Whipling

The other China: Life in a rural village I spend a few days in a rapidly vanishing place. Where food is free, doors are left open, and the main currency is grandchildren.

Happy weekend everyone. Go slow, have a few thousand words about life in a rural Chinese village.

China: Quieter, more fretful than I remember After four years away, it's time to meet old friends and see what's changed.

"That’s the thing with China: there’s ‘rules’, and there’s ‘the rules’. Half of China life is knowing which are which. Half the fun, too."

China: Quieter, more fretful than I remember - by Whipling toosimple.substack.com/p/china-retu...

USA executes the invasion of China's dreams While Trump takes out Maduro in hours, Beijing is still building its Taiwan case via military peacocking and online "Cognitive Warfare".

Maduro was certainly something, but this is about Taiwan — specifically the way which China is trying to manufacture consent for a Taiwan invasion via "Cognitive Warfare". Not my words. Some top Party academic advisors.

Verdict in trial of Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai looms as new diplomatic flashpoint The case has drawn international scrutiny as emblematic of China's crackdown on rights.

Hard not see this as test set for UK.

Starmer is penciled for a state visit to China next month, after a year of prep visit by Cabinet, advisers. Message from Beijing seems very clear: "How much do you want your trade?"

Tweet reads: From 1997-2008, Chinese always asked if I was from Xinjiang or I would joke that I was. I took it as a compliment (Han Chinese found Uyghurs to be exotic looking) and it was a funny joke to explain why I speak Chinese with a funny accent But we stopped joking about it from 2008-2020. In those years, gangs of pregnant Uyghurs with groups of their children would come and rob Chinese. Police wouldn't do much because there were laws against arresting pregnant Uyghurs We used to have warning words to give to friends and colleagues when we saw groups of pregnant women. Every single time I saw them try to pickpocket someone. And then in the 2010s people were scared because they worried they were terrorists. So I stopped joking I was from Xinjiang For a number or years, you didn't see too many Uyghurs roaming the streets But now you do again. And for the last 5 yrs everyone jokes again that it looks like I'm from Xinjiang and explains why my accent is weird but I can still speak Mandarin in full sentences. Once again it's usually meant as a compliment as so many movie stars are Uyghur Here's a picture of me taken last week. I'm half Chinese/ half Jewish. Sometimes I wish I were 25 years younger as I'd try to break into the entertainment industry

I don't know what's more mindbending: the entirety of this tweet (deleted after ~a minute) or that Shaun is still regularly booked by CNBC, blue chip firms for his insights on China.

How "Red" is Little Red Book? TikTokers fled to China's fluffy, politics-free answer to "Instagram". Yet behind the scenes, Xiaohongshu is being increasingly coopted by the CPC.

Back in January, I dug into Xiaohongshu's party links: they're surprisingly brazen about it.

“When recruiting personnel, the principle of giving priority to Party members is implemented."

"How dare Taiwan ban the RedNote app," says Chinese state media, while borrowing the Internet of other countries, to post on X, an app blocked at home.

CGTN and its influencer studios Social media sleeper accounts. Evading Facebook advertising rules. Teaching university lectures. These are some ways China's biggest media outlet is advancing its propaganda aims.

Spent a little time looking at CGTN's influencer studios. How they operate. Some tricks they use, and how it is helping shape the outlet's future digital strategy.

Not me.. 🤔

"You're in spy territory now" London falls into finger pointing as two ex-TEFL teachers manage to expose the UK's security weaknesses in Government

Now up.

This one comes with a nice interactive pulldown table of (partial) pen names used in the CCP's official People's Daily. We aim to serve!

Been thinking about this all week. On the train to the Hague I was reading Edward Fishman's 'Chokepoints'

In 2018, when Trump cut ZTE off from US kit, a newspaper run by China’s Ministry of Science & Technology published a series of 35 articles titled “What Are Our Chokepoints?”

In a rare tweet, former Global Times chief Hu Xijin says: “The US cannot prevent China’s reunification with Taiwan by military means.” 🧐

It’s just one month since state media bent over backwards to describe Beijing's mammoth military parade as a not a show of force, but a "show of peace”.

Good point, worth explaining. So I deliberately skipped Zichen in the initial article — which this Economist story is based off, as despite ending up as a Xinhua product with rostered staff, Pekinology's story (and Z's) is more complicated~

Second half: 100%
One can dream 🥲

Why China is so keen to support TikTok The Party has regularly collaborated with ByteDance to amplify state content abroad. Those who believe it is fully independent from Beijing are lying, or naive.

Trump is likely to sign the TikTok deal today, hiving off a new US company. So I thought I'd take a look..

Did you know ByteDance worked with Beijing state media to promote state influencer studios on TikTok? Exclusive.

"No speed. No ability. Can't tell stories". Why China is turning to 'media studios' to revive its propaganda These 'Light Cavalry' are designed to be small, nimble, and camouflaged — just don't ask them who they work for.

Thunk. This is a little looksy at how Chinese state media is currently trying to get out of the way of itself to enable workers, and deliver propaganda better-suited to the 21st Century.

✨Media Studios✨ Context. And how they’re run.

One is Xinhua's Jiang Jiang, who states in his newsletter: "views not representing Xinhua".

However, a recent Xinhua article said, stating it was "created by the External Dept", and listing all the ways its studios are supported / censored. Reference to Jiang Jiang was later deleted.

How Chinese state media are quietly targeting "elites" via Substack Journalists say they are writing "independent" newsletters. Their employers say otherwise.

Substack has seen a quiet proliferation of Chinese state media accounts. Many are posing as 'independent journalists' — in fact, according to bosses, they are state-backed "studios", with the aim of subtly influencing "western elites" "drip-by-drip".

Most recent investigation, now free to read~

Is he ever right..?

*WHO guidelines recommend annual average concentrations of PM2.5 should not exceed 5 µg/m3 — meaning China is 6x higher.

Also. Pick your moment, guys. Today, is a "purple" day, with Beijing hitting 252 PM2.5. 😷

Xiangyu, a pro-Beijing Taiwanese rapper released a song about the DPP 'selling out'. CGTN offered to amplify it—but only if he made "politically sensitive" changes.

Cue a hasty chorus rewrite, from:
🎶Taiwan is our home, we are Taiwanese🎶
-to-
🎶We are Chinese, our homeland is called Taiwan Province🎶

👈 The hope
The reality 👉

(Incidentally, Luke's now deleted the QRT)

Oh dear. Luke, a Brit who moved to Xinjiang, primarily as a shot in the arm for his influencer aspirations, and be state media's go-to foreign face on Uyghur issues, writes a long thread on XUAR's subtle political differences.

Backfires.
Gets full wrath from the botfarm.

Mind-blowing stats on nurseries in China: the number of births has fallen by half *since 2017*, leading to a collapse in early years provision.

The future impact on primary and secondary education is going to be seismic.

www.ft.com/content/8271...

Play recording: Live from Beijing Jason Smith - 上官杰文’s Space · Where live audio conversations happen

Paraphrased. Source here, from 21m10. x.com/i/spaces/1rm...

CGTN's Jason Smith is currently hosting a livestream on X. "Chinese police are so safe! We went to a rural place in Qinghai and the police met us at the station and told us we couldn't be there. They followed us. There must have been a military base or something. I've never had an escort before!" 🧐

a) Very kind. 🍻
b) That tracks. If so, wonder how long it'd take to finish Operation: Secure Family Assets.

a) I've been enjoying this newsletter a lot, you should check it out

b) I think if Xi went now he would probably be remembered half-well - basically for the 2010s successes - but if he sticks around another five, ten years or more he will be categorized like Brezhnev.

State media often portray Xi as a great diplomat. Numbers say different.

Worldwide, confidence in Xi lags China everywhere (except India). Interestingly, some of the biggest gaps are with China's close political partners. A case of: "Love the country/money—just not the Party"?

This year, China will borrow $2.50 for every $1 of economic growth. This is not normal.

Xi has exploded borrowing, taking China from one of the least indebted countries globally, to one of the most in just a decade. All in, Gov debt now 312% of GDP.

And it's speeding up~