New from me: a Chinese student at University of Sydney went missing and allegedly has been sentenced to six years in China, for participating in protests in Australia, including solidarity protests for China’s ethnic minority groups:
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Yes! Went yesterday and Twitter (as curated for me) is 90% “I visited China and it’s amazing” posts.
Even so, the industry’s capabilities and ambitions should be taken seriously Many advanced firms are spinoffs of elite research institutions trying to monetize cutting-edge work. Plus advances in generative AI have already been substantial.
Researchers at
@doublethinklab.bsky.social
analyzed some of the accounts mentioned in the GoLaxy files and found them to be early stage and not yet engaging in any sophisticated campaigns. Read their analysis (including key takeaways on the leaked files) here: medium.com/doublethinkl...
Now some companies are developing fully autonomous systems. GoLaxy is one of them. As far as I can tell, based on the leaked documents, these systems are still experimental and perhaps somewhat less capable in practice than described here in the New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/o...
This works well enough in a domestic context, where it's easy to recruit people to flood platforms with the help of semi-automated "commenter" apps. Works less well in global contexts, where foreign language skills are required and messages need to be tailored to appeal to foreign audiences.
Companies offer specific products for managing paid human online commenters (apps usually referred to as 网评员管理系统, 网评管理系统, 网评管理平台 or similar). Though many of these apps are called "smart", they are not fully autonomous and still rely heavily on human labor.
But also because the Chinese party-state (military, state security, some other central ministries and departments) have an interest in engaging in "public opinion warfare" (舆论战) on Western social media platforms
The main focus have been Chinese domestic social media, but companies also offer services for Western social media, in part because lower level party and government departments in China worry about negative public opinion that can originate there
The industry originally came into being because public sentiment and related "incidents" are seen as threats. Public opinion management (舆论处置), including monitoring, but also interventions including via managed online commenters, are a big priority for any cadre in China who wants to keep their job.
I've been tracking the "public sentiment industry" that GoLaxy is a part of for the past few years. My friend and colleague Jessica Batke and I wrote a piece about them in 2020 after analyzing public procurement documents from units in China wanting their services: www.chinafile.com/reporting-op...
These companies occasionally make the headlines, including last August, when 400 pages of a company called GoLaxy (中科天玑 in Chinese), outlining their capabilities and ambitions, leaked www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/u...
I wrote about China’s expanding social media monitoring and manipulation industry: the firms building and deploying bot networks for party-state actors and expanding into Western platforms. You can read the piece here: www.gmfus.org/news/outsour...
A few points about the industry🧵
New: Beijing has issued a direct threat to retaliate against EU companies, should the EU move forward with its proposed cybersecurity act, which would hit Chinese firms
Hey if anyone was looking for a way to communicate to the median voter why they should care about keeping Taiwan free and the SCS open for navigation, the Hormuz Strait is providing an excellent example for what happens when you lose the open seas
Worth these cases from overseas are almost certainly not outliers, it's just info from within China is better controlled
Germany's far-right AfD leader calls for withdrawal of all US troops (h/t @abenewman.bsky.social ).
Several factors at work:
🧵
I'm fairly left leaning, but I need somebody with more solid leftist credentials to explain to @progintl.bsky.social that the "whole-process people's democracy" propaganda line in this piece is, politely speaking, complete bs. Publishing this is not progressive, it just shows you have no clue.
Man a lot of people are unable to conceive what the end of Pax Americana actually entails.
GMF’s Zsuzsanna Végh joined FT's Gideon Rachman on The Rachman Review to discuss Hungary’s pivotal parliamentary elections this April.
Listen to the full podcast: https://bit.ly/47mlpfp
Jeez - these numbers for Europe are absolutely bonkers
China's trade data for the first 2 months of the year.
Exports to the EU up 27.8%
Exports to Germany up 31.3%
Exports to Netherlands up 17.9%
Exports to France up 31.9%
Exports to Italy up 36.4%
I read this book a few years ago and highly recommend it!
If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.
It feels almost quaint to appeal to joint EU action at this point, but that's honestly our only chance.
Please understand that China is an actual place with its own structures and problems and not some pendulum that swings only in reaction to US actions.
Begging folks to recognize when they are being called the adversary
Die drittgrößte Volkswirtschaft der Welt macht sich klein: In Peking schrumpft der Kanzler den Krieg mitten in Europa zur »Ukraine-Frage«. Auch sonst wählte Friedrich Merz bei Xi Jinping zu weiche Worte.
Kommentar @spiegel.de (10-mal frei)
www.spiegel.de/ausland/mein...
Yep, the 4-5 different searches thing is exactly what I'm doing now, so if that could be combined in one (mostly reliable) search, that would be great.
