Is China America’s Mortal Enemy?
What is Zoom doing with your data?
And Chinese military aggression ramps up
That and more on this week’s China news headlines
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell. YouTube has been
secretly unsubscribing people again, so make sure you’re subscribed, smash that like button,
and check back often. Because YouTube probably isn’t telling you when we have new episodes.
Merry Christmas. China is America’s mortal enemy.
At least, according to White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro.
This is a strategic rival, but it is also
increasingly a mortal enemy. They're coming at us Pete. In so many different ways.
I think he means that they were already a mortal enemy,
like Scorpion. But now they’re an even scarier mortal enemy, like Goro.
But what kind of different ways is China coming at the US? Well, let’s have a look.
You might have heard of an app called Zoom. You’ve most likely used it to replace normal
human interaction, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, that the Chinese Communist Party
is responsible for. And it turns out, Zoom has been working very closely with Beijing.
Federal prosecutors are accusing a Zoom executive of working with Chinese government
to surveil users and suppress video calls.
Zoom says they deliver happiness.
That motto is a lie. Whenever we use Zoom, all of us are deeply unhappy.
Especially if you worked with this guy.
But you know who is happy? Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who’s now worth 3 billion dollars.
But when prosecutors accuse a Zoom executive of working with the Chinese government,
they don’t mention CEO Eric Yuan.
Instead, they allege a China-based executive with Zoom named Xinjiang Jin,
“worked with the Chinese government to terminate Americans’ accounts and
disrupt video calls about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square”.
You might remember this because it was a big scandal back in June.
We interviewed Tiananmen activist Zhou Fengsuo, whose Zoom meeting was shut down.
Zoom at the time said it was just following local laws. But that’s not all that Jin did.
The Zoom executive “monitored Zoom’s video system for discussions of political and
religious topics deemed unacceptable by China’s ruling Communist Party, the complaint states,
and he gave government officials the names, email addresses
and other sensitive information of users, even those outside China.”
That’s right, he sent user data from outside China to the Chinese Communist Party.
This is something that Zoom publicly said it did not do.
But it gets worse. On top of that lie, Jin also worked with Chinese police and state security
to create fake evidence to get these users banned.
What kind of fake evidence? Oh you know, things like they were involved in terrorism,
inciting violence, and of course, child pornography.
And the Chinese Communist Party also used the data that Zoom gave them to detain at least
one dissident and threaten the family of another dissident.
I’m guessing those people don’t feel like Zoom really delivered happiness.
More like delivered a crackdown from an authoritarian regime.
So what is Zoom doing now? Well, it’s clear from the criminal complaint that Jin was working with
other Zoom employees in the US to ban users and meetings. So Zoom fired Jin
and put other employees on leave, and they say they’ve launched an internal investigation.
Zoom has pledged to do better, but at the same time the company is still minimizing what
happened. For example, Zoom says that they did not provide the Chinese government with the user data
of non-China users…”with the exception of user data for fewer than ten individual users.”
Yeah we totally didn’t give the Chinese Communist Party user data except for when
we did. But let’s not focus on that part. Did we mention that we deliver happiness?
So you can see why Trade Advisor Peter Navarro says China is coming after us in
so many different ways. More came out this week than just the Zoom fiasco.
The Chinese regime has been engaging in mass surveillance of Americans’ mobile phones.
That’s according to a new report by Exigent Media, a Washington based cyber security firm.
They found state-owned telecom operator China Unicom,
was the leading source of attacks against U.S. mobile users over 3G and 4G networks in 2018.
So clearly, the only solution is—Huawei 5G.
But if this is mortal Kombat
the US is fighting back. Hey, Mortal Kombat prepared us for the coronavirus!
Last week, the US added more than 60 Chinese military linked companies to a blacklist.
The Commerce Department points to “China’s military-civil fusion”.
That’s basically a new policy in China that means any so-called private company in China
has to turn over the goods to the Communist Party’s military.
Meaning, there’s no such thing as a private company in China.
And for more on how the Chinese Communist Party controls everything in China,
stay tuned after this short break.
Welcome back.
The Chinese Communist Party controls all aspects of Chinese society.
And the Party is more than happy to have the people
make some sacrifices on the Party’s behalf. I’m sure it’s what the people would want.
Millions are having their electricity rationed.
Entire cities have gone dark.
“Officials in at least three provinces—where a total of more than 150 million people live—have
issued orders limiting energy use, warning of potential coal shortages.”
Wow, that’s rough. Maybe the Party shouldn't have banned coal imports from Australia?
Power shortages will obviously make a lot of Chinese people angry.
But the Communist Party knows how to take care of that. By distracting them with war!
Chinese jets joined Russia in entering South Korea’s air defense zone.
This isn’t entirely new. “In July last year,
South Korean warplanes fired hundreds of warning shots toward Russian military
aircraft on a joint air patrol with China, when they entered South Korean airspace.”
China has denied any wrongdoing. Because invading other countries’ airspace feels so right.
And why have one battle front when you can have two?
Taiwan had to scramble ships and aircraft as a Chinese carrier passed by the island.
“Taiwan’s ministry said that six warships and eight
air force aircraft were sent to ‘stand guard’ and monitor the Chinese ships’ movements.”
Alright, this game isn’t fun anymore.
Considering how openly hostile the Chinese Communist Party is becoming, it’s
not that surprising to hear that Japan has approved a record military budget,
with new stealth jets and long range missiles.
And this is also interesting because it shows that current Japanese Prime Minster
Yoshihide Suga is continuing the hard line approach of his predecessor Shinzo Abe.
Japanese military expansion is controversial in Asia because...remember Japanese aggression
ahead of World War II? But the possibility of Chinese Communist aggression in World War III
might be a little more pressing to countries in the region now.
Now over to Canada. Earlier this year,
a Chinese company made an attempt to buy a gold mine in Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost province.
Weird, because the current price of gold makes that goldmine
unprofitable. But..the mine just happens to be close to a useful arctic shipping port.
And also just a few hundred miles from a NORAD base.
But good news: This week the Canadian government
blocked the takeover of the Nunavut gold mine on national security grounds.
I guess they were having “none of it.”
This high quality humor is why you watch China Uncensored.
And if you want to learn more about what’s happening with Canada and China,
watch our next China Uncensored episode. I’ll be “Poutin” it on this channel Monday.
Admit it. You love me.
Things aren’t looking good for Chinese tech giants.
You may remember last month when China blocked the IPO of Ant Financial.
That was after Ant Financial founder Jack Ma
mouthed off about his displeasure toward Chinese regulators.
Which is why Xi Jinping saw it personally that Ant Financial’s IPO would be blocked.
That led to concerns the Communist Party would start a major crackdown on tech companies.
And... it’s happening.
That includes Alibaba and Tencent. This is on top of anti-monopoly guidelines
the Party made last month targeting some of these major tech companies.
And now, Jack Ma is singing a slightly different tune.
Because, say it with me—there is no private business in China.
And now I’ll answer a question from one of you,
a fan who supports China Uncensored on the crowd funding website Patreon.
Logan asks, “Any luck finding a merchandise store yet? I want a Xi the Pooh shirt.”
Oh, you mean you want a t-shirt with this on it? I’m hoping a lot of you watching would
like a t-shirt like this. We were selling this shirt earlier in the year on Teespring, but
they permanently shut us down. Imagine that.
But many of you suggested we reach out to Bunker Branding for merchandise.
And I’m happy to say that is moving forward! Sadly we missed the Christmas rush, but
very soon, we will finally be offering merchandise. So stay tuned!
And as always a big shout out to everyone who supports China Uncensored on Patreon. With
YouTube demonetizing us and randomly unsubscribing people, we would have had to shut the show down if
it weren’t for your support. If you’d like to join what I call the China Uncensored 50 cent army,
head over to Patreon.com/ChinaUnensored to learn how you can support the show.
And in case you think we missed something big in this episode, we actually recorded it two days
ago so Seamus didn’t have to video edit over Christmas. The Chinese Communist Party often
does horrible things right around Christmas so that the Western media don’t cover it.
If that happened this year, you’ll just have to wait till next week to hear about it.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell. Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.