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Yeah. When people in mainland China saw all the unmasked foreigners at The World Cup it spawned a lot of ideation. I'll summarize the ideas I've seen floating a
by DriftRegion 4y ago
Yeah. When people in mainland China saw all the unmasked foreigners at The World Cup it spawned a lot of ideation. I'll summarize the ideas I've seen floating around the Chinese internet:
- It's a money-making scam by the COVID test manufacturers
- It's a money-making scam by the temporary quarantine center manufacturers
- It's a failure of bureaucracy ”层层加码”
- It's a ploy to increase the depth of state surveillance
- It's a ploy to lock people at home and increase the birth rate
- It's a ploy to keep the poor poor to ensure that they keep working hard
- It's to mitigate war with the United States. Apparently the Geneva convention has a clause against going to war with a nation stricken by a pandemic.
- DriftRegion 4y agoHere's a recent commentary from a WeChat group (translated via deepl): > The current situation is that Western water forces, through insidious and poisonous means such as the Internet, have created a very dangerous atmosphere of public opinion and incited the people to rebellion. If we are deceived and held hostage by these rumors, what China will end up with will only be a disaster. We have to believe that the country, more than anyone else, wants an early end to the epidemic, and more than anyone else, wants an early end to this costly and socially expensive epidemic prevention activity, so that society can return to normal and the economy can recover as soon as possible. We believe that the Party and the government will be able to lead the people of China to work together to overcome the epidemic! China will win! [fist][fist][fist] > 当前形势是西方水军通过网络等阴险毒辣的方式，已经营造了一个非常危险的舆论氛围，煽动民众叛乱，如果我们被这些流言所蒙骗和裹挟，最后中国迎来的只会是灾难。我们要相信，国家比任何人都希望疫情早日结束，也比任何人都希望早日结束这种耗资巨大、社会成本巨大的防疫活动，让社会恢复正常，经济早日复苏。相信党和政府，定能领导全国人民，同心协力，战胜疫情！中国必胜！[拳头][拳头][拳头]
- throwoutway 4y ago“Wants an early end”? That must be propaganda because it should be obvious to a lay person that it started in late 2019. China government has been trying for 3 years to “have an early end”
- yreg 4y agoWait until you read to "We believe that the Party and the government will be able to lead the people of China to work together to overcome the epidemic! China will win! [fist][fist][fist]".
- ptero 4y agoIt is pretty clear that the quoted is propaganda from the first sentence. When I read "... Western water forces, through insidious and poisonous means such as the Internet ..." as the opening, what comes after is always propaganda. This does not mean that it cannot contain true statements, but that it could only be useful by providing clues about the goal that the authors want to achieve; not from taking the words as information. My 2c.
- sidewndr46 4y agoWhenever I read translations like that, I often feel that the propaganda arm is trapped in the 1940s. A totalitarian police state doesn't actually need that great of a propaganda arm. It just has to scrape by with being loosely believable.
- feet 4y ago>just has to scrape by with being loosely believable Like in the US?
- wongarsu 4y ago
- dumb1224 4y agoComments like this wouldn't pass the chinese Turing test: after the first sentence it would be reduced to white noise in most people's eyes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- leereeves 4y agoWhat does "Western water forces" mean? Is that a Chinese idiom?
- yw3410 4y agohttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://thelowdown.momentum.asia/chinese-tech-slang-from-water-army-to-eating-melon/%23:~:text%3DShui%2520Jun%2520%25E6%25B0%25B4%25E5%2586%259B,to%2520criticise%2520or%2520promote%2520others.&ved=2ahUKEwj8xe-ukdH7AhUKSMAKHS3UAXQQFnoECAgQBQ&usg=AOvVaw33U4iKDtQ7OpOj3K3nP45z https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- robjan 4y agoIt's a bad translation of 水軍 which is short for 網絡水軍 (astroturfers)
- netsharc 4y agoFascinating that to understand "astroturf" you'd have to understand that it's a brand of fake grass, and it's a term someone invented to mean "fake grassroots movement" and you'd have to understand what the phrase "grassroots movement" is. An average Chinese person who encounters "astroturfer" for the first time would probably wonder what it means, just like we wondered what "water scouts" mean...
- DriftRegion 4y agoYeah, "水军". Let me Baidu/deepl that for you: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BD%91%E7%BB%9C%E6%B0%B4%E5%86%9B/5519438 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BD%91%E7%BB%9C%E6%B0%B4%E5%... Online water scouts are hired online writers who publish specific information about specific content in the Internet. They are usually active in e-commerce websites, forums, microblogs and other social networking platforms. They influence normal users by disguising themselves as ordinary Internet users or consumers and by posting, replying and spreading blog posts.
- bee_rider 4y ago> It's to mitigate war with the United States. Apparently the Geneva convention has a clause against going to war with a nation stricken by a pandemic. It is a sort of funny conclusion to end up at — the US wants to have a war with China, but is stopped by the Geneva convention. I thought they didn’t have as effective vaccines as we’ve got in the west (on top of the general, uh, hands-off approach western counties tend to take around public health). Different facts on the ground, different policies, right?
- mumblemumble 4y agoI would guess the real reason the US won't ever willingly go to war with China, not even under the most fantastic of hypothetical scenarios, has a lot more to do with a combination of the anticipated importance of tech in a modern war between major powers, and the USA's near-complete lack of domestic electronics manufacturing infrastructure.
- bee_rider 4y agoAlso, while they didn’t engage in the US/USSR mass nuke building competition, they have enough to at least ruin our weekend.
- thereddaikon 4y agoThe US does have domestic electronics manufacturing. There are many fabs in the US actually. Mostly Intel and GloFo. The semiconductor market is a complicated one and not easily explained in an internet comment. But suffice it to say, things are far more complicated than that. And the real reason the US wants to avoid war with China, and vice versa. Is because we are talking about two nuclear states with competent second strike capability. This is the same reason why the cold war never went hot. Nobody wants to see the outcome. Millions dead, civilization set back a century or so etc.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tlogan 4y agoThis might be a Ceausescu moment for Xi. I just do not understand why he did not “declare that China won against COVID and how CCP is great”. (If there is a problem with vaccination rates, the CCP has tools to make that happen. Yes Sinovax vaccine is not very effective but with 3 doses it will cut death rates by 90% or so.) So the question here is really why Xi decided to keep zero-COVID. Maybe he is not so smart? Or maybe there is a big insider power war going on?
- apostacy 4y agoIt is obvious at this point that China's "zero covid" policy has nothing at all to do with public health. What many of us do not want to admit, is that our leaders have taken advantage of the crisis for their own benefit. I think most western media is reluctant to report on what is happening in China, because it would start uncomfortable conversations at home. Seeing the Chinese government so nakedly use what's left of the pandemic to oppress their population is very problematic to our pandemic narrative. People might start to ask if perhaps their governments too have been doing that too. The official narrative in the west has been that anything the government does to us in the name of protecting us from COVID is always correct and anyone who criticizes it is an evil "anti-vax" lunatic.
- boringg 4y agoSorry - you so far off base here. There has been ample reporting about China in the western media and none of your conspiracy related thought process is translating to anything that's happening in the West. If anything its promoting the narrative that the Western response to the pandemic was highly successful.
- apostacy 4y agoWhat I said stands. I never said that our media does not criticize China. Of course they do. But they tiptoe around criticizing China in a way which could expose our own hypocracy. Western media has been pushing the narrative that any level of force by the government is justified, because the pandemic is such an existential threat. They are reluctant to report that the Chinese government is then using excessive force, because it would make people question whether our government over-reacted as well.
- usrusr 4y agoFrom my uninformed outside perspective the explanation is so much simpler: decisionmaking structures of the organization in charge are failing to facilitate an overdue strategy switch. They had the best possible approach back when vaccines were a few months out and the strains in circulation were still easy to contain (much easier than the current ones), but now they keep trying to repeat that triumph, and because questioning that approach back then was bad (as evidenced by past successes) there's still no questioning now. But circumstances have changed, a lot, and the same structures that seemed surprisingly competent working on a blank slate (after merely a few days of trying to silence that ophthalmologist, I believe that this part of history was greatly exaggerated in western media) are now completely falling to adapt, because now there's an established party line and we I the hypothetical scenario that everyone knew that it was outdated, nobody would question it, more reward in feigning support.
- 411111111111111 4y ago> "best possible approach" Hahahaha, that's a good one. Yeah, welding shut apartment buildings with COVID positive inhabitants was the perfect approach to dealing with a strong lung infection for sure!
- cma 4y agoWas there ever a case where they were fully welded in back then? Bad for fire safety, but it was only the back door to ease monitoring by having all go through the front in the ones I looked into. This may not be the case with what they are doing now.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> saw all the unmasked foreigners at The World Cup it spawned a lot of ideation Is there any evidence this is about masks versus gatherings? > the Geneva convention has a clause against going to war with a nation stricken by a pandemic The U.S. would go to war with China if it invaded Taiwan, conventions or not. (I also believe the relevant text is with respect to medical personnel, not a general prohibition on armed conflict.)
- nashashmi 4y agoThe US would not go to war and attack china over Taiwan. MAYBE They will fund Taiwan to attack. Maybe they will just put their troops there. And not fight. But they won’t go to war.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> US would not go to war and attack china over Taiwan Attack the Chinese mainland, perhaps not, at least not without plausible deniability. Sink Chinese ships in waters the international community considers international or Taiwanese and Beijing Chinese, absolutely. Were China to retaliate by hitting an American ship, then yes, we would likely go to limited war against its port and missile facilities.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoThere’s no limited war between China and the us
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> no limited war between China and the us “Limited” as in not seeking unconditional surrender. As long as the U.S. doesn’t threaten the CCP’s existence, limiting its aims to thwarting Xi’s policy goals, i.e. taking Taiwan, it’s irrational for Beijing to escalate to nuclear Armageddon. But Xi is a dictator, and dictators do not make for rational states, so who knows. What is clear: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would meet with an American and allied military response. And the decisions around what that response looks like (or if it happens) would give zero weight to whether China says it’s in a pandemic.
- Markoff 4y agowell, at least bunch of them are right - there are lot of people making money in testing & quarantine business, it IS failure of bureaucracy, it IS increasing state surveilance through mandatory health codes and location tracking, it IS used to lock people at home or disperse previous protests by switching health codes to red to lock people at home (not so sure about helping to increase birth rate) disagree only with last two I don't think most Chinese care that much about state surveilance with WeChat already in their phone anyway, but first two money making scams are definitely spot on, which is why they are also often mentioned. It was not different in west with testing centres and vaccination business, especially VDL exchanging private messages with Pfizer CEO how to defraud EU citizens for billions of euros on useless vaccines almost nobody healthy wanted voluntarily (unless they fell for nonsense that it somehow stop/lower transmission rate fake news).
- ilyt 4y agoHonestly if every single one aside maybe from the last turned out to be true I wouldn't be even slightly surprised
- schrectacular 4y agoI'll add another I heard today, "it's a natural experiment that is being conducted and if there is no outbreak it means CoviD is over" A very handy about face!