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China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

economist.com

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Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#141

Post by contrarian1234 »

jamesaurichs wrote: post #100
Animats wrote: post #32

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] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66737272

Xi is losing it everywhere; - 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…

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 :)

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#142

Post by snehk »

praisewhitey wrote: post #3

>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. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#143

Post by Animats »

miguelazo wrote: post #136
jamesaurichs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xi is losing it everywhere; - 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…

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,…

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#144

Post by defrost »

Animats wrote: post #140
AussieWog93 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the first time we've had some serious quantitative data behind it, though. There are good indicators that an economic stagnation or recession are coming, and that could potentially hurt the CCP long term.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#145

Post by snehk »

WiSaGaN wrote: post #13
praisewhitey wrote: post #3

>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. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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 be…

> 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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#146

Post by jesterson »

jamesaurichs wrote: post #100
Animats wrote: post #32

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] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66737272

Xi is losing it everywhere; - 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…

Wow, you really should stop using internet. Most of it is absolute bs

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#147

Post by bratbag »

keepamovin wrote: post #115
Guvante wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twisting yourself in knots to avoid an unpleasent conclusion, serves nothing either.

Liberal democracies arose out of the realisation that autocracies have bad endings like this.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#148

Post by bratbag »

MissingAFew wrote: post #87
threeseed wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country has bio labs. The insinuation which your sources refute is that they are bio-weapon labs.

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.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#149

Post by bratbag »

sacnoradhq wrote: post #2

It seems worth the cost and effort to improve CAPTCHAs and comment microtransactions to prevent automated and boiler room sentiment manipulation.

Creating a paywall for opinions just filters out normal people while only mildly increasing the cost of organised propaganda.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#150

Post by bratbag »

coliveira wrote: post #27

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.

'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.

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