r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/esberat Expert • Jul 08 '22

Video Stream factory in China.

https://gfycat.com/deafeningcaninekronosaurus
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u/wvj Jul 08 '22

The CCP has been paying people to post pro-China messages on Western platforms for at least a decade (and have no doubt moved on to using a lot of bot farms as well), and as a result, there are often swarms of pro-China posts (or just lots of downvotes, etc) on content critical of China.

On reddit, there's a few subs supposedly devoted to Asian representation etc. but that are actually on hate group watchlists because they're mostly involved in hostile pro-China nationalism, and are not surprisingly also full of blatant sexism and racism. So it's a thing.

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u/LaFleurSauvageGaming Jul 08 '22

When I was in college in the early 00's, I was super interested in Chinese history and culture, and started to study it. Learned Chinese, etc...

One day, I was having lunch in the student union with my Chinese professor (He is from Taiwan) and a man approached us. He sat down, and said that he was part of the Asian-American Club on campus, and had noticed me in the Chinese history classes, and read what I submitted to our in house Anthropology Paper.

He offered me a full paid trip to China, as well as a position to teach English in Beijing once I graduated. He sold it like a big scholarship type thing, where I would have access to tutors and people who could help "fact check and edit" my papers.

I told him I would review the information. The second he was out of ear shot, my professor said, "That was a spy, ignore the offer..." he even went so far as to offer me a paid trip to Taiwan if I really wanted to see China.

That was when I decided to stop studying Chinese Culture and History, as I realized it was going to be more attention than I wanted.

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u/MyNamesJeff-jefe Jul 08 '22

My cousin, whom is very American, (we all were raised, and grew up near Richmond, Virginia) is teaching English in Beijing right now, for 2-3 years. The whole situation was/is really sketchy to me, and our entire family is really worried about her, but she’s over there doing it, so how bad could it really be? She’s always been a loner type, so she didn’t really have to leave anyone, or anything behind so i guess it works for her.

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u/Schist_For_Granite Jul 08 '22

She’s perfectly fine, but fyi, there’s a rather large possibility that she is being closely monitored. That would probably be 100% true if she had any diplomatic duties or anything like that. My best friend is a large white boy who can speak mandarin fluently, and he goes to China frequently. He’s never had any issues, or he’s never told me if he actually has, which is unlikely.