Is China’s closest ally, Russia, about to see a regime change?
The US released an intel report on the origins of Covid.
And China passes an anti-hegemony law.
That and more on this week’s China news headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
Xi Jinping’s best bro might be in trouble.
I’m not sure anyone saw this coming.
One of Russia’s mercenary groups, the Wagner group turned on Russian leadership this weekend
in a surprise attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush the armed insurrection, but then backtracked
and granted it immunity in exchange for its leader leaving the country
Yevgeny Prigozhin agreed to go to Belarus in exchange for amnesty.
But the stunt he pulled drew back the curtain on Russia’s weakness.
Prigozhin’s Wagner Group got within 150 miles of the capital, and took the city of
Rostov-on-Don along the way.
Putin claimed that Russians were behind him all the way.
But this was the kind of hero's welcome that Wagner fighters got from Putin’s supposedly
loyal followers.
A lot of people saw this as a big challenge to Putin.
And to many, it raised questions about Putin’s hold on power.
That’s an especially important question for China, which is arguably Russia’s closest
ally.
The Chinese government was silent about the mutiny until after it ended on Saturday.
On Sunday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement.
It said only that the rebellion was Russia’s internal affair, and that China supports Russia
in maintaining its national stability.
Some speculate that China’s muted reaction belies anxiety over the war and the global
balance of power.
As I said, Russia is one of China’s closest allies, and the leaders are a key aspect to
that relationship.
Xi Jinping and Putin have several times now said they have a “no limits friendship.”
However, that “no limits friendship” might actually have some limits.
“In recent months, government advisors have expressed increasing frustration with Russia
behind closed doors, feeling Beijing is increasingly being ‘dragged around’ by Moscow’s risk-taking
behavior.”
According to the Associated Press, Chinese foreign policy experts are also worried about
how Russia’s war has revived NATO.
Japan has even requested a NATO liaison office to be set up in Tokyo to counter the threat
from China, which is something that has never happened before.
Some Chinese foreign policy experts “fret that [the war] could prompt a renewal of American
alliances in East Asia.”
And speaking of allies, whatever China says about its neutrality in the Ukraine war, it’s
clearly backing Russia.
The New York Times reports that a state-run Chinese company sent large shipments of gunpowder
to a Russian munitions factory last year.
“Poly Technologies described the powder as being ‘for assembly of foreign-style
hunting cartridges.’”
Oh right, like those hunting cartridges they use to hunt Ukrainians.
Gotcha.
The New York Times says the delivery was enough to fuel 80 million rounds of ammunition, and
it quoted a defense expert as saying this was definitely for military use.
In February, the US said China was considering providing lethal aid to Russia.
But far, it hasn’t said that that’s happened.
But it has said it’s worried about private Chinese companies doing so.
Which, in China, is kind of a distinction without a difference.
Chinese companies—even if they’re privately owned—are all under the control of the Chinese
Communist Party.
If the Party wants Chinese companies to do something, they’ll do it.
And speaking of the war in Ukraine, there’s more than one perspective on that in US media.
Which is why I used Ground News to see how it’s being covered on the political left,
versus the center, versus the right.
As you can see, some stories get almost entirely right-leaning coverage,
and others get mostly left-leaning coverage
On the app and website, the homepage is the same for everyone—helping break through
echo chambers and media bubbles caused by click bait headlines and manipulative algorithms.
Even better, there’s a feed called Blindspot which lets you see stories that are being
over or under reported by only one side of the spectrum.
Like if you search for “China Politics”, you can see that some topics are basically
only covered by the left or right.
Which is why, without Ground News, it’s easy to miss key stories.
Ground News is on a mission to hold the media accountable and provide context so we can
easily see how media narrative can shape public opinion.
It’s a great place to go if you want to be more informed than the average newsreader
and find multiple international perspectives that you might otherwise have missed.
And it’s also just really interesting to see all the hidden biases in the media.
And that’s why we’re working with Ground News to sponsor this video.
Sign up at ground dot news slash chinauncensored or subscribe through my link before July 5
and get it for 30% off, as little as $5 a month.
And after the break, did we just learn the origins of Covid?
Welcome back.
Last week, we were supposed to learn everything the US intelligence community knows about
the origins of Covid.
But today, we know only what the White House wants us to know.
President Joe Biden signed a bill in March that requires the US government to declassify
intel on the origins of Covid.
That bill gave the government 90 days to do so.
As we reported before, the deadline to do that ended on one of the days Secretary of
State Antony Blinken was in Beijing.
The Biden administration delayed releasing those documents until five days after the
deadline.
And then, what it did release was a mere 10-page summary, 3 pages of which were the appendix.
It’s like being offered ice cream, only to watch it fall on the floor .
Not only was the summary absurdly brief, but it didn’t actually do what the law said,
which was to declassify the intelligence.
The report basically says the government is divided on the origins of Covid.
It says the National Intelligence Council and 4 other intelligence community agencies
believe in the natural origin theory.
That means they believe Covid was passed to humans through animals and not as a result
of a lab leak.
However, both the Department of Energy and the FBI both believe Covid *did*come from
a lab, although for different reasons.
And the CIA and another agency the report didn’t identify remain undecided.
It said all agencies believe that Covid was *not* a bioweapon intentionally released by
the Chinese military.
But it did cite connections between the military and the Wuhan Institute of Virology ,which
was the main culprit in the lab leak theory.
It said they collaborated on research, including on coronaviruses, “but no known viruses
that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.”
No *known* viruses.
*Unknown* viruses that, for example, weren’t reported to the world by the Wuhan Institute
of Virology, could be a different matter.
Potentially.
The summary also said they had collaborated on vaccines for coronaviruses before the pandemic
began.
Which is just one of the many suspicious things this report cites that it says doesn’t rise
to the level of a smoking gun.
Another example: in 2013, the Wuhan institute of Virology collected a bat coronavirus that
was 96.2% similar to Covid-19.
However, it says that wasn’t a close enough match to be what caused the pandemic.
It said the lab had poor safety precautions and aging infrastructure, which could contribute
to an accident, but again, that wasn’t proof positive Covid escaped from the lab.
The same thing with researchers falling ill shortly before Covid was known to start spreading
in Wuhan.
It could be evidence, or it could be a coincidence
One thing I found kind of troubling about the report, though: they seem to be taking
China’s word about those workers’ diagnoses.
It says “China’s National Security Commission investigated the [Wuhan Institute of Virology]
in early 2020 and took blood samples from [its] researchers.
According to the World Health Organization’s March 2021 public report,
[Wuhan Institute of Virology] officials . . . stated lab
employee samples all tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.”
Uh, did they not watch China lie all through the pandemic and the WHO totally whitewash
it?
What’s the point of having intel agencies if they’re just going to take China’s
word?
That’s like if the US government released a report saying there were no casualties from
the Tiananmen Square Massacre because China said there weren’t.
Now, there was a classified part to this report that wasn’t released to the public.
And, according to the chair of the House Intel Committee, that classified intelligence paints
a very different picture than this summary.
“In the report that was given to the president, the 90-day or so report, they have information
in that report that contradicts I believe the impressions that are given in these statements
by the intelligence committee.”
He and other Republicans are now preparing for a faceoff with the Biden administration
over declassifying the intel, which is what the law was supposed to do.
And after the break, is China going to topple western hegemony?
Welcome back.
China has passed a foreign relations law targeting “Western Hegemony.”
The law gives China the right to take countermeasures if the West puts on sanctions.
Not that China didn’t have the ability to sanction people and entities before.
In April, it put Raytheon and Lockheed Martin on its entity list, which, let's be honest,
was really symbolic because the US defense companies don’t do business with China.
According to Bloomberg, “the umbrella legislation gives Beijing’s existing toolkit more weight
by embracing it in a legal document alongside two of Xi’s signature foreign policy initiatives.”
Sanctions is one of the weapons that China is preparing for as it’s going to war over
Taiwan.
China is no doubt watching all the sanctions the West has put on Russia.
And it knows that if it makes a similar move on Taiwan, sanctions like those will also
be placed on China.
And French President Emmanuel Macron says no global agenda can be accomplished without
the US and China fully behind it.
“For the critical elements, where you will increase divisions and conflictuality and
tensions between the US and China, we should moderate them, to try to find a way to, I
mean, discuss quietly, and build the relevant floor, to decrease tensions.”
He gave the Paris Climate agreement as an example of an international issue that can
be tackled with the US and China working together.
It’s true that both the US and China signed the agreement.
But I’m not sure I would hail that as some sort of coup for the international agenda.
The deal doesn’t have any teeth.
And China, which emits more greenhouse gasses than all the developed countries combined,
only put out a plan in 2021 to hit a carbon emissions peak before 2030.
Meanwhile, China’s been building up its coal plant capacity week by week.
So if and when it does peak its CO2 emissions, it’s not necessarily going to stave off
climate change.
Macron took heat from world leaders a few months ago for saying France shouldn’t blindly
follow the US into a war with China over Taiwan.
A poll earlier this month said 62% of Europeans would want to stay neutral in the event of
a war over Taiwan.
That poll also found 43% of Europeans view China as a necessary partner they want to
cooperate with.
Not that polls are necessarily a reliable indicator of where the public’s at on an
issue .
But as I mentioned, this episode is sponsored by Ground News.
It’s a great tool to help you stay well informed about what’s happening in the world—and
how it’s being covered by all sides of the political spectrum.
Check it out at ground dot news slash chinauncensored or click the link below.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.