to road accidents,

a lot of things in China can be deadly.

Hi. Welcome to China Uncensored.

I'm your host, Chris Chappell.

Be sure to subscribe for the latest China news.

The world is full of delightful deadly dangers.

From natural disasters to disease,

from toxic waste to toxic food.

And China's certainly got its fair share of things that could kill you...

eventually.

So today, I bring you five things to look out for in China

if you're not yet ready to meet Marx.

Karl, not Groucho.

Number 5

Tainted food.

Now, I love Chinese food.

Whether it's soup dumplings,

or red-cooked pork,

or hand-pulled noodles—

there's no cuisine that tantalizes the taste buds like Chinese food.

But when you eat Chinese food in China these days,

well, you may be putting yourself at risk.

I don't want to be alarmist here—

you're probably not going to die,

but you might wish you were dead.

For example, if you're visiting China,

you'll definitely want to try the street food.

Just think of it like playing Russian roulette

with your digestive system.

Vendors may not washing things,

or maybe they let meat sit around in the open for hours.

Sometimes street food can be great.

Other times, let's just say it can come back to bite you.

And consider that some of the delicious foods

that you may be eating might have been prepared

using recycled gutter oil.

“It's all in a day's work for this woman.

She opens up a manhole cover and scoops out

as much slop as she can.”

According that Radio Free Asia report,

business is so good,

in just a few short years of scooping out gutter gunk,

that woman made enough money to build a house.

“Her slop eventually ends up at a processing plant like this one,

where it's combined with other animal fat refuse,

to create recycled cooking oil.

Workers put the oil in barrels for delivery

to restaurants and hotels.”

Now that video is from 2013.

So have things changed since then?

Well, since at least 2010,

Chinese authorities have repeatedly cracked down

on the use of gutter oil,

but there's no sign that it's gone.

Especially since authorities have to keep ramping up the crackdown.

Now you might think going to a Western restaurant

like KFC or McDonald's would be safe—

since they have higher standards.

Well, not necessarily.

A video surfaced in Chinese media a few years back,

showing disgusting practices in a Shanghai food-processing factory

that supplies ingredients to a lot of international restaurant brands.

“It began with this grainy video shot by local TV,

showing workers allegedly processing expired meat.

Mixing raw and recycled meat,

and pulling raw meat directly off the floor with their bare hands.”

The plant supplied meat in several Chinese cities

to McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's.

Which I didn't even know they had in China.

Food scandals in China are disturbingly common.

From 'seriously mouldy' meals on Chinese trains...

to kindergartens feeding kids 'rotten, worm-infested food'...

restaurants and institutions may not be

a safe haven of food safety in the least.

A quality control and compliance service provider called Qima

found that almost half of Chinese food-processing plants

fail to meet internationally acceptable standards.

The company conducted several thousand inspections,

audits and tests on food-processing plants in China

and found abnormal levels of pesticides, antibiotics,

heavy metals, bacteria, or viruses

that could put consumers at risk.

The Qima's vice president said,

“There are horror stories, obviously”...

after the company published a report that

48% of the thousands of food processing plants in China

did not meet the requirements set by Western

food trading companies and retailers.

Oh, and careful what you wash down your meals with, too, because...

Number 4

Toxic drinks.

The company that makes Jack Daniel's, Brown-Forman,

estimates that around 30% of all alcohol in China is fake.

But perhaps more shocking is a recent report that

nearly 40% of Chinese people knowingly buy fake booze.

Fake booze means it's not what the label says it is.

It could be anything from a cheaper brand

poured into a more expensive bottle,

to straight-up poisonous bootleg liquor

made in a bathtub.

And in some cases, fake booze can kill you.

Just like real booze—

except fake booze can also kill you

in ways you don't expect.

That's what the World Health Organization's

representative in China says.

“Where counterfeit alcohol

is made from poor quality ingredients

or toxic industrial chemicals,

consuming it could lead to

serious acute illness or worse.”

The nasty chemicals he's referring to

include antifreeze and methanol,

which can make you go blind.

And bottling conditions can be,

as one British newspaper reported,

“perilously unsanitary.”

Which is a nice way of saying that counterfeiters

were caught bottling the booze in toilets.

In a recent case 22 people were poisoned

after drinking fake whisky at a bar southern China.

It's unclear how much they drank,

but according to local reports,

some experienced visual impairment,

dizziness and some even vomited.

Now while for some people that might sound like

just another Friday night,

it turns out the whiskey was poisonous,

and some of them ended up in intensive care unit

and nearly died.

Now you might think:

“Liquor then beer,

you're in the clear.”

But even beer in China can make you sick.

In this video,

workers at an underground factory in Dongguan

are dunking used Budweiser cans into a tub of cheap beer

with their bare hands to fill them up.

Then the Budweiser-branded cans run along

a filthy conveyor belt where they get capped and presto,

ready to quench the thirst—

or claim the life—

of the unsuspecting night club goer.

Authorities estimated that the underground factory

churned out about 600,000 crates of fake Budweiser a month,

which were then distributed to bars and nightclubs.

Fake alcohol won't always kill you,

but you'll definitely have the worst hangover of your life.

For a quick recovery,

just remember,

drink plenty of water.

Just not the fake kind,

like from the illegal bottling plant near Shanghai,

where a man was busted filling empty jugs with dirty tap water

and passing them off as well-know brands like Nestle.

So...China is full of fake liquor and water.

I think I'll just stick with milk.

Unless, of course, it's...

Number 3

Tainted milk powder.

Back in 2008, 300,000 babies got sick

after drinking tainted milk powder

from the Chinese company Sanlu.

At least six of the babies died from kidney damage.

Eventually, two Sanlu executives also died.

From being executed.

The scandal was one of the worst consumer product scares

in modern Chinese history.

Partly because authorities tried—

and failed—

to cover it up.

Although they did successfully cover it up

until after the 2008 Beijing Olympics,

so they get at least a bronze medal for saving face.

Now Chinese authorities say they're working to solve the problem.

But the consumer market doesn't seem to think so.

That's why the majority of Chinese parents

still prefer to buy their infant formula from foreign brands.

There's even a black market of infant formula traffickers

who bring in powdered milk from abroad.

That's like trusting your local drug dealer

more than a government-regulated company.

I mean, literally,

people are buying infant formula on the street.

Which is not smart, since big criminal syndicates

are also getting in on the racket.

In April 2016,

Shanghai authorities arrested nine people

for producing more than 17,000 tins

of fake milk powder with counterfeit labels—

so these products looked like those

from American infant formula brands.

Some Chinese parents are just crossing the border

into Hong Hong to buy legit milk powder,

but the Hong Kong government

has now set restrictions on that.

The demand for high quality milk formula in China right now

is so high, and the supply so limited,

that it's become the most valued gift at baby showers.

I guess I should return

that plush Cthulhu I bought for my niece.

What's that, Shelley?

Ok, fine, it was for me.

On to other things that can kill you...

Number 2

Traffic accidents

Driving around China can be a killer experience.

In 2016 in China there were over 300 thousand deaths

due to road incidents—

more than 800 people every single day.

When you compare that the US—

and adjust for the number of drivers in each country—

you're 6 times more likely to die driving in China.

The best travel advice in China is to avoid the roads—

and take the train.

Well...not always.

And...

Number 1

Air Pollution

In China, the skies aren't always blue.

Air pollution is not only costing the Chinese economy

around 38 billion dollars a year,

it's killing 1 million people per year.

A new study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong

says an average of 1.1 million premature deaths each year

are caused by two types of air pollutants:

a fine particle called PM2.5 and smog-inducing ozone.

PM2.5 are microscopic airborne particles small enough

to lodge deep in the lungs and cause respiratory problems.

That's the number 3 cause of death in China,

according to the WHO.

Other studies link ozone pollution to an increase

in the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases,

which is the number one killer in China.

Beijing is one of China's most-air polluted cities.

It's not good for kids...

or the elderly.

Air pollution is even a reason

many Western business people

want to get out of China.

Or maybe it's just the food.

Or the booze.

Or the car accidents.

So what do you think about the top 5

things in China that could kill you?

Leave your comments below.

And before we go,

it's time for me to answer a question from a viewer

who supports China Uncensored

on the crowd-funding website Patreon.

Karan Joshi asks:

“Can the People's Republic of China

ever split up like the Soviet Union?”

Good question, Karan.

The difference is that in the Soviet Union's case,

it wasn't just one country.

It was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,

essentially a country of countries.

The Soviet Union included Russia,

but also about 15 others,