China’s social credit system—tracking everything from WeChat posts to facial recognition scans—denied 2.56 million citizens plane tickets in July while expanding to 626M CCTV cameras by 2020, with foreign firms like Huawei forced to surrender encryption keys under Chinese laws (effective Dec 1 & Jan 1). Expert Gordon G. Chang warns Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong risks guerrilla resistance, citing its leadership’s isolation from public dissent. Canada’s post-election shift toward Huawei, despite U.S. warnings like Susan Rice’s, raises global security concerns as China weaponizes tech control, exposing vulnerabilities in Western digital freedoms. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my rebels, we've got a big show for you today.
Two important parts.
The first is a terrifying video of an interrogation in China where someone is grilled by secret police for what he said on a social media app called WeChat.
The second is we talked to our friend Gordon Cheng about cyber security laws in China which really give the Chinese government access to any app, any data passing through that country.
We talk a bit about Hong Kong.
I'd like to invite you to get the video version of this podcast.
I'm just thinking about it.
The video of the interrogation I show you, you need to see it because we have the trends, the translation on the screen.
And I think you'll still have a successful podcast experience because I sort of explain it afterwards.
But it's one of those times where I wish you had the video version of this podcast.
You can get that by being a premium member at premium.rebelnews.com.
It's eight bucks a month, well worth it, I think.
All right, here's the podcast.
Tonight, are you afraid to say anything critical about the government on social media?
I'll show you a video that'll make you scared.
It's December 2nd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is the government go on is because it's my bloody right to do so.
The most popular social media sites in North America and Western Europe are Facebook and YouTube.
You know, Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp too.
It's huge.
Twitter isn't that big.
It only has about 125 million users every day.
That's about a tenth the size of Facebook.
It's smaller than Snapchat, too.
And a China-owned musical app called TikTok has taken off in the West, which has caused some concern given that Chinese law requires any companies there to divulge private information to their governments.
The other day, a Muslim girl named Feroza Aziz in America made a video on TikTok that looked like one of the zillions of makeup tutorials that young women make on social media.
But if you listen to her, you can hear that it's actually a political criticism of China and its treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
Take a look for a few moments.
Hi guys, I want to teach you guys how to get long lashes.
So the first thing you need to do is grab your lash curler, curl your lashes, obviously.
Then you're going to put them down and use your phone that you're using right now to search up what's happening in China, how they're getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there, separating their families from each other, kidnapping them, murdering them, raping them, forcing them to eat pork, forcing them to drink, forcing them to convert different religions.
If not, or else they're going to, of course, get murdered.
People that go into these concentration camps, they'll come back alive.
This is another Holocaust, yet no one is talking about it.
Please be aware.
Please spread awareness.
And yeah, so you can grab your lash curler again.
Pretty smart, hey?
Well, TikTok took that down and suspended her account.
I think that girl's American.
She was talking on social media in America.
And she certainly wasn't saying anything that radical, certainly nothing violent.
Just by the fact that she wasn't wearing a hijab, you can tell that the girl herself isn't even that fundamentalist, but she criticized China.
So she was banned from TikTok.
Now she was later reinstated after a massive backlash.
But do you really think that's the last event?
The social media app, Twitter, that I mentioned before, it's used by politicians and journalists.
Lord knows that's where I'm the mouthiest.
But most of the politically oriented social media sites are banned in communist China.
Facebook and YouTube are.
And for good reason, people can communicate with each other in direct, unregulated ways.
The Hong Kong democracy organizers don't even trust Facebook or Twitter.
They prefer to use an app called Telegram.
It's encrypted.
It's created by Russian mathematicians.
But last year, Russia banned Telegram because Telegram refused to give the Russian secret police a backdoor key to their encrypted conversations, which tells you something about all the other apps not banned in Russia, doesn't it?
But my point is, there are social networks in China, ones that we are less familiar with here in the West.
WeChat is the name of one of them.
I know people in Canada who use WeChat.
It has a billion users on any given month.
Not all in China.
They have their own payment app called WeChat Pay.
I've even seen that used in restaurants here in Canada.
You can pay using WeChat.
It's a super app.
It's an app for everything.
It's Facebook plus Amazon plus PayPal, all in one.
And like all Chinese apps, it is fully compliant with the demands of the Chinese government.
As in, they use it for mass surveillance.
Everything you write, everything you read, every dollar or yuan you spend, everywhere you go because of the GPS, every friend you have or don't have, every photo and video you take, and who knows, maybe photos and videos when you don't take them, but when the app takes them.
Everything goes to the Chinese government.
I mean, really, there's no need to plant a listening device in a room to bug a room anymore like they did in the Cold War, because we all carry around with us listening devices on our own person now, everywhere with us, our cell phones, even into the bedroom, wherever.
Throw in facial recognition software.
And it's an everything system.
It's a panopticon, watching everything all the time.
And unlike you, it never forgets.
It never forgets who you met with, what you read, what you said a year, five years ago.
It has a perfect memory of everything you ever did, everything you ever went to.
In that way, it actually knows more than you know about yourself.
I'm going to show you something very scary in a moment, something new.
But let me show you something not so new first, like this.
Remember this?
This is an announcement on a Chinese bullet train.
I've been on one of those.
They're amazing.
300 plus kilometers an hour zipping around.
Listen to this.
Dear passengers, people who travel without tickets or behave disorderly or smoke in public areas will be punished according to regulations.
And the behavior will be recorded in the individual credit information system.
To avoid any negative record of personal credit, please follow the relevant regulations and help with the orders on the train and at the station.
Recorded in your individual credit file.
Not like a credit card, not money credit.
Your personal political credit.
That's what they call your secret police file because it doesn't say, it doesn't sound as bad as secret police file.
Your government file, your personal credit file.
Everything's in there.
China isn't hiding this.
They're bragging about it.
They're working with Western tech companies, especially Google, to master it.
Here's a Chinese publication called Global Times, specifically pushing Chinese government messages to the Western world in English.
So they're not shy about this.
Look at this.
China restricted 2.56 million discredited entities from purchasing plane tickets and 90,000 entities from buying high-speed rail tickets in July.
Social credit.
Discredited entities.
That's what they call people who have been unpersoned.
2.56 million people were blocked in one month from flying.
That's 100,000 people a day almost.
This thing is in widespread use.
Here's a story from last month in the Daily Mail.
Chinese citizens must pass a facial recognition test to use the internet as part of Beijing's social credit system.
Citizens in China must have their faces scanned to have the internet installed.
The rule is part of China's social credit system, which will take effect on December 1st.
That's yesterday.
Authority claimed the move could help improve the nation's internet security.
China has been building the world's most powerful facial recognition system.
The nation is due to be equipped with 626 million closed-circuit TV cameras by 2020.
That's next year.
I'm going to read some more.
Let me just tell you all these facts.
China has stepped up its internet censorship by demanding its citizens pass a facial recognition test to be able to use web services.
People who want to have the internet installed at home or on their phones must have their faces scanned by the Chinese authority to prove their identities according to a new regulation.
The rule, which will take effect on December 1st, is said to be part of the social credit system, which rates the Chinese citizens based on their daily behavior.
At present, a Chinese citizen will need to show his or her ID card while applying for a landline or the internet.
The facial recognition test is set to verify that the ID card belongs to the applicant.
The directive was issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology late last month.
The ministry claimed the move would help improve the country's internet security and combat terrorism.
Chinese citizens are also banned from reselling their SIM cards by the regulation to prevent unregistered users from making calls from mobile phones.
ID Card Show00:03:49
So yeah.
Who's excited about getting Huawei, China's main telecom company, to set up our telecom systems here in North America or in Europe for what's called 5G super broadband?
Who would literally hand over our entire computer and phone systems and everything else that's hooked up to the internet these days from your printer to your refrigerator to your car to airplanes to our Defense Department?
Imagine letting China install telecom infrastructure in your country.
Which brings me to the video I want to show you today.
This was recorded before the new facial recognition law took effect yesterday.
So this is how things were before.
Imagine it now.
Let me play it for you.
Read the captions underneath and look at that bizarre chair.
Chair I'm about to show you reminds me of something out of Clockwork Orange or 1984, but it's real.
A walk, a
walk, a walk, a walk, a
walk, a
walk, a walk, a walk, a walk.
That's not just a chair.
Did you see his hands like that and his feet, too?
Why did you complain about police on WeChat?
Why did you talk about the traffic police?
Why did you talk about them confiscating motorcycles?
What's wrong with that?
Why did you badmouth the police?
Do you hate the police?
Say you like them.
Say it.
What's your intention?
Was it a joke?
I know I'm wrong.
I know I'm wrong.
I definitely didn't mean it.
Any words for the police?
Uncle Police, I'm so sorry, Uncle Police.
I know that now.
Please forgive me.
I won't do it again ever.
There are questions about his name, what he did.
Trading Info for Access00:13:53
They already knew all of that, of course.
They had it already.
This was about destroying his will, destroying his mind, his intentions.
This was about breaking him.
And the video, well, that's a warning to others.
But hey, guys, don't worry about it.
That kind of social media re-education by police-that's at least what five years away from here.
Yeah, nothing, nothing for us to worry about.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, this is a very serious matter, and one I don't think has had enough attention in the West.
But we have an expert who we call on every time we need to decrypt what's going on in China.
And he's written an essay just a couple days ago in the Gate Stone Institute called China Adopts Malicious Cyber Security Rules.
And you know who I'm talking about.
It's our old friend Gordon G. Chang who joins us now via Skype.
Gordon, great to see you again.
I always encourage our followers to follow you on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
Tell me what's going on with the new rules passed yesterday and the ones that will take effect on January 1st.
Yeah, these two measures, December 1, which is the implementation of the Multi-Level Protection Scheme 2.0.
And on January 2, the cryptography law goes into effect.
These two measures will make all the data, communications, informations that foreign companies store on their China networks available to Chinese authorities.
So there will be no more encryption permitted, at least encryption that is from the Chinese government and the Communist Party.
And this really means that China will be able to take this information and, for instance, give it to state enterprises that compete against foreign companies.
It also means that foreign companies may lose around the world their trade secret protections for information that they store on their China networks.
And China will use this to ruin these companies, just like it ruined Nortel Networks, which is now bankrupted.
So this is a matter where China is in a position really to take over foreign companies, not just in China, but elsewhere around the world.
So how would that impact a high-tech company?
I'm just going to pick an example.
Let's just say, I don't know, Apple computers.
How would Apple or Apple users or Apple designers be at risk?
How would China use these laws to get access to things?
I'm just using that as an example.
Yeah, well, Apple would have to turn over encryption keys to the Chinese government, which means everything on their networks in China is visible to the Chinese government.
And by the way, this is not a situation where Apple, after a request or a demand, would turn over information to Beijing.
This Beijing would be able to take it on its own because there is no encryption with regard to the Chinese government.
So this means just everything is there.
And it also means, Ezra, because the Chinese are in the networks of Apple, they probably are in a better position to rummage around Apple's networks outside China.
So, you know, you shouldn't be surprised within a decade that Apple is owned by China.
This is serious because we saw this with Nortel.
This is not some sort of theoretical concern.
This has already happened to a major multinational.
Yeah.
Nortel used to be the Canadian high-tech champion until it was undone in exactly the manner you suggest.
Now, in the past, companies like Apple have fought against the U.S. government trying to get backdoor access to their encryption.
And I respect that.
They've even done so in cases involving terrorism, which shows their dedication.
I haven't seen an outcry from Silicon Valley about Chinese decryption efforts.
Have I just missed it?
Or how has Silicon Valley reacted?
Well, you know, China is a lot more coercive than the United States.
And so they realize that there's no point in trying to publicly oppose Beijing's efforts.
And so they don't.
You know, they're trading information for access.
Companies have done this for quite some time, not very many of them successful.
And that's why there is this difference of approach that companies take to Beijing as opposed to the approach they take to Washington.
And this is despicable.
This is horrible.
But it's in the context of business understandable.
And it's up to countries like Canada and the United States to change the incentives for those companies so that they are not subject to pressure by Beijing, which unfortunately means not only reducing their vulnerability to China, but getting them out of China.
This is terrible, Ezra.
But remember, Ottawa, Washington, London, we're not driving this.
It's Beijing that's driving this.
Well, one thing that's concerned me, it's the one-year anniversary of when the daughter of the founder of Huawei, who's also the CFO, was arrested transiting through Vancouver.
So she's been under house arrest.
It's been the one-year anniversary.
This was the spark of a degradation of relations between China and Canada.
But since the last federal election up here, Gordon, I see that Canada is becoming softer towards China.
The new foreign minister, very pro-China, has even appeared on Chinese state TV saying China is a model of security and stability.
We see a number of foreign policy statements about we need a new framework with China.
We want to patch things up.
I'm worried that Canada is collapsing towards China.
And in particular, I see that Huawei is on a PR offensive in Canada.
In fact, Canada has allowed Huawei to build networks in the northern Arctic, which I would think is a strategic military and industrial network.
Let me ask you this.
Huawei, if we allow Huawei to build telecom infrastructure in Canada, could that be used under these Chinese laws to suck out data and information and secrets, just letting the hardware be put in place in Canada?
Beijing would be certainly in a position to do that.
Not under the December 1 and January 1 measures, which only apply to networks in China.
But China, with Huawei in the backbone of Canada's telecommunications networks, clearly would be able to do exactly what you say, which is why the United States is in the process of removing Huawei from the American backbone.
This is important because Canada's a five eyes partner.
But if it has Huawei 5G networks, I don't think the United States should be cooperating with Canada.
And this whole drift that you're talking about of Canada becoming a Chinese colony is really most worrisome.
You know, Susan Rice, Barack Obama's former national security advisor, came up to Canada and warned Canada about doing business with Huawei.
I thought that was remarkable considering the source.
I mean, she's no friend of Donald Trump.
And for her to take the American line in Canada was quite interesting.
Let me shift gears a little bit.
I follow you very closely on Twitter because you're the master of what's going on these days with China and Hong Kong.
Can you give us your assessment of the last month in Hong Kong leading up to the election?
We had our reporter Kian Bechi there and he found it eye-opening and wondrous, but terrifying too.
What's your take on the election, its results, and what Beijing is going to do next?
Well, Beijing just a few hours ago told the U.S. Navy it could no longer have Hong Kong port calls.
And this to me showed the weakness of China because China wasn't sanctioning the United States.
It was sanctioning itself.
Those port calls are important to the economy of Hong Kong.
When a carrier strike group pulls into Hong Kong waters, that's $5 million for the Hong Kong economy within those three or four days.
So really right now you see Beijing pulling a temper tantrum, but not being able to actually do something effective against the United States.
And we see just in general, Beijing after the district council elections of two Sundays ago, basically doesn't know what to do.
They were actually thinking that their pro-Beijing candidates would pick up seats in those district council elections where the pro-Beijing camp got annihilated.
They had control of all 18 district councils before the election.
Now they've only got control of one.
And the only reason why they have the control of that one is because it's dominated by government-appointed members.
So China right now is just struggling in terms of trying to figure out what to do in Hong Kong.
Well, that's fascinating because in repressive or authoritarian or one-party regimes, no one likes to tell the emperor about his new clothes.
No one wants to be the dissenter.
I just watched the mini-series on Chernobyl.
And what struck me, I mean, I know it was a dramatization, but I think they nailed it.
In a Soviet-style system, no one wants to tell the boss he's wrong.
So I can only imagine, despite them being able to watch the free press in Hong Kong, they preferred to believe their, you know, their own PR, their own spies who said, oh, we're, you know, President Xi, you're beloved in Hong Kong.
This is just American meddling.
I was shocked that China got it so wrong.
Are they really that disconnected from reality?
You know, I was really surprised by how out of touch the senior leadership in Beijing is.
Because, you know, you're exactly right.
The lower-level Chinese officials knew, I'm sure, exactly what was going to happen.
Everybody knew the polling before the election.
There was going to be a sweep.
And for senior Chinese leaders not to know that shows the fundamental failure of their system, that there's that disconnect.
And it's for the reason you say that everyone is afraid of Xi Jinping.
This is an authoritarian system becoming totalitarian very fast.
Let me ask you one last question.
In the few days before the elections, there was sort of a siege of Pali University.
Some students were holed up there and some pretty heavily armed police outside.
And some of the students were using bows and arrows.
And they were using some little high-tech MacGyver gizmos, no real firearms.
And, you know, part of me thought, well, look at their ingenuity.
But most of me thought, oh, my God, bows and arrows, they're going to be annihilated if this goes Tiananmen Square style.
And I actually was extremely sad to see that's all they got.
I mean, that's dramatic, but that's a desperate last stand.
Well, those guys won, the pro-democracy students won.
But if Beijing rolls in the tanks, bows and arrows aren't going to work.
Are you still afraid that Beijing could play the Tiananmen Square brutal force card like they did against the democracy movement that fateful day in Tiananmen Square?
Well, it's possible that they do it, but I think that from a military point of view, it would be a disaster for China.
There would be casualties, but there'd be casualties on both sides, because we know from all we've seen over the last five months that those kids are willing to die.
They're good fighters.
For the most part, they have out-foxed the police.
Their only tactical defeat was at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, as you point out.
But it was actually a political success because it convinced the U.S. Congress to vote for those two pieces of legislation that President Trump signed on Wednesday.
And, you know, if the Chinese formally deploy their troops or their police on Hong Kong streets, those kids are going to rain down explosives and petrol bombs on Chinese troops.
They're going to disappear into apartment buildings.
This is, remember, a guerrilla force that is supported by almost 90% of the population of Hong Kong.
And if the Chinese invade, that 90% is going to be 95, 96, 97% support of the people, which really means that it's extremely difficult to beat a guerrilla force that is supported by the people.
We Americans should know that.
It's called Vietnam.
I hope the Chinese understand what's going on because if they were to formally deploy, they'd be bringing back a lot of their troops and body bags.
Much of a Claim00:03:57
Wow.
Well, God forbid it comes to that.
We're just so proud of the Hong Kong democracy activists.
I truly think they're an example for the world of people standing up for principles that I think used to be called Western liberal values.
But now Hong Kong has much of a claim to those values as anyone else in the world.
I think they're the leaders in it.
And Gordon, I thank you for being such an attentive observer and punt on these matters.
We rely on you so much, and we're always grateful for your time on TV.
Well, thank you so much, Ezra.
You know, it's really great what you're doing, and especially with those very troublesome developments in Ottawa, you know, your voice is so critical at this moment.
Well, it's nice of you to say we'll keep at it.
And folks, I want to say again, if you're not following Gordon on Twitter, he's a must follow.
You can do that at Gordon G. Chang, and we'll put his Twitter handle on the screen.
Take care, my friend.
Keep up the fight.
Thanks, Ezra.
Right on.
There you have it, Gordon G. Chang.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue Friday about German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that society must oppose freedom in order to remain free.
Wayne writes, Merkel has no children.
She cares little about what her country will look like when she dies.
Yeah, and she's frustrated that the country's turning against her.
I mean, obviously, she's still chancellor, so not that much yet, but I think she's angrier and angrier with people not obeying her.
You know, she's shouting, but people aren't listening, so maybe she'll ban people from disagreeing with her.
She's authoritarian.
Remember, her dad moved from West Germany to East Germany during the Cold War.
I've never heard of that.
Moving from West Germany to East Germany during the Cold War, deliberately moving to an unfree country.
That's who she comes from.
Paul writes, I'm not sure which is more terrifying, Merkel saying it with the people clapping.
Turkey's voting for Christmas.
Utterly unbelievable.
Yeah, unbelievable.
I have to say, the pounding, the pounding and the arm and the pounding and the shouting in German, it was just too mnemonic for me.
On my interview with Tarek Fatah, Sam writes, Tarek reminds me of Yoda, such a wise man.
Yoda, yeah, it's a good one.
I can sort of see it too.
No, I'm kidding.
He's very cuddly, like Yoda.
Now, he's a smart guy.
We love having him on.
And sometimes I just got to slow down because he says a lot of things.
I have to catch up and process.
But I love him.
He's always welcome on the rebel, I'll tell you that.
Bernard writes, why don't you send Kian to Halifax, St. John, and St. John's to find out why Maritimers, half of whom work out West, keep voting liberal.
Call it the strange case of the liberal grip in the maritimes.
Yeah, I think we'll need more than just a quick visit from Keon to unriddle that mystery.
But yeah, I don't quite get it.
But hey, I live in Red Area Code 416 Toronto, and it is a lock for the liberals all the way down.
So I don't understand my neighbors either, I guess.
It's a puzzle.
It's a puzzle to me.
I don't know.
I see there's a bit of a civil war within the Conservative Party.
Harper's people versus Shears' people.
I think it does come down to the question, who can beat Trudeau next time?
I don't know if Shears the answer to that.
I'm interested in your thoughts on that.
All right, that's our show for today.
What do you think about that creepy, creepy video from China?
I found that deeply disturbing.
And yet we're going to put Huawei in our own country.