Chinathread: Look at this pig'zhuge balls!

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Chinathread: Look at this pig'zhuge balls!

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
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Grand Fromage posted:

I would love to stop paying taxes that go to governments running concentration camps. Upsetting how difficult that is to do.

Good think that in the USA there are a shitload of limitations on what the government can and cannot do and it also changes every two years, unlike in China where the government has carte blanche to do whatever it wants forever

# ? Oct 10, 2020 22:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 5, 2024 11:06

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Kharnifex posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44SG4obrYcs

Teahouse scam using lovely apps

lmao

# ? Oct 10, 2020 22:37

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

So good~

# ? Oct 10, 2020 22:44

goblin week: Jan 26, 2019; Absolute clown.

Not So Fast posted:

I'm not saying you're a liar, I'm saying it's hyperbolic to link a video-game made in China to the camps. It would be like claiming buying Halo 5 funds the concentration camps on the US border.

Not really, corporations in America don�t pay taxes :haw:

# ? Oct 10, 2020 23:22

Blistex: Oct 30, 2003; Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Grand Fromage posted:

I would love to stop paying taxes that go to governments running concentration camps. Upsetting how difficult that is to do.

In South Korea I wasn't paying for camps but there are islands where disabled people are sent to be enslaved, which the authorities are fully aware of and don't care about.

But our social homogeneity!

# ? Oct 10, 2020 23:58

BrainDance: May 8, 2007; Disco all night long!

Fojar38 posted:

Genshin Impact right? The blatant Breath of the Wild knockoff?

Apparently it's making waves which is unfortunate because now a bunch of people who think it's a Japanese game are going to be funding concentration camps

Was listening to some weeb complain about the game not having 'original' Japanese voice acting. But whatever.

Games similar to Zeldas and I guess anything Chinese are always 'knockoffs' but like 80% of games are knockoffs of something. How many games were just quake? Or, I was really into Medal of Honor Allied Assault when the first CoD came out and I remember shouting 'its just MoHAA but lovely, why is everyone playing this?' Or look at what The Elder Scrolls did for pc rpgs (though there you got a lot of 'its a clone but way better')

Genshin Impact, gameplay wise is actually a lot more of a standard arpg with some stylistic things taken from botw. I don't think the problem is that it's a clone, the problem is it's seriously just not very good.

It sucks cuz I totally would be up for a botw clone. I want botw to inspire other games. I probably would have just paid twenty bucks or something for it to not have the lovely pay to win bullshit, but that's the entire game.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 00:41

Rabelais D: Dec 11, 2012; ts'u nnu k'u k'o t'khye:
A demon doth defecate at thy door

I thought the problem with the game (despite it sounding like a massive waste of time) was that if you type "Hong Kong" into chat the game displays it as "**** ****"

# ? Oct 11, 2020 00:49

AvesPKS: Sep 26, 2004; I don't dance unless I'm totally wasted.

goblin week posted:

Not really, corporations in America don’t pay taxes

It's more like taxes don't pay for detention camps in the US because USCIS is self-funded through fees and not tax dollars.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 01:10

BrigadierSensible: Feb 16, 2012; I've got a pocket full of cheese🧀, and a garden full of trees🌴.

WeChat censors are getting slack.

Yesterday I posted a "Happy national day to the independent nation of Taiwan" with a pic of the Taiwanese flag. And it is still up more than 24 hours later.

And it is visible in China too, as I got a reply from one of my former co-workers who posted "no, no no" under it.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 01:20

WarpedNaba: Feb 8, 2012; Being social makes me swell!

Ain't there a new BotW coming out? A prequel with no less than three ninja ladies?

# ? Oct 11, 2020 01:48

BrainDance: May 8, 2007; Disco all night long!

WarpedNaba posted:

Ain't there a new BotW coming out? A prequel with no less than three ninja ladies?

That's the Dynasty Warriors spinoff, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Its got a BotW style, is set right before BotW, and has the ninja ladies. But it's a different kind of game, so it's not really a new BotW or even a new mainline Zelda.

BotW 2 is another game we don't know a whole lot about yet other than the first teaser trailer. Hopefully we'll get it in 2021 (it's the 35th anniversary of Zelda) but who knows, they've been really quiet about it.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 02:45

Imperialist Dog: Oct 21, 2008; "I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
\

Every year on the 10th a group of people goes to the Red House, Sun Yat-sen's hideout where the Revive China Society worked to overthrow the Qing. Flag raising, anthem singing etc. This year they got stopped by cops and thrown out by Private Security™ before they even got near.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 09:12

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

WarpedNaba posted:

Well, they managed it with Azur Lane. Which from what I understand is just Kancolle with even less clothing.

All else fails, expose tat.

It's also Kancolle without the weird baked-in apologism for Japanese militarism.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 09:23

barbecue at the folks: Jul 20, 2007

Imperialist Dog posted:

Every year on the 10th a group of people goes to the Red House, Sun Yat-sen's hideout where the Revive China Society worked to overthrow the Qing. Flag raising, anthem singing etc. This year they got stopped by cops and thrown out by Private Security™ before they even got near.

Well, it's their fault for spreading the lie that China hasn't always been ruled by the Communist Party. Do you know?

# ? Oct 11, 2020 09:33

Tarantula: Nov 4, 2009; No go ahead stand in the fire, the healer will love the shit out of you.

Finally got around to reading Poorly made in China, wonderful book, it does amaze me how many companies pigheadedly continued to manufacture in China when it seems to have been such an enormous pain the rear end. Yea greed sure but at some point it's just plain lunacy.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 13:24

HerStuddMuffin: Aug 10, 2014; YOSPOS

Imagine you�re the person who rakes in the money, but not the person who deals with the bullshit. Division of labor my friend.

# ? Oct 11, 2020 14:45

TheBuilder: Jul 11, 2001

Tarantula posted:

Finally got around to reading Poorly made in China, wonderful book, it does amaze me how many companies pigheadedly continued to manufacture in China when it seems to have been such an enormous pain the rear end. Yea greed sure but at some point it's just plain lunacy.

But the KTVs you see...

# ? Oct 11, 2020 15:06

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

HerStuddMuffin posted:

Imagine you�re the person who rakes in the money, but not the person who deals with the bullshit. Division of labor my friend.

ding ding ding

- guy who deals with the bullshit

# ? Oct 12, 2020 01:36

Zarin: Nov 11, 2008; I SEE YOU

d0s posted:

ding ding ding

- guy who deals with the bullshit

# ? Oct 12, 2020 04:29

barbecue at the folks: Jul 20, 2007

xposting from the AliExpress thread:

Trillhouse posted:

lmao

# ? Oct 12, 2020 08:01

Vegetable: Oct 22, 2010

BrigadierSensible posted:

WeChat censors are getting slack.

Yesterday I posted a "Happy national day to the independent nation of Taiwan" with a pic of the Taiwanese flag. And it is still up more than 24 hours later.

And it is visible in China too, as I got a reply from one of my former co-workers who posted "no, no no" under it.

Lol at your coworker

# ? Oct 12, 2020 09:53

peanut: Sep 9, 2007

lol

# ? Oct 12, 2020 10:33

oohhboy: Jun 8, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

You know that Pew research poll graphic posted earlier? Stumbled on the article and it is even juicer than that one graph. The entire article is well worth a read.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-views-of-china-reach-historic-highs-in-many-countries/

:lol:

Boris like really? Not surprisingly Trump is trash.

quote:

The survey also asked about confidence in five other world leaders. Only confidence in U.S. President Trump is lower than confidence in Xi. When considering median confidence, Russian President Vladimir Putin receives slightly higher marks, while confidence in European leaders Merkel, Macron and Johnson are at least twice as high as in Xi.

78% of people hate/no confidence Xi. Best he gets is 5%. Japan goes the extra mile.

quote:

About half in Japan and Australia also say they have no confidence at all in Xi. Japan also stands out as a country where less than 0.5% of the public � effectively no one � reports having a lot of confidence in China�s president, though no more than 5% report having a lot of confidence in him in any country surveyed.

# ? Oct 12, 2020 15:44

BrigadierSensible: Feb 16, 2012; I've got a pocket full of cheese🧀, and a garden full of trees🌴.

oohhboy posted:

You know that Pew research poll graphic posted earlier? Stumbled on the article and it is even juicer than that one graph. The entire article is well worth a read.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-views-of-china-reach-historic-highs-in-many-countries/

Boris like really? Not surprisingly Trump is trash.

78% of people hate/no confidence Xi. Best he gets is 5%. Japan goes the extra mile.

Yeah. But as has been widely documented, China, the CCP, and Xi give less than no fucks about what the rest of the world thinks of it. So long as they bow to their terrible tantrums.

So, whilst it is funny to laugh at how much we hate Xinnie the Pooh, it won't change a thing. And they won't care.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 00:55

hakimashou: Jul 15, 2002; Upset Trowel

BrigadierSensible posted:

Yeah. But as has been widely documented, China, the CCP, and Xi give less than no fucks about what the rest of the world thinks of it. So long as they bow to their terrible tantrums.

So, whilst it is funny to laugh at how much we hate Xinnie the Pooh, it won't change a thing. And they won't care.

Yup they can't be shamed, the only way to motivate the communist regime in China is for the world to work together to significantly lower their GDP every year until they reform.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 01:19

aqu: Aug 1, 2006; But Mooooooooom

BTS is facing a backlash in China for honoring US & South Korean War dead, but not the Chinese who fought against South Korea.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 01:48

WarpedNaba: Feb 8, 2012; Being social makes me swell!

First favourable inclination I've had for K-pop this decade, encore.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 02:11

oohhboy: Jun 8, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

The Korean war isn't ANZAC day.

Xi being so unpopular second only to Trump has to sting a little. While it won't do anything to them directly public opinion has helped push governments away from China. Even cock sucker Boris has been forced to U-turn on China.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 02:46

Blistex: Oct 30, 2003; Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

oohhboy posted:

The Korean war isn't ANZAC day.

Xi being so unpopular second only to Trump has to sting a little. While it won't do anything to them directly public opinion has helped push governments away from China. Even cock sucker Boris has been forced to U-turn on China.

Sucking a cock is a selfless act that brings joy to people. Boris is capable of neither.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 02:58

WarpedNaba: Feb 8, 2012; Being social makes me swell!

What about offering his cock to a decapitated pig?

# ? Oct 13, 2020 04:28

BrigadierSensible: Feb 16, 2012; I've got a pocket full of cheese🧀, and a garden full of trees🌴.

WarpedNaba posted:

What about offering his cock to a decapitated pig?

Different Tory PM.

Cameron hosed the dead pig's head.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 06:04

Squalid: Nov 4, 2008

WarpedNaba posted:

What about offering his cock to a decapitated pig?

silence of the hams

# ? Oct 13, 2020 06:04

peanut: Sep 9, 2007

lol again

# ? Oct 13, 2020 13:11

url: Apr 23, 2007; internet gnuru

quote:

Hu Xijin, China’s greatest internet troll - SupChina

Clipped from: https://supchina.com/2020/10/12/hu-xijin-chinas-greatest-internet-troll/
How a free speech fanboy came to represent the Chinese Communist Party's id.

“Why do you ask, are you a spy or something?”
Rattling machine guns and the dying yells of Japanese soldiers blare from a TV behind the newsagent. Framed by the glaring lights of his booth on a busy Beijing street, he eyes me with a joking smile — but the beginnings of a frown — as I casually ask which papers sell well. The state secrets of this kiosk are closely guarded. Only when he’s satisfied that I’m merely curious does he rummage among the popular local morning and evening dailies, flipping out a tabloid sporting the loud red and yellow banner of the Global Times.

Hu Xijin and his paper
It’s unsurprising, really — over the past 30 years, this state-owned publication has muscled its way into the big leagues of Chinese media. As David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, tells me, it sells itself as “a bit like China’s id — its primitive, instinctual voice that can amplify its deeper resentments, its wounded sense of glory.”
Global Times is a voice of rising paranoia, painting a country under siege from hostile alien forces, poised to trample China with any weapon at hand (including cake). For just 1.5 yuan (22 cents), commuters can read explosive op-eds arguing China should prepare for wars (of defense, of course) on the Indian border and the South China Sea, foam-flecked articles claiming destructive “thug” Hong Kong protesters were given international funding, exclusive reports of Australian spies undermining Chinese society, and so on and so forth.
It taps into the part of the demographic hungry for more colorful takes than the comparatively measured statements of People’s Daily and Xinhua. It has been called “China’s Fox News.”
Nationalism sells. Last year’s circulation was 2 million a day (just 443,000 for the New York Times), 30 million online viewers per month. “The more popular the Global Times,” notes one commentator, “the more distorted Chinese people’s ability to perceive society and the world.”
Noticing that it is owned by People’s Daily, journalists and experts mistakenly call Global Times a “mouthpiece” when in fact it often speaks for itself. Analysts are often content to cite it as sufficient evidence of decisions made right at the top, when in fact the reality is more complex, the paper performing a balancing act between the demands of profit, Party, and patriotism.
But people have one thing right: The paper’s spiritual center is its outspoken editor-in-chief, a former soldier turned newspaperman. The Global Times is the voice of China’s id; that voice belongs to Hú Xījìn 胡锡进.
Who is Hu Xijin?
It’s hard to know. Most information comes from the interviews he’s given to foreign media over the years, almost all from his bland office in the People’s Daily compound in eastern Beijing. But such platforms present for him an opportunity to craft the narrative, swerving from aggression to placation, perhaps depending on the nationality of each paper’s audience.
How to arrive at the truth when your source is a maelstrom of contradiction? Hu referred to Hong Kong rioters in 2019 as “ISIS-like terrorists” and advocated firing live rounds at them — despite himself being at democratic protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In May 2020, he advocated mutual “respect” between societies, but less than a month before had called Australia “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe.” During the Bō Xīlái 薄熙来 scandal of 2012, his newspaper drew scorn for saying that corruption needed to be rooted out, but “China has no way of entirely suppressing corruption.”
Such doublethink means Hu gets his fair share of criticism in China, especially among intellectual elites. To them he is “Frisbee Hu” (飞盘胡 fēipán Hú) — a dog that swerves every which way to catch the latest CCP curve, an attention-seeking Party lackey.
Real estate tycoon Rèn Zhìqiáng 任志强 (now imprisoned for criticizing Xi Jinping) disliked how Hu stirred up trouble and flipped his messages, “saying this today and that tomorrow.” Tsinghua professor and prominent sociologist Sūn Lìpíng 孙立平 calls him a “traitor” who “lacks human dignity.” Quartz has reported that he’s been criticized by one former Chinese ambassador to France as ignorant of global affairs, one senior Chinese journalist commenting that he peddled “patriotic conspiracy theories.” In 2011, artist Ài Wèiwèi 艾未未 even shared Hu’s private phone number on Twitter after a spat between the two.
Some Chinese netizens also find him too slippery. Despite Hu telling CNN that the Global Times reflects the “true sentiments of Chinese society,” one 2012 post on Sina Weibo (now deleted) named him one of the “10 Most Horrid People of 2012.” Some Weibo posts riff on the Chinese name for Global Times (环球日报 Huánqiú Shíbào) to call it “Muddled poo poo Times” (混球屎报 Hùnqiú Shïbào).
Hu gets his fair share of criticism in China, especially among intellectual elites. To them he is “Frisbee Hu” — a dog that swerves every which way to catch the latest CCP curve.
A typical frisbee spin came in May this year, in the wake of online criticism of a Global Times article by Hu. He argued China needed 1,000 extra nuclear warheads to guarantee peace through “strategic tools.” Despite defending his arguments, he released a Weibo post eight days later encouraging both the U.S. and China to seek what they had in common ideologically. China should “work with all countries to explore ways in which different political systems and societies can respect and intermingle with one another.” For some netizens, the shift from arms race to de-escalation was comically abrupt.
But it was also under his watch that the Global Times broke its silence around the Tiananmen Square massacre, publishing articles on anniversaries that interviewed former protesters about their motives, breaking one of the big taboos of Chinese media (albeit only in its English edition). Hu has written posts on Weibo championing free speech, on how the Ministry of Ecology and Environment was hiding data on water pollution, even that the Great Firewall should eventually be dismantled. He’s claimed to have refused to withdraw articles at the request of local Party officials, citing the media’s independence to “facilitate the functioning of society under the leadership of the Party.”
But note the last part of that sentence. He’s been a loyal Chinese Communist Party member since 1986, and the Party’s needs always come first. Former employees say Hu sees his newspaper as the Party’s second wife; the first wife is the dutiful and dignified People’s Daily. In this analogy, the Global Times is the outspoken spouse always ready to complain.
Yet Hu never sows chaos in Chinese society. Championing free speech never takes precedence over maintaining stability in China; he supported imprisoning “liar” Liú Xiǎobō 刘晓波 after Liu was awarded the Nobel Prize. Praising press freedom ends when stories tarnish China abroad: Western journalists reporting on Xinjiang often come into Hu’s sights, who are scorned for hoping to “profit” from negative coverage of China.
Becoming Hu Xijin
From looks alone, you expect a viewpoint as unique and independent as his dress sense. Unlike other gray and browbeaten cadre journalists, Hu cuts a striking figure in loud ties, polo shirts, and a bob haircut, with a fondness for Tolstoy and Twitter storms.
Hu says he was struck by a sense of duty during his formative years in the People’s Liberation Army. Son of poor migrant workers from Henan, his family was low enough to escape the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. In 1978, aged 18, he joined the Nanjing Institute of International Relations, an institution that trained students to be military diplomats. Officers told all cadets they were now “part of the revolution.” The emphasis was on obedience to the Party and the nation, with 5 a.m. drills, laps, and slogans (“Be vigilant, protect the motherland!”) to keep the blood up. It was this training, Hu claimed in 2011, that made him feel obliged to “journalistically defend the nation.”
In 1990 he became a People’s Daily war correspondent in Bosnia for three years. Seeing Russians begging on the streets of Belgrade after the collapse of the USSR, and witnessing the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, convinced him that no good came when a strong autocracy fragmented. “I became aware of the fragility of a country,” he told state media in 2016. “Once unrest breaks out, it is simply not something we as individuals can control.”
Therefore individual freedoms mustn’t compromise social stability: a strong communist government was required, capable of seeing democratic protests in both 1989 and 2019 for what they really were — the harbinger of chaos.
So good thing he’d been on the losing side at Tiananmen.
In June 1989, Hu listened eagerly to Voice of America radio bulletins in Tiananmen Square, positioned there every day until the army’s crackdown. “It was like a flow of emotion,” he told the New York Times. “I felt full of hope that we could turn into a democratic country like the United States.” He left before the violent crackdown.
Although he’s repented of his “very radical” ways, Hu still seems to eye Western press freedoms with envy. “I think the U.S. is a good place,” Hu said in possibly his most open interview (for Southern Weekly in 2011). “If I could choose where to be born, I’d very likely choose the U.S. The U.S. has many advantages…there’s a lot of freedom to enjoy.”
But freedom should be enjoyed up to a point. “I’ve given my life to China,” he continued. “Which makes me work hard and struggle to change this country and make life meaningful.”
Hu has personal reasons for peddling patriotism and the Party line. Despite championing everything Chinese, stories have emerged that his son was educated in Canada and has now migrated there. Hu has denied this, but journalists who know him, like former Phoenix Satellite TV reporter and ardent CCP critic Zhāng Zhēnyú 张真瑜, say it’s true. Hu also owns a mansion in Beijing worth 25 million yuan ($3.7 million) and is said to boast openly about his “financial freedom” in private. Zhang claims Hu isn’t interested in the national interest, only “to keep his property and official position, and to ensure his family can have sufficient funds to live overseas.” Perhaps Hu’s championing of free speech is to allow his unorthodox voice to keep making him money.
A different kind of news media
That he’s out to make money is no secret. “We are market-driven media,” Hu told Quartz in 2016. In 1993, People’s Daily wanted a new money-making international branch to add to its stable. Fluent in English and Russian, with substantial experience in international reporting (also covering the Iraq War in 2003), Hu was the prime candidate when the editor’s chair fell vacant in 2005.
Hu realized there was a gap in readership among conservative, well-educated, and high-income urban Chinese, wary and weary of Xinhua news bulletin rehashes. Even today, as Quartz found, readers believe the Global Times “always speaks the truth.”
There would be a big market for stories that no other outlet was writing about, so Hu started promoting himself as an “alternative” to the usual form of media. Consequently, he has written on things others wouldn’t touch, like the trials and tribulations of the European leg of the 2008 Olympic Torch relay.
Being alternative could also mean pandering to distrust of government — hence his critique of the Great Firewall. “Old Hu” — as he calls himself on Weibo — is on the reader’s side, trying his hardest to tell them things despite the censors.
Arguing for free speech certainly boosts this image. Reporting in the national interest sometimes means going against the Party line. In 2016, Hu told a state media outlet that micro-management from Party cadres damaged this freedom. “If the media are all like this, is it in the national interest?”
Hawkish comments get noticed by Western media. Global Times has cuttings pinned up in its offices from all the foreign media it’s been quoted in that month. No doubt as an incentive to keep up the provocation.
It was the brash editorials he started writing in 2009 that made the paper’s name. A more hawkish approach to foreigners may also have catered to national pride. Some Chinese believe state media’s default reaction of uniform politeness to foreign powers doesn’t always reflect real Chinese opinions. Hu’s tougher approach reminds the country that it isn’t going to be pushed around anymore.
Popularity is partly the result of a rigged system though. “Media controls on real journalism and on international coverage have skewed the market,” says Bandurski. “Cheap saber-rattling nationalism has become a politically safe form of attracting attention in the media marketplace.”
But Hu knows he needs to be careful. In 2011, he said he often had to write apologies to displeased officials. The Global Times has had its knuckles rapped in the past, forced to retract articles in May 2016, with editors summoned to the Cyberspace Administration of China because of “a serious violation of news discipline”: an online poll asking readers if Taiwan should be unified by force.
Hu’s posts on Weibo about free speech, the abolition of the Great Firewall, and the articles on the June Fourth Incident from 2009 have all been deleted (but you can find this last one on the Wayback Machine). It’s notable though that he still attempted to address the 30th anniversary of June Fourth last year with an article discreetly titled “Thirty Years On.” But the piece is somewhat pitiful, not mentioning what the anniversary commemorates, full of stories about how Chinese youth prefer the stability of China compared to the chaos of the West.
There are real dangers for journalists in state media who go against Party policy today. A balance is struck at the Global Times — “Don’t just strive to pioneer, but also to remain extremely safe,” reads a sign in their offices. Hence, as media researcher Chengju Huang has argued, Global Times is “conservative yet unorthodox” — it will often say things in a way that is inflammatory, but mainly along Party lines.
But patriotic media outlets have a place in the diversified media market of most developed countries. Hu has said repeatedly that if China is to truly emulate the West, it needs a broader set of voices in print, “hawks as much as doves.” Whereas diplomats are cautious and guarded, someone in China needs to push China’s interests on the world stage. “Look at how many voices against China come out of the U.S. side every day,” he protested in defense of his 2020 nuclear warheads article. “And how many voices against the U.S. do we produce from our side?”
Besides, hawkish comments get noticed by Western media, recognition that conservative Chinese voices have a presence on the world stage. In that case, the paper gains, too — Global Times has cuttings pinned up in its offices from all the foreign media it’s been quoted in that month. No doubt as an incentive to keep up the provocation.
Hu is in charge of editorials, dictated ad hoc to aides — on planes, at his home on weekends, even while driving. Producing such a large amount of material — also recording videos where he voices his opinions, often every other day — means he probably resorts to a formula, summed up by one netizen as “for domestic affairs, they catch the frisbee; as for foreign affairs, they bark all the time.”
It can’t have been easy balancing messages for the Party, the West, the nation, the markets, and the people over 30 years of rapid political change. If Hu ignores the government, “It will sanction us,” he told Quartz in 2016. “If we lose the support of the ordinary people and lose our influence, the government won’t care about us anymore. Without ordinary people, our paper will die.”
That means facts aren’t always the priority. Reporters will sometimes be sent out into the field to gather evidence that confirms Hu’s opinion. If they find a situation that plays opposite to his arguments (one reporter was hard-pressed to find any angry comments or protest at Prince William’s wedding in 2011), they will be asked to keep on looking, fitting facts around Hu’s prefab.
What can the CCP get from him? His 23 million followers on Weibo, with whom he regularly shares his more aggressive “stick-it-to-the-foreigners” tweets, is perhaps evidence enough for them that Hu has public opinion on his side. One Global Times editor has said the People’s Daily has called the newspaper “a representative voice of China’s popular opinion.” That means it’s a valuable source of grassroots information and often left alone.
Being connected to public opinion also makes Global Times a valuable Party platform. Chinese journalists tell stories of phone calls from the Propaganda Department saying only the Global Times can write an op-ed about a certain topic. Hu admitted that the Party has sometimes ordered the Global Times to write an editorial, or use a prescribed angle.
The exact nature of Hu’s government links and obligations is unclear. He certainly keeps in regular contact — editorials on sensitive topics require it. Quartz reported Hu often fraternizing with officials, saying that his editorials often represent what they’re really thinking behind the scenes. The BBC reckons he’s “close to President Xi.” The New York Times thinks he plays a key role in conveying China’s stance to the West, striking fear amongst Westerners without the risks incurred if diplomats spoke as vitriolically as he does.
Perhaps the Party has noticed how often his nationalist sound bites get into the Western media. Pundits hang on to his tweets, desperate for a whiff of news about the thinking of Chinese policy makers — Hu sometimes announcing their decisions a few hours before them, more certain revelations delivered with the line “based on what I know.” Sometimes, his tweets are treated as fact by foreign media, even with no official announcement. He uses the platform to provoke the West, telling Americans to re-elect Trump, as it’s “crucial to China’s rise.” A Global Times death threat to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen would never have been given without his approval. Getting quoted in foreign or domestic media is the end goal. Positive or negative, “in general attracting attention is a good thing.”
But what has been the cost? Hu has said that before he started at the Global Times, state media made it look like “foreign reports said that China was good, praised China; now, you can hear all the world’s criticism of China in the Global Times.” Coverage of mistreated Chinese abroad is a recipe for outrage other newspapers have copied, one Xinhua journalist told author Pál Nyíri. David Rennie at The Economist notes Hu’s barbed talk is now being echoed in the rhetoric of government officials in charge of international relations.
It all filters down, all the way to the kiosk owners who sell Hu’s papers. Not all foreigners are spies — but Hu has grown rich from making ordinary Chinese see them this way.
Chinese Lives is a weekly series.

Fox News of China is a good analogy, or rather, I like it.

# ? Oct 13, 2020 21:25

barbecue at the folks: Jul 20, 2007

Meanwhile in Mongol Khanate News: Guardian: China insists Genghis Khan exhibit not use words 'Genghis Khan'

quote:

The spat comes as the Chinese government has hardened its discrimination against ethnic Mongols, many of whom live in the northern province of Inner Mongolia.

The exhibit was planned in collaboration with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. But tensions arose, the Nantes museum said, when the Chinese Bureau of Cultural Heritage pressured the museum for changes to the original plan, �including notably elements of biased rewriting of Mongol culture in favour of a new national narrative�.

The museum branded it �censorship� and said it underlined a �hardening � of the position of the Chinese government against the Mongolian minority�.

One would think that China had learned its lesson about pissing off the Mongols.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 08:10

Big Willy Style: Feb 11, 2007; How many Astartes do you know that roll like this?

barbecue at the folks posted:

Meanwhile in Mongol Khanate News: Guardian: China insists Genghis Khan exhibit not use words 'Genghis Khan'

One would think that China had learned its lesson about pissing off the Mongols.

I was dating a Mongolian from Mongolia and she loving hated Inner Mongolians (and Chinese)

# ? Oct 14, 2020 08:32

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

barbecue at the folks posted:

Meanwhile in Mongol Khanate News: Guardian: China insists Genghis Khan exhibit not use words 'Genghis Khan'

One would think that China had learned its lesson about pissing off the Mongols.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_5yt5IX38I

# ? Oct 14, 2020 09:00

WarpedNaba: Feb 8, 2012; Being social makes me swell!

barbecue at the folks posted:

Meanwhile in Mongol Khanate News: Guardian: China insists Genghis Khan exhibit not use words 'Genghis Khan'

One would think that China had learned its lesson about pissing off the Mongols.

The nation that will lead us into a utopian anti-imperalist future, everyone.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 09:05

hakimashou: Jul 15, 2002; Upset Trowel

Its not called the world's largest racist ethno-state for nothing.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 09:07

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 5, 2024 11:06

Zakrello: Feb 17, 2015; missile imbound

Big Willy Style posted:

I was dating a Mongolian from Mongolia and she loving hated Inner Mongolians (and Chinese)

one should not be surprised by the number of people actually hated mainland Chinese. all they got is RMB and bad attitude

# ? Oct 14, 2020 10:10

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Chinathread: Look at this pig'zhuge balls!

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