China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

> ... 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.

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. ...

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.

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."

That's like calling ping a DoS tool.

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.