Flooding in China sparks a massive explosion
A monkey virus kills
And China is buying up American farmland
That and more on this week’s China news headlines
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
Massive flooding is once again devastating China.
At least 33 people have died in Henan province, in central China.
Chinese state-run media have called it the heaviest rain there in 1000 years.
Henan experienced almost a year’s worth of rainfall in three days.
How severe is the flooding? Pretty severe.
Cars were being swept away like leaves.
I’d be a little more freaked out if I were this guy.
And you may remember the problem China has with sinkholes from a recent episode.
Unfortunately, the flooding has not helped.
Also, apparently floodwaters can make factories explode.
This is what’s left of an aluminium alloy plant.
It was quite the explosion.
And it could be seen from quite a distance. But that’s not even as scary as what happened to a
subway line in the city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan. After water burst through
a retaining wall near a subway station, water started pouring into the tunnels.
People were trapped in flooded subway
cars. And I would definitely be a little more freaked out if I were them.
These people were evacuated from drowning subway cars.
According to official figures, around 500 people were evacuated,
while tragically, at least 12 people died while trapped in the flooding subway.
The suddenness of the flooding took people by surprise.
Thankfully, people were able to pull this woman to safety.
But in the aftermath of the floods, hundreds of people are still missing,
judging from posts on Chinese social media. And the death toll is likely to rise. Although we’ll
probably never know the true death toll, since Chinese authorities suppress that information.
And now locals are asking why authorities weren’t more prepared for the floods.
Residents are questioning inaccurate weather forecasts and a confusing disaster alert system.
And even why officials didn’t shut the subway down after the flooding began.
Some are even wondering whether the officials’ decision to open
reservoirs to release floodwater also contributed to the massive flooding.
If it did, then I fully expect Chinese authorities to also suppress that information.
More China news after the break.
Welcome back.
It’s the book release we were all waiting for—the Compilation of Xi Jinping’s Discourses on
Full and Strict Governance Over the Party! It’s so exciting that the official Xinhua news
agency published a...one-sentence article about it. Well, someone’s going to a re-education camp.
Anyway, the book is a real page turner. A compilation of over 220 reports, speeches,
articles, and instructions by Xi Jinping, from 2012 to 2021.
And guess what? It turns out Xi is not a fan of democracy. Who’d have guessed
presitator for life Xi Jinping would feel that way?
In January 2018, Xi delivered a speech to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
That’s basically his anti-corruption police force that has been purging all his political opponents.
Here’s what he said, “As the strict overall governance of the Party continues to intensify,
there are also some murmurs of noise within the Party.”
Those murmurs were calls for intra-Party democracy, rather than, shall we say,
more centralized leadership. Two months after that speech, Xi amended China’s Constitution,
so he could effectively be presitator for life. Now this is important to remember about factional
infighting within the Chinese Communist Party. Xi didn’t make himself leader for life for fun.
Just like those in the Party that were calling for intra-Party democracy
weren't good-guy reformers. Remember, they weren’t saying give Chinese people a vote.
There are no heroes in everyone’s favorite communist soap opera General Hostility.
As you know if you’ve been watching, Xi Jinping is locked in a life or death power struggle
with a faction tied to former Chinese leader and Battletoad-reject Jiang Zemin. Intra Party
democracy would have taken power away from Xi and put it into the hands of the Jiang faction.
And remember, in a communist power struggle, no one wins.
The key takeaway, no matter what you might hear,
is the Chinese Communist Party will never reform. When US politicians or businesses
talk about working with the Communist Party, they are being idiots.
The Party isn’t building all those new missile silos for our health.
Speaking of our health, a year after declaring a pandemic,
the World Health Organization is finally calling for audits of the Wuhan labs.
I mean how much evidence could the Chinese Communist
Party possibly destroy in just a year’s time?
But I don’t want to criticize the WHO
that much. I’m sure they’ve learned many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic.
Just in time for China to report its first human death from the rare Monkey B virus.
The 53 year old man was a veterinarian. He was dissecting two dead monkeys and got sick.
It’s rare for humans to contract the Monkey B virus—a form of herpes that causes brain
swelling in humans. Since most people aren’t at risk of coming in contact with monkey fluids,
it’s pretty rare in humans.
However, while the Monkey B virus is deadly, it’s not as bad as the Monkey C
virus, which causes radical behavioral changes. After all, Monkey C, monkey do.
More bad news for Hong Kong’s Apple Daily. Which is surprising since the Hong Kong
government already drove the company out of business. How much worse could it get?
Well, Hong Kong national security police arrested 3 more top staff of the paper,
including the former editor in chief.
It’s not entirely clear what they’re being charged with, but I think it's pretty clear
Hong Kong authorities don’t need much of a reason to arrest anyone these days.
Speaking of the continued communist takeover of Hong Kong, staff at Hong Kong’s public
broadcaster are no longer allowed to call Taiwan a country, or refer to its leader as a president.
So Taiwan’s democratically elected president, Tsai-ing Wen,
must be called “the most senior leader of Taiwan”
while Xi Jinping, who was elected by nobody, must be called “president.” It makes total sense.
China is suffering from a massive demographic crisis.
It was caused by decades of state-run family planning.
In other words, forced abortions and sterliziations.
Well, for the first time in decades, the CCP has lifted
baby fines for people who have more children than allowed.
Currently there’s a three-child policy. But now, you won’t be fined if you have more. Supposedly.
We’ll see how local officials handle it.
But this should give you some idea of just how desperate the CCP is
for people to start having babies. Of course for all the people who have been
forcibly sterilized, the new changes probably don’t mean all that much.
And after the break, Chinese people might not want to have more kids, but that hasn’t
stopped the Chinese Communist Party from screwing the US.
Welcome back.
Over the past decade, China has hacked dozens of US pipeline companies.
And this wasn’t about stealing technology. Oh no. Much worse.
According to the FBI and Homeland Security,
“these intrusions were likely intended to gain strategic access to the [pipeline]
networks for future operations rather than for intellectual property theft.”
In other words, they weren't stealing the technology. Chinese hackers
wanted to be able to seize control of them in the future.
So Blackrock, tell me more about how we should be investing in Chinese bonds.
But if you want more proof that no one is taking the China threat seriously,
the US military has been buying Chinese cameras in violation of America’s own China sanctions!
We’re talking video surveillance equipment with known national security risks. But the military
didn’t buy them directly from China. No no no. They bought them from American resellers
who totally said they didn’t violate US sanctions.
Gives me a lot of confidence in US military intelligence.
In more good news, guess who’s buying up American farms? Besides Bill Gates.
The answer is, China.
Yes, China might someday control America’s food supply. I can’t see that going wrong.
“By the start of 2020, Chinese owners controlled about 192,000
agricultural acres in the U.S., worth $1.9 billion.”
That’s still a small percentage of the nearly 900 million acres of total American farmland.
So it’s not an immediate problem, but it’s something we should definitely do something about.
But in some good news, there is bipartisan agreement this is bad.
Because, you know, national security.
And I’m talking like, Mike Pence and Elizabeth Warren are in agreement. That’s amazing. To see
a white man and a Native American woman setting aside their differences for the common good.
And this week marks the 22 year anniversary of the
Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual practice.
US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price had this to say.
We recognize 22 years since the People’s Republic of China launched a campaign of
repression against the Falun Gong movement and its millions of practitioners, advocates, and the
human rights defenders working to protect their rights...We call on the PRC to immediately cease
its campaign against Falun Gong practitioners and release those imprisoned due to their beliefs.
Back in May, the State Department sanctioned a
Chinese official involved in persecuting Falun Gong.
And even former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke out.
“With respect to Falun Gong, the absence of religious freedom in China is horrific,
it is tragic, it’s gone on for too long and America needs to lead the world to ensure
that those people have the opportunity to practice their faith in the way they want to.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also issued
a statement condemning the Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong.
As did at least 15 other US lawmakers, like Senator Marco Rubio
As well as the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China,
an international coalition of politicians from 20 countries.
So considering former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin said he’d wipe out Falun Gong in three months
back in 1999, I’d say this campaign majorly backfired for the Chinese Communist Party.
And now it’s time to answer a question from a member of the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army,
fans who support us and our efforts to expose the truth about the Chinese Communist Party,
by contributing through crowd funding website Patreon.
Ringleader asks, “Knowing that the PLA and it's "military leadership"
have no real combat/war fighting experience, plus it's extreme corruption, what are the odds that
the CCP could really succeed in a real invasion against the independent nation of Taiwan?”
That is the big question, isn’t it? The Chinese military is basically completely
untested. That’s a huge advantage for the defense of Taiwan.
Not to mention China would be facing a coalition of forces defending Taiwan.
Besides the US, Japan said it would likely get involved.
The real advantage the Chinese Communist Party has is the fact that basically
everything today is made in China. The US is entirely dependent on China for things like
aspirin and antibiotics. That’s an advantage the Chinese regime will keep
pressing. Then there’s the wild-card factor of China’s space weapons. If they really
could blind US satellites, that really would impact the US military’s ability to coordinate.
But China would still be facing some pretty big obstacles to a successful invasion of Taiwan.
But an unsuccessful invasion of Taiwan? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Thanks for your question and your support, Ringleader.
And a big thank you to everyone who supports China Uncensored on Patreon. We could not do this show
without you. So thank you for joining us in the fight to expose the Chinese Communist Party to
the world. If you’re interested in joining, head over to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored. You’ll get
a bunch of cool perks, including the chance to have me answer your question on the show!
Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.