Reashot Xigwin
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Meanwhile in the real world
SerpentZA is a South African named Winston Sterzel. He and his partner Laowhy86, an American named Matthew Tye, have two of YouTube’s most popular China channels and made some of the Internet’s most-watched China content. Laowhy86 and SerpentZA immersed themselves heavily into the Chinese culture — they both have Chinese wives, children, and extended families — and together have made hundreds of extremely popular videos motorcycling all around China. SerpentZA has repeatedly, in several videos over the years, claimed to have been subject to multiple attempts by organizations in China to take over his channel, guaranteeing him huge Chinese audiences, lots of money, and even logistical services. Laowhy86 elaborated in an email, “We were offered compensation to play down some of the western media claims that Tibet and Xinjiang CCP governments are oppressive towards their citizens, and even offered to fly us out to shoot some positive videos promoting tourism in the region.”
Over the last few years, the content and tone of SerpentZA and Laowhy86 videos shifted away from neutral travel vlogs and expat experiences, becoming more explicitly critical in their explanations of certain Chinese social practices and of the ruling CCP. Wumao trolls frequent their material and they have become lightning rods among the Chinese YouTube community. The SerpentZA channel has been the target of at least two separate paid advertising campaigns on YouTube aiming to discredit him; the ongoing one by the Barretts and another in late 2019 that he thinks was probably by a wumao but that the CCP may have been behind. Videos criticizing their commentary and accusing them of racism or being paid shills for the West, often specifically the CIA, are common, especially by other westerners living in China, like Nathan and Gweilo60 and the Barretts.
Laowhy86 lived in China for over ten years, SerpentZA for almost fifteen. They both left China in early 2019. The harassment each faced escalated to the point where they felt that they and their families were in danger — and not just from the wumao. Describing the intensifying pressure, Laowhy86 said, “Monthly visits from police to my apartment, just to root around my apartment and check my documents meant I wasn’t welcome, and my content [on YouTube] was relatively positive about China at that time.”
Results of a Baidu (Chinese Google) search for reports on SerpentZA to the “report a spy” website, known as 12339.
As a consequence of his success as a China YouTuber SerpentZA and his family faced a deluge of official and wumao harassment. In 2018, China launched a website for citizens to report foreign spies. SerpentZA and his wife have been reported to this website countless times. Instructions on how to report them were repeatedly posted on Chinese social media (the link is in Chinese). His wife, a doctor, was doxxed. Her colleagues were doxxed. False reports filed against her with the Chinese medical board so she had to fight to keep her license. A man walked in her clinic with her picture printed out from a social media post and was removed by security. SerpentZA’s South African family were harassed, their neighbors swarmed with emails and phone calls explaining how they lived next to racists, putting their lives in danger. The wumao went after people in South Africa who shared his name but weren’t even related to him.
Other story
Georges is a French YouTuber who spent thirteen years in China, vlogging for most of that time. He used to run a channel called China Non-Stop but has since moved back to France and changed his YouTube name to Georges Non-Stop. Georges is also married to a Chinese woman but will not make videos about China anymore. The wumao made the last year of his life in China awful but the Chinese authorities did all they could to make it hell. Georges was upset after a mass wumao attack on his YouTube channel almost led to the cancelation of his channel and the deletion of all his content. He was angry and indignant when the wumao repeatedly spammed his Chinese employers, leading to his termination. But it was absolutely chilling when the Chinese police confiscated his passport, telling him it’ll be returned to him when he’s “nicer to China.” So he made more ‘positive content’ (demonstrating that sarcasm can be lost on people), got back his passport and fled China as soon as possible. In a phone interview, Georges said that he has since been contacted by at least ten other foreigners who were all forced to leave China under similar circumstances.
Their stories are well-known in the YouTube community in China. Stories like this are not uncommon in China for foreigners at large, not just those on YouTube. Chinese authorities have no compunctions about controlling the conversation through any means necessary. American Richard Vaughn spent five years in Shanghai, YouTubing under Triad Travelogues. He said that Chinese moles would sneak into their private social media group chats on the popular Chinese app WeChat. “They would grab screenshots of private conversations, taken out of context, and post them on nationalist forums. Leading to more harassment.” The posts become reasons for the authorities to threaten their visa status or just ignore the harassment.
receipt:
How China is Influencing YouTubers into Posting State Propaganda | by Thomas Brown | The Startup | Medium
