<story><title>I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left</title><url>https://write.as/dsf4khx3r1m1208f.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>elldoubleyew</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand this philosophy of &amp;quot;if only they could change their minds&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The current regime has broken records year over year and almost the entire population is happy with them. Chinese people are better off every single day. Who are we as westerners to say that our system of governance is better than theirs? How can you be so sure that their system will inevitably be bad for the people?&lt;p&gt;Just because an absolute right to say (almost) whatever you want is essential to the political philosophy of the west does not mean that it can&amp;#x2F;would mesh well in Chinese society.&lt;p&gt;I know you guys are going to want to crucify me for saying a lot of this but I work with a lot of people in mainland China and no one has any problems with the government, they stick to their own business and are doing pretty damn well. Obviously this could change one day but thats not our job as non-chinese citizens to decide.</text></item><item><author>Seenso</author><text>&amp;gt; Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn&amp;#x27;t leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China&amp;#x27;s government policy as evil.&lt;p&gt;It takes &lt;i&gt;years&lt;/i&gt; in the right environment for someone like that to start to think differently.  All kinds of important facts and ideas were kept from them, much of it random things that don&amp;#x27;t come up often that they may not even realize.&lt;p&gt;For a less than unusual example: a lot of Chinese think the US never apologized for accidentally bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Balkans conflict, but it did so, publicly: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.c-span.org&amp;#x2F;video&amp;#x2F;?123188-1&amp;#x2F;youth-violence-embassy-bombing-apology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.c-span.org&amp;#x2F;video&amp;#x2F;?123188-1&amp;#x2F;youth-violence-embass...&lt;/a&gt;.  The Chinese government portrayed the bombing as a deliberate act, and used it to create a sense of nationalist outrage in the population.  The apology didn&amp;#x27;t fit the narrative so it wasn&amp;#x27;t reported.  How long would it take for someone whose views were shaped by things like that outrage to get exposed to the truth randomly, given how infrequently this event comes up?</text></item><item><author>shadowgovt</author><text>Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn&amp;#x27;t leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China&amp;#x27;s government policy as evil.</text></item><item><author>virtuous_signal</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief &amp;quot;We shouldn&amp;#x27;t censor for China, even if that makes us lose money&amp;quot;. But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don&amp;#x27;t give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad press.&lt;p&gt;People with ethical sense leaving Google makes the balance worse. So the dealings with China will probably resume, at an even greater pace, when the public forgets about the first controversy. (edit: I should say first &lt;i&gt;two&lt;/i&gt; controversies, since they stopped censoring in 2010, then tried to resurrect it as Dragonfly in 2018, then stopped again)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alisonatwork</author><text>I live and work in mainland China, and the government here pisses me off. Yeah, i am a foreigner, but this is my home. I pay taxes here. I deserve to have my voice heard. The Chinese government is trash.&lt;p&gt;Because i am a foreigner the worst that could happen from me voicing such an opinion is the government doesn&amp;#x27;t renew my work visa. For Han, it could affect their social credit rating. For ethnic minorities it could land them or their families in &amp;quot;reeducation camps&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the trick of authoritarian regimes. If you just shut up and do whatever the government says, they won&amp;#x27;t bother you (unless you are rich enough to bother extorting). But if you make a noise, you are screwed. That&amp;#x27;s the reason why everyone you talk to is allegedly happy with the regime. It&amp;#x27;s not in their interests to be anything else.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left</title><url>https://write.as/dsf4khx3r1m1208f.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>elldoubleyew</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand this philosophy of &amp;quot;if only they could change their minds&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The current regime has broken records year over year and almost the entire population is happy with them. Chinese people are better off every single day. Who are we as westerners to say that our system of governance is better than theirs? How can you be so sure that their system will inevitably be bad for the people?&lt;p&gt;Just because an absolute right to say (almost) whatever you want is essential to the political philosophy of the west does not mean that it can&amp;#x2F;would mesh well in Chinese society.&lt;p&gt;I know you guys are going to want to crucify me for saying a lot of this but I work with a lot of people in mainland China and no one has any problems with the government, they stick to their own business and are doing pretty damn well. Obviously this could change one day but thats not our job as non-chinese citizens to decide.</text></item><item><author>Seenso</author><text>&amp;gt; Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn&amp;#x27;t leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China&amp;#x27;s government policy as evil.&lt;p&gt;It takes &lt;i&gt;years&lt;/i&gt; in the right environment for someone like that to start to think differently.  All kinds of important facts and ideas were kept from them, much of it random things that don&amp;#x27;t come up often that they may not even realize.&lt;p&gt;For a less than unusual example: a lot of Chinese think the US never apologized for accidentally bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Balkans conflict, but it did so, publicly: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.c-span.org&amp;#x2F;video&amp;#x2F;?123188-1&amp;#x2F;youth-violence-embassy-bombing-apology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.c-span.org&amp;#x2F;video&amp;#x2F;?123188-1&amp;#x2F;youth-violence-embass...&lt;/a&gt;.  The Chinese government portrayed the bombing as a deliberate act, and used it to create a sense of nationalist outrage in the population.  The apology didn&amp;#x27;t fit the narrative so it wasn&amp;#x27;t reported.  How long would it take for someone whose views were shaped by things like that outrage to get exposed to the truth randomly, given how infrequently this event comes up?</text></item><item><author>shadowgovt</author><text>Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn&amp;#x27;t leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China&amp;#x27;s government policy as evil.</text></item><item><author>virtuous_signal</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief &amp;quot;We shouldn&amp;#x27;t censor for China, even if that makes us lose money&amp;quot;. But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don&amp;#x27;t give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad press.&lt;p&gt;People with ethical sense leaving Google makes the balance worse. So the dealings with China will probably resume, at an even greater pace, when the public forgets about the first controversy. (edit: I should say first &lt;i&gt;two&lt;/i&gt; controversies, since they stopped censoring in 2010, then tried to resurrect it as Dragonfly in 2018, then stopped again)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Seenso</author><text>&amp;gt; ...I work with a lot of people in mainland China and no one has any problems with the government, they stick to their own business and are doing pretty damn well.&lt;p&gt;The topic of this subthread is not the attitudes of mainland Chinese, it&amp;#x27;s the attitudes of mainland Chinese who have immigrated to work at Google for economic reasons.  I have friends who came from mainland China, and have talked to them about how their attitudes have changed over time.  They don&amp;#x27;t all stay fixed in the officially-sanctioned mainland mindset.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Obviously this could change one day but thats not our job as non-chinese citizens to decide.&lt;p&gt;So you&amp;#x27;re saying if someone is happy with something at least in part because they&amp;#x27;ve been lied to, it&amp;#x27;s wrong for someone to interfere with their attitudes by trying to tell them the truth?</text></comment>