Understanding China

China has a highly unusual business environment- the government is currently holding 2 Canadians hostage to benefit a private company (Huawei).  Those with the right connections regularly use government resources for their own benefit.  As far as investing in Chinese stocks go, it is a trap for foreign capital:

1. Massive fraud.
2. The CCP encourages mainlanders to be racist, nationalist, and xenophobic.
3. Because of state-sponsored racism and xenophobia, there are far fewer (or no) consequences when somebody cheats a foreigner versus an ethnic Han Chinese citizen.
4. The CCP often exploits foreign capital and sponsors the theft of intellectual property.
5. Relations between the CCP and most developed countries will deteriorate because the CCP has been increasingly antagonistic towards other countries.  The resulting trade wars will hurt China’s economy and make the environment sketchier for foreign capital.

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The CCP tries to use brazen lies to hide problems

China has an air pollution problem in many cities.  Instead of implementing solutions to the problem, the CCP tries to mislead the public into thinking that the government has “solved” the problem.

• Google secretly worked on a search engine product for China that would display falsified air pollution data.
• An overseas Chinese student made her graduation speech at a US university where she mentioned the cleaner air in America.  The CCP pressured her into making an apology (the student had family in China).  Global Times, a CCP propaganda mouthpiece, stated that the student’s Chinese hometown was “a city that enjoys high-quality air, with the PM2.5 always staying below 50”.

The CCP’s charades are silly as any Chinese citizen can see the air pollution problem in their city.

The CCP has a history of creating the illusion that the government “fixes” problems.  With the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government first covered up the outbreak and caused many Chinese citizens to die unnecessarily.  While local government officials were blamed for the coverup, the coverup likely extended much higher because the World Health Organization was part of the coverup (e.g. the WHO stated that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission).  There is likely some dissent in China among CCP members who are against the practice of hiding problems and making them worse by punishing people who are trying to fix the problem.  However, it looks like that faction has lost given that China is currently blaming the Beijing outbreak on imported salmon.  The CCP continues to engage in the very behaviour that outraged residents of Hubei.

The cultural genocide of Uyghur Muslims

The CCP has forced many Uyghur Muslims into re-education camps where they are made to go against their religion by eating pork and drinking alcohol.  The Uyghurs have faced beatings, torture, forced abortion, and having their children taken away from them.

CCP propaganda on the other hand tells a different narrative about “absurd rumor sources of Uyghur detentions in Xinjiang“.  Sometimes their story is that the US’s CIA spy agency is interfering in the region and causing the Uyghurs to be separatists and terrorists.  CCP mouthpieces also pretend that Uyghur culture is alive and well in China.

Rule of law: it exists and it doesn’t

China’s push towards rule of law and capitalism has created many benefits for the country’s economy.  The prosperous parts of China have highly educated workforces and infrastructure comparable to developed countries (e.g. its high-speed rail network is better than Amtrak in the US).  There are certainly parts of China that have benefitted from rule of law.  However, China has plenty of corruption and unusual business practices.  Here are some examples:

• Commonplace bribes.  When going to the hospital, it is normal to bribe the doctor and nurses to try to get better medical care.
• Fake vaccines.  After scandals about fake vaccines broke out, Chinese citizens will no longer blindly trust made-in-China vaccines because they don’t know if the government has actually solved this problem or not.
• Deadly infant formula.  Again, Chinese citizens don’t trust their country’s products and many are willing to pay a premium for infant formula that ‘ought’ to be safer (e.g. not made in China).
• Pyramid schemes.  The government encouraged P2P lending.  However, those “investments” turned out to be pyramid schemes.  When citizens organized protests, the CCP quickly shut down those protests.
• It is ok for citizens to kidnap others to collect on a debt.  The excellent China Law Blog has a post mentioning this practice.  Policing in China often consists of police officers acting as arbitrators.  They will try to resolve disputes themselves instead of letting it go to a court.  Their standards about socially appropriate/inappropriate behaviour will play a role, so they will allow kidnappings if the circumstances warrant it.  Because the CCP encourages discrimination against foreigners, the police are generally biased against foreigners.  Bribes and connections can also cause the police to favour one party over another.

In the media, you may read news stories about how Xi Jinping is cracking down on corruption.  This isn’t really true.  The corruption crackdowns in China are mostly about removing political opponents.  China still has huge problems with corruption and insufficient rule of law.

Rule of law is receding

Hong Kong’s economy benefits from rule of law and China is in the process of dismantling that (see my previous post on how Hong Kong is dying).  The CCP ignores Hong Kong law and abducts dissidents residing in Hong Kong, e.g. the Causeway Bay Books disappearances (which are summarized on Wikipedia).  The CCP is now in the process of replacing Hong Kong law with new laws that would make its previously illegal activities legal.

Corruption and China’s unusual smuggling

Smugglers import low-value items such as garbage (for the recycling industry), fruit, and meat into mainland China.  Profits exist because China has very high tariffs on imported goods that smugglers evade.  Military officials overseeing border crossings work with smugglers to move goods into the country so that all parties involved can make money.  Whereas most countries have smugglers that only import high-value items such as drugs, China has smugglers that import both high-value and low-value goods.  Here’s some evidence:

• The Youtuber laowhy86 tells a story of a guy in China who built up a smuggling racket along the China/Vietnam border (21 minute video).  The smuggler was involved in drugs, human trafficking, and fruit.
• FT has video footage of smuggling across the China-Vietnam border; the goods shown included electronic waste being sent to China.
• Hong Kong has a problem with smugglers moving meat into mainland China, as reported by the independent news outlet HKFP.
• The CCP propaganda outlet China Daily writes about trash being smuggled into China.  Officially, the import of (many types of) trash is banned.
• The CCP propaganda outlet Global Times writes about Lai Changxing, whose syndicate “smuggled cigarettes, cars, refined oil, vegetable oil, chemical materials, textile materials and other commodities worth 27.4 billion yuan ($4.35 billion) and evaded duties of 13.99 billion yuan, according to the court”.

How China’s elite gained their wealth

The “princelings” in China are the children of powerful government officials who were simply born with powerful connections.  However, not all of China’s elite were blessed with powerful parents.  One uncommon way to gain connections is to bribe corrupt officials with prostitutes and to secretly film their extramarital affairs so that they can be blackmailed.  The Global Times propaganda piece on Lai Changxing mentioned earlier says this about Lai:

In 2006, Lai built a seven-story complex in Xiamen, known as the “Red Mansion,” where he entertained his associates with drink and girls.

Presumably he used his brothel to later blackmail government officials, creating a lot of enemies.  Lai had to flee China.  Guo Wengui is another ultra-rich Chinese business tycoon who was (allegedly) involved in blackmail.  After his real estate project Pangu Plaza was hit with fines for having rooftop court-yard houses, a sex tape surfaced and brought down Beijing’s vice mayor who was delaying his project from being finished.

Power dynamics in China

The people with power are high-ranking government officials, army officers, and those with connections to them.  The country’s most powerful people can sometimes get away with murder.

• One episode of China Uncensored on Youtube talks about the entitled children of government officials saying things like “my father is going to kill you”.
• The son of one official told the police “my father is Li Gang” after killing somebody in a car accident.  The implication is that he was untouchable because of his connections.

The children of Chinese elites say these things because there is a kernel of truth to what they’re saying.  The powerful and connected in China can get away with their shoddy behaviour as long as their bad behaviour isn’t widely publicized (where it can lead to public outrage over social media).

Because China’s elite have the power to mistreat other human beings (and don’t have to worry about being mistreated themselves), they have a strong incentive to hold onto their power.  This power is mainly based on connections rather than money or social status.  They may not necessarily want the non-elite to become rich because money can be used to build connections via bribery.

As far as everyday people go, society in China tends to gang up onto those who don’t go along with CCP propaganda or those singled out by CCP propaganda as enemies of China.  Once a person or some group of people have been singled out by the CCP, a mob can easily form against that party because that party is quite powerless.  The government typically strips privileges and freedoms and away from enemies of the CCP.  Under the social credit system, “bad” citizens can lose their privilege of riding on high-speed trains and leaving the country.  On social media, mobs of toxic CCP nationalists can go after people who aren’t sufficiently pro-CCP/pro-China.  The Youtuber laowhy86 talks about how he received many hate messages for saying that Hong Kong has beautiful scenery; he received hateful comments because of his possible implied support of Hong Kong protestors.

Currently, most of China’s population has been happy with the status quo because they are part of the majority that is doing the persecution of others.  They generally do not feel like they are being mistreated by China’s elite.

State-sponsored xenophobia and racism

The CCP goes out of its way to encourage its citizens to be nationalist, racist, and xenophobic.  This seems to be a major strategy that the CCP is using to try to control its population and to distract them from the power imbalance between China’s elites and the general population.

One example of blatant racism is the CCP forcing blacks (*Africans) living in China to quarantine themselves despite clean COVID-19 tests.  Blacks were specifically targeted as their non-black spouses were not required to be tested or quarantined (source: Youtube).

The xenophobia is a little unusual in China because the CCP constantly changes the villain of the day.  If CCP media runs a story about how the coronavirus came from a lab in the US, then public will temporarily discriminate against the US.  Citizens may smash their iPhones only to buy new ones later when the country is no longer rabidly anti-American.  One reason why xenophobia can quickly wane is foreigner admiration.

• If a white face is associated with something, mainlanders will see it as high quality.  The Youtubers laowhy86 and serpentza do a great job at explaining “white monkey” jobs.  Many mainlanders can’t tell the difference between a Russian and an American (e.g. by their accent), so Chinese companies can save money by hiring Russians and Ukrainians as white monkeys.
• If a Chinese person speaks using English, that person will be seen as more intelligent/knowledgeable about the world (this is explained in the video China’s Tik Tok Propaganda is Getting Scary).
• Rich Chinese parents want their children to learn English and to get a foreign degree as status symbols.
• Foreign products are usually seen as higher quality.  Some of this is driven by import taxes, which means that foreign products are pricier in China.

Unfortunately for foreigners, China is becoming increasingly nationalistic and hostile.  State propaganda is increasingly blaming foreigners for China’s problems.  The US has been blamed for the coronavirus, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea.  Yes, there are times when CCP propaganda has blamed all of China’s major problems (except for its African swine fever outbreak) on the US.

Exploiting foreign capital is a CCP-sponsored institution

Sometimes foreign investors do make money in China because the CCP has figured out that they should lure in foreign capital.  However, the legal system puts foreigners in a precarious legal position where they can easily be exploited by mainland Chinese citizens or corrupt government officials.

The excellent China Law blog has many posts talking about IP theft in China such as “China IP Theft: Why Pay for Technology?“.  Simply search the blog for the words IP theft or click on the IP theft tag to see what they’ve written on the topic.  There are various ways in which China’s law discriminates against foreign capital:

• Not allowed to operate in many industries.
• Not allowed to own many types of businesses.  See China Law Blog’s post on why VIEs are illegal.
• Restrictions on taking money out of China.  The CCP can arbitrarily prevent foreign companies from repatriating profits.
• In many cases, there is little or no recourse if Chinese companies scam a foreign company.

The CCP also pays its own citizens and foreign citizens to steal intellectual property through the Thousand Talents Plan.  See ADV Podcasts on Youtube and the Wikipedia page on the “Thousand Talents Plan” for details on how it works.  Overall, there is a situation where the CCP is telling Chinese citizens that it’s acceptable and sometimes patriotic to steal from foreigners.

The CCP’s deteriorating relationship with other countries

The CCP is engaged in various behaviours that will intensify its conflicts with the rest of the world.

1. The CCP is coercing corporations into silencing CCP critics.  This is happening to critics of all ethnicities and races.  In the US, there have been major controversies over the NBA, Activision Blizzard, and (to a lesser extent) Zoom silencing those who argue for democracy in Hong Kong.  Many Westerners are appalled that corporations are bullying Westerners into performing the CCP’s dirty work.  In Australia, many are unhappy that the University of Queensland is going after Drew Pavlou for speaking out against the university selling itself out to the CCP.
2. The CCP has programs in place to steal IP from developed countries.
3. The CCP monitors Chinese citizens abroad through organizations like the Confucius Institute.  Presumably, the CCP also has a role in forcing Chinese companies to ship security vulnerabilities and backdoors with its technology products (e.g. Zoom, Lenovo, Huawei, etc.).  The CCP is essentially expanding its police state overseas.
4. With the coronavirus, the CCP made the situation worse when it initially tried to cover up the outbreak rather than informing the world.  Some politicians are using this to scapegoat China for unleashing the coronavirus on the world.

It is highly likely that anti-CCP and anti-China sentiment will grow as citizens of other nations will not tolerate the CCP’s attacks on their way of life and freedom of speech.  The expansion of CCP control globally seems to be intensifying as more corporations (e.g. Bloomberg) are being coerced into pro-CCP actions.  This year, British banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered have publicly supported the CCP through their support of the Hong Kong security law.  Instead of backing off, the CCP has been increasing its antagonistic behaviour.

Military tensions

In terms of international politics, the CCP looks like it is trying to provoke other countries into taking action against China so that the CCP propaganda machine can strengthen nationalism in China.  The CCP is involved in aggressive land grabs against Japan (Senkaku islands) and in the South China Sea (disputes with Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, United States, and Australia).  The CCP is also talking about a military invasion of Taiwan through ‘non-peaceful’ reunification.

On June 16, 2020 it was reported that 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the India-China border region (Ladakh).  Indian citizens are quite unhappy at the situation because Chinese is murdering their soldiers and taking India’s land.  However, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has been downplaying China’s aggression.  India has only released limited information about what happened, with most details being contained in a press release from the MEA.  The press release does state that Chinese troops crossed into Indian territory, setup a tent, and killed Indian troops in a deadly ambush (“took pre-meditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties”).  Some Indians are unhappy that their government withheld information to downplay what happened; Narendra Modi is currently acting as if Chinese troops did not annex Indian territory and that negotiation will fix the situation.  One theory is that Modi is embarrassed that his plan of improving India-China relations has failed (e.g. 70 events were planned for this year to celebrate the 70th year of India-China diplomatic ties).  In any case, some Indian citizens are unhappy that Modi is acting like an unpatriotic stooge.

In the event that China becomes involved in a war, the People’s Liberation Army may be far weaker than it appears.  The PLA engages in “paid services”- basically, it owns and runs businesses such as hospitals, real estate, kindergartens, etc.  Officially, there have been attempts at ending paid services since these businesses are intertwined with corruption.  I haven’t been able to find good information as to whether or not the reform attempts are a smokescreen for Xi Jinping removing political rivals.  The big picture is that corruption plays a large role in the PLA as military promotions are based on connections and politics rather than merit.  I don’t believe that there is much of an incentive for China’s military leaders to build an effective fighting force when China’s media will not hold them accountable and the incentives skew heavily towards making money through corruption (e.g. smuggling, paid services, etc.).  PLA’s effectively is hurt because soldiers receive low pay and are made to do manual labour instead of training full-time.  To be fair, most militaries in the world are not good at fighting wars so most wars involve incompetent armies fighting each other.  For example, the US did not secure military victories in Vietnam and Korea.

The big picture is that the CCP intentionally chooses to antagonize other nations by annexing their territory, ramming their fishing boats, murdering their soldiers, taking hostages, and imposing their police state onto foreign citizens.  While low levels of such activity have been overlooked or tolerated in the past, the trend upwards will only cause a rift between China and the long list of countries it has antagonized.

China does not have a great investing climate

One of the problems in China is that there aren’t great investment options for its citizens.

• When the P2P lending pyramid schemes in China blew up, the government used its police to stifle protests.  (*I couldn’t figure out if well-connected individuals in China masterminded these schemes.)
• When citizens invest in real estate, they are often buying properties with extremely poor construction standards.  The Youtubers laowhy86 and serpentza have an excellent video that tours the dilapidated buildings that citizens are investing in.

If the government isn’t doing a great job at protecting its citizens against bad investments, then it seems likely that foreigners will fare far worse.  When Chinese reverse mergers were being outed as frauds, China made it more difficult to research these companies by limiting access to SAIC filings.  It also continues to block the PCAOB from inspecting Chinese audit firms.

In the past, China was previously a great place to open a factory.  The country has a skilled workforce that is held back by a corrupt government, allowing foreign capital to enjoy low wages and China’s subsidized export industry.  However, China is now a very risky source of cheap labour as explained by China Law blog.  China’s economy will likely suffer as foreign companies try to shift production into less risky countries without the risk of a deeper US-China trade war (which can suddenly increase tariffs dramatically).

Business and government are often intertwined

In the case of Huawei, the Chinese government held 2 Canadians hostage to pressure Canada into releasing Huawei’s CFO (Canada is in the process of extraditing her to the US).  Those with connections in China constantly use government resources for their own personal gain.  You can also read about Kun Huang and Silvercorp.

Those without good government connections can see their real estate taken away from them without proper compensation.  China Law Blog has a post on an expat factory owner:

Peter has been operating his own factory here in China for the past decade or so. He started up in Jiading, which happens to be where the Tesla factory is now located, just outside of Shanghai. The local government kicked him out of there — on short notice, without cause, and without compensation, he says — and the land on which the factory stood was developed. So now, at considerable expense, Peter has re-located his factory to Wuxi, in Jiangsu Province, where he currently has about 60 workers.

[…]

it’s hard for a foreign factory to compete with local Chinese factories on price. Foreigners are under greater scrutiny and they just can’t game the system to achieve a lower cost base like the locals

[…]

Peter is not a China-hater. He’s made China his home and he has raised his kids here. He just wishes sometimes that foreigners would take the time to understand the prevailing business culture and work with it properly.

Coronavirus

Originally, I had a fairly high opinion of China’s response to the coronavirus.  This is because I didn’t understand China.  While Westerners often see the CCP as a draconian government and its fearful citizens as incredibly obedient, that’s not what happens in China.  Chinese citizens enjoy a lot of freedom (as long as they don’t oppose the CCP) and often ignore their government’s requests.  Citizens do not practice social distancing and infrequently scan QR codes when they take the subway (the QR codes would help to contact trace if they were to become infected).  Here are some reasons why compliance is low:

• Mainlanders will usually act for the greater good only if they are dealing with people they know rather than strangers.  They live in a system where many altruistic behaviours are avoided because they are not sufficiently rewarded.
  • Charitable donations are usually siphoned away by corruption.
  • Citizens can be punished for being a good samaritan.  If they help a car accident victim, the victim can blame their good samaritan for their injury and extract money out of their samaritan through the police or the courts.
• The selective enforcement of China’s laws is one reason why laws are often ignored.  For example, China has laws against using VPNs (to bypass Internet censorship) and using motorcycles.  It is culturally acceptable (and normal) to use VPNs and motorcycles illegally.
• If citizens see that some people are successful in breaking a law, they may begin to follow suit themselves.

To change public behaviour, the government will sometimes make an example out of somebody.  That’s where the videos of the government welding doors shut in Wuhan comes from.  The government is hoping that the public will actually obey their requests to stay home during lockdowns.  When the government demonstrates that it is “serious” about stopping a particular practice, compliance will be very high in the beginning before everybody drifts back to the old way of doing things.

It is likely the case that China has a low level of COVID-19 infection similar to South Korea (or a little higher than South Korea).  The CCP is probably underreporting cases as part of its propaganda.  It wants to tell the story that it takes care of its citizens and that it is doing an incredible job at containing the virus.  The CCP would definitely want its citizens to forget about how it initially covered up the virus and made the problem worse.

While the virus is likely mostly suppressed in China, China’s economy will be hit hard just like every other country in the world.  First its factories were hurt by the US-China trade war.  Then many factories were shut down in the initial outbreak.  Now, they are being hit again because the demand for the factories’ output has plummeted dramatically due to the coronavirus hurting worldwide demand.

Political infighting over massive unemployment

China’s premier Li Keqiang pushed for China to allow street vendors again as a way of helping protect Chinese citizens against unemployment.  However, CCP-controlled media quickly did an about-face and started shooting down the idea.  This shows a rift between Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang.  Perhaps Xi Jinping’s strategy is to solve the problem with nationalism rather than trying to fix China’s economy.

Mainlanders versus diaspora Chinese

diaspora = the dispersion of any people from their original homeland.

I want to make it clear that mainlanders have a very different culture than the Chinese diaspora.  On the surface, there are many cultural similarities between mainlanders and diaspora Chinese as there hasn’t been much time for the languages and food to diverge.  However, mainland China has a unique economy and government system that warps the culture of the people living there.  This has led to the development of some highly nationalistic mainlanders who support (A) taking freedoms away from Hong Kongers and (B) an armed invasion of Taiwan.  Because of the ongoing politics, the cultures will likely diverge strongly as increasing numbers of Hong Kongers and Taiwanese emphasize that they are not mainland Chinese.

The diaspora Chinese in the US and Canada often have a superficial understanding of mainland China and aren’t aware of what goes on such as the racism and xenophobia.  They would be very surprised that some shopkeepers in China would hang a sign saying “no dogs or Japanese allowed”.  That type of racism is sponsored by the CCP and was never an intrinsic part of Chinese culture.  A lack of familiarity means that there are plenty of diaspora Chinese who would cheer for China at the Olympic games.

In Canada, a lot of diaspora Chinese would lump all Chinese (mainlanders and non-mainland) together because the differences between mainlander / Hong Kong / Taiwan / Singapore are never relevant; everybody gets along and there are no political divisions between the diaspora Chinese.

Investing implications

I would avoid all Chinese stocks.  There are too many levels of unnecessary risk compared to Taiwan or the US.  The CCP exploits foreigners in numerous ways and the legal system is setup to enable those with the right connections to make money in corrupt ways.  Even the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are a problem as they suffer from plenty of corruption- the CCP propaganda mouthpieces have reports on corruption purges targeting the publicly-traded SOEs like Petrochina, China Mobile, etc.

Hong Kong should also be avoided as China is in the process of turning Hong Kong into mainland China.

I would not panic out of these stocks right away because there will likely be many waves of optimism before it is clear that China story stocks underperform sensible investments.  If for some reason you’d like exposure to growing foreign economies, you would likely see better returns from countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Rwanda, India, etc.  Countries with rule of law, competent government, and below-average levels of corruption should fare better than other countries like Brazil, Russia, South Africa, etc.

Final thoughts

While I talk about cultural differences around the world, human beings are more similar than they are different.  For example, Americans don’t make distinctions between the descendents of Italians, Germans, French, and British immigrants.  While there are African Americans, there is no social concept of German Americans.  Their cultural heritage and race simply aren’t issues despite their ancestral countries fighting bloody wars against one another.  This shows us that our differences are man-made.  Racial and cultural issues only exist because we continue to manufacture and maintain them.

The world would be better off if all of humanity worked together in co-existing and taking down toxic divisions based on race, ethnicity, gender, etc.  Of course, that is not the world that we live in.  All societies will eventually begin to persecute some minority group (or to band together to fight an outside enemy).  It is human nature to spread misinformation to facilitate bullying.  However, the lies that we are taught can make it difficult to understand how other societies think and how they work.  Chinese citizens often do not obey their supposedly ‘draconian’ government.  The purpose of this blog post is to help you quickly understand where China is now and where it’s likely headed.  Unfortunately, I did not paint a flattering picture of how the country works and how a segment of China’s population embraces the CCP’s push towards nationalism.  But, we have to accept that it’s happening and to behave accordingly.  Investors should not pour money into a country that (A) uses foreigners as scapegoats and (B) establishes a legal system that facilitates corruption and theft.  There are much better countries to invest in.

 

*Disclosure: I hold a small number of short positions on China story stocks listed on US exchanges.

 

 

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Where to get information on China

CCP propaganda can be found on newspapers like the People’s Daily and Global Times.  CGTN’s television segments are available on Youtube.  If you simply want quick hits of CCP propaganda, you can follow @HuXijin_GT (editor of the Global Times) on Twitter.

There are many Youtubers talking about China.

• Laowhy86 and serpentza run the channels laowhy86, serpentza, ADV China, and ADV podcasts.  They originally moved to China to seek adventure, became friends, and married Chinese wives.  However, their Youtube popularity put them on the radar of the CCP.  They were swatted by armed police, had China’s secret police question them, saw their friend be held hostage in China over the Huawei-Canada dispute, and left China because it was far too risky for them to live there.  Because serpentza is a white South African, he saw some of the racism that blacks face in China because Chinese authorities discriminate against anybody with an African passport (there is the perception in China that only black people live in Africa).
• Simon Yu talks about China with a more neutral and less anti-CCP perspective.  He is married to a Taiwanese woman, so he should be familiar with Taiwanese view on China, e.g. most Taiwanese emphasize that they are Taiwanese and not PRC Chinese.
• Asian Boss is a Youtube channel that interviews everyday Asians on the street so that Western audiences can better understand the various Asian cultures.  Some of their more interesting interviews are about mainlanders’ views on democracy (their idea of good government is very different than what you’d think) and what they think about Japan.
• China Uncensored is run by a Canadian (with sarcasm that Canadians and Americans would understand) with a strong anti-CCP bias.
• There are a number of Youtubers who are pro-CCP.  Examples include Barrett and Daniel Dumbrill.  Barrett’s channel is mostly a CCP shill channel so I wouldn’t bother with it (just watch CGTN instead to get the propaganda view).  Some of Dumbrill’s content such as interviews are interesting.  He is also critical of racism in China.

VICE and the BBC have good documentaries on the Uyghur Muslim situation.  You can see that everyday Chinese people lean towards supporting the “re-education” camps.

Reddit can be a good place to see what people are talking about.  However, Reddit audiences tend to be biased due to subreddit moderators removing dissenting voices and downvoting culture within a particular subreddit.  Reddit demographics are also heavily skewed towards young English speakers with Internet access and VPNs.

• r/China skews heavily towards anti-CCP moderation and downvoting.
• r/Sino is heavily pro-CCP with a lot of pro-CCP Chinese living outside of China.  r/AznIdentity is a weird subreddit that I don’t quite understand; it looks like a haven for pro-CCP Chinese living in America.

Overall, I wish that there were better English-language resources.

Links

John Hempton has some interesting posts on China about guanxi and organized crime.

• Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange (and possibly Herbalife) team up to help organised crime
• Guanxi vs Analyst: Carlyle and the coming collapse in Asian Private Equity

Channel 4 News has an interesting feature on how a corrupt police official cheated millions of dollars out of policemen.

ABC News has a feature on the China-North Korea border.  While cross-border trade is illegal. the film crew went on a tour boat where the operator led the tour boat to a North Korea boat where cross-border trade occurred from boat to boat.