BEIJING (Reuters) - Many Chinese are venting their frustration at the slowing economy and the weak stock market in an unconventional place: the social media account of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

A post on Friday on protecting wild giraffes by the U.S. embassy on Weibo, a Chinese platform similar to X, has attracted 130,000 comments and 15,000 reposts as of Sunday, many of them unrelated to wildlife conservation.

“Could you spare us some missiles to bomb away the Shanghai Stock Exchange?” one user wrote in an repost of the article.

The Weibo account of the U.S. embassy in China “has become the Wailing Wall of Chinese retail equity investors”, another user wrote.

The U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

  • mwguy@infosec.pub
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    10 months ago

    China built an economy that’s like 50% based on bullshitting to your superiors about how much infrastructure you built.

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      They also overbuilt infrastructure and entire housing complexes sit empty. So is it both?

      • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        Housing which is shit and often unsuitable for habitation:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project

        And to be clear, they’ve built a lot of infrastructure, but it’s often underbuilt. Eg. they’ll build huge projects or even residential districts, but save money by not ensuring there’s sufficient drainage. Result: fancy stadium, looks better than many a western stadium, cost less to build, fancier, looks higher quality, what you see may even be better quality, built in record time, but when it rains everyone’s walking in poo water.

        • naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Southern and central China are drowning. Since June 18, the regions have suffered their worst bout of flooding in a decade, furthered by a category 4 typhoon that hit the mainland after sweeping through Taiwan Friday morning, local time.

        • pelespirit
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          10 months ago

          Your article is for Taiwan and they had a typhoon come through. Do you have anything for mainland China?

          • Skua@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            furthered by a category 4 typhoon that hit the mainland after sweeping through Taiwan

            That article is about mainland China. It just says that the typhoon hit Taiwan first. However it is still about a typhoon, and while infrastructure should be built to handle the worst storms that come through it’s definitely less shocking when it fails to that than to regular rain

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      At a micro level, theres a lot of low quality products. Things that look okay on their face, but fall apart with any minor inspection.

      I wonder if that’s deep down the problem for China, beyond products.

      • mwguy@infosec.pub
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        10 months ago

        It’s what happens when you build a culture around “saving face” rather than competence. And then kill 10% of the population, targeting the productive and educated.

    • Altofaltception@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Don’t forget, the US has implemented some strong sanctions against China including restrictions on trade.

      Imagine competing in a race but you have your friends holding back your competitor.

      • protist@mander.xyz
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        10 months ago

        Sure, and China certainly has no restrictions on businesses from other other countries. No sirree. None. They’re also renowned for their non-interventionist, market-based solutions that certainly don’t favor Chinese interests.

      • theodewere@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        that’s a pathetic excuse… China’s problems are all its own making, and there are several big ones they haven’t even begun to deal with yet… in fact, the real problem in China is their lack of responsibility and willingness to look around for someone else to blame, like you just did…

        China is a debt addict about to go through bad withdrawals

      • Zeroxxx@lemmy.id
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        10 months ago

        America may be one of major assholes for trade wars, sanctions etc, but China are on whole different level. They have godlike amount of hypocrisy and being complete ass to everyone with their protectionism policies.

      • pimento64@sopuli.xyz
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        10 months ago

        More like imagine competing in counterstrike and complaining about hacks because you got sniped. China does the same shit, they’re just not as good at it. All hat, no cattle.

      • mwguy@infosec.pub
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        10 months ago

        It’s almost like if you respect basic human rights has a positive economic benefit…

          • theodewere@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            we’re talking about the Uyghurs, whom the Chinese have enslaved, but you probably know all about that

            • Altofaltception@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Well of course. Just wondering why the double standards when the perpetrators of human rights abuses are white or white passing.

          • mwguy@infosec.pub
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            10 months ago

            Ironically both. Palestinians don’t believe their neighbors should be allowed to continue living, so they engage in constant warfare. Now their neighbors don’t want to give them free stuff anymore.