Ah that makes sense, thanks. I was wondering how other western youtubers had channels full of interviews.

A couple of the western Chinese vloggers I used to watch a lot recently fled China after they caught wind that the authorities were looking for them for 'illegal journalism'

This vlogger, his youtube channel is Serpentza lived in China for more than 10 years now had no choice but to leave, otherwise he wouldn’ve been inprisoned or even worse:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgqdfAomVI

Thanks for the link, that's too bad. I remember watching his videos years ago. He seemed to really like living in China.

Yes his early videos were not political but his content changed dramatically in the last two years. He was under scrutiny by other western youtubers in China e.g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiOOC1Exk7o to question his recent contents. Not commenting on his opinions just to provide information from both sides.

Given the situation in HK, I find it very believable that it would not be in the best interest for a foreigner living on the mainland to get involved in political criticism — at least - until they leave the country.

Sure if you believe you're at certain risk. But these channels were talking about Serpentza and his behaviour telling untruth about other vloggers. It has nothing to do with political criticism.

From what I saw with my own eyes he and his fellow blogger were documenting inconvenient truths about China and their lives were in danger to stay any longer there. It is quite dangerous to be even in HK at the moment, the CCP’s armed forces are extremely vicious, perhaps at Xinnie the Pooh’s direct orders, his ego was severely bruised as he’s a sore looser just like our current president. Let’s hope he doesn’t turn into another Mao, thugh it could be even worse..

My comment wasn't about any political stance he has nor what might cause his journey. It was the interactions with other foreign youtubers in China. And surely the inconvenient truths were at most documented/collated material by serpentza not literally your own eyes if that's fare to say?

Oh, that's great to know. I didn't realize that was happening. Thanks for the clarification.

> you need a license/approval before you can interview someone

[citation needed]

> Many western youtubers came under scrutiny for it.

came under scrutiny by whom? Their audience or CCP?

Disclaimer: I'm a China national.

Their audience. If journalists are forcefully accompanied by government officials, their journalism can be influenced. This irreparably taints the integrity of their work in a way that is often unacceptable to their audience.

> > you need a license/approval before you can interview someone

> [citation needed]

So it was stated by a police officer in the video above (I'm assuming it was a real police encounter and not staged, and that the subtitles are correct as he didn't say it in English).

That scene is at ~12:00.

For the record those police officers said people can't accept interviews without approval, which is obviously BS.

This comment is fascinating. It feels like it's written by GPT-3. It almost makes sense at first glance.

If you look at bgee's comment history, all the posts are about China.

> [citation needed] The police officer in the video said that in the video linked above. Mostly I'm curious what China's official position is.

Thank you. I consider it a badge of honor when I'm getting attacked simply because of the topics of discussion I choose to engage.

As a non-native English speaker, it also feels content to hear my writing is on par with the state-of-the-art NLP model.

> all the posts are about China

This is materially incorrect. This one is not [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22815243