Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/zuckerbergs-anti-china-rhetoric-roils-facebook-employees

by otoburb • 7 years ago

58 91 7 years ago

theinformation.com

christkv• 7 years ago

If they are on an H1B that’s a pretty risky move.

nailer4• 7 years ago

complaints of anti-China bias

Zuckerberg is quite clearly being critical of the Chinese Communist Party, who by nature of being authoritarian, have no mandate from the people of the PRC. There is no bias against China as a country, or Chinese people. Zuck is merely judging an authoritarian government for it's own actions. Shame on those who would wish to conflate the two.

have_faith• 7 years ago

Bit of a mirror to the tightrope of people trying to discuss objections to the Israeli governments actions.

thorwasdfasdf5• 7 years ago

In order to understand why this conflation is occurring, you need to understand chinese culture. Chinese culture is very different in some fundamental ways that's hard for western countries to understand. First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government. this is a fundamental viewpoint of how the chinese see themselves. This of course allows the PRC to do whatever it wants without any complaints from the people because any thoughts against the PRC is tantamount to being anti-chinese. Thus when chinese people see anything that goes against the PRC they take it as a personal insult to themselves. The PRC has influenced their people to regard any idea that goes against the PRC as racism towards chinese.

scarmig2• 7 years ago

This might suit both anti- and pro-PRC propagandists, but it's not reflective of reality on the ground. Chinese people have plenty of self-conception, independent thoughts, and the ability to distinguish between themselves and their government and objectively judge government actions. At least, no less so than people anywhere.

hangonhn3• 7 years ago

Come on. That's patently not true. Seriously. I'm born Chinese and my family is Chinese. We were never "trained". I'm highly critical of the Chinese government (though I left fairly young) as are some members of my family. Some of them were born and raised there. Come on. Stop it with the stereotypes. People are complicated and have multitudes.

"People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government."

No seriously no. We aren't robots nor idiots.

"This of course allows the PRC to do whatever it wants without any complaints from the people because any thoughts against the PRC is tantamount to being anti-chinese. "

Even at the height of the Mao era there were still dissent even when it could cost you your life.

"Thus when chinese people see anything that goes against the PRC they take it as a personal insult to themselves."

It depends though, doesn't it? Are the charges being leveled fair within the context they're being viewed? Not everything in Western media is completely fair, reliable, etc. I mean, just read the articles written by the media when it comes to technology. They miss a lot of the nuances.

Is it really surprising that nationalism has an effect on people? You don't think Americans do that? Remember that fervent anti-French sentiment in some parts of the US when they criticized our invasion of Iraq? You don't think the fetishization of the military in US media is a form of propaganda? What about singing of the national anthem at NFL games? China does very similar things but perhaps more frequently. These pro-nationalist sentiments are fanned much more subtly than you've described it.

helen___keller• 7 years ago

First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government. this is a fundamental viewpoint of how the chinese see themselves

Do people actually believe this? How could you possibly hope to put a billion people in such a tiny box?

paganel3• 7 years ago

There is no bias against China as a country, or Chinese people.

At some point you also have to make it about the people, too, after all the Chinese Communist Party is comprised of Chinese people.

nkrisc• 7 years ago

What percentage of Chinese citizens are actual party members? Honest question, I have no idea, but if I had to wager I would guess not a very large percentage.

nailer4• 7 years ago

No you don't. The Chinese Communist Party being made up of Chinese people mean does not mean criticism of the CCP is criticism of Chinese people.

Cookingboy6• 7 years ago

by nature of being authoritarian, have no mandate from the people of the PRC

If you have studied Chinese history you'd know the mandate does not come from it being democratically elected, but rather how good it's doing its job.

Democracy is not only a concept that's foreign to Chinese history, it's not even desired by that many people in China.

sugarpile• 7 years ago

@dang, any chance we can get the url updated to one with the usual theinformation.com paywall bypass?

throwGuardian2• 7 years ago

Puzzle me this - as an employee in the US, for a company paying well above market for your labor, with generous perks and the freedom to speak out against the employer (which is likely absent in China), the response of the Chinese workforce seems rather paradoxical - criticising an accommodating work environment, which, mind you, is only possible because of freedom of speech

Or, the press is out to make a mountain of a mole - most Chinese employees at Facebook are happy despite Zuks' tone against the govt.

thomasjames• 7 years ago

Nationalism is nationalism regardless of said nation.

thorwasdfasdf5• 7 years ago

but nationalism for the chinese is particularly intense, see my comment on that below.

thorwasdfasdf5• 7 years ago

if you want an explanation for why this is, checkout my explanation down below

mistersquid3• 7 years ago

the response of the Chinese workforce seems rather paradoxical - criticising an accommodatung work environment, which, mind you, is only possible because of freedom of speech

You’re questioning, and implicitly criticizing, these workers for exercising their access to free speech, for complaining about an aspect of their employer’s position about their country of origin.

Such an implicit critique undermines the foundations on which free speech stands. Speech is free regardless of the benefits and privileges granted to those who would speak.

null_vector• 7 years ago

You used a lot of words to say nothing at all.

pertymcpert3• 7 years ago

You are doing it to a much worse extent.

buzzerbetrayed• 7 years ago

You’re questioning, and implicitly criticizing, these workers for exercising their access to free speech, for complaining about an aspect of their employer’s position about their country of origin

Why is this relevant? By that definition, any time you criticize anything someone says you are criticizing them for using free speech.

There is a big difference between “I disagree with what you’re saying” and “you shouldn’t be allowed to say it”. As far as I can tell, he isn’t even hinting at the latter.

throwGuardian2• 7 years ago

Speech is free regardless of the benefits and privileges granted to those who would speak.

You're copiously misinterpreting my comment. Of course free speech is an inherent privilege, nay human right, that doesn't require granting from any entity/authority figure. I'm very much questioning the logic behind their angst against Zucks' opinions on China. If anything, the free flow of information, free speech without retaliation and the general upliftment by being at FB should convince them to argue FOR free speech in China. I was hoping they saw the clear correlation between freedoms, free-speech, etc as the foundation for equitable wealth creation and prosperity, which they very much have experienced at FB.

I'm guessing their reaction is more visceral/emotional than logical. Most people tend to love their motherland despite it's shortcomings.

Spooky232• 7 years ago

Who's to say those employee actions are not being scrutinized by others and reported back?

As the US and China implement different tit for tat policies, relatives at home can be punished for the actions of relatives abroad.

bgee3• 7 years ago

I'm a Chinese national working in the US. I have never heard of this kind of punishment.

Can you provide any evidence?

deepVoid• 7 years ago

Freedom to speak out against the employer? There are definitely consequences. It can apparently get you fired quickly [1][2][3][4].

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvgn9q/do-not-discuss-the...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/facebook-employee-i-was-fire...

[3] https://digg.com/video/qin-chen-facebook-employee-suicide

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

umvi• 7 years ago

Title should read:

"Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils (Chinese) Facebook Employees"

At any rate, I applaud Zuckerberg for actually having a spine when it comes to China, unlike Tim Cook.

justinzollars• 7 years ago

Agreed. Tim Cook seems laser focused on shipping as much of our semiconductor industry to China as possible.

Apocryphon3• 7 years ago

Wait, what about their contracts with TSMC?

jjtheblunt• 7 years ago

I don't get that impression at all. Semiconductor fabs may exist overseas, but the technology is predominately domestic, from what i can tell. Micron in Idaho is an American powerhouse, for example.

Apocryphon3• 7 years ago

It's probably easier for him to do so, given that Facebook is banned in that country. But then again, so is Google, yet they pursued Project Dragonfly.

joeblau• 7 years ago

From the financial risk perspective, Tim really can't say anything.

chongli• 7 years ago

Zuckerberg for actually having a spine when it comes to China, unlike Tim Cook

What spine? Facebook is blocked in China. It costs him nothing to take this stance. If Tim Cook tried the same, China could seize the factories and Apple would have no product to sell.

I'm sure in private Tim Cook would admit that Apple needs to diversify their manufacturing out of China as a hedge against the risk of a hostile government there. That is a process which cannot happen overnight, however, and so in the mean time it's best to tiptoe around the sleeping dragon.

larnmar3• 7 years ago

It should read “Chinese Government”, not China, too.

The Chinese government was not elected by the Chinese, is not in any sense a legitimate representative of the Chinese, and has no more right to rule over China than I do. Conflating criticism of the CCP with criticism of the country that they illegitimately rule is CCP propaganda techniques 101.

Cookingboy6• 7 years ago

What is legitimacy?

A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't the legitimacy of a government judged by how good it's doing its job vs. how it came into power?

Historically speaking there have been plenty of prosperous societies that was ruled by "illegitimate" governments (and I'm not even saying China is one), and plenty of government that was put into power by the people (actually the original, populist CCP government is one example) that ended up being disastrous.

Even if we want to always put democracy on a pedestal, how do we qualify it? Does only direct democracy count? What about representative democracy? How "representative" can it be before it's no longer democratic, i,e electoral college? Do any of those actually matter?

prewett• 7 years ago

Mao Zedong was widely liked, and the Communists were seen as much better than the corrupt Guomindang [0]. They also defeated the Guomindang militarily. I think the CCP are actually the legitimate rulers of mainland China, both by peoples' choice and military conquest.

You may think the Chinese people chose poorly, but I think it is clear that they definitely chose.

And to put this in some context, China has had an authoritarian government for the past 2000 years, so it's not like choosing an authoritarian regime is that much of a change. You might as well pick the authoritarians who are less corrupt. And post-Mao the CCP has been pretty effective in building the country.

[0] traditionally spelled "Kuomintang" but Wade-Giles is a horrible romanization. You think you know how to pronounce it after looking at it, but you're wrong; it's actually worse than just having a bunch of characters, because at least you know you don't know how to pronounce them.

FussyZeus• 7 years ago

Title should read "Zuckerberg takes positive stance for headlines which costs his company nothing"

taobility3• 7 years ago

Have you heard the news that Mark has learnt Chinese very hard, and even placed Xi's book at his office desk trying to please the visited Chinese officials? He didn't have any spine, and what he's doing right now just because he failed so have to change the strategy.

mtnGoat• 7 years ago

Do you have a source for this? your past comments are very pro Chinese and also reference "other news" without citation.

Trying hard to prop up the motherland in the public eye?

mdni007• 7 years ago

or maybe because his wife is Chinese?

mindgam3• 7 years ago

Zuck’s anti China stance has nothing to do with having a spine and everything to do with Facebook’s bottom line. He is merely using China as a very convenient punching bag and foil to deflect attention away from Facebook’s own gross abuses of power.

This is exemplified in his address on free speech several weeks ago - trying to position Facebook as a defender of American values (free speech and human rights) versus big bad China.

Make no mistake, if Zuckerberg actually cared about the values of a free society he would fix his own platform. Don’t applaud him for throwing shade at an even more authoritarian regime.

loceng• 7 years ago

He doesn't understand how, he's indoctrinated into it as well as his behaviour - he has personal work to do to open up his mind and heart before he'll develop the necessary empathy to see the holistic for what it is.

davidwitt415• 7 years ago

Mirror check on 'intense nationalism' - how many Americans supported or still support unlimited US military actions around the globe, not to mention CIA buggery? How has democratic activity slowed this down in any meaningful way in the last 20 years?

You are not as immune as you think to government propaganda, it's just easier to spot when it's another country.

Consultant32452• 7 years ago

Obama campaigned as anti-war. So did Trump. Neither of those presidents have lived up to their campaign promises, but it seems clear to me the American people don't want to keep the most insane of US military actions going but feel powerless to stop it. The tricky part is that corporate media on both sides of the aisle never saw a war they didn't love. But that's different than the American people.

natechols• 7 years ago

I think everyone here is already well aware of this, considering that some variation on this same comment gets posted repeatedly every time China's human rights issues are in the news.

eznoonze4• 7 years ago

Hmmm....Government propaganda is one thing. But sending you to concentration camp or prison because you have different views from the government is another.

Not sure what kind of equivalency you are trying to make here.

PavlovsCat2• 7 years ago

The fact that you can talk about that, while criticism of China gets shuffled off the front page EVEN on an American site, speaks volumes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dx8rn0/absolutely...

What would you say is the American equivalent to that? And what would be the American equivalent to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d1rp31/are_we_rea...

And that is, all other actions considered, such a harmless and cute clip. Keeping it SFW.

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage/videos/9503534286...

How do you explain this?

You are not as immune as you think

You don't know what I think. Personally, I'm not even American, and have criticized the US for the stuff you mention more harshly than the average American by orders of magnitude. That doesn't mean I don't see the infinite difference between the US government sometimes sucking, and the CCP (== no elections, no free press, torture camps, putting down protests over the law being broken with force, dictating to companies what they may post in Western countries, and so on). Yeah, Snowden had to run, but we can talk about Snowden. There's American books by American publishers about American war crimes, Noam Chomsky leads a full, critical life. There's a greater risk that the Chinese government might kidnap or assassinate him, just for saying something they don't like in passing, than the US govt laying hand on him. So to even mention the CCP and the US in one sentence... again, I'm not even American, and even I know all that and more.

The only data point you're offering for what you think about the subject at hand is this "mirror check". Those are a dime a dozen, people pretending to be objective or neutral, and calling it a mirror check -- when the whole point of the exercise them getting away from their own personal stance and responsibility, while creating straw men up about a generic other.

rolltiide• 7 years ago

Culturally, should a suicide of an employee that comes from a culture that doesn't put weight on suicide really draw more attention to an issue than before?

Beijing's state policy is freedom from religion and that removes most of the mental failsafes preventing suicide.

My anti-suicide talk with some Chinese people has often been prefaced with "oh yeah our culture typically focuses on self preservation and avoidance of suicide, hope that clears things up for you" before explaining how that person's failure has other options. I wouldn't consider myself anti-suicide when it comes to other people's options, I would consider myself to have just strong self preservation skills and can perceive options for myself and other people that are considering an escape hatch.

So I think there is a cultural component to consider here, for western media wanting to cover this.

emergie• 7 years ago

I remember when Mark had Xi Jinping book on his desk. This guy is a joke.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/mark-zuckerberg-snapped-wi...

thecleaner• 7 years ago

Wait until Zucky says something against the Indian government - still has a better human rights record. But Indians will lose their shit.

jmpman• 7 years ago

My understanding is that I’m not allowed to discriminate based upon the country of origin of my employees. As long as they have the right to work, they must be considered equally. Should that be altered for Chinese citizens?

edwinyzh• 7 years ago

This video by Nathan Rich contributes some information about the history relationship between China and Facebook. relationship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2srfDwM2sQ

Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

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