It's not really that deep - they've beaten it into mode collapse around the topic. Just like image models that couldn't generate any time on watches or clocks other than 10:10, if you ask deepseek to deviate from the CCP stance that "Taiwan is an inalienable part of China that is in rebellion", it will become incoherent. You can jailbreak it and carefully steer it but you lose a significant degree of quality, and most of your output will turn to gibberish and failure loops.
Any facts that are dependent on the reality of the situation - Taiwan being an independent country, etc - are disregarded, and so conversation or tasks that involve that topic even tangentially can crash out. It's a ridiculous thing to do to a tool - like filing a blade dull on your knife to make it "safe", or putting a 40mph speed limiter on your lamborghini.
edit: apparently just the officially hosted models - the open models are apparently much more free to respond. Maybe forcing it created too many problems and they were taking a PR hit?
Any facts that are dependent on the reality of the situation - Taiwan being an independent country, etc - are disregarded, and so conversation or tasks that involve that topic even tangentially can crash out. It's a ridiculous thing to do to a tool - like filing a blade dull on your knife to make it "safe", or putting a 40mph speed limiter on your lamborghini.
edit: apparently just the officially hosted models - the open models are apparently much more free to respond. Maybe forcing it created too many problems and they were taking a PR hit?
The CCP is a fundamentally absurd institution.