te
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But seriously, we already replaced the government of
the country where al-Queda was based, where the terrorists lived and trained before coming to California and Florida. Afghanistan was no longer ruled by the Taliban by the time Trump took office,
Uh, most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia [wikipedia.org], dude. Why are you gabbling about Afghanistan, which got its militant islamism from saudia arabia via pakistan [researchgate.net]?
He was in Saudi Arabia when he was 12 years old (Score:2)
There is definitely a terrorism problem in Saudi Arabia. More on that at the bottom of this post. First, let's get the facts about those 9/11 hijackers who had been born in Saudi Arabia.
Hanjour left Saudi Arabia when he was 19 and spent his adult life in Afghanistan and California.
Sheri was living in Chechnya when he was recruited to come to Afghanistan.
al-Mihdhar was came of age in Bosnia, before heading to Afghanistan.
Nawaf al-Hazmi was also in Bosnia by 1995, where he was friends with al-Midhar.
Salem a
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Yeah, I remember that. The list of countries drawn up under the Obama administration? Which includes Venezuela? That "muslim" ban?
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Yeah, I remember that. The list of countries drawn up under the Obama administration?
Except none of those nations were treated by Obama the way they were treated by Trump.
Which includes Venezuela?
Wow, that fooled you? I've got to remember that trick. Just throw in one red herring and the fools will fall over themselves to make apologies for you.
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The list came from Obama. Are you saying he threw that in to fool people?
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The list came from Obama. Are you saying he threw that in to fool people?
Obama didn't use the list for the same purposes [washingtonpost.com], and it wasn't really his list [snopes.com]. Trump left that in to fool people.
Fuck China (Score:2)
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I like your plan Dave. It isn't going nearly far enough with regard to China though. Re-uniting the allied forces to take them out and then mostly handling them like we did Japan seems like the way to go.
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Since tariffs end up getting passed on to the consumer, perhaps we need some way to ease the burden on the poor. I know! We can take money from the rich and give it to the poor, to help them afford the higher costs resulting from the tariffs.
If you don’t want socialism, stop trying to screw with capitalism.
Huh. Meh. Who cares. (Score:2)
Spinning this for China? (Score:2)
Why are we putting a spin on this in favor of China? These are not rouge corporations acting badly on their own. These corporations are just and extension of the Chinese government. We shouldn't ban these corps we should ban trade with China. Embargo them even.
Stop interfering with human rights abuses (Score:2)
Yes, indeed, the US should stop interfering with their human rights violations. lolz.
But seriously, I wonder how far this trend will continue? There have been growing clashes with China over the past few months-- and it feels like it's increasing quickly. How far can this go?
Hmmmm (Score:1)
> punishing Beijing for its treatment of Muslim minorities.
Meanwhile, in Syria.......
Start with (Score:1)