We were told that by interacting with China,
The West would help China liberalize.
But instead, China made the West more authoritarian.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
The Chinese Communist Party changed the world with the coronavirus pandemic.
The CCP Virus as I call it. One of the ways it did this
was by recommending brutal, authoritarian lockdown policies.
Things like rounding people up, and putting them into quarantine camps.
Or locking down entire provinces.
The Communist Party justified its totalitarian practices by showing low Covid numbers.
And Western media bought it hook, line, and sinker.
The New York Times says, “[China’s] tactics have been highly effective.”
CNN says, “The strict approach has so far been effective:
China has recorded far fewer Covid-19 cases than many other nations during the pandemic,
and its economy was the only major one to grow in 2020.”
Um...a big reason China has reported fewer Covid cases than other countries is that
CHINA IS FAKING THE DATA!
Even Chinese researchers are saying the numbers are fake.
As for China being the only major economy to grow in 2020—I’ve
got news for you: They’re faking the GDP data, too!
Even a top Chinese official once admitted the GDP numbers are man-made and unreliable!
But if you’re looking at China’s *fake* data, they look like they've been doing great during Covid.
Now, I’m not saying that China has the same level of Covid as other countries.
They do have fewer cases. Not as few as they claim. But fewer than many other countries.
That’s because they lock down entire cities and restrict
people’s movements all the time. But that also means they can never open back up
without getting hit with a massive wave of the CCP virus. That’s a huge problem.
And yet somehow, China’s lies convinced the world that authoritarianism
was actually the best solution to Covid.
What’s crazy is, massive lockdowns are the opposite of what the scientific
community had been saying before Covid spread.
In the context of a global pandemic scenario,
a W.H.O. team in 2019 said that “large-scale home quarantine was ‘not recommended’”.
And a September 2019 report from Johns Hopkins University said,
“In the context of a high-impact respiratory pathogen, quarantine may be the *least likely*
[Nonpharmaceutical Intervention] to be effective in controlling the spread.”
But again, China implemented big authoritarian policies, then faked its data to make it look
like they worked. Western media bought it, and so did politicians in the West—some
of whom put their citizens into full or partial lockdown on and off for the past two years.
And authoritarian policies in the West in many cases went beyond just lockdowns. Facebook
full-on censored anti-lockdown protest pages.
Australian police even went into a pregnant woman’s home and arrested her
for planning a peaceful anti-lockdown protest.
If that sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, it is.
It’s called pre-crime. From the 2002 film Minority Report.
And it’s largely thanks to the Chinese Communist Party. Their policies have
influenced the West’s policies—and that has eroded democracy around the world.
Already, less than half the world lives under democracy.
This report by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit
“sheds light on continued challenges to democracy worldwide, under pressure from
the coronavirus pandemic and increasing support for authoritarian alternatives.”
Enter Canada. For the first time
in the history of that report, Canada fell out of the world’s top 10 most stable democracies.
The report cites “extremely low levels of public trust
in political parties and government institutions”.
That’s largely because of citizens’ frustrations with government leaders who have continued to
reinstate pandemic related restrictions after first rolling them back in the summer of 2020.
It’s not that Canadians are angry with their government keeping them safe.
It’s that a substantial number of Canadians don’t believe
long-term lockdowns are effective at stopping Covid.
On the flip side, there are also people that strongly support lockdowns—even if it means
heavy-handed government policies. The report also says more Canadians now show “increased levels of
support for non-democratic alternatives, such as rule by experts or the military”.
All of this is particularly concerning in light of how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
has handled the recent trucker convoy—which is a
protest against coronavirus restrictions and mandates.
In response to the protests, which have been almost entirely peaceful,
Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.
Those emergency powers even “authorize Canadian banks
to freeze accounts suspected of financing the protesters”—without a court order.
And Canada’s second largest bank did just that—freezing
over a million dollars worth of support for the protesters.
And Canada’s state broadcaster has been using illegally hacked data to
out people who donated to the trucker convoy.
And frankly, it’s not all that surprising that Canada has been
implementing the kind of authoritarian policies you’d normally see in China.
For a long time, “Chinese authorities have been ‘exporting their authoritarianism overseas’
by infiltrating democratic institutions in Canada and elsewhere”. That’s according to
an expert testimony before the Canadian parliament last year.
The Chinese Communist Party even spends roughly $10 billion per year “on so-called ‘soft power’
tactics, in which it seeks to sway public opinion through academic and other avenues.”
And if Western governments keep looking to the Chinese Communist Party’s Covid
policies as a guide, things are not going to get more democratic.
And as a thank you to my viewers who don’t support the Chinese Communist Party—specifically,
those of you who support China Uncensored through the crowdfunding website Patreon—I’m
going to answer one of your questions.
John Cheresna says, “Yet China is on the "Human Rights Council" in the UN.
You cannot make this up.”
Yes, sadly that is true. Just another way China is eroding the freedoms of the West.
In 2013, China got itself elected to the UN Human Rights Council.
And it’s been using that platform to undermine human rights globally.
For example, “by downplaying individual rights and emphasizing state-led development.”
Which is an insane thing to push for on the UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL!
And don’t worry, it’s not like the Chinese regime has used their position in the UN to,
for example, get a UN human rights office to help it keep an eye on dissidents.
And just to make sure no one complained about China’s horrible abuses,
China warned other UN countries to submit positive reviews about China,
and threatened consequences for any that criticized Beijing.
So that’s how they rope other countries into supporting them.
The Chinese regime has a multipronged strategy for becoming a superpower. And influencing other
countries to let go of their democracy and become more authoritarian is a great start.
Thanks for your comment, John.
And thank you to everyone who supports China Uncensored through Patreon.
If you’re not signed up yet, go to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored
to learn how you can support us in making videos like this with a little as a dollar per episode.
I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.