Chinese Authorities Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine

China surrounds Taiwan with a hundred ships. I wonder what they might be rehearsing for. A guy drives an excavator into a Chinese government building. What could he be possibly mad about? And Nvidia's billionaire CEO resigns because he got caught sleeping with an alleged Chinese spy. That and more on this week's China news headlines. Welcome to China Uncensored, You know those scam texts that are flooding your phone? I'm Chris Chappell. Some of them may be coming from China. And today's sponsor, Surfshark, can help you fight them. More on that in a bit. But usually when the CCP wants to scare Taiwan, they make a whole production out of it. They publish footage of ships launching missiles and shooting Gatling guns. Or computer animation of rockets being launched directly at Taiwan. They'll even give it a dramatic name like Straight Thunder, which is definitely a naval exercise, and not Xi Jinping wishing he could star in a sequel to Magic Mike. Oh god. God! Ugh! Excuse me for a moment. I'm glad what actually happened this month was just that China quietly deployed over 100 Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the Western Pacific. On November 3rd, Taiwan's National Security Council Chief Joseph Wu posted this map showing more than 100 Chinese Navy and Coast Guard ships spread across the Western Pacific. He called Beijing a big bully, which by diplomacy standards is very rude. And also 100% true, because in diplomacy, manners have no place for reality. This is part of what one expert calls an anaconda strategy targeting Taiwan. An anaconda strategy means NO! God, thank you. An anaconda strategy means gradually strangling Taiwan through blockades, isolation, surveillance, and other gray zone warfare—basically, to force Taiwan into submission without launching a full-scale invasion. It's battling on a budget, because who can be a conqueror in this economy? Analysts at the American Enterprise Institute also say this is part of China's cognitive warfare, and that it's meant to create the impression that the PLA can isolate Taiwan at will. China didn't give the exercise a name. They didn't even publicize it was happening. I'd say given its description, oily grip might be a good one, but I don't want to see that graphic pop up if I committed to that. On Tuesday, Taiwan's defense minister simply confirmed China is conducting area denial drills in the Western Pacific. So why the silence? As China analyst Melissa Chen writes, conducting a large, relatively unpublicized deployment while the US was distracted with elections and the Iran war fits patterns of probing attention and response. The CCP hopes that everyone just gets used to China placing 100 ships around Taiwan. It becomes routine. In the future, if and when the CCP actually decides to blockade or invade Taiwan, they can start out by pretending it's just a drill and get all their assets in place before anyone else has time to react. Russia used this exact playbook in the months leading up to its invasion of Ukraine five years ago. For now, the CCP is trying to give the impression that massive drills surrounding Taiwan are totally normal. The CCP also says there's no such thing as transnational repression, Gretchen's her, you know, grain of salt. So they're just going to keep drilling harder and harder and... Oh god, why? But the most interesting thing about the drill is the timing. Next week, Xi Jinping will host the APEC summit in Shenzhen. It's an annual meeting of 21 major economies in the Asia-Pacific. President Trump plans to attend, saying one of the meetings I think will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that'll be interesting. Man, imagine living the type of life where you're going to meet face to face with the two most powerful dictators on the planet, and your reaction is the same as someone saying they're taking you to a Picasso exhibit. I will now use super intelligence to dramatize this historic meeting. Wow, my anaconda don't want none of that three-way. Nightmare blunt force trauma rotation. You know who wasn't invited, though? The president of Ukraine. Yeah, he's not invited to this meeting of world powers that may decide the fate of his country. Ukraine wasn't invited to APEC at all, since it's not a member. But Taiwan is a member. And apparently, since this year's summit is being held in China, Taiwan got slighted in the pettiest way possible. Instead of receiving a formal invitation like all the other countries, China just sent them an email. But you know, By inviting Taiwan to APEC at all, China just kind of admitted that Taiwan is in fact a country. But the CCP has been trying really hard to make that not so. It's not just the drills, it's the election interference. Some of the CCP's foreign election interference in Taiwan is subtle. Fake accounts, AI-generated news sites, fabricated polls. And then there's the Taiwan People's Communist Party. I assume the Venn diagram of them and Taiwanese sadomasochists is just a circle. Over the weekend, Taiwanese authorities detained the Party's founder and chairman, Li Teng-huang, the guy in the middle. He was running for borough chief of a district just outside Tainan. Prosecutors allege he was doing so under the direction and sponsorship of the Chinese Communist Party. Prosecutors say Lin took instructions and money from the CCP to run in Tainan's Xinying District, and that he directed another Party member, Chen Chen-chou, to run for borough chief in Hsinchu. Prosecutors allege that Lin sought to buy votes by repeatedly recruiting voters to travel to mainland China, where they received hospitality. In other words, some of their expenses were paid. You know, vote for me and you'll get a paid vacation in the country that wants to invade you. It's like telling someone you mugged to tell the cops someone else did it, and as a thank you, you'll uppercut them in the liver. A Taiwan court has ordered Lin held incommunicado, and Chen is out on bail. Neither man has been convicted of a crime, and this isn't Lin's first time being detained. In 2023, he was indicted for allegedly taking Chinese money and for planning to pay protesters against Nancy Pelosi's visit with cash and Chinese Covid test kits. And in 2025, a court found him not guilty. The prosecutors are zero for one against this guy so far. Taiwan holds local elections on November 28th, and authorities say they're investigating multiple foreign interference cases. I just hope the people voting for Taiwan's Communist Party have the decency to leave their gimp masks at home. Lithuania is backtracking on its support for Taiwan in the stupidest way possible. So you know how I said that China sort of implied Taiwan was a country by inviting them to APEC? Not that they had much choice, international politics and all that. Well, I'm sure that must have rankled them something awful, because as far as the CCP is concerned, that is a big no-no. You see, the CCP is a wary, sensitive little bear. It doesn't like Taiwan's embassies around the world to be called embassies, even though that's what they are. And the CCP doesn't want Taiwan to even be in the name, because this would imply that Taiwan is a country, god forbid. For example, Taiwan's embassy in Washington is called the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office. It's like that in every country in Europe. Except Lithuania. Back in 2021, Lithuania did something brave. It let Taiwan open an office in its capital called the Taiwanese Representative Office, brushing aside China's opposition. Of course China was furious. It condemned the accurate naming as an egregious move. China kicked Lithuania's diplomats out of Beijing and quietly blocked Lithuanian imports. But then Taiwan stepped up. They bought 20,000 bottles of Lithuanian rum that had been stuck at sea after China refused to let it through customs. And Lithuania's exports to 10 Indo-Pacific countries, including Taiwan, jumped by more than half. Impressive for Taiwan to do this while nursing a wicked Lithuanian rum hangover. Lithuania's foreign ministry said that more than made up for the losses in China. When I told you about it at the time, it was a triumphant story of standing up to the CCP. But now, five years later, Lithuania has a new government that wants to patch things up with China. Because China is like the rise of Skywalker. You go long enough without seeing it and think, it can't be as bad as I remember it. It is. It always, always is. According to a report on Monday, Lithuania's Foreign Ministry asked Taiwan's office to change its name. The document argued that the office's current name was obstructing the development of economic ties between Lithuania and Taiwan and creating difficulties for business. But now it's Taiwan's turn to stand up to the bully. Taiwan said hard no on the name change, not going to do it. Which is good, because giving in to the CCP on the name change would not have gotten either Taiwan or Lithuania any actual benefits. These are the real leftists trying to force someone to transition we need to be paying paying attention to. Meanwhile, my favorite state-run media, the Global Times, quoted a Chinese expert saying words alone will not mend Lithuania's fractured ties with China, and that Lithuania needs to take concrete steps to respect China's core interests. Which just goes to show that when you give into the CCP a little bit, they'll just demand you give more. Somebody please translate this book into Lithuanian. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned amid an investigation into his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. I mean, it would have been bad enough if he and the spy were just friends, but they were more than that. Two days ago I did a whole episode on his relationship with the alleged Chinese spy and how it came to be, so check it out, link is below. But now Jensen Huang has resigned over it. As of me recording this, which is actually yesterday because I'm a time traveler, Nvidia's stocks fell 13% on that news. For those of you who missed all this, Huang has for a long time been pushing to get Nvidia's most advanced microchips into China. That's even though selling China the most advanced AI chips is currently illegal because it creates a national security threat for the US, since China uses them for its military. NVIDIA has gotten around this by selling billions of dollars of microchips to companies outside of China, which totally would pinky swear to never resell them to China. Those companies included Megaspeed, which this alleged Chinese spy was CEO of. Obviously, Jensen Huang was lacking in good judgment about dealing with China. And women. If you're from rural China, chances are pretty high that at some point your local government has tried to reclaim your land and demolish your home. That's just a thing in China. Chinese officials do it for the lulz, but also for the money. What they don't like is a taste of their own medicine, which they got on Monday when a guy wreaked destruction on the local government office with an excavator. Apparently local officials had forcibly demolished his farm, so he figured, why not repay the favor? It's like John Wick, but instead of revenge for a puppy, it's revenge for soybeans. Unfortunately for him, the people's government is not a government of the people or for the people. They arrested him and put him under criminal coercive measures, which could be anything between long-term surveillance and a prison camp. Hopefully he has another buddy with an excavator that can excavate him. This video of the guy with the excavator was posted on X by a guy named Li Ying, who goes by Teacher Li. Actually, if there's been shocking footage or protest footage from Inside China in the last few years, there's a decent chance Teacher Li was the guy who found it from Inside China and reposted it on X. That's what he does. It's one of the few times someone on X is actually doing something to help humanity, rather than speed up its downfall. For example, during the Covid protest four years ago, I ended up using some of their footage he reposted on China Uncensored. So who is Teacher Li? He's an overseas Chinese guy living in Italy. That's why he can repost politically sensitive footage from inside China without being harassed by Chinese secret agents. Is what I'd be saying if he weren't being harassed by Chinese secret agents inside Italy. In fact, Italian prosecutors in Milan have now targeted an entire China-linked network accused of tracking him. They've just wrapped up an investigation into ten people, eight Chinese nationals and two Italians. They claim the people spent years tracking and intimidating Teacher Li. I've heard of Hot for Teacher, but this is ridiculous. According to the prosecutors, there were two ringleaders acting on behalf of Chinese police, while staying in touch with Chinese diplomats and the United Front Work Department, that's the Communist Party's overseas influence arm. Below them, the hired help. One alleged organizer recruited Chinese nationals in Italy to follow Li. Another allegedly offered someone 100 euros a day to help find him. Investigators say the suspects repeatedly visited homes where they thought Li lived. They photographed entrances, watched buildings from nearby cafes, questioned neighbors, and even went through his garbage. One suspect allegedly collected 35 videos and more than 4,000 photos. I've heard of people on social media having followers, but this is ridiculous. Li got death threats. His personal information was posted online. His family and friends in China were pressured. Li kept moving between Milan and Turin to stay ahead of them. In October of 2024, Li looked through his peephole and filmed a man spray-painting stupro, the Italian word for rape, on the wall next to his apartment, which is when he got the Italian police involved. I've heard of...actually, I haven't heard of something like this. But it's ridiculous. The four alleged organizers face a criminal association charge that carries up to seven years in prison. But nobody has been convicted so far. The suspects still have a chance to respond or take it to trial. As long as they don't flee to China first. Meanwhile, China's Foreign Ministry responded to all this by saying, there is no such thing as transnational repression. Which is a funny thing to say, considering the same day this came out, China passed a new corruption law on chasing corruption across borders, aka China just legalized transnational repression. So they're just trying to tap dance over everyone else's laws. Dancing. Dancing. Why? Why? You know those stupid scam texts saying you owe unpaid tolls, or that your package couldn't be delivered? Well, security researchers have traced a lot of those to Chinese-speaking crime groups selling phishing kits. Actually, if it's SMS, it's called smishing. Yep, that's a word now. It's been smished into my brain. Well, I've been working with Surfshark for 8 years, using their VPN to protect my identity. And now, Surfshark protects me even better than ever. 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Once again, I'm Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.