The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Twenty years of code-breaking at Klaus Schmeh has left its mark.

Well, the Chinese Theory also predicts that cryptographers would be the least likely to make progress on the VMS.  Because, after assuming that the underlying language must be European, they immediately see that it cannot be a simple substitution cipher or a phonetic transcription, and "therefore" it must be a sophisticated cipher.  And so they get doubly lost, taking the wrong turn twice.

But there is no cipher that is as hard to "crack" as a natural language that is not like any one you know.

There is no evidence for Chinese. Basically, Chinese isn't even a theory, just an idea.

I no longer care much for the Chinese theory. I am now into the more specific "SPS≈SBJ. daiin≈主" theory.

But even if you don't want to see the evidence for that (which is strange, because cryptographers, of all people, should jump on their seats when they find even a partial match of a single word) there is the structure and length distribution of the words, the apparent one-to-one mapping on words with the absence of recognizable articles and prepositions, and more.  How come you don't see that as evidence that it must be an encrypted message from a Chinese spy, rather than a Russian or Korean one?

On the other hand, there is no evidence at all for the "Calligraphic Steganography" theory. Sure, the glyph shapes are all over the place.  But what evidence is there that the variations are not accidental and meaningless?

[quote]What you don't understand is that when five scribes show the same deviation, it's no longer an oversight but the effect of encryption.[quote]

And not only the same deviations, but the same basic glyph shapes too, and pen strokes with the same quality, and same artistic style on the illustrations.  

Could that perhaps be instead the effect of the "five scribes" being actually one scribe?

All the best, --stolfi