An Undersea Tunnel springs a leak Joe Biden vetoes a resolution that
would put tariffs on Chinese solar panels. And we may finally learn why
GoFundMe froze our funds. That and more on this week’s top China news headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Surfshark. You should be using a VPN like Surfshark to
Protect yourself whenever you go online. I’ll tell you more at the end.
Now is not a good time to travel to China.
I mean, I’m not sure it’s ever a good time to travel to China, but especially now.
This week, China sentenced an American citizen to life in prison for espionage.
John Shing-wan Leung was a 78-year-old American citizen who was also a permanent
resident of Hong Kong.He was detained roughly two years ago in Suzhou,
China under circumstances that aren’t known. There aren’t a lot of details about his case,
including why the Chinese government thinks he’s a spy. Which is by design, I’m sure.
After all, China’s had a lot of practice nabbing foreigners on trumped up charges to use as
political pawns when it needs them. Like when China detained two Canadians on spying charges,
only to release them after Chinese Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was released by Canada.
Leung’s sentence comes with a $72,000 fine and the
removal of his “political rights,” …which I didn’t know Hong Konger’s had any more.
Speaking of Americans in China— Former NBA star Dwight Howard triggered
Chinese netizens’ anger recently for calling Taiwan the “c” word.
That’s right. In a promotional video for Taiwan tourism, Howard called Taiwan a country.“OK.
Here we go. Right? Oh hello everyone. I’m Dwight Howard. And since I came to Taiwan, I’ve gained
a whole new appreciation of this country.” He added insult to injury by calling Taiwan’s
leader, who definitely doesn’t rule over an independent country,
a “president” and the building where she works the “president’s office.”
Are you really sure we can stay for one night at the president’s office?
Yes. The President’s office?
So I might even bump into the president herself while going for a late night snack.
Yeah. And the stay includes breakfast and other tasty Taiwanese snacks.
That’s crazy. I don’t even know if that’s legal in my country or not.
That’s why Taiwan is a free country. OK. I like it.”
CNN reported that “The hashtag ‘Howard Taiwan independence’ became the top trending topic on
Weibo on Friday morning, and garnered more than 400 million views by the afternoon.”
That’s literally one day after it was posted.
The “director” in this video is Taiwan’s vice president, and the video was created to promote
a contest for an overnight stay in Taiwan’s presidential office building in Taipei.
Hmmm. I think if I were to travel to one of the Chinas right now, I’d probably go with Taiwan.
A Chinese jail cell would be much cheaper, but I bet
the food in the presidential office suite is way better.
Howard has been playing for the Taoyuan Leopards,
a professional basketball team based in the city of Taoyuan in Taiwan, since last year.
He claims he didn’t know this commercial would offend anyone
and apologized for causing any harm.
Now, I find that pretty hard to believe. Because how can you live in Taiwan for almost a year and
not know you’re *not* living in a country? Howard also claimed, “Where I’m from if I say
I wanna go to the country, it doesn’t not mean that place is a country. It’s just how we talk”.
“It doesn’t not mean that place is a country”? Is the double negative intentional? If so, I’ve gotta
hand it to you, Dwight Howard. That was smooth. Somehow given the history of the NBA…I doubt it.
And after the break, turns out the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have much of a
sense of humor. Welcome back.
Biden has vetoed a resolution that would have put tariffs back on Chinese solar panels.
Last year, the Biden Commerce Department lifted tariffs on solar panels made with Chinese parts
as long as they were assembled in Southeast Asia. The tariffs were supposed to be removed for two
years to “[support] American businesses and workers in the solar industry,” who,
it was argued, needed access to cheap solar panel parts in order to build solar
projects in America. (Pull quote:
But in December, a U.S. trade court ruled that several Chinese companies
were trying to evade tariffs by routing their solar panels through Southeast Asia.
And here I thought Chinese companies always played fair. The vetoed resolution would have punished
China by reinstating tariffs, but Biden says that it would have hurt the solar industry in America.
Biden claims that 51 new American solar makers have gone into business since 2021 and that in
order to give them time to meet US demand, he’s keeping the tariffs off to make sure the rest of
the American solar industry has enough supply. That may sound logical, but here’s
why it’s not a good move. First, the US first put tariffs on
Chinese solar panels back in 2018 because China was flooding the market with them.
China introduced tons of cheap solar panels below market rates because manufacturers
there were getting subsidies from the Chinese government. All those
subsidies made it impossible to compete, and US manufacturers were going out of business.
The EU and India put tariffs on Chinese solar panels for the same reason.
The other major problem with Chinese solar panels is that they’re made with slave labor.
In particular the Uyghur variety.
So I sympathize with anyone who has to pay a little more for their American-made solar panels.
But if paying a little extra to avoid ethnic slave labor is a problem for you, might I recommend you
head over to chinauncensored.tv/merchandise and buy one of our lovely “I turned a blind
eye to ethnic cleansing and all I got was this slightly cheaper t-shirt” t-shirts.
Speaking of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang—Elon Musk.
He’s one person who obviously doesn't have a problem with doing business in Xinjiang,
because his company Tesla opened a showroom there in January of 2022.
Musk was asked on Tuesday if he cared what shareholders and advertisers thought
about his sometimes controversial Tweets. Here’s what he had to say:
“ you know I’m reminded of, there’s a scene in the Princess Bride.
Great movie. Where he confronts the person who kills his father and he says
‘offer me money, offer me power. I don’t care.’” “So you just don’t care?
You want to share what you want to say.” “I’ll say what I want to say, and if
the consequence of that is losing money, then so be it.”
OK Musk, so if you really don’t care, why don’t you ever tweet anything critical of China? Huh?
Seriously, we looked through all your Tweets that mention China,
and there’s hardly anything that could even be interpreted as critical.
He’s even shared Chinese propaganda about how
China has eliminated “absolute poverty,” which it hasn’t,
and then talked about the “economic prosperity that China has achieved.”
First of all, The Chinese Communist Party didn’t lift anyone out of
poverty. It just changed the definition of poverty so that it could claim that.
Second, as recently as 2020, China’s premier said that over 40% of Chinese were living
on less than $5 a day. I would hardly call that an “economically prosperous” country.
He’s also said Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China.
State-run media loved that.
So Musk isn’t afraid to Tweet anything, except when it comes to China.
But as nice as Musk has been to China, he has still gotten
in China’s crosshairs for a tweet he wrote. He commented on this tweet, which said “Dr.
Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it,
and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated
at the Wuhan lab. Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?”
Musk responded that “He did it via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth)”,
which is short for EcoHealth Alliance.
That was enough for my favorite Chinese media, the Global Times ,to go after him,
claiming he was supporting the lab leak theory and implying that his business in China was at risk.
In a social media post, the author asked if Musk was “smashing China’s
pot,” which is another way of saying “biting the hand that feeds him.”
Elon wouldn’t want to risk that new Tesla factory, right?
But I’m sure Musk didn’t think that criticizing Fauci was a dig at the CCP.
Unless—have you ever seen Fauci and Xi Jinping in the same room together?
Speaking of offending the Party, A Chinese comedy troupe was hit with
a $2 million penalty for making jokes about China’s military.
In a notice about the fine, the Beijing cultural and tourism regulator said, “The company and
actor Li Haoshi wantonly tampered with the preapproved content of the performance”...
…and that there was “humiliating material against
the People’s Liberation Army . . . causing very bad social effects.”
Ah yes, the crime of causing very bad social effects. Got to love communism.
We don’t know what exactly the comedians said, but “reports on China’s social media said Li had made
fun of a popular PLA slogan about winning battles, comparing it to two dogs chasing a squirrel.”
I’m sure it was a real zinger. And after the break,
our little run-in with GoFundMe may be getting a proper investigation.
Welcome back. When it opened earlier this month,
the Dalian Bay Tunnel was hailed as a testament to Chinese engineering. It was six lanes wide,
three miles long and according to one engineer “created a number of
records in the field of cross-sea immersed tunnel construction”.
This Chinese State media reporter got to test it out on the first day it opened:
“Now the completion of the Dalian Bay Sea tunnel can be seen as a showcase
to other countries around the world, especially for the countries in the Belt and Road Initiative,
like in the Southeast Asia.” Don’t get too excited yet, tunnel company.
Here it is less than a month later. Officials said it was a burst pipe.
Reminds me of back in 2021, when massive flooding did this to a subway in China. 12 people died.
You know, I used to have this big irrational fear of getting trapped in an elevator,
but now I think my biggest fear is being in an underwater tunnel made by a Chinese company.
And finally, is GoFundMe’s day of reckoning coming? I sure hope so.
As you may remember, we started a GoFundMe campaign for a former provincial leader
from Solomon Islands named Daniel Suidani Thanks to all our wonderful fans, we were able to
fully fund a trip to DC for Suidani and even help out with his legal expenses in several lawsuits.
We—and by “we” I mean you—reached our goal in less than 24 hours,
and so we closed the campaign and started the process of transferring the money to Suidani.
However, GoFundMe froze it and never gave us a full explanation of why.
Though after we told them we were talking to the media and testifying about it before Congress,
guess what!? They magically released the funds!
But it gets even better. Last week, Congressman Chris Smith said he may
open an investigation into GoFundMe for not releasing the funds like it should have.
“I just would note that Daniel Suidani from the Solomon Islands has just come in, and
welcome. He briefed the c-e-c-c a couple of weeks ago on the long arm
of China's transnational repression in his Pacific Island nation. Disturbingly,
his GoFundMe account to pay for his trip to warn Congress and the American people was blocked until
word got out that he would be appearing before the CECC. Nonetheless, we are going to look at
why GoFundMe would freeze his account, hopefully without having to use our subpoena authority,
which we will use if they don't cooperate.” So who knows? Maybe, someday,
we’ll know what was really going on. And this episode is sponsored by Surfshark.
When you go online, everything you do is being tracked and logged—by the websites you
visit and your internet service provider. And in many cases, by the government.
And if you’re in an authoritarian country like China or Russia,
this kind of tracking can put you at risk of surveillance and even arrest.
Citizens like you and me are being monitored constantly. And that’s why you should
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Surfshark secures your data with top of the line, uncrackable encryption.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.