Is China Impenetrable to Outsiders?

Leopold Aschenbrenner says China is impenetrable to him. Reading German newspapers gives him the German debate and the German state of mind, and he would understand both far more poorly from afar. He also has a sense of what is happening in the UK. He does not have a sense of the state of mind or the political debate of an average Chinese person or an average Chinese elite. China has a billion people, and he finds the distance worrying.

Almost everything else is globalized, including the internet, and he says translation machines are now basically perfect. China is still impenetrable. Some people do really great work going through party documents and party speeches. Leopold Aschenbrenner says the work seems to require a lot of interpretive ability, because very specific words in Mandarin carry one particular connotation.