A viral ad
has Chinese censors going bonkers.
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
This video went viral on Chinese social media.
It’s an ad for the German camera company Leica.
It’s basically a collage of all the insane stuff
photographers have endured
to tell the world’s important stories.
Presumably using Leica cameras.
And one of those insane stories involves a photographer
covering the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
We proudly whisper to ourselves, “I’m a hunter.”
Yeah, Tank Man was never going to get past Chinese censors.
Now maybe you don’t know the story.
Possibly because you’re watching from inside China,
and this is your first time using a VPN
to jump over the Great Firewall,
and the first thing you did for some reason
was to watch China Uncensored.
But anyway, in June 1989,
the Chinese Communist Party sent troops into Beijing
to crush a nonviolent student-led protest.
According to the latest research, 10,000 civilians were killed.
In fact, June 4, 2019 will mark the 30th anniversary.
And the Party has spent the last 30 years
making sure no one talks about it,
so a lot of Chinese kids today have no idea it happened.
You can read more about the 30-year propaganda campaign
in the book the People’s Republic of Amnesia by Louisa Lim.
So you can see why the Party would be upset about the Leica ad.
They spent so much time trying to get people
to forget the Tiananmen Square massacre,
and then Leica comes in like a wrecking ball.
The catchy kind that gets stuck in your head
and you can never unsee that video.
I’m talking about the Leica ad.
Now sure, the Leica ad wasn’t meant for the China market.
But it quickly spread on the Chinese internet.
And just as quickly,
Chinese authorities sent out this censorship directive,
instructing websites to delete it.
Chinese censors even blocked the word Leica from social media.
The theory was, if people can’t talk about it,
everyone will just lose interest.
But they did not.
Reactions to the video on the Chinese Internet were mixed though.
Some were very angry.
But not for the reason you’d think.
They weren’t mad because they discovered
their government massacred 10,000 people
and spent the last 30 years covering up.
They were mad because Leica has a partnership with Huawei,
the Chinese telecom company with questionable links
to the Chinese Communist Party.
One user wrote,
“Do you even deserve to collaborate with our patriotic Huawei?”
Others were quite happy about it.
Zhou Fengsuo,
a Tiananmen survivor I’ve had on the show,
said “It captured the spirit of 30 years ago.
I was in tears watching it.”
But you know, I got to hand it to Leica.
They understood that China’s heavy-handed authoritarianism
is exactly the kind of thing those brave journalists
risk their own lives to expose,
and they stood up to…
Wait, what’s that Shelley?
Leica is trying to cover their butts?
They’re saying they had nothing to do with the ad?
It turns out,
Leica did what any responsible company does
when being threatened by the Chinese Communist Party.
They denied all personal responsibility,
and blamed the ad agency.
Leica said they made the ad without their approval.
I know, it’s hard to believe that an ad agency
just decided on its own to produce an expensive,
high production video for Leica
without getting Leica’s approval first.
Well, they didn’t.
“Leica’s Brazilian ad agency claims it developed the film
with Leica representatives in Brazil.”
So really,
Leica can just throw its own Brazilian representatives
under the bus.
Because it’s one thing to stand up to
warlords who threaten your life...
...but you can’t expect Leica to stand up
to the thugs who threaten their profits!
So what do you think of the ad?
Let me know in the comments below.
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.
Benjamin Jull asks,
“With all this extra stimulus in the Chinese banking system,
what is stopping local governments
and ordinary people from exploiting it?
Like taking out large loans they can’t pay back,
then defaulting on the government to bail them out?”
Excellent question.
The answer is...people *are* exploiting it.
When people can borrow money easily and cheaply,
they’re often going to take out loans for projects that are...
how shall I put it?
Stupid.
Really stupid investments.
Like building homes that no one wants to live in.
On the plus side,
even building stupid things contributes to GDP!
And when GDP goes up,
local officials get promotions.
Last year,
there were defaults on almost 18 billion dollars of debt.
Defaults cause big problems.
But typically what happens is the central government
just pumps more money into the system
to keep everything afloat.
It basically kicks the can down the line
to some time in the future.
The problem is,
sooner or later,
you lose control of the can.
Or something.
Thanks for your question, Benjamin.
And thank you to all my 50-Cent Army soldiers
who support China Uncensored.
It’s only because of your support
that we’ve been able to cover topics
that most other media don’t want to,
because standing up to the Chinese Communist Party
is really hard.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.