China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation
economist.com
economist.com
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.
There's nothing along those lines in any EU country, let alone the US (where such a concept is in extremely flagrant violation of the First Amendment). The closest you'd come is laws against Holocaust denial--but notice the key difference between a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a "good" person might have done something bad versus a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a bad deed never happened.
In China you certainly can point out, even criticize, Mao's role in the Great Leap Forward. Even "Official History" criticizes Mao! You can't be too "over the top" about it, such as comparing him to Hitler or accuse him of being a mass murderer, lest you get cancelled. But the reason you can't has nothing to do with the draft laws being proposed here.
> The closest you'd come is laws against Holocaust denial--but notice the key difference between a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a "good" person might have done something bad versus a law that makes it a crime to suggest that a bad deed never happened.
If you make the first kind of claim and you are wrong, you falsely accuse an innocent person. If you make the second kind of claim and you are wrong, you unjustly exonerate a guilty person. Which is worse? I don't think there's a clear answer! So I fail to see the "key difference" you are trying to highlight between these kinds of claims. Of course, if one of them is true and the other false, then there's a clearly worse claim, but then the worse claim is worse because it's false, not because of the objectionable/offensive nature of its content.
I suspect you never read commentary about the Great Leap Forward from the official gov.cn web sites...
In other news, if we're here to sling dirt: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-user-...
Of course UK isn't in "EU country" any more, but hey, I don't have a habit of collecting human rights violations of other countries as a hobby.
- 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 generals in the missile forces were purged.
- Xi Jing Ping was privately scalded by party elders during the recent party summit Beidaihe. There's an internal unrest and struggle occurring
- china's export drop 4th straight month https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/business/china-exports-au...
- the great flooding of northeast farmland this summer wiped out 1/3 of China's grain production. in order to mitigate the flooding of Beijing, they instead flooded provinces next to Beijing, which incidentally housed many military forces. Those forces were destroyed without warning.
- another big real estate developer, sunac, filed for bankruptcy https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/economy/china-sunac-ny-bankru....
- the Hangzhou asian games was a massive failure, attended by no major heads from developed countries. Cost $30 billion, while its local governments are so desperate for money, they are raiding temples
- marriages in China in 2022 are down 10% from 2021, lowest record since 1986. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/china/china-marriages-record-...
- Huawei homegrown chips was a nothing burger. iPhones were sold out in seconds online. Full Apple Store crowds. Very empty Huawei stores. People didn't like the overheated mate 60, or the broken software.
In short, political, economic, demographic, and tech collapse in China.
About Huawei stores being empty, some seems pretty crowded at least on the first day. https://youtu.be/YFeE2xHQVRI?si=2-tqnqXj8aF8srN6
There are good indicators that an economic stagnation or recession are coming, and that could potentially hurt the CCP long term.
Now are you going to say the data collected before is unreliable somehow and this time it's reliable?
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.
Someone could easily cherry pick stories about the US and make the same argument. Unsustainable debt, rampant homelessness and addiction, lifespan and healthspan plummeting, birth rates dropping, etc.
Africa and South America would take major investing to bring up to that point.
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 :)
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 countries.
Here's an interesting satire about this https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E?si=MziI90I7xP5W4g-m
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)
For the sake of good analysis, it's important to focus on real alternatives to that hypothesis, and avoid getting bogged down in semantics.
Liberal democracies arose out of the realisation that autocracies have bad endings like this.
Pretending Xi is insane is twisting yourself in knots to avoid the unpleasant conclusion that China is a challenge to the West that won’t conveniently fail.
So often people are first to accuse others of what they are themselves…
Similar to how the Republican party always try to inhibit abortion wherever they can. You won't say that Republican party successfully passing an anti-abortion law indicates they are losing, will you?
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...
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/05/taiwan_should_destory... ("US Army journal's top paper from 2021 says Taiwan should destroy TSMC if China invades")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012442 ("Taiwan should destroy TSMC if invaded, suggests US military paper (datacenterdynamics.com)"; 148 comments)
Here's extended context of what the OP is discussing, a different thing:
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/05/12/... ("‘Selectively clipped’ video misrepresents US official’s TSMC comments")
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/12/microchip... ("Opinion: Blow up the microchips? What a Taiwan spat says about U.S. strategy")
edit: Moulton's quote is at 36:22 here—this is apparently its full and complete context:
https://vimeo.com/817736553 ("The United States and China: Navigating Strategic Competition"; Milken Institute, May 2, 2023)
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.
> “I’m not promoting the idea. I’m not promoting the idea,” Moulton said. “What I’m saying is these are some of the things that are actually actively being debated among US policymakers.”
The fun thing is this: if people like you keep denying this is a real thing until this becomes official policy, it would be too late for the people of Taiwan to object to it.
Another win for the US again! "The most effective lie is the one with a kernel of truth" indeed.
The US does a lot of stupid things, it doesn't make it unreal. This policy isn't even half stupid as long as you can deny it long enough to make it happen. I might even say it's smart to deny it on the surface but actually continuing to make the threat credible. Well done.
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 best strategy, but because it’s an example of the debate that’s out there. And of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea.” [1]
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/12/microchip...
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 Americans don’t really care that much about TSMC. Its fabs are highly dependent on parts, material, etc from more secured countries, which is by design, or they would have never allowed semiconductor industries to be setup in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. They have much of the process locked up and a chip only gets made via free trade from multiple countries (with a lot of fate keeping by key allies, like the Dutch).
My understanding of the timeline/causation in 1950 is the other way around. Initially China was only going to offer largely moral support to North Korea. On June 27 the U.S. Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait to prevent PRC from taking Taiwan. This was a factor in China's decision to enter the Korean War in October.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/taiwan-strait...
> U.S. policy toward East Asia in the early Cold War contributed to the tensions in the Taiwan Strait. In late 1949 and early 1950, American officials were prepared to let PRC forces cross the Strait and defeat Chiang, but after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south. The appearance of the Seventh Fleet angered the Chinese Communists, who transferred their troops poised for an invasion of Taiwan to the Korean front. This served to delay military conflict in the Strait until the United States withdrew its fleet after the Korean War.
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1069/explaining-chi...
> In fact, at the initial stage, China took a passive response to the situation in North Korea. Besides moral support for Kim, the only material support provided by Beijing at the time was to send approximately 14,000 Korean Chinese who were then serving in the PLA back to Korea.8 However, three subsequent events dramatically changed Beijing’s attitudes.
> The first is that on June 27, the U.S. Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait to ‘neutralise’ the situation. ...
The USA completely expected Taiwan to fall to the communists before the Korean War, and they were pretty untrusting of Chiang Kai Shek at the time, they didn’t really care. But after the Korean War started, that sentiment transformed overnight into “Taiwan must not fall to the communists at any cost.”
It could be all but a barren rock, same feelings and motivations would apply.
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-...
Every few years they pull out their maps and we pull out our maps.
False. There might be some discussion around Ukraine and its historic role as an integral part of Russia's culture and history - and thus, where would an actual border between two peoples (including a cultural one) will be carved when shit gets fucked. But mixing up Poland or even GDR into this is nonsense narrative that does not exist.
Also, the historic reason behind PRC issues with Republic of China (Taiwan) is the fact that both state being the "One True China" as the core of their national myth. The practical issues are of course deterring a potential military threat. Everything else is just pointless rhetorics.
I don’t think the economists get this, but definitely people in the Chinese government are aware that taking Taiwan doesn’t really get them the tech.
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.
Look at the incentives and consequences of blowing up TSMC if China uses the military. China would not have access to the high end chips; Taiwan loses a bargaining chip of its own, and would suffer a huge economic cost (a lot of electricity is used up by TSMC alone); and US is the one who gets to point at the big bad PRC throwing weapons at ROC, and know that PRC gets a road block on the semiconductor front.
In the end this is a matter between Ukraine and Germany and nobody cares what Russia thinks.
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.
We have 338 trained seals up in Parliament.
And they're still saying it's Russian propaganda...
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 newspapers. “Everyone just treats it as a job,” he says. “It’s a tool to feed yourself.”
Also this is very cynical and painful to read. Ugh...vomit face. But also makes sense based on what I've seen there!
Project 596 was named after the month of June 1959 in which it was initiated as an independent nuclear project, immediately after Nikita Khrushchev decided to stop helping the Chinese with their nuclear program on 20 June 1959, and Mao shifted toward an overall policy of self-reliance.
Because you essentially get people obsessed over trivialities, content-free but emotionally compelling non-issues that are guaranteed to channel energy but not move the needle.
It's a key tenet of democratic stability: you need to pump the media full of innumerable social debates that partition the market, so you get people fighting themselves over trivialities rather than focusing their considerable energies on change for real issues.
So I see this as more a proof of the "coming of age" or new sophistication of the Chinese "psyop brigades" as you call them, rather than an indication of incompetence that you seem to think.
Small caveat that I haven't decided about yet is: some of this could be to create such an overly oppressive "rules based" atmosphere that people are so afraid of tripping over any law they just toe the line more generally. But I'm not sure, this is directly non-Confucian:
In governing, don't try to force issues or you'll turn away from what is right. The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be
And anti-Lao Tzu:
"The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
...
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers."This reminds me a lot of the (presumably Russian disinformation) story that flitted around American conservative spheres early in the Ukraine war saying that the US gov was setting up bio weapon labs at the border with Russia and that's why the Russian invasion was justified. Funny how the exact same propaganda can be shared between conflicts to good effect presumably.
What russian or chinese interference is there when there is 24/7 anti-russian and anti-chinese propaganda?
I’m not even going to touch the thinly veiled antisemitic smear
If I were China I’d probably go with a hardware supply chain attack. These machines can sit around for years.
I think DARPA’s SSITH program is a step in the right direction. At the very least, I’d feel a lot better with bug bounties on publicly available demonstrators from all manufacturers.
There are hundreds of factors that will ultimately decide who wins on the day.
So, not sure they sat it out as much as the U.S. was a little better prepared. For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo.
Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.
Literally, by definition, and extending well beyond just election topics.
Better job by not cashing the adversaries checks?
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/...
> Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.
Ah you mean the government going hunting and finding accounts that violated the ever changing ToS which was heavily influenced by the USG?
Safe to say that $46K ad spend was a drop in the bucket versus their overall effort, but sure, Facebook not accepting those rubles in 2020 counts as a small example.
I have no problem with the U.S. government working with American communications platforms to prevent adversarial propaganda, disinformation and disruption of US elections. These are foreign governments engaged in psyops against American citizens. Falls pretty squarely (and obviously) within government purview to defend against it.
And, in any case, if they're parroting the same disinfo as foreign adversaries who are working to destroy us, then they don't get special dispensation just because they're U.S. citizens.
This is why the First Amendment famously has limits.
You just described every social media platform.
"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.
They pulled out of the EU Code of Practice around disinformation back in May and they have been warned as recently as yesterday that the platform was the worst of all of the social networks at allowing Russian disinformation.
And I am sure everyone who used it has seen the massive uptick in bots and other coordinated activity.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter...
The CCP UnitedFront don't seem to realise the damage they are doing to their own political image.
And for fellow HN readers no matter what you read about China always bear in mind that politics comes first. It is more important than lives, morals, history, families, science, economics. Everything is subservient to politics, everything. Not saying is good or bad - it is just the CCP "way".
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 some crazy bat strain. I don’t know what “Gain of Function” is.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/...
https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/sections-offices/defen...
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ukraine-news-russia-war-us-...
The insinuation which your sources refute is that they are bio-weapon labs.
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/04/21/a...
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.
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.
Instead, American right-wing conspiracy theorists seized on the idea, and then Russian media started talking about it.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-asked-explain-a...
Robert Kennedy Jr also confirmed this. Not surprised - this is the same crap that occurred in Wuhan Institute of Virology. Since U.S. laws do not permit this stuff, the U.S. does bio weapons research outside the nation.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
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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background: worked on a US State Department project to help counter them. Technically China's anti-Taiwan efforts too. But we cared most about Russia. I did, anyway.
my side project, Slartboz, also deals with the topic of adversarial propaganda & disinfo, and the efforts of amoral, anti-democratic nation state actors like Russia and China.
Expect it to effectively vanish off the front of hacker news in record time.
Considering what US is doing to TSMC and how Taiwan is likely going to be stripped of all valuable assets in the future for NatSec, and how Germany is now being de-industrialized after the bombing of Nordstream by US & allies, I'd be extremely wary of the people running US if I care an iota about my own people.
Those of us who remember how Japan was made to kneel by the BoJ following US diktats know very well that Kissinger's remark 'to be a friend of US is fatal' is deadly serious.