BREAKING! - RED Note - China is Scrambling to Keep Influence over Americans - Episode #246

I remember you. You make me feel stronger. Welcome, everybody, to episode 246. That is the area code for Barbados. Barbados, Barbados! Yeah, somebody's actually there. That's not in the song. It's not in the song. We're just arguing about the Beach Boys. They didn't like Barbados enough to put it in the song.

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, guys, we're talking about this crazy TikTok Refugee movement and this whole Shia Hong Shu, Little Red Book, red note as they're trying to disguise it as. By the way, we'll get into that. It's kind of crazy, but it's quite a movement. There's a lot to talk about, a lot of anthropology as well, because people are meeting each other for the first time—yes, Chinese and Americans.

I got to say, there are some positives out of this, some interesting things happening. But we wanted to cover it because we've got a lot of insight into it. Also, we pick up on trends when the Chinese propaganda department starts pumping stuff out, and they are pumping this to death. Huge! They are using American TikToker videos as proof as to why it shouldn't be banned.

Yes, so we're going to go through some of those and break those down and show you why they're probably thinking about this as the definitive video on this whole TikTok debacle. TikTok ban, SL migration to Red notes, TikTok Refugee, Refuge R. Yeah, everything! But it's a full show, so we're going to start off with what's new, where we talk about everything that's new, specifically with regards to China.

So, let's get right into it. Right into it, one might say. Last week, we told you about this crazy uprising that happened because of the mysterious death of a student. We wanted to give you an update, and the update is this: that entire area is still under martial law. As you can see, the roads are still blocked off, and people are not allowed to go anywhere near that entire area.

I just want to throw this out there. You know how everyone was all up in arms about Korea going into martial law? Yeah, Seoul. Why does nobody talk about this? I know! 100,000 people in China in this small city stormed into the gates to demand reasons and demand answers and got beaten by cops brutally as they protested. Everyone got basically driven out of the area, surrounded, arrested, black-bagged, and now that entire area is under martial law.

And there's not one ounce of news about it because when China does bad things, it doesn't matter. No, that's pretty much how it goes, right? So we wanted to update you. It's still locked down. People are still not allowed to go even anywhere near that place. Big intersections, as you can see here. So that's the update on that. Pretty wild!

Yeah, it's blocked off. You can't go down there. Where's that? Where's that news? Where's the news? Sorry, this is a mini repeat of that. Anyway, we got to break things up a little bit. What have you got for us here?

Well, there's some viral clips going around on the Chinese internet. This guy was cooking with some stones, right? The stones! A little PSA: if the stones are wet, by the way, if you're cooking with wet stones on the fire, if they heat up, they will explode. Be careful when you're doing that. You know, you have a campfire or whatever. Cook in a pot, whatever. Don't throw wet stones into the fireplace or use wet stones to prop up your pot or something. Okay? Dry them off first or just don't use them because they retain water.

Yeah, this is true. Okay, this guy lost all the beer. He lost all the beer, guys! That's unfortunate. He lost all the beer. He's going to be in big trouble. Well, I mean, just think about it.

Okay, yes, yes. Can you pause it there? I just want to ask you a question. Sure! Would you also do that? Would you have a sip? I have done that. What are you saying? Would you? I have done that. Would you have that sip after you've spilled all the other beers? Of course! You don't want it to go to waste!

I'd go, like, literally depending on my mood and the situation, I might even go suck it up off the floor. Obviously, if it was a clean, sterile floor, not the road. I absolutely would not do that. You wouldn't do that? Imagine glass shards in there.

Yeah, okay, but like you could separate them aside and then, you know what I mean? Like beer worth glass shards in your stomach? What if you dropped a really expensive bottle of bourbon or something?

Yeah, then I'd reconsider. Yeah, then you'd probably lick it off the floor, glass shards and all. I don't know, like a 100-year-old scotch or something.

Yeah, I mean, that's too old. I drink. You'd probably take a mop and then squeeze it out. Glass! I would! The glass is what bothers me, not the dirt.

Yeah, put it through a strainer. Yeah, fair enough. Okay, anyway, this is a PSA to not buy fake shoes. She like ran into the—did you see what she did? Yeah, and she slipped down because her shoe came apart.

Yeah, that's what happens when you buy counterfeit shoes. True! Yeah, so buy real Nikes.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, now this, we wanted to ask our audience about. What do you think this—well, just put it in your comments in the chat here. What do you think this truck driver is going to do? This guy, you see him over here? What do you think he's—what is his aim?

Okay, I'll just watch the chat. Okay, what do you think he will do? He's stuck here. What is he trying to achieve here? Is the question. See, he got out of his truck.

Yeah, okay, let's leave it there and let the chat populate a little. So, guys, you've got this big truck. He's carrying either—it looks like natural gas or petrol or something. It's a big, dangerous-looking container truck. Yes, he's reversed back from the off-ramp, right? He gets out of his truck, and he walks down the road to check something.

Yes, what do you think he's about to do? Yeah, what is his next action? I guess what would be his next choice? He's not going to poop, guys. That's okay.

I think we've left people in—change lanes, block the roadway, turn around. Let's see. U-turn? Well, he's doing something, all right. He's definitely U-turning.

Oh, would you expect? He's driving down the wrong way down the highway after that. Now, you see, I have seen this in real life, and so have you in China, where people, they miss an exit.

Yeah, but I mean, I lived it. Yeah, but you were in a situation where the person that was driving reversed. They didn't do a U-turn. No, they reversed. They reversed to get to the—so I was in a car on the highway. They did this, but instead of turning around, they just went backwards at 20 miles an hour down the highway with people going to get back on the exit.

This is heading in on this. This is like he missed an exit like 10 miles back, and he's realized, "Oh, I've got to be there." So how am I going to get there? I'll just turn around and drive with my explosive tanker against oncoming traffic.

People wonder why there's so many crazy accident footage things in China. And like I said, I've seen it with private cars, but when you have a truck, you would think that a truck driver has a little bit more experience and a little bit more knowledge of the road.

Yeah, you would think that because, you know, they drive a lot, right? This guy's like, "Nah, I missed my exit. I'm just going to turn around."

Anyway, hold on. What, guys? Would you please do us a favor and give us a thumbs up on this video? Because I want you to give a thumbs up, and I'll make it personal.

Okay, give a thumbs up to this video if you would not head into oncoming traffic backwards, exactly in a truck—explosive truck. If you would do that, then feel free to avoid the—yeah, yeah, please do it. But do it, please! We could really use your help.

Yeah, for sure! Anyway, so what else is going on here? We've got a truck. Well, you saw—hang on, you actually saw that. I got to go back to that. I'd like to play this in like one more time for you guys to see.

Okay, we'll get out of there so you can see it correctly. We're just looking at Teemu shoe again. Yeah, that's how it goes. Where's Jeff? He's in the bathroom taking a tu. That's correct.

All right, so this is the Shanii truck. Yeah, okay. You see, there's actually a clip where you see it from another camera when he turns around.

Okay, so just—I just want to ask you guys, can you imagine the lack of common sense that's going on here right now? It's actually—I can explain it away. It's called the belief in you Fen, which is fate.

Yes, it means that if you believe that it's just your time, then it's just your time. Yeah, right? So this is the camera angle I wanted to show.

Okay, so he's driving the wrong way. Oh, we get more footage! Yeah, just a little blip, and you see other tanker trucks going at full speed just going past him. Like, how dangerous is that?

That's absolutely insane! I'm so desensitized to this, though. Look at that! The tanker on the top is actually wide open.

Yeah, so it's probably empty. Yeah, so he's like, "You know what? If it was full, I wouldn't do this." But think it's empty. You think so?

No, no, absolutely! Anyway, this poor guy gets sprayed. So actually, I can explain that a little bit.

Yeah, for sure! In China, these guys have to go on like clockwork in these street sprayers. Yeah, and they will actually even run them while there's a flood.

Yes, I think this guy's watering the lawn, though. Yeah, I mean, it's the same purpose, different purpose. Flooding and raining, they'll still do it as well.

Yes, it's just—that's their job. Poor guy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Okay, and this, what we're going to show you here is a little bit of a PSA. These are PSA videos. This is like, you know when you have a setup just to demonstrate?

Well, they only exist because it's such an issue. Exactly! Now, everybody goes on about China having a cashless society and how amazing it is and how unprecedented it is, which is kind of weird because ask yourself, when is the last time you used cash in America? Like, years ago?

Yeah, I mean, if you use—you can—I can't even think of a time I used— You know what? I gave someone a tip with cash.

Yeah, yeah! I mean, rarely. It's very rare. I mean, you do still use it. It's only because I had some on me.

Yeah, yeah! But every time you use your little tap, your credit card thing like that chip or your chip or use a debit card, like everyone—what I'm trying to say is that Chinese propaganda have made it out as if China is like this groundbreaking cashless society where the rest of the world has been using credit cards for decades before China decided to do this.

But here's one of the things that's a danger. This guy has one of those Easy Pass cards in his car. So how it works in China is every single highway you drive on, every single highway, you have to pay a toll.

Yeah, you know how only some roads in America are toll roads? Every road in China, every single highway has a toll. There is not one mile of way in China that you don't pay for. It's super expensive, and people don't realize that.

Yeah, but you get on the GSU, and you go through the little thing, and you either pay right there, like you get a card, and then when you get off, you pay, or you have one of these Easy Pass things, and then you go, and it beeps, it opens up, you go through.

Right? The thing is, that's tied to all of your finances. It can be. Yes, can be. A lot of times, it is.

So you either recharge it—you can recharge it at recharge stations, and you put in like 1,000 RMB, say, or 2,000 RMB, or it can be tied to your digital wallet. But people go around, and they have these devices like this guy.

Take a look! The Bluetooth device is lit. What are you doing? And what happens is that device acts as if it is a toll reader, and it actually minuses the money off of your account.

Yeah, bro's acting like a mobile toll. Yeah, exactly! So, fing around stealing. These are very common, by the way.

I used to see people do this in the park, you know, in the parking lot or like a rest stop. Yes, on the highways. Yeah, they just walk around, and there were signs. It was like, "Watch out for bandits" or whatever.

Yes, yeah, exactly! It's happened to people that we know, family members, and basically, you can get huge amounts of money wiped out in a single go.

You know what's funny is that when I—you just made me have a flashback. You can tell if someone's doing well in their car, like when you line up to go in the toll, because it'll actually have a screen of one.

And every time I saw like a normal person with like a crap card, it'd be like 200 RMB or something or less. It tells you how much is left, but everybody can see it.

But everyone can see it, and then I would see a CCP official car. It's got like 50,000 RMB, 100,000 RMB. Why that much? What are you doing?

Yeah, why have you got that much in your card? You're absolutely right! I forgot about that!

Yeah, yeah! The people that have the Communist flag on their thing. Yeah, corrupt ass! They have to put out these PSAs to teach people to—you got to be careful.

And here's another scam where the guy's got his wallet on the table. You can see it over there, right? That little black rectangular wallet. The guy's got a bag, and he just comes in, and he's like distracts him and puts his bag on top of—see? Got CAU!

And again, just think about this. You know when you go to a credit card machine and you tap? It's a similar thing that works with the phone now in China as well. You know, you could tap your phone or you have your credit card, whatever.

They have a machine. They could just tap your bag and then like take all your money out. They tap the bag, and then they get the bag.

Yeah, well, they get everything that's in your wallet. The bag just—that's what young people say these days. Yeah, get the bag!

Okay, get paid! All right, I see! I see! Now that makes sense.

Anyway, I just wanted to show you that that's going around. You got another funny clip for us here?

Well, I mean, it's up to you. I mean, okay, it was fishing-related. So this guy, he puts his pole down. Okay, and I'll tell you this: I would also put my pole down to relax because I know I'm not going to catch anything.

These guys never catch anything. The fish they catch are like this big because everything's so overfished in China. True!

So they'll actually pull out a fish this big and keep it and like cook it in soup, and like it's just bones basically. Anyway, they do this to do, as they say in Chinese. Dango means like, uh, pass the time, just like mess around but not be good at the thing.

Yeah, killing time! You know what a good analogy is? Dango is specifically like when you go to a thing you're supposed to know how to do, but you don't really know how to do it.

So like someone that goes to a gym and just stands around the equipment, that's dango, which actually translates to hit soy sauce. Yes, exactly!

So this guy's hitting soy sauce. Yep! And he just puts his pole down because if he catches anything, it's going to go right. But he sits down in this flimsy chair. Look what happens!

Okay, see? He got jungo all over his face there. P! Peace out! Oh man, that's bad luck!

I want to see that one more time. You know whether that's a setup or not, that's up to you, but that's funny because there's genuine reactions of the other fishermen that are like, "What the heck? What's going on?"

Yeah, okay, let's take a look. Yep! I mean, regardless, he got stuff all over his face. Regardless!

Yeah, he could be highly regarded. Who knows? Anyway, very funny. What's this?

Okay, now this is a little bit more concerning. Yeah, you know we've seen a lot of AI images being used in disinformation and misinformation these days.

Yes, and a good flashback for you guys is the Hawaii wildfires, the whole Maui fires. Yes, China and politicians that wanted to be against America for the sake of being against America pushed their agenda, pushed a Chinese propaganda campaign that used fake imagery about the fake image of the fires.

Anyway, I just want to—before we even comment on what's going on, I'm going to show you three images. We've got one of a Chinese child. These are all AI-generated, by the way, if you couldn't tell. It's pretty obvious to me.

Of a Chinese child during these terrible earthquakes that we told you about last week that have just happened in Tibet. Right? Then we've got an image talking about Gaza. Okay, also AI-generated, too.

Yes, both AI-generated. And then we have one about Hollywood burning. All of these are AI-generated.

Yes! Now, on the Chinese internet, the one about Hollywood grabbed a lot of attention, allowed this person to get a lot of views, a lot of engagement. Oh, not just this! Like, this is just one example of thousands that spread this.

Okay, and I'll go back to the other one. The one about Gaza gained a lot of sympathy, a lot of comments about how terrible it is, etc., etc. This is all on the Chinese internet.

Yes, that was not removed either. No, the Hollywood one, the one about the China earthquake on the left. Yeah, the person who posted it got detained by the police.

They got arrested! Yeah, they got arrested for sharing because it showed China in a negative light.

Mhm, isn't that weird? Wild! Number one, like props for having some regulation on AI imagery, and shame on you for not proving the other AI images.

I mean, it's like it's okay to have AI imagery if it shows America in a bad light or pushes a political agenda like the Gaza thing, but not if it's China. Then it's no, no, you're not allowed to do that.

Isn't that crazy? And it ties into this whole thing we're going to talk about today. And don't worry, guys, we're getting to the main topic soon. There's a few things we have to get out of the way here, like would that get out of the way cover? I should say wrong wording.

Yeah, I'm trying to rip you guys. Remember this? Yeah, what was this?

Well, this is the Uyghur genocide, right? So just pause it real quick. This is when China took over a million Uyghur people, the Muslim people in western China that don't identify as Chinese.

I don't know why people try to downplay this. This is real. It's a genocide, and it's a cultural genocide.

Okay, they took them and told them you're not allowed to practice your religion anymore. You're not allowed to have your beards anymore. You're not allowed to have your language.

Yeah, you're not allowed to have your language anymore. Separated children away from parents, just disappeared people for no reason.

Lit all the adults, the Uyghur adults, and put them in concentration camps. They built concentration camps that a Chinese guy was actually able to expose.

And then expose it. In the past, we've shown the footage. People were doing forced labor. Xinjiang police files, there was a hack where all of the criminals were exposed, and they turned out to be people that were praying in their homes.

Millions of people, right, were detained for just very innocuous things. So yeah, look, and it's absolutely worked. They've completely neutered any sort of cultural identity or religious identity. You're not allowed to anymore.

Now, all you're allowed to do is dance around. Yes, so it's the most tightly controlled area in terms—it's basically like North Korea surveillance, but like with higher surveillance.

Yes, this area of China in western China called Xinjiang. And what happens now is that China employs Westerners to go there and say that there's no genocide.

You know when you see these horrible travel shills, and they go to Xinjiang, and they go to tourist sites like, "What genocide?" Like the Grand Bazaar, you know, the Old Town and the night market and stuff.

And they go there, "Oh, there's no genocide here!" And they show a tourist site. It's like going to Disneyland and saying, "Oh, there's no drug abuse in America because you're walking around Disneyland, and there's Mickey Mouse and stuff."

That's a perfect analogy! It's ridiculous, right? There's no gun violence in America. This is like Misty Mountain or whatever it is. You know, like, "Look at this roller coaster!"

Yeah, it's what's going on. It's homelessness in America. Look at Space Mountain!

I know exactly! That's what's going on. Anyway, we don't need to go too far into that as a refresher because right now what China is doing is they just started boarding schools in Tibet, which is basically re-education centers for Tibetan children now.

So this is not the Muslims in Xinjiang. This is the Tibetan people, which also don't identify as being Chinese, right? So this is a way to culturally genocide another group of people that they've been doing, by the way, away for decades.

When German Mao forcefully—remember how like all the politicians and shills say China's never invaded any country? Tibet was a country, bro! You know what I mean? It's part of China now. You invaded it with soldiers and killed everybody.

They invaded that. They invaded the Dalai Lama. You kicked him out. Yeah, that's just one of the places they did actually invade, just in case you're not up to scratch. Just one of many.

Yeah, I got a whole video about that. Anyway, it's just interesting right now. New York had a great piece. You go ahead.

Okay, you've got that in the description. Yeah, New York Times had a great piece on this. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children are being separated from their families and placed in boarding schools by the Chinese government.

And what they're making them do is shocking. They're making them parade around with the hammer and sickle and the Xi Jinping thought book and portraits of the leaders, right?

And trying to completely erase their identity because they don't want to get into a situation like the Uyghurs where they have to re-educate adults. It's much harder to re-educate adults.

Oh, yeah! So you take a child away from their family, right? And you say religion is bad. Your parents are evil, right? You are fine as long as you are Chinese, as long as you are Chinese, right?

So stop speaking your language. Stop practicing Buddhism. You now follow the dear leader, right? And I'm not exaggerating. This is what's happening.

Pretty horrible! It's pretty insane, and this is happening. And it's apparently—I just want to throw out there, like we're amidst all this like talking about like TikTok bans and all this kind of stuff. This is happening right now in China.

And a lot of people are now thinking that China is some bastion of like unknown culture that they've never been able to reach, and it's some like hidden secret that the American government doesn't want us to know about. It's the other way around, my friends!

Yeah, exactly! This is a bad government. It's a very bad government. I don't need to get too preachy, but it's a great article.

Yeah, and this is also going on. You know, what are we going to save? What are we going to prioritize when there's an earthquake? We've got to put up pictures of Xi Jinping like he's a god.

Isn't that wild? In the relief tents, so there's relief tents in the Tibetan area where these earthquakes happen, and this is what they're doing.

Yeah, this is the country, guys, that you apparently are supposed to look up to.

Yeah, oh yeah! We're going to get really deep into it shortly. What's going on here? Another funny clip?

Yeah, you've been sprinkling them in very liberally this time. Oh, I just want, you know, people to not get—I'm not against it. I didn't want people to get too down.

Sure, sure! Just what's going around the Chinese internet. He got kicked in the nards!

Yeah, look at that! That is a tu table! If—oh, for sure! What else is happening?

Guy's going for a coconut! Whoa! A woman—okay, sorry, right. Okay, so hang on. This looks like fun, by the way. This looks like a good time.

You got a plastic chair, and you've welded a frame with a wheel and put it to the side of a motorcycle. It's like a sidecar, right? I love that!

Oh, I don't think that's a good thing to promote. No, yeah, maybe don't do that. To be fair, it's very difficult to control a sidecar.

We've driven one. Yeah, it's way harder than you think it is. It's weird. It looks normal, like it's just going to—you’re just going to be able to see.

You can't lean! It's the opposite because you're on a motorcycle. You're supposed to lean and shift your weight. You can't shift!

Yeah, so especially if you make it by yourself, you don't get the geometry right. It's going to be terrible!

To a black guy! Okay, what's this? So this has been going around on the American internet as well. This Hong Kong street interview guy, he's in Hong Kong, goes up to interview this dude about what it's like to be black in Hong Kong.

SL, what it's like to be black in China, and this is what he said. Okay, in Asia, do you get any weird looks in Hong Kong? Not really. In China, too much.

Too much! It's unbearable! What do they do to you in China? They try to rub your skin!

In China, they're trying—they're trying to clean it! It's true, though! Yeah, actually, just before we get into that, our black friends in China had such a miserable time.

Yep, I can attest! So bad! Like, especially, by the way, that rubbing thing, it happened to them too.

Yeah, yeah, for sure! Something I've seen! Yeah, and it's crazy! Like, there's ignorance, and then there's maliciousness.

And the problem is, maybe that's ignorance, right? It's just ignorance. Yeah, but the comments are not just ignorance when they're dropping the really bad words.

Okay, if you understand Chinese, it suddenly becomes bad. If you don't understand Chinese, you can be blissfully ignorant.

Yes, but if you understand Chinese, the comments—CU! People are not afraid to just speak their minds in China.

They like to blurt things out about things they see, especially if it's something they've never seen before or rarely see. So as a foreigner, they'll very often just be like, "Oh, why?" You know, "Foreigner over there," whatever.

You know, like, "Oh, look at his big nose," or whatever. But you know, when you've got your black friends with her, they'll be like, "Look, he's so ugly!" or "Look, he looks like this or that!" or "He smells better!"

You know, and they just blurt that out. And you know, most black people I know, especially from Africa in China, speak Chinese incredibly well.

They actually take the time to learn. Well, yeah, and also, like, just growing up in Africa, for some reason, lots of languages.

Yeah, all the people that I grew up around that were African, they could speak like five languages. They're very good at languages, and they pick up Chinese very quickly.

Yeah, you know what I mean? So it's even more insulting when they can hear it.

Yeah, well, it's because the people that are saying these horribly racist things don't ever expect them to.

I mean, we've overheard stuff in China. Like, for I'll tell you a quick example. One time I was in the elevator in China, and normally it would be something like, "Oh, look, he's kind of handsome," or whatever.

But one time I was in with a couple. They were like probably in their 40s or whatever, and they never expect me to speak Chinese.

Sure! And the woman looks over at me, and she goes to her husband, "I thought foreigners are supposed to be handsome."

And I go, "Thanks!" Yeah, thanks!

And the guy was like, "Oh, [expletive], he understood!" Yeah, yeah!

But anyway, that kind of stuff happens, right? That kind of stuff happens in China.

And usually, I would say it's 50/50 nowadays. If you're an American in China, it could be very bad, but you'll never know if you don't speak Chinese.

If you're just some tourist, you're not going to know. You're not going to understand. But if you understand, you're not going to be happy.

I had fun with that once because I was in an elevator, and it was the opposite. I was speaking English to my friend, and there was a young couple there.

And the girl, she obviously was studying English or something because she could understand what I'm saying. But she was translating everything that I said to her boyfriend.

So I'd say like, "Man, we got to go get some food after this." And then she would like, "Oh, roll!" You know, she'd basically be translating along.

And then she started doing copycat. Like everything I said, she'd say in Chinese to her boyfriend. So then I said a really complicated sentence of gobbledygook, and then she just giggled, and she realized the gig was up.

You know what I mean? Do you remember when we were in Ikea? This goes the other way around because I want to be fair.

This is not like, "Oh, you know, those bad racist Chinese people." It's not like that. It can go every which way because foreigners do the same.

We think they can't understand us when we talk because the vast majority of people don't, right? But one time we were in Ikea in Shenzhen, and we had just got back from seeing abject poverty all over China.

We just got back from filming a documentary, and we had gone through this region of Hunan and Guo that was so unbelievably poor. It changed your life.

You know, you're talking about very third-world conditions. Yes, no running water, no electricity, kids walking without shoes down the road picking up rats. That's what we were seeing.

Yeah, we saw it. So I go, "We're in Ikea," and the juxtaposition was shocking, right? So I said to Winston, "We just got back from Backwater Guo where we saw the most horrible poverty."

And we're waiting in line to get like a hot dog at Ikea or something, and I was like, "Isn't that crazy?"

And this woman turns around, this Chinese woman turns around, and she goes, "Have you ever even been to Guo?" I was like, "Actually, yeah, we were just there!"

Like she overheard, and she was pissed off. She goes, "I'm from Guo, and I'm not poor!" And I was like, "I didn't say you were!"

No, yeah, that's true! I remember that interaction very well.

Okay, we've got to get into the whole TikTok, Shaung Shu, TikTok Refugee topic. We've got it lined up, but first we have a word.

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Thanks! Okay, thank you very, very much, AG1! And now, guys, time to get back to the show and head right into Soft Power Hour, which is coming up just as we glide over this lake.

Okay, Soft Power Hour, where we talk about how China is trying to change your mind, literally this time, through, you know, all of its propaganda.

So this video you would have seen in the thumbnail, the picture of this woman—never seen or heard of her before. No, well, that's not important.

Yeah, but the Chinese government really loves her right now. Loves her video, at least!

Yeah, exactly! Well, they love her because she made this video, obviously working out for them. Jang Hing, who is a Chinese Communist Party official, government official, bad dude.

He's a rubbish dude! Exactly! Anyway, now pay attention to the wording. This video by popular TikTok personality Supi is going viral with 1.2 million likes and 3.9 million views in 15 hours.

Potential voters of US politicians are very unhappy now. Okay, that's quite the stretch, Jang Hushing!

Yeah, by the way, the video's got probably about 10 million views by now, but that's quite the stretch.

Yeah, the whole voter thing! Oh yeah, what are you talking about?

MH, anyway, let's see where the next one is. Okay, this guy is a very well-known propagandist for the CCP.

He says this video by popular TikTok personality Supi is going viral with 1.2 million likes and 3.9 million views in 15 hours. Potential voters of US politicians are very unhappy now.

Very interesting! It's the same! It's exactly the same!

SCP! So Chinese government official, CCP official posts something, and then amplifiers, Chinese very well-known propagandist for the CCP just posts absolute garbage propaganda all day, all day attacking America, posting, you know, CCP propaganda.

Exact same! Exact same wording! MH, and same video!

Yeah, interesting, right? Yeah, very interesting! This video by popular TikTok personality Sup is going viral with 1.2 million views—sorry, likes—and 3.9 million views in 15 hours. Gen Z is not happy!

Oh, so they're just swapping out some of the phrasing! Exactly! The same wording!

Could this be a propaganda push? Not the video, but to push the video for its own purpose? Well, if you've got Chinese government officials sharing something, it works for Chinese propaganda.

And if you've got their propagandists pushing it, then it's absolutely being used as propaganda. It's being used as, yeah, it's being used as propaganda!

Yeah, so, you know, we were wondering why are Chinese government officials and well-known CCP propagandists sharing this woman's TikTok video?

So we decided to watch it. We're going to watch it with you, and we're going to discuss it and debunk things that are said in it.

Yes, or at least give clarity. So I just want to preface this by saying I don't think—like, I support anyone's right to do anything, to say anything.

And although I disagree with her opinion, I genuinely don't think this video was made as propaganda. But I do recognize when something is useful as propaganda for other people.

Right? I don't support people's right to do anything, especially I don't support Chinese government officials to post on a platform they block themselves.

Oh, that part I disagree with! I don't support their right to do that! No, I'm talking about the woman that made the video.

Oh yeah, she can have whatever opinion she wants, but I do not support the CCP. She's right! I didn't say that!

I disagree with what she says almost entirely! Yes, but the CCP officials should not have a platform on Western platforms when their own country blocks that platform.

Yeah, exactly! So Jang Hing is sharing a TikTok video that serves his purposes as CCP propaganda on a platform that doesn't—the Chinese government doesn't allow Chinese people to use.

They can't use Twitter! Yeah, it's blocked! It's blocked! You can go to jail!

Yeah, people have! Yes! Okay, let's take a look. Let's watch this video.

I know, I know! So it's coming! It's coming! Let's watch!

Fascist countries ban apps! Fascist countries ban websites! Fascist countries ban apps and websites under the guise of threats to national security when every other country knows it's about suppressing the free speech of its citizens.

Just some ironic censorship footage being edited into here. Yeah, I put that in there so that you guys know it's true. Fascist countries do ban apps!

Correct! Like China, who owns ByteDance, the app that you're defending! Let's take a look at some of the apps that are banned under productivity.

There, what do we got? Gmail, Dropbox, all the Google apps, Microsoft OneDrive, Slack, Google Play. What else we got? Social sites: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or X, Quora, Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok.

By the way, TikTok is banned! TikTok is banned in China! Yes! So the sheer irony of this, isn't that just ironic?

Yes, because remember, TikTok is like a product. It's a subs—they've got Douyin, which is heavily censored, where you can't talk about anything. That's China's version of TikTok.

Yeah, and then they're like, "Okay, we need an American version, so here's the American version of Douyin, you know, and it's called TikTok."

And then we're going to block it in China, but we'll allow the Americans to use it, and we'll still have control over it. The Chinese government blocks it because they know it's a negative influence on their people, whereas in Douyin, they can pump whatever they want into it to, you know, change the narrative for their citizens.

I mean, you know, you can go take a look at this list, but pretty much you can think of any app that you use, and it's blocked in China.

Which, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Line, Signal, all those. Yeah, and if you go to visit China and you're used to using Google Maps to get around, forget about it!

You can't unless you've got some kind of weird roaming thing set with your SIM card. Then you'll be allowed to use it in certain things. But if you went to China and you bought a phone there, you couldn't even download Google Maps!

Anyway, I think it's just the sheer irony of these Chinese government propagandist officials and their amplifiers using this video to talk about why TikTok shouldn't be banned is the most rich thing I've ever heard in my life!

I know! It's crazy coming from a country that blocks literally everything! Every single thing! Everything!

Yeah, except their own internal stuff! Mhm, it's crazy! So WhatsApp is blocked! Don't forget that!

If you go to China and you think you can WhatsApp your friends, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Line, like you said, Signal, whatever, Cal, Cal Talk is Kaka.

I don't know what that is, but that's Korean apparently. There's plenty! You know, like Amazon doesn't work.

That was so frustrating! You can't have like a Google Home or an Amazon Alexa device in China. It doesn't work!

You can't even have like a Google Chrome! I remember I bought one, and I plugged it in. Couldn't even use it!

So no DuckDuckGo, all of this stuff. Just to—we just have to—this is banned in 2025, and it has been for a long time.

You know, Blogspot, WordPress, Skype, Google Hangouts, every—literally everything! And if you use a VPN to get on those things, you can go to jail!

And you will oftentimes—will people have gone to jail for it? So when people try to throw out that argument, "Oh, it's easy, just install a VPN," they're encouraging you to break the law in order to just do normal tasks on the internet, like go on Google Maps!

Yeah, right? It's ridiculous! Moving on!

Yeah, so we just wanted to—you know, we're taking this video, we're breaking it up. What does she say next? You know, if the government believes that a single app could, quote from the hearing on the 10th, skew the perspective of American citizens to be anti-American.

And I just wanted to point this out as exhibit A, so to speak. This is an American defending a $300 billion Chinese corporation that is beholden to the CCP.

And you know, I would think that she might actually be proof that this is working. You know, like inadvertently. Inadvertently!

Yeah, I think she might be proof because she is attacking her own government on behalf of a massive corporation that belongs to an adversarial government.

Maybe that's because that's what she's been conditioned to do using TikTok. Well, that's actually proven in the study that we have up here.

We'll go into that a little bit into that. Okay, good! Maybe the real problem is that American citizens are already in such a state of political unrest and unhappiness.

Yeah, I wonder why! So here's a nice graph I threw together.

Okay, there's a study from Rutgers University. It's peer-reviewed now, by the way. Okay, so it's a real study!

Yeah, so what they did was they said, "Well, let's go out to actually see if the CCP controls what content is on TikTok."

Right? Because the argument that TikTok or ByteDance is making and all of its apologists are making is that it's not controlled by the CCP.

It's a privately owned company. We know for a fact that if a company has CCP members on the board, which they do, then they have ultimate control over what you can and can't do.

Doesn't matter where that app is operating. The CCP will dictate what happens, and I can prove it. So what happens was—they actually found out that if you look at pro-CCP content versus anti-CCP content on TikTok, anti-CCP content got 113,000 likes, right, in the sample versus 28,000 likes for pro-CCP content.

Right? So you think, "Oh, well, that's interesting. That means the anti-CCP content has a fair shake."

Yeah, you know what's interesting about this? What? What would you think would happen on any normal website or app if that was the case?

Would what content would you get more of? Well, if you're liking anti-CCP content a lot, you will get served more anti-CCP content.

And on YouTube and Instagram, that is the case. In fact, there are samples with that that turned out to be the case.

Okay, but what happened on TikTok was absolutely alarming! Okay?

Okay, despite the liking of the content for more times of four—four times the likes of anti-CCP content, pro-CCP content was recommended much, much more on TikTok.

Users liked and commented on anti-CCP content nearly four times as much as they liked or commented on pro-CCP content, yet the search algorithm produced nearly three times as much pro-CCP content.

Neither in Instagram nor YouTube showed this extreme discrepancy between the content ratio of likes and comments.

So you're liking something, and they're like, "We're not going to show that to you. We're actually just going to show you the propaganda."

Correct! You know, the pro-CCP stuff. Look, this is Chongqing living in the future!

Yes! You know, or much more malicious genocide denial!

Yeah, right? Okay, so let's carry on. Our government is scared a single foreign influence could tip the scale and have it all be over.

Don't you think that by taking away the—and I quote—key communications channel of Americans, it's going to make those 170 million Americans a little more anti-American?

Actually, no! So in this poll, I believe this was for ABC News, M says, "Do you think the US government should or should not try to force a sale of TikTok to a non-Chinese company?"

The majority of Americans said yes, they should force the sale! Right? In the condition that it's not right.

If not sold, would you support or oppose the US government banning the use of TikTok in the United States? They would actually—53% of people, the majority of people, would support them banning that in the event of not being able to sell it.

So that's just not true! Yeah, so it's well, it's factually not true!

She's not fact—not true! But again, at least according to this, why is there such an anti-American sentiment?

Well, because China is an adversarial nation that has a 9 out of 100 on the freedom index and literally operates a billion-dollar campaign to actually make America bad and to divide America through campaigns like the Hawaii misdirection and stuff and all that kind of stuff.

It's their incentive and prerogative to actually make America fail! Yes, which we'll get into more proof of that later.

So just to make the claim that, like, it basically sounds like a lot of these people—not just a lot of these people think that everyone opposes this, and the American government is being super authoritarian to ban this.

This was put together by a panel of 81 elected officials. We have a democracy where we elected officials that make trustworthy decisions for us.

Y, and the decision that they came to with surmounting evidence over and over and over again is that TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government, has negative intentions and purposes that could be used in a very bad situation against Americans.

And they came up with a very good thing where if you force a sale, right, then it can be in America's hands and not be for nefarious purposes for our country that quite literally wants us to be destroyed.

Not the people! The Chinese government's intent is for America to be destroyed! Correct!

So it's crazy! It's also quite disingenuous to not realize or that you can use many other alternatives—YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, sure!

The plethora of other apps that do the same. There are tons! And those are safe apps that are not in control of an adversarial government!

Yeah, like Twitter is definitely, you know, an alternative if you wanted to put up stuff.

Anyway, the fact of the matter is I suspect a lot of people have an anti-American sentiment because that's what they pushed on TikTok a lot of the time and all social media.

You'll see evidence of that being able to be the case. Okay, let's carry on with her video.

Maybe Congress knows and understands that. Maybe the government knows that the backlash it will receive from banning TikTok does not outweigh the threats that come with its existence.

I just wanted to point out over here, why is she not angry with the Chinese government? Because they're the ones that they could—the reason there could be a ban!

Yeah, because the American government's not saying, "We're going to ban it." They're like, "Look, you can keep it. It can keep running as long as you sell it."

It's, by the way, it's also a bipartisan approach. This isn't some like one dictator over—it's not like the CIA or something.

It's like this is Democrats and Republicans that, you know that meme of the handshake? It's like that! Democrats and Republicans going, "This is bad!" and everyone going, "Yeah, it's pretty bad!"

Okay, so then now the Chinese government—the Chinese government, not this company—the Chinese government is the one that's blocking the sale!

Yes! Because it could be sold, and then it would just carry on business as usual, but you wouldn't have the Chinese government with its fingers in the pie anymore.

There's another caveat to this. What's that? TikTok was allowed to run under Chinese government influence for how many years now in the US? Unimpeded!

Right? And it would actually be allowed to be continued if the Chinese government didn't keep breaking the rules, like manipulating the content, like is found in this peer-reviewed study.

Yeah! Didn't harvest Americans' data, didn't track journalists based on what they were doing on the app.

Yeah! Didn't break every rule along the way and try to take advantage of this. TikTok would still be allowed!

Sure! You understand? So the blame lies on the Chinese government!

You know, the government that bans this app in their own country! Yes, by the way!

But that's my whole point! It's like, why are these—I just don't get the argument. Why are people like her not realizing that the only reason it could potentially be banned is because of the Chinese government breaking the rules?

Yeah! And also the Chinese government refusing to let it be sold! Correct!

So if it gets banned, it's not actually the American government banning it. It's the fact that the Chinese government said, "We would rather ban it than sell it."

Also, keep in mind that the Chinese government said this is an independent company that has nothing to do with the Chinese government.

Then why are they trying to block the sale? Yeah! Why are they then the ones—why are their foreign ministers of the Chinese Communist Party getting on a podium saying, "This will absolutely never be sold. It's none of your business!"

Right? Yeah! Anyway, let's see.

Yeah, not in a matter of national security. Okay, what is this? Well, TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in efforts to track leaks.

It came under so much scrutiny and pressure that they had to admit that yes, we do and did track journalists.

We did! We did do that! Yes, right? Again, it's not made up!

No! One senator said national security officials described how China can harvest user data, user data, and weaponize it through propaganda and misinformation.

Another lawmaker said that we—they were told that TikTok is able to spy on the microphone on users' devices, track keystrokes, and determine what the users are doing on other apps.

That's true! And they were able to—like if you're making searches there, they're tracking the keystrokes there as well.

Not only that, they are actually employing trackers on other websites. Even if you don't have the app, TikTok or ByteDance is selling tracking pixels to other websites to track your user data around the internet.

Exactly! It ultimately has to give that to the Chinese government!

Yeah, it's pretty insane if they want to! Mhm, which they do!

Yes, but in a matter of being the most popular news and media outlet that the government cannot control, like American-owned broadcasting networks and publications.

I mean, here's the deal. You might not like these companies. This is a little tiny smattering, by the way.

You might think that there's some conspiracy where they're all shaking hands behind the scenes and coming up with grand plans.

Yeah, but one thing you can't say is that these are beholden to the American government. These are private companies!

The thing is, of course, the government could approach them and be like, "Listen, it would be in national interest not to report on this," or something.

Do they have to listen? No, they don't! No, they don't! Some of them do! Some of them have in the past!

Do does a private journalist in America that can exercise their freedom of speech? Don't you think if they were making articles critical of certain leaders in their own country that they would have been shut down?

Yeah, exactly! Or they would be like, "I can't operate here." Here's the thing: the fact that you cannot open a newspaper or website without seeing some rubbish about Trump or Biden or usually just Trump every day proves that the media here is allowed to go on the attack, is allowed to criticize, and is allowed to dig into the personal lives of the leaders.

Okay, it proves it! Right? You cannot do this in China!

Yeah! If it was completely government-controlled, I mean, then the president, like Biden or whatever, would just say, "You're not allowed to say anything bad about me!"

Trump could do this on YouTube and look up some videos. You'll see hundreds of thousands of them going railing against every politician in America.

Yes! What I'm saying is that, you know, you're right. They're private companies, and they don't have to do what the government tells them.

No! All right, so let's see. But the Chinese government directly controls every single media outlet in China and the ones that operate outside of China.

So every media outlet in China is actually directly controlled by the government. So keep this in mind. There are no—yes, there are no private media companies in China.

They answer to the propaganda department or the state security department. They have to listen to what they say, and they have to run everything through the censorship board before they put it out.

Yes! These are directly beholden to a dictator! Yes! Not in a democracy!

So what happens in China is what she's kind of insinuating the American government does. Yes! But that's what actually happens in China!

Yeah! It's not actually a theory! No, it's true! It's not! They don't hide it!

No, it's not debatable! Right? And probably the most important point here, and the real irony, and yes, that includes ByteDance, TikTok's parent company.

Yes! They are ultimately beholden to the Chinese government like every company in China is beholden to the Chinese government on, you know, pure irony here.

Yeah! Is on grounds of national security! Yes! The Chinese government pulls—not can—pulls information, pulls articles, censors people, black bags them, disappears them for anything even remotely critical about its leadership!

Yes! And they do it on grounds of national security! Yes!

Now bringing it back full circle here. Mhm! ByteDance is beholden to the CCP! Yep!

What do you think they will have to do when the CCP knocks on their door and says, "Promote this, target this group, don't allow this"?

And it turns out that's been happening! Of course it's been happening because we saw from the data that when you like a certain type of video, they don't show you more like that.

They show you more of what they want you to see! Correct!

Anyway, let's see over here. But in a matter of being the most popular news and media outlet that the government cannot control—again!

Okay, her whole thing is—I wish you hadn't cut it right there because it's kind of the lead-up to that. And what she says there is important.

She is saying that the American government is so scared of TikTok because it's a media that they cannot control.

Right? The government cannot control! But the fact of the matter is she's missing the whole point that yes, the American government cannot control it just like they can't control CNN or Fox or whatever.

They can't! I mean, they can to a certain degree. They can influence it. They can't like go in there!

Yeah, exactly! They can influence! We're not going to pretend that doesn't happen!

But the Chinese government can control TikTok! So not can they do, does!

Yeah! So the Chinese government can control it, and she's okay with that as long as it's not the American government!

That's what's wild to me! You know what I mean? How do you make that leap? How do they not see that the Chinese government is a far, far worse alternative and that the American government's the lesser of the two evils here?

Yeah! It's also—it's your own bloody—just being disingenuous to say that this ban is some authoritarian thing that nobody wants!

Yeah, of course! But like, let's pretend that's the case! Yes!

It's very—it's quite disingenuous and no, it's misinformed to think that the Chinese government is not the far—sheer more evil entity! Way worse!

Way worse! Yeah! Okay, let's see! The genocide government that's genociding its own people!

Like American-owned broadcasting networks and publications! I just want to always remind people, and the sources down below, that China has one of the lowest journalistic freedoms in the world.

It ranks 172 out of 180 something, so it's quite literally at the bottom of the world! Yes!

Yes! America is no peachy paradise! We have a global freedom index of 83 out of 100! That's kind of like a B! It's a B! B+!

We have internet freedom of 76 out of 100! But China, always remember, is a 9 on both fronts!

And in fact, it has gone down by a measure of a lot since we've lived there! Oh, it keeps going down!

Mhm! And it never surprises me when China employs even more North Korea tactics, yet somehow they are not the bad guys here!

Yes! It's just crazy! It's crazy that a lot of people have these incredibly staunch opinions where they deflect away from China and then paint their own country with this horrible brush.

Which, again, is your right, and I support your right to do that! But when asked or faced with the reality of people that have lived there over a decade and have seen how China operates and understand—actually understand the language and can read the Chinese internet and understand the censorship and understand the laws and barriers and black-bagging and all the horrible things they do to journalists like us, travel tourists, people that were filming videos and almost completely disappeared in China with a SWAT team busting into our hotel rooms.

If you understand those elements, you'll probably have a little bit of a different perspective about why China might be not the best country to lead the most popular app in America! Correct!

You know what I mean? Yeah, just maybe! Just maybe! But whatever!

Mhm! That's my two cents! This is the shocking part of this peer-reviewed study!

Okay, if you look at this, we all know—and that's why I showed those figures before—China is not a free country! One of the least free in the world!

It's also has one of the worst human rights records in the world! Correct! Absolutely!

When people disappear, they disappear, and there's nothing! Human rights lawyers, artists, anybody who gets disappeared or put under house arrest, family members cannot find out where they are!

Family members cannot contact them sometimes for years at a time! When you get taken, you get taken!

Yes! And that's when you realize you have no rights! Correct!

Never mind the religious minorities in China that are completely brainwashed, removed from their families, not allowed to practice their religion, thrown in jail for up to 15 years sometimes for reading the Quran!

MH, Catholics aren't allowed to practice openly under the leadership of Rome! There are so many examples of not only religious freedom but minority racial minorities in China that cannot operate freely in society!

Just everyday people in China that get nabbed! Nothing! Like through corruption! You know, like just because they pissed off the wrong guy who happens to have a connection in the CCP, they disappear!

And again, 99% conviction rate! 99.9! In the court! So if you're accused of something, there's no rule of law! You will go to jail!

You will! No matter what! Unlike the US that has a judicial branch and three branches of government that keep each other in check!

China has no branches of government! Here's the thing! It's kind of crazy to even think of talking about human rights when it comes to China!

Everybody should know by now that the Chinese government's not a fair government! There aren't human rights! They don't give a crap!

Okay? They will just steamroll anyone who says the wrong thing or gets in their way! You've got all the forced, you know, organ harvesting laws!

You've got the forced labor! You've got the sweatshops! You've got the prison labor! You know, you've got all these terrible things happening!

Forced relocation of a land! Dozens of new companies actually just got blacklisted under the Uyghur Forced Labor Act!

Yeah! The current lead—the current—anyway, the fact of the matter is China has an appalling human rights record!

So yeah, this is what makes this shocking, right? You go in, everyone knows that China's got a bad human rights record! It's freaking terrible!

Correct! So you go into that with that base stat, right? That about 4.98% of people think that it has a good human rights record!

Right, exactly! Now if you look at that red piece of the graph, that's people that are on TikTok, but they're using it less than 15 minutes per day!

Yeah, okay! Okay, now that's pretty normal! I think 95% of Americans do think that China is a terrible human rights record, which it does!

Yeah, it's true! But when you up that and you start using it from 15 minutes to three hours in that green part of the graph, yeah, you're on TikTok 15 minutes to three hours in that window per day, that jumps to 36% of people that think China has a good human rights record!

Exactly! So it was 4.9%. That's less than 5%! Suddenly, 36% of people think China has a good human rights record!

I mean, that's eight times higher! Right? You've just jumped!

And why do you think that's happening? It's because you're being fed all this nonsense! You're being maliciously propagandized!

Yeah! It's like all this stuff about how amazing and free China is and how great it is and how everybody's taken care of by the governments!

And it's not! It's not the reality! It's a dystopia!

Anyway, looking at the highest, if you use TikTok more than three hours, yeah, the positive ranking of human rights in China becomes about 50%!

Yeah! So it went from 5% to 50%! Ten times higher!

Yeah! When you're using TikTok! This isn't necessarily people going, "I want to learn about human rights in China!"

These are just users! You're just scrolling around! TikTok is that not alarming?

It's very alarming! By the way, I want to ask you this: is that fair to Chinese people?

No, absolutely not! What you've done is taken the Chinese government approach in how they should run their country, what?

Yeah! And persecute their own people and agree with them on that! Well, a lot of people don't realize when you're looking at this TikTok stuff, you're looking at middle to upper class, I don't know, like young women going out and eating barbecue or something!

Right? Whatever it is! Or dancing or doing something, driving a fancy car! And you get this impression that's China!

Come on! If you go live in China, you'll know that the average person is struggling! Yes!

Okay? And there's a huge, huge portion of the Chinese society that is impoverished in a very bad way and downtrodden, treated like dirt, earning around $500 to $700 a year!

A lot of them! Yeah! Yeah! And in the rural country! I mean, look, it's bad!

Factory workers have it bad! Like, it's really not great there! There is a reason that there are tens of thousands of people rushing over the border into America from China!

And there's a reason that Americans are not doing that to China! Correct! It's very simple!

Right? Correct! We welcome Chinese people escaping persecution here in America! We do welcome that!

Right? China does not welcome people running away from persecution in America because, number one, they're not doing—they're not running away to China!

And number two, they wouldn't be allowed! No, they wouldn't be allowed! You can't go to America!

I mean, to China and say, "I want asylum!" Look at this! I mean, this, to me, this is the most alarming graph that just proves everything!

Again, peer-reviewed studies down below in the description if you want to read them yourself! This is highly be all on N!

Because we have a lot more! More! Yeah, let's finish up her video so that we can look at the whole Little Red Book thing!

Yeah, maybe if this was actually a national security concern, the government would be banning all Chinese-developed apps like Shein and Timu that collect the exact same amount of data as TikTok!

We agree, by the way! Please ban Shein and Timu! Yes! 100% agree with you!

Yeah! As we showed you last time, you know, maybe children will stop getting hurt by fast fashion, toxic chemicals, you know, and all this other nonsense!

And also, mom-and-pop shops will actually have a chance to survive in whichever country you're in! So in this regard, by the way, 100% agree!

By the way, Bingo! Source! What do you think of sources?

Yeah, I mean, here's my problem with that, though. There was one little caveat. Yeah, she said it collects the exact same amount. Where's the source for that?

I know! Where's the source? My source is that I made it up! That's right!

However, they do collect massive amounts of user data! It could even potentially be worse!

I'm just saying I don't have that quantifiable statistic! Correct! And my problem, I think, actually, I'll sum it up after it's over!

Okay, because maybe it knows TikTok is something special! It is something special!

TikTok is a sub from the Chinese government, which is not an ally! It is an adversarial nation that wants America to fail!

So it's been proven time and time again! Yes!

It is doing things that are tantamount to war, and we are right on the cusp of kind of being able to acknowledge that, but nobody's ready to do it yet!

They are doing horrific, horrific things! Yes! The more you look at it!

When you look up Uyghur, which is the Muslim minority in western China, there are millions of them!

Yeah, right! There are over 10 million Uyghurs in China! Yes!

The vast majority of the content that TikTok feeds you is irrelevant! That's how they drown it out!

Isn't it interesting that on YouTube, the pro-China content far, far outweighs the anti-China content?

Yes! Well, that is because China has a massive prerogative to pay influencers!

There's a billion influencers out there saying how great Xinjiang is now! And whereas Uyghurs are great!

Whereas people critical of us, we can't go to China to go do journalism! You're not allowed to!

No! They'll black bag you! Yes! You're done! Right?

That's the irony, right? The irony is that a Chinese journalist can go fly over to America and report on homelessness!

Yes! But I can't go to China to report on homelessness!

Yeah, of course! You understand? Yeah!

So what TikTok does is it doesn't give you any results! It says like, "Okay, they searched Uyghur. Let's see, are we going to give them a pro-China or an anti-China?"

You know what? We're just going to give them garbage! Let's, I don't know, send them a video about bricks!

Literal bricks! Like actual mud made! We probably also send them a video about BR!

Exactly! It's going to be something irrelevant! So it just kind of throws you off! You know what I mean?

And that's how they get rid of this! Like people stop searching! CU! You're not getting anything!

You're not getting anything! You get frr! Like how there's no content!

Interesting! Yeah, it is interesting! It's also just super nefarious!

Correct! You can look at a bunch of other figures here, which are great! These graphs are fantastic!

But here's an example of the irrelevant content! Yeah! When you search Uyghur, it's like epic fail Sonic and Q-tips!

And you know, this is what we mean by irrelevant! So isn't that crazy?

It's like if I search for cars and I get bouncy balls! Yes!

It's just like, what does that have to do with anything? Nothing! That's how they divert away from this stuff!

Yeah! Can you guys give this video a thumbs up if you agree that this is a very nefarious thing that's happening?

Yeah! Thank you very much! Appreciate it! Look at this! This is the average like count on post for the search term of Tibet!

Right? MH! When served up, you end up with irrelevant content!

Okay? When you do that for Xinjiang or Tiananmen, you get irrelevant content!

In fact, the thing that's actually the craziest part is that if you like the post, for example, if you like a post about—what's that here?

The green one here, you end up getting such few results, it's not even funny! But you look at the gray bar here, and you're just getting served up things that have nothing to do with the Uyghur!

The age count of TikTok for posts on the term Xinjiang, right? Yeah! You just get irrelevant junk!

Anyway, we get the picture! They just—they manipulate what you see! It's very simple! It's proven now!

Right? It is proven now! It is proven now! Absolutely! Without a doubt!

Yeah! Yeah! Use proba! So this is interesting! If you go to YouTube and you like a pro-China video, your like turns into about 44 views!

Okay, so that's—it's worth about 44 views of content that the algorithm will feed you! If you like an anti—they should say anti-CCP video, but anti-Chinese government video, it'll serve you up about 39 views!

Okay? Isn't it interesting? Slightly biased, right?

Yeah, it's biased! YouTube is biased against anything anti-China these days! Look at the first graph!

Yeah! The average views per like for TikTok, if you like a pro-China video, you get 15 views!

And it's half of that for the anti-government videos! Manipulated!

Half! Percentage of participants who agree with the statement that China is one of the most desirable travel destinations in the world!

And this is by TikTok usage! Right? If you've never used TikTok, you think of China as a good travel destination 21% of the time!

Yeah! If you've used it less than 15 minutes, that jumps up to 27%! If you go to 15 minutes to 3 hours, that's 38.8%!

And if you're on TikTok more than three hours per day, that jumps up to 41%! It's crazy!

Yeah! So you just—you could kind of mirror that across any issue! Yeah!

Like about China! If the Chinese government promoting something, whether it's tourism or human rights or genocide denial!

Right? It's fairly obvious what's happening here is they're changing people's opinions and minds!

They are, you know, propagandizing them! Yes!

Okay, so let's see what she says! Can't politically organize!

I wish you hadn't cut these where you cut them! CU! Sentences are being missed!

Yeah! Anyway, let's see! You can't politically organize on Douyin!

You're—she's right! You can't politically organize on Douyin!

So she's saying that you can politically organize on TikTok! Let's see! Where's the rest of our sentence here before we go back to your graphs?

Hang on! We'll get back to the graphs in a second! If TikTok goes dark, the government deliberately and knowingly took away your free speech!

Do not accept national security for an answer! So her argument is that they're not going to ban Douyin because you can't politically organize on Douyin!

But they want to ban TikTok because you can politically organize on it and go against the government! Right?

Well, that's the argument! That's what she's saying! Right? In my mind, that's not reality!

No, of course that's not reality! And she says the Chinese government, though!

I mean, I want to say the Chinese government is the one that wants it banned! Okay?

At the end of the day, it's their fault! Blame them if you need to blame someone!

But do you see how she's actually very counter to what she's trying to do here? She wants TikTok to remain, but she's proving a point here!

Is that it's an adversarial country, right, that controls this app that allows you to attack your own government!

And obviously is encouraging it through—and doesn't allow you to be critical of China!

Oh, you can't be critical of China! They bury that! Right?

I was banned! Yeah, exactly!

And it's just—the irony is just lost! You know what I mean? Because guess what? You can politically organize if you want on any social media!

We've seen it! We've seen it! Of course! Facebook! Lots of protests for him on Facebook against the US government, by the way

Including my wife, who uses Shong Shu, they're like, "Yeah, it's Little Red Book, like M's Little Red Book." Everyone knows, everyone says that they're trying to co-opt this. This is Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, with some absolutely amazing quotes, like, "Hundreds of millions of Chinese people can be sacrificed as long as we end up on top." Yes, really horrific things. Yes, really absolutely awful, awful things. It is a brainwashing, horrible little collection of quotations by mad Mao, who killed more people than any invader ever did in China, than any person in the world, in history, and his own people. Yes, yes, yeah, he's tens of millions. He's a bad guy.

Anyway, Xiaohongshu is now the new thing, and this is what this TikTok refugee thing is. Again, we're seeing these propagandists who work for China full-time. If you ever want to torture yourself, you can go look at their Twitter pages, but it's literally just "China's good, America's bad," but like horrible stuff. It's influence ops, exactly, on a platform that's banned in China. The irony! They're putting stuff out like this: "Young US Americans are grateful to be able to use Red Note and be so kindly received." And, you know, they're putting on, "Hi, Red Note friends, thank you for having us here," type thing.

So it's all these people, you know, this idea that TikTok might be banned on the 19th. Yeah, they're going to run over to a different app because they need to have a replacement for TikTok. By the way, which would be YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels or any of the other apps that do the same thing. Little Red Book is not an alternative, not the correct one.

Yeah, we're going to get into that in a bit, but do you know why? Do you think it is that they're suddenly going to Little Red Note? Why do you think it's because TikTok is pushing that now? Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's why. If you go in the comments, why would they TikTok videos? It's hundreds of thousands, not millions now, of bot comments telling people to go over here.

And it's weird because Xiaohongshu would be a competitor financially with TikTok, but it's still under the control of the Chinese government. That's what they want. It is the prerogative of the Chinese government to take all of those users that it's about to lose and get them over and corral them into something it also controls.

Correct, and I'll tell you why they do this real quick. The Chinese government doesn't understand how things work. Right? If you were to sit down with a high-level CCP official, they don't understand what TikTok even is. But what they do know is they know that it's a thing that controls over 100 million Americans' opinion about China, and they can be employed for that. It's one of the best weapons if we're ever in World War III. They can employ it against America, right? They know that that's important.

Yes, they don't care what app does it. It could be called Raps City. It could be called Pandora's Box, right? It doesn't matter what it's called. It just matters that they can exert that influence over 170 million Americans, right? Correct. Now that they're faced with this dilemma, because I can tell they didn't see this coming. No, they didn't think it was actually going to happen. They thought it would just be the Chinese way, always used to winning, right? Because they can exert monetary control over people. They can blackmail; they can do whatever they want.

Yeah, they're used to winning all the time. Now that this ban actually is probably going to come into fruition, they're like, "What are we going to do?" It shows you how sloppy and knee-jerk they are. They're not playing 4D chess here. The 4D chess was manipulating Americans, but if that goes away, they need to get them somewhere else. This is like a last-ditch effort to get them into an app that really is not a replacement for TikTok.

No, right? Well, I mean, here you've got very well-known propagandists over here saying congratulations to another Chinese company for becoming the number one most downloaded app. Come on, you're South African. Would you say, "Congratulations to South Africa for having a great app?" I wouldn't. "Congratulations, America, for having Google Maps." Dude, this guy's entire career is based on, you know, sucking the jba of the CCP in order to get, like, whatever, you know, incentives and stuff. Come on, like that's what he does. It's his job.

All right, Americans flocking to Xiaohongshu prove China has won the tech wars. Americans will not accept an inferior product. Instagram? Now imagine if China was allowed to sell its cars in the USA; they would dominate. So this is the kind of propaganda you're seeing, kind of rubbish you're seeing.

Yeah, and again, you're getting the same stuff over and over. These propagandists have one thing to do, and that's to push a narrative. They take the same screens; they put out the same stuff. "W W W Xiaohongshu is great." You know, look, it's so friendly. You've got all these people saying like, "Oh, you know, it's peak irony." The TikTok ban led to Americans exploring Chinese social media and discovering pretty much all they've been told about China was a lie.

You know, by the way, this guy is a massive shill. He's like a Communist Party of the UK's princeling or something. Nonsense, I can't remember, but you know what I'm saying. Like all these people are just pushing this garbage, right? You've got state media personalities pushing stuff like, "US soft power is over." Xiaohongshu, also known as Red Note. No, it's not also known as that. They made that up like yesterday.

Yeah, like, okay, they literally made up Red Note like a day ago. It's a Little Red Book, guys. It has hit number one on the US App Store following news of a possible TikTok ban on January 19. Flash in the pan. It is a flash in the pan.

But yeah, you've got people going on, and they're like celebrating. It's out of spite. You know, TikTok users are flocking to an actual Chinese-owned clone of TikTok. It's not, by the way, it's nothing like TikTok. It's like Instagram. They have nothing to do with TikTok. Douyin is TikTok, exactly. Nobody knows what they're talking about.

Yeah, exactly. Everyone's learning Mandarin. Existing users are super welcoming. Yeah, whatever. What kind of stretch Armstrong is this? Everyone's learning Mandarin.

Yeah, so let's talk about what Xiaohongshu really is, okay? Because maybe our audience is not familiar with it. Correct. The app has 300 million users. This is, again, a Chinese state media employee giving us the facts, which is very, very useful. Thank you.

70% of women, half of them were born after 1995. 35% were born after 2000, so it's for young people, right? Half come from China's top cities, so it's only for the wealthy middle to middle upper class. Yeah, it's often Chinese abroad, right? Chinese people living abroad. Exactly, the diaspora.

Yeah, Xiaohongshu is a place to share and search for information on restaurants, travel, makeup, fashion, and everything else young people like. It's not the same as TikTok. No, it's not political, by the way. Yes, we'll get into that.

Yeah, this is a sampling of what you would find on Little Red Book, okay? And if we just take a quick look, it's the typical, like, "Oh, I'm checking out a food." Like, "Look at this little cake," right? You know, "Oh, look at this fashion," right? You know, some makeup, some travel stuff, the Jelly Cat specials on plushies or whatever. You know, it's like it's what you would expect for that demographic.

My wife uses it. It's like a, you know, it's usually women, as he said. And it's also the kind of place where people can set up a shop and sell handbags or, as you can see on the side there, sell handbags. You can sell makeup. You know, you can have your little store. You can become an influencer, like, "Oh, check out this lip gloss," or whatever. Sorry, I'm not very well-versed in what goes on there completely, but you know what I mean. It's that kind of thing.

One thing for sure is it's a women's lifestyle app. It's also a lifeline for the diaspora overseas, correct, that are not living in China. And I know this because my wife, she makes friends through that. They share details and loopholes on how to take advantage of Costco deals or that kind of thing, right? That's what it's really for. It's not to go on there and talk about your political issues and whatever else, dancing videos or whatever. It's not like TikTok, right?

So it's not an app that's suited to that. No, you know, it's not a replacement. It's kind of like a fashion-related thing. This is what it's looking like right now with all the TikTok refugees coming in, and you can see it doesn't really match, does it? Previously, you've got all those, like, you know, very filtered, very slim kind of like, "Here's a handbag and a lipstick," and now you've got like, "W the howy gu," you know, whatever, just TikTok, you know?

So this is something interesting that's happening because of this. The people are going over there and meeting Chinese people, and Chinese people are meeting Americans for the first time, and there's actually very nice interaction. That's the positive thing that's coming out of this.

The funny thing is that China is about to run into a wall because this is something they've prevented for a long time. They don't want that mix. They don't want people to have American values. It's something that the top leaders push all the time. That's why they block TikTok in China. They don't want them to see what free life looks like in a free country, whether that's criticism of America or not. They do not want people to see that. That's something people can do.

Yeah, Xiaohongshu has always been behind a language barrier. Even the app's name is in Chinese. It's in Chinese characters, right? So your average English-speaking person is not going to know what it's about. They're not going to know how to navigate it because it's all in Chinese. But they don't have a choice. They're desperate. They're trying to move people over.

So this is like a soft power victory in the interim that they're going to have to try to find a way out of later. Yeah, because what these people, these refugees, don't understand is you're just going into another Chinese-controlled app that's actually probably even more Chinese-controlled.

Yeah, and you're going to have to use hidden secret words that Chinese people have had to adopt, a completely different vocabulary to communicate with each other about anything because they get banned all the time.

Well, there's some interesting things coming up about that. I just wanted to once again reiterate what the Little Red Book is, okay? You can see it here in this awful communist propaganda, but it was used as a symbol of Mao Zedong. It was used as a symbol of Chinese superiority. It is not good. Like I said, it's like Hitler's Mein Kampf. It's the same idea. It's got that power, and to call your app after that is actually in very poor taste.

All right, and if you were to see this, this is what it used to be. The Little Red Guards running around. These are the people that ratted. That's why they're trying to rebrand. Yeah, they ratted their teachers out. They, you know, their parents, they murdered their teachers and the intellectuals and stuff. They ran around with this Little Red Book. They had all this power to go and destroy everything and ruin people's lives and murder them and steal from them and do all these terrible things.

You know, and this is what people are signing up for, is this Little Red Book, this app that's named after this Little Red Book. Yeah, I mean, to conflate that is disingenuous. Like, the name is that they're not signing up for what, but they are signing up for an app. It's like signing up for an app called Mein Kampf. It really is. You can't dismiss that.

No, no, the rebrand is hilarious. Yeah, it's stupid that they're trying to say, "Oh, no, it was Red Note all along." It wasn't. Xiaohongshu is directly translated to Little Red Book. Yeah, and they claim that it has nothing to do with that.

Anyway, and this is kind of funny, the memes coming out, you know, like Americans after their government bans TikTok. It's literally that. Okay, the thing is people are already finding out, okay, that some content isn't allowed on Red Note. So TikTok refugees have already noted harsh restrictions on Red Note that have resulted in their content being removed or their accounts being suspended.

TikTok, the app that banned me for posting anything critical about the Chinese government, by the way, it turns out the stuff that I could post on there about America being bad and all this kind of stuff, I can't post this stuff. Yeah, I'm gay. I can't post stuff about that because that's not allowed either. It turns out when I go to a Chinese government-controlled app, I can't express myself. H, EXA, what a surprise!

So people are being suspended, including for mentioning LGBTQ+ identities or for women wearing slightly low-cut tops. Okay, that's crazy. One TikTok user returned to the platform to share that she had been banned from Red Note after posting a selfie with a tiny bit of cleavage. It's not allowed in China.

In a separate video mentioning trans plight, a Black user asked for help online after her selfie was removed, all for wearing a shirt in the same color as her skin tone. So they probably thought like that she was naked or something and removed her. I mean, people are going to find out really quickly.

And it's kind of mind-blowing that people would be willing to go and accept and join a heavily censored app that's controlled by the Chinese government and think that that's okay. Put up with Chinese censorship, put up with the Chinese government censorship because they think that the American government is censoring them. I don't quite understand this. It's like a post-truth reality. It's like, I will go and accept real censorship and think it's from an authoritarian country and not complain about it.

I'm just going to accept that because it's the Chinese government that's censoring, so that's okay. By the way, that government wants the worst for me as an American. Yeah, you know what I mean? Isn't it weird?

Yeah, it's nuts. It's crazy. Yeah. What's this about? So Xiaohongshu is an innocent lifestyle app or another security risk? Some investigative journalists, I believe this was for Radio Free Asia, went in there and they looked up Tiananmen Square. They looked up in Xiaohongshu. It did not, by the way, I saw people searching in English for this too, and it doesn't have any results in English either. Makes sense, right? Because it's not allowed.

You're not allowed to ask what happened in Tiananmen Square when the Chinese government mowed over thousands of students in Tiananmen Square and killed all of them. Yeah, if you look up 64, which is the date of Tiananmen Square, you write "Tiananmen," banned for like two hours or something. Yes, and when you post a picture of Tank Man, one of the guys that stood up to those PLA tanks in Tiananmen Square, your account will be banned.

Yeah, makes sense. She blocked the account. It makes complete sense. This is on Little Red Book, on Red Note. Your freedom of speech, a message sent by one Xiaohongshu user in which they refer to Xi Jinping as "Papi," which, by the way, is not even a negative thing at all, saying "Daddy Trump."

Yeah, yes, sounds weird. Was censored in transit and never reached the recipient user's phone. Instead, they received a reminder to report any messages violating the app's terms of service. By the way, I found this out in ByteDance's, which is unrelated to TikTok, ByteDance's AI, that if you ask them, "Should content about Xi Jinping be censored on American apps?" Yeah, it basically says yes.

Yes, if you say, "Should content about Biden be censored on American apps?" It says no. Yeah, of course, that's ByteDance for you. Yeah, yeah. So I'm just saying you're not much better off here.

Yes, so what's this undesirable information? This includes this is the Xiaohongshu, the Red Note terms of service. What do we got? Violating the principles of the Constitution, inciting resistance or undermining the Constitution, inciting resistance or undermining other laws, other laws, all of them.

All, yeah. Endangering national unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity, revealing state secrets. This is threatening nationality government, by the way, not the American government. No, this is about the Chinese government. Undermining the dignity, honor, or interests of the state, promoting terrorism or extremism, denigrating the nation's excellent cultural traditions. Where have we heard that?

Okay, yeah, exactly. Chinese excellent culture. Yeah, inciting ethnic hatred or discrimination, infringing on national customs, distorting natural history, no national history or historical figures, hurting national feelings. Hurting national feelings? Wow, that's kind of vague. You get banned for hurting China's feelings.

Xiaohongshu undermining national unity, which, by the way, is what you see TikTokers doing to America. Yes, it's all about division, right? It's about like red versus blue. It's about like, "Oh, government sucks," and like, "America sucks," and like, "Everyone," it's all about division, right? Undermining national unity is not allowed on Xiaohongshu.

Endangering social morality is not allowed on Xiaohongshu. Disrupting the social order is not allowed on Red Note. Undermining social stability is not allowed on Red Note. Promoting obscenity, gambling, or drug use is not allowed on Red Note.

So all of these, there's more. Yeah, oh, there's more. Okay, let's see. We don't have to go through everything. I just wanted you guys to get an idea of what you're up against. Okay, wait, promoting, okay, let's see. We'll just go through it. Rendering violence and terror, abetting crime, or teaching criminal methods, infringing on the lawful rights and interests of minors, damaging the physical or mental health of minors, insulting or slandering others, spreading others' private information, inciting resistance or undermining the state's religious policy. Uh-oh.

Okay, yeah, yeah. Promoting religious fanaticism, endangering religious harmony, hurting the religious sentiments of religious citizens, undermining the unity of believing and non-believing citizens, promoting cults and superstitions, violating any of the seven bottom lines, breaking any laws or regulations, just any, okay, in China.

Yeah, yeah. Contravening the socialist system. You can't criticize socialism, guys. How ironic is that? Yeah, it's kind of strange. Contravening national interests, whichever those may be, infringing upon citizens' legitimate rights and interests, disturbing public order, offending public morality, spreading inauthentic information.

Sorry, spreading inauthentic information. So, all of TikTok, really, it's like, you know, if something's not completely proven to be true, you're not allowed to say it, basically. Breaking other laws and regulations, it says like breaking any laws and regulations and then also other ones. This is a giant net.

Yeah, it is a giant net. This is Xiaohongshu, Red Book. This is Little Red Book. This is Red Note. This is what you signed up for, guys. This incredibly censored thing, and you think it's freedom. You think it's like, "Finally, here's an app we can give a middle finger to the American government because they can't control us." There, guess what? The Chinese government can control you there.

Yeah, you know what they do? What? Well, when state security organs in China are collecting evidence in the course of investigating acts of espionage, all individuals or organizations concerned must provide truthful information and cannot refuse to do so. China's recently enacted counter-espionage law requires any company or individual to provide any information requested by state investigators. It's illegal to refuse.

Yeah, so when they say, "Give us all the DMs, all of the pictures, all of the access to that person's phone, his microphone, camera, and everything that's got Xiaohongshu or TikTok installed," they have to. They can't say no. It's a Chinese app.

Mhm. It's illegal to do. Yeah, this is provided by Asia Fact Check Lab. Yeah, so when asked, if you ask Google AI, "Is Xiaohongshu, Red Note, subject to Chinese foreign influence?" Right? Yeah, it says yes. Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media platform, is subject to influence from the Chinese government, meaning it likely censors content deemed politically sensitive by Beijing, similar to other internet services within China. This censorship is a key feature of the platform.

Now, the reason I did this is I would never use AI to just prove something to you. That's nonsense. But what I do is provide sources, correct? So when you break these down, whenever you get an AI result, you can actually break them down as to where they got their sources from. So in the next slides, you'll see where they got their sources from, and all of those are linked below.

Okay, unlike people that just like to get addicted to spreading hateful messages and screaming at the camera, yeah, we like to provide sources of where this information comes from. Like most apps and internet services in China, Xiaohongshu is subject to censorship. Platforms typically enforce censorship by deleting or shadowbanning content that Beijing deems politically sensitive. Large Western platforms such as Google and Facebook are blocked in China.

Correct, and there are three sources that gave this information about Xiaohongshu, by the way, again, okay, linked below. This was on a Semaphore article about Xiaohongshu's new influx of, you know, foreigners, of Americans, these refugees. The influx of foreign culture and languages could cause problems for Xiaohongshu, which is already heavily censored and could face heightened pressure over content moderation.

Yes, they are going to be overwhelmed. I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, I think people are going to put up with it because everyone wants to say, "You know, China W, China's great," and, you know, "American government bad," so I'm going to put up with the censorship. But it's going to grate on you because if I know Americans, I know that they like to speak their mind.

Yeah, and when people tell them you're not allowed to and stuff gets banned, I think they'll get rowdy very quickly. Oh, yeah, I really do think so. There could be some serious disruption. I think Americans, if anyone, will find a way around the censorship to put out their displeasure with what's happening to them on that app and potentially about China or Chinese government things, and it will reach 300 million Chinese people now.

Yeah, that'd be interesting. Not a good idea for the Chinese government. I also think that, you know, the thing is, the Little Red Book, Xiaohongshu, is not tooled up for English. It's meant for Chinese language speakers, not yet. They'll figure out.

So I think a lot of stuff's going to slip through in the beginning. I thought this was an interesting quote, and I think it's a wildly misinformed quote, okay? And I just want to prove something. The reason that our government, this is talking about America, is telling us that they're banning TikTok is because they're insisting that it's owned by you guys, the Chinese government, whatever.

She said, "And they're trying to make us think you guys are bad." This is someone on Xiaohongshu leaving this message: "A lot of us are smarter than that, though, so we decided to piss off our government and download an actual Chinese app." She said, "We call that trolling." In short, we're here to spite our government and learn about China and hang out with you guys.

Oh, lovely intentions. Sure, doesn't make any sense. China is the—I don't know about you, but in American schools, we are taught to do nothing but love other cultures, appreciate other cultures, to learn about other cultures. In China, they are quite literally taught that you, as an American or a Japanese person, are the enemy of China. They teach children this. They teach them to hate.

How to shoot you in schools, in military campaigns, school in the schools. Yeah, yeah, they spread information about how America is the worst country in the world and wants nothing but bad for China. Yeah, you don't learn that in America. No, I can attest to that. I've got a young child who's in school, and I mean, she's always bringing some random culture thing home, like some paper lantern or some, you know, Spanish thing or some Korean thing or some random— you name it, she's bringing it back, and she's just learned all about whatever festival over there.

And I'm like, "Okay, it's nice. I'm glad that she gets to learn all of this stuff," but it's like, "Yeah, okay, cool. Where's your culture? Let's be like China." I'm joking, I'm joking. No, I mean, when you've lived in a country like China for so long where they actually reject any other form of culture, to see this in America is very heartwarming.

Yes, you know, it's lovely. I love that. I love the fact that my daughter knows more about the cultures around the world than I do. She learns it in school. It's awesome. It is awesome, right? It's about this human race. We're all in it together. But China is not. The Chinese government is like, "We are Chinese, you are foreigners, and we're going to keep our culture. We're going to reject all of your stuff."

Not allowed to practice or celebrate certain things, especially not in any official capacity in China right now. Anything like Christmas and all that, yeah, you can have your mall decorations, but you're not allowed to set up a Christmas tree and have a nice thing in your school or your government apartment or anything that's linked to the government. You're not allowed to.

So you know what I mean? It's pretty bad how they do that. Well, let's just look at a quick little video about what they teach in school. This is what—yeah, this is what they teach Chinese children. They don't teach them about the beauty of other cultures. No, you know, they're like, "What country do you hate the most?" Says it's the US. "I hate them so much."

Why? Regardless of the good and bad, I hate them all. There, Chinese schools. You do when you grow up want to kill Japanese. And a teacher interviewing a student. Why? And then posting it, and then everyone online saying it was good. One time I felt so much hate it made my nose bleed.

Yeah, isn't that crazy? Just a little smattering. I mean, look, we've both been there. I taught kindergarten kids for about a year and a half in China, somewhere around there, and I saw firsthand how the little children were taught to hate Japanese people, and it really made me sad to see that. And also just the massive amount of nationalist brainwashing that goes into it.

So again, we're dealing with a government that doesn't like you very much. No, okay? No. Anyway, what is this? It's unlikely that Americans will settle on Red Note. This is how I wanted to finish this. I don't want to pour cold water on this. I like the interaction between Americans and China right now. I think that's positive.

The fact that Chinese people and Americans are meeting and talking, the thing is they've been able to do that all along. No one's ever stopped Americans from going on Xiaohongshu. No, no, you were able to. It's just because of this ban. There's this immigration. Oh, now we're going to go. We're going to show them.

Well, you stupid idiots, if you wanted to do that all along, you could have done so. It just shows you didn't care enough. Right? But this, for it's like trolling, right? I'll make a prediction. This flash-in-the-pan thing, this isn't going to last. Xiaohongshu, Red Note is not going to be some prolific TikTok counter. It's not going to be what people use permanently after this.

Americans will eventually just migrate to other apps that do the same thing, like YouTube, like Instagram. I would make a prediction. I think they would—what is it called? Red Note? Xiaohongshu? They would be lucky if they get 5% of the Americans over from TikTok. They'll be lucky if they get 5%. Just because it's the number one app right now is because it's a new thing that people are downloading.

It is not the majority of TikTok users. No, this will be a fad. Right? It also is something that the Chinese government is probably not going to want unless they already have some massive contingency plan to warp people's minds over there as well. But it looks like a mess.

I have another prediction. Xiaohongshu is going to release an American version called Red Note. Yes, okay? That's going to be in English for the American market that will allow people to talk about LGBTQ and whatever they want to talk about. Chinese people would be banned in China. Won't. Yeah, that's what'll happen. That's exactly what's going to happen.

If it gets enough traction, I think they're sitting there and they're like, "Oh, look, yeah, this is working. Let's quickly roll it out. Let's roll out Red Note, and we got to get these Americans out of our Xiaohongshu because, you know, they're messing with our message here."

You know, so this was from Time Magazine you were reading. Okay, oh yeah, it's unlikely that Americans will settle on Red Note or Lemonade long-term. Lemonade is another one of those actual TikTok kind of competitive. They face the same regulatory pressures that TikTok does, but these apps' ascendance does reveal an acute desire from Americans to find their next social media destination.

Their general weariness about TikTok's top American competitors and their discontent with a ban that may seem paternalistic. Yeah, many see it as paternalistic. It's quite possible that Red Note's honeymoon will be short. Some users have experienced concern that Red Note will be quicker to censor content that is political, sexual, or LGBTQ-related.

And Red Note also faces a potential ban while Congress, protecting Americans from foreign adversary-controlled applications act, singles out TikTok and other ByteDance apps. It also regulates other foreign adversary-controlled applications. Might be a bit of a whack-a-mole situation we're going to be looking at here.

Wouldn't it be such a pity if Xiaohongshu gets blocked? Yeah, well, you know what? I really like what's like I said. I like what's happening right now, but I really think give it three months, and if Americans do want to stick with the app, they are not going to be happy about what they're not allowed to put on there.

Exactly, just not. Yeah, you know, I mean, yeah, go ahead. And that's the thing. Experience it for yourself. Just go enjoy it. Like, have fun. Talk to Chinese people. I suggest that anyway, you know?

Like, yeah, I do not recommend downloading a Chinese app, though. No, I agree with that. I agree with you. Yeah, we can't recommend. I say go talk to them. Yes, you know, but maybe you Chinese, you know what you should do if you're on there? Advocate for the freedom of Chinese people. Advocate for the freedom that Chinese people shouldn't have to break the law to try to get on Twitter or on YouTube or on all these other apps, which everyone around the world is allowed to use.

Yeah, except for North Koreans and Chinese and Iranians and stuff and Turkmenistan, exactly. Yeah, and Cubans. Those countries don't allow their citizens to participate in dialogue with us. We could have been talking a long time ago. We've been advocating for this for a long time.

So exercise your right to stick up for their freedoms. I'd love to see more Chinese people allowed on social media apps, you know? Yes, and stop being walled off all the time. Yes, anyway, I think we've run out of time here, so probably we just—just a quick little thing.

Listen, rumors, whether this is true or it's like sources close to whatever, you know, TikTok's claiming this is nonsense, by the way. So they're claiming it's nonsense. Yeah, well, according to sources, Chinese officials have been talking to Elon Musk about buying TikTok. If that's really true, I think everybody has to worry a little bit. You know what I mean? Because if the Chinese government is going to trust him to run their propaganda, that's not even him.

If they were like okay with a sale, like all of a sudden overnight, I would be like, "Uh, what? This dealings is that person?" Yeah, what's going on? Yeah, so we'll keep an eye on that, guys. You know, I guess it's time for us to hit a Q&A. Yes, all right, so we're going to go into our Yamcha segment. This is where we answer your questions and question your answers.

We thank you for putting up with our rather hastily thrown out. Yeah, we said to get this out there because you guys were hammering us with questions about it. Also, we just have to inform people because a lot of people are misinformed. They were thinking that Xiaohongshu was the Chinese version of TikTok. A lot of people, it's not. It's Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, and I don't understand why they didn't go there, by the way.

Yes, why? I don't know. I couldn't tell you. It's strange. It is strange. You know why? Because it's probably very familiar to TikTokers, and then they'll realize that, "Hang on a second, it's, you know, they don't allow us to do the same." You also can't just sign up. Oh, yes, that's right. Chinese ID, by the way, if you want to use Chinese apps, most of them require a Chinese ID and a Chinese phone number and all that.

Yeah, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, you get—okay, so anyway, let's get into the Q&A. And for those of you who are not watching now, this is our week's video, by the way. So we'll see you again next week.

Yeah, and we'll leave the Q&A up for the rest of the week. Yes, all right. Stay awesome. Chinese Pride says 2025 is going to be a wild year. The snake is more my year. Ouroboros. Ouroboros. Oh, okay, you know, that's the snake that eats itself. Yes, yeah, that's correct.

So let's plan some protests and follow through until the PRC sheds the CCP skin. USA Miss, I miss the bike in support of you both spreading the facts. Well, you just pick it up. Pick up the bike. You know what? One thing I do want to show everyone, okay? Something funny, something you missed out on. You just need to be like this. You just need to be like this. Smell it.

Alcohol, tobacco consumption, the kind Santa Claus with a gray beard and a red cotton-padded coat together with his cute deer. Cute deer. Together with his cute deer. Why is she so upset? She's like, "This is the worst thing I've ever seen." Yes, I do. Is that like Arnold Schwarzenegger or something?

Yes, I do. Sorry, baby, that is the shittiest ad I've ever seen. Yes, mind that. That was Xiaohongshu, our Monday show. If you go to patreon.com/podcast, you will get access to our Monday show. We have over 100 episodes. There's currently a deal where you can get in, and you can lock in for half price.

Yeah, it is the show where we cover a completely different topic on Mondays. This time on this episode that you missed, it was amazing. You can go watch. Yeah, if you sign up, it was about Liang Qichao, which was the Chinese government's medicine to stop COVID around the world, and the FDA was like, "Nah."

Yeah, anyway, a lot of other countries accepted it, and it was just this herb garbage. Yeah, but they made this fantastic ad campaign. There was, you know, it's aimed at foreigners, and that's where a lot of our sound bites come from. You know, like if you've seen this, "Take the pills, je do working out, they're amazing."

Yeah, so honestly, that's where those sound bites come from, and we had a whole bunch of these hidden ads, and we showed them and went through the timeline. It was so good. It was one of the best episodes we've had in a long time.

Yeah, so go check that out. Go to patreon.com/podcast. Sign up for the ho ho ho sale. The holiday sale is still going because it still seems wildly popular. We're going for a little while. Guess it's still holidays in your heart. It is, and it's January. You know, is that a holiday? It's snowing. It's cold out. You know, it's got the vibe. It's got the vibe.

Yeah, but check it out if you get the chance. Anyway, let's get back to the Q&A. Lane Kendall says, "Appreciate you all going live for this. Best in the game." Thanks very much. I appreciate you saying that. And yeah, I don't think anyone had such ravenously detailed coverage as we do about the TikTok ban.

By the way, I made a TikTok ban video today. Please go check it out. Yeah, it's getting suppressed like beyond. It's the worst performing video I've ever had, and people watching are like, "This needs to be important. People need to see this video." I proved that ByteDance is beholden to the CCP.

Yeah, remember when we showed you the ByteDance AI? You went even deeper. I asked the audience some questions. They came up with some very poignant things to ask ByteDance about its CCP influence. It's bad. It's so bad. Correct.

So go to Law 86. It's in the description. Go check it out, please. You will like it. Yes, okay. Okay, where is that nonsense? Here it is. You'll follow me. Okay, I called it, "You're on the fence about TikTok? Watch this."

Yeah, because if you are on the fence about TikTok, I'm confident you might be swayed after watching that video. Yeah, please go take a look. Yes.

Lane Kendall, thank you very much. Fantastic forger, thank you very much. Nice surprise. Conscientious objectors, what? Okay. Joe of the Mask, I'm four minutes behind, but keep up the good fight. Next, we have Gun Fox. Thank you very much. I have to ask, could he exit the freeway and go over the highway and re-enter the highway like we can in the US?

Of course, you're talking about the truck. That's the one thing. I guess people are just too impatient, too inconsiderate, or they just don't know how it works. But so many times, I almost died once because a guy was in the fast lane. I was following him, and he decided he was in the distance, but he decided he just missed the exit, and he wasn't sure, so he was going to check his GPS.

So he stopped dead in the fast lane. That's right, and I slammed on brakes, and my ABS saved my life that day in my little crappy Chinese car because I went and like probably an inch away from his bumper, and I would have died if I wasn't paying attention. And then he just looked at me in his rearview mirror and very nonchalantly did a U-turn and then drove down the exit that he missed, and I was furious.

You know, anyway, our China secret police says, "The Culinary Institute of America would like to invite you gentlemen to some barbecue massage." Oh, we haven't had that in a while. We're cooking up a succulent Chinese meal for New Year. That's an underused sound bite, big time. Barbecue massage, could go for one right now.

Ben, thank you very much. G, I get a Culinary Institute of America. What is that? CIA? Yes, nice one then. Gabriel Keing, Xiaohongshu and TikTok are about to get absolutely torqued. This is definitely what you want, I assure you.

Quadrex, respect. Legends, cheers from Ireland as always. And cheers to you, Ireland. Will Smith says, "Oh, S H A H T is the Xinjiang victim database. It has resources and evidence documenting over 80,000 case studies. It's more than just Uyghurs too." That's right. Yes, correct.

Phanatic Forger says, "Marxism is the bitter mark of Cain." J. Professor J. Peterson. Okay, Richard Howells, thank you very much. Chris says, "Guys, no, we're not going to call you." You know what I like about the whole Chinese government is they don't even have their own form of government. They had to knock off a Western idea, a [ __ ] one.

They pick the worst Marx. They're like, "Yeah, this is the Chinese way." It's not. You're copying a lame German dude. Stop. And it's like the worst one, and they did it badly. Yeah, it's like, you know, it was already bad. It started bad.

Yeah, exactly. But you know, like a Nike knockoff, it's not going to be nearly as good. So when you do like a Marx knockoff, like a communist knockoff, it's even worse. They try to inject their own things into it, like use their own ingredients. Dude, stop. Go back to Chinese traditional culture. Chinese culture and tradition is fantastic.

Doesn't exist anymore. No. Lane, Xiaohongshu's community standards have some bangers, like the users must spread the correct view of history and practice core values of socialism. Bingo, there we go.

In hot water, how bad is the economic situation in China? 1 to 10, I would say if 10 is really, really, really bad, I would say China's economic situation is a six and a half. Yeah, I was going to go seven, but yes, I agree with you. Six and a half is more accurate.

Okay, Adam B says, "It seems like the argument against the TikTok ban is just because of user privacy and data. In reality, it's the algorithm and content that's the problem." TEU has other issues that you guys have highlighted. Thank you, Adam, for pointing that out. That's why TEU, I think, should be banned too, but under different grounds, right? It's not because for spreading information, just good for the planet. You get rid of it.

And it's unfair. Yes, unfair business practices. Dude, it's destroying American, not only America, the whole world's businesses. I think, you know, like Trump's campaign is all about making business more fair for America. I really hope that his cabinet does something about those TEU apps and stuff. This diminutive [ __ ] needs to go away. It's got to go away.

Yeah, uh, Hedon Epicura, good job, Jens. I'm a piece actor on here. Nice. Oh, thank you. Civas says, "Little Red Note is offering free shield broth." Yes, exactly.

Calla 123, can I get an epic mouse clap followed by "No, you?" Oh, yeah, of course. I haven't had that in a while. Here we go. Both of those are better options than using TikTok or Little Red Book, I assure you. Yes, yes.

Oh my goodness. Dr. YouTuber, Red Note is actually Ma Lingo, a language learning app. Okay, Ma Lingo instead of Duo. Yeah, Ma Lingo.

Yeah, tentacle cold attack toy, everything sucks. Yeah, that's right. You'll understand that if you're there. If you watch that, if you want to join SH for one video, please join it for that. It was so much fun. Do it.

Yeah, it was yesterday. Seems like an age ago. It was just so much fun. Yeah, Doc, I think says, "Is this Chinese Pinterest?" All it kind of is. It kind of is Chinese Pinterest.

Yeah, except say more like Instagram. It's like Instagram mixed with Pinterest, and it's kind of like if it was those but with overt CCP control. Yeah, yeah, and you got to stay in your lane. You know, you can't be talking politics on there. True.

Um, Dragon Ella says, "Hippo Hub could unite all nations." It's possible. I don't think, yeah, probably not though. Adam V says, "You guys need anti-TikTok merch stickers." I don't think we need merch. Hopefully, people figure out how to get on an alternative app, and they will, and it'll be fine.

I've seen so many great TikTok videos on YouTube Shorts. You can migrate there. It's fine. It works the same. Yeah, it's all right. Correct.

Norman Faris, so the thing to do is get a burner phone, get a Little Red Book account, and sneakily post pro-West stuff. Blue skies, birds, ET. Exactly. Yeah, if you're going to go on there, and I don't recommend you do, it's just for data privacy concerns, but if you do, be civil, be nice, make those Chinese friends, and change hearts and minds.

Wouldn't it be interesting to just have, you know, like what they do on American TikTok, and it's all about like, "Look how amazing China is with these shiny buildings," or "We're living in the future in our public transport." What if Americans went on Douyin or Xiaohongshu and they did like, "Look how green our parks are," and "Look at our amazing cities at night," and "Look at this and that," you know?

Like, because you can look at all the safe, fun things you can do. You could do the exact—go show like wind surfers on the coast or something, like doing all cool stuff or surfboarding or roller skating or skateboarding. Only this can happen in America, and you're like, "Yeah, exactly."

It's like, "Wow, Chinese people shocked," and you like show—you just have to have like a thumbnail with someone with their mouth open. Yeah, they're like, "Ah!" Yeah, that's what you need.

Oh my gosh, America has this. Yeah, oh, this city. Too bad China doesn't have this. Only America has this. Yeah, exactly. You got China versus USA, and then it's got like some destitute—like learn what they did and then do it like ironically back on their apps. It'd be pretty funny.

It would be very funny. Oh, you'd be banned immediately, but it'd be funny. Wouldn't it be funny if enough people did it where it just caused enough kerfuffle and enough people saw, and they're like, "Oh, damn."

Yeah, exactly what I mean. Yeah, that would be really funny. Yep. Let's see here. Dirty Guy says, "I'm not reading that." Okay, thank you. Kind of Tokyo Bobcats. Oh goodness gracious, it's always doing this.

It is. Only Xiaohongshu can teach criminal methods, but they show you how to get around American laws to do Tao and stay overseas and how to hide your government connections. This is also very—that's a different deep dive. That's a different deep dive.

I've been wanting to bring up Xiaohongshu for the longest time because, you know, like illegals hopping over the border and stuff, they learn how to do that on apps like Xiaohongshu. They do. They teach them how to do that.

Yeah, they teach people how to avoid paying taxes, how to take advantage of things. You know, it's all there. It's not all that, by no means. No, no, no, no. But I mean, that's where the stuff happens.

Yeah, the diaspora, they go there to discuss these things because it's available and it's easy to use. The vast majority of people on there are nice people, of course. I'm not saying otherwise.

Uh, Dragon Ella says, "Don't type your name in The Death Note." Okay, okay, that sounds like a vague threat, Dragon. Yeah, what if I want to type my name in The Death Note? Okay, just don't do it.

Uh, Mares is talking about the Israeli lobby pushing the TikTok ban because they allowed to spread foreign propaganda. I mean, I don't know what that's about. It's not in our wheelhouse. Neither of us are Jewish, and none of us have ties to Israel, so I don't really even know how to speak on that.

Yeah, uh, Qual 123, is it true that Xiaohongshu is the number one app that honorable Med Sh Joy, or should I say, yes, that's great. Hang on. H H to hell with you. I like how he's like, "To hell with you."

Yeah, Hong, Hong, Hong, to hell with you. Got to love it. Yeah. World Eater 359 says, "Hi friends, like the stream. Let's flood the comments with love and comments to make this video more engagement on C Milk's video too." Thank you very much. Do it here. Do it on mine. Let's get some exposure on these.

Not to help me out, to help out the message. I genuinely care about that message. Absolutely. Yeah, we both do. It's an important video. Yes, yeah, I don't care if I don't make a cent on that video. I want it to get out there.

Yeah, it's not why we do what we do. No, Adam Khan says, "What is the most lazy thing you've seen in China?" So many. Seen a lot of lazy. Okay, yeah, okay, it's not very funny.

Okay, but I had—I was trying to find one of those little mechanic shops, and the guy was like having a nap, so I didn't want to bug him. But he like had a newspaper over his head, and he pulled it down. He goes, "What do you need?" I was like, "Oh, I got a flat tire. I just wanted to get the tube changed out if you have any tubes. I can do it myself."

Right? Yeah, and he goes, "No, I'll do it for you. Bring me the bike." And he grabbed his tools that were like kind of near him, and he's like, "Go grab me this." He didn't get up out of bed, and he started prying the tire while laying in his bed. That's pretty epic.

And I was like, "That's—yeah, well, I ended up doing it." Yeah, come on. Yeah, that's kind of funny. You know, it always really annoys me about just in general when you're walking around in China on the roads as a pedestrian is cyclists because they put the least amount of effort possible into cycling.

So it's kind of like, you know, when you walk really slowly, but now you want to use a bicycle, not because it's more efficient or whatever, it's because you just want to use less energy than just walking slowly. So they'll literally be like, you know, barely keeping balance, going and going so slow that it's a menace because you're trying to walk. This person's like rickety here, there, and it's very common.

Yeah, yeah, so common. It's super lazy. It's like, "How little effort can I put into cycling?" True. It's so funny.

Uh, Haunter One says, "Was Lost Tom driving that truck?" Probably. Haze Runner, please. M, I'll get you a haze. Here he comes. You'll follow me.

Okay, wonder if he likes hazy IPAs. Probably, yeah. I'd have a beer with him. Yeah, me too. Yeah, seems like a fun dude, genuinely.

Uh, GMA says, "Appreciate your hard work on this channel. You'll drink with me?" Okay, only if he says that. I'll drink. You'll buy me a beer? Okay, that's probably what he does. I'll buy a case. Yeah, why not?

Spanky Jones says, "How is the sparrow population doing in China?" Oh, it's recovered somewhat. Yeah, I mean, they just wiped it out, though. No, they did. And when you go to the countryside, you'll see people about bird nets everywhere, and it's just covered in sparrows.

Yeah, and just other random birds that have survived somehow, and people also eat them. I remember I went to an orange grove, and there was this vat—I actually shot a video of this—a vat of sparrows that are still alive, and he's plucking the feathers out of them while they're alive, dunking them in water and pulling them out, and they're all like, "I hate to see."

And I was like, "What are you doing?" Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I see that. Kill them first if you're going to do. Yeah, exactly. I agree. Be humane.

Why was I expecting her to end with, "You got to understand China?" Yeah, we haven't had that in a long time. Where even is that? Do I still even have that on the board here? You got to understand China.

Yeah, uh, do you guys know a Taiwanese new YouTuber? Oh, I don't. Yeah, I heard about that guy. He flipped on an ex-Xiaofeng Hong in Taiwan. He uses his pro-CCP status to cover to expose how CCP funds and promotes influencers overseas. I did see that's really good stuff.

Yeah, he flipped. He was pro-CCP. I hope he can use his influence to get undercover of some of the Western CCP influencers. It'd be interesting to see how they're getting their funding. Agreed, because they're all promoting the same thing.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious. It'd be pretty—I’m just going to put it out there, right? If you happen to be, you know, of Chinese ethnicity, what would happen if you just sent an email or approached some YouTubers and stuff and said, "I work for the Chinese government. I want to promote something."

Yes, and see if they actually take the bait. True, that would be interesting. I think it'd be interesting just as a case study. Yeah, as a case study. It would be just for content.

Yeah, just to see how many of them would be like, "Sure, I'll do that." That's true. And if you're clear about it, "I work with the Ministry of State Security" or something. That's funny.

Phil and Rustic Pickle, Dan L says, "I have some friends in China. They're missionaries. I was wondering if you have any insight into what life is as a missionary is like over there." If you get caught, you're in big, big trouble.

Um, I actually know a guy whose whole family were missionaries and went there, and they got into a lot of trouble. I know, you know, because they were trying to bring Bibles in and stuff. It's not a good idea. No.

Yeah, um, do what you got to do. Be careful. All right, don't forget the guys on the border of North Korea. Remember that they had that coffee shop? Missionaries, read up about them. Yes, yeah, it's true.

All right, guys, thank you very much for tuning in. Yeah, and again, far and wide. I know this is not what you normally expect on a Friday, but it's been really nice to have you here. Thank you for being a part of this important conversation. We can't wait to see you next week.

Yeah, so we'll do see you on Monday if you join the patreon.com/podcast. Yeah, we'll see you there. See you there at Shaban Ho, and we'll see you for next week's Friday show. We're going to do a travel shill expose.

Oh, it's going to be fantastic, and I have a massively cool sloganda as well. Yes, it's just not ready yet, so it's still in the oven. Anyway, see you then. Cheers, guys, and I won't cut myself off. Let's do it. Five.