Lemmy technically doesn’t hide your likes - the interface might not show you, but all your likes are public in the Fediverse. Kbin, when I used it, would show which users upvoted/downvoted a post. That’s important because it means researchers and OSI people can still do fact finding - Twitter doesn’t like the idea of having to be open even if it’s a requirement (albeit to researchers specifically) in the EU now.

Allow me to gas Finland up a bit more. They’re higher than Germany in terms of innovation (triadic patents per capita), they have semi-democratically owned grocery stores with 90% of the country being a member/co-owner, they have 60% union density and a Ghent system (like Sweden, unlike Norway), their housing prices were among the few in Europe falling - after the government started their Housing First initiative and built social housing for the poor, their education system being so good (despite being relaxed unlike e.g. Singapore) and state-funded instead of private… life is pretty good in Finland.

It’s a good reminder that collective/democratic bargaining works. It’s about time we bring back unions and cooperatives.

Subsidies are an incredible tool when used well, like when they funded a bunch of utility cooperatives that electrified rural US. Maybe you’re asking why we should because propping up the car industry when public transit and bike infrastructure should be subsidized instead, rather than challenging subsidies, though.

What do you think is China choosing, A or B?

Do you know? Are you prescient? Don’t pretend you can predict what China would do - especially rich coming from Mr. 90% Articles About China.

You’re still yapping on about the off topic thing I see. Come back when we’re talking about subsidies again please. If you have to steer the conversation away when you’re losing the argument, onto a topic I don’t even necessarily disagree with (forced labour, environmental and social concerns)… I don’t know what to say, you’re just being a weirdo.

Given this lack of transparency, is a trusted cooperation possible? (The answer is: no, it isn’t.)

This is silly and absolutist reasoning. The law exists to encourage companies to push their suppliers for more ethical behaviour, if China won’t allow transparency, then it’s a violation of the supply chain transparency law and they’ll have to choose between A) more transparency, or B) not being on the receiving end of deals. The crucial difference is this only targets the things you pointed out that weren’t even on topic to subsidies to begin with, but instead we’re enacting protectionist policies and complaining about “unfairness” with the amount of subsidies they have.

You are just repeating your statements and ignoring mine it seems.

That’s funny considering you changed the subject. I’m trying to stay on topic with the original article talking about subsidies, you’re moving the goalpost. I don’t have to respond to things that aren’t on topic.

No. Especially in this case, it is also a term for cheap manufacturing processes by ignoring environmental and social norms, including the use of forced labour. […]

Then just target the anti-environmental, social, and forced labour parts? This article is specifically about unfair subsidies, not what you just mentioned. You’re moving the goalpost.

That’s a good idea, but it only works if and when both sides apply […]

Supply chain transparency in the countries that have enacted laws like that, apply internationally:

The [Norwegian Transparency Act] mandates that liable firms be able to account for the human rights and fair labor practices, not only of direct or “Tier 1” suppliers, but of all those indirect vendors and subcontractors who comprise the entirety of the upstream and downstream value chain.

Your anti-western sentiment is somewhat weird if I may say so.

I literally described Norway in a very positive way - my ideal approach. Are they no longer western? Or are you just being a weirdo because I don’t like propaganda in general? I don’t like Chinese propaganda, and I don’t like whatever you’re doing by having a profile consisting of 90% news articles about China. You’re basically doing marketing by constantly pushing articles about China, similar to how adverts are constantly pushed in our faces. A normal person might post a few articles about China here and there, but your history is 90%.

There you go, here’s your response to the article (below). It took me 43 minutes to respond, while it took you a single copy paste to post the article (probably 5 seconds of effort). Maybe now you understand why I don’t feel like responding to every single thing you post with a debunking? The effort it takes to tackle misinformation is much higher than simply copy pasting URLs.

My general/summarized thoughts:

At the end of the day, if we do protectionism and bar China, I can only hope we do enact more subsidies, close if not on par with China, for our own industries so that we accelerate our transition to green energy. I don’t really personally care if we ban Chinese products, I just think this is a bit of cope about someone who’s just… doing better economic policies, that we should also be doing, instead of crying about “unfair market competition” as if free market absolutism is necessarily good (China isn’t doing enough “free market” so they’re “unfair”, even though we’re doing the same to a slightly lesser degree).

My personal preference would be doing what Norway is doing: setting up democratic state run organizations that do green tech so that we socialize the profits we do make from such an industry. That’s Norway’s approach to hydropower, where they own the vast majority of it, and they’re ramping up efforts towards wind energy too. They also have a state oil industry, but obviously I’m not too happy about that in the context of climate change - however, it has been incredibly economically beneficial for the people of Norway, so we should likely copy their strategy for green tech.

Responding to specific paragraphs:

During a trip to China, Yellen said the country’s unfair trade practices — dumping artificially cheap products on global markets — were a threat to US businesses and jobs. Washington is considering imposing higher tariffs and closing trade loopholes if Beijing maintains its existing policy.

“Artificially cheap” is basically a loaded term for “subsidized”. We do the same thing for certain industries here in Europe, there’s really nothing special about it. In fact, we should probably be doing more subsidies.

“Chinese subsidies are pervasive,” Rolf Langhammer, former vice president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW-Kiel), told DW. “They encompass almost all industries and are far larger than any EU or US subsidies.”

Maybe we should increase our own subsidies instead? I really don’t see the argument here - would we transition to a green economy too fast when climate change is a crisis in waiting? Why are cheap products a problem all of a sudden, I thought that was the primary reason we started using China to mass produce stuff on our behalf, i.e. we took advantage of their horrible working conditions that we know led to suicides and anti-jump fences. But now all of a sudden cheap stuff is a problem?

In addition to the huge subsidies, the report’s authors noted, Chinese producers also benefit from preferential access to critical raw materials, forced technological transfers and less domestic red tape than their foreign competitors.

All of these sound like good things we should be doing. In fact, we are doing a little bit more of transparency (which is what “forced tech transfers” are, in less loaded terms - it’s literally just making corporations share knowledge and cooperate) e.g. supply chain transparency in Europe is growing. Less domestic red tape sounds like a good thing? Norway has a similar “problem” of a government being a little bit too efficient. Obviously that’s not a bad thing - maybe we should figure out why we’re comparatively slow?

Langhammer noted that the West also benefits from the Chinese subsidies, as consumers can buy cars at a lower price while companies can access cheaper Chinese parts. Despite the threat from cheaper Chinese EVs, he said, some automakers were skeptical about the EU probe into Beijing’s subsidies as firms such as Germany’s Volkswagen and US EV leader Tesla receive them, too.

As in, Tesla has received Chinese subsidies. It has also received US and (I believe) EU subsidies too. And I’m talking about supply side subsidies, demand side subsidies like governments paying part of the price of EV cars have provided tens of billions in plenty of EU and EEA countries.

Yes, unlike you I don’t post constant articles about China. I’d prefer not to see propaganda, whether that’s Chinese funded propaganda, or your constant posting of anti-Chinese free market biased articles. If the rules of this sub didn’t explicitly carve out an exception for you, maybe you would’ve been banned by now - unfortunately, only “foreign” and “billionaire” misinformation is banned from this sub, domestic/western misinformation is OK.

Also, I will respond to the article, but I’m not a paid state actor who does this as a full time job (unlike maybe you, otherwise your obsession with China is pretty weird), so I don’t have the time to tackle the multiple articles you post about China ever day. I can only do so much as a normal person, and I can only really tackle the articles I have knowledge about (e.g. economics).

Reminder that OP’s account is 90% articles about China and has said they have “Chinese friends so they aren’t xenophobic” in defense of doing so. Bias and misinformation probabilities are high.

But don’t services like Discord forbid third party clients?

Me waiting for inflation to slowly increase Discord’s yearly revenue until it tips into the legally defined Gatekeeper™ status under the EU Digital Markets Act so they’d be playing with fire if they banned people for using interoperability apps.

This is funny when you just look at your profile’s first page and see you’ve made comments like these:

I hate this rhetoric. It implies that this a refular occurence. It is just a man hating comment. If this is happening to you frequently, maybe you are the problem. I am tired of being assumed an asshole just because I am a man. It is sexist. Plain and simple.

So you deny “unproblematic” women regularly experiencing unsafe behavior from men who are entitled and you’re also denying people’s gender identity - otherwise, why would it be a waste of time for a woman’s fight for her right to access women’s spaces? So you’re hateful towards people you perceive to be “men” while complaining about “man haters” elsewhere. Logical inconsistencies in favor of hate is a hallmark sign of right wing extremist views.

With this context, it gets more interesting:

On 6 December 2022, the Parliament of Indonesia passed the country’s new criminal code (NCC), outlawing sex and cohabitation outside of marriage. Under the new law, extramarital sex carries a jail sentence of one year, while cohabitation of unmarried couples carries a jail term of six months. In a statement given to Reuters, a spokesperson for the Indonesian justice ministry justified the law on the grounds that it aimed to “protect the institution of marriage and Indonesian values.”

Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked – at least not in the short term. So now they can’t have sex and they’re not marrying either, worst of both worlds. Maybe they also wouldn’t have a prison overcrowding problem if they stopped jailing people for things like these.

This world’s pretty fucked up. I remember being disillusioned of socialism back in the day (still am) but shit like this makes me wish there was some magical better system than our shitty capitalism.

I mean there is something better than “shitty capitalism”. You can call it what you want, market socialism, social democracy, cool capitalism, but look to Norway for a pretty good example of what we could have:

2/3rd of Norway’s GDP is driven by the public sector, most of the hydropower is owned socially, trains are socially owned, 20% of housing is socially owned through housing coops, gigantic social wealth fund that could singlehandedly fund UBI from like half the returns it makes every year, they have almost 60% union density without a Ghent system like Sweden and Finland, very low income inequality, low on the hours worked per week by country list, high GDP per hour worked… I could go on.

And there’s more cool stuff like that in other countries around Europe too, Vienna’s approach to social housing, Italian and Spanish worker cooperatives, most of the electricity companies in Denmark being socially owned through cooperatives, 90% of Finland being a member in their grocery coops… like, there are so many examples of good things spread out everywhere - we just need the political will to do them more.

It’s sad that it’s taking so long when like 10 years ago we had politicians warning us about Russian oligarchs meddling with elections, or as in the UK, killing people with radioactive poison. We could’ve done something then but chose to wait and now the damage has grown larger. It’s like waiting to get cancer, only to yell about it and do nothing, and only start caring when it’s on the brink of terminal/irreversible before actually doing something, instead of actively doing things that reduce cancer probabilities.

You’re basically making the “I have black friends so I can’t be racist” argument. Your post history is like 90% articles like these:

• Chinese Communist Party-Backed Businessman in Fiji is a Top Australian Criminal Target
• Calls for sanctions against China after Beijing accused of cyber espionage in US and UK
• China’s Private Property Developers Face Persistent Funding Constraints, Fitch Ratings Says
• UK lawmakers claim ‘harassment, impersonation, and attempted hacking’ from China
• Millions of U.S. citizens’ online accounts have been caught up in a “sinister” Chinese hacking plot that targeted US officials, officials say
• Threats, fear and surveillance: Chinese students in the UK say they are scared to return home and worry for their families in China after being followed and harassed by the regime in Beijing
• Oxford University held training sessions attended by Chinese doctors accused of illegally harvesting organs

Like, this is not a normal amount of articles about China. This feels like an obsession. If I was posting a similar amount of pro-China articles, I’d rightfully be called a shill.

The EU just looked into the potential for dumping. They were not finished with the process and therefore did not punish CRRC at all.

What’s your point here? There are actual quotes in the article claiming the pull-out as a result of the regulation, meaning they didn’t pull out because they wanted to.

Also China is not that poor. GDP per capita is only a third less then that of Romania.

But both are “up-and-coming” as I said alongside “poorer” so I’m not sure why you’re arguing semantics here. China is one of very few exceptions when it comes to actively losing money to richer countries (Net Resource Transfers). This regulation is not about China, it targets any foreign company, and if you understood my post, you’d know that the vast majority of them are being drained and in need of economic help.

Trying to instill FOMO just because the Chinese are coming for it!!!

Take a look at the posts OP makes – they seem obsessed with posting negative articles about China.

The headline sounded odd considering EU countries aren’t exactly averse to subsidies, but the kicker is this:

The inquiry, announced last month, was the first of its kind and marked the maiden use of a foreign subsidies regulation designed to stop state handouts from distorting the EU’s single market.

So it’s protectionism that’ll apply especially to poorer and up-and-coming countries that don’t have established private megacorps (i.e. their companies depend on economic strategies like window guidance to grow).

I’m neutral about protectionism in general, but contextually it can have negative outcomes - e.g. the EU’s agricultural policies have not been good for poorer countries. At a time when poorer countries are bleeding money as we can see by tracking Net Resource Transfers (with China being one of the few exceptions), it’s a little tougher to be happy about policies like these.