May 8, 2025 • 26 mins
Newt discusses the potential crises between China and Taiwan with Dr. Weifeng Zhong, a senior advisor at the America First Policy Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Mercatus Center. Dr. Zhong leads the open-source Policy Change Index project, which uses AI and machine learning to analyze propaganda texts and predict government actions. Their conversation explores the Chinese Communist Party's attitude towards Taiwan, the role of propaganda in shaping public sentiment, and the implications of China's domestic challenges on its foreign policy. Dr. Zhong highlights the importance of monitoring changes in propaganda to understand Beijing's intentions and discusses the potential impact of economic weakness on China's approach to Taiwan. They also discuss the use of AI in analyzing North Korean propaganda and the broader implications of Chinese technology in global surveillance. Dr. Zhong's insights provide a nuanced understanding of the geopolitical dynamics in the Taiwan Strait and the role of AI in predicting potential conflicts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World, how close are we
to a crisis? With China and the Taiwan Straits. My
guest today is doctor Waifong Zhong, Senior Advisor for the
Office for Fiscal and Regulatory Analysis at the America First
Policy Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Mercada Center
at George Mason University. He leads the open source Policy
(00:27):
Change Index PCI project, which uses artificial intelligence and machine
learning to read large volumes of propaganda text to analyze
and predict government's actions based on their words. Using PCI,
doctor Jeong is out with a new paper entitled Predicting
Taiwan's Straight Crisis using Propaganda, a new open source method.
(01:08):
Pay Fong, welcome and thank you for joining me again
on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Thank you, mister speaker for having me again.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Before we get into China and Taiwan. I have to
ask you, because I'm fascinated about the whole process. The
system you've now built scans how many items a day?
On average?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
We catch every news article that comes out of the
Chinese propaganda machine, which by which I mean the People's Statey.
Not only the people of Statey, the central newspaper, but
also now many other provincial and ministerial newspapers from China,
so we collect them every day.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The system reached Chinese. Yes, do you also monitor Taiwan?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We also just started monitoring new speed from Taiwan too.
It takes two parties to take part in the conflict,
which is a big part of why we are not
expanding the data collection to Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
When you're looking at all this material, how fast does
your system analyze it?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Well, we catch all these content as it comes out,
and then we have in the back end a series
of models that ingest these data into the algorithms, and
then we do our calculations for different purposes. And for example,
we monitor Chinese officials their rights and fall in the
(02:34):
political fortune in Beijing. Oftentimes we catch ahead of time
the fall of key officials when they got into trouble
with the authorities. Which do you thinking that was showed
up in propaganda too or included a rise sometimes you
know you see black forces coming up in the scene
in Beijing. And the same is true for monitoring Chinese
attitude towards Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US on a number
(02:58):
of issues.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Given this kind of quantitative analysis, are you sort of
looking for word patterns or what are you looking for?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
The most important thing we look for is anomalies, things
that deviate from the trend or the baseline. And this
is very unique when it comes to analyzing authoritarian regimes
propaganda because we are not really talking about news, the
real fake news, which is propaganda coming out from regimes
(03:27):
like the Russians and Chinese. And with these regimes, we
should not think of their let's say, their newspaper or
their radio broadcast as facts. We should think of them
as the regime's attitude. So what's really important is to
measure to catch the moment these attitude changes, because oftentimes
(03:48):
indicate the intentions, Beijing's intention, mascots, intentions, and intention.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
From that standpoint, how should Americans understand the Chinese Communist
parties view of Taiwan.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
A good analogy to make it actually to look at
the CCP's attitude toward the student protesters going back to
nineteen eighty nine, the Tmn' Square protests, and that's an
excellent example. I mean, it's a tragedy, but it's also
a very good example to understand how propaganda operates. Because initially,
(04:23):
when the students were protesting in Beijing. They were advocating
for a more open government, open society to some extent,
beaging knowledge that they said, these people they came on
with good intention, the protesters, demonstrators, and they all have
a hope for a better future for the country. But
then when things got out of hand, it's actually necessary,
(04:44):
tragically necessary for the regime to change how they describe
these students, they would say, because if they're good people,
you can't crack down, you can't send in troops to
kill them, right, and so they had to become in
some sense, in the propaganda sense bad people. We saw
in nineteen eighty nine. Looking back is that the propaganda
(05:05):
dramatically changed how they describe these students. At the end,
they became like morons in the newspaper, and that's needed
before they could actually send in troops. The same logic
holds here when it comes to the Chinese stitude toward Taiwan,
because the ordinary Chinese people, they don't really hate the
people in Taiwan, but war or conflicts connectic. Conflict requires
(05:28):
negative sentiment, requires popular support for the regime to you know,
send missiles over. And so this is exactly what we're
monitoring is how the regime if at any point trying
to move the public attitude to the negative side toward Taiwan,
which is something that happened very significantly in nineteen ninety
(05:48):
five to nineteen ninety six for the last Taiwan stract crisis.
I know, mister speaker, you had some personal connection to
this episode, because I know you went to Taiwan the
year after.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Is that nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I think it was in ninety seven, But in ninety
six I was on TV saying that President Clinton was
right to send a second aircraft carrier into the streets
and that we were sending a clear signal to Beijing
that in fact, we would fight if they tried to
invade Taiwan. When I visited, it was a fascinating experience.
But as you look at the data sets you're getting
(06:23):
what can you tell? For example, the military leaders are
making predictions, and it seems to me that at times
they're predicted that oh this is Chinese commiss military leaders
their predictions would imply some kind of combat in the
not very distant future.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, absolutely right, mister speaker. But the same is true
for American military leaders too. They're all sorts of estimates,
bry predictions about when something like it would happen some
set twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Luckily that has passed. Now a lot of eyes are
on twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I think the Chinese witterer leaders did the saying, but
I think a lot of these military assessments they focus
more on the capabilities, like when China has the capability
to overtake Taiwan, but that depends on how much interference
we see from other parties such as the US, the
rest of the Western.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
World, and maybe Japan.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So all these are important variables to the capability portion.
But I think from again the data, we see more
of them.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Do you see the Chinese communists that are showing up
in your data sets becoming more bella coost and more
leaning towards a military operation, Not.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
In a very recent month.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
So we developed this AI algorithm to learn from what
happened back in nineteen ninety six, arguably the most intensive
crisis in recent times, and then we use what we
learned from that episode to monitor subsequently former Speaker Pelosi's
visit to Taiwan a couple of years ago, as well
(08:00):
as the meeting between the Taiwanese president and former Speaker
Kevin McCarthy. What appears to be the pattern now is
that there are strong reactions. I think when how he
placed US officials visit Taiwan a meet with the Taiwanese leaders.
But the magnitude has decreased.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
It's almost like what was initially a crisis has now
begun to be They grumble, but it's now sort of
normal to have visits. I remember originally, boy, it was
like a giant crisis. Even to land in San Francisco
or Los Angeles was a huge deal. Analysis kind of
background grumbling.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Right, if you compare from speaker to speaker, right from you,
mister speaker to Speaker Pelosi, speaker of MC coffee, the
magnitude of reactions from Beijing has declined, which actually shows
a lot of value of demonstrating American strength in this situation.
When we show strength, Beijing will think twice about how
(08:58):
aggressive they want to be. And that's really the purpose.
I image of your visit to Taiwan too.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Back in the days.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You've developed this large language model. Does it actually report
back to you in Chinese or does it translated into English.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It reports back to me in Chinese, which is where
my human intelligence comes in, is that I would interpret
that in ingresh writing to our audience as our readers.
But the machine is clellly operating in the Chinese language,
not only Chinese language, actually the Chinese culture and Chinese
way of news reporting in the system. Because that's alway
(09:50):
ingesting to the model.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
As an amateur, did I read about the idea that
when you have an artificial intelligence model like yours, it
then has to go through a pret being trained.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Let's start with what's called large language models, which is
basically models built on every word ever other on the Internet,
possibly the big companies they can possibly find right which
include Chinese language. But that gigantic lake up data, if
you will, it's not particularly helpful when it comes to China,
(10:24):
for example, of China versus Taiwan, because it's a very
specific context.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So the training in.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
This case means if you just ask a question to
the AI in Chinese, it would respond to you, but
it will be based on the vast number of Chinese
language material on the Internet, which included Chinese language that
were data spoken on the US Internet. Because they are
Chinese immigrants here, but their Chinese language content is very
(10:50):
different from Chinese language content coming out from the CCP.
In our case, when we do these projects, training means
to steer the AI to focus more on content in
the propaganda coming up on the propaganda system, So pay
more attention to those and ignore whoever you know Chinese
immigrants in San Francisco are talking about in blogs.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So that's not really rather than to the question at hand.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So, as I understand it, as you were developing this,
you actually were training it using the people's daily articles
during the nineteen ninety five Taiwan Straight Crisis, which led
to military escalation by China, Taiwan and the US. I'm
curious as you went through that assessment, did you learn anything.
(11:36):
Did you see the nineteen ninety five crisis any differently
after you got the report back from the machine.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I think what surprised me the most after seeing what
the machine returns is how much the road the US
plays in the escalation in the whole crisis. Fundamentally, Taiwan
is an issue of reunifying with Taiwan is almost a
requirement for the CCP region. So that in our assessment
(12:06):
remains the number one most important factor, but the number
two most important factor was the Chinese attitude toward the
United States, and that changed drastically during the crisis too.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
So it's not really an issue.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Taiwan is not really an issue just between the mainland
China and Taiwan. It's how the Beijing preceved strength of
the West, which goes back to the point of when
we demonstrate strength, Beijing's reaction to these, even just bilateral
visits between the US and Taiwan less and less significantly
over the years in recent years, I think that should
(12:41):
be counted as an achievement of our foreign policy rather
than weakness in any sense.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So, in a sense, a little bit less Bella Coost,
a little bit less on the edge of war than
they were in ninety five ninety six.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Yeah, if we're just comparing from like a sets from
speaker to the speaker in the last few episodes, it
seems to be the case. But I also wonder it's
hard to distinguish is to what extent the weakness now
in Beijin comes from the weakness of the Chinese economy
or the Chinese development stage, so to speak, which really
has been having a really hard time in the last
(13:19):
few years too. So the difference between Colosi and mccaffee,
for example, could be to some extent due to the
weakness of the Chinese economy that's trending down since the
COVID lockdown was lifted in much of China.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The process that we're in the middle of right now,
Jiji panclearly has faced with. Even before Trump and the Terrified,
the Chinese economy was in significant trouble, both because the
one child policy has now led to a dramatic decline
in the workforce, because they had overbuilt entire towns, not
(13:54):
just overbuilt buildings, but entire towns. They had over extended
themselves in terms of internal lending. That could either lead
him to be more aggressive so people would pay attention
to and rally around nationalism, or he could lead them
to be more cautious because he would feel like he
doesn't have a stable and solid a base. What's your
(14:16):
handsh of how those two way out well.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I think in the end, an actual kinetic conflict or
even an invasion would have to be an outcome of
two things. One is the Beijing's strength internally, because that
has to deal with capabilities. But the other intention how
desperate Shei Jimpin is in overtaking Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Every time I think.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
About this, I go back to the notion of legacy.
Political legacy a lot in the Chinese context. If you
compare Cjimpin with his predecessors, including those you met mister
speaker in Beijing, Jian Jamin and his supportinates at the time.
So if you compare for something from Janjumin to Hu
Jintao to announce C. Jimpin, you could name a few
things as great as a achievements by Janatamine for example,
(15:02):
right leading China into the wto taking back Hong Kong
and Macau holding the Beijing Olympics to some extent that
went to Puljintail as well. But if you think about
cj he really didn't have much achievements so far. It's
running the economy down to the ditch and many other
things down to the ditch too, And so one argument
(15:23):
to be made is that he is desperate in looking
for achievements, particularly when his next five year term comes up,
which is twenty twenty seven. I think that has a
lot to do with other assessment about why the timeline
has to be twenty twenty seven, because by twenty twenty
seven he will be seeking another run, right, And even
though China does not have democracy, popular support still matters
(15:46):
to him, and the lack of it matters even more.
And so one could make the argument that taking back
Taiwan in the timely manner would matter a lot to
his political legacy, because so far he has none. So
that's I think a major factor. But of course he's
not going to be able to do that if the
Chinese military power and economic power continue to decline, which
(16:07):
is why I think it's very important to continue to
monitor the situation that weighing these two factors over the
next few years to see which one comes out dominant.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Do you see in that sense as being almost like
an American politician in that he wants a way out
which gives him dignity and makes him important, but he
may not want to risk the destruction of the regime
in order to get there.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Absolutely, I think in the end, as we always say, right,
foreign policy fundamentally is domestic policy, and domestic policy fundamentally
is about the legacy or legitimacy. Right in a normal
democratic country, legacy takes a form of having more votes
right in the next election and more support for the
party if you do well.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
But in China, I think the bar is much lower.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
But if the legacy is low enough, it might tricker
a lot of opposite even from within the leads.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
We have seen that actually during the COVID lockdown period
when people couldn't stand it, you know, we see university
students coming out to protest too, and that makes people
think again to look back to find a similarity to
for example, student protesters in km and Square. So all
these are very unpleasant images for the CCP.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
One of the things that you came up with that
I was surprised by is that your analysis of mass
scale of information shows a real decline in reporting about
the outside world by the People's Daily that is just
less and less important than the story. What do you
think is going on?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
We actually just publish a journal article about this journal
of Contemporary China, where we actually track how the CCP
mentions all the different countries including Taiwan, the US and
everywhere else, versus any content that's purely domestic.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So the CCP's.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Vision, I think, in the last almost twenty years now
has increasingly narrowed, so their eyes are more on domestic
issues less on the outside world. Initially, I think that's
because the trading with a lot of outside world, engaging
with a lot of outside world becomes less critical, Like,
(18:35):
for example, they used to emphasize Europe a lot, but
not right now. I think CCP doesn't think Europe is
relevant because Europe has been in some sort of decline,
right But in later years, even the attention to the
US has declined, and I think that it's not really
an indication of the America in decline, is in indication
that Hijinpin himself is more and more narrow minded. And
(18:59):
I think that's a very dangerous situation to be in
because when you don't even report to the outside world,
not to say the reporting is accurate, but when you
report even to a lesser extent, it makes.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
All the elites in the society.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
And everyone else in China more nearrow minded, because that's
the only source already right to the outside world, and
even that is not covering a lot.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
It seems to me like they're beginning to move more
and more inwardly oriented and less or less aggressively trying
to become a worldwide power because there just have too
many domestic problems. I mean, does that seem accurate to
you to.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
A large extent.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
That's not the same to say China's actual activities in
terms of engaging with the outside world are necessarily in decline.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
We have seen the continued effort to boost.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Up the Baton Road initiatives for example, right China is
still trying to forge all these collaborations with the Baton
Road countries in Asia, in Africa, in South America. But
the way they approach that this projects has also changed.
In the past they emphasized more on economic development, but
now they emphasize more integrating them into the Chinese values
(20:13):
because they come up with this value system that they
basically try to turn all these other countries to the
same way of thinking as the CCP has engaging. So
that's a narrow minded vision, not necessarily a narrow minded activity.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
It's always struck me that they're so good at running
into totalitarian system and they've developed all of these cameras
and facial recognition and massive ability to track a billion
people that if I were a local dictator, I might
like to have the Chinese come and show me how
to make sure that I'm totally secure, and in that sense,
(20:48):
they may have something to offer that we don't have.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, actually, the Chinese have offered that it's a speaker
to a lot of developing countries.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
The Chinese technologies had.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Over the years power to many surveillance systems in African countries,
and some of these episodes have come up in the
news reporting on how they helped these non democratic regions
to monitor their own people. Which is why I think
in the US is really a justified concern on a
lot of technologies we have here because they could potentially
and some did, provide the capabilities for beaging to monitor us.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And we'll talk about Hawwei. We're talking about TikTok.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
TikTok's a perfect example Huawei, which is one of the
major failures I had in the first Trump administration. I
kept trying to warn them that Huawei is very dangerous
and very powerful and currently very successful worldwide. It provides
access for the Chinese communist that is I think very sobering.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Absolutely, and I think there are two layers of the
dangers here.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
TikTok is a speaker, it's one the proper ganda through content,
so to create a pro China content right to try
to influence online. But HAWA is a vulnerability where information
itself could be tapped into by the CCP, and we
actually have that with TikTok too, because the way TikTok
(22:09):
collects information is down to your fingertip, like how you
scroll on your screen and how you select content. And
in my opinion, it's actually very damaging in the longer
term because when apps are able to monitor our behavior,
it would be able to learn our preferences to how
we think about things, or how American voters think about
(22:30):
different niches, and knowing that it's incredibly valuable because that's
a huge intelligence.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
It has a huge value on intelligence.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I buy a lot of books on Amazon, and it
now in two it's what I might be interested in
based on my behavior. So the giantic system that Amazon
has is sort of studying me and figuring out what
to offer me in a way that is on the
one hand, is very practical and very helpful. On the
(22:59):
other end, and it's a little scary.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's actually very scary. Even Amazon could potentially learn your schedule,
mister speaker, like when you would scroll on the app
to shop they would figure out your sleep patterns, you
know when you couldn't sleep in the middle of the
night and you're trying to buy some gadget on Amazon.
Now imagine all that that every company in the world
is doing that. But imagine a world where every company
(23:24):
submits that information to the CCP. That's their vision of governance,
the global governance, and we should try very hard to
prevent that from happening.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
So do you think you'll extend this new methodology to
looking at other countries?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
We have.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Last year we put out an algorithm that monitors came
young to North Korea, So we have gathered the North
Korean content and we made the similar algorithm to detect
whether kingdom or is thinking differently.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Given how closed the dictatorship is. Is that very revealing
doing it that way? I mean, do you pick up
queues and indications?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I wasn't sure when I started the project, but it
performs surprisingly well. For example, we picked up signs of
significant nuclear weapon tests shortly before in some ways that
you somehow just changed the tone anten on their front page.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So that model we did was as off last year.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
So this year we're going to random the model live
in the sense that we'll be like getting the content
from opinion every day and updating the algorithm every day.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So that's one of our next projects too.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Ye when you're doing some fascinating stuff, and I hope
maybe an ear we can come back and you'll read
us into all the different things you're learning, because you've
found a way to really have a big impact.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I think thank you, mister Seeker for saying that I'd
love to come back. Also, let me clarify the AI
is doing most of the work now, it's no longer me,
which is a very reassuring development.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I am personally happy to still believe that the human
had a role in this thing. Makes me feel better.
Waite Fun, I want to thank you for joining me
and helping us better understand both your system, which is amazing,
and how to analyze and think about China's plans for
the Taiwan Straits. Our listeners can follow your work by
visiting the America First Policy Institute's website at America First
(25:12):
Policy dot com. And it's really been very enlightening and
I really appreciate you visiting us again.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Thanks again for having me Missless speak here.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Thank you to my guest doctor Waifong Zhong. You can
read his new paper predicting Taiwan's straight crisis using propaganda,
a new open source method on our show page at
newtsworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Ganglish three sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloman. Our researcher
is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
(25:47):
by Steve Penley. Special thanks the team at Gangwish three sixty.
If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
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it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign
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(26:07):
dot com slash newsletter. I'm new Gnglish. This is Newtsworld.
On this episode of News World, how close are we
to a crisis? With China and the Taiwan Straits. My
guest today is doctor Waifong Zhong, Senior Advisor for the
Office for Fiscal and Regulatory Analysis at the America First
Policy Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Mercada Center
at George Mason University. He leads the open source Policy
(00:27):
Change Index PCI project, which uses artificial intelligence and machine
learning to read large volumes of propaganda text to analyze
and predict government's actions based on their words. Using PCI,
doctor Jeong is out with a new paper entitled Predicting
Taiwan's Straight Crisis using Propaganda, a new open source method.
(01:08):
Pay Fong, welcome and thank you for joining me again
on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Thank you, mister speaker for having me again.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Before we get into China and Taiwan. I have to
ask you, because I'm fascinated about the whole process. The
system you've now built scans how many items a day?
On average?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
We catch every news article that comes out of the
Chinese propaganda machine, which by which I mean the People's Statey.
Not only the people of Statey, the central newspaper, but
also now many other provincial and ministerial newspapers from China,
so we collect them every day.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The system reached Chinese. Yes, do you also monitor Taiwan?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We also just started monitoring new speed from Taiwan too.
It takes two parties to take part in the conflict,
which is a big part of why we are not
expanding the data collection to Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
When you're looking at all this material, how fast does
your system analyze it?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Well, we catch all these content as it comes out,
and then we have in the back end a series
of models that ingest these data into the algorithms, and
then we do our calculations for different purposes. And for example,
we monitor Chinese officials their rights and fall in the
(02:34):
political fortune in Beijing. Oftentimes we catch ahead of time
the fall of key officials when they got into trouble
with the authorities. Which do you thinking that was showed
up in propaganda too or included a rise sometimes you
know you see black forces coming up in the scene
in Beijing. And the same is true for monitoring Chinese
attitude towards Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US on a number
(02:58):
of issues.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Given this kind of quantitative analysis, are you sort of
looking for word patterns or what are you looking for?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
The most important thing we look for is anomalies, things
that deviate from the trend or the baseline. And this
is very unique when it comes to analyzing authoritarian regimes
propaganda because we are not really talking about news, the
real fake news, which is propaganda coming out from regimes
(03:27):
like the Russians and Chinese. And with these regimes, we
should not think of their let's say, their newspaper or
their radio broadcast as facts. We should think of them
as the regime's attitude. So what's really important is to
measure to catch the moment these attitude changes, because oftentimes
(03:48):
indicate the intentions, Beijing's intention, mascots, intentions, and intention.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
From that standpoint, how should Americans understand the Chinese Communist
parties view of Taiwan.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
A good analogy to make it actually to look at
the CCP's attitude toward the student protesters going back to
nineteen eighty nine, the Tmn' Square protests, and that's an
excellent example. I mean, it's a tragedy, but it's also
a very good example to understand how propaganda operates. Because initially,
(04:23):
when the students were protesting in Beijing. They were advocating
for a more open government, open society to some extent,
beaging knowledge that they said, these people they came on
with good intention, the protesters, demonstrators, and they all have
a hope for a better future for the country. But
then when things got out of hand, it's actually necessary,
(04:44):
tragically necessary for the regime to change how they describe
these students, they would say, because if they're good people,
you can't crack down, you can't send in troops to
kill them, right, and so they had to become in
some sense, in the propaganda sense bad people. We saw
in nineteen eighty nine. Looking back is that the propaganda
(05:05):
dramatically changed how they describe these students. At the end,
they became like morons in the newspaper, and that's needed
before they could actually send in troops. The same logic
holds here when it comes to the Chinese stitude toward Taiwan,
because the ordinary Chinese people, they don't really hate the
people in Taiwan, but war or conflicts connectic. Conflict requires
(05:28):
negative sentiment, requires popular support for the regime to you know,
send missiles over. And so this is exactly what we're
monitoring is how the regime if at any point trying
to move the public attitude to the negative side toward Taiwan,
which is something that happened very significantly in nineteen ninety
(05:48):
five to nineteen ninety six for the last Taiwan stract crisis.
I know, mister speaker, you had some personal connection to
this episode, because I know you went to Taiwan the
year after.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Is that nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I think it was in ninety seven, But in ninety
six I was on TV saying that President Clinton was
right to send a second aircraft carrier into the streets
and that we were sending a clear signal to Beijing
that in fact, we would fight if they tried to
invade Taiwan. When I visited, it was a fascinating experience.
But as you look at the data sets you're getting
(06:23):
what can you tell? For example, the military leaders are
making predictions, and it seems to me that at times
they're predicted that oh this is Chinese commiss military leaders
their predictions would imply some kind of combat in the
not very distant future.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, absolutely right, mister speaker. But the same is true
for American military leaders too. They're all sorts of estimates,
bry predictions about when something like it would happen some
set twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Luckily that has passed. Now a lot of eyes are
on twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I think the Chinese witterer leaders did the saying, but
I think a lot of these military assessments they focus
more on the capabilities, like when China has the capability
to overtake Taiwan, but that depends on how much interference
we see from other parties such as the US, the
rest of the Western.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
World, and maybe Japan.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So all these are important variables to the capability portion.
But I think from again the data, we see more
of them.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Do you see the Chinese communists that are showing up
in your data sets becoming more bella coost and more
leaning towards a military operation, Not.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
In a very recent month.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
So we developed this AI algorithm to learn from what
happened back in nineteen ninety six, arguably the most intensive
crisis in recent times, and then we use what we
learned from that episode to monitor subsequently former Speaker Pelosi's
visit to Taiwan a couple of years ago, as well
(08:00):
as the meeting between the Taiwanese president and former Speaker
Kevin McCarthy. What appears to be the pattern now is
that there are strong reactions. I think when how he
placed US officials visit Taiwan a meet with the Taiwanese leaders.
But the magnitude has decreased.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
It's almost like what was initially a crisis has now
begun to be They grumble, but it's now sort of
normal to have visits. I remember originally, boy, it was
like a giant crisis. Even to land in San Francisco
or Los Angeles was a huge deal. Analysis kind of
background grumbling.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Right, if you compare from speaker to speaker, right from you,
mister speaker to Speaker Pelosi, speaker of MC coffee, the
magnitude of reactions from Beijing has declined, which actually shows
a lot of value of demonstrating American strength in this situation.
When we show strength, Beijing will think twice about how
(08:58):
aggressive they want to be. And that's really the purpose.
I image of your visit to Taiwan too.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Back in the days.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You've developed this large language model. Does it actually report
back to you in Chinese or does it translated into English.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It reports back to me in Chinese, which is where
my human intelligence comes in, is that I would interpret
that in ingresh writing to our audience as our readers.
But the machine is clellly operating in the Chinese language,
not only Chinese language, actually the Chinese culture and Chinese
way of news reporting in the system. Because that's alway
(09:50):
ingesting to the model.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
As an amateur, did I read about the idea that
when you have an artificial intelligence model like yours, it
then has to go through a pret being trained.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Let's start with what's called large language models, which is
basically models built on every word ever other on the Internet,
possibly the big companies they can possibly find right which
include Chinese language. But that gigantic lake up data, if
you will, it's not particularly helpful when it comes to China,
(10:24):
for example, of China versus Taiwan, because it's a very
specific context.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So the training in.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
This case means if you just ask a question to
the AI in Chinese, it would respond to you, but
it will be based on the vast number of Chinese
language material on the Internet, which included Chinese language that
were data spoken on the US Internet. Because they are
Chinese immigrants here, but their Chinese language content is very
(10:50):
different from Chinese language content coming out from the CCP.
In our case, when we do these projects, training means
to steer the AI to focus more on content in
the propaganda coming up on the propaganda system, So pay
more attention to those and ignore whoever you know Chinese
immigrants in San Francisco are talking about in blogs.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So that's not really rather than to the question at hand.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So, as I understand it, as you were developing this,
you actually were training it using the people's daily articles
during the nineteen ninety five Taiwan Straight Crisis, which led
to military escalation by China, Taiwan and the US. I'm
curious as you went through that assessment, did you learn anything.
(11:36):
Did you see the nineteen ninety five crisis any differently
after you got the report back from the machine.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I think what surprised me the most after seeing what
the machine returns is how much the road the US
plays in the escalation in the whole crisis. Fundamentally, Taiwan
is an issue of reunifying with Taiwan is almost a
requirement for the CCP region. So that in our assessment
(12:06):
remains the number one most important factor, but the number
two most important factor was the Chinese attitude toward the
United States, and that changed drastically during the crisis too.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
So it's not really an issue.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Taiwan is not really an issue just between the mainland
China and Taiwan. It's how the Beijing preceved strength of
the West, which goes back to the point of when
we demonstrate strength, Beijing's reaction to these, even just bilateral
visits between the US and Taiwan less and less significantly
over the years in recent years, I think that should
(12:41):
be counted as an achievement of our foreign policy rather
than weakness in any sense.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So, in a sense, a little bit less Bella Coost,
a little bit less on the edge of war than
they were in ninety five ninety six.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Yeah, if we're just comparing from like a sets from
speaker to the speaker in the last few episodes, it
seems to be the case. But I also wonder it's
hard to distinguish is to what extent the weakness now
in Beijin comes from the weakness of the Chinese economy
or the Chinese development stage, so to speak, which really
has been having a really hard time in the last
(13:19):
few years too. So the difference between Colosi and mccaffee,
for example, could be to some extent due to the
weakness of the Chinese economy that's trending down since the
COVID lockdown was lifted in much of China.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The process that we're in the middle of right now,
Jiji panclearly has faced with. Even before Trump and the Terrified,
the Chinese economy was in significant trouble, both because the
one child policy has now led to a dramatic decline
in the workforce, because they had overbuilt entire towns, not
(13:54):
just overbuilt buildings, but entire towns. They had over extended
themselves in terms of internal lending. That could either lead
him to be more aggressive so people would pay attention
to and rally around nationalism, or he could lead them
to be more cautious because he would feel like he
doesn't have a stable and solid a base. What's your
(14:16):
handsh of how those two way out well.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I think in the end, an actual kinetic conflict or
even an invasion would have to be an outcome of
two things. One is the Beijing's strength internally, because that
has to deal with capabilities. But the other intention how
desperate Shei Jimpin is in overtaking Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Every time I think.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
About this, I go back to the notion of legacy.
Political legacy a lot in the Chinese context. If you
compare Cjimpin with his predecessors, including those you met mister
speaker in Beijing, Jian Jamin and his supportinates at the time.
So if you compare for something from Janjumin to Hu
Jintao to announce C. Jimpin, you could name a few
things as great as a achievements by Janatamine for example,
(15:02):
right leading China into the wto taking back Hong Kong
and Macau holding the Beijing Olympics to some extent that
went to Puljintail as well. But if you think about
cj he really didn't have much achievements so far. It's
running the economy down to the ditch and many other
things down to the ditch too, And so one argument
(15:23):
to be made is that he is desperate in looking
for achievements, particularly when his next five year term comes up,
which is twenty twenty seven. I think that has a
lot to do with other assessment about why the timeline
has to be twenty twenty seven, because by twenty twenty
seven he will be seeking another run, right, And even
though China does not have democracy, popular support still matters
(15:46):
to him, and the lack of it matters even more.
And so one could make the argument that taking back
Taiwan in the timely manner would matter a lot to
his political legacy, because so far he has none. So
that's I think a major factor. But of course he's
not going to be able to do that if the
Chinese military power and economic power continue to decline, which
(16:07):
is why I think it's very important to continue to
monitor the situation that weighing these two factors over the
next few years to see which one comes out dominant.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Do you see in that sense as being almost like
an American politician in that he wants a way out
which gives him dignity and makes him important, but he
may not want to risk the destruction of the regime
in order to get there.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Absolutely, I think in the end, as we always say, right,
foreign policy fundamentally is domestic policy, and domestic policy fundamentally
is about the legacy or legitimacy. Right in a normal
democratic country, legacy takes a form of having more votes
right in the next election and more support for the
party if you do well.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
But in China, I think the bar is much lower.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
But if the legacy is low enough, it might tricker
a lot of opposite even from within the leads.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
We have seen that actually during the COVID lockdown period
when people couldn't stand it, you know, we see university
students coming out to protest too, and that makes people
think again to look back to find a similarity to
for example, student protesters in km and Square. So all
these are very unpleasant images for the CCP.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
One of the things that you came up with that
I was surprised by is that your analysis of mass
scale of information shows a real decline in reporting about
the outside world by the People's Daily that is just
less and less important than the story. What do you
think is going on?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
We actually just publish a journal article about this journal
of Contemporary China, where we actually track how the CCP
mentions all the different countries including Taiwan, the US and
everywhere else, versus any content that's purely domestic.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So the CCP's.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Vision, I think, in the last almost twenty years now
has increasingly narrowed, so their eyes are more on domestic
issues less on the outside world. Initially, I think that's
because the trading with a lot of outside world, engaging
with a lot of outside world becomes less critical, Like,
(18:35):
for example, they used to emphasize Europe a lot, but
not right now. I think CCP doesn't think Europe is
relevant because Europe has been in some sort of decline,
right But in later years, even the attention to the
US has declined, and I think that it's not really
an indication of the America in decline, is in indication
that Hijinpin himself is more and more narrow minded. And
(18:59):
I think that's a very dangerous situation to be in
because when you don't even report to the outside world,
not to say the reporting is accurate, but when you
report even to a lesser extent, it makes.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
All the elites in the society.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
And everyone else in China more nearrow minded, because that's
the only source already right to the outside world, and
even that is not covering a lot.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
It seems to me like they're beginning to move more
and more inwardly oriented and less or less aggressively trying
to become a worldwide power because there just have too
many domestic problems. I mean, does that seem accurate to
you to.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
A large extent.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
That's not the same to say China's actual activities in
terms of engaging with the outside world are necessarily in decline.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
We have seen the continued effort to boost.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Up the Baton Road initiatives for example, right China is
still trying to forge all these collaborations with the Baton
Road countries in Asia, in Africa, in South America. But
the way they approach that this projects has also changed.
In the past they emphasized more on economic development, but
now they emphasize more integrating them into the Chinese values
(20:13):
because they come up with this value system that they
basically try to turn all these other countries to the
same way of thinking as the CCP has engaging. So
that's a narrow minded vision, not necessarily a narrow minded activity.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
It's always struck me that they're so good at running
into totalitarian system and they've developed all of these cameras
and facial recognition and massive ability to track a billion
people that if I were a local dictator, I might
like to have the Chinese come and show me how
to make sure that I'm totally secure, and in that sense,
(20:48):
they may have something to offer that we don't have.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, actually, the Chinese have offered that it's a speaker
to a lot of developing countries.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
The Chinese technologies had.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Over the years power to many surveillance systems in African countries,
and some of these episodes have come up in the
news reporting on how they helped these non democratic regions
to monitor their own people. Which is why I think
in the US is really a justified concern on a
lot of technologies we have here because they could potentially
and some did, provide the capabilities for beaging to monitor us.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And we'll talk about Hawwei. We're talking about TikTok.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
TikTok's a perfect example Huawei, which is one of the
major failures I had in the first Trump administration. I
kept trying to warn them that Huawei is very dangerous
and very powerful and currently very successful worldwide. It provides
access for the Chinese communist that is I think very sobering.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Absolutely, and I think there are two layers of the
dangers here.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
TikTok is a speaker, it's one the proper ganda through content,
so to create a pro China content right to try
to influence online. But HAWA is a vulnerability where information
itself could be tapped into by the CCP, and we
actually have that with TikTok too, because the way TikTok
(22:09):
collects information is down to your fingertip, like how you
scroll on your screen and how you select content. And
in my opinion, it's actually very damaging in the longer
term because when apps are able to monitor our behavior,
it would be able to learn our preferences to how
we think about things, or how American voters think about
(22:30):
different niches, and knowing that it's incredibly valuable because that's
a huge intelligence.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
It has a huge value on intelligence.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I buy a lot of books on Amazon, and it
now in two it's what I might be interested in
based on my behavior. So the giantic system that Amazon
has is sort of studying me and figuring out what
to offer me in a way that is on the
one hand, is very practical and very helpful. On the
(22:59):
other end, and it's a little scary.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's actually very scary. Even Amazon could potentially learn your schedule,
mister speaker, like when you would scroll on the app
to shop they would figure out your sleep patterns, you
know when you couldn't sleep in the middle of the
night and you're trying to buy some gadget on Amazon.
Now imagine all that that every company in the world
is doing that. But imagine a world where every company
(23:24):
submits that information to the CCP. That's their vision of governance,
the global governance, and we should try very hard to
prevent that from happening.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
So do you think you'll extend this new methodology to
looking at other countries?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
We have.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Last year we put out an algorithm that monitors came
young to North Korea, So we have gathered the North
Korean content and we made the similar algorithm to detect
whether kingdom or is thinking differently.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Given how closed the dictatorship is. Is that very revealing
doing it that way? I mean, do you pick up
queues and indications?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I wasn't sure when I started the project, but it
performs surprisingly well. For example, we picked up signs of
significant nuclear weapon tests shortly before in some ways that
you somehow just changed the tone anten on their front page.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So that model we did was as off last year.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
So this year we're going to random the model live
in the sense that we'll be like getting the content
from opinion every day and updating the algorithm every day.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So that's one of our next projects too.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Ye when you're doing some fascinating stuff, and I hope
maybe an ear we can come back and you'll read
us into all the different things you're learning, because you've
found a way to really have a big impact.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I think thank you, mister Seeker for saying that I'd
love to come back. Also, let me clarify the AI
is doing most of the work now, it's no longer me,
which is a very reassuring development.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I am personally happy to still believe that the human
had a role in this thing. Makes me feel better.
Waite Fun, I want to thank you for joining me
and helping us better understand both your system, which is amazing,
and how to analyze and think about China's plans for
the Taiwan Straits. Our listeners can follow your work by
visiting the America First Policy Institute's website at America First
(25:12):
Policy dot com. And it's really been very enlightening and
I really appreciate you visiting us again.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Thanks again for having me Missless speak here.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Thank you to my guest doctor Waifong Zhong. You can
read his new paper predicting Taiwan's straight crisis using propaganda,
a new open source method on our show page at
newtsworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Ganglish three sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloman. Our researcher
is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
(25:47):
by Steve Penley. Special thanks the team at Gangwish three sixty.
If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
give us a review so all this can learn what
it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign
up for my three free weekly columns at gnglishwe sixty
(26:07):
dot com slash newsletter. I'm new Gnglish. This is Newtsworld.
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