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China is crashing towards a childless
society, while, surprise surprise,
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the Chinese government is finding ways to make the
situation even more dystopian than it already is.
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Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
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Well, it’s time to take a break from
fighting YouTube censorship.
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..so we can fight Apple’s censorship. I’m not
kidding. For the last few months,
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we’ve been building you an
exclusive China Uncensored app.
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Or at least, we designed it, programmed
it, and submitted it to Apple for review.
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They typically approve or reject an
app within 48 hours, a week at most.
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We submitted our app for review more than a
month ago, on January 24. After two weeks,
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we hadn’t gotten a response, so
we applied to expedite Apple’s
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processing. Still no response. Weird. So
we pulled that version and resubmitted it,
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hoping it would land with a new reviewer. Still,
no response. Now it’s been more than a month.
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No one from Apple has contacted us, and they
won’t approve or even reject our app—which they
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probably won’t do, because they have no
legitimate cause to reject our app.
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We tried everything we could. And
now we’re concerned that Apple is
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actually censoring us. But they
don’t want to explicitly say so,
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so they’re ghosting us. An Apple
a day is keeping us away.
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You might ask, But Chris, aren’t
you being paranoid? Maybe.
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Except Apple has censored China Uncensored before.
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Back in 2017, we built an app for Apple TV.
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Apple approved it, but then immediately
blocked it in mainland China, Hong Kong,
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and Taiwan. Their excuse?
“Apps must comply with all
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legal requirements in any location
where you make them available”.
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Well, our app did comply with
the laws in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
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But it took 10,000 of you signing
this online petition to Apple to
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pressure them to uncensor us. Which was kind of
important since Uncensored is our whole thing.
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So here’s what I want you to do now.
Sign our new petition calling on Apple
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to NOT CENSOR the China Uncensored
App! The link is in the description.
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But hey, maybe it’s all just a big
misunderstanding or just a simple
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technical delay. That would be great. In
which case, the petition is just expressing
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your enthusiastic support for the coming China
Uncensored iOS app. So thank you for signing.
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Now back to the episode.
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping is great with kids.
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He gives them important lessons,
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He shows them how to use a bucket safely,
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and he even tackles them, just for a bit of fun.
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Plus he sometimes sends them and their
families off to camps for free. What fun!
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In fact, Xi’s many interactions with
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Chinese children have landed him the
nickname “Grandpa Xi” in Chinese state
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media. And that’s the only nickname he
has. The rest definitely aren’t censored.
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And Grandpa Xi and his government
are so stoked about children that
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they want Chinese people to have more of them.
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To achieve that, in recent years,
the Chinese authorities have rolled
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out all sorts of incentives to try
to encourage Chinese baby-making,
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from subsidies and tax breaks for families
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to free fertility treatments
for couples trying to conceive.
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Some local officials might have gone to the
task with a bit too much enthusiasm, though,
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like those calling women to ask
whether they are pregnant, and,
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if not, when they’re planning to be.
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Which shouldn’t be a surprise.
Given how the CCP treats Taiwan,
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you can tell they don’t respect boundaries.
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Yet, despite all the various
attempts, it’s not working.
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China’s birth rate is declining fast,
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resulting in the national population
falling three years in a row now,
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and it has set the stage for
China to become a severely
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aging society by 2035. And that’s coming
from my favorite Chinese state-run media,
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Global Times, and the CCP health authority,
so the situation might be even worse!
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Hm, maybe if women get calls by even
more strangers from the government
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asking probing questions, that’ll
put them in a baby-making mood.
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The situation even appears to be accelerating,
as it came out recently that Chinese marriage
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rates took a record-setting plunge in 2024 –
dropping by about a fifth compared to 2023.
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That was an even deeper drop than during COVID,
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leaving marriage numbers at their lowest
since record-keeping began in 1986.
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And with family life in China centered around
the institution of marriage, no weddings means
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no babies.
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But as Chinese society races towards zero births,
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it’s not just the prospect of an
aging society that’s raising alarms.
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In fact, China is heading for a geographic
and ethnic sea change the likes of which
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Grandpa Xi and his government have never
seen. And really really don’t want to see.
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You see, if there’s one thing Xi likes almost as
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much as growing the Chinese family,
it’s growing the Chinese countryside.
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Literally. Here he is inspecting a vegetable
field in Hubei Province in late 2024 and
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telling farmers how to do stuff. Man, he just
loves telling people how to spread their seed.
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But they love him for it in the rural areas,
as this very natural clapping scene suggests.
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Such trips to the provinces are
part of Xi’s push to breathe new
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life into the Chinese countryside
– a central mission of his.
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Chinese development in the cities,
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especially on the country’s east coast,
has long outpaced the development
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in the countryside, creating one of the
largest rural-urban income gaps in the world.
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At the same time, large parts of rural China are
plagued by issues such as soil degradation and
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deindustrialization.
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Do, uh… you have any helpful advice
for that, Grandpa Xi? Any at all?
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But the declining birthrate is now putting
Xi’s rural development plans under threat.
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It actually used to be that higher birth
numbers in rural China compensated for
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the lower birth rates in the Chinese
cities, but that is no longer the case.
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Today, births among young people in rural areas
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are dropping more rapidly than
among their urban counterparts.
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On top of that, Chinese people continue to
migrate from the countryside to the cities,
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contributing to some rural areas
becoming severely depopulated – a
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phenomenon referred to in China as
“hollowed out” towns and villages.
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And it’s especially bad in some
of the regions bordering China’s
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neighboring countries. These towns are
more hollow than one of the CCP’s promises.
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Not far from the Chinese border
with Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam,
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which is formed by the two
southern provinces of Yunnan
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and Guangxi,
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there have been accounts of border towns
and villages turning into ghost towns
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after locals either died out or abandoned them
for better living elsewhere. Which is bleak,
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but at least not as bleak as back
when places became ghost towns
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because all the locals starved
to death. Ain’t communism grand?
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In the north, along the Chinese
border with Mongolia and Russia,
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the situation is even more dire.
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There, the population of the
region of Inner Mongolia fell
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from almost 25 million people in
2010 to just 24 million in 2022,
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and the province of Heilongjiang
went from more than 38 million
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people in 2010 to less than 32 million in 2020.
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These declines have raised deep
concerns among the Chinese authorities,
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with one government adviser
saying in November that
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“to bolster national security amid
a countrywide demographic slide,
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China should turn its eyes to the declining
populations of its towns bordering Central Asia”,
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while the ever glorious Global
Times said last year that Inner
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Mongolia is the "northern gateway" and
the "moat" of the capital city Beijing
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that shoulders a major political
responsibility in safeguarding
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national security and border stability.
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The Global Times also reported that the
leader of Inner Mongolia had vowed to
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implement “comprehensive measures to attract
more people to settle and live in border areas,
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and ensure human shields- I mean
national unity and border security”.
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While the population decline is
immense, it isn’t exactly clear,
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though, what sort of immediate national
security threats could emerge from it.
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After all, it’s rare to see Mongolian hordes
come riding down from the north these days,
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and that’s what the Great Wall proudly
rises to protect against, anyway.
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However, the Chinese Communist Party is
notoriously obsessed with appearing strong,
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and having large stretches of the northern regions
looking like this doesn’t exactly signal strength.
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Certainly not like Grandpa Xi’s super tough rough
housing. What a tough guy! And an awesome grandpa!
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China does have some real
reasons to want to appear strong.
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For example, in the late 19th century, when
China also looked weak on its northern front,
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Russia seized the opportunity to
annex vast areas of Chinese territory.
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Given the state of the China-Russia
relationship in the 21st century,
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it seems unlikely that the Russians
would make a similar move again,
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but then, few thought that Putin would
be crazy enough to invade Ukraine,
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so, who knows. His promises are also
just as hollow as those ghost towns.
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In China’s southern borderlands,
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though, the potential effects of
depopulation are much more immediate.
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In the south, the Chinese government has
long struggled to assert and maintain
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control, especially along the nearly
1,400-mile-long border with Myanmar.
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Not only is the cross-border area a patchwork
of ethnic minorities, the dense jungle and
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mountainous terrain also make large stretches
of the region difficult to traverse and monitor.
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This makes the region a hotbed for illicit trade
and smuggling – including people smuggling,
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in which crime syndicates based in Myanmar have
lured Chinese people into the war-torn country,
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where tens of thousands are currently
enslaved and forced to work as cyber scammers.
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Of course, this explains why people
might want to leave the area,
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but when locals begin rapidly disappearing,
either into Chinese cities or into Myanmar
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scam centers, there’s not much left in
the towns to maintain a strong border.
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But not to worry – Xi has an excellent way
to solve all of China’s rural problems.
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He has called for Chinese youths to make
greater contributions to rural revitalization.
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This sentiment was mirrored by an action plan
announced in 2023 by the local government in
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Guangdong Province that aims to send 300,000
college students to the countryside by this
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year. Which I’m sure is just what they
were hoping to gain from going to college.
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This plan would have the added bonus of getting
unemployed youth out of the cities, where they
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might stir up trouble and unrest and start getting
crazy ideas about autonomy and freedom of speech.
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The whole thing is also a fun throwback to the
Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when
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millions of Chinese young people were sent to
the countryside to educate and be educated. Oh,
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and a whole bunch of people
were killed. You know… fun!
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Xi himself has often spoken fondly about the time
he himself spent in a rural village back then.
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Those were indeed splendid days,
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with Chinese youths gathering to exercise
with hammers on Chinese cultural treasures
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and making oversized necklaces for
their friends and loved ones… fun!
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But it’s not just decline and depopulation that
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seem to be spurring desperate moves by the
Chinese authorities. It’s the demographic
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shifts that come with it. And I’m not
just talking about an aging society.
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Because, while Han Chinese are experiencing
massively declining birth rates, it’s a different
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matter for the more than 125 million people
that make up China’s 55 ethnic minority groups.
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Regions such as Inner Mongolia,
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Gansu Province,
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and Guizhou Province…
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have all experienced population decline
in recent years among Han Chinese,
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but this was partly counterbalanced by
higher birth rates among minority groups.
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Across China, 13 percent of all newborns
had minority background in 2000, and their
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population as a whole was estimated to make up
almost 9 percent of the total population by 2020,
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which is quite a change from the 1960s,
when they made up less than 6 percent.
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Of course, Xi is super happy
with all minority groups,
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and even sends some of them and their families
off to camps for free to thank them… fun!
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Now, we do have to be a bit careful with
these numbers. After all, they’re all based
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on official Chinese figures, which, according
to researchers, aren’t always the most reliable,
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due to low quality data collection, incentives
for local governments to either inflate or deflate
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certain population numbers, and the sensitivity
of the issue for the Chinese leadership.
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This means that the actual minority population
of China and its growth could be higher than
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what the official data shows, which sounds like
a good thing, given that many minority groups
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live in the border regions where Chinese
officials are fussing about depopulation.
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But the Chinese authorities don’t
seem to be rejoicing about it.
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For example, one of China’s fastest growing
minority groups, the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs,
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saw their birth rate almost cut
in half between 2017 and 2019,
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according to the government’s own numbers.
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That sudden drop coincided with an
intensified crackdown on the Uyghur people,
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with mounting evidence indicating that many Uyghur
women have been coerced into taking birth control
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and subjected to forced sterilization.
Which — and I’m no scientist or
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anything — doesn’t sound like it’ll help
in the whole baby-making whatchamacallit.
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Although few have experienced the same
draconian measures as the Uyghurs,
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other Chinese minorities have been targeted, too,
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including the Mongolians, who have
had their language banned in schools,
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as well as the Tibetans, whose
children are increasingly getting
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sent to Mandarin-dominated boarding schools,
while Tibetan educators are disappearing.
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And measures that weaken children’s ties to
their parents’ culture don’t sound like a
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strategy you use if you want people to have more
kids. That’s about as effective an aphrodisiac as
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the movie Teeth corner box. If you know, you know…
and you haven’t been the same since you’ve known.
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It’s become more difficult for us to know
the effect of such policies, however, as the
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authorities have stopped publishing statistics
on the birth rates of separate non-Han groups.
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For…some reason.
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But there are clearly a lot of signs that the
Chinese leadership are looking to restrict
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minorities rather than tap into China’s ethnic
mosaic to alleviate the depopulation issue.
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That’s not really a shock, as Xi is less the
poster boy for minority empowerment and more
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the kind of guy that stresses Chinese
uniformity under the rule of the CCP.
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But such posturing risks dealing a
heavy blow to China’s national birth
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rate at a time when it’s already in free fall.
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And with the current generation of young
Chinese people being small already as a
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consequence of the one-child policy,
it’s unlikely that there are enough
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unemployed youths in the cities to
revitalize the countryside and plug
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all the expanding population
gaps in the border regions –
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unless robot college graduates count.
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So, despite the Chinese government’s
desperate attempts to lift the birthrate,
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the leadership seems to be willing
to sacrifice population growth at
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the altar of ethnic dominance for the Han Chinese.
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I guess at least, as China approaches zero
births, the CCP is trying to make sure that
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all of China across ethnic groups is
heading towards dystopia together.
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While that certainly sounds grand,
it’s less “Grandpa Xi” grand
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and more “Grandstanding Xi” grand.
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And before you go, don’t forget to sign
my petition. Apple—which just so happens
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to rely on the China market for more
than $50 billion in revenue per year,
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could be censoring the China Uncensored App,
by refusing to either approve it or reject it.
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00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:53,526
So click below and sign this petition to tell
Apple to not censor the China Uncensored App!
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I’m Chris Chappell. Click below.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.