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If you’ve been following me for a while, you might know that I’m not the biggest fan of China’s government. While nobody’s government is perfect (especially the one I live under in the United States), the actions of the Communist Party are often inexcusable. From threatening to nuke neighbors to claiming the South China Sea as internal waters to threatening to invade Taiwan, the desire to coexist with the rest of the world just doesn’t seem to be there. And this is all before considering domestic policy. It would take a whole series of articles to address the human rights violations in the country.
But, again, none of this makes the United States government some perfect and morally upright good guy. It would take an even longer series of articles to explain all of the bad things that have happened both at home and abroad. Two wrongs don’t make a right!
This easy-to-forget truth really comes into focus when we look at the US government’s attempts to ban TikTok. It’s certainly true that the Chinese government is constantly looking for ways to manipulate citizens overseas, and this includes armies of trolls on social media sites who pretend to be from the United States while pushing the Party’s position on a variety of issues. It’s undoubtedly true that at least some of the content on TikTok is designed to manipulate young people in other countries.
However, we have to be real about the problem and admit to ourselves that it happens on basically every social media network. We’ve seen people like Mark Zuckerberg go wherever the wind blows, obeying Donald Trump in advance on issues like content moderation and DEI initiatives, for example. There’s also Elon Musk, the owner of X, who has deep financial ties with the Chinese government and often sympathizes with the likes of Vladimir Putin. Grok — X’s AI — identified Musk as the biggest spreader of political misinformation during the last presidential election season.
To pretend that banning TikTok would fix the whole problem of manipulation from abroad is ignorant at best. It’s even more deeply ignorant to think that the US government can control internet users. As was famously said in the movie Serenity, “You can’t stop the signal, Mal.”
With a court challenge to the TikTok ban pending, social media users are already looking for alternatives to social media owned, operated, and manipulated by US oligarchs. The main beneficiary of this quest for a TikTok replacement has been RedNote, also known as RED and Little Red Book (the literal translation for 小红书, or xiaohongshu). It’s the #1 downloaded app on US app stores, with the #2 app being another Chinese app. It’s clear that US citizens aren’t happy with being told that they aren’t allowed to communicate with Chinese netizens.
Trying to ban these other “Chinese Insta” apps would be an endless game of whack-a-mole. Not only would we do what Chinese netizens do and use VPNs to bypass restrictions, but new ones would pop up faster than the old ones could be banned from app stores. Again, we don’t like being told what to do.
In the cleantech industry, we’d be wise to keep this in mind as government agencies attempt to prevent the sale of Chinese EVs, batteries, and solar in the United States. It’s a lot easier to prevent whole cars from going into the United States than it is to prevent TCP/IP connections, of course. But, at the same time, it’s only a matter of time until citizens demand access to better and cheaper EVs and vote for those who would let them in.
Instead of thinking that we can rely on tariffs and selective subsidies to keep Chinese EVs out forever, we need to be real and admit that these kinds of policies only buy us time to improve. If the US auto industry (including domestically built vehicles from European and Asian brands) doesn’t get its act together sooner instead of later, the Chinese auto industry will eat them all for lunch!
Featured image: some AI generated slop of President Biden and Vice President Trump hitting TikTok with ban hammers.
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