North Korea has an explosive case of Covid
A shooting at a Taiwanese Church in Los Angeles
And the fate of a mysterious plane crash in China
That and more on this week’s China news headlines
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
Throughout nearly the entire Covid pandemic,
North Korea claimed to be Covid free. They’ve refused meetings with
South Korea to discuss the virus. They’ve rejected donations from Covax, the global vaccine program.
Well, now they’re admitting they have an explosive Covid outbreak and a 0% vaccination rate.
Well, great.
At least they’ve been able to make at least one thing explode successfully.
Unlike their missile launches.
But otherwise, this is bad news.
North Korea is so isolated, it’s impossible to know what’s really going on inside the country.
Back during the famine in the 1990s, two million people died. And the outside
world didn’t even really know it was going on until the bodies started washing up in China.
The New York Times says “[North Korean state media] claimed a
million people had already recovered from fever,
though experts doubt the numbers being reported by North Korea are reliable.”
Well yeah, of course not. I just wonder why those same New York Times experts
didn’t question *China’s* Covid numbers over the past two years.
So what’s North Korea going to do? Well, they want to follow China’s Covid “success.”
Oh good. Does that mean they’re going to start testing shrimps too?
Wildly spraying disinfectant into the air?
Locking people up and starving them? Oh wait, they already do that.
As the New York Times says, “China has used strict lockdowns, mass testing,
and vaccinations to keep cases low throughout the pandemic.”
Wait. No, they didn’t. They lied about the cases, constantly.
But the Times says this won’t work in North Korea.
Not because it’s a fundamentally flawed way to handle a pandemic,
but because “[North Korea] lacks the basic therapeutics and food supplies that China
has mobilized to enforce the extreme restrictions seen in cities like Wuhan, Xi’an and Shanghai.”
That analysis...is stupid.
The problem with Chinese-style lockdowns is not that North Korea doesn’t have the resources.
The problem is that they don’t actually work in China, either.
This is like saying the only reason these leeches didn’t
cure my diabetes is because I didn’t have enough leeches!
Why is the New York Times so in love with China’s Communist regime?
Remember when they said that in a pandemic, living in free, democratic societies was a problem?
Here’s an article from March 2020.
It says while China staved off the virus with effective lockdowns, the west was, “paying a
price for living in open, affluent democracies, where people are used to free movement,
easy travel and independent decision-making, and where governments worry about public opinion.
Governments aren’t used to giving harsh orders, and citizens aren’t used to following them.”
Yeah, if only we could have handled it like China.
The New York Times goes on to say the problem with North Korea trying to use Chinese methods
is that “If North Koreans were placed under the kind of extreme lockdowns seen in China…the
government would be unable to provide basic needs.”
You mean like how residents of Shanghai are running out of food
because the Chinese government was unable to provide for their basic needs?
I really don’t get how the Times has chosen to cover China’s pandemic response.
Do they have a crush on China?
Are they not seeing all the red flags!?
To be fair, this isn’t a problem that’s unique to the New York Times.
There are many in the West who have been totally fooled by Chinese propaganda, and look at the
Chinese Communist Party with rose-colored glasses. And it’s not just about their Covid response.
Remember when Bernie Sanders praised China for solving poverty?
When Michael Bloomberg praised China on climate change?
When Justin Trudeau said he admired China because
their “basic dictatorship” allowed them to have economic flexibility?
They all believed the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda.
Because they wanted to use China to criticize their own countries.
It’s like when your parents praise other people’s kids in front of you.
They don’t care whether it’s true, they just want to use those kids to shame you into doing better.
We should tell these people: stop comparing us to China!
China hates their parents and abuses Adderall to get straight As!
Shelley wrote that joke. It came from the heart.
And coming up after the break, a hate crime against Taiwanese Americans.
Welcome back.
This week, a shooting at a Taiwanese church in Los Angeles. It’s being called a hate crime.
Police say 68-year-old David Chou walked into the Southern California church bearing two handguns
and a political grudge. It is believed the suspect
involved was upset about political tensions between China and Taiwan.
Initial reports said the shooter was an immigrant from China but that turned out to be false.
He was born in Taiwan. His parents fled there to escape the Communists.
At the time of the shooting, Chou held US citizenship.
Authorities say he was “motivated by hatred of Taiwanese people
documented in handwritten notes that authorities found”.
Why do mass shooters always leave handwritten notes?
You know, the next time your girlfriend asks you to write her a handwritten note,
just tell her no, I’m not a psychopath.
The LA shooting obviously comes as China vows to make good on its threat to invade Taiwan.
They’ve been making frequent military incursions near the island nation.
The shooter also had “ties to a Las Vegas organization
opposed to Taiwan’s independence from China”.
Which is the worst organization I’ve ever heard of in Las Vegas. Which
is really saying something, since Las Vegas is home to
zombie burlesque. A show that combines a terrifying,
out of date fad that destroys brains… with zombies.
And yes, zombie burlesque is a real thing.
And coming up after the break, China made big money off the Covid pandemic.
Welcome back.
You may remember recently that mysterious airline crash in China,
when a plane made a straight nose dive into the ground.
Well, China has been very tight-lipped about what caused it.
But according to US reports,
after looking at black box data, it appears the crash was intentional.
“The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit.”
All 132 passengers died in the crash. I would be very interested to know who
was on that flight.
This is a mystery because “China Eastern Airlines previously said
the three pilots on board were qualified and in good health.”
Of course I don’t think anyone believes we’ll be getting a good answer from China.
Except maybe those “experts” from the New York Times.
According to this new report by British think tank Civitas,
The UK tripled its purchases of Chinese medical equipment during the pandemic.
We’re talking billions of dollars going to China.
As the report mentions, reliance on China for medical supplies is dangerous.
“This power is often used by the CCP to exert geopolitical leverage on other states.”
Besides that, the Communist Party is selling equipment to help deal with a problem
they caused. This is like setting off a
stink bomb, then selling people clothespins
to pinch their nostrils off with. Grifters gonna grift.
But it’s not just the UK making bad financial decisions when it comes to China.
President Joe Biden has hinted the US may drop Trump era China tariffs.
To her credit, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai doesn’t want to do that. She
wants to hold off for a broader China trade strategy that could include more tariffs.
But dropping the tariffs is a move being backed by the US Treasury Secretary.
“U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is among those who want to slash many of these tariffs.”
Now I’m not actually going to go too hard on Biden over what his Treasury Secretary wants to do.
Biden himself has made some good moves on China. For instance,
signing a bill supporting Taiwan’s entry into the World Health Assembly.
The real problem is always these US Treasury Secretaries. Janet Yellen is a banker . They
have a very narrow worldview. And the president tends to appoint people with
experience leading the worst parts of the financial system as treasury secretaries.
Trump was guilty of that too He appointed Steven Mnuchin and that guy was awful on China as well.
Gee, I wonder what he saw in China. The New York Times was probably like,
“Back off! China is mine!”
The biggest problem with Biden’s China policy is that we have no idea what it
is. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was supposed to unveil it earlier this month,
but his speech was postponed because he got Covid.
Though personally, considering the existential threat of the Chinese Communist Party,
I would have liked to see that speech happen a little
sooner than a year and half into the Biden Administration.
That’s like seeing an asteroid hurtling towards Earth and thinking,
“Man! I should probably do something about that… maybe later.”
No, not later! We need to send
Bruce Willis to China now!
But the financial industry’s faith in the People’s Republic of China is severely misplaced.
New data shows Chinese stocks have been a terrible investment.
Even as the Chinese stock market grew tremendously,
the return for foreign investors was minuscule.
Let’s look at data from Morgan Stanley Capital International.
It began a China index in 1992. Since then, its flagship global stock index saw an average annual
return of 8.25%, its emerging markets index saw 6.91%, and the China index—just 1.06%.
That doesn’t even track inflation.
In fact of all its Asia indexes, China is the worst performing.
And that's pretty consistent with other data.
Over the past 10 years, the S&P 500 index had an average annual return of over 12%,
while the Shanghai composite had just a 2.8% return.
Wow. Who could have guessed that investing in something so historically low performing
would wind up being low performing.
This is like if Bitcoin continued crashing for another 30 years,
and people thought, “Now is the time to buy! It can only go up from here!”
But it’s not just Wall Street finding out the hard way that China is a bad investment.
There are huge protests in Peru against a Chinese copper mine.
Protesters have occupied Peru’s biggest copper mine. It alone makes up 2% of the world’s copper.
The government has responded with tear gas.
When in Chinese mines, do as China does against protestors, I guess.
And Sri Lanka is out of gasoline.
Sri Lankans have been protesting the worst economic situation there in decades.
“According to World Bank data, Sri Lanka has $35 billion in total debt
of which $6 billion is owed to China for loans to fund BRI projects managed by Chinese companies.”
For more on that, check out the recent episode, China’s Dying Belt and Road Initiative.
I can understand why Sri Lankans are upset. They owe money on a project that’s dying.
This is like if a company tried getting you to pay back money you owed investing in
Betamax. And if you’re a younger viewer and don’t know what that is… that’s the point.
Adding to China's financial woes is that yet another real estate developer has defaulted.
Don’t worry, it only defaulted on its *foreign* debt.
So maybe someone needs to tell Janet Yellen that China is not a smart investment.
Speaking of bad deals, you remember that Chinese Elon Musk lookalike?
Hi everyone. I am Yilong Ma. I received a gift from Tesla.
Okay, he doesn’t quite have the voice down. Elon Musk doesn’t sound quite so natural.
But Yilong Ma has now been banned from Chinese Social Media.
Somehow I don’t imagine the real Elon Musk will have any better luck in China.
Free speech absolutists aren’t really the Chinese Communist Party’s cup of tea.
Russia has already lost the war in Ukraine. That’s according to China’s former ambassador to Ukraine.
In a closed door event hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences think tank,
he said, “The failure of the Russian blitzkrieg and the failure to achieve
a quick victory signaled the beginning of the Russian defeat.”
Putin can’t afford, “a high-tech war costing hundreds of millions of dollars a day”.
Although if Putin wanted to lose an astronomical amount of money on a terrible decision,
instead of invading Ukraine, he could have just spent the last 10 years investing in China.
Anyway, as the former ambassador put it, “It can be said that Russia has completely lost Ukraine.”
Which is a very interesting take. Because he’s the kind of person that may influence
China’s plans for a Taiwan invasion. And they’re learning from Russia’s failures.
At the very least, China now at least knows
it won’t work to say they’re invading Taiwan to get rid of Nazis.
And just to show how peaceful China’s rise is,
China has been using replicas of US ships as target practice.
Satellite photos show several mock ups of aircraft carriers and naval ships in mock ports.
And as you can see, they have been shooting them with missiles.
Can’t wait for that reboot of US-China relations. It’s already started with a bang.
And YouTube is still playing dirty with us, so the biggest part of our budget to
continue making the show and paying our staff comes from the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army,
fans who contribute as little as a dollar per episode on the crowd funding website Patreon
Or our exclusive social media platform on Locals.
As a thank you, I’ll answer your questions at the end of an episode.
Today’s question comes from...
Nick Allen 1 on Locals. Since China has a lot of influence in the WHO, is there any chance that
China could use the WHO to make a pandemic treaty to impose a zero covid tolerance standard on other
countries and lock down cities in the US? ￼
Well Nick, I’m happy to say there is zero chance
of China pushing its zero covid policy on the world.
The WHO was definitely covering for the Chinese Communist Party in the early days of the pandemic.
And as I said, a lot of Western media, like the New York Times,
was essentially praising China’s authoritarian response to Covid.
But Zero Covid is so extreme, all that’s falling apart now.
Even the head of the WHO is saying it's not sustainable.
The New York Times says it's a mess that proves autocracy hurts everyone.
A little late to the game, but they got there. Don’t worry,
New York Times. You can do better next time. Just don’t go falling in love with Russia.
However, in the early days of the pandemic,
China *did* convince the world to do large-scale lockdowns.
You may not know this, but the mainstream scientific consensus
before the Covid pandemic was that lockdowns don’t work.
Back in 2006, the World Health Organization said that “forced
isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical.”
That same year, a Johns Hopkins team of medical experts found that “There are no
historical observations or scientific studies that support [quarantining]
possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of influenza.”
On top of that, “The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme…
that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”
Sadly, vaccines weren’t the only things people
were shooting themselves up with during the pandemic.
So why did we see lockdowns all over the world?
It’s because a lot of people believed China’s Covid lies. You had the New York
Times saying China’s system worked, because they believed China’s bogus Covid numbers.
We actually did a full episode on our other channel America Uncovered,
about how the science of lockdowns changed. Check it out, I’ll put a link below.
By the way, did everyone watching know we have another show, America Uncovered?
Anyway, thanks for your question and your support, Nick.
And if you want to join the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army and help us
fight against Communism, head on over to our exclusive social media platform on Locals.
That’s chinauncensored.locals.com
Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.