#280 Our Last Podcast On YouTube
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On this episode of China Unscripted, why we're leaving YouTube. Welcome to China Unscripted. I'm Chris Chappell. I'm Shelley Chong. And I'm Matt Gnaizda. And I guess we have big news. If you haven't also been watching China Uncensored, which I don't know what the Venn diagram is between this show and China Uncensored, but I'm pretty sure there's a 100% overlap.

Except some people may not have been watching China Uncensored because our views have been mysteriously cut in half. Yeah, it's wild. For a channel that just topped 2 million subscribers, most of our episodes are not topping 100,000 views. Suddenly. And we've seen some people say in the comments that we're not showing up in their feeds anymore. Yeah. Yeah, so fishy things going on with YouTube. Yeah. Let us know, by the way, if you are seeing China Unscripted and China Uncensored in your feeds or if you have to go manually...

search us out. Yeah, but this ties into the big news that we have completed our brand new subscription website, ChinaUncensored.tv. And this is big. This is important. This is, one, going to help us get around a lot of the crazy YouTube censorship stuff that's going to be going on.

But, you know, it also gives us a chance to create new premium episodes. We can talk about things that YouTube would not like us to talk about. I wish we had this during the COVID era. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. YouTube censored so much of our stuff and including, well, basically all of it was things that turned out to be right just a few years later. Or even things just showing what China was doing to people. When they, like...

China's like COVID people like put someone in a box and carried them away screaming quarantine I mean just the most ironic one was the one that was called the answer to the coronavirus is like not authoritarianism. Yeah deleted episode from Yes, so yeah ironic. So this is gonna be a big help and the big news is we're going to be putting this website

This website, this podcast exclusively on the website.

which I think is a great idea because, you know, in particular next week, we're going to have a guest who says some very controversial things. I won't say who, but so it's good that this will not be on YouTube. We will, however, still continue to release a few highlights from the podcast here on the YouTube channel. So this YouTube channel will continue. Yeah, and also all 280 podcasts we've done since 2018, including this one,

will still be on YouTube. Like, if it's on YouTube, we're keeping it on YouTube for you. We're not going to take anything away. But we do hope that you subscribe to our new website because...

That is also what will allow us to continue making this podcast and making the show China Uncensored and the rest of our stuff in the face of the insane things that YouTube is doing. Yeah. The goal is to still get as many people as possible aware about China and the CCP, but the only way we can afford to keep doing this is with support on the subscription website. Now that Patreon has decided to screw us over, and that's not going to work anymore. Well, to be fair to Patreon... They were screwed over? It was absolutely...

Patreon so patrons is passing passing on the screwage to to you our beloved viewers It's not as fun as that sound but we've decided that we Will not pass it on to you because I like we do not believe that if you are contributing say $10 to

China uncensored on patreon that three dollars of that should go to Apple plus another dollar to patreon. That's That's really nuts

So sorry, my phone my phone was on. Do not disturb. Interesting that your Apple phone decided to interrupt you as you were. Oh, my gosh. So anyway, instead of passing on those incredible costs to you, we have started our our website so we can just, you know, basically have subscriptions ourselves. And yeah, I mean, we're.

This is just the beginning of launching a new thing, and I think we're really excited about all of the different premium episodes we want to put on there. Like, we're talking about, you know, entire series of general hostility that would probably be a little too niche for the general YouTube audience, but we think our core fans will really enjoy where we look at maybe the rise of Xi Jinping, you know, the... Some of the history of the Communist Party. Yeah, so a lot of things that...

we wouldn't be able to put on YouTube because that would negatively affect us with the algorithm. Because those episodes wouldn't do well for people like you who really are interested in really understanding China. Yeah, so anything. And also to be perfectly frank about it, you know, we...

kind of the survival of our company is at stake here because it's a big gamble for us to switch everything over to this new ChinaUncensored.tv platform and you know we don't just make the show with the three of us we have video editors we have writers we have a lot of people that depend on us as a company to be able to continue and with the way that YouTube is screwing us over it's pretty

pretty hard to keep doing that without kind of making a drastic shift. So we don't have a lot of money. You can see why I have worn down patches on my suit. We should get you some, sew you some like arm patches, you know, like the elbow patches. So then you look more professorial. Good idea. I had to do that on the suit I was wearing a week or two ago. Cause I really did wear out the elbow so much.

I feel like we're like Charlie Chaplin. Yeah. Chris can't even afford to wear suit pants underneath. That's a secret. We can't show you what Chris is actually wearing underneath, but maybe on our website we could do that. Hey, now. YouTube wouldn't like it. Oh, okay. This is not OnlyFans. Again, ChinaCensored.tv.

So, yeah. So we're excited. We have a community chat where, you know, people can talk. We are going to be doing live streams on there. Exclusive live streams. We're going to be. Exclusive guests. Yes. You know, we've talked about doing some more three of us type podcasts. Yeah. That's just for, you know, that website where we talk about.

maybe more world news, not just China stuff. So yeah, check it out. It is just the beginning of what we want to do. And we're also working on an app.

Yes, the app will be out. So that we can do this. You can access it all on your phone easily. Yeah. So that's slated for early 2025. Oh, and because somebody asked for it, there should also be a way that you would be able to download like an audio file of the podcast so you could listen to it in your car easier. Yeah.

Yes, we're looking into figuring out the technology for that. Yeah, that's actually something that one of our premium subscribers asked for in the community chat. And we're like, you know, we didn't think about that. Maybe that's a good idea. So yeah, for those of you who actually subscribe on ChinaUncensored.tv, like we're actually reading your chats all the time. We're, you know, the episode suggestions you have, you know, we're looking into those kind of things. So it's going to be, it's a pretty awesome place to subscribe to. Yeah.

All I can see now is the bald spot on my suit. It's better than like a bald spot in your beard. That's true.

Looking on the bright side Matt. Yeah. All right, so should we get it? I have a major bald spots in my beard here Hey, I was gonna say should we get into the news, but no Matt wants to talk about facial hair. Mm-hmm Oh, well, what do you want the audience? Yeah, we can't chat like this. All right, let's get into the news then though I guess the main news I kind of want to talk about by the time this comes out next week will be very old the the martial law in

False Korea. False Korea? False Korea? Well, yeah, because it's not true Korea. The true Korea, of course, is the DPRK. Yes. And I, by the way, I say DPRK because I'm extremely woke. Well, I don't. And I know that North Korea is a better country. At least their people aren't starving. I think that's a tanky thing to call North Korea DPRK. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's actually a pretty big tell that somebody is going to, if somebody is saying DPRK, they like the DPRK.

DPO. Yeah, and in case people don't know, you're basing this off of somebody you actually spoke to who said... Yeah, it was a few years ago at like a May Day rally. Yeah, and he was like

He was like, had some sign about North Korea or DPRK and I asked him about it. I interviewed him, I have the clip and he was like, oh yeah, like America's terrible. Like the DPRK is so great. At least people aren't, you know, starving to death in the DPRK. Whoever heard of anyone starving in North Korea? No, I mean, I think you seriously actually asked him if he thought life was better in the US or in North Korea. Oh yeah, that's what it was. He was like, oh, definitely North Korea. Yeah.

And definitely DPRK. Yeah, we were all stunned. Yeah. Yep. And this was not a Korean person. No, no, it was not Yeonmi Park.

Poor Yomi. But yeah, so South Korea, the president, President Yom declared martial law out of the blue. No one saw it coming. I don't know what he was thinking. It was in the middle of the night. It was not the middle of the night, but it was at night. Late Tuesday night, I think. Tuesday night. In Korea time. Oh, in Korea time. Yes. So yeah, it seemed so out of the blue that even his own political party

Was very much like we don't support this. Yeah. Well, they there was there was a vote the next day No, no, not the next day. There was a vote like overnight like I'm getting confused because of my timeline experiencing this in their timeline Yeah, so there was a vote about it. So that a few hours later. So the so the president had tried to use the military to block the National Assembly

building but 190 out of the 300 National Assembly members their legislature still made it into the building and unanimously voted to end martial law. And then people started gathering outside the National Assembly to protest. And then you had these incredible images of essentially Korean civilians

reprimanding the military. Have you seen some of these? A few of them. Yeah, so there's a woman who was a news anchor or something and she's scolding this guy who has a fairly large gun that he's holding and she's slapping the gun away and going, how dare you? You should be ashamed of yourself, et cetera, et cetera. And then the president was like, okay, actually, no more martial law.

Well, I think he was required to, like, after the vote. Yeah, but if you've already declared martial law because you say the assembly is rising up against you and there are, you know, pro-North Korean communist forces in your government, then you need to declare martial law to fight them. Well, this is what's weird. And I know we're going to talk a bit about this a little later. But, like, Americans don't get political warfare. Right.

There are definitely and we've covered this on the show. There are definitely North Korean and Chinese forces inside South Korean society and government trying to push things a certain way It's same like in the US where you have engagement type people, right? And probably is not wrong that like they're there come. Oh, let me give you so president Yoon is a Conservative and one of the things that he's been doing over the last few years is he's been

like changing the South Korea from being more pro-China and pro-North Korea relations to being more... So President Yoon has developed ties with Japan and with the United States and is anti-communist. And so these are things that the Chinese regime does not like. They're basically terrified of

South Korea moving away from China's sphere of influence and South Korea's been very heavily under China's sphere of influence for a while Mm-hmm. Yeah, and we're not saying that this justifies Martial law or anything like that like this guy his wife is apparently being investigated for corruption There could be a lot of officials as well. There could be a lot of other things going on internally in the domestic South Korean politics and because even though President Yun's

Conservative Party, even though he's the president, the Liberal Democratic Party has a lot, I think they have the majority in the legislature, so they've been blocking everything. They won. It's called the Democratic Party. So the Korean Conservative Party is the people power party, I think.

which sounds commie to me. Well, there may be no heroes in this story, but my point is only that I know what the Chinese Communist Party's perspective is, and they don't like President Yun, and so they want...

to damage his reputation, go after him, take him down. He won very narrowly the presidential election. And then the Democratic Party came back to win a really big majority in the legislature. And part of it was that Yoon had promised to do a kind of purge corruption. Corruption is a huge problem in South Korean politics. In fact, that's why

several former presidents have been charged with things. Wasn't there one who was involved in witchcraft or was that just a rumor? Was that the one that was the religious group that may have been...

Occult. Maybe. I forget. Do some researching yourself. That's a wild thing. Let's not talk about this on the show until we've done some research, I think. Well, this is a good jumping off point for you, the audience, to join in on the fun of this show, to research which...

Witchcraft South Korea the question is it was it real witchcraft? Okay before we go off the rails. I do want to give some Information about how deep the CCP intro infiltration is now in South Korea So the Democratic Party the opposition party in South Korea, they have essentially endorsed China's one China policy with Taiwan so not like a separate

one China thing like the US has where they're like the US's policy is okay China says it's China including Taiwan Taiwan says it's China including Taiwan we acknowledge both sides say this yeah

Whereas China's version is South Korea's version South Korea's version is China's version. No, not South Korea's version the Democratic Party of South Korea They have endorsed China's version, which is Taiwan belongs to us, you know, so they've

you know, very friendly ties with CCP officials. The Democratic Party has been in power for more recently than the Conservative Party. And so there have been civil servant exchanges between like young Chinese civil servants and young South Korean civil servants, like government officials that they've been traveling with.

and experiencing stuff in the other country. Right, and they get the young Korean diplomats to come over or civil servants to come over to China, go to karaoke bars, stay in hotel rooms where they may be videotaped. Oh, well, I don't know about that specifically, but they do have to go through training and Xi Jinping thought when they go to China just so they learn

So it's kind of like the South Korean Democratic Party is very pro-China. Right. They've accused the conservative party of provoking China by talking about Taiwan. Speaking of corruption, the Democratic Party's former presidential candidate,

was also convicted of violating election law and was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term. So this is messy in South Korea. Which is why it's false Korea, unlike the pristine political system of Juche. Yeah, and then, okay, so a lot of... I hope that doesn't get clipped out of context. This is why we need to put the podcast on our own website. So it's...

What else? So South Korea apparently has the highest number of Confucius Institutes in the world, which South Korea is a small country. And then there's also things like there are dozens of South Korean media outlets that carry CCP stuff.

CCTV. State-run media. State-run media. You know, CCP propaganda, People's Daily articles. The weirdest thing is that there was a...

Mayor of a South Korean city. I'm gonna mispronounce this Gwangju in 2023 tried to build a park in honor of the guy who composed the anthem of the People's Liberation Army and a marching song for North Korea because he thought it would bring Chinese tourists Wow, that's very specific thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's because the guy was from that city so you can't choose who you're

you know elected representatives are no no no i was gonna say who your famous people who are communists are yeah um right but but like if you're from i don't know wherever jeffrey dahmer was from like you don't have to build a park in his honor oh that's very true

Stunning analogy. So obviously the bad thing about this, well, the unfortunate thing about this is that President Yoon likely will not be president much longer. Yeah, there's talk that he'll probably be impeached. Yeah. And so, and I mean, like, I don't know what the hell he was thinking with the martial law thing. Like, that backfired.

However, but this will mean that likely the Democratic Party will get more power and it is very pro-China. So, and the CCP has also been trying to, for many years, like undermine relations between South Korea and Japan and South Korea and the U.S.,

So it's harder to do it with South Korea and the U.S. But, you know, now what has been happening under President Biden and, you know, Japan and South Korea in recent years is trying to have an alliance between the three countries. And so now this makes it all that more difficult. I mean, I think Xi Jinping is pretty happy. Probably. Probably. Yeah. And there's not a lot of things that make him happy.

I think he leads a difficult life, poor Xi Jinping. The jar of honey is just out of reach. In other news, should we talk about the prisoner exchange? Since we were talking about President Biden, the clock's ticking on his time as president. Only 40-some more days on office. Oh, actually, by the time this episode comes out, maybe less than that. Yeah, I mean, that's enough time for a global flood to reside. Reside.

-Reseed? -Reseed. Thank you. -Okay. -I was like, this isn't sounding right. -You know when you suddenly swing a biblical reference out of the middle of nowhere, then I have to be like, wait, what is he? Okay, Noah. Yeah, got it. -Okay, so yes, there's enough time for a biblical flood that had already happened to recede if that's what it was now. -Mm-hmm.

But it's also time for Biden to do some prisoner exchanges with China. Shelley, over to you. I thought you were going to take it. So right before Thanksgiving, the U.S. and China swapped three Chinese prisoners in the U.S. for three Americans that had been imprisoned in China. Yeah, we had talked about some of them in the past. Yeah, so this...

The three Chinese citizens that the US had released were essentially Chinese spies. Like two of them had been convicted of spying for China and had been serving, one was serving like a 20-year prison sentence, one was serving an eight-year prison sentence. And then the Americans that were released were this guy Mark Lee, who had been held in China since 2016 on spying charges.

People say he was not actually spy Got 2016 so eight years in a Chinese prison. Yeah, this guy marks Swiden which I think we've talked about him before in the past he had been sentenced in 2012 to Drug trafficking charges which carries a death penalty. Yeah, and he was since 2012 he had been

detained and possibly was going to be executed. And again, some people say that he was not actually trafficking drugs. Yeah, that was something China planted on him. And then this guy, Zhang Lian, who's 78, had left, he had been

the US and seemingly to be an agent of CCP influence in the US actually He had started several pro-Beijing groups in Houston, Texas and then it turns out that he was actually been secretly an FBI informant For years double agent. Yeah, and so he had been he was arrested several years ago in China and so oddly he went back to China when he was 75 yeah, it was

I have to say that if you're being an informant for the FBI, it's possibly not safe to... Possibly not. ...go to China again. Remember what they did to those CIA agents? Yeah. All the ones who were killed? Yeah, they just, like, rounded them up and shot them and their families. Like, it was awful. Yeah. Yeah. So...

Okay, and then there were also three Uyghurs who were released. They weren't under custody, but they were allowed to leave the country and go to their relatives in the US including the mom of a You know someone we've had on the show several times Nury Turkle. Mm-hmm. Probably correct with and who made it into the US government. Yeah, he was a

I can't remember the acronym anymore, but it was basically the U.S. has a commission on religious freedom. Yeah. I mean, that's a nice thing about Doge. It's easy to remember. That's true. That's true. That's true. When you name your government programs after memes... Is this going to be the meme administration? Yeah.

It really could be. It could well be. Yes. Anyway, so back to the prisoner exchange. So can I say administration? I said it first here on Charnon's Scripting. Okay. Yes, that actually was good, Matt. It's a good pun. Thank you. I hope that does get clipped. Administration? Administration. Anyway, so the prisoner exchange was interesting because I think some of the

It's been negotiated for a long time. But what was also interesting is that after the prisoner exchange, the U.S. State Department lowered their

Travel warning for China? Do you know about this? Oh, no, I didn't. Yeah, so for several years now since COVID, the U.S. State Department has travel warnings on their website, right? And they had given China, I don't know if it was the highest. I think it was level three they gave China. Yeah, it was like a pretty high one where they were like, okay, do not, we would recommend. I think it was reconsider.

We consider traveling. Yeah, as opposed to like, do not go. I mean, I think do not go is probably reserved for like... The DPRK. Yes. Yeah. And yet people still go. Well, I... They just love the juche and the true Korea freedom. Not like America. Yeah. I don't know how some people get to their conclusions. I don't know. I'd like to see them show their proof.

That would probably be North Korean propaganda. Yeah. Or maybe Russian propaganda or, you know. So at any rate, so the prisoner exchange, the U.S. then lowered their travel advisory from level three to level two. Yes. So it's like a sort of – just be cautious, I think. Yeah. So that is like a weird part of it, I think. Because they're still –

a lot of Americans who are not necessarily directly in prison in China, but I think there are Americans like citizens who are in prison

labor camps, there are many American citizens who are in what they call exit bands. So you cannot leave the country. You may not be in custody officially, but your movements are restricted. You're not allowed to leave China. Yeah, I'm sure this was part of the deal because China wants more Americans to come to China, bring some money. Yeah, they're looking to become less of a

uh you know the travel to China since covet has just never recovered to the levels it was before so and on top of that there's the the business issue which is a lot of companies are quietly uh pulling out or partially uh you know removing some assets from China

But they're not saying. They're not saying it. I mean, very few companies are going to be like, so our plan is to pull out of China two months from now. So just watch. And then, you know. Then they get raided. They get, well, all their assets get nationalized by the Chinese government and they lose everything. And their people get arrested for being spies or drug dealers or something. Yeah, I think, was it Mary Kissel we were talking to about this? You know, that she's,

Talking about a lot of companies looking to get out now. Yeah, you can't I mean like that on China uncensored I which we told the story in 2020 in January right before kovat so it didn't get a lot of traction but our There was this company that had been sponsoring us Mova globes. Those are the ones that have the like that blue spinning globe back there really cool globes that they they had moved manufacturing to China and

And then basically the CCP screwed them over their designs because some of their designs had maps and those maps of the world were not approved because they didn't show, for example, the Nine Dash Line. And Taiwan is part of China. And Taiwan is part of... And I'm not talking about just like a regular political map from 2020. I'm talking about like...

one of the designs, I don't know if it's on here, but it's like an ancient... It's a historical map. Like a 15, 1600s... Yeah, it was an Italian map from like 17-something or whatever. Whatever it is. It's like an old-style map. Like...

It needed to have the nine dash line. It wasn't just an old style map. It was a reproduction of an actual map from the 1600s or 1700s. Which is critically important to the CCP because they like to bring out the old maps and say it was always a car. So the point is that the CCP was going so nuts over trying to force MOVA Globes to redesign their globes to put in the absurd territorial claims that they have now.

uh, that Mova was like, like, we can't do this. Uh, and like they were halting production. It was just a mess. And so they, they, they, uh, wanted to leave, but then,

This is the thing that happened the Chinese government came in and they basically like took over their facility and nationalized it and Like all of their like physical assets that were still in their warehouses and their production facilities were confiscated so they lost like all of the all of their products and

And so they had to start not entirely from scratch, but like to a large degree, they just lost so much trying to get out of China, even though they felt like they were being forced out. So this is going to happen with. And they're in Taiwan now, right? They're in Taiwan now. True China.

- I'm not sure we wanna make the connection between Taiwan and North Korea. - I was gonna say, yeah, like, and I'm not sure everyone in Taiwan actually feels like that. A lot of them feel like they're just Taiwan. - Yeah, I think a lot of young people are just like, they just wanna be Taiwan. - So anyway, so we're talking about pulling out of China and it's going to be hard to do. And like, you know, we've seen how much trouble it's been with Apple.

And they've been, you know, they've built new facilities in India and Brazil, but they're still...

you know, the new iPhones sold to Americans are still made in China. Well, and also this is the problem with all of the talk of any kind of trade war, tariffs on China is you have like these business elites who will be like, oh, but things will get more expensive for Americans. And it's like, well, these were the same people who said it would be great for America if we just moved all of our manufacturing to China to get cheap stuff. And it destroyed entire towns,

ruin people's lives in America. And now, yeah, we're poor and hooked on cheap Chinese goods from a country that's trying to destroy us. It's like, have you ever thought about secondary effects? Like, the primary effect of moving to China was cheaper goods, but the secondary effect was the complete gutting of manufacturing. It also wasn't just...

It wasn't just like the cheaper goods angle. It was the idea that there's 1.4 billion customers in China. Who are gonna buy American products. Yeah, so that was a large part of it too. And that was also a lie. Yes. Right. It was all lies. I think from the CCP's perspective, they were lying, but a lot of American companies and politicians were just duped. Well,

But this is the idea of like that we're talking about earlier about how China is very good at political warfare The US is not and so that allows for people to be duped right and yeah, it's very we're very naive in a lot of ways Yeah, not the three of us, but you know the you know, we're cynical and jaded. I'm not jaded. I'm optimistic So, okay, so the the pulling out is is difficult but I

It is going to help because if there's secondary impact of going to China, there's also gonna be a secondary benefit, I believe, of moving manufacturing back here, which is more jobs, higher wages for Americans, the rebuilding of communities.

It also kind of reminds me of the argument that some people are making well well if we get rid of like illegal immigrants who are like basically the slave labor population then then like who's gonna cut our lawns and like all these things will be more expensive and it's like you're arguing for essentially slavery Also, that's

offensive to a lot of people who do those jobs who are not illegal. Not illegal immigrants who are paid, yeah. Right. Well, I mean, many of the people, and we found this out during the election, a lot of the people who basically voted against illegal immigration are recent immigrants themselves. I don't know if you can say a lot because there's more non-immigrants than immigrants in the U.S., but the idea that a lot of

immigrants are against illegal immigration is apparently stunning to the Democratic Party. Yeah, or that like mostly Latino communities on these border towns that are dealing with illegal immigration are also not happy with the situation. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway. But about China. The main thing is Biden did a total art of the deal move by getting these prisoner exchange done. I'm sure...

Trump was very proud, and when they met, they probably had a slight nod. What? Matt. I thought that's what you were going to say. What? No. Matt. This is why we need to move things on the web. No, this is why we need that spray bottle. Yeah, well, anyway, so at least the prisoner exchange thing seemed to have gone well. Can we talk about something funny? Do you have an idea? Yeah, I want to talk about what...

Speaking of Chinese territories being taken over by the CCP. I just have to say, on this podcast, you asked if we could talk about something funny. Well, this is more serious than China Uncensored. Don't you think so? Yes, this is very serious. And I don't know if there's room for jokes, only puns. More so when we're interviewing someone. That's true. But when it's just the three of us, I mean, I talk about how my college put on a musical production about the Kent State Massacre.

Yeah, that's going to get censored by YouTube. That, you know, I'm for free speech. That maybe should have been censored. The musical? Musical. You know, anyway, so the funny thing is that Cathay Pacific apologized last week, by the time you were watching this, for having an episode of

Family Guy on their in-flight entertainment. And not because Family Guy makes tons of politically incorrect jokes all the time. Well, it was actually the first episode of Family Guy. And the reason is that there, you know how Family Guy has all these really arbitrary cutaways to things and references to things.

There was suddenly a cutaway to Peter standing next to Tank Man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square.

And so that was the thing that is now too sensitive for a Hong Kong airline to have on their in-flight entertainment. A reference to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I mean, it's funny because that show, they make fun of, like, everybody, right? Like, it's pretty out there. I mean, the joke is that Peter's a coward who...

decided to nope out of standing up for, you know, I think the real thing to say about this is we we can't show you the clip of

On YouTube because YouTube will even though it would be fair use They would they would hit us with a copyright strike on our website We will be able to show you yes clip and things like it in the future This this clip is like a five second long clip or something Yeah, and and they would demonetize our whole thing with a copyright strike just for showing you something that is legal to use because YouTube has no meaningful arbitration

or mediation process for This kind of thing certainly not for a channel like us who only has two million subscribers but anyway, so That's one thing so we're doing these special premium episodes for the website and we're able to have a lot more fun with the video edits actually because Because we don't have those kinds. We don't have those kinds of restrictions. I mean recently we were even demonetized for showing a clip of JD Vance

Oh, and it was like we do this all the time. We show like pull quotes. Yeah, there's sound bites. Sound bites, right? So yeah, so it was a sound bite that we were talking about. And the way we did it was perfectly legal within fair use law. And I checked these things and it was totally legal. And yet YouTube demonetized our whole video with absolutely no recourse. And it's not like...

They would do that to CNN who does the same thing all the time, you know? Yeah. But because we're the little guy, we cannot get anything from YouTube. Anyway, so... So ChinaUncensored.tv, that's where we hope you go to watch our stuff. Buy a new suit. One of the ones that I really had wished that... I had written an episode a few years ago that was about essentially... I think it was about...

Kenny G getting in trouble. Oh, yeah. In China for, which Kenny G is very popular in China. Mm-hmm.

There's a song of his that gets played when all the stores close, malls close and things like that. So Chinese people are very familiar with Kenny G and he's been touring and stuff like that. And then he, I think it was during the Hong Kong protests, right? Where he got in trouble for taking a photo in Hong Kong of the protesters and then

He had to issue an apology. Yeah. And I had this whole joke about how there should be a super group of people of washed up singers like David Hasselhoff and Kenny G. David Hasselhoff is not washed up. Well, because he had performed at the Berlin Wall. Yeah. And the song Looking for Freedom that he had performed.

that was super popular in Germany. And people associate this song with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I mean, Hasselhoff performed it at the wall after it fell. But, you know, it was amazing because when I was in Berlin, there is a David Hasselhoff museum in Berlin. Sexiest museum on the planet. It's a small museum. But they're also in like the Berlin Wall.

wall museum there's photos of david hasselhoff with the signed photos of david hasselhoff singing at the berlin wall and it's an amazing clip because he's wearing this jacket that is piano keys and it lights up and i was like i really wanted to be able to use this clip for the episode but i couldn't because we would get copyright strike

Yeah, so again, well, I mean, ultimately we lost tons of money that whole year because of the protests. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that was another thing YouTube really didn't like. They didn't like us talking about the Hong Kong protests. A lot of episodes demonetized. They really don't want us to exist anymore.

Help us exist, please. Yeah, and like we said, we still want to provide a lot of content that is free for people. But we just have to do something to be able to survive to make that free stuff. Yes, and hopefully gives you some value back if you subscribe by giving you exclusive episodes that won't be on YouTube. Right, and I think when you go to the website, if you go there now, there's going to be like three or four premium episodes of China Uncensored already.

But keep in mind that this is just the beginning and your support is what will actually allow us to make it more robust with tons more episodes, more variety, more everything. More general hostility. Right. So it's kind of like it's a snowball effect, right? Like the number of subscriptions allows us to make more content that will get more people to actually subscribe.

yeah hopefully yeah and if you have things that you'd like to see yeah yeah especially these early days like you know when there's only a few hundred subscribers or you know whatever like when you're in on the ground floor we're listening to you much more directly because there's just not that many people yet in the chat but we're still going through the chat and reading all the comments so this is a big deal so so yeah come on over this whole episode is basically like a pitch for China uncensored.tv

I don't think so. Oh, you were talking about great stuff. Like when you said Trump and Biden were gonna kiss. Good content. I'm just now imagining AI making videos of that right now. I think AI probably already has. Yeah. Honestly. But my favorite Trump-Biden AI video is the one that you sent me where they're singing that Chinese song. Oh, yeah. Can we show a clip of that? On our website, we can. I don't...

Are we able to do that here? Well, so this is the whole problem. Like we have to have a conversation of like, Oh, is this okay? I mean, it's definitely fair use, but it's kind of the, the issue is would, would it get caught up in the YouTube's like automatic copyright system? Yeah. Or how they go after like AI as well. Um,

Yeah. It's like, it's like the whole system is being run by like, well, not the whole system, but like at a, at a very practical day to day level, YouTube is being run by robots. Uh, and, uh,

Like, you know, you think, oh, robots are going to do things so well and efficiently and won't make mistakes. Who thinks that at this point? I actually heard this on a Joe Rogan podcast with this idea that like, you know, if your ports are automated, it's going to be like free from human error. And like I disagree with that because –

The errors come in the parameters that you set for your robots. Well, and so I think that is the real problem with YouTube is that

There there's I think there's very likely someone or a group of people in the middleman level Who is setting parameters that end up screwing China and censored right like you set? I don't know. They I don't know if they still have it used to have like a like a P score score P value something like that look into that quartering talked about that but that was that was like five years ago and I don't know what their out system is now, but they can clearly choose which channels get a

you know, go viral and which ones are essentially prevented from that. Because, you know, five, six years ago, like we would have every couple months, we'd have a video that goes like to a million views. And we haven't had any in years since we really since COVID.

Did we have any during COVID? Well, I mean, not since the COVID started. And like, you know, it's not that like suddenly our content has sucked because our number of actual subscribers, which is people who are meaningfully choosing to click subscribe, that's gone way up.

uh but the algorithm is clearly not pushing out China Uncensored in the way that it used to. So there's something going on there, we just don't know what it is and you can't download the code anymore to see it and you know we just don't know but like yeah some mid-level person decides that we are persona non grata but they don't want to officially censor us. And again we have no idea what connections China has in YouTube which sounds far-fetched but there was a Twitter whistleblower a few years back who exposed

just how deep of a Chinese influence there was in Twitter before Musk took over. And who knows? Musk could be a lot of Chinese influence right now. I mean, he's got... I really don't like that he's got Tesla factories in China. This really is not good for us. Musk's Chinese influence is kind of...

out there in a way. It's kind of less insidious in a certain way than what's happening with YouTube. Or like if you're secretly an investor in BYD or something, but you don't let anybody know. I mean, everybody knows what Tesla's connections are with China. That's a good point. And his mother is a spokesperson

person for Chinese brands. Yeah, yeah. It's like very visibly. So in a way, like that influence operation is clear to see. You know what I mean? And like, I mean, I have mixed feelings about Elon Musk because I feel like he's definitely...

not seeing the picture with the CCP clearly. Like he claims to be anti-communist and, you know, like a free speech absolutist and all this stuff. And I think that what he's done with Twitter slash X has been good, you know, in general for,

America and for free speech which they do not have in China at all But yeah, it's just like there's a giant blind spot when it comes to China. Yeah. Yeah, it's really strange I wish we could have an opportunity to speak to him and get to just hear what he's thinking Maybe you need to go on X and become like a power user and then I just don't have the soul left for that Yeah

But I mean, eventually, you know, eventually Tesla, I think, will have to leave China because they're getting screwed by Chinese brands. And this is something there was actually basically the General Motors just released their numbers saying that they were going to do like a five billion dollar write down of their

I don't know what this means exactly for the shareholders, but they had lost $350 million in just the first three quarters of this year in China.

Because what happened is like, you know, they went to China in like, I think 1990 or somewhere in there. And they, you know, oh, yeah, come to China. You can make your cars real cheap, blah, blah, blah. You can sell to 1.4 billion people who are all going to buy General Motors for sure. Don't worry about it. Just come on in. We'll all have disposable income. Sure. And so, you know, they go and they do. They make money. They make money. I mean, China had a huge car boom in 2019.

the late 90s early 2000s yeah when they went from like basically you see the videos of beijing and it's all bicycles yeah even when i was in china in 97 like it was a lot of bicycles mostly they had a lot of bicycles and most people did not have a driver's license or know how to drive so it really changed in the first decade of the 2000s i've seen some videos of driving in china i would still say a lot of people don't know how well there's just not like a there's not a like a

like a long driving culture. That is true. When you don't learn like safety and car culture from your parents, you know, you're kind of, it's not as easy to do that. But so my point about GM is like they peaked in like 2018 and they've been on the decline in terms of sales because their technology, and this is going to come as a big surprise, was stolen.

by Chinese essentially state-owned or state-controlled companies and their whole thing about stealing. This happens to everybody, it happened to Tesla, although Tesla actually made it publicly available. But all of these technologies for cars have now been picked up by Chinese companies. And there's at one point more than 100 different Chinese car manufacturers. And they're all ripping off American and European technology

And now the Chinese Communist Party is trying to make sure that the cars sold in China to Chinese people are primarily the Chinese brands. And then they're also trying to now...

takeover the worldwide electric vehicle market. The CCP was never going to let foreign companies dominate their market for any period of time for any product. That was never something that they were going to be okay with. And it's like you see this in industry after industry after industry and yet...

New industries keep going in. Like, Hollywood was a late entry into this, right? But essentially now, what happened to Hollywood in the last five years, the CCP is restricting a lot of their movies in favor of domestic movies.

movies where they learned how to make movies from Hollywood productions doing these co-productions with Chinese production companies moving in and now they've built these giant studios in China. They don't need Hollywood anymore. Right. I mean, the plus side of Hollywood getting completely screwed by China is that I've seen in the last like two years or so some

movies and TV shows especially that are like the the baddie for that episode or whatever is like a Chinese agent or something where you would definitely well, we were not seeing it you would not see that between like 2008 and 2020 well the whole Red Dawn thing right where they digitally replaced all of the Chinese Baddies with North Korean ones. There was a people old. I think was an X-Files episode with a young Lucy Liu and

That had like organ harvesting in Chinatown. In the U.S.? Yeah. Okay. But that's just, I don't think that would be something that would get made now. There is, I think it's Dean Kuntz. There's a Dean Kuntz book from the 2010s that talks about organ harvesting in China. Well, there was the World War Z by... Oh, yeah. But like this entire book, the, like it was about...

Like state-run organ harvesting? Yeah. Yeah. I think... I do vaguely remember that book, yeah. But I've never read the book. But I do... I think there's a character who's a Chinese dissident who gets their organs harvested. Wow. But, you know... So, at any rate, no foreign company that has gone into China...

Uh, has like, they've all either gotten screwed already or they're in the process of that.

like in being replaced by domestic brands because the CCP's whole thing is technology theft. And what do you do? You don't steal technology for no reason. You steal it because you plan to use it. Well, again, like Tesla, it's publicly available. But the goal, because there is no private sector, it's all controlled by the state and the state, the CCP, their goal is to undermine and destroy the Western world order, to undermine and destroy the U.S. and

They don't want to just compete normally with foreign companies. They want to ultimately destroy them. So it's a China led world. Well, the CCP doesn't think about competition the way that the U.S. does. Like Americans value the free market.

because we value the exchange of ideas. We value the idea that in a free market, companies that serve customers best will perform better and that minimal government interference is better for the market. It's better for small business. It's better for all sorts of things. Whereas the Chinese Communist Party doesn't look at the free market as being good. They look at

uh the free market is something they can take advantage of so they can dominate yeah it's their their main goal this is the political warfare thing their goal is to win a war and defeat their enemies right which means gm tesla the united states i think that's something that's been proposed recently from several quarters is that the u.s should rescind rescind the

Most favorite nation trade status great from China, which the most favorite nations not everybody knows what that is because it's an old term So you want to explain it or I can explain it? Why don't you go ahead? The idea is that if you have a treaty with one nation and like whatever you have treaties with a lot of nations and whatever is like the best terms of like your best treaty and

anyone with most favored nations gets the same favorable terms as Like your best trading partner Essentially it allowed a huge amount of free trade more or less right China It's like it's like any any great deal that we have with you know Canada or England or Germany or whatever like that China would get like the the same terms but that's stupid because what China does is steal American stuff and

They subsidize state-owned and even private industries to artificially outcompete. They abuse workers' rights. They emit more carbon than the rest of the developed world combined. And they're also trying to completely undermine our country. So it does make sense to not treat them as a normal trade partner. Yeah.

In terms of the car thing, Volkswagen just announced also that they needed to pull out of China because their factory in Xinjiang, guess what, is implicated in slave labor. No, Volkswagen. But they've been such a... The single solitary stain on their history. The interesting thing, Volkswagen has been in China since...

They were the first, right? But the interesting thing is that then they announced that they were going to, they announced that they were pulling out of China and they were going to close this factory in Xinjiang. And then they announced that they're going to double down on their, they have like a relationship with a Chinese car manufacturer. They have like a co, I don't remember what it's called, but essentially they have a relationship with a Chinese car manufacturer and they're going to double down on that.

Can that Chinese partner use slave labor? Probably. Well, then it's okay. I mean, I think they might be required to use slave labor. Well, you know, a lot of people are actually very comfortable with slave labor as long as they're not the ones who actually have to own the slaves. Well, do you see the thing recently about Italian tomato products having...

Xinjiang tomatoes. Oh yeah, like meager slave labor tomato in Italian. Yeah, and Uniqlo had to come out with a statement saying that they don't use any Xinjiang cotton so that their cotton is slave labor free. And then now they're probably going to get boycotted in China because they're not using Xinjiang cotton. So the CCP is trying to force companies to use Xinjiang cotton and Xinjiang tomatoes. Which would essentially make them choose between the China market or...

The rest of the world. Yeah, I mean in the US especially with the Uyghur forced labor act that is now illegal to import things There was the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger like they they got sanctioned I think by China for not using Xinjiang got this is why you know slavery has historically been in a lot of different cultures, but it's always been very difficult for

to get rid of for this very reason, right? Which is that the slave owners, in this case, the slave owners are the CCP. They not only have their own interest in maintaining the slave labor, but they also use their power to force people to be a part of that system.

And I believe that to have been the case historically in the US and other places. So like, even though almost nobody actually wants slavery, but the slaveholders,

try to force people to be in that system. So then it makes it very difficult to eradicate. And the only solution is to really truly eradicate slavery everywhere in every country. And it's just so hard to do. - There are more slaves now than there were at any point in history. - Yeah.

I'm thinking about Star Wars lore. I'm thinking about, I started reading that book you recommended, The Years of Rice and Salt. Oh, you did? Wow, cool. Yeah, so it does have some stuff about slavery and some other stuff. I recommend that book to you, dear listener. I'm only on chapter four, so I don't, I just started reading it. But it's, that's a great book.

I don't know how he assimilated so much knowledge, the author. Oh, yeah. But it starts off in this guy. He's like a Mongolian warrior. He's like walking alone across...

Like yeah, it was part of some kind like the stands. Yeah, he was like part of some failed It's an alternate history book So he's putting part of some failed Mongolian quest and he goes into Europe and the premise of the book is the Black Death Instead of wiping out a third of Europe wiped out 99% of it, right? And so then he's just walking through like these completely decimated European

towns right have you got to the part where he gets to essentially Greece and he just finds like the vat of olive oil and he just drinks the olive oil for four days yeah he's just there just eating just a jug because he's starving because there's like nothing

Yeah. That really stuck with me. I just imagine drinking olive oil for four days. That's just like, it's a source of calories. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic book. Really recommend it. Actually, I feel like it was only a few podcasts ago that you insisted that you did not read books.

What is real? What is fake? That's the theme of Dreams of Black Mansions, Red Chambers. Wow. Okay. What? Well, are you going to explain this? Did you read Dream of the Red Chamber? Yeah, I did. That's a weird and very pornographic book.

It was partly pornographic. Not compared to the one we can't ever remember the name of, the plum and jade vase flower. That one, like, actually. Yeah, so speaking of, you mentioned that the David Hasselhoff Museum was the sexiest one that you know of. Oh, no, Matt, let's not. You're right. No, never mind. I won't say it. I shouldn't say it. Let's move on.

Yeah. I feel like I just, like a truck just passed inches in front of me and I just dodged something. You definitely dodged something. Yeah. So anyways, bullet dodged. You were talking about favorite. Truck dodged. Truck dodged. Yeah, because you probably wouldn't see the bullet. Yeah.

You were talking about most favored nation. I think we got to Matt explaining what that was. And then we went on to this whole thing about... Anyway, companies. So China has had permanent most favored nation trade status since... The great thing about making it permanent is it really encourages the other partner to really, you know, keep on the straight and narrow. Well, the thing was that since...

The Tiananmen Square massacre what had happened is that every year the the trade status or China was reviewed in Congress and They would the human rights record would come up all the stuff and it's not like they ever rescinded it Yeah, but but they had to approve it. They had to approve it right here and so after in 1999

they passed it and were like, okay, we don't need to ever approve this again. Those hardworking members of Congress had to decide to work a little less. Yeah, well, I read some of the arguments in the congressional record about it, and

you know, Senator Joe Biden was like, you know, this is an important thing for us to do for the people of China. And it wasn't like he was alone, right? Yeah. Bill Clinton was pushing for this. This was seen as the great new thing that we were going to do. And then so we passed permanent most favored nation trading status. And then the next year we helped China get into the WTO. But at least those things turned China into a liberal democracy. Yeah, yeah. Definitely worked in so many ways.

But so now there's a bill that's been introduced in Congress by members of the select committee on the CCP to rescind most permanent, most favored nation trade status. And other people are talking about it. Guest of the podcast, Grant Newsham, has written a op-ed in Congress

I think on Fox News that talks about how what we should do with Ukraine, actually. And he was the comparison he made was like, look at what happened with South Vietnam and we shouldn't make the same mistake with Ukraine.

I believe one of the things that you had wanted to do when we were talking about history unearthed as a show that we wanted to do you wanted to do an episode about how the US won the Vietnam War I was about to get into that because that's important context for South Vietnam. Yeah, where the US the war was over it was essentially like Korea where it was divided between North and South war was done then American hero Nixon got purged by the filthy forces against him

This is another one of those things where there are no heroes in the story. Yeah, but basically anti-war Democrats took over Congress and just over the course of years pulled all funding for South Vietnam. Then like North Vietnam was like, hey, maybe we can start the war. Maybe we can take this. And they slowly encroached. No pushback from the U.S.,

The president of South Vietnam was begging on TV for the US to do something. I think it was Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford was begging Congress to do something. And they're like, nope, nope, we're not going to give any support for South Vietnam. And so the war was lost after the fact. South Vietnam fell. It did not have to fall.

It was pure incompetence by the U.S. So Grant's argument is that we should not make that same mistake in Ukraine, where, you know, obviously an endless war in Ukraine is not.

what anybody wants, but also he was talking about the destabilizing secondary effects of South Vietnam falling too. What happened in Cambodia after that with the Khmer Rouge, like all this stuff that was destabilizing things that were happening in Asia after that. So his point was that whatever happens with Ukraine and Russia, Russia can't come out the winner.

So that includes that we would have to do things like deal with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. And

make sure that they're not able to like support each other into like this new Axis power and his main point was like you really don't have to do all that much like he with the example of true Korea He he said like like we could do new sanctions or we could just enforce the ones that are already there Yeah, we there's a lot of loopholes Yeah, I was like or Russia sanctions the same like there are a lot of loopholes with the China thing was what he was saying that

revoking most favored nation trade status is like something we should do. Yeah. Because China is supporting Russia in the war with money and material goods. And it's fairly obvious at this point. And no North Korean troops are there. Yeah. So also Iran destabilizing the Middle East. We need to stop funding them.

That would be a good idea. Yeah, but again sanctions enforcement. Are you sure that if you don't if you give Iran billions of dollars maybe what they'll do is they'll put them into you know like social welfare programs for the people. They won't use it to fund the nuclear program and also you know proxy Hamas or Hezbollah. Or even like what Obama did with Project Cassandra where there was this whole like the FBI was gonna blow up I think it was Hezbollah's drug trafficking and Obama was like stop doing that because I want to make an Iran deal.

and as well as an Iran proxy. Yeah. Like what a stupid thing to do! Yeah, I mean I think... And when people, it makes me mad when people are like the Obama was the only controversy in his presidency at that time he wore a tan suit. It's like no! I mean I really liked Obama, it's just that like at the time because he's so well spoken and like so charismatic. He had the riz as they say.

But yeah, when you look back on some of his stuff, you can see that a lot of those decisions that were made... There were a lot of foreign policy failures that were made at essentially at taking authoritarian regimes at their word. Yeah. Yeah. And... He was just too trusting. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like with the fentanyl thing. Obama, Trump, Biden both listened to Xi Jinping when he was like, yeah, well...

We'll stop fentanyl. It's not like we're subsidizing it and forcing it on you as part of our drug warfare to destroy you. But, yeah, so Grant, we should put a link to his op-ed. Oh, yeah, we can do that. Because he had some interesting ideas for how to deal with Iran, how to deal with Russia. How to deal with Russia was similar to what he was saying about China, which is like sanction Putin's wealth, and if you cannot...

Get at all of it, then you expose the the wealth of the corrupt Russian Oligarchy. Yeah the way that he's talked about doing with the CCP. Yeah, which you know, it's authoritarian leaders do not want truth They do not want a light shined on their behavior. Yeah, so so that's the solution and the thing that this requires though is for

I'll just use America. The American government, the American society is to understand that a war is going on and we actually have to fight it. It's not just one war, right? There's a lot going on. But you're talking about the CCP one? I'm talking about like this whole collective thing between Russia, North Korea, Iran, China. The way that they are currently at war with us. They are currently at war with us. All of these forces want to destroy the United States. We have to recognize that and actually realize that this is a war and we have to fight back.

Yeah, the fighting back part. But there are so many ways to fight back that don't involve military. Yeah, there are plenty of options. I mean, I think this was one of the successes of the first Trump administration with how he helped destroy ISIS by cutting off the money. I think what's interesting also is there is essentially a foreign policy issue

I don't know if you want to call it like a theory or belief system among certain foreign policy elite, mostly on the Democratic side where essentially it's bad for the U.S. to use. The U.S. is the superpower in the world, but it is bad for the U.S. to use its power because, you know, we're the oppressor and everybody else is the oppressed, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So then...

This is the point that Drew Pavlou made in a politically incorrect way. He's a delight. On Twitter where he was like, okay, well, the Sullivan, Lincoln, wimpy... He used another word that I'm not going to use because I don't want YouTube to... But on our website, would you use it? Maybe. But...

uh he was just talking about how this terrible foreign policy is is what's causing a lot of it he was actually talking about in terms of south korea where he was like the u.s is south korea's biggest ally like they could they could play a role in like the military coup yeah and things like that but

The US is afraid to do anything. Yeah, essentially. Oh, yeah, the context was that Lincoln was like, oh, we're expressing great concern. Right. And he was like, the US could do a lot more than just express concern. They're always expressing concern about Iran, about Russia and China and whatever. But yeah, I think there's this.

caution that is more likely to get us into war than the yeah, the US should not use its power. I saw somebody make a point like complaining online today about how like oh, you know The way Trump is like talking to like Canada and Mexico and all these other powers It's like he's acting like he's the boss of the world and it's like well, you know the American president That's that's kind of what people want

And yeah, I think that this is the antithesis of that, right? The way that the current foreign policy elite is like, oh, well, we want China to join the international world order, like the international liberal world order and, you know, be part of the solution. And they're like, they have no interest in

in being part of the solution. That is not what they want to do. They want to be the world police. Yeah, so it's just... Anyway, it is very frustrating. And interestingly, one of the comments to Drew's post was that someone was like, I'm a Democrat, but I'm very excited to see Marco Rubio as the next Secretary of State because I hate the way that the Democrats do foreign policy. Yeah. Well...

I mean, the obvious solution, and this always works well, is you just gotta say that, like, you know, the communists are inside the country, so declare martial law, and then everything solves itself, right? Yeah, yeah. No problems whatsoever. Well, you heard it here first on China Unscripted. I am declaring martial law. I am in charge now.

You apparently had about as much of an ability to declare martial law as the South Korean president did. Yeah, except I won't rescind this. Rescind. There you go. I've learned something today. Thank you for watching China Unscripted. I'm Chris Chappell. I'm Shelley Chong. And I'm Matt Gnaizda. And we'll see you on our new website, ChinaUncensored.tv. See you there.