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China has a new high-tech breakthrough Robot wives! Is this the future of technology? Or another dystopian nightmare. This is China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest China news, and click the notification bell so you get an alert each time we publish a new episode.
China is trying to lead the world in tech. And apparently, that includes building robot wives. This report from Chinese media Sohu is called “a robot wife has been created, so you don’t need to marry a real wife in the future.” It says Chinese scientists have created realistic-looking female robots that can even do chores. Of course, like some reports about breakthroughs in Chinese technology, this might be a little premature.
Those robot wives look like they can barely move, so I’m not sure how good they’re going to be at unloading the dishwasher. Which is the true test of a successful marriage. Also, this report doesn’t exactly say which institution or tech company is building robot wives. But that last robot is called Jia Jia. She—or it—was created by a team of scientists at the University of Science and Technology in China.
They call her a robot goddess. “Have you had dinner? Eat whatever you like and treat yourself better.” Eat whatever I want and feel good about myself?! Wow, she is the perfect woman! And guess what? According to the Daily Mail, they programmed her to call them ‘lord.’ “Hello” “Hello my lord, how are you?” Ok, to be fair, as some things in the DailyMail, that’s a little bit inaccurate. She’s actually calling him her owner. Much better. But still, it’s incredible. Because they’ve successfully made a three-dimensional female robot as one-dimensional as possible.
Now Jia Jia is capable of matching lip movements to voice and can recreate micro-expressions that are super uncanny valley. Still better looking than this. Yeah, I’m actually glad I ain’t never had a friend like him. Or a friend like this guy. “A 31-year-old software engineer in China was tired of feeling pressure to get married so he built his own robot bride.” Now marrying a robot is not legal in China.
At least not yet. But there’s a reason why there could eventually be a push for robot wives in China. Because of something called the One child policy. For decades, the Communist Party only let Chinese people have one child, with some minor exceptions. Since boys were preferred, girls were sometimes aborted, or killed after birth, or abandoned. What that means today is this: “In absolute numbers, there are 33 million more men than women in China today.” Now you can imagine the kind of social problems that can cause. And in the grand scheme of things, maybe robot brides are a slightly less-bad idea than say... forcing Uighur women to marry Han Chinesemen. Or sex trafficking women from Southeast Asia. And North Korea.
But robotic companions are going to create a whole slew of other problems for every country, not just the authoritarian ones. For instance, celebrity copyright. In Hong Kong, Ricky Ma, despite having no background in robotics, spends 50 thousand dollars to build a Scarlett Johansson robot. “Mark One, how do you feel about Ricky? I really love you, because you is my creator.” That’s disgusting.
I hate bad grammar. Oh yeah, and the fact that this is literally objectifying women. Not to mention— how would the real Scarlett Johansson feel about this? Because at the end of the day, we know what these robot wives will be used for. As Quartz so delicately puts it, “Ricky built the Mark One to be anatomically correct.” Yup. And so the real question is, as the New York Times asks, can robots give consent? I hate everything. But seriously, this isn’t happening just in China. This Frenchwoman said she was engaged to a 3D printed robot she designed herself, telling media, “I’m really and only attracted by the robots.” I guess you could say the French woman... surrendered to the pressures of dating? And this Japanese man married a hologram. Kondo's bride is a 16-year-old with saucer eyes and aquaremine pigtails, but Kondo considers himself an ordinary married man. He told the Japan Times he considers himself a sexual minority facing discrimination, “It’s simply not right. It’s as if you were trying to talk a gay man into dating a woman, or a lesbian into a relationship with a man.” According to the New York Times, these, “pioneers of human-android romance now have a name, ‘digisexuals.’” I will never look at Digimon the same way again. And it might not be too far off that people can actually marry robots.
But the point is, someday soon, there could be a global market for robot wives. And like any other emerging tech market, China wants to be at the forefront. Because of all the potential for espionage and blackmail! Unfortunately, that’s not a joke. Already, people are worried that even a Chinese-made Metro line could spy on people. Imagine what hackers could do to a made-in-China robot wife that lives in your home.
As one China expert told the Epoch Times, “If further developments of this product include espionage functions, such as eavesdropping and taking videos, the user will have a live monitor in the residence.” And I thought Alexa was creepy. So if you’re worried about Chinese telecom company Huawei building your 5G network… ...it might not be too long before we start seeing countries like the US banning Chinese-made robot wives over national security concerns. Yes.
The future is here. And it is stupid. On the plus side, at least there’s no way technology could actually replace real women. Wait, what’s that Shelley? They have artificial wombs now?! Well, what do you think about China’s robot wives? And before you go, now is the time when I answer a question from a member of my loyal 50-Cent Army— fans who support the show through the crowdfunding website Patreon. Zhou Rui asks, “Am I the only one that thinks it's odd that the CCP believes it is OK to debt trap countries into "99 year leases" of part of their country? Why is this OK? In Chinese history, this was part of their "Century of humiliation".
So is it OK to humiliate debtor countries in the same way? That’s actually a pretty deep question. So the Century of Humiliation is a period in Chinese history when Chinese people felt they were losing their place in the world to encroaching foreign powers. Many of those were Western powers, but also Japan. Tens of millions of Chinese people died fromwar, or drugs, or famine.
Basically, China suffered a lot because of imperialism. But today, the Century of Humiliation is mainly brought up as a propaganda tool by the Communist Party. The goal is to get Chinese people to redirect their anger at literally anything else, as long as it’s not the Communist Party.
Remember, the Communist Party wasn’t even in power during the Century of Humiliation. But the Party is perfectly happy to learn from all the tactics used against China back then, and use them today— in its dealings with other countries.
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