I've said this before, but there's a dynamic where China combines the worst of two worlds—a very real technological surveillance state, plus a leadership team that is being fed back its own propaganda. This decoupling from reality makes it hard to do GAME THEORY
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An underreported aspect of this too is how the big scary technologies China is using for oppression—like mass facial recognition and AI—don't work that well. Their widespread deployment adds further abitrariness and terror to people's lives. It's phrenology with labor camps.
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Anyway, you don't need AI or a global surveillance network to understand what Hong Kongers want. You don't even need to speak Chinese, they helpfully chant in English from time to time. The fact that this information isn't privately getting through to Beijing is very significant
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There's an alternate universe where China could have used its incredible capacity to infiltrate and observe the protests, made skillful use of Cantonese-speaking agents to channel decisions and conversations on LiHKG, subverted Telegram groups etc. But we're in the derp timeline.
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you talking about hong kong in 2019 or guangzhou in 1838?
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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The PRC internal confidential reporting system -- reference news -- 内部参考消息 -- is supposed to prevent the leadership from being blinded by its own propaganda. Even they are too intimidated to report what is going on and to translate western press reports?
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Alas yes - even in 2013-2014 Xinhua people were telling me the content was going badly downhill. I think it was 2014 that they killed the equivalent of the 'dissent channel' at the MFA too.
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