Great. Now anybody who takes a non-comformist line in the china debate is going to be accused of being paid by the Chinese government. Great way to go with making sure there is only one opinion on this issue.
If not, you may be able to validate someone by looking at their IP address. Or just mention a phrase that will get the page blocked by the Great Firewall.
Unfortunately the Chinese didn't seem to think that honest opinion differences would result in the outcomes they wanted.
Now anything pro-China is tainted. And rightly so, unfortunately.
Why? An argument is an argument is an argument. If it holds water, let it carry the water. Saying that a pro-China argument is tainted just because there is a possibility that the person making the argument is paid to make the argument is fallacious, it's a kind of reverse Appeal to Authority.
Of course, there are certain arguments that are tainted. For example,if someone says "I counted 280,000 signatures on this Kick Google Out of China petition," that argument is suspect. As is the "My friends and everyone I know see no value in Free Speech" anecdotal argument.
And I'm sure there are some others that are subject to scrutiny. But if someone makes a good argument backed up with reasonable premises, it could come straight from their Premier for all I care.
The thing is, until now, most of the arguments I trusted most about China were anecdotal. Not because I distrust numbers, but because numbers about China are so untrustworthy. If someone reputable in a forum like this one plausibly presents themselves as an old China hand and explains conclusions they’ve come to from a wide range of experience there — about what average citizens think of the web censorship, etc. — I’ve tended to assume that it’s as close to the truth as I’m likely to get.
So sure, this only taints anecdotal evidence about China. But for a country where nearly all non-anecdotal evidence about important things is already tainted by the government, that’s a big blow.
(Some acquaintances have traveled in China and explained things about life there that really raised my opinion. Now I’m a little scared to bring them up — despite being generally pretty darn wary of the Chinese government — for fear of looking like an astroturfer.)