China isn't real: Temu spying on former staff/ body part in Beijing streets

China is not a real country. I'm more than convinced after the news this week. Some of the most bizarre stuff happened in China. From body parts in the middle of the road in Beijing, to the CCP banning stock selling at open and close, to Timu tailing their former employees suing them out of the industry, to a provincial study session of unifying or liberation of thoughts. And after I list all of them, you'll probably agree with me. Welcome to China Insider, I'm David Zhang. Now, you saw the title, right? China, under the CCP, is living in a parallel universe where apparently nothing is normal. This is a screenshot leaked by a former PDD employee. PDD, or Pinduoduo, is the parent company of Timu. To prevent former staff from working at their competitors, PDD will actively surveil and tail their former staff, including taking photos and videos. And PDD will ask its former staff to pay a monthly social security fee as a way to track their destination for the next job. Workers sign a non-compete disclosure or non-compete clause when they leave or resign, which the clause states that it will prevent the worker from working at their competitor for a certain time or certain area in the country. Once they leave their job, PDD will actively tail their former employees to find out whether or not they're actually doing something that will violate this clause, and this includes filming them at home. Many former PDD employees said on social media this week that Pinduoduo was suspected of abusing the non-compete agreements and employees who resigned were often sued for hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions in compensation. According to the non-compete disclosure, which was provided by some of the employees to Sina Technology, about 30 domestic companies are involved in so-called related businesses, and these are listed as a part of those competitors, which means that many of these companies, if you go work for them, will file a lawsuit with PDD. And there are many restricted companies. Companies with a shareholding ratio of more than 20% are also considered a competitor. These restrictions directly lead to employees essentially having no choice but to leave the industry entirely if they want to get away from being sued. From the list here, many of them worked for more than 2 years. Some of them even worked for at least a year or so. One person worked for 4 years. The next column shows how long they've been battling with a lawsuit against PDD. According to this internet source, PDD has never lost a lawsuit of this kind, given the fact that they are state-backed and state-favorite. Timu, of course, by extension, is also backed by the Chinese Communist Party to export cheap and poor quality goods around the world, so it is a favorite of the party. And that's to flood the market around the world with Chinese products. Now, according to one former staff at PDD, she said that after she graduated from college in July of 2022, she joined PDD Grocery, which is part of the company, with a monthly salary of about 10,000 yuan. Now, she resigned in March of 2023 due to frequent overtime work. Of course, I did a short video on this, the 996 culture, right? It was too much for her health. And so when you leave your job, you're required to sign this non-compete clause as a part of that. Otherwise, you won't get your resignation certificate to get recommended for a different job. But then in October of 2023, so about, you know, this is seven months after she resigned from PDD, she was sued and demanding compensation of approximately 280,000 yuan. So that's more than double her annual income at PDD. So a company that abuses employees with overtime and abuses and surveils them, and then if nothing else matters, they sue the heck out of them. They're essentially doing that, selling the cheap goods to the rest of the world. So what kind of an app are people supporting by purchasing stuff on there? You're essentially supporting this extreme behavior. Now, PDD and Timu are, like I said, state favorites because they help to export deflation to the rest of the world. I actually did a video on this, so I'll link it here for you. But meanwhile, according to the Financial Times, China state-owned enterprises have begun to set up what's called an in-house reserve military units. Now, that's a legacy of Mao Zedong, which is a sign, of course, of the entire country being increasingly concerned about the social and political instability and trying to concentrate power as well as preparing for war. Now, this is as the company and general economy slows down, and so you focus more on the political control side of things. Now, the Financial Times analysis of companies' announcement and state media reports over 2023, so last year, shows that dozens of Chinese state-owned enterprises have established the New People's Armed Forces Department. And this department was historically affiliated with the People's Liberation Army and its recruitment efforts for the county and village level, which, of course, back in the days, was the core of the concentration of power under Mao Zedong. But today, they're typically conducting civil defense activities, and they contribute to military recruitment, promotion, and training. Now, of course, this military unit isn't going to directly go to war, but it is a part of reviving what was once seen as a turbulent period towards the Korean War, the subsequent Vietnam War, etc. of that period. Now, this never officially disbanded over the years in China, but it was downplayed from the reform and opening up period, which, of course, we know that now Xi Jinping is going back on. So, meanwhile, the CCP is drafting the new private sector law at the same time. Now, they're supposedly going to protect the so-called private sector, all the while they're increasing the focus on making state-owned enterprises more militarized and more politically active, right? And let me tell you, no matter what they do, the private sector has never been allowed to fly freely, because once they get too big, they get punished. And the core problem with that is because if you're rich enough, well, then you become capitalistic as a private company, and then you can rival the state, which isn't something you want in a communist country. So, the problem isn't really the law or the legislation, it's the Chinese Communist Party itself. Now, this is without reason, right? These increasingly isolative actions by the CCP, they're done to return China back to the Mao Zedong era as we speak. So, recently, a provincial communist party in Hunan, they called for the emancipation of mind, and this is a discussion centering around Xi Jinping's thought. Now, while on paper, it sounds like they're trying to welcome alternative thought processes of that to the communism ideas, right? But in reality, the many older generation in China who's lived through the Cultural Revolution would know that this so-called liberation or emancipation of the mind is actually simply unifying all thoughts to be Xi Jinping's thought, aka to be more communist, more socialist, and more radically Maoist. So, as predicted, the announcement clearly stated at the outset that emancipating the mind or liberating the thought is, first of all, to study and implement Xi Jinping's thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, and to fully implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and the Second Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Alright, so a bunch of words, none of those actually mean anything about liberty or freedom or anything like that, or freedom of thought, right? So, it means that the mind must be liberated, but only under the context of Xi thought. In other words, the definition of liberation in China is to think freely as long as it is within the free space that is considered thinking within the context of Xi Jinping. Otherwise, you're still a traitor or anti-revolutionary. So, this may recall you back to another concept we recently covered, something called Maple Bridge Experience or Feng Chao Bridge Experience. Now, that actually draws back again to the Mao era, which is called the Liberation of the Rule of Law or the Suspension of the Rule of Law. People essentially controlled the law, meaning that people struggled against people. Different groups of people struggled against different groups of people. And the suspension of law was in place so that people could fight against other groups of people, right? Class struggle, identity struggle, gender struggle, etc. So, yes, we're one step closer to that of the Mao era, once again, under Xi Jinping. So, yeah, it's happening in real time. It's no wonder foreign investment in China is down 82%. Again, news headline this week, that's going back to levels of 1993 with only 33 billion US dollars in total investment last year. And this is according to state data. Now, if I was Wall Street and I hired a risk assessment group on geopolitics, they'd probably tell me that China is literally walking backwards. I would stop investing in China too if I heard some of the stuff I covered today. I mean, who knows what's going to happen to the company I put my money in, in China, if they would just investigate the company under spy charges one day. All my money will be gone. Now, China's economy is clearly over, as we've repeatedly talked about, because it is propped up by foreign investments over the years. Without it, it's losing its lifeline. Recently, though, a large number of netizens posted on social platforms saying that they were let go by the company on the first day of work after the Chinese New Year holiday season. So, some of the netizens said that on the first day of work, they arrived at the company and learned that, well, the company had closed down, or that they were let go, prompting to comforting words from internet users like, well, at least they didn't fire you before the new year, or at least there's severance pay. So, it's a sign in general that the economy is not turning, and it's doing really bad, the stock market as well. We'll talk about that next. But the CCP continues to hide it. So, China announced yesterday that they're banning institutional investors, aka larger firms, from stock selling at the opening and closing of the trading day. So, yes, large investment firms, where majority of the money gets moved around, is not allowed to trade in the beginning and the end. So, that's about 30 minutes of the beginning of the day and the end of the day, where 80% of the shares that are actually trading, hence, happen in those two time frames. And then you're saying that, okay, well, that's where the things are happening. We're going to let you not do that. In what world is a stock market supposed to work if you deny people from selling? Is that even trading? Well, that's basically what China's stock market is. It's just a domestic game. That's like telling the people in China who have lost so much money that, well, you can't do your job to earn them back because, well, I said so. They removed the only thing that these people in stock trading want to do right now, which is to sell. So, you would think that holding onto these pointless shares of these terribly performing companies would be beneficial, right? Well, that's what the CCP wants you to do. But then you're like an independent thinking, math-driven, market-driven, clear-minded person who is trying to sell stocks. You keep clicking that button, it just doesn't do anything. Because why would you risk losing all of your beautiful shares in China when you can stay and, well, I guess you can sink with the boat? That is the Chinese market. Now, the Chinese stock market, even as it crashes and burns, it wants to take more people down with it, including these larger firms. And wow, there's no panic button involved, right? No sell button. You can internally scream all you want, but don't let the outside world hear it because the next thing you know, you're getting invited to the police station over tea time to talk about what your wrongdoings are. It's like there's no insane asylum for the stock traders in China. Now, it's no wonder people are going crazy. Just on Wednesday, this happened in the morning of Wednesday. This is the rush hour time. Body parts were found on the streets in the middle of a major expressway in Beijing's Three Ring Road, and that circles around Beijing's city center. So, this is in the heart of Beijing. And of course, anything that happens in Beijing that's, of course, a disaster or something like this is considered a major political no-no. Aside from the unidentified body parts, having something like that happen in Beijing in broad daylight is already a sign of doom. For the authority, that is. Somebody is trying to serve a warning. But these turbulent events, they happen like, you know, once in a while. Sometimes it happens as a form of explosion. Other times like this. Now, this is all happening right before the New Year celebration period even ended, right? It's supposed to be a peace time. At least that's what the authorities are trying to create. But now, there's at least 300,000 cameras who can easily find the car that dropped these off in the middle of the road at that particular time. So really, this is not a problem in terms of tracking down whoever did it. But it is a problem if that this is to deliberately serve a message and that they they're not really trying to catch the perpetrator. Now, of course, some may ask, is this an animal body part or something like that? Well, it wouldn't be so shocking as to having them blocked off the entire road and that the person filming this video is so shook that they're not even like they're trying to hide the fact that they're trying to film it. Right. And the hearts are covered with the white cloth with a patrolman. So it's a it's a pretty interesting time. It's also a checkmate for Xi Jinping because, you know, this all happened in the capital. Like I said, it's a warning. It's typically believed that nothing happens without a reason in Beijing. And so we'll see what happens from there. Anyways, I hope you have some interesting thoughts about this episode, because to me, it sounds like I'm just watching a really terribly written drama in real time. And it is happening in a country I grew up in. So let's see where this goes. Anyways, enjoy the content. Leave a like comment below your thoughts today and subscribe to our channel. Until next time. I'm David Zhang. This is China Insider. Bye bye.