Thoughts on China

[Fred Claus]

What are your thoughts on the China situation? Tensions are mounting in this country over them and a few other places. I have a couple of companies that I was thinking about doing business with, but they are in China. Is it still a good idea, or should I find someone else?

 

[britechguy]

The following is not meant to be snarky: What "someone else" can you find? If you find them, are they using Chinese manufacturing themselves?

Personally, I think that any attempt to "escape China" in terms of electronics manufacturing of any kind is doomed to failure. Every major computer maker and smartphone maker has some or all of its equipment manufactured there even if it was designed elsewhere.

Unless what you're looking for is chips, and chips you know are made elsewhere, it just seems to me to be expending a lot of effort for no real end result. It all goes back to Chinese manufacture these days.

 

[Fred Claus]

It was a software program actually. I'm looking at one for me personally called Camcard and another for the business. The one for my business was a tool by EaseUS which is a Chinese company.

 

[britechguy]

OK, that changes things, but only by the tiniest bit.

I doubt that EaseUS is going anywhere soon, as far as the US market is concerned. But it never hurts to explore your other options. Just remember the learning curve that comes from "jumping ship" for virtually anything you can think of.

 

[Metanis]

Remember the old TV ads for Fram oil filters where the mechanic says, "Pay me now, or pay me later!". Paying now is avoiding China as best you can, because if you don't avoid them you'll most likely have to pay much more later. I think it's highly likely that every single Chinese business is subject to their government forcing them to play spy games.

 

[Mike McCall]

I would be more apprehensive of the control, influence, and integration between Chinese businesses and the Chinese government. It's no secret that the Chinese government requires businesses to act as intelligence agents for them.

"When US officials were pressed in early 2019 to provide evidence that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, had facilitated spying on the US and its allies, they pointed out that Beijing had already made their case for them: first with the party’s systematic infiltration of private companies, and second with the introduction of a new national intelligence law in 2017. The law states that “any organisation and citizen” shall “support and cooperate in national intelligence work”. The director of the US National Counterintelligence and Security Center, when asked about China’s entrepreneurs, cited these two policies in asserting that “Chinese company relationships with the Chinese government aren’t like private sector company relationships with governments in the west”."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...mmunist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei

 

[Blues]

Regardless of the political side of this we should have concerns of the centralizing of certain sects of business which we can see as what is happening with a lot of industries and China being a major place that it is moving to.

 

[britechguy]

we should have concerns of the centralizing of certain sects of business

Not that I don't agree with you, because I do, but the only thing I can say to this with regard to the political climate and overall zeitgeist in the USA since at least the Reagan Era is, "How quaint."

How it's ever come to be that the belief the was expressed in the ridiculous and self-serving statement, "What's good for GM is good for the country!," made many decades ago is now considered to be true eludes me. We're watching as virtually every gain of the 20th century that emphasizes the public good over what big business demands are being steadily chipped away, and with increasing speed.

The only thing that's warmed the corners of my heart recently is the success the UAW has had with it's strike and the resulting attitude shift toward unions and organized labor. I grew up in a part of the country where coal and steel were king, and where unions were very strong yet those industries flourished. They died because of technology changes and environmental concerns (coal) and offshoring, which the companies wanted to do, desperately, to increase the bottom line and the CEOs' compensation (steel). And the middle class blue collar communities that flourished for many decades vanished, virtually overnight, with offshoring. That this weakens national security also doesn't seem to occur to far too many both among our citizenry and political class.

 

[GTP]

IMHO...

I have no "beef" with China. They helped build this country and have been here since the beginning.
They are respectful, courteous people whom I admire.

America is no shining example of piety either.
Does China do any more or less spying on everyone than the US?
The good old USA is always stirring up trouble. They always have and always will. They cant help themselves.
They remind me of the classroom bully - the tough guy who tells everyone "hey, I'll look after you if you glorify me!"
Other countries tag along like puppies...

Regardless of the politics, I dont think any other country in the world has the capability of supplying goods and services like China does - and at the prices they do.

 

[Metanis]

The good old USA is always stirring up trouble. They always have and always will. They cant help themselves.

Believe me when I tell you that a significant percentage of US citizens are sick of the globalists who keep leading us into these misadventures.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

China is not a friend of the United States...make no mistake....they are not our friends.

China plays "the long game". Do some research on how they've been infiltrating our colleges and higher education, and how they've quietly been buying up vast amounts of land...buildings....land near important military assets, land in various area surrounding our continent (like various Bahamian islands)

Yeah, it's difficult to be in IT and sell product that is not somehow having roots in china...parts made there. But we try. We no longer buy from Ingram Micro (I call it ChIngram MIcro)...since they bought it back in what..2016. We try to resell services mostly based in the US. We use PAX8 for our software..they're based in CO. We used to use a firewall company based out of CA...Untangle. We used to purchase the hardware from NextGenAppliances..who had custom made industrial x86 platforms from Canada.

Our primary backup vendor was Datto (before KrapSeya bought them up)..and they were based in our own state...CT
We resell DNS Filter..based out of Washington State
We resell SentinalOne..based out of California
Dropsuite..based out of Singapore (not China)

Yeah...I love Lenovo...I can't get away from that..made in China.

A couple of years ago we had some momentum to bring manufacturing back to the US..but that fizzled away in just the past couple of years.

Looking at "home stuff"...my wife and I do our best to avoid "made in china" products. And...yes...I've been this way for a good...20+ years. Not just a recent thing. Yup..when I buy jeans, sneakers, furniture, appliances, various stuff for around the house...I research as best I can and avoid "made in china". Pay more? Yup. But feel good about supporting my country...yup. The economy starts locally, and goes in outward rings.

Did anyone read the rather quiet news about how the chinese infiltrated the GCC High Microsoft 365 accounts that our top level government uses? (yup, mostly not reported by our news). Proxied via a planted employee at Microsoft. Yup...for many months earlier this year...they had their eye on our top government departments email. We managed to find the hack and track it back to the exact chinese gov't backed hacking groups. But of course...our current gov't did nothing about it.

We have massive pollution going on in the world. Some top countries try to do something about it, minimize pollution. Yet..other countries, like china...turn a blind eye to it, they simply don't care. They'll keep dumping garbage, plastics, into the ocean. They'll happily take all the EV battery manufacturing and strip mine their own country leaving massive environmental waste going on...because they don't care. One of the problems of EVs...just moves the pollution over the horizon out of sight.

And I say this more towards their gov't...not the people, I know plenty of Chinese people, and like any "people"...for the most part...great people.

 

[frase]

IMHO...

I have no "beef" with China. They helped build this country and have been here since the beginning.
They are respectful, courteous people whom I admire.

America is no shining example of piety either.
Do they do any more or less spying on everyone than the US?
The good old USA is always stirring up trouble. They always have and always will. They cant help themselves.
They remind me of the classroom bully - the tough guy who tells everyone "hey, I'll look after you if you glorify me!"
Other countries tag along like puppies...

Regardless of the politics, I dont think any other country in the world has the capability of supplying goods and services like China does - and at the prices they do.

So trade sanctions on Australia is ok, cause they got butthurt?

 

[GTP]

So trade sanctions on Australia is ok, cause they got butthurt?

Australian politicians are pussies and will do anything the "school bully" tells them. Even if it means being sanctioned.

 

[frase]

No the trade sanctions had nothing to do with the US, China just flexing and was in regards to questionable Covid-19 origins.

 

[britechguy]

Australian politicians

It's interesting to me how consistent it is that Australians really, really, really intensely dislike through hate their politicians no matter who is in office. I participate on an automotive forum out of AU and it's always struck me how many, and frequent, complaints are about their political class.

The USA has certainly been playing "catch up" in that regard as the country has become more and more polarized.

 

[GTP]

No the trade sanctions had nothing to do with the US, China just flexing and was in regards to questionable Covid-19 origins.

The trade sanctions had everything to do with the US and were a direct response to, and a disapproval of our siding with the US.

Also, we all know where "Covid-19" came from... and it wasn't China...
Blind Freddy can see why Covid -19 was created as well..
Like ebola, saars, anthrax and hundreds of others they can be used as weapons.. and in the case of Covid-19 it was used very effectively as a political tool to sway public opinion, even at the cost of lives...but when has America ever worried about that? just sayin...

God help us.

 

[frase]

Albanese is an idiot and was swing voted in like the man next to him. He is an absolute moron one who tries to be the man, though cannot even dress himself. His wife is thinking omg.

 

[GTP]

Agreed, but look who he's standing next to. Whenever I see him on TV he looks like a dottering old fool... Talk about puppets.

 

[britechguy]

proclaming to be the trust of the world.

We lost the right to make that claim in 2016. And it will be decades, if ever, that we earn it back. And I'd not blame "the world" if we were never to take back the place we'd had on the world stage.

Elections have consequences; certain ones were entirely predictable.

 

[Fred Claus]

There is so much information here,it took me a LONG time to digest it all and understand it. I don't talk politics much as I don't understand a lot of it. You all made some great points, and I thank you for your input.