Hasan Piker is normally an impulsive, off-the-cuff speaker. He has to be, given that he livestreams his political commentary every day for upwards of six hours. But when the topic turns to China, Piker becomes stilted. “Why are you being so carefully footed on this?” asked Ethan Klein, Piker’s former co-host on the “Leftovers” podcast, after Piker danced around his position on whether Taiwan is “China or not China.”
Piker has amassed 3 million followers on the livestreaming platform Twitch for sharing his leftist political commentary. With the drawling, swaggering vocal cadence of a Los Angeles fratboy and the charisma to match, he has been touted as the Joe Rogan of the left and an alternative political role model for disaffected young men.
Piker’s politics are broadly leftist, and specifically socialist. He is anti-Israel and a critic of Trump, focusing his recent livestreams on the Epstein files. This month, he brought his livestream to China.
“China is dark woke,” Piker said on November 14, his fifth day in the country. “That’s when you’re woke but a little mean.”
Piker is travelling to Hong Kong today after 10 days in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Chengdu. His daily rhythm in China shows impressive stamina: He wakes up at four in the morning, sets up the streaming tech, goes live around 6:00 a.m., talks politics and his experience in China on Twitch for four or five hours, then reconvenes with a group of fellow American influencers to sightsee, bringing the livestream along for the ride. It’s usually during the site-seeing portion of his day where Piker dual streams on Bilibili, a Chinese video sharing platform.
During his first full day in China, Piker was stopped by police in Tiananmen Square while livestreaming. He was wearing a gold, limited-edition Adidas jacket inspired by satin garments from the Tang dynasty and posing with a meme of Mao Zedong (毛澤東) in Piker’s likeness. In Shanghai, Piker gushed when he was given a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” by a fan.
During an interview with Chinese state media personality Li Jingjing (李菁菁), Piker told Li that he went to China to counter American misperceptions that China is a backwards state. “I always try to use China as an alternative, an example because I also want high-speed rail in America,” Piker told Li. “I want Americans to not fear where their next meal is coming from,” he added. “What I’m saying is, I want America to wake up and I think China is a decent example to showcase.”
Piker has received a lot of backlash for saying — while walking around Tiananmen Square — that he has no patriotism for America. But the criticism that he seems to be most sensitive to is that he is brushing over China’s poor record on LGBTQ+ rights. While same-sex sexual activity is legal in China, same-sex marriage is not, and reports suggest that the supression of LGBTQ+ activity, particularly in online spaces, has worsened under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) leadership.
Still, Piker seems to be on a mission to convince his viewers that China is “hella gay.” “The way that Americans cover it, there’s just no homosexuality, like it’s just like they’ll [the government] throw you in prison for being gay. That’s not the case at all,” Piker said during his stream on Sunday. “For all the claims of mass surveillance of netizens … For all the claims of no homosexuality being allowed in China, the greatest antidote to all of that stuff is just experiencing it.”
On Tuesday, his ninth day streaming in China, Piker acknowledged that China lags behind the U.S. in terms of providing legal rights to gay people. When a commenter pointed out that Piker would likely be more angry about China’s standard of gay rights if it were in the U.S. context, he responded, “Of course I would be more outraged if this was happening in America. America doesn’t offer any f—ing amenities. All you have is a crumb of f—ing social development.”
Piker is evidently tired of being confronted with China’s human rights record. In a livestream recorded last spring to recap American streamer IShowSpeed’s trip to China, Piker bristled at the idea that every time he mentions China, liberal-leaning Americans expect him to highlight China’s human rights abuses. “Liberals have their own Maoist standard English version, which is Uyghur, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square,” he said.
On this trip, Piker has largely stayed away from those touchier subjects. On November 11, his first day in China, a commenter asked him why he wasn’t planning to go to Xinjiang. “Is it a bad place? No. Xinjiang is awesome, it’s just really far,” he said. During his livestream on Sunday, someone commented that denying Chinese reunification with Taiwan is ridiculous in historical context, given that the West was in support of German reunification. Piker equivocated: “Yeah, it’s a part of foreign policy, let’s be real.”
Previously, Piker has talked in more detail about Taiwan. When he was confronted by Ethan Klein about whether Taiwan is “China or not China” on the Leftovers podcast, Piker replied bemusedly that he supports the American policy of “one country, two systems.” Whether or not this was a deliberate mischaracterization of U.S. policy, it was a mischaracterization all the same. The U.S. acknowledges China’s stance on Taiwan without endorsing it — that is the principle of strategic ambiguity. “One country, two systems” is the model China wants to govern Taiwan with, so Piker saying he supports it is an endorsement of Chinese policy, not U.S. policy. In another instance, Piker explained cross-strait relations by comparing Taiwan to the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.
Many are wondering whether Piker’s trip to China is sponsored by the government. Piker denies this. He did say, however, that everything his team livestreams in China is “pre-cleared.” Piker has a team based in China who is handling logistics and translation. Piker refers to them casually in streams but hasn’t revealed which company they work for and whether they also do this “pre-clearance” for him. People commenting on Bilibili seem to think that Piker is working with an MCN, or a multi-channel network, which is a company that helps influencers manage their video channels.
On the Sharp China Podcast, Bill Bishop, author of a leading Substack on China, said that there is a lot of opacity about whether the local company Piker is likely working with to help arrange his trip is picking up costs or even paying him. “The Chinese propaganda apparatus has a policy, has a program to bring over useful idiots like Hasan Piker and have them run through China and say how great it is and then broadcast to their millions, tens of millions of followers globally, primarily on U.S. social media platforms. He is just one in a long line of useful tools, useful idiots,” Bishop said.
During his last few days in China, Piker is taking his Twitch followers to Hong Kong. He wants us to keep an open mind about the trip. “If you can’t experience it personally, you should keep an open mind, you should watch this stream.”
Just don’t disagree with Piker’s politics or take issue with the way he’s marketing China because then he’ll say you’re on maximum “copium.” That’s Twitch speak for self-delusion.
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