The CCP is covering up its stock market crash. Chinese weapons are
ending up in the hands of Hamas. But the biggest danger could be
Chinese pigeons! That and more on this week’s China News Headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Incogni.
You probably know that companies are collecting your personal data. But you
may not realize just how many. Dozens, maybe hundreds—most of which you’ve never heard of.
And you have no idea what they’re doing with your data. Incogni helps stop them.
I’ll explain more at the end.
Well, good news for China! This week China stocks
rebounded—sharply!—on renewed talk of official support.
Wait, what does “renewed talk of official support” mean?
Well let’s see, according to Reuters,
it says stocks “rose on a slew of *signals* that authorities are
strengthening their *resolve* to support slumping markets”.
Which...doesn’t sound like authorities are actually
doing much. There are merely signals that authorities *might* do something.
And the fact stocks are rebounding on a chance makes me think everyone working
with China isn’t just naive, but they also have a serious gambling problem.
While stocks did rebound *this week*, it’s not as rosy as some media make it out to be.
This is the Shanghai Composite Index from the last 5 days. Rebound, right?
But if you look at that same Index over the last three years,
that rebound is a small blip in a long downward trend.
It’s like celebrating losing five pounds in a week… after putting on 240 pounds
during the lockdowns. Maybe skip the cake and head back to the treadmill.
China’s Shenzhen stock market is on a similar slide downward.
So...things are actually going horribly for the two biggest Chinese stock markets. Which
means things are going horribly for Chinese companies. Hope is almost gone. Despite this,
some people will hear me say “*almost* gone” and think
“So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” Invest!
Who’s to blame for this downward trend? Obviously, it’s the independent rating agencies! You know,
the ones that assess the health and profitability of companies on the stock
market and provide that info to investors, so investors can make better decisions.
Which is why the CCP is punishing six major
rating agencies for reporting negatively on Chinese stocks.
Killing the messenger,
huh? I guess this is what it means when authorities “support slumping markets”.
The *real* problem is obviously that rating agencies try to tell investors the truth. If only
they’d stop reporting the truth and report the way the CCP tells them, then investors will put
more money into the markets! And that will solve all of China’s fundamental economic problems.
Those other fundamental economic problems include...
China’s factory activity. It’s shrinking because of weak demand.
That leads to layoffs, so people have less money, which makes demand even weaker.
Some Chinese export factories have had to lower prices so much,
they’re on the brink of bankruptcy.
That article talks about a factory owner, Mr. Lin, who took an order even though the
price was 10% *below* his production cost. Meaning he lost about $150,000. But things
were so bad already, he took the order anyway, desperate just to keep the client.
If their prices were any lower they could technically be considered a
charity. Though I’m not sure how many charities make their employees work in
sweatshop-like conditions. Kinda defeats the whole humanitarian purpose of it.
Around 15% of people in China work in jobs related
to exports. And since exports are down, jobs are down, too. Why? Well…
Other countries are buying less from China. To which I say… good.
In fact, in 2023, for the first time in two decades,
the US bought more from Mexico than China.
That’s in part because it’s been getting harder to do business with China. Chinese goods have
gotten more expensive to make and import. Also, a lot of American consumers just don’t want
stuff made in China anymore. Probably because China’s human rights record is almost as shoddy
as their products.
Oh, and another fundamental economic problem China is facing is debt.
Local government debt has reached a record high. Local governments are running out of money. So
they’re issuing more and more bonds to raise capital. But the problem is,
they have to pay interest on those bonds, which makes them run out of money even faster.
It’s the equivalent of getting a payday loan,
but every week. Eventually the fees and interest will make you go bankrupt.
The average Chinese citizen is not happy about all this.
Last Friday, the US Embassy in Beijing posted this
to Weibo. It was a message about the importance of giraffe conservation.
Or was it?
Because angry Chinese investors used it to post comments venting about the plunging stock market.
The post got more than 160,000 comments. Mostly not really related to giraffes.
You know things are bad when people saw the giraffe, realize its downward sloping
neck looks like a plunging stock market chart, and then trauma dumped en masse.
One user wrote, “The US government, please help Chinese stock investors.”
Another commented, “Even giraffes get protection, I’m so envious.”
It’s sad *that* makes them jealous of giraffes… and not the fact they
can whip those long necks with enough ferocity to kill an adult
man. Why do I have to have such a stupid, short, non-lethal neck?!
So why did so many people jump on the giraffe post? I don’t know. Probably it has more to
do with it being a US Embassy page, which—even though it’s theoretically subject to the same
censorship as other Weibo pages—I guess it *feels* like a place you can speak freely.
Or maybe it’s just because “China’s market regulators have disabled the
comments sections of their own social media accounts.”
Another case of “If we don’t see the bad news,
then it’s not happening.” Kind of like how you can’t get a cavity if you never see the dentist.
And after the break, guess who China is sending weapons to? You probably won’t like it.
Welcome back.
Taiwan is angered at a unilateral change China made to a Taiwan Strait flight path.
With this change to the “M503” flight path, certain domestic
commercial flights that connect the Chinese cities of Dongshan, Fuzhou,
and Xiamen will be flying on a route that comes just 4.3 miles from the Taiwan Strait Median Line.
Taiwan and China had agreed to the route back in 2015, except according to their agreement,
Chinese planes had to fly 6 nautical miles further west.
Last week, China arbitrarily decided “Nope,
we’re not going to follow that anymore. We’re going to move it slightly closer to Taiwan.”
Now maybe this change in flight paths doesn’t seem like a big deal. After all,
it’s just a few miles. And we’re talking about civilian aircraft, not military.
But it is a big deal.
The CCP is playing the long game. It’s called “salami slicing.” Gradually push more and more,
and if they don’t get real pushback, they keep pushing further. If Taiwan doesn’t push back hard
right now, one day they’ll wake up and Chinese military planes will be cruising over Taipei.
The CCP is also salami slicing Japan.
Last month, China ordered a Japanese fishing boat
to leave waters near the Japan-held but Beijing-claimed Senkaku islands.
Just because China claims those islands, doesn’t mean they’re theirs.
They have about as much authority claiming those waters as I do
claiming the so-called Empire State Building. I call it Chappell Tower.
But if China keeps pushing, and Japan doesn’t push back,
eventually China *will* effectively control those islands. And they’ll
say they’ve actually been part of Chinese territory since ancient times.
It’s like how no one pushed back when China started gradually building up
artificial islands in the South China Sea.
And now those islands have runways and warplanes—because nobody stopped them.
It’s like that old story “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,
It’s Gonna Also Take a Glass of Milk, and Your Ancestral Home.”
If you’re concerned about the CCP’s military buildup,
at least they’re not selling weapons to terrorist groups.
Except that a massive cache of Chinese-made weapons was found in Gaza last month.
Of course, the CCP is totally denying they’ve been providing weapons to Hamas to use against Israel.
However, China does officially sell weapons to
Iran, which then supplies weapons to Hamas. But that’s totally different.
And after the break, China has a terrifying new surveillance device for electronic warfare.
Welcome back.
Chinese scientists say they have developed a game-changing military
surveillance device for electronic warfare.
Basically, it’s a tool that will let them intercept all enemy communications during
a battle. This is high-tech because it allows real-time monitoring of signals
that used to be impossible to capture: radio, satellite—basically any signal frequency.
Now if it could only tell me when women are sending me signals,
ya hear me fellas?According to the scientists, this device also allows the Chinese military
to suppress those signals, while leaving their own communications uninterrupted.
So while China attacks, US or Taiwanese troops could
be left completely unable to talk to each other.
Unless they go old school.
Of course, the Chinese scientists might be lying, but…
The US probably isn’t when it says it has disabled a Chinese hacking network targeting
critical infrastructure—like naval ports, internet service providers, and power lines.
That Chinese hacking network is being labeled “Volt Typhoon.”
And look, it’s good the US found and disabled some of those hacks. But how long did Volt
Typhoon have access to America’s internet and power grids *before* they were disabled? And did
the US disable *all* of these kinds of hacks? Not likely. Probably only a small fraction.
I’m gonna be so mad if China gets access to my internet search history. I’ll be
absolutely ruined if the world learns how much I watch clips from Gilmore Girls.
US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has another hacking concern:
Chinese Electric Vehicles. She says they pose serious data security risks.
Like Teslas, Chinese EVs constantly collect information about the driver, location,
and the car’s surroundings. The difference is, Chinese EVs may be sending that data to Beijing.
Dang it, so they’d know how much I watch Gilmore Girls while I’m driving,
too? I… might have a problem.
Fortunately, there are still basically no Chinese EVs in the US, because both the Trump and Biden
administrations have put in a 25% tariff. That makes US electric vehicles more competitive.
But Europe and Australia have been flooded with cheap Chinese EVs.
Policymakers in those countries call Chinese cars “affordable,” but
eventually everyone will realize how much they’re really paying.
Chinese EVs are like living next to an active volcano. Sure,
it might be the more affordable option. But sooner or later, you’re gonna get burned.
You know what else is a security risk? Pigeons. That’s right, pigeons.
A pigeon accused of spying for China has been freed in India after an 8-month detention.
Did they torture the pigeon? Waterboard it? Electrocute it?
Eat a bunch of delicious bread right in front of it without offering any crumbs?
Police in Mumbai had found the bird with metal rings tied to its leg and Chinese
writing under its wings. Naturally, they assumed it was a Chinese spy.
After all, China does do a lot of aerial spying.
In this case, though, “Experts say the bird probably got lost during
a race off the coast of Taiwan and may have hitched a ride on a boat.”
So the bird was finally released this week—weirdly, after a campaign by PETA,
the organization that exploits women’s bodies to help animals.
So, ok, possibly India detaining the pigeon was a mistake.
It would be terrible if that bird was held in an Indian
prison on false charges. *China* would never do that to animals.
Only to people.
And this episode is sponsored by Incogni.
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Once again I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.