>She points to a spurious claim that America “wants to blow up” TSMC, a Taiwanese chipmaker. It originated with a misleading video posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which featured an American lawmaker appearing to discuss the possibility.
This part stood out to me as I've seen this mentioned several times on HN in the past.
The HN discussion isn't related to a "misleading video posted on Douyin"; it's based on accurate news reporting about an academic foreign policy paper (which doesn't speak for US foreign policy).
Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.) is in government. And if a Chinese military journal said something, the US press would have no qualms saying "Chinese military thinks/wants X". It's on the same level of "disinformation" as 99% of journalism, which is to say, it contains minor sensationalism but has meaningful factual basis, and with minor additional qualifiers, has a reasonable factual basis.
That's just a boring pedantic whataboutism, which is also incorrect as the type of "random people can say random stuff" blue-sky thinking free speech doesn't really exist in China.
It's not whataboutism (a nebulous and mostly useless category) to talk about common journalistic practice, and how the claim falls well within norms of that practice. So it can hardly be described as "disinformation" except in the sense that it is unflattering information coming from an official enemy.
Just heard Lyle Goldstein (visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown, Director for Asian Engagement for Defense Priorities think tank, former professor for 20 years at US Naval War College), say on the Nonzero podcast that in the event of conflict in Taiwan, it's likely that China has securing TSMC facilities and staff as a goal (but not a primary goal), and that the US likely has TSMC on the target list to destroy: https://youtu.be/91QM9W0QAjo?feature=shared&t=1950
> “I’m not promoting the idea. I’m not promoting the idea,” Moulton said. “What I’m saying is these are some of the things that are actually actively being debated among US policymakers.”
The fun thing is this: if people like you keep denying this is a real thing until this becomes official policy, it would be too late for the people of Taiwan to object to it.
Another win for the US again! "The most effective lie is the one with a kernel of truth" indeed.
The US does a lot of stupid things, it doesn't make it unreal. This policy isn't even half stupid as long as you can deny it long enough to make it happen. I might even say it's smart to deny it on the surface but actually continuing to make the threat credible. Well done.
This is said by "Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.) — one of the Democratic Party’s leading voices on defense":
Speaking at a Milken Institute panel in Los Angeles, Moulton said: “One of the interesting ideas that’s been floated out there for deterrence is just making it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC.” He continued: “I just throw that out not because that’s necessarily the best strategy, but because it’s an example of the debate that’s out there. And of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea.” [1]
Yeah. China has its stance consistently since 1940s, it is not that they woke up about Taiwan in 2010.
It is more of a scorched earth plan. There isn't much of interest to US beyond TSMC. As long as it doesn't fall in hand of China, rest it will be OK to loose.
It would only have been since 1949, and they gave up their best chance to retake Taiwan (while the Americans weren’t interested) to meddle in Korea instead.
The Americans don’t really care that much about TSMC. Its fabs are highly dependent on parts, material, etc from more secured countries, which is by design, or they would have never allowed semiconductor industries to be setup in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. They have much of the process locked up and a chip only gets made via free trade from multiple countries (with a lot of fate keeping by key allies, like the Dutch).
> ... they gave up their best chance to retake Taiwan (while the Americans weren’t interested) to meddle in Korea instead.
My understanding of the timeline/causation in 1950 is the other way around. Initially China was only going to offer largely moral support to North Korea. On June 27 the U.S. Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait to prevent PRC from taking Taiwan. This was a factor in China's decision to enter the Korean War in October.
> U.S. policy toward East Asia in the early Cold War contributed to the tensions in the Taiwan Strait. In late 1949 and early 1950, American officials were prepared to let PRC forces cross the Strait and defeat Chiang, but after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south. The appearance of the Seventh Fleet angered the Chinese Communists, who transferred their troops poised for an invasion of Taiwan to the Korean front. This served to delay military conflict in the Strait until the United States withdrew its fleet after the Korean War.
> In fact, at the initial stage, China took a passive response to the situation in North Korea. Besides moral support for Kim, the only material support provided by Beijing at the time was to send approximately 14,000 Korean Chinese who were then serving in the PLA back to Korea.8 However, three subsequent events dramatically changed Beijing’s attitudes.
> The first is that on June 27, the U.S. Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait to ‘neutralise’ the situation. ...
Kim asked permission from Mao (who then asked Stalin m) to invade, with the support from China and Russia that would entail. America became very interested in east Asia after the initial invasion, not just when MacArther went too far into North Korea. It was basically over for their plans to retake Taiwan once Kim crossed troops into South Korea, Mao had to have known that.
The USA completely expected Taiwan to fall to the communists before the Korean War, and they were pretty untrusting of Chiang Kai Shek at the time, they didn’t really care. But after the Korean War started, that sentiment transformed overnight into “Taiwan must not fall to the communists at any cost.”
The real value of Taiwan is that it keeps China from having easy access to the Pacific. That's why the US has suggested it will defend Taiwan for long before TSMC became valuable.
It's dangerous strategically for the US to believe that China's motivation is about TSMC. "Taiwan" might not even be just a "CCP" goal. In fact, the "CCP" wouldn't likely survive without making unification a priority.
I agree that it goes much much deeper than TSMC, but it's a bit dismissive to call TSMC "one fab". It's the leading edge fab and deeply ingrained in a very large number and wide variety of supply chains in a way that Intel and Samsung are not at the moment.
It goes beyond that, the more "renegade" Taiwan is in its rhetoric and the more the US increases the MIC investments in Taiwan the more militant China is about "repatriating" Taiwan and the faster they want it achieved.
Nobody really cares that much about renegade provinces until they seem like a threat. The US famously called Taiwan the unsinkable aircraft carrier in the pacific[1]. It doesn't really matter that Taiwanese people themselves don't want to fight China.
If the Europeans and the US were serious about Taiwan's independence they would have built up Taiwan's defense industry and supported it's independence in the UN, when they were at the height of their power, but they specifically did not, they actually voted against any attempt of Taiwan to be admitted to the UN(to be fair the Republic of China in its constitution still considers itself the sole China). At the time Taiwan was an economic powerhouse and they had some of the biggest shipyards in the world.
Right now the US cannot at all compare with China in terms of military industrial output, here's what the US Navy secretary general had to say about the topic[2]. Basically AUKUS is subsidizing US shipbuilding.
Everyone can dig out ancient maps and declare something renegade. Defacto Taiwan is a independent nation, with a very different (not purged aka original) Chinese culture. Russia claims Ukraine, Poland and GDr to be renegade provinces. Should we just accept that.
The governing authority in Taiwan also considers it part of historical China. The goal was to eventually retake the mainland with foreign assistance, and the independent nation idea only emerged after that became obviously impossible.
> Russia claims Ukraine, Poland and GDr to be renegade provinces
False. There might be some discussion around Ukraine and its historic role as an integral part of Russia's culture and history - and thus, where would an actual border between two peoples (including a cultural one) will be carved when shit gets fucked. But mixing up Poland or even GDR into this is nonsense narrative that does not exist.
Also, the historic reason behind PRC issues with Republic of China (Taiwan) is the fact that both state being the "One True China" as the core of their national myth. The practical issues are of course deterring a potential military threat. Everything else is just pointless rhetorics.
None of Taiwan’s fans can run for very long without parts and replacement machinery from the USA or Europe. The tech is pretty locked down, even if production is currently distributed. China doesn’t have much choice but it re-invent the engineering done in the west to catch up (on economical perf, not just perf or economical).
I don’t think the economists get this, but definitely people in the Chinese government are aware that taking Taiwan doesn’t really get them the tech.
> And of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea.
Reminds me of when Biden was standing next to the German chancellor and said he'd make sure Nord Stream would be stopped if Russia ever invaded Ukraine and then when Russia invaded Ukraine and Nord Stream was blown up, everyone just ignored it.
Don't worry, there are plenty of doublethink practitioners who believes that Russia blew up Nord Stream, pipelines that supplies Russian gas to Germany that Russia already turned off the tap at the source.
Look at the incentives and consequences of blowing up TSMC if China uses the military. China would not have access to the high end chips; Taiwan loses a bargaining chip of its own, and would suffer a huge economic cost (a lot of electricity is used up by TSMC alone); and US is the one who gets to point at the big bad PRC throwing weapons at ROC, and know that PRC gets a road block on the semiconductor front.
We pretty much know that it was Ukraine but there are more important things going on so it is on the backburner till the crisis is over. The main impetus behind NS was not to create new additional supply lines but to become independent from the Ukraine pipelines.
In the end this is a matter between Ukraine and Germany and nobody cares what Russia thinks.
Absolutely hilarious that - in an article talking about disinformation - they make the 100% wrong claim that the video is somehow misleading. It exists and the contents are absolutely clear.
Claiming that the video is misleading is 100% disinformation.
Reminds me of Trudeau who talked about Russian disinformation after they gave a standing ovation to a literal SS soldier.
Anything I don't like is a Russian/Chinese fake news campaign and everyone I don't agree with is a Russian/Chinese bot. I can't believe that's what the culture in the west has become. It's really concerning.
> America had asked Taiwan to manufacture biological weapons at a lab run by the island’s defence ministry, the report claimed.
This reminds me a lot of the (presumably Russian disinformation) story that flitted around American conservative spheres early in the Ukraine war saying that the US gov was setting up bio weapon labs at the border with Russia and that's why the Russian invasion was justified. Funny how the exact same propaganda can be shared between conflicts to good effect presumably.
Yes, "propaganda" like information about the Uighur Genocide and facts about Ukrainian civilians fleeing a war-torn country (an undeniable reality irrespective of what Russia's reasons for invading Ukraine were to begin with).
Lmfao Rishi Sunsk and Justin Trudeau interfering to protect the rights of the oppressed moose minority, make English one of America’s official languages, and reclaim America for the Crown
I’m not even going to touch the thinly veiled antisemitic smear
We can repeat the 2020 election the “most safe and secure” election ever. Funny how Russia and China sat that one out huh? Guess they’d let the other team win one.
My understanding is in some states the laws are written with a Catch-22: you need evidence of hacking to kick off an investigation. So I wouldn’t be that confident.
If I were China I’d probably go with a hardware supply chain attack. These machines can sit around for years.
I think DARPA’s SSITH program is a step in the right direction. At the very least, I’d feel a lot better with bug bounties on publicly available demonstrators from all manufacturers.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that if Russia/China get involved they are guaranteed to decide the outcome of the election. That is absolutely not the case.
There are hundreds of factors that will ultimately decide who wins on the day.
The safe and secure claim was largely around the conduct of the election itself, whereas US adversaries largely deployed disinfo and propaganda tactics to interfere in the election.
So, not sure they sat it out as much as the U.S. was a little better prepared. For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo.
Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.
Safe to say that $46K ad spend was a drop in the bucket versus their overall effort, but sure, Facebook not accepting those rubles in 2020 counts as a small example.
I have no problem with the U.S. government working with American communications platforms to prevent adversarial propaganda, disinformation and disruption of US elections. These are foreign governments engaged in psyops against American citizens. Falls pretty squarely (and obviously) within government purview to defend against it.
The US government didn't stop there though. They used their influence to censor US citizens' tweets. That's censorship, and that's what happens when you give the government this power. Put censorship in quotes all you like, you support it.
Twitter is infested with trollbots and sock puppets, and can't even agree with itself on its count of real users. So, if some real user accounts that parroted disinfo were swept up in bans or whatever you're calling "censorship" during the disinfo fight, then so be it.
And, in any case, if they're parroting the same disinfo as foreign adversaries who are working to destroy us, then they don't get special dispensation just because they're U.S. citizens.
This is why the First Amendment famously has limits.
"Most safe and secure" referred to the counting of the votes, in response Trump's claims.
"Interference" refers to China/Russia state-sponsored targetted propaganda on social media and the like.
Was it really the "most safe and secure" and is "interference" an accurate way to describe these type of activities? Well, one could argue about that. But you're mixing up two mostly unrelated things here.
The worst part is that X/Twitter is deliberately not trying to help this cycle.
They pulled out of the EU Code of Practice around disinformation back in May and they have been warned as recently as yesterday that the platform was the worst of all of the social networks at allowing Russian disinformation.
And I am sure everyone who used it has seen the massive uptick in bots and other coordinated activity.
We must censor this dangerous disinformation at once! Surely we also need to establish federal oversight commissions to determine what is or is not disinformation, we can't let citizens sort this out for themselves!
The fact that this always surpises americans doesn't stop to amaze me. American politcs to some extent affects literally everybody on the planet. But only 300M of them are allowed to vote directly. I consider this situation unjust :)
The volume of Chinese disinformation inside China about Ukraine from Feb 2022 thru dec 2022 was amazing. Bio weapons, assassination plots, secret missiles - pick your favourite conspiracy theory and it was out there.
The CCP UnitedFront don't seem to realise the damage they are doing to their own political image.
And for fellow HN readers no matter what you read about China always bear in mind that politics comes first. It is more important than lives, morals, history, families, science, economics. Everything is subservient to politics, everything. Not saying is good or bad - it is just the CCP "way".
The CCP doesn’t really care what people outside China think about it. It comes off as crass because they plays well at home, and they are immune to public opinion anywhere else.
I don't think it's about "politics" it's about power and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It is about what they say it's about it. This is just the way they are going about it.
Ukraine has bio labs, funded by the US and operated by Ukraine.
There is also proof and testimony that the US funded the Wuhan lab also.
“They're looking at pathogens that infect humans and animals with an emphasis on those that are endemic to Ukraine, Anthrax, tularemia, tuberculosis, botulism, classic swine fever, Crimean hemorrhagic fever, avian flu, those types of things.”
Just like Wuhan was just checking out some crazy bat strain. I don’t know what “Gain of Function” is.
I'm sorry, but I really don't see the difference. If they do gain of function to create a virus, that virus can be used as a weapon. You can't separate the two.
It's the difference between making fertiliser for farming or to build a bomb. Intent matters.
And so if they are creating viruses to better understand how to cure them or prepare responses for dealing with them then that is a good thing. Creating a virus for use in a bio-weapon is a bad thing.
If you don't have bio-labs then you don't have cures so we can't get rid of them entirely.
The amount of engineering required to go from fertilizer to bomb is astronomical. Deploying a virus covertly does not compare in the slightest, that's a disingenuous comparison and you know it.
Not really. Development of the virus is the hard part. Ping is straight forward and widely available.
As soon as the virus is developed, it can be used by other departments within the government easily with proper approval, and purposes other than intended.
Would you care to share the credentials you have that allow you to make a sweeping statement about it being impossible to separate the two?
Because that was a line of propaganda attack, but I'm willing to give you a chance to prove you are qualified and not just mindlessly regurgitating bullshit.
I don't need credentials for common sense. If a virus is developed, it can be easily used improperly when given to the wrong individuals. There are differences, but not enough to make it useless in bioweapons development.
It seemed to flow the other way: had Russia believed that Ukraine was preparing bioweapons, or wanted to use that excuse, Putin would have absolutely used that in his speeches justifying the invasion.
Instead, American right-wing conspiracy theorists seized on the idea, and then Russian media started talking about it.
Robert Kennedy Jr also confirmed this. Not surprised - this is the same crap that occurred in Wuhan Institute of Virology. Since U.S. laws do not permit this stuff, the U.S. does bio weapons research outside the nation.
Presumable the hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of people in China who are going to die if they invade Taiwan, due to all the weapons that the US gives Taiwan and will continue to give them to defend themselves.
And possibly even more that that if and when either the USA or surrounding Pacific Asia countries get directly involved against China.
Those US bases aren't there for show.
Instead, they are they to shoot down invading forces from China, if they start an invasion.
If it goes that far, the global economic ramifications could easily have a death toll exceeding direct hostilities. Or maybe trade would continue while war raged, it seems surreal, but it isn't unthinkable.
On this note - without implying anything about OPs personal politics - it's absolutely crazy to me how quickly certain varieties of leftists bought into the imperial notion that major powers are entitled to spheres of influence within which they can enforce their will on smaller neighbors regardless of what those neighbors want for themselves.
Because that's basically how a lot of arguments about NATO, Ukraine, Taiwan etc tend to go. People like Chomsky end up using the same arguments that were used to justify heinous actions in the 70s and 80s, just with the "sides" flipped.
Yes, I know that. Where did I say differently? I said the threats are being normalized. If a world power is telling their citizens that it's happening, whether its actually happening or not, then that is the process of normalization.
> is this the kind of world we live in now? Where the proliferation of bioweapon threats is commonplace?
no one is normalizing bioweapon threats, they're normalizing accusing the other side of bioweapon threats
but I guess that's pedantic and I agree with you that it sucks that no one would be surprised if a bioweapon did occur because everyone suspects the other side of it anyway
The expression "flooding with disinformation" is the hallmark of biased reporting. Why is only one side considered as "disinformation" while the other side is assumed to be only talking the truth? The only conclusion I can reach is that the economist is doing here the very same thing they're accusing the other side.
MSM wants to pretend that nobody realizes their purpose is to push disinformation to everyone, all the time. So they clutch their pearls when "the other side" does it. Sorry, MSM, your credibility is in the toilet. You're all pushing disinformation, all the time. You get no points for calling the other side out on it.
'Both sides' is a core part of the authoritarian propaganda playbook.
Pretending that occasional manipulation in the information produced by Liberal democracies is somehow equivalent to the constant stream of lies autocracies produce, is part of how they stop their people wanting change.
Err... CGTN?
> CGTN is a state-run foreign-language news channel based in Beijing, China. It is one of six channels provided by China Global Television Network, owned by the Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television, under the control of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party
The goal of the "disinformation flooding" narrative is exactly to avoid any kernel of truth that other nations may be telling. If someone says anything that goes against the US narrative, they will immediately say that it is result of the "disinformation campaign", not the fact that the person concluded independently that this single piece of information may be correct. You can see this happening in this very discussion board.
I’m not seeing much independent thought outside the usual “America bad”. It’s interesting that a lot of those independent thinkers all have the exact same opinions.
It's funny that you make this qualitative assessment about the history of this board, and the very topic of burner accounts, while posting from a fresh account.
I made no reference to burner accounts, but thanks for tying that into your not-so-subtle accusation against me. I've been here since 2011. Want proof of my identity, check my bio on Github[1]
This is exactly what I'm talking about. McCarthy like paranoia. Downvoting people because of how old their accounts are[2], not because of what they wrote. Accusations of burner accounts. It's ridiculous.
I've left this place a few times as it's gotten progressively worse. Then I rejoin after some time off, and it's even more warped and hostile to new users.
As opposed to the group think around popular programming languages or web development stacks? How about the controversy around COVID origins circa 2020-21? Humans are going to human. HN isn't immune to knee jerk reactions, politics or tribalism.
Critiques or discussions of the CCP generally devolve into flamewars. I've seen worse here. The site is more interesting for tech topics. Anything with a nationalistic component will become inflammatory.
There is an organized brigade somewhere out there, but I suspect the younger, overseas students "bring their own rations" out of a sense of national pride and alienation. If you call them paid agents, it will only make them dig in deeper.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
I honestly don't think HN is capable of acting as a forum for these topics. It takes a lot of moderation and abuse prevention. The article is absolutely interesting and raises good points but this thread is already too polluted by cheap disinformation techniques (namely whataboutism) to have any meaningful discussion at this point. Good luck with this one mods!
To back this up: I have met at least a few people who admitted to doing exactly this when they were younger. They weren't paid agents of the state. They just found it to be fun and morally righteous.
China is having an internal information crackdown. It's approaching the nutty level, which probably indicates that Xi is losing it. The latest thing is a crackdown on clothing "detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people."[1]
I'd suggest taking a look at the specific clauses under discussion, esp. as the draft laws are still in the public commentary stage. See clauses 2 and 3 of Article 34 in (https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/public-security-adminis...) and consider them in the context of clauses 1, 4, 5, and 6. Note the recurrent mentions of 'heroes and martyrs' and 'wars of aggression' within these clauses, something a casual reader of that BBC article would not have been led to expect, and consider that some European countries directly impacted by WW2 on their own soil have laws at least similar in letter (laws which most Americans would probably find restrictive, but I doubt anyone would regard as them as clearly 'nutty').
Of course, you can still criticize these draft laws for vagueness and unenforceability: these concerns have already been extensively covered in mainstream Chinese media outlets.
Tut tut, I thought you would have learned from the HK protests that no serious current event commentator is ever really interested in what the law actually says. I.E., The Basic Law.
"Causing harm to the names, images, reputations, and honor of heroes and martyrs through insult, defamation, or other such means" pretty clearly means to me something along the lines of "you can't point out that Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward caused a famine that killed tens of millions of people."
There's nothing along those lines in any EU country, let alone the US (where such a concept is in extremely flagrant violation of the First Amendment). The closest you'd come is laws against Holocaust denial--but notice the key difference between a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a "good" person might have done something bad versus a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a bad deed never happened.
"heroes and martyrs" is the English translation of 英雄烈士, which is not a generic term of praise in Chinese but specifically applies to someone who died in battle (or some similar act of bravery) — think acts worthy of Victoria Cross in UK or Purple Heart in US. Even people who worship Mao do not think of him as one of the "heroes and martyrs".
In China you certainly can point out, even criticize, Mao's role in the Great Leap Forward. Even "Official History" criticizes Mao! You can't be too "over the top" about it, such as comparing him to Hitler or accuse him of being a mass murderer, lest you get cancelled. But the reason you can't has nothing to do with the draft laws being proposed here.
> The closest you'd come is laws against Holocaust denial--but notice the key difference between a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a "good" person might have done something bad versus a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a bad deed never happened.
If you make the first kind of claim and you are wrong, you falsely accuse an innocent person. If you make the second kind of claim and you are wrong, you unjustly exonerate a guilty person. Which is worse? I don't think there's a clear answer! So I fail to see the "key difference" you are trying to highlight between these kinds of claims. Of course, if one of them is true and the other false, then there's a clearly worse claim, but then the worse claim is worse because it's false, not because of the objectionable/offensive nature of its content.
- the great flooding of northeast farmland this summer wiped out 1/3 of China's grain production. in order to mitigate the flooding of Beijing, they instead flooded provinces next to Beijing, which incidentally housed many military forces. Those forces were destroyed without warning.
- the Hangzhou asian games was a massive failure, attended by no major heads from developed countries. Cost $30 billion, while its local governments are so desperate for money, they are raiding temples
- Huawei homegrown chips was a nothing burger. iPhones were sold out in seconds online. Full Apple Store crowds. Very empty Huawei stores. People didn't like the overheated mate 60, or the broken software.
In short, political, economic, demographic, and tech collapse in China.
I mean it isn't the first time that narratives about China's collapse have surfaced; they've been going on since the 2000s. Take anything you read about China on western boards with a pinch of salt; vice versa for the other side too.
China had a real estate bubble fueled by overbuilding, and it collapsed. Nobody is quite sure what happens after that. The economic system is so different that the aftereffects aren't clear.
I can't find the paper ATM - but this was discussed by an Australian group (ASPI adjacent) tasked with China watching eight years (? ish ?) ago .. and as I recall it played out more or less as they predicted.
China central planning pushed for and encouraged 'over buiding' for efficiency and surplus, doing bulk deals on concrete, streamlining steel creation from iron ore, etc.
If you put aside the traditional western stock market view of companies trading in the building domain (which grew and collapsed) and look at it as state planning for bulk efficiences of scale it perhaps makes more sense.
Right now it makes sense to look at what the next five to ten year state backed push will be as we might anticipate more "one foot in the free market" bubble like growth there.
Imagine having such a superiority complex thinking that China's survival hinges entirely on western investment and graces. That's some jingoism right there.
Yeah, I'm sorry to break a nationalist's heart. China needs foreign investment to survive, otherwise its 22% youth unemployment rate, 3 of its biggest real estate companies being bankrupt, local government's $12 trillion debt, 600M citizens on $140/month income will just get worse.
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I know. I live in Hong Kong. Some of these are worrying but a few of them seem questionable. From what I can find, the previous asian games opening also wasn't attended by many world leaders. It's not Olympic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Asian_Games_opening_cer...
Yeah, I’ve seen these stories before. And all from the usual suspects. Quick, someone find the tweet with the 10 Economist magazine covers about China collapsing. You know, the ones that used to come out every 5 years and now come out every year.
Someone could easily cherry pick stories about the US and make the same argument. Unsustainable debt, rampant homelessness and addiction, lifespan and healthspan plummeting, birth rates dropping, etc.
There's an observation in "How Asia Works", by Joe Studwell that all the successful Asian countries grew at about 10% per year as they industrialized, because you can do that by copying the developed world and exporting while paying low wages. Once they caught up, growth dropped to about 5%, because then you have to do something new and pay people more. Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. all followed that path. Countries can screw up and do much worse - Cambodia, North Korea, etc. China is now about at the point where the growth rate drops to 5%. This is not a disaster.
It is a disaster but not for the Chinese. The capitalists elsewhere won't have such cheap labor that's passably educated and has ready access to infrastructure.
Africa and South America would take major investing to bring up to that point.
Very anecdotal.. But I just spent a couple of weeks in Sichuan for the first time since the pandemic. It felt much more vibrant and wealthy than 5 years ago. People dress better, no more half empty shopping malls, much more vibrant street food scene. I went to some designer fashion mall and they had more trendy brands than I've seen in Seoul or Taipei
Huawei seems to be doing well domestically somehow. Way too many store front that aren't too busy.. But they have their own car brand now that seems to be selling well. I'd say half the cars in the street were some domestic electric car brand. I'd guess gasoline cars will be phased out soon
I kept reading about how devastated the country was by the pandemic - but what I saw was a ton of progress. Talking to locals though, they didn't seem to really percieve the difference :)
Here's a thought, maybe all those news are "fake news"?
The original article talks about China misinformation in Taiwan. Maybe western society is running the same thing to China. Like like they did for North Korea.
Remember the "people can only get certain types of haircuts in North Korea"? Fake news, and I believed it at the time. So now I'm always sceptical on what I read from western news talking about Asian countries.
Western "society" can't do anything because it's not a uniform entity. We're a group of individuals who can post ideas and theories in forums like Hacker News or anywhere else. Perhaps you can say that about mainstream media, having in mind that the average person doesn't care too much about what happens inside China or Asia, unless if it's killing jobs in the West.
What's an alternate hypothesis? I.E., why might they be doing this besides going insane? So, an alt explanation that avoids the China-crash forever story?
Xi feels he is losing power isn't a China-crash necessarily.
The US economy doesn't stop when we switch leaders regularly.
Certainly there would be changes but they aren't predictable. (For instance the new leadership could censor even more due to not having as established based on less as they got into power by promising less invasive actions)
Sure, you raise a good point. It's also useful to consider how the idea that the leader for life of the country is going insane could be felt to be denigrating to the country and could be considered to be part of the general China-crash tropes.
For the sake of good analysis, it's important to focus on real alternatives to that hypothesis, and avoid getting bogged down in semantics.
Pretending Xi is insane is twisting yourself in knots to avoid the unpleasant conclusion that China is a challenge to the West that won’t conveniently fail.
So often people are first to accuse others of what they are themselves…
I don't count that Xi losing, but Xi winning. He's very conservative in China's sense, and he's basically crushed less conservative forces in the Party. A crackdown on clothing "detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people." doesn't serve any real interests of Xi other than enforcing the ideals of China's conservatives.
Similar to how the Republican party always try to inhibit abortion wherever they can. You won't say that Republican party successfully passing an anti-abortion law indicates they are losing, will you?
One phenomenon I don’t think psyop brigades seem to have caught on to, is that by flooding comment sections with controversial statements they invite vigorous debate, which ends up boosting engagement. In the end they bring more attention to the stories they are attempting to squash.
I think these new slated rules are actually more taking a leaf out of the Western democratic book: it's a distraction. It's a loss-leader. Yes, a small sacrifice that makes you (the gov) look ridiculous. But the gain? Immeasurable.
Because you essentially get people obsessed over trivialities, content-free but emotionally compelling non-issues that are guaranteed to channel energy but not move the needle.
It's a key tenet of democratic stability: you need to pump the media full of innumerable social debates that partition the market, so you get people fighting themselves over trivialities rather than focusing their considerable energies on change for real issues.
So I see this as more a proof of the "coming of age" or new sophistication of the Chinese "psyop brigades" as you call them, rather than an indication of incompetence that you seem to think.
Small caveat that I haven't decided about yet is: some of this could be to create such an overly oppressive "rules based" atmosphere that people are so afraid of tripping over any law they just toe the line more generally. But I'm not sure, this is directly non-Confucian:
In governing, don't try to force issues or you'll turn away from what is right. The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be
And anti-Lao Tzu:
"The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
...
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers."
Ignoring the details (bioweapon etc.), US Skepticism is very warranted for Taiwan (and all Asians/Europeans IMO).
Considering what US is doing to TSMC and how Taiwan is likely going to be stripped of all valuable assets in the future for NatSec, and how Germany is now being de-industrialized after the bombing of Nordstream by US & allies, I'd be extremely wary of the people running US if I care an iota about my own people.
Those of us who remember how Japan was made to kneel by the BoJ following US diktats know very well that Kissinger's remark 'to be a friend of US is fatal' is deadly serious.
Russia is also a major actor in the adversarial disinfo space. Especially against the US, NATO and the EU.
background: worked on a US State Department project to help counter them. Technically China's anti-Taiwan efforts too. But we cared most about Russia. I did, anyway.
my side project, Slartboz, also deals with the topic of adversarial propaganda & disinfo, and the efforts of amoral, anti-democratic nation state actors like Russia and China.
I was really interested until they compared it to Russian disinformation that led to the election of Donald Trump. Everyone knows that's a load of crap. Why discredit yourself? If you're trying to get the word out that China is attempting to sway a Taiwanese election, the last thing you need to be doing is comparing your point to known nonsense.
He suggests many Taiwanese have an “orphan mentality”: they fear abandonment by outsiders because of Taiwan’s experience of losing American diplomatic recognition in the 1970s.
This was insightful for me, actually. I never thought of this before. It explains a lot!
All journalists in Taiwan serve the bias of their newspapers’ bosses, says Mr Wang, who has worked for both pro-independence and pro-unification newspapers. “Everyone just treats it as a job,” he says. “It’s a tool to feed yourself.”
Also this is very cynical and painful to read. Ugh...vomit face. But also makes sense based on what I've seen there!
It reminds me very much of this episode from Chinese history, which shows an equally mirrored-but-subdued statement of defiance after rejection:
Project 596 was named after the month of June 1959 in which it was initiated as an independent nuclear project, immediately after Nikita Khrushchev decided to stop helping the Chinese with their nuclear program on 20 June 1959, and Mao shifted toward an overall policy of self-reliance.
196 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 404 ms ] threadThis part stood out to me as I've seen this mentioned several times on HN in the past.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/05/taiwan_should_destory... ("US Army journal's top paper from 2021 says Taiwan should destroy TSMC if China invades")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012442 ("Taiwan should destroy TSMC if invaded, suggests US military paper (datacenterdynamics.com)"; 148 comments)
Here's extended context of what the OP is discussing, a different thing:
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/05/12/... ("‘Selectively clipped’ video misrepresents US official’s TSMC comments")
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/12/microchip... ("Opinion: Blow up the microchips? What a Taiwan spat says about U.S. strategy")
edit: Moulton's quote is at 36:22 here—this is apparently its full and complete context:
https://vimeo.com/817736553 ("The United States and China: Navigating Strategic Competition"; Milken Institute, May 2, 2023)
From two guys who seem to have no real influence. It's basically little more than a blog post.
A lot of people say a lot of stuff. Sometimes that's pretty stupid. Sometimes even worse. That's kind of how it works in a free society.
The most effective lie is the one with a kernel of truth.
> “I’m not promoting the idea. I’m not promoting the idea,” Moulton said. “What I’m saying is these are some of the things that are actually actively being debated among US policymakers.”
The fun thing is this: if people like you keep denying this is a real thing until this becomes official policy, it would be too late for the people of Taiwan to object to it.
Another win for the US again! "The most effective lie is the one with a kernel of truth" indeed.
The US does a lot of stupid things, it doesn't make it unreal. This policy isn't even half stupid as long as you can deny it long enough to make it happen. I might even say it's smart to deny it on the surface but actually continuing to make the threat credible. Well done.
Speaking at a Milken Institute panel in Los Angeles, Moulton said: “One of the interesting ideas that’s been floated out there for deterrence is just making it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC.” He continued: “I just throw that out not because that’s necessarily the best strategy, but because it’s an example of the debate that’s out there. And of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea.” [1]
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/12/microchip...
It is more of a scorched earth plan. There isn't much of interest to US beyond TSMC. As long as it doesn't fall in hand of China, rest it will be OK to loose.
The Americans don’t really care that much about TSMC. Its fabs are highly dependent on parts, material, etc from more secured countries, which is by design, or they would have never allowed semiconductor industries to be setup in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. They have much of the process locked up and a chip only gets made via free trade from multiple countries (with a lot of fate keeping by key allies, like the Dutch).
My understanding of the timeline/causation in 1950 is the other way around. Initially China was only going to offer largely moral support to North Korea. On June 27 the U.S. Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait to prevent PRC from taking Taiwan. This was a factor in China's decision to enter the Korean War in October.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/taiwan-strait...
> U.S. policy toward East Asia in the early Cold War contributed to the tensions in the Taiwan Strait. In late 1949 and early 1950, American officials were prepared to let PRC forces cross the Strait and defeat Chiang, but after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south. The appearance of the Seventh Fleet angered the Chinese Communists, who transferred their troops poised for an invasion of Taiwan to the Korean front. This served to delay military conflict in the Strait until the United States withdrew its fleet after the Korean War.
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1069/explaining-chi...
> In fact, at the initial stage, China took a passive response to the situation in North Korea. Besides moral support for Kim, the only material support provided by Beijing at the time was to send approximately 14,000 Korean Chinese who were then serving in the PLA back to Korea.8 However, three subsequent events dramatically changed Beijing’s attitudes.
> The first is that on June 27, the U.S. Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait to ‘neutralise’ the situation. ...
The USA completely expected Taiwan to fall to the communists before the Korean War, and they were pretty untrusting of Chiang Kai Shek at the time, they didn’t really care. But after the Korean War started, that sentiment transformed overnight into “Taiwan must not fall to the communists at any cost.”
It could be all but a barren rock, same feelings and motivations would apply.
Nobody really cares that much about renegade provinces until they seem like a threat. The US famously called Taiwan the unsinkable aircraft carrier in the pacific[1]. It doesn't really matter that Taiwanese people themselves don't want to fight China.
If the Europeans and the US were serious about Taiwan's independence they would have built up Taiwan's defense industry and supported it's independence in the UN, when they were at the height of their power, but they specifically did not, they actually voted against any attempt of Taiwan to be admitted to the UN(to be fair the Republic of China in its constitution still considers itself the sole China). At the time Taiwan was an economic powerhouse and they had some of the biggest shipyards in the world.
Right now the US cannot at all compare with China in terms of military industrial output, here's what the US Navy secretary general had to say about the topic[2]. Basically AUKUS is subsidizing US shipbuilding.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/us-navy-chief-china-...
Every few years they pull out their maps and we pull out our maps.
False. There might be some discussion around Ukraine and its historic role as an integral part of Russia's culture and history - and thus, where would an actual border between two peoples (including a cultural one) will be carved when shit gets fucked. But mixing up Poland or even GDR into this is nonsense narrative that does not exist.
Also, the historic reason behind PRC issues with Republic of China (Taiwan) is the fact that both state being the "One True China" as the core of their national myth. The practical issues are of course deterring a potential military threat. Everything else is just pointless rhetorics.
I don’t think the economists get this, but definitely people in the Chinese government are aware that taking Taiwan doesn’t really get them the tech.
Reminds me of when Biden was standing next to the German chancellor and said he'd make sure Nord Stream would be stopped if Russia ever invaded Ukraine and then when Russia invaded Ukraine and Nord Stream was blown up, everyone just ignored it.
Look at the incentives and consequences of blowing up TSMC if China uses the military. China would not have access to the high end chips; Taiwan loses a bargaining chip of its own, and would suffer a huge economic cost (a lot of electricity is used up by TSMC alone); and US is the one who gets to point at the big bad PRC throwing weapons at ROC, and know that PRC gets a road block on the semiconductor front.
In the end this is a matter between Ukraine and Germany and nobody cares what Russia thinks.
Claiming that the video is misleading is 100% disinformation.
Reminds me of Trudeau who talked about Russian disinformation after they gave a standing ovation to a literal SS soldier.
Anything I don't like is a Russian/Chinese fake news campaign and everyone I don't agree with is a Russian/Chinese bot. I can't believe that's what the culture in the west has become. It's really concerning.
We have 338 trained seals up in Parliament.
And they're still saying it's Russian propaganda...
This reminds me a lot of the (presumably Russian disinformation) story that flitted around American conservative spheres early in the Ukraine war saying that the US gov was setting up bio weapon labs at the border with Russia and that's why the Russian invasion was justified. Funny how the exact same propaganda can be shared between conflicts to good effect presumably.
What russian or chinese interference is there when there is 24/7 anti-russian and anti-chinese propaganda?
I’m not even going to touch the thinly veiled antisemitic smear
If I were China I’d probably go with a hardware supply chain attack. These machines can sit around for years.
I think DARPA’s SSITH program is a step in the right direction. At the very least, I’d feel a lot better with bug bounties on publicly available demonstrators from all manufacturers.
There are hundreds of factors that will ultimately decide who wins on the day.
So, not sure they sat it out as much as the U.S. was a little better prepared. For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo.
Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.
Literally, by definition, and extending well beyond just election topics.
Better job by not cashing the adversaries checks?
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/...
> Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.
Ah you mean the government going hunting and finding accounts that violated the ever changing ToS which was heavily influenced by the USG?
Safe to say that $46K ad spend was a drop in the bucket versus their overall effort, but sure, Facebook not accepting those rubles in 2020 counts as a small example.
I have no problem with the U.S. government working with American communications platforms to prevent adversarial propaganda, disinformation and disruption of US elections. These are foreign governments engaged in psyops against American citizens. Falls pretty squarely (and obviously) within government purview to defend against it.
And, in any case, if they're parroting the same disinfo as foreign adversaries who are working to destroy us, then they don't get special dispensation just because they're U.S. citizens.
This is why the First Amendment famously has limits.
You just described every social media platform.
"Interference" refers to China/Russia state-sponsored targetted propaganda on social media and the like.
Was it really the "most safe and secure" and is "interference" an accurate way to describe these type of activities? Well, one could argue about that. But you're mixing up two mostly unrelated things here.
They pulled out of the EU Code of Practice around disinformation back in May and they have been warned as recently as yesterday that the platform was the worst of all of the social networks at allowing Russian disinformation.
And I am sure everyone who used it has seen the massive uptick in bots and other coordinated activity.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter...
The CCP UnitedFront don't seem to realise the damage they are doing to their own political image.
And for fellow HN readers no matter what you read about China always bear in mind that politics comes first. It is more important than lives, morals, history, families, science, economics. Everything is subservient to politics, everything. Not saying is good or bad - it is just the CCP "way".
There is also proof and testimony that the US funded the Wuhan lab also.
“They're looking at pathogens that infect humans and animals with an emphasis on those that are endemic to Ukraine, Anthrax, tularemia, tuberculosis, botulism, classic swine fever, Crimean hemorrhagic fever, avian flu, those types of things.”
Just like Wuhan was just checking out some crazy bat strain. I don’t know what “Gain of Function” is.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/...
https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/sections-offices/defen...
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ukraine-news-russia-war-us-...
The insinuation which your sources refute is that they are bio-weapon labs.
And so if they are creating viruses to better understand how to cure them or prepare responses for dealing with them then that is a good thing. Creating a virus for use in a bio-weapon is a bad thing.
If you don't have bio-labs then you don't have cures so we can't get rid of them entirely.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/04/21/a...
As soon as the virus is developed, it can be used by other departments within the government easily with proper approval, and purposes other than intended.
Because that was a line of propaganda attack, but I'm willing to give you a chance to prove you are qualified and not just mindlessly regurgitating bullshit.
Instead, American right-wing conspiracy theorists seized on the idea, and then Russian media started talking about it.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-asked-explain-a...
Robert Kennedy Jr also confirmed this. Not surprised - this is the same crap that occurred in Wuhan Institute of Virology. Since U.S. laws do not permit this stuff, the U.S. does bio weapons research outside the nation.
Presumable the hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of people in China who are going to die if they invade Taiwan, due to all the weapons that the US gives Taiwan and will continue to give them to defend themselves.
And possibly even more that that if and when either the USA or surrounding Pacific Asia countries get directly involved against China.
Those US bases aren't there for show.
Instead, they are they to shoot down invading forces from China, if they start an invasion.
Which is why such a thing isn't going to happen.
China makes a lot of bold statements but it never follows through on them.
Whats going to happen with Taiwan is the same thing that has been happening for 70 years.
China will say a lot of mean words but ultimately not do anything, and Taiwan will remain as it is now. An independent country.
Sorry, we gave all those to Ukraine.
Or all the military bases in the Asia Pacific area, controlled by either the US or it's allies?
Those bases aren't for show.
They are for taking out invading forces and enacting an oil blockage if it comes to that.
Pinkie is a term used to describe young pro-China online posters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Pink
Well, no. It also includes Taiwan.
Because that's basically how a lot of arguments about NATO, Ukraine, Taiwan etc tend to go. People like Chomsky end up using the same arguments that were used to justify heinous actions in the 70s and 80s, just with the "sides" flipped.
no one is normalizing bioweapon threats, they're normalizing accusing the other side of bioweapon threats
but I guess that's pedantic and I agree with you that it sucks that no one would be surprised if a bioweapon did occur because everyone suspects the other side of it anyway
*using no one and everyone loosely
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
Pretending that occasional manipulation in the information produced by Liberal democracies is somehow equivalent to the constant stream of lies autocracies produce, is part of how they stop their people wanting change.
U.S. Senate's proposed stopgap funding measure unlikely to advance in House: Speaker McCarthy
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China opens first 350km/h cross-sea high-speed railway
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Decoding China: UNESCO lauds China-proposed initiatives
White paper on global community offers a ray of hope for humanity
Spinning black hole proves Einstein's general relativity prediction
Latest census shows U.S. poverty rate increased in 2022
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Sixty million watched Zhang Zhilei fight' - heavyweight boxer becomes an overnight star in China
China reveals U.S. invasion of Huawei's servers since 2009
Chinese boxer Zhang Zhilei goes heavy to prepare for Joe Joyce rematch
'Heart to Heart': How Hangzhou Asiad boosts unity, friendship across Asia
Live: Special coverage of the opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games
This is exactly what I'm talking about. McCarthy like paranoia. Downvoting people because of how old their accounts are[2], not because of what they wrote. Accusations of burner accounts. It's ridiculous.
1. https://github.com/amoffat 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37668908
The comment you replied to did (wumao)
There is an organized brigade somewhere out there, but I suspect the younger, overseas students "bring their own rations" out of a sense of national pride and alienation. If you call them paid agents, it will only make them dig in deeper.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66737272
Of course, you can still criticize these draft laws for vagueness and unenforceability: these concerns have already been extensively covered in mainstream Chinese media outlets.
There's nothing along those lines in any EU country, let alone the US (where such a concept is in extremely flagrant violation of the First Amendment). The closest you'd come is laws against Holocaust denial--but notice the key difference between a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a "good" person might have done something bad versus a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a bad deed never happened.
In China you certainly can point out, even criticize, Mao's role in the Great Leap Forward. Even "Official History" criticizes Mao! You can't be too "over the top" about it, such as comparing him to Hitler or accuse him of being a mass murderer, lest you get cancelled. But the reason you can't has nothing to do with the draft laws being proposed here.
> The closest you'd come is laws against Holocaust denial--but notice the key difference between a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a "good" person might have done something bad versus a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a bad deed never happened.
If you make the first kind of claim and you are wrong, you falsely accuse an innocent person. If you make the second kind of claim and you are wrong, you unjustly exonerate a guilty person. Which is worse? I don't think there's a clear answer! So I fail to see the "key difference" you are trying to highlight between these kinds of claims. Of course, if one of them is true and the other false, then there's a clearly worse claim, but then the worse claim is worse because it's false, not because of the objectionable/offensive nature of its content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Dehuai
I suspect you never read commentary about the Great Leap Forward from the official gov.cn web sites...
In other news, if we're here to sling dirt: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-user-...
Of course UK isn't in "EU country" any more, but hey, I don't have a habit of collecting human rights violations of other countries as a hobby.
- internal purging of military senior officials. 5 out of the 7 senior officials are now missing in action. https://www.newsweek.com/china-defence-minister-li-shangfu-m.... Very similar to Mao Zedong's purging of his generals https://www.hoover.org/research/lin-biao-incident-and-people.... China has had to transfer generals from airforce and army to head up missile force, because so many generals in the missile forces were purged.
- Xi Jing Ping was privately scalded by party elders during the recent party summit Beidaihe. There's an internal unrest and struggle occurring
- china's export drop 4th straight month https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/business/china-exports-au...
- the great flooding of northeast farmland this summer wiped out 1/3 of China's grain production. in order to mitigate the flooding of Beijing, they instead flooded provinces next to Beijing, which incidentally housed many military forces. Those forces were destroyed without warning.
- another big real estate developer, sunac, filed for bankruptcy https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/economy/china-sunac-ny-bankru....
- the Hangzhou asian games was a massive failure, attended by no major heads from developed countries. Cost $30 billion, while its local governments are so desperate for money, they are raiding temples
- marriages in China in 2022 are down 10% from 2021, lowest record since 1986. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/china/china-marriages-record-...
- Huawei homegrown chips was a nothing burger. iPhones were sold out in seconds online. Full Apple Store crowds. Very empty Huawei stores. People didn't like the overheated mate 60, or the broken software.
In short, political, economic, demographic, and tech collapse in China.
About Huawei stores being empty, some seems pretty crowded at least on the first day. https://youtu.be/YFeE2xHQVRI?si=2-tqnqXj8aF8srN6
There are good indicators that an economic stagnation or recession are coming, and that could potentially hurt the CCP long term.
Now are you going to say the data collected before is unreliable somehow and this time it's reliable?
China central planning pushed for and encouraged 'over buiding' for efficiency and surplus, doing bulk deals on concrete, streamlining steel creation from iron ore, etc.
If you put aside the traditional western stock market view of companies trading in the building domain (which grew and collapsed) and look at it as state planning for bulk efficiences of scale it perhaps makes more sense.
Right now it makes sense to look at what the next five to ten year state backed push will be as we might anticipate more "one foot in the free market" bubble like growth there.
But those investments are now gone forever.
> But those investments are now gone forever.
Can bet there will still be investors coming in to fill the void.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That means, among other things, using HN for curious conversation rather than ideological battle.
Someone could easily cherry pick stories about the US and make the same argument. Unsustainable debt, rampant homelessness and addiction, lifespan and healthspan plummeting, birth rates dropping, etc.
Africa and South America would take major investing to bring up to that point.
Huawei seems to be doing well domestically somehow. Way too many store front that aren't too busy.. But they have their own car brand now that seems to be selling well. I'd say half the cars in the street were some domestic electric car brand. I'd guess gasoline cars will be phased out soon
I kept reading about how devastated the country was by the pandemic - but what I saw was a ton of progress. Talking to locals though, they didn't seem to really percieve the difference :)
The original article talks about China misinformation in Taiwan. Maybe western society is running the same thing to China. Like like they did for North Korea.
Remember the "people can only get certain types of haircuts in North Korea"? Fake news, and I believed it at the time. So now I'm always sceptical on what I read from western news talking about Asian countries.
Here's an interesting satire about this https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E?si=MziI90I7xP5W4g-m
The US economy doesn't stop when we switch leaders regularly.
Certainly there would be changes but they aren't predictable. (For instance the new leadership could censor even more due to not having as established based on less as they got into power by promising less invasive actions)
For the sake of good analysis, it's important to focus on real alternatives to that hypothesis, and avoid getting bogged down in semantics.
Liberal democracies arose out of the realisation that autocracies have bad endings like this.
Pretending Xi is insane is twisting yourself in knots to avoid the unpleasant conclusion that China is a challenge to the West that won’t conveniently fail.
So often people are first to accuse others of what they are themselves…
Similar to how the Republican party always try to inhibit abortion wherever they can. You won't say that Republican party successfully passing an anti-abortion law indicates they are losing, will you?
Because you essentially get people obsessed over trivialities, content-free but emotionally compelling non-issues that are guaranteed to channel energy but not move the needle.
It's a key tenet of democratic stability: you need to pump the media full of innumerable social debates that partition the market, so you get people fighting themselves over trivialities rather than focusing their considerable energies on change for real issues.
So I see this as more a proof of the "coming of age" or new sophistication of the Chinese "psyop brigades" as you call them, rather than an indication of incompetence that you seem to think.
Small caveat that I haven't decided about yet is: some of this could be to create such an overly oppressive "rules based" atmosphere that people are so afraid of tripping over any law they just toe the line more generally. But I'm not sure, this is directly non-Confucian:
In governing, don't try to force issues or you'll turn away from what is right. The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be
And anti-Lao Tzu:
Considering what US is doing to TSMC and how Taiwan is likely going to be stripped of all valuable assets in the future for NatSec, and how Germany is now being de-industrialized after the bombing of Nordstream by US & allies, I'd be extremely wary of the people running US if I care an iota about my own people.
Those of us who remember how Japan was made to kneel by the BoJ following US diktats know very well that Kissinger's remark 'to be a friend of US is fatal' is deadly serious.
background: worked on a US State Department project to help counter them. Technically China's anti-Taiwan efforts too. But we cared most about Russia. I did, anyway.
my side project, Slartboz, also deals with the topic of adversarial propaganda & disinfo, and the efforts of amoral, anti-democratic nation state actors like Russia and China.
This was insightful for me, actually. I never thought of this before. It explains a lot!
All journalists in Taiwan serve the bias of their newspapers’ bosses, says Mr Wang, who has worked for both pro-independence and pro-unification newspapers. “Everyone just treats it as a job,” he says. “It’s a tool to feed yourself.”
Also this is very cynical and painful to read. Ugh...vomit face. But also makes sense based on what I've seen there!
Project 596 was named after the month of June 1959 in which it was initiated as an independent nuclear project, immediately after Nikita Khrushchev decided to stop helping the Chinese with their nuclear program on 20 June 1959, and Mao shifted toward an overall policy of self-reliance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_596
Expect it to effectively vanish off the front of hacker news in record time.