I wouldn’t say they think that he is dumb, at least that’s not how I interpret this. I even think that the netizens’ comments aren’t directed at Mbappé personally. He is certainly a great personality (there are no indication why we would assume anything else) and is a apparently a good sportsman, but he is also quite young with no experience in dealing with such political matters. And we can also reasonably assume he hasn’t good advisors around him who could be helpful here. So even as I think that his apology was a mistake, I wouldn’t blame Mbappé for this mistake as, in case of doubt, has done this in good faith.

What is unforgivable in my opinion are the apologies by his football club Real Madrid and the La Liga, the Spanish football league association. Instead of staying by a factual remark, they also apologized for Mbappé’s remarks.

Both the club and the association would lose money if Chinese sponsor pull back, but they would also certainly survive that. The responsible managers there have not only shown that they have no spine, they play entirely into the Chinese Communist Party’s hands as Mao was not only a dictator but also paved the way for continued repression in China today.

But that’s just my 2 cents to this.

The report cites 1,200 sources. The names and everything else is all in the pdf report.

The linked report names each of the Chinese provinces and municipalities, in which countries they have their ‘offices’ and which organizations are part of it, it shows dozens of images of police meetings and ‘liaison officers’, who they are, when the offices were founded, who reports to whom, when - all based on almost 1,200 (mostly Chinese) sources.

@[email protected]

Do you understand that this kind of whaboutism is particularly revealing as this Waymo video, unlike the Chinese JAC/Huawei case, is still visible on the web? Do you understand that the story isn’t just about the crash but about the censorship of a testing video that is endangering people’s lives?

I don’t get why the comments so far got deleted. They are all justified and don’t violate any of the rules here.

Yes, it’s mentioned in the linked article.

In China, the AI bubble has already burst

… The meltdown, tanking the mainland STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor leaders by 40% in less than four months and vaporising some $480 billion in market value, is an ill omen for wobbly world markets and a dampener on China’s efforts at encouraging its savers into stocks to fund the AI boom.

… With AI stocks running to 42% of China’s market capitalisation and 57% of turnover across mainland-listed A-shares and Hong Kong’s H-shares, according to Goldman Sachs, few in a market dominated by small investors have escaped pain.

… Shares in robot-maker Unitree, 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail buyers at listing, have halved since they started trading in August, and chipmaker CXMT has lost more than a quarter of its value in the past month.

… Chipmakers MetaX Integrated Circuits and Moore Threads Technology, which leapt 700% and 400% respectively on their market debuts last year, have also halved in value since July.

… Frustration that an investment theme backed by Beijing has ended so badly has driven many investors into defensive assets and is likely to slow equity fundraising by tech firms.

A remarkable detail in China, citing the report:

The frenzy and its fallout contrast with a push by authorities to improve returns and dampen volatility by cracking down on leverage and high-frequency trading. State-backed investors were sellers into rallies to keep gains in check.

[Emphasis mine.]

I guess what @[email protected] is referring to is China’s ‘pretend to work’ reality as has been reported by a wide range of outlets, e.g.,

China’s unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs

… Paying companies so you can pretend to work for them has become popular among young, unemployed adults in China. It has led to a growing number of such providers … Shui Zhou, 30, had a food business venture that failed in 2024. In April of this year, he started to pay 30 yuan ($4.20; £3.10) per day to go into a mock-up office run by a business called Pretend To Work Company, in the city of Dongguan, 114 km (71 miles) north of Hong Kong …

Fake it till you make it? Inside China’s ‘pretend to work’ trend as youth face surging unemployment

… Some take “pretend to work” further, renting desks in mock offices that recreate the rhythms of work - minus the employer.

Equipped with computers, desks, meeting rooms and internet access, these spaces are gaining popularity in major Chinese cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu …

What is a good source to inform yourself if the China-appointed so-called ‘Tibetan leader’ presides over a symposium on promoting ‘ethnic unity’ in Tibet?

Immigrants in the U.S. make up more than 15% of the total population. Even Russia has more than 5%.

Edit:

Maybe Hong Kong can be a hint for what happens in China regarding migration.

Before 1997, when Hong Kong was transferred from UK to China rule, the city had a largely positive net migration. As a result, the city grew from 3.9 million people in the 1950s to almost 7 million in the mid-1990s.

In this century, however, Hong Kong experienced a trend of negative net migration that has been increasing since the beginning of the 2020s, supposedly due the introduction of the National Security Law and the pandemic. The trend: Young people are increasingly leaving Hong Kong, while immigrant come largely from China’s mainland.

As I said, it’s not only the size of the population but also the state of the Chinese economy. And, as said, China is more and more becoming a threat for foreigners. China’s government is doing the exact opposite of what it should do.

I don’t know why you post this interview about the U.S. here. This is about China.

… due to its size, the impact that immigration can have to mitigate it is limited.

The problem isn’t the size of the country but rather - as the article also says - China’s “increasingly ethnocentric path.”

Foreign residents make up 0.1% of China’s total population, that’s the lowest rate in the world. In Germany and Italy, the two countries you mentioned, the rates are 21% and 11%, respectively.

The total fertility rate (measured as number of births per woman) is 1.0 in China, among the lowest in the world. In Hong Kong, it is even 0.75. Experts say you need a rate of 2.1 to sustain the current population.

Unlike may Western countries, China is a low-income country with rising inequality in the country (inequality levels have reached the levels of the U.S. in the meantime). This is have a grave impact on China’s ability to care for the pensioners.

Even Chinese experts have long been called for state measures - such as increasing the retirement age, encouraging immigration, and other measures. But the government’s decision to raise its retirement age is widely considered as too little, and Xi Jinping’s policy, ranging from National Security Laws to a sharp increase in the number of exit bans for foreigners and from transnational repression to secret detentions of people without a trial, doesn’t exactly encourage people to migrate to China; it’s rather the opposite.

What has this to do with the linked article’s topic?

Some attempts to engage in whataboutism is almost hilarious.