China’s tyranny was built by American companies
that put profit before basic human rights.
And now, they might get the pants sued off them.
Pants made from Chinese slave labor.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
Human rights really get in the way of doing big business,
don’t you think?
I mean that’s essentially what Bill Gates said when he was in Beijing in 1994.
He said, “It's a little strange to tie free trade to human rights issues,
it is basically getting down to interference in internal affairs.”
Yeah! And just think how much cheaper Chinese goods would be if they hired even younger kids.
Made them work even longer hours.
And didn’t pay them at all!
You’d save like $13 a year at Walmart.
Worth it!
Sure, the Chinese Communist Party tortures dissidents with electric cattle prods.
But they also have a lot of money.
So that obviously balances out, karma-wise.
The problem is there’s all these do-gooders in the world who don’t think profit is the greatest good.
They think freedom of belief, and expression, and not being tortured to death are the greatest good.
I’d like to see *their* 401ks.
Unfortunately, the US Commerce department put up a bunch of roadblocks to big business.
After the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, they put restrictions on trade.
US companies couldn’t sell things like handcuffs, helmets, or shotguns to Chinese police.
That’s just money left on the table if you ask me.
And Chinese police need those tables clear—
so they can tie dissidents to them,
and torture them with electric cattle prods.
The good news is that eventually the US helped
China get into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
And then, for many years, the US Commerce Department had
no qualms with American tech companies working directly with Chinese police.
I mean, when have tech companies
working with authoritarian regimes ever led to anything bad?
Except for that time with IBM and the Nazis.
Anyway, when you think about it,
isn’t sharing technology the best thing for human rights?
As one California based tech CEO said,
“Anything that helps China to modernize will help China to improve its human rights situation.”
Of course he said that back in 2006 when…
well no, that was as stupid back then as it is today.
The problem is, because American tech companies in the early 2000’s
treated China like one giant gold rush,
China was able to turn the book 1984 into an instruction manual.
There are a lot of examples.
Microsoft has worked with the Chinese military on AI research.
Thermofischer was selling DNA kits that I’m sure were very useful
for harvesting organs from political prisoners.
If there was money in it, I bet
they’d make China “Anti-saying Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh” guns.
Then when criticized, they would claim,
“Well how were we supposed to know they’d use them on people
who said Xi Jinping looked like Winnie the Pooh?”
But one company in particular had a very special role—Cisco Systems.
Cisco saw how the Chinese Communist Party was monitoring and arresting people and thought,
what a great opportunity to sell more routers!
So Cisco built systems that helped the Chinese Communist Party track and censor the internet.
In fact they were sued for it.
But in 2014, that case was thrown out. Not on substance, but on a technicality.
At the time, US District Judge Edward Davila ruled that
while there were credible claims that Cisco specifically marketed
itself as being helpful in persecuting dissidents,
“He wasn’t convinced the company could be sued in the US for alleged abuses committed overseas.”
Which was a great relief to
everyone at the Amazon baby leather factory in Cambodia.
But this lawsuit refused to die.
Unlike all those dissidents China killed since then.
Last week, a federal appeals court, called the 9th Circuit,
said the lawsuit alleging Cisco aided Chinese torture may now proceed.
Will American tech companies finally be held accountable?
I’ll tell you right after this quick commercial break.
Welcome back.
Unless YouTube demonetized us again then all you saw was a black screen.
But I mean,
I can’t imagine why YouTube’s parent company Google
would want to do that to an episode about American tech companies aiding CCP crimes, can you?
So as I said, after being thrown out in 2014,
the lawsuit against Cisco has been accepted by an appeals court.
That doesn’t mean Cisco is liable.
It just means the judges felt there was enough evidence to appeal the case,
and let it actually be heard in court.
This is a real pain for Cisco.
So much for the courts backing multi billion dollar corporations.
Corporations are people too, you know!
The lawsuit alleges that,
“Cisco Systems Inc. and two former executives aided the Chinese government
in tracking and torturing adherents of the Falun Gong.”
Falun Gong is the Chinese spiritual practice that became widely popular in China during the 90s.
Until there were more people practicing it than
there were members of the Chinese Communist Party.
And then the Party decided to beat them up and put them to labor camps instead.
And it wasn’t that Cisco technology was being misused by the CCP—
like it was all some big misunderstanding. No.
The allegations say Cisco specifically advertised its technology to China
as being really useful in helping go after religious dissidents, like Falun Gong.
Cisco says the claims have no basis.
Though that isn’t what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
After the lawsuit was allowed to move through,
Paul Hoffman, an attorney for the Falun Gong plaintiffs, said,
“What this means is that tech companies, and other companies for that matter,
will not be able to engage in activity that aids and abets torture in other countries.”
Imagine what would happen if American companies
were actually held accountable for their actions in China.
There’s a reason Nike, Adidas,
and Apple lobbied to stop a Uyghur slave labor bill a few years ago.
Yes, they protested a slave labor bill.
That’s because they like slave labor in China.
It’s like that old saying, “An Apple a day
is cutting into productive work time!
Pick up the pace, you worthless dissidents!”
The technology Cisco helped build for China was called Golden Shield.
It was the beginning of what people now call the Great Firewall of China.
It originally started as a way to persecute Falun Gong practitioners,
but it’s been used for so much more.
For instance, in 2019,
making sure that chatter of a mysterious virus of unknown origin
would be scrubbed from the Chinese internet.
As I said, when have tech companies working with authoritarian regimes
ever led to anything bad?
I wish just once when I asked this type of question it’d actually be rhetorical.
There are a couple of things that could happen now that the appeal has been granted.
This ruling was made by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court.
Cisco could petition for an 11-judge panel to make a new ruling.
Or, it could appeal up to the US Supreme Court.
But considering the current Supreme Court...
that could be a ruling that many American companies would not want made.
So Cisco may hesitate to go that far.
But if the case moves forward, which it seems it will, Hoffman said he’s going to start
“seeking internal records from Cisco and deposing its executives”.
Which also could be really bad for Cisco.
But let's remember the real victims here.
No, not them!
The American corporations that stand to lose big money!
As Bloomberg News, which is tied to billionaire Michal Bloomberg,
whose finance company relies on the China market, says,
this case “threatens to exacerbate tensions between the US and China”.
Bloomberg News says the US and China are
“tumbling into a tit-for-tat trade war and
both sides are restricting exports critical to advanced technologies”
Yeah! Think of all the advanced technologies the US is getting from China, like…
But China is getting advanced technology from the US.
And remember,
“Anything that helps China to modernize will help China to improve its human rights situation.”
In fact, even in this 9th Circuit Court,
one of the judges was worried about the impact on international relations.
She said,
“Finding of liability in this case would necessarily require showing that the Chinese
Communist Party and Ministry of Public Security violated international law.”
I mean we know China is committing genocide,
killing people for their organs,
and using rape as a form of torture,
but if we actually said that in court,
then it could really make doing business there seem, somehow…dirty.
And is that what we really want?
Remember what the Bible says:
“Money is the root of all wealth.”
I learned that in Cash-olic school.
So won’t someone please think of the children…
and how we can put them to work!
So do you think American companies should be held accountable for their actions in China?
Let me know in the comments.
And as a thank you to all the fans who make China Uncensored possible
by contributing on patreon.com/chinauncensored
because YouTube keeps demonetizing us.
I’ll answer one of your questions on the show.
Today’s question comes from Timothy.
“Hey Chris, What do you think would happen if the PRC "accidentally"
attacks a US naval ship? Say they also formally apologized and sent an
indemnity. Similar to what Imperial Japan did in the USS Panay Incident.
Do you think the US government would tuck its tail between its legs and take the apology?”
Timothy, I am offended.
This is the United States of America we’re talking about!
Greatest country on Earth!
Do you think we would bow to China?
Repeatedly?
On several different occasions? Okay, yeah, you might have a point.
The problem is a lot of people in the Biden Administration came from the Obama Administration,
and they come from a camp that believes we have to engage with China.
Many in the US government, Bush era too,
believed that doing business with China was the best way to bring democratic reform to China.
And as we saw with Secretary of State Blinken’s trip to China.
And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip.
They’ll go pretty far to try to normalize relations with China.
Kind of like how the “This is Fine” dog
tries normalizing living in a burning building.
Now we know the CCP likes to push the envelope.
Back in May, a Chinese fighter jet buzzed a US plane
over international waters in the South China Sea.
Would they go so far as to “accidentally” destroy a US military vessel?
It depends how they think the US president would react.
I don’t think that would have gone over under Trump.
Under this Administration…
Let’s hope we don’t find out.
Thanks for your question and your support Timothy!
And thank you for watching.
If you want to support China Uncensored,
all it takes is as little as a dollar an episode over on pateron.com/chinauncensored.
You’ll get a bunch of cool perks,
including the chance to have me answer your question on the show.
And best of all, you’ll be helping us stick it to the CCP.
Once again I”m Chris Chappell, see you next time.