LIVE IN HONG KONG 1: Chris and Shelley Answer Fan Questions | China Uncensored

It's live. Wait, we're live? We're live right now? Live right now. Oh man. How does anyone know what you're really live? Well, I just got a notification. Oh, cool. See if I unsubscribe from China. Hi, we're live. We're live. so professional. All right, 271 people watching. Oh my gosh, 271. Hi, this is Chris. I'm Shelley. And we're live in Hong Kong right now. Yeah, this is a test. Yeah, we're basically, there's a large protest today, so we want to make sure if things get a little crazy, we can do some live streaming of that. But we've never actually done anything live, so this is our test for that. I know somehow we'll be able to see comments from you guys. So here's what's happening. What's happening? Oh, you know, I'm looking at myself looking at myself. So now, if you want to look, I guess we can see what you can see what your phone is. And why don't you start answering questions? No one can hear. Turn the volume up. So how can we make that? I'm sitting closer to make it louder. Bear with us. This is our first time doing anything live. So we're trying to figure out the technical thing. Please turn off the volume on your phone. Yeah, we're just trying to use the iPhone mic because if you know we need to go live in the protest, that's what we'll be using. Unless Matt is trying to look for our lab mic right now that can connect. Yes, he is. Okay, so can't don't get arrested. Samuel Horn says don't get arrested. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Matt. I'm plugging in a microphone. Don't get kidnapped. I can't speak for Shelley. Thanks. Well, how fast are you on your feet? I'm definitely gonna be wearing running shoes. Oh, that's a good one. Jenny says she loves this. Let's move this closer. Okay. If I speak into this microphone, is the sound better? Oh, somebody donated $5. Thank you. Let's see. It sounds like it's much better now. Oh, it sounds much better. Great. So all we have to do is as we're running away from the tear gas, just hold the lab mic up, you know. Well, we'll tell the the police to like just just hold on a second. We need to get set up. Uh huh. Okay, this is gonna be fun. I can already feel this. Um, so we're gonna just kind of test this out for the next like five or 10 minutes. So you know, feel hey, Richard Hacker just gave us a dollar. Thanks, Rich. Yeah, so while we're here, you guys can ask us some questions. I'm kind of following along on my phone. And yeah, Shelley and I will answer your questions. Oh, now someone is saying too loud. Are you safe? Oh, Mr. Bullets gave us 99 cents. Thank you. Try not to die. We will try to not to die. Chris is going to get extra died in mainland China. No, they have temporarily suspended the bill. So I won't get through. We're we're okay for now. Although suspension and withdrawing the bill is not the same thing. So that's why there's still a huge protest this afternoon. So this was something interesting. We were watching the press conference with Carrie Lam yesterday. And, you know, we don't speak Cantonese, but we were with somebody who does and they said the Cantonese it was much more like, we're going to kind of like temporary postpone the bill. But there will still be the second and third reading possibly at some point. But in English, she said we've suspended the bill. And so a lot of Western media has kind of been reporting. It's been permanently suspended. Well, it's a little I think it's a little bit up for interpretation. I think a lot of the media has been saying because the word suspended was also used for Article 23, which was the 2003 like anti-subversion bill that the Hong Kong government tried to push through that would have basically made anything that was illegal in China also illegal in Hong Kong. Like I don't know, like practicing Falun Gong or, you know, protesting the government and all these things. So about half a million people marched on the streets in 2003. And in response, they suspended the bill and they've not reintroduced it in 16 years. Although every once in a while, they're like, we should really do this. Like we need to put this in our constitution, you know, for the for the good of the Hong Kong people. By the way, Ginger Snap just donated $24.99. Thanks. I'm having this is all new to me. So this is more Matt, the true hero, Joey. Joey gave $5 and said, Matt is the true hero. So that's not that's not appropriate to say. Hey, Matt, come here. Can I can I just say, Joey, I 100% agree with you. I am really the true hero of the show. I noticed also that Matt decided that he was going to cover me up and not Chris, though. So he knows which side is butter is breaded on. Yes, that's exactly correct. Yeah. So let's see. Yeah, let's let's keep the question. Keep it good work. Jaeger bomb, Donny $5 says keep up the good work that you are all doing in Hong Kong. So let's try answering. Yeah, answer a few questions. So don't let the tear gas get down. Think Hong Kong can keep what it has. Well, I'm a bit more hopeful today than I was before yesterday. Yeah, yeah. We were we got in Friday, very early Friday morning, Hong Kong. And the first thing we did was basically meet with a bunch of local journalists where we were kind of like, so if the PLA moves in, what do we do? And so there was a lot more worry about the government kind of ramping things up. And now, yes, since yesterday, when they kind of back down a little bit, it seems like protests can still work in Hong Kong. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think this is at least a partial victory, although a lot of people have the sense that what the Hong Kong government is doing is just sort of like backing off slightly to kind of make the protest today not happen or like have people not turn out. Yeah, have it be smaller. Yeah. And then maybe push the bill ahead anyway. But from a lot of people we're talking to, it seems like today is still going to be a pretty massive protest and we'll be there later today. Perhaps we'll, we'll live stream some of that. We'll also make like a proper China episode about that. Yeah, I realize this is Matt. And I, one of the things I realized about the live streaming is if you guys are hearing a little bit of a delay or some interference, that's just the internet connection, but we are on wifi here at the hotel. However, we heard that last Sunday, the internet connection through cell networks was very spotty with a million people. And so it is possible that that could happen. And in that case, we'll give it our best attempt, but no, no promises on that. It's also possible that we'll just have to, you just have to wait a little bit and we'll upload some stuff later. Yeah, we'll do our best. Yeah. We might not be able to do YouTube live video from the protest. We'll see. But, you know, we'll be on Twitter. Definitely. Yeah, Shelly will be doing live Twitter. Shelly, what's your Twitter? It's at S H E L Z H A N G. Yeah. And she'll also retweet it on the China Uncensored page. I see Kenneth He has given $10 and says, any idea what the CCP's response is going to be? Are they going to keep pressing or are they going to leave Hong Kong until 2047? I think he's going to say no on the second one. Yeah. It's hard to know what the CCP's response is going to be. I think at this point, like to actually send in like PLA troops would be pretty insane. So I don't think that's going to happen. There are. So the interesting thing about being here is there's lots of rumors going around. So for instance, one, there was a case on Wednesday night of Hong Kong police, like they're like, they usually have like their badge identification number, like on their uniform, and it was covered up. Some of them had them covered up. And then there are rumors, people saying that that means they're from the mainland, or like, they're not real cops or fake cops. Maybe they're either Chinese police or PLA soldiers. The idea being they're like their response was so much more violent. Although we did talk to a former police officer who said there are elite members of the like police squads where they do not have to show their badge numbers. So yeah, this is one of those things where, you know, it actually reminds me of right before we came here, we did a China Unscripted podcast with Meryl, Terrell Jones, who was a AP reporter in Tiananmen Square in 1989, right before the massacre and during the massacre. And yeah, he was talking about how like in the days leading up to the Tiananmen Square massacre, there was lots of rumors flying around. Nobody really had a super clear idea of what was happening. But so it's kind of like that. Someone asked how long we're staying in Hong Kong. The worst person in the world gave two dollars and asked how long we're staying in Hong Kong. Well, you're not the worst person in the world. So thank you for giving two dollars. Well, when we came here, basically, like on, I think it was Wednesday, like that was when we decided to come. Yeah, there was Wednesday morning decision, Wednesday night's flight. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, it was basically that was the day there was like really violent. There was a violent crackdown on some protests. I think like 150 tear gas cans were used that day, which was more than the entire time of the umbrella movement. So yeah, that's when we were like, OK, we need to go. That morning we decided we're going to go. And that night we were on a plane out here. What was the question? I forget. How long are we going to be here? Oh, and we didn't buy a return ticket. Yeah, we don't have return tickets right now because when we landed Friday morning, like I said, it was a lot more uncertain seeming. It did. We didn't know if the Hong Kong government was going to back down at all. And now they've done a partial retreat. But Joong-Hong Kim has donated twenty five dollars. Thank you. And ask how difficult is it to recall Carrie Lam? Oh, just recalling her in my mind is so difficult and painful. So what's blown me away about Carrie Lam is how she's trying to portray herself as like she's the mother and we all have to listen to mother because mother. That's kind of like a common like authoritarian regime. Yeah. But you don't really hear it with mother. It's usually like the father or big brother. Well, yeah. Dear mother. Well, I think for recalling Carrie Lam, there's no democratic mechanism to do that because she's not actually elected by the people. She's chosen by a group of Hong Kong elite, essentially, that are basically. Manitized to mainland. Yeah, it's basically like the CCP picks the Hong Kong chief executive through like this proxy committee that's controlled by the CCP. So she doesn't have to really please Hong Kongers, even though they're the taxpayers that pay her salary. She has to please Beijing ultimately. And she's only two years into her five year term. Yeah. So I mean, but people are very upset. They don't really trust the Hong Kong government anymore. They don't trust Carrie Lam. So people have been calling for her to resign. Yeah, I don't think people will really be satisfied unless the extradition bill is actually dead and Carrie Lam resigns. And there's no but there's no mechanism for them to force her out, really. Yeah. If anything, I think it could be a situation where like, you know, the Communist Party tells her like she has failed, force chokes her to death, and then she's replaced. Okay, maybe without the force choking her to death. The CCP isn't run by Sis Lawrence. Okay. Thank you to everyone contributing on this. This live chat. I know people have been wanting us to do like a super chat for a long time. So it's great to actually do that. Um, oh, yes, going off of what she well, Shelly looks for another question. Going off that whole mother thing. We were at a mother's protest. Last night, or the other night, time is meaningless to me right now. Friday night, the first night we got it. Yeah. One of the mothers at the protest was like, Carrie Lam is not our mother. We we pay her to do her job. So she should really answer the people. Oh, I'm listening. So Xivox donated $2 and ask, has there been a petition from Hong Kong citizens? There have been many, many petitions. Yeah, they don't seem to work. Like, for example, the mother's protest we went to, the organizers say there are about 6000 people there. But also that same day, like 44,000 moms had signed the petition, like telling Carrie Lam to not, you know, withdraw the extradition bill. You're not her mom, like that kind of stuff. Yeah. There have been definitely petitions. You guys are crazy. LOL. We're not crazy. Crazy for freedom, maybe. Let's see. The sound is rather weak. I really wonder how this is the sound is going to work at the event. I mean, I guess if you guys would like we could probably do like a little bit of live streaming while we're there, just so you guys can get like some just raw footage of stuff. But I don't know how that interesting that'll be. Somebody says the sound is fine. Okay. Yes, I'm Leo Taxel is asking, do you think the protests will keep the extradition bill at bay forever? That's really hard to say right now. I mean, right now it is not dead. And, you know, I imagine for whatever reason, this is something, you know, the Hong Kong government and the Chinese Communist Party was pushing. So there must be a reason why they want this. So I don't think they'll just give up. But like Article 23, that was something they also wanted. And they just it was too difficult to do. But I mean, Hong Kong has changed a lot. Yes. In the 16 years since Article 23, there's been a lot of erosion of Hong Kong is kind of basic freedoms. So somebody asked, well, real quick, Zephyr Chan does makes the point that the 1200 member election committee is not all CCP owned. That is correct. There's just a lot of influential business people on that committee that have a lot of business ties to mainland China. So it's not a great it is not all CCP owned, but in doc, in, in practice, really, there's not really a way that somebody is going to become chief executive that Beijing isn't okay with. Yeah, holy cow, Lord, Zarfax donated $500. Thank you. He does not ask a question. But wow, yeah, thank you. That's fantastic. Yeah, that that's, that is going to make this trip a little less painful. Budget wise for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're definitely really trying to keep costs down as much as possible. Question from Jeremy Jensen. Jer, huh? Can you? Oh, I see it. $20 from Jeremy Jensen. Thank you. Have you guys? Have you guys thought about covering big tech trying to demonetize and potentially silence the Hong Kong protests? Have you guys thought of using alternative platforms such as D dot two or bit shoot? Well, it's been interesting, like every video we post about the Hong Kong protests has been demonetized by YouTube, including one we did with Denise Ho a couple weeks ago, well before the protest started. And that was not demonetized. Only very recently did they like go back and find it been here, I think. So it seems like there's something going on with the YouTube algorithms where they're flagging Hong Kong protests and demonetizing them. So that's very not okay. Yeah, like our one about the Hong Kong moms protest got permanently demonetized. And if you watch it, I mean, it's hard to imagine. No, no, it was the Carrie Lam one. No, no, the Hong Kong one has now been permanently demonetized. Oh, it's been permanently demonetized now. Okay. So yeah, Matt had double checked. I was tweeting angrily about this about half an hour ago. Oh, okay. And in that period of time, the Hong Kong mothers one has also been permanently demonetized. So at least two of our Hong Kong videos have been permanently demonetized. So thank you, YouTube. Yeah, it was, you know, it's hard to imagine a more peaceful protest than the moms protest. But we did. Where they're handing out flowers and cupcakes. Yes. But we did have to put footage on there of like, you know, the police pepper spraying, like and some protesters and things that were happening at the earlier, like protests where they're kind of clashing more. But if we don't show that, we have to show that, you know what I mean? So it's Yeah, this is also, we don't know why this happened. But Google Translate was doing this weird thing where if you type in, originally, it was very sad later that got corrected to be like, so if it used to be if you typed in very sad to see Hong Kong become part of China, it would translate in that into Chinese as very happy to see Hong Kong become part of China. That got correct. Oh, sorry. Ah, Shelley, I can't see myself. And then like, I guess currently now if you type very troubled to see Hong Kong become part of China, Google Translate will change that to again, very happy to see Hong Kong become part of China. We don't know why. We don't know why. Although it is possible to tell Google Translate that they've made a mistake in their translation and like correct the translation. So it's possible that there are a lot of like pro CCP people or people who made bots that are like spamming Google Translate with this. And that could also be what's happening with the demonetization of the Hong Kong videos is that like, China's got the 50 cent army, not the China 50 cent army, but the bad 50 cent army, just flagging all our videos. And maybe that's having something to do with I mean, this is the problem with how YouTube does things now. It's like you have no idea why things get demonetized. It's just you're we're completely in the dark and there's no one we can talk to about it. But it's really quite a pain to fly all the way out here and then just have every episode demonetized. And then we're not sure if that means YouTube doesn't show the video as much like let fewer people see these episodes because it's getting flagged for demonetization. Somebody asked us if there have been any riots. We're lagging. Well, riots. I mean, Carrie Lam has called the protest organized riots. We have seen no rioting. And I don't think there really has been a riot from the perspective of what you would expect. When you think of riots, if you think of like, like what's been happening in France with like, like property looting or kind of like destruction of property. There's been none of that. In fact, like on Wednesday night, which is kind of the most intense time, a lot of the protesters like there was a kind of luxury mall near the area where the protests were happening. And they kind of sheltered a lot of protesters. Yeah. And so riots and like no nobody heard any of the stores, nothing like that. So somebody was like making the point on Twitter that if they were rioters, they're pretty inept rioters like that. Yeah. But what's scary to me, though, is so with the umbrella movement, a lot of the leaders of that have been put in jail for various things like a public nuisance. But that was one of the charges that got like nine leaders pretty recently. So my concern with this is like Carrie Lam saying, oh, this is a riot. Well, that carries like a seven to 10 year jail sentence. So I think the concern is like in the coming months, they'll start grabbing people, especially a lot of the teachers who were involved on Wednesday's protest. And they already arrested a guy in the hospital. Like there was a teacher. He got hit, I think, in the eye by a rubber bullet and then got sent to the hospital. And while he was still in the hospital, he was arrested for instigating riots. Yeah. And so like I wouldn't be surprised in the coming months, they try and get these guy the leader. This is a pretty decentralized protest. So there really aren't leaders the way there was with the umbrella movement. But I'm sure we'll be seeing people getting sentenced to like long jail terms for for participating in the protest against the extradition bill. Somebody asked if we can they can meet us in person during today's rally. We'll be around. Yeah. But you know, there might be maybe a million people there. So if you see us, definitely please. Yes. Please say hello. Maybe if we're all fleeing from like tear gas, that's not the best time. Unless you know a good shortcut. Yeah. Or if you have a helmet for us. We did not buy helmets or goggles. So things get heated. We meant to do that yesterday, but then didn't end up having time. Yeah. Thank you again for everyone who's contributing. This is fantastic. There's a question from Angela Luck. And maybe this will be the last one because we're at 22 minutes. Oh, OK. Oh, so Angela Luck donated 118 Hong Kong dollars. Thank you. Do you think the man who gave his life for this cause last night in Admiralty would give further pressure to the government? Cheers. OK, so that was one of the that that sort of it happened last night. There was basically this protester who where where was it showing? He actually went like kind of on the top of that mall that I was talking at the luxury mall. OK, so like a banner that said like, say, like, withdraw the anti extradition or withdraw the extradition bill. And he it's not quite clear what ultimately happened. Well, I guess it's clear what ultimately happened, which he fell to his death. Yeah. From the reports that we saw, it wasn't clear if like I think he had gone up there with the intention to jump. And then the police were trying to talk him down. The fire department had come and like, yeah, but they like tried to grab him. But like his clothes were loose. So it's yeah, it's not super clear. And it was like four hours or five hours that he was up there. So but that is the first kind of death that's been associated with this protest. A lot of the protesters are calling for people to dress in black and bring a flower for it for the guy who died and kind of treating him as like, you know, like a martyr in a way. So will it put more pressure on the government? I'm not sure. It does seem that like that, plus the unsatisfactory resolution to the extradition bill has left a lot of people very upset. And so I think that's going to carry over into today's protests. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of people. We've we've heard mixed things. Some people think that that protests will be slightly smaller than last Sunday because of the pause in the extradition bill. Other people think that people are going to be angrier because, you know, a lot of things that Carrie Lam said in her press conference yesterday were still kind of defending. Like one reason she said they couldn't withdraw the bill is because the government was correct. They were correct in wanting this bill to, you know, close these legal loopholes. She again brought up that Taiwanese murder case as like the justification for the extradition bill. So called the police force, the amount of force the police used warranted, you know, like said a bunch of these things that are still going to anger people. Like, you know, she's not like they're not backing down from their position exactly. And then she also said that, you know, they're not suspending the bill in order to pacify people, you know, it's just that they've realized, you know, they didn't communicate this well enough. Yeah. So I think a lot of the things that she said will make people unhappy. Yeah. But like one final note that I'll end on that is kind of nice is like today is Father's Day. So people are kind of expecting that a lot of fathers will bring, you know, their children to the protest. And people have been encouraging that, like a lot of the kind of memes and like posters that people have been passing around about the protests have been like, you know, we had the moms protest. Now it's time for the dads to step up for Father's Day. Bring your dad, bring your kids, you know. Yeah. And that has a big effect. Like, you know, this will be like a young generation that, you know, has sort of a political spark put into them from an early age. Like the people who the young people leading the protests this time, like they were like 10 during the umbrella movement. So this is these are generations of people that, you know, the Hong Kong government and by extension, the Chinese Communist Party has lost. One thing that I found interesting that was happening is like a lot of the people, it's like Hong Kong is like any other city where some people are more politically active than others. But I've seen like photos and footage of these kind of community screenings where the protesters are bringing screens and like putting them out at night around Hong Kong and showing like videos of like the police brutality that happened or whatever to just like the ordinary Hong Kongers who might not be as plugged into what's happening. And so there's I think an undercurrent of support that's still there because you don't want to mess with people's kids. Like that's a big thing. Yeah. The sign says don't shoot our kids. Yeah. It's hard to argue against. Yeah. So I think there's definitely like a groundswell of support that wasn't there in the same way for the umbrella movement. Yeah. But with that, I think we're going to sign off for now. You know, keep your eye on the channel because we may be doing some live streaming in a couple hours when we're at the at the protests and, you know, we'll be there all day. You know, we're expecting a long day and night. So wish us luck. Thank you for your support. And thank you to everyone who donated on Super Chat. That's fantastic. And it definitely helps since YouTube is demonetizing all of these videos. So, yeah, keep your thoughts and prayers with the people of Hong Kong. This is going to be an exciting day. See ya.