>>91400 I don't have an issue with the topic but there's about four of these threads with the same stupid meme going on. You could have linked to articles, pulled some quotes, done anything, but it's just that stupid meme again.
>>91400 >We've seen consistent capitulation to the CCP from western govts for a number of years now and despite the COVID-19 outbreak, Uighur Genocide, and Academic/Industrial Espionage it doesn't seem like anything meaningful is going to change to stop the slow global decline into uncharismatic dictatorships across the board.
There's actually some very rapid work on this most evident during the Huawei saga and something that is being lead by the US. The most recent is the new UK security law on foreign acquisitions that is rather plainly directed at China:
https://www.ft.com/content/68594eed-a082-464a-a125-2288587db693
I'm not sure what else can realistically be done outside of regime change.
>I'm not sure what else can realistically be done outside of regime change.
Don't buy their shit, that was supposed to be the entire point of free market diplomacy. We give them a taste and then we cut them off if they aren't good little boys and girls.
>Directors of overseas companies that fail to do so could face personal fines of up to £10m, or their businesses could pay penalties worth up to 5 per cent of annual turnover.
Small price to pay for Oligarchs, especially when corrupt accounting practices can be implemented to mimimize cost. Really just means more cash for kleptocrats and this country will continue to be run into the ground in the name of Neoliberalism.
>I'm not sure what else can realistically be done outside of regime change.
UK regime change or CCP regime change? (Preferably both amirite?)
>Britain on Thursday said China had broken its main bilateral treaty on Hong Kong by imposing new rules to disqualify elected legislators in the former British colony, cautioning that it would consider sanctions as part of its response.
>We give them a taste and then we cut them off if they aren't good little boys and girls.
It seems astonishing to me that we now find ourselves shocked it doesn't work, when it's like telling your kid not to buy sweets because the bloke who runs the corner shop is a Tory.
Harnessing the market as a tool of diplomacy is all well and good, but for the past 70 years we've been training our populace as consumerist zombies who can't live without the latest Made in China electronic tat, and we've made our entire GDP reliant on it.
>>91423 You say tat, but it's not just tat, is it? All electronics come from Asia, and there's not really a viable alternative without a reinvention of our economy too radical for any Tory to countenance, because of their monopoly on rare earth metals.
They don't have a monopoly on rare earth minerals and electronics makes up less than 10% of total consumption. The vast majority of rare earths are used as catalysts in various chemical processes.
China dominates the electronics business for the same reason it dominates manufacturing in general - skills, infrastructure and supply chain. Chinese labour isn't particularly cheap, especially in the Pearl River Delta region where electronics are made. The network effects of having tens of thousands of manufacturers, suppliers and distributors in the same place are insurmountable without tens of billions of investment over several decades.
>RCEP: Asia-Pacific countries form world's largest trading bloc
>Fifteen countries have formed the world's largest trading bloc, covering nearly a third of the global economy. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is made up of 10 Southeast Asian countries, as well as South Korea, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The pact is seen as an extension of China's influence in the region.
>The deal excludes the US, which withdrew from a rival Asia-Pacific trade pact in 2017. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) shortly after taking office. The deal was to involve 12 countries and was supported by Mr Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as a way to counter China's surging power in the region. Negotiations over the RCEP began in 2012. The deal was signed on Sunday on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), hosted by Vietnam.
>The RCEP is expected to eliminate a range of tariffs on imports within 20 years. It also includes provisions on intellectual property, telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce and professional services.
>But it's possible the new "rules of origin" - which officially define where a product comes from - will have the biggest impact. Already many member states have free trade agreements (FTA) with each other, but there are limitations. "The existing FTAs can be very complicated to use compared to RCEP," said Deborah Elms from the Asian Trade Centre. Businesses with global supply chains might face tariffs even within an FTA because their products contain components that are made elsewhere. A product made in Indonesia that contains Australian parts, for example, might face tariffs elsewhere in the Asean free trade zone. Under RCEP, parts from any member nation would be treated equally, which might give companies in RCEP countries an incentive to look within the trade region for suppliers.
>For years, Alibaba founder Jack Ma has had a safe spot at the top table of Chinese business. Members of the Chinese Entrepreneurs Association even recall an evening outing on West Lake in Hangzhou some years ago when he boasted about his close relations with the president, dating from when Xi Jinping was a provincial Communist Party secretary.
>But this week, which was supposed to end with the $37bn listing of Alibaba’s Ant Group financial business, instead saw Mr Xi himself, according to people close to events, pulling the plug on what was meant to be the biggest IPO ever.
>The immediate catalyst for the action was at least in part a speech Mr Ma made in October that was critical of Chinese banks and regulators. But in the background, regulators and banks threatened by the rise of nimble new competitors have been lobbying hard to rein the sector in, particularly Ant and its ebullient founder.
>“He had become too arrogant,” said the head of Asian economics at one major international bank with close relations with regulators. “They needed to put a leash on the monster that Ant was becoming.”
>In retrospect, it is clear that Mr Ma, now 56, has become caught up in a mess that was a long time brewing and is at least partly of his own making.
When you're a multi-billionaire, you can do whatever the fuck you like. Jack Ma likes singing torch songs, Larry Ellison lives in a re-creation of a feudal Japanese palace, Elon Musk has his own space programme. Don't pretend you wouldn't be just as bonkers in their place.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are the main reason we've got a COVID vaccine so soon. They've all but eradicated polio and they're going great guns in eradicating malaria.
Musk and Bezos less so. I can kind of buy the idea of Bill Gates as a legitimate philanthropist, but like all of his kind, you do get the distinct impression the level to which they give back to society only ever seems to be correlated to how suspicious they are that Heaven and Hell might really exist.
Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and would still be as rich as when the Pandemic began. Amazon is looking at putting fulfillment center workers in cages to be able to automate parts of the center and increase productivity further.
Bill Gates cut his teeth screwing over colleague Gary Kildall in the IBM deal and I would seriously question whether he hadn't maintained such a cutthroat culture in all his subsequent enterprises. I'm pretty suspicious of a philanthropist who is spending all their money on charitable causes and continues to get richer.
>>91782 To be honest, if cheap access to space, electric cars and LEO broadband are the work of evil capitalists then I do wonder what the alternative is. Burning it on SLS launchpad would probably be the government option.
The space, electric cars and ludicrous speed broadband are only for the rich though. Under evil capitalism the precariat and unneccesariat get fulfillment center cages and/or food bank queues.
I don't begrudge Bezos - he hasn't made my life worse in any way by creating Amazon. He created something very valuable out of nothing and quite rightly has a say in how some of that value gets distributed. My problem is with landlords and the Government's arbitrary constraints on housebuilding, which serves as a giant drag on the productive economy. I'm perfectly happy to pay taxes to support public services, but I bitterly resent the huge chunk of my salary that goes straight to a parasitic landowner.
>>91790 >he hasn't made my life worse in any way by creating Amazon
He's made millions of people's lives worse by with his poor employment practices, this is something lots of people are collectively guilty of but him more so than perhaps anyone else. The knock-on effect of that has absolutely made your life worse in some ways, even if you can't immediately distinguish it.
I don't know the figures but I'm guessing the amount of tax Amazon avoids paying also has a significant impact on the "productive economy" in much the same way as the example you just gave.
>>91789 >The space, electric cars and ludicrous speed broadband are only for the rich though.
All of those things benefit humanity immensely either directly or indirectly. LEO broadband especially is something tailor made for servicing Sub-Saharan Africa where internet infrastructure and services are designed around portable mobile technology whereas everywhere else uses lines for cost-effectiveness.
>>91790 It sounds like you would enjoy the teachings of Henry George.
>>91790 I agree actually. And I don't agree with >>91792 at all about Amazon "employment practices" - I've worked there, and my life is much the better for that experience.
>>91794 >I've worked there, and my life is much the better for that experience.
This is what we call anecdotal evidence, and it sounds particularly silly given all the well-documented complaints Amazon employees have made about the working conditions.
>>91795 Okay, so the people who publicly complain and document that their experience was terrible, outweigh those that didn't have a terrible experience? Maybe they were just shit at their jobs.
My local area is a major logistics hub and Amazon seem to be the best of the bunch in terms of pay and conditions. They'll work you hard, but you start on £9.70 an hour with better than double for overtime and quite generous bonuses. I know people who did a stint there and couldn't hack the pace, but I also know a number of people who jumped ship from other logistics companies and are much happier at Amazon.
The situation might be worse in the US, but most of the complaints here seem to boil down to "they don't let you slack off" and/or "there are too many bulgmanians".
>>91799 Fair dos but Amazon operates in pretty much every country and leaving the Anglocentric bubble, conditions for workers in developing countries are much worse. DiEM25 recently launched the hashtag #Makeamazonpay to protest workers rights, environmental impact, and their abject refusal to pay into any of the states that it benefits from conducting business in.
>Major U.S. companies, reportedly including Apple, are lobbying against a new piece of legislation that seeks to prevent forced labor in China.
>The bill, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, levies sanctions on human rights violators and prevents imports of goods manufactured in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang unless companies can guarantee they weren't produced by imprisoned or coerced workers. As of November, estimates indicate that China has forced nearly one million Uighur Muslims into internment camps.
Apple in particular has conducted multiple probes over the years on forced labour without finding fault. The problem in the case is likely that it's bloody difficult to separate out on your supply chain when exports are raw materials that get mixed in with legitimate sources. This information took me less than a minute.
Similarly, your arguments over union and environmental rights are just tired arguments that play up stereotypes of suicide nets. It does nothing to address the real issues around a lack of trade union culture or the lack of hooks to keep money in-country. Mostly because I suspect those issues are too complicated for silly youtube videos and twitter hashtags from a pressure group.
>>91805 >It does nothing to address the real issues around a lack of trade union culture or the lack of hooks to keep money in-country.
So you should still buy the blood diamonds because if you don't, they'll be sold anyway.
No you're right. These CEOs are saints, they are not to be expected to adhere to any kind of Social Contract, nor should they be yoked with any additional responsibilities for their staff with all the power and privilege they wield.
>>91799 >The situation might be worse in the US
In the US they're subject to mandatory 100% exit searches, and aren't paid for the time this takes, which can be upwards of an hour on a heavy shift.
>Nearly a year after doctors identified the first cases of a worrying new disease in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the country appears to be stepping up a campaign to question the origins of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
>State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019.
>The official People’s Daily newspaper claimed in a Facebook post last week that “all available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in central China’s Wuhan”.
