China definitely does not have Covid under control.
The US gives money to the group that funded the Wuhan lab.
And World of Warcraft goes offline in China.
That and more on this week’s China News Headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
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Well, good news!
Covid is over!
That’s what you might think now, when you see headlines like this: Bali, Indonesia welcomes
its first flight from China as COVID rules ease.
That flight had more than 200 passengers on board.
Chinese tourism is really important for Indonesia’s economy.
Before the pandemic, more than two million Chinese tourists would visit the country each
year.
Sure, China seems to be going through a massive Covid outbreak right now.
But while some of those tourists *might* be carrying a deadly virus, they’re *definitely*
carrying money.
And they’re willing to risk spreading one as long as they can spread the other.
Cha-ching!
Of course, we can’t exactly *prove* China is going through a massive Covid outbreak.
And that’s because the Chinese Communist Party is going to great lengths to get rid
of the evidence.
Of course, there are some indicators.
Like when a Chinese health official said a few days ago that 80 percent of the population
has been infected with Covid.
Which, ok, that sounds bad.
But don’t worry.
Because according to Chinese officials, that just means the Lunar New Year travel rush
is “unlikely to lead to a surge in COVID cases as most people have already been infected.”
See?
Most people in China have already been infected!
Nothing to worry about.
It’s...normal.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials are also claiming less than 13,000 people have died from Covid
in the week leading up to the Lunar New Year, which was a week ago.
13,000 deaths is tragic.
Also tragic is how bad you’d have to be at math to believe that.
If 80% of people in China are infected, that’s more than a billion people.
Which would suggest there are *millions* of people dying, not thousands.
But that can’t be right.
I mean, the Chinese regime would never cover up deaths they were responsible for… right?
Actually, from the CCP’s perspective, those millions of deaths don’t count.
Because the CCP has literally stopped counting cases.
I mean, you wouldn’t want to mess up China’s great statistics by collecting accurate data,
would you?
The BBC found that in one province, coffins are selling out.
Not a thing that typically happens.
Although there’s always the possibility that it has nothing to do with Covid, and
it’s actually that millions of vampires are moving to China and need a place to sleep!
And on the plus side, one customer said, “Those in the funeral industry had been ‘earning
a small fortune.’”
This is especially happening in rural areas.
Half a billion people in China live in the countryside.
And while young people tend to go to big cities to work, the people who get left behind are
the elderly.
And they’re a lot more likely to die from Covid.
Especially since rural hospitals are, at best, horrible.
But I guess these don’t count either.
Hey, I said stop counting!
See, I told you China had a vampire problem.
In Yunnan province, one crematorium went viral—no pun intended—after someone uploaded a video
of their new real-time “departure” information board.
It showed constantly updated streams of the number of “cremations in process” and
how many ovens are “cooling down”.
Sure, this upset a lot of people for being callous.
On the other hand, Gen Z-ers described it by saying “That’s literally a lit fam.”
There has also been a surge in recruitments at funeral homes across China.
But I’m sure it’s for no particular reason, since the CCP says everything is fine.
We may never know where Covid-19 originally came from.
And that’s because a lot of Western media tried to stop people from asking.
More on that after the break.
Welcome back.
Where did Covid-19 actually come from?...is a question you’re not even supposed to ask.
And it’s not just inside China where you’re not allowed to ask this question.
43 top security experts—including many in the United States—have slammed the Western
media for censoring the laboratory hypothesis, i.e. that Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
Among those security experts are the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee
and the former national security advisor.
They say “‘The Lancet,’ ‘The New York Times’ and others willingly downplayed the
Wuhan lab theory.”
They did this by blocking dissenting voices, failing to question China’s narrative, and
even accusing people of racism if they suggested Covid could be from a Chinese lab.
Which, let me tell you, is not racist.
Racist would be answering, “What’s your least favorite race?”
Which, by the way, is another question you’re not supposed to ask.
Now to be clear, I’m not claiming *I* know where Covid-19 came from.
And these security experts don’t make that claim either.
What they’re saying is, plausible theories were actively suppressed.
“The security experts believe that ‘by prematurely dismissing or stigmatizing certain
questions—from the very outset of the pandemic—many prominent scientists and journalists failed
in their duty.’”
Since, you know, asking questions is what scientists and journalists do for a living.
This would be like ordering
sushi, and the chef said, “Oh no, we don’t allow raw fish in here.”
Well, then I think you might be in the wrong line of work.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Defence has awarded a new $3 million grant to EcoHealth
Alliance.
That’s the group that funneled money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China before
the pandemic.
That shouldn’t matter, of course, since the New York Times has reminded us that Covid
could not have possibly come from that lab, don’t be racist!
And it’s only a coincidence that the lab had been studying deadly bat coronaviruses
in poor safety conditions, in what became the epicenter of the outbreak.
And it shouldn’t matter that “EcoHealth in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute
of Virology had engaged in gain-of-function research in violation of the federal moratorium.”
Gain of function, in this case, is when they were attempting to engineer a virus to spread
more easily.
This doesn’t seem to bother the US Department of Defense, though.
Last month, they gave EcoHealth Alliance 3 million additional taxpayer dollars.
This time, it’s for the purpose of “reducing the threat of viral spillover from wildlife
in the Philippines”.
I’m sure nothing could go wrong.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that the US congress has set up a new “Select Committee
on China Competition”.
And now its chairman, Mike Gallagher, has outlined its new agenda.
He said it will own “niche topics”, like banning social media app TikTok, and shine
a spotlight on work already being championed in the House, such as the importance of enhancing
“hard power west of the international dateline.”
Which essentially means protecting Taiwan.
Unfortunately, the committee won’t actually have the power to *do* anything.
But it will definitely talk about things that ought to be done.
So, they’re less of a committee… and more like all of Twitter.
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are friends.
Good friends.
Really good friends.
So it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that China has been supplying Russia with critical
technology—despite Western sanctions.
Because… that’s what friends are for.
Back in February last year, the US and its allies sanctioned Russia over its invasion
of Ukraine.
Trade between China and Russia dropped off sharply.
But according to a Washington DC think tank, “a lot of people stopped paying attention
to what happened after that.”
What?
You mean all those people who put the Ukraine flag in their profile picture were just following
a trend and not truly invested?
See, it turns out that after the initial drop, trade went back up.
Way up.
In 2022, China’s exports to Russia grew 13% from the previous year, and imports from
Russia grew almost 50%.
That means there’s more trade now than before the invasion!
In particular, “Russia continues to have access to crucial dual-use technologies such
as semiconductors, thanks in part to China and Hong Kong.”
And China is also allegedly aiding Russia with economic aid and non-lethal military
equipment.
In other words, Western sanctions don’t actually work if authoritarians stick together.
Reeeeeeeal close together.
But there’s some good news.
Maybe.
The US government is finally confronting China about their ties to Russia.
Maybe.
Bloomberg News says “US officials have raised the matter with their Chinese counterparts.”
Oh boy!
They raised the matter!
If China isn’t careful, that might get upgraded to a polite request to refrain.
That doesn’t mean the US will take any action, though.
It’s tricky.
I’m sure the CCP is funding a regime that’s attempting a violent takeover of a smaller
nation.
But the US also doesn’t want to antagonize China!
After all, China could hold the key to pushing Putin to peace talks!
And of course the US and China need to work together to stop climate change!
So really, even if the Chinese regime is doing really, really bad things, maybe we should
just let that slide.
For now.
But if they don’t shape up… they just might get upgraded to a stern talking to!
And there’s some sad news for gaming fans out there.
Blizzard games have gone offline in China.
That includes World of Warcraft.
Great.
China has already ruined the world in real life, and now they’re also trying to do
it online.
One Chinese gamer said on social media that they “cried all night.”
Another player described World of Warcraft as “my first love.”
So why the tragic end to Blizzard games in China?
It turns out that Blizzard, which is based in California, was unable to reach a deal
to renew its contract with NetEase, a tech company based in China.
US companies need foreign partners to operate in China.
Now at first I thought, “Great.
Blizzard is realizing that it’s a bad idea to set up shop in an authoritarian regime,
which among other things can use software to collect vast amounts of data and spy on
citizens.”
But I was wrong.
Blizzard issued a statement that they’re continuing to work with the Chinese company
Tencent to distribute “Call of Duty: Mobile”.
And they’re also looking for new Chinese partners to resume Blizzard’s iconic franchises,
like World of Warcraft.
So while players in China may feel like they’ve lost their first love, Blizzard still wants
to reignite the spark.
A little too aggressively, perhaps
But hey, maybe all those gamers should just go outside now.
After all…
Covid is over!
The only thing they have to watch out for
is millions of vampires.
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I’m Chris Chappell.
Thanks for watching China Uncensored.