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China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

economist.com

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Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#81

Post by sva_ »

Supply5411 wrote: post #53
sva_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 1. https://github.com/…

> I made no reference to burner accounts

The comment you replied to did (wumao)

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#82

Post by arp242 »

dundarious wrote: post #72
arp242 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an academic foreign policy paper (which doesn't speak for the US foreign policy). 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.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#83

Post by arp242 »

vuln wrote: post #63
jamesaurichs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's going to be a lot of Russian and Chinese interference in American politics in 2024 for sure

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.

"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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#84

Post by hackernewds »

striking wrote: post #51
palmfacehn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

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.

Which sounds like brigading?

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#85

Post by dundarious »

arp242 wrote: post #82
dundarious wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#86

Post by rjzzleep »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #33
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…

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

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/us-navy-chief-china-...

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#87

Post by MissingAFew »

threeseed wrote: post #80
vuln wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#88

Post by threeseed »

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.

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#89

Post by aragonite »

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

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.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#90

Post by ipnon »

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.

A better term would be “propaganda” or psychological warfare, something CCP and PLA each have dedicated units for.
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