Are you afraid to say anything critical about the government on social media? I'll show you a video that'll make you scared. And we talk to our friend Gordon Chang about cyber security laws in China, which really give the Chinese government access to any app, any data passing through that country, and we talk a bit about Hong Kong.
00:00:00.000Hello, my Rebels. We've got a big show for you today. Two important parts. The first is
00:00:03.720a terrifying video of an interrogation in China where someone is grilled by secret police for
00:00:10.700what he said on a social media app called WeChat. The second is we talk to our friend Gordon Chang
00:00:16.480about cyber security laws in China, which really give the Chinese government access to any app,
00:00:24.480any data passing through that country. We talk a bit about Hong Kong. I'd like to invite you
00:00:29.480to get the video version of this podcast. I'm just thinking about it. The video of the
00:00:33.100interrogation I show you, you need to see it because we have the translation on the screen.
00:00:41.300And I think you'll still have a successful podcast experience because I sort of explained it
00:00:45.380afterwards. But it's one of those times where I wish you had the video version of this podcast.
00:00:50.060You can get that by being a premium member at premium.rebelnews.com. It's eight bucks a month.
00:00:56.440Well worth it, I think. All right. Here's the podcast.
00:00:59.480Tonight, are you afraid to say anything critical about the government on social media?
00:01:18.880I'll show you a video that'll make you scared. It's December 2nd, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:24.140Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:30.000There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:34.060The only thing I have to say to the government, the wire publisher, is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:01:39.920The most popular social media sites in North America and Western Europe are Facebook and YouTube.
00:01:51.200You know, Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, too. It's huge.
00:01:55.220Twitter isn't that big. It only has about 125 million users every day.
00:01:59.620That's about a tenth the size of Facebook. It's smaller than Snapchat, too.
00:02:03.640And a China-owned musical app called TikTok has taken off in the West, which has caused some concern given that Chinese law requires any companies there to divulge private information to their governments.
00:02:18.080The other day, a Muslim girl named Feroza Aziz in America made a video on TikTok that looked like one of the zillions of makeup tutorials that young women make on social media.
00:02:30.560But if you listen to her, you can hear that it's actually a political criticism of China and its treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
00:02:40.060Hi, guys. I'm going to teach you guys how to get long lashes.
00:02:42.960So the first thing you need to do is grab your lash color, curl your lashes, obviously, then you're going to put them down and use your phone that you're using right now to search up what's happening in China, how they're getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there, separating their families from each other, kidnapping them, murdering them, raping them, forcing them to eat pork, forcing them to drink, forcing them to convert different religions.
00:03:03.900If not, or else they're going to, of course, get murdered.
00:03:06.820People that go into these concentration camps, they'll come back alive.
00:03:09.520This is another Holocaust, yet no one is talking about it.
00:03:29.140She was talking on social media in America.
00:03:32.440And she certainly wasn't saying anything that radical, certainly nothing violent.
00:03:38.620Just by the fact that she wasn't wearing a hijab, you can tell that the girl herself isn't even that fundamentalist, but she criticized China.
00:04:09.460And for good reason, people can communicate with each other in direct, unregulated ways.
00:04:15.100The Hong Kong democracy organizers don't even trust Facebook or Twitter.
00:04:19.340They prefer to use an app called Telegram.
00:04:21.860Telegram, it's encrypted, it's created by Russian mathematicians.
00:04:25.780But last year, Russia banned Telegram because Telegram refused to give the Russian secret police a backdoor key to their encrypted conversations.
00:04:37.760Which tells you something about all the other apps not banned in Russia, doesn't it?
00:04:42.920But my point is there are social networks in China, ones that we are less familiar with here in the West.
00:13:06.680That's a torture device. That's not just a chair. Did you see his hands like that? And his feet, too?
00:13:30.400Why did you complain about police on WeChat? Why did you talk about the traffic police? Why did you talk about them confiscating motorcycles?
00:13:37.600What's wrong with that? Why did you badmouth the police? Do you hate the police? Say you like them. Say it!
00:13:43.060What? What's your intention? Was it a joke? I know I'm wrong. I know I'm wrong. I definitely didn't mean it. Any words for the police?
00:13:51.020Uncle police. I'm so sorry. Uncle police. I know that now. Please forgive me. I won't do it again ever.
00:13:56.460There are questions about his name. What he did. They already knew all of that, of course. They had it already. This was about destroying his will.
00:14:08.120Destroying his mind. His intentions. This was about breaking him. And the video. Well, that's a warning to others.
00:14:15.480But, hey, guys, don't worry about it. That kind of social media re-education by police, that's at least, what, five years away from here?
00:14:29.760Okay, nothing for us to worry about. Stay with us for more.
00:14:45.480Welcome back. Well, this is a very serious matter and one I don't think has had enough attention in the West.
00:14:53.020But we have an expert who we call on every time we need to decrypt what's going on in China.
00:14:59.800And he's written an essay just a couple days ago in the Gatestone Institute called China Adopts Malicious Cyber Security Rules.
00:15:09.580And you know who I'm talking about. It's our old friend, Gordon G. Chang, who joins us now via Skype.
00:15:15.580Gordon, great to see you again. I always encourage our followers to follow you on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
00:15:22.640Tell me what's going on with the new rules passed yesterday and the ones that will take effect on January 1st.
00:15:30.320Yeah, these two measures, December 1, which is the implementation of the Multi-Level Protection Scheme 2.0.
00:15:37.320And on January 2, the cryptography law goes into effect.
00:15:42.620These two measures will make all the data, communications, informations that foreign companies store on their China networks available to Chinese authorities.
00:15:53.220So there will be no more encryption permitted, at least encryption that is from the Chinese government and the Communist Party.
00:16:01.380And this really means that China will be able to take this information and, for instance, give it to state enterprises that compete against foreign companies.
00:16:11.180It also means that foreign companies may lose around the world their trade secret protections for information that they store on their China networks.
00:16:19.760And China will use this to ruin these companies, just like it ruined Nortel networks, which is now bankrupted.
00:16:27.940So this is a matter where China is in a position, really, to take over foreign companies, not just in China, but elsewhere around the world.
00:16:36.600So how would that impact a high-tech company?
00:16:59.880Yeah, well, Apple would have to turn over encryption keys to the Chinese government, which means everything on their networks in China is visible to the Chinese government.
00:17:10.140And by the way, this is not a situation where Apple, after a request or a demand, would turn over information to Beijing.
00:17:18.500This Beijing would be able to take it on its own because there is no encryption with regard to the Chinese government.
00:17:25.820So this means just everything is there.
00:17:28.660And it also means, Ezra, because the Chinese are in the networks of Apple, they probably are in a better position to rummage around Apple's networks outside China.
00:17:39.800So, you know, you shouldn't be surprised within, you know, a decade that Apple is owned by China.
00:17:45.480This is serious because, you know, we saw this with Nortel.
00:17:49.980This is not some sort of theoretical concern.
00:17:52.600This has already happened to a major multinational.
00:17:55.420Yeah, Nortel used to be the Canadian high-tech champion until it was undone in exactly the manner you suggest.
00:18:03.420Now, in the past, companies like Apple have fought against the U.S. government trying to get backdoor access to their encryption.
00:19:03.960But it's in the context of business understandable.
00:19:07.740And it's up to, you know, countries like Canada and the United States to change the incentives for those companies so that they are not subject to pressure by Beijing, which unfortunately means not only reducing their vulnerability to China, but getting them out of China.
00:19:34.820Well, one thing that's concerned me, it's the one-year anniversary of when the daughter of the founder of Huawei, who's also the CFO, was arrested transiting through Vancouver.
00:20:23.740I'm worried that Canada is collapsing towards China.
00:20:28.380And in particular, I see that Huawei is on a PR offensive in Canada.
00:20:33.400In fact, Canada has allowed Huawei to build networks in the northern Arctic, which I would think is a strategic military and industrial network.
00:20:45.580Let me ask you this, Huawei, if we allow Huawei to build telecom infrastructure in Canada, could that be used under these Chinese laws to suck out data and information and secrets, just letting the hardware be put in place in Canada?
00:21:03.680Yeah, Beijing would be certainly in a position to do that, not under the December 1 and January 1 measures, which only apply to networks in China.
00:21:14.540But China, with Huawei in the backbone of Canada's telecommunications networks, clearly would be able to do exactly what you say, which is why the United States is in the process of removing Huawei from the American backbone.
00:21:30.720This is important because Canada is a Five Eyes partner.
00:21:35.380But if it has Huawei 5G networks, I don't think the United States should be cooperating with Canada.
00:21:41.580And this whole drift that you're talking about of Canada becoming a Chinese colony is really most worrisome.
00:21:49.260You know, Susan Rice, Barack Obama's former national security advisor, came up to Canada and warned Canada about doing business with Huawei.
00:21:58.260I thought that was remarkable, considering, you know, the source.
00:22:02.720I mean, she's no friend of Donald Trump.
00:22:05.280And for her to take the American line in Canada was quite interesting.
00:22:55.580Those port calls are important to the economy of Hong Kong.
00:22:58.860When a carrier strike group pulls into Hong Kong waters, that's $5 million for the Hong Kong economy, you know, within those three or four days.
00:23:08.140So, really, right now you see Beijing pulling a temper tantrum, but not being able to actually do something effective against the United States.
00:23:16.980And we see, you know, just in general, Beijing, after the district council elections of two Sundays ago, you know, basically doesn't know what to do.
00:23:26.760They were actually thinking that their pro-Beijing candidates would pick up seats in those district council elections, where, you know, the pro-Beijing camp got annihilated.
00:23:37.620They had control of all 18 district councils before the election.
00:23:41.660Now they've only got control of one, and the only reason why they have the control of that one is because it's dominated by government-appointed members.
00:23:50.480So, you know, China right now is just struggling in terms of trying to figure out what to do in Hong Kong.
00:23:55.740Well, that's fascinating, because, you know, in repressive or authoritarian or one-party regimes, no one likes to tell the emperor about his new clothes.
00:24:08.920I just watched the miniseries on Chernobyl, and what struck me, I mean, I know it was a dramatization, but I think they nailed it, in a Soviet-style system, no one wants to tell the boss he's wrong.
00:24:21.100So I can only imagine, despite them being able to watch the free press in Hong Kong, they preferred to believe their, you know, their own PR, their own spies who said,
00:24:34.540Oh, we're, you know, President Xi, you're beloved in Hong Kong, this is just American meddling.
00:24:40.900I was shocked that China got it so wrong.
00:24:44.080Are they really that disconnected from reality?
00:24:46.780You know, I was, I was really surprised by how out of touch the senior leadership in Beijing is, because, you know, you're exactly right.
00:24:58.140The lower level Chinese officials knew, I'm sure, exactly what was going to happen.
00:25:02.980Everybody knew the polling before the election.
00:25:27.700In the, in the few days before the elections, there was sort of a siege of Pauly University.
00:25:35.360Some students were holed up there and some pretty heavily armed police outside.
00:25:39.180And some of the students were using bows and arrows.
00:25:42.520And they were using some little high-tech MacGyver gizmos, no, no real firearms.
00:25:48.500And, you know, part of me thought, well, look at their ingenuity.
00:25:52.080But most of me thought, oh, my God, bows and arrows, they're going to be annihilated if this goes Tiananmen Square style.
00:26:00.480And I actually was, was extremely sad to see that's all they got.
00:26:05.600I mean, that's dramatic, but that's, that's a, you know, that's a desperate last stand.
00:26:10.140Well, those guys won, the pro-democracy students won.
00:26:13.260But if Beijing rolls in the tanks, bows and arrows aren't going to work.
00:26:19.420Are you still afraid that Beijing could play the Tiananmen Square brutal force card like they did against the democracy movement that fateful day in Tiananmen Square?
00:26:51.400For the most part, they have outfoxed the police.
00:26:54.860Their only tactical defeat was at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, as you point out.
00:26:59.640But it was actually a political success because it convinced the U.S. Congress to vote for those two pieces of legislation that President Trump signed on Wednesday.
00:27:08.500And, you know, if the Chinese formally deploy their troops or their police on Hong Kong streets, those kids are going to rain down explosives and petrol bombs on Chinese troops.
00:27:20.320They're going to disappear into apartment buildings.
00:27:22.560This is, remember, a guerrilla force that is supported by almost 90 percent of the population of Hong Kong.
00:27:30.140And if the Chinese invade, that 90 percent is going to be 95, 96, 97 percent support of the people, which really means that it's extremely difficult to beat a guerrilla force that is supported by the people.
00:27:46.860I hope the Chinese understand what's going on, because if they were to formally deploy, they'd be bringing back a lot of their troops and body bags.
00:27:54.840Wow. Well, God forbid it comes to that.
00:27:57.940We're just so proud of the Hong Kong democracy activists.
00:28:02.520I truly think they're an example for the world of people standing up for principles that I think used to be called Western liberal values.
00:28:12.100But now Hong Kong is much of a claim to those values as anyone else in the world.