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China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

economist.com

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Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#161

Post by xtian »

3seashells wrote: post #156
SanjayMehta wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bizarre idea. China wants Taiwan because they consider it a renegade province. I doubt they care about one fab.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#162

Post by mjklin »

keepamovin wrote: post #125

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 newspaper…

Rumor has it that many Taiwanese named ugly street dogs “Carter” for years because of what Jimmy Carter’s admin did with their recognition.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#163

Post by AstralStorm »

Animats wrote: post #143
miguelazo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#164

Post by glimshe »

ranguna wrote: post #155
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…

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 count…

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#165

Post by AstralStorm »

prewett wrote: post #99
blackoil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The choke points come from US naval bases located slightly further than Taiwan, though it does help.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#166

Post by MissingAFew »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #107
MissingAFew wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's like calling ping a DoS tool.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#167

Post by MissingAFew »

threeseed wrote: post #88
MissingAFew wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#168

Post by MissingAFew »

bratbag wrote: post #148
MissingAFew wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#169

Post by [deleted] »

bratbag wrote: post #147
keepamovin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#170

Post by peteradio »

snehk wrote: post #145
WiSaGaN wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No point in admitting to something that can only be used against you.
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