Lee and Oli Barrett are a pair of British YouTubers based in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Lee is the father and had lived in China for a period since before 2019. Oli, the son, formerly operated a YouTube channel related to ''

Call of Duty ''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter video game Media franchise, franchise published by Activision. Starting out in 2003, it first focused on games set in World War II. Over time, the series has seen games set in the midst of the Cold W ...

'' and moved to China in 2019. Their channel was established circa June 2019. By May 2020 the two had 100,000 subscribers.
Alternate link at

Yahoo Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from STATS, Inc. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. Bef ...

By June 2021, they had 29 million views. By July of the same year, Lee Barrett was working as a stringer for

China Global Television Network China Global Television Network (CGTN) is the international division of state media outlet China Central Television (CCTV), headquartered in Beijing, China. CGTN broadcasts six news and general interest channels in five languages. CGTN is r ...

. According to ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', the Chinese government sponsors the Barretts for their content, but the allegation was disputed by Lee Barrett on their YouTube channel, claiming that they have taken expenses-paid trips sponsored by government affiliated entities, but had had full editorial independence for their content output.

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The Barretts make content defending the Chinese government and its surveillance program, stating that the Xinjiang concentration camps do not exist, and that Western media are making unfair accusations against China. Ethan Paul of the ''

South China Morning Post The ''South China Morning Post'' (''SCMP''), with its Sunday edition, the ''Sunday Morning Post'', is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group. Founded in 1903 by Tse Tsan-tai and Alfred Cunningham, it has remained ...

'' wrote that "Defending China" was "The key to their rapid audience expansion". Ellery and Knowles wrote that as the Barrets took stances firmer in support of the Chinese government, "the number of subscribers increased exponentially". The two argued against the description "pro-democracy" for the anti-Hong Kong government protesters in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, and that the

Xinjiang internment camps The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers ( zh, 职业技能教育培训中心, Zhíyè jìnéng jiàoyù péixùn zhōngxīn) by the government of China, are internment camps operated by ...

are good.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barrett, Lee People from Shenzhen Living people Video bloggers British expatriates in China Year of birth missing (living people)

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See also

References