Noel Ho

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Flailing U.S. Military Commits More Atrocities In Iran / Iran's Massive ... https://t.co/OATJOPJsac via @YouTube

[Jason Smith - 上官杰文 @ShangguanJiewen]

This chart is the reason for the flash flood on the China-Nepal border.

Chinese and Nepali rescue teams continue rescue operations even now.

This tragedy and the rescues are being closely watched within China, in the media, and on social media.

[Noel Ho @noelho]

There is no Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang, China https://t.co/sixG2zOZb0 via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

🚨 BREAKING: US b0mbs CHILDRENS HOSPITAL in Iran https://t.co/dIMX59zBCc via @YouTube

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

The funniest part of this NYT piece is that it accidentally explains why China’s image keeps improving.

Washington wages wars.
Sanctions half the planet.
Threatens secondary sanctions.
Pulls forces across regions.
Alienates allies.
Then wonders why Beijing gains leverage by simply refusing to join the self-destruction.

The article admits it itself:

Xi does not want to be entangled in foreign wars, seeing them as one of the reasons U.S. power has waned over the decades.

That is the whole story.

China did not need to manufacture a better image.
America did the advertising for it.

One side keeps setting itself on fire to prove it is still powerful.
The other side stands outside the flames and trades with everyone.

It is less that China profited from the wars than that America made China look better by comparison.

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Three shocking things in today's attack on China in the Guardian https://t.co/30rLAIOes1 via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Every Single Narrative on China... Is WRONG https://t.co/9nfBHH2tHl via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator?

More like lying sack of shit that makes up bullshit narratives.

This idiot makes the world a worse place, with their bullshit and lies.

[Noel Ho @noelho]

@Chellaney You are so full of shit.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Everything - and I mean everything - Chellaney is saying is a bald-faced lie.

Which is absolutely disgusting: using such a tragedy - which killed hundreds (if not thousands, we don't know yet) of Nepalis and Chinese alike - to manufacture an entirely fake geopolitical narrative is genuinely beyond the pale.

1) The collapse happened on the Nepal side, not the "Tibetan side": as confirmed by Nepal themselves (https://t.co/hVvGlMNzSP) and as obvious from satellite imagery (https://t.co/B6SRZ6dkOr), Langtang Lirung, where the glacier collapsed, is entirely within Nepalese territory - this is not even a borderline case.

2) There is exactly zero "Chinese hydrological modifications and infrastructure footprint" in this area. You just need to check satellite imagery around the collapse side to check it out: https://t.co/TKvdc0PKgO. It's an extremely wild and unpopulated mountainous area.

The only "infrastructure" there is a border checkpoint, a road, and a bridge that have existed in some form since the 8th century (https://t.co/pkZVW8xPZe). There are no dams. No hydrological modifications. Nothing.

3) On the "no warning" claim: this one is probably the most egregious of all because Chellaney is blaming China for not warning Nepal about something that happened **inside Nepal**.

And, in any case, once the mountain collapse, warnings would unfortunately not have changed people's fates: the mudslide reached the border crossing - just 25km away - within just 7 minutes and 40 seconds (https://t.co/eKzfNAzNn7). There is no conceivable warning system that would have enabled a meaningful evacuation in under eight minutes.

4) If anything, one of the lessons of this terrible tragedy is that you actually WANT more infrastructure footprint in that area, Chinese or otherwise, if only to monitor if nearby mountains or glacier are showing signs of instability.

Entire mountains just don't collapse from one day to the next without showing early signs of weakness that the right sensors could pick up days or weeks in advance.

So the right answer to save lives in the region in the future, which I strongly suspect Chellaney doesn't give the slightest damn about, is more Chinese-Nepali cooperation on joint monitoring infrastructure.

This is unfortunately not Chellaney's first rodeo with anti-China narratives designed to sow division and hatred between developing countries.

He is the man, for instance, who infamously coined the "debt-trap diplomacy" narrative (since thoroughly debunked - see https://t.co/y1EaERG0R5 - but still widely believed) to poison developing countries' relationships with China and thereby deprive them of infrastructure investment they badly need.

How many roads, ports, and railways were delayed or canceled across Africa and Asia because governments were scared off by a narrative that turned out to be false?

It's exactly the same pattern here: a catchy lie designed to sow division and hatred between countries at the exact moment they need each other most.

I hate to say this but, behind all this, there is also a wider India angle. Anyone who's followed posts on X about this tragedy know that the overwhelming share of the disinformation about it - all aimed at weaponizing the tragedy to blame China - has come from thousands of Indian accounts like Chellaney's.

And, given how aggressively India censors social media (shutting down up to thousands of X accounts a week: https://t.co/Se02KGlAYX), the tolerance about this anti-China misinformation campaign unfortunately speaks for itself.

All the more, in this instance, since Chellaney is deeply connected in the Indian government and was a member of India's National Security Advisory Board (https://t.co/DbRh142dNx).

At the risk of stating the obvious, it's pretty pathetic and deeply short-sighted.

This is the case for this specific strategy: every glacier that threatens Nepal threatens northern India just as much: the next collapse could just as easily send a wall of mud into Uttarakhand. And if it does, India will need exactly the kind of cross-border China-Nepal monitoring cooperation that narratives like Chellaney's are designed to destroy.

And it is the case more broadly too: when your strategy consists of turning your neighbors against each other based on lies, sooner or later they realize that the one thing they actually have in common is being deceived by you - and that makes you, not China, the common threat.

[Noel Ho @noelho]

When China Was Weak, the West Sold Opium. Now It Lectures China - Kishor... https://t.co/X5Ms1POSUp via @YouTube

[Jason Smith - 上官杰文 @ShangguanJiewen]

A little point about who freed the slaves...

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Stability in Asia? Unlikely While Japan's Military Resurges https://t.co/lecG3RGvOY via @YouTube

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is just pure unadulterated propaganda by the BBC.

And it takes literally 2 seconds to debunk: go on Xiaohongshu (or any other Chinese social networks), type a keyword related to the mudslide (I typed "泥石流", "mudslide") and you'll see thousands of posts with footage about it - including from state media (the first post in my screenshot is from People's Daily)🤷

Even crazier - which shows the extent to which the BBC thinks its audience are complete idiots - their lead example of footage that supposedly isn't being shown in China is… footage that comes from China!

This is how they open their article:

"The dramatic footage was almost impossible to miss. A torrent of water tearing through Gyirong Port, one of the main border crossings between Nepal and Tibet, sweeping away all in its path as hundreds of people fled for their lives.
The scenes, captured by CCTV cameras, quickly spread on social media and onto screens around the world.
Except here, in China."

We've all seen this footage, which is Chinese CCTV footage, released first in China, and extremely widely spread on Chinese social media (it's in the 3rd post on my Xiaohongshu screenshot below 👇).

It's literally insane: they think you're stupid enough not to notice that they're using Chinese footage as their lead example to claim China isn't showing footage 🤦

This also all points to a deeper issue: China does have a completely different and largely insulated media ecosystem with little overlap with Western media, and extremely little reach in the West.

Which means it's trivially easy for outlets like the BBC to make false claims about what's happening in China that:
a) their readers will never check: it's actually difficult to for foreigners to access Chinese social networks, if only for the language barrier.
b) won't be challenged by the other side: Chinese media has so little reach in the West that there's essentially no one to push back. It's like lying about someone who isn't in the room.

That's the irony when you read about "Chinese propaganda": the bigger issue is that it actually doesn't really exist - at least not in a material way - and therefore falsehoods about China can be written with an impunity that they could never get away with if they were writing about, say, France or Germany.

As I keep repeating, this is actually mostly bad for the West because - given the importance of China in the world today - this is a country you simply cannot afford to misunderstand. Bad journalism about China is a strategic liability.

So, in a somewhat ironic way, if there were one genuine "China threat" worth worrying about, it's this: that China is not great at communicating about itself with the outside world and Western publics are left with garbage BBC articles to understand it.

[Noel Ho @noelho]

China's Debt Trap Narrative: Just How Real is it? https://t.co/jgN1Q0LGOR via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Is it safe? https://t.co/5d5dLgFxQM via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

Britain Has RAW Sewage. China Has High-Speed Rail. | Steve Keen SCHOOLS ... https://t.co/6szI310gPW via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT THE JAPANESE HAVE DONE IN CHINA! 🇨🇳 THE NANJING MAS... https://t.co/QZgUr5FIsu via @YouTube

[Noel Ho @noelho]

'China Is Capitalism Masquerading as Communism!' | Aaron Bastani DESTROY... https://t.co/pToiEHeGYZ via @YouTube