I mean uh, my audience is primarily in finance and um economics, and but they all know you and know of you and know of your work, that's cool, i would say 80 of them love you and twenty percent of them hate you, because yeah that makes sense, Makes a lot of sense yeah excellent. So what are we talking about today? Yeah? So, first of all, i i want to introduce you real quick, although i don't think you need an introduction to be honest. Okay, i'm talking here with winston serpenza over 1 million subscribers on youtube phenomenal work, some of the best videos on the planet. As far as china goes, this is his page in case you've been living under a rock and haven't seen it before.

He has a video that gone completely bonkers viral three weeks ago, called the secret behind china's ghost series, which is something i definitely want to talk about, but there's so much content here. My personal favorite is actually a little known video. Where you talk about how you used to be a bodyguard, oh right, yeah, a kingpin and like stuff like that. But i mean it's a wealth of knowledge, and so, if you haven't yet go subscribe to winston's channel, i mean he doesn't need our subscribership.

I mean he has over a million but uh yeah, some of the best work i've seen around china. Thank you. What do you think about uh? What's going on, i mean as somebody who has what i consider to be. Would you say you have a unique perspective about china because how much time you spend there, i i think so to a certain degree you know uh.

I definitely have a unique perspective. Having been the first person to actually run a youtube channel out of china uh. So i'm the first person to ever start. You know making youtube videos while living in china, and i suppose i was able to show people something that had been hidden before behind sort of a bamboo curtain.

So to speak, and during the time i stayed in china, china changed so much. So i got to experience this massive amount of change and when i first got to china, of course, being a foreigner, it still is, but it was very much a novelty. So i got drawn into all sorts of different social circles, including government and rich people, poor people, everyone in between. So i got to see a lot and i also traveled the entire country by motorcycle, which is something most people haven't done.

So you know you have people that go to shanghai and beijing and maybe they've got a factory there, maybe they're having business meetings. Maybe they do some traveling around and they go to the hot spots. They take a train, they take a plane, they take a a bus, uh or their chauffeur driven from the main cities to somewhere, but i've actually been through all the smaller rural towns and areas in the mountains and stuff where they've never seen a foreigner before so I've got to actually experience a part of china that most people miss you. So how long were you did you spe if i could, if i'm correct uh 14 years, yeah 14, china? So it's like a decade and a half and you are married to a chinese lady and you speak fluent chinese.

Well, i wouldn't say fluent it's. I can speak fairly good chinese. I can read and write chinese and you know i can speak it on a conversational level, but you know throw a legal document at me in chinese and i'm going to be sitting there trying to figure out what certain words mean. I mean as good as any foreigner can can learn chinese.

I think great yeah, just yeah. There are better but yeah i'll. Take it. It's like the only language, that's tougher, to learn as a foreigner than russian is chinese yeah, it's super tough.

So what do you think is right now the biggest misconception or misunderstanding about china in the west, having lived in both sides of the fence, everything really um? The problem is that when people look at china and they try to find news about china, information about china, there are only two sources that you can get it from number one: western mainstream media who has a certain agenda right and the other one is chinese state Media, which has a massive agenda, so you you basically get a one-sided view from china, everything coming out of china and it doesn't matter if it's a television program, if it's a newspaper, if it's a a v logger on the street or a live stream. I remember all the big news sites and youtube and google and facebook and twitter and all of these are blocked in china right, so you may not access them as a local chinese person. It's not allowed and you can't so. The only people that can access them are state condoned people either the state news, broadcaster or diplomats they're allowed to use twitter, but the average person is not allowed to do it, so they can tailor a narrative.

They also censor everything, that's bad, so the state organs, and i guess it doesn't matter what newspaper, what tv channel whatever it is in china. You may only have state-run media. You can't have a private media company, it's not allowed, so everything that's put out as news has to first pass the very strict censorship of the chinese government. So let's say they put something out: that's mildly: critical of a societal issue in china.

It'll be censored and deleted and won't be allowed to be put out there. So the only thing that comes out from china is positive, fluff pieces about how great the the government is the poverty alleviation. The infrastructure is amazing, look what china is doing. Look how great it is, but they're also allowed to put out anything negative about foreign countries, so they'll keep harping on about how bad america is.

Look at the homeless problems. Look at the the mass shootings. Look at the terrible things! Look how dangerous america is america, sucks or uk sucks or australia, sucks or canada, whatever the flavor of the week, so you'll get a lot of that from the chinese media. But when china is concerned, it's only only positive on the western side.

That's the other option. I told you the two two options to get news: you have the mainstream media which, for the longest time, has been incredibly ignorant about china. Okay, first of all, they didn't know what was really going on and if you've got a correspondence say for the bbc living in china, they're very limited in what they can do. They're not allowed to go to certain places, they're shielded from certain things, they're blocked from being able to do certain things, and also for the longest time the west has been trying to carry favor with china, and they know there are certain topics you know if we Want to keep our office open in china, we can't cannot talk about the tiananmen square massacre or the taiwan issue or whatever the case may be otherwise.

They'll just shut us down, which they do so they've always been walking around on tiptoes. So you get a kind of a half-assed, biased view from the west, which is fairly negative but at the same time, also very positive, especially when it comes to anything financial. Look at this amazing economic miracle. Look at how china has lifted everyone out of poverty.

All this kind of stuff you see that being boosted in the western media as well, so there is no real sort of in between on the ground daily life. What actually happens in china? What's really going on? You know critical of life there, of society and of the chinese government and and so on and so forth, and i think that's where i might fall in me and somebody like my my friend uh lao86 and a few others. But you you very it's very rare to find a genuine insight based on actual experience of living in china, dealing with both the government, the economy and everything else. So from what you're describing to me, i got ta be honest with you when you were describing to me this whole situation, i was, i could replace china with russia and china media with rt, and the description you just told me would absolutely fit to the tea Yeah, why do you think that china is like sorry? Russia is the pariah now when, and people like ray dalio are basically talking up.

China and the entire western world is decorating china, even though they're, basically just as bad as russia yeah. I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that china, we all know they're very good at copying um, you know making knockoffs and so on, and they did the same with the soviet system. They absolutely worshipped the soviet system and they copied it almost to a t i mean you could look at the military uniforms and and the ideals and all the propaganda, posters and the you know the whole idea of communism and, let's not forget that communism marxism. All of this is a western idea.

It is karl, marx was german and the chinese government just like they can knock off an iphone they kind of knocked off the you know, communism and said this is ours. Now you know uh communism with chinese characteristics and so on and so forth. The only reason why um people are now looking at russia, the way they are and not looking at china in the same light, is because so many people are dependent on china at the moment, and they know for a fact that if you anger the chinese government, They can overnight completely like freeze all of your assets, confiscate your factories, whatever you have there and just do what they want with you and that's something that they're terribly afraid of, because there are no checks and balances if uh, if there's a company operating in the U.S and something similar happens, let's just say i don't know they decide that your persona non grata. You can still appeal.

There's there's going to be lobbyists, there's going to be groups, there's going to be some way for you to at least you know, fight against it. In a legal way, but in china there are no options if they decide that they don't like you anymore, they can. They can force their entire population to boycott. You, we've seen this with actors and certain movies and hollywood and certain brands.

We see this very often when a brand says something or maybe prints a a t-shirt. That's got taiwan on it by mistake or something they will get the entire population. It's very easy for them to turn on this nationalist um tab and make it mandatory for the entire population to just boycott that brand. So, of course, people are so afraid of becoming um.

You know persona non grata in china and being boycotted and so on and having all their assets frozen and losing that market that they tend to turn a blind eye to the bad sides of china, and i feel, like the world, is not reliant on russia. In the same way, our supply chains aren't there. You know that kind of thing. So that's why there's a difference? What about jack ma, i mean they made a whole billionaire disappear.

Yeah! Look. They do that all the time and that's because jack ma he became too powerful and in china they have that saying and kind of all around the world really. But you know the nail that sticks up is hammered down and when you get to a point where you're starting to look too powerful, you have too much sway over the populace. The chinese government gets incredibly jealous.

They do not want anyone to be able to have any control over the population other than themselves, so someone like jack ma got to a point where he was just an untouchable billionaire. Well, at least he thought - and we see this with big actresses and actors and so on, and he was starting to give advice to the public that the chinese government didn't, like especially financial advice, and he actually called them like the the financial institution in china. Like old and it's a bunch of old people needs to be reformed, that kind of thing, and that was a big no-no. That's when they stepped in and said: okay, that's it now you're going to learn that nobody is untouchable and they made him disappear same that they did with whang bing bing and various other high profile actors and actresses the most popular live streamer in china, and i'm Not talking about the guy, that's just gotten canceled for having a uh a tiananmen square which he didn't you know wasn't really.

It was just a tank cake, ice cream thing and he got cut midstream and he's been disappeared for now um. Prior to that there was a massively influential live stream up very big, also got disappeared on tax for tax reasons, but that's what they do they come in when somebody gets too powerful and influential and they get rid of them because at the end of the day, You worship the party, you don't worship anyone else. So what also there was the tennis player right, oh yeah, yeah. Of course she was like a top 20 tennis player that just you know they paraded her around.

Basically, you know she, like a video conference, call where she was like. Yes, i'm fine, i'm fine, you know it looks like a hostage situation. Yeah it was. I mean it.

That was an awful thing and once again she had the courage to speak out about some terrible things that had happened to her um and, of course, she accused a high-ranking official of uh sexual assault, and you know all that kind of nonsense and that's a no-no. You cannot go against the government in china, it's not something you do so, even though the post was only up for 30 minutes, it got taken down, you couldn't search her name, you couldn't do anything on the internet and they disappeared her and it took months for It to finally surface in these kind of forced um. You know interviews where it's like. Oh i'm, fine! No, i didn't mean anything.

No, it was just a mistake. You know yeah, it's not good. Do you think that china will ever actually take military action against day? One look um, it's one of those situations where it's been a political tool for the ccp to use. They obviously haven't done it.

They haven't done it up until now, because they don't actually want to do it, but they're backing themselves into a corner, because every single time they want to go and uh rile up the public, and you know to get get trust back in the communist party. It's one of their big blustering talking points like we will take taiwan in a day. We will reunify china. You know all this kind of stuff gets everyone riled up and they're like yeah.

We can do it we'll do it. It's like we're just we're just letting them off the hook. They're. You know they they're like a naughty little brother that ran away and we're gon na bring him back when we feel it's right when the time is right.

We'll just take him back like that, and everyone's like yeah, we're all big and powerful. Taiwan's a piece of we'll take him back and it belongs to us. Um and they've been doing this now for decades right and it's getting to a point where i think they might actually have to do it simply because they've been promising it for so long and the people are starting to lose confidence in the party and what they Say because you can only make a promise so many times and not uphold it before people start to be. Like you know what you said, you were going to take back taiwan 20 years ago.

You still haven't done it. What's what's the deal you know so, unfortunately, i think they might be talking themselves into a corner where they might actually have to do it in order to you know, maintain their legitimacy with the public. You think that the what's going on in ukraine is a positive incentive for him to do it or a negative incentive for them to do it because of the reaction to russia. Well, absolutely in the beginning.

Obviously, i think it was a bit of a warning to them, because i have a feeling that the intent was to see how quickly russia could take the ukraine and if it did, go as putin had said, like. Oh we'll take them over in like a couple of days or whatever. If it was a successful campaign, china would have said: okay, great, look, it worked out now we can do it and i think the fact that it's still ongoing 100 days later 100. More days later, i think it's given a little bit of pause um to the chinese government for them to stand back and say well, we didn't expect this to work to go this way.

Maybe we should like try to reformulate a bit, let's think about another way, because you know ukraine's a land border. They can just roll the tanks over from russia into ukraine no problem, but with the china taiwan issue, you've got the water in between and you've also got the backing of uh. You know america and various other nations who are like you know we're kind of floating around in the sea here, keeping an eye on what's going on. If something kicks off, we are going to get involved, and so i think it's given them.

Paws like big paws. One is like super militarized right i mean they're, i mean i know they're pretty well armed um. I know a lot of taiwanese people who grew up with taiwanese people and they all have to do a certain amount of conscription going to the military for a certain amount of time. Everybody is aware of this situation and kind of have been expecting an invasion for decades now.

So i think they're all kind of ready for this, and taiwan's also very well, from a geographical point of view, very well fortified against an attack with these mountains and cliffs and things right against the sea line. There and it'll be very difficult for a land invasion to happen. So from that point of view, i think taiwan's actually quite lucky and that's probably why they haven't been invaded up until this point. Uh there's a question here from keaney one of our regulars here on the channel um he's asking if there's any connection with the recent lockdowns and the 20th national party congress meeting in the coming months to subjugate their own citizens, yeah look there's a there's.

A lot of talk about a connection and this ridiculous zero covert policy thing that they've put in specifically in shanghai and been so harsh in shanghai. There's a lot of speculation around that, because the communist party, like any organization, has factions within it. Okay and the jiangsu men faction, if you don't know what young zamen is or i should say who jung's men is he's the guy who looks like a zombie that they always drag out whenever they have a one of these big political things. He's like this ancient guy, he really he looks kind of like a like a frog or something i don't know how to explain it.

But yeah he's like a zombie guy anyway. He's got this faction in shanghai and um. They are against the xi jinping faction. In many ways they disagree and there's a power struggle, an internal power struggle, and so shanghai has always maintained a certain amount of autonomy when it comes to china.

So when uh the beijing government says okay, this is now a blanket rule. That's going to cover the whole of china. Shanghai sometimes manages to kind of skirt those laws or they'll be able to do something. The rest of the country won't be able to do from a just a way of living point of view or a financial point of view, or something there's always something that makes shanghai a little different and special from the rest of the country.

And i think this was beijing's uh play to bring them down to to earth, bring them down to the same level and say: listen, you think you're special, but you're, not! You are part of china. You will follow our laws. You will be the same as everybody else and i think that's why they went extra, harsh and forced everybody into quarantine like that, because it was completely unnecessary and we're talking about the most sophisticated city in china. Shanghai is home to like all the posh millionaires.

You know billionaires all the the middle upper class that you know think of themselves as being very special in china, and you know top of the pops type of thing, so it was kind of an exercise to bring them down to earth. I believe, and also to force this issue of the zero covert policy, because that has been xi jinping's baby. That was his idea to enforce this zero covert policy and if they were to turn around and say, look it's not working everybody's pissed off they're, all locked up. They want their freedom.

Let's let them out. Let's, let's admit that it doesn't work. You know, let's just build up some herd immunity or maybe let's, let's actually go and get some vaccines that work from the west rather than our homegrown vaccine, which is useless against omicron. If they'd done anything along those lines, it would have looked as if xi, jinping's, zero covert policy had failed, and that's the last thing that xi jinping would want, because of this party conference coming up because he's about to be reaffirmed again.

As you know, the leader of the communist party going forward, so this has all been a political thing and i do believe that's why they were so harsh on shanghai and many other places. There's so many places that didn't get the news in the spotlight uh spotlight in the news, sorry that we're also under strict lockdown during this time. I can't i can't hear you, i think, um have you put yourself on yeah, servo, okay yeah, i accidentally yeah. I wonder like how did the chinese people deal with your or at least dealt with your sense of humor, because it's very not chinese, like uh, you don't joke like a it, doesn't really fit the asian culture right.

Did you get a lot of into trouble because of your sense of humor? There, oh, i mean sure sure, look when i was living in china to be honest, um. I had some of the best uh interactions with local people, because it's really just the government that messes everything up people themselves and i think you'll find us across the world. People themselves in general are very nice. Uh hospitable, friendly people, you can strike up a conversation, sit down, have a beer.

You can find some common ground. You know, and i met lots of wonderful people during my time there, but one thing that always messed everything up is this hyper nationalism that the government has instilled into all of the people and you do get the occasional person who tries to bait you with political Questions trying to get you to say something or if it's a sensitive time. Let's say america is doing another freedom of movement exercise through the south, china, sea or something there'll be a lot of animosity towards foreigners, especially if you're american or so on, and they might ask to be very angry and ask you like where you're from and if You say america, then something bad will probably happen or they'll treat you badly. But if you say you know, i'm i'm english or i'm south african or whatever then they'll, relax and everything can go back to normal, so yeah when it comes to the sense of humor thing you just when you're there and you learn the language and the culture You get to fit in and you get to know how to deal with that.

But as far as my videos are concerned, it has caused me a lot of issues in the past because i'll make a video title like my one, video is called uh. Are chinese girls easy and it's question mark right? I did that so many years ago now, six years ago or something so i made this video um, maybe even longer than six years. I don't know i made this video. It was a just a question, not a statement, but there's a language barrier issue there and a lot of people cannot differentiate a question from a statement.

So you know it's kind of. If somebody says um, the sky is green. It's different to saying is the sky green, because the answer obviously is no right to that, and that was the idea behind that, but because of the language barrier got me into a lot of hot water. I got a lot of hate and uh issues from that, and it kind of uh wasn't a great so yeah the language is the video yeah there.

We go okay, yeah that and that's the second video, so yeah cool says a while ago, yeah um anyway, and the answer to that question was no. Actually, if you watch the video not easy, maybe easy to get into a relationship. It's never an easy relationship because of the the cultural differences and the traditions and so on and so forth. But you know that's just an example of how the language barrier can be a big issue yeah.

So, at which point did your videos became too much of a danger for your safety that you had to leave it's when i started to talk about societal issues. You know you'll find if there are any youtubers or instagram stars or anything that currently live in china. If you watch what they put out, it is 100 positive about china. Okay, they don't talk about real issues in china, so they'll be like wow.

Look at this great new infrastructure. China's lifting people out of poverty look at how they plant in this grain. Doing i don't know planting trees in the desert or look at the solar farm or whatever you know it's always like positive stuff right. I started to talk about things that were affecting my life: okay and my friends and family in china.

I got chinese family. I got friends. Obviously chinese friends, so you know, like kidnapping, is a huge issue in china. It's not talked about much, but it's massive.

It is so ingrained in in society. People are so paranoid about letting their children out of their sight uh in china in a park or wherever for ransom. No just human trafficking, they don't ransom them they're. Just you know, because there's a shortage of um, i don't know in the rural areas.

Somebody will want a boy right because without a child, children play a very important role in chinese society from many different points of view, but uh largely an investment, so to speak, like a retirement fund in a way, if you have a boy, especially a man, but You know a boy child and you bring them up um. They will look after you in your old age. That's their that's their job. You will end up living as the parents.

You will live with him when he gets married, you will live in their house. You will do the cooking and stuff, but they'll take care of all the bills and so on and so forth. So it's it's! This situation, where you'll have a rural couple that can't have a kid or they've had like a a daughter and they're not allowed to have a son because of the one child policy back in the past or whatever they want to. They want a child of a specific uh type and they'll pay for it.

So then you get these human traffickers that go out and steal kids from the park and sell them to uh. You know the rural couples, of course, there's also the horrible stuff when it comes to like um sex sex industry uh. That type of thing kidnapping but kidnapping is mass, is a massive massive massive issue: beggar gangs by kids or use rent kids. So you know having lived for so long when i could understand the language and the culture more and see what was going on this kind of stuff.

Pissed me off. You know because it really went against my sensibility, so i started to talk about it. I made videos about the kidnapping. I actually stopped a child trafficking situation um once on the shenzhen metro, where there was a group of beggars and what they would do is you're not allowed to beg on the schengen metro right.

It's the underground train system there and it's very high tech and they try to keep it clean. So what would happen? Is these these? This group of women would sneak in wearing like an overcoat. They would sneak in and bring a kid with them. They'd sneak into the metro and then once they were in there, they would take off their coat and they'd, be wearing like tattered, old clothing.

Underneath and they'd strap have this kid strapped to their back um and they'd walk around asking for money, of course. So i saw this and i took a photo of the one woman right. She got very angry with me: try to smack my camera out of my hand, but i took a bunch of photos and then i noticed the next day a different woman. With the same kid, and the thing is the kid was drugged, obviously, like it looked like a one and a half year old, two-year-old child, just kind of you know out of it when you're that age you're normally making a lot of noise.

You know a child that age, especially in a busy metro train like that, but they were drugged. Okay, basically on their back. So i took photos of the second woman, and then there was a third woman the next day and i lost my patience and i actually grabbed her and i took her off the train and i called security down. While she had the kid on her back - and i showed them the photos that i'd taken of the same kid on the back of different women over three days - and i called they brought the cops down, i sent the pictures via my phone via bluetooth to them.

They took her and the kid away. Hopefully they figured out what the deal was, but then they started to put up um notices at the entrance to the metros, like don't give money to people like this, and they showed one of the photos that i'd actually sent them, which was kind of a proud Moment yeah, so you know i, i started to get more involved in this kind of thing and that's the problem is i'm the only one who stood up to this right. You've got a metro there, full of hundreds of thousands of people every day must have been subjected to these women because they were just riding back and forth on the same lines. You know maybe change over here and there and the shenzhen metro takes a huge, huge volume of traffic every day, but nobody stood up to this.

Nobody batted an eyelid. Some people gave money, but you know what, when i did start raising a stink and when i pulled off the train, i started showing some of the other passages the pictures on my phone. Then they started to like get riled up and like oh yeah, she's, bad and stuff like that, but otherwise nobody would have said a thing, and this is this. Complacency that's been built into the chinese populace.

It's been bred into them from a young age. That's what the government likes. They don't want anyone to cause a ruckus or get up there cause a scene. So in the beginning of course, you get a lot of people who are supportive of what you're doing.

But then i make a video about it. Talking about the kidnapping issue in china and all of a sudden, i become the bad guy because it's okay for a chinese person to criticize an issue in china, but it's not okay for a foreigner to do the same thing they have a saying in in in China, which they've told me many times, it's ok, it's kind of like in your family, um you're allowed to say your uncle is bad or he's like an alcoholic or something. But if there's a guest, that's over he's not allowed to say anything, that's rude type thing, and so this is when i started to hit real issues, because i was talking about genuine human issues, i'm not even talking about governmental stuff. Here i knew that it would be stupid to talk about politics.

I was just talking about issues in society. You know, like health risk issues, the fact that there were fake vaccines and stuff, which you know hurt a bunch of children or anything like that. If i were to talk about a real issue that affected my chinese friends and family and put a video out about it, i'd get attacked as somebody who's trying to smear china or make china look bad or, or you know they say, hey jong-wa, which means to Yeah make china look bad, hey mon jong, and that's when i realized that this was getting dangerous because i started to get people reporting me as a spy to the local. You know: police, public security, bureau and so on.

I started to get visits from the police. Quite often it started to get very hairy, and that was when i decided yeah. You know this is now a point where i got to think about leaving here. You know that's insane.

So as long as this was internal nobody mind, but when you externalize, i mean nobody likes um critics of uh of of a certain like in any country that doesn't fly well. I mean i'll, give you an example like if, if it's russia or the u.s, when you have like a local guy talking to the world, explaining to them about all the bad things like in russia, like nobody likes, that they they're kind of seen as a traitor. But they're allowed to do it and to mostly even not in russia anymore. I mean russia and china is now identical in the way they censor information yeah.

But i think in the us. Yes, they'll call you names, but they'll. Let you do it. I find that um quite horrible like this as a parent.

What you told me it's just it's it's beyond belief, like your greatest fear, is apparent. Something ever happens to your kids. This is just unthinkable to me. It's an awful awful situation.

You know. Human trafficking is huge in china, there's a there. How big is it like? As far as do you have any numbers about it? Any statistics - that's the problem - is that uh statistics are very hard to come by because it's such a hushed up sort of a situation but, for instance, there's a website called babe hui, which means uh. You know uh, they baby come home uh, which has got just hundreds of thousands of missing kids on it, people looking for their their children.

I can tell you that it's such a big issue that um i actually once i didn't see the kidnapping happen, but i was in the shopping mall and this is in shenzhen. You know biggest uh one of the four top first tier cities, one of the four i'm in the shopping center and a very distraught uh grandmother was running around looking for a kid who'd been snatched, you know, so that happened right there. She couldn't find a kid cops are called nothing who knows what the the fate of that child was. It was terrible my friend lauity six near his house in the park um, where his child used to play.

When you know when uh they were still there. Four children got kidnapped out of that four or five children got kidnapped out of that very park in the in the preceding months. It's it's a big deal. Look children getting snatched in china is a massive deal, especially in the more rural areas and the more cut-off areas.

Um and human trafficking is big. Massive we've seen recently, they uh uncovered that situation where that girl was kidnapped and then chained to a wall. I don't know if you saw that whole thing about the woman they found who gave birth to eight children in the rural area and she was chained to a wall in a shack um. That's a big part about this okay! Well, it's not that long ago.

Maybe a couple months ago, it reignited the whole discussion about human trafficking in china, but uh, basically from oh, it's a big mess. We've done a lot about it, but i'll give you a quick gist of it. Um, a young girl was kidnapped at the age of about 12., at least they believe it's her, because people have done sort of forensic comparisons of the photos of when she was young and they 100 you know match. It's definitely looks like it's her, but the local chinese government - it's not in their interest to admit that, so they haven't allowed anyone to do dna testing or anything anyway she disappeared.

And then this live streamer guy. This poor, like you, know like a very um low-class kind of guy, started making videos about him and his family of eight, which is something that's not allowed in china. It's not common right because of the one child policy, but he started to do live streams, um and he's very impoverished, so people started to send donations and so on to his place. You know to help him out and he became very popular online and then somebody went there to go.

Give donations was looking around and checking out the donations and walked into the back and found a woman chained to the wall in a shack and it's winter and there's no door or anything on there and he was like what the hell is going on. It turns out she's the mother of these children and she's, basically just been kept in their chain chained to the wall as like a sex slave for, however long um, and it sparked off a massive debate about women's rights and uh human trafficking and stuff in china. But it got so big and of course the chinese government did everything they could to try and silence it and deleted all the search terms and everything about it, but it got out there. So human trafficking is just one of the examples i'm using here, but it is a massive issue in china and people don't like to talk about it and the news is always suppressed about it, so it never gets fixed and i mean there's a reason for this.

A lot of the local government is involved in the whole human trafficking thing in the more rural areas as well. So you know there's that incentive. If you can, you ever go back in your lifetime to this to the to china, you think you would be able to able to come back. No, the only way, i'd be able to yeah the only way we're in a similar situation.

Russia will have a better chance of a regime change in china. I think the way things are working, i think so too, and you know the the thing is they would let me back in, but they would never. Let me out that's what they do. That's what they do yeah um before we continue we're at the halfway mark uh i wan na just quickly.

Uh read out the sponsorship for today's. For today's interview. This is the the sponsorship for today is by ftx. Ftx is my long-time sponsor on the channel.

They are a cryptocurrency exchange and they're. Basically, u.s regulated exchange millions of users um soon you will be able to trade stocks on ftx as well. They are running currently uh a new kind of promotion where you get up to a hundred dollars in crypto when you trade with ftx us as well a free crypto. If you trade over ten dollars uh, it's basically a really good way to do dollar cost average into cryptocurrencies.

As long as you do it responsibly, um i for me this is the only sponsorships i've ever done on. My channel are ftx. I've never done sponsorships before and don't plan to do either terrific brand they work with tom brady with steph curry they own their arena in the nba they're, one of them blue chip brands that i've absolutely been excited to work with. If you are interested in checking them out, there's a link below in my description uh, you can use that link, use the code name tom nash and you will get a free crypto for every trade of 10 and i guess we can go back to the interview.

I think that's all the issues i wanted to mention, so thank you, ftx response during this show and uh allowing me to make these kind of interviews um yeah thanks thanks 840 viewers in i'm, going to use this as a clip man go for it go for It yeah, no, that's been a wonderful. It's been a wonderful experience to work with them. They absolutely don't zero issues with what content i do what i say i can even talk bad about them or crypto or bitcoin, and so absolutely 100 creative freedom, which is exactly what i was looking for. Um moving on from the from the sponsorship uh, i wanted to touch base with you a little bit about the video that went absolutely bonkers.

So in case you guys are not familiar. Uh winston has a youtube channel which was already kind of successful. I mean i mean a million subscribers, isn't you know something to you know talk down about, but i mean you had a video recently that went absolutely bonkers. This video right here called the secrets behind china's ghost cities.

Uh approaching one million views i mean for you. That's not really out of the ordinary you. You have videos with millions of views, but this one specifically, i think, there's the biggest amount of mystery about i'm going to play the video in the background, without audio just to show people what we're talking about here and, as i play it for a few minutes. I wanted to ask you uh about this concept, because every time i bring this up as a kind of an argument in one of my videos or my debate, show there's always people from china or people who are from the us but they're supportive of china.

There's a lot of them actually out there believe it or not. Quite a big number of these. Oh there are yeah absolutely yeah. There will go bonkers in the comment section saying it's a fud: it's a lie.

It's a fabrication! There's! No such thing! We've never seen it blah blah blah. So can you i mean obviously go check out the video it's uh. The video is right here. It's 13 minutes.

It's definitely worth your time, but can you kind of explain to us what the hell is going on with these ghost cities? Sure i mean the difference. I think between talking about it and um, and my video is the fact that i've been to ghost cities all over china, which is this intro, that you can see um with the little pac-man ghosts. Those are just the actual ghost cities. I have personally visited myself and seen myself and every town and uh place that i've been in china.

You will always find these empty apartments. It might not be a ghost city, but there will be a district of that city or town that has empty apartment buildings, and this has been a massive part of china's growth engine. I mean to have these empty apartments there. Most people would look at it and say what a waste of real estate right, because you you get to see these empty husks of a building where there's no cladding on it, there's no anything.

You can actually just see right through it as if it's just a skeletal um, you know structure, but in the bigger cities you will get something that looks from the outside to be complete. But if you were to walk inside the apartments, it's an empty, concrete shell, and this was something that, in the beginning, really really puzzled me even in downtown shenzhen you'd have these massive buildings and, for instance, one of the first jobs i had was in a uh. This this building called goji kojidasa, which is like the new. What would that be translated to, like i don't know like whatever, like future technology building or something like that um and when you went into the building you had to enter it through the rear entrance like a service entrance right and then you could go all the Way up to, i think it started on the 14th floor and then all the offices and and whoever was in the building, who was renting a space was like from the 14th floor up.

But what me and my colleagues used to do is we used to go down in the stairwell um and get off on the other floors and it was abandoned. They had this massive, beautiful, big entrance. Okay, that came in like a shopping, mall entrance you'd walk in it had escalators going up on either side this huge lobby. It was amazing, but it was deserted and the front doors where the front doors were supposed to be.

There was actually a footbridge that led to that they had been completely um, basically walled off. They replaced the front doors with glass cladding. No, you couldn't open it anymore, so they basically got rid of the front entrance on the building and then all these other floors, leading up to the 14th floor, were just derelict and open with nothing just cement. You know you go in there, there's nothing, not even like.

I don't know plumbing or anything, just open cement areas um, but this building was old. You know this is built when i say old for shenzhen it was probably built in the in the late 90s. You know um yeah, that's for shinjen, that's old, i mean the the city only started to grow in 1980. So you know when i was born.

The year i was born is when they actually decided to change it from a fishing village into something, and now it's crazy, full of skyscrapers, but that that was my first indication that something was really weird here. You had these skyscrapers and some some of them had like this one as a massive skyscraper had offices in it had businesses running out of it, but only in the top sort of like smaller office sections. But the majority of this thing was going to waste and it wasn't being used and i started to notice a lot of buildings that were empty and when i'd go visit, friends in their apartments, sometimes you'd get off and then next to their apartments. There'd be a an apartment, the door would be open or something you look inside and it's an empty, concrete thing apartment buildings that i used to live in that i rented in there would be these empty apartments next to me or below me or above me, or On the ground floor or whatever, and for the longest time i couldn't understand, i thought like what's going on: did they start construction and then just stop halfway, because they thought that it was not structurally sound or something what's the deal, but it turns out it's designed That way, it's basically just an investment, it's kind of like cryptocurrency in a way right, it's just there as a as an asset out there in the wild.

It's not something that you use and it's not something you live in. It's just it's money held in a in a concrete block, um and the reason that they don't furnish these things, and you can see a lot in the background there. All of these buildings are empty, all of them. That's insane and everything you're seeing right down the screen, yeah, yeah, they're, all empty and all the shops that you see below them.

Those are empty too um. They they put them up, they put fake signs. This is quite common when there's a new real estate development. In china they will go and put a bunch of fake shops, they put fake signs and it's quite funny.

I've taken pictures of it. They they just use random names. They'll take a brand like starbucks, but they'll change the letters. So it looks like something stupid this one over here behind us all of those buildings are empty too.

That's that's an absolutely failed ghost city that one in particular that we came across there that one um that's a slightly different story to the other ones, the stuff. I'm talking about all of these buildings here are empty um. This is in huizhou a completely different part of the um of the country. Anyway, i'm getting sidetracked.

The point is no. No. This is fascinating. Go on go on, they'd, make these fake shops.

To give you an idea of what it could be like right, so when you as an investor, go into one of these places, you look around and you see, there's nothing. Actually there, there are no shops. Okay, there are they'll, they'll, have parks and things set up there. You know to make it look like hey.

If you do move out here, you'll have these kind of facilities and these amenities in the future type thing. So people invest because they think. Oh, this looks pretty good, we'll buy it and they'll go and invest, and even before they break ground on the new buildings they're going to build or whatever they've already paid for the apartment, put down a deposit and stuff like that which the construction companies take and Then they use that for their own means and and so on, um, but the whole point of leaving it open like that is because in china the traditional beliefs still run strong, even though religion and so on, was wiped out by mao zedong and and uh. You know the great leap forward and the cultural revolution and stuff there's still a lot of traditional beliefs and one of the beliefs.

That's very firmly held is about luck and wealth. Luck and wealth are like the two biggest things you see, people when they go to an altar and you see them praying or laying down anything. It's always about luck and wealth and health. Those three things so these these buildings, as well by the way all empty.

You see here - and this is what i was talking about - this is on the outskirts of huizhou, which is a big populated city, but they have these areas that are just full of empty apartments, so, anyway, back to the whole wealth and health. This is actually a real city, though right right or just yeah. This is shenzhen this that you can see over there that those are all occupied buildings there, but there are some you'll find within those buildings. You'll find these empty apartments as well: okay, so, anyway, um when you buy a property, the last thing you want to do is buy a property.

That's been lived in okay, because if it's been lived in, that means it absorbs the bad juju or the bad luck or the you know of the previous owner. So if you buy one of these apartments and you furnish it so in other words, you put the flooring in you do the walls. You know you screed and paint the walls you put tiles down whatever that devalues the property, because now that's your personal choice - and this is anyone - who's lived in china will know what i'm talking about when you move into an apartment, building right, if somebody buys uh An apartment either beneath you above you next to you, you're in for a rough time, because for the next month or more you've got to hear jackhammers and sledgehammers as they tear out the floors they tear out the walls they tear everything out. So then start fresh.

If they're going to live in it right, so if you're, a prospective buyer and there's an apartment, that's empty, in other words, nothing's been done to it. No floors, no walls, anything it's worth more because now you can go in there and put your personal wall and floors, and things like that plumbing and all that. So it's worth more, but if you're buying an apartment, that's already done, even if it's beautiful, even if there's marble floors in it - and it's all well done it's worth less to you, because you're gon na have to tear that stuff out anyway right! So that's why they leave them empty like that, because it's an investment so when you've got an empty investment property like that, you just leave it empty and every year it goes up in value and when you decide to sell it to the next full down the Line you make a huge profit and i'm talking big right. I know people that made a hundred percent profit on their properties that they bought in shenzhen because they bought them like 10 years prior or something like that.

The market, especially in the big cities like shenzhen and shanghai and beijing, is insane the amount of money you pay for. A tiny little apartment is something you could buy a mansion on the beach. You know in california, for instance, but you're buying a tiny little like two-bedroom apartment in shenzhen in a desirable area. So these ghost cities started to spring up specifically because the properties inside of the cities were too expensive.

So not sure if people know this, but the average wage in china is pretty low. Okay compared to most other places, your average working joe is just doing an office job. He might make about 1200 us dollars a month um if he's doing a pretty good job. A lot of people earn a lot less than that some people earn as little as 500 us dollars a year in china.

Still, okay, there's a huge wealth gap. So people know that the only sure way of investment in china is to buy property. Not only is it traditionally something people have done, but they've been burned by the stock market, because we all know the chinese government when it decides it wants to. I don't know, prevent a company from listing.

They can do that right. They just stop it. Look. What happened to dede and alibaba and the ant thing and all those things if they decide they don't like a company, they just freeze it, and then everyone loses their investment.

On top of that, there was a big stock market crash that basically turned everybody off. There aren't a lot of investment options in china for people for the average person. You know cryptocurrencies illegal, for instance, um various things like that, so they turn to property. It's the only real big form of investment.

So here you are you're an up and coming middle class guy and you want to have an investment to grow your money. The only option you have is real estate, but there's no way in hell that you can afford real estate in the big city that you're working in okay. So if you're in shenzhen or shanghai beijing guangzhou any of these big cities, even the middle tier cities, the property is so expensive that you would never be able to afford it. So what they do is they go out into the middle of nowhere and break ground and build these these? What you're, seeing on the screen right now, you can see in the background.

All of these things are far away from the main city. You have to really get out there. You know to get to these. All of those are empty buildings currently being built, and so on so you'd have to drive an hour or so to get to these things or take trains and buses, and it would take you forever to get to these things right, but because they're so far, flung And they're so far away, they're, cheap and that's why people invest in them, so they invest in them.

But then it's too far away and nobody's living there and there's nothing. Actually there you don't get proper um. What you call it like infrastructure, there's, no schools or something in the area. So of course people don't go out there to live there.

They just leave it empty as an investment and that's pretty much uh why they exist and why they still exist. So you can go to various parts of china and you're looking at this ridiculous, empty husk of a building, for instance, but there's millions and millions of dollars sunk into that building, it's already being paid for people are still paying off their mortgages on those things that Belongs to someone and it's just an investment they're waiting to be sold to the next fool who comes along and wants an investment, so it's kind of like crypto in concrete, if that makes sense, yeah uh. If you want to support winston accidentally, we just played that clip and we just saw the patreon page for for his channel. Oh thank you and his cause.

So patreon.com.