The China tag is for posts that are about China, that address how China is relevant to various issues EAs care about, or that are relevant to how one could have an impact by engaging with China.
Further reading
Wiblin, Robert & Keiran Harris (2020) China, its AI dream, and what we get wrong about both, 80,000 Hours, February 6.
An extended interview with Jeff Ding about China’s AI strategy.
My original rationale for this tag: It seems perhaps odd to single China out for a tag while not having tags for e.g. USA, Southeast Asia, ASEAN, United Nations, Middle Powers. But we do have a tag for posts relevant to the European Union. And China does seem like a particularly important topic, and one that it makes sense to have a specific tag for. And maybe we should indeed have tags for United Nations and Middle Powers.
I’d also be interested in thoughts on whether BRICS, Rising Powers, or something else would be a better label/scope for this particular tag than China.
Thoughts on how this entry should be used to cover different EA causes related to China? For example, should farmed animal welfare in China be discussed here? One option is to subdivide the article into different sections, each corresponding to a different cause or area, such as “animal welfare”, “artificial intelligence”, “great power wars”, etc. Another approach is to reserve this entry for something like “improving Sino-Western coordination”, which I guess is broadly what most people think of when they see the “China” tag? Though on reflection the latter seems overly restrictive.
Fwiw, I was envisioning something more like the former—i.e., this tag could be used for any post that has substantial discussion of China or China’s relevance to some cause area, and the entry could cover the intersection of China and various different cause areas. I see this as making sense because I think there’s some extent to which knowledge, connections, etc. relevant to China could be transferable across different cause areas. E.g., someone who develops some degree of expertise on Chinese policymaking or history or culture for the purposes of thinking about animal advocacy efforts there could also potentially be useful for people interested in technology or great power risks to talk to.