It seems everyone is kowtowing to China.

Blizzard.

Apple.

Even Vans.

The only one standing up to China seems to be...

South Park?

Welcome back to China Uncensored.

I'm Chris Chappell.

The Chinese Communist Party spent the week being very offended.

Their public enemy number 1?

The NBA.

But don't worry,

the Party has a much longer list of public enemies.

Starting with public enemy number 2, South Park.

On October 2nd,

South Park aired an episode called Band in China.

It was clearly creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone

venting all their frustrations about Hollywood and commercial

self-censorship to appease the Chinese Communist Party.

Who here thought that they had permission

to say anything critical of Chinese politics?

Well, it is true, sir.

The Chinese seem to exploit their own people with forced labor and…

Shut the [censored] up, Thor!

And obviously,

the show that mocked censorship in China,

got censored in China this week.

So the South Park wrote this:

“Like the NBA,

we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes

and into our hearts.

We too love money more than freedom and democracy.”

Savage.

Almost as savage as the NBA and South Park

doing more to raise Americans' awareness

about China in a week than China Uncensored

has managed to do in 7 years.

I'm not bitter.

But now it's time for China's public enemy Number 3.

The video game company behind World of Warcraft

and the reason my college roommate failed out of school,

Activision Blizzard.

The company banned “a professional Hearthstone player in Hong Kong,

for a year,

while forcing him to forfeit a reported $10,000 in prize money.”

So that was at first a confusing statement to me

because I didn't know what a Hearthstone is

or how much money you could make playing video games professionally.

I obviously wasted my life doing some stupid show

that educates people about China.

And Hearthstone is a free-to-play

online digital collectible card game.

Which judging from this image from

the Free China memes instagram page,

looks fun.

Think about it.

The Hearthstone player was banned for shouting

“Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.”

And Blizzard bars any players for

“Engaging in any act that,

in Blizzard's sole discretion,

brings you into public disrepute,

offends a portion or group of the public,

or otherwise damages Blizzard image.”

Clearly, the player needed to be banned

for supporting the people of Hong Kong,

because that offended a group of the public—

namely, China's Communist authorities.

On the other hand, Blizzard may also have to ban itself

because their move offended all the members of the public

who support freedom in Hong Kong.

There's talk of a global boycott against Blizzard.

And more unity from Democrats and Republicans.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said Blizzard showed

“it is willing to humiliate itself

to please the Chinese Communist Party.”

Republican Senator Marco Rubio said

“Recognize what's happening here.

People who don't live in #China must either self censor

or face dismissal & suspensions.

China using access to market as leverage

to crush free speech globally.”

Wow, reminds me of how YouTube

demonetizes our Hong Kong episodes

because they're “not advertiser friendly.”

Okay, so Blizzard might be the most hated video game company

in the world right now.

Even more than EA.

But at least Activision Blizzard

successfully got out in front of this and avoided

becoming public enemy number one in China, right?

Well, unfortunately for Activision Blizzard,

karma is...a very nasty lady.

Someone suggested on Reddit that it would be a shame

if a character from the popular Blizzard game Overwatch

became the new symbol of the Hong Kong protests.

Yeah, that would be a real shame if that happened.

And now on to China's public enemy number 4.

Apple.

Hong Kong protesters came up with

a crowd sourced app called HK Map Live

that shows in real time the location of Hong Kong police.

It also lets people know where

there's case of live fire and tear gas.

The Chinese regime demanded that Apple

remove what they call “toxic software”—

Makes sense.

For the Chinese regime,

factual information is very toxic.

What did Apple do?

They removed the app.

As well as the app of online media Quartz,

which has been reporting a lot on the Hong Kong protests.

And..the latest update to the iPhone censored

the Taiwan flag emoji in Hong Kong and Macau.

Yeah, that'll stop dissent!

Not like China's public enemy number 5, though: Vans!

No, Vans the shoe company.

What, do you think the Chinese Communist Party

just goes around getting offended at everything?

Every year,

Vans holds what they call the Custom Culture competition.

People get to submit their own shoes designs

and the winner of an online vote gets $25,000

and their design manufactured by the brand.

Well, this year, this was one of the top designs,

with tens of thousands of votes.

A Hong Kong protest shoe.

I would buy that.

Except before the contest was over,

Vans announced,

in a Chinese and English statement on facebook,

That “a small number of artistic submissions have been removed.”

Bet you can't guess which!

Honestly, it seems like Vans will let China...walk all over them.

And once again, in an attempt to appease the China market,

Vans ends up risking their entire market from angry fans

who want to boycott them.

But now on to China' real public enemy—

the Trump Administration.

The Trump Administration has blacklisted 28 Chinese entities

over abuses in Xinjiang.

Those includes Hikvision and Dahua Technology,

two of the world's biggest makers of video surveillance products.

Bet they saw saw that coming.

A day after the blacklist was announced,

the Trump administration put

visa restrictions on Chinese officials

involved in abuse of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

“The State Department said the visa restrictions

will apply to designated Chinese government

and Communist Party officials,

along with their families.”

Yes, the Trump Administration:

Defender of China's Muslims.

We are in the strangest timeline.

Obviously, these new punishments by the Trump Administration

caused Chinese officials to realize the error of their ways.

The error being they should retaliate by restricting visas

for US citizens with anti-China links.

A source speaking to Reuters pointed out that Beijing

accuses the US and other governments

of inciting “anti-government protests

in both mainland China and Hong Kong.”

A 2 million person protest in Hong Kong?

Totally the CIA's doing.

So with these new visa restrictions,

China is taking a hard stance against a problem...

they created themselves.

And that's it for this week's China news headlines!

And now it's time for me to answer a question from one of you—

a fan who support China Uncensored

with a dollar or more per episode,

by contributing through the crowdfunding website Patreon.

James Wallberg asks,

“Do the protesters know about the South Park episode

denouncing companies following China's lead on the protests?”

Yes they do.

In fact, they've held neighborhood screenings

of the South Park episode.

By the way, we just got back to New York

from covering the protests in Hong Kong.

And running away from police shooting tear gas at us.

So we were not exactly up on the new season of South Park.

But we heard from you China Uncensored

fans that we needed to watch it.

So when we had some downtime, we did.

Matt, Shelley and I did have a good laugh.

Check out the episode if you haven't already.

It says so many things we've been saying for years.

Only...they got way more attention for it.

Thanks for your question, James.

And if you have a question for me

you want to hear answered on the show,

sign up to join the China Uncensored 50 cent army,

by supporting the show with a dollar or more

per episode on Patreon.

YouTube is demonetizing us so much

we would have to shut down the show

if it weren't for your support.

And to everyone, thanks for watching!

Once again I'm your host Chris Chappell.

See you next time.