In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek. 1/20
This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda. 2/20 bsky.app
In today’s Wumao Soup, I’ll introduce how and where the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda and influence operations work. Due to China’s massive population and advances in AI, CCP-aligned online content has become increasingly visible. 1/20
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened. 3/20
2 - Mao Zedong’s democide The founder of the People’s Republic of China is responsible for millions of deaths, yet he’s still revered by the regime, even more so than Stalin by Putin. Imagine if Hitler were still celebrated in Germany and Hitlerism were its official ideology. 4/20
3 - Taiwan is a country Taiwan was never part of the People’s Republic of China, so no, it can’t be “separatist” from it nor a “renegade province.” China wants to conquer it through a murderous process called “war”. But they’ll call you a warmonger if you’re against that. 5/20
Just like Russia, they deny their target’s legitimacy to justify invading them. Both invaders rant about their “historical mission” to expand their empire, and the same vatniks justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are already encouraging a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. 6/20
4 - Free Tibet As a precedent to China’s planned invasion of Taiwan: they invaded, conquered, and annexed Tibet 75 years ago. Notice how no one dares suggest a referendum on independence. Curious. 7/20
5 - Hong Kong Hong Kong didn’t “choose stability.” Beijing broke its own treaty obligations, dismantled autonomy, jailed opposition figures, and criminalised dissent. Again, no referendum on self-determination. 8/20
6 - Uyghur genocide The Chinese government has detained over a million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, imposing mass internment, forced labor, cultural and religious repression, and reproductive controls — textbook genocide. 9/20
7 - Ghost towns Cities where no one lives, trains that no one rides, shopping malls where no one goes shopping. The “Chinese miracle” is debt-fuelled and a huge bubble of government-planned projects ignoring market demand and wasting resources. 10/20
8 - Ecocide Caves filled with garbage. Overfishing the seas. Coal mining. CO₂ emissions. China is basically the biggest polluter in the world. But of course you’ll see cute videos of some isolated tiny green project somewhere. 11/20 bsky.app
How China’s massive overfishing endangers global ecosystems
9 - China just disappears people Like in Russia, you can get rich or famous in China - as long as you support the regime. If not — public figures regularly “disappear” from public view. If they reappear at all, it’s to make public confessions or suddenly alter their views. 12/20
10 - Chinese police stations abroad China is operating illegal overseas police stations to monitor, intimidate, and coerce Chinese nationals abroad, when threatening their families back home is not enough to silence them or force them to support the regime. 13/20
11 - COVID pandemic When Chinese doctors tried to warn the world early, the authoritarian regime silenced them. And then switched to totalitarian controls once the virus had already spread. 14/20
12 - Authoritarian regime China has no free elections and no independent courts. The hukou (household registration) is a de facto caste system, limiting where people can live, work, get healthcare, or send their kids to school. 15/20
The CCP regime even tries to control how many children people can have: first with the one-child policy, including the horrors of forced abortions, and now, predictably, with top-down orders in the other direction. Peak authoritarian central planning at work. 16/20
13 - Censorship: “the great firewall of China” No free press, no freedom of speech, and like in Russia, Twitter is blocked in China. So basically, anyone tweeting to defend the regime that blocks normal people from tweeting: very suspicious, you can assume they’re a wumao. 17/20
14 - Imperialist hybrid aggression China is bullying the Philippines and other countries with its fishing and military vessels, showing again its true colors. Expect wumaos to somehow blame it on the US, or do their usual cringe comparisons and “whataboutism” about it. 18/20
15 - China is helping Russia China is helping Russia invade Ukraine, and in return Russia could help China invade Taiwan. And it would be harder for the US to squeeze out of its obligations to defend Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan… 19/20
… than ignoring the Budapest Memorandum regarding Ukraine. It is also obvious that China is observing how the invasion goes in Ukraine and the world’s response to decide whether or not to invade Taiwan. The only way to avoid World War 3 is therefore still to support Ukraine. 20/20
Chinese propaganda is less sophisticated than the Russian one, but… the amount of energy needed to refute wumao BS is still an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. Fact-based research takes time and effort. Please support our work: vatniksoup.com
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