Speak softly, and carry a big chip

Re:Speak softly, and carry a big chip by komali2 on Saturday January 21, 2023 @11:15PM (#34474198)

Xi is incredibly popular across the PRC, and the textbooks are changing to enforce a new cult of personality. I wouldn't risk speculating on his popularity as a measure of whether or not an imperialist invasion would happen.

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Re:Speak softly, and carry a big chip by ssnistfajen on Sunday January 22, 2023 @02:05AM (#34475115)

The whitepaper protests clearly shows he doesn't enjoy incredible popularity, so are the massive censorship term lists that consist solely of nicknames of Xi. Why would so many of these terms exist if everybody liked him?

Leaked censorship list of 564 terms containing references to Xi Jinping from Xiaohongshu, a popular social media app, circa 2020: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9...

Leaked censorship list of 35467 terms containing references to Xi Jinping from LeTV, a once-popular video streaming service, issued directly from the State Council Information Office, circa 2016: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%9B%BD%E6%96%B0%E5%8A...

The bottom line is an invasion of Taiwan carries a high risk of ruin for the ruling clique in the CCP. There were multiple times when the ROC was in much more vulnerable positions both militarily and diplomatically (pre-Korean War and post-US-PRC approachment) and invasions didn't happen then. The PRC is much more export-dependent than Russia despite all the nationalist hysteria, and ruining all that with sanctions is going to do far more damage to themselves compared to simply keeping the propaganda machine running with inciteful editorials.

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