title: Is UTF-16 compatible with UTF-8?
body: <p>I asked Google the question above and was sent to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4655250/difference-between-utf-8-and-utf-16">Difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16?</a> which unfortunately doesn't answer the question.</p>
  
  <p>From my understanding UTF-8 should be a subset of UTF-16 meaning: if my code uses UTF-16 and I hand in a UTF-8 encoded string everything should always be fine. The other way around (expecting UTF-8 and getting UTF-16) may cause problems.</p>
  
  <p>Is that correct?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: To clarify why the linked SO question doesn't answer my question: My problem arose when trying to process a JSON string using <code>WebClient.DownloadString</code>, because the WebClient used the wrong encoding. The JSON I received from the request was encoded as UTF-8 and the question for me was: if I set <code>webClient.Encoding = New System.Text.UnicodeEncoding</code> (a.k.a UTF-16) would I be on the safe side, i.e. able to handle UTF-8 and UTF-16 request results, or should I use <code>webClient.Encoding = New System.Text.UTF8Encoding</code>?</p>