cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/210431

This has been bothering me for a long time. A lot of this sounds like the videomaker just watched a documentary that had it out for the CPC and parroted the content verbatim with relatively little research into counter-theses.

Obviously I support beating the shit out of fake martial artists who purport to turn you into a ninja god, and there are surely many snakeoil salesmen in China as there are in America who therefore should be beaten. It also seems perfectly plausible that a good con would be able to take cover under the CPC initiative for cultural revitalization in order to scam people, even if that went counter to the initiative’s goals.

But, the video seems to ultimately be aimed at smearing the CPC. For example, vaguely saying Xu “was made” to wear that clown makeup, not saying who made him, and adding in that same segment that the CPC docked his “social credit score”, preventing him from taking some methods of transit.

Who made him wear the makeup? Probably the con/dojo he was challenging or possibly the promoters of the fight, but by speaking in vagaries and not defining different institutions, the videomaker makes it sound like these cons are working for the CPC and it’s the CPC that made him present as a clown. It’s as though there’s just some homogeneous “Chinese institution” that Xu is traveling around and fighting different agents of, like the plot of a weird martial arts film.

Some things, like wiping social media, are really par for the course, but shutting his gym down and fining him massive amounts of money are included with no critical investigation of why they happened or even if they did, and are mentioned in the same breath as purely socially-driven harassment like the Taichi students obstructing him. It’s all just unsubstantiated hearsay.

It reminds me of how often western press will report on defectors saying they are being attacked by the government [of Bad Country] for speaking out when – while they did speak out – they also in many cases did horrible shit like chop their girlfriend to pieces or lead an ethnonationalist campaign. The treatment of Navalny by western press is probably the easiest example unless you want to go back to the “moderate rebels” or “brave mujahideen freedom fighters” eras.

That said, getting good information on this as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese is difficult, so I was wondering if other people here knew more about the story.

If the timestamp doesn’t work, the correct url is: ( https://youtu.be/gjbSCEhmjJA?t=1155 )