19 days too late for a positive resolution

@LoganZoellner doesn't directly matter, but just out of explanation of my judging system, I'm not sure this would quality. I take it a bit more as an observation rather than a criticism. It's hard to pull any subset of it out and say "here is where trump says the CCP is doing wrong"

@Ernie Don't you think this meets the criteria of Musk criticizing Chinese government policy?

"The situation where .... X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced.

Something must change."

He's saying the policy of blocking X is bad and that the policy should be changed. That's criticizing.

@JoshuaWilkes yeah, I just mean, in the space of criticism, saying that a situation between two countries is "unbalanced" is quite weak.

Consider how much room there is above him towards the "strong" end of the distribution: something like "Regime X is evil, monstrous, horrible". In contrast he said "between the two of them, Regime X and Regime Y, there is an imbalance". It's quite soft. Yet it's hard to imagine anything softer than this when speaking about this topic.

I agree he did point slightly more at CCP since he used passive phrasing in "X is not allowed to operate" after giving his preference for not banning tiktok in the US.

I do think that the actual main grammatical point of his tweet, though, is the unbalanced nature, which is much safer since it has multiple solutions - the US symmetrically banning all chinese apps in the US, which they ban our version of in China, is also a satisfactory symmetrical solution which would match CCP desires. As would them matching our policy . The point is the "unbalanced" thing, not necessarily that "I insist that we be balanced in the US style way" (rather than the CCP style way)

@Ernie because he says in both this tweet and the one he is quote tweeting that he doesn't think that the US should ban TikTok, it's fair to argue that these are no longer symmetrical solutions to the problem he sets out. Anyone reading the tweet(s) normally would parse that I think.

It's certainly a very weak criticism, but he is explicitly saying that he doesn't like this policy and that he thinks it should be changed. If someone had just bet this up to 90% on the basis of the description, they'd be pretty unhappy to have the "weak" criterium introduced at this stage.

@JoshuaWilkes (there's also a separate and interesting point about how criticising China's Great Firewall weakly feels more challenging to the CCP than strongly criticising the way they roll out charging points or handle EV subsidies, since it cuts towards the kinds of issues that threaten the CCP's legitimacy, but that's even further beyond the scope of the criteria imo)

@Ernie

I'm not sure this would quality

Thanks for the clarification. Please remind me never to bet on a market created by you in the future.

I was engaged in a good matured discussion, very happy to leave it there now.

@JoshuaWilkes Yes, I do agree with you. it is not totally symmetric for that reason. I just mean in the space of support/comment/note/point out/suggest/criticize, saying something is 'unbalanced' is to me clearly not at one of the extrema or even near it. It's completely debatable whether or not it should qualify as criticism, here, and in the Chinese context, to be a bit edgy, what constitutes criticism as far as the CCP is concerned has definitely had an expansive range over the past 60 years.

Also note that the way he phrased it: "X is not allowed to operate" is less focused as a criticism than "Xi doesn't allow X to operate". I'm not saying this is definitive, but every step away from clear criticism reduces it:

"Xi is bad because he did <unethical thing>"

"Xi is bad because <unethical thing happened in china>"

"Xi should be concerned because <unethical thing happened in china>"

"<unethical thing happened in china> while Xi was in power"

"<unethical thing happened in china> while the CCP was in charge"

"<unbalanced thing happened>"

i.e. He's using passive voice, not mentioning specific people.

Please, if you don't think this form of analysis is useful, my claim is that nobody can give a precise definition of the line between criticism and non-criticism.

Here is who you are up against: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

If we are using historical cultural revolution levels of "seeing criticism" then the claim would be YES in a million ways. I was more using a convention based on whether we took teh above tweets and asked 100 educated people "how confident are you that this is a criticism of china <plus rest of claim>". my feeling is that it wouldn't score high enough to qualify as unconditional YES. That's why we're having the discussion.

@LoganZoellner not sure what I missed. Sorry if the resolution here didn't satisfy you,

Yours respectfully, Ernie

Resolving NO. If you have evidence to the contrary, I can reresolve

@Ernie I think this market can resolve; the start of 2025 has passed. I haven't done my research on how it should resolve.

Is bro against the entire country?