Chinese Regime, Apple, Face Backlash Over Crackdown On Anti-Govt Protesters

Citizens have been protesting across China against harsh coronavirus restrictions imposed by President Xi Jinping regime. Chinese Communist Party(CCP) thugs and police have been brutally cracking down on the protests which have intensified in recent weeks -- spreading to 20 provinces and the cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

The totalitarian regime has sent tanks into major cities of the East Asian nation overnight, as it tries to put down the protests. Some protesters are calling on United States President Joe Biden to say more in support of the protests.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called on the Chinese government to respect the rights of demonstrators and journalists after a BBC journalist was arrested in China. "Media freedom and freedom to protest must be respected," he wrote on Twitter, Monday. "No country is exempt. The arrest of BBC journalist @EP_Lawrence in China is deeply disturbing. Journalists must be able to do their job without intimidation." Senior journalist and camera operator for the British media outlet's China Bureau, Edward Lawrence was recently arrested as he covered the protests.

The protests originated after a deadly apartment building fire last week in the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi, which resulted in the deaths of 10 people. As a result of lockdown measures in the city that have been in place for over 100 days, the city's fire department was delayed in arriving on the scene.

Residents of the city began demonstrating on the streets shortly after the tragedy, marching on government buildings and demanding an end to the city's strict lockdown.

Despite the fire happening in the far western region of the country, protests quickly spread across the country, a rare showing of resistance to China's Communist Party. Protesters across the country took to the streets to demand an end to China's zero-COVID policy that has resulted in three years of strict lockdowns in many cities. Some protesters called for freedom and democracy and others for the removal of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Video from Shanghai shows authorities in China attempting to crack down on the protests, with one protester being arrested while attempting to give a speech in support of the victims while holding up a yellow bouquet of flowers. Other protesters could be seen objecting to the man's arrest as police forced him into a police car and away from the scene.

Conservative and Republican leaders in United states have come out strongly in support of the protesters, and have called out the Biden administration for its muted response. They have also slammed Apple for aiding and abetting Beijing, after the the Smartphone giant disabled the AirDrop peer-2-peer communication feature in iPhones in China which protesters have used to organize outside the regime's surveillance.

"When you speak out for freedom, that terrifies the tyrants in China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela," Senator Ted Cruz(T-Texas) wrote on social media. "But what does Joe Biden do? He appeases and shows weakness to all of them!"

Cruz also wrote in another post: "It’s not just Apple that's in bed with Communist China. Big Business, Big Hollywood & Big Universities are in bed with Communist China."

Speaking to Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night, Florida Governor DeSantis slammed the CCP and government crackdown on the protests. He also called out Apple for aiding and abetting the regime, and said the United States congress "need to look at anti-trust with these massive companies[like Apple] because they are exercising massive amounts of power over our society." He is also referencing recent revelation by Elon Musk that the Smartphone giant is threatening remove Twitter app from the App Store.

Commenting on the protests, Carlson in his monologue Tuesday night, slammed Biden administration and left-wing media for their muted response and coverage respectively, of Chinese regime crackdown on the protests. He also called out Apple for aiding and abetting Beijing, while working to undermine Elon Musk's effort to allow free speech on Twitter.

Carlson said in part,

Virtually no American media outlets even acknowledge that that happened, and that's pretty weird if you think about it. Imagine, for example, that Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán put tanks into Budapest to crush his political opponents. Would our media notice? Oh, yeah, they would. It'd be on the front page of The New York Times. "Morning Joe" would lead with it, and keep in mind that Hungary is a very small country. It's got a GDP smaller than South Dakota's.

China, by profound contrast, has the biggest economy in the world. China is our main global rival. It's a highly significant place and yet somehow no one in any newsroom in America noticed when Xi Jinping decided to replay Tiananmen Square. They didn't see it, even though the pictures were on the internet. How is that possible? Could it be that the American news media is covering for the government of China? We can't say. We’ll let you make the call on that.  

We can say, we know for a fact, that Apple is covering for the government of China. Apple is the most valuable company in the world. It's got a current market cap of trillions of dollars. Financial listings describe Apple as an American company. You can see why they do. Apple is headquartered in the United States. It was founded by Americans. To this day, it's run by an American citizen, but those facts don't tell the story. In fact, at this point, Apple is in no sense American. Apple's loyalty is to the government of China and if you think that's an overstatement, consider this. 

Earlier this month, Apple did the bidding of the Chinese government to crush domestic protests against the Communist Party there. Apple did this by disabling its permanent AirDrop feature in China and so far, only in China. It's the only country in which it's disabled. Why did Apple disable that feature in China? Well, because that feature, permanent AirDrop, allows iPhone users to communicate directly with one another without using the internet or cellular networks — both of which in a totalitarian state like China, are controlled by the government and that means that without permanent AirDrop, it's effectively impossible for freedom-minded citizens to organize with one another. They're powerless.

Apple, of course, knows this and that's why when iPhone users in China began using permanent AirDrop to complain about the Communist Party, Apple just shut it down. In other words — again, this is not an overstatement — Apple is now an active collaborator with China's murderous police state. When tanks roll into a Chinese city, Apple is rooting for the tanks.  

Well, for a company based outside San Jose, this seems like a big step: Becoming a partner with a Chinese police state? Yes. And yet, once again, this fact received virtually no coverage in the United States.

COOK: I think that we have a responsibility as a business to do business in as many places as we can, because I think business is this huge catalyst. I believe in what Tom Watson said is world peace through world trade. You have to get your head around when you're operating outside the U.S. and any country in the world that there are different laws and so, that's part of the both the complexity and part of the beauty of the world is that everybody has their own laws and customs.

Alright. Well, let's continue that standard here. In the United States where Apple is headquartered, free speech is the law. It's the first law. It's the first guarantee in our Bill of Rights and yet, strangely, for a company that claims to respect local customs, Apple has done far more than its share to eliminate free speech in the United States. We can give you many examples. Here's a new one. In the middle of the COVID pandemic, a small video-sharing site called Odysee was trying to get approval to be listed on Apple's App Store. The App Store is one of most powerful things that Apple has. For many people, the app is the portal to the company who's making the app. So, for a startup like Odysee, getting on the App Store was an essential step. Roughly half of the adults in the United States use iPhones, so if you're not on the App Store, you're shafted, but Apple was hesitant to allow Odysee on the App Store. 

Why? Well, because, unlike YouTube, owned by Google, Odysee allowed its users to search for information on the origins of COVID and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Oh, if you used Odysee you might know that the patron of Apple was in fact responsible for the COVID pandemic. Users of Odysee could search for videos challenging also the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines and stopping transmission of the virus. So, to Apple, that kind of free speech, truly free speech, searching for actual answers and not just more propaganda, was totally unacceptable. Apple presented Odysee with a list of nearly two dozen search terms, most related to COVID, that it had to ban if it wanted to join the App Store.  

The executive who runs Apple's App Store, a man called Phil Schiller, just deleted his Twitter account. Well, that's weird. Apple has virtually stopped buying ads on Twitter. That's weird too. So would Apple do this? Well, several tech developers are coming forward to confirm that this is exactly how Apple operates and has for years. When Apple threw the social media company Parler off the App Store — remember that? — because they allowed Donald Trump to speak, you thought it was an anomaly, but it wasn't.  

This is what they do and few people really understood that. In fact, for years, even the most cynical observers assumed that big tech companies like Apple censor speech. Yes, they do, but only in extraordinary circumstances. Oh, no, they do it all the time. In fact, Apple engages in large-scale secretive censorship and always and everywhere Apple helps the Chinese government, so preventing American citizens from saying what they believe or getting to the truth about something while bolstering the power of one of the most repressive governments in the world.

Twitter must be silenced because it allows Americans to exercise their birthright, which is free speech, a prerequisite for a free society and a democracy, but TikTok must be protected because the Chinese government uses TikTok as a tool of espionage. That is Apple's position. At this point, the real question is, will Apple be allowed to strangle Twitter, which it could, because it has monopoly power? So far, virtually no one in American politics seems to have noticed this is happening.

WATCH Tucker Carlson's monologue on the Chinese protests.