China blocks Wikimedia from entering World Intellectual Property Organization
wikimediafoundation.org
wikimediafoundation.org
Creative Commons comment on the most recent blocking: "As in 2020, China’s statement falsely suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation was spreading disinformation via the independent, volunteer-led Wikimedia Taiwan chapter"[0]
[0] https://creativecommons.org/2021/10/06/creative-commons-resp...
The only thing that can be concluded is that you apparently believe the wikipedia page of every US politician is somehow anomalous. It tells us nothing.
one can argue, that if MSM spreads disinfo what can you expect from wikipedians, but the problem is their "power editors" and admins are a small clique with very particular political bias, it's just another echo chamber
You didn't really respond to the assertion that all American politicians are right-wing, but it's true. We have a "blood and soil" far right party and a "diverse corporate oligopoly" center-right party.
"Two people repeating it on HN comments" != "it's true".
It really boils down to: What's your standard of reference? You seem to want to use Europe (I assume) as the standard for defining left and right in US politics. Why do you consider that a reasonable thing to do?
And even if you consider it a reasonable thing, why Europe? Why not Asia? Or the Middle East? Or Africa? Or the world as a whole?
Or why not, you know, use the US as the standard for judging what left and right are in US politics?
Right up until politics, crime rates, infrastructure, public policy, or really any matter of consequence is discussed, at which point we transform back into a Western European nation.
There must be a word to describe this type of dualist rhetoric but I can't quite put my finger on it. Also, those people complaining about the Democrat or Republican party being too right wing tend to be Americans who know nothing about right wing political parties in Europe. Yes, left wing parties in a multi-party system are much more radical in Europe, but so are right wing parties. What these people want is the stability and institutional weight of a party in the two-party system but the radicalism of a European left-wing party.
Now, I agree that the Middle East is not where the standard of reference should be, but it's the area that I'm pretty sure of how we compare. Others are more tricky.
Central and South America? There are countries there that we are clearly to the right of, but also some that we align somewhat with. I don't recall whether there are currently any right-wing dictatorships there.
Asia? We could be to the left of some countries there. I don't have a good idea of how to describe where China is right now - are they right or left? They kind of have elements of both. At least some parties in India are to the right of the US. I don't have a good feel for Africa, though I'd bet that in at least some countries, some parties are to the right of the US.
So... it's complicated. I think I can make a... a "case" might be overstating it, but at least a handwaving argument that if you move the focus off of Europe, then US political parties are less clearly right-wing. But an actual case? That would take something like a worldwide ranking of political parties on a left-right axis, which is data that I freely admit that I do not have.
When it is just the truth, you don't need to spin it to have a certain kind of impact. The impact exists even when you view things impassively, without much care one way or the other.
Then there's this:
> Most of Scottish Wikipedia Written By American in Mangled English
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxqy8x/most-of-scottish-wiki...
Some examples of the writing here: https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/1298579510581960705
And finally, I remember some translated wikipedia language was mostly written by like 10 people and went kind of nuts, but I can't find a link.
This stuff is like @tptacek bait -- I heard of these by reading his twitter.
Wikipedia can't disclaim the information on wikipedia.org if they want to be a credible organization.
Other editors get in her way, but that’s still in good faith. Not exactly a situation that backs up that commenter’s point, for sure.
The second isn't politically motivated, but simple vandalism.
> actual disinformation in a concerted effort especially on politically charged topics
China saying that Wikipedia Taiwan is spreading misinformation is just an effort to warp reality to fit China's alternate-universe version of the facts.
I don't get the feeling you're anti-Taiwan, but I think calling Taiwan a "de-facto" implicitly questions its status and should be avoided.
And I'd like to point out that the ROC and the PRC don't even have the same land claims. The PRC claims the mainland and Taiwan. The ROC claims the mainland, Taiwan, and Mongolia. Mongolia claims Mongolia. There are three separate countries making these claims.
The fact that (some of) their claims overlap doesn't magically mean that the ROC and PRC aren't two separate countries. It just means that they are two countries that claim more land than they control.
As of today, the governments in Beijing and Taipei agree that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it. That's the "One China" principle.
Taiwan does not assert that there is a sovereign country whose territory consists of the island of Taiwan. Taiwan's government still claims that the Republic of China still exists and that it is the legitimate state in all of China including Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang. This position is accepted by very few countries.
The fact that they are able to act in many respects as though they are the government of a sovereign country whose territory consists of the island of Taiwan is what makes them a de facto country.
Unlike both the ROC and the PRC, they don't actually govern anything in practice, irrespective of whether it is coextensive with their claims. Upthread post claimed the ROC and PRC are both governments of real and separate countries in practice, independent of their overlapping theoretical claims. Doesn't seem a related thing at all to your question.
*Well as much as a such a claim can be made without specifying what legal system is being referred to.
De facto mainland China and Taiwan are separate countries, with distinct territories, governed respectively by the PRC and ROC.
That is the basis (or perhaps just expansion) of the upthread description that Taiwan is, de facto, a distinct country from China.
I still don't understand the point of the qualifier. I don't hear people refer to China as a de facto country so why use the qualifier for Taiwan?
Actually, looking back, that was probably not something I should have said.
ROC and the PRC are each (in their own legal systems) the de jure government of the same (widely formally recognized, usually with the PRC formally recognized as the government) country, “China”.
“Taiwan” and “mainland China” are de facto countries, governed in fact by the ROC and PRC, and are often treated as such by countries that formally recognize one China with the PRC as its government.
> why use the qualifier for Taiwan?
Because in most legal systems that aren’t that of the ROC itself, the PRC is the recognized government of the single de jure country of “China” that subsumes both the de facto countries of mainland China and of Taiwan. ROC is, in those systems, only and exclusively the de facto government of the de facto country of Taiwan, and not the de jure government of anything, and Taiwan is de jure a province of China.
Which legal systems are you referring to in your last paragraph? The US, for example, does _not_ recognize Chinese claims to Taiwan. They acknowledge that China makes them and has agreed not to have official relations with the ROC, but they've never agreed with the claims nor have they ever made any statement to the effect that the ROC isn't a country nor that the ROC is not a legitimate government.
Frankly I suspect your confusion is a result of a misunderstanding of UN resolution 2758. That resolution said that the PRC gets the seat of "China" at the UN. It never said anything about what the borders of the PRC are. It also never said that Taiwan couldn't become a member as "Republic of China" either. (Of course, since China can block that action unilaterally as a member of the security counsel it's a non-starter.)
Anyway I may be wrong about your misconception, but then I don't know what you mean exactly. The US definitely does not consider Taiwan as a province of the PRC. I can't speak for other countries' legal systems, but at least I'm not familiar with many in Europe that have that legal designation. Sure most don't have relations with the ROC, but that's obviously not the same thing.
Exactly claims are cheap. Hence why the PRC's claim that Taiwan is its territory is so worthless given that it has _never_ controlled it. Also why the ROC's claims to the mainland and Mongolia are so worthless given that they haven't controlled any of that for more than 70 years.
The claims are cheap and meaningless. The reality is that China and Taiwan are two separate countries.
... the Taiwan independence movement claims only the island of Taiwan for the Taiwanese nation, and is a core aspect of the Pan Green Coalition, which has 56% of the legislative and the president.
I think it would be ideal of Taiwan could be come de jure independent and sovereign, but that would essentially require some deal between China and the USA which is certainly not forthcoming.
Right, and one could also say that America's position is that China isn't allowed to invade Taiwan, so I guess if China wanted to do that, it would need to trade something of value to America to let it happen, and I'm not sure China has anything to trade that matters to America. This is the US-Sino agreement -- China isn't allowed to invade, the US isn't allowed to recognize independence. The situation can only be settled with diplomacy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy for more information about this agreement -- which both the US and China signed.
So you see, China can't really prevent the US from recognizing an Independent Taiwan, but neither can the US prevent China from attacking Taiwan. Both of these balance. China can sabre rattle, sort go up to but not actually invade, just as the US can go up to but not actually recognize Taiwanese independence. For example China can violate Taiwanese airspace but then leave without shooting at anyone. And the US can open an "office" in Taiwan that isn't quite an embassy but does some consular work. And perhaps an American official might visit that office and shake a few hands.
It's a weird tit-for-tat.
This is the game that is being played. The US is betting that it has time on its side. With each year that passes, the Taiwanese consider themselves more independent in their own consciousness. China is betting on rapidly becoming so rich and such a pleasant place to live that the Taiwanese will want to reunify in order to enjoy the Blessings of Beijing. Everything else is either play-acting or dangerous stupidity. Because I think Xi is a smart guy, I think he is play-acting and for a domestic audience. Whenever there is some problem like electricity blackouts, or some corruption scandal, Xi does some provocation against Taiwan and people fall behind him ready to avenge Chinese honor. But I know there is a non-zero chance that I could be wrong, and perhaps Xi really means it. That would be disastrous for all sides.
So international disputes are not really settled by one side having a position only, there are multiple sides, each needing to compromise on their position. Being rigid often ends up backfiring, particularly for a nation locked into the dollar system and one that isn't food or energy independent.
I'm not saying that there is no bias in the wikipedia articles, it's bound to exist seeing it's being written on by humans and bias is inherent to humans. However, the bias on peer-reviewed articles is much diminished compared to a unique party bias regarding issues they want swept under the rug.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
China blocks the application, citing irrelevant info. Then other countries dismiss those irrelevant accusations as false. It seems the future of WIPO is to become irrelevant UN body.
I certainly hope so!
China is on the security council so this will never change. The UN will implode first.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/china-makes-sure-everyone-w...
To create another system would be to risk irrelevance due to the mismatch between actual military power and UN power.
It sucks when it leads to states using that power, but the alternative is more wars and potentially nuclear weapons use.
I understand that UNSC is the way it is because that's the only way to actually get the power players to participate. That doesn't make it any less broken.
The U.N.'s primary purpose is simply to minimize the occurrence of war, especially nuclear war, not to spread any particular political ideology across the world such as “freedom and democracy”.
In this particular case it allows China a conduit to achieve what it wants to without firing nuclear missiles.
This article doesn't give China a great image, sure. I can think of a million criticisms to levy against China.
However, I feel like a lot of the comments aren't just criticizing China, they seem to be outright anti-China.
I wonder if, in the grand scheme of things, Americans/Westerners might be feeling threatened by the shift in power. I wonder if Americans/Westerners are capable of appreciating the things that China gets right, or does right. I wonder if Americans/Westerners are capable of acknowledging the things that their countries get wrong, or do wrong. I wonder if we here in the West are as fair and balanced as we tend to think.
This isn't merely an academic question, I think it goes to the core of the state of mind that is required to view situations objectively (regardless of whether we might be right or wrong in any specific context).
In this case, I'm totally on Wikimedia's side. But I feel like we in the West are standing right on the slippery slope of nationalism.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/913650298/as-u-s-views-of-chi...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/19/chinas-treatment-of...
1. China, as a nation consists of ALL the citizens of said nation.
2. CPP, only consists of ruling party.
The people's opinions don't matter as to their grouping. I can still be for one group and against another.
The people of Taiwan don't want any part of CCP China, and in spite of a lot of noise about "One China Policy" the only people arguing right now for reunification are Xi and the cadres.
It's completely disingenuous to suggest that recognizing the horrors of an oppressive nation-state equates to some sort of bigotry against the country itself.
I'm certainly not trying to advocate an anti-US or anti-China stance here, but your comment can easily be turned around by the CCP for the same reasons when it comes to criticism of their internal affairs.
It's funny you mention whataboutism, because that's what I was about to mention too.
This really goes to my main point: it's important to be able to levy criticism and to NOT give anyone a free pass, but many of the comments in here seem to be implicitly (and arguably, erroneously) splitting world actors into "good" and "evil". Hence the "us vs them" mentality and the mounting nationalism.
Trying to say "oh, but the west has problems too" when there aren't any comparable attempts at large-scale genocide ongoing is crazy. Not because the west doesn't have problems. Or because the west is somehow angelic. But because it's like comparing a nuke to a house fire. And some things really are evil in a whole different way.
Again, this is not what I was trying to say, and if it came across that way then I was misunderstood or I did not express myself correctly.
I can see how what I wrote could have been interpreted that way, but I would really encourage you to apply the "charitable interpretation" principle.
I would also note that the topic of genocide is different from the original topic of conversation. While my comment was of a more general scope than the wiki drama, I think it's a bit unfair to suggest that I'm trying to change the topic or deflect attention by way of whataboutism.
---
Edit: reconsidering this thread, I think I would like to clarify that what my comment was trying to get at was that a lot of the criticism being levied against China suffered from the "genetic fallacy" [1]: regardless of whether the criticism was right or wrong, some of it didn't address the matter at hand (the wiki drama) and instead resorted to criticizing the world actor based on other baggage. It's not that the conclusion of the critiques is wrong per se, it's more that it might be right only by accident. I hope this helps clarify.
It's true that on some level blocking Wikimedia from a global organization isn't directly about genocide - it's about Wikimedia not being a centralized entity kissing the ring the way the China wants it to. But on another level that is really about the fact that articles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide exist, and that they're guided by an aspiration to encyclopedic documentation and not Xi Jinping Thought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping_Thought). Because China would like Xi Jinping Thought exported globally.
I feel like this is practically a sport in America. We love to criticize the government and everything it does wrong. That's part of democracy: the fact that Trump was voted out was very much a collective "we fucked up/this is wrong" where we decided to go a different path. In China, on the other hand, that is not allowed. We certainly do have issues in the US, but a lack to self-criticism does not count among them
Which ones? I don't see it myself.
Why would you wonder that? This forum is chock full of criticism of the American government by Americans. I’ve personally levied a huge amount of it myself on this very website. In fact, I genuinely cannot imagine how you could possibly ask such a question in good faith.
This type of rhetorical question or quip is a pretty good example of the mentality I was drawing attention to in my comment: it's entirely possible to think that something is generally bad (eg.: you might think the CCP is, on balance, not great or even terrible) while also recognizing that there are positive aspects to it.
Recognizing the pros of a thing doesn't mean you have to forget about the cons. Being able to hold both in one's head at the same time also helps formulate better criticism of the bad things, as such criticism often becomes more precise.
The heuristic of "CCP/China = bad" may very well be correct in a particular situation, but such heuristics are a very dangerous mode of thinking.
Focus on the ball please.
Ignore our warnings at your peril.
You're shifting the goalposts...Has America or any western country blocked the wikimedia foundation from entering WIPO?
> I wonder if, in the grand scheme of things, Americans/Westerners might be feeling threatened by the shift in power.
> I wonder if we here in the West are as fair and balanced as we tend to think.
All of that is unquestionably true. But what does it have to do with criticizing China's actions here? The criticism could be coming from anti-China bigots, yet still be entirely legitimate.
Of course, but in many ways it's the threat of the same shift in power between the allies and the axis in WWII. China is not a nice country. Openly imprisoning and "re-educating" uyghurs there, Tibet, Taiwan, openly hunting down and organ harvesting the falun-gong. The West does plenty of bad stuff too but nothing on the same level, and definitely not as openly as if saying "what're you going to do about it".
Same as Russia assassinating people recently, it's a "what're you going to do about it?" scenario. Now that nuclear weapons exists the world is going to go to shit because nobody can do anything about it anymore.
So why should we be surprised that China does this when the United States federal government don't call their Taiwan ambassador ambassador, but rather director of the American Institute in Taiwan, out of respect of the same policy.
Second, this policy by china is the problem. Not the lack of obedience by the rest of the world.
China wanted the UN seat, right? Would they really turn that down because the US insisted on saying some shit about Taiwan? When they were kinda broke and caught between us and Soviets? Did the KMT really not want to give up "Republic of China", even if it meant being relegated to non-country status? Does it even matter what they think, being a subordinate dictatorship at that point?
This seems like entirely a problem of the US's creation.
Because the security council seat was for the taking.
And ChiComs had a very good memory how the Korean war started.
Of course now there is no UN seat to dangle, and they are strong, and like with NK it's a fuck situation of our own procrastination, but then I think it was easy, and we just fucked up.
The more important point is I don't see KMT having any leverage over the US in the 1970s, so it doesn't matter what they think.
Civil Wars, partial rebellions, partial revolutions, are one the mechanisms of state formation.
It's nothing to respect. The US is something to respect, because it's got a lot more economic and military power than poor backwards NK. Through the US, South Korea became a country. That's the mechanism of state formation.
China doesn't bow to the US, so it's an entirely different dynamic. I say entirely different but the creation of Taiwan was a forceful takeover of an inhabited island by a retreating army who ruled with an iron fist. It was under martial law for 40 years. The nicest thing I hear people say about Taiwan is that it's 1) not China, and 2) not that oppressive anymore.
The idea that China would suddenly respect that is weird. Plenty of people in Taiwan support unification.
It also isn't like people who also wish to deal with China don't deal with Taiwan as if it were a country, they just don't call it one. It's like when they tried to call gay marriage "civil unions" in order to maintain the letter of homophobic policies while abandoning the substance.
No, this is demonstrably false. Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910. After the war, Korea was partitioned -- much like Europe -- with North Korea occupied by the Soviet Union and South Korea occupied by the US along the 38th parallel in 1945. Except the nature of the respective military presence was very different. The Soviet Union and China brought in large quanties of military equipment and troops, while actively supporting communist guerrillas in the South (but there were never more than ~5000 such guerillas). North Korea invaded the South on June 25, 1950 with ~200K troops and 75K PLA troops of Korean ethnicity, whereas the US had 2-300 troops in all of South Korea. The North attacked with 280 tanks furnished by the Soviet Union, whereas South Korea had no tanks, as the US refused to provide them with any prior to 1950. The North had 110 attack bombers, and 150 Yak fighter planes provided by the USSR. The US did not give any aircraft to the South, and there were only 22 aircraft in the South. The US had basically a token military presence in South Korea as it was not interested in either invading the North or building military bases in the South. You can read more at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Prelude_to_war_(195...
To call this a "US invasion" is absurd. Moreover, somehow trying to make this about the boogeyman of "fighting fascism" or even "civil unions" is bizarre -- what is the state of civil unions in North Korea or China? What is the state of freedom of expression? Or freedom of religion? If you are going to be using words like "fascist", then they are much better applied to North Korea or China than to South Korea or Taiwan.
Please don't spread this type of disinfo on public forums.
A US invasion to prop up the Rhee government that massacred leftists is the only reason there isn't a unified Korea under North Korean rule. You can argue that's a good thing, but trying to claim the US did not invade is absurd.
And on the fascist bogeyman parts, any improvement in those areas happened in South Korea and Taiwan rather recently, in the past thirty years or so.
* forced collectivization of agriculture
* attacks on schools, press, and bringing all instutions under the control of the party functionaries
* execution of monks, priests and missionaries and destruction of all religious organizations
* seizure of all private property.
Enforcing something like that requires a very bloody attack on the entire civil society:
"Concentration camps came into being in North Korea in the wake of the country's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II. Those persons considered "adversary class forces", such as landholders, Japanese collaborators, religious devotees and the families of people who migrated to the South, were rounded up and detained in large facilities. Additional camps were later established in the late 1950s and 60s in order to incarcerate the political victims of power struggles along with their families as well as overseas Koreans who migrated to the North. Later, the number of camps saw a marked increase with the cementing of the Kim Il Sung dictatorship and the Kim Jong-il succession."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_inte...
You can argue that Stalinist dictorships destroying civil society are a good thing, but trying to claim that the US "invaded" South Korea with 300 troops is absurd.
> any improvement in those areas happened in South Korea and Taiwan rather recently, in the past thirty years or so.
There was no period of time in which North Korea was more free or respectful of human nature than the South, as evidenced by people continuing to flee to the South from the North, which is why the North had to build walls to keep people in.
It is because the government of the South did not launch a wholescale attack on human nature and provided more freedom than the North that it could evolve in directions that promoted greater individual liberty over time, whereas the North remained mired with famines, collectivization insanity, and repression.
>who was himself dissapeared by Kim Il Sung in 1949.
1957, supposedly for being part of a China and Soviet backed coup attempt.
>but trying to claim that the US "invaded" South Korea with 300 troops is absurd.
I'm not making that claim, the US had over 400,000 troops invade North Korea. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#UN_forces_invade_No...
I recommend learning about the history of North Korea. Those concentration camps existed before the war. Do you really think the forced collectivization policies and murder of "class enemies", monks, priests, landlords, university professors, members of the press, etc., that killed 30 million in Russia and 55 million in China were miraculously bloodless in North Korea? It was the same set of Stalinist policies in all these places, with similar networks of gulags, summary executions, etc.
> 1957, supposedly for being part of a China and Soviet backed coup attempt.
He was dissapeared in 1949. No one knows what happened to him, but there are some rumors that he was killed in 57.
Third from the left in 1955. He was Chairman of the Supreme Assembly until 57.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Tu-bong#/media/File:%E5%BA...
Beyond that, "I recommend learning about the history, then you can guess that terrible things were happening" isn't really changing anything I said, which is primarily about how the US backed it's own military dictatorship in South Korea.
I stand corrected - he was dissapeared in the 60s.
> I said, which is primarily about how the US backed it's own military dictatorship in South Korea.
The US "backed" an illiberal government with 300 soldiers.
Meanwhile North Korea set up concentration camps, exterminated monks, executed "class enemies", those with property, priests, and nuns, and engaged in forced collectivization of land as part of widespread destruction of civil society -- all prior to the North's invasion of South Korea.
Somehow you are trying to create a moral equivalence between a Stalinist dictatorship in North Korea with many concentrate camps in it, and South Korea - which although it is illiberal by modern standards, was by far more free and humane than anything on the Korean peninsula in the history of that land. Then you are arguing that the US "supported" the South because of these 300 American soldiers. Meanwhile the North had over 100,000 PLA and Soviet troops and hundreds and tanks and fighter aircraft. From this, you conclude that the North did not invade the South, as historians say, but that the US actually invaded Korea.
Look, I know which Chomsky pamphlet you are getting this stuff from and it is an Orwellian reading of history. The 300 US soldiers is not an "invasion" of Korea by the US, and there is no comparison between the North and the South in the arena of human rights or freedom.
He was removed from his position in 1957, and completely purged in 58. Not 49, not the 60's.
>Then you are arguing that the US "supported" the South because of these 300 American soldiers.
Again, this is not my argument. The US invaded North Korea with over 400,000 troops. I linked you the details of this invasion, it's common knowledge that it happened.
I'm not trying to create a moral equivalence, you accused someone of spreading disinfo for a factual version of events.
I've said that North Korea had a horrible human rights record, and that I wouldn't be surprised if their were prewar massacres. That doesn't change that the US invaded to prop up the military dictatorship headed by Rhee. Maybe his dictatorship was better than the North's would have been, I won't speculate. Either way, the US is the reason Korea wasn't unified under the North.
I have no idea what Chomsky pamphlet you think I'm getting this from, you're making up most of what you think my argument is. Let's keep it simple, Rhee was a military dictatorship, the US invaded North Korea to ensure he stayed in power.
The war was started by North Korea, but the US definitely invaded North Korea in the war and preceded to burn down every town in the entire country.
The nicest thing I can say about Taiwan an White Terror is that it gave us this horror game called Detention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_(video_game)
Now it's even made it into a movie https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/detention-movie-review-20...
None of those people had strong local ties, either personal ones with the non-Mainlander population or political ones with homegrown political movements. Taiwan, for them, was at best a consolation prize, not a home.
From the US perspective, why would they go out of their way to call Taiwan its own country when neither government, on either side of the Strait, was interested in that?
:) I feel like this the same sort of thinking as tech debt. Names? Who cares! Everyone knows what the situation is on the ground.
In my view, norms have to be actively upheld, even especially if you are on "Team 'rule of law'". If the thing is a state, call it a state dammit! I like this argument because it doesn't rely on "well, you gotta foresee China becoming strong and stuff". No, you don't, just have a principle that de jure and de facto should deviate as little as possible.
I stand by my original analysis that doesn't matter what the KMT thinks, because RoC effectively a client state of the US at the time, with no TSMC to get more leverage, and also that the PRC should be happy enough to get its UN seat. If we wanted to, we could have made this happen, but we are sloppy and we didn't try.
What norm or law makes Taiwan a state other than that it claims itself to be? If you're team "rule of law" I think you have to insist that the KMT still run China.
US did attempt to block it by claiming that it is an "important question" under Article 18 of the UN Charter - specifically, that it counted as expulsion of a member. This was rejected on the basis that no member was actually expelled: China was a member before the vote, and it remained a member after the vote, the only difference being which government's delegation represented it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Yes they can. A private organization could just treat it like a state, in the same way that it treats any other state.
The consequences of that depend on what the organization does.
That’s not how the CCP sees it. They have threatened hotel chains and airlines that referred to Taiwan as a country.
You apparently do not recognize that a private organization can recognize a state; I do.
What powerful entitites such as states recognize and not recognize is already quite meaningless; it is certainly meaningless what you and I do or do not recognize.
“Recognition” very often is unimpactful jabber of semantics. — Many of the states hat do not recognize Taiwan have business relations with it outside of the P.R.C. regardless.
The Transformers series especially wound up being money printing machines in China.
Even overlooking the pressure China doubtlessly applies to Hollywood, the execs greenlighting scripts would have to start hating money to approve anything that jeopardizes revenue from Chinese theaters.
Imagine what China is gonna do to Apple now that on-device wrongthink scanning is a thing.
Yes, it's horrifying how the authoritarian Chinese government forced this.
Actual corruption can still happen by individuals within organisations, but that (continuing the metaphor) is like coughing or stammering while you talk, and isn’t desired even by the user.
International inter-governmental organizations have always had members like China. That is the environment they are built for and function in, like the current, waves, and wind for a ship at sea.
The U.S.'s reputation isn't so hot, throwing it's weight around and under Trump and to a lesser degree, GW Bush, actively trying to undermine those organizations. Even the international postal organization was a target.
See Google trends [1]
This is a very real influence and it's pervasive due to the fat one side speaks with one, directed voice, the other there's no coordination at all: leaders of nations, provinces, universities, corporations, NGOs, uncoordinated.
[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=t...
If everyone googled about what is going on some part of the world, almost all would read the Wikipedia article. If the Wikipedia article differed in any major way from what the Pentagon's goals were, well... you can see how that would be a problem for the Pentagon. If you allow yourself to believe that the goals and movements of the Pentagon are not always grand, you can see how the political content there can more or less act as a weapon of war. Not really an exaggeration to say that, i really don't think...
I feel like a lot of people just aren't catching on to how tightly managed US media is when it comes to "hostile" or "aggressive" actions of others, "democracy", "brutal dictators", etc. in other parts of the world. People are really still ingesting these corporate news sources with anything other than the utmost suspicion.
Obviously, the core of this is not appeasing to Chinese / CCP censors but the headline is funny nonetheless.
It seems like you're trying to be flippantly dismissive, or to just make a joke, but the intent of your 'joke' isn't clear at all. What are you trying to intimate? Chinese companies gain millions of patents each year, in China and elsewhere, so China defending IPR as a concept seems wise. They seem to use a lot of utility patents (I think the USA equivalent is the 'design patent', it covers a product rather than an invention per se).
China as a nominally formerly communist state it makes sense that IPR would be weak in Chinese law [there's a lot to be said on whether the Chinese progress with, for example, 6G phone tech has been accelerated by that approach - which might indicate that the West has things locked down too much and stifles innovation somewhat??]; just like how the full power of IPR goes to the richest companies in USA because of their strong capitalism. China is changing, and whilst they may not enforce IPR in the way many Western Capitalist countries do Chinese organisations still use patents heavily. Indeed the Chinese government have schemes to encourage acquisition of foreign patents.
So, yeah, not sure where you're going with that?
Wikimedia is just one small pebble in this river.
Soft propaganda is going to rewrite how the world perceives the sinosphere, more thoroughly and more profoundly than any Winstons rectifying Wikipedia. I don't think we have any meaningful models to understand what's going on right now -- there's not really much precedent in history or even in fiction.
Productions that wanted access to the entire US market bent to the most restrictive state’s demands.
Did some states occasionally pay to incentivize compliance? Don’t know about that, but the function is largely the same.
Also, let's not forget CCP is the reason why North Korea still exists and why Vietnam is still a communist country.
That's a paradoxal reaction. It's like somebody being raped tries to cover her face to not to see her rapist.
Not seeing a rapist doesn't change the ground reality of you still being raped. The correct action is not to use hands to cover your face, but to punch back the assailant.
When have you seen a movie about the USSR winning the WW2? Or about the Guantanamo Bay?
Any Russian movies about the US winning the WW2? Naturally each country tells their own narrative. This seems like a silly point to make.
Perhaps another thing is that when the memory of the war was still fresh and people (at least in eg France) generally knew that the USSR had a big impact, McCarthyism was also at its height and there were strong reasons not to show communists in a good light. And then maybe later films mostly copied the trend.
It’s like the chase scene at the end of Argo. That never happened. They just got on the plane and left but if the movie was accurate that would be a horribly boring ending so they made up a better on.
The change in this case was not in order to make the story more suspenseful but to simply inspire patriotism.
The simplest explanation is that, especially historically, Hollywood has targeted domestic audiences first. What message do you think is/was more likely to play well in the US and broadly in the west?
- Elmer Davis, director of the US Office of War Information
> - Elmer Davis, director of the US Office of War Information
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_War_In...
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-hollywood-became-the-unof...
> It was an organization designed not only to disseminate information and to clarify issues but also to arouse support for particular symbols and ideas. "The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds," said Davis, "is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."
Koppes, C. and Black, G., 1977. What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945. The Journal of American History, 64(1), p.2, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1888275>
That paper then points to this ultimate source:
> Elmer Davis to Byron Price, Jan. 27, 1943, Box 3, Records of the Office of War Information, RG 208 (Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md.)
Dead end. I emailed the Archives but the entire facility is closed because of the pandemic. I also tried tracking down the paper's authors but both are retired.
The document likely lives somewhere in this trove: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=%22Records%20of%20the%...
Anyway, I'm satisfied it's a real quote (both authors are reputable) though I definitely want the surrounding context now :)
Seriously: very nice work; thank you. Above and beyond!
> "The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds," said Davis, "is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."
Now a nearly irrelevant second place to social media.
It is easier for me to believe that a movie specifically about the Russians winning WW2 simply would not get financed due to low probability of earning a decent ROI due to American/English audiences not wanting to pay to watch it.
I was also taught in US history AP class in high school that a significant, if not necessary, element of winning WW2 was the Russians tying up the Germans on the eastern front, and it was stressed that the Russians suffered the most casualties by far.
The Soviets along with some remaining Polish forces also won the battle of Berlin (which caused Hitler to commit suicide), having pushed back the German army all the way back from the gates of Moscow to the gates of Berlin. The Third Reich, left with no "leader" and no capital and no significant territory neither in the east nor in the west really had no option other than total capitulation or total defeat. The capitulation happened a week later. The Western Front and the Eastern Front in the end had about the same amount of German causalities and captures.
Anyway, the Soviets did a little more than "just" tying up Germans on the Eastern Front.
Russia didn't win WWII, given that they didn't fight Japan in any meaningful way.
Furthermore, I've read [2] that historiography on the Eastern Front was quite poor, even from the Soviet perspective, until Stalin's death. From [2], page 12: > Soviet military works written before 1958 were highly politicized and focused heavily on the positive role of Stalin in every aspect of war. Correspondingly, operational and tactical detail was lacking.
Though Cold War politics did play a role.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_the_Battl... [2] PDF WARNING: https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/docpreview-s/00-00...
Sure, here's one from this year:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4761112/?ref_=kw_li_tt
And here's the list
https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=guantanamo-bay
Careful now, lest the audience actually learn that it were the Soviets who launched the first man into space.
Right now. There's a current multi-season show about the Axis winning WWII on Amazon Prime. From what I've read, it's pretty successful.
Which just goes to show that many Americans aren't really aware of how the Soviets were crucial to winning that war.
To act like the Soviet Union was Ireland or Switzerland at the start of the war, is disingenuous. Stalin and Hitler made a secret plan to carve out an Eastern European sphere of influence, not unlike the Japanese sphere of influence in East Asia.
The irony of course is that Stalin still got his sphere influence, albeit through the Treaty of Yalta.
The USSR didn't defeat Japan.
The Second World War was against Japan, Germany, and, to some extent, Italy. The USSR only fought Germany.
...almost all of them? the USSR was one of the Allies. who won WW2. so every WW2 movie which doesn't engage in some sort of alt-history has the USSR winning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Instrument_of_Surrender
I'd love to see something similar from China or North Korea.
They are even told "Tovarisch means 'comrade', which is a good thing!" Then all the ship's crew shout "comrade" back to the throngs of happy, well-fed, smiling Soviet citizens in WW2.
Other fun propaganda lines: "I believe in God, President Roosevelt, and the Brooklyn Dodgers!". They even feature radio recordings of Roosevelt set to patriotic music.
Despite being heavy handed and not having the best effects (you can see lines pulling the subs) it's a fun movie for Bogart fans and those interested in propaganda films. On Amazon Prime, tagged with "Cerebral, Joyous, Intense".
No single country won WWII.
Saying so is nationalist propaganda which devalues and demeans the sacrifices of every other country.
Tell that to the Finns.
There may be a bit of a Streisand effect going on. It's hard to avoid hearing about the Chinese communist party giving Taiwan a hard time when they are trying to censor every organisation around the world pretty much.
How long will it be before the same is true of American business leaders?
Will talking bad about the CCP prevent you from raising a round and having your company be funded?
Will talking bad about the CCP get you fired, if you're an employee?
its the nature of democracy that people discuss and fight over things and that decision making is therefore a messy process... but we are getting there.
even stuff like Polands confrontation now with the EU is part of a HEALTHY process and it speaks for the EU that all this is possible... no matter the outcome by the way, as long as indepedenent judges come to a conclusion!
so stop with your predictions of doom. I bet in the long-run, China and Russia will be the one who fail.