Joe Biden calls Xi Jinping.
Canada’s top spy warns about China.
Plus, China makes it to Mars.
That and more on this week’s China news headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell. Remember,
this show relies on viewer support. For as little as a dollar an episode,
you can join what I call the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army and earn cool rewards, like having me
answer your question at the end of episodes. Head over to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored to learn more.
After weeks of waiting by the phone,
Chinese leader Xi Jinping finally got a phone call from US President Joe Biden.
He was so excited that he was on Cloud Nine!
At least that’s what I gather from the banner image on state-run Xinhua News.
So what happened on the phone call? Well, we don’t know.
All we have is the manicured press releases from each side. And...they don’t quite match up.
According to the White House, “President Biden
affirmed his priorities of protecting the American people’s security, prosperity,
health, and way of life, and preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
While according to Xinhua, Xi Jinping emphasized on the call that China and the US should “uphold
the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.”
Yes, non-confrontation always works out well...for
the Chinese Communist Party. Because it means you’re not allowed to confront them.
Meanwhile, according to the White House, “President Biden underscored
his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices,
crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang,
and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan.”
While Xi Jinping told Biden that “Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang-related issues
are China’s internal affairs, which are related to China’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity. The United States should respect China’s core interests and act cautiously.”
So it sounds like both Biden and Xi spent the entire phone call
talking past each other. This’ll come up at counseling.
But there is one thing that both sides agreed happened.
“[President Biden] shared his greetings and well wishes with the Chinese people
on the occasion of Lunar New Year.”
Happy Lunar New Year, everyone!
Remember to respect China’s core interests and act cautiously.
Talk is cheap. Unless you’re calling China and you have AT&T.
But what really matters is what President Biden will actually *do* when it comes to China.
And while normally Biden is very sharp on all matters,
it seems he hasn’t quite figured out his China policy yet.
According to Politico, “The worry, some former officials say, is that
Biden is just getting organized while Xi is seizing the moment:
ramming through a massive investment deal with the European Union, for instance.”
“Beijing isn’t waiting around...China has waged an influence campaign, seeking to endear itself
to U.S. businesses as well as the same American allies that Biden and his top aides are engaging.”
And this is making a lot of people worried. Biden has
been dogged by criticisms that he’s soft on China.
Last week, I told you that Senator Ted Cruz blocked Biden’s pick for Commerce Secretary
over concerns she’s soft of Huawei.
Huawei is the Chinese telecom company
the US has accused of being a national security threat since the Obama Administration.
And this week, there was this story: Biden withdraws Trump rule
on schools disclosing ties to Chinese state-run Confucius Institutes.
Confucius Institutes are an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department.
Back in August, the Trump Administration required the group register as foreign agents in the US.
In January, Trump pushed a last minute rule that “would require colleges and
K-12 schools that are certified to have foreign exchange programs to disclose any contracts,
partnerships or financial transactions from Confucius Institutes or Classrooms.”
So why did Biden withdraw that proposal? According to a Biden Spokesperson, “On Inauguration Day,
White House chief of staff Ron Klain released a memo freezing all regulatory process.”
Basically it was a blanket freeze on any last minute proposals by the Trump Administration.
So it’s not as if Biden specifically undid some kind of ban of the Confucius Institute.
It would be nice if the Biden Administration did take a stance on the Confucius Institute.
But that might put him in the awkward situation of agreeing with Trump on an issue.
And coming up after the break, the Biden Administration wants to sit at the table
with China, Cuba and Venezuela...when it comes to human rights.
Welcome back.
The Biden Administration wants to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Trump had pulled the US out of the council in June 2018. Countries like China, Cuba,
and Venezuela are on it. Clearly those countries got human rights under control.
Or at least they have their humans under control.
Current Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the pull out, saying Trump’s withdrawal
“did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of U.S. leadership.”
He did say, “We recognize that the Human Rights Council is a flawed body,
in need of reform to its agenda, membership, and focus.”
But this shows a very different approach from the Trump Administration. Biden has said he will work
with American allies and international bodies to counter China. But he hasn’t made it clear
how that will actually work since China has a lot of control over international organizations,
like the Human Rights Council, and even foreign governments.
Senator Marco Rubio criticized this approach in a statement,
saying President Biden “should not give any shred of credibility [to the human rights council],”
because it’s “become a place for despotic regimes to come together
and receive international cover to continue to commit their horrific abuses.”
Then again, maybe this would give the US a place to get international cover
so we can commit some horrific abuses of our own!
Speaking of international cooperation, Biden has announced a new Pentagon China task force.
It will be focused on how the US and its allies can deter China in the Pacific.
Biden said, “It will require a whole of government efforts,
bipartisan cooperation in Congress and strong alliances and partners. That is how we will meet
the China challenge and ensure the American people win the competition of the future.”
The task force will be led by Ely Ratner, a former deputy national security adviser to Biden.
Ratner is the guy who said last August that the US must forget America First to counter China.
He said, “The China challenge right now is about us,
it’s not about them, it’s about our own competitiveness.”
So I’m sure, as Biden says, Ratner’s task force will really help,
“ensure the American people win the competition of the future.”
The World Health Organization is once again reminding everyone why we
hate it. After months of international pressure, and millions of deaths,
China finally allowed a WHO team into Wuhan to investigate the origin of the coronavirus.
Was the WHO mad that it took so long?
No! “Instead of scorn, the W.H.O. experts on Tuesday delivered praise for Chinese officials.”
In fact, the WHO experts backed up Chinese Communist Party propaganda,
“saying it was possible the virus might have spread to humans through shipments of frozen food,
an idea that has gained little traction with scientists outside China. And the
experts pledged to investigate reports that the virus might have been present outside China
months before the outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, a longstanding demand of Chinese officials.”
The head of the WHO investigation team also made a point to say, “Don’t rely too much on US intel;
increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects.”
Got it. The CCP claims that the coronavirus came from pig heads and frozen fish...
And...auto parts packaging. That’s totally reasonable.
But US intelligence, that’s unreliable.
Especially because the US State Department called into question the transparency of
the investigation, saying “The jury is still out.”
The WHO gets most of its funding from the US. So why is the WHO so deep in the CCP’s pocket?!
I’m just glad Biden has stopped the US withdrawing from it.
And after the break, we’ll show you what the head
of Canada’s spy agency says about the threat from China.
Welcome back.
In a rare public appearance,
the head of Canada’s spy agency said China poses a serious strategic threat to Canada.
Well he didn’t actually say it in public. It was an online forum. No one appears in public
anymore. Ever since the coronavirus spread from frozen food in the US THANK YOU VERY MUCH, W.H.O.!
Canada’s spy chief said, “The government of China ... is pursuing a strategy for
geopolitical advantage on all fronts—economic,
technological, political, and military—and using all elements of state power to carry
out activities that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty.”
How does China do it? Are they masters of subversion and infiltration?
No, Canada just kind of lets them do it.
And then, I assume, apologizes for it.
You may remember back in August, China detained Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist
working for Chinese state-run CCTV. After months of detention she’s finally...been
officially arrested and charged with spying.
Injustice takes time in China.
50 members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China—including representatives from the UK,
Canada, Australia, France, Germany and Switzerland—are calling on HSBC
to unfreeze the account of a Hong Kong activist.
HSBC has chosen to be the bad guys in Hong Kong.
The bank has backed the national security law that destroyed the freedoms of Hong Kong.
The global lawmakers also point out that besides freezing the funds of the Hong Kong activist,
and his entire family—for some reason— “HSBC also froze bank accounts of a Hong Kong charity
and Christian church that supported the 2019 democracy movement in Hong
Kong, as well as the bank accounts of individual preachers from the same church.”
I know, it’s hard to imagine that a bank
could be on the side of evil, but, it just goes to show you anything is possible.
Chinese people are starved for uncensored information
and connection to people outside China. That was probably a big part of the success in China of
Clubhouse, a hip new social media platform beloved by Kanye West and Elon Musk.
Clubhouse uses audio chatrooms that disappear when the conversations end.
And for a short time, it actually connected Chinese netizens to the outside world.
“In recent days,
several Chinese-language chatrooms had been filled to the 5,000-user capacity.”
Clubhouse is invitation only. And it became so popular, that a “small black market for
invitation codes [emerged]...The going price for one code was up to 300 yuan, or about $46.”
On Clubhouse Chinese netizens could hear stories from Uyghurs talking about their experiences in
concentration camps in Xinjiang. They could hear from Hong Kongers. People in Taiwan.
And that’s why after less than a week of its rising popularity,
Chinese censors have finally blocked it in China.
And as I mentioned earlier, it’s the Lunar New Year! Many people celebrate by making dumplings.
The Chinese Communist Party celebrated by
arresting more than 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners.
The Chinese Communist Party harvests the organs of Falun Gong practitioners
on a mass scale. So I’m sure this was just the Party’s way of...making dumplings with them.
And to show how great everything is on Lunar New Year, China Central Television
showcased their 39th annual propaganda bacchanal! The CCTV new year gala.
Complete with what’s now become a proud CCTV gala tradition: Blackface.
Back in 2018, CCTV aired a “racist blackface” sketch.
And clearly they’ve learned their lesson.
Because this year they’ve included a blackface *dance* instead.
Although I don’t want to be unfair. It wasn’t just a blackface dance. There was
cultural appropriation from all around the world!
If you’re familiar with the CCTV gala, every year they do a song about all of China’s
happy ethnic minorities. This was basically that, but for the entire world.
But enough about the Lunar New Year. Let’s talk about Mars.
China is now the 6th country in history to have reached Mars.
If China is the first country to make contact with the Martians I will be so mad.
And now, as I said at the start of the episode,
it’s time to answer a question from a member of the China Uncensored 50 cent army!
Leif Hendricksen says, “I think all the athletes should go to the Olympics,
then stage a mass protest during the opening ceremonies. Lets see how well
China's detention of the athletes would go over on the world stage.”
Ah, Leif was responding to my recent episode about a possible boycott
of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
So, China has shown it doesn’t have a problem with arresting citizens of another country. So
definitely, any Olympic athlete who uses it as a platform to protest genocide,
could find themselve in serious trouble. But on the other hand,
it would be so bad for the Communist Party’s image to go after another country’s Olympic athlete,
that this could actually be a very effective way to protest, say, genocide in Xinjiang.
However, that’s probably not going to happen. Because athletes are forbidden from political
protests during the Olympics. That’s according to the International Olympic Committee.
The IOC president has said that the Olympics
are not about politics and that athletes should be politically neutral.
And “Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter bans any form of political protest during the Games.”
So don’t expect any kind of mass protest against the Chinese Communist Party during the Olympics.
At least not from the athletes. But there are opportunities for the rest of the world
to use the publicity from the Olympics to call out the CCP’s crimes against humanity.
The lesson the CCP learned from the 2008 Beijing Olympics
was that it didn’t matter what kind of horrible human rights violations the Party committed,
the rest of the world wouldn’t care as long as there’s a nice opening ceremony.
Hopefully this Olympics, the world will act a little differently.
Thanks for your question and your support Leif.
And thank you for watching. Once again I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.