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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Chinese protests are a top story in Western news media. I don't think they're entirely organic. Some are likely intelligence agency ops.

Here's the first thing that made me think something was off: https://twitter.com/quanyi_li2/status/1596784472740937728

First, some of the signage doesn't look right. They use traditional characters instead of simplified. They also sometimes use pinyin, seemingly unable to recall the "qi" in "Urumqi," the biggest city in Xinjiang, even as they were protesting on Urumqi road. Mainlanders wouldn't do this. This is beyond mere misspelt Tea Party protest signs, I'd say it's akin to protesting against Biden with an English-language sign with Cyrillic characters accidentally slipped in. It's a clear signal of "not from around here."

Second, the protests don't make much sense if your goal is to reach other Chinese folks in China. You can't share such protests on social media, and news agencies won't cover them. However, contrary to popular narratives, demonstrations are allowed in China. You can't call for the downfall of the national government, but you can plea for the national government to come in and fix local issues. You can also take to the streets because you're really worked up about foreigners insulting China.

So, the intended audience is probably Western news media and consumers of such media.

Third, advocating against the national government and leaders is punished, and everyone knows it. It's unlikely that Chinese citizens would take such a risk when it's so easy to put on a demonstration that falls short of impugning the national government. I think it's likely that these were non-citizens, perhaps Taiwanese, or perhaps expats, that aren't risking their livelihoods. The use of traditional characters makes this more likely, only Hong Kong and Taiwan use them. Western media are unlikely to take note of such things, or to take note of Taiwanese accents.

This aligns with what we've seen before in intelligence ops.

We've seen evidence that intelligence agencies have helped along color revolutions in the past, including protest leaders in Hong Kong meeting with at least one state department official. Much of this is actually done in the open, with the National Endowment for Democracy sending money directly to dissident groups.

Note that an intelligence op doesn't mean that everyone involved works for the intelligence agency, or that they even know that the agency is involved. Every country has its collection of folks who would like to see the government fall. Intelligence operatives identify and befriend these folks, nurture their revolutionary sentiments, and help to remove hurdles in their way. It's the same tactic used to get a group of right-wing men to agree to kidnap the governor of Michigan, except that no one stops the plot from continuing to move forward.

Here's the first thing that made me think something was off: https://twitter.com/quanyi_li2/status/1596784472740937728

If I saw an American holding a misspelled sign at a protest, the last thing I would think is that it must be a China. If there's any conspiracy, it'd be more likely that it is a domestic operation that is meant to make the protesters look stupid/uneducated. (I seem to recall, but I may be wrong, that some people holding up signs like "keep your government hands off my medicare" while protesting Obama were actually Democrats, but that was a long time ago, so I may be misremembering).

Don't get me wrong there are plenty of protests in China but a REAL Chinese protest tend to demand local official to step down and national government to intervene. They almost never call for a regime change. Even rarer to call the party leader to step down.

But the policies they are protesting are coming from the top. And even if they weren't, its not like people don't protest the feds when other levels of government are more responsible for the situation. The trucker protest in Canada was generally against covid restrictions, most of which were put in place by provincial governments, and a border vaccine mandate put in place by the US. But they still protested the Canadian federal government.

Those two things simply do not address the problem at hand. Demanding national leader to step down is a western thing because then they can vote in a new leader. It does not work in China. Strong sign of foreign funded operation.

I don't think I've actually seen many protests demanding federal leaders resign, because in the west we CAN vote in a new leader. So if you were protesting in China, it seems like demanding a resignation of the leader would be the only real option, since voting ain't going to do it. I guess in parliamentary systems, since the leader isn't directly elected, calls for leaders to step down are a bit more common, especially since elections are irregular.

the central government has extremely high approval ratings and it's usually the local ones that people have issues with.

But the issue with zero COVID seems to come from the central government. Changing local leadership isn't going to solve things.

Also the police stood aside keeping watch instead of clamping down immediately shows 制度自信. These people are lucky if only the police is investigating i know for a fact that Shanghai facial recognition software is extremely good.

You'd think if this was a foreign operation that the police wouldn't be twiddling their thumbs. "Nah, we only suppress domestic, organic protests. We'll happily allow the CIA to undermine our country, though."

I think this is more evidence in favour of the protests being encouraged, at some level, by the CCP. Maybe as an excuse to change policy. Maybe to expose dissidents (and CIA networks). Maybe to frame anti-lockdown protestors the same way the western governments have. As outsiders we look at these people and think 'heroes'. But in the west, the average person has looked at anti-lockdown protestors as loons. Maybe the average Chinese person looks at these protestors like they are retarded rednecks endangering the lives of everyone around them. Because China is much more, uh, collective than the west (especially America).

They use traditional characters instead of simplified. They also sometimes use pinyin, seemingly unable to recall the "qi" in "Urumqi," the biggest city in Xinjiang, even as they were protesting on Urumqi road. Mainlanders wouldn't do this. This is beyond mere misspelt Tea Party protest signs, I'd say it's akin to protesting against Biden with an English-language sign with Cyrillic characters accidentally slipped in. It's a clear signal of "not from around here."

Would any minorities in China do this? Minorities tend to be more likely to protest, since the majority tends to be well represented.

Didn't China pretty effectively dismantle CIA networks in their country a couple years back? Some conspiracy theories attributed it to Hillary's email server being compromised.

I could see the protests being any combination domestic and foreign, with the CCP leveraging them like politicians in any part of the world would. Could have been organic, and the CIA swooped in to fan the flames, and the CCP is tolerating it in order to gain intelligence on who is all involved and what their motivations are, and also trying to paint the protests as being astroturfed. Every team is in the game.

I saw a twitter post of some fellow holding Friedman equations. Freedman, free man... This is possibly the most convoluted way to express a point. How many Chinese are going to see the equation, process it and appreciate the pun in a foreign language? I know China has a heavy emphasis on STEM but this is too much. Looks very much like something you'd do to attract foreign attention rather than sway the domestic audience.

https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1596842009364500481?

Any time anything like this happens in China or Ukraine or whatever, it's always "foreign operatives" or whatever. The locals never have any agency of course.

From this video in Beijing (亮马桥 area), we can see:

  • first ~10 seconds: the first person (with masked) with the microphone is asking the crowd to be careful as there a foreign anti-Chinese forces among them (“现在,在我们群众当中,有境外反华势力,在我们周围“)

  • People start yelling "we are all Chinese people / citizens" (“我们都是中国人”)

  • at the 0:24 mark, a second person (shorter, no mask, glasses) now has the mic, who asks: "Are Marx and Engels the foreign forces you speak of? ... (crowd repeats) Is it Lenin?" (“请问,你说的境外势力是马克思和恩格斯吗?是列宁吗?”)

  • 0:33 mark: the first speaker responds (without the mic, with his hands up) that he will forever love his country and its people.

  • 0:40 mark: the first person continues that he also thinks the current policies have issues ("我也觉得现在的政策有问题,我真的觉得有问题“)before getting cutoff by the crowd for trying to change the topic ("不要转移话题“)

  • 0:51: "Question: was the fire in Xinjiang started by foreign forces?" (the fire in Wulumuqi that killed people) (“请问新疆的火是境外势力放的吗?”)

  • 0:56: "Was the bus in Guizhou crashed by foreign forces?" (”贵州的大巴是境外势力推翻的吗?” )

  • 1:01: person in white jacket takes the mic and asks in the most Beijing accent: "everyone, was I called here by foreign forces?" ("大家我是境外势力叫来的吗?“ ) - crowd: "no!!"

  • 1:05: "we can't even go onto foreign websites, how could we be foreign forces? How can foreign forces communicate with us?" ("我们连网都上不了国外的,我们哪儿来的境外势力?境外势力怎么跟我们沟通?“

  • 1:13: glasses guy takes the mic again: "we only have domestic forces that prevent us from gathering" (“我们只有境内势力不让我们聚集”)

Anyway you get the gist. The glasses guy was later interviewed by Japanese television, and his whole emphasis is "I could be the next Xinjiang fire or Guizhou bus crash".

First, some of the signage doesn't look right. They use traditional characters instead of simplified. They also sometimes use pinyin, seemingly unable to recall the "qi" in "Urumqi," the biggest city in Xinjiang, even as they were protesting on Urumqi road. Mainlanders wouldn't do this. This is beyond mere misspelt Tea Party protest signs, I'd say it's akin to protesting against Biden with an English-language sign with Cyrillic characters accidentally slipped in. It's a clear signal of "not from around here."

This seems cherry-picked. If you look at the videos from the 2am Wulumuqi protest, there weren't much signage at all. Most of the protests after have been using the blank A4 paper. You see that in the video I linked above.

Second, the protests don't make much sense if your goal is to reach other Chinese folks in China. You can't share such protests on social media, and news agencies won't cover them. However, contrary to popular narratives, demonstrations are allowed in China. You can't call for the downfall of the national government, but you can plea for the national government to come in and fix local issues. You can also take to the streets because you're really worked up about foreigners insulting China.

Just because they know censorship exists doesn't mean they never protest. Plus most of the protest isn't calling for the downfall of the government (tho some exists).

If you listen to the slogans, they aren't calling for the downfall of the government. They are saying stuff like 不要核酸要吃饭 不要封控要自由 (Don't wanna nucleic test I want to eat, don't want lockdowns want freedom).

(And yes I was at an anti-Japanese march in Shanghai a long time ago. It seemed ironic to be yelling anti-Japanese slogans as you walk near the Japanese Consulate, and then drinking your Kirin beverage (but that's just me))

Third, advocating against the national government and leaders is punished, and everyone knows it. It's unlikely that Chinese citizens would take such a risk when it's so easy to put on a demonstration that falls short of impugning the national government. I think it's likely that these were non-citizens, perhaps Taiwanese, or perhaps expats, that aren't risking their livelihoods. The use of traditional characters makes this more likely, only Hong Kong and Taiwan use them. Western media are unlikely to take note of such things, or to take note of Taiwanese accents.

In a country of 1.3 billion or whatever the number, there are weird shit that happens all the time. I can tell you with confidence that the 2am protest in Shanghai was majority local Chinese, mostly young people. This was in the former french concession (trendy place to live) so there were some foreigners there (I may or may not have been there), but all expat groups and group chats on wechat etc have been warned not to participate in these, precisely because you dont wanna be a random white guy photographed in the crowd and then used as "see, this is foreign forces!". And you don't wanna be deported and all that.

And by the way the twitter account you linked is ... questionable.

Any time anything like this happens in China or Ukraine or whatever, it's always "foreign operatives" or whatever. The locals never have any agency of course.

I observed this as well. I follow Daryl Cooper and he goes on and on how everything that happened in Russia since downfall of Soviet Union has imprint of USA. Russian economy was ruined by US corporations, their peaceful attempts such as Partnership for Peace was dashed by the likes of Allbright and Kissinger and their pawns like Václav Havel or Lech Wałęsa. Expansion of NATO basically forced Russia into hot wars, they had no other choice. Even recent analysis like Nordstream 2 pipeline explosion - Cooper's theory is that Biden was blackmailed by intelligence community to blow up the pipeline - because there is no possible explanation for why Putin or anybody else would ever do it, there is quite a remarkable absence of imagination regarding Putin and his convoluted gang of goons, given what convoluted stories Cooper can create when it comes to US actions. And my speculation is that even if Putin actually ordered it a new narrative would be created how it is ultimately just result of America's shady plays behind the curtain.

There is never any agency of 7.7 billion people in the World, everything that ever happens is orchestrated by this one nation of 300 million. It seems like a sort of strange and perverse version of American exceptionalism - yes we are the most powerful nation that ever was and we are behind everything, only we are the bad guys. Which is BTW a strangely common thread with the wokes, only they see immense power of Western White Males everywhere in the world throughout whole history. It is quite a weird fetish.

Also for everybody else, I follow The China Show podcast of two expats who lived in China for over a decade and who have a lot of contacts still in there. They covered the topic extensively during last episode, it is worth a watch.

I've always found it strange that typos or linguistically confused protest signs are considered evidence of CIA interference when that seems like one of the easier things for them to get right. Maybe it's hard to wrangle up a translator for obscure languages, but there's no shortage of people who know Chinese and you could even anonymously outsource the task to language learning sites and forums full of native speakers happy to correct you for free. It's easy to overestimate the literacy of the average person, but the typical protest sign is much closer to the level of yahoo answers than motte posts, with mistakes that to us seem glaringly obvious or impossibly absurd. This is even more pronounced in Chinese these days because hardly anyone hand writes characters anymore, using either pinyin inputs or one of the various autocomplete methods.

That actually seems like a relevant variable- if reports that tech censorship ramped up in China as unrest came into the picture are true, then the average chinaman being functionally inscripturate means we should expect to see a few protest signs written with Taiwanese characters or whatever- after all, Taiwanese writing apps are presumably not any more blocked than they had been.

And my understanding is that the ability to actually write in Chinese characters unassisted is like knowing Latin- it’s the product of the Chinese version of an expensive classical education, not something that stem lords or average joes would get(or indeed seek out), so the people protesting(who are almost definitionally not the elites who would know these things) are dependent on apps to produce Chinese characters.

The issue is that 乌鲁木齐 - the "qi" character (the last one) is very much a character you learn to write in like, 2nd grade if not first.

At the same time, this photo feels very cherry-picked to me. I didn't notice any such written signs in any videos.

So, summing up your evidence: 1) one of the protest signs - one filtered through social media to look like that - is written weirdly. . 2) ... the protests don't make sense because "demonstrations are allowed, and you can plea for the national government to fix issues, but the news agencies won't cover them". Maybe they're doing that? 3) "protesting against the national government is punished". Yeah, it is in iran too, yet protests happened there. Protests happen a lot, including in countries they're illegal in. The long duration of covid measures is making people more willing to protest! Not to say that protests are human nature or anything, social phenomena like this are (somewhat) historically contingent and depend on a history of protests people learn about, but it's plausible they are protests.

This isn't enough to prove intelligence involvement. From the twitter thread:

Don't get me wrong there are plenty of protests in China but a REAL Chinese protest tend to demand local official to step down and national government to intervene. They almost never call for a regime change. Even rarer to call the party leader to step down.

The covid measures are by the national government, though. And most protestors aren't calling for regime change! I can believe western media is playing up 'regime change' as a component of the protest - but even they acknowledge it's a small fraction of protestors. From cnn:

As numbers swelled at demonstrations in multiple major cities over the weekend, so too have the range of grievances voiced – with some calling for greater democracy and freedom. Among the thousands of protesters, hundreds have even called for the removal of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who for nearly three years has overseen a strategy of mass-testing, brute-force lockdowns, enforced quarantine and digital tracking that has come at a devastating human and economic cost.

Videos showed Urumqi residents marching to a government building and chanting for the end of lockdown on Friday. The following morning, the local government said it would lift the lockdown in stages – but did not provide a clear time frame or address the protests.

Some china watchers on twitter have also claimed media / twitter randoms were mistranslating vocal protests, swapping covid slogans for anti-regime/pro-democracy slogans, which is plausible. But all of that undermines her argument - if most of the protestors are just protesting covid, then your reasons 2 and 3 and her thread aren't relevant! And in the context of large protests about covid, a subset of them making more extreme claims becomes more plausible. From her thread again:

Those two things simply do not address the problem at hand. Demanding national leader to step down is a western thing because then they can vote in a new leader. It does not work in China. Strong sign of foreign funded operation.

the central government has extremely high approval ratings and it's usually the local ones that people have issues with. There are also foreigners in there chanting down with CCP in the video, they refer to the Communist Party as the "CCP" even though they're in China 🤭

This just sounds like the china-lover equivalent of 'americans would never vote biden because he is a communist subverter so TRUMP WON ' or 'america would never vote trump so RUSSIAN HACK ELECTION BOTS', tbh.

It's like the 'half of this board are feds' / 'half the twitter people who disagree with me are bots' claims (which was even less plausible pre gpt3, yet was about as common) - intelligence agencies exist and do things, but they don't do everything. Even if the CIA were involved in this, that involvement is very complex - even if the CIA ran 'protest-covid-china.cn', where the protestors downloaded pngs for their signs how much of a causal role in the protests does that actually have, might the protestors have used other signs otherwise?

You claim "I don't think they're entirely organic. Some are likely intelligence agency ops". Well, if 5% of the protests are 'ops' and 95% are 'organic', then how does that matter? Russia funds a bunch of leftist media organizations in the US that have a strong following on twitter (hence the 'russian state-affiliated media' tag). Does that make communism russian? Not at all.

This isn't to say US intelligence are 'the good guys' or would never do such a thing, not at all - this is much 'worse': In 2010, a new decade was dawning, and Chinese officials were furious. The CIA, they had discovered, had systematically penetrated their government over the course of years, with U.S. assets embedded in the military, the CCP, the intelligence apparatus, and elsewhere. The anger radiated upward to “the highest levels of the Chinese government,” recalled a former senior counterintelligence executive. ... Within the CIA, China’s seething, retaliatory response wasn’t entirely surprising, said a former senior agency official. “We often had a conversation internally, on how U.S. policymakers would react to the degree of penetration CIA had of China”—that is, how angry U.S. officials would have been if they discovered, as the Chinese did, that a global adversary had so thoroughly infiltrated their ranks.. But spies existing doesn't mean they're responsible for the car that just drove past your house.

The covid measures are by the national government, though. And most protestors aren't calling for regime change! I can believe western media is playing up 'regime change' as a component of the protest - but even they acknowledge it's a small fraction of protestors.

I'd argue that it is hard to underestimate significance of even small fraction of protesters demanding Xi Jinping or CCP being replaced. This NEVER happens in China, never. There was a precedent to this in form of famous bannerman protest in Beijing calling for end of Covid restrictions and calling for free elections as the National Congress of CCP was in sitting. This was immediately suppressed and censored and the bannerman AKA Bridge Man was promptly disappeared - probably with his larger network of friends and family also severely punished up to three generations. But his message still spread out in various forms including Apple Airdrop campaign, for which Apple caved in to CCP. That is the reason why you normally never see these things in China, and yet here we are.

Again, even if it is a small portion of the crowd demanding a change it cannot be compared to the Western protests. This is huge shift in sentiment of the population. If you actually have vocal voices willing to take such an incredible risk, there are bound to be much more people silently sympathizing but scared to voice their opinion.

Hold on.

You say we’ve seen intelligence agencies fund and maybe even coordinate opposition in HK. And this is supposed to imply that the West is smuggling fake agitators into enemy territory to stage protests? And despite this devious, nigh-suicidal deployment of eager actors, they didn’t bother hiring you to proofread their signs?

It would be easier to fake the whole thing in Hollywood. Or in the offices of mainstream media. Or by seeding a bunch of pictures on Twitter.

I did not imply that people were being smuggled in.

Note that an intelligence op doesn't mean that everyone involved works for the intelligence agency, or that they even know that the agency is involved. Every country has its collection of folks who would like to see the government fall. Intelligence operatives identify and befriend these folks, nurture their revolutionary sentiments, and help to remove hurdles in their way. It's the same tactic used to get a group of right-wing men to agree to kidnap the governor of Michigan, except that no one stops the plot from continuing to move forward.

I think it's likely that these were non-citizens, perhaps Taiwanese, or perhaps expats, that aren't risking their livelihoods.

Motte, meet Bailey...

I think the first question should be "Who is purporting this to be authentic?" The tweet you posted is just a debunking of the photo but it makes no reference to the source. Did the person who posted the tweet take this picture herself? Did it appear in Western media? I did a reverse image search and the only places I can find this on the web are from CCP apologists using this photo as evidence of CIA or MI6 or whatever involvement, which isn't a good sign.

Possible. But it's just as likely that it's a false flag by the PRC as something Western instigated.

Maybe slightly more likely. Western intelligence agencies aren't hiring Iowa teenagers to make these signs; they have plenty of people capable of writing Chinese, and they know that the mainland uses simplified. This isn't exactly obscure stuff, and they're not idiots.

The protestors' behavior even fits better; participants in a false flag operation know they won't be punished, while absolutely anyone living in China (including Taiwanese and expats) knows that calling for national downfall will lead to a... bad time, regardless of any sweet talking by Western operatives, who can't do much to protect you anyway.

I'd rank "organic protest by idiots" as most likely, false flag as a bit less likely, and a Western operation as the least likely.

Why the hell would a dictatorial régime do a false-flag revolution? They risk making people believe that protesting the government actually won't get you killed, so lots of normal people will join the false protests... Turning them into real protests. The number 1 rule for a dictator is to prevent the creation of common knowledge about how many people don't like you. Any appearance of large scale protests is incredibly dangerous to this end.

The false flag here is the signs clearly not being written by literate mainlanders. CCP propaganda organs can take those photos and circulate it through domestic media to prove that any protests are just some Western operation as opposed to organic expressions of dissatisfaction with the regime.

I think what he's saying is that the pictures are produced by the Prc then debunked, feeding a narrative that the (real) protests are fake.

I think it's likely that these were non-citizens, perhaps Taiwanese, or perhaps expats, that aren't risking their livelihoods. The use of traditional characters makes this more likely, only Hong Kong and Taiwan use them.

Doesn't that seem just ridiculously dangerous for the people involved? Rather than risking their livelihoods or reputations, it seems as though they are risking their lives. Massacres of local citizens can't escape notice locally, "disappearings" of foreign nationals who aren't even supposed to be there can be concealed because they weren't even supposed to be there. Local citizens have few rights, foreign nationals have none.

I don't think China disappears foreigners. Other than a couple of unfortunate Canadians, I believe that China treats foreigners well. I've visited China a few times and all levels of law enforcement treated me well. Other than their extreme apathy and lack of will to let me register my residence one time. They were too disinterested to even track me the way they are supposed to track where foreigners stay.

I'm going to say that China is safe for visiting white westerners. Your punishment for violating their laws and norms is being kicked out and banned from re-entry.

Yup! But if foreigners infiltrate the country in secret, so that no one other than the CIA knows you're there, and you get disappeared, who does anything about it? What's being proposed here is that the protestors claiming they are locals aren't locals, they get arrested and their identities can't be verified, what happens to them then? The diplomats can't claim them without revealing they've been astroturfing anti gov protests, not an option. If they die, what can anyone say? He wasn't even there.

Other than a couple of unfortunate Canadians, I believe that China treats foreigners well. I've visited China a few times and all levels of law enforcement treated me well.

Were you publicly protesting Xi Jinping's policies? Seem a bit apples and oranges if not...

Unless you're unlucky enough to be targeted for retaliation in response to something like America arresting Huawei executives, I think foreigners are treated better than Chinese citizens in this respect. You'll probably be kicked out, not have your ability to travel or do business in your home country restricted, and certainly not massacred. No one is being massacred over this, not even citizens.

Unless you're an actual spy, then you'll be at least imprisoned.

Information controls are designed to prevent ideas spreading to Chinese citizens that the government believes to be dangerous. Kicking you out achieves that goal without causing diplomatic headaches.

From what I can tell China has a total of about 30 Americans in its prisons, and the State Department considers one of those to be wrongfully detained. It's hard to find resources on Chinese citizens imprisoned in America, all I found was this that says we had "no more than 400" in the mid-2000s.

If your idea of China is that you'll be whisked away to the gulag on the slightest suspicion, I think you need to update. Cultural Revolution China is not present-day China. Present-day China is also not Stalin's Russia. They aren't free to call for the downfall of the national government or its leaders, but the typical treatment I've seen for verboten speech starts with a police visit where they try to convince you to stop. For whatever reason I'm having a hard time digging up the articles I'd read on the topic. Search is polluted with recent results, and restricting my search to before 2020 yields 6 results on Google for "china speech visit from police".

My model of china isn't citizens being whisked away to Gulag. Rather my model is, if the US/Taiwan/etc infiltrate large numbers of Taiwanese or other foreign nationals into the Prc to pretend they are prc citizens, that rather precludes diplomatic intercession on their behalf. If the Prc disappears them, the USA can't intercede without admitting that they were there protesting to begin with.

There are lots of times foreign citizenship can be a protective shield, but not where you're standing up to pretend to be a local protestor. When they round up the "local protestors" no one will notice people who aren't supposed to be there not being there afterward. Too many risks, not enough reward. These protests will be as meaningless in China as they were on Long island.

too many risks, not enough reward

You could say the same for, uh, flooding Chinese cities with planted agitators. What’s the point, the expected impact? Where is COINTELPRO getting all these fake Chinese eager to piss off the PRC?

Edit: I realize this is the same point you were making.

See my last paragraph, I'm explicitly not arguing that the protestors are planted. The young radical Muslim who sets off a fake bomb the FBI gave him isn't planted. It's far easier to network and influence locals that already have a negative view of the government than to import actors.

There are about 400,000 Taiwanese nationals living in China.

Exactly, I'd actually find the full Alex Jones "These are actually filmed in downtown Pawnee, Indiana" type takes more logical than "They launched a huge infiltration operation while cheesing out on learning how to spell."

I wish western intelligence services were strong enough to incite anti-lockdown revolts in China, but you're making them sound way cooler than they actually are.

Why would western intelligence services decide, in 2022, to ignite the exact sort of protests they spent much of 2020, 2021 and 2022 trying to stop? Especially when it's already known that such protests have an awful habit of spreading across borders with copycat protesting, such as when the freedom convoy in Canada had copycats as far flung as Europe and New Zealand.

Why would western intelligence services decide, in 2022, to ignite the exact sort of protests they spent much of 2020, 2021 and 2022 trying to stop?

I'm skeptical of the idea that the CIA is behind these protests, but this a poor argument against it. The CIA is very much in the habit of sponsoring the same people abroad that other parts of the US government fight at home. Whether it is "moderate" Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Syria, or drug traffickers in South and Central America...or reach way back into the Disney vault and remember when it was the choice between supporting Mussolini and allowing communists a chance to flourish that directed Anglo-American foreign policy.

The very fact that the USA is trying to quash these protests at home makes it more logical that they would try to force them abroad. If the deep state genuinely thought that lockdown/covid policies were good, then they would want to undermine China by preventing China from implementing them.

Why would western intelligence services decide, in 2022, to ignite the exact sort of protests they spent much of 2020, 2021 and 2022 trying to stop?

Because they have more than one priority at once? Western rivalry with, and distrust of, the Chinese Party-State is longstanding public knowledge. And when you have a big objective like that, any tool to hand looks attractive.

Are there any lockdowns left to protest in the West?

No, but trucker convoys do get used for non-lockdown related libertarian protests. A set of libertarian protest tactics used in China would presumably spread.

Ya especially with Europe's energy crisis coming, economic downturn, and the existing European precedent of the yellow vests and dutch farmer protests... anything anti-lockdown, but ultimately anti-government has the risk of pouring over into general international anti-technocrat class war...

but then the CIAs never been that smart with who they fund and what they choose to enable... they Ignored the Berlin wall protests and were actively shocked when communism fell at the same time they were pouring millions into funding Bin Laden to fight the soviets...