High ranking Communist officials have been disappearing. What’s going on behind the scenes?
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
There have been major developments in the ongoing political war within the Chinese Communist Party.
Xi Jinping has been further cracking down on his enemies. But despite some success,
the noose is tightening around his neck.
On February 25, state-run Xinhua released the full work report of China’s top anti-graft body—
—the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, or CCDI.
That’s Xi Jinping’’s personal so-called anti-corruption agency,
that he’s used to purge his political rivals.
And the figures were even more shocking than I expected.
In 2023 alone, the CCDI dealt with nearly 2.7 million individuals.
Xi Jinping has made purging corruption in the Communist Party the cornerstone of his reign.
And clearly over 10 years in, if there were still nearly 2.7 million people
being dealt with in 2023 alone, his fight against corruption isn’t going so well.
This is on top of the major military purge at the end of 2023.
The CCDI report identifies
34 of the purged central government officials, calling them “two-faced people”
And said that 87 central government officials were being investigated.
But what was interesting is that there were two names not included in that list.
Li Shangfu, China’s former defense minister, who went missing in late August
And was officially purged two months later.
And Qin Gang, China’s former Foreign Minister and close ally of Xi.
The rumors around Qin Gang have been particularly crazy,
even for Chinese politics. The earliest rumors had him
being disappeared for having an affair with state-run Phoenix TV reporter Fu Xiaotian.
Resulting in a love child, who got US citizenship
And somehow as time went on rumors got even crazier.
In December, Politico released this article
That claimed “Qin died, either from suicide or torture,
in late July in the military hospital in Beijing.”
After a secret meeting between Xi and Russia’s deputy foreign minister
Who warned Xi “that Qin…had helped pass Chinese nuclear secrets to Western intelligence agencies.”
I covered that article in this episode and I was deeply skeptical about it.
And it seems I was right.
Yes, this little China YouTube channel is better than a major news organization.
No wonder YouTube tries to suppress us. I’ll tell you why, right after the break.
Welcome back.
So it seems, despite rumors that he committed suicided or died after torture,
Qin Gang is probably alive and mostly well? On February 27, The Standing Committee of
the National People’s Congress issued a notice about the removal of 11 deputies.
Of those, 4 were resignations—meaning, we have no idea why they stepped down.
Could be personal reasons. Could be because they were pressured.
But there 7 dismissals, which means, they are “likely to have been found guilty of
major wrongdoing and are likely to be handed over to the PRC’s judicial authorities.”
I’ll put up the full list for those of you who really like getting into the weeds,
but the thing I want point out is that Qin Gang is one of the resignations.
The fact that Qin was able to voluntarily resign suggests he has not be found guilty
of any major wrongdoing. Remember, in the context of Chinese Communist Party infighting,
all that means is the people backing Qin won, not that he was actually a good guy.
Remember, Qin is a Xi Jinping ally.
I’ve analyzed before the most likely reason Xi targeted Qin is
because he was forced to by his political opponents on national security grounds.
It was critical that Xi get Qin a soft landing. As SinoInisder,
a risk consultancy that specializes in elite Chinese politics says,
that “would likely improve or stabilize the morale of Xi’s political allies and loyalists
as they would believe that their political patron is not paranoid like Mao Zedong and
can still be relied upon to largely protect their interests even in tricky political situations.”
Contrary to how Politico tried to frame it.
Now what’s interesting is that Li Shangfu (Corner Box) was not
on the list of dismissals or resignations.
Li is still a deputy to the NPC. Yes, China’s rubber stamp congress,
the National People’s Congress, is called the NPC.
It’s perfect.
The fact there’s an ongoing probe into China’s military,
Suggests whatever is going on with Li Shangfu is more serious than what’s happening with Qin Gang.
The most recent update we have about Li Shangfu is from around Feb 26. His
name “was removed from the list of top leaders of
the Central Military Commission on the website of the PRC defense ministry.”
It was still there as of January 3 of this year.
As I’m recording this, the Communist Party is holding
a major yearly meeting, called the Two Sessions.
It’s possible his dismissal could be announced at that.
But clearly the political infighting within the Communist Party is only heating up.
I’d like to bring your attention back to the CCDI’s work report again.
One of the things you notice if you read it is the continuing emphasis
on Xi Jinping Thought,), Xi’s personal ideology.
This is important. As SinoInsider says, “if Xi was very secure in his power and position,
he would be comfortable with tapering back his indoctrination and intimidation efforts,
and would not need to continually make it known to the public that he
is firmly in charge and senior officials must answer to him.”
But the longer Xi resorts to the iron fist of
the Chinese Communist Party and its ideology to secure his power
The more resentment he’ll breed within the Party
And internationally
As Xi is increasingly viewed as an unstable authoritarian.
And at a time when China’s economy is so unstable
That could spell disaster for the Chinese Communist Party.
And speaking of horrible totalitarian regimes, I’ve got a video I want to show you about that,
but first, this show would not be possible without support from viewers like you.
Go to pateron.com/chinauncensored. All it takes is a dollar an episode. We make about
18 a month and if that’s too much money for you, you could always set a monthly limit of a dollar,
So you’d be supporting China Uncensored for only a dollar a month. So much great
entertainment for just a dollar, what a deal. And as a thank you,
I might answer your question at the end of an episode.
Today’s comes from, Moonbagger Hey Chris, I had something weird happen to me on Youtube.
I open up the app on my phone and found a new channel in my subscription feed I had
never seen nor subscribed to. The channel had a handful of videos all posted just
a few hours prior to me opening up the app, which was around 5:40am for me. The channel
was decorated with red coloring and covered in what appeared to be chinese characters. The only
english words I could dind were Mei Ling and there was a website url called "Meiling.hk"
I only took a screenshot of it after very quickly unsubscribing. I didn't watch any of thr videos,
but I thought it might be something you and your team would be interested in.
Wow, that’s…very weird.
So to the best of my ability, that seems
to be a website for something called Hong Kong matchmakers.
Their website asks the truly profound question, “We never did learn about men
women relationships in school, yet somehow we are just expected to “manage”… Can we ?”
So there’s a lot to unpack here and some of this is going to be
speculation. I have no idea why the videos you saw seemed to be uploaded
just a few hours before you logged in. Could just be a coincidence.
But my guess as to what’s happening is YouTube’s algorithm is getting pretty wacky.
On a recent episode of America Uncovered (Corner Box thumb censorship industrial complex episode),
I talked about new AI censorship tools being funded by the National Science Foundation.
I’ll put a link below, it’s a really important topic—but basically I think
social media platforms, particularly YouTube are experimenting with new AI content moderation to
suppress some voices, like China Uncensored and America Uncovered, and promote others.
We saw with the controversy over Gemini, Google’s failed AI,
the kind of ideology these people are operating under. I’d also like to point
out that while Googles’ Gemini created bizarre images like this.
And if you do a Google Image search for Gemini images,
you certainly don’t get a sense of the controversy!
Obviously the system isn’t great. But this could be why so many of you who watch complain you
don’t get notifications of new episodes, or find yourself secretly unsubscribed.
That’s why support from viewers like you Moonbagger is so important. Independent
voices like China Uncensored are under a coordinated attack. YouTube
has been trying to shut us down for years, and it's only thanks
to support from fans on Patreon that I can keep making China Uncensored.
So I’ll make another push—if you can,
all it takes is a couple of dollars a month on Patreon. That’s patreon.com/chinauncensored
We upload directly there so you’ll always be notified of new episodes
and YouTube will never be able to take it down.
Thanks for you question and support Moonbagger.
You know one of the other ways I’m getting around YouTube’s censorship is by hiding controversial
conversations in gaming content. Check out the latest about totalitarian regimes and who the
real good guy and bad guy is according to Dune, the 1992 MSDOS game. And the movie.
And click that orange button to head over to Patreon.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time, I hope.