Chinese troops mass on Hong Kong Border
Google has a deeper relationship with Huawei than we thought.
And the secret of US foam.
Yeah.
Foam.
That and more on this week’s China Uncensored.
This is China Uncensored,
I’m Chris Chappell.
This week’s China news headlines!
First up, Hong Kong.
I’ve got good news and bad news for Hong Kong.
The good news—
the US government is keeping an eye on the situation.
The bad news—
the situation is that Chinense troops may be massing on the border.
“What do we know about this alleged troop build up on the border?”
“Well this is coming from a White House official
who wanted to remain anonymous
telling journalists that they have evidence
that there is perhaps a congregation,
a buildup of Chinese troops, PLA,
or armed police at the border with Hong Kong.
We don't know the numbers
and we don't know the nature of this build up,
if in fact it is buildup.”
Yes, the nature of the thing,
if it indeed is a thing,
is a thing.
But I don’t want to make a thing out of it.
Speaking of the People’s Liberation Army,
yesterday, August 1st, was their birthday!
The PLA is 92 years old.
Happy belated.
And to celebrate,
the PLA has been releasing videos on social media.
Including this one from the PLA’s Hong Kong garrison.
Which seems to show soldiers blowing up innocent cars,
yelling in Cantonese,
and running anti-riot drills against unarmed civilians.
Lots of anti-riot drills.
It’s almost like they’re trying to send a message.
But Hong Kong protesters may not even need
to be worried about the Chinese military.
They just need to worry about cops.
This Hong Kong policeman started waving his shotgun at protesters
with his finger on the trigger.
Police later said that the gun was loaded with beanbag rounds,
and that the officer was in fear for his life.
Yeah, he looks terrified.
So Hong Kong police officers may not know good trigger discipline.
But there is one thing they do know:
Triads.
Remember that triad attack on protesters a week ago?
Hong Kong police knew about it ahead of time.
“The police have now admitted
they had intelligence days before the attack
that something was going down
but they chose not to act on the intelligence.”
Sounds to me like a secret plot by the Hong Kong government.
A secret plot,
where the protests gets more dangerous,
then they get more media attention,
and then the government is forced to give in,
and give Hong Kongers their freedom back.
Or maybe the police are just incompetent.
A Texas man has been convicted
of stealing trade secrets for China.
According to federal prosecutors,
the 54-year-old man named Shan Shi,
“sent more than $3 million from China to fund his efforts
to steal a Houston company’s process for manufacturing a durable,
lightweight foam that’s essential for deep-sea oil and gas drilling.”
China’s even trying to steal our foam secrets!
Wait, the US has foam secrets?
Google and the Chinese telecom company Huawei
may have had a deeper relationship than previously thought.
According to the tech news website The Information,
Google and Huawei were involved in several product development projects.
That came to an end when the Trump administration
essentially banned Huawei from the US market,
calling it a national security threat.
One of the projects was a Huawei branded smart speaker
that used Google assistant.
It would have been called, AI Cube.
A nice friendly name that conjures up nice friendly images.
Really a shame we won’t be seeing that in our homes anytime soon.
Meanwhile, China is expected to roll out
a tough new expansion of a cybersecurity law.
It would in part,
“forbid certain data from leaving China
or at least slow the process of dispatching data,
which would increase uncertainties and costs for business.”
Cybersecurity laws in China have allowed the Chinese regime
to maintain a tighter grip on data and information within China,
eliminate data privacy,
and serve as a legal means for the Party
to steal Western intellectual property.
The sad part about all this is the new rules
are going to hurt companies like Cisco and Dell,
the very same companies that helped build
China’s vast network of surveillance systems and control.
My heart bleeds for them.
Facebook has been desperate to get into China,
ever since it was banned there.
But now they may have a powerful bargaining chip—
digital currency.
Facebook announced it plans
to create its own cryptocurrency called Libra.
“Introducing Libra, a digital currency
designed for the digital world.”
And here I thought the Borg Cube was scary.
The issue for China is they’ve been trying
to make their own cryptocurrency
since about 2014.
Why?
According to NPR,
“A digital currency would allow China's central bank
to record every single transaction with high precision in real time.”
That would be a powerful tool for control in a society
where almost everything is paid for digitally.
And according to a Chinese crypto expert,
“China relies on the mobile payments sector immensely.
We have had a long lead time [over Libra]
with the success of WeChat and Alipay,
but Libra represents a huge threat on mobile payments.”
Facebook says Libra will be ready by 2020.
And since Facebook has 2.4 billion users,
more than double the users China’s WeChat has,
it could seriously rival China’s global cryptocurrency ambitions.
And that’s exactly how Facebook is framing Libra.
At least to the US government.
In this statement to the House Financial Services Committee,
David Marcus, the man behind Libra said,
“I believe that if America does not lead innovation
in the digital currency and payments area,
others will.”
But considering Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
was so desperate to get Facebook in China,
that he ask Chinese presitator Xi Jinping
to name his first born daughter...
...who knows how he’ll leverage Libra
to get access to that sweet,
sweet China market?
Now on to Human Rights.
In a violation of all of our human rights,
Reuters has started making puns.
In a sign of the times,
China is banning Arabic an Muslim symbols on signs.
Of course the real victims here aren’t groaning readers.
It’s Chinese Muslims.
The Chinese Communist Party has launched a massive campaign
to “sinicize” the religion.
Sinicizing mainly involves rounding up Muslims
and putting them in brainwashing camps
to rid them of their culture
and make them love the Communist Party.
And while there was evidence that more than a million people
were in those concentration camps,
concentrating on how much they love the Communist Party that is,
most of them have been released!
According to China.
Yet “A spokeswoman for the US state department said
there was no evidence to support the assertion.”
China is banning individual travel permits to Taiwan.
That could cost the Taiwanese economy up to 900 million US dollars.
The Chinese Communist Party considers Taiwan a breakaway province
that they’re retake by force if necessary.
But since the US just made
a 2 billion dollar weapons deal with Taiwan...
taking the island by force seems less of a sure thing.
Good thing they’re also trying to
take over the island with economic force—
variably punishing or rewarding Taiwan with tourism,
depending on Taiwan’s stance.
Despite the banning of individual travel permits from mainland China,
the Taiwan government said it “would spend an additional
NT$3.6 billion in the fourth quarter of the year on promoting tourism.”
And may I just say to the Taiwan board of tourism
that if you really want to reach Americans,
consider spending your tourism dollars here at China Uncensored!
We accept cash, Bitcoin, and Libra.
Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
is saying there’s major progress
on South China Sea Code of Conduct talks.
This is the South China sea.
China claims this giant part of it.
Which upsets all these countries.
China and those ASEAN countries are holding talks
on how to resolve territorial disputes.
I assume using more words than just,
“Gimme gimme gimme!”
And that’s it for this week’s China news headlines!
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from one of you—
a fan who support China Uncensored with a dollar or more per episode,
by contributing through Patreon.
Anniina Kafka asks,
“This interview with Thae Yong-ho got me thinking:
have you heard about the Flash Drives for Freedom initiative
and what do you think of it?”
Thae Yong-ho was the former North Korean diplomat who defected.
We published an interview with him earlier this week.
Great question, Anniina!
Yes, I learned about the Flash Drives for Freedom project
at the Oslo Freedom Forum,
where we interviewed Thae Yong-ho.
It is fairly memorable.
Apparently USBs are a major way
people share information in North Korea.
So defectors have been smuggling in USB drives
with information to counter propaganda from the Korean state.
It’s a lot more effective than that time I tried to smuggle
a China Uncensored USB drive to China via balloon.
If you’re interested in helping out,
you can visit flash drives for freedom dot org
and donate your old USBs or donate money.
Every dollar lets them send one USB drive.
Thanks for your question.
And thanks to everyone watching!
We could not make this show without your support.
Whether it’s supporting us through Patreon
or just watching and sharing the show with your friends and family.
So thank you from me
and everyone on the China Uncensored team.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell,
see you next time.