| ▲ | wxw 7 hours ago |
| > After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore. > It was not immediately clear on what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a deal involving a Singapore-based company and how, if at all, a completed acquisition transaction would be unwound. > Manus' two co-founders, CEO Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yichao, were summoned to Beijing for talks with regulators in March and later barred from leaving the country, five sources familiar with the matter said. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. |
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| ▲ | kelnos 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The third quote seems to invalidate the second, no? Under the "grounds" that key people are currently physically in China, and as such, the Chinese government can coerce them to do whatever it wants. Though I suppose if those two did not have majority ownership of the company, the actual (former) majority owners can refuse to unwind the sale regardless of their wishes. Company might be worth quite a bit less to Meta without those key people, though. Either way, I assume the two people stuck in China won't be seeing a dime of that sale price, which is not cool. (This is regardless of my feelings about Meta owning more AI capability...) |
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| ▲ | skeledrew 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The co-founders have roots in China. As such it's already a done deal that China will get its way. |
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| ▲ | throw03172019 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Dealt with is the founders / team / investors losing out of the $2B. That’s the punishment from China. |
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| ▲ | giwook 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Somehow I think there is a real possibility more will happen. Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes. I don't claim to know what's going on outside of what's being reported, but I'm reminded of other individuals who have "stepped out of line" (as determined by Beijing) and were also either barred from the country or mysteriously disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to randomly reappear at some point singing a different tune. | | |
| ▲ | observationist 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >>> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes. This is standard operating procedure for the CCP. They are a truly ruthless, sinister group who have no scruples about ensuring compliance and using leverage on behalf of Chinese interests. Just look at what happened to Jack Ma. | | |
| ▲ | xtracto 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Gemini, Give me examples of people that the US has retained passports pending investigations It's standard procedure in every country for some investigations. | | |
| ▲ | giwook 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And what exactly are these founders being investigated for? | |
| ▲ | 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | nutjob2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is false equivalence. Outside of immigration issues, you can only be made to surrender your passport if you have been arrested and indicted for a crime, as a part of bail. That power can only be granted by a judge. China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever. | | |
| ▲ | BigTTYGothGF 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Outside of immigration issues, you can only be made to surrender your passport if you have been arrested and indicted for a crime, as a part of bail This has historically not been the case, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig_v._Agee and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson | | |
| ▲ | nsagent an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The first case makes sense: ex-CIA officer explicitly outing CIA officers. Naturally, the government is going to step in and it's a false equivalence to compare to restricting random citizens. As for your second case, US schools teach about the perils of McCarthyism. You neglected to link to the subsequent Supreme Court ruling in 1958 overturning the confiscation of the passport over protected speech. Note how long ago that was and how it's taught as a black stain on US history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_v._Dulles | |
| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Anyone with a child support order that makes decent money is only one misrecorded or bounced payment away from being ineligible for a passport. The trigger is only 4 digits of USD. | |
| ▲ | Avicebron an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You didn't have to bring out the big gun usernames, we get it, you run a bot farm. |
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| ▲ | andersonpico 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever. What makes you think there's no legal process for blocking nationals from leaving China?It's a very common instrument and in a bunch of countries it's an administrative measure with even less scrutinity than a judicial mandate. Do you consider France or the UK to be a countries without rule of law or due process? But to the point in the US, for example, the government can just issue a warrant for you as a material witness or flag your passport and then you can't leave; these are hardly due processes and more like legal workarounds to do exactly the same thing; the US has disappeared plenty of people in much more sinister ways than that, however, so I agree that there's no equivalence here: the US is worse. |
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| ▲ | Computer0 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They are good actually. | |
| ▲ | Fricken 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Jack Ma is fine. If that's what you mean by ruthless then it's not really a big deal. | | |
| ▲ | nutjob2 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | He's fine because he complied with the authorities. | | |
| ▲ | yakbarber 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | that's true in every country. | |
| ▲ | Fricken 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | All states, by definition, are authorities that demand compliance. You're not saying anything that distinguishes Jack Ma's condition from anyone else's just about anywhere. | | |
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| ▲ | conradev 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Jack Ma comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#During_tech_crackdown Ma's voting rights were reduced from 50% to 6%.
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| ▲ | cineticdaffodil 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Usually they just threaten the family that stayed in china to enforce compliance. As in visit by police and do a video call. Good old socialist playbook. Guess the CEOs were to workaholic ti be threatened with the mafia methods. | |
| ▲ | cermicelli 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | |
| ▲ | guywithahat 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management. | | |
| ▲ | dublinstats 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Shouldn't every country be barring people from leaving the country if they've been charged with a crime? At least if there's a good chance they will flee justice. This seems like a side issue from the question of whether the charges are legitimate. | | |
| ▲ | Invictus0 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Manus founders had already left China. They were called back and went willingly, because if you don't go back, then China disappears your family. | | |
| ▲ | threethirtytwo 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | This is an exaggeration. But there are things China can do that are legal in the name of national security. I would say it’s just as extreme as what the US would do to Snowden if he came back. | |
| ▲ | intrasight 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for explaining why they would willingly return. |
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| ▲ | mothballed 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's extremely common even without a crime. US block or cancel people with extremely small child support debts (I think like $1000 which is a single missed payment for middle class person) and people with moderate tax debts (I think about $25,000) for instance from getting a passport. | |
| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, everyone country does this. You can be barred from travel in a wide range of other circumstances in many other countries. Every person has a nationalistic solipsism that renders them incapable of understanding events that occur outside of their own country. China and the US are two countries where this tends to be most severe, people outside these countries seem to believe they possess a profound and innate understanding of events there that renders them capable of offering a complete opinion (and, in reality, that opinion will almost always be entirely self-referential, 20% of the comments on this thread seem to be talking about the US). At a high-level, the characterization of China as a lawless dictatorship is undermined somewhat by the higher levels of crime in almost every other country. You will see this interpretation of China from people in the US who live in places where there are constant, visible signs of crime. | | |
| ▲ | glerk 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just because the US also does this doesn’t make it right for China to do it and vice versa. Team coca-cola and team pepsi are both evil and illegitimate. | | |
| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Every country does it. Doing it is a central function of having a government. The number of, presumably, left-wing people who advocate for the most extreme forms of libertarianism is truly incredible. | | |
| ▲ | glerk 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Every country does it. Doing it is a central function of having a government. You are falling back on whataboutism. This is irrelevant. If we were having a similar debate in the middle ages, you would probably say something like: > Every church is burning witches and heretics at the stake. Doing it is a central function of having a church. The CCP has abducted these individuals and is preventing them from leaving the country. This is not ok. You can't justify this by saying "yeah, but they're the government, so it's their right to abduct whoever they want". A government is just a corporation with a bit more power than the others, not some sacred entity that sits above us. | | |
| ▲ | Fricken 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >A government is just a corporation with a bit more power than the others, not some sacred entity that sits above us. Well yes, a government doesn't need to be sacred to sit above you, it need only have more power. It's legitimacy is conditional on maintaining a monopoly on violence. | | |
| ▲ | glerk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If we’re going to descend into pedantry, my statement was normative, not descriptive, as in “I agree this is what a government does, I disagree this is what it _should_ do”. “Beneath me” is _my_ value judgement that I pass on this government and its appendages as in “it has been weighed in the balance and has been found unworthy”. That this government has more power than me doesn’t make it sit above me as a moral absolute, and it doesn’t magically give it legitimacy. | | |
| ▲ | Fricken 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The government sits above you because it makes you do things under the threat of violence. Why do you stop at the stop sign? because the government reserves the right to hurt you if you don't. The government's legitimacy comes from it's stick being bigger than yours. It's not sacred, it's not magic. It's a bigger stick. Your value judgement would have weight if your stick was bigger. The guy with the bigger stick decides what you (or Jack Ma) is worthy of. | | |
| ▲ | glerk 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > The government's legitimacy comes from it's stick being bigger than yours By the same argument, are Somalian warlords and Mexican drug cartel also legitimate in the territories they control? I don't think "legitimate" is the word you are looking for to describe pure power dynamics, since "legitimate" is imbued with a moralistic judgement (look up is vs ought etc.). But yes, in practice, if I have a gun pointed at my head, I could be forced to do things that go against my judgement (within limits!). |
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| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Luckily china has a litany of 3rd world countries land borders surrounding it with porous borders, and in a great deal of them no one who gives too many shits about some poor chinese villager crossing. Americans on the other hand have Canada which for LEO purposes is basically an extension of the US, and Mexico which due to the drug trade and other unique factors mean anyone getting caught jumping the border in either direction is likely to owe the cartel a massive amount of money or some extremely undesirable favors. I would definitely rather be a trapped Chinese trying to escape than a trapped American. |
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| ▲ | defrost 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Would that be lower or higher than the number of people who endlessly bang on about "lefties" and or "fascists", "nazis" et al. I myself find the numbers that engage in political reductionism and sophism to be truly incredible .. easily a double digit percentage of any population, actual billions in total globally. Wait, is that actually "incredible" though, or just merely "expected"? |
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| ▲ | soperj 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes. Feels like Guantanamo Bay all over again. | | |
| ▲ | EA-3167 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | In what conceivable way? | | |
| ▲ | T-A 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_Surveillance_at_a_... | | |
| ▲ | EA-3167 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | This seems like, to be very very VERY generous as per the guidelines, a case of limited superficial similarities being blown out of proportion. Assuming the best of intentions. | | |
| ▲ | T-A 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wikipedia's description of RSDL does not go into gory details. They are not hard to look up though. See e.g. https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/michael-caster-on-chinas-for... | | |
| ▲ | EA-3167 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you really believe that "activists" and suspected criminals are given the same treatment as some entrepreneurs who just lost their shirts? This feels like an excuse to bring up something that's fundamentally unrelated to the subject at hand, because there are a dozen closer and more useful comparisons to make than Gitmo. For example how Japan can hold and question people without access to a lawyer, outside of police stations. |
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| ▲ | soperj 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Indefinite detention without charges. Sounds exactly the same. | | |
| ▲ | EA-3167 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This strikes me as a classic case of, “Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie:
‘Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this!’” |
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| ▲ | ahmadyan 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes. Pure speculation on my part, but i would be surprised if China didn't have our equivalent of export control laws, not difficult to fabricate a crime and pin it on founders. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They do have export control laws and such, but based on current and past behavior China’s Communist Party doesn’t need those laws to disappear people or create crimes and then make people guilty of said crimes. Worth mentioning though that this is not how America functions, nor our rule of law. | | |
| ▲ | wahnfrieden 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | What do you make of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927544 | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not much, none of those cases from the US resulted in disappearing the founders. The US is a nation of laws, no matter how imperfect. Stark contrast to the CCP. | | |
| ▲ | rvnx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | At the end of the day, the process itself, years of investigation, millions in legal fees, frozen assets, destroyed careers is often the punishment regardless of whether charges stick or convictions hold up. Not sure we can give any lessons to the world. | | |
| ▲ | cataphract 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The US is a democracy, and people are given many procedural and substantive rights, even Guantanamo detainees (we can argue if Boumediene had any practical effect, but we wouldn't have seen the same from China). But Americans are under the impression that what the world sees is what they mostly see -- the domestic side. And to a certain extent, they do thanks to its cultural influence. This democracy/rule of law, however, is completely absent in way it behaves outside its borders and it's now clearer than ever to everyone that the US is the biggest source of instability in the world. More than Russia. Certainly more than China. | | | |
| ▲ | Levitz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Then you probably are not fit to comment on this matter. I'm sorry to be that blunt but if you don't understand the value of rule of law, the difference in incentives, the consequences of separation of powers, I can't even grasp what kind of perspective you can build. It's genuinely baffling to me. |
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| ▲ | foxes 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | lol, your current president and congress dont seem to be following your own laws. |
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| ▲ | refulgentis 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yr parent is new to standard China legal mechanisms and you pivoted off of that to invent a chain of stuff that isn’t real. Are they unfamiliar to us? Yes. But it’s worth speaking to whether the speculation is rational. |
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| ▲ | mc32 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Their mistake was not reading the tea-leaves. Just as Youxia Zhang, Weidong He, etc. Although to be fair the party elders and generals were in a no-win situation. They could not just "leave." They were likely baited to come in with some pretense and once they had them, they would not and will not let them get away. |
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| ▲ | itopaloglu83 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Looks like the issue will be “dealt with” though we don’t know how exactly. |
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| ▲ | paulsutter 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's easy to see how this will play out. The entrepreneurs will get nothing. Most likely everyone else that has been paid (investors, etc) will keep what they received. Whether Meta or the CCP ends up with the proceeds of the entrepreneurs, that's anyone's guess. |
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| ▲ | stego-tech 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I suspect this is more of a warning shot to others attempting the same playbook ("Singapore-washing", as I've heard folks call it): the state is watching, and shifting geopolitics means it's in their interest to retain successful talent and entities at home rather than let opposition have them. If anything, I'm genuinely surprised it took them this long. America's been doing this for decades without much in the way of pushback, so China must feel very confident in its position to use such tactics. |
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| ▲ | aesch 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know if America has done anything quite like this. The example I'm looking for is where a company starts in the US but leaves and incorporates outside the US and then the US attempts to block acquisition by a foreign company. Also, the enforcement mechanism while vague seems un-American. America might tax the company upon exit but it wouldn't hold the founders hostage in America. If you have examples I'd be curious. | | |
| ▲ | DontBreakAlex 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You don't need to incorporate in the US for this to happen to you. You should look up what happened to Marc Lasus after he founded Gemplus (spoiler, he's on social security while the company the CIA stole from him has $3b revenue) or how Frédéric Pierucci was taken hostage to force the sale of France's nuclear reactors to General Electric. I assume the US does this to all the other countries too. | | | |
| ▲ | capitalhilbilly 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Being stopped that late is a bit different than the US AFAIK,
but there is certainly the possibility of being stopped from work and (depending how you react) prevented from leaving the US for purely economic inventions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act I find it notable that the US' actual checks on government have worked against expanding the secrecy act further into economic protectionism for favored industries, etc. | |
| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | vkou 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US doesn't need to do 'something like this', they can just bar you from the global financial system if they don't like you. [1] Or just order another country to snatch you up. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou She was arrested, and was being extradited from Canada into the United States... Because her Chinese company was doing business with Iran. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout This chap was arrested in Thailand, extradited, and did a decade in a US prison because he had the audacity of selling weapons from Russia to Colombia. I'm not sure how exactly US law is of any relevance to such transactions... --- [1] Or, since 2025, just shoot a missile at your boat, with an option for a follow-up salvo if there any survivors. Strangely enough, everyone who has managed to survive both the initial attack, and the double-tap has so far been repatriated to their countries of origin, with no charges filed by the US. | |
| ▲ | cermicelli 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | US has blocked merges of companies especially with Chinese and other non western companies. Including Japan, India etc. For instance US Steel acquisition by Nippon Steel(japanese) is one such example.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vz83pg9eo More examples, Ant Group(chinese) tried to buy MoneyGram (blocked in 2018)
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/us-blocks-moneygram... Xiamen Sanan Optoelectronics tried buying Lumileds, blocked again by US. Also Chinese ofc. Broadcom and Qualcomm deal was also blocked, Broadcom was then Singapore based in process of moving to US I believe... (very sus happened in 2018 too, someone didn't pay Donald enough) https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/india-inc-and-the-cfius-nati...
Indian company forced to divest from US tech firm... (2013) I am certain there must be European examples as well but smaller ofc, AI companies are over valued these days, most acquisitions were never this big in the olden days of pre 2020s... I know for a fact that most folks don't want to invest in US for this reason other than in public equities or bonds ofc. Private foreign investment in US has been high only due to European pensions and Middle-eastern money going into it. I don't know about how fair, far, or right it was compared to these were, detaining founders is also not confirmed, but sure let's assume it's true still... Only difference in US is perhaps foreign folks can sue over it. Sometimes, if they are lucky and if the deal is worth it. I find it strange people of HN being based in US can be so ill informed of what their country, does to foreign companies but be mad about things foreign companies do to them? I mean sure rest(96%) of the world doesn't really exist, it's but a myth or a land the better folks of US only want to take value when needed? Unsure what this comment meant, this has happened before as well btw, these are just post 2010s examples because they are relevant. Russians and US used to do this too, India and US were worse of pre-2000s, Japan and US were at their throats in 1980s, in terms of trade and acquisition... | |
| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | rzerowan 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Famously back in the day Grindr , which had a plot point in the Silicon Valley series . Probably more obscure ones that havent been heard of outside software in the Hard tech space like MotorSich (Ukranian) was being courted by Chinese investment got blocked due to US pressure. And very recently the whole TikTok fiasco. |
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| ▲ | strangegecko 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What examples do you have of the US government doing to CEOs what has happened to people like Jack Ma and many other public figures? For China, there are so many examples of people doing 180s and being full of contrition after those interventions, it's hard to imagine anything but severe intimidation or worse happening behind closed doors. | |
| ▲ | axus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm totally fine with what-about-ism here; making China a better place to live and do business is out of my jurisdiction and doesn't help me, encouraging the USA to do better will. | |
| ▲ | reissbaker 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You've been all over this this thread responding with the same whataboutist comments claiming America does the same thing. And yet, I'm pretty sure America hasn't held American citizens hostage in order to force them to unwind a sale of a foreign company they founded to a different foreign company. | | |
| ▲ | maxglute 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | US absolutely has exit bans on people who break/is being investigated for national security and export control laws, which is what Manus did. Except Americans don't call it hostage taking when they do it. | | |
| ▲ | JPKab 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Please cite an example. | | |
| ▲ | maxglute 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not sure if serious, you think US doesn't make people surrender passports for NSL investigations, i.e. Supermicro trio surrendered their passports. | | |
| ▲ | bit-anarchist 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not comparable. The Supermicro trio wasn't trapped for trying to sell a company to China. | | |
| ▲ | maxglute 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Directly comparable, trying to circumvent export controls. One is chips other is algo. | | |
| ▲ | jwitthuhn 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Could you cite the specific law that makes it illegal for someone to export their thoughts? | |
| ▲ | bit-anarchist 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As another comment mentioned, comparing "employees trying to selling GPUs to an unauthrorized country" and "CEOs selling a company built on national resources to an outside country" is spherical cows levels of comparison. | | |
| ▲ | maxglute 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Another wrong comment doesn't make being wrong less wrong. CEOs/persons trying to sell controlled technology unauthorized for export by origin country. They are direct legal analogs. | | |
| ▲ | bit-anarchist 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wrong how? It is your comment that is missing the point. The contention isn't whether USA has export control (you are the one who brought it up), it's whether USA has actually prevented a company from being sold overseas by detaining their owners. Are you trying to push a red herring? | | |
| ▲ | 8note 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > it's whether USA has actually prevented a company from being sold overseas by detaining their owners. notably china isnt doing this either: they are barring exit, not detaining, and the reason for barring exit was not reported, so its a stretch to say that its to prevent the sale of the company overseas. The US: - makes broad claims of jurisdiction
- has export control, which is listed in the article as a potential reason for blocking the sale, and
- restricts exit from the country when it wants to make sure certain people are available to chat I dont see whats so exciting about pushing on this specific case. There's an error of, "who's tried to export controlled IP by selling their company to a foreign adversary?" I dont see what's so exciting about this case that the US definitely absolutely wouldnt take a pretty similar approach to china - bring the CEOs to testify before congress and keep them in the country til the government is satisfied. What's so out of the ordinary that makes this interesting? This is the stuff that goes into work compliance courses. you might instead want to answer which high tech defense contractor for the US has successfully been bought out by say, iran, china, north korea, or russia, that the US has given the OK on? I expect there's a lack of data either way. It doesnt come up because people generally move their companies to the US, not out why is this the hill to die on? | |
| ▲ | maxglute 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | US export controls prevent companies from selling controlled tech. If US companies tried o circumvent then they would absolutely be denied, if they did secretly anyway, against, the law of course they'll likely have passport surrendered, i.e. exit ban if flight risk. Like this isn't complicated, the difference is Manus was full blown retarded enough to transparently circumvent PRC export controls after PRC closed loopholes and politely signalled them to stop, which they didn't, i.e. they broke actual export control laws. Like Manus didn't try to sell, they fucking sold, sign and dotted, despite being told not to, because its against export control laws. Even US companies rarely this blatantly dense. Americans getting exit banned for selling controlled hardware is LESS serious then what Manus tried to do, i.e. lesser (relative) export control crimes in US getting same treatment. |
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| ▲ | burntbridge 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Dan Duggan | |
| ▲ | mothballed 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Philip Agee |
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| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | stego-tech 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're right. To my knowledge, we don't hold citizens hostage to force them to unwind the sale of a foreign company they smuggled out of America into another country to a different foreign company. But you cannot seriously hold America up as blameless when we've wielded our economy as a cudgel against anyone we remotely disagree with (sanctions against Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc; tariffs against everybody), have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice, regularly park our navy off foreign shores to coerce desired outcomes, and dronestrike civilians as a final saber-rattling before full-fledged conflict. The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell, take a look beyond the past thirty years of history and there's a glut of incidents where empires used this sort of leverage to achieve outcomes - including the United States! We've traded political prisoners to achieve negotiated outcomes repeatedly, we just use different words to make ourselves feel better about it. We've propped up entire puppet states to ensure American corporate interests were served instead! Like, holy shit, why do I have to teach you naysayers what's already outlined in history books just because you can't be bothered to do the assigned reading? | | |
| ▲ | nerdsniper 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Just last year the USA de-banked (from EU banks) EU citizens who are International Criminal Court officials for "opening preliminary investigations against Israeli personnel". The USA wields incredible power over financial interactions. | | |
| ▲ | stego-tech 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | THANK YOU, I knew I was overlooking a recent example in favor of historical ones! | | |
| ▲ | Alive-in-2025 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Trump is making it worse, but there had been examples of bad behavior. Now the US is completely uncontrolled. I can't say we wouldn't do something like happened here (trying to stop a foreign company from selling stuff or developing stuff) if it was doing something significant about weapons or ai. |
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| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Saline9515 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Of the course the USA does it. Obama was totally ruthless with such economic warfare, including on the US usual lackeys. See for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Pierucci | |
| ▲ | thrownthatway 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | While I don’t agree with your tone, and I’m sure an unbiased reading of history also wouldn’t agree with your tone… Who would you rather be world police? One or more of Cuba, Iran, China, Russia? | |
| ▲ | Levitz 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't think anyone is holding the US as blameless or perfect, but it gets exhausting to see Chinese propaganda every single time anything like this happens. When the US does something reprehensible, people rarely come up in droves going on and about China's enablement of the North Korean regime or the many abuses enacted on its population, but every single time the US does anything we had to read a whole lot on how "at least China doesn't invade countries" as if the prime reason as to why China doesn't tend to involve itself militarily isn't precisely American hegemony. The rate at which the country is portrayed as some paragon of human rights, equality and peacefulness is either insane, deluded, or paid for. | | |
| ▲ | RobertoG 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You have to be joking. The media is almost daily full of China scares.
Also, the comments here are not talking about who started this war, with the GPU sanctions and the arrest of the daughter of Huawei's founder. Does it mean the Chinese are the good guys? No, because there are not good guys, but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese. | | |
| ▲ | bit-anarchist 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The media is almost daily full of China scares That gets repeated a lot. Is there any source? > there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese. Ask the Taiwanese about it. Or most countries dealing with border disputes with the PRC. | | |
| ▲ | Daishiman 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > That gets repeated a lot. Is there any source? Have you not been reading The Economist for the past 20 years of the WSJ since its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch? They've been predicting the downlfall of China every other month. | | |
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| ▲ | Levitz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese. It's not the Chinese? You sure? There's probably nobody more economically aggressive in the planet and they just threw a hissy fit at the EU the other day for doing something they've been doing since forever. I care not for "the media", I care that I don't have enough fingers to count the amount of people trying to justify this in this very comment section. I'm sure western media is not favorable to Chinese interests, I'd be utterly baffled if Chinese media was favorable to western interests. I do not expect public sentiment to follow a party line because we are better than that, but I do expect a certain reticence to go all out and justify opposition in intellectually rotten ways. |
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| ▲ | stickfigure 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You're right. You should have just left it at that. | |
| ▲ | nandomrumber 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice I wonder how that came about? What’s that fence analogy called? Chester-what? | |
| ▲ | wewtyflakes 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think people are frustrated with the firehose of whataboutism rather than disagreeing with you with the idea that things are not perfect. | | |
| ▲ | stego-tech 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean, the whataboutism is a critical tool in negating propaganda. Rather than focus on the reprehensibility of anyone using threats of violence like this to force specific outcomes favorable to domestic policy, everyone is instead hung up on the fact China did this. Whataboutism, used effectively, is meant to draw parallels rather than excuse behavior. Fuck China for what it's doing here, but also fuck the countries and entities who have used similar tactics in the past to great effect. Don't just conveniently put on blinders for what's happening/happened at home all because the government-labelled "baddie" did it too. | | |
| ▲ | boc 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Whataboutism, used effectively, is designed to change the subject and stop detailed exploration of the topic at hand. Which is what you're doing in this thread. We don't need to turn a news-relevant thread specifically about the CCP into a thread relitigating decades of American government and business behavior. You can make a separate submission to discuss the US if you'd like. |
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| ▲ | intended 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell, There is a massive difference in degree and kind here. Mixing them up at this level is spherical cow territory. |
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