They’re lying.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
What do you really know about China?
It’s the most populous country in the world.
And the second biggest economy.
It’s home to the Great Wall
And pandas.
But, it’s also home to the most brutal communist regime in the world today.
And it spends billions of dollars on propaganda.
Propaganda targeted at you. Many of the things people think they know about China,
aren’t actually true. Here are 5 lies China told the world.
Lie Number 5 The Communist Party lifted millions out of poverty
This is a big one. The Communist Party likes to claim it lifted 800 million people out of poverty.
And once they get groups like the World Bank to repeat their lie,
it’s easy! (
Now Chinese state-run media can cite the World Bank to perpetuate the lie.
And if you visit the places the Chinese regime wants tourists to see, you might think China
really is a rich, prosperous country. But it’s mostly propaganda.
They’re hoping you don’t read the fine print.
Like sure, the World Bank says China lifted people out of poverty. But they
define poverty as “the international poverty line of a dollar ninety per person per day.”
So if you make $1.91 cents, congratulations! You’ve been lifted out of poverty.
You’re now only considered low income.
And according to the Pew Research Center, China still has about 900 million people
who are low-income—people who make more than $1.90 but less than $10 a day. That’s
a day, not an hour. A day.
But things are still better in China than they were in the past, right?
Well, maybe. It depends how far back you go.
200 years ago, during the Qing dynasty, China was a wealthy and prosperous nation.
But then China faced decades of war, the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, a civil war,
a Japanese invasion, and then more civil war. And after the communists won the civil war in 1949,
that was followed by the absolute disaster unleashed by Mao Zedong. Chairman Mao
collectivized farming. Tens of millions starved to death. Private business was all but illegal.
Communism made pretty much everyone poor.
Except wealthy communist officials. Like Mao Zedong and friends.
But even after Mao died, it wasn’t the Communist Party that lifted people out of poverty.
The Party just backed off on the whole collectivization thing.
They allowed people to go back to doing what they used to do before communism:
selling crops, doing business, and making a living for themselves. So
hundreds of millions of Chinese people lifted themselves out of poverty.
But economic reform did not come with social or political reform.
People are often still forced to work long hours in unsafe conditions for low wages with no right
to unionize. And the Communist Party still has control over every single business in China.
Meanwhile Taiwan—the free and democratic country—is
much better off. Taiwan has four times the GDP per capita as China.
So now when you hear someone say communism lifted millions out of poverty in China,
you can tell them: That’s a lie.
And stick around after the break—because there are more lies to tell.
Welcome back.
Lie Number 4 China is a developing country
China is the world’s second largest economy.
But they still get the world to recognize them as a “developing country”.
Sure, the Communist Party will brag they lifted 800 million people out of poverty,
but then they’ll say China is actually very poor and so it deserves handouts and concessions.
They got the World Trade Organization to hand them “special provisions
which give developing countries special rights”.
And those special provisions allow the Chinese Communist Party to out-compete countries
like the US. As a developing country, China is allowed to discriminate against foreign companies
“by favoring higher-priced and lower-quality domestic providers.”
The US is not allowed to do that.
The WTO also encourages Developed Countries like
the US to share technology with Developing Countries.
And then we get to a situation where US companies like Microsoft work with Chinese
military universities. (
That’s not treason or supporting crimes against humanity! It’s just helping a developing country.
These WTO rules are designed to help countries that are *actually* poor and disadvantaged.
But China’s economy is larger than the economy of every single *developed* country, except the US.
But yes, there are a lot of people in China, and like I said earlier,
many of those people are still pretty poor. So, is China a developing country?
It turns out the WTO has no official definition.
Members announce for themselves whether they are developed or developing.
And that’s how the Chinese Communist Party games the system.
So next time someone claims China is a developing country, you can tell them: That’s a lie.
Lie Number 3
The Chinese Communist Party never invaded another country.
This is one I hear get repeated a lot, usually in the context of—oh, why are you criticizing
China? China is peaceful. China never invaded another country, LIKE THE EVIL U.S. IMPERIALISTS!
Which is a silly argument, because it assumes you can’t criticize
more than one country. And believe me...I can.
But it also simply isn’t true.
One of the first things the Communist Party did
after seizing control of China was to launch an invasion of Tibet in 1950.
Tibet at the time, was internationally recognized as an independent country.
Then, in 1954, and again in 1958,
China tried to invade Taiwan. That was the first and second cross strait crisis.
The US got involved and even briefly considered using nuclear weapons against China.
In 1962, China invaded this part of India, called Arunachal Pradesh,
claiming it was actually Chinese territory.
That was the beginning of the Sino-Indian War.
In 1979, China invaded Vietnam. And that went about as well for China as it did for the US.
The Chinese Communist Party also threatened the UK to force them to hand over all of Hong
Kong in 1997—even though the main island of Hong Kong fully belonged to the UK.
In more recent times, the Chinese Communist Party has built artificial
islands in disputed waters of the South China Sea.
And begun putting missile launchers on them.
Because even though several countries border the South China Sea, China claims all of it.
It also continues to slowly take over territory on its land borders,
like by building villages in territory that actually belongs to Bhutan.
And putting more troops on the border with India.
And to this day, China still threatens to invade Taiwan by force.
So next time someone tells you, well, China has never invaded another country,
you’ll know what to say: It’s a lie.
Lie Number 2 Falun Gong is an evil cult
What do you call a spiritual practice that involves people standing still
And sitting still?
Chinese yoga? Wrong! It’s a dangerous threat to state power!
Falun Gong is a Buddhist-y meditation practice that became popular in China during the 1990’s.
In 1999, Chinese government estimates put it at 70–100 million people practicing. Which would
have meant more people were practicing Falun Gong than were members of the Chinese Communist Party.
So then Chinese leader Jiang Zemin
launched a bloody crackdown that continues today.
But how do you get the Chinese people to agree to a massive crackdown
on tens of millions of their innocent neighbors? Make people scared of them.
Tell everyone Falun Gong is an evil cult. Make up a bunch of lies about their beliefs,
create propaganda videos, and then censor foreign media who say anything different.
According to actress and rights activist Anastasia Lin, , “Official media defamed Falun Gong and
dehumanized practitioners. Student leaders like me indoctrinated fellow students with hate
propaganda. Hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned and put through a process of torture
called ‘transformation,’ whose objective was to make them renounce their beliefs.”
If you’d like to learn more, check out my episode What is Falun Gong and Why is it Persecuted.
But anyway, next time someone tells you Falun Gong is an evil cult, you can tell them: That’s a lie.
But this lie isn’t just about Falun Gong.
This is the same lie the Chinese Communist Party uses against any group they want to persecute.
That’s why the Chinese Communist Party calls Uyghurs terrorists.
They call Tibetans separatists.
And Hong Kong protesters secessionists.
It’s all to make people scared of these groups. And to make it
seem like the Party is justified when it imprisons, tortures, and kills them.
And finally,
Lie Number 1 The Coronavirus pandemic isn’t China’s fault.
There are just so many lies here, it’s hard to know where to start.
But let’s start with the original name. In January of 2020, Chinese state-run media were calling
it...do you remember?...the Wuhan Virus. Because Wuhan is the city where it was first discovered.
China also lied when they said it was preventable and controllable.
But when things began to spin out of control for China, they tried to rein it back in.
First, they got the World Health Organization to stop calling it the Wuhan Virus—because you know,
that’s racist—and instead call it Covid-19. And Covid-19 could have started anywhere!
And then they doubled down, by spinning a tale that Covid-19
actually was actually started by the US Army.
And definitely not by this lab in Wuhan, called the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
which was specifically doing research on how to make bat coronaviruses more deadly to humans.
And yes, China told labs to destroy all its early samples. But they weren’t covering anything up.
It was done for “biosafety reasons.” It’s now impossible to go back and pinpoint
what was happening at the lab in the months before the outbreak.
Not that it matters, because Chinese state-media says China has always been
open and transparent on COVID-19 origins tracing.
And frankly, the US is manipulating it in order to blame China.
But the worst lie is the lie Chinese officials told themselves. Isn’t that always the truth?
I’m talking about how, during the early weeks of the outbreak starting in December 2019,
Chinese officials covered up the outbreak—choosing to suppress
information so as not to embarrass Party members.
For 25 days, “Officials in Wuhan and Beijing
concealed the extent of infections or refused to act on warnings.”
If they had acted instead of covering it up,
they might have prevented a global pandemic. But, you know, oops.
And then after that happened, well, what choice did they have but to spin a bunch of lies?
So those are 5 lies China told the world. How many have you heard before? And have you ever
gotten into an argument with someone over any of them? Let me know in the comments below.
And before you go, it’s time for me to answer a question from a fan who supports the show on the
crowd funding websites Patreon or Locals. YouTube demonetizes pretty much all of our episodes, so
they would have run us out of business years ago if it weren’t for support from viewers like you.
Let me grab one from the bottom here...
Wow, this one’s from November 2019?! Don’t know how this got in the hat, but ok.
Logan asks: “What is article 9 and how is it the anti-bill of rights?”
Ah, Logan is referring to something retired General
Robert Spalding mentioned in an interview I did with him.
It’s actually usually referred to as Document Number 9. It’s a leaked internal document
circulated within the Chinese Communist Party in 2013. And it really is the anti-bill of rights.
While the bill of rights guarantees freedoms we often take for granted, Document 9 calls things
like media freedom and judicial independence dangerous Western values that the Party has to
fight against. It calls things like democracy and universal values “extremely malicious.”
In other words, it’s like the Chinese Communist Party’s declaration of Unindependence,
clearly stating the Chinese regime is the enemy of freedom and liberty. Something fun to remember.
Thanks for your question Logan.
And thank you for watching. Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.