UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮

Witnessing decades of change happening in the span of weeks 见证历史

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

“It's an amazing trick that our politicians are winning elections now by raising taxes but calling them tariffs instead.”

https://t.co/J6OoEDBgwf via @YouTube

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@DavidLe76335983 “A beautiful sight to behold”

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@RnaudBertrand @Desktop_Lover The reason is simple — they’re too used to dealing with China/rest of the world that way and are too arrogant/racist/misinformed to change 😏

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it's by their Shanghai bureau chief - not some outside contributor.

The title is "The China debate cannot continue like this!" and the article makes the case that it's suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it's rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China - whichever direction they go (anti or pro) - then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people's imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it's literally the main point I've been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light...

I also believe, as I argued in my article "Are Western media turning China-friendly?" last year (https://t.co/Xg1hoSRtNy) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don't have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don't want to, they just won't do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is... convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you're a journalist reading this and you're peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that's simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a "threat" to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn't China. It's you.

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

There’s always been a disproportionate number of Indians in senior government positions, since the LKY days.

And there’s been large numbers of South Asian migrant workers working in construction for decades — photos showing large number of Indian congregations are nothing new.

So it’s always been this way in Singapore, long before the Indianisation of the West/Silicon Valley became a thing.

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@kaiblvg @Xitler_Jinping @AngelicaOung That’s much harder to proof/disproof.

Just tell us what are the lies that’s supposedly been sold?

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@randommartyr @CollinRugg Which would make a lot more sense, from a "isolated from the world" perspective

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@D162Michele The US can’t even “won’t allow” Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz 😏

[Kaiser Kuo @KaiserKuo]

If this goes forward — $250 bill with Trump's face on it. — Chinese will get a huge kick out of it. "250" (二百五， èrbǎiwǔ) is a common Chinese insult meaning a half-wit, a blockhead, a fool. Comedy writes itself. 笑死.

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@peihwaho @UnderSecE Maybe he’s truly that ignorant/misinformed of what his side is doing that he actually believes TSMC is not subservient.

Not sure which is worse, the duplicity or the ignorance

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@peihwaho @UnderSecE 💯

To bring up TSMC in this context as an example of independence is hilarious

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@BrianKoontz59 @DavidLe76335983 “Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuke” is just an excuse/smokescreen.

The US has been saying this for decades so what’s different this time?

The difference is, Bibi managed to trick Trump into going to war with Iran 😏

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@graciehartie 💯

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@RnaudBertrand It’s come full circle 😏

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@ContraTurtleX @graciehartie Futon is just a thicker Ti Lam 😉

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@graciehartie Good post

It’s conspicuous over-consumption driven by “look how shiny my life is” on social media

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@D162Michele “given him great international stature”

That must have been a hard sentence to write 😏

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@DavidLe76335983 “I didn’t want to do it but they asked me to!”

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@clashreport I thought Trump around tried that (with the >100% tariffs on China post Liberation Day) but TACO’ed

So why would it be different the 2nd time round 🤔

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

Their leader is the best because they’re “democratically elected”, like literally in a popularity contest.

If that was the best way to select a leader the same capitalists would be having elected leaders run their companies.

So it’s double standards — meritocracy for corporate governance but liberal democracy for state governance

[UnWoke 🧢🍉🌮 @Lets_Go_TACO]

@AngelicaOung @imperial_flag That’s why Kishore Mahbubani said CCP is more “Chinese Civilisation Party”

One of the most insightful things he’s said, which is saying something