Editor’s note for January 18, 2023

My thoughts today:

There’s a lot to learn from Chinese social media and state propaganda. But you have to be a little careful what you believe.

Bloomberg, Nikkei Asia, and the Financial Times have all reported on a new government backed ride-hailing app to be called Strong Nation (强国 qiángguó) apparently intended to rival Didi, the company that ate Uber alive in China but was later smacked down by the government after it IPO’d in New York in 2021.

But the source of these reports was “state media,” specifically a report in the Beijing Daily, a newspaper controlled by the Beijing branch of the Chinese Communist Party. However, when I searched for the article this morning, it had already been deleted. And since then, a variety of reports by Chinese media have refuted the claims of official backing for the app, and called the firm behind the app a “wildcat” (or literally “wild chicken”) company that has no state sponsorship.

That provides our word of the day below, and a lesson in fact checking:

wildcat / pheasant / slut
野鸡 yějī
Literally “wild chicken,” this word means “pheasant” in formal language. In slang, it is similar to “wildcat” and can refer to an unofficial or unregulated university or company (野鸡大学 yějī dàxué and 野鸡公司 yějī gōngsī). It is also used to mean a freelancing sex worker, or something like “slut.”