xiaohongshu

To comment on the validity of the cases here: there is no definite proof as far as we know, but at least a dozen of internet accounts on major internet platforms (Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin etc.) claiming to be the victims have posted photographic evidence of their own identification documents, police arrest warrants, detention notices, attorney bills etc. A number of practicing lawyers have also claimed that they have been approached by the victims. This has been happening since June last year but the number of cases seem to have increased over the past few months.

It is highly unlikely that people post fake evidence like this for drama, at least not in China, and especially since this has turned into a hot topic on the Chinese internet gaining quite a lot of attention. You can get into serious trouble for that. Especially for practicing attorneys linked to their actual businesses. I find it unlikely to be fabricated. Maybe the scale and extent have been exaggerated, but I don’t think people would want to risk losing their careers just for fabricating drama.

Gray zone. Most content creators aren’t registering themselves as businesses, let alone some poor college students writing on a niche website earning some donations and subscription fees.

You can enter into a contractual relationship with the internet platform and you may be liable to pay personal income tax, but personal income tax is only a very small fraction of the Chinese government tax base that they are negligible for internet content creators except for the largest channels with millions of subscribers as well as high profile celebrities involved in contracts comprising tens of millions of yuan.

Most of the tax revenues in China come from value-added tax, followed by corporate income tax. These are where the tax evaders are at. I highly doubt they’re wasting resources going after some poor college students or even internet content creators for evading personal income tax.

It’s a Taiwanese niche website for this kind of content (which can range from mild to shocking). The main audience are female and queer college students. They were writing erotic fictions btw, not producing some exploitative porn materials.

Also, plenty of Chinese content creators have their separate accounts on YouTube, earning American dollars through ads and subscriptions. All you need to do is to fill out the W-8BEN form and pay tax to the US Treasury as a foreigner (10% for mainland Chinese citizens, 30% for Hong Kong residents) and a bank card that accepts foreign currencies to receive the income.

They were writing erotic fictions, mostly female college students writing for a women/queer centric audience. There is no need for imprisonment (the law allows for up to 10 years or life imprisonment).

Actual, exploitative porn materials are dime in a dozen across Chinese internet despite the crackdowns. Maybe the law enforcement should get their priorities straight and focus on those instead.

This has actually spurred a large discussion among Chinese netizens recently on topics on morality, legal rights, the extent of punishment etc.

Just let people have their fun.

American leftists still believe that they can achieve transformative change without having to sacrifice their first world comforts and privileges. That’s why they are so invested in peaceful protests and electoralism.

Because the alternative is to turn militant, getting hunted by the Feds, having to hide and organize from an underground network far and away from the treats and comforts they’re so used to enjoying, like what the actual communists used to do. It’s truly putting your ideological conviction to the test. Are you willing to lose your life for your own ideology? That’s just too much, couldn’t do that. This is why all the American “Marxist” parties will give you a dozen reasons why they’re never getting armed.

People on this site like to fantasize that they could become some revolutionary fighters, but how many of them can actually commit to a life like that? I even doubt that most of us in China can do that now that life has gotten so comfortable compared to a hundred years ago.

Read Michael Hudson here: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/michael-hudson-why-america-is-at-war-with-iran.html

The whole point is destabilization. America is using Israel to destabilize the Middle East just like how it has been using Ukraine to keep Russia busy. It is to prevent the Global Majority from seeking an alternative framework to the US dominated neoliberal order - or whatever brand of fascism it is trying to transition into right now.

Iran has its own industrial base but it is not like Russia with its remnant socialist industrial base, and certainly has suffered a lot under sanctions. It will need a lot of foreign aid, and even then, the whole country is going to suffer with a war going on. If it’s a long war, then we’re looking at years of lost economic development.

For the US, it doesn’t care. It wants chaos, trade flow disruption, killing the economy of the exporting countries so that they come to beg for a deal, which will open up their domestic economy to influx of foreign finance capital. If the US have its way, expect to see record IMF or foreign capital bailouts over the next few years.

This is why an alternative economic and financial framework is needed. We’ve had the chance 3 years ago when the Ukraine war started, but because the so-called BRICS did not have the political will to come together and do it, the whole window of opportunity for de-dollarization has been utterly wasted.

The only card left to play that I can see is for China to give up its net exporter status to absorb the surplus exports from the rest of the world, but the Chinese leaders are very unwilling to do it. They want to convince the US to go back to the status quo which they both enjoyed for the past couple decades.

Sorry China is already one step ahead.

In fact, just a few weeks before Israeli attack, China already ramped up crude import from Iran as though they already anticipated this outcome.

Now China’s oil inventory is at a record high level:

China typically imports 1.6m barrels from Iran daily, so China can last for at least a few months even without Iranian oil import, and if oil price goes too high and threatens their exports, they can release their crude stockpiles using Iran’s own oil they have accumulated, just like how Biden released the strategic petroleum reserves when the Ukraine war hiked oil prices.

Iran does not have what it takes to threaten China.

Does the latest action make him more likely to win or less?

It does if it wants to guarantee a win. Nobody’s going to gamble away the entire nation by starting a war if they don’t have the confidence to do so. This is not a video game where you can reload a saved game you know? If you lose, tens of millions of people die, the entire country collapses.

Iran cannot do that without Russia and China on its side, and so far there is nothing that indicates that except the presence of a few Chinese assets nearby that some have observed. There has been no extensive military or air force build up on Iran’s borders by both the Russians and the Chinese. Maybe things will change now after the latest US action.

Honestly I would not trust claims coming from either side until at least half a day later, if not longer than that.

Proper damage assessment takes way longer than that, with all the inspection that needs to be performed, and with all the sensitive equipments and infrastructure involved. At best they can tell you about the structural damage.

Same with the battle damage assessment following the strike from the US side. Maybe they have some advanced recon capability that I don’t know about, but still you’d expect this to take longer than what Trump was immediately tweeting after the strike.

You also have to take into considerations the Iranian response, which is still being decided. If they don’t want to escalate any further, or only want to commit to limited retaliation, they will probably save face by saying that damage is minimal and not seriously affecting their operations. Another reason is to prevent mass panic. Again, with minimum intel, all we can do is guess here

You mean non-western leftists?

Because honestly most average people are apolitical and just don’t care that much about the world. If you only get your information from the internet and social media, it can seem like people are having certain sets of opinions, but once you actually go out and talk to people about the stuff we care about here, you’d find that most of them don’t even know what you’re talking about.