‘차이나 언센서드’ 진행자들, 중국 공산당을 밑바닥까지 파헤치다 (1부) [ATL]

The CCP is very smart at understanding the divides in American society, and it knows how to target both sides. In this episode, I sit down with Chris Chappell and Shelley Zhang, creators of the popular YouTube channel China Uncensored. Chinese people just are living in this propaganda. They live and breathe in this propaganda every day. They've been covering Chinese Communist Party propaganda efforts and narrative warfare for over a decade. There is a lot the U.S. can do to challenge the Chinese Communist Party. The idea that we can't, because we don't want to risk nuclear war or any other kind of war, they want to scare. There's a lot the U.S. can't do, especially with China facing pretty unprecedented economic troubles right now. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Chris Chappell, Shelley Zhang, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's great to be here. Yeah, definitely. I've been watching China Uncensored for years, and I couldn't help but notice that Scarborough Shoal, or this whole region around the Philippines, where the Chinese Communist Party has been operating in all sorts of interesting ways, is back in the news. And I couldn't help but remember that you guys took a trip out there. Tell me about that. Yeah, this was in 2016, right? Yeah. Yeah, we hired a Filipino fishing boat, one that had actually been rammed or water cannon? Rammed by the Chinese Coast Guard. But we didn't know that at the time. We didn't know that until we got on the water. Yeah. Well, we finally made it to the Scarborough Shoal. It used to be that Filipino, Malaysian, Vietnamese fishermen would all come and fish in these waters. They would even eat together on the shoal. But in 2012, China asserted its claim and all that stopped. So yeah, we went on this boat for three days on the open ocean to actually get to the Scarborough Shoal. And when we got there, there was the Chinese Coast Guard off in the distance. This was at a period where there was a bit of a lull in the tensions. So we felt a little safer, I guess, except our producer there was Matt. He has bright blonde hair. So we had to put a hood on him so he wouldn't be spotted. We brought cigarettes and alcohol to bribe Chinese Coast Guard. In case we met them. Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, what were we thinking? It was a very stupid, dangerous idea. But the conclusion was that we actually got out onto the shoal, which is submerged. The shoal is submerged. So we were like chest high in water. And then I planted the China Uncensored flag on the Scarborough Shoal. So this is what the media constantly misses, that Scarborough Shoal actually belongs to me. You can only see parts of the shoal. But as far as I'm concerned, this territorial dispute is over. Solid rock. Yes! The shoal has been kind of really taken over since that time by China. It was taken over in basically 2012 after what's called the Scarborough Shoal incident. And this is a major turning point in US-China relations. I think Chinese strategy changed tremendously because of this event. And what happened was the Scarborough Shoal is very close to the Philippines, very far from China. But China claims everything in the South China Sea. So their Coast Guard basically occupied the area. The Philippines Coast Guard came and it looked like there was gonna be some kind of confrontation. So the US, under the Obama administration, it was Kirk Campbell, right? Decided to get in there and negotiate. And they got an agreement that both sides would withdraw. The Philippines withdrew. China did not. And the US did nothing. In response. They let them have it. And they had basically have had control to this day. They used it as kind of like a carrot and stick thing. So if the Filipino government was, you know, cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party at the time, then they would let the fishermen in. If the Chinese Communist Party was upset with the Philippine government, then they would block it again. So that's kind of the situation that it's been in right now. Like they haven't started building an island there yet. But the current government of the Philippines is kind of challenging the CCP's claims more. So now you see a lot more confrontation, a lot more the Filipinos like fighting back in different ways, trying to supply ships and stuff in these shoals, Scarborough Shoal, Sabina Shoal, fighting back against the CCP's, you know, narratives and saying like, well, the CCP doesn't claim these areas. These places are within the Philippines' exclusive economic zones. We should be able to go there. And that messaging has really, I think, rattled the CCP. What the Scarborough Shoal incident did was it showed the CCP that if they push, the U.S. won't push back. And from that incident you saw, that's when they started ramping up the island building in the South China Sea, which again, Xi Jinping and Obama met. They made agreements. Xi Jinping ignored it. They kept building the islands. They militarized the islands. That was really the moment where I think it completely changed Beijing's calculus with how much they could get away with. So let's talk a little bit about what China Uncensored is. I mean, as far as I can tell, you guys have been around for 12 years now. It's incredible how fast time flies. Tell me about what the idea behind this show is in the first place, just for the benefit of our audience. Sure. So I started it in 2012, which was a very different political landscape at the time. People were still thinking of China, kind of fresh off the 2008 Beijing Olympics, that wonderful opening ceremony. Oh, it was so interesting. It was so fantastic. People had a very skewed view of China and the CCP. You tell the story about how people you knew were like, it's a democracy, right? I mean, I worked with people who thought that, you know, and these were well-educated Americans who thought that China is a democracy, right? Because they have a president. There was just a lot that wasn't known. And I think people also hadn't kind of really realized what they were doing geopolitically and how aggressive that they would become. So, you know, for a long time, it felt like we were just, you know, Cassandra, you know, screaming into the void. The goal of the show was to help Americans see the Chinese Communist Party for what it was. And the president thing is a great example of narrative warfare that like in English language media, they'll call him President Xi Jinping. Specifically so, people in America hearing that think, President, somebody voted for him, right? Yeah, it's true that in Chinese, the term that they use for the leader of China is not the same word that they use for president of democratically elected countries. You know, they really do spend an inordinate amount of effort. And I'd like you to help quantify that, too, on this narrative warfare, you know, making sure, controlling carefully the image of what, how the Chinese regime is perceived. There seems to be like an unusual fixation here that is kind of goes above and beyond even our most, I don't know, the work of some of our most illustrious PR companies. Yeah, the Chinese Communist Party sees the United States as its biggest threat, biggest enemy. And so it puts a lot of effort into shaping how Americans think about the Chinese Communist Party. The overarching thing they want Americans to think is that China, the Chinese Communist Party is not a threat. You know, they are very good at, you know, they looked at what happened with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And they're very much like, we don't want to be in that position. How do we, you know, use our language, our messaging, even how they frame events in the world to be to their benefit? And then they can use that as part of their influence operations. You know, when they talk to American business people, American politicians, you know, even, you know, social media influencers, you know, they will take these messages from the CCP's narrative warfare and parrot them without even realizing that they're doing it. What was it that we saw today? There was a Twitch streamer. It was a guy who is a big gamer and political commentator for, you know, the Gen Z audience. And he was talking about how, you know, China was right to take over Tibet because, you know, Tibet had slaves and China, you know, liberated them from this feudal serfdom. And this is 100%. CCP propaganda. Yeah, this is CCP propaganda. You know, another, just something else just jumps to mind. There was a foreign ministry, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson who's, you know, criticizing America for the prospects of maybe shutting out TikTok. And she's saying, you know, there needs to be, you know, kind of openness of markets. And this seems so surreal, almost. How do you explain that? TikTok is a great example of the CCP's narrative warfare because it's been very effective. They portray it as, you know, the US government interfering in the free market or trying to censor free speech. Which is ridiculous because it's the Chinese Communist Party. They don't have a free market in China. They banned all Western social media in China. But this has been very effective at getting certain parts of the US population to be like, oh yeah, I don't like the US government so much. Maybe they are censoring. Maybe the CCP has the right idea. And yeah, I think that's a good example of how the CCP can hijack, you know, things like free speech and use it to argue that that's why, you know, TikTok should be allowed to operate freely and stream Chinese propaganda into American phones, right? Because if you don't allow that, that's not free speech. But that's not actually the case. The issue is TikTok is a weapon of the CCP designed to shape how Americans think, as well as steal a tremendous amount of personal data on individual Americans. And the ban, the idea of the ban is kind of ridiculous because it's just like the Chinese company that owns and controls TikTok just has to give up control. And then TikTok would be allowed, but the Chinese Communist Party does not want to give up control. Particularly because if they did, then whatever American company bought it would have access to the inside of TikTok, to the algorithm and actually get to see what really was going on behind the scenes. The CCP is very smart at understanding the divides in American society. And it knows how to target both sides. So for example, we were talking to Lord Chris Patton the other day, the last British governor of Hong Kong. And he said, one of the things the CCP would say about Hong Kong is like, oh, it's been occupied. It's the British colonial powers. And that really taps into this sort of left-leaning ideology. But he said the reality was the only people that were occupying that area were people fleeing China, fleeing communism from China. So they use that language to cover up the reality of things. And a more right-wing example, I have this theory China is doing this propaganda campaign I'm calling China is based. You see all of these conservative commentators, the CCP will put out a video of kids in China, young kids in kindergarten, playing with machine guns or fake rocket launchers doing this military training. And these conservative US commentators are like, oh yeah, China's based. They're not pushing woke ideology on kids. And you don't realize that militarization of children is insane. It gets them to react against this one other ideological extreme for this other. Or another great example is in video games now. China just put out a game called Black Myth Wukong that is one of the most popular games. And I criticized it because it's got ties to Tencent, which is basically a Chinese company with a lot of connections to the CCP. We don't want China controlling American video game industries. But the response was like, oh, I'm so sick of playing these Western woke games with woke ideology. I'll take this Chinese game. It's based. Because they said in the game that they weren't going. They don't want you to talk about feminism. Yeah, they said, you know, they don't want you to talk about feminism. And then it was like also anything about the Chinese. Chinese politics, COVID, et cetera, et cetera. The Chinese government, but because they said feminism first, then it suddenly appealed to a political group in the US who were sick of feminism. Yeah, and then it kind of covers up the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is heavily involved in ESG funding that is pushing a lot of this woke ideology in games. So China is kind of controlling both sides of this. And really, it knows how to play Americans off of each other. So we're fighting each other instead of realizing who our real enemy is, the Chinese Communist Party. Yeah, I keep thinking of the term gray zone. In the South China Sea, there's no very limited kinetic activity. Some of it's getting very close to kinetic, and people wonder, but as long as it stays in the so-called gray zone, no one really wants to take a too serious position. It almost seems like this term kind of fits into everything you've just been describing too. There's always some level of plausible deniability that there's a military objective. That there's a specific strategic objective. Tell me what you think about that. So this is one of the greatest failings in US policy towards China. We have this idea that, okay, war is war, and then there's everything else. And so we can do business with China. But the Chinese Communist Party, as a Marxist-Leninist regime, does not see things like that. They are not just a mirrored reflection of us. They see the US as an ideological threat that has to be destroyed. And so they will use any means to achieve that. It's not just boots-on-the-ground fighting. For them, warfare is anything. It can be legal warfare, it can be economic warfare, political warfare, narrative warfare. So they have a goal in mind, which is to defeat the United States. But Americans and American politicians for decades, Republican and Democrat, have not seen it that way. They're just like, this is another country we can do business with. We can be partners, or maybe competitors, but we're not enemies. And I think that's the thing with, Chris, you make a good point about that binary, right? About war, not war. And I think that's the thing with gray zone warfare, is that these gray zone tactics, is that it doesn't just stop in the light gray of the gray zone, right? Like they keep pushing and pushing. As long as they deem themselves to be in this gray zone, they'll keep pushing and pushing towards that line to see where that line is. And the more that there's no response to that, or the more that they get away with it, then that just expands their ability to actually do these kinds of different things to blockade Taiwan, to challenge the Philippines and South China Sea, all of these things, because there is a fear of overreaction on the Western side. Essentially, the CCP has trained us to react that way with their narrative warfare. If you ever look at anything that happens with Taiwan, U.S. selling military equipment to Taiwan or supporting Taiwan in any way, the headlines in American media are always like, the U.S. and Taiwan do such and such, comma, angering China. The headline is always about how you don't want to anger China. That is a threatening thing to do. We don't want to spark an accidental war with China. Yeah, but that is, I think, the result of the messaging that the CCP has built up over the years that we should be afraid of angering China, right? That's why this is a problem. These things are not good to do because it might anger China. They have the threat of actual war or kinetic war dangling over us. So we don't realize that TikTok is a weapon. It's not a social media platform. It is a weapon. So can you quantify for me, give me some sense of the scale or effort that the Chinese regime puts into this narrative warfare component of their, let's call it total war approach. Let me just give a big picture idea to show the success of this, at least in the business community. So COVID happened. The Chinese Communist Party spent the first initial month or two covering it up specifically so they could buy up PPEs in America, stockpile it. They closed down domestic flight from Wuhan, kept international flight from Wuhan going. They wanted to spread it all over the world. The COVID pandemic is entirely the Chinese Communist Party's fault. A few years after that, Xi Jinping went to San Francisco for APEC. The city completely cleaned itself up, got rid of all the homeless just for this communist dictator coming. And you had American business leaders giving him a standing ovation. Just a few years after they used the COVID pandemic against us. That shows just how successful they are at being able to get a certain class in American society on their side. This begins at all levels of society, in politics and in business, on the political side. Eric Swalwell is a great example. A Chinese spy was essentially grooming him when he was very early on in his political campaign. You also see things like Eric Adams. Back when he was the governor of Brooklyn. When he was the Brooklyn Borough President. Brooklyn Borough President, sorry. China funds these trips for business leaders, congressional staffers, politicians. Again, trying to make it seem like China is your friend. We can do business. I mean, I think a few years ago it came out that China was spending something like $8 billion on overseas state-run media efforts. But I think that is just a drop in the bucket for when you talk about narrative warfare. It's not just what comes out through the official state-run media and how they tried to use that to influence American media or media in different countries. But it's also these things that Chris is talking about. How do you quantify these business trips or these friendship trips to China from US politicians, where then they get fed these narratives? Sister city agreements with towns, states, colleges. Yeah, it's pervasive through every aspect of the CCP's outreach to the wider world. So it's hard to say they're spending this much on it or that because it's part of everything they do. Basically, you're saying it's embedded as part of every international activity because it's a key strategic directive from the very top. Yeah, I think people talk about the three warfares that that book that was written by or those three Chinese PLA. But one of the things in there is essentially narrative warfare. They call it something different, but you can also call it public opinion warfare, information warfare, all these things. But it's all about controlling not just the information, but the perception of the information. It's very postmodern. There is no universal truth. There's just different perspectives and whoever has the most force can get their message across. I remember when the Epoch Times was started back in the early 2000s, the distance between what people understood to be the reality of communist China and the reality of communist China that I was aware of being on the human rights side of things was so vast that it was almost like people would think you're a crazy person. You say, hey, I don't have any topic I would talk about. It's wild. It has, to be fair, it has shifted quite significantly. Yes. Especially in recent years. There was just this phenomenon. The Tiananmen Square massacre happened. That month, George Bush Sr. sent a secret delegation to Beijing to assure the Chinese Communist Party that it wouldn't hurt U.S.-China relations. The same month that the CCP massacred 10,000 students in Beijing. For years, we had experts, top politicians telling us that if we do business with China, it will reform them. They'll become a democracy. It'll help the U.S. government. Even as towns across America were being gutted because we shipped all of our manufacturing to China, we had experts saying, this is good, this is still good. Look at how much our GDP has gone up. Meanwhile, Americans are struggling to make ends meet. We listen to these experts who have, who knows what relation to China, pushing this narrative that, yes, we have to engage. And I think a few years ago, we talked to Alex Jasky, who wrote a book on influence operations. And he talked about how this type of narrative, the idea that China would reform democratically if there was economic reform, kind of came from the CCP, where they had this message going out through channels that weren't official channels. But it was as if, if a U.S. official got to know Chinese business people who are connected with the CCP, or even Chinese officials, lower level officials, or people who are maybe in academia, and they would say to them, kind of as if on the down low, that they were like, oh, well, this is what we officially have to say. We officially have to say that we're the Communist Party and we won't change or reform. But actually, secretly, we want to do these things. Like if we had more economic relations with you, that can only be better for us. And it was really insidious. Like these officials would be like, you really get China. You're very smart. Not like all the other people. You're a smart person. And don't push too hard. We're on the same side. But if you push too hard, then that means these far left extremists in the party, they'll be activated. And then we can't deal with that. So just never push hard. Don't push publicly. So it was kind of like, and people felt special, right? Because they felt like they were getting the real inside view on what the CCP officials actually thought, not what they had to say publicly. So, but in actuality, this was part of their influence operations as part of their narrative warfare to try to make all these U.S. officials believe that that's what would happen if we just did more business with them. We were chumps. Recently, two officials from the Solomon Islands, Daniel Suidani and Celsus Talifilu, I had them on the show in early 2023, in part thanks to your fundraising efforts to bring them to America to tell their story. So tell me a little bit about that picture. Where do things stand now? Well, just to tie this into the whole influence of the CCP, we did that fundraising campaign to be able to bring them to Washington, DC to warn U.S. politicians about it, also to raise their profile so they wouldn't be immediately arrested when they went back. Maybe just briefly just kind of explain what happened with them. So the Solomon Islands, a very important strategic location in the Pacific. Major World War II battles were fought there. It's a very important, yes, strategic location. For years, they had recognized Taiwan as opposed to the PRC as a legitimate government of China. And they changed that in recent years to recognize the PRC. And this was because the president, the prime minister at the time, May, was getting a lot of money and a lot of close connections to the Chinese Communist Party. Now, the most populous province of the Solomon Islands, Malata province, was led by a guy named Danis Hedani, a devout Christian. He saw what the Chinese Communist Party was doing to his home. The Chinese were coming in. This is their MO everywhere. They extract resources, do not provide much for locals. They might build a hospital, but extract the wealth of the entire nation. And he pushed back against the switch, as they called it. Ultimately, the prime minister and the Chinese Communist Party went hard against him. They denied him life-saving medical treatment. He had to get flown to Taiwan, thanks to support in Taiwan, to get his medical issues treated. Then they got him kicked out of his premiership. And they were in the media trying to portray him as, basically, this troublemaker revolutionary who needed to be in jail. So it looked like he was going to wind up behind bars. And so that's when we began the campaign to get him to D.C., this fundraising campaign. We raised, in a day, we were able to raise $27,000 for his travel expenses, legal fees, because he had to defend himself in the Solomon Islands. We were using GoFundMe They did not want to release the money to us. And this was a real problem, because they were here. We had to pace things out of pocket at this point. They just would not release the money until we told them that we were going to be testifying in front of Congress about what was going on and would have to mention that they were withholding funds. And then they released the funds to us after that. And we never used GoFundMe again. So unfortunately, now the latest is that Daniel Sidani and Celsus Telfilu, who was also there, we also brought him over, he was an advisor, they have been arrested. They're out on bail. But it seems like they held off on going after them because there was that initial media attention and political attention on them. Now, a year or two later, I think they're hoping that that attention has shifted, especially with everything going on in the U.S. right now. So they are once again in danger of being persecuted. And this is a really important issue because this is a case of all the CCP has to do is pay off certain, the right people in government around the world and countries around the world, and then they can take over. This is an example of just a few people fighting back. And if the CCP is able to crush him, if they're able to crush Daniel Sidani, that sends a message to countries around the world, people around the world who would stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, no one's gonna come and save you. The U.S. won't protect you. So why risk your life, your family, just to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party? So this really is ground zero. It was an important place in World War II. It's now an important battlefield in Cold War II, whatever you wanna call it. This is a war with the Chinese Communist Party. So what happens to Sidani is incredibly important. So some of the narratives I'm hearing, Chinese nuclear proliferation has been going full tilt in a way that's been underestimated by Western intelligence. I mean, the military growth, the building of ships, all sorts of areas has been huge. Xi Jinping, again, recently openly talking about preparing the country for war, appearing in camo fatigues and everything else. It seems like a significant threat. Why risk? Why risk war? That is a powerful narrative they're pushing. I mean, first of all, Xi Jinping has been appearing in fatigues and saying to prepare for war since he came to power in 2013. That happens all the time. There is an unprecedented military buildup in China that should not be dismissed. I know some people are like, ah, it's all made in China. That's a dangerous way to take it. Or they have more ships than our Navy, but we have bigger ships. Better ships. Yeah, that's not a great way to approach it. But the Chinese Communist Party wants Americans scared. The idea of like, do you really want to defend Taiwan? Is it worth a nuke in Los Angeles? Yeah, there was actually a few years ago, an opinion article in the Business Insider that basically said that. It was about, is Taiwan worth risking nuclear war? Everything in there was essentially exactly what the CCP would want to be out there because they want you to be too scared to make a move. And it's incredibly defeatist because there is a lot the U.S. can do to challenge the Chinese Communist Party. One great example would be to just expose the corruption of top CCP officials. This would be a powerful narrative warfare tactic the U.S. could use because the Chinese Communist Party, say we just sanctioned China. The CCP would tap into the narratives like, oh, these imperialist Americans hurting us Chinese people. Don't worry, the Chinese Communist Party will protect you. Shore up support for the Communist Party. But if the U.S. is specifically targeting the corruption of top leaders, they can't really use that line because the Chinese people see, oh wait, you guys at the top are actually pretty rotten. So that's just one example of a tactic the U.S. could use. The U.S. can do so many things to fight China and the idea that we can't because we don't want to risk nuclear war or any other kind of connect war. They want us scared. There's a lot the U.S. can do, especially with China facing pretty unprecedented economic troubles right now. The Trump administration was great with the tariffs. The Biden administration kept those tariffs and did the CHIPS Act. There's a lot of levers the U.S. still has to solve the problem, I think. We're Americans. We don't have to give up. We don't surrender.