Chinese MMA Star Unpersoned After Proving Tai Chi Sucks
Tom Pappert
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A Chinese mixed martial artist was unpersoned from the country’s Internet and smeared by the media after he proved MMA outperforms the classical Chinese practice of tai chi, mirroring the actions American companies took against Infowars radio host Alex Jones.
Xu Xiaodong is a professional MMA athlete who became frustrated after learning a man, Wei Lei, was celebrated as a champion by Chinese media for his tai chi victories. In reality, Lei performed highly staged fights with professional actors.
Xiaodong challenged Lei to a fight, and traveled across the country to attend. He beat Lei within seconds, Lei’s tai chi totally incapable of fending off the MMA style assault.
After the fight, Xiaodong says his life was irreparably damaged by the media. Chinese national media claimed he “attacked traditional Chinese culture,” and that he “used foreign forces to invade China,” referencing MMA.
This led to his purge across social media, including the closure of his account on Weibo, a service similar to Facebook. His video service was also terminated.
“I no longer had a channel where I could speak out,” said Xiaodong. “Yes, I criticized many people online, but have you ever considered that what I said was right?”
Even banned by the Chinese tech censors, Xiaodong continues to make it his mission to expose fake martial artists.
The actions taken in China against Xiaodong are eerily similar of those taken against Alex Jones.
Jones has been famously unpersoned for reasons still unclear to most people. YouTube and Facebook claim he violated their community standards, and each cite different examples justifying his ban. Most of these platforms invariably fall back to 2014 conspiracy theory claims that Jones maintains he never publicly supported.
After the two Big Tech giants banned him, Jones would be banned days later by Twitter, after he confronted CNN’s Oliver Darcey. Darcey had written articles and appeared on the network as well as the halls of Congress to call for Jones’s ban from the Internet, and Twitter determined that Jones confronting the man who called for his ban, in fact, justified the ban.
It appears the Western Big Tech companies learned their censorship techniques from their Chinese counterparts.
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