This article is utter tosh, whatever one's position on Trump, Pope Leo XIV, or the morality of the Iran war. Essentially every paragraph is nonsense. It reads like borderline satire at times. One example of the idiocy of the piece among others, I quote "... 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴", which is a truly insane thing to write, given that the first salvo of the war was literally a double-tap on a school that killed ~150 schoolgirls. It's puzzling this embarrassing piece passed an editor at the Times. thetimes.com/comment/columni…

This speech *is* one for the history books. But that’s less a compliment, than a coda. Carney has given us the words to mark the end of the ‘rules-based order’…by acknowledging it never really existed. It was a collective illusion. That now is over.

Chinese internet users have recreated the lives of Chinese children millennia ago by combining artificial intelligence with Song Dynasty paintings (960 - 1279 AD), revealing what it was like for children to grow up in ancient China and how they spent their childhood. The paintings are: Assaulting the Jujube Tree (扑枣图), unknown author, Song Dynasty (960 - 1279 AD); BathingBuddha’s Icon (灌佛戏婴图), Su Hanchen, (1094 - 1172); One Hundred Children in the Long Spring (长春百子图), Su Hanchen, (1094 - 1172). AI generated by: 刘皇叔AI创作/小红书

Wtf again. @ChannelNewsAsia just can't help themselves. This time they're mistranslating basic Chinese from the recent parade, possibly maliciously. During the drive-by, Xi says: "同志们辛苦了", which means "Comrades, you’ve worked hard!". The soldiers respond "为人民服务!", which means "To serve the people!" @ChannelNewsAsia's translations? They translate "同志们辛苦了" as "It's been tough on you, comrades." That's okay I guess. But then, they translate "为人民服务!" as "It's not been tough, Chairman." What the fuck? The rest of the translations in the video are fine, so I don't think the translator was incompetent. Which suggests that... the glaring mistranslation was on purpose? Perhaps they don't want us to see Chinese society as a selfless, people-first collective? @govsingapore, @joteo_ylm what is wrong with this news org?

The danger of losing Chinese identity, culture and language - Lee Kuan Yew

“Mr. Bean” on free speech in UK. Video: @christianorguk

This is a very interesting study by King's College London on the coverage of China in British media. kcl.ac.uk/news/british-media… No surprise, it found that coverage of China is systematically negative across all mainstream media outlets, with an "almost total lack of any positive coverage of China in the British media". And interestingly whilst you often hear the media defend themselves by saying they criticise "the government, not the people", the study found that's not the case at all: "it is China, not (just) the Communist Party of China, that is framed negatively in the British media". They also looked at whether having journalists based in China made the coverage more balanced and found they emphasized the negative just as much as their colleagues in Britain. An example is The Economist's Chaguan’s columns, written by David Rennie who's Beijing-based: their analysis "identified negative coverage in 84% of Chaguan’s columns, with only four reports (1.5 %) being coded neutral-to-positive, and none clearly positive." Even the Financial Times, often considered the most nuanced media out there, was found to be stunningly biased. The study looked at 133 "Big Read" on China written during a period of 4 years (2019-2022) and found that just 2 (1.5%) had been positive versus 115 (86%) negative, and the rest neutral. As the study notes, this "has important implications for Britain’s policies towards China" because"if media coverage is predominately negative, public opinion is bound to sway the same way. This, in turn, makes it more likely that the UK will adopt a more critical policy toward China". In other words, what we're looking at here is what Chomsky calls "manufacturing consent". Think about that next time you are tempted to think the West has a "free press"...

That red-carpet treatment Elon Musk received in his surprise trip to China on Sunday contrasts with Tesla’s long-standing impasse with India. trib.al/HxTioKi

【单边开放】 …visa-free for citizens from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia from December 1, 2023, to November 30, 2024. …no more than 15 days for business, tourism, family visits and transit purposes. chinadaily.com.cn/a/202311/2…

Australia and China have come a long way in the 50 years since Gough Whitlam made his historic visit. This is a relationship that matters to Australia and to the stability of our region.

For love!

Dribble charging! Gavin Newsom,The governor of California is in a primary school in Beijing.

A tutor once told me that we didn't have to be *right*; we just had to formulate a compelling argument. I immediately knew he was wrong. Scholars have to pursue truth, not chase fashions and concoct arguments out of thin air. cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Thank you for a lively discussion on #DigitalEmpires hosted by @AISingapore and @NUSingapore yesterday. Terrific comments by @ProfChesterman, David Tan and other AI experts and scholars!

A positive step towards Responsible Regulation

China to embrace AI advances but also control risks as ChatGPT wave spreads scmp.com/tech/policy/article… via @scmpnews

"Inspired by psychological studies on human judgment, this Article ... catalogues the main social and cognitive mechanisms through which various well-organized interest groups can exploit public fear of foreign direct investment from China."

A near full translation of #China's State Council institutions reform plan is presented by Ginger River Review (#GRR) with the official notes by State Councilor Xiao Jie, diagrams, & a review of previous Party and state institutions reforms. gingerriver.com/p/what-is-ch…