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David Fickling
@davidfickling
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
It's very revealing of the state of informed debate in Washington that you can be published on the pages of the @wsj as a Taiwan expert without knowing the difference between "one China policy" and "one China, two systems".

HT @heguisen
wsj.com/articles/ameri…
(Former is backed by the U.S. government and the KMT; latter by neither)
Ahem latter *in relation to Taiwan* by neither
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David Fickling
@davidfickling
I've long had a sneaking suspicion that Trump is deep down pretty opposed to Middle Eastern wars -- not out of principle, but because of a superstitious feeling that it's bad for his businesses:
Trump Taj Mahal went bankrupt about six months after the first Gulf War ended in 1991.

The Plaza Hotel and Trump Casinos both filed for Chapter 11 the year after the Iraq War ended, in 2004.
There was a kerfuffle during the 2016 election campaign with Trump saying he'd always publicly opposed the Iraq War, which didn't quite match his public statements.

But he was certainly distinctly downbeat about it, at a time the whole nation was cheerleading for war.
Read 5 tweets
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David Fickling
@davidfickling
People like to describe China's social credit system as an Orwellian new tool of centralized control.

In truth, it's much more like the chaotic, nonsensical oppression of a Franz Kafka story (thread):
bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/ar…
There's been a lot of ink spilled about the social credit system since it was first mooted in 2014, and IMO a lot of it is off the mark.

That's not because I don't think China is an oppressive authoritarian society (it is!) but because social credit doesn't really change that.
The basic idea of social credit is that each Chinese citizen gets something like the personal credit rating you would get from Experian. But then you add or subtract points for "social" behaviour that's not clearly relevant to your creditworthiness.
Read 22 tweets
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David Fickling
@davidfickling
Are the people who named Suzhou's social credit system "Osmanthus" Black Mirror scriptwriters on the side?

bloomberg.com/news/features/…
The whole report is worth a detailed read. Bumbling incompetence and capricious enforcement, rather than efficient totalitarianism, seems the biggest risk from the social credit system in Suzhou.

More Kafka/"Brazil" than Orwell.
Xinjiang looks like a whole different kettle of fish, though
Read 3 tweets

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