Italy wants out of its belt and road deal with China.
Chinese American skier Eileen Gu may be switching nationalities.
And China’s promise to bring peace to Ukraine will leave it in pieces
That and more on this week’s 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.
The Philippines is getting closer to the US as it sees more and more of China’s aggression
in the South China Sea. Unlike his predecessor,
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is moving away from China and closer to the US. At
least in terms of security. He still wants to have good economic relations with China.
Marcos Jr. visited Washington this week,
where he met with President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Biden told Marcos that the US mutual defense treaty remains quote "ironclad".
Austin promised that the US would defend against “armed attacks on our armed forces,
Coast Guard vessels, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific,
including anywhere in the South China Sea.”
That’s especially important since last week, the Philippines accused
China's coast guard of using "dangerous maneuvers" and "aggressive tactics".
It said a People’s Liberation Army Navy ship encountered two Philippine
coast guard ships near the Spratly Islands, which the Philippines and China both claim.
According to the Associated Press, “a Chinese coast guard ship blocked the
[Philippines’] Malapascua as it tried to steam toward the Second
Thomas Shoal. . . . The Malapascua’s Captain … said a near-collision was averted when he
abruptly reversed direction and shut off its engine to bring the vessel to a full stop.”
China accused the Filipino ships of being in *its* waters and said the
Philippines planned the confrontation to “deliberately create a friction”
According to a recent report, China is increasingly using
exit bans as punishment and blackmail. The human rights group Safeguard Defenders
says “at least tens of thousands of people in China are placed on exit bans at any one time.”
And that’s not counting the exit bans it has on ethnic groups like Uyghurs and Tibetans.
The report says that 5 new laws since 2018 have made exit bans more common. One of
those is China’s newly amended espionage law, which is not only far-reaching but very vague.
We covered that in a recent episode, which I’ll put a link to in the description below.
Reuters reported that there’s been an
8-fold increase in court cases involving such bans since 2016.
And the bans have been imposed not just on Chinese citizens, but also on foreign executives.
So if you’ve got a business in China, yesterday would be the best time to get out.
The EU chamber of Commerce told Reuters that "’At a time when China is proactively trying to restore
business confidence to attract foreign investment, the exit bans send a very mixed signal.’"
Or, said another way, the exit bans send a very clear signal: “I want your money and intellectual
property but screw you and your business.” And after the break, Eileen Gu controversially
represented China in the 2022 Winter Olympics but may be dropping China for the US.
Welcome back. Olympian Eileen Gu is calling for unity.
At an event in New York, she called out anti Asian discrimination in America,
saying "discrimination of all kinds is wrong".
Kind of ironic considering the event was sponsored
by the Bank of China USA and the China General Chamber of Commerce.
I think ethnic cleansing of Asians by the Chinese Communist Party should also probably count.
But Eileen Gu didn’t mention that. Eileen Gu was born in the US,
grew up in the US, and, for most of her life, competed as an American skier.
But in 2019, she switched her nationality and
began representing China. Well, actually, it’s not clear
whether she switched her nationality or not. There’s been a lot of controversy around that
because China doesn’t allow dual citizenship. But she never said she gave up her US passport,
either, which led many to speculate that China bent the rules for her.
She became internationally famous during the 2022 Beijing Olympics after she won a
silver and two gold medals, making her the youngest freestyling gold
medalist in Olympic history. Now, there are rumors on Chinese
social media that Eileen Gu’s contract with the Chinese ski team has expired.
She hasn’t said anything publicly about it, and China is still listed
as her nationality for her most recent competition.
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation also has her listed as representing China.
But if she were to switch back, it wouldn’t be a surprise. She grew up in the US,
goes to school in the US, and lives in the US most of the year.
Last spring, she left China on her private jet
while China was still under harsh Zero Covid lockdowns.
That angered some of her fans on social media, who said she acted more like a tourist in China.
Gu was raised by her Chinese mother, who moved to the US in her 20s. Her
father is reportedly American, but his identity hasn’t been made public.
Whether she felt a connection to her mother’s homeland or not, repping China came with some
pretty lucrative sponsorship deals One company estimated she made $31
million in Chinese sponsorship deals in 2021, even before she won her three Olympic medals.
I wonder if any of those products were made with Uyghur slave labor?
And speaking of allegiances, we reported last week that China was planning to send
an envoy to Ukraine after Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelensky spoke for the
first time since the start of the war. Well, we now know who China’s sending,
and it’s pretty clear he’s the best possible choice… for Russia.
Li Hui was China’s ambassador to Russia for 10 years before he became China’s
special representative for Eurasian affairs. He once wrote that “China needs a ‘powerful
Russia,’ . . . and that Beijing and Moscow would stand ‘back-to-back and shoulder-by-shoulder.’”
If you’ve been paying attention to Sino-Russian relations, that shouldn’t surprise you.
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have declared a “no limits” friendship on several occasions.
But at least publicly, Ukraine has welcomed Li’s appointment,
despite his apparent chumminess with Russia.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry told NBC that they hope that Li’s “’deep knowledge
of our region will help him to communicate impartially and effectively with all parties’”.
And after the break, will Italy get out of the Belt and Road trap?
Welcome back.
Italy signed up for China’s belt and road initiative in 2019,
but it’s now having second thoughts.
New conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni campaigned on bringing Italy closer to Taiwan.
China doesn’t like that. Italy has to make a decision
soon about whether to stay in the Belt and Road program or leave. The deal is set to expire at the
end of this year, and if Italy doesn’t cancel it, it will auto renew for another 5 years.
Italy wants to keep China as a trade partner but doesn’t want to get too close to Beijing.
The last time Meloni met with Xi, she said she hoped to increase Italian exports to China,
which Beijing could use as a bargaining chip to keep Italy in the deal.
Anyway, if Italy wants to move closer to Taiwan, it’s certainly taking its time.
A delegation of Italian politicians was set to travel to Taiwan this month, but their trip
was delayed indefinitely. Italian media La Stampa reported that it was because they wanted to avoid
going at a time of “high international tensions.” What they don’t seem to realize is that
international tensions are going to remain high because high tensions mean China always gets
its way. Every time anyone does anything related to Taiwan, China pitches a hissy
fit and everyone backs down. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Works every time, and China knows it.
And speaking of tiptoeing around the Taiwan issue—Greece.
Last week, Former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou was invited to speak
at the Delphi Economic Forum in Greece. The problem is Greece is very close with China.
So when the Chinese embassy noticed the forum was going to call him the
former President of Taiwan, they complained.
And the forum changed his title to former President of Taipei.
Taipei is the capital city of Taiwan.
Then, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs objected,
so the forum changed his title to the "Former President of Taiwan."
But gosh, that really makes it sound like Taiwan is a separate country from China.
So the Forum again changed his title to former *leader* of Taipei.
Wow, not even a president now.
Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry complained again, and this time the forum changed his
title to the much worse “Former President of the Kuomintang party - Chinese Taipei.”
Smooth.
The ministry condemned the change and said it would have nothing to do with the forum
anymore. But apparently Ma didn’t feel the same way because he still attended.
Ma, by the way, sought closer ties with China when he
was….President of the Kuomintang party - Chinese Taipei.
And in 2015, he became the first Taiwanese president to
meet the leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 7 decades.
In fact during his speech, Ma “was adamant that Beijing wasn’t ready to attack Taiwan.”
Yeah, China is just constantly sending warplanes
near Taiwan because they love Taiwanese bubble tea.
Politico reported that Ma was introduced on stage
as Taiwan’s former president and in a press release afterwards. However
the livestream of the panel discussion he was part of was reportedly removed.
Clearly, Greece has taken its Taiwan policy to a whole new level of “strategic ambiguity.”
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
always be keeping your internet activity private by using a VPN, like Surfshark.
Surfshark secures your data with top of the line, uncrackable encryption.
And on top of that, Surfshark intentionally does not keep logs of what you do. In fact,
one cool thing it does is keep a server network in the British Virgin Islands, where local laws
allow Surfshark to not keep user data logs. So if you haven’t yet, check out Surfshark.
And with just one Surfshark account, you can connect as many devices as you want.
So try it out now. Surfshark has a special deal that includes 83% off of a 2-year plan
plus 3 extra months for free. You can protect yourself for just $2.21 a month.
So go to surfshark.com/uncensored and use the code UNCENSORED to secure this deal.
The link is in the description down below.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.