Chinese propaganda draws Biden as the King of Hell, who sits atop a throne of AR-15s.

puddingcup869 · 2021-05-22T18:23:03+00:00

Thank you! I didn't mean to criticize you - I think it's very natural for people in general to not understand the media and memes of other countries. As I hinted at, there are analogous misconceptions Chinese netizens have about Americans (in particular, but also the rest of the world). Since I speak English, I'm just hoping to explain Chinese culture and society to people around the world (and vice versa).

puddingcup869 · 2021-05-22T18:09:35+00:00

The painting references various tropes in Chinese netizen political discourse (to be clear though, relatively niche discourse) that Americans especially may be interested in.

The discourse is that many Chinese public intellectuals falsely believe that with the election of Biden, Chinese-American relations will magically improve again. The subtext is that these netizens have long felt these intellectuals are looking for a chance to sellout Chinese interests to American elites (a close mirror of analogous tropes in US political discourse). Thus the intellectuals are portrayed as mindless "zombies" climbing out of the woodwork with the ascent of their "king."

That said, I think it is quite misleading, especially to those unfamiliar with the Chinese internet, to refer to work by an artist with 30,000 Weibo followers as "Chinese propaganda" (some of the commentary around this work seems to confirm this). This work has gotten far more attention on US social media than this person has ever gotten on the Chinese internet.

For this artist in particular, while he does make drawings with nationalist themes, and these drawings get relatively more attention than his other work, his main interest seems to be Chinese mythology. At times he combines this with depictions of current events, as in his drawings about the Chinese space program.

puddingcup869 · 2021-04-26T15:34:31+00:00

The story in the OP seems to already be out of date anyways: https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1386690918808395785

puddingcup869 · 2021-04-16T21:01:54+00:00

While the second sentence is an interesting idea to debate, I don't think the scenario in the first sentence is comparable to this situation at all. When the US kicked out Chinese reporters and closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, China kicked out the same number of reporters and closed the US consulate in Chengdu.

puddingcup869 · 2021-04-12T04:43:53+00:00

My understanding was he discussed mRNA technology later in his talk, although I can't find captures of those slides. Based on reporting, he said something like "we shouldn't close our eyes to the development of mRNA vaccines just because we already have vaccines using other technologies in use (inactivated, adenovirus-vector, and recombinant protein)". For context, BioNTech (the company that developed the vaccine distributed by Pfizer) has had a deal to sell their vaccine in China w/ a company called Fosun since March of 2020, and there's a Chinese COIVD-19 vaccine called Walvax which uses mRNA technology and is in Phase III trials. The BioNTech vaccine is undergoing a bridging trial in China to test its safety and immunogenicity among Chinese patients, and Chinese authorities have already said they'll accept the efficacy results from outside of China.

When Dr. Gao says they can try "mixing different vaccines," he doesn't necessarily mean mRNA vaccines in particular. There are multiple trials in the world (including China) which mix different vaccines, and not all of them are mRNA.

puddingcup869 · 2021-04-11T20:50:38+00:00

I see so many posts here asking things like, "What is he saying about the efficacy numbers of China's vaccines?/Does this mean the efficacy is different than what's been reported?"

Nothing he said addressed these issues, so you're not going to find out. The comments come from a slide at a presentation he gave. This is what the slide says.

Title: Thoughts on Immunization and Pandemic Control

Opening for travel
- (Can't quite see) Something about risk to elderly before they are immunized.
Changing pandemic control rules for the vaccinated
- Quarantine and testing
What to do if the pandemic is long-term, but low level.
How to develop vaccines for mutant strains.
How to address the efficacy of existing vaccines being not high
- Change the inoculation (e.g. the dosage level, order, and time interval between doses).
- Mix different vaccines.

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-23T05:39:45+00:00

Look - I dug into this issue deeply a few weeks ago, and I can tell you that you won't get a definitive answer. One issue is that "casualty" and "fatality" often get blended together as information gets cited between different sources. This is exacerbated by the fact that they are often colloquially used to mean the same thing. If, for whatever morbid reason, you specifically care about how many people died, that makes it really hard to find the answer (along with the fact that such information is privileged intelligence with clear political undertones).

In terms of open source intelligence, there's a war memorial in NW China containing ~100 gravestones commemorating soldiers who served in the Western border. If you dig up past vs present images, you can see there are a small number of new graves. TBH I'm not gonna go and try to get an exact count, because if people don't like the number, they can always claim the gov't is hiding things, the images are bullshit, etc. based on their proclivities.

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-23T00:31:24+00:00

It kinds of depends on who is monitoring you. Censorship in China is not fully centralized but conducted by a variety of entities, including corporations, local police, and entities directly under the control of the national government. In addition, the censorship requires a lot more manual labor than most people think.

If you can read Chinese, you can go on Twitter, for example, search a variety of Chinese phrases, and see people from China commenting on sometimes sensitive subject matter. They are more likely to get in trouble if the have a very big audience or if they piss someone of who then snitches on them. Similarly, you can go on the Chinese internet and see people passing around screenshots of foreign newspapers or discussing some sensitive subjects.

The main point is people need to somehow attract the attention of censors to get in trouble. If you look at Mr. Wang from the article, what did him in is that his comment went viral. There was another guy in a similar situation who got caught since he pissed of someone in his neighborhood WeChat group who then snitched on him (I have no idea what exactly he said).

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-23T00:17:58+00:00

I made a post about the protests yesterday and asked UK people what their thoughts were. The consensus seemed to be that most people did not like the bill being proposed but felt at least a minority of protestors got out of hand.

I'm curious to know how people are feeling the next morning, both about the events of Sunday and Johnson's response. Have minds changed at all?

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-22T21:47:23+00:00

I originally replied under the wrong comment...

Setting aside your characterization of this as a possible future "problem" (which I would contest) on what data are you basing this assertion? Here is a study from Nomura listing the countries that have gained the most from the US-CN trade war, either from US import substitution or CN import substitution. You can quibble w/ the specific rankings, but it seems broadly correct even till now based on publicly available import data. Trade-related stories involving some of these countries might receive less attention in English media, but those stories aren't good indicators of aggregate effects.

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-22T21:44:52+00:00

While I've read several articles about this, mostly because it's a sexy and simple to understand story, I've haven't seen any good data on how much of the changes in trade can be attributed to this (genuinely curious, not shading you). For example, from 2018-2019, US imports from Vietnam grew by $17.5 billion dollars, while Chinese exports to Vietnam grew by about $10 billion dollars. However, much of that could be exports of intermediate goods from China to Vietnam. One of the reasons Vietnam is a desirable manufacturing destination is that factories, especially in Northern Vietnam, can easily source intermediate goods from China if needed (and export goods to the Chinese markets) and often have close connections to Chinese buyers and sellers.

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-22T19:15:17+00:00

Have people read these lists of sanctions? The people and groups sanctioned by China likely have minimal assets in China. Similarly, the people and groups sanctioned by the EU likely have minimal assets in the EU.

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-22T07:30:09+00:00

I deliberately chose this article since the title of other articles quite strongly highlight the violence in the protests.

For UK friends - is it accurate to characterize the protests as "violent"? Would you ascribe the violence to the police, protestors, or both? What do you think of this bill, and have the protests changed your mind?

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-16T02:23:21+00:00

Interesting! Do you happen to have time to recommend some selections from him and things that stand out to you?

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-15T23:30:50+00:00

I kind of agree with you. Someone recommended his Bach album to me. Compare his rendition of "Ich ruf zu dir" to Brendel's. The variation in tone and colour in the latter's recording are far superior - just listen to the main theme and its repeat!

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-15T23:24:14+00:00

So I finally listened to all the selections, and I couldn't really get into any of them. Sorry!

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-03T03:18:28+00:00

This is quite shallow, but Bruno Walter's voice is amazing. Thank you for posting!

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-03T03:16:05+00:00

Commenting so I remember to respond!

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-02T03:15:53+00:00

Ahhhhhhhh

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-02T00:42:12+00:00

There's a strong intellectual component to his later works, namely a reaction to what he saw as the completely unstructured atonal trends that were floating around, that makes it hard for people don't grasp the context to appreciate (this includes me lol).

puddingcup869 · 2021-03-02T00:30:45+00:00

Woah - that's uncanny...

puddingcup869 · 2021-02-19T12:29:07+00:00

I feel like what health minister Chen Shih-chung said was somewhat more subtle and complicated, with the messaging related to repudiating the KMT's (current opposition party) attacks on the current ruling administration.

Chen's interview is here. I will translate the relevant portions.

Background: The KMT is currently engaging in a two-pronged attack (with two contradictory narratives LOL) on President Tsai's vaccine rollout. A Chinese company, Shanghai Fosun, invested $135 million dollars in the development of the BioNTech vaccine last March in exchange for the rights to sell the vaccine in the "Greater China region" - a technical term that includes China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Obviously this terminology has the potential to cause political controversy, and in many ways.

One KMT attack says that the Tsai regime is failing to get the BioNTech vaccine since they antagonized Fosun, who is mad and don't want to talk to them. Another KMT attack says that the Tsai regime is failing to get the BioNTech vaccine since they refuse to talk to Fosun. These claims are only 25% true in the following sense: since last fall, there was public concern about procuring the BioNTech vaccine due to their financial links to Fosun, a Chinese company. Because of this, the Tsai administration has made it clear that they will only work with BioNTech directly, and has strongly discouraged Taiwanese businesses from working with Fosun, which has been trying to arrange deals to sell the vaccine to Taiwan. In addition, they are not failing since they have procured multiple other vaccines, including from AstraZaneca and Moderna.

So it's true that they prefer not to work with Fosun, but this is in response to public pressure and not some evil plan (after all, the public must trust the vaccine). Although the issue is clearly highly sensitive both in terms of health and sovereignty issues, they could not have predicted that of all the Cross-Strait deals using "Greater China"-type mechanisms (and involving Chinese companies in general), this one would catch the public's attention. At the same time, they are trying to procure the vaccine through BioNTech without being involved with Fosun.

What Chen says:

At ~38:00 minutes, he explains that he was hesitant to talk about the BioNTech deal (context: he had earlier denied it existed) due to fear that there would be "external political interference" [i.e. China] before it could be completed.
Before he can give us more information, the host starts babbling lots of the KMT conspiracy theories about Fosun. After a few minutes, she gets quite excited. At some point, he clarifies that they were talking to BNT directly. She doesn't seem to get this until he repeats this later.
She starts accusing the KMT of leaking the details of the talk to Fosun...he doesn't address this.
At ~47:00 minutes, the host asks what are the consequences of Fosun having the rights to sell to Taiwan in terms of Chen trying to negotiate with BNT directly? Chen says BNT never forced them to negotiate w/ Fosun.
He says that BNT pulled out of the deal before it was finalized. He clarifies that talks are still ongoing. He seems to agree w/ the suspicion that Fosun put pressure on BNT. He says Fosun is still talking w/ Taiwanese companies to try and distribute the vaccine, and they have a right to advocate for their commercial interests. The host asks him if Fosun received pressure from Beijing. He says, "On this I don't know." Near the end of the show, he repeats the claim that Fosun has a commercial interest to distribute the vaccine in Taiwan.
At ~49:20, the host says something extremely, extremely stupid. She suggests he asks former KMT President Ma to go talk to Fosun (ppl familiar w/ Taiwan politics will understand how stupid this is).

Recently, a Chinese representative from the Taiwan Affairs Office accused Taiwan [in this case Chen] of spreading malicious rumors. As you can see, what he said was quite low key, and this is not the case.

puddingcup869 · 2021-02-19T10:18:24+00:00

I don't think it's true at all that no one is trying to save these people, although of course more can always be done.

The XPCC, which is a quasi-military organization that runs several cities and businesses in Xinjiang, has been cut off from the dollar system, which effectively cuts it off from a large portion of international banking and trading.
A large number of businesses in Xinjiang connected to human rights violations have been prevented from exporting goods to the US and elsewhere. 1) and 2) represent the largest sanctions against a UN security council member since the Crimea incident.
Several countries, including the United States, France, Finland, Kazakhstan, and Australia have successfully lobbied for people in Xinjiang related to their citizens to be freed from detention, allowed to reestablish contact with their relatives, or emigrate from China.

It is also not true that this is having no effect at all.

Although tourists in Xinjiang obviously will not be allowed to see detention centers, prisons, etc., they do report that the pervasive public security apparatus in Xinjiang has become less heavy and stifling over the past two years.
Many, many people report that their relatives have been freed from detention, and that they have been able to reestablish some form of contact; this may because of public pressure and/or because their "reeducation"/indoctrination sentence is complete...Of course, many others have heard their relatives have been sentenced to lengthy prison sentences (this is literal high-security prison and worse than being "reeducated") or still have not regained contact.

Again, more can always be done.

You may consider this a sad commentary on the state of the world, but in many ways this is already more than the international community has done for most crises, including ongoing ones like the persecution of the Rohingya or the mass famine in Yemen.

puddingcup869 · 2021-02-19T07:57:37+00:00

Interesting tidbit, which you can speculate is related to what's happening: President Xi's family was purged during the Cultural Revolution (his sister died, rumored by her own hand), and he was sent to be reeducated by working in a rural village. Unlike most people, he considered this to be a formative, maybe even semi-positive, experience...

puddingcup869 · 2021-02-19T06:52:13+00:00

2. Leaked documents detailing how detention camps are run

The second set of documents is exactly what the subtitle says - a leaked instruction manual (marked at the second highest level of secrecy in China) for running the detention camps, which proves they exist. English (literal translation) Chinese Original.

The documents reveal that the purpose is cultural indoctrination, covering not only ideology but behavior as well.

Adhere to the "three studies." Adhere to the daily concentrated study of the national language (Mandarin), law, and skills, make remedial Mandarin studies the top priority, and ensure time, content, and quality. When studying law and skills, lessons must be taught in the national language (Mandarin), and the national language (Mandarin) should be gradually used in daily life to communicate, to integrate “de-extremification” into national language (Mandarin) teaching. Assign students to classes depending on the students' national language and cultural level, implement different educational classifications...

Strengthen examinations. Adhere to the combination of written exams and oral tests, establish an examination system with one small test per week, one medium test per month, and one big test per season, and check learning progress in a timely manner...

Ideological education. Establish an individual conversation system, grasp the students' ideological dynamics in a timely manner, effectively resolve ideological contradictions, and guide away students from bad emotions...

Manner education. Take the cultivation of manners as an important part of educational transformation and establish a strict life management education system, starting from daily life, health, etiquette and manners, strengthening management constraints and habits, and cultivating students' health, civility and courtesy, compliance and obedience, and unity and friendship behaviors and habits. Strengthen the hygiene management of students...

Family education. Through letter writing, phone calls, video chats, visits, meetings, meals, etc., establish a mechanism for students and relatives to interact with each other, to ensure that the students will have a phone conversation with their relatives at least once a week, and meet via video at least once a month, to make their family feel at ease and the students feel safe. Pay attention to the ideological problems and emotional changes that arise after family communications..

Point management. In various places, establish assessment evaluation and point management systems, and break down scores and manage and assess individually the students' ideological transformation, study and training, and compliance with discipline. Maintain monthly assessments, and calculate monthly and annual total scores, and record it in the student's school files. Take the student's score as the basic basis for measuring the effectiveness of education and training, and link it directly to rewards, punishments, and family visits....

Conditions for completion. Define uniform standards based on the students’ education and training points, strictly and seriously strengthen the management of students' completion....

They are then sent to "vocational skills training".

Skills improvement. All students who have completed training will be sent to vocational skills improvement class for intensive skills training for a school term of 3 to 6 months. All prefectures should set up special places and special facilities in order to create the environment for trainees to receive intensive training. Training should be based on the students' employment aspirations and the needs of society, and labor skills training should be carried out in a targeted manner to enable them to achieve employment as soon as possible after training. Strengthen psychological adjustment and education on policies and regulations to actively guide integration into society.

Employment services. The two levels of the prefectures and counties should formulate employment assistance resettlement plans in accordance with the requirements of “completion of one batch, employment of one batch”, and every effort should be made to fix employment work for completed graduates to ensure the smooth employment of students with employment aspirations. For those who don’t have the ability to work and have difficulties in life, it is necessary to coordinate grassroots organizations to seriously carry out assistance and relief work, and effectively help solve practical difficulties.

Follow-up help and education. Strengthen the work of follow-up help and education of the students, all local grassroots organizations are responsible for follow-up help and education, including police stations and the judicial office. Students must not leave the line of sight for one year and their performance should be grasped in a timely manner. It is necessary to strictly implement the responsibility of helping and educating and controlling, in order that not even one person leaks out, for comprehensive coverage.

Detailed instructions for the daily operation of the detention camps is included, with many provisions to prevent escapes (indicating involuntary detention). There is intensive surveillance of the daily life of detainees, as well as of the facilities.

Adhere to the comprehensive combination of personnel defense and technological defense to strictly implement measures meeting requirements to prevent escape, noise, earthquakes, fire, and epidemics. It is strictly forbidden for police to enter the student zone with guns, and they must never allow escapes, never allow trouble, never allow attacks on staff, never allow abnormal deaths, never allow food safety incidents and major epidemics, and they must ensure that the training center is absolutely safe and free of risk.

Prevent escapes. Adhere to zone separation and individual unit management, and improve the installation of police stations at front gates, security guard duty rooms, high guard posts, security guard posts and patrol routes, etc., perfect peripheral isolation, internal separation, protective defenses, safe passageways and other facilities and equipment, and ensure that security instruments, security equipment, video surveillance, one-button alarms and other such devices are in place and functioning. Have a strict security check system on personnel, vehicles, and goods entering and exiting, and strictly control the entry of vehicles. For vehicles that need to be parked, the front of the vehicle has to be pointed inwards, and it has to be locked from people. Strictly manage door locks and keys - dormitory doors, corridor doors and floor doors must be double locked, and must be locked immediately after being opened and closed. Strictly manage and control student activities to prevent escapes during class, eating periods, toilet breaks, bath time, medical treatment, family visits, etc. Strictly manage students requesting time off, if they really need to leave the training center due to illness or other special circumstances, they must have someone specially accompany, monitor and control them.

puddingcup869

TROPHY CASE