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As someone who lives in SEA and used to live in China, he's able to move around because he lives in China and I assume has a long term visa and speaks Mandarin.

• FooBarWidget 6y ago
  Didn't Global Times report on him long after he had already made the trip and blogged about it? Or are you saying: it's all one big scheme, planned way up front?
  • askl56 6y ago
    Given his Twitter feed looks like a Chinese diplomat's[1], I would assume he is part of the pro-Beijing influence network. I mean, why would someone dedicate 6 months of their life to convincing the world that something isn't happening which is reported on widely (even by some limited Chinese media)? I have no idea if he is scheming with the the government or if he is simply trying to curry favour, but if you are a gwai lo (westerner) in China and want to get ahead for any reason (visas, job whatever), this is precisely what you would do. Whether its voluntary propaganda or paid propaganda, it's still propaganda. edit: This is the kind of blatant propaganda I'm talking about: https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/1298262507740520448 https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/129826250774052044... [1] - https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/1296697255072686081 https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/129669725507268608...
    • FooBarWidget 6y ago
      You think he’s spreading propaganda. Ok, fine. But I have issue with you saying “that which is reported widely”, as if the other side is entirely honest and truthful. In reality, both sides are distributing propaganda. I fear that, although you are skeptical of Chinese propaganda, you fail to recognize or be skeptical of Western propaganda at the same time.
      • ardy42 6y ago
        > But I have issue with you saying “that which is reported widely”, as if the other side is entirely honest and truthful. In reality, both sides are distributing propaganda. I fear that, although you are skeptical of Chinese propaganda, you fail to recognize or be skeptical of Western propaganda at the same time. You're making a false equivalence by oversimplifying things into symmetrical "sides." The Chinese state-owned media and propaganda apparatus have an established history of frequently spreading false or misleading claims for propaganda purposes. While Western media sometimes does get a story wrong or sometimes gets misled by their sources, they make a far greater effort to ensure objective accuracy, and are thus far more trustworthy.
        • glenstein 6y ago
          Thanks, I was going to mention this too. I think there's an important skill that people fail to develop when they fall for propaganda, and it's the inability to calibrate appropriately for degrees of bias. Instead, all sources are 'biased' and regarded as equally untrue as one another. In my experience, if you try and communicate this, you can't get anywhere. For an example I recently experienced, I was confidently informed by a redditor that Infowars and Common Dreams are equally biased sources, and there's a deficit of critical thinking there that I just don't know how to communicate to someone. It's also common with believers in the fake news trope - it's not wrong that there's media bias, but that gets used as an excuse to equate mainstream media outlets to those that traffic in conspiracy theories.
        • DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
          > While Western media sometimes does get a story wrong or sometimes gets misled by their sources, they make a far greater effort to ensure objective accuracy, and are thus far more trustworthy. I find this is too simplistic a view. The media often falls in with the government's foreign policy objectives, playing up foreign enemies, presenting their own government's interests as completely reasonable but "adversarial" countries' interests as illegitimate. If you were to go by American media, the invasion of Iraq was a mistake based on faulty intelligence, while Russia's annexation of Crimea was a grave attack on the international order. Never mind that the invasion of Iraq caused an incomparable amount of human suffering, violated a central principle of international law (the illegality of wars of aggression), and was provably based on lies. The New York Times itself played a key role in pushing the WMD story and promoting the case for war.
• free_rms 6y ago
  I've been to China numerous times, my Mandarin sucks, I stand out, and I went wherever I wanted. Didn't try to go to Xinjiang, admittedly. There's paperwork that says you have to check in with local authorities wherever you go, tell them what hotel you're staying at, and all this other stuff, but nobody actually does it. If you caused trouble, it'd probably be held against you after the fact is all. There's no reason to assume this guy is some kind of agent because he had freedom of motion. He probably liked all the people he met, sees lots of ignorant anti-China commentary on the English internet, and is pushing back (perhaps too strongly).
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > There's paperwork that says you have to check in with local authorities wherever you go, tell them what hotel you're staying at, and all this other stuff, but nobody actually does it. That's wrong: if you're staying in a hotel, they're doing the paperwork for you. You only have to do it yourself if you're staying in a private residence.
    • free_rms 6y ago
      Maaaayyybe at a big western oriented hotel in Shanghai. I personally stayed at plenty of places without giving them my ID.