Edward Snowden’s Autobiography Gets Censored in China
Trump Promises He Won’t Say the word cheat
And a World Bank Deal in Xinjiang.
What could go wrong ?
That and more on this week’s China Uncensored.
This is China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
This week’s China news headlines!
Edward Snowden.
The former NSA whistleblower.
Guess what?
He has some thoughts about democracy and privacy.
But his new autobiography,
Permanent Record,
seems to be missing those parts in the Chinese edition.
And I understand the Chinese Communist Party’s
dilemma here with the Chinese edition.
On the one hand,
you have the autobiography of the guy
who exposed massive corruption in the United States.
That’s good!
But, on the other hand
he advocates for democracy and Internet privacy.
That’s not so good.
But Snowden has come up with a novel solution.
He wants to crowdsource a corrected
and unabridged simplified Chinese version.
To be published for free online.
Sure, he won’t make money off it.
But then again,
he wasn’t making money off the Chinese version anyway.
China’s paramount leader is Xi Jinping.
His title is General Secretary of the Communist Party.
He also gave himself the title of president,
but don’t call him *that*.
That’s what a Congressional panel recommends in a new report.
Because calling Xi Jinping a president
makes it sound like there’s democracy in China.
Thank you!
I’ve been saying this for years!!!
In fact, that’s why I came up with a new word last year
to describe Xi Jinping.
He’s not a president,
he’s not a dictator,
he’s a presitator.
Presitator.
Put that one in your report.
On to US-China trade:
President Trump spoke at the Economic Club of New York.
And he says he’s got China right where he wants them.
They are dying to make a deal.
We're the ones deciding whether or not
we want to make a deal.
We're close.
A significant phase 1 trade deal with China could happen.
But if that doesn’t happen,
then tariff man will...well, you know.
If we don't make a deal we're going to substantially raise those tariffs.
No one has manipulated numbers better,
or taken advantage of the United States more,
and I won't use this word cheated,
I will not say the word cheated,
but nobody's cheated better than China,
but I will not say cheated.
Okay, everyone, that’s just between us.
Cheated is off the record, got it?
What is on the record, is this message to China.
The US has sailed another warship through the Taiwan Strait.
Which honestly is kind of a mixed signal.
Yeah, it shows that the US is ready to defend their ally.
But it also means that if the US
can sail a warship through the Taiwan Strait,
China can too.
But China has bigger things to worry about.
For example, the plague.
Yes, the plague, as in the Black Death
that wiped out a third of Europe.
Now today, we have antibiotics that can treat it.
And this was only two people.
According to Chinese authorities.
So that’s no reason to panic right?
Or, is it the perfect reason to panic?
Remember, this is the regime
that covered up the SARS Outbreak in 2003.
According to the New York Times,
“Fears are mounting in China over a possible outbreak of the disease.”
“Residents are asking why the authorities took so long
to diagnose and disclose the problem.”
Don’t worry, the problem was short lived.
Not the plague problem,
the people asking questions problem.
In good old SARS tradition,
Chinese censors ordered online news companies
to “block and control” online discussion.
And that my friends is how you breed an atmosphere of paranoia.
This Australian researcher is struggling to get his PhD.
And he blames China’s influence in Australia.
James Jing has been teaching at Perth’s Curtin University for 12 years.
But according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
“He said he had spent years unsuccessfully trying to convince
more senior members of Curtin's academic staff...
to supervise his research into censorship
and the Chinese social media platform WeChat.”
But they’ve never given their approval.
They haven’t rejected it either.
So Jing is in academic limbo.
I wonder why they wouldn’t want to sponsor
research into censorship and WeChat?
Could it have anything to do with the fact that WeChat
sponsors events and programs at Curtin University?
Nah.
The World Bank is scaling back on a project in China’s Xinjiang.
You know, the place where the Chinese Communist Party
has built concentration camps for over a million Uighur people.
And has sent men to sleep in the same beds as Uighur women
while their husbands are in those concentration camps.
Yeah, that Xinjiang.
There were allegations
that a 50 million dollar World Bank loan
would be used for these concentration camps.
The World Bank couldn’t confirm that,
but then decided that because of the risks and difficulty
in monitoring how the money would be used,
“the scope and footprint of the project is being reduced.”
Why the World Bank even considered giving money
to a regime that has concentration camps is beyond me.
Meanwhile, China Uncensored struggles to survive
because YouTube demonetizes pretty much every video we make.
And the World Bank has not offered us even one cent.
Maybe if I start putting people in concentration camps...
But fortunately, I don’t need the World Bank.
I’ve got my wonderful China Uncensored 50 cent army,
fans who support the show on the crowd funding website Patreon.
So as a thank you to them,
I answer a question from one of them
at the end of some of my episodes.
Today’s question comes from...Logan.
“How long did it take the West to forget about
the Tiananmen Square massacre
and the subjugation of Tibet?
Was there any meaningful political actions taken then?
How where those actions compared
to what is being done for Hong Kong now?”
I’m sorry to say,
the West forgot about the Tiananmen Square massacre
almost immediately.
Well, not the people of the West.
The governments of the West.
Less than a month after the massacre,
then US president George Bush Senior
sent a secret delegation to China.
The goal was to continue the US relationship
with Chinese leaders.
Freeing Tibet, meanwhile,
was a big thing in the 1990s,
thanks to Richard Gere and the Beastie Boys.
Oh, and the Dalai Lama.
But then Hollywood realized
that China has 1.4 billion people.
And the Communist Party saw
that the same international community
that condemned the Tiananmen Square Massacre
and who called for a Free Tibet
had completely forgotten about it by the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
It taught the Party that they can literally get away with murder,
and sooner or later,
the West will be on their doorstep,
ready for access to that sweet, sweet China market.
It actually reminds me of what a guest
on our China Unscripted Podcast told me.
Captain Jim Fanell,
the Former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations
for the U.S. Pacific Fleet,
talks about what he calls the “decade of concern.”
The decade of concern is the idea
that sometime over the next decade,
China will invade Taiwan.
That way, by the 100 year anniversary
of the People’s Republic of China
rolls around in 2049,
there will have been time for the West
to have also forgotten about that—
and be eager to travel to Beijing for the celebrations.
But Hong Kong may be changing this plan.
US lawmakers have passed legislation
supporting the Hong Kong protesters.
So maybe, at least the United States,
is beginning to wise up to
the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
Thanks for your question.
And thanks to everyone for watching.
Remember, we rely on your support
to keep making the show, so if you can,
head over to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored
to contribute a dollar or more per episode.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell,
see you next time.