[US Trending] China Zun: The Third Version of Liu Junhua | CITIC Tower Incident: The Soviet Moment Has Arrived | Anhui Garbage Station Sparks Protests by Thousands | Juxiaohua and Yikoudai in Yingkou, Liaoning Run Away | Archway Collapses in Qufu, Shandong | Professor Shen Yi's World Cup Fallacy | No Japan Flag Among the International Flags | Xi Jinping Has Convinced Himself |
This episode mainly covers several high-profile trending events and commentaries that have sparked social concern: thousands of residents in Luyang District, Hefei, took to the streets to block roads in protest, forcing authorities to cancel a garbage station project; the light aircraft crash into CITIC Tower in Beijing continues to draw widespread attention, with various speculations regarding the pilot's identity and motives, prompting follow-up analyses from US and European politicians and media; police-civilian clashes broke out at the rights defense site of Juxiaohua and Yikoudai users in Yingkou, Liaoning; the collapse of an archway at the Nanxincun market in Qufu, Shandong, resulted in casualties; in addition, the program discusses Shen Yi's remarks regarding football fans supporting the Japanese team, foreign media commentaries on China's economy and nationalist propaganda, and the upcoming report by US intelligence agencies on the wealth of top CCP leaders.
Video Link:
Full Text:
US Hot Searches lets you hear the voice beyond the Great Firewall
Hello, audience friends,大家好
Welcome to today's US Hot Searches
I am Qi Xiaotian
Chinese residential compounds often have high population densities; a single compound can house tens of thousands of residents, and compounds with over 100,000 residents are not uncommon. One characteristic of these residential compounds is that residents can unite with their neighbors and organize large-scale collective rights defense events through communication methods such as homeowners' WeChat groups. Recently, collective events among compound residents have become increasingly frequent. On June 27, 2026, over a thousand residents in Luyang District, Hefei, blocked roads to protest a government garbage transfer station project nearby. Clashes between police and residents occurred during the protest, and multiple people were taken away. However, the residents ultimately succeeded in forcing officials to back down; the scale and outcome of this protest are relatively rare. Let us look at the complete timeline of the entire event. On the night of June 27, over a hundred residents quickly gathered, and the number subsequently swelled to over a thousand. They flooded onto the main road of North Second Ring Road to stage a road-blocking protest, causing traffic on that section to be completely paralyzed for more than two hours. Subsequently, a large force of police officers marched into the scene in formation, and some people in the crowd shouted: "Welcome, welcome, a warm welcome." A large number of citizens at the scene engaged in fierce shoving with police officers holding shields. Ultimately, under pressure, Yang Binghong, the head of Luyang District, announced on the spot that the garbage station project was canceled. Cheers immediately erupted on the scene, and the protest by the Hefei citizens succeeded. Of course, such capitulation to the masses is somewhat humiliating for officials. Another official subsequently came out to emphasize: This project, which was originally meant to serve everyone, was only in the planning, design, and public opinion-seeking stage. This official also stealthily played a linguistic game, changing the district head's statement that the "project is canceled" to the "project has disappeared." It was as if this project was merely a passing thought, downgrading the achievement of the masses' protest from "forcing the authorities to make concessions through protest" to "the masses reacted strongly, and officials decided to make the project vanish." A subordinate standing next to this official was also busy leading the crowd to applaud the leader. A netizen asked: I don't understand why Jiangyou turned out that way last time, but this time is different? Dear viewers, can you answer this question? Please leave a message in the comment section. Although the compound residents achieved victory, the censorship machinery of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) naturally had to be activated. Netizens inside the Great Firewall said: On June 28, a large number of on-site videos and related discussions could no longer be viewed. The heat of related topics declined rapidly, with many posts showing as deleted or inaccessible, and related content is under strict censorship. A Twitter netizen asked: Is the autumn reckoning about to begin? I hope those brave people protect themselves well. Indeed, the CCP's most practiced killer move is to make temporary concessions, wait for the crowds to disperse and everyone's anger to subside, and then arrest people one by one. Although the compound residents won a victory, if everyone fails to realize this ultimate killer move by the CCP, any victory may only be temporary.
The incident at the CITIC Tower in Beijing has become the most sensitive and questionable event within the Great Firewall. We have compiled the information that emerged this weekend, including the identity and clues regarding the pilot, Liu Junhua; the question of who this pilot named Liu Junhua actually is has become increasingly baffling. First, let us look at how a netizen reconstructed the aircraft's final flight path using publicly available flight data. The perspective in the video is the pilot's super-view. Below, this netizen used a pilot's perspective to demonstrate how close the CITIC Tower is to Zhongnanhai. According to netizens, at the speed of this small aircraft, it could reach the target in two minutes and seven seconds. Multiple foreign media outlets present at the scene stated that police prevented them and passersby from taking photos and demanded that some individuals delete photos or videos of the scene they had already captured. On the night of the incident, a reporter from the Financial Times saw several individuals in black clothing searching a black SUV under the supervision of uniformed police at the Shifosi Airport in Beijing; a license plate search revealed the owner's name to be Liu Junhua. This confirms the pilot's name from the leaked screenshot we published in our program last Friday. Shifosi Airport is the flight training base for the Eastern Fashion Flight School, which is linked to the aircraft involved. However, the report explicitly emphasized that it is currently impossible to confirm whether this SUV or its registered owner has a direct connection to the CITIC Tower aircraft collision incident. The report also mentioned that public records show a manager with the same name, "Liu Junhua," at an institution under CITIC Bank, but it cannot be confirmed whether she is the vehicle registrant or the pilot involved as rumored online. In response, both CITIC Group and CITIC Bank refused to comment. Once the news broke, everyone assumed that Ms. Liu Junhua of CITIC Bank was the pilot, and for a time, both inside and outside the Great Firewall, attention was focused on this female executive, with people beginning to dig deep into her personal information. On June 27 at 13:04, CITIC published an article on its official WeChat account: "Liu Junhua of CITIC Wealth Management Discusses Cultural Empowerment for the Company's 'High-Quality Development'." In the first paragraph of the article, a timestamp was specifically embedded: June 27, 2026, which was the day after the CITIC Tower incident, when a reporter interviewed Liu Junhua, General Manager of the Private Account Investment Line at CITIC Wealth Management. This report is a typical indirect denial used by the Chinese Communist Party. Three hours later, at 4:00 PM, 22 hours after the incident, the Chaoyang District government finally issued a notice stating: On June 26 at 17:55, near the East Third Ring Road in Chaoyang District, a single-engine, two-seater light sport aircraft collided with a high-rise building during flight; there was only one pilot on board, who has died; 13 people at the scene were injured. Currently, the injured are receiving full medical treatment, and relevant circumstances are under further investigation by the competent authorities. This belated notice, less than 100 words long, deliberately avoided mentioning the name of the building. This public information is somewhat intriguing. The timing chosen for the denial article by CITIC, which preceded the government's announcement, is also full of mysteries. On June 28, flight YouTuber "Tutu Laoshi" released a new video claiming that, according to industry insiders, the pilot involved was a male approximately 60 years old, also named Liu Junhua, who was the head of a technology company. According to tips from peers and people from his company, it was confirmed that this pilot Liu Junhua was a male, around 60 years old—perhaps not yet 60—and not the woman from CITIC, but rather the head of a technology company. During the process of learning to fly, this person developed a bit of a romantic attachment to the sales representative and instructor who recruited and taught him. Liu Junhua himself may have believed they were in love and that the affection was mutual. For the sake of this relationship, he spent a great deal of money on this female instructor, using his own family's and company's funds—of course, the company's assets were his to use—until eventually, the hole could not be filled. Then, after experiencing some fluctuations in his relationship with this woman, his psychological defenses collapsed, and he wanted to create a major disturbance. This version of Liu Junhua shifts the narrative from financial bankruptcy to one of being trapped by love and subsequently seeking revenge on society from the air. However, this version seems to be the one the Chinese Communist Party prefers, as this story can reduce trouble for the government and institutions.
After the CITIC Tower incident, Dennis Wilder, former head of the CIA's China analysis department, analyzed that Xi Jinping would "immediately draw the worst conclusion" from the incident. He said that Xi would try his best to cover it up while strengthening security, and would likely fire those who allowed the flight, as he would worry that it might be an incident aimed at him personally. Dennis Wilder guessed correctly. Financial Times reporter Eleanor Olcott said that on the night of the incident, she saw five police cars collecting intelligence at the Oriental Fashion Flight School. Afterwards, netizens reported that universities in Beijing had begun to screen personnel with pilot licenses this afternoon. Another netizen forwarded an internal notice from the Civil Aviation Administration, stating that all general aviation operations had been suspended. On June 27, netizens reported that drone practical exams and fixed-wing exams in Tianjin, Henan, Shandong, and other places had been completely suspended. According to multiple candidates, the relevant exams have been suspended since June 27, and the expected suspension period is at least 3 days. Below is a video of the drone exam site after it was completely shut down. On June 28, a netizen filmed a SWAT police vehicle equipped with drone countermeasure equipment on the road near CITIC in Beijing. A netizen lamented: From now on, all national flight arrangements must be personally approved by Xi Jinping; stop doing anything else and just spend every day scheduling flights. Information related to the CITIC Tower was quickly blocked on the domestic network. After the incident on June 26, netizens discovered that in addition to relevant reports being "comment-disabled" and trending searches disappearing, almost all Douyin videos involving "CITIC Tower" and "small aircraft" were "comment-disabled." However, social media shows that a large number of netizens are still searching for related content. Although the news inside the Great Firewall has been harmonized, public opinion outside the wall is getting hotter; most mainstream Western media reported on the CITIC Tower incident immediately. The Wall Street Journal pointed out: The plane crash occurred just weeks after Beijing banned drones from flying. In addition, the airspace over the city center is almost highly restricted, especially near political core areas such as Tiananmen, Zhongnanhai, and the August First Building; civil aviation can only fly on designated routes. However, the Beijing airspace, which is touted as being so secure that not even a mosquito can fly in, was easily breached by a small plane.
Blogger Sydney Daddy pointed out that a similar phenomenon occurred before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union long advertised that it possessed the world's most powerful air defense system, capable of detecting and intercepting any target that intruded into its airspace, especially in Moscow's airspace. On May 28, 1987, to challenge this propaganda, an 18-year-old West German amateur pilot named Mathias Rust flew a Cessna 172 plane, broke through the Soviet air defense network, and landed near Moscow's Red Square, instantly shattering the myth of Soviet air defense. After the incident, the Soviet military faced large-scale accountability: the Minister of Defense was removed from office, the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Defense Forces was dismissed, and more than 150 officers were disciplined or replaced. This was one of the largest personnel shake-ups in the Soviet military since the Stalin era. I wonder how Xi Jinping's reaction will differ from Gorbachev's? Dear viewers, what do you think? Toronto Fang Lian commented from another perspective: Any leader with a brain, seeing this situation, should know how much pressure the Chinese people are under and how deep their grievances are; the CCP's narrative of "the East is rising and the West is declining" has become such a joke, and they should also realize that they cannot continue to block things like this and continue to exert pressure on society.
On June 29, a conflict occurred at the rights defense site for users of Ju Xiaohua and Yi Kou Dai in Yingkou City, Liaoning Province. The scene video shows a girl screaming loudly, multiple rights-defending users having physical contact with the police, and some people being forcibly taken away by the police. The economy is not good now, and even banks are unwilling to accept fixed deposits. If an institution promises high interest, it can basically be concluded that they are scammers. Please keep an eye on your wallets.
Around 2:00 PM on June 27, the archway of the Nanxin Village market in Qufu City, Shandong Province, collapsed. However, the CCP has once again started to "beautify" casualty data in the tragedy. The party media "Dazhong Net Jining" official account issued a situation notice stating: 7 people were injured and sent to the hospital for treatment, one of whom died after rescue efforts failed. However, locals have already revealed online that local hospitals have received documents from above not to disclose details. According to local relatives and comments from locals on Douyin, they also unanimously believe that 7 people died. A netizen lamented: In the Celestial Empire, people are often not even numbers.
Last Friday, we reported that Chinese fans in Shanghai supported the Japanese team, and as a result, Fudan University's positive-energy professor Shen Yi came out to show his patriotism, calling those Shanghai people's actions an "act of treason" and directly turning sports into a loyalty test. In addition, a netizen shared a picture during the World Cup of a shopping mall hanging flags of all nations, where the Japanese flag appeared to be deliberately folded up. A foreign netizen said: China loves turning everything into a loyalty test, to the extent that they must hate Japan in all aspects.
Next, we enter the Foreign Media on China segment: shouting "the East is rising and the West is declining" every day, after a long time, even they themselves believe it. The Chinese Communist Party's greatest success in recent years may not be convincing the world, but first convincing itself. An opinion piece in Bloomberg pointed out that Beijing now wants the world to believe that China is no longer "rising" but has "already risen." At this year's Summer Davos Forum, many Chinese scholars, business people, and officials emphasized that China has weathered the trade war, while the United States has fallen into a passive position. Some even believe that after the meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping, the United States has begun to accept the reality of China as a global equal power. However, there is a clear gap between this official narrative and the feelings of ordinary people. The latest economic data shows that China's consumer spending remains sluggish; in May, total retail sales of consumer goods saw their first decline since the pandemic, car sales plummeted 22.1% year-on-year, housing prices continued to fall, and fixed-asset investment was also below expectations. Youth employment remains difficult, and many respondents are more pessimistic about the future than the previous generation. China is forming a "two-track economy": exports, high-end manufacturing, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and other industries continue to expand, but domestic demand remains weak. Beijing is not unaware of the difficulties it faces, but its choice is not to directly address the economic dilemma, but to use nationalism to divert public attention and cover up these realistic challenges with a tough posture and high-profile propaganda; this is a dangerous choice. The author of the article stated that multiple Chinese diplomats he spoke with are also worried because of China's lack of economic transparency. The most dangerous time for a regime is not when it makes others believe it is strong, but when its propaganda convinces itself deeply, treating propaganda slogans as reality, nationalism as a panacea, and blaming all problems on external enemies, ultimately failing to fool either the market or the ordinary people. The real problem is never that others don't believe it, but that the problems in reality will never automatically disappear just because the slogans are shouted loudly enough.
The wealth hidden overseas by the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party may be exposed to the world this time. The countdown has begun for the public release of the US intelligence community's report on Xi Jinping's wealth. According to the Washington Times, the US intelligence community is preparing to release a new report on the personal wealth of the CCP's top leadership before the end of this year. The report will cover the personal wealth, business interests, domestic and foreign real estate, overseas investments, financial accounts, and relatives and business partners allegedly used as proxies for assets of 25 top CCP officials, including Xi Jinping, members of the Politburo Standing Committee, and the Politburo. This report is an upgraded version of the initial 2025 report, which estimated that Xi Jinping's family held assets exceeding $1 billion through relatives, and stated that up to 65% of officials in China have informal income, including bribes or corruption proceeds. The US Congress felt the previous report lacked sufficient detail and therefore requested that more non-public intelligence be included this time. The report also cited a 2024 Congressional Research Service report stating that Xi Jinping owns at least $376 million in investments, including a 18% indirect stake in a rare earth company valued at over $300 million, and a $20 million equity stake in a tech company; his family's hidden wealth is estimated at around $700 million, held mainly by relatives such as his elder sister Qi Qiaoqiao, brother-in-law Deng Jiagui, and niece Zhang Yannan; some members of the US Congress suspect the actual amount may be much higher. The CCP has long used the image of "servants of the people" as an important source of its ruling legitimacy, making the leadership's wealth issue its most sensitive soft underbelly. The previous version of the wealth report was given a failing grade by Congress and sent back to be redone, and this version of the wealth report is well worth anticipating. Once released, we will share it with everyone at the first opportunity.
Next, let's look at a few absurd videos. Huawei electric vehicles' far-ahead results, personally led and starred in by Yu Chengdong, saw the color TV, refrigerator, and large sofa upgraded once again. Netizens joked: Brewing American-style coffee with such worship of foreign things? Why not brew Chinese Longjing? Another netizen pointed out: Don't you need to change coffee beans, fresh milk, and clean and maintain it? Setting this up in a car is just a broken brain. Back in the day, Miss Hong Kong winners were people like Maggie Cheung and Michelle Reis, possessing noble elegance and international flair, symbolizing the charming style of the Pearl of the Orient; in 2026, Miss Hong Kong contestants have been reduced to lining up to recite Mao Zedong's revolutionary poetry. It seems the Pearl of the Orient beauty pageant has now turned into a "Red training class." Netizens sighed: Next comes wearing military uniforms, walking the Red Army's path, and striving to be Jiang Qing's successor.
At the end of the show, we enter the netizen interaction segment. Momo offered advice to the Chinese Communist Party propaganda department regarding the CITIC Tower incident, saying: The Chinese Communist Party doesn't need to be so coy, it can directly publicize: "The houses we, the Chinese Communist Party, build are just solid, and they won't collapse even if hit by an airplane." Dai Yiyi commented on the Shanghai residents who supported the Japanese team, saying: After Shanghai was locked down for two months, basically everyone became rebels. Jeff Lyu commented on the North Korean-style applause from ordinary people when Xi Jinping inspected Shandong, saying: They are really good at learning from North Korea. Not only did they raise their hands high to applaud, but there was even the rudiment of jumping and cheering! Today's US trending searches end here. Thank you all for watching. New viewers and friends, if you like our show, please help like and subscribe, and help us spread these voices from outside the Great Firewall further. In addition, friends who want to support our channel more can consider joining the members of US-China Benchmarking. See you in the next episode.