Him and the South African guy were politely but firmly told to leave China after the government and internet users got mad at them for essentially abusing their privilege too much. They rode bikes where they weren’t supposed too, they flew drones everywhere they went, the constantly used vpns to access banned websites, they complained about the travel restrictions put on foreigners, they owned and operated a bike shop when foreigners aren’t supposed to own stuff, they filmed things they weren’t allowed to film. But the biggest transgression of all, is them working without visas. They did a lot of white monkey work that wasn’t at all regulated. They were the beneficiaries of the dengist reforms which flirted dangerously close with liberalism which is why so much of it was reverted when Xi took office.

Like the time they were in China was some of the most economically prosperous but also economically unequal periods in Chinas history, they left right when the whole global economy took a shit before the pandemic. I think they are jaded about being kicked out. Like the American married a woman who wants to raise their kids in the US meanwhile the South African is still a bachelor but couldn’t go back to South Africa, I think and like they both kind of settled down in the US and can’t really do travel blogs anymore and now just grift for money from their dwindling fanbase. Their biggest problem is like they spent so much time learning Chinese culture, they did nothing to learn about communism. That’s their biggest problem, they tried being neutral about it but you cannot be neutral when it comes to communism, you either support it or you don’t and if you support it you got to support all the time and they weren’t willing to do that.

I think the only silver lining to them is that, despite basically becoming anti-China mouthpieces, they know enough about China to vocally denounce the crazy cults like Falun Gong, like they hate the China uncensored youtubers with a passion, and for those that don’t know, China uncensored is a Taiwanese Falun Gong ran Youtube channel. These guys (Laowhy) does know a lot about China and it’s a fucking shame that they are so critical of it.