I suspect that the Chinese government "pulls this kind of stunt" often but just nobody ever hears about it because their society is not free to complain about such a thing publicly.
They do now.
Top AI researchers in China are barred from getting an exit visa [0] (the PRC has done this for other employees as well such as Foxconn China employees who were working on shifting Apple supply chains to India [1]), and "AI Safety" from a national security perspective has been codified as party policy now [2].
The leading Chinese AI labs are also shifing away from open-source AI for commercial reasons, as can be seen with the org changes at Alibaba with the axing of the Qwen team [3][4].
That said, these are called out but it's all in Putonghua and no one on HN actively reads or follows what happens within China. I've noticed most HNers now source information from Reddit which has been dealing with DRAGONBRIDGE deluge for a couple years now, and I've noticed similar tactics being applied on HN as well.
In all honesty, I've found HN's noise to signal ratio to have tanked severely since 2022. Silver lining is that less people that matter are using it as much, so the IW impact is limited.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-26/china-exp...
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-17/china-mov...
[2] - http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2026/0616/c40531-40741238.htm...
[3] - https://m.guancha.cn/economy/2026_06_12_820253.shtml
[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/b39da303-3188-447b-8b65-3dd8dad8b...
Posts questionable info, gets called out or downvoted -- throws a fit, doesn't reply with anything concrete. Rinse and repeat.
wuh?
The old "cathedral-style" democracy is dying. People are seeing that the "regular" politicians are just ineffective and kinda boring. The old party-based structures are stifling and prevent changes. People want more direct participation in the governance.
So people are voting for a "new wave" of candidates that promise to work around the old institutions. Right-wingers were the first to harness this, initially with the Tea Party takeover and then Trump came in and crushed the entire Republican Party into his personal fiefdom.
Mamdani is doing the same with the Democratic Party now. After the recent primary victories, he's well-poised to become the left-wing Trump.
If you want historical analogies, the situation is similar to the start of the 20-th century when the wide masses first became politically active. Literacy spread, then radio broadcasts and daily nation-wide newspapers gave people the impression that they're a part of the same entity.
It ended well, with democracy winning over authoritarianism. But the middle part contained a couple of world wars and mass genocides.
Mamdani is NOT doing the same nor like Trump. For all the scaremongering, he is pragmatic politic with policies full of compromises.
There ia no symmetry between what those parties do.
Remember, democracy doesn't mean that "good" people win.
> Mamdani is NOT doing the same nor like Trump. For all the scaremongering, he is pragmatic politic with policies full of compromises.
Just wait. He's well poised to fail upwards with his policies. They can't and won't work long term, but they'll create a lot of buzz by the time he aims for a higher office. But anyway, that's beside the point.
> There ia no symmetry between what those parties do.
The horseshoe theory works: the extremes are very much alike. And that's why Republicans were taken over by Tea Party radicals, and Democrats are now getting taken over by Mamdani radicals.
Both are the result of the same sentiment: "the current elites are not representing us, and we need to destroy the political system".