On this episode of China Uncensored…
A Plane Crash Mystery in China
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is hurting the CCP
And a food crisis is coming
That and more on this week’s China news headlines
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
What you’re looking at is the terrifying final moments of a passenger plane in China.
The plane plunged 26,000 feet in the span of just 95 seconds.
All 132 souls perished.
The crash has experts baffled.
The Boeing plane went from cruising altitude to practically a nose dive straight to the
ground.
“Weather had been fine on Monday and communication between the flight crew and the ground was
normal before the crash.”
Now Boeing planes have had serious safety issues in the past.
The Boeing 737 MAX was grounded globabally after two crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia
several years ago.
It turned out Boeing had manipulated the plane’s safety tests.
And was forced to pay more than 2 and half billion dollars to settle criminal conspiracy
charges.
However, this wasn’t the Boeing 737 MAX.
It’s a 737-800, a plane with an immaculate safety record.
According to a former pilot of this model of Boeing plane, "It's hard to get the airplane
to do this.”
A former investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane is designed not
to take steep dives like that.
“You need something to hold the nose down.”
As of this recording, the plane’s cockpit voice recorder has been found and an investigation
is underway.
So obviously there’s only one way to respond to such a tragedy—censorship!
“The Chinese government, faced with its worst airplane disaster in more than a decade,
has moved quickly to control the flow of information.”
Censors have deleted online posts and comments about the crash, while Chinese state-run media
have said next to nothing about what caused the disaster.
Instead, “state media has been dominated by scenes of emergency crews rushing to the
scene and orders from China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to officials to do their utmost to
find survivors.”
That’s basically the Communist Party’s playbook for any disaster.
Ignore what caused it and focus on how great the Party is handling it.
That would be like if your parents came back from vacation and found the house on fire,
and you said, “Who cares how it started!
Isn’t it impressive how I almost saved the goldfish?”
After officials refused to answer basic questions about the plane crash, Chinese netizens said,
“officials were issuing ‘rainbow farts’ — a common idiom to describe excessive praise.”
An image I won’t be able to get out of my head.
Thanks for ruining Skittles forever.
No one wants to taste that rainbow.
And coming up after the break, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is really backfiring for
the Chinese Communist Party.
Welcome back.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is having a major impact on China.
President Biden had a call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the first since November.
And Biden warned Xi of consequences if China provides support for Russia.
According to the White House readout of the call, “[Biden] described the implications
and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks
against Ukrainian cities and civilians.”
The details of what those consequences are however are a little unclear.
Which is pretty typical of all the problems the US has had in dealing with China.
For Xi’s part, during the call he refused to call Russia’s invasion a war, instead
calling it a crisis.
Replacing the word “war” with “crisis” is the weirdest form of censorship I’ve
seen from them.
Especially when watching the movies
Crisis Horse
World Crisis Z
and The Crisis-iors.
Xi Jinping also used a favorite Chinese saying of his: "Let he who tied the bell on the tiger’s
neck take it off.”
Which means, this is all America’s fault.
Although Xi also said the US and China must “shoulder our share of international responsibilities
and work for world peace and tranquility.”
In other words, the US has to work with China.
For more on that, check out this recent episode about how China wants Russia to be the new
North Korea.
I’ll put a link to that below.
But right before Russia’s invasion, “China imported twice as much liquefied natural gas
from Russia [in February] than a year earlier.”
That’s why China is concerned about what it calls spillover from sanctions on Russia.
The sanctions on Russia are getting in the way of China doing its regular business with
the country.
For example, China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has suspended all activities
in Russia.
That puts on hold $1.1 billion worth of lending that Russia could really use.
Don’t you just hate it when your profits are affected because your business partner
commits war crimes?
Jeez, bro.
If you’re gonna commit atrocities, at least learn to cover it up, like we do!
The point is, the Chinese Communist Party hates sanctions.
That’s why China’s vice foreign minister said “History has proven time and again
that sanctions cannot solve problems.
Sanctions will only harm ordinary people, impact the economic and financial system … and
worsen the global economy.”
That’s funny, because a lot of the sanctions on Russia are actually targeted sanctions.
That means they only hit corrupt officials, blocking them from having access to overseas
bank accounts and properties.
The same kind of sanctions both the Trump and Biden Administrations have hit Chinese
Communist officials with.
I wonder why they hate sanctions.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is begging China to stop selling drones to Russia’s military.
Many of the drones Russia has used in the invasion were made by the Chinese company
DJI, one of the world’s largest drone manufacturers.
One Ukrainian official tweeted, “[DJI], are you sure you want to be a partner in these
murders?
Block your products that are helping Russia to kill the Ukrainians!”
DJI likely looked at their profit margin and said, “Yup!
We should have been partners sooner!”
Besides the issue of sanctions, China has billions of dollars invested in Ukraine, all
of which is at risk now.
So however China thought Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would go down at the beginning,
the reality is proving to be quite unpleasant.
And coming up after the break, 2 billion dollars have been seized from Evergrande.
Welcome back.
China continues to struggle with the CCP Virus.
China just locked down another city of 9 million.
The problem is China’s Zero Covid policy.
It can’t tolerate any cases, even mild ones.
And so, “Across China, many medical workers are becoming overwhelmed—not by a wave of
critically ill Covid-19 patients, but by a wave of not very sick ones.”
Which is terrible for healthcare workers.
But incredible for hypochondriacs who’ve been saying for years they need to go to the
hospital.
And now, they may be stuck there.
Hospitals all over the country are being forced into full or partial lockdown, because of
minor cases of Covid.
That means non-Covid patients are being sidelined.
Several people posted that their surgeries had been postponed due to a lockdown at the
hospital.
There were posts about medical workers sleeping in the hallways.
And the vending machines are probably out of KitKats!
The only thing that’s left are Skittles,
Because no one wants to taste the rainbow.
There are signs even the Communist Party recognizes it needs to back down.
Last week Xi Jinping said the government needed to control Covid with the smallest cost.
Unfortunately the Communist Party views Chinese lives as pretty expendable so I’m not sure
that will be a factor.
Xi Jinping is basically Lord Farquaad saying,
“Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
Speaking of Covid deaths, I’ve talked several times on the show before about how unbelievable
China’s official Covid statistics are.
Especially their death numbers.
According to the Chinese regime, tens of thousands of Chinese people got Covid in 2021.
And only two died.
Which has not happened anywhere else in the world.
Well, all that’s changed now!
Because the Chinese Communist Party has reported the first Covid deaths in China since January
2021.
How many deaths?
Two.
Ok, they’re just messing with us now.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong is also facing a huge CCP Virus outbreak.
Hong Kong went from zero Covid to the highest Covid death rate in the world.
But because Hong Kong is not part of mainland China, their Covid numbers are less politically
sensitive for the Chinese Communist Party.
They can always blame the Hong Kong government for messing up.
So the death rate is actually accurate.
And as it turns out, 87 percent of people who died, but were vaccinated, got Chinese
made vaccines.
Chinese vaccines aren’t effective?!
Why, that’s only something Chinese officials have been admitted.
But there are other diseases plaguing the Chinese Communist Party.
The crisis over Chinese real estate giant Evergrande continues—2 billion dollars in
assets have been seized.
You see, “Evergrande said that it won't be able to meet the March 31 deadline for
publishing audited results for 2021.”
It’s almost like they don’t want people to know how much money they lost in 2021.
But the $2 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to Evergrande’s almost $300 billion
of total liabilities.
This could have a huge impact on not just the Chinese economy, but the global economy
as well.
That might be why Chinese state-run media hasn’t been talking about Xi Jinping’s
big push for common prosperity lately.
The US is imposing travel bans on Chinese officials involved with persecuting religious
and dissident groups.
In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The United States rejects
efforts by [Chinese] officials to harass, intimidate, surveil, and abduct members of
ethnic and religious minority groups, including those who seek safety abroad, and U.S. citizens
who speak out on behalf of these vulnerable populations.”
The statement didn’t say who or how many would be targeted by the new restrictions.
But it does come shortly after an announcement by the Justice Department that China was hunting
Americans in America.
For more, check out this week’s episode.
But if you’re wondering why the Chinese regime feels like it can get away with that
sort of thing, look no further than the United Nations.
China sits on the UN Human Rights Council—already a grim satire.
That’d be like if the head of The International Coalition For Protecting Salmon
was a grizzly bear.
But it gets worse.
For years, whistleblower Emma Riley has claimed the UN was sharing the information of Chinese
dissidents with Beijing.
Reilly first made a complaint about the issue in 2013.
The UN claimed they weren’t endangering any Chinese dissidents, and that they stopped
giving that information to China in 2015.
Reilly says this issue is still ongoing.
And after she came out with the story, she then said the UN was trying to fire her.
And then they fired her.
And now, Australian judge Rowan Downing , who was in charge of investigating the accusations,
is saying the UN fired him, just days before his ruling.
“He said that his two judgments relating to [the] case in the internal UN Dispute Tribunal
were ‘within 10 days of being released’ when he was dismissed in 2019 and this ‘was
probably known to management.’”
He also called it, “an attack upon the independence of the judiciary.”
Wow.
The UN is really going to war with anyone calling them out.
Wait, sorry… going to “crisis” with them.
If that wasn’t enough, to give you a better idea of how horrible the UN is, “UN Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres was the guest of honor alongside Vladimir Putin at the Beijing Winter Olympics.”
“And China won the support of dozens of countries in the General Assembly for its
policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang in 2020.”
Sounds like the United Nations needs to go the way of the League of Nations.
China has been helping Iran launder money.
A new report by the Wall Street Journal found “Iran established a clandestine banking
and finance system to handle tens of billions of dollars in annual trade banned under US
led sanctions.”
And China, or countries China has a big sway over, like Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey and
the United Arab Emirates, are fueling the exchange.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this help has allowed Iran to continue its nuclear
program even while negotiating with the Biden administration.
China is facing a growing food crisis.
Last year, massive flooding devastated China’s breadbasket.
Panic buying resulted in vegetables being more expensive than pork.
China even made a law punishing people for wasting food.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made things worse.
“In a March 17 article, China’s Feed Industry Information Network reported that due to the
war, Russia has suspended grain exports such as wheat and corn; while Ukraine has banned
the export of wheat and bulk commodities.”
And this video recently went viral in China.
It shows farmers in Shandong who were ordered by local officials to clear trees to make
the land available for farming.
Here in Weifang, Shandong, we’re cutting down all the trees in the countryside.
Look at how big these trees are.
Many places, all the trees are being killed.
Cut down to plant grains.
This year fertilizer is expensive.
Everything is expensive.
Prices are all going up.
If we have to grow grains, we’re going to lose money.
Communist officials are basically forcing people to do this, even though it’s not
going to lead to good things.
Kind of like when parents make their kids take accordion lessons.
They’re gonna take a beating because of this.
But it’s not just that the farmers are going to go broke.
Even worse, “the area is prone to drought.
Removal of trees can easily lead to soil erosion.”
Which will only make the food crisis worse.
But don’t worry, because then the Chinese Communist Party will force farmers in another
province to cut down all of their trees and grow more grain.
That’s the beauty of central planning.
And we could not do this show without the support from viewers, so as a thank you to
fans who contribute on our crowdfunding platform on Patreon, or our exclusive social media
community on Locals, I answer a question from them at the end of each episode.
Today’s question comes from Censport on Locals.
Y’all wouldn’t happen to have a list of countries that have extradition treaties with
China, would ya?
Well that’s a very good question Censport.
We just had Benedict Rogers, a UK based human rights advocate on our China Unscripted Podcast.
Now he was just threatened with life in prison for violating Hong Kong’s draconian national
security law.
Crazy right?
You should check out that episode for the full story, but as China does that kind of
thing more in the future, what risk is there to people who don’t travel to China?
Well, if you go to a country with an extradition treaty with China, technically they could
send you to China.
Currently, China has an extradition treaty with 59 nations or jurisdictions. 39 of those
treaties are ratified.
I’ll give you a moment to screenshot it.
Sure, maybe you weren’t planning to go to Iran or Kyrgyzstan.
But there are some more popular travel destinations, like France and Italy.
South Korea too.
Now I can’t imagine those countries actually sending me to China if I visited.
But it is crazy how many countries have that kind of legal dealing with an authoritarian
regime that constantly violates human rights.
So, travel safe friends.
Thanks for your question and your support Censport.
And thank you for watching.
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Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.