Latest / UK Column Radio / Jerm Warfare in China with Carl Zha (Part 2)

Transcript

Jerm Warfare in China with Carl Zha (Part 2) · UK Column Radio

• 0:34
  None. OK, Part 2.
• 0:47
  Let's go. Trump is your president.
• 0:51
  My president. Is your president your
• 0:55
  president? Is my president for the
• 0:57
  acceleration ISM of US imperial decline.
• 1:02
  I will vote for him now. I will vote for him if he runs
• 1:06
  again. So he was at the UN.
• 1:12
  Recently. Speaking, this was now this is
• 1:14
  not just after the the Charlie Cook Theatre, I mean memorial.
• 1:20
  Yes. So So yeah, he's giving some
• 1:25
  moments the teleprompter. Is.
• 1:29
  Not working. So he blames the UN for his
• 1:31
  teleprompter and for his. Staircase, yes.
• 1:35
  He says he's ended 7 wars. Of course he's a great
• 1:38
  peacemaker, and he also says he deserved Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1:42
  Of course he deserved the Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1:46
  And then he says this is what the part where he says where
• 1:48
  he's always right. He's also really good at
• 1:51
  predicting he's. Really good at predicting
• 1:53
  things. And he's nice blaming China for
• 1:55
  pollution. In America, yes.
• 1:57
  He says so. He says so.
• 1:58
  China. China makes pollution that gets
• 2:00
  blown across, yes. Over the United States?
• 2:04
  Yes, no matter what. You're.
• 2:06
  Doing but my favorite is he's always right.
• 2:09
  He's always right. Trump is always right.
• 2:12
  I can't find it. It's true.
• 2:18
  I've been right about everything.
• 2:19
  He's been right about everything.
• 2:22
  But why do you say that he's your president?
• 2:25
  Why I'm I? He is my president.
• 2:28
  I I literally. Because you're.
• 2:29
  American. You were Chinese Once Upon a
• 2:33
  time. You know, Trump is great for his
• 2:39
  honesty. You know, before when you have
• 2:41
  Obama or Biden that talk about all we, we are for democracy,
• 2:48
  for freedom. We, we build partnership across
• 2:51
  the world. Now Trump just goes out and say,
• 2:55
  hey, we, we want everybody to pay.
• 2:57
  You are going to pay you're going to pay for the of American
• 3:01
  empire And I, I think that's, that's, that's refreshing.
• 3:05
  I, I, I appreciate the honesty in US foreign policy messaging.
• 3:11
  You know, Trump just basically revealed that emperor has no
• 3:15
  clothes. It's, it's very naked American
• 3:18
  imperialism and therefore everyone to see I, I appreciate
• 3:21
  that. That's that's, that's great.
• 3:22
  I also like that about him. So what?
• 3:24
  This is even what? Even what is Swiss?
• 3:27
  Is it is it Swiss or French? I don't know.
• 3:30
  I. Don't.
• 3:32
  Maybe. Maybe it is.
• 3:33
  Oh no, maybe it is French. Yeah, French.
• 3:35
  OK, so this is the Paris edition in China, because for whatever
• 3:39
  reason China doesn't have water. Now we need to import it from
• 3:43
  France. Speaking of which, we are
• 3:47
  driving quickly, just for context for this, for this
• 3:50
  video, where are we driving to? Who are driving to Aksu, the
• 3:55
  home of apples. This this whole region of
• 3:59
  Central Asia is where Apple originated.
• 4:02
  Hang on, apples the the the plural, the ones that you eat,
• 4:05
  not the computer. Right, right, right also also.
• 4:09
  But Apple products is also made in China, I.
• 4:16
  Think I think Tim Cook shifted some of the manufacturing to
• 4:19
  India. About 20% of the iPhone
• 4:23
  production is India, but that's in the final assembly stage.
• 4:26
  So basically they're still importing all the components
• 4:29
  made in China, ship them to India and, and, and finally the
• 4:33
  final assembly put together in your phone.
• 4:35
  So that that's, that's the Indian part.
• 4:37
  And they were doing that originally for making iPhones
• 4:41
  specifically for America in order to avoids a high tariff
• 4:46
  that was placed on Chinese made product until Trump flat 50
• 4:50
  percent, 50% on percent tariff on India for for India's
• 4:57
  purchase of Russian oil. So who knows?
• 5:00
  What do you know about tariffs and China's history with them?
• 5:06
  Well, I mean tariff is actually pretty normal right?
• 5:08
  Everyone have tariff. What China used tariff for is to
• 5:14
  protect its domestic industry like everybody else does.
• 5:17
  The tariff can work, but provided that you have a
• 5:21
  domestic industry to protect. The problem with the United
• 5:25
  States is that Trump thinks tariff is a magical bullet.
• 5:28
  He just need to raise a pair tariff and magically all the
• 5:32
  industry will re return to the Usus will re industrialize.
• 5:36
  But that's not how it works because US has been
• 5:39
  deindustrializing for the last 40 years.
• 5:43
  Now we have now United States have a serious problem, not just
• 5:47
  lack of lack of physical equipment or factory, but also
• 5:53
  lack of human capital. Because all these people who
• 5:56
  have been trained to do manufacturing, now they're
• 5:59
  retired, there's a 40 years time gap.
• 6:02
  They have to retrain a whole new generation of people to do to do
• 6:07
  manufacturing. And that takes time.
• 6:09
  You know, it's not something that just merely putting up
• 6:11
  tariff will help. Yeah, but I mean, so now that
• 6:15
  Trump has slapped tariffs on China, doesn't make any
• 6:18
  difference to China? Well, China has actually has
• 6:22
  been preparing for this moment since the first Trump term when
• 6:28
  Trump starts slapping China with tariff and sanctions back in
• 6:32
  2017. So China had now have about 8
• 6:35
  years to prepare to decouple from the United States.
• 6:39
  So now US. Once Upon a time before Trump's
• 6:43
  first term, US was Chinas top #1 trading partner.
• 6:47
  Today US is #3 the US has been replaced in the top spot by
• 6:52
  ASEAN and then EU. So China has been steadily but
• 6:59
  have steadily and gradually been shifting their market elsewhere.
• 7:04
  And so in this case, US is actually much less prepared than
• 7:08
  China for this decoupling process.
• 7:10
  So the US is less prepared for the US sanctions against China.
• 7:15
  Correct, because the problem is, you know, Trump policies,
• 7:18
  there's this is no long term planning, you know, there's no
• 7:25
  long strategic thinking around it.
• 7:27
  You know, Trump is very being, being Trump is very impulsive.
• 7:31
  And this this whole tariff in on imported goods is very
• 7:37
  disruptive for US industry because right now for
• 7:41
  reindustrialization of America, they actually need to import a
• 7:45
  lot of parts from China. So for example, US auto
• 7:49
  industry, they require they currently import a lot of
• 7:53
  Chinese major components, for example, batteries, because
• 7:55
  China has dominated the battery industry and now they're going
• 7:59
  to face higher input prices because of the tariffs.
• 8:04
  It would appear that China actually doesn't really care,
• 8:08
  because with 1 1/2 billion people, China is effectively its
• 8:11
  own world. That's true.
• 8:14
  That's true. China, just like United States,
• 8:17
  he has a continental size economy and it's a much, much
• 8:21
  bigger market. I would argue, you know, like
• 8:24
  according to the IMF and World Bank's calculation based on
• 8:29
  power purchase parity terms, China is about 25% larger than
• 8:34
  the US economy. But I think that vastly
• 8:36
  underestimate the true size of China's economy because if you
• 8:40
  look at other metrics like electric consumption, China has
• 8:45
  about twice the electric consumption as United States or
• 8:50
  car market. Chinese car market is about
• 8:53
  twice the size of US car market. So my back of the napkin
• 8:58
  calculation, China is, is at least twice the size of U.S.
• 9:03
  economy already. And and China can redirect its
• 9:08
  productivity to elsewhere. You know, there's other market
• 9:11
  global S EU and China has already been doing that.
• 9:15
  When we spoke to that economist a week ago, we won't mention his
• 9:20
  name. He didn't want his name to be
• 9:21
  mentioned because he's he's a bit more critical.
• 9:24
  Sure. Than the average citizen, yeah.
• 9:28
  Sure. And that's another issue we'll
• 9:31
  come to, sure. Sure.
• 9:33
  He said that China's economy is, and he's an economist, and he
• 9:37
  effectively said that China's economy is around 3 times larger
• 9:41
  than that. Yes, yes, I was surprised by
• 9:44
  that because I always go, you know, my back of napkin
• 9:47
  calculation or two times and he said the Chinese economy is at
• 9:50
  least three times. I was like, wow, OK.
• 9:53
  So just for clarity, right now, he's he's he's an American
• 9:56
  economist who's lived in China for 29 years.
• 9:58
  Yes. OK.
• 9:59
  So he's got a lot of St. grid. He has a lot of data too as well
• 10:02
  because he's that's his field. He studies the economy.
• 10:05
  So what did you make of this conversation?
• 10:09
  It's definitely a very interesting conversation because
• 10:12
  he he said he, he does not like the current Chinese leader, he
• 10:18
  does not like Xi Jinping because he thinks Xi Jinping is actually
• 10:22
  Xi Jinping is actually destroying the Chinese economy.
• 10:24
  He thinks the Chinese economy was doing very well before Xi
• 10:28
  Jinping came to power. But XI Jinping's policy like
• 10:31
  anti corruption, Dr. etcetera is choking off the economic growth.
• 10:36
  But then that asked him, OK, who would you choose, Xi Jinping or
• 10:41
  Trump? And he said that Xi Jinping,
• 10:45
  yes, no, it's not the question, Right, Right.
• 10:48
  That's all. And he said, that's why I have
• 10:50
  stayed in China because, you know, Trump's America is going
• 10:54
  off a totally wrong direction. And then, then, then what's more
• 10:59
  shocking to me is because he has a son, He married a Chinese
• 11:02
  woman, yes. So his son inherits both a Mick
• 11:06
  Wall would in care of both American citizenship and Chinese
• 11:10
  citizenship. Before you know, you reach 18,
• 11:13
  then you will have to make a choice.
• 11:14
  But he said no, he does not want his son to have a Chinese
• 11:17
  passport, to have American passport.
• 11:20
  He rather his son only have Chinese citizenship.
• 11:24
  I was very surprised by that. And and so I asked him and he
• 11:29
  said, you know, America is really going to a very, very
• 11:33
  dark place. I remember he said that.
• 11:35
  Yeah. He said it's like the downward
• 11:38
  trajectory of United States is in sharp contrast with the the
• 11:44
  steady climb of China. So, so, so even though he does
• 11:49
  not like Xi Jinping, in fact he said he hates Xi Jinping for
• 11:52
  what Xi Jinping is doing to the Chinese.
• 11:54
  Economy. He used very creative words,
• 11:56
  shall we say? Right.
• 11:57
  But so he still chose to stay in China and he would choose Xi
• 12:03
  Jinping over Trump anytime and he want his son only to have
• 12:08
  Chinese citizenship. So I, I think that's a, that's
• 12:11
  a, that's a, that's a great endorsement, I would think.
• 12:15
  Yes. And I like the fact that he is
• 12:17
  quite nuanced. And that is that is one of the
• 12:21
  primary reasons I am here in China is to understand nuance.
• 12:26
  It's not black or white. Sure it's not binary yet.
• 12:29
  That's that's the problem with with so much of the wasted
• 12:31
  media. I think that's a lot of problems
• 12:34
  with a lot of people because they think it's it's like
• 12:37
  Manician worldview. You know, it's like the good
• 12:41
  versus evil, the black versus white, but a lot of the world
• 12:44
  functioning in a Gray area, right?
• 12:46
  And and it takes time. It takes time and and and energy
• 12:51
  effort to understand the nuance. So what I appreciate about you
• 12:55
  germs is you always have an open.
• 12:57
  Why you? You are always open to different
• 13:00
  ideas, yes? Because I realized that living
• 13:04
  in a bubble doesn't really help anybody.
• 13:07
  I agree. And the world is the world is
• 13:09
  very, very big, and what the way things are done here doesn't
• 13:14
  necessarily mean it can be successfully exported.
• 13:16
  That's very important because even the Chinese of government
• 13:21
  official position has been the Chinese experience is unique.
• 13:24
  You may not be replicated elsewhere.
• 13:27
  It's Chinese model is developed according to the unique
• 13:32
  circumstances of China. And this is where China's
• 13:38
  position is that there's there's a so-called universal value
• 13:41
  that's been promoted by United States and the West doesn't
• 13:44
  really exist because the world is so different.
• 13:47
  Every country need to pursue the path of development that's more
• 13:51
  suited to their own unique circumstances.
• 13:55
  Well, yes, a message from the that economist who were
• 13:58
  chatting, chatting about, he was, he's been messaging me
• 14:02
  about surveillance. That's one of the topics that
• 14:05
  that Trump brought up because he wants to, he wants to, and this
• 14:08
  is such a great segue because he wants to, Trump wants to
• 14:11
  implement more mass surveillance.
• 14:14
  Oh, are we stopping? Yeah, we're we're.
• 14:16
  Let's continue this after after this break.
• 14:19
  After the bathroom break. An old trick.
• 14:21
  OK, you do this. You clap.
• 14:24
  No, no, no, no. Now you ruin it.
• 14:26
  Just one clap. So what the clap does is that it
• 14:28
  sinks. Got it.
• 14:29
  Largely the sinks, The sound. OK, I think we've got our
• 14:32
  cameras. Hey, listen.
• 14:34
  I see drizzle. Yes, it's start raining.
• 14:36
  And you were saying it doesn't rain yet?
• 14:38
  No, it's rare. Very rarely rain here, but this
• 14:42
  year the weather is a bit abnormal.
• 14:45
  They have had a lot of rain in Xinjiang, which is very rare.
• 14:48
  And the whole precipitation line basically shifted north in
• 14:53
  China. Normally all these rainfalls
• 14:56
  will happen in southern China. Now the the whole rainfall
• 14:59
  pattern is shifted N So now, now Xinjiang is getting a lot of
• 15:03
  rain, which is causing problems because a lot of these desert
• 15:08
  cities, they their city not built to drain for like they
• 15:13
  don't have a lot of drainage for to handle the rain.
• 15:16
  Yeah. Let me see if I can get my get
• 15:18
  my camera off here and see if I can capture some of those rain I
• 15:24
  can't really see, can't really see on the glass.
• 15:27
  Small drizzle. Yeah, just.
• 15:28
  A small drizzle, but as you said, this is quite unusual for
• 15:31
  this area. Yeah.
• 15:31
  OK, let's see if I can get this back on here.
• 15:35
  So the economist that we that we met up with, he was chatting to
• 15:42
  me over the last few days about the increased surveillance that
• 15:47
  is rolling out in the US and Trump spoke about it at the UN.
• 15:52
  Yeah. And Palantir is a big part of
• 15:53
  this now. Yes, yes.
• 15:55
  The irony. It's always China that's that's
• 15:59
  accused of being a mass surveillance state.
• 16:02
  Yes. But it's not that, is it?
• 16:04
  Well, I think a lot of the Western talk talking points
• 16:08
  about China is 100% projection. When they're talking about
• 16:11
  China, they're not necessarily talking about China as the real
• 16:16
  place that existed. They're talking about China as a
• 16:18
  foil to their worst fierce. As an abstract idea.
• 16:22
  Yes, exactly. So I like to say every
• 16:26
  accusation is a confession. And if you look at us today,
• 16:31
  Palantir is sinking its it's claws into every segment of the
• 16:36
  society. There's basically being a
• 16:38
  takeover by the Silicon Valley Bros.
• 16:42
  I mean, Vance Vance is Vance was sponsored by Peter Thiel, right?
• 16:48
  And and so you have these kind of takeover of the American
• 16:52
  government by the big tech companies.
• 16:57
  And Palantir is particularly insidious because they also
• 17:01
  develop AI technology for Israel to identify, you know, policy
• 17:08
  targets. And now they're doing that for
• 17:11
  American citizens. Trump has ordered all the
• 17:15
  American government agency to share their data on American
• 17:19
  citizens with Palantir. And that's what that's what
• 17:21
  Trump said. It's going to happen.
• 17:22
  Exactly, exactly. Well, at least Trump is honest
• 17:26
  about it. But still, this is not going
• 17:28
  down a good path. But having said that, you know
• 17:31
  there is a lot of surveillance each other.
• 17:33
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I wasn't saying
• 17:35
  there wasn't. I'm saying that people, people,
• 17:37
  they say this with a huge blind spot.
• 17:40
  They, yeah, yeah, they don't see, see what's happening in
• 17:42
  their own society. But what I want to point out is
• 17:46
  we came to China, we do see a lot of cameras everywhere.
• 17:50
  A lot of cameras. And after we've been to
• 17:52
  Xinjiang, there's also more police presence everywhere.
• 17:56
  At the airport. Too at the airport, at the hotel
• 17:59
  hotel, there's there's a security guard in the in every
• 18:03
  hotel they have a metal detector and a security guard.
• 18:06
  So but the I've been talking to local Chinese people, they don't
• 18:14
  feel it's oppressive. They for them, their experience
• 18:18
  is different because they feel the those prevalence of camera
• 18:22
  have made places much safer. I mean, I can tell you one
• 18:26
  experience, well, you were there in Shanghai.
• 18:28
  I left my camera. I left my off.
• 18:31
  I left my camera charging on a senior Community Center for an
• 18:36
  hour and a half. I totally forgot about it when I
• 18:38
  returned. The camera is still there.
• 18:41
  And I can tell you that was not the case in China 10 or 15 years
• 18:46
  ago. Like 10-15 years ago, that phone
• 18:48
  would have been stolen. And, and I some people
• 18:52
  attributed to camera, some people attributed to general
• 18:58
  alleviation of poverty. So people are living better now
• 19:02
  and, but, but in any case, today's China is very safe.
• 19:05
  That's, that's, that's one thing I have to emphasize.
• 19:08
  It's you. You can leave.
• 19:10
  I don't recommend you do it, but you can leave your camera and
• 19:14
  laptop unattended and, and when you come back, it's still there.
• 19:18
  This is very common in China. That's the thing, and I spoke
• 19:22
  about this last time with you, the that that just breaks my
• 19:27
  brain is how did that all occur? I think effectively in the last.
• 19:32
  30 years, yes. I mean, that is a very fast
• 19:35
  change. In the last 30 years, crime has
• 19:37
  not really reduced all that much in South Africa.
• 19:40
  It's it after 1994, crime shot up and then it came down
• 19:46
  gradually and it's kind of plateaued.
• 19:48
  But that plateau is still quite high.
• 19:50
  Yeah, I think, you know, there's plenty of surveillance in other
• 19:55
  countries, right? Like, there's a lot of cameras
• 19:57
  in London, there's a lot of cameras in New York, but.
• 20:01
  The difference is it comes to law enforcement, the camera.
• 20:05
  They have the camera, they have the surveillance in London and
• 20:08
  New York. But because they don't enforce,
• 20:11
  enforce the laws, New York and London are not safe.
• 20:14
  They're not nearly as safe as China is.
• 20:19
  But again, what did they do differently?
• 20:22
  But I, I think there's a, there's a couple of things.
• 20:25
  There's, there's also people are living better now compared to
• 20:30
  30, 3020 years ago. So there's also less incentive
• 20:35
  to steal. And plus the prevalence of
• 20:38
  cameras in combination with the fact that the people are much
• 20:43
  more prosperous than before. It just, it just reduces the
• 20:48
  incentive to to to steal drastically.
• 20:51
  I think that's what this is my take but.
• 20:54
  Let's go back to the surveillance aspect because
• 20:56
  that's pretty important. So something that I've noticed
• 21:01
  is now. OK, so let me just quickly add
• 21:03
  disclaimer, I don't like surveillance.
• 21:05
  Sure. So for me, for me, I just, I
• 21:07
  just don't like it. Yeah.
• 21:09
  But nonetheless, it is what it is.
• 21:11
  What I have noticed is here in China, there's a huge amount of
• 21:14
  very visible and obvious deliberate surveillance.
• 21:19
  OK, it's deliberate. What's happening in the US seems
• 21:22
  a lot more subversive. That's interesting because you,
• 21:28
  you don't realize you are being profiled.
• 21:31
  I think that's that. That might be it.
• 21:33
  That might be it. Because like, you know, let me
• 21:35
  give you. Sorry, let me interrupt.
• 21:36
  Let me give you an example. When I got off the plane, when I
• 21:39
  got off the plane to land in China, a group of guys from I
• 21:46
  think it was the Congo, they were asked to, to to disembark
• 21:51
  first. Sure.
• 21:53
  And I'm not quite sure why, OK. But nonetheless, when I got into
• 21:57
  the airport, I was standing this little form you fill in if
• 22:01
  you're a foreigner, Arrival card.
• 22:02
  Arrival card, yes. And one of the guys from that
• 22:06
  group was standing there and I had a look at his arrival card
• 22:09
  and it had a big red stamp on it that said profiled.
• 22:12
  There is no political correctness in China.
• 22:14
  I have to tell you there is no 0 political.
• 22:18
  Correctness China is based. Yeah, OK.
• 22:21
  I'm speaking as someone who hold American passport.
• 22:25
  I don't care Chinese government have data on me because they
• 22:29
  don't have jurisdiction over me. You know, I I'm on WeChat, you
• 22:33
  know, I'm assuming all my data is all got sucked up through
• 22:37
  WeChat, but I don't care. Chinese government has no
• 22:40
  jurisdiction over me because I'm not a Chinese citizen.
• 22:44
  However, I'm not a lot worried about volunteer because I am
• 22:49
  American citizen and U.S. government do have jurisdiction
• 22:52
  over me. And I, I and I do say a lot of
• 22:55
  things, you know, that disagree for example, with the US foreign
• 22:59
  policy. So that that is something I I
• 23:02
  legitly worry about. Guess what that economist sent
• 23:06
  me the last night he said. Yeah, but don't forget that the
• 23:10
  US government now requires visa applicants to list their social
• 23:15
  media identities and is refusing to issue visas to foreigners
• 23:21
  whom they have identified as having said anything negative
• 23:24
  about. Israel Yeah.
• 23:26
  So This is why I now I'm a lot more hesitant to bring my wife
• 23:32
  to US because she's still an Indonesian citizen and she would
• 23:35
  need a visa to come to US. You know, we, we, we luckily we,
• 23:39
  we visited a couple of years ago.
• 23:41
  But now with all these horror stories about like foreigners
• 23:45
  being with valid visas, being being deported from the airport,
• 23:49
  denied entry. I don't want to subject my wife
• 23:52
  to that. Because what if the people, what
• 23:55
  if they look at their social media post?
• 23:58
  You know, my wife don't post political stuff.
• 24:00
  She, she posts about her, her, her work, which is making
• 24:04
  handmade jewelry. But they can easily go from from
• 24:08
  her profile to my profile. Now there's a lot of criticism
• 24:12
  of U.S. government in my social media.
• 24:15
  So I don't want hard to be like subjected to that kind of
• 24:19
  scrutiny because of me because, you know, I'm bring him, bring
• 24:22
  her to US. So these are the things I do
• 24:25
  have to think about. With all the increased
• 24:27
  surveillance in the US, are, are you seeing something positive
• 24:32
  coming from it though? Yeah.
• 24:34
  So, so, So in other words, you were alluding to the fact that
• 24:37
  there's increased surveillance here in China and it could one
• 24:40
  of the consequences could be lower crime and it's basically a
• 24:44
  safer place to live. I, I, I, I don't see that ever
• 24:48
  happening in the USI mean like the government.
• 24:50
  The, the problem, I think fundamentally intention does
• 24:54
  matter. You know, John, Professor John
• 24:56
  Mearsheimer famously say intention doesn't matter, it's
• 24:59
  all about capability. But I, I, I, I, I, I disagree.
• 25:04
  I think intention do matter because in China's case, the
• 25:08
  Chinese government actually do want to reduce crime.
• 25:12
  I just don't think the US elite cares so much about that because
• 25:17
  I mean, just from the past experience for the last 30
• 25:21
  years, I don't think they really care.
• 25:23
  I mean, they, the politicians may say they're, they're tough
• 25:26
  on crime, but if you look at their track records for the last
• 25:29
  30 years, you know, the crime has a big reduce.
• 25:32
  And I don't I don't think they really care about about doing
• 25:36
  anything about the crime. So that is a problem.
• 25:38
  So they have the capability, they have all the camera having
• 25:41
  the surveillance, but they don't care about enforcing the laws.
• 25:44
  US, you know, supposedly A democracy, right?
• 25:49
  The people should demand change. But the problem is, will you
• 25:52
  have politicians after politicians promising change?
• 25:56
  I mean, people remember Obama. I mean, that's how he got
• 25:58
  elected. I mean, Trump also promised
• 26:00
  change, but every politicians end up being the same.
• 26:05
  They they say all the right things and then they they fail
• 26:09
  to deliver on their promise. No, no, no.
• 26:11
  Only Trump says all the right things.
• 26:14
  Only Trump says the right thing. I'm sorry.
• 26:17
  A a vector of surveillance is censorship and that was one of
• 26:23
  the economist friends criticisms of the current president.
• 26:28
  Yes do you so so so he was hope in fact, he was very optimistic.
• 26:35
  If you remember, he he, he says he believes that the next
• 26:39
  president will loosen the reins on the censorship.
• 26:42
  And he says it was quite free before around 2010.
• 26:46
  I'm actually less optimistic than so I, I have been on record
• 26:52
  of saying I don't like censorship in China.
• 26:54
  I think it's too strict. And but I think that the, the,
• 26:58
  the freedom that he, he was referring to pre Xi Jinping era,
• 27:02
  that was a result of social media being very new.
• 27:07
  So the Chinese government don't quite know what to do with it.
• 27:11
  You know, traditionally, you know, the, the government here
• 27:15
  that they dominate the state norm.
• 27:17
  Every media in China is state media.
• 27:20
  And so when social media started to proliferating, they just
• 27:26
  hasn't quite catch on the significance of it.
• 27:29
  And they didn't know quite what quite what to do about it.
• 27:33
  But what happened is over time, they have realized, OK, they
• 27:38
  need to control this. They need to control the
• 27:40
  narrative by applying censorship on social media so it does not
• 27:46
  deviate too much from the official line.
• 27:48
  So I, I don't think this is necessarily tie to Xi Jinping.
• 27:53
  I think it's just a matter of like they caught up.
• 27:58
  The government has caught up on, on managing social media in the
• 28:02
  Xi Jinping era. So I don't think, I don't think
• 28:05
  there's necessarily going to be a loosening up.
• 28:07
  But I, I do have, I also hold up hope because while my criticism
• 28:13
  is not censorship in general, I might, you know, I understand
• 28:17
  why they would have censorship because they're worried about,
• 28:21
  you know, being Americans weaponize the social media
• 28:27
  platform to foment color revolution, etcetera, etcetera.
• 28:32
  But my complaint is that this right now, the citizenship is
• 28:35
  too strict. So I do have hope that maybe
• 28:41
  there will be more leeway in the future as China itself becomes
• 28:46
  more stronger and more confident.
• 28:50
  More confident is in its own self power, soft power that you
• 28:55
  will allow more leeways in in terms of different opinions
• 28:59
  being expressed on the Chinese social media that that is my
• 29:02
  hope. I'd like to see more censorship.
• 29:04
  I'd like to see less of the Céline Dion Backstreet Boys
• 29:09
  story happening here on the music.
• 29:11
  There's too much Western influence here.
• 29:13
  We can't have Jenny listening to that nonsense.
• 29:17
  That's I don't think that's going to happen actually,
• 29:20
  because Chinese government actually don't care.
• 29:24
  About which music you listen. To yeah, which music you listen
• 29:26
  to, like pop culture stuff. They don't care because they
• 29:29
  don't see that as you know, they don't see, you know, U.S.
• 29:35
  government can weaponize Backstreet Boys.
• 29:37
  I think the whole world used to censor Backstreet Boys.
• 29:40
  Like the entire world. I think Street Boys was like
• 29:46
  still 1990s, right? Like 1990s or 2000?
• 29:49
  Jenny was listening to them earlier.
• 29:53
  She wants it that way. She wants it that way because
• 29:57
  for her, it evokes a memory of an earlier time, right?
• 30:02
  I mean, like the youngest don't, don't listen to Backstreet Boys.
• 30:05
  They're like. They listen to kpop.
• 30:08
  They listen to kpop, you're right.
• 30:11
  But I, I, I, I have a I'm not too opposed to kpop.
• 30:15
  You know why? Because I think anime K pop is
• 30:19
  sort of gave way drugs for the Western audience to prepare them
• 30:25
  for eventual Chinese soft power takeover, right?
• 30:29
  Because because look, let's face it, for people outside of East
• 30:33
  Asia, people can't tell the difference between Chinese,
• 30:36
  Japanese, Korean and so. So first you get them and cook
• 30:42
  up anime, then you get them hook up K pop and then next thing you
• 30:45
  know Chinese soft power. Actually, Speaking of soft power
• 30:53
  NGOs, OK, how does the Chinese government view them?
• 30:58
  There was a lot of caution because you know, George Soros
• 31:02
  famously sponsored many NGOs and they had been active in China.
• 31:08
  Like pre, pre Xi Jinping era, there were a lot of NGOs.
• 31:14
  So, so, so in the after Xi Jinping came to power, there was
• 31:18
  a lot of restriction these NGOs because they saw what the NGOs,
• 31:24
  how the NGOs function, you know, how they, they function
• 31:27
  basically as as a third arm of, you know, the three letter
• 31:32
  agencies of, of United States. And and you know, it's
• 31:36
  especially in this participation in fermenting color revolutions
• 31:42
  in places like Hong Kong, for example, 2019 protests, yes.
• 31:45
  So, so This is why you know, George Soro himself is basically
• 31:50
  persona non grata. He's.
• 31:52
  Not He's not coming back. Yet he's not coming back.
• 31:55
  He should be. He should be persona non grata
• 31:58
  everywhere. I agree, but you know he.
• 32:01
  And Speaking of Soros, the Ned is quite important, particularly
• 32:07
  in this province that we're in now.
• 32:09
  We're in Xinjiang, yeah, with a, with a, with a very big Uyghur
• 32:13
  population. And the Ned are one of the big
• 32:16
  funders of the genocide narrative.
• 32:18
  Yes. Ned, by the way, is the acronym
• 32:20
  for National Endowment for Democracy.
• 32:23
  Of which Soros is one of the funders.
• 32:25
  Right. And, and Ned was first spun off
• 32:30
  basically as like, like a arm of the CIA, you know, like a former
• 32:35
  CIA director have famously said, you know, now the Ned can carry
• 32:40
  on the work where we, we previously tried to do, but
• 32:45
  they, they can do it without the stigma of being associated with
• 32:50
  CIA. And and does, you know, if you
• 32:53
  look at Ned, you know, they have they, they, they publish, you
• 32:57
  know what they, how they spent their money.
• 32:59
  So what they spent quite bit of a money on promoting, you know,
• 33:04
  all these all these Xinjiang Uigu genocide narratives and and
• 33:11
  now we're traveling in Xinjiang. Yes, I mean.
• 33:13
  We all over. Yeah, yeah, there's, there's
• 33:16
  Uyghur people all over. They're speaking Uyghur every
• 33:19
  day. I mean like.
• 33:20
  We saw a gay a gay one or two. You saw very flaming.
• 33:25
  Very flammable. Stuff this, this place is
• 33:27
  traditionally very kind of conservative Muslim place,
• 33:31
  right? But I think what happened is now
• 33:35
  there's space even for their safe space.
• 33:39
  It's a safe space. It's a safe space for a for a
• 33:42
  flaming Uyghur, a boy Uyghur man to to be out in the open, you
• 33:50
  know, and. He was very out and.
• 33:53
  He was very out in the open. He was serving at a cafe at a
• 33:59
  very popular tourist tourist spot.
• 34:01
  And the goal next to him, yeah, it was also serving, is also
• 34:06
  Uighur and wearing something that would also be considered
• 34:09
  very taboo. Yeah, she's just wearing, I mean
• 34:12
  she's covered up, but she's wearing like form fitting
• 34:14
  clothes, very tight. Yeah.
• 34:16
  So basically, I would say 10 years ago, you will be very much
• 34:22
  frong upon in the in place here, like because in 10 years ago
• 34:28
  there was a time. So Xinjiang has experienced its
• 34:32
  own kind of ship in, in, in, in in 1980s, nineteen 90s, very few
• 34:41
  women, very few Uyghur women covered up, you know, and then,
• 34:47
  but that changed after late 90s, two thousand as some of these
• 34:55
  Uyghur fighters who have crossed the border in the in the late
• 35:00
  70s to join the Afghan mujahideens in the war against
• 35:05
  Soviets. And and you know, they they
• 35:08
  start to filter back in the 1990s, you know, when the Afghan
• 35:13
  with the so after the Soviet withdraw, the Afghan civil war
• 35:18
  started, some of these Uyghur fighters came back and they
• 35:22
  tried to bring their ideology, you know, Islamic fundamentalist
• 35:27
  ideology back to Xinjiang. And that's when a lot of women
• 35:31
  start to be forced to cover up. They, they, they start to wear
• 35:34
  like burkas. Like burkas is really not a
• 35:38
  thing hasn't been a thing in Xinjiang for for decades.
• 35:42
  Suddenly, you know, made a resurgence around late 90s,
• 35:46
  early 2000 all the way to 2000 tens.
• 35:50
  And so one of the thing that you know, the the whole Uyghur
• 35:56
  cultural genocide narrative is that that Chinese government is
• 36:01
  restricting religious expression.
• 36:05
  And one of the thing was burqa was banned.
• 36:10
  So no, no, no, no burqa. We saw no burqa in Xinjiang, no
• 36:13
  face covering, right, No burqas, no Chandors.
• 36:18
  And, and to associate it with this crackdown is also, this is
• 36:25
  what the the Chinese government, this is they say Xinjiang is a
• 36:29
  place of religious freedom. So what that means is each
• 36:34
  individual is free to choose his or her religion.
• 36:38
  They're not tied to a religion, you know, not not because you
• 36:42
  are born from into a certain religion, then you must stay
• 36:47
  that certain religion. So anybody can choose their own
• 36:49
  path. So I think as a result of that,
• 36:53
  now you can see a very flaming a good man serving coffee in a
• 36:58
  kucha. A raging homosexual.
• 37:01
  Uyghur. Yes, yes, yes.
• 37:04
  But let's just stay on this Uyghur thing for a second
• 37:08
  because there is a huge, huge misunderstanding.
• 37:12
  Can you quickly take me through the history and how they ended
• 37:16
  up there and why it's so sensitive?
• 37:19
  Right. I mean, this region has always
• 37:21
  been different from rest of China.
• 37:25
  Even from before China was China.
• 37:26
  Yeah, yeah, even before China was China.
• 37:28
  So this this region has been from the earliest times, it was
• 37:35
  populated by people who spoke Indo European language.
• 37:42
  You know, now, now some archaeologist, historian called
• 37:45
  the language Tacarius. So they spoke Takarians in
• 37:49
  northern half of the Taran Basin, which we're traveling
• 37:52
  through right now. And they spoke like Saka
• 37:58
  language in the South in Kashkar and Kotan.
• 38:02
  And Saka language is classified as Indo Iranian language.
• 38:08
  And, and then around the around 60 BC, around 60 BC, that's when
• 38:19
  this, this, there was a war that happened between the Han dynasty
• 38:24
  of China and the Shengdu, the the first nomadic empire based
• 38:30
  in Mongolia. And 1 of this, this whole area
• 38:34
  of Xinjiang became a battleground because for the
• 38:38
  nomad nomadic Shengdu Empire, Xinjiang is a treasure trove.
• 38:45
  You know, they supply a lot of the Oasis stays here.
• 38:48
  They supply Chonglu as tributes. And the Han dynasty wanted to
• 38:54
  cut off the source of funding for the Chonglu.
• 38:56
  So they send in the army to conquer the place.
• 39:00
  This, this happened about 60 BC. This is when the kind of first,
• 39:05
  the first contact, if you will, with the rest of China.
• 39:08
  I got incorporated into Han dynasty, but the, but the, the
• 39:12
  imperial control has always been kind of tenuous.
• 39:15
  So when China is strong and united, it will extend its
• 39:19
  control versus region. But when China is fragmented or
• 39:22
  being invaded, they will, you know, lose the control of of
• 39:25
  this part. But this, this, this region is
• 39:28
  important for another reason. It's because this sits on the
• 39:32
  crossroad of the ancient Silk Road.
• 39:35
  So a lot of the ideas, for example, Buddhism, Buddhism
• 39:41
  originally India is spread to Afghanistan and via Afghanistan
• 39:47
  came to Xinjiang. So Xinjiang was a major Buddhist
• 39:50
  region for about 1000 years. And then Buddhism actually
• 39:55
  traveled from here in Xinjiang to the rest of China and then
• 39:59
  from China to Korea, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etcetera.
• 40:06
  So this was for, for, for. Cultural reasons and strategic
• 40:13
  reasons. This region was very important
• 40:15
  for China and right around Tang dynasty.
• 40:23
  Tang dynasty so we're talking about 9th century 9th century
• 40:30
  the we were empire rule Uyghur continate ruled Mongolia There
• 40:37
  were nomadic people who ruled Mongolia, but around the late
• 40:42
  half of the 9th century the Uyghur continent collapsed.
• 40:49
  The collapse around the same time when the Tibetan empire
• 40:52
  collapsed this this might might be because the weather was
• 40:55
  turning cold and the Uyghurs that migrated a mass from
• 41:01
  Mongolia into this region now at that time this region was a very
• 41:07
  multi ethnic multicultural place.
• 41:10
  You know, previously was controlled by the Tang dynasty
• 41:13
  and and when the Tang dynasty faced its own crisis during the
• 41:18
  unusual rebellion, the Tibetans took over this region and the
• 41:24
  the the local inhabitants included both original Indo
• 41:30
  European speakers and some Han Chinese who have migrated here.
• 41:36
  And now we you have the the Uyghurs who migrate out of
• 41:40
  Mongolia. They push out the Tibetan empire
• 41:43
  out of this region. They establishes their own
• 41:46
  Kingdom here, and they also adopted Buddhism because
• 41:49
  Buddhism was the most dominant religion in this region.
• 41:54
  And so you have this upper class of Uyghur, the overlords ruling
• 42:00
  the local inhabitants who originally speak indoor
• 42:04
  Europeans, and some of them, some of them are Han Chinese.
• 42:07
  But because the, because of the elite dominance of the Uyghurs,
• 42:12
  gradually everyone adopted the Uyghur language.
• 42:16
  And, and so over a period of several centuries, you know,
• 42:21
  there's culture, a culturation of these different groups.
• 42:26
  So all these, so both the ancient Uyghurs who came from
• 42:29
  Mongolia, the ancient Indo European speaker, some of the
• 42:33
  Han Chinese, they were all the ancestors of the modern Uyghur
• 42:39
  people. And and and but, but the the the
• 42:42
  term Uyghurs for a time was specifically during the tense
• 42:48
  10th to the 14th century. The term Uyghurs actually
• 42:52
  specifically refer to the Buddhist Uyghur of this region
• 42:55
  that we're travelling through. And because this is because
• 43:03
  people in the more southern part of tower and basin around
• 43:07
  Kashgar, they adopt, they start to adopt Islam around around
• 43:13
  late 9th century and early, late, no, late 10th century and
• 43:19
  early 11th century. And, and then so you have so
• 43:24
  Xinjiang was kind of divided between kind of the Buddhist
• 43:27
  zone and the Islamic zone. And then come the Mongol
• 43:31
  conquest, Jingis Khan's army conquer all this region and it
• 43:36
  was divided between the different grandsons of Genghis
• 43:41
  Khan. So by the Yuan dynasties, there
• 43:44
  was a Mongo civil war that happened between Kublai Khan and
• 43:48
  his cousin Kaidu. And they, they, they were
• 43:52
  fighting who should be the rightful owner, who should be
• 43:55
  the rightful Great Khan of the Mongol Empire.
• 43:59
  But the front line of the Mongol civil war was here and Xinjiang,
• 44:04
  Xinjiang, Xinjiang was your fun line.
• 44:06
  And through the back and forth battles, a lot of the ancient
• 44:11
  Buddhist sites and Buddhist cities in Xinjiang got
• 44:14
  destroyed. This this happened around 14th
• 44:18
  century, 14th century and, and, and and then later, later.
• 44:24
  What happened is that the great kind of the Chakatai Chakatai
• 44:28
  kinde Chakatai been the third, second son of Chinggis Khan, his
• 44:34
  line, his Chaggathai's descendants ruled the Central
• 44:40
  Asia and they were fighting against the Yuan Dynasty based
• 44:43
  in Beijing, China. So Chaggathai Khan eventually
• 44:49
  they adopted Islam and they were able to exert dominance over all
• 44:55
  this region. So by, by the late 14th century,
• 44:58
  they took over all of Xinjiang and they forced all the Buddhist
• 45:02
  inhabitants to adopt Islam. And some of the destruction of
• 45:07
  the Buddhist sites that we visited happened around this
• 45:11
  time, the late 14th century and, and, and the over the next
• 45:17
  couple 100 years, all of Xinjiang become Muslim, Muslim
• 45:22
  majority. And it remains that way today.
• 45:26
  And all these different people that have come through, you
• 45:29
  know, whether it's Uyghurs, Turks, Han, the original Indo
• 45:35
  European inhabitants, Mongols, they all start over centuries,
• 45:40
  they all melted together into one people.
• 45:42
  And that's a modern Uyghur people.
• 45:45
  But but but the modern Uyghur people, they do look a little
• 45:48
  bit different. Because they're not hot.
• 45:50
  Yeah, it's from the hot They their their features are more
• 45:53
  Central Asian. They speak a Turkic language.
• 45:57
  Their religion is Islam. You can't understand their
• 45:59
  language. Yeah, yeah, I only know like
• 46:01
  some basic and. The script even looks.
• 46:05
  Arabic, yeah, there's they have. So originally the Uyghur, they
• 46:10
  had their own ancient Uyghur script and that's the ancient
• 46:14
  Uyghurs script was later adopted by the Mongols to write
• 46:18
  Mongolian. So the modern the Mongolian
• 46:22
  script is based on the ancient Uyghurs script.
• 46:25
  But the Uyghurs themselves after they adopted Islam, they
• 46:28
  switched to use Arab Persian script.
• 46:32
  So now if you look at the so in Xin, currently in Xinjiang is
• 46:37
  required by law that all the building, all the signs should
• 46:42
  be both in Chinese and in Uyghur.
• 46:44
  And if you look at the Uyghur, it's Arabic script.
• 46:46
  Yeah, it's written with Arabic script and, and so, so they are
• 46:52
  different. So, so this is the purpose why
• 46:54
  in 1955, the the area of Xinjiang was set up as a
• 47:00
  Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
• 47:03
  It's autonomous region because it's different.
• 47:06
  It's different from the rest of. The and we're here on the
• 47:10
  anniversary, on the 70th anniversary of, of that
• 47:13
  autonomous creation. Yes, we're here for the 70th
• 47:16
  anniversary of the Foundation. In actual fact, quite literally
• 47:19
  now, like the the president is here in Xinjiang.
• 47:22
  Xi Jinping just traveled to Runxi yesterday.
• 47:25
  Yeah, the capital so This is why we can't get some drone footage
• 47:30
  because now because. All drones.
• 47:32
  All drones are privated here. Yeah, because because of the XI
• 47:35
  Jinping's visit, now there's a much tighter security measures.
• 47:39
  Part of it is like the drones are kind of off limits lot lot
• 47:44
  of parts of Xinjiang. So, so unfortunately we will not
• 47:47
  get some great drone shots, but it is what it is.
• 47:51
  But so the context is important because it helps you understand
• 47:56
  why the the Uyghurs live in this area.
• 47:59
  Yeah, but why is it politically sensitive?
• 48:02
  Correct. Well, what one One thing?
• 48:05
  OK, so so. And I say politically sensitive
• 48:07
  because that's the term that's used.
• 48:09
  Correct, correct, correct. So, so because this region is
• 48:12
  different culturally, religion wise, historically,
• 48:18
  historically, so there has been there, there was a separatist
• 48:24
  movement, there was a separatist movement.
• 48:27
  And because this, this express itself in different times.
• 48:30
  So for example, in nine, as late as 1930s, there was a attempt,
• 48:41
  there was a rebellion here in Xinjiang.
• 48:45
  There was a group of Uyghurs that tried to set up what's
• 48:47
  called the East Turkestan Islamic Republic, but but the
• 48:54
  whole thing only lasted about six months.
• 48:57
  And then again in the 1940s, this was a result of this was a
• 49:05
  result of World War 2 actually, because at that time in the
• 49:09
  1930s forties, Xinjiang was ruled by Chinese warlords, a
• 49:14
  particular warlord named Sensitize.
• 49:17
  And he had he had control over all of Xinjiang with the backing
• 49:22
  of Soviet Union. You know, he even he even
• 49:24
  applied to join Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but he got
• 49:29
  rejected. So, you know, he he even some
• 49:32
  say he even applied to have Xinjiang join Soviet Union as a
• 49:35
  Republic of Soviet of the Soviet Union.
• 49:38
  But what happened was during World War 2 when Hitler launched
• 49:43
  the Operation Barbarossa to invade Soviet Union, when the
• 49:47
  German army was at the gate of Moscow in 1941, around the same
• 49:53
  time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, dragged United States into the
• 50:00
  war. So since it's high at the time
• 50:02
  sitting in Xinjiang, he thinks he, he, he, he thinks that the,
• 50:06
  the, the power balance has shifted.
• 50:09
  And you know, his calculation was that OK, because America
• 50:13
  have joined the war against Japan.
• 50:15
  You know, United States is going to, is going to and is probably
• 50:21
  going to win out at the end. At the time, the US was allied
• 50:24
  with the nationalist government of China headed by Zhang Kai
• 50:28
  Shen. So in his estimation, OK, Moscow
• 50:33
  is under siege. By by by by by Nazi Germany.
• 50:37
  Moscow might might fall. Looks like Soviet's finished.
• 50:42
  US joined the war and US is ally with Jungkai shit, Junkai shit
• 50:47
  and and US might. They might be winning.
• 50:52
  So Jenny. Jenny wants an apple.
• 50:55
  So. So he thought, OK, I better
• 50:59
  throw my lot with a winner. So he he tried to get rid of the
• 51:03
  kick out of the Soviet influence from the region.
• 51:05
  He he kick out the other Soviet army advisors Fung Xinjiang he
• 51:10
  arrested. So at that time he will actually
• 51:13
  had because of Soviet Union influence, he had a cooperation
• 51:17
  agreement with the Communist Party of China.
• 51:19
  So Mao's younger brother at the time was serving as the finance
• 51:23
  minister of Xinjiang. So he had Mao's younger brother
• 51:27
  arrested and executed and to win favor with with the Nationalist
• 51:34
  government under Chiang Rai said basically and and this Stalin
• 51:38
  was not happy about this. I'm going to sorry.
• 51:40
  I'm going to quickly take one of these apples also.
• 51:42
  Stalin was not not happy about this.
• 51:45
  So when, when when the Soviet Red Army start pushing back Nazi
• 51:51
  Germany out of from Moscow and after they won the won the
• 51:57
  Battle of Stalingrad, they now decide to do something about the
• 52:03
  speech fail. So the way they dealt with
• 52:07
  sensitized, they decided to support these group of
• 52:11
  separatists and also Uyghur and Kazakh communists who were
• 52:16
  trained in Soviet Union to come back to set up to stage a
• 52:21
  rebellion. And they set up a government in
• 52:25
  in the northern part of Xinjiang.
• 52:27
  That's that's boring Soviet Union.
• 52:29
  So, so this is this is a part of the region that we didn't go on
• 52:33
  this trip. This is a region near the AL Tai
• 52:35
  Mountains and the in the Yili Valley and and they call
• 52:41
  themselves the East Turkestan Republic and to distinguish from
• 52:47
  the first the East Turkestan Islamic Republic.
• 52:50
  This is sometimes called the Second E Turkestan Republic.
• 52:55
  And this this, this. So their goal was to to gain
• 53:04
  independence for much of Xinjiang, but then Stalin's
• 53:10
  government and the nationalist government of China, they start
• 53:15
  into their own negotiation for kind of the post war settlement.
• 53:20
  And one of the settlement is that Soviet Union that China
• 53:25
  would allow Outer Mongolia to hold a referendum for
• 53:30
  independence. So up to this time, Outer
• 53:33
  Mongolia was de facto. What is Outer Mongolia?
• 53:36
  Outer Mongolia is the country of Mongolia today.
• 53:40
  Oh, OK. So at that time it was called
• 53:41
  Outer Mongolia because there's a Inner Mongolia which is still
• 53:46
  part of China today. So at that time, Outer Mongolia
• 53:49
  has had a de facto independence with the support of the Soviet
• 53:54
  Union, but was not internationally recognized.
• 53:56
  So if you look at World War 2 maps, a lot of World War 2 maps
• 54:00
  still show Mongolia as part of China.
• 54:03
  But Stalin want Zhang Kaishi to recognize the Mongolian
• 54:08
  independence. So he the condition is that
• 54:13
  Jiang Kai Shi will allow other Mongolia to hold a referendum on
• 54:17
  independence and in return Soviet Union will respect
• 54:22
  China's territorial integrity. So that would include Xinjiang.
• 54:27
  So, so because of this deal, the the second E Turkestan
• 54:37
  government, they start negotiation, the negotiation
• 54:42
  with the Chinese central government.
• 54:43
  So at this time, Chinese central government also exerted control
• 54:47
  over rest of Xinjiang. They got rid of the warlords
• 54:49
  census high because census high had been flipping flopping too
• 54:52
  many times. And Zhang Kai Sheikh didn't
• 54:55
  trust him. So he moved his own army into
• 54:57
  this region, took it over and and as a result of the talks,
• 55:03
  they decided to form a coalition government for Xinjiang.
• 55:05
  So, so East Turkistan Republic, they took up, they changed their
• 55:11
  name. They no longer called themselves
• 55:13
  the East Turkish Republic. They called themselves, you
• 55:15
  know, the three region revolutionary government.
• 55:19
  So, so, so, so they can say they're nominally still part of
• 55:22
  China and and then the Chinese civil war happened, right?
• 55:27
  So the communists won, the nationalist under Jiang Haishi
• 55:32
  got kicked to Taiwan and here in Xinjiang was still divided
• 55:38
  between the nationalist troops who control most of the Xinjiang
• 55:41
  and this Uyghur and Kaza communists who control this very
• 55:46
  this part of northern Xinjiang. So Uyghur and Kaza communist
• 55:52
  first of all, E Turkistan Republic, it wasn't all a
• 55:57
  communist government because it was it was in the beginning, it
• 56:02
  was a coalition between the communists and Islamists.
• 56:06
  So there was a tension between the two.
• 56:09
  So Islamists later defected to the nationalist side because
• 56:14
  they don't like communists, right?
• 56:16
  You know, they want Islam, they don't want communism.
• 56:19
  And so so they the the Islamist element of the East Turkestan
• 56:25
  government defected to the to the nationalist side.
• 56:28
  But two side has kind of standoff as a military standoff.
• 56:33
  And then when the communists was gaining their victory in rest of
• 56:38
  China, they sent their team to Xinjiang to negotiate with the
• 56:45
  Uyghur and Casa Communists. So Uyghur and Casa communists,
• 56:48
  they, they, they all boarded the plane to fly the Soviet Union
• 56:54
  to, to come see Mao, but that that plane crashed, killing all
• 57:00
  the top leadership. When was that?
• 57:02
  This was like about 19481949 killing almost all the top
• 57:09
  leadership of the Uyghur and Caza communists of the region
• 57:12
  except one the one the one who didn't didn't board that plane
• 57:19
  Sippity. So he was later he was invited
• 57:24
  to to join the funding ceremony of the People's Republic of
• 57:30
  China. If you look at old footages of
• 57:32
  the funding of the People's Republic of China in October
• 57:35
  1st, 1949, you have Mao walking the front and there will be a
• 57:40
  guy wearing fedora hat walking right behind Mao.
• 57:45
  And that man is a Uyghur communist city.
• 57:48
  He, he was the last surviving like high-ranking leaders of the
• 57:55
  Uyghur Communist movement. So basically he's signed the
• 57:59
  agreement to throw his lots with the Communist Party of China.
• 58:05
  And then the nationalist troops, there were still 100,000
• 58:08
  nationalist troops in Xinjiang. They surrender.
• 58:10
  They, they also decide to, to, to switch sides.
• 58:13
  So that's how Xinjiang in 1949 was incorporated as part of the
• 58:18
  People's Republic of China. And then in 1955, they decided
• 58:22
  to make entire Xinjiang a we were autonomous region.
• 58:28
  So. So this is a kind of the whole
• 58:29
  history. I just give you a like full
• 58:31
  history. It's a bubble round that.
• 58:32
  Yeah. Remember there's the this was a
• 58:36
  triumph of the communists right in the through the civil war,
• 58:41
  the Islamist element who previously disagreed with the
• 58:45
  communists in the East Turkistan Republic who sided with the
• 58:49
  nationalists now find themselves on the losing side again, right.
• 58:54
  So they many of them made their escape to made their way to
• 58:59
  Kashmir that was under British law at the time.
• 59:03
  And some of them made it to Turkey and Turkey being the home
• 59:08
  of the pan Turkic movement. The idea of Turkic and Turkic
• 59:13
  movement is that all the Turkic people of the world should unite
• 59:18
  together, right? So, so, so Turkey sees itself as
• 59:21
  a Big Brother of all the Turkic people, including the Uyghurs.
• 59:25
  And, and so there have and also later when Sino Soviet split
• 59:32
  happened, the Soviet Union and China relation deteriorated.
• 59:36
  Soviet Union also supported Uyghur separatists in Central
• 59:41
  Asia. Soviet Central Asia to Uyghur
• 59:45
  broadcast into this region right to encourage the Uyghurs to to
• 59:50
  up to rise up and against the against the Chinese government.
• 59:55
  So there has always been a separatist element who want to
• 1:00:00
  separate this part from from the rest of China, and that that
• 1:00:05
  gang became so after Soviet Union collapsed.
• 1:00:10
  The the, the nature of separatism change again because
• 1:00:13
  this this come from because around 1979 China completed the
• 1:00:21
  Karakoran Hwy. linking Xinjiang with Pakistan.
• 1:00:24
  By the way, we're going to travel to Karakoran Hwy. later.
• 1:00:27
  So this highway came in line at a very important time because
• 1:00:34
  1979 was when Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and United
• 1:00:39
  States was deeply involved in funding the Afghan mujahideens
• 1:00:43
  against the Soviet and their base was Pakistan, right?
• 1:00:47
  So at that time, China was also de facto allies of the West
• 1:00:52
  against Soviet Union. So China, US, Pakistan, Saudi
• 1:00:56
  Arabia, they all cooperated to support Afghan mujahideens.
• 1:01:00
  In fact, in 1980s, CIA actually have a listening station here in
• 1:01:05
  Xinjiang to observe, to spy on the Soviet nuclear testing next
• 1:01:10
  door in Kazakhstan. And, and CIA also source a lot
• 1:01:15
  of Chinese made weapons because they want to cover their tracks.
• 1:01:19
  So they want to provide the Mujahideen with the Soviet
• 1:01:22
  weapons. And because at that time a lot
• 1:01:25
  of Chinese weapons are replicas of the Soviet weapons.
• 1:01:28
  They're they're Soviet weapon derivatives.
• 1:01:30
  So CIA bought a lot of Chinese made weapons and the ship
• 1:01:35
  through the Karakoran Hwy. into Pakistan to supply the Afghan
• 1:01:40
  Bujahideens and for the Afghan Mujahideens to sneak across the
• 1:01:44
  border into Pakistan. They needed mules, donkeys to
• 1:01:48
  carry equipment, weapons. Yeah, initially, Americans
• 1:01:54
  supplied the Afghan mujahideens with Tennessee mules.
• 1:01:57
  But these American mules couldn't hack them.
• 1:02:00
  They're harsh Afghan climate. So they died en masse.
• 1:02:04
  So then CIA would come to Xinjiang.
• 1:02:07
  They bought hundreds of thousands of donkeys and mules
• 1:02:11
  to ship them to Pakistan to supply the Afghan Mujahideen to
• 1:02:15
  carry those Chinese made weapons for the for the Afghan
• 1:02:18
  Mujahideen. It was a big effort against the
• 1:02:20
  Soviet Union. This was the biggest CIA
• 1:02:22
  operation before the Syrian war. The Afghan operation was called
• 1:02:26
  Operation Cyclone and and then but but along the Karakorn with
• 1:02:35
  the Karakorn, the highway was constructed.
• 1:02:37
  This was 1979. Mao have already died.
• 1:02:40
  Then Xiaoping has gained power and China start to opening up to
• 1:02:45
  the rest of the world. So people are traveling abroad,
• 1:02:49
  people, people are starting to leave China, go to other parts
• 1:02:52
  of the world and that including some Uyghurs, some young Uyghur
• 1:02:56
  man who would travel to Pakistan to do business to go to school.
• 1:03:02
  And some of them ended up. But this was the same time when,
• 1:03:05
  when Saudi Arabia was pouring a lot of money to fund these
• 1:03:10
  religious school called madrassas along the Pakistan,
• 1:03:14
  Afghan, Afghan border to indoctrinate all these Afghan
• 1:03:18
  refugees in kind of the Saudi inspire Wahhabi ideology.
• 1:03:25
  A lot of we were young men, some of the young, we were young men
• 1:03:29
  ended up there. They're getting radicalized in
• 1:03:31
  those madrassas. And then they cross the border
• 1:03:34
  into Afghanistan to fight with Afghan Mujahideen.
• 1:03:37
  And in the in the 1990s, some of these Uyghur Mujahideen filtered
• 1:03:41
  back into Xinjiang. They wanted to do what they did
• 1:03:45
  in Afghanistan here. This is when a lot of the
• 1:03:49
  terrorist attacks start happening starting from 1990s.
• 1:03:52
  Another thing they did was try because at that time, you know,
• 1:03:57
  during Cultural Revolution in in Xinjiang, like the rest of the
• 1:04:01
  China, for a while all the religious activity was on halt
• 1:04:05
  with all religions was banned in Cultural Revolution.
• 1:04:09
  And then after Cultural Revolution ended, everything was
• 1:04:13
  opened up. So people there was a revival of
• 1:04:16
  religions in China, including Islam.
• 1:04:19
  So now these those Uyghur mujahideens came back from
• 1:04:22
  Afghan, they said we bring back the pure Islam, the real Islam,
• 1:04:27
  right straight from the land of the prophet, from Saudi Arabia,
• 1:04:31
  like so. But they're telling people
• 1:04:33
  that's when they're telling people women should cover up.
• 1:04:37
  Women should not leave the house to go to work.
• 1:04:40
  And they tell people, OK, you should not participate because
• 1:04:45
  the Chinese government is a kafir is a is a infidel
• 1:04:49
  government. And that word, by the way, is
• 1:04:52
  prohibited in South. Africa, Yeah, yeah, because it
• 1:04:54
  means something else in South Africa.
• 1:04:56
  But, but, but kafir just means infidel, right?
• 1:04:59
  So he said because it's a Chinese government, which is an
• 1:05:02
  infidel government should not participate in any kind of
• 1:05:07
  government related activity, including marriage.
• 1:05:09
  You know, don't register at the you, you, you, you perform a
• 1:05:13
  religious ceremony to get married.
• 1:05:15
  Don't go register the government and you don't, don't go to
• 1:05:19
  government sponsored schools, right?
• 1:05:21
  That's government schools. And, and you we should create
• 1:05:25
  our own parallel society. That's, that's, that's separate
• 1:05:29
  from the Chinese government. And go, don't go to the go,
• 1:05:31
  don't go to the government sanctioned mosque either,
• 1:05:34
  because all the mosque are sanctioned by the government.
• 1:05:36
  They have been tainted. They're not teaching the real
• 1:05:39
  Islam because all the imams and and mullahs in the mosque,
• 1:05:43
  they're all being government approved.
• 1:05:46
  So they, they must be tainted. So you, you come to us, we give
• 1:05:50
  you the real Islamic teachings. So, so, so, so started.
• 1:05:55
  And they, they initially they, they, they tried to do a kind of
• 1:05:59
  very stealthy way. You know, they tell people you
• 1:06:03
  shouldn't drink, you shouldn't smoke, which sounds good, right?
• 1:06:05
  You shouldn't drink, you shouldn't smoke, you shouldn't
• 1:06:07
  do drugs, right. And after they kind of gained a
• 1:06:11
  little bit local support because people took them to as like, you
• 1:06:16
  know, they're, they're really spreading the message of the
• 1:06:19
  real Islam. Then they tell, tell people, OK,
• 1:06:22
  women shouldn't leave home to to work.
• 1:06:24
  They should cover up. And so This is why by, by by
• 1:06:30
  2000, especially in this part of Xinjiang, a lot of women start
• 1:06:34
  wearing breakfast and and and and and and there's but, but the
• 1:06:41
  real problem is for for the Chinese government is a lot of
• 1:06:44
  terrorist incidents start happening.
• 1:06:47
  You know, the biggest biggest was 2000 O 9 Urumqi riot in
• 1:06:55
  June, July 5th, in July 5th, 2002 thousand O 8.
• 1:07:05
  You know, there was a huge ethnic riot in Ruchi.
• 1:07:09
  So you touched off originally because Chinese government had
• 1:07:14
  this program to get rigors to work in the East Coast of China
• 1:07:18
  because they figure, OK, maybe all this terrorism is happening
• 1:07:21
  because poverty. If we eliminate poverty, we'll
• 1:07:25
  eliminate the route, the foundation of terrorism.
• 1:07:28
  So, but at that time there were many companies or investment
• 1:07:32
  coming to the region. So it's like, OK, we will just
• 1:07:35
  bring the Uyghur workers to work on the East Coast China, where
• 1:07:39
  there's a lot of lot of factories making goods for
• 1:07:43
  export to the Western market. So Chinese government would give
• 1:07:47
  preferential treatment to factories that would hire Uyghur
• 1:07:51
  workers. But this Uyghur worker will have
• 1:07:53
  to be organized because they first of all, they need to allow
• 1:07:58
  me, right? They have a different separate
• 1:08:01
  requirement. So Chinese government organizes
• 1:08:05
  Uyghur workers in groups to go travel to work in factories in
• 1:08:11
  the East Coast. China.
• 1:08:12
  Now, at that time, Ned sponsored Radio Free Asia, for example,
• 1:08:19
  will spread a lot of rumors about this.
• 1:08:22
  They say, oh, this young Uyghur women leaving to the land,
• 1:08:27
  leaving home, going to the land of infidels.
• 1:08:29
  They will be corrupted. You know, they will turn into
• 1:08:32
  whores. And and so to to to to raise
• 1:08:37
  resistance to this policy, right.
• 1:08:40
  And then in 2000, O 8, what happened was global financial
• 1:08:45
  crisis, a lot of layoff in those factories because the orders are
• 1:08:51
  not coming in anymore. So there's a massive layoff in
• 1:08:54
  those factories. But because some of these
• 1:08:58
  factories that employ Uyghur workers, they have the
• 1:09:02
  government subsidy. So they were still, so they're
• 1:09:05
  still waiver workers coming in. So this is bring a lot of
• 1:09:08
  resentment into say, the hunt workers.
• 1:09:12
  They see they're out of jobs and that we grocery coming in.
• 1:09:16
  And then there was a specific incident that touched off a riot
• 1:09:20
  in Guangdong. Which which is probably what led
• 1:09:23
  to the genocide narrative. Right.
• 1:09:25
  But let me let me finish, let me talk about this specific
• 1:09:28
  incident because I saw it as it happened on the Internet.
• 1:09:31
  So there was a rumor start spreading that a hunt girl went
• 1:09:34
  to the dormitory to look for her boyfriend but she went to the
• 1:09:38
  wrong dormitory. So at that time they have
• 1:09:41
  separate dormitory for the Uygur and the hot because they have
• 1:09:45
  separate requirement religious requirements.
• 1:09:48
  So the rumor says she went to the by accident, she went to the
• 1:09:53
  Uygur dormitory and, and she was raped by the, the, the, the
• 1:09:59
  Uyghur man there. And then the, the authorities
• 1:10:01
  trying to hush, hush, hush this, this whole incident because they
• 1:10:05
  don't want the government policy to be criticized by bringing
• 1:10:08
  Uyghurs workers to work in those factories.
• 1:10:11
  So this, this, this Internet rumor very quickly become viral.
• 1:10:18
  So thousands of local workers start to gather outside the
• 1:10:23
  Uyghur dormitory and then it turns off into a attack.
• 1:10:30
  They did all these thousands of workers ton workers attacks the
• 1:10:33
  Uyghur dormitory. And in the BRA, one Uyghur young
• 1:10:38
  man was killed. So when this news traveled back
• 1:10:42
  to Xinjiang, it was floater also at that at that time, social
• 1:10:49
  western social media was not banned in China.
• 1:10:51
  So you could access Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.
• 1:10:54
  So a lot of the we were diaspora groups based in the United
• 1:10:57
  States, sponsored by Ned. They start to embellish the
• 1:11:03
  story and they they will say like they the because this
• 1:11:07
  actually happened was like the, the Uyghur man's dormitory was
• 1:11:11
  attacked. The Uyghur man's the IT was a so
• 1:11:16
  a young Uyghur man was attacked and killed.
• 1:11:19
  And so they said that the Hans were attacking Uyghur women
• 1:11:24
  dormitory. There were there was massive
• 1:11:26
  rapes, there was mass rapes and atrocities.
• 1:11:30
  So those there's a lot of anger. There was a lot of anger in
• 1:11:34
  Uluchi. So there was a big and the.
• 1:11:36
  Story was just building and building as it does, yes.
• 1:11:38
  Yeah, so, so there was a lot of anger and the we were staged a
• 1:11:43
  huge protest in the capital Uluchi.
• 1:11:46
  They went to the government building, the provincial
• 1:11:49
  building to put, to protest, to demand the government to do
• 1:11:52
  something, to investigate. And, but there was a lot of
• 1:11:55
  security around the government building.
• 1:11:57
  So they couldn't, they couldn't do anything.
• 1:12:00
  So what happened was later the, the the the protesters, they
• 1:12:06
  they dispersed into the neighborhood and then it turns
• 1:12:10
  into kind of ethnic program. They would, they would attack
• 1:12:16
  any hot person. So so they will, they will.
• 1:12:19
  This was in the evening. So it was like rush out and
• 1:12:24
  heard our child. So we went to that the weaker
• 1:12:27
  neighborhood. Yes, right.
• 1:12:28
  So that that area was on the route for a lot of the bus route
• 1:12:34
  for workers will get off home for work.
• 1:12:36
  So a lot of buses will be stopped.
• 1:12:38
  They will drag people from the buses and you know, they'll,
• 1:12:42
  they'll see which one is Uyghur, which is Han.
• 1:12:45
  And they'll beat up the, the hump passengers.
• 1:12:47
  And some people they couldn't tell, they will they'll ask you
• 1:12:50
  in Uyghur language. If you can't speak the language,
• 1:12:53
  they'll beat you up. They'll beat you up. 200 people
• 1:12:56
  were killed, 2000 people were wounded.
• 1:12:59
  And, and, you know, it was fungus.
• 1:13:02
  This this could possible, this, this whole thing could possibly
• 1:13:05
  be orchestrated and, and, and, and and organized, manufactured,
• 1:13:09
  yeah, be, could be organized because like from the
• 1:13:12
  surveillance footage, you, you see like a, like a group of
• 1:13:15
  people, including women wearing burqas, you know, wielding
• 1:13:19
  sticks, beating up people, you know, dragging people from the
• 1:13:22
  buses and beating. So this two, this whole
• 1:13:25
  incident, 2000 O 8 sparked the whole crackdown.
• 1:13:29
  So first thing that happened was Facebook was banned, social
• 1:13:32
  media was banned. The Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
• 1:13:35
  was all banned in China. The the Internet to Xinjiang was
• 1:13:40
  actually cut off for a while to stop the the the the rumor from
• 1:13:44
  from from spreading because day because you let's.
• 1:13:48
  You have to. Remember, Rumchi is still hot
• 1:13:50
  for Georgia city. So because after the 11 day
• 1:13:55
  after the, the, the, the, the, the program happened, the Han
• 1:14:00
  resident were organizing, were Han resident of Luchi were
• 1:14:05
  organizing, trying to do a counter attack on the Uyghur
• 1:14:09
  neighborhood. But too bad for them.
• 1:14:12
  That's when the People's Liberation Army arrived in
• 1:14:16
  Luchi. So they put everybody on, on
• 1:14:18
  lockdown. They put they, they, they
• 1:14:21
  enforce martial law on, on the, on the city and, and this led to
• 1:14:27
  the whole security crackdown on the Xinjiang region.
• 1:14:30
  Like all the security you saw today, it started from that that
• 1:14:35
  2008, the crackdown and. I mean the security at Urumqi's
• 1:14:40
  airport is the is the most hardcore scene.
• 1:14:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so and then but but that
• 1:14:46
  didn't stop the the the terrorist attack.
• 1:14:49
  It's because there's still a big spate of terrorist act,
• 1:14:53
  including in 2014 there was one in Tiananmen Square, a Uyghur, a
• 1:14:59
  group of Uyghur. The famous Gentleman Square.
• 1:15:02
  Yes, the famous tamer. A group of Uyghurs drove their
• 1:15:05
  van to run into the crowd in the Tiananmen Square.
• 1:15:09
  Because that's a tourist site. There was a lot of people.
• 1:15:12
  And so there were there were, there were mild.
• 1:15:15
  They will drive their their bank into the crowd.
• 1:15:17
  This this actually happened before the similar incident were
• 1:15:20
  happening in Europe, remember, like people were talking.
• 1:15:23
  So, so it first happened in China, yeah, like Tiananmen
• 1:15:26
  Square. And then before, so before 2014,
• 1:15:30
  anybody can just walk. There's no fences around
• 1:15:33
  Tiananmen Square. You can just walk in.
• 1:15:34
  Anybody can just walk in. So today if you go to Beijing,
• 1:15:38
  the the the taxes is restricted and they all started on the
• 1:15:42
  terrorist attack in 2014. Another attack was when Xi
• 1:15:46
  Jinping was scheduled to visit Xinjiang in 2014.
• 1:15:51
  At that time, Xi Jinping was scheduled.
• 1:15:53
  There goes our camera. Hang on, we have a camera
• 1:15:58
  malfunction. Yeah, let's just quickly fix
• 1:16:00
  this. So in 2014, Xi Jinping was
• 1:16:02
  scheduled to visit Xinjiang by train, and so they staged a bomb
• 1:16:09
  attack on the Urumqi train station.
• 1:16:13
  But the worst attack was actually not in Xinjiang, but in
• 1:16:21
  in in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
• 1:16:24
  So starting from. So the time 2014 was when like
• 1:16:29
  the Syrian war was like when ISIS was at the peak of its
• 1:16:34
  power, 132014 if you remember that.
• 1:16:37
  And a lot of the Uyghurs will travel out to go go to join the
• 1:16:44
  jihad in Syria. Yeah, this is a a well
• 1:16:48
  established circuit. So what they would do is these
• 1:16:53
  radicalized Uyghurs would travel because at that time there was a
• 1:16:57
  security crackdown around Xinjiang because of the attacks.
• 1:17:02
  So all the borders to Central Asia was sealed.
• 1:17:05
  So to get out of China, they adopt A different approach
• 1:17:11
  because Xinjiang's border is sealed, but they can travel to
• 1:17:14
  other parts of China, right? They can just jump on the high
• 1:17:17
  speed train and they will be in the southwestern part of China
• 1:17:22
  in Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar, Laos.
• 1:17:27
  It's very the border is very porous.
• 1:17:30
  It's, you know, like you can just.
• 1:17:32
  And it's a very big province. It's a big.
• 1:17:34
  Province and the border is very porous and I the policy over,
• 1:17:41
  I've been to Yunnan before at the policy over there is for the
• 1:17:45
  people who live on the border, they can cross freely.
• 1:17:49
  They they, you know, there's a, if you live on on the border,
• 1:17:54
  you can cross freely. So So what happened?
• 1:17:56
  This group of radicalized Uyghur they they would jump on the
• 1:17:59
  train functioning Jung travel to Yunnan and from Yunnan they will
• 1:18:02
  go to either Myanmar or Laos or Vietnam.
• 1:18:07
  Cambo travel to through Cambodia, Thailand, they would
• 1:18:11
  travel all the way to Malaysia. Once they reach Malaysia, the
• 1:18:16
  Turkish consulate in Kuala Lumpur would give them for any
• 1:18:22
  Uyghurs who made it to Kuala Lumpur.
• 1:18:24
  In Malaysia, they will receive Turkish passport and with the
• 1:18:31
  Turkish passport they will be able to fly to Turkey.
• 1:18:35
  Once they land in Istanbul, they will be greeted by by people who
• 1:18:41
  take away their Turkish passport.
• 1:18:43
  But then they will be greeted by jihadist recruiters who tell
• 1:18:47
  them to who try to get them to go to Syria.
• 1:18:50
  Hang on, hang on, hang on some. Serious.
• 1:18:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 1:18:57
  Just let me know when I. Yeah, we can't.
• 1:18:59
  We can't record at the moment. Yeah, I don't think we can
• 1:19:04
  record for a while because we're.
• 1:19:06
  Is it going to be like this for a while?
• 1:19:07
  Yeah, because this road is, is like, oh, all right, Yeah, it's
• 1:19:12
  yeah. All right, we're going to take a
• 1:19:14
  break. Noise cancellation.
• 1:19:18
  I don't even know where we were. We were talking about Uyghurs
• 1:19:21
  going to Syria, radicalized Uyghurs.
• 1:19:25
  We're travelling through Southeast Asia to reach Kuala
• 1:19:31
  Lumpur Turkish Consulate in Malaysia where they will receive
• 1:19:34
  Turkish passport which allow them to fly to Istanbul.
• 1:19:39
  At the Istanbul airport, their Turkish passport will be
• 1:19:43
  confiscated and they will be greeted by jihadist recruiters
• 1:19:47
  who tell them to go to Syria. So this is how some by some
• 1:19:51
  estimate there were 5000 Uyghur fighters in northwest Syria
• 1:19:56
  together with their families. Some people estimate their total
• 1:20:00
  of 10 to 20,000 Uyghurs now living in Syria.
• 1:20:05
  Now China realizes problem around 2014.
• 1:20:10
  So they cracked down on this flow.
• 1:20:12
  You know, previously porous border of Yunnan and Guangxi
• 1:20:18
  also got sealed, so in March. 2014, there was a group of eight
• 1:20:24
  weavers who originally planned to travel to Syria, who traveled
• 1:20:28
  to the border and got turned back.
• 1:20:30
  And when they realized they couldn't go go abroad, they
• 1:20:35
  decided to carry out attacks in China.
• 1:20:38
  So they went to the Kunming train station.
• 1:20:41
  They had these, they carried these long knives like
• 1:20:45
  traditional Xinjiang knives. Are those ones that we saw at
• 1:20:48
  that market? Yes, the one that I wanted to
• 1:20:50
  buy and then we decided I probably can't.
• 1:20:53
  You can't carry it to the airport.
• 1:20:54
  Yeah, I can't get it from. I can't get it between airports
• 1:20:57
  back. Home, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:58
  So in China, the Chinese tourist file can, you know, they can
• 1:21:03
  ship it, they can they can FedEx, oh, not FedEx, they can
• 1:21:07
  express ship it to their home address.
• 1:21:09
  But for us, we'll be a little more problematic because we have
• 1:21:12
  to figure out how to get on the. And we're flying multiple
• 1:21:15
  flights inside China, so it's very tricky.
• 1:21:18
  Yeah, so but these, these knives, you know, traditionally
• 1:21:22
  it's carried around in Xinjiang, a sign of manhood, you know,
• 1:21:26
  for, for for men to to have these non life knives.
• 1:21:29
  So but this Uyghur terrorists in March 1st 2014, they went to the
• 1:21:34
  Kunming train station and they start to stabbing people
• 1:21:39
  indiscriminately. Almost 30 people died from this
• 1:21:43
  from this knife attack and this together with serious incident
• 1:21:50
  in Xinjiang itself triggered more security crackdown.
• 1:21:54
  You know, one of the one of the attack was actually happening in
• 1:21:57
  Wu Chi A bunch of guys drove SUV through the early morning market
• 1:22:04
  and they throw bomb explosives out out of their window and they
• 1:22:08
  were driving people over with their with their SUV.
• 1:22:12
  So this explains the the the heavy police presence.
• 1:22:18
  And the term political, Politically sensitive.
• 1:22:20
  Politically sensitive and so starting from 2017, the Chinese
• 1:22:26
  government started a camp like a provincial wide campaign of
• 1:22:31
  deradicalization. They felt this whole
• 1:22:37
  radicalization in Xinjiang has reached a a tipping point.
• 1:22:41
  So they decide. So this is when they open these
• 1:22:44
  so-called reeducation centers, but they're really
• 1:22:47
  deradicalization centers. So for people who did not
• 1:22:52
  necessarily did not necessarily commit a felony, you know, that
• 1:22:57
  would that would, you know, get prison centers, but for people
• 1:23:03
  who maybe have some minor infractions, but they they
• 1:23:08
  didn't have been have been radicalized, they will be sent
• 1:23:12
  to this deradicalization. Centers, OK, so the government
• 1:23:15
  doesn't like any radicalization, and that's what's going on here.
• 1:23:17
  Exactly. And but the goal has always been
• 1:23:21
  to reintegrate these people back into society.
• 1:23:25
  The radicalization center wasn't supposed to be permanent.
• 1:23:28
  Do you know if they have done that?
• 1:23:30
  So in fact, in 2019, in summer of 2019, Chinese government have
• 1:23:35
  announced all the de radicalization service that has
• 1:23:38
  been closed. They announced this whole de
• 1:23:41
  radicalization program has been widely successful.
• 1:23:44
  So, so all the all the centers are now closed and you can see
• 1:23:50
  some of the changes in Xinjiang. One of the changes was that
• 1:23:54
  flaming barista at the Kucha Cafe, The.
• 1:23:59
  Guy. The guy bats for the other side.
• 1:24:01
  Right. So for a, for a openly gay
• 1:24:06
  Uyghur man, his life would have been much more difficult, let's
• 1:24:11
  say 10 years ago in a very conservative Muslim.
• 1:24:17
  But it's easier for him now. It's, it's obviously because
• 1:24:20
  he's openly flaming and in a very public place, right in a,
• 1:24:25
  in a very tourist place in, in Cucha.
• 1:24:29
  And as I mentioned, you know, his coworkers, this Uyghur woman
• 1:24:33
  also, you know, wearing like form fitting clothes that would
• 1:24:37
  have been frowned upon very much just a few years ago.
• 1:24:41
  Apparently they have the space now.
• 1:24:43
  Yeah. It's a Chinese restaurant.
• 1:24:46
  Oh, OK, so we at our next stop. Watch out your arm.
• 1:24:51
  Sorry. We are at our next stop.
• 1:24:52
  Looks like we have to take another commercial break.
• 1:24:54
  We got to eat. So that we can have lunch.
• 1:24:56
  Yes, we've got to. Eat.
• 1:24:57
  We'll be back after lunch, OK? So a few hours have passed since
• 1:25:36
  we had lunch. We have a situation, we have a
• 1:25:39
  little situation. We got the kind of visit from
• 1:25:43
  the local police. And the reason is that our film
• 1:25:48
  crew decide to fly a drone because we saw a Chinese couple
• 1:25:53
  flying drone. So we thought, OK, you know,
• 1:25:56
  maybe it's safe to fly drones here, even though at this time
• 1:26:00
  is a very sensitive time period. Because the Xinjiang government
• 1:26:04
  is currently celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding
• 1:26:09
  of the Xinjiang Weibo Autonomous Region.
• 1:26:11
  And Xi Jinping just flew to the capital, which yesterday.
• 1:26:15
  So because of that, there's heightened security all around
• 1:26:18
  Xinjiang and many places are off limits for Jones.
• 1:26:23
  So the, the, the natural assumption is this place should
• 1:26:25
  be off limits for Jones as well. But then because we saw a
• 1:26:28
  Chinese couple fly Jones, so we thought, OK, maybe it's OK.
• 1:26:32
  So. But I mean, also, we're just
• 1:26:34
  between mountains here, quite literally.
• 1:26:36
  Yeah, yeah. So we, we just, we thought we
• 1:26:38
  just OK, we just do a quick drone shots and then that's it.
• 1:26:41
  And then we took our time to walk around here.
• 1:26:44
  In the meantime, the Chinese police locked on us, locked on
• 1:26:49
  to us. They called our tour guide says,
• 1:26:52
  were you flying Jones? We will.
• 1:26:53
  Why were you flying Jones? And the tour guide said, wow,
• 1:26:57
  we're not with our guests at the moment.
• 1:26:59
  We don't know where they are. If they if they were flying
• 1:27:02
  Jones, we'll tell them not to. So we came back now and the
• 1:27:06
  police was already here and they had we had a big discussion
• 1:27:11
  because one of the problem is OK, put that thing lower so the
• 1:27:16
  police don't see you. So one of The thing is that our,
• 1:27:20
  our, our. Cop just drove past which is why
• 1:27:22
  I dropped the camera. The, the, the one of The thing
• 1:27:27
  is that our photographer is a Russian guy, you know, blonde
• 1:27:30
  Russian dude obviously stood out.
• 1:27:33
  Not only he has Jones, but he also has big ass cameras because
• 1:27:38
  he's a photographer. So there's a lot of question of,
• 1:27:41
  of course, you have a very politically sensitive region.
• 1:27:45
  And by the way, those are those, those, those police are Uyghurs,
• 1:27:49
  the Uyghur police. So they have a lot of questions
• 1:27:51
  and that we were being told by our tour guide to stay in our
• 1:27:54
  car. So you know not to create more
• 1:27:58
  confusion and more questions so so.
• 1:28:01
  This is, you say, tour guide, but it makes us sound like we're
• 1:28:03
  in North Korea, driver. Okay, sure, our driver well we
• 1:28:09
  because we contacted a local tour group to lead us through
• 1:28:13
  Xinjiang, right? This is a private tour group,
• 1:28:18
  not state, not state sanction tour group.
• 1:28:20
  This is why we get we have a rugging with the police, right?
• 1:28:24
  Is this a state sanctioned tour? If if this is like we are being
• 1:28:28
  accused in CCP shells, we would not have this problem with the
• 1:28:32
  police right now. How the hell did the police know
• 1:28:35
  we were flying a? Trainer.
• 1:28:36
  So my guess, my guess is the DJI Jones register when you know all
• 1:28:42
  the DJI Jones are registered, they must up maybe they're
• 1:28:45
  uploading their their data to like a local data centers.
• 1:28:51
  This is my my my understanding. I mean, obviously the the drone
• 1:28:53
  is communicating. Right, right, right.
• 1:28:55
  So they would know if a Jones take off in a particular area.
• 1:29:00
  And since this is a no Jones area, pretty much all Xinjiang
• 1:29:05
  is a no Jong area at at at this particular moment.
• 1:29:08
  I think the, the, the, the, the, the ban on drones will last
• 1:29:13
  until the what, the 28th of of September.
• 1:29:18
  So we're, we're unfortunately still within the drone banning
• 1:29:22
  days. So This is why they, the police
• 1:29:24
  are worse on our case. I mean, apparently very
• 1:29:28
  efficient, very efficient. So it's a most accessible.
• 1:29:47
  OK, so OK, so according to our driver, they just told us told
• 1:30:01
  the our our photographer not to fly the drones and requested to
• 1:30:08
  register their drone. So got some of their drone
• 1:30:11
  information. OK, but they didn't delete any
• 1:30:13
  footage or anything? To mail Yao to Tapa like quite a
• 1:30:17
  sleeping yeah. So they didn't they didn't they
• 1:30:22
  didn't ask any they didn't ask him to delete any footage or ask
• 1:30:26
  to see the footage. They just told them not to fly
• 1:30:29
  the drones and take down they took down the the drone
• 1:30:33
  information. We are chatting about the lead
• 1:30:37
  up to the security crackdown in Xinjiang and the effect it has
• 1:30:43
  on the Xinjiang society and this lead to the overinflated
• 1:30:50
  so-called Uyghur genocide narrative in the West.
• 1:30:54
  This is very important though. Overinflated, yes.
• 1:30:57
  So something was going on which triggered the overinflation.
• 1:31:03
  Sure. I mean, what happened was there
• 1:31:05
  was a security crackdown in Xinjiang.
• 1:31:07
  This was a response to the terrorism incident was occurring
• 1:31:11
  and the radicalization that was happening in the Uyghur society.
• 1:31:17
  The the, the crackdown, the de radicalization center that
• 1:31:22
  popped up was to address the, you know, what was going on in
• 1:31:27
  Xinjiang at the time. I mean, would, could there be
• 1:31:30
  abuse, you know, in this widespread crackdown?
• 1:31:34
  Probably. I mean, did the Chinese
• 1:31:37
  government go overboard in some instances?
• 1:31:40
  Very likely. But was it a genocide?
• 1:31:44
  No, because what's happened, what happened in Xinjiang and
• 1:31:47
  what is happening in Xinjiang pales in comparison of what is
• 1:31:52
  happening in Gaza at this very moment.
• 1:31:55
  I mean, it's it's which? Is a genocide.
• 1:31:57
  Which is a legitimate genocide so for people to say that what's
• 1:32:02
  happening in Xinjiang is a genocide is actual genocide
• 1:32:06
  denial by degrading the term of genocide and because.
• 1:32:12
  Because we're now travelling in Xinjiang.
• 1:32:14
  I mean, yeah. Do you see a genocide going on?
• 1:32:18
  I mean, does it look like a genocide?
• 1:32:19
  We've. Engaged with a pile of Uyghurs
• 1:32:22
  and it's been absolutely normal. Yeah, I mean, like we travel
• 1:32:26
  everywhere. Most of the hospitality workers
• 1:32:31
  and most of the shop owners, most of the the police are all
• 1:32:36
  Uyghurs. And, and in fact, we got stopped
• 1:32:39
  by police today and they're also Uyghurs and they're all speaking
• 1:32:43
  Uyghurs. So I, I don't see any evidence
• 1:32:46
  of the the so-called Uyghur genocide going on.
• 1:32:49
  And and but, but but but you know, this is because the, the,
• 1:32:57
  the West has tried to construct a narrative based on the
• 1:33:03
  security crackdown that did go on in Xinjiang and they they,
• 1:33:06
  they blow it up way over proportion in order to construct
• 1:33:11
  the anti China narrative. So that's that's a real a big.
• 1:33:15
  A big portion of that that narrative is driven by groups
• 1:33:21
  like the Ned. Yes, correct.
• 1:33:23
  I mean for example, correct. For example, one of the famous
• 1:33:28
  dichotomy like in the western reporting on Xinjiang is they
• 1:33:33
  would put the term Chinese police and the Uyghur.
• 1:33:39
  Juxtapose. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:41
  Juxtapose the two together. So it's almost like, oh, these
• 1:33:45
  Chinese are oppressing the Uyghurs without actually telling
• 1:33:49
  you. The police are actually also
• 1:33:51
  Uyghurs as well, You know, like this is still very Uyghur
• 1:33:56
  society, you know, at least this, this is a part of Xinjiang
• 1:33:59
  we're traveling to right now, which is the southern part of
• 1:34:03
  Xinjiang, South of the Kansas Mountains.
• 1:34:05
  This is a Uyghur traditional Uyghur homeland, still very much
• 1:34:09
  Uyghur. I mean, everybody is still
• 1:34:11
  Uyghur. They're still speaking the
• 1:34:12
  language. Uyghur's language is still
• 1:34:14
  written on all the signs. On every signs they have Chinese
• 1:34:19
  and Uyghurs, sometimes in English but always Chinese and
• 1:34:22
  Uyghurs are on the sides. Yeah.
• 1:34:24
  And we were discussing earlier that the term genocide actually
• 1:34:27
  is fairly empty because it's so. But the UN definition is so
• 1:34:34
  broad that really it minimizes anything that perhaps is really
• 1:34:41
  a. Genocide.
• 1:34:42
  When you call what's happening in Xinjiang oh genocide, it
• 1:34:46
  degrades the term genocide. I mean like it makes the whole
• 1:34:51
  term loose meaning. Especially compare what's
• 1:34:53
  actually going on in Gaza. Well, I mean, the UN definition
• 1:34:57
  includes the word intent. So what's happening in Gaza?
• 1:35:01
  There is political intent. Yes.
• 1:35:03
  There isn't political intent, Yeah.
• 1:35:06
  No, I mean here, when the de Radicalization Center were
• 1:35:10
  constructed, the goal was still to reintegrate these people back
• 1:35:14
  into society. The radicals.
• 1:35:16
  Yes, that that has always been the goal.
• 1:35:18
  And and by the way, the de radicalization center has been
• 1:35:22
  closed all across Xinjiang since summer of 2019.
• 1:35:27
  That's another thing that most of the Western mainstream media
• 1:35:31
  do not tell you they know they they think they're still, you
• 1:35:34
  know, people. Millions of Uyghurs are being
• 1:35:37
  I'm. Going to have to Fact Check you.
• 1:35:38
  I'm going to look on. I'm going to look on Wikipedia.
• 1:35:40
  OK, OK, go ahead, go ahead. Look at Wikipedia.
• 1:35:45
  But currently we, we have been to many places in Xinjiang
• 1:35:50
  already. We've been to Turpan, we've been
• 1:35:53
  to Kucha. And, you know, we saw schools
• 1:35:58
  for Uyghur children. We have talked to local Uyghurs,
• 1:36:03
  including Uyghur kids who came to us to talk to us because they
• 1:36:07
  wanted to talk, to speak to foreigners, especially germs.
• 1:36:11
  Yeah, Yeah. And so.
• 1:36:13
  So we have interacted with locals.
• 1:36:17
  And one thing you know, I would speak to if I met at Uyghur, I
• 1:36:22
  always open with Jacques Shimous S, which means hello in Uyghur.
• 1:36:27
  And it's always without exception, met with positive
• 1:36:32
  reception. You know, they people first
• 1:36:34
  expressed surprise that I would speak Oigor and then they will
• 1:36:37
  open with a smile and then that get them the conversation going.
• 1:36:41
  So I it's really hard for me to imagine that that would be kind
• 1:36:47
  of the reaction of a people whose.
• 1:36:49
  Also, genocide. Were a genocide going on, you
• 1:36:52
  would think that they would be attempting to flee across the
• 1:36:56
  border. Good point.
• 1:36:58
  That's a good point. That's a good point.
• 1:37:00
  Where are the Uyghur refugee camps, right?
• 1:37:04
  You know, in Central Asia, for example.
• 1:37:06
  Aren't any. Exactly.
• 1:37:09
  An interesting perhaps parallel is in South Africa, where we
• 1:37:14
  have a situation where white or Afrikaans farmers are being
• 1:37:21
  attacked on a regular basis, and the reasons for that are largely
• 1:37:25
  unknown, however. Well, you think it's economics?
• 1:37:29
  Yeah. I think it's a combination of
• 1:37:31
  things. And I think there's foreign, I
• 1:37:32
  think it's foreign interest also to destabilize our agricultural
• 1:37:35
  sector, OK. You don't believe in the white
• 1:37:38
  genocide in South? Africa, that's the that's the
• 1:37:40
  joke. That's how everything has been
• 1:37:41
  inflated so much that it becomes, it becomes comical.
• 1:37:45
  Sure, if I felt like there was a white genocide, I wouldn't have
• 1:37:49
  just finished, you know, moving into a beautiful new house, I
• 1:37:52
  would have emigrated, right? I would have left the country.
• 1:37:55
  But I don't feel in any way like like I'm being targeted
• 1:38:01
  specifically to be wiped out. But don't you think these terms,
• 1:38:06
  this overinflation of terms, genocide is intentional or just
• 1:38:10
  think that's the intent? Because there is a real genocide
• 1:38:13
  going on in Gaza, Yes. And yet they're calling, you
• 1:38:16
  know, the white genocide in South Africa.
• 1:38:19
  They're calling Uyghur genocide in.
• 1:38:21
  China, it minimizes. It basically makes the whole
• 1:38:24
  thing silly. Exactly.
• 1:38:27
  And I, I know I'm going to get pushback.
• 1:38:28
  So I just want to reiterate the attacks on South African farmers
• 1:38:33
  is very, very real. And it's very, very severe.
• 1:38:36
  And it does require a special kind of treatment by the South
• 1:38:41
  African government, which isn't happening.
• 1:38:43
  I want to just point that out. It is, it is a serious thing and
• 1:38:46
  it's very vile. But does it equate to white
• 1:38:49
  genocide? No, OK, it doesn't.
• 1:38:53
  But by the way, what's your take on the the whole attack on the
• 1:38:56
  farmers? What do you think are the costs?
• 1:38:58
  I think it's, I don't know, Carl, I've had this discussion
• 1:39:02
  many times over the years. I I, OK, so I think that there
• 1:39:05
  is certainly foreign backed interest.
• 1:39:10
  The third biggest political party in South Africa, the EFF,
• 1:39:13
  which is headed, it's run by a guy called Julius Malema.
• 1:39:17
  He Once Upon a time said on Twitter that one, one of their
• 1:39:20
  biggest funders is, quote UN quote, the Jews.
• 1:39:24
  And they love the Jews. And we often see this happening
• 1:39:29
  when it comes to disruptive narratives.
• 1:39:33
  But you, you, you also told me that you believe this has to do
• 1:39:38
  as economic basis because I'm not OK.
• 1:39:40
  Yeah, I'm sorry. So what I'm saying is what I'm
• 1:39:42
  saying is I think that there are perhaps foreign backed interests
• 1:39:47
  to destabilize our agricultural sector and and to install a
• 1:39:50
  sense of fear because when you when you have scared farmers,
• 1:39:56
  you have farmers who are more easily controllable and
• 1:40:00
  manageable, OK. On top of that, I also think
• 1:40:04
  that there is perhaps a small sense of of hatred that.
• 1:40:09
  Falls back into the apartheid era from the farm workers, but I
• 1:40:12
  think that's quite small. And I think another aspect of it
• 1:40:14
  is economic in the sense that a lot of farmers still operate in
• 1:40:18
  cash. A good friend of mine, farmer
• 1:40:21
  Angus, he lives 25 minutes away from my house, doesn't operate
• 1:40:27
  in cash. He's never been attacked, but a
• 1:40:30
  neighboring farm to him was recently attacked and they
• 1:40:33
  operate in. Cash that, that actually reminds
• 1:40:37
  me because a lot of the Chinese small businesses who a lot of
• 1:40:41
  overseas Chinese diaspora businesses who often do get
• 1:40:46
  attacked is also because they often operate in cash.
• 1:40:51
  And a lot of Chinese tourists often became targets of crimes
• 1:40:56
  when they travel to Europe or or wherever.
• 1:40:59
  It's because they also are known to carry large amount of cash.
• 1:41:02
  So I, I think that I, I, I think that makes a sense that makes.
• 1:41:06
  Sense not just cash, but most farmers carry with them a lot of
• 1:41:11
  guns and I suspected that also like cash becomes a target.
• 1:41:16
  Sure. Because the farm workers know
• 1:41:17
  that they are, that they are armed.
• 1:41:19
  Right. And they just have to figure out
• 1:41:21
  where the firearms are, right. And perhaps, but I, I need to, I
• 1:41:26
  need to look into that. I don't know what the statistics
• 1:41:27
  are around that, but. But you don't believe is there's
• 1:41:30
  white genocide? There's no white genocide in
• 1:41:31
  South Africa, but there is certainly a very severe problem
• 1:41:37
  with for particularly Afrikaner farmers being attacked and I
• 1:41:41
  don't know what the reasons are I.
• 1:41:42
  Understand. But going back to what you're
• 1:41:45
  saying, when we start throwing around the term genocide, what
• 1:41:48
  actually ultimately happens is that we start discussing the
• 1:41:53
  word genocide and we become distracted from the actual
• 1:41:57
  talking point. Yes, it's you are distracted
• 1:42:00
  from the actual genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza.
• 1:42:04
  And this is intentional. I would argue this is
• 1:42:06
  intentional because manufacturing, yes, because in
• 1:42:09
  2018, I remember this is at the time when Israel was bombing
• 1:42:12
  Gaza and New York Times and many W Washington Post, many Western
• 1:42:19
  mainstream media are running the story that the Xinjiang is
• 1:42:22
  actually the world's largest open air prison.
• 1:42:25
  And at that time, if you do Google search on world's largest
• 1:42:29
  open air prison, you will get Xinjiang, which is completely
• 1:42:34
  ridiculous because everybody knew it's Gaza that's been known
• 1:42:39
  as the world's largest open air prison.
• 1:42:42
  So it's almost like a game. It's almost like they did it
• 1:42:45
  intentionally to game the search engine.
• 1:42:48
  So to distract your attention from Gaza to, oh, look at this
• 1:42:54
  horrible thing that's happening to Uyghur in Xinjiang, you
• 1:42:56
  should be focused on that. And it's, it's, and I think in
• 1:43:01
  many cases it has worked until like more recent, until like
• 1:43:05
  more recently when Israel straight up posting their own
• 1:43:08
  war crime on social media. Now more people are, are now
• 1:43:12
  realizing what's actually going on in Gaza and, and, and, and,
• 1:43:16
  and, but nevertheless, I, I, my point is, I, I do believe
• 1:43:19
  there's a concerted effort to manufacturing a narrative to
• 1:43:25
  distract what's happening in Israel.
• 1:43:30
  I noted Falun Gong earlier. Let's just quickly talk about
• 1:43:35
  that. Is that also a Xinjiang based
• 1:43:42
  discussion? No so Falun Gong.
• 1:43:46
  And related to that is the organ harvesting.
• 1:43:48
  Right, right, right, right. So, so Falun Gong, there's
• 1:43:51
  organization who originated the claim of organ harvesting in
• 1:43:56
  China. Falun Gong, it's it's a cult
• 1:43:58
  that was banned in China since 19, since late 1990s.
• 1:44:03
  And they obviously have axe to grind with the Chinese
• 1:44:07
  government because they have been banned from China.
• 1:44:10
  And, and they one of their most sensational claim is that China
• 1:44:15
  target first they claim China target Falun Gong practitioners
• 1:44:19
  for organ harvesting and later that claim got inflated into
• 1:44:27
  China is targeting Uyghurs for organ harvesting.
• 1:44:31
  There's even a claim that China is targeting Uyghurs for organ
• 1:44:35
  harvesting in order to sell to clients in the Gulf states
• 1:44:41
  because the Uyghur organs will be considered halal organs.
• 1:44:46
  So, so, so, so that they marketed toward rich, wealthy
• 1:44:52
  Gulf Arabs. That was that was a claim.
• 1:44:56
  Now, the interestingly, one of the Uyghur doctors who was one
• 1:45:01
  of the quote, UN quote key witness for the following claim.
• 1:45:05
  Later he apologized on Twitter say, oh, I apologize to my Saudi
• 1:45:12
  friends that we sometimes get too emotional and, and, and, and
• 1:45:18
  maybe have overstated our claims.
• 1:45:21
  And I, I, I, I think because he doesn't want to pissed off, you
• 1:45:25
  know, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and, and because, you know, the
• 1:45:28
  claim was they're selling Uyghur China was selling Uyghur organs
• 1:45:32
  to, to Saudi clients. So Falun Gong was banned
• 1:45:38
  because, you know, originally for people who don't know Falun
• 1:45:42
  Gong is you might have heard of the epic times that is the media
• 1:45:47
  arm of Falun Gong and Falun Gong.
• 1:45:50
  They, they, they're now, they're now probably one of the most,
• 1:45:55
  you know, people often say Chinese propaganda.
• 1:46:00
  I think Falun Gong is by far the most successful Chinese
• 1:46:04
  propaganda in the world at the moment.
• 1:46:07
  And that is because they were sponsored by the US government.
• 1:46:12
  But that also, I mean, isn't one of the Intel operations based in
• 1:46:16
  Washington? Yes, well, Falun Gong originally
• 1:46:19
  they were funded by EU, the the what is it AG Yes.
• 1:46:27
  So so the the the agency that funds all these Ned adjacent
• 1:46:32
  organizations. So used to call BBG, the Board
• 1:46:36
  of Broadcasting governor. Now they they rename it to I
• 1:46:40
  think the US agency for yeah, US Agency for Global Media, which
• 1:46:45
  funds Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Liberty.
• 1:46:50
  He founds the Voice of America. So he found he founds it's an
• 1:46:56
  agency that founds all these like CIA adjacent organizations.
• 1:47:00
  You also funds file and goal. And I don't know if the funds
• 1:47:03
  file and goal now, because now far run a very quite profitable
• 1:47:07
  media organization called Epoch Time.
• 1:47:10
  And it's it's it's also linked to the CIA.
• 1:47:13
  Yeah, of course. I mean, that's why they're so
• 1:47:16
  successful in, in, in media, you know, like Epoch Times.
• 1:47:20
  If you actually go and have a look at the China articles, it's
• 1:47:22
  always negative. Yeah, of course, of course.
• 1:47:25
  I mean, they are Falun Gong and and they're very, they have very
• 1:47:29
  huge YouTube operations as well. You know, China Uncensory, one
• 1:47:34
  of the big Falun Gong channel that's out there, many people
• 1:47:37
  probably don't even know their Falun Gong, but they, they, they
• 1:47:43
  are the ones who originate a lot of these horror stories about
• 1:47:50
  organ harvesting in China. And, and, and you know, I, I,
• 1:47:56
  they obviously have axe to grind against Chinese government
• 1:47:59
  because they were being banned since late 1990s.
• 1:48:04
  They were being banned because because at the time they were
• 1:48:09
  growing very fast. You know, it's one of the
• 1:48:12
  fastest growing cult in China. They believe in UFOs or
• 1:48:15
  something. Well, they believe their leader
• 1:48:18
  could levitate and talk to aliens and all that crazy stuff,
• 1:48:21
  but they also believe they also don't believe in modern
• 1:48:24
  medicine. So they should they believe
• 1:48:26
  their follow one practitioner should not go to the hospital to
• 1:48:30
  not seek medical help, but should just pray to get better.
• 1:48:36
  But what happened was in the late 90s, some Chinese
• 1:48:41
  journalists ran expose on Falun Gong and so the Falun Gong
• 1:48:45
  organized a larger protest to demanding the publication to
• 1:48:50
  retract the story and apologize. And when that didn't happen,
• 1:48:54
  they organized a larger protest. This time they had us organized
• 1:48:59
  a thousands of members to do a sit down in the Tiananmen Square
• 1:49:03
  near and it blocks the entrance that blocks the entrance of the
• 1:49:09
  headquarters of where the the residents of the Chinese top
• 1:49:13
  leader Zhongnan Kai. And that alarmed then Chinese
• 1:49:17
  President Zhang Zamin, who, you know, did not like that at all.
• 1:49:21
  So he had Falun Gong ban. So because from China and this
• 1:49:25
  for this particular reason, you know, Falun Gong had a big axe
• 1:49:28
  to grind against the Chinese government.
• 1:49:31
  And, and and it's just so that US three letter intelligence
• 1:49:36
  agencies found Falun Gong a very convenient vehicle, you know, to
• 1:49:41
  carry out their anti China agendas.
• 1:49:43
  This is how Falun Gong got their U.S. government funding.
• 1:49:47
  I don't think anybody takes Falun Gong seriously.
• 1:49:49
  Oh, I hope so. I hope so.
• 1:49:52
  But they do, you know, they do have interview.
• 1:49:54
  I interviewed some women. Jennifer Zen.
• 1:49:56
  Yes. Yes.
• 1:49:58
  She's a Falun Gong. Yeah, she's Falun Gong.
• 1:50:00
  And. I believed her.
• 1:50:03
  Yeah, because some, some of some of their stories are very
• 1:50:07
  believable. I mean, they they create a very
• 1:50:09
  believable narrative. But the they also have a very
• 1:50:16
  successful like a dance performance show, you know,
• 1:50:20
  called the singing. Their branding is China before
• 1:50:25
  Communism. And you know, you will see their
• 1:50:27
  posters, advertisement posters everywhere in big cities like
• 1:50:31
  Los Angeles, where I used to live, there's just like a
• 1:50:35
  Chinese woman in traditional costume dancing.
• 1:50:37
  So many people thought thought they were going to go see like a
• 1:50:41
  Chinese cultural show, but it's actually a Chinese cultural
• 1:50:44
  show. It's actually Falun Gong
• 1:50:46
  propaganda disguised as a as a Chinese cultural show.
• 1:50:50
  That's one of the biggest money maker besides the Epoch Times
• 1:50:55
  media empire. But anyways.
• 1:50:58
  I think we have covered quite a lot of ground.
• 1:51:02
  Call. This is have a look here.
• 1:51:03
  Just turn the camera around. Look at that.
• 1:51:05
  The sun is setting. The sun is setting and we're
• 1:51:08
  going. How's that for bad timing?
• 1:51:10
  I'm filming us going through a toll gate.
• 1:51:12
  Yeah, it is 735. Well, this is actually 735.
• 1:51:19
  Let's talk about that quickly. Yeah, this is 735 Beijing time.
• 1:51:23
  And Xinjiang, even though we're a couple of time zones away from
• 1:51:28
  Beijing, but in China, all of China operates under Beijing
• 1:51:32
  time. So right now at 735 Beijing
• 1:51:36
  time, sun would be already set in Shanghai, for example, in the
• 1:51:40
  East Coast. But in Xinjiang, it's the sun is
• 1:51:43
  still bright because the locals operate what's known as the
• 1:51:47
  Xinjiang time, which is 2 hours behind.
• 1:51:49
  So 735 Beijing time is really 535 Xinjiang time.
• 1:51:54
  You know what I mean? Is the locals, local students,
• 1:51:58
  they go to school at 10:00 because that's really 8:00.
• 1:52:05
  So everybody kind of just mentally offset by two hours.
• 1:52:09
  And, and this is, but this is how the reason why all of China,
• 1:52:15
  despite China being a huge country and operate on one time
• 1:52:18
  zone is so they can have a uniform train schedule.
• 1:52:22
  It is confusing when you wake up in the morning.
• 1:52:25
  Yes, yes. Because in Xinjiang, every day
• 1:52:27
  we wake up right now, it's 7:00, It's still dark, you know, You
• 1:52:32
  know, Clock's Sung is just barely rising.
• 1:52:35
  End of Part 2.