The US and China race for a downed F-35
An Australian tennis organization bans “Where is Peng Shuai” T-shirts
And China weaponizes climate change
Than and more on this week’s China news headlines
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
The US is fighting back against China’s maritime claims.
The Chinese Communist Party claims the entire South China Sea as its territory.
Each year, trillions of dollars of shipping goes through these waters.
The US frequently sends some of its most powerful warships through the South China
Sea. What it calls freedom of navigation operations. Aimed at no country in particular.
The latest one happened this week.
Umm, it might not exactly have had the intended effect.
Tonight one of the most sophisticated pieces of military technology on the planet
now at the bottom of the South China Sea and up for grabs.
Yes, an F-35C stealth fighter crashed while attempting to land on the aircraft carrier
during routine flight operations. 7 people were injured.
The pilot was rescued, and no one died, so that’s good.
The problem is, that fighter jet is now at the bottom of the South China Sea.
And now the US Navy is in a rush to get it back, before China can.
The race is on now to get the appropriate kind of recovery gear. The Chinese have it,
the US Navy has it. Both those countries are going to want to get a hold of this wreckage.
But how much could it possibly matter if the Chinese Navy got a hold of the wreckage?
The nearly 100 million dollar fifth generation stealth fighter, one of the most sophisticated
assets in the US arsenal. It's almost invisible to radar and so the construction
the coatings that are on that airplane are of great interest to the Chinese.
Okay, so it would be really bad.
Then again, Chinese hackers already stole the designs for the F-35.
So…I really don’t think there’s a silver lining to this story.
But while the US was having a few problems with its aircraft,
China showed that its jets were doing just fine. By sending a bunch of them over Taiwan’s way.
Taiwan has reported the largest incursion of Chinese air force jets in months,
as Beijing steps up its military activity around the island's air defense zone.
Taiwan's defense ministry said Sunday its fighters warned away
over three dozen Chinese aircraft in an area close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Vice President traveled to Los Angeles,
where he had a digital conference with 17 US lawmakers.
The Taiwanese Vice President stopped in LA on his trip to Central America.
Lai was “on his way to cement ties with Honduras,
which previously flirted with switching its diplomatic recognition to Beijing.”
The big question is whether China will try to stage an invasion of Taiwan
as early as this year. While the upcoming Olympics in Beijing make it less likely,
it is still a possibility—one we discussed in this recent episode. I’ll put a link below.
And coming up next, China warns the US over the Olympics. After this theoretical commercial break.
Welcome back. Unless we’re demonetized again.
The Chinese Communist Party is warning the US to stop interfering in the Olympics.
That was on a call between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken . Wang told Blinken the most urgent priority
is the US should stop interfering in the Beijing Olympics.
Wang didn’t say how the US should do that.
Really, the only thing the US government has done is to launch a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics.
So is Wang saying the US is interfering with the Olympics by not coming to the Olympics?
Sure, that makes sense. Meanwhile, Olympic athletes
and other participants are heading into Beijing’s Olympic Covid bubble,
where they’ll be isolated from the rest of the country and repeatedly tested for Covid.
Now while this is to keep an outbreak from happening, Chinese authorities must have
been looking forward to a little side benefit from the bubble: pesky Western journalists
wouldn’t be able to travel around interviewing inconvenient human rights activists,
or Uyghurs, or anyone else the Chinese regime wants to keep their mouths shut.
So instead, Western journalists have a lot of time on their hands
to write stories about how creepy and authoritarian China’s Covid bubble is.
“For the thousands of athletes,
journalists and others descending on Beijing for the Winter Olympics,
China’s strict pandemic measures are creating a surreal and at times anxious experience.”
Not exactly the great publicity the Communist Party was hoping for.
But speaking of the wide world of sports, Tennis Australia , which
hosts the Australian Open, banned t-shirts with the saying “Where is Peng Shuai.”
Peng Shuai is of course the Chinese tennis star who accused a top ranking Communist
Party official of sexual assault, disappeared, then reappeared under obvious state control.
Tennis Australia said it banned the t-shirt because it wanted “to create a
‘safe and inclusive’ environment”.
After an incredible backlash, Tennis Australia reversed the ban...
“as long as those wearing them were well behaved”.
But speaking of t-shirts, why don’t you take a stand by buying one of our very own
not made in China t-shirts celebrating the Beijing
Winter Olympics. Fake Snow. Real Genocide. Get yours at chinauncensored.tv/merchandise.
Wear it to a sporting event and let me know how it goes.
And speaking of clothing, US lawmakers are demanding the International Olympic Committee
prove that Beijing Olympic uniforms aren’t made using forced labor.
The IOC responded by saying, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
But the Chinese Communist Party’s insidious reach into Australia doesn’t stop at Tennis Australia.
This week, a Chinese company seized control
of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’sWeChat account.
“Its name is now: ‘Australian-Chinese New Life,’ and the description is:
‘Providing living in Australia information for the Chinese community.’”
And since it's an election year, the move is being called foreign interference. Because it
essentially cut off Prime Minister Morrison from a platform used by many Chinese Australians.
Chinese officials have denied any involvement in seizing Morrison’s account. And the Chinese
company that now controls the account claims they bought it fair and square because they needed an
account that already had followers, and that they had no idea it belonged to the prime minister.
But in some ways, Morrison never had control over the account in the first place.
“Because of WeChat’s rules that public accounts must be registered by a Chinese national,
Mr. Morrison had registered his account through a Chinese intermediary.”
Which just shows how messed up it is for Australian government officials
to use WeChat in the first place. Yes, you want to keep in touch with your constituents.
But this is essentially Chinese Communist Party spyware.
“With the loss of Mr. Morrison’s account, some Australian officials vowed to dump WeChat.”
Yeah, that’s a good idea.
I just hope Morrison and his staff weren’t using WeChat on their own phones.
And coming up after the break, China is using climate change to fight the US.
Welcome back.
Diplomats at the US Embassy in Beijing are not happy.
Some of them have asked permission to leave China temporarily over Covid restrictions.
I wonder if that has anything to do with China bringing back the Covid anal swabs?
Yes, remember a year ago, when the Chinese Communist Party started using anal swabs to
detect the coronavirus? They apparently mostly stopped after a huge backlash.
But we now know, thanks to US government records,
that Chinese authorities did perform anal swabs on US diplomatic officials.
I’d want to leave China too.
But as Climate Envoy John Kerry always says, we have to work with China to fight climate change.
And Xi Jinping is all about protecting the environment.
You know, so long as it doesn’t interfere with normal life.
Xi Jinping told Party leaders, “Reducing emissions
is not about reducing productivity, and it is not about not emitting at all, either.”
“We must stick to the overall planning and ensure energy security, industrial supply
chain security and food security at the same time as cutting carbon emissions.”
In other words, let the US become less competitive by pushing a climate agenda
while China keeps firing up new coal plants.
I reported last week that China’s birthrate has plummeted to the lowest level in decades.
China is on the verge of a demographic crisis.
But after years of the one child policy and a bleak looking economic future with few prospects,
many Chinese people are not ramping up production of the old baby factories.
So to encourage baby making, “Beijing is...offering everything from baby bonuses,
to discounted mortgages and paid leave that increases depending on the number of children.”
And as I’ve said, if the carrots don’t work,
the CCP will bring out the sticks and start forcing people to have babies.
And if that sounds far fetched to you, remember,
this is the regime that kills people and sells their organs.
And now a research paper has been taken down because it used
non consensual DNA samples from Tibetans and Uyghurs.
This is actually a huge issue in the medical community.
This 2019 study by the British Medical Journal
found that 99% of publications involving organ transplantation in China,
did not provide proof the organ donors gave consent.
Which, I know its crazy to think that that’s a question that even needs to be asked,
but that’s what you get when you deal with the Chinese Communist Party.
You know what else you deal with?
China giving Fight Club a new ending. Where the authorities win.
The original ending in the movie Fight Club shows a bunch of buildings exploding—basically
the protagonist’s successful plan to blow up the credit card companies
that are keeping the common people down.
But there’s a new ending in the Chinese version, released on the Tencent Video streaming platform .
And it’s so much better! “The exploding building scene is replaced with a black screen and a coda:
‘The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals,
successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.’”
And you know how Brad Pitt’s character was really just a figment
of Edward Norton character’s imagination? Well in China’s version, he’s not imaginary,
but instead, “was sent to a ‘lunatic asylum’ for psychological treatment and was later discharged”.
I feel like whoever came up with the new ending should be sent to the lunatic asylum.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from a fan of China Uncensored who supports the
show on the crowdfunding website Patreon or the exclusive social media platform Locals.
Motqalden asks on Patreon, “Don't host countries usually lose money on the games in a good year?
Bet you they are gonna regret it more than normal.”
Well, you’re right, host countries usually lose money on the Olympics.
Some say the Tokyo Olympics lost 30 billion dollars.
That’s why it's harder and harder to find countries willing to host the Olympics.
For this year's Winter Olympics, it was basically down to China versus Kazakhstan—both
brutal authoritarian regimes.
China doesn’t care about losing the money. A huge part of their economy is based on moving debt
around. I’ll explain more about that on tomorrow’s episode so stay tuned. But China saw the 2008
Beijing Olympics as a big propaganda win. And it was hoping this year’s Olympics would be as well.
But with everyone wearing this incredible China Uncensored Beijing 2022 Winter
Olympic T-shirt , it’s become more of a propaganda nightmare for the CCP.
The Chinese Communist Party knows the jig is up.
They can’t trick the world into believing it's all cuddly pandas. That’s why you see
the Party taking a harder and harder line. And a confrontation is looking more and more inevitable.
At least you’ll be wearing a cool t-shirt. Thanks for your question and your support!
And thank you for watching. You too can get your questions answered on the show by
signing up for the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army over at patreon.com/chinauncensored.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.