Comment by patmcc 3 months ago
What if Congress passed a law that said "The New York Times must shut down unless all foreign owners divest"? That's effectively impossible for a publicly traded corporation. Is that just a ban, in practice?
For those interested, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47986 is a relatively approachable overview of these guidelines.
It's interesting to read the full TikTok opinion https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf and search for "scrutiny" and "tailored" while referencing some of the diagrams from the overview above. It's a good case study of how different levels of scrutiny are evaluated!
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
IANAL, but my lay opinion is that thanks to the foreign commerce clause this would be a matter of rational basis.
So quite likely Congress could craft such a law and have it hold up, if it could show that foreign control of the NYT (which is incidentally the case) posed a national security concern.
Except this isn't a law against any foreign owner, just specifically a foreign owner that is essentially the #1 geopolitical adversary of the US.
A large part of the US-China relationship is zero-sum. If America loses, china wins, and vice versa. That relationship is not the same for, say, the US-France relationship.
That’s what the China hawks want you to believe, it’s not just a lie but a shameful, war mongering lie. And they will increasingly use that lie to shut people up, shut apps down, until we have no choice but to believe that the Chinese want us dead and we them. It’s textbook propaganda and you’re spreading it.
China and the US have been in a massively successful, mutually beneficial global economic partnership for decades. Zero sum my ass. Take a peace pipe, make friends not war.
I want to believe you, but arguments like this are so simplistic that it's profoundly disappointing. It is simultaneously the case that they are extensive trade partners and that there's ongoing harassment in the South China Sea, the horrifying takeover of Hong Kong and the increasingly chilling situation in Taiwan, or the harassment of expat dissidents who have fled to the West.
To say nothing of extremely adversarial cases of increasingly aggressive hacking, corporate espionage, "wolf warrior" diplomacy, development of military capabilities that seem specifically designed with countering the U.S. in mind, as well as the more ordinary diplomatic and economic pushback on everything from diplomatic influence, pushing an alternative reserve currency, and an internal political doctrine that emphasizes doubling down on all these fronts.
I don't even feel like I've ventured an opinion yet, I've simply surveyed facts and I am yet to meet a variation of the Officer Barbrady "nothing to see here" argument that has proved to be fully up to speed on the adversarial picture in front of us.
I think what I want, to feel reassured, is to be pleasantly surprised by someone who is command of these facts, capable of showing that I'm wrong about any of the above, and/or that I'm overlooking important swaths of the factual landscape in such a way that points to a safe equilibrium rather than an adversarial position.
But instead it's light-on-facts tirades that attempt to paint these concerns as neocon warmongering, attempting to indulge in a combination of colorful imagery and ridicule, which for me is kind of a non-starter.
Edit in response to reply below: I'm just going to underscore that none of the facts here are in dispute. The whataboutism, insinuations of racism, and "were you there!?" style challenges (reminiscent of creation science apologetics) are just not things I'm interested in engaging with.
That covers the China side of things. Presumably America is doing nothing against China. In that case things would be very lopsided and you (in general) would have a reason to be concerned. On the other hand if America was doing “adversarial” things in the direction of China as well, and both sides at sufficiently low intensity, it could still be argued that the two countries are not playing a zero-sum game overall because trade etc. happens in spite of all that.
You complain about "whataboutism," but your comment is just a long list of, "But what about this bad thing China did?"
Yet when other people point out much more horrible things the US has done in the same timeframe (like backing Israel to the hilt as it kills tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and destroys the entire Gaza strip), you respond with, "That's Whataboutism."
if you reread your post, looking for whatabboutism, each critique you provide could be described as such in response to "we're great trading partners and will continue to be"
why are these whatabboutisms interesting but others are not? what makes you comfortable with working with americans, when its clear how they treat expat political dissidents like Assange and Snowden? why are you ok working with the US who's military is tuned for seizing iranian oil shipments? why are you favourable to a US reserve currency when the US has been abusing its power by putting all kinds of unilateral sanctions, and confiscating reserves without any due process? its not just china thats trying to make a new reserve currency, the EU does too, so they can buy iranian oil.
minus all the whatabboutisms, america and china exchanged ~$750B worth of goods and services in 2022, with neither's trangressions being a blocker. Americans by and large care much more about the cost and variety of goods than they do about fishing rights in the south china sea. americans dont care that much about US foreign policy goals, compared to shopping and culture.
Have you been to China? Know anyone from there? Or is your opinion on what they deserve based entirely on TV headlines? Do you relate to them as humans? That’s what I need to see before I take anyone’s condemnation of any group of people seriously.
I’m disputing none of the facts you raise, I just don’t think it’s reason enough to label the entire country as an enemy state and shut the door like a petulant child. Especially in light of the horrifying atrocities that we ourselves are funding.
> China and the US have been in a massively successful, mutually beneficial global economic partnership for decades
Past performance is not indicative of future results. China is now grappling with sluggish GDP growth, declining fertility, youth unemployment, re-shoring/friend-shoring, a property crisis, popular discontent with authoritarian overreach (e.g. zero COVID and HK), and increasingly concentrated power under chairman-for-life Xi. Their military spending has hockey-sticked in the past two decades and they're churning out ships and weapons like nobody's business. He realizes that the demographic and economic windows of opportunity are finite for military action against Taiwan (and by extension its allies like the US and Japan). The Chinese military's shenanigans in the South China Sea with artificial islands, EEZ violations, and so forth in combination with Xi's rhetorical sabre-rattling in domestic speeches don't paint a pretty picture.
Before somebody like this poster calls me a "war-mongering [liar]" or something similar let me point out that this is the opinion of academics [1], not US DoD officials or politicians. I have nothing but reverence for China's people and culture. I'd love to visit but unfortunately it's my understanding that I'd have to install tracking software on my phone and check in with police every step of the way. This type of asymmetry between our governments is why this ban has legs.
With the gift of hindsight I think it's safe to say that neoliberal policy (in the literal sense of the term, not the hacky partisan one) is a double-edged sword that got us to where we are today. To say that the US-China relationship is sunshine and puppies is ignorant of the facts.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/04/china-war-military-taiw...
> I'd love to visit but unfortunately it's my understanding that I'd have to install tracking software on my phone and check in with police every step of the way.
Uh, what? I've never encountered this in my trips to China.
You do have an ID scanned (like literally, on a photocopier) when you check into a hotel.
That was the us policy for 20 years under the assumption that political liberalism with follow economic liberalism. It has not. This is also no one sided. China is preparing for conflict with the US so we must also. Yes hawks can push a country into war but so can doves.
Do you dispute the persecution of Uyghurs in China? The UN, US Dept. of State, House of Commons in the UK and Canada, Dutch Parliament, French National Assembly, New Zealand, Belgium, and the Czech Republic?
This is not a government to be friends with. It's time we go our separate ways from the CCP.
I do not dispute it (in fact if you have good sources on the latest goings-on about this issue I’d appreciate it). But to say that it’s cause enough to excommunicate the CCP and go to war… is hypocrisy of the highest order, when we ourselves clearly fund and condone massive atrocities as long as it’s someone else’s hands. Road to peace is not paved with blood, do not be confused. Peace comes from boring communication work: talking, arguing, hashing the problems out, day in and day out. Shutting the door is the first step to a tragedy, always.
Yes, I dispute, because all of that are lies and brainwashing done by USA government. Please show prove of 1 million Uyghur locked up in China, genocide. Or you should apologize for your lies to the world. You say there is genocide in 2018, now is 2024, where is the bodies, people desperate to escape? Ur ambassador to China spent his time riding on Chinese bullet trains funded by Chinese government and vacation in the country, instead of going to Xinjiang and rescue all the 1M Uyghur people locked up camps?? What is your military doing? Should you save these poor people? Xinjiang is free for anyone to travel. People are allowed to freely leave and enter with all its neighboring countries. And USA say they love the Uyghur people, and the way they show their support is ban all the products, every single one, made by Uyghur people? Lol, you are not fooling anyone here. It is a fact Uyghur people can freely leave China if they want. And it is a fact, Uyghur population increasing faster than the broader population. And u can travel in Xinjiang today, there is Uyghur language everywhere, on shops, street signs. Uyghur language is taught in every government funded schools. Did the American boarding schools for native Americans teach their own language? Today, Uyghur kids are running in the streets, freely, speaking in Uyghur. Why don't you get all the countries you listed to form coalition army to save the poor Uyghur souls? Your government officials should not shake Chinese government official hands and travel on Chinese government trains to vacation in the country. No more talking, only action.
My person in deity do I need to go down the list of genocides and atrocities the US has either participated in or funded in its long and bloodsoaked history? It's a long list but it ends with the billions of dollars in weapons, aid and personnel we sent to help Israel try to wipe out the Palestinians.
This isn't an attempt at whataboutism here, no one is denying that what China is doing to the Uyghurs is terrible, but the US and its allies have no moral high ground to stand on at all in this regard.
Have you gone to Zhihu or Weibo and read what the Chinese are saying there about you guys? Here's a top thread on there with 12,000 likes - https://www.zhihu.com/question/460310859/answer/2046776391
>I might as well make this clear.
>Now, regarding the international situation, The biggest wish of most of us Chinese is that the United States disappears completely and permanently from this beautiful earth.
>Because the United States uses its financial, military and other hegemony to exploit the world, destroy the peace and tranquility of the earth, and bring countless troubles to the people of other countries, we sincerely hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at the large number of infections caused by the new coronavirus pandemic in the United States, not because we have no sympathy, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at the daily gun wars in the United States, not because we don’t sympathize with the families that have been broken up by shootings, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at Americans for legalizing drugs, not because we support drugs, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.When we scold American Olympic athletes, it's not because we lack sportsmanship, but because we really hope that America will disappear.
>We make fun of Trump and Sleepy Joe, not because we look down on these two old men, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We Chinese are hardworking, kind, reasonable, peace-loving and not extreme. But we really don't like America. Really, if the Americans had not fought with us in Korea in the early days of our country, prevented us from liberating Taiwan, provoked a trade war, challenged our sovereignty in the South China Sea, and bullied our Huawei, would we Chinese hate them?
And that's what Chinese netziens agree without controversy on one of their biggest social media sites. What about the CCP here? Well if we look at Wang Huning, Chief Ideologue of the CCP, he is explicitly an postliberal who draws from the Schmittian rejection of liberal heterogenity, which he sees as inherently unstable, in favour of a strong, homogenous and centralized state based on traditional values in order to guarantee stability. And if it that's just internally, how do you think a fundamental rejection of heterogenity translates to foreign policy? So yes, whether you think China is a problem, China certainly thinks you are a problem.
It's always very interesting to see people pull out threads with low like counts (like 12k) and claim that central idea of the post is widely held.
We're talking about platforms with tens of millions of users; wide appeal is at least a quarter million likes, with mass appeal being at least a million. A local-scale influencer can gather 10-30k likes very easily on such a massive platform.
bro literally citing chinese facebook comments ;) if you started taking pissed off internet comments seriously we'd have to go to war with every country in the world
look man, i'm not saying china is some heavenly force of justice. but the thing about peace is that it's bigger than both sides, and it's maintained by the grace of those who understand that often the real threat isn't the enemy, it's your fear of the enemy.
Ok, replace my sentence with "The New York Times must shut down unless all Chinese foreign owners divest"; does that change the analysis?
The ban is not rooted in the concept ByteDance has a minority of investors who are Chinese citizens so any comparisons framed around that concept will not change the analysis. The reason for the ban, agree with it or not, is the perceived control and data sharing with the Chinese government made possible by many things (mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction and then have all of these other potentially concerning details, not that they just have one of these other details).
If the NYT were seen as being under significant control of and risking sharing too much user data with the Chinese government then it would indeed make sense to apply the same ban.
Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic. On the other the inherent problems of banning companies by law. Such things work out in other areas... but will it work out in this specific type of example? Dunno, not 100% convinced either way.
>>>mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction
ByteDance is; TikTok is not. TikTok is headquartered in USA and Taiwan. Why is that not part of the analysis? The CCP can control/influence ByteDance, the US can't do anything about that. But it could do a number of things to prevent ByteDance control/influence on TikTok, and it jumped directly to "must divest".
Congress could have passed a law banning TikTok from transmitting any user data back to ByteDance/China, for example. Why not do that, if that was the actual concern?
>Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic.
I wouldn't worry about that, as FB, twitter, reddit etc are banned in China. To the extent that we want equilibrium here, banning Tiktok would reprsent a step toward parity.
Yes, because the NYT is a publicly traded company. And it is majority-controlled by a single American family - the Sulzbergers. I'm not sure you could argue that a Chinese national owning a single share of NYT stock could have any kind of sway on the operation of the company. Could the same be said for the relationship China has with TikTok?
This is the reason right here. If TikTok was owned by North Korea, this wouldn't be controversial.
Why not just nuke China then, without these pesky 1.4B people, the world will be a much better place! Otherwise, you are stuck with us, we 1.4B people will never leave this planet. So it's up to you if you want to convert 1.4B of us to your enemy or your friends. But so far, with all the attacks, bullying, theft you are doing to Chinese people, you are not wining any hearts and minds here. Believe it or not, a lot of Chinese people like the USA before 2016. Then with every attack, insult, theft, oppression you are pulling, you are converting your fans to people who despise you. Huawei's executives used to be biggest cheerleaders of USA. Bytedance founder and nearly all Chinese entrepreneurs loved the USA. Now with you stealing their asset, blackmailing, terrorizing them in broad daylight, people are shocked this is the true DNA, color and culture of USA. Protection of private assets? Nope. Freedom of speech? Nope? Humanity, reason, logic, love, trust? Nope? Pursuit of happiness? Nope. Human progress? Nope. Making all people on Earth's lives proper, no poverty, no starvation? Nope. It turns out USA is the biggest pirate, oppressor, dictator, bully in the world. USA say u care about human rights and freedom, what would democratic international relationships? What about the rights and freedom of 1.4B Chinese people to survive, live in dignity, peace, relative prosperity? And spare me Chinese people getting richer is bad thing for the USA. USA companies made trillions of Chinese market and 1.4B Chinese consumers. You only have this market if Chinese people have money. Your companies are stupidly rich and powerful. If you don't think Chinese people benefit your companies, please ban all of your companies from selling to Chinese market. Please no more all talk, no action, ban them now.
Well, yes. Just like you're allowed to say who your biggest enemy or your best friend is, even if your biggest enemy or best friend don't feel the same way about you.
Anyways, who do you think China would say their #1 geopolitical adversary is?
As far as i can tell, the Chinese care mostly about building and investing. They're aware that the US sees them as their "number one enemy" (what a childish, irresponsible way to refer to a nation of a billion, mostly innocent, people), and that the US has maintained its global domination since WWII by political assassinations, bombings, proxy wars, and half-assed failed invasions.
My advice? Stop using words like "geopolitical adversary" to mask what you really want to say. This is life, not a chessboard.
Please tell me what I really want to say, since you apparently know me better than I do.
What if Congress passed a law that said "The New York Times must shut down unless all foreign owners divest"?
This already exists in some ways. Foreign companies are not allowed to own American broadcasters. That's why Rupert Murdoch had to become a (dual?) American citizen when he wanted to own Fox television stations in the United States.
They absolutely could if the NYT was fully owned by a foreign entity, and that entity was a government that adversarial to the US.
The issue is not that a company has foreign shareholders -- it's the fact that is under the control of the CCP.
This was also an issue when Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy Fox; he was only able to do so once he became a US citizen, for the same reasons.
The 1A arguments by ByteDance was a diversionary tactic to shift the conversation away from the real issue (control) -- and judging by all the comments on HN by people who don't understand it's about control, I'd say they were pretty successful.
In fact, I think it makes the goverment's argument even stronger. Would we allow the NYT to fall in the hands of the CCP? I'd say no way, congress would act way before that's even possible.
I think the equivalent would be if New York Times is somehow owned by Tencent and given that the Chinese government uses golden shares to control private companies. In that case, I think it's fair game to force NYT to divest or force them to shutdown.
That's what the question of strict scrutiny vs. intermediate scrutiny vs. rational basis is about. The courts would have to decide the appropriate level of scrutiny given the legal context and then apply that to the law as written.
Your hypothetical clearly implicates the Times' speech, so intermediate scrutiny at least would be applied, requiring that the law serve an important governmental purpose. I think that would be a difficult argument for the government to make, especially if the law was selective about which kinds of media institutions could and could not have any foreign ownership in general. The TikTok law is much more specific.