-
[Music]
-
Riots are breaking out in China. What
-
has the CCP done now?
-
Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chapel
-
. Once again, there's been a riot
-
in China with as typical a response from
-
the Chinese Communist Party as you could possibly get
-
. Last week, a number of
-
protesters gathered in front of this
-
building in the city of Lingi.
-
And because the CCP isn't a big fan of large crowds
-
, they were almost immediately joined by the police
-
, and I mean a lot of police, you couldn't even go to the
-
nearby playground in peace without
-
bumping shoulders with a dozen of them.
-
I've heard about a slide into
-
authoritarianism, but never next to actual slides
-
. The police formed a human
-
wall to block protesters from entering
-
the building, used water guns on the crowd
-
, and pushed a man down.
-
It's like they learned from that playground bully.
-
At one point, the protesters started
-
throwing rocks at the building. The
-
police scattered to avoid getting hit
-
and protesters stormed the building. It
-
didn't take long for the police to regain control
-
. They pepper sprayed
-
their way in, stormed in like the
-
Kool-Aid Man, and clashed with
-
protesters inside.
-
Given their schoolyard bully tactics, thank goodness
-
no one got purple nerpled.
-
Chinese authorities rounded up and arrested the protesters
-
. And it seems like they're
-
also censoring the story because they're
-
as consistent as they are persistent.
-
But why? What is this building?
-
Why all the police? Is this some nefarious CCP
-
government agency bent on oppressing the Chinese people
-
? Well, no. Actually, it's
-
the headquarters for a business called
-
Shupai Ago, and those people are its
-
customers. So, what happened?
-
Well, let's just back up a bit a tad.
-
The Shupai was founded by Wong Xiaoqing, a
-
representative of the 17th Lini
-
Municipal People's Congress, a visiting
-
professor at Lini University and a
-
recipient of a national patriotic award.
-
So what does it do?
-
Well, early on the company was heralded as a pioneer of
-
entrepreneurial change in the digital
-
age that abides by the policies and
-
guidelines of the Chinese Communist
-
Party and the government. Well, that's the first red flag
-
. As always, this one,
-
it was even featured on a CCTV special
-
program on the digital economy where the
-
state-run media claimed that Shupai had
-
universal praise from the public. Yeah,
-
that aged great. The company got public
-
endorsements from Lingi government
-
officials and even the Ministry of
-
Public Security.
-
But you know, what does it do?
-
Apparently, it was a key digital
-
economic project that collaborated with
-
the local government and Lingi University
-
to build a digital industrial park
-
. Okay, so what does it do?
-
Well, aside from reportedly empowering
-
physical stores with digital technology,
-
Shoe promises customers that they could
-
earn money by spending money through
-
things like shopping rebates and profit sharing.
-
What?
-
Well, in other words, all customers had
-
to do was load up their Shoe Pie app
-
with cash and then earn cash by buying
-
stuff and referring others.
-
The platform claimed annualized returns of up to 200%.
-
Oh, it's a Ponzi scheme.
-
It's a Ponzi scheme, which is what Chinese Nessans
-
started calling it despite all the nice
-
things the government was saying about
-
it. So the Lini municipal government
-
responded to concerns by releasing this
-
document which said that authorities had
-
looked into scam allegations and
-
concluded that Shupai was not involved
-
in telecom fraud, illegal fundraising or pyramid schemes
-
. So that's it. Nothing to see here
-
. Shupai is totally legit.
-
You're guaranteed to make loads of cash.
-
You'd have to be a stupid, idiotic, fine
-
print reading, fiscally conservative,
-
not wanting to leap before you look
-
[ __ ] not to throw your life savings at this
-
. But then recently this letter went viral
-
. It says Shupai is being
-
investigated for potentially operating a pyramid scheme
-
. It also says that if the
-
pyramid scheme charge is proven true,
-
all participating companies and users
-
may be criminally held liable.
-
Sounds like the local communist officials may have been lying
-
. You know, communism is a pyramid scheme
-
. The guys who get in
-
first kill everybody and take their stuff
-
. But the letter also put
-
restrictions on withdrawing cash from the app
-
. And surely enough,
-
people started to report that they couldn't get their cash out
-
. There's also this letter
-
allegedly from Wong trolling his followers
-
. It says, "Hello everyone.
-
I'm Wong Xiaoing, the founder of Shupai. I'm
-
already abroad now. Everyone's IQ is as low as their wealth
-
. That's why my IQ is 190."
-
No one knows for certain if those
-
letters were legit, but it kind of doesn't matter
-
. People got mad anyway.
-
More than 40,000 people had joined this
-
company's program with some of them
-
reportedly losing their entire life savings
-
. One user later reported that
-
Shupai went bankrupt. Well, they really
-
were a great representative of the CCP.
-
And now with protests erupting in Lingi,
-
the story is getting buried deeper than King Tut
-
. NTD reports that many videos
-
and posts related to Shupai have been
-
deleted on Doí and Way. In fact, while
-
researching this topic, I myself noticed
-
that many Chinese articles about the
-
scandal started displaying errors just
-
hours after publication.
-
What? They published these things on Snapchat.
-
Of course, this isn't the first time this
-
kind of thing has happened.
-
Unfortunately, Ponzi schemes and other
-
financial scams like this are very
-
common in China, and so are protests over them
-
. Back in 2022, four rural
-
banks engaged in a Ponziike scheme and
-
ignited protests after they froze and
-
transferred their victim's funds. The
-
authorities, of course, responded as
-
good civic servants should.
-
They beat up the protesters.
-
In 2018, there was the funding platform Cuba.com,
-
a state media darling that collapsed
-
after raising around 11 billion. The
-
authorities responded by carrying away protesters.
-
The year before that, there was the online lender.
-
It gained credibility from Chinese state
-
media and took $7.6 billion dollars from its victims
-
. Hm. Starting to think maybe
-
this wouldn't happen as often if the
-
authorities punished the actual
-
criminals instead of going after protesters.
-
The pattern is always the same. A
-
company lures customers in with promises
-
of massive returns only to collapse and
-
rip billions off of their life savings.
-
This is because thanks to China's
-
communist state planned economy, there's
-
very little for people to actually invest their money in
-
. Sometimes the scammers get away with it and sometimes
-
that's thanks to positive Chinese media coverage
-
. Which is why, as always, you
-
should trust Chinese state media about
-
as much as you trust the tap water in Tijuana
-
. In fact, the real estate sector
-
crisis in China is thanks to companies
-
like Everrand acting like Ponzi schemes
-
with money used to endlessly build new
-
buildings rather than completing the
-
apartments people actually paid for. But
-
it's not just these companies that do Ponzi schemes in China
-
. The CCP itself
-
is just one big Ponzi scheme. Think
-
about it. The CCP promises massive
-
returns to investors, but it often
-
delivers poor quality and misuses
-
resources for things like corruption,
-
infrastructure that crumbles, and
-
useless show purchases.
-
The CCP is totally an MLM. Marxist Leninist moochers
-
. They prioritize political
-
power over true economic stability.
-
Indeed, China as we know it couldn't
-
have survived or much less grown to be
-
as powerful as it is without foreign
-
money constantly being injected into its
-
economic lifeblood,
-
which is its own Ponzi scheme.
-
And just like the collapse of these scammers, the CCP is facing
-
collapse from the weight of its
-
ridiculously high debt and its
-
unprofitable projects like its
-
overprouction of EVs. And finally, if
-
you're a businessman who wants to take
-
your hard-earned money and manufacturing
-
capabilities out of China, chances are
-
the CCP won't let you make a withdrawal.
-
The CCP hates that I bring this up, and
-
apparently so does YouTube. So, if you
-
haven't, click this button to support us
-
on chinaunensored.tv.
-
Don't worry, we're not scammers trying
-
to rob you out of billions. Just trying
-
to give you exclusive, in-depth China
-
coverage you won't see anywhere else.
-
Once again, I'm Chris Chapel. See you next time.