I couldn't get through the whole thing, but this part made me lol.
More recently, the paper deferred to Beijing’s narrative on topics including last year’s “blank paper” protests against covid-19 lockdowns and CCP rule, as well as in coverage of the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by the United States in February, in which stories routinely implied that the American reaction was irrational and a symptom of decline.
The "Chinese surveillance balloon" was nothing more than a hobbyist weather balloon, but let's just skip over that because it doesn't fit the narrative being presented here.
It wasn't a hobbyist balloon to my knowledge. It was an expensive professional one. Unless the hobbyist was a millionaire it was likely launched by a University or their national weather service and they'd likely counted on recovering and re-using it but it was blown off course, this happens to US research balloons too from time to time so they're buying new ones semi-regularly.. They did later shoot down a hobbyist balloon sent up by an American group but that was a later incident.
Perhaps I got the stories mixed up. In any case, we know it wasn't a "spy" balloon so continuing to refer to it as such is disingenuous and reveals that the author's arguments are not being made in good faith.
I couldn't get through the whole thing, but this part made me lol.
The "Chinese surveillance balloon" was nothing more than a hobbyist weather balloon, but let's just skip over that because it doesn't fit the narrative being presented here.
It wasn't a hobbyist balloon to my knowledge. It was an expensive professional one. Unless the hobbyist was a millionaire it was likely launched by a University or their national weather service and they'd likely counted on recovering and re-using it but it was blown off course, this happens to US research balloons too from time to time so they're buying new ones semi-regularly.. They did later shoot down a hobbyist balloon sent up by an American group but that was a later incident.
Perhaps I got the stories mixed up. In any case, we know it wasn't a "spy" balloon so continuing to refer to it as such is disingenuous and reveals that the author's arguments are not being made in good faith.
At least one of the other balloons shot down was the hobbyst.