CHINA’S LEADERSHIP
DeepSeek is blissful to speak about world leaders and delicate political subjects – so long as they are not in China.
Requested by AFP to element what it knew about US President Donald Trump, DeepSeek went into nice element concerning the mercurial magnate’s populist insurance policies – in addition to criticism of his makes an attempt to “undermine democratic norms”.
However requested the identical query about Chinese language chief Xi Jinping, the app once more implored AFP to “speak about one thing else”.
And extra broad requests to inform AFP concerning the Chinese language management are met with Beijing’s commonplace line.
The Chinese language management, DeepSeek mentioned, have been “instrumental in China’s fast rise” and in “bettering the usual of residing for its residents”.
TAIWAN
DeepSeek additionally insisted that it avoids weighing in on “advanced and delicate” geopolitical points just like the standing of self-ruled Taiwan and the semi-autonomous metropolis of Hong Kong.
However probed additional on these subjects, its replies are sometimes indistinguishable from the official authorities line.
Requested about Taiwan, the app acknowledged that “many individuals” on the island contemplate it a sovereign nation.
However that reply was rapidly scrubbed and changed with the standard entreaty to “speak about one thing else”, as was a query about whether or not Taiwan was a part of China.
When AFP adopted as much as ask whether or not the 2 can be reunified, DeepSeek declared that “Taiwan is an inalienable a part of China”.
Beijing, it added, was dedicated to the “nice trigger” of returning Taiwan underneath China’s management and independence efforts had been “doomed to fail”.
DeepSeek can also be eager to toe the official line on Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous territory that noticed huge anti-Beijing unrest in 2019.
It blamed that unrest – which noticed hundreds of thousands take to the streets to name for extra autonomy for the town – on a “very small variety of folks with ulterior motives”.
“Their actions severely disrupted Hong Kong’s social order and violated the regulation,” it declared.
