TikTok sues Montana for banning the app.
The Chinese government is destroying mosques.
And a Chinese pilot does a dangerous stunt next to a US Air Force plane
That and more of this week’s China news headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Surfshark.
Whenever you go online, you should be using a VPN like Surfshark to cover your tracks
and protect your identity.
So last week I reported that the China Uncensored Truth Social account had been taken offline
due to “egregious violations” of their terms of service.
Well, I have some good news—the account is back up!
Not long after I published that video, Truth Social sent me an email saying the account
was “inadvertently banned due to a bug” in its bot mitigation system.
It also claimed they had sent me an email the day the account was banned, which I never
received.
But hey, not complaining.
At least now I can get the Truth again.
A Chinese military jet harassed a US Air Force plane above international waters in the South
China Sea.
The US Indo-Pacific Command reported this week that a pilot of the PLA Navy did an “unnecessarily
aggressive maneuver” in front of a US Air Force plane.
It claimed the Chinese pilot flew so close to the nose of the US plane that the plane
was rocked by the force of its wake.
The US military said it happened last Friday while the US pilot was flying in international
airspace over the South China Sea.
China blamed it on the US, saying its reconnaissance missions close to China were the “root cause”
of maritime security issues in the area.
Because of course it’s the United States’ fault whenever anyone does stupid things like
this.
I’m sure that was also the reason this Chinese Navy plane came within 20 feet of this US
Air Force plane last December.
And speaking of Chinese planes, China’s homegrown passenger jet took its first commercial
flight this week.
The Comac C919 took about 130 passengers from Shanghai to Beijing.
So far so good, but I don’t think I’m going to be getting on one of those anytime
soon.
If they’re anything like Chinese roller coasters, you’re really taking your life
in your hands when you get aboard.
COMAC is a state-run company, and stands for Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China.
It’s trying to compete with the United States’ Boeing 737 and France’s Airbus A320, which
have a duopoly on the market.
While it claims it’s domestically made, large parts of the plane are supplied by foreign
companies.
US engine-maker GE Aviation and France’s high-tech industrial group Safran were two
of its biggest suppliers
And given how much Chinese hacking there is of US and other countries’ trade secrets,
I’m sure the C919 is about as natively Chinese as fortune cookies are from China.
You may see them in every Chinese restaurant, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually
Chinese . And after the break, TikTok is suing the state
of Montana.
Welcome back.
There are only 5 religions that are allowed in China, and if you’ve been following the
genocide of the Muslim Uyghurs in China ,you may be surprised to learn that Islam is one
of them.
Yes, technically Islam is legal in China.
But if you practice it, you better watch out because the Chinese Communist Party is on
a mission to “sinocize” religion.
In other words, it wants to make everything in China more Chinese, and it doesn’t consider
Islam particularly Chinese.
This last Saturday, members of a mosque in Southwest China clashed with police
as they reportedly tried to remove its dome and minarets
A protester told CNN that scaffolding had already been set up around the Mosque when
they arrived and that authorities had driven cranes into the compound and were ready to
do the demolition.
After an hours-long standoff, CNN reported that the police finally left.
But this is the Chinese Communist Party.
No one ever comes out of a fight with police without a target on their back.
A source told CNN that police were arresting people after the fact and issuing threats
to others to turn themselves in or face harsher punishments
The mosque is located in Najiaying village of Yunnan province which is mostly Hui, an
ethnic minorityin China.
“The Najiaying Mosque and the Grand Mosque in the neighboring village of Shadian are
considered to be the last two government-approved ‘Arabic-style’ mosques in China.”
Well, apparently not anymore.
Because of the Communist Party’s obsession with Sinocization, anything that doesn’t
look “Chinese” enough—and by Chinese they mean from the Han ethnic majority—is
being destroyed.
As the government State Council put it in a white paper on the region of Xinjiang, which
is made up of mostly Uyghur Muslims, “Only by regarding Chinese culture as an emotional
support and spiritual home, can we promote the prosperity and development of ethnic cultures
in Xinjiang.”
And for those who don’t do as they’re told, the Party will make life hell.
Speaking of making hell, TikTok isn’t going to go quietly into the night.
After Montana signed a bill preventing app stores from allowing downloads of the app
in the state, TikTok sued.
“The complaint alleges the Montana law violates the company’s constitutionally protected
rights to disseminate and promote third-party speech.
It also claims that the ban is preempted by federal law as foreign affairs and national
security are exclusively matters controlled by the federal government.”
Montana is the first US state to do a state-wide ban of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company
ByteDance.
The ban isn’t just about TikTok, though—any app owned by a foreign adversary also can’t
be downloaded under the new law.
Montana’s governor said the ban was to “protect Montanans’ personal, private, and sensitive
data and information from intelligence gathering by the Chinese Communist Party”
The law will go into effect in January of 2024 if it’s not stopped by a court.
And after the break, is the US still working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
Welcome back.
If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s that common sense isn’t that
common.
Case in point, the US has now renewed its contract with the research firm linked to
the lab in Wuhan that is the center of the Covid19 lab leak theory.
The US National Institutes of Health has awarded a $2.3 million grant over 4 years to Eco-Health
Alliance . Before the pandemic, EcoHealth used NIH funding
to work on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology , which was believed
to be ground zero for the pandemic.
Many, including the head of the FBI, believe that Covid-19 was likely the result of a lab
leak, and many suspect it came from Wuhan Institute of Virology because the institute
was studying bat coronaviruses near where the first cases were reported.
When the spotlight first turned to the Wuhan lab, the President of EcoHealth Alliance,
Peter Daszak , worked hard to cover up the connection.
He got a group of researchers to publish a letter in the journal The Lancet debunking
the lab leak theory as a conspiracy.
Now, of course, he claims the lab leak theory is possible, but, like I said, he worked really
hard for a long time to make people think otherwise.
Now his company is receiving NIH funding once again.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, guess what the new grant is for – studying bat
coronaviruses.
I think I’m going to start investing in facemasks, PPE, and sourdough starter because
I’m sensing another pandemic coming on.
Now, the contract says EcoHealth can’t use the money for gain-of-function research, collecting
samples from the wild, or working in China, but that doesn’t mean China’s totally
out of the equation.
“Daszak defended the grant's renewal, telling DailyMail.com the funding would be used purely
for lab work and to analyze samples that were already collected and sequences at the [Wuhan
Institute of Virology] and other institutes worldwide.”
Yeah, I don’t know what to say.
If I had a way to bottle and sell stupidity, maybe this would seem like a good idea.
Two people accused of acting as illegal agents of the Chinese government were arrested in
California this week.
John Chen, a 70-year-old U.S. citizen originally from China, and Lin Feng, a 43-year old Chinese
citizen, are accused of targeting the spiritual practice
Falun Gong.
Falun Gong was a popular practice in China in the 1990’s.
Its spirituality and health benefits led over 70 million people to start practicing it.
The atheist CommunistParty started a campaign to eradicate Falun Gong in 1999 because it
doesn’t like anything spiritual it can’t control.
Like Islam, for example.
Chen and Feng were charged with making a false whistleblower complaint about a non-profit
run by Falun Gong practitioners.
According to prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, the two tried to bribe
an IRS agent to advance their complaint.
Their goal was to get the tax-exempt status of the non-profit removed, and they allegedly
offered bribes of up to $50,000 for an audit of the group.
Unfortunately for them, instead of bribing an IRS agent, they bribed an undercover law
enforcement officer.
The two also allegedly worked with a Chinese government official “to further the [Chinese]
government’s campaign to repress and harass Falun Gong practitioners.”
They’re charged with not registering as an agent of a foreign government, bribery,
and money laundering charges in the state of New York.
And this episode has been sponsored by Surfshark.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
Thanks for watching China Uncensored.