back to article Apple is like HITLER says Chinese billionaire

One of the ways Chinese kids like to pass their time is watching video on a site called Leshi TV that's sufficiently popular the company's CEO Jia Yueting is ranked among the planet's billionaires. Jia is also an enthusiastic user of Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent. And late last week he used it to post the image above …

  1. Mark 85

    The CEO's trying to make a point that Apple exercises very rigid control over its ecosystem, to the exclusion of all contenders and therefore to the detriment of consumers.

    And China doesn't exercise that kind of control over it's own populace? <rolls eyes> Ok.. sure...

    1. Scoular

      Could you explain in detail the difference between China and others. Certain well known 'western' countries spy on all their citizens, surely that too is control over its citizens. What other motivation could there be?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ignorant?

        "Could you explain in detail the difference between China and others"

        I think the difference is pretty f-ing obvious, I don't understand why people even bother asking. One is damn right in your face tyranny, my way or the jail way for life, the other is sneakily behind the scenes manipulations. That said when you say 'western' countries now-a-days, there is a big difference between the UK and the US as shown by the recent trip by Cameron to the US to lobby for greater survillance power.

        Really, don't even try to down play the significance and difference between the two. It's not remotely funny especially for people who are actively pursued by the Chinese police state, and yes you should be worried that the UK is turning more like China every day.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Ignorant?

          Right.

          "One is damn right in your face tyranny, my way or the jail way for life, the other is sneakily behind the scenes manipulations."

          And the other is China.

    2. John Bailey

      "And China doesn't exercise that kind of control over it's own populace? <rolls eyes> Ok.. sure..."

      And Apple is a country? <rolls eyes> Ok.. sure...

      1. Mark 85

        Apple controls it's ecosystem. China controls it's ecosystem. Both seem to rule with an iron fist.

        1. Captain Queeg

          No, it's one of those irregular verbs:

          I... ensure order and security

          You... rule with an iron fist.

          He... Commits inhuman atrocities.

          (With apologies to Bernard Wooley)

  2. LaeMing

    Hitler is a bit extreme.

    Control-obscessive sociopath, certainly, though.

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: Hitler is a bit extreme.

      How about Mao, then?

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Too much red there, blood or otherwise.

      2. LaeMing

        Re: Hitler is a bit extreme.

        Well, (as implemented in the field) Communisim is just the nanny-state in corporate-heirachy form, so probably yes.

        1. Ian Joyner Bronze badge

          Re: Hitler is a bit extreme.

          >>Communisim is just the nanny-state<<

          I don't think you could make the case that Stalin or Mao implemented a nanny state. Quite the contrary.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More than controversial

    It's down right disgusting to compare a company with a regime that caused the holocause and committed crimes against humanity.

    This is to be expected from China's CEOs, most of them not that well educated in history and has a twisted sense of moral due to influence from communist propaganda pumping out of state media.

    Last year an ex-MD of a well known tech company in Hong Kong compared pro-democracy activist to ISIS on LinkedIn.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More than controversial

      I very much doubt that you are very well educated on China either and your big sweeping generalisations are about as bad as the Chinese CEO's remark. His reason are obvious from the article.

      Get over it, "crimes against humanity" are going on on a daily basis all over the world.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: More than controversial

        "Get over it, "crimes against humanity" are going on on a daily basis all over the world."

        Unless of course some of you consider that a "Crime Against Humanity" requires for there to be more than 1 person being murdered, raped, persecuted, etc etc etc ..

        The Holocaust, I agree, was at an extreme level, but it should not deviate from the fact the same "errors" are still being made on albeit much smaller scale.

    2. Bloodbeastterror

      Re: More than controversial

      If you're going to mention the murder of 6 million people you might at least have the courtesy to spell it correctly.

  4. skeptical i
    Pint

    Sorry, not getting how the symbolism is supposed to work.

    Apple, in the form of a school-crossing-guard-gone-bad, is keeping an ethnicity- and gender- balanced clot of youths from going to windfarm land? Or keeping them from leaving windfarm land? "Hitler" style is standing ahead of the kids, while "king" style is roughly equidistant from the door as the kids. So the kids are behind the tyrant and, what, protected by him? They're smiling and not cowering in fear or acting coerced, so who knows. Being behind the tyrant, the yoofs could slip out the door unchecked, but appear content not to do so. In the larger "king" picture, OK, the doors are in a rounded-corner frame (Apple i-things), so iPhones are separating kids from wind farms? Or forcing them to not leave them? Are the windfarms supposed to be good or bad? They're certainly a good idea, but there are enough instances wherein the good idea crashed into the mountain of reality and the windmills did less good than hoped, so is this a metaphor for pie-in-the-sky disconnection from the real world? Or good clean eco work? The doors themselves are open, but it's not clear where they lead (just a wild blue yonder) which I guess makes a point about the indeterminacy of Apple's future. The "do not cross" tape is not over the doors themselves, but next to them, implying that avoiding the i-doors is bad (a thought I'm sure Apple endorses) unless one avoids them to the left which apparently leads to either clean solutions for the future or grand scale delusion depending on ones opinion of wind farms. The pockmocks in the floor -- landmines? Holes from where the windmills were before they picked up and wandered, Ent-style, into the background? Sorry, amigos, it's late and after a day of yard work in the sun I'm clearly losing this round of Pictionary.

    Maybe a beer will fix that problem. :^)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Roughly translated...

    I can't add "multi" to "billionaire" with Apple, so I'll slag it off by making a few ludicrous comparisons. I might be able to with Android, so I'll ignore any contradictions, and its all kittens and roses as far as I'm concerned.

    Absolutely no vested self interest involved at all, says the Rupert Murdoch of kids TV.

  6. nastybarsteward

    And the Western Countries are better because.....

    So China watches it's populace as much as possible and does so in quite an open way. US/UK have been caught doing similar, but have tried to do it in a clandestine way.

    China imprisons people on supposed charges that seem paper thin at best. US imprisons people in Guantanamo bay for up to 13 years without charge,

    China is a hugely growing economy. US, if it was a business, would have had the administrators called in on it long ago.

    I think that the phrase "people in glass houses" comes to mind here.

    Still, even with all of that, and understanding the cultural differences, using Hitler as imagery for Apple is going too far.

  7. Phuq Witt

    Godwin's Law

    Surely it's only an example of Godwin's Law in action if the argument *eventually* ends up with someone comparing their opponent to Hitler?

    Using comparison to Hitler as your opening gambit is an exciting new time-saving technique and suggests China may be about to shake up internet trolling in much the same way they've done with manufacturing.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good job they didn't compare Apple to Mao

    That would've really been offensive!

    Victim totals:

    Hitler = 21 million

    Stalin = 62 million

    Mao = 77 million

    "For perspective on Mao’s most bloody rule, all wars 1900-1987 cost in combat dead 34,021,000 — including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in combat in all these wars."

    https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/reevaluating-chinas-democide-to-73000000/

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Honestly, you might want to replace those totals into their time frames for a proper comparison.

      Hitler (as Führer) : 1934 - 1945, or 11 years

      Stalin : 1925 - 1953, or 28 years

      Mao : 1949 - 1976, or 27 years

      So Hitler reigned the least, and his "genocide impact" is reduced further when you consider that his Final Solution was not actually implemented before 1942. Beyond that, his Final Solution did not only concern Jews (something that way too many people do not know). You must therefor include up to 1.5 million Romani people, nearly 2 million Poles and up to 3 million assorted other victims (Soviet prisoners of war, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jehova's witnesses and other undesirables). Not counting the almost 20 million people who did indirectly because of his politics of deliberate starvation of "undesirable races".

      So Hitler's direct "genocide total" is actually much closer to 12.5 than 6, and that in a time span of, at most, 4 years.

      If Stalin had had that kind of behavior, he would have killed 116.6 million people instead of your quoted 62, and Mao would have killed 112.5.

      Mao may appear to have done a bit less, but one must not forget that the population of China has always dwarfed the population of the Soviet block by a ration of around 10 to 1. In that light, Mao was positively benign.

      In the end, let us not forget that all of these numbers represent the lives of millions upon millions of innocent people sacrificed on the alter of ignorance.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Sr. Handle

        Was Mao a missunderstude nice guy?

        I am confusos, Mao was a very nice person for killing a lot of people but not enought to be the munster everybody outside dictatorial China thing?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hitler in Asia is just not seen in the same way

    Of course in Europe, that memory is still raw. But go to Asia and ask people about him, and they see him as a remote figure, something between a great general who conquered Europe and yet another dictator who did something bad they don't quite know about.

    And why not? Their populations were not slaughtered by his armies.

    Quite the opposite: how many know in the West that the head of the Nazi Party in China, like Schindler, directly helped save 200000 lives. While Western democracies were conveniently looking the other way at the time.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

    Conversely, I'm sure that they could give you the names of Japanese generals they consider as monsters, but you've never heard about.

    Different histories, different viewpoints, maybe it's time to realize that Godwin's law is not quite universal.

    1. dogged

      Re: Hitler in Asia is just not seen in the same way

      Thank you for the link to John Rabe. Fascinating. And rather sad.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I smell desperation - or drugs.

    For something so seriously off the rails to be even considered as acceptable, let alone beneficial to sales you must be in a considerably messed up state of mind.

    I have no idea which target market this guy is aiming at, but I would have some concerns about product sustainability if the guy at the top is not quite all there, which is what this comparison suggests.

    The only possible explanation I can come up with is that they must have been pretty drunk when they dreamt this up, or stoned out of their minds. Either way, it seems worth avoiding.

  11. Alan Denman

    But people loved Hitler

    ... cause mainly fools dared speak out.

  12. martinusher Silver badge

    South Park?

    When I first saw the cartoon I though it was a still from a South Park episode that I had missed.

  13. Ian Joyner Bronze badge

    Apple have been done over before

    When Apple was more open Microsoft and Bill Gates stole the technology (they stole Quickdraw which was Jef Raskin's work, not Xerox as Gates likes to claim).

    Since then Apple has been more careful. Others still steal the work that Apple has developed. That is bad competition. But they can do that because Apple also bases its work on open standards. Note that IBM did use monopolistic practices by trying to control those open standards. (Richard Delamarter Big Blue: IBM's Use and Abuse of Power.)

  14. DerekCurrie
    FAIL

    It's All About China Surveilling And Manipulating Its Citizens

    In light of the Chinese government's disapproval of all things encryption and private, the desperate invocation of Godwin's Law is no surprise whatsoever.

    China: If you want Android, you can have it! It's the single LEAST secure OS available today, beating out awful Windows. You want your devices PWNed? All your's. You want your government tracking your every move? You got it. You want to support a mobile platform that compromises your human rights, rips-off and stifles the creativity of other technologies? Have at it.

    As usual, I call you what you are: China, Criminal Nation. Revolt and make China sane again.

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