A Once Untouchable Chinese Official Has Been Purged

A once untouchable Chinese official has been purged, China's new luxury minivan has a small defect that might just kill you, and more on Europe's ongoing failure to China. That and more on this week's China news headlines. Welcome to China Uncensored, I'm Chris Chappell. So you may have seen headlines like this popping up lately, talking about how various countries are joining a push against China's overcapacity. We've talked a lot about what that overcapacity does to countries in places like the European Union. But what does that look like on the ground in China? Let me paint you a picture. Every year, China has a week-long national holiday in early October called Golden Week. Hundreds of millions of people travel to see family, visit tourist sites, and join crowds so large they can be seen from space. Doesn't this look like fun? But this year, with the Chinese economy being what it is, some business owners decided to take a much, much longer vacation. According to workers who spoke to the Epoch Times, people in several provinces returned from their holiday to find their factories emptied and the owners gone. As you might imagine, this includes months of wages left unpaid. In Shaoxing in Hubei province, a worker said his hardware and plastics factory had been moved out and the boss has fled. I know companies say we're more of a family here, but you could have at least waited until Father's Day to go out for a pack of smokes and never come back. In Yongkang in Zhejiang Province, a woman said that ahead of Golden Week, more than 60 employees had gone three months without wages and the factory owner had disappeared. So over the holiday, her parents and other workers stood guard outside the factory gate for about a week to make sure nobody came to haul away the remaining equipment. These workers spent their national holiday guarding the factory that wasn't paying them from the boss who wasn't paying them. That's like the worst possible way to spend your Golden Week holiday. Except for this. They should call this Diamond Week since people are getting pressed so hard. I'm expecting a diamond to pop out of them like rings from Sonic the Hedgehog. At Xuzhou Fengcheng Salt Chemical in Jiangsu Province, Workers came back from the holiday on October 8 and found their access cards no longer worked. Hundreds of them gathered outside. Police showed up. The next day, the company called everyone into the cafeteria. They said no photos or videos were allowed, which is probably why someone took this video. The manager said the plant would not reopen, and about 800 or 900 people would be laid off or transferred. And of course, when workers demanded better treatment, The evidence is scrubbed from the internet. One worker says that when he posted his own video of the protest, China's internet police tracked him down and made him delete it. So to recap, the factory disappears, the jobs disappear, and then the video of the jobs disappearing disappears. Was David Copperfield behind this? Speaking of disappearing acts, you've heard of Huawei? They make everything from phones, to security cameras, to 5G equipment, which do such a good job keeping track of people, that back in 2022, the US banned Huawei equipment sales because they pose an unacceptable risk to national security. So now, Huawei launched a new venture. In partnership with China's state-run Jack Motors, Huawei is now making luxury electric vehicles like the Huawei Maestro V800. This is just one problem, I guess not including how it spies on you. The problem is, the brakes don't work. In this recent video from the Chinese car site Dongcha Di, you can see the driver going about 60 miles an hour, and he hits the brake pedal. It snaps. It snaps off. So they tried a second V800. Same thing. So they brought out a third one. It was brand new with just 3 kilometers on the odometer. And at the second hard stop, snap! Snapping is great for Slim Jims, not so much for essential safety equipment. Dongcheng Di's safety lead said the three brakes were identical, which, I mean, at least Huawei products have a consistent user experience. The day after that video came out, Maestro made a public statement saying its braking system exceeds national and industry standards. It said this has never happened to an actual customer, and then it promised free upgrades for existing owners of the part that exceeds the standards. It's like a restaurant saying, our food is perfectly safe. Also, here's a free stomach pump. For no particular reason. After the test went public, Huawei's partner Jack Motors had its stock shares drop so far so fast that it hit the daily trade limit for the Shanghai Stock Exchange two days in a row. As of this recording, its market cap has dropped by 19%. They're trying to put the brakes on this freefall, but you know. So to make sure this kind of thing never happens again, Chinese censors stepped in, which is why the test video is no longer available on Bilibili, Douyin, Weibo, and WeChat, suggesting it has been removed from all platforms. Because in a communist system, it's often hard to fix a problem, But it's easy to cover up. Like the 1989 protest in Tiananmen Square, and the man who stood up to the tanks. The CCP tried to cover it all up, but now you can make the CCP big mad by displaying one of these. I'll tell you more at the end. So speaking of cars that spy on you, in September, Norway's Home Guard held its biggest exercise of the year. About 5,000 soldiers trained around Oslo, guarding parliament, government buildings, and the main airport. And to get around, the military rented cars from Hertz Norway, which is owned by Volvo, which is owned by China's Geely. Yeah, figuring out how everything ties back to China is the world's worst six degrees of Kevin Bacon. At least two of the cars they rented were Chinese electric vehicles made by state-owned Chang'an Automobile. According to a lieutenant who took part, the cars recorded video including who got in and out of the cars, where they drove, who they picked up, and how long they stayed at different locations. He said the recordings also captured the access codes soldiers entered to open military gates and doors. Now I get it. Norwegians are very trusting people. And I applaud them for that. But at a certain point, trusting crosses over into stupid. And China secretly monitored the exact moment that happened. Even after discovering that the Chinese cars were recording their every move, they kept using them. I guess there just aren't that many rental cars available in Norway. Reporting this just hurts. Now, of course, Volvo Cars rejected the idea that Chinese ownership poses a security risk and said no data can be shared with Geely without a legal basis. But also, Chinese law compels Chinese companies to provide whatever information the government wants whenever it wants. Sounds Sounds like a legal basis to me. But you know, while tech that spies on you is all the rage these days, good old fashioned human spies are still a thing. They do important work, and are totally trustworthy What's that, Shelley? Apparently a former German spy chief had contacts with a Chinese official. Ah, this is the worst thing Germany has ever done. Okay, maybe not the worst thing. His name is August Hanning, and he ran Germany's foreign intelligence service, called BND, 1998 to 2005. His job was to catch spies. So it's a little awkward that last week, German police arrested him on suspicion of spying. Specifically, he was detained for allegedly sharing information from confidential documents provided by his former chief of staff with foreign intelligence agents. That former chief of staff has also been arrested. Prosecutors say he gave Hanning as many as 2,000 internal BND documents between 2010 and 2022, which is after Hanning had retired from government and started his own consulting company. These documents included sensitive material on Iran's nuclear program and the Russian army. And Hanning allegedly turned around and sold that information through his consulting business. He's now facing charges of attempted treason and espionage for a foreign intelligence service. I know what you're thinking. Coconut oil. That's how I keep my beard so soft. I also know what else you're thinking. How is it connected to China? Well, according to a German magazine, Hanning had longstanding contacts to a former senior Chinese general, and he had traveled to China several times since he started his consulting company. So far, Hanning has only been arrested and charged, not convicted. But it's not a good look for the man who ran the agency meant to protect Germany from foreign intelligence services, to be accused of being the leak. It's the biggest L Germany's ever taken. Okay, not the biggest. In China, there's a type of toy called Bu Daowang. It's a tumbler doll. You knock it over, it wobbles, and it pops right back up. For years, that's what people called Huang Qifan, the political tumbler. Huang was the mayor of Chongqing from 2009 to 2016. During that time, he served under six different Communist Party secretaries in Chongqing, two of whom ended up in prison for corruption, including Bo Xilai, who once plotted to overthrow Xi Jinping. Also, Bo's wife murdered a British businessman. And also his police chief fled to the US consulate dressed as an old woman. Bo Xilai is now rotting in a Chinese prison, but at least he has a ton of crazy stories to share with all the other inmates. Anyway, through it all, Huang Qifan, the guy actually running the city government, just kept wobbling and not falling over. He retired. He became an economic commentator, writing books and giving speeches. Just a month ago, he gave a keynote speech in Xiamen about foreign investment. Seems like nothing could touch him. And then on Tuesday, China's top anti-corruption body announced that Huang is under investigation for corruption. The CCP hasn't said what he allegedly did, because their justice system is the opposite of normal countries. In China, first you disappear, then the charges show up later. Maybe. If they have a good political reason to do the paperwork. Caixin reports the case may involve reforms to state-owned companies, and that it follows probes into other Chongqing officials and financial executives. The bigger picture is, this is part of Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign. He's already purged more than 7 million officials. So I guess now he's targeting retired officials? Even if you've been out of power for 8-10 years, you're still not safe. And this comes about two weeks before a major Communist Party meeting, the Fifth Plenum, which starts October 26. So the lesson for Chinese officials is simple. No matter who you are, no matter whether you're retired, the CCP will always come after you. And crush you like you're celebrating Golden Week. Now, I've been trying to warn people about the threat of the CCP since 2012, the year Bo Xilai was arrested. But lately, YouTube has been making it extremely hard for us. For example, a YouTube search for China often doesn't show any results from China uncensored. But there's lots of videos with pro-CCP narratives, including ones with far fewer views than we ever get. But I know that you won't tolerate suppression. Like the tank man in Tiananmen 1989, who stood up to a column of Chinese tanks. At least their brakes worked. The point is, there's a way you can also stand up to CCP suppression and have fun doing it. For a limited time, if you visit our website using the link below and sign up for a new annual Premium Membership, we'll send you one of these, for legal reasons I can't call it, Lego Tiananmen Tankman sets. It's made with genuine Legos. Put Tankman on your desk at work, put it in the background of your Zoom calls, bring it to popular tourist sites, and tell Chinese visitors what the government's covered up. Have fun with it. And you'll also be supporting China Uncensored directly. That's critical, because YouTube, our biggest platform, is trying to destroy us and replace us with a pro-CCP narrative. We only made 400 of these, and they're already going fast. So click this button or the link below. Once again, I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.