Sending planes close to Taiwan, threatening invasion everyday, like what Russia did before invading Ukraine?
Was Russia merely challenging American superiority?
1,307 karma · joined June 16, 2019
Was Russia merely challenging American superiority?
> Chen-Ning Yang was technically not wrong with his 1998 prediction, since Tu Youyou got 1/3 of the 2015 Nobel in medicine, but it didn't really make sense for him to link this to continued development, since the delay between discovery and award means that most of the prizes from 1998–2018 were for work that was already done before he made his prediction.
Agreed. Though to nitpick, the part on “even more than one, if the country’s economic development continues at its current rate” is technically wrong, if we just count Chinese Nobel scientists developed in Mainland China (only Tu Youyou).
Chen-Ning Yang was bullish on Chinese science, but reality did not deliver.
Shing-Tung Yau is as bullish on Chinese mathematics in the future, but even he admitted that China is still decades behind in mathematical research, due to systematic issue which ‘“places too much emphasis on material rewards” and tends to encourage young researchers to work for titles instead of scientific advancements’. [1]
[1]: https://archive.is/MRDlP "China has problems to solve before its mathematics research can rise above WWII levels, scholar says"
This is a problem with the culture of science.
Count points:
- Intellectuals, academics, and teachers were persecuted, attacked, and killed by the youth (the Red Guards), in all schools and institutions in China.
- Search for “scholars killed during the cultural revolution”, or “list of scholars abnormally died in China during the cultural revolution” (or for a short list in Chinese https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/中华人民共和国被迫害人士列表#科学技术人士). This includes the leader of Two Bombs, One Satellite (nuclear weapon, ICBM, artificial satellite) 赵九章. Besides, those returned from overseas were considered traitors or spies, and just within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (top science institution), there are 229 scholars died due to the Cultural Revolution [1]. This destroyed the environment needed to do great science. Imagine if Yang went back to China in the early 1950s.
[1]: https://blog.wenxuecity.com/myblog/74771/201904/2157.html "文革时中科院131位科学家被打倒 229人遭迫害致死"
> I guess we'll see Chinese scientists winning Nobels at a rate commensurate with other big countries in 20–40 years or so.
Such predictions—Chinese scientists will win more science Nobels—has been made long ago. In 1998, “The Chinese-American Nobel Laureate Chen Ning Yang has also predicted that mainland scientists will win a prize within twenty years – even more than one, if the country’s economic development continues at its current rate.“ [2]
[2]: https://china-us.uoregon.edu/pdf/Minerva-2004.pdf "CHINESE SCIENCE AND THE ‘NOBEL PRIZE COMPLEX’"
But reality shows otherwise, not until scientists and academics are respected in China. During COVID, politics overruled science, resulting in the Zero-COVID policy, which were brought down by widespread protests, not by science (counter evidence to the ineffectiveness of the Zero-COVID policy).
Unless you are implying that you predict a regime change by that time...
13 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_Nobel_laureate..., including peace prize laureates Liu Xiaobo (2010) and the 14th Dalai Lama (1989).
> But, since the Nobel was established, China has been invaded...
> The US has been invaded zero times...
The number of external invasions is not a strong indicator of the number of Nobel Prizes, if you compare all countries, beyond just China or the US.
And as you mentioned, the Cultural Revolution greatly reduces the chance of Chinese Nobel, so internal events can take a large role. And Mao led to more deaths—not to mention destruction to science and culture—than external invasions in the last century combined.
> The civil wars also brought to power brutal dictatorships...
The dictatorship arguably hasn't ended, by taking another less brutal form. And to be precise, CCP brought the civil wars and its consequences, not the civil wars brought dictatorships.
Rubio was sanctioned twice by CCP in 2020 for speaking up for human rights [2], but was quietly given a different Chinese surname in 2025, possibly to avoid the question of whether he is still under CCP’s sanction as the current US Secretary of State [3]. When asked, CCP gave vague answers [4].
For a similar story, Mike Pence when visiting Hong Kong last month called for China to release the imprisoned publisher Jimmy Lai [5]. Pence was mentioned in the National Security case of Jimmy Lai, which is to say Jimma Lai allegedly violated the National Security Law of Hong Kong by collaborating with foreign adversaries, in particular Mike Pence. But Mike Pence had no problem entering and exiting Hong Kong, only Jimma Lai had, despite the NSL applying to “anyone on Earth, regardless of nationality or location” [6], and had targeted US citizen living in the US before [7].
CCP postures selectively, with a very fluid definition of an enemy of the state, which often does not follow what they say in letter.
[1]: https://de.usembassy.gov/secretary-rubio-on-the-megyn-kelly-... "Secretary Marco Rubio with Megyn Kelly of The Megyn Kelly Show"
[2]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-tells-rubio-behave-himself-... "China tells Rubio to behave himself in veiled warning"
[3]: https://www.newsweek.com/china-news-gives-new-name-us-secret... "China Gives Marco Rubio New Name"
[4]: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327371.shtml "Chinese FM responds to change in official translation of Marco Rubio’s surname"
[5]: https://www.reuters.com/world/former-us-vice-president-mike-... "Former US Vice-President Mike Pence visits Hong Kong"
[6]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-nat... "Hong Kong’s national security law: 10 things you need to know"
[7]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hong-kong-issues-arrest-w... "Hong Kong issues arrest warrant for U.S. citizen under new national security law"
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/06/elon-musk-d...
[2] https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/doge-to-audit-...
Chinese ships are just “testing the waters” this week by cutting the Internet cables near Taiwan.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42615939 "Chinese Vessel Cuts Taiwan Internet Cable in Apparent Sabotage"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/china/undersea-cable-taiwan-i... "A cut undersea internet cable is making Taiwan worried about ‘gray zone’ tactics from Beijing"
* China's banking turmoil: 40 banks vanish, Jiangxi leads collapse: https://www.msn.com/en-ie/money/other/china-s-banking-turmoi... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40944836
* Small banks in China are running into trouble. Savers could lose everything: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/economy/china-bank-runs-prote...
Hong Kong ranked pretty high in Press Freedom: 18th in 2002, around 60th before 2014 (when Xi took power and the Umbrella protest broke out), then it went downhill and suddenly dropped to lower than 130th after the 2019 protest and the recent national security law [1].
It is an uphill battle under the rule of an authoritarian government which disregards freedom.
[1]: See the graph “Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: Hong Kong” at https://hongkongfp.com/2024/07/19/wall-st-journal-union-urge...
> If you watch an anime or a TV series "about" fighting, … getting better at techniques you already know is often more effective than having a portfolio of hundreds of "moves".
> Relatedly, Joy Ebertz says:
> One piece of advice I got at some point was to amplify my strengths. … How can you turn something you’re good at into your superpower?
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.” —— Bruce Lee
I am working with other volunteers to improve Cantonese teaching, and wonder what difficulties you have encountered when learning Cantonese, and what materials or communities would be helpful for Cantonese learners.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40085214 "Apple deletes WhatsApp, Threads from China app store on orders from Beijing" (110 points, 1 day ago, 127 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40092127 "Apple Pulls WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and Threads from App Store in China" (7 points, 1 day ago, 6 comments)
...
3. New defense technology
4. Bring manufacturing back to America
...
Russia threatens to use nuclear, even without being hit with nuclear.
Worth noting the difference in scale between Russia (1.3m active personnel) and Ukraine (0.2m active personnel), the West are not directly participating in the battlefields (due to nuclear threats), and that Russia is connected to Ukraine by land.
For the Chinese case, the US has been very clear about sending armies to defend Taiwan, which is separated from China by sea.
So a technological gap can be a sufficient deterrent for the Chinese case, while less so for the Russian case.
For those following the Taiwan election, this explains a lot. China wants the Taiwanese ruling party, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), to lose, and it wants the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) to win. But Terry Gou could not get the nomination to run for KMT, so he ran as an independent candidate. This makes KMT and related opposition even weaker against DPP in the coming election.
Hence the tax inspections at Foxconn, which is owned by Terry Gou. This might deter Terry Gou from running in the election.
But the flip side is that the Chinese economy desperately needs foreign investments, so punishing Foxconn may scare away foreign investments and hurt China even further.
The law broadens the scope beyond what it originally sought to prohibit – leaks of state secrets and intelligence – to include any “documents, data, materials, or items related to national security and interests.” [1]
[1]: https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-anti-espionage-law-is... " China’s new anti-espionage law is sending a chill through foreign corporations and citizens alike"
[2]: https://www.dw.com/en/japanese-companies-fear-chinas-draconi... "Japanese companies fear China's draconian espionage laws"
[3]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/11/china/china-john-leung-mms-sp... " Beijing claims US citizen jailed for life in China was decorated spy who worked undetected for decades"
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/german... "German car industry urges Berlin to address anti-spy laws with Beijing"
A penalty of over 1 million yuan (>145K USD) for using VPN is a new development: before this, only VPN service sellers were prosecuted.
[1]: Law-enforcement agencies have been imposing larger and more frequent fines for offenses: https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-local-governments-are... "China’s Police Are the New Earners for Cash-Strapped Governments"
[2]: https://eightify.app/summary/chess/tianjin-government-crisis... "The Tianjin government's financial crisis, with unpaid wages and high debt ratios, reflects a larger problem in China's declining land finance and unsaleable real estate market, raising concerns about the stability of other Chinese cities."
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=242pUa9rXgg "Civil Servants go unpaid and Local Government Borrowed From Temples/Protests surge in China"
[4]: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wages-09082023112323.... "Chinese local governments struggle to pay civil servants' wages"
[5]: The government is trimming a combination of bonuses, cash subsidies and base pay for many employees, according to interviews with 10 local civil servants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-12/pay-cuts-... "Bankers’ 40% Pay Cuts Show the China Dream Fading in Its Richest Cities"
Chinese Foreign Ministry https://twitter.com/foreignchinese?lang=en
Xi's Moments (official news of Xi Jinping and China) https://twitter.com/XisMoments
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37787205 "Chinese Netizen Fined Over 1 Million Yuan for Using VPN"
[2]: https://here.news/post/93c46bbd-ea0d-48e2-bba6-135e58887f81/... "Chinese Netizen Fined Over 1 Million Yuan for Using VPN"
[3]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-man-arrested-after-mak... "Chinese man arrested after making $1.6 million from selling VPN services"
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37095302 "We need scientific dissidents"
Yes, but this is part of the strategy to contain CCP while competing with it, deterring it from trying to take over Taiwan, preventing another Ukraine, which could be costly even if the war is won.
The strategy to compete with CCP, instead of co-operating (as a factory of the World and a reliable trade partner), became mainstream since 2018 or so, when CCP show that it wanted to challenge the current world order (see the China 2049 Initiative by Xi).
> Strong disagree.
> 1. The USA's current stance toward Taiwan is largely a continuation of its historic stance, which had absolutely nothing to do with semiconductors.
> The USA currently maintains a strategic ambiguity...The Six Assurances were communicated to Taiwan about half a decade before the founding of TSMC.
This.
The strategic ambiguity is a message from the US to both sides of the Taiwan strait:
1. It deters CCP from taking over Taiwan,
2. It also deters Taiwan from changing the status quo.
But given the recent trajectory of CCP under Xi's dictatorship to be more aggressive, US has been more assertive of the defense of Taiwan [1] (though it is still technically a strategic ambiguity, unlike its Security Treaty with Japan).
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-says-us-forces-would-def... "Biden says U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion"
In a gaming competition with the China team, the Hong Kong player used a name which included the two Chinese characters for “Liberate,” according to the livestream of the competition.
You can judge whether it is sensitive enough, and if it should be punished to “uphold the fairness of the entire competition and abide by the principles of sportsmanship.” Or, if the punishment itself upholds “the fairness of the entire competition” and abides “by the principles of sportsmanship.”
[1]: https://hongkongfp.com/2023/07/18/hong-kong-e-sport-player-s... "Hong Kong e-sports player suspended from competing for 3 years over ‘sensitive wording’ in ID name"
[2]: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%E5%85%89%E5%A4%8D%E8%B7%AF "光復路"
Chinese dominance of rare earth production is not sustainable, either, using lax regulations to externalize environmental and health hazards: leaking radioactive residue (like thorium) and other toxic waste, polluting water sources (including the Yellow River), neglecting worker safety, and abusing human rights.[1]
> “China’s ascendancy is the result of forward thinking by the country’s leadership”
One forward thinking of China is to move its operation through its state-owned enterprises to Africa, contaminating outside communities instead.[1]
[1]: https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complica... "Not So “Green” Technology: The Complicated Legacy of Rare Earth Mining"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36531485 "How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]"
One speculation is that, it is harder to move 12 cars uphill, than to move 9 cars uphill, after the train crossed the harbor.
- What about search? (Baidu vs Google or Bing)
- What about news agencies? (CGTN and Xinhua vs BBC and The New York Times and The Guardian)
- What about the Internet itself? (Great Firewall vs effectively none)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... "List of websites blocked in mainland China"
I find it interesting that the Chinese government wants to take down such a repo, because it is very much harmless.
Some observations:
- The repo is still accessible, but the README.md was cleared at a commit [1] on 23 Jan 2021, one day after the take down request on 22 Jan 2021 (see its complete history [2]).
- The repo appears to be a political message against Xi, as a markdown file (README.md [1]) and an image (xiyuyan.png [3]).
- The repo invents a new programming language, 习语言 XI YU YAN (The Xi Language), whose example README.md is loaded with political messages [1]:
WHILE-LOOP keyword is “re-elected”, as Xi is “re-elected” repeatedly;
VARIABLE-DECLARATION keyword is “I-declare”;
RETURN keyword is “going backward”, probably to before the reform and opening of China by Deng Xiaoping;
and other political references (One Belt One Road, etc.).
This is easily be protected by free speech in other countries.
Regardless, the fact that the Chinese government thinks this need to be taken down speaks quite a lot of their insecurity.
[1]: https://github.com/xi-yu-yan-kai-fa/Xi-Yuyan/commit/d98c5fe3... "Commit to clear the README.md after the takedown request"
[2]: https://github.com/xi-yu-yan-kai-fa/Xi-Yuyan/commits/master/... "History of README.md"
[3]: https://github.com/xi-yu-yan-kai-fa/Xi-Yuyan/blob/master/xiy... "Xi Yu Yan -- The Xi Language"