On this episode of China Uncensored
Dunkirk makes a huge retreat in the Chinese market.
The CCP wants to treat all foreign companies equally...
badly.
And finally, smile, you have KFC.
This is China Uncensored.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored. I'm your host, Chris Chappell.
You know, the Chinese regime has always said
it doesn't want other countries to interfere
in its internal affairs.
When it comes to the Chinese regime
interfering with other foreign companies,
the more interfery, the better.
The Chinese Communist Party has always required
that local Chinese companies above a certain size
must have Communist Party branches
within their organization.
Well now, CCP “has exerted political pressure
on some [foreign] companies
to give CCP representatives in the joint ventures
the final say over business operations.”
This is great news for foreign companies,
because they're finally being treated equally in China.
And you know what’s great about
having the CCP control your company?
Many things, I’m sure.
But one that comes to mind
is that the CCP will encourage companies
to make investments that
align with political objectives.
Like how the CCP told Chinese companies,
“You ought to invest in Venezuela.
Their socialist economy is gonna do great.”
Oops.
Chinese companies have lost between
3 and 5 billion dollars in Venezuela,
as the economy there continues to sputter.
And those are just private investments,
outside the tens of billions the Chinese regime
has directly poured into the country.
According to a study
by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
investing in Venezuela is even riskier
than investing in Iraq and Sudan.
Unsurprisingly,
many Chinese companies
have now left the Venezuelan marketplace.
But that’s not a retreat.
Because retreating is not a Chinese value.
That’s at least what I learned
from my favorite state-run media,
the Global Times,
in its review of the World War II film, Dunkirk.
“Dunkirk depicts a disastrous evacuation,
which is very different from traditional Chinese values.”
Dunkirk is about the evacuation
of British troops in World War II
who were stranded across the English Channel
after retreating from the Nazis.
The British originally hoped they could rescue
30,000 of them,
but in the end
they rescued more than 330,000.
But that’s still a retreat.
I mean, take the uber patriotic
Chinese film Wolf Warrior 2.
This hero doesn’t retreat.
He just kills... everybody.
Global Times calls it
“a Chinese-made patriotic movie
that literally sent a message that said:
‘The citizens of the People’s Republic of China:
When you encounter danger overseas,
do not give up!
Please remember,
right behind you,
there is a powerful motherland!’”
I wonder what they’d have to say
about the Long March.
The guerrilla Chinese Communist army
was forced to, uhh,
heroically move backwards,
to avoid being killed by the army
of the government ruling China at the time.
And it was a great victory for the Communists.
Sure 19 out of every 20 soldiers
died or deserted.
But it was absolutely not a retreat.
In fact, it was uber patriotic.
Like China’s national anthem,
which is about marching ahead
in the face of enemy fire.
The lyrics might not be an accurate description
of what really happened in the Long March,
but you’d better not mince words when you sing it.
Because a proposed Chinese law
could send you to jail for improper anthem use.
So what constitutes improper use?
Well according to my less favorite state-run media,
Xinhua,
it would be playing it at “improper” occasions.
Or “maliciously” modifying the words.
What’s even more concerning
is that there’s talk of implementing
the same law in Hong Kong.
Which is just further proof that
when the Chinese Communist Party told the UK
that Hong Kong would have
“50 years no change,”
they actually meant 20 years.
You know, the 5 and the 2,
it’s easy to get confused.
Speaking of needless regulation,
I know you like your Netflix,
but in China,
the government is clamping down
on online dramas.
Because you know how to make good TV?
Get the government involved.
“The government will encourage
good television production…
[with] oversight of the ideological
and artistic merit of content.”
And now, Chinese dramas
will never ever surpass Korean dramas.
Way to go.
But it does make sense, in a way.
A lot of Chinese dramas are period pieces,
especially from the early days
of Communist Party rule.
Producers could accidentally make
some mistakes about history.
Political mistakes,
not factual mistakes.
Especially because the Chinese Communist Party
is in the middle of rewriting history.
Researchers have just discovered
that as historical documents from the 50s
are digitized,
dozens of articles have been removed,
“that questioned the Communist party’s commitment
to the rule of law at the time.”
Wow, they were pretending
they had rule of law way back then too.
But while China in the 50s
saw terrible mass killing and famine,
today you can smile
and eat as much fried chicken as you want.
Because KFC in Hangzhou
has launched a pilot program
to let users pay...
with a smile.
To be clear,
you still have to pay with money.
It’s just that you can use your smile
to activate the payment
instead of your phone or credit card.
It uses that same kind of creepy
facial recognition software
the Chinese regime wants everywhere.
Now if that’s not a reason to smile,
I don’t know what is.
Just don’t smile too much
or you might get a double charge.
Fortunately, if you’re like me,
after eating KFC,
you won’t want to smile for days.
And coming up after the break,
what do you think these two
just agreed to pay for?
Hey, if you really want to smile,
get on over to China Uncensored.tv.
There you’ll see loads more China Uncensored
you won’t see anywhere else,
including full half hour episodes.
And you don’t even have to pay for it.
However if you’d like to support China Uncensored,
also make a trip to the website
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where you can contribute to the show!
That would make me smile.