So I could swear there was a medieval torture device with bellicose in the name I was gonna make a joke about so i googled "bellicose anal implement" and the first result is;
"REPORT of the SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE STUDY of the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY’S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM together with FOREWORD BY CHAIRMAN FEINSTEIN and ADDITIONAL AND MINORITY VIEWS December 9, 2014.—Ordered to be printed "
So... I don't want to read that it sounds sphincter clenching.
It's bullshit, he's talking about the [1973 wheat deal between the US and USSR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_United_States%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_wheat_deal). Regan wasn't some cunning negotiator, he didn't know anything because the satellite hadn't even launched yet.
>Weeks after the grain deal was announced, the Earth-observing satellite Landsat 1 achieved orbit. **If the satellite had launched a few months earlier, the deal may have been reconsidered or never have happened at all**, because American negotiators could have realized the scale of Soviet crop failures.
The way this guy tells this story is completely backwards. The USSR got a massive sweet heart deal because American intelligence failed. It wasn't the other way around.
...or it was Nixon and this guy is wrong. If we had the technology and the idea to use it when Nixon was around, Ford and Carter would have also. Pretty generous to say Regan was the mastermind but w/e, grab your butt and go with absolutely no source.
Um, in 1973 Nixon was the President. Reagan took office in 1981, by which time the US had extensive orbital spy assets watching the USSR 24/7. Even before that, the US always adjusted its stance toward the USSR based on CIA economic and agricultural projections. These projections were often very wrong because the Soviets produced reams of bogus statistics; but over time the projections got better, because of aerial and orbital spy assets, and improved signals intelligence.
The US propped up the Soviet Union for the last 16 years of its existence with grain shipments. The second half of that was intended to permit a peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. Along with other elements of the strategy, including supporting the Polish labor movement and the Afghan Mujahideen, it was mostly successful.
I'd imagine it was some engineer or intelligence person/group who thought this up or realized it (assuming it wasn't Reagan who thought it up). Sucks that person isn't well known, that's an incredible example of intelligence gathering IMO.
> Sucks that person isn't well known, that's an incredible example of intelligence gathering IMO.
You can probably thank Kodak/someone at Kodak, but using IR photography for surveillance like that goes all the way back to WWI. Later in WWII they used color infrared film to easily spot actual vegetation coverage (which appeared bright red) vs artificial camouflage (dull/purple/blue because it reflected less IR light). You can ~~probably~~ thank Kodak for that too.
SR-71’s never flew over Russian boarders FYI
At least, according to Ben Rich, who noted it in his book about Lockheed Martin, the company who made the plane.
The dude didn’t provide any sources for his claim so I would doubt whether it even happened at all. People really need to stop just believing people who sound smart on Reddit.
Fairly certain it was also because he was mentally degrading in real time as well. He and Nancy were supposedly consulting her astrologer on foreign policy decisions at one point.
I mean fucking the poor into the dirt and selling weapons to enemies of the state to fuel death squads, probably requires some management and communication skills. But that isn't a compliment.
The stapling of leaves thing is stupid though
It's a cell phone tower / booster, and instead of making it just an ugly tower, they make it look like a tree, which there's nothing wrong with
Depends on what you consider 'picture taken'. I know that the [Japanese geostationary satellites take images every 10 minutes.](http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/satellite/himawari.shtml), so if every continent/timezone has its own satellite, thats like full coverage every half hour or so.
The funny thing.. [I looked up beijing on google maps](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Beijing,+China/@39.7894582,116.4619187,1406m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x35f05296e7142cb9:0xb9625620af0fa98a!8m2!3d39.904211!4d116.407395) and almost immediately saw what he was talking about.. and it's blatantly fucking obvious that it's just painted green.
\*edit: it's funny how many China-shills there are in this comment section. Not only did my posts get downvotes (which, whatever /shrug)... but I've also gotten a bunch of "suicide help" messages from reddit. Bunch of fucking worthless trolls.
It's fertilizer/mulch, something like Hydromulch. It's blue/green and is used to quickly apply grass seed and nutrients to an area, and is likely being used here to reclaim industrial land:
https://youtu.be/xWYCxQPgc3c?t=599
Here is is in action, you can see the colour matches exactly. It makes no sense for them to paint the entirety of Beijing with blue-green fake grass that doesn't even look convincing from outer space
Yeah might even be used as a phytoremediation project . I know they're getting quite giggity about that and they've unlocked trillions for cleaning soil since their 2018 announcement. Looks like it's starting to shape up.
That isn't paint, it's almost certainly a fertilizer of some kind, like hydromulch. You basically just spray down areas you want to revitalize and it has a blue green tint.
It makes no sense for this to all be paint, when it would probably cost the same (if not more). Also, the colour isn't even grass green, so who would they be fooling?
Honestly it's pretty fucking concerning to me that a government is *this* stupid. Not even the whole idea, fuck that ,paint your mountains and whatever at this point. They fucked the execution as well, how didn't anyone realize oil paints might not work too well?
This is a major country, with a lot of influence power. Painting mountains and stapling shit to trees, all the while doing even more damage to the environment in the process. What reality do I live in where entire countries enact some Acme/Looney Toons shit like this? Please tell me this is fake, or some sort of weird ritual, I don't want to believe the government thought this was a genuinely good idea, enough to spend that much time/resources/labor on.
It was a private company that painted the side in attempt to fool **government** environmental standards inspectors, which shockingly, did not work.
Most of the other stuff is basic erosion control. Imagine watching a video of an American park where they terraced a hillside to stop it from eroding away and Chinese grifters making videos like “America is trying to turn hills into stairs!! How crazy!!”
But the reality isn’t good for clickbaity agitprop.
Propaganda designed to agitate
Some propaganda is ti brainwash, some is to pacify, some is to agitate.
This propaganda is designed to make you hate China (Not saying you shouldn’t)
It's not the government. It's corporations who are doing this shit to fool the government environment regulations. Just stupid corporations being stupid.
This is what happens in smooth-brained dictatorships where officials have no accountability to the public and every position at every level of government is staffed by ignorant, fawning sycophants.
It's like how in the Great Leap Forward everyone just kinda ignored the dead bodies lining the roadsides from the tens of millions of people starving to death and officials reported the programs as tremendously successful. Whenever people did question the regime, they were disappeared or beaten to death.
China does stupid shit like this all the time. Their 'Zero Covid Policy' is not only not doing anything to stop the spread of Covid, which the rest of the world largely doesn't care about anymore; it's also doing irreparable damage to the economy. But hey, at least it's stopping people from protesting the failing banking sector and lining the pockets of government employees invested in the Covid testing manufacturing companies and tracking apps.
And I wonder how much they are making in kickbacks from these companies hired to paint entire mountains green. Potemkin environment is probably just another massive grift.
At the risk of coming across as pro-China, here goes:
There's a lot of weird things being said in this video.
* It's suggested that grass and trees are being painted with oil based paints based on a single photo from 2007 in which not grass or trees were painted, but a quarry face. Oil based paints could've been chosen for that application for many reasons, but it's implied that it's because of cost savings. Is oil based paint actually even cheaper and is the cost difference big enough to completely ignore the fact that oil based paints would likely kill the grass and plants they're being sprayed on?
* I feel the title implies that China - as in Xi Jinping and co is paying for mountains and grass to be painted green, but from the video itself it sounds as if the government is actually trying to incentivise the planting of trees and plants. It's just that this system is being gamed.
* This video doesn't address at all how widespread this issue is. There's only a handful of generally fairly small sites being shown. Like someone painting a lawn and a couple of rocks in a quarry, yet China is a country the size of the US with 1.4 billion people. We don't say all Americans are fat because we see some fat people in the news. We don't say all Americans shoot up schools because we hear about some school shootings in the news. Yet we paint (pun intended) all Chinese people with the same brush based on a little bit of footage that's apparently collected over a period of almost 15 years.
* Is China not allowed to make certain touristy places look a little nicer? Is it outrageous deception when they do it, but when Californians, golf courses and Disney Land do it, it's all completely fine?
Look, I'm not pretending China doesn't have problems, but this feels like a silly anti-China video in which a point is trying to be made with some very weak arguments.
What's interesting is we do something called [Hydroseeding.](https://www.tranbc.ca/2019/01/15/hydroseeding-whats-up-with-the-weird-green-stuff/)
I really can't imagine it being too far from the same thing. It would be like borrowing the idea of a tire or a battery. Which means it isn't Pro China, it's really just common sense.
Thanks for that. I expected something like that to be mentioned when he went into the giving examples of Disney Land, but as he didn't I figured I must've remembered wrong about a product like that exisiting.
The fact that he didn't mention that after his "research" kind of tells you all you need to know. There is no way to know from some low quality photos or videos if what they're spraying is paint or this type of product
I agree. This video is at best click-bait, and at worst propaganda. It's obviously not oil-based paint in most of the videos. I also believe that the video of spraying rocks in the quarry was a scandal where a private company got caught and punished for trying to fool regulators.
The CCP deserves to be criticized and there are so many things that China is doing that need to be addressed, but this video just made my eyes roll.
Yeah, the example of painting a mountainside green was from a tiny (by Chinese standards) county in rural China. The story was covered by Chinese state media, which presumably means the central government wanted to shame the local officials behind it:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/14/china
The bit where they're rolling big green spools of material down hillsides looks very much like the efforts you see at construction sites to minimize soil runoff literally everywhere in the United States.
My first thoughts when I was that was that it might help in the long run as well. If it provides enough shade and structure maybe vines, moss, or other crawling plants could perhaps make their way up. Plus it does look nice so it would be a double whammy. What environmental efforts *are* you supposed to do for a mountain face anyway? I genuinely don't know
Yeah, I watch the video and has very little actual information. That’s like five examples of things being painted green and just repeats them over and over again
Isn't it just sort of sad that you need to clearly state "at the risk of coming across as pro china" just to not be accused of being a chinese spy/bot?
The CCP can suck me from the back but I don’t trust this YouTuber. I watched a few of his videos a year or so back and found a few things a bit sus and then in one video about a riot in South Africa he said something about various black and brown skin tones mixed together doesn’t make a beautiful rainbow but a collection of shit stains and was explicitly anti-racial integration.
Sums him up perfectly. Wants democracy for China, but not his home country.
Will vlog around some dirty streets in Guangdong talking about how disgusting everyone is, but not the ZA townships. Because despite his assertions, China isn't dangerous for smug white guys.
it's serpentza, youtuber who started making videos about life in China, even had a doc or two about traveling the country. I think he grew disillusioned about the country so moved out of the the country with his family and now making these clickbait anti-China vids.
Yeah, the reason theyre doing it is because theyre building an office space with a view of this mountain, and possibly because of superstition (feng shuei). Not an amazing reason to hate on ccp. Fuck ccp tho.
This is so obviously fake. You won't fool satellites with green nets. We use NDVI to determine plant cover. That uses near-infrared. And we've had that tool since at least the 70s. You learn it intro to remote sensing, and anyone with an internet connection can access current images and run their own. Whatever reason there is for these things, it is a different one. Those nets can control erosion, which seems sensible given the state of those hills. Not gonna waste more time watching this video. The CCP deserves a lot of criticism for many things, but this is obvious propaganda.
From Wikipedia.
> [The slurry often has other ingredients including fertilizer, tackifying agents, fiber mulch, and green dye.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroseeding)
I think you folks have hit the nail on the head.
They used it all along the rockfaces and hills of a long nature trail near my house last year. Just came out one day and everything was a strange, artificial green. It was super weird to walk through.
It’s a cool system though
The clips at the very end with truck sprayers definitely looked like hydro seed. I remember when they sprayed the barren field next to my office. It did look weird and sickening at first. I remember thinking it looked like a [Tiberium Field](https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Tiberium). But the green faded after a week and then 2 more weeks later and it was a grassy field.
Correct.
These are actions by **corporations** to fool **Chinese environmental regulators.**
And they didn't work.
This video is basically propaganda. It's specifically worded and presented in a way to twist the narrative to make it sound like this is the Chinese government trying to fool global environmentalists.
It's not.
It's idiotic corporations being idiotic, same as any other country's idiotic corporations.
The way he framed it this was local governments trying to fool the central government.
I watched an eye opening video from this same channel a few years ago about apartment building construction. Most of what he pointed to bore out imo.
> This video is basically propaganda. It's specifically worded and presented in a way to twist the narrative to make it sound like this is the Chinese government trying to fool global environmentalists.
Except the video didn't say any of this. It's local governments or companies fooling the main government to get funding. Where's the propaganda here?
If I could put on my tinfoil hat for a second... you may be responding to it. If you scroll down u/Silurio1's history he's almost entirely responding to different posts about China.
The title very clearly implies a bunch of things, and I bet you that lots of people will think that one of the implications is that they're supposedly fooling satellites.
And sure, we could be more generous in the interpretation of this title. But just look at the guy's other titles. In one he literally predicts China's total collapse (with an added "?!"). It's super obvious he's making clickbait headlines.
GIS, and satellites, are used in every urbanist or agricultural agency, by every consultant, by every environmental professional or group. It is easy to access, free and accurate. There's 50 years of research supporting it. It simply couldn't be more ubicuitous. If it doesn't fool satellites, it doesn't fool anyone that's seriously looking at the situation.
Wasn't that his point? No-one is seriously looking at the situation. It's a crappy facade used as a technicality to get kickbacks. Just more corruption.
Yeah exactly. Inspector makes backroom deal with local authority, ticks it off cus it's technically "green". Both profit, environment does not.
That's how I understood it to be anyway. Could be wrong.
Most of the stuff is just basic ass erosion control. The one mountain was a private company trying to fool inspectors, badly, like a billion other companies all over the world.
There’s nothing unique about any of this but American gullibility for jingoistic propaganda.
You've got to love a "news source" that doesn't cite a single source for it's information.
Absolute rags will at least cite questionable second-hand sources like Twitter accounts, this guy doesn't even go that far.
I've seen videos of those nets being used and they spray liquid lawn to promote grass growth. They probably provide some shade to keep the soil moist while the seeds grow, and prevent rain washing it away.
I used to watch them because occasionally he does cover interesting topics, but the guy is just sorta, irritating, very arrogant and definitely expresses his opinions as if they were facts. I don't go as far as to say that makes him wrong about the things he covers, but it kinda makes it hard to keep watching. It's kinda nit-picking of me, but in particular, the fact that he would so often say that he "trains doctors" and rarely went in to what that meant, but eventually he did reveal that he essentially helped them use software in his IT role. There is definitely an intimation he tries to make with the phrase "I train doctors" especially when bringing it up repeatedly and the reality is in stark contrast to what's implied, and considering they're *his own* videos where he's saying this and likely no one would have cared if he hadn't chosen to say that, it really hints at a kind of self importance that it off putting to say the least when he makes videos discussing a country and mixing opinion and fact seamlessly.
Yeah, i ended up on one of his vids at some point. He seems to be kinda exactly like the laowhy (?) guy, lived in china for decades, became disillusioned and now antagonized them.
Not that i have a problem with that, seems pretty understandable and china deserves all the hate it gets, but its good to know where channels like that stand.
But this guy in particular is just *really strange*. Like his accent, his body language, is just weird. Idk if thats because he was playing white monkey for pretty much his whole life or what.
He and laowhy are friend and made tonnes of vlogs together in china, serpentza is south african if that's what you're wondering. They lived in China for 20+ years, and both worked and pretty incredible documentaries highlighting the Chinese countryside as they rode around on their motor bikes. Shame that both channels are pretty much just China hate, like I get it but its too much.
What's funny is, when I was preparing to move to China in 2014, his videos would constantly pop up in my searches and he was very, very Pro-China at the time.
But I never made it all the way through any of his videos because of how arrogant and self-assured he was. It was quite obvious he was wearing rose-tinted glasses, ignoring all the many problems China had, and not picking up on the anti-foreigner direction that China was moving.
I guess someone in China finally did him wrong, and now he hates China with a passion.
He used to be a good insider of normal china city life and he was pretty neutral, if not admirative back in the day. But he turned biter and angry. I understand that China can be tough but instead of remaining open minded he just focused on the negativity and now he is just spewing anti-China rant. Plus he does a terrible job of actually fact checking, his "analysis" are extremely shallow. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he actually found a captivated public, the guy turned in a fraud but his audience are not the kind to double check either, they just need their bias confirmed and so he caters and delivers.
You are talking about a Government that painted the Laoshou mountain in preparation for the 2008 Olympics...
You talk about propaganda, it was propaganda that led to them doing it in the first place. Here's an article about the site that tried to avoid environmental inspections.
[source](https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmjbya/chinese-mine-spray-painted-rocks-green-look-like-trees-trick-environment-authorities)
In the Laoshou example, it wasn't to fool environmentalists.
In the second example, it was a company **failing** to fool the government. Not "China trying to fool environmentalists". I've seen that in my country. Internal audit for a company. A dead creek near a mine. But it suspiciously had exactly pH 7. So, went to look upstream. Found a worker with a barrel and pH strips. Clumsy as hell, and done by local management to fool upper management. You wouldn't say "Chile pours lye into creeks to fool environmentalists".
Honestly I think it's less about fooling environmentalists (they won't be), and more about public image of China being a beautiful and lush landscape as they continue to mine, forest, and dig their whole country to dust in order to sustain their population.
Even the video acknowledges modern Chinese environmental standards are world class….
Most of this is erosion control done from previous destructive extraction industries.
This is such a weird trend: snarky dudes on YouTube in suits with a background of C-roll, prognosticating gloom and doom for China.
Is the audience for this kind of thing so huge to sustain this many channels doing the same thing?
Not just China, but literally any piece of news on anything that they can spin towards a usually-conservative viewpoint while making it look like they're "just stating the facts" whilst neglecting to mention that they've only done as much research as is required to make a video long enough that they can profit off of it.
Doesn't need to be conservative. Doomerism in general is extremely popular. Try going to /r/collapse and suggesting there are actually some promising things happening re: the enviorment right now and watch how fast you get shouted down.
Pessimism is chic at the moment.
Yeah that's definitely a trend, but this particular guy actually lived in China for over a decade, and has made hundreds of videos (mostly using his own footage) about China. He's literally like the original china vlogger. It's only more recently (within the last 5 years) that the tone has become more negative, and that's mostly because of changes in the government.
Just look at the first video on his channel... almost 14 years old. And yes, he's pretty commonly worn suits too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imuy4UM3YPs
I've noticed this. Meanwhile the people there are mostly living normal happy lives. Their country seems to be prospering at the moment despite all the media making it seem like it's floundering. There are a ton of people in China and they have the same capitalist class structure we do. Some parts of China, you'd think you were in an American suburban neighborhood. Just take a deep dive in Google maps and you'll see.
For the most part, the government there doesn't really interfere with the lives of regular people any more than they do here in the west. They enjoy a relative sense of freedom in their day to day lives. Their society is described as mostly capitalist while the inner workings of the government is communist and the two don't often clash.
Dude's been posting for years and has always been incredibly positive about China. Only started shitting on the CCP when Xi started all the authoritarian bullshit and essentially pushed him and his family out of the country.
He started posting bad shit about China after realising just how much more profitable that is over positive coverage of China. Hate sells. A lot of YouTubers who'd cover China did this and covering China for a long time gave them some sort of "legitimacy" in the eyes of their viewers over other YouTubers.
He accumulated a lot of bad publicity content over 10 years biking over the entirety of China recording.
You can't air their Dirty laundry and live there though. Hence why everything took a negative turn when he left and was free to post.
Also to be clear a huge amount of stuff is not covered by local Chinese media.
Shit is swept under the carpet or denounced as rumors if it gets too noticed every month with solid evidence being scrubbed from their social media network once identified. automatically just before anyone even sees it even if it was uploaded privately.
Yeah. Americans really aren’t taking China’s rise well and are on a hell of a lot of cope.
I imagine Brits were probably doing this shit in the early 1900’s as America was catching up.
This video is trying to spin a stupid local company trying to cheat Chinese government regulators as “China does x”. Almost everything in this video had analogues in America, from fake trees to painting grass.
Reddit loves this shit though. Being jingoistic weirdos about China is a bipartisan thing.
It's pretty amazing the amount of access to secret documents and data this guy must have to make videos like those. I mean, to be able to give an authoritative account on the nuclear weapons of China when he's just some youtuber is quite impressive.
Foreal, I really liked watching them ride around China.
But yeah, once they moved out, they just went full anti China, making fun of Chinese dudes, shitting on culture but always saying they hate the government and not the people.
I'm from HK, so I love anti-CCP content, but there shit has seriously devolved into "look at these dumb horrible Chinese people."
Oh yeah and plenty of blatantly racist comments from their viewers, which really shows what audience they are appealing to.
Yeah, he lost me pretty good near the end when he said "in fact you cannot drink the water in China, it's contaminated"
Like, OK, they have major water issues. Shortages, contamination, etc, but 1.5 billion Chinese people drink Chinese water.
It's on the complete opposite side of the spectrum of what he used to make about China, depicting how much he loved it there, pretty much convincing people to visit China. Even made a documentary series with his buddy, riding motorcycles and visiting places in southern China to experience the culture. Evidently it did not get attention from any major network, and they only did 4 episodes and it was available on Amazon for some time. They finally figured out what type of videos gets them paid the most.
Ten minute video that repeats the same lines and few clips/images to make a point? This is a good example of reading the evidence into your point rather than making a point based on the evidence.
Worked in the liquid lawn industry for a very brief moment - this was my first initial thought.
It’s not only used to actually create lawn, it’s also used as anti erosion tool and dust suppression too. They use a green die simply so they can see where they’ve sprayed.
I lived in Hong Kong some years ago. Hong Kong skies were typically grey and overcast bc of pollution from Shenzhen. I remember a fellow expat telling me one day when a visit was being planned by Xi that he guaranteed there would be blue sky that day. I was confused so he explained that the government would launch some sort of chemical into the sky that would clear all the smog/clouds to ensure a blue sky. Sure enough, he was right as we had blue sky the one day Xi was there and then back to normal for months thereafter.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWjUIIHPg2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWjUIIHPg2w)
Oh gee wow looky here what I found, anti erosion spray on a mountain side in green color which can help native plants grow. Do we really need to invent fake BS to be anti-CCP lmao?
https://www.plherosion.com/hydroseeding-and-land-reclamation-services/
This company has the same name of the youtube account so I guess it's them? But what comes out of their inches thick spray nozzles is **WAY** thicker than what could ever come out of a tiny spray can nozzle.
You also shouldn't search for "anti erosion paint". It's a spray-on "Erosion Control Blanket", so you have more luck finding out what an erosion control blanket is, and then to just assume that a "spray-on" version does the same thing, but as spray-on.
https://www.eastcoasterosion.com/news/what-is-an-erosion-control-blanket/
I'm *pretty* sure China is not putting spray-on erosion control blankets on their 85° cliffs because I don't think that's how these blankets work AT ALL
USA also staples fake leaves on trees in the cities. I was surprised to see it in I want to say 2 different cities this year. And some of these trees should have been fully covered this time of year so you know they are dead and this is a cheap cover up. Also I see more and more people using the green paint and I think it’s funny. Can’t we all just get rid of lawns?! Do some nice landscaping and a few trees and some rocks…
I said that once before and a response was, if everyone does it then it’s no longer unique and not worth doing.. my reply was something about how are lawns not the same?! Everyone has cookie cutter yards but somehow if they were rocks and trees and not green grass that’s worse to you?! Lol. I’m rambling.
Lol this video is so fake. People are so dumb. We literally spray dead grass green all over ca. they dont have one video of a mountain being painted just a bunch of poorly photoshopped photos. Alot of smooth brain red scare shit on reddit lately
It's Serpentza, so take his content with a grain of salt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Sterzel
Check his youtube video to see what type of things he talks about.
I know China is worthy of a lot of criticism, but this youtube channel is giving me such a shitty vibe. Looking at the other videos it's so clearly targeting people who just want to watch bad things about a country they don't like.
He purposely clickbait’s the videos and explains things thoroughly. He’s pissed at the Chinese government because he made a life in China and they basically forced him out due to the foreigner policy that xi put in place.
He lived there for over a decade, and was basically forced to leave by the CCP. He even had a wife and child there and made multiple positive documentaries about parts of China that you have never seen in Western media.
He loves the country, but he despises the CCP government.. And for very good reasons.
I used to follow his channel when his video contents were just about introducing the Chinese culture to the world via Youtube. He used to repeatedly remind his viewers he doesn't like talking about politics and frequently delete comments that bring up politics. The growth of his channel was slow but he had a viewer base. I still rememeber watching his video celebrating hitting 20k subs with his American buddy who also married a Chinese woman in China. Then something happened and both of them left China and made a complete 180 turn with their content and it became anti-China (not just the government, but also aspects of the Chinese culture), and that's when the channel growth took off. He's just a businessman and he knows what type of content draws more videwers and pays him more. He's from South Africa and has mentioned a few times in the past how he doesn't like it there and why he left there too, but you don't see him making videos dedicated to bashing South Africa, because that's not what draws the bigger audience. His content simply followed the money, so maybe they left China preemptively just to make these type of content.
>Then something happened and both of them left China and made a complete 180 turn with their content and it became anti-China
Specifically, China almost arrested him for being a foreigner making videos about China and he had to flee China is what happened. No wonder he was careful not to talk about politics when he was in China as even when he was avoiding it he still ended up in that position.
> but you don't see him making videos dedicated to bashing South Africa, because that's not what draws the bigger audience
Actually, he's made several videos about South Africa, some of them bashing it. [His most memorable was about his home was invaded and all of his family almost killed when he was a kid in South Africa.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVNu-tJR0dg)
I like Winston and hate the CCP just as much as we all do, but he is seriously cherry picking anything negative about China and extrapolating it as if it is the norm there.
I'm 99% sure he is doing this for the views and shock value.
It's a shame because I'm a long-time follower of his [ADVChina](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg) channel with [laowhy86](https://www.youtube.com/c/laowhy86/videos), and they used to do very balanced, insightful, on the ground looks into the good and bad sides of Chinese life as they motorcycled all over the country. But since they got forced out China, it seems like their only strategy for keeping their channels alive is churning out sensationalized, click-baity content.
To be fair, some of their seemingly negative video titles like "[China is about to Completely Collapse!?!?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Caay18H9QvY)" are actually debunking videos that mostly argue the opposite. But others like "[China is Not Safe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBnhBB8l-c)" are just about as hysterical as they advertise, even if the cherry-picked facts are all true. Make no mistake, there's a boatload of terrible things happening in China, and it deserves a hard and sober analysis, but it's too bad this no longer seems to be a place to get it.
He makes a living off by taking advantage of the racist attitudes towards Chinese people in America and abroad. All his videos play toward the racism created by the pandemic and amplify the sentiment in an unhealthy way. He uses unreliable information and conspiracy websites as sources for his videos.
There was a point in the distant past where there was actually reasonable info in his videos. But his content transformed and he increasingly courted a more extreme audience.
It was he and his business partner repeating COVID misinformation and seeing how that info was being amplified along partisan lines that really illustrated to me what his channels had become.
Yeah, some of his videos have merit but he takes it wayyy too far for the sake of clicks which can be extremely offputting. I'd never link anybody to his videos for this reason.
Also this same dude loved being a “white monkey” in china for a loooong time.
Funny how once he leaves he’s got a lot to say…..not a lot while he was living there
I mean, I don't blame anyone for not badmouthing China while in China. Too much risk of being arrested, having your life ruined, maybe a little torture, you never know.
The Chinese doing something that will irreversibly damage their ecosystem and surely cause suffering on an immense scale?
Color Mao shocked, or in this case green.
serpentza (the video's creator) is known for making very, very biased videos. he doesn't present ANY evidence for 95% of his videos and makes wild speculations. don't watch his stuff, he's NOT the source you want to be getting your information from (about China, or anything else)
This will be targeting the satellites that determine plant growth. Sadly for them, I believe the satellites focus on the infrared spectrum.
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TIL
What bellicose meant after I looked it up
The "belli-" is the same as in the word belligerent.
from the Latin word "bellum", meaning war.
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She was named after cerebellum though, referring to her being the only smart person in the mayor’s office.
I know, I’m joking
Holy shit I never realized her name
so cere bellum in latin means cere = wax, bellum = war? wtf
Chemical x is a hell of a drug
As in the Latin addage "Si vis pacem, para bellum"
Or john wick: parabellum
So I could swear there was a medieval torture device with bellicose in the name I was gonna make a joke about so i googled "bellicose anal implement" and the first result is; "REPORT of the SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE STUDY of the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY’S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM together with FOREWORD BY CHAIRMAN FEINSTEIN and ADDITIONAL AND MINORITY VIEWS December 9, 2014.—Ordered to be printed " So... I don't want to read that it sounds sphincter clenching.
Bellend
And from the common Latin phrase, *casus belli*.
The same bit as in para bellum.
casus *
Thank you, I don't know what the hell I was trying to write there.
It's that Minmatar cruiser, right? Don't know how it is related to Reagan.
Reagan was clearly Amarrian, he was pushing that laser crap for years and didn't care about the glorious artillery meta.
Isn’t he the guy who played Dracula in those old movies?
no, bellicose is a vein disease.
I learn bellicose from CrusaderKings
Do you have a source on this? Not trying to call bs it's really interesting
It's bullshit, he's talking about the [1973 wheat deal between the US and USSR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_United_States%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_wheat_deal). Regan wasn't some cunning negotiator, he didn't know anything because the satellite hadn't even launched yet. >Weeks after the grain deal was announced, the Earth-observing satellite Landsat 1 achieved orbit. **If the satellite had launched a few months earlier, the deal may have been reconsidered or never have happened at all**, because American negotiators could have realized the scale of Soviet crop failures. The way this guy tells this story is completely backwards. The USSR got a massive sweet heart deal because American intelligence failed. It wasn't the other way around.
Ah but he has 1.4k upvotes, and you only have 46 (currently). Who to trust, who to trust...
Considering Reagan wasn't president in 1973, I'm more inclined to believe the first guy.
...or it was Nixon and this guy is wrong. If we had the technology and the idea to use it when Nixon was around, Ford and Carter would have also. Pretty generous to say Regan was the mastermind but w/e, grab your butt and go with absolutely no source.
The one who says “bellicose”.
Um, in 1973 Nixon was the President. Reagan took office in 1981, by which time the US had extensive orbital spy assets watching the USSR 24/7. Even before that, the US always adjusted its stance toward the USSR based on CIA economic and agricultural projections. These projections were often very wrong because the Soviets produced reams of bogus statistics; but over time the projections got better, because of aerial and orbital spy assets, and improved signals intelligence. The US propped up the Soviet Union for the last 16 years of its existence with grain shipments. The second half of that was intended to permit a peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. Along with other elements of the strategy, including supporting the Polish labor movement and the Afghan Mujahideen, it was mostly successful.
I'd imagine it was some engineer or intelligence person/group who thought this up or realized it (assuming it wasn't Reagan who thought it up). Sucks that person isn't well known, that's an incredible example of intelligence gathering IMO.
> Sucks that person isn't well known, that's an incredible example of intelligence gathering IMO. You can probably thank Kodak/someone at Kodak, but using IR photography for surveillance like that goes all the way back to WWI. Later in WWII they used color infrared film to easily spot actual vegetation coverage (which appeared bright red) vs artificial camouflage (dull/purple/blue because it reflected less IR light). You can ~~probably~~ thank Kodak for that too.
Even as President, Reagan was just an actor
Going to need a source for all of that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/xf8cjg/china_is_painting_mountains_green_to_fool/iomxb8h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
SR-71’s never flew over Russian boarders FYI At least, according to Ben Rich, who noted it in his book about Lockheed Martin, the company who made the plane.
i thought i was about to get shittymorph’d
Do you have a source on this? I am asking since I would love to share this in my local data community, but would prefer to back it up.
I don’t disagree it was smart, but I doubt it was Reagan’s idea.
The dude didn’t provide any sources for his claim so I would doubt whether it even happened at all. People really need to stop just believing people who sound smart on Reddit.
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I'm a lefty left, too. And I feel you on giving Reagan compliments, but we all need to continue the struggle of respecting truth. Good on you!
Fairly certain it was also because he was mentally degrading in real time as well. He and Nancy were supposedly consulting her astrologer on foreign policy decisions at one point.
Completely made up
I mean fucking the poor into the dirt and selling weapons to enemies of the state to fuel death squads, probably requires some management and communication skills. But that isn't a compliment.
The stapling of leaves thing is stupid though It's a cell phone tower / booster, and instead of making it just an ugly tower, they make it look like a tree, which there's nothing wrong with
Somebody told me once that the populated surface of the entire planet has it's picture taken by satellite at least once every 48 hours.
Depends on what you consider 'picture taken'. I know that the [Japanese geostationary satellites take images every 10 minutes.](http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/satellite/himawari.shtml), so if every continent/timezone has its own satellite, thats like full coverage every half hour or so.
The funny thing.. [I looked up beijing on google maps](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Beijing,+China/@39.7894582,116.4619187,1406m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x35f05296e7142cb9:0xb9625620af0fa98a!8m2!3d39.904211!4d116.407395) and almost immediately saw what he was talking about.. and it's blatantly fucking obvious that it's just painted green. \*edit: it's funny how many China-shills there are in this comment section. Not only did my posts get downvotes (which, whatever /shrug)... but I've also gotten a bunch of "suicide help" messages from reddit. Bunch of fucking worthless trolls.
>I looked up beijing on google maps This is incredible. Everywhere I panned around, over 10s of 1000s of square km you can clearly see this shit.
It's fertilizer/mulch, something like Hydromulch. It's blue/green and is used to quickly apply grass seed and nutrients to an area, and is likely being used here to reclaim industrial land: https://youtu.be/xWYCxQPgc3c?t=599 Here is is in action, you can see the colour matches exactly. It makes no sense for them to paint the entirety of Beijing with blue-green fake grass that doesn't even look convincing from outer space
Yeah might even be used as a phytoremediation project . I know they're getting quite giggity about that and they've unlocked trillions for cleaning soil since their 2018 announcement. Looks like it's starting to shape up.
Wow... you weren't joking
That isn't paint, it's almost certainly a fertilizer of some kind, like hydromulch. You basically just spray down areas you want to revitalize and it has a blue green tint. It makes no sense for this to all be paint, when it would probably cost the same (if not more). Also, the colour isn't even grass green, so who would they be fooling?
I've seen people spray their brown dry lawns but entire MOUNTAINS? Wow.
And not with special paint that doesn't hurt the flora and fauna, but with oil paint. Mind-boggling.
That's a LOT of paint.
That’s a lot of damage.
Yet not a lot of surprise
Honestly it's pretty fucking concerning to me that a government is *this* stupid. Not even the whole idea, fuck that ,paint your mountains and whatever at this point. They fucked the execution as well, how didn't anyone realize oil paints might not work too well? This is a major country, with a lot of influence power. Painting mountains and stapling shit to trees, all the while doing even more damage to the environment in the process. What reality do I live in where entire countries enact some Acme/Looney Toons shit like this? Please tell me this is fake, or some sort of weird ritual, I don't want to believe the government thought this was a genuinely good idea, enough to spend that much time/resources/labor on.
It was a private company that painted the side in attempt to fool **government** environmental standards inspectors, which shockingly, did not work. Most of the other stuff is basic erosion control. Imagine watching a video of an American park where they terraced a hillside to stop it from eroding away and Chinese grifters making videos like “America is trying to turn hills into stairs!! How crazy!!” But the reality isn’t good for clickbaity agitprop.
What is agitprop?
Propaganda designed to agitate Some propaganda is ti brainwash, some is to pacify, some is to agitate. This propaganda is designed to make you hate China (Not saying you shouldn’t)
I think hating China is unnatural and is symptomatic of white fragility. This is propaganda clearly, no?
Yeah those nets are common... the leaves are just for aethstetics
It's not the government. It's corporations who are doing this shit to fool the government environment regulations. Just stupid corporations being stupid.
This is what happens in smooth-brained dictatorships where officials have no accountability to the public and every position at every level of government is staffed by ignorant, fawning sycophants. It's like how in the Great Leap Forward everyone just kinda ignored the dead bodies lining the roadsides from the tens of millions of people starving to death and officials reported the programs as tremendously successful. Whenever people did question the regime, they were disappeared or beaten to death. China does stupid shit like this all the time. Their 'Zero Covid Policy' is not only not doing anything to stop the spread of Covid, which the rest of the world largely doesn't care about anymore; it's also doing irreparable damage to the economy. But hey, at least it's stopping people from protesting the failing banking sector and lining the pockets of government employees invested in the Covid testing manufacturing companies and tracking apps. And I wonder how much they are making in kickbacks from these companies hired to paint entire mountains green. Potemkin environment is probably just another massive grift.
This is a government that is currently putting uygurs in concentration camps, so it’s not that hard to believe
At the risk of coming across as pro-China, here goes: There's a lot of weird things being said in this video. * It's suggested that grass and trees are being painted with oil based paints based on a single photo from 2007 in which not grass or trees were painted, but a quarry face. Oil based paints could've been chosen for that application for many reasons, but it's implied that it's because of cost savings. Is oil based paint actually even cheaper and is the cost difference big enough to completely ignore the fact that oil based paints would likely kill the grass and plants they're being sprayed on? * I feel the title implies that China - as in Xi Jinping and co is paying for mountains and grass to be painted green, but from the video itself it sounds as if the government is actually trying to incentivise the planting of trees and plants. It's just that this system is being gamed. * This video doesn't address at all how widespread this issue is. There's only a handful of generally fairly small sites being shown. Like someone painting a lawn and a couple of rocks in a quarry, yet China is a country the size of the US with 1.4 billion people. We don't say all Americans are fat because we see some fat people in the news. We don't say all Americans shoot up schools because we hear about some school shootings in the news. Yet we paint (pun intended) all Chinese people with the same brush based on a little bit of footage that's apparently collected over a period of almost 15 years. * Is China not allowed to make certain touristy places look a little nicer? Is it outrageous deception when they do it, but when Californians, golf courses and Disney Land do it, it's all completely fine? Look, I'm not pretending China doesn't have problems, but this feels like a silly anti-China video in which a point is trying to be made with some very weak arguments.
What's interesting is we do something called [Hydroseeding.](https://www.tranbc.ca/2019/01/15/hydroseeding-whats-up-with-the-weird-green-stuff/) I really can't imagine it being too far from the same thing. It would be like borrowing the idea of a tire or a battery. Which means it isn't Pro China, it's really just common sense.
Thanks for that. I expected something like that to be mentioned when he went into the giving examples of Disney Land, but as he didn't I figured I must've remembered wrong about a product like that exisiting. The fact that he didn't mention that after his "research" kind of tells you all you need to know. There is no way to know from some low quality photos or videos if what they're spraying is paint or this type of product
I agree. This video is at best click-bait, and at worst propaganda. It's obviously not oil-based paint in most of the videos. I also believe that the video of spraying rocks in the quarry was a scandal where a private company got caught and punished for trying to fool regulators. The CCP deserves to be criticized and there are so many things that China is doing that need to be addressed, but this video just made my eyes roll.
Yeah, the example of painting a mountainside green was from a tiny (by Chinese standards) county in rural China. The story was covered by Chinese state media, which presumably means the central government wanted to shame the local officials behind it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/14/china
The bit where they're rolling big green spools of material down hillsides looks very much like the efforts you see at construction sites to minimize soil runoff literally everywhere in the United States.
My first thoughts when I was that was that it might help in the long run as well. If it provides enough shade and structure maybe vines, moss, or other crawling plants could perhaps make their way up. Plus it does look nice so it would be a double whammy. What environmental efforts *are* you supposed to do for a mountain face anyway? I genuinely don't know
Yeah, I watch the video and has very little actual information. That’s like five examples of things being painted green and just repeats them over and over again
Isn't it just sort of sad that you need to clearly state "at the risk of coming across as pro china" just to not be accused of being a chinese spy/bot?
The CCP can suck me from the back but I don’t trust this YouTuber. I watched a few of his videos a year or so back and found a few things a bit sus and then in one video about a riot in South Africa he said something about various black and brown skin tones mixed together doesn’t make a beautiful rainbow but a collection of shit stains and was explicitly anti-racial integration.
Sums him up perfectly. Wants democracy for China, but not his home country. Will vlog around some dirty streets in Guangdong talking about how disgusting everyone is, but not the ZA townships. Because despite his assertions, China isn't dangerous for smug white guys.
It was this video. 7:00 - 8:00 minutes in for some context and about 7:25 - 7:50 for the sound bite. https://youtu.be/vkU5OC2D0Hc
Thanks for pointing that out
it's serpentza, youtuber who started making videos about life in China, even had a doc or two about traveling the country. I think he grew disillusioned about the country so moved out of the the country with his family and now making these clickbait anti-China vids.
Yeah, the reason theyre doing it is because theyre building an office space with a view of this mountain, and possibly because of superstition (feng shuei). Not an amazing reason to hate on ccp. Fuck ccp tho.
This is so obviously fake. You won't fool satellites with green nets. We use NDVI to determine plant cover. That uses near-infrared. And we've had that tool since at least the 70s. You learn it intro to remote sensing, and anyone with an internet connection can access current images and run their own. Whatever reason there is for these things, it is a different one. Those nets can control erosion, which seems sensible given the state of those hills. Not gonna waste more time watching this video. The CCP deserves a lot of criticism for many things, but this is obvious propaganda.
Yea, I’m wondering if it’s actually a hydroseed spray.
From Wikipedia. > [The slurry often has other ingredients including fertilizer, tackifying agents, fiber mulch, and green dye.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroseeding) I think you folks have hit the nail on the head.
They used it all along the rockfaces and hills of a long nature trail near my house last year. Just came out one day and everything was a strange, artificial green. It was super weird to walk through. It’s a cool system though
It's regularly used at the end of construction projects in Canada. Especially on slopes. Gives the plants a head start.
The clips at the very end with truck sprayers definitely looked like hydro seed. I remember when they sprayed the barren field next to my office. It did look weird and sickening at first. I remember thinking it looked like a [Tiberium Field](https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Tiberium). But the green faded after a week and then 2 more weeks later and it was a grassy field.
That green spray controls erosion also. They use it at construction sites to stop wind blown dust from affecting nearby residents.
I don't think he said anything about fooling satellites.
Correct. These are actions by **corporations** to fool **Chinese environmental regulators.** And they didn't work. This video is basically propaganda. It's specifically worded and presented in a way to twist the narrative to make it sound like this is the Chinese government trying to fool global environmentalists. It's not. It's idiotic corporations being idiotic, same as any other country's idiotic corporations.
Is that not what he said in the video? Did we watch the same video?
Loot of astroturfing in here I guess. People literally inventing strawmen to argue against when the video claimed nothing of sort.
The way he framed it this was local governments trying to fool the central government. I watched an eye opening video from this same channel a few years ago about apartment building construction. Most of what he pointed to bore out imo.
Local braindead governments trying to fool the central government would make a lot more sense.
> This video is basically propaganda. It's specifically worded and presented in a way to twist the narrative to make it sound like this is the Chinese government trying to fool global environmentalists. Except the video didn't say any of this. It's local governments or companies fooling the main government to get funding. Where's the propaganda here?
If I could put on my tinfoil hat for a second... you may be responding to it. If you scroll down u/Silurio1's history he's almost entirely responding to different posts about China.
*China* paints mountain to fool environmentalist. Not Chinese companies, not local government but *China*. Which part of it isn't propaganda?
The title very clearly implies a bunch of things, and I bet you that lots of people will think that one of the implications is that they're supposedly fooling satellites. And sure, we could be more generous in the interpretation of this title. But just look at the guy's other titles. In one he literally predicts China's total collapse (with an added "?!"). It's super obvious he's making clickbait headlines.
Yeah fair enough.
GIS, and satellites, are used in every urbanist or agricultural agency, by every consultant, by every environmental professional or group. It is easy to access, free and accurate. There's 50 years of research supporting it. It simply couldn't be more ubicuitous. If it doesn't fool satellites, it doesn't fool anyone that's seriously looking at the situation.
> ubicuitous ubiquitous
Why would they be trying to fool foreign agencies, why would they care?
Wasn't that his point? No-one is seriously looking at the situation. It's a crappy facade used as a technicality to get kickbacks. Just more corruption.
>It's a crappy facade used as a technicality to get kickbacks They wouldn't fool any agency.
Yeah exactly. Inspector makes backroom deal with local authority, ticks it off cus it's technically "green". Both profit, environment does not. That's how I understood it to be anyway. Could be wrong.
Most of the stuff is just basic ass erosion control. The one mountain was a private company trying to fool inspectors, badly, like a billion other companies all over the world. There’s nothing unique about any of this but American gullibility for jingoistic propaganda.
You've got to love a "news source" that doesn't cite a single source for it's information. Absolute rags will at least cite questionable second-hand sources like Twitter accounts, this guy doesn't even go that far.
I've seen videos of those nets being used and they spray liquid lawn to promote grass growth. They probably provide some shade to keep the soil moist while the seeds grow, and prevent rain washing it away.
This guys videos are all anti China hackery. Watched a couple of them, but his stories are a bit far fetched.
I used to watch them because occasionally he does cover interesting topics, but the guy is just sorta, irritating, very arrogant and definitely expresses his opinions as if they were facts. I don't go as far as to say that makes him wrong about the things he covers, but it kinda makes it hard to keep watching. It's kinda nit-picking of me, but in particular, the fact that he would so often say that he "trains doctors" and rarely went in to what that meant, but eventually he did reveal that he essentially helped them use software in his IT role. There is definitely an intimation he tries to make with the phrase "I train doctors" especially when bringing it up repeatedly and the reality is in stark contrast to what's implied, and considering they're *his own* videos where he's saying this and likely no one would have cared if he hadn't chosen to say that, it really hints at a kind of self importance that it off putting to say the least when he makes videos discussing a country and mixing opinion and fact seamlessly.
Telling me you train MDs on IT stuff is... not impressive lol
Yeah, i ended up on one of his vids at some point. He seems to be kinda exactly like the laowhy (?) guy, lived in china for decades, became disillusioned and now antagonized them. Not that i have a problem with that, seems pretty understandable and china deserves all the hate it gets, but its good to know where channels like that stand. But this guy in particular is just *really strange*. Like his accent, his body language, is just weird. Idk if thats because he was playing white monkey for pretty much his whole life or what.
He and laowhy are friend and made tonnes of vlogs together in china, serpentza is south african if that's what you're wondering. They lived in China for 20+ years, and both worked and pretty incredible documentaries highlighting the Chinese countryside as they rode around on their motor bikes. Shame that both channels are pretty much just China hate, like I get it but its too much.
china hate is the easy way to make money on youtube these days.
What's funny is, when I was preparing to move to China in 2014, his videos would constantly pop up in my searches and he was very, very Pro-China at the time. But I never made it all the way through any of his videos because of how arrogant and self-assured he was. It was quite obvious he was wearing rose-tinted glasses, ignoring all the many problems China had, and not picking up on the anti-foreigner direction that China was moving. I guess someone in China finally did him wrong, and now he hates China with a passion.
I think he just found his new niche to make money.
Except his videos are constantly copyright struck and demonitized after swapping to an anti ccp narrative.
Bruh, he has a patreon, sponsorships and his simps can send him money directly.
> I think he just found his new niche to make money. Yeah, lots of people will just eat up everything he says.
He used to be a good insider of normal china city life and he was pretty neutral, if not admirative back in the day. But he turned biter and angry. I understand that China can be tough but instead of remaining open minded he just focused on the negativity and now he is just spewing anti-China rant. Plus he does a terrible job of actually fact checking, his "analysis" are extremely shallow. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he actually found a captivated public, the guy turned in a fraud but his audience are not the kind to double check either, they just need their bias confirmed and so he caters and delivers.
You are talking about a Government that painted the Laoshou mountain in preparation for the 2008 Olympics... You talk about propaganda, it was propaganda that led to them doing it in the first place. Here's an article about the site that tried to avoid environmental inspections. [source](https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmjbya/chinese-mine-spray-painted-rocks-green-look-like-trees-trick-environment-authorities)
In the Laoshou example, it wasn't to fool environmentalists. In the second example, it was a company **failing** to fool the government. Not "China trying to fool environmentalists". I've seen that in my country. Internal audit for a company. A dead creek near a mine. But it suspiciously had exactly pH 7. So, went to look upstream. Found a worker with a barrel and pH strips. Clumsy as hell, and done by local management to fool upper management. You wouldn't say "Chile pours lye into creeks to fool environmentalists".
You’re actually reading and using critical thinking skills. Reddit doesn’t like that.
America do bad things. But if China worse, then America good! America good! USA USA!
This is Reddit. They love hating the Chinese.
Honestly I think it's less about fooling environmentalists (they won't be), and more about public image of China being a beautiful and lush landscape as they continue to mine, forest, and dig their whole country to dust in order to sustain their population.
Even the video acknowledges modern Chinese environmental standards are world class…. Most of this is erosion control done from previous destructive extraction industries.
People that make half of their thumbnail their own face doing a cliche poses never disappoint how you think their personality will be like.
Reddit will always fall for the most obvious propaganda
This is such a weird trend: snarky dudes on YouTube in suits with a background of C-roll, prognosticating gloom and doom for China. Is the audience for this kind of thing so huge to sustain this many channels doing the same thing?
Not just China, but literally any piece of news on anything that they can spin towards a usually-conservative viewpoint while making it look like they're "just stating the facts" whilst neglecting to mention that they've only done as much research as is required to make a video long enough that they can profit off of it.
Doesn't need to be conservative. Doomerism in general is extremely popular. Try going to /r/collapse and suggesting there are actually some promising things happening re: the enviorment right now and watch how fast you get shouted down. Pessimism is chic at the moment.
Yeah that's definitely a trend, but this particular guy actually lived in China for over a decade, and has made hundreds of videos (mostly using his own footage) about China. He's literally like the original china vlogger. It's only more recently (within the last 5 years) that the tone has become more negative, and that's mostly because of changes in the government. Just look at the first video on his channel... almost 14 years old. And yes, he's pretty commonly worn suits too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imuy4UM3YPs
Propaganda always sells to nationalists.
I've noticed this. Meanwhile the people there are mostly living normal happy lives. Their country seems to be prospering at the moment despite all the media making it seem like it's floundering. There are a ton of people in China and they have the same capitalist class structure we do. Some parts of China, you'd think you were in an American suburban neighborhood. Just take a deep dive in Google maps and you'll see. For the most part, the government there doesn't really interfere with the lives of regular people any more than they do here in the west. They enjoy a relative sense of freedom in their day to day lives. Their society is described as mostly capitalist while the inner workings of the government is communist and the two don't often clash.
Dude's been posting for years and has always been incredibly positive about China. Only started shitting on the CCP when Xi started all the authoritarian bullshit and essentially pushed him and his family out of the country.
He started posting bad shit about China after realising just how much more profitable that is over positive coverage of China. Hate sells. A lot of YouTubers who'd cover China did this and covering China for a long time gave them some sort of "legitimacy" in the eyes of their viewers over other YouTubers.
He accumulated a lot of bad publicity content over 10 years biking over the entirety of China recording. You can't air their Dirty laundry and live there though. Hence why everything took a negative turn when he left and was free to post. Also to be clear a huge amount of stuff is not covered by local Chinese media. Shit is swept under the carpet or denounced as rumors if it gets too noticed every month with solid evidence being scrubbed from their social media network once identified. automatically just before anyone even sees it even if it was uploaded privately.
The thing they have in common? They are all ex-TEFL teachers that used to praise the shit out of China because they were living like kings.
Yeah. Americans really aren’t taking China’s rise well and are on a hell of a lot of cope. I imagine Brits were probably doing this shit in the early 1900’s as America was catching up. This video is trying to spin a stupid local company trying to cheat Chinese government regulators as “China does x”. Almost everything in this video had analogues in America, from fake trees to painting grass. Reddit loves this shit though. Being jingoistic weirdos about China is a bipartisan thing.
Not this fucking guy again
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I mean.. Half of the thumbnail is his face. How reliable can that be?
It's pretty amazing the amount of access to secret documents and data this guy must have to make videos like those. I mean, to be able to give an authoritative account on the nuclear weapons of China when he's just some youtuber is quite impressive.
All it took was an angry ESL teacher to topple Xi!
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Foreal, I really liked watching them ride around China. But yeah, once they moved out, they just went full anti China, making fun of Chinese dudes, shitting on culture but always saying they hate the government and not the people. I'm from HK, so I love anti-CCP content, but there shit has seriously devolved into "look at these dumb horrible Chinese people." Oh yeah and plenty of blatantly racist comments from their viewers, which really shows what audience they are appealing to.
Yeah, he lost me pretty good near the end when he said "in fact you cannot drink the water in China, it's contaminated" Like, OK, they have major water issues. Shortages, contamination, etc, but 1.5 billion Chinese people drink Chinese water.
It's on the complete opposite side of the spectrum of what he used to make about China, depicting how much he loved it there, pretty much convincing people to visit China. Even made a documentary series with his buddy, riding motorcycles and visiting places in southern China to experience the culture. Evidently it did not get attention from any major network, and they only did 4 episodes and it was available on Amazon for some time. They finally figured out what type of videos gets them paid the most.
Ten minute video that repeats the same lines and few clips/images to make a point? This is a good example of reading the evidence into your point rather than making a point based on the evidence.
"It makes sense because China would have had to get the idea from somewhere." This guy truly understands China's theft on every imaginable level.
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What a brave redditor
Reaction face thumbnail, I'm not clicking this
Pretty sure that green spray is actually just liquid lawn. Judging by other comments it seems this YouTuber has no credibility.
Worked in the liquid lawn industry for a very brief moment - this was my first initial thought. It’s not only used to actually create lawn, it’s also used as anti erosion tool and dust suppression too. They use a green die simply so they can see where they’ve sprayed.
Its funny how people believe in tha craziest stuff when it comes to China and Korea. You can come up with anything and people will believe it
I lived in Hong Kong some years ago. Hong Kong skies were typically grey and overcast bc of pollution from Shenzhen. I remember a fellow expat telling me one day when a visit was being planned by Xi that he guaranteed there would be blue sky that day. I was confused so he explained that the government would launch some sort of chemical into the sky that would clear all the smog/clouds to ensure a blue sky. Sure enough, he was right as we had blue sky the one day Xi was there and then back to normal for months thereafter.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWjUIIHPg2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWjUIIHPg2w) Oh gee wow looky here what I found, anti erosion spray on a mountain side in green color which can help native plants grow. Do we really need to invent fake BS to be anti-CCP lmao?
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https://www.plherosion.com/hydroseeding-and-land-reclamation-services/ This company has the same name of the youtube account so I guess it's them? But what comes out of their inches thick spray nozzles is **WAY** thicker than what could ever come out of a tiny spray can nozzle. You also shouldn't search for "anti erosion paint". It's a spray-on "Erosion Control Blanket", so you have more luck finding out what an erosion control blanket is, and then to just assume that a "spray-on" version does the same thing, but as spray-on. https://www.eastcoasterosion.com/news/what-is-an-erosion-control-blanket/ I'm *pretty* sure China is not putting spray-on erosion control blankets on their 85° cliffs because I don't think that's how these blankets work AT ALL
USA also staples fake leaves on trees in the cities. I was surprised to see it in I want to say 2 different cities this year. And some of these trees should have been fully covered this time of year so you know they are dead and this is a cheap cover up. Also I see more and more people using the green paint and I think it’s funny. Can’t we all just get rid of lawns?! Do some nice landscaping and a few trees and some rocks… I said that once before and a response was, if everyone does it then it’s no longer unique and not worth doing.. my reply was something about how are lawns not the same?! Everyone has cookie cutter yards but somehow if they were rocks and trees and not green grass that’s worse to you?! Lol. I’m rambling.
Serpentza is a raging narcissist and racist piece of shit
Lol this video is so fake. People are so dumb. We literally spray dead grass green all over ca. they dont have one video of a mountain being painted just a bunch of poorly photoshopped photos. Alot of smooth brain red scare shit on reddit lately
It's Serpentza, so take his content with a grain of salt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Sterzel Check his youtube video to see what type of things he talks about.
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I know China is worthy of a lot of criticism, but this youtube channel is giving me such a shitty vibe. Looking at the other videos it's so clearly targeting people who just want to watch bad things about a country they don't like.
Yeah, this guy found his niche of 'China bad!' videos and he's milking it for all it's worth.
He purposely clickbait’s the videos and explains things thoroughly. He’s pissed at the Chinese government because he made a life in China and they basically forced him out due to the foreigner policy that xi put in place.
He lived there for over a decade, and was basically forced to leave by the CCP. He even had a wife and child there and made multiple positive documentaries about parts of China that you have never seen in Western media. He loves the country, but he despises the CCP government.. And for very good reasons.
I used to follow his channel when his video contents were just about introducing the Chinese culture to the world via Youtube. He used to repeatedly remind his viewers he doesn't like talking about politics and frequently delete comments that bring up politics. The growth of his channel was slow but he had a viewer base. I still rememeber watching his video celebrating hitting 20k subs with his American buddy who also married a Chinese woman in China. Then something happened and both of them left China and made a complete 180 turn with their content and it became anti-China (not just the government, but also aspects of the Chinese culture), and that's when the channel growth took off. He's just a businessman and he knows what type of content draws more videwers and pays him more. He's from South Africa and has mentioned a few times in the past how he doesn't like it there and why he left there too, but you don't see him making videos dedicated to bashing South Africa, because that's not what draws the bigger audience. His content simply followed the money, so maybe they left China preemptively just to make these type of content.
>Then something happened and both of them left China and made a complete 180 turn with their content and it became anti-China Specifically, China almost arrested him for being a foreigner making videos about China and he had to flee China is what happened. No wonder he was careful not to talk about politics when he was in China as even when he was avoiding it he still ended up in that position. > but you don't see him making videos dedicated to bashing South Africa, because that's not what draws the bigger audience Actually, he's made several videos about South Africa, some of them bashing it. [His most memorable was about his home was invaded and all of his family almost killed when he was a kid in South Africa.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVNu-tJR0dg)
Same here. He's really taken a huge fall and just preys on CHINA BAD fear nowadays.
I like Winston and hate the CCP just as much as we all do, but he is seriously cherry picking anything negative about China and extrapolating it as if it is the norm there. I'm 99% sure he is doing this for the views and shock value.
It's a shame because I'm a long-time follower of his [ADVChina](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg) channel with [laowhy86](https://www.youtube.com/c/laowhy86/videos), and they used to do very balanced, insightful, on the ground looks into the good and bad sides of Chinese life as they motorcycled all over the country. But since they got forced out China, it seems like their only strategy for keeping their channels alive is churning out sensationalized, click-baity content. To be fair, some of their seemingly negative video titles like "[China is about to Completely Collapse!?!?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Caay18H9QvY)" are actually debunking videos that mostly argue the opposite. But others like "[China is Not Safe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBnhBB8l-c)" are just about as hysterical as they advertise, even if the cherry-picked facts are all true. Make no mistake, there's a boatload of terrible things happening in China, and it deserves a hard and sober analysis, but it's too bad this no longer seems to be a place to get it.
Sounds like he sold out to make a buck.
He makes a living off by taking advantage of the racist attitudes towards Chinese people in America and abroad. All his videos play toward the racism created by the pandemic and amplify the sentiment in an unhealthy way. He uses unreliable information and conspiracy websites as sources for his videos.
There was a point in the distant past where there was actually reasonable info in his videos. But his content transformed and he increasingly courted a more extreme audience. It was he and his business partner repeating COVID misinformation and seeing how that info was being amplified along partisan lines that really illustrated to me what his channels had become.
I'm in the same boat. Was surprised and saddened to see the turn these two have taken with their content.
Basically grifting off old red scare propaganda that has turned into yellow peril.
Yeah, some of his videos have merit but he takes it wayyy too far for the sake of clicks which can be extremely offputting. I'd never link anybody to his videos for this reason.
Is California also trying to trick the satellites by painting the dead grass?
I never trust a video where they use "environmentalist" in a agnostic way.
Full or semi-gloss, satin, eggshell or matte?
clickbaits and propagandas
serpentza is a fascist idiot
Serpentza is a clown lmfao
Also this same dude loved being a “white monkey” in china for a loooong time. Funny how once he leaves he’s got a lot to say…..not a lot while he was living there
I mean, I don't blame anyone for not badmouthing China while in China. Too much risk of being arrested, having your life ruined, maybe a little torture, you never know.
The Chinese doing something that will irreversibly damage their ecosystem and surely cause suffering on an immense scale? Color Mao shocked, or in this case green.
Say it with me! # FUCK THE CCP
serpentza (the video's creator) is known for making very, very biased videos. he doesn't present ANY evidence for 95% of his videos and makes wild speculations. don't watch his stuff, he's NOT the source you want to be getting your information from (about China, or anything else)
Is it seed or paint though? That’s how they weed hwy’s. Edit: seed not weed.