My name is Vicky Xu; it’s pronounced a bit
like the shoe on your feet and just like so
many other shoes in Australia I was also made
in China.
I asked Vicky to present the twenty nineteen
‘Annual Inaugural Chaser Lecture’ because
she’s a smart and funny person and her personal
story is really compelling.
I’m here to tell my story today, mine, and
I hope my story can make you think about what
you can do as China is on the rise to become
a new superpower. I’m not going to give
you the answers because I’m in enough trouble
for asking the questions
Vicky Xu is a journalist. She too has been
trolled and intimidated for speaking out against
China.
There have been crackdowns on dissent overseas.
We’re seeing surveillance on Uighyrs who
live overseas.
Vicky is only 25 but she was one of the first
journalists to really blow the lid open on
the Uighyr issue here in Australia.
The Uighyr story is one of the most serious
mass human rights violations in the world
today. China doesn’t want you to know about
it.
Vicky is quite a controversial character I
think her explosiveness has really given her
a huge media platform. But Vicky is just one
voice in a complex media debate on the growth
of mainland China.
I’m definitely considered provocative at
times. The label anti-China has been put on
me by certain people, but that’s not how
I see myself.
Vicky’s in a sensitive position. She’s
in a difficult position. Vicky has exposed
China to a lot of scrutiny at great personal
costs .
I’ve basically become a traitor to the country.
And many people are just very angry. But what
a lot of people don’t know is that just
a few years back I was just like them.
Thank you for coming along your next act are
you ready? Please welcome on the stage the
very fine Vicky Xu.
There are so many strands to Vicky’s life.
The move to stand-up comedy is pretty recent
for Vicky.
I don’t like to tell people that I’m made
in China because you know
Comedy for Vicky was a pressure release to
get lots of things off her mind and to be
able to speak about them in a way that was
uninhibited.
Whenever I tell people this was all made in
China, I don’t know I feel like a Huawei
phone we’re both cheap easy to break, and
a threat to national security.
The idea of a young female Chinese comic satirizing
the Chinese government is pretty explosive
and pretty rare anywhere in the world.
I’ve got a day job guys, I have a day job,
I work as a journalist.
I think the Chinese government has been paying
quite close attention to her. But Vicky is
not someone who’s going to be silenced.
I wrote an article earlier this year about
the Uighyrs, they’re Turkic Muslims they’re
detained in China. And the other day I got
some feedback from an audience member and
he was like ‘oh can you talk about something
a little more uplifting cause this is a comedy
room after all’ and I was ‘yeah absolutely
cannot’.
I do think it’s very personal for Vicky.
New converts in any faith are some of the
most intense. And I think in some ways this
is this is a conversion that Vicky’s gone
through.
I grew up in Northwest China, in a tiny town.
By tiny in Chinese standards, that means some
200,000 people, it’s one of the poorest
provinces in China.
Vicky was an only child and the golden child,
and her parents put everything they had into
her education and into her well-being. All
they wanted was for her to be a success.
The Chinese school system was quite demanding;
everything was about conforming. Students
have to excel in political studies.
If you want to be a class captain, you have
to wear your red scarf every day. The red
scarf means you belong to the party. I was
a class captain for a few years.
I have known Vicky since 2003. She excelled
in her studies and stayed on top of her class.
She stayed on top all the time. Her dream
was to become a journalist.
The major she enrolled in was at the University
of Communication in China. I think it’s
one of the best media colleges in China.
All open ‘How are you?’
How are you?
Vicky was training to be an English language
broadcaster for the Chinese state media in
Beijing
How are you?
So that would mean that she’d be presenting
news all around the world through a Chinese
lens.
One of our professors would be telling us
our mission is very important. It helps the
world understand China in a positive way.
In my second year at university in Beijing,
there was an opportunity to go abroad and
take a gap year.
I first met Vicky when she arrived in Perth
in 2014. She was working at a high school
that I was working at teaching Mandarin. Vicky
was very proud of China. She was a loyal nationalist,
100 percent.
My first impression of Australia was really
good. I just remember seeing people being
like relaxed.
After a few months, Vicky decided that she
wanted to get educated in Australia, so she
applied to Melbourne University to do political
science and media studies. Just before she
left Perth, she saw a poster advertising a
documentary on Tiananmen Square.
I remember looking at that poster, I knew
it was meant to say something significant,
but you know, I’m quite good at Chinese
history. I don’t think there was ever a
crisis on Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Thirty years ago, the people of China dared
to hope for a democratic future. But on the
night of June 3, 1989 the People’s Liberation
Army turned its guns on the people.
Tiananmen Square was a series of protests
in which the Chinese government cracked down
on a whole bunch of people who were looking
for greater freedom and democracy, including
students who were just killed or just removed
from the streets.
These tanks have just provided an escort for
about 30 troop trucks which have come into
Tiananmen Square from the east of the city.
I went to the documentary screening.
Hospital morgues are running out of space
for the unending procession of their victims.
When I first learned about Tiananmen Square
crackdown, I think the overwhelming feeling
was grief and there was also just this sense
of betrayal because you know growing up in
China, I had never seen any material about
this event.
We don’t want gunshot and the army firing
at the innocent people
My parents, teachers they knew about this
but no-one said anything so I felt shocked
and sad and yeah just couldn’t believe it.
I mean Tiananmen Square is one of the biggest
stories of the Chinese Communist Party’s
rule over China throughout its entire reign.
And the idea that it could just be erased
from the entire story of China for someone
like Vicky is pretty astounding.
But what’s interesting is that within a
few months I came to um rationalize the whole
thing right. There were accounts to say that
this was a CIA inside job. I started going
to university and all of a sudden, I just
became very, very overwhelmed by the amount
of negative information about China around
me.
I was trying to tackle these accusations of
you know China’s human rights abuses and
I was finding inconsistencies and all this
hypocrisy in the discourse of human rights
and in the end, I just got very frustrated.
She felt that as the only Chinese student
in the class, she was obliged to explain China’s
action to other students.
I wanted to explain to people around me how
some of the so-called human rights abuses
are actually justified because, you know,
you have a big country to run and you just
simply can’t be nice to everyone. I was
arguing with my peers, my professors, my boyfriend.
I was getting a little upset and my sense
of nationalism was heightened. The more I
defended China, the more fonder of the country
I felt. And in the end, I came to this tattoo
parlour and get myself this Chinese national
flag tattooed on my ankle.
Even as Vicky was defending China in class,
I think behind the scenes she was really starting
to weigh the evidence.
It’s just really sort of difficult to navigate
I first met Vicky in 2016
I mean in this kind of situation it’s important
to be sceptical with most of what you encounter.
She was questioning the very basic ideas that
her family had instilled in her.
There’s a lot of information that is just
supressed you know deleted overnight
She said that she was interested in interrogating
I guess how the Chinese Communist Party had
formed her views about the world
It seems like it’s getting harder and harder.
And for her final assignment she interviewed
dissidents from China.
Hi Vicky.
Hi.
I met one of the first Chinese dissidents
that I know. This guy named Lebao Wu. He’s
a refugee from China. I just thought he could
be a fraud and I was going to interview him
and write an expose.
Remind me which part of China you’re from
again?
Oh An Hui province.
I told her my story. I worked as a maths teacher
in a Chinese college. In 2008, I got involved
in some dissident activities.
I was questioned whether I have foreign connections
have connections with foreign powers.
He was posting criticism of Chinese leaders
online.
The worst thing I did was I posted some jokes
online
I was put in prison which was like a labour
camp. I had been forced to do manufacturing
labour 14 hours per day. We were ordered to
put disposable gloves into small bags. And
every day we are required to make thousands.
We were ordered to get up at 6 o’clock,
no break after getting up.
After I was released from prison, I resettle
in Australia I has been diagnosed with PTSD.
And a variety of mental health issues actually.
I was very touched by his story because it
was so full of trauma, it kind of traumatized
me too. And it really make me rethink a lot
of my previous positions.
When Vicky met Mr.Wu I think it changed her
life. She went into the interview expecting
to be able to expose a traitor. And I think
she left the interview shaken and concerned
that everything she’s been told might not
be right.
Vicky went back home over the semester break
and was writing for a local magazine. And
while she was there in China there was an
enormous flood.
Vicky saw on Chinese social media that that
villagers in the town of Longcao had been
inundated by flooding and that they were complaining.
They thought flood water was directed into
their village so that some bigger cities downstream
could survive the flood and they said for
four days they didn’t have any rescue resources
from the government.
I was incredibly worried because I knew that
she was a Chinese journalist reporting on
a story that clearly was sensitive to the
government.
We don’t have drinking water
We interviewed some villagers, they were devastated
by what they had lost, and how they didn’t
have any food. Within 20 minutes the government
officials arrived, they were trying to feed
us the official line about what had happened.
And the police took down our details, warned
us not to do this again.
Despite all the risks, she decided to run
the story in The New York Times and her name
must have been put on some sort of list .When
she was travelling through the country later,
later in that trip police officers would stop
her and those travelling with her. They wanted
to make sure that she knew that they knew
wherever she was at any time.
I started teaching Vicky in 2017, an undergrad
news journalism writing class. I wasn’t
sure whether she knew what she was getting
herself into.
But she’s able to do stories that few people
do here in Australia.
I started to work for a range of outlets that
was my second and third year of university,
I wrote for the New York Times.
Hey so you find anything have they said anything
about the Ambassador?
Vicky wanted to uncover things that other
people weren’t uncovering, and she wanted
to reveal things that might have otherwise
stayed invisible.
They’re literally accusing him of having
a bunch of mental health issues.
And so, from the very beginning what she was
working on was sensitive.
After a short stint with The New York Times,
Vicky came to work in the ABC’s Asia Pacific
newsroom. Vicky was adamant and relentless
in her push to do a story about the Uyghurs.
I would keep telling her, you know, ‘what’s
the deal with this story? Why do you need
to do a 3000, 4000-word feature on it?’
And she would repeat ‘Steven, you don’t
understand. You don’t understand. People
need to know this’.
The Uyghurs are an ethnic minority who live
in Northwest China in the province of Xinjiang.
They’re mostly Muslim.
Over the past few years, China has been increasingly
repressive. Most recently placing up to a
million, some estimates say up to 2 million
in these political indoctrination camps. It
likes to call them re-education camps, but
it’s more like an indoctrination camp.
The Chinese government maintains the line
that they are fighting terrorism and extremism.
China did have a terrorism problem, and that
is correct. I think it's important we actually
acknowledge that China was suffering a terrorist
problem. But that said, the response to that
problem, extra judicial detention, wiping
out an entire culture. It's a human rights
tragedy that we need some plain talking on.
In Australia, we have a fairly large Uyghur
community, about 3,000 people. And most of
these people have friends or relatives detained
in these camps.
Vicky had very strong connections to the Uyghur
community. And was able to get a lot of these
people that had family members in detention
to go on the record. At the time it was very
difficult to get anybody to even speak about
it, let alone identify themselves.
Almost three years I haven’t heard anything
about my wife. My wife been charged with assembling
a crowd to disturb social order. I can’t
believe she was been arrested. She very shy
girl.
I guess a lot of that was seen as off-limits
for the Chinese authorities. Very quickly,
I realised I was losing friends back home.
My best friend back in college, who is now
working for the Chinese Foreign Ministry,
he stopped talking to me.
From the moment Vicky started digging into
the Uyghurs it was clear to me that this was
going to be challenging, sensitive stuff.
I told her ‘listen you’re taking you and
everyone you love and anyone who loves you
into that situation’.
Last year my grand mom was very sick, so my
Dad wants me to go back home to visit. But
I was feeling very anxious about visiting
again, and I just didn’t know what was going
to happen. A Chinese government official gave
me this whole lecture about how I should be
more careful with my words and basically warned
me to you know asked me to stop doing what
I’m doing.
By the time I was trying to fly out of China,
I was having some trouble getting a boarding
pass at the airport. And so, I just couldn’t
check in. Someone said, ‘well is she on
the list or something’ and that was when
things got a little suspicious. They did let
me go in the end, but it was just such an
alarming episode.
Thank you for your co-operation. Enjoy your
flight.
My mum pulled me to the side and said, ‘Well,
maybe you want to do more comedy and less
journalism’. And she also said, ‘maybe
don’t come back again anytime soon.’
When she got back, she was definitely shaken.
But she went on to pursue a story about the
Uyghur community in Adelaide.
And we published an article featuring two
families who have relatives stuck in China
in those camps. And the good news was that
because of the sort of attention on the story,
those two families, they both had their relatives
released. But the bad news that came out of
that was my father got a call from the Chinese
police.
I mean, it was a message to say, you know,
we see you, and be careful. That freaked my
mom out. I was waiting for a text message
to say what happened with the police and all
these, like, crazy thoughts started to play
out in my head. You know, maybe they’re
detained. Maybe they’re brought into the
station to be questioned, or maybe they’re
under home arrest, because it’s China.
My dad has stopped speaking to me. I couldn’t
help but feel that it’s my fault I am in
this situation and I put my family in this
situation. But when I published my first article,
I was 21 and I was very young, and I was not
expecting things to escalate to here today
so quickly. But the guilt, I don’t know.
I honestly have no idea. I think I’m going
to be guilty about this forever.
Help Hong Kong, help Hong Kong, no extradition
to China.
Last year, hundreds and then thousands of
students in Hong Kong, hit the streets to
really call for more freedom, more democracy.
Support Hong Kong Police
There were a whole bunch of almost satellite
protests in Australia.
Long Live China, long live China!
It’s interesting because at the very same
spot yesterday there was a pro-China rally
going on.
We love China.
Where patriotic students from mainland China
chanted slogans and verbally abused and physically
attacked people who disagreed with them.
If you don’t like Hong Kong get the f-ck
out.
I remember seeing Vicky’s Twitter feed from
one of the protests and it was quite direct
and confronting. She was translating some
of the statements that people were saying
in Chinese.
Traitor, traitor.
You had people yelling at this Hong Kong supporter,
traitor, traitor. And a couple of people,
I heard them saying, you know, if the police
weren’t here, we’re going to beat him
to death.
There was a lot of strong feelings toward
Vicky’s reports about the Hong Kong rallies.
And a lot of people saw Vicky’s reports
on the rallies to be quite one sided.
Hong Kong's a sensitive issue for China. The
Chinese world view has very strong views that
Hong Kong is part of Chinese territory they
shouldn't be accepting outside voices or critical
views of China in that space. But look, some
Chinese students went too far. I mean when
you start tearing down walls and when you
start physically abusing people that crosses
the line.
So, I started getting these really awful messages
this one’s saying that I’m abhorrent,
I’m selling out and it’s not enough if
I die 100 times. There were also these articles
on Chinese media that had my images with my
eyes blacked out that was quite creepy.
The thing that I think interesting is that
their criticism of her, and attempt to silence
her not only backfired, it had the complete
opposite effect. At a time when the China
story was a really big story in Australia,
Vicky became one of if not the go-to people
to help make sense of it.
The young protesters in Hong Kong are essentially
saying they do not believe in the so called
one country two systems.
One rally I’ve covered that was back in
2017 when the Chinese premier Li Keqiang visited,
we know for sure that that rally was organised
by the Chinese consulate in Sydney…
One of the things I think that’s going to
be a great challenge for her is to not be
exploited and to not let what she’s trying
to say be oversimplified by people who simply
want to make her a weapon against China.
Forget about business opportunities for a
second and think.
I think when Vicky talks about these things,
she’s talking without a filter, but we have
to be nuanced when we talk about this issue
because there is this ‘yellow peril’ idea
that still encroaches in Australian society.
The debate on China in Australia has had a
ferocious impact on Chinese Australians. And
people like Vicky Xu have copped the full
brunt of Chinese nationalism and they really
need our support. On the other hand, there's
other groups of Chinese Australians who feel
they're unable to participate in this discussion
because if they do, they will be framed as
being disloyal to Australia, their voices
are cancelled. And that's a tragedy, both
sides. It's a tragedy when we don't hear these
voices, because the real problem we have in
Australia is not enough Chinese Australian
voices.
I hope that Vicky has a chance to return to
China at some point and to reconnect with
the country. But sometimes you have to move
on and build a new life.
I have no idea what the future holds for me.
In the past month or so, I’ve been working
at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
on a project about Uyghur forced labour. It’s
a collaboration with the Washington Post.
We got this one from Weibo yesterday and it’s
Tim Cook visiting this factory in Dongguan.
We found out that since 2017 when the mass
detention started in Xinjiang a lot of Uyghurs
and other ethnic minorities have been taken
out to other provinces in China.
If you’d be able to look at the factory
from the satellite,
And they work for these Chinese factories
under these abusive coerced forced conditions.
Can I have a look at the sign?
And these factories are supplying very, very
famous well-known brands like Nike, Adidas
Apple.
I’m hoping to be able to search her name
in the victim database and see if her relatives
are looking for her.
So, in the near future, as much as I would
love to do more comedy, I’ll just be doing
what I am doing right now investigating the
Uyghur issue to be able bring as much awareness
to the issue as I can.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute
report and corporate responses can be found
at abc.net.au/austory.
The Chinese Embassy declined our request for
an interview.
