Russia wants China’s military help to invade Ukraine.
China sells Thailand a submarine that doesn’t work.
And China’s zero covid policy is an absolute nightmare.
That and more on this week’s China News Headlines.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Surfshark.
Whenever you go online, especially if you’re in an authoritarian place like China or Hong Kong,
you should be using a VPN like Surfshark to protect your identity.
Well, I’m back from my vacation in California. And somehow I’m
no longer feeling relaxed. Because Russia is still shooting missiles at Ukraine.
This war has lasted longer than
Tom Brady’s retirement.
And now US officials are saying Russia is asking China for military and economic aid.
Which makes sense, because the US and the EU have put massive sanctions on Russia.
So why wouldn’t Putin turn to his BFF for help?
Interesting side note, Xi Jinping has met with Vladimir Putin “38 times as national leaders,
more than with any other head of state, and the two share a drive to weaken American power.”
Which is to say, they’ve been hanging out on average four times a year
for the past decade to discuss how to weaken American power.
That’s more often than I visit my parents in California!...
to discuss how to weaken American power. Seems crazy, but things get pretty heated when
we play Monopoly.
At any rate, the US is warning China not to support Russia.
President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan flew to Rome this week to meet
with the Chinese Commmunist Party official who’s his, I guess, counterpart, Yang Jiechi.
Sullivan was reportedly trying to suss out just how much support China was going to
give Russia. And he warned China ahead of time that “assistance for Russia — including helping
it avert sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Western allies — would be costly for them.”
This is important, because two US administration officials
told the Associated Press that “China had signaled to Russia that it would be willing
to provide both military support for the campaign in Ukraine and financial backing.”
Wow, so they’re throwing money around so their ally can take over more land?
This whole thing is basically just another violent
game of Monopoly.
Actually, there are reports that China’s state-connected Huawei
has already been helping Russia stabilize its internet.
And Chinese companies have already worked out a way to continue to buy oil from Russia,
using an alternative system of payment that gets around Western sanctions.
So...I’m pretty sure the horse has already left the barn.
Maybe even literally. Was this horse supplied by China?
What’s the Biden Administration’s red line on this? Isn’t China already putting their
toe over the red line to see what the US will do?
So far, the US has signaled it will...meet with Chinese officials. And warn them.
With that kind of tough stance from America, it won’t be long before
China gradually starts selling Russia food supplies. And technology. And then weapons.
And Russia needs weapons, as there’s evidence “Russian missile supplies have been running low.”
And that evidence is...all the Ukrainian infrastructure Russia
blew up with missiles! Great detective work.
That’s like seeing a food fight and saying
“there’s evidence the cafeteria is running low on cream pies.”
Hopefully more ammunition won’t be supplied by China.
And after the break, how Russia’s war cost one Chinese conglomerate 8 billion dollars.
Welcome back. Thanks to Russia’s
war on Ukraine—and the West’s response to it—a Chinese conglomerate called
Tsingshan Holding Group has lost 8 billion dollars in nickel trading.
And no, I’m not talking about Liberty Head V
Nickels or 7-D Buffalo Nickels, if you’re like me and
were into coin collecting in high school because you were a total boss.
I’m talking about the metal. The price of nickel has skyrocketed, since Russia is such
a big supplier. Nickel is used to make things like electric vehicle batteries and stainless steel.
Also, the coins that no one wants anymore.
Interesting side note, US nickels are actually made mostly of copper,
to save money using cheaper metal.
And pennies, which *look* like they’re made of copper, are made almost entirely of zinc.
This is irrelevant.
But common knowledge to all my fellow coin heads.
But I bring it up to say that Tsingshan has lost
the equivalent of nearly a trillion pennies in the commodities market.
That’s because “Tsingshan routinely sold nickel using forward contracts
as part of its regular hedging.”
And now the price of nickel is way higher than they expected.
But I’m sure Tsingshan will be ok. They made $19 billion in revenue last year.
Or the equivalent of about 4 gallons of gas in California roughly a month from now.
I didn’t do a lot of driving while I was there.
China has sold a submarine to Thailand. The problem is, it doesn’t have engines.
A submarine without engines? So they basically just sold them a
floating whale statue. They could have at least
slapped some googly eyes on it so they could put it on display.
But it’s not that China was trying to rip Thailand off.
And yes, I know how that sounds. Saying China wasn’t trying to rip someone off is like saying an
otter wasn’t trying to be adorable. That’s just what they do. They can’t help themselves.
But in this case, the problem was that the engines for this type of Chinese
S26T submarine are made by a company in Germany.
And the German government is now “barring export of the engines to China,
strictly applying a European Union arms embargo imposed in 1989.”
Here’s the weird thing. This embargo has technically been
in place for more than 30 years...but it’s only really being enforced now.
See, “The embargo has never operated as an all-out ban. EU nations’ differing
interpretations have made room for certain exports to continue.
Items that have both civilian and military uses, for example, are sometimes allowed.”
And for a long time, engines for Chinese submarines fell into that category of “allowed.”
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an estimated 56
of these German MTU diesel engines “have been transferred to China since 1989
for Song-class attack submarines.” Plus, “at least 26 MTU engines were used in Chinese destroyers.”
You know, Chinese destroyers. Which have so many
civilian uses. Who doesn’t remember being a kid and firing destroyer weapons at
your friends’ birthday parties… if your friends were the children of warlords.
Fortunately, at some point in the last couple years, the German government seems
to have wised up to the fact that these Chinese warships are, you know, warships.
Maybe now those can also just become harmless whale statues.
Benedict Rogers, the founder of the UK-based nonprofit Hong Kong Watch, is in trouble.
The Hong Kong security bureau has threatened
him with life imprisonment for colluding with foreign forces.
In a letter seen by Hong Kong Free Press, the security bureau accused
Rogers of lobbying foreign countries to impose sanctions or blockades and
engaging in other hostile activities against the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.
Which...is accurate, since Rogers literally has a campaign calling for
sanctions on Chinese officials for their mistreatment of Hongkongers.
Last month, Hong Kong internet companies—presumably under pressure
from Beijing—blocked the Hong Kong Watch website. Now it can only be accessed there with a VPN.
Like, for example, Surfshark.
The scariest part though, is how Chinese
authorities are directly targeting Benedict Rogers, a UK citizen.
Hong Kong’s National Security Law is written in such a way that it applies to
anyone anywhere in the world, not just within China’s borders.
Rogers is based in the UK, so he’s safe. And even if he wanted to go to Hong Kong, he couldn’t,
because Rodgers was already barred from entering Hong Kong five years ago.
So yes, Hong Kong authorities want to imprison him for life in Hong Kong,
but he’s not actually allowed to go to Hong Kong,
according to those authorities. Someone didn’t think this one through.
But while Rogers can’t go to Hong Kong, he now has to be careful when he travels—for example,
to any country that has an extradition treaty with Hong Kong, or China.
Countries like Russia. Although I don’t think he’ll be going there anytime soon, either.
It’s a real shame. Because forget my vacation in California, there’s nothing
more relaxing than spending down time in an authoritarian regime. Who wouldn’t want to
honeymoon in North Korea?
Or have a destination bar mitzvah in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan?
Benedict Rogers will be on our podcast, China Unscripted, this coming Monday.
We’ll talk with him about China’s legal warfare—which is what
this is—and how it’s a threat to everyone, everywhere on the planet.
So check out our podcast channel China Unscripted for that, and
tons of other great interviews. The link is below.
China Unscripted is also on iTunes, Spotify, and all the other ones. You should subscribe
and listen to it...all the time. We’ve already got more than 100 hours worth of podcasts up.
And after the break: Less shameless self-promotion,
and more about how the Chinese Communist Party is massively screwing up with its new lockdowns.
Welcome back. After two years of the coronavirus,
America is in recovery. With Omicron mostly in the past, and deaths way, way down,
pretty much every US state has relaxed or eliminated their Covid restrictions.
But in China, it’s a whole ’nother matter.
This week, local governments in five Chinese cities have put a
total of 37 million people in near-complete lockdown.
Why? Because daily cases have skyrocketed...from a
few dozen in February, to more than 5,100 this past Tuesday.
Now those of you with a head for numbers might be thinking,
5,000 daily cases in a country of more than a billion people is not that many.
But what you *don’t* know… is that you’re right.
At this rate, it would take more than 500 years
for the whole country to be infected. That’s right. 500 years.
But to the Chinese Communist Party, there’s only one number that counts:
Zero. They’re hell-bent on enforcing a “Zero Covid” policy, even after
all evidence suggests this is absolutely, ludicrously stupid.
This would be like trying to beat the ocean in a fist fight.
Which, to be fair, China has done a pretty decent job of decimating the ocean,
but mostly thanks to overfishing, not punching.
This article in state-run Xinhua on Tuesday defended China’s stupid Zero Covid policy,
saying “China has already found an approach to dynamically stamp out COVID-19 infections
while maintaining the country’s economic vitality. It saw a strong rebound with
8.1-percent growth in 2021 and became the only major economy to record growth in 2020.”
Yes, China’s economy is doing great...if you believe China’s made-up economic numbers.
And its made-up Covid numbers.
So to maintain Zero Covid, “Residents in Changchun, Jilin city, Shenzhen and Dongguan are
banned from leaving their neighborhoods, except for essential workers and emergency services.
Each household is only allowed to send one person to buy groceries every two to three days.”
And “Langfang...went a step further in prohibiting all residents from
leaving their homes except for emergency reasons.”
And sadly, going to the theater to see Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
doesn’t count as an emergency reason. And it should, because if you don’t see this movie,
how are you going to be able to follow the plots in the subsequent Marvel movies built on this one?
If anything, the CCP should encourage the whole world to go out and see every MCU flick,
just so they can say to Taiwan,
“See how happy those movies are
not being standalone or independent? Why can’t you be more like them?”
But anyway, I really feel bad for people who live in China.
The regime can just do whatever it wants to you, anytime.
They want to lock you down for any reason? They can. And you have no recourse at all.
But you know who I feel even worse for? Me.
Because China’s Zero Covid lockdowns are really messing up the global supply chains.
Where’s my Gilmore Girls Complete Series box set? I ordered it two months ago,
and it still hasn’t arrived! I sold off my coin collection to pay for that.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong has gone from near-zero Covid to the world’s highest death rate.
Over an eight-day span earlier this month, they counted more than 23,000 positive cases per day.
Which in a city of seven and a half million people, is a lot more per day...than
all the rest of China?! Someone is definitely lying about their numbers.
Either that or they’re just having a hard time adding them up. After all… all
their calculators are made in China.
But at any rate, it’s gotten so bad in Hong Kong that their crematoriums are nearly full.
The more than 4,000 recent Covid deaths are mostly among the elderly,
unvaccinated people, and care-home residents.
That may be partly because “Only about 35 percent of residents
80 and older have received two vaccine doses.”
In most Western countries, 80 to 90 percent of the elderly are fully vaccinated.
And on top of that, “more than two-thirds of those elderly in Hong Kong took Sinovac,
the Chinese-made vaccine. One or two doses of that vaccine
offers negligible protection against Omicron.”
And I’m not willing to rule out the possibility that Andrew Cuomo was
put in charge of the nursing homes in Hong Kong. Way to fail into a lateral position.
But you know who’s really to blame? America.
On Monday, state-run China Daily published this cartoon, suggesting America created Covid:
And that illustrates China’s fundamental problem. No, not the propaganda. That China
thinks it’s normal to work with coronaviruses with only gloves and goggles! You need
Biosafety level 4, people! That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.
All of this sheds light on why China may support Russia, though.
It’s all to help their Zero Covid Policy. After all,
if they support Russia, kick off World War III, and the entire planet gets nuked…
Then there will be no more coronavirus cases! Zero Covid achieved!
Who’s absolutely, ludicrously stupid now?!
And this episode has been sponsored by Surfshark.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. It’s good to be back.