Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / The West is CLUELESS about China. Here's why that's a MISTAKE. With Kaiser Kuo

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The West is CLUELESS about China. Here's why that's a MISTAKE. With Kaiser Kuo · The Smart Cookies podcast

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Kaiser Kuo is the host and founder of the Seneca
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podcast, a well -loved current affairs program
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that invites prominent China experts to participate
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in discussions about Chinese political and economic
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affairs. He's also the former director of international
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communications at the Chinese search giant Baidu.
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Kaiser, a warm welcome to the show. Thanks, Zaza.
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Good to be here. What's the number one thing
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that Westerners get wrong about China in 2025?
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I get asked that a lot. Let's start off nice
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and easy. Yeah, you know, it's hard because,
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you know, I mean, it's interesting that you put
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it, you said in 2025, because it's a moving target.
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I mean, 10 years ago, I would have said something
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else. You know, people were talking about how
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China couldn't innovate, you know, or that social
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media was going to be this unstoppable, emancipatory
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force. Today, I think, I guess I'm cheered in
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thinking that People are getting it less wrong.
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I think there's a really interesting narrative
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shift happening in the year 2025 where especially
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younger people, I think, are really changing
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their minds on China, at least in the United
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States. I haven't spent a ton of time in Europe
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this year, so I don't really know whether that's
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followed in Europe. But, you know, I think there
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are still some lingering fallacies. I can get
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into that narrative shift in a little bit. But
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since I mean, to answer your question as directly
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as I can. And there are a couple of, I think,
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you know, lingering fallacies. I mean, the biggest
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one probably is this idea that China wants to
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be some kind of global hegemon, that it wants
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to displace the United States, that it wants
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to, you know. And this is just a failure. of
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american imagination i mean just because you
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know the united states since the second world
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war has sort of assumed this you know global
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hegemony uh they they they assumed that any other
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country that had the wherewithal would also want
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it. But I think that just China really has neither
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the capability nor the desire to do that. They
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don't really want to step into those shoes. And
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I don't blame them. I think they see a lot of
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the headache that comes with it. And they're
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more realistic about it. Now, do they want to
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enjoy regional hegemony? Certainly. I mean, I
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think they want to be the unchallenged, you know,
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top dog in the neighborhood for sure in East
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Asia. But I think that the idea that they're
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and then I think the corollary to that, that
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they want to, you know, become the global hegemon
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is that they want to, you know, push their ideology
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out into the rest of the world, that they somehow
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imagine that their ideology, which, by the way,
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is called Xi Jinping thought. on socialism with
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chinese characteristics for the new era that
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that's somehow a sexy brand that everyone's going
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to be beating a pass their door and is going
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to want to sign on for yeah give me some of that
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xi jinping thought on socialism with chinese
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characteristics for the new era not for the old
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era for this new era it's it's very silly i mean
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it's right there in the name i mean you know
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chinese uh have exceptionalist beliefs about
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china all countries you know especially the so
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-called great powers. They all have it. But I
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mean, we're really familiar with American style
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exceptionalism, but I think maybe less familiar
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with the Chinese style of exceptionalism. It
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isn't a proselytizing religion. It isn't one
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that says our values, our institutions are valid
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for all people in all times. And we must, you
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know, compel the rest of the world to take up
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our same. you know uh institutions and values
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that's that's just not how the chinese have done
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it in fact it's it's equally arrogant if you
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want um it it says well these are specific to
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china's circumstances to china's culture and
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even if you wanted to imitate it you couldn't
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so yeah i think those are probably the the the
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big ones or that that pair i'm a total news junkie
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and to the detriment of my mental health the
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first thing i do every morning is have myself
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a nice and juicy doom scrolling session but in
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any case in the mainstream media at least China
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is almost always, in the West that is, almost
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always depicted as some sort of sinister threat,
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you know, like between the lines, if not completely
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out in the open, at least politically. The news
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is usually either about a new incident involving
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some sort of aggressive saber rattling around
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Taiwan or the disappearance of somebody like
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Jack Ma, etc. So the image of China that is consistently
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served to us is almost that of some sort of a
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bigger and more powerful threat. North Korea
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or something. But then once in a while, there's
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going to be a headline about some insane technological
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breakthrough, like the recent deep seek one that
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runs completely counter to that entire narrative.
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I mean, if China is indeed this endless Asian
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gulag, where all thinking is tightly controlled,
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if not prohibited, how is this breathtaking speed
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and scale of development? even possible. So there
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is this glaring gap in Western media that is
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left completely unaddressed, and I think that's
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on purpose. So I thought you might be able to
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help resolve this pickle a little bit. Sure.
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Let me take a stab at that. I mean, first of
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all, what you describe, I can completely understand
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why someone, especially somebody who, you know,
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isn't steeped in American news media all day
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long would conclude that. I don't think that
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it's as deliberate as you make out. I think that
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the problem is basically a structural one. It's
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a problem of the way that news is reporting.
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I have lived in the United States. I moved back
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to the US in 2016. My wife and I, with our children,
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we moved here from Beijing. And so I've got to
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witness the first four years of the Trump presidency.
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came i mean i'm sticking around for this second
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helping and my god i am really glad that the
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american news media sort of sees it as their
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responsibility or some of them do obviously there
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are some that don't but you know the the reputable
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news outlets they see it as their duty to speak
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truth to power to sort of ferret out the the
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you know the perfidy of of powerful actors right
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they want to you know expose uh the malfeasance
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of you know powerful corporations or individuals,
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you know, political actors. I'm glad of that.
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I'm glad that they see their role as primarily
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adversarial. But we have to ask ourselves, does
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that work when you are reporting on foreign countries?
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Like, I've often said this before, and I think
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it bears repeating. I can pick up a copy of the
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New York Times sitting here in the States or
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the journal, or I can scroll through Apple News
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about, you know, American domestic politics,
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and I will see a lot of very negative stories.
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about what's happening in america with good reason
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and yet i i sort of know that you know no king's
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protests aside once you know blue moon will have
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real protests and people will be charging the
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barricades but most times even though i've read
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yet another story about you know an innocent
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you know black motorist an unarmed man who was
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beaten by cops or another school shooting or
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another corrupt politician or what have you that
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somehow i'm i i have the rest of the newspaper
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as ballast i have my lived experience in america
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that i know that most of american life isn't
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represented by these extreme headlines so that's
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great i mean i i still you know like that feeling
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like you do you know i'm like a masochist as
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you are in the morning i i wake up every morning
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and i open my eyes and i say okay what fresh
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outrage from donald trump today but i still kind
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of know that things aren't truly truly off the
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rails just yet i mean we are in the midst of
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a constitutional crisis and all this stuff but
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and still somehow things kind of function now
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And that's because I have, well, like I said,
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the rest of the newspaper, I have my lived experience.
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And you don't get that when you're reading only
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five or six stories in a newspaper in a given
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day on China. They're going to be the more sensational
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stories. Some of them are going to be sensational
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in the bad direction, the sinister things you
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were talking about, the giant gulag, you know.
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They're going to be about human rights violations,
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the oppression of some minority ethnicity. They're
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going to be about... you know, wild stories about
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environmental degradation or corruption or what
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have you. But then there are all the stories
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that are extreme in the other direction about
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that, you know, crazy technological leap. So
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it's sort of a U -shaped thing. You don't have
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this, the middle part that you would ordinarily
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have, right? You don't have all those perfectly
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normal pedestrian stories that you do have in
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that thick American newspaper. So that's part
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of it. It's structural. And, you know, the only
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way that you can really compensate for that is
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to think about it, is just to remember, yeah,
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this is how news works. So, yeah, there are some
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bad actors. There are some news outlets who do
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deliberately set out to cherry pick very, very
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bad stories. But I don't think that's most of
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them. I don't think that's what, I mean, I...
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Probably I'm fortunate enough to have probably
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known maybe 80 or 90 percent of the English language
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news reporters who have covered China in the
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last 30 years personally. And I don't think many
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of them are out to smear China. Sometimes in
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retrospect, you know, as a Westerner, you remember
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all those headlines that were kind of increasing
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in quantity. about like iraq or i don't know
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afghanistan or libya or any other countries and
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you know that happened before another unsuccessful
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and horrific military intervention so that's
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why i you know i'm always a little bit more you
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know and you're right to raise that because i
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have actually you know i've i've had that same
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observation i mean it was especially the case
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in 2020 2021 uh there was this drum beat you
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you really felt it though it felt like it was
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leading up to something and it felt like you
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know 2002 right it felt like you know where is
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the the judith miller who's going to show up
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and you know uh and and and talk about you know
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weapons of mass destruction or whatnot i i get
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that i i absolutely get that and there there
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have been times when i think uh the media and
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certain individuals in the media have been wildly
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irresponsible before we talk about um systems
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and politics Since you just said you live between
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China and the U .S., I wanted to ask, what's
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everyday existence really like in a first -tier
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Chinese city, say Beijing or Shanghai these days,
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especially if you contrast it with life in the
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West? Yeah, I mean, you asked specifically about
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first -tier cities, and that's where, unfortunately,
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I mean, that's where I spent, unfortunately,
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I suppose, where I spent most of my time. I lived
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in China for 20 continuous years from 1996 to
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2016. and lived in Beijing, except for about
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six months when I was in Shanghai. And yeah,
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I traveled around a lot. But yeah, where I was
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rooted was in Beijing. And since I've been going
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back, post COVID, I've definitely been spending
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most of my time anchored in Beijing. And I mean,
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it's a delight. I mean, the quality of life is
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absolutely splendid. I don't know where you want
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to start, but there's this sort of seamlessness
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to it that's made possible by the digital platforms
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and by, you know, the transportation infrastructure
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from the moment you get off the plane. You know,
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everything is just quite efficient. Gone are
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the days where it was, you know, there were sort
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of hellishly bureaucratic systems to navigate.
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Everything just works really smoothly and is
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really, really affordable. I mean, I was lamenting
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the other day coming back to the States how,
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you know, my first Uber ride back in the States
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probably cost as much as a whole month's worth
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of riding around daily in, you know, DDs, same
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kind of rideshare deal. But often those cars
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were state -of -the -art EVs. I mean, they were
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just really, really nice vehicles and just dirt
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cheap. You know, you cross town for a couple
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of bucks. It's pretty astonishing. You know,
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life is good. There's no power outages. There
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is abundance. I mean, that's the thing. I mean,
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we hear a lot now with Derek Thompson and Ezra
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Klein's book about abundance. And, you know,
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you live in a Chinese first tier city. That is
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a life of genuine abundance. There is. you know,
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a surfeit of stuff, restaurants galore, food
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that you just unimaginable quality of food and
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service. And then, of course, just just the infrastructure.
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The subways are frequent. They run, you know,
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at very long, reasonable hours. They are extraordinarily
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clean, extraordinarily well air conditioned.
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Everything about them is. is is pretty great
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damn the chinese tourist board should really
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hire you because this sounds well i mean this
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is again i mean with caveat that i'm talking
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about beijing i'm talking about shanghai i'm
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talking about cities like shenzhen that i have
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the privilege to go but there's a lot of those
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there are there are yeah uh there's by the way
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it's not that too yeah um yeah life in the countryside
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must be quite different right But still much,
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much, much better than it was. I mean, I just
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spent a month living in a very small town over
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the summer where my band, I play in a rock band
14:17
there. We had a writing retreat where we composed
14:20
the material for our forthcoming album. And it's
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a little town. It's obviously very touristy.
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It's in the mountains. We go there to get away
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from the summer heat of Beijing in southwestern
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China. Even in a city like that, you just have
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high -speed broadband connectivity, 5G connectivity.
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I was once in my life, in the entire time, I
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was only once when we went into the deep mountains
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to pick mushrooms. It was the only time I did
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not have 5G connectivity in China. That's crazy.
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A slight pushback based on absolutely nothing
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at all, but I hope you will humor me. I haven't
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even been to China, but I was on a long flight
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back to Japan where I live recently and watched
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a really good Chinese movie. It was called Another
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Day of Hope. The story was about like, I think
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it's from 2023. The story was about a middle
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aged manager who's always in a hurry because
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of his really demanding job. And that's why he
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hits a food delivery worker on a moped who's
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always also always in a hurry because he has
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to meet these like very stringent delivery quotas.
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It's a really cool film made in a sort of like
15:34
a hyper realistic style. Feels very authentic.
15:37
Also quite openly critical about a lot of. social
15:40
issues anyway but what struck me the most was
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the portrayal of how kind of i don't know if
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it's accurate you're gonna tell me but how pressurized
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and stressful trying to survive in modern china
15:51
in one of these cities really is. I gotta say,
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as a lefty, I was a little bit disappointed at
15:57
that because people in the film seem to be constantly
15:59
rushing to get their money, trying hard not to
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get fired that day, having to pay out of pocket
16:05
for more demanding medical procedures and stuff
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like this. I mean, besides some cultural differences,
16:11
it felt just like life in the West does. Would
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you say that's accurate or semi -accurate? Yeah,
16:17
I don't think that's that doesn't sound far fetched
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at all. I mean, it is a pressure cooker. It is
16:21
a rat race. And that's why we have these phenomena
16:24
like lying flat, why people are constantly talking
16:27
about involution. It's hyper competitive. It's
16:30
it's very, very hard. But again, for somebody
16:36
who. is gainfully employed you know who does
16:39
have a job you only have the one job you can
16:41
work one job and live fairly comfortably yeah
16:44
you it's not like i mean i have friends in the
16:46
states okay maybe not my friends but you know
16:49
younger acquaintances who have to work two jobs
16:52
and you know and also have to pay uh exorbitant
16:57
amounts of money for for health care look it's
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i'm not i again i i really was want to amply
17:05
caveat anything that i say when i when i talk
17:08
about you know gleaming infrastructure and stuff
17:11
like that that is not the entire picture by any
17:13
stretch of the imagination the the world that
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that's described apparently in this film which
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i have not yet yet seen but um have heard of
17:20
about it it it's another facet of china for sure
17:25
look i mean like any society It's complex, and
17:28
there are many hilltops from which you can view
17:32
the surrounding countryside. Some of them are
17:34
going to afford you some very lovely views. Some
17:36
of them are going to be, you know, a view of
17:38
the garbage heap. There's not, you know, it's
17:43
by no stretch of the imagination an ideal society,
17:47
and there are a lot of losers as well. Yeah,
17:52
I mean, I think, you know, the pressure thing
17:56
is... It is very real. We talk about 996 work
18:01
culture. That was my next question, by the way.
18:04
For a very long time. Yeah. You know, it was
18:06
expected that you would work six days a week,
18:08
9 a .m. to 9 p .m. 996. Now, there's been pushback
18:15
to that. A lot of companies have been, you know,
18:18
publicly shamed for having that. They're not
18:21
legally supposed to do that anymore. Does that
18:25
mean it's gone away? Probably not. I think there's
18:27
still a lot of it. And it's not just in the workplace.
18:32
I mean, the whole country kind of operates on
18:35
KPIs, whether you are a high -ranking government
18:38
official or a lowly peon, you are answerable
18:44
to somebody and you've got these key performance
18:47
metrics, these key performance indicators that
18:49
you've got to turn in. That's kind of how the
18:51
country runs. So I live in Tokyo and I'm learning
18:57
the language. It's a nightmare. And at Japanese
18:59
school, I have a classmate from China who's about
19:01
two levels above everybody else. It's really
19:03
cranky. He's just so smart. I'm not happy about
19:07
it. Anyway, he's a young guy working in IT and
19:09
he told me that working in Japan is kind of more
19:12
chill than working in China these days because
19:15
it's so competitive. And I was like, that can't
19:17
be true because for Westerners, working in Japan
19:19
is an absolute nightmare, you know. For squeamish
19:22
Europeans such as myself who views a 40 -hour
19:25
work week somewhat of a tragedy already, that's
19:29
almost unimaginable. So I just wanted to ask
19:32
how competitive is it in China if you're a young
19:36
person and you're trying to get a job? Well,
19:39
as we all know, there's a very, very high youth
19:41
unemployment rate right now in China. Part of
19:44
that is just simply a function of... You know,
19:47
elite overproduction 20 years ago, you know,
19:50
a tiny percentage of people of college age 18
19:54
and 22 actually were enrolled in four year programs.
19:57
Now it's over 50%. I mean, it's multiplied just
20:02
in the case of in the span of a few decades that
20:06
has the, you know, I mean, it. it means they're
20:11
graduating a lot of people for whom you know
20:13
the job market hasn't adjusted yet i i liken
20:16
it to buying clothes for teenage kids who are
20:19
growing up i mean you you can't you know the
20:24
kids never going to be dressed right and they're
20:26
either going to be wearing clothes that are too
20:28
small or too big it's it's very hard to guess
20:30
exactly when the growth spurts are going to happen
20:33
and that's the same with sort of planning on
20:34
do i invest in post -secondary education really
20:38
really heavily now well when i have the money
20:41
and am i able to you know make structural adjustments
20:45
to the labor market at the same time probably
20:48
not it's you're probably going to to have a period
20:52
where you'll have pretty significant uh rates
20:55
of unemployment or underemployment or you're
20:57
going to have you know Times as we did in the
21:02
very, very recent past where there were massive
21:05
labor shortages, including for white collar work.
21:07
So, you know, it's like buying clothes for kids.
21:09
I don't worry too much about it right now. I
21:13
think there are other factors, you know, demographics,
21:16
for instance, that are sort of mitigating against
21:17
that. But it's tough to get a job. And when you
21:23
do have a job, I mean, it's tough to keep it,
21:25
right? I mean, people are very, very, there's
21:28
expectations. And, you know, look, I worked in
21:33
an industry. I'm a guileless American. I was
21:35
born in the States. I'm, you know, a babe in
21:38
the woods when it comes to understanding the
21:41
complexities of Chinese office politics, which
21:43
make, you know, a TV show like Succession look
21:46
like child's play. I mean, it's very complicated.
21:50
And I fortunately have a... conciliary at home
21:55
in the form of my wife who is a beijinger respect
21:58
navigate these things really well but i could
22:02
only work in industries uh where i think the
22:05
ethos was very much very deliberately copied
22:08
from from america from silicon valley specifically
22:11
so that were you know deliberately free of politics
22:15
where you know the the structures were deliberately
22:18
flat where they had kind of this radical egalitarianism
22:22
uh so the internet company that you mentioned
22:24
when you introduced me uh that was one where
22:27
the the enterprise culture was very deliberately
22:30
cribbed from from the united states and so you
22:34
know they encouraged you to be you know guileless
22:37
direct open candid and uh really frowned on you
22:42
when you evaluated your peers Like I said, KPI
22:45
is really big. One of the big questions was,
22:47
does this person engage in office politics? And
22:50
the correct answer is no. No, of course not.
22:54
They would never do such a thing. But in a typical
22:58
Chinese office, engaging in office politics is
23:01
a must. It's Game of Thrones. But where does
23:04
the difference come from? That's fascinating.
23:08
It's endemic. I mean, you know, it's funny. A
23:13
lot of people who live in the West or who, you
23:15
know, who've encountered Chinese people outside
23:18
of their native setting, I think have a very
23:22
strange idea of what Chinese people are like.
23:24
They see them all as relatively retiring, relatively
23:28
modest, shy, not very assertive. And they seem
23:33
somewhat simple. technically very competent or
23:38
whatever they do their job well they have no
23:41
idea of the internal life of the chinese mind
23:44
which is it actually grew up on uh what i would
23:50
say are the most intricate psychological head
23:56
fuck machiavellian uh works of fiction ever devised
24:02
by man okay do tell more romance of the three
24:06
kingdoms for example um okay i'm gonna write
24:09
that down yeah please do i mean it's it's uh
24:12
you know the the just just explorations of human
24:16
psychology cunning trickery uh that that will
24:20
make your head spin it's just absolutely wild
24:24
um and you know you go into a bookstore in china
24:28
and the the the business book section is just
24:31
filled with these sorts of primers you know this
24:35
is how you apply the stratagems of you know various
24:38
i mean look everyone in the west knows sunzi
24:41
right the art of war he's just one of many one
24:46
of many uh and and you know that is one work
24:49
in in a large body a big corpus of strategy literature
24:55
it's it's pretty scary So there's definitely
25:01
a market for this kind of sassy general of the
25:05
past sort of literature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not
25:08
always so sassy. I mean, sometimes they're, I
25:10
mean, they're devastatingly, you know, effective.
25:15
So yeah, I think it's funny. It's like, you know,
25:17
that person sitting next to you in your Japanese
25:20
class, you have no idea. uh what they would be
25:23
like in in an office setting if you were not
25:26
just competing with them for a good grade in
25:29
the class oh my god now i see him in a completely
25:30
different light i'm never gonna have beer with
25:32
him again yeah by the way speaking of culture
25:36
i this just hit me when i was traveling in asia
25:39
you know especially korean pop culture is everywhere
25:43
i was in cambodia i was in thailand i was in
25:45
in vietnam and everybody was looking everybody
25:50
was watching these k dramas on their little phones
25:53
and stuff korean beauty product commercials are
25:57
everywhere you know japan is also big with the
25:59
anime industry in the west and everywhere else
26:02
how come china isn't cultivating this kind of
26:06
a soft power approach you never hear of like
26:08
a really successful like global phenomena game
26:11
of thrones type of chinese tv The first rule
26:15
of soft power should be don't talk about soft
26:18
power. I think that China's mistake is it thinks
26:21
about cultivating soft power to the detriment
26:26
of its actual soft power. I think this is changing.
26:31
I think part of it is just simply a function
26:33
of, you know, sort of per capita GDP. I mean,
26:36
when you look at, I mean, I grew up in the States
26:38
and When I think about when it was when we all
26:42
suddenly knew all the names of all the sushi
26:44
fish and we all suddenly knew all the names of
26:48
the major Akira Kurosawa movies, when we were
26:52
watching anime and we knew the names of anime
26:56
artists and directors, that was around the time
27:00
when Japan had reached about 75 % of US per capita
27:06
GDP. Yeah, and then Korea, too. Around the time
27:10
where Haru sort of broke in America, where suddenly
27:13
everyone was watching Winter Sonata and, you
27:17
know, K -pop bands. This is pre -BTS still, but,
27:22
you know, K -pop was a thing already. Yeah, it
27:25
was, again, it was in that 72 to 75 % of American
27:30
GDP had, you know, had attained that in South
27:33
Korea. China is still far, far, far from that.
27:35
So, I mean, I think part of it is that. I think
27:38
part of it is just simply you said you're a lefty.
27:40
I'm maybe invoking a lot of sort of, you know,
27:43
Marxist, you know, economy as the major driver
27:49
of culture, of superstructure as a function of
27:53
these economic functions. I think that's part
27:56
of it. But I think there's, you know, another
27:58
piece of the answer simply is that China, you
28:03
know, has tried too much to. direct it from the
28:07
top to control it from the center these things
28:10
need to shelter in from from the periphery they
28:13
need to grow up from the grassroots and you know
28:16
china's you know as an authoritarian state it's
28:19
suspicious of of that that kind of thing and
28:21
it hasn't always been helpful in creating them
28:24
the other thing is it's it's also that there's
28:27
just a big enough domestic market where it doesn't
28:31
feel like it needs to calibrate its appeal internationally
28:36
all these things combine to to militate against
28:39
it i mean there's been no breakthrough chinese
28:41
rock bands internationally right i mean to my
28:44
great chagrin uh there have been no i mean yeah
28:48
television shows yeah i mean now we're seeing
28:51
this ridiculous thing i mean if i had to labubu
28:57
have you heard of labubu it's yeah i mean it's
29:00
inescapable yeah yeah okay so that i'm very puzzled
29:05
by i do not understand but yeah there there's
29:08
there's that uh i that video game that caused
29:12
quite a storm wasn't it wukong or something it's
29:15
called yeah black myth wukong i did a show on
29:17
that uh and i i tried to play it you know i'm
29:19
not very good at those things so i mean i blew
29:22
my 50 bucks and bought it and played it for a
29:24
little while and then gave up but um i mean it
29:27
was cool looking it was i mean the art's amazing
29:32
But yeah, I think, you know, that's what we're
29:34
going to see in digital stuff. I mean, there
29:38
have been a couple of Chinese video games. One's
29:43
called Genshin Impact, I think, that has had
29:47
quite an impact. And then, you know, Black Mithukong,
29:50
there are another couple that are on their way
29:52
out right now. Some games that are set in the
29:57
kind of the... martial arts epic world that I
30:01
think are probably going to at least make it
30:04
outside of greater China and into, like you said,
30:08
Korea, Thailand. And again, the Chinese soft
30:13
power thing, we can't only measure it by looking
30:15
at the developed world. We need also to look
30:19
at countries like Thailand, at the Philippines,
30:21
at Malaysia, where Chinese soft power actually
30:23
is making pretty substantial inroads. Okay, let's
30:28
switch it up to a more macro level. I don't know
30:31
if that's true, but a while back there was this
30:32
stat that everybody was repeating. I don't know
30:34
if it's a stat or urban myth or whatever, that
30:36
Shanghai is the city with the most billionaires
30:40
in the world. Now, nominally, China is, of course,
30:43
a socialist state, a Marxist country. So here's
30:46
the classical question. Is China a communist
30:49
or a capitalist country or something in between?
30:53
Yes. I'm sure this is not the first time you've
30:57
been asked this. No, I mean, look, it doesn't
31:02
describe itself as a communist country, right?
31:04
First of all, it's ruled by a communist party,
31:07
but they describe it as a socialist state, and
31:10
they describe it as a market socialist state.
31:13
So, I mean, if we want to go back to our Marxist
31:16
theory, what it believes is that there is a vanguard
31:21
Leninist party. that is leading its transition
31:25
through the stages of history to basically, you
31:29
know, do this project of infill, right? You know,
31:32
Marx didn't expect that revolutions were going
31:35
to take place in these gigantic, you know, agrarian
31:39
empires like Russia or China. It was supposed
31:43
to happen in Germany. It was supposed to happen
31:45
in England. It was supposed to happen where there
31:47
were large and angry proletariat classes, right?
31:50
That's not where... marxist revolutions happened
31:54
in you know the in if we know our marks well
32:00
the historical role of of the the bourgeois state
32:05
mode of production when you know of capitalism
32:07
was to create material abundance and and you
32:11
know drive these class differences of course
32:13
that would result in the overthrow of the capitalist
32:16
class by the workers uh but you know that we
32:20
they sort of short -circuited that in china uh
32:23
they had already achieved you know a workers
32:26
party in in control of china and so they had
32:29
to go back and fill in the material abundance
32:32
part by you know sort of managed capitalism that's
32:36
what the whole chinese characteristics used to
32:39
mean it was just sort of uh you know the the
32:43
in dung's theory he was making up allowing the
32:48
capitalist mode of production to you know be
32:52
around for some indefinite period until such
32:54
time as china actually did enjoy material prosperity
32:57
you know pauperism is not supposed to be you
33:01
know uh socialism right um there's no expiration
33:06
date on that i mean i don't think it's ever going
33:09
to come around i i imagine there are probably
33:11
some people toiling in the bowels of the chinese
33:13
academy of science who are trying to use generative
33:18
AI or machine learning in some way to replace
33:21
the pricing mechanism and to achieve genuine
33:24
communism that way, that's good luck. But no,
33:29
I think it's a hybrid. I think what we need to
33:33
understand about China and China as it's always
33:36
been is it's a deeply syncretic society. It's
33:39
always, you know, it never dwells on ideal. It
33:44
has dwelled in short. and and kind of unfortunate
33:47
periods on on ideological purity but generally
33:52
speaking across you know the the many centuries
33:55
china uh is is kind of okay with having things
34:00
that if you look too close they they do seem
34:03
to contain contradictions like is it really okay
34:07
to be a buddhist and a confucian and a taoist
34:10
all at the same time well no but most chinese
34:13
people sort of were right It was OK. And so it's
34:17
OK to be a Leninist capitalist with technocratic
34:23
tendencies and kind of, you know, a Confucian
34:26
kind of substrate. Right. These are all there
34:30
and they're all sort of explicitly there. You
34:33
know, if you ask the leadership how it would
34:35
describe itself, I mean. What is in the current
34:39
ideological mix? There's huge helpings of Confucianism.
34:43
It's, you know, Confucianism that's been stripped
34:46
of some of its uglier things, you know, Confucianism
34:48
that hopefully has some of the overt, you know,
34:53
patriarchy stripped out of it. It's got plenty
34:55
of Leninism, obviously, but it's also got a lot
34:58
of Singaporean style, you know, sort of, you
35:01
know, engineering state technocracy. And it's
35:05
got plenty of just sort of unbridled capitalism
35:08
in it as well. It's a very complicated mix of
35:12
things. You mentioned the leadership. If you
35:16
are a Chinese person and you have political ambitions,
35:20
what sort of the path to becoming, let's say,
35:23
the governor of a province or whatever, do you
35:25
still have to go through these notoriously difficult
35:29
elite civil service exams? Yeah, you do. I mean,
35:34
you're going to want to join the Chinese Communist
35:37
Party, of course, from a very, very early age.
35:39
You're probably going to want to join the Communist
35:42
Youth League. I think one of the most powerful
35:46
institutions is the organization department.
35:49
I mean, their whole job is to dole out those
35:51
KPIs that I talked about and to assess you on
35:54
it. Look, you need to rise up through the ranks.
35:58
There is this idea that, you know, there's some
36:00
people who are sort of born into privilege in
36:02
the princelingdom and they get to sort of jump
36:05
the line. And that probably happens to some extent.
36:07
But for the vast majority of people, you slog
36:10
your way up. You know, you work in a district
36:13
office. You work then, you know, in a municipal
36:15
party. Is that as Game of Thrones as your average
36:18
Chinese office? Yeah, I'm sure it is. I'm sure
36:23
it's really, really brutal as well. But I've
36:27
never really done it. But I have friends who
36:30
have, who've risen up through the ranks. And
36:34
that's what you do. You rise up through the ranks.
36:36
You check all the boxes. You tick the numbers.
36:39
You hit your targets. So again, it's about KPI.
36:43
That's how you rise through the ranks. Exactly.
36:45
You rise through KPIs. And I think you'd be naive
36:52
to believe that it's purely meritocratic. Of
36:54
course, there's a lot. of soft variables in it.
36:57
There's a lot of who you know, and there's a
36:59
lot of, you know, you know, making a good impression
37:01
and, you know, being a good schmoozer, serving
37:05
the right booze at the banquet. There's a lot
37:07
of that, of course, as there is in any bureaucratic
37:10
organization. But relatively speaking, I think
37:14
there, I mean, it is fairly meritocratic in that
37:19
sense, such that if you look at the members of
37:23
the Politburo Standing Committee today, all but
37:25
two of them have actually run a province, right?
37:30
There's seven members of the Politburo Standing
37:32
Committee. Wang Huning has not run a province.
37:35
I think Ding Xuesiang is the other one who has
37:38
not actually run a province, but the rest of
37:40
them have. So they've either been governor or
37:43
a provincial party secretary, and usually two
37:47
provinces. And none of the leaders in recent
37:50
years has... has had less than two provinces
37:53
that they have served provinces or provincial
37:57
level municipalities where they have served as
38:00
a municipal or provincial party secretary so
38:04
yeah there's to to get to climb the ranks you
38:07
got to pay your dues yeah exactly so these guys
38:10
that you mentioned that have been that have been
38:12
running at least like a province or two who make
38:15
it to the top they have to be extremely politically
38:17
shrewd number one but They have to be super sharp
38:20
as well. So again, not some Soviet -style apparatchiks
38:24
whose only competence is to be loyal to the regime,
38:26
right? That seems to be. I think none of them
38:29
are... Yeah, I mean, they're not dumb. Yeah.
38:33
You might not like all of them, but... Right.
38:36
I mean, one example, one of the two men who is
38:40
on top right now who... maybe exhibits a lot
38:45
of that kind of shrewdness that you were talking
38:46
about is this guy, Wang Huning, who really, you
38:51
know, a lot of people have described him as sort
38:53
of the gray eminence, the sort of the person
38:58
who has sort of, he's the party theorist. He's
39:02
the one who, you know, has come up with the major
39:04
ideas. And he has served under, not, I mean,
39:08
under Jiang Zemin, under Hu Jintao, and now under
39:10
Xi Jinping. So he's a real survivor. He's the
39:13
author of some of the big ideas that these three
39:18
party secretaries have have been, you know, their
39:23
signature ideas. So it's he's he's quite remarkable
39:28
in that in that way. And, you know, he was he's
39:31
just an academic. He's somebody who really, you
39:34
know, he's a theoretician. all kind of ironic
39:37
given the fact that in the west we are so proud
39:39
of our like supposed meritocracy but some of
39:41
our leaders have literally stepped out of a bad
39:44
cartoon yeah some of them have i mean even some
39:48
of the ones who i i i love uh like barack obama
39:52
for example i would make no apologies for my
39:54
my fondness for him you know he was a state senator
39:58
uh before he became he served only two years
40:02
of his six year first six -year senate term before
40:04
he ran for for president right uh that's that
40:07
he's never held an executive position right uh
40:12
prior to that he i think he did a very good job
40:14
as president but he yeah he certainly wouldn't
40:19
have made it in the chinese system in that regard
40:22
is it possible to figure out how the majority
40:25
of of chinese people view its leadership it's
40:30
not somehow it's it's not impossible i mean look
40:32
look there there are a lot of of of surveys that
40:37
are done and if you do a survey people are going
40:40
to point at it and they're going to say ah that's
40:43
exhibiting preference falsification right that
40:46
you know the the people who are answering that
40:49
feel obliged to answer positively you know as
40:52
they have sort of an invisible threat hanging
40:54
over them i don't know how true that is i think
40:57
and i had conversations with people who have
41:00
devised very clever means by which they can actually
41:04
measure the extent of preference falsification.
41:08
I'm unable to just repeat exactly methodologically
41:12
how that works, but it was convincing at the
41:15
time. If anyone's really interested, look at...
41:17
an interview that I did with Rory Truex, T -R
41:20
-U -E -X, at Princeton University, who talked
41:23
about this problem of preference falsification
41:26
and ways to sort of circumvent it and to get
41:29
out of your data. And I think that, in fairness,
41:33
that most of these surveys, after they've been
41:37
cleaned, the data's been cleaned, show pretty
41:39
high levels of regime support. And I don't think
41:44
that that should be all that surprising. I think
41:45
that... You know, you asked at the beginning
41:48
of the top of our conversation, which has flown
41:51
by, by the way, it's been so fun. At the top
41:54
of the hour, you were asking me about, you know,
41:56
the things that people get wrong. I think maybe
41:58
not in 2025, but for, you know, God knows how
42:02
long, the big blind spot has been that Americans
42:07
especially have sort of asked implicitly or explicitly,
42:11
you know. Why don't you Chinese hate your government
42:14
as much as I think you should? Not implicitly,
42:19
quite explicitly. I remember it well. Yeah, yeah.
42:23
I mean, that's the really interesting thing.
42:26
They can't fathom that. And I'm really curious
42:30
as to why that is. Why do they assume that? And,
42:33
you know, I think at the very bottom of this
42:37
is this. basic refusal to accord political legitimacy
42:42
to any uh political authority that isn't elected
42:48
the u .s president elected through procedural
42:51
democracy right i mean if you are not uh in office
42:56
because people voted you into office then somehow
42:59
you are not actually legitimate and you know
43:02
i mean we can argue philosophically about whether
43:04
that's the case but i think this whatever you
43:08
think. I mean, you know, it can derive from performance.
43:13
It can derive from, you know, even uglier things
43:16
like jingoism, nationalism. It can derive from
43:20
historical narratives. It can derive from coercion
43:23
too, sure. But I think that this idea that it,
43:26
I mean, it makes us constantly assume that anything
43:32
that the party does, it does only to keep itself
43:35
in power. It makes us, you know, take the worst
43:39
possible interpretation of anything that China
43:42
does. It gets its hands on some technology. Well,
43:47
clearly it wants to use it to repress its own
43:49
people and possibly to, you know, to defeat us
43:52
militarily on the battlefield or to flummox America's
43:56
plans in the world. I mean, it's the great blind
43:59
spot. And I think that one of the big things
44:03
that contributes to this. I get when, you know,
44:07
your ordinary sort of not particularly well -educated
44:11
American thinks that. I mean, that's because
44:14
of what you were talking about, that kind of
44:17
media coverage they get. I'm not going to blame
44:19
them for it. But then there are these really
44:21
quite sophisticated Americans who, you know,
44:24
read the New York Times and listen to NPR and
44:26
read the New Yorker. And they are... And I'm
44:31
sorry for dwelling on Americans, and I think
44:33
this is probably true of most Western Europeans
44:35
too. Definitely, yeah. But I think that the problem
44:39
is that they see critical and dissident intellectuals
44:46
kind of overrepresented in their media diet.
44:48
So when you come across somebody who is presented
44:51
to you as a Chinese intellectual, odds are he's
44:55
going to be somebody who's very very critical
44:57
of the chinese communist party who is probably
44:58
liberal in his own thinking and we it creates
45:04
this sort of false sense that all chinese intellectuals
45:07
are dissidents to qualify as an intellectual
45:09
you must be dissident if you are somebody who
45:12
you know is smart in china you're gonna be somebody
45:16
who doesn't like your government and That I think
45:20
is a failure on our part. I think that's a failure
45:23
of the media. I have a really good friend who
45:25
quipped, we don't know who the David Brooks of
45:31
China is or what he thinks. Some sort of middle
45:34
of the road establishment, kind of boring intellectual.
45:38
Like what does that guy think? I think there
45:42
are people out there. And I would like Mark Leonard,
45:46
for example, at the European Council on Foreign
45:49
Relations, who's written books about looking
45:52
for these guys. I've been trying to understand
45:54
mainstream intellectual life in China. Great.
45:57
There's a guy named David Ownby who has the fantastic
46:01
website. He's retired now and he's writing only
46:05
occasionally on it, but it's still a fantastic
46:07
resource. It's called Reading the Chinese Dream.
46:11
And on that, he translates. intellectuals from
46:16
across the political spectrum in China. I mean,
46:18
some of them, the ones who you think that we're
46:21
going to identify with, the so -called liberals,
46:23
their ideas are positively ghastly. I mean, a
46:26
lot of these guys are like ethno -nationalists
46:30
or Trump types. Some of them are pretty horrifying.
46:35
And then some of the so -called mainstream intellectuals,
46:39
you would actually find quite persuasive. And
46:43
very, very sensible. In the West, we've obviously
46:46
been taught that neoliberal capitalism, with
46:49
as little interference as possible, is the cornerstone
46:53
of development. However, when it comes to technologies
46:56
of the future, you know, stuff like renewables,
46:59
EVs, and now even AI, China, with its state supervision,
47:03
if I understood it correctly, is vastly outperforming
47:06
most of the West. I mean, it's not even close.
47:09
Not even close. How's that possible? Well, I
47:12
think we were wrong. I mean, neoliberalism and
47:15
unfettered markets weren't the only way. Amen.
47:20
Yeah, no, that's where we got it wrong. And it's
47:23
kind of funny because when you are somebody who,
47:26
like me, grew up in America, you know, went to
47:29
college during the Reagan administration, hating
47:31
Reagan even, you know, voting for Bill Clinton
47:34
and all that stuff, you kind of absorb some neoliberalism.
47:39
It's hard not to. And especially when you go
47:42
to China, you go to, you land in China and every
47:46
time you are sort of asked to choose between
47:49
on the one hand, the policy that seems to support
47:53
state -owned enterprises, you know, they're sluggish
47:58
and inefficient and wasteful and, and, you know,
48:02
bureaucratic or, you know, the reform. uh the
48:08
the the sort of reform angle you know the the
48:10
nimble entrepreneur you know who's like breaking
48:13
free of the red tape you know asking for for
48:16
forgiveness and not permission who's you know
48:18
that scrappy entrepreneur it's it's you know,
48:21
you end up, it really reinforces this kind of
48:25
neoliberal bias in you. And it takes, it took
48:29
me a while to recognize that I was doing this
48:32
habitually. It took until I was sort of choking
48:35
on smog and realizing, oh, fuck. I mean, this
48:39
is actually what I asked for, right? I mean,
48:41
I was the one who was all for, you know, like,
48:43
yeah, FDI. Yeah. You know, lots of, you know,
48:50
uh, export led growth and, and, you know, less
48:53
regulation and, and yeah, polluting industries.
48:56
Um, and you, you suddenly realize you're living
48:59
in this society with a higher genie coefficient
49:02
than America. And you're living in a society
49:05
that, that where, you know, the environment,
49:07
that environmental problem is just so horrible.
49:10
You're taking a kid to the hospital because he's,
49:13
you know, unable to breathe from a terrible asthma
49:15
attack. And, you know, By about 2010, I started
49:20
to realize, wow, you know, I think I was on the
49:23
wrong side of a lot of this stuff. You know,
49:27
and I'm somebody who had always thought of myself
49:30
as being of the left. But, you know, in the Chinese
49:33
context, it can really fuck you up. So I think
49:39
those of us who have watched the industries that
49:43
you've talked about. renewables you know the
49:45
green energy transition and and electric vehicles
49:48
happen uh i think we're all kind of believers
49:52
in in enlightened industrial policy now uh we're
49:56
all believers in in the idea that uh you know
50:01
states have a very very important role to play
50:04
in offering you know targeted subsidies to to
50:07
get to coordinate an industry i mean especially
50:10
you take something like evs for example right
50:13
it required an awful lot of state coordination
50:15
that wasn't just going to happen uh but they
50:20
also used some uh unapologetically kind of neoliberal
50:26
approaches for example you know i don't know
50:29
if you've heard the term it's a term of art when
50:31
you in in china but they talk about catfishing
50:35
so what they they do is they will catfishing
50:37
that we know it is the west is it no not not
50:40
the internet catfishing yeah they'll allow a
50:44
gigantic predator a catfish an enormous catfish
50:47
to come in uh and in this case it's tesla and
50:51
it is a ferocious competitor that also enjoys
50:54
a lot of government support you know in china
50:57
you know Elon Musk built his gigafactory in Shanghai
51:00
with a lot of government help and a lot of government
51:03
subsidies. And his cars enjoyed the same subsidies
51:06
in China for consumers as their domestic competitors
51:10
did. And, you know, it was there to force domestic
51:15
competitors to be, well, to be competitive, to
51:18
be able to outcompete them. And so if it weren't
51:22
for the competition of a Tesla, you wouldn't
51:24
have. a BYD or a Zeker or these other, you know,
51:28
Xiaomi is in cars now. They're doing great. It's
51:32
pretty astonishing. Now, a lot of them are going
51:35
to die. I mean, there cannot be 100 EV manufacturers
51:40
in China. A lot of them are going to die. And
51:42
China is like weirdly unsentimental about allowing
51:46
this to happen, the Chinese state is. So it's
51:49
a very interesting combination. So for people
51:54
who are interested in this, I could not recommend
51:57
more highly the work of Ilaria Matsoko. She's
52:01
at CSIS, and a lot of your listeners will think,
52:05
oh, CSIS, American establishment think tank.
52:11
But her work is top -notch. She works on industrial
52:14
policy. The other person is, of course, Kyle
52:17
Chan. kyle k -y -l -e chan c -h -a -n uh his
52:22
uh substack uh which focuses on this it's called
52:27
high capacity uh he is one of the smartest writers
52:31
on chinese industrial policy and on i mean everything
52:36
i know i know because of these two basically
52:38
just before the interview i read an article that
52:42
china is on the verge of pulling ahead in the
52:44
quest to achieve commercial nuclear fusion even
52:48
so basically limitless green energy at the same
52:51
time trump is continuously saying that america
52:55
has to go back to exclusively fossil fuels and
52:57
coal very much the technologies of the 19th century
53:01
i mean the farce writes itself right yeah i mean
53:05
then what can you say you just sort of at that
53:07
point you just throw up your beer it's like i
53:10
i can't believe this this is the strangest timeline
53:14
So much for meritocracy. Right. I mean, it's
53:18
horrifying. I mean, and look, what you're saying
53:22
here is so true. And it's making a lot of us
53:26
just sort of have to confront really unpleasant
53:29
realities. I mean, they're not that unpleasant
53:32
in my case. I mean, I'm perfectly happy to see
53:35
China triumph in this. I mean, I'm a cosmopolitan.
53:39
I want... you know the good result i don't care
53:43
who who takes us across the line right i i am
53:48
though by nationality i'm an american and so
53:52
i'm sorely embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed
53:56
a deeply deep deeply ashamed of what's happening
53:59
it's it's such a fucking clown show i mean i'm
54:02
i'm i'm horrified by it what can i say i mean
54:06
but what what i'm you know, really coming to
54:10
realize is that I've got to be able to say the
54:13
thing that I've been thinking for so long out
54:16
loud. It's still weirdly hard for me to say,
54:19
but that is that, you know, especially when it
54:24
comes to green energy, you know, China is just...
54:33
whipping the shit out of America. I mean, it's
54:37
not a contest that America is going positively
54:41
backward. I mean, fracking will be looked back
54:49
on in due time as a gigantic curse. China is
54:54
going to run away with dominance in... the green
55:00
energy transition and that will be the footing
55:04
on which it achieves genuine industrial dominance
55:08
in the world it already is industrially dominant
55:11
in the world but this isn't even funny i mean
55:13
this is it's just we're so distracted by other
55:17
minor bullshit when this is really the thing
55:20
that we should all be entirely focused on yeah
55:24
Now, clearly, America sees China as the number
55:27
one boogeyman most of the time. I mean, politicians
55:29
are very open about that. And Trump is perhaps
55:31
embodying this even more than most. Does China
55:35
have the same sort of antagonistic, hostile view
55:38
of America? Well, now I think it more or less
55:43
does. I mean, I think for a very long time, it
55:45
was always willing to give America the benefit
55:47
of the doubt. It was able to say, well... that's
55:50
just this administration. When the other party
55:52
is back in office, things will be better. I think
55:55
that, you know, now having seen Trump, then Biden,
55:57
then Trump again, they realize that it has very,
56:02
you know, next to nothing to do with the party
56:05
in power, that the American stance is implacably
56:08
hostile. And yeah, so, and still, still, even
56:14
in this situation, I don't think that you have
56:17
the level of... animus toward you know the the
56:21
united states that that we see in dc toward china
56:24
i mean china's uh posture has been reactive and
56:32
it has been entirely understandable from where
56:35
i sit it's it it makes perfect sense that that's
56:38
how they would have responded to this whereas
56:41
i look at the united states and i see uh you
56:44
know moral panic i mean i would describe i'm
56:47
quoting somebody who i heard say this i thought
56:49
it was pretty brilliant but the american response
56:52
to be this strange mixture of hubris you know
56:56
overweening pride of of fear uh of collapsed
57:05
confidence and complacency all at the same time
57:09
it's just bizarre uh the the panic part of it
57:13
and you know Zaza, I've spent a lot of time trying
57:17
to think about, you know, what is it that has
57:20
America so just completely unhinged in its response
57:26
of watching China surpass it? And I think there
57:32
are a whole bunch of layers to it. I mean, one
57:35
of them, I think, is that America has this exceptionalist
57:40
idea, right? Manifest destiny. Yeah, yeah. I
57:45
mean, you know, we kind of think that it is our
57:47
God -given right. There are certain domains that
57:50
are ours to own, you know, and that nobody else
57:55
is allowed to, you know, be an interloper into
57:59
these. And, you know, global hegemony, I guess,
58:03
is one of them. You know, innovation is one of
58:08
them. Having impossibly white teeth is another
58:11
one. Or, you know, turning any building into
58:14
a drive -through. These are like Americas by
58:17
right. The thing about American exceptionalism
58:24
is China has basically knocked out one load -bearing
58:28
wall after another. that has upheld our American
58:32
exceptionalism. I mean, it starts with you're
58:36
not supposed to be able to have a functioning
58:38
market economy except under the auspices of political
58:41
democracy, right? So China does that. That one,
58:44
okay, there's some adjustments. Two of them that
58:48
have to do with, you know, the relationship between,
58:50
you know, political authority and technology,
58:55
right? We have this emancipatory. narrative that
58:59
said and we we believed this until we didn't
59:01
until it proved to be completely wrong as after
59:04
the arab spring and after the the russia gate
59:07
and all this stuff we we basically thought that
59:10
digital media and especially social media was
59:13
going to sound the death knell to authoritarianism
59:15
was going to bring bring the people will will
59:18
rise up and and bring down authoritarianism you
59:21
can't nail the jello to the wall internet censorship
59:24
is not going to work So, you know, the internet
59:28
wants to be free, right? And so that didn't work
59:33
out so well. The failures of the Arab Spring
59:36
uprisings, all the color revolutions and all
59:38
that, right? Then the other one is about innovation,
59:42
right? You're not supposed to be able to be innovative
59:44
unless you're free, right? Unless you have the
59:47
free exchange of ideas. Look, I mean, I hold
59:50
on to some version of that myself. I mean, a
59:54
really quite, you know, mild version of it that
59:58
says, yeah, you know, having a censored internet
1:00:04
is going to impose costs on your ability to innovate
1:00:07
in the long term. But, you know, I mean, I joked
1:00:11
about this in an interview that I had with the
1:00:13
Washington Post back in like 2015, I think, or
1:00:15
2016, where I said, it turns out you don't need
1:00:18
to know the truth of what happened in Tiananmen
1:00:20
Square in 1989 to build a smartphone app. And
1:00:27
I mean, it's true. I mean, so there's a lot of
1:00:29
innovation that has happened even under unfree
1:00:33
auspices. Then there's these other two, like
1:00:37
we were supposed to, the country that was all
1:00:40
about free trade, right? Until suddenly we weren't.
1:00:45
And now China is holding the banner of free trade
1:00:47
and we're tariffing everybody left, right and
1:00:50
center. And of course, industrial policy, right?
1:00:54
That wasn't supposed to work either. We opposed
1:00:57
it because it doesn't work. But now that we see
1:01:00
that it works, we're adopting an industrial policy.
1:01:03
So all these pillars of exceptionalism have been
1:01:06
falling one after another, these load -bearing
1:01:09
walls. And so we are in this kind of crisis of
1:01:13
confidence. And what do we do when we're in such
1:01:15
a crisis? We lash out. We have these sort of
1:01:18
spasms, these inchoate spasms of kind of violent,
1:01:22
you know. And it's kind of embarrassing to watch.
1:01:27
And you think China is trying to match this energy?
1:01:30
No. No, no. I don't think so at all. Because
1:01:34
you said at the beginning that it might be a
1:01:36
bit more, you know, the view of the U .S. might
1:01:38
be a bit more antagonistic. Yeah, antagonistic,
1:01:40
but it's not spasmodically antagonistic. Right.
1:01:43
I mean, it's not out of panic. I mean, it's been
1:01:46
deliberate and planned. Look, that's another
1:01:50
misunderstanding. maybe overstate the extent
1:01:53
to which China is capable of planning, right?
1:01:56
They imagine like this 100 -year marathon, Michael
1:02:00
Pillsbury, I mean, the truth of it is that China
1:02:04
muddles through like everyone else. Most of the
1:02:07
time it flies by the seat of its pants. It's
1:02:09
vaunted planning, you know, made in China 2025,
1:02:12
whatever. These things are mostly just sets of
1:02:15
wish lists of things with KPIs attached to them.
1:02:20
They're not master plans, the vaunted five -year
1:02:24
plans. People imagine this to be sort of like,
1:02:28
you know, Soviet planning back in Brezhnev's
1:02:31
day or even earlier. It's not that at all. But
1:02:36
there is some, you know, I mean, China is not
1:02:42
just lashing out, you know, randomly in this
1:02:47
like... crazy way the way the united states is
1:02:51
i mean my my wife describes it as the trump policy
1:02:57
is she calls it turtle boxing it's when you sort
1:03:00
of like wail your arms randomly um and and that's
1:03:05
like their method of fighting china is not doing
1:03:08
that interestingly enough there's a whole slew
1:03:12
of articles uh out recently that say that China's
1:03:16
favorability in the world, including in the US
1:03:19
itself, is rising while the latter is falling.
1:03:23
Why do you think that is? Is it because of what
1:03:26
we just talked about, you think? Yeah, part of
1:03:28
it is. I think, I mean, we're in the midst of,
1:03:30
I think, a very clear narrative shift on China.
1:03:32
Again, it's not just in the United States. I
1:03:35
think it's broadly, you know, in the West, right?
1:03:38
I mean... I think it's a combination of push
1:03:41
and pull factors. I mean, obviously, Trump factors
1:03:44
in here, right? Probably not just in the way
1:03:47
that we immediately think. I mean, sure, there
1:03:49
are a lot of people in the States right now who
1:03:51
think he is taking the country in a truly awful
1:03:54
direction that we are, like I said, in the midst
1:03:57
of a constitutional crisis. That, you know, if
1:04:01
the U .S. is going to turn into an authoritarian
1:04:04
state, let's at least, I mean, I would rather
1:04:10
go live in the technocratic, competent authoritarian
1:04:13
state rather than in this like, you know, crazy
1:04:16
kind of stochastic, you know, kakistocracy, right?
1:04:22
It's just dumb authoritarianism in America, the
1:04:26
way that Trump is taking it. But I think there's
1:04:29
also a lot of people who are maybe pro -Trump
1:04:32
whose minds are also changing on China because
1:04:35
in part they see how their leader is behaving,
1:04:39
right? They think that, you know, Trump didn't
1:04:42
just taco on this. It's Trump always chickens
1:04:45
out. But they think when it comes to China, he
1:04:48
actually sees something, you know, that he admires
1:04:51
in Xi Jinping just as he sees it in Putin. And
1:04:55
they kind of go along with it. You know, I see
1:04:58
this changing like on Taiwan, the way that after
1:05:01
the failed recall vote, And then, you know, not
1:05:05
allowing Lai to visit, you know, to transit through
1:05:10
the United States and not allowing this, you
1:05:14
know, planned security summit that was going
1:05:19
to take place in D .C. with Taiwanese officials
1:05:23
to go forward that, you know, he basically sees
1:05:27
Taiwan as a loser. He's ready to cut a deal with
1:05:32
China. we're starting to see this i mean there's
1:05:35
a lot that the right you know for better for
1:05:39
worse kind of admires about china they see it
1:05:41
as like this law and order society that's you
1:05:44
know broadly speaking ethnically you know you
1:05:49
know homogeneous right uh that it's not obviously
1:05:53
but you know the but i think that um i i i kind
1:05:58
of i i get that i mean i'll take it it's better
1:06:02
than preparing for war uh i think though any
1:06:08
fair -minded assessment of the country's attainments
1:06:12
right now you know any alien civilization comes
1:06:16
to earth and looks at the united states and looks
1:06:18
at china right now and is going to say probably
1:06:21
it's going to give the price to to china just
1:06:25
in terms of you know its inertia in improving
1:06:28
measures of you know human flourishing But I
1:06:32
think the important thing is that this shift
1:06:35
is happening. If you look at the Pew data, the
1:06:38
shift is happening. It's weirdly, except for
1:06:41
in Poland or Hungary, I can't remember what country,
1:06:44
there's like one outlier. But in every other
1:06:46
country they look at, and especially in the United
1:06:48
States, it's the young people, like the 18 to
1:06:50
25s, where you see this gigantic shift in a positive
1:06:55
direction. So I think that's significant because
1:06:57
that's a leading indicator. These are people
1:07:00
who are going to... have their views being formed
1:07:02
now and they're going to hold on to them for
1:07:04
a while so this this suggests to me that as we
1:07:08
we move forward the the narrative shift is gonna
1:07:12
you know it's gonna stick now i think that's
1:07:15
happening for a couple of reasons now um again
1:07:18
you know some of it is push but the pull parts
1:07:21
of it i mean and i guess this is may still more
1:07:23
push but they feel They've been gaslit by the
1:07:27
mainstream media on China. The China that they
1:07:30
now see coming at them in their socials, in their
1:07:34
IG feed or whatever. I mean, they see these beautiful
1:07:41
urban landscapes. They see these nice apartments.
1:07:44
This is not a Potemkin village. It's not fake.
1:07:51
It's the very nice parts of a real village. There's
1:07:55
lots of really shitty parts of that same village.
1:07:57
They don't show those, obviously, because it's
1:07:58
social media. But they're not being lied to there.
1:08:05
And these are people in the United States. They
1:08:09
don't live in societies with really high social
1:08:11
mobility, with really fast -changing urban landscapes.
1:08:15
They don't have gazillions of kilometers of high
1:08:19
-speed rail. So they're naturally very impressed.
1:08:22
when they see what these influencers are pushing
1:08:24
on the socials. And they also don't have trauma
1:08:27
from, what, 36 years ago, right? They weren't
1:08:31
born. They weren't born in 1989. They don't have
1:08:37
that image burned into their minds the way everyone,
1:08:40
you know, millennials or Gen X or boomers do.
1:08:44
It's very different. I think the combination
1:08:50
of these things means that this vibe shift is
1:08:52
probably going to stick around for a while. I
1:08:55
think on balance, that's a good thing. There's
1:08:57
a lot of, you know, a lot of naivete. I think
1:09:01
there's a lot of Pollyannish misconceptions about
1:09:04
it. You know, there's overcorrection. You know,
1:09:06
China is not some techno -utopian paradise, right?
1:09:09
Obviously it's not, right? They're going to downplay
1:09:12
the repression. They're going to romanticize
1:09:15
its governance model, which is not perfect. i
1:09:18
don't know i think that both cynicism and the
1:09:22
naive kind of optimism they they distort reality
1:09:25
i i'm you know surprise surprise i'm i'm i'm
1:09:30
about like let's let's be clear -eyed let's look
1:09:33
at it what what it really is but let's not let's
1:09:36
not smoke the copium either let's not you know
1:09:38
ask but at what cost at every turn and you know
1:09:43
Try to find some reason to self -soothe and make
1:09:47
Americans feel better. Yeah, maybe there's a
1:09:50
correction or overcorrection going on in the
1:09:53
opposite direction as well. I've never been to
1:09:55
the States, but I have a good friend. She's American
1:09:58
that I met in Berlin when I was still living
1:10:01
there. And then she moved back to the States
1:10:02
and we had a video call once. She was in New
1:10:04
Orleans. She was living in a house in some suburb.
1:10:07
And she showed me around her neighborhood and
1:10:10
it was... Quite shocking is the word that I was
1:10:14
looking for. You know, decaying infrastructure,
1:10:17
shacks everywhere, homeless people. And I'm coming
1:10:20
from Eastern Europe. I wasn't born in Beverly
1:10:22
Hills or something. You know what I mean? My
1:10:24
expectation wasn't over the roof, but it certainly
1:10:27
wasn't what we usually see in the movies, in
1:10:30
Hollywood movies where everything's polished.
1:10:32
Then she came back after a couple of years for
1:10:35
a visit and she said she was robbed at gunpoint.
1:10:38
Two times in three years. Lord. So, you know.
1:10:42
Yeah. Works in the other direction as well, I
1:10:45
suppose. Yeah. That's a data point. I mean, you
1:10:47
know, one thing you can say is China is very,
1:10:50
very safe. No question about that. I mean, it's
1:10:54
something I've been thinking about an awful lot.
1:10:56
When I left China in 2016, I had no doubt in
1:10:59
my mind that it was a low -trust society. It
1:11:02
was absolutely a low -trust society. Everyone
1:11:04
really believed in their heart of hearts that
1:11:07
most other people... were running a game they
1:11:10
had some ulterior motive that everyone wanted
1:11:12
something people were deeply untrusting and very
1:11:14
cynical uh that seems to have changed and i don't
1:11:20
know why i'm part of it is just you know the
1:11:23
panopticon of ever -present surveillance but
1:11:26
it does seem like there's there's this is this
1:11:30
is something i really want to explore yeah there's
1:11:32
a shift there's a shift I'm not ready to pronounce
1:11:35
on it yet. But why was it a low -trust society?
1:11:38
Where was that coming from? Neoliberalism, buddy.
1:11:42
I mean, it's because it was just so dog -eat
1:11:44
-dog. Because it was, I think that, you know,
1:11:48
it was a scarcity mindset that everyone had to
1:11:53
get theirs. And, you know, you found a way to
1:11:58
get in line ahead of the other guy and you put
1:12:00
your morals aside. I mean... When I moved to
1:12:04
the States, one of the things that I realized
1:12:07
as the election approached was how many Chinese
1:12:11
in the United States, immigrants from China,
1:12:15
were supporters of Donald Trump. I was horrified.
1:12:20
I couldn't get my head around it initially. And
1:12:23
I thought, well, I mean, it's about affirmative
1:12:25
action. It was. Affirmative action was a big
1:12:28
piece of it. The sort of casual racism. In my
1:12:31
final analysis, I think it has to do with just
1:12:34
they came from a really low trust environment.
1:12:38
They were ready to say, you know, I am going
1:12:40
to screw you and yours and anyone else who gets
1:12:44
in my way before you can screw me and mine. I'm
1:12:48
going to climb over your body to get over that
1:12:49
wall. But yeah, I think it's significantly changing
1:12:55
right now. What do you think is the guiding principle
1:12:57
of Chinese foreign policy? Pragmatism. I think,
1:13:03
you know, look, I mean, there's realism in IR
1:13:08
theory is something I have great contempt for.
1:13:11
I have great contempt for IR theory. But if there
1:13:13
is one country in the world that kind of practices
1:13:16
something akin to realism, it's got to be China.
1:13:20
They're not under a whole ton of illusions about
1:13:23
their morality or anything like that. They have
1:13:26
a pretty clear sense of what constitutes. chinese
1:13:30
interests and those are the things that they
1:13:32
pursue you know this has been on display um with
1:13:36
the ukraine war uh on you know every everything
1:13:40
you see everything you see about the ukraine
1:13:43
war about china's participation really needs
1:13:45
to be understood through the lens of you know
1:13:48
china has chosen the side it chose a side on
1:13:50
day one the side it chose was china right it's
1:13:54
it's going to do whatever it believes is its
1:13:58
own national interest. And the way that national
1:14:02
interest is defined is it can be pretty crude.
1:14:06
But I think we need to understand that it is
1:14:09
not about global mastery. It's about the things
1:14:16
you would expect, access to resources. It doesn't
1:14:19
want its oil supply, which is still you know,
1:14:24
substantially coming from the Gulf and from Iran
1:14:26
to be choked off. So what are the choke points?
1:14:28
The Strait of Hormuz is a big choke point. The
1:14:31
Strait of Malacca is a gigantic choke point.
1:14:33
So everything it does in the South China Sea
1:14:37
has to be lanced through this idea that that
1:14:40
is the oxygen pipe. And if somebody else can
1:14:43
get its hands around China's oxygen pipe, it
1:14:46
does not like that. So some... I think it's like
1:14:50
98 % of China's energy that's imported by sea
1:14:57
comes through the Strait of Malacca. It's just
1:15:02
a core national interest. It's not ideology that
1:15:08
motivates it, certainly not. It's not altruism.
1:15:11
It's not building its relationships with countries
1:15:15
of the global south. out of the kindness of its
1:15:19
heart. It knows that selling it as such can sometimes
1:15:24
be to its benefit, but that's not why it's doing
1:15:27
it. And I don't think that the people on the
1:15:30
other end are under any illusions about that.
1:15:33
They know that China wants to be there, wants
1:15:35
to make money, and they're going to find a way
1:15:36
that they can do some kind of Pareto optimal.
1:15:41
exchange into the lens of the Edgeworth box.
1:15:45
We'll trade the thing that we don't value that
1:15:47
we have in abundance for the thing that we value
1:15:49
and that you have in abundance. That's kind of
1:15:53
how it's gone down. It's as simple as that. I
1:15:58
mean, I don't think there are any outlying instances
1:16:01
that you can point to with the possible singular
1:16:04
exception of Taiwan, where there is You know,
1:16:09
where there's deep national historical, you know,
1:16:15
what I think an outside viewer would reasonably
1:16:19
say is irrational factors that motivate. Not
1:16:23
even with Japan, given the recent history between
1:16:27
the two countries. But look at, you know, look
1:16:29
at Sino -Japanese diplomacy just in the years
1:16:34
since Trump. came back into office especially
1:16:36
since liberation day uh it's been sweetness and
1:16:39
light right i mean they i didn't know because
1:16:42
unfortunately again living in japan i see that
1:16:48
a lot of japanese people are sort of parroting
1:16:50
american viewpoints which is a surprise given
1:16:54
the fact that there's like american bases here
1:16:56
and stuff and you know yeah i don't know if they
1:16:59
see china is a threat a lot like my my father
1:17:02
-in -law who's an older Japanese gentleman, you
1:17:05
know, he's always saying how he's afraid of China,
1:17:08
that he heard it on the news again. And it makes
1:17:11
absolutely no sense because I don't think Japan
1:17:14
has, I mean, it's an amazing culture. I love
1:17:16
living here, but I don't think it has anything
1:17:19
that, you know, China would necessarily want,
1:17:23
you know, especially not in this kind of like
1:17:25
guise of invasion or like military aggression
1:17:27
or anything at all. So it's kind of... It's a
1:17:32
bit startling to notice this. I don't count that.
1:17:36
I mean, look, it's, you know, again, it's crudely
1:17:42
instrumentalized often by the leadership in China.
1:17:46
I don't know. I mean, I think I imagine the LDP
1:17:49
does the same exact thing. They understand that
1:17:52
there are political gains to be had from instrumentalizing,
1:17:57
you know, hostility toward that. that longstanding
1:18:00
historical adversary. And I've often said that
1:18:04
when it comes to anti -Japanese nationalism in
1:18:09
China, the party kind of stands astride the fire
1:18:12
pit of nationalism with a fan in one hand, it
1:18:15
can fan up those flames whenever it wants to,
1:18:18
and a fire hose in the other. It can just spray
1:18:20
them down when it threatens to spill its banks
1:18:23
and burn down the valuable crops in the surrounding
1:18:26
countryside. So it uses that issue really instrumentally.
1:18:32
And there have been really fascinating studies
1:18:35
exactly the way that China has managed it. Because
1:18:38
you can look at what terms get censored, what
1:18:42
conversations get shut down in the aftermath
1:18:45
of flare -ups. And they have quite fine -grained
1:18:50
control over that valve. Pretty impressive. So
1:18:55
we're not accused of being total China shills
1:18:58
here. Let's talk about some of the problems as
1:19:01
well. What are some of the biggest issues China
1:19:04
is facing today, would you say? Look, it's all
1:19:08
very, very complicated. But, I mean, where do
1:19:12
you want to start? Let's start with economics,
1:19:13
right? Look, there's a lot of different ways.
1:19:17
I'm not an economist, and I don't even really
1:19:21
play one on TV. I hear two cases put to me, both
1:19:27
pretty compellingly about the housing market,
1:19:31
right? The real estate market. Now, I mean, the
1:19:34
simple facts of it are that there's a lot of
1:19:41
downstream effects from the real estate market.
1:19:44
It's extremely key. Property market was so crucial
1:19:50
in local government finances. It represents a
1:19:56
huge piece of wealth for households in China.
1:20:01
There's a lot of anxiety around it. And the bubble
1:20:04
burst, right? Well, that's the question. Did
1:20:07
the bubble burst or did the party deliberately
1:20:10
deflate an asset class that was threatening to
1:20:14
burst? I thought that was kind of like the canon
1:20:17
version of events now, that the party deliberately
1:20:19
burst the bubble. There's a version of it. To
1:20:23
tame the speculation aspect. Right, right. So
1:20:25
if it was a controlled implosion, did it nevertheless
1:20:31
cause more collateral damage than they had anticipated?
1:20:35
Did they control it well enough? Did it even
1:20:38
serve its function? Are they full of regrets
1:20:42
now? There's lots of questions that I don't,
1:20:45
I mean, you know, the other big thing is, so
1:20:48
basically there's the real estate crisis, there's
1:20:51
consumption, right? There's, and you know, once
1:20:55
again, we see sort of soft consumption numbers
1:20:57
coming out, but I am sort of a consumption obsession
1:21:02
skeptic. I think that there's ways to understand
1:21:07
consumption. and the apparent softness of consumption.
1:21:13
I'm going to quote a couple of things that, that
1:21:16
from conversations that I've had, but one wasn't
1:21:19
a conversation. It was actually just a very,
1:21:21
a post that I read that I thought was really,
1:21:25
really interesting. It was written by somebody
1:21:28
who is a foreign national who runs a major foreign
1:21:36
cosmetics. a luxury cosmetics brand that sells
1:21:42
into China. And she runs their China operation
1:21:45
and says their sales have been really significantly
1:21:49
down. But one thing she's not seeing, she's not
1:21:53
seeing Chinese women wearing less makeup or not
1:21:57
wearing as good quality makeup. What they're
1:22:01
doing is they're substituting local brands that
1:22:05
have gotten very, very, very good. you know,
1:22:09
that foreign brand that they used to buy from
1:22:11
her. And so that is going to lower overall consumption,
1:22:16
obviously, because they're paying less for the
1:22:19
same good. But is that necessarily bad? So that's
1:22:27
one thing. The other was a reporter who I had
1:22:31
dinner with when I was back in China over the
1:22:33
summer from, you know, a major newswire. And
1:22:37
he told me, I said, you've got to think about
1:22:40
this. If you live in a city like Beijing where
1:22:44
there is a fantastically good public transportation
1:22:46
systems, great subways, everywhere you go, everywhere
1:22:50
you could conceivably want to go to get to the
1:22:52
subway, at the most, you're going to pay 30,
1:22:56
40 cents to hop on a really, really nice, good
1:23:00
quality, you know, bike share bike and get to
1:23:02
the subway station. And so, and you're all going
1:23:06
to do. pay for it with this app that it's like
1:23:09
you scan a QR code. It's like frictionless. Why
1:23:14
would you buy a car? It's going to suppress consumption,
1:23:18
right? You're going to not buy one of the big
1:23:21
ticket items, you know, one of these durable
1:23:22
goods that is sort of assumed to be part of the
1:23:25
consumption package. That made a ton of sense
1:23:29
to me. And I see instances of that everywhere.
1:23:32
When I look around, you know, the public goods
1:23:36
that Chinese are consuming that don't factor
1:23:39
in as the C portion of GDP, but are instead I
1:23:44
or G, right? Their investment or their government
1:23:47
spending. It's different than in a Western economy.
1:23:52
So I'm somewhat skeptical about beating the drum
1:23:58
too hard on, oh, China is not consuming enough.
1:24:03
And then, of course, there's the overcapacity
1:24:06
issue. And I keep thinking, you know, I've just
1:24:09
started reading abundance, right? One man's overcapacity
1:24:15
is another man's abundance. Right? I mean, it's
1:24:19
not, it's just, I'm kind of persuaded that, especially
1:24:24
in the sorts of goods that we're talking about,
1:24:26
like solar panels, really? Is that something
1:24:30
we're going to worry about? overcapacity with
1:24:33
oh no the rest of the world will have access
1:24:37
to extremely inexpensive you know poly polysilicon
1:24:41
that that does not seem like a terrible problem
1:24:45
to me okay i'm my two cents on that but again
1:24:50
you probably think i'm sounding like a shill
1:24:52
right not at all these there are problems i mean
1:24:58
look yeah okay what about demographics Again,
1:25:02
I live in Japan and things are becoming quite
1:25:06
dire here. There are signs that the country is
1:25:10
becoming, what should I call it? I don't want
1:25:14
to say a big nursing home, but a country that
1:25:16
is led by the elderly for the elderly because
1:25:20
the elderly have all the power and there's simply
1:25:22
not enough young people anymore. Even the government
1:25:25
is now saying that certain industries are faltering
1:25:28
because... there just isn't enough people anymore.
1:25:31
I think this year, Japan lost another million
1:25:33
people, and every year is worse than the previous
1:25:36
year, which is pretty... And it's sad. As soon
1:25:40
as you go out of the big cities, you see ghost
1:25:42
towns everywhere that were once booming resort
1:25:44
towns, commercial centers, and so forth. And
1:25:48
I don't have anything against the elderly. I
1:25:50
hope I'm going to be 80 or 70 or whatever old
1:25:54
once myself, but I hope... We're not just going
1:25:57
to be a bunch of 80 -year -olds. Also, young
1:25:59
people innovate. Young people obviously bring
1:26:01
new ideas. And I'm wondering, since China had
1:26:06
this one -child policy for such a long time and
1:26:08
is now facing low birth rates as well. By the
1:26:12
way, Korea is apparently even worse than Japan.
1:26:15
How do you see this play out? Yeah, I mean, it's
1:26:19
bad. Obviously... And again, sorry, just a last
1:26:24
interjection. America doesn't have this problem
1:26:26
because for all its faults, it's an immigrant
1:26:28
culture. They're trying to curb it, obviously.
1:26:31
Yeah, okay. But as it stands right now, America
1:26:33
doesn't seem to have this problem. People are
1:26:36
still coming in. Anyway, yeah, go ahead. No,
1:26:38
I mean, it's a problem. I mean, clearly, I think
1:26:41
you'll find nobody who's going to speak a word
1:26:44
of defense for the one -child policy, which I
1:26:47
think everyone now recognizes went on way too
1:26:51
long. and was, you know, enforced way too rigidly.
1:26:56
I mean, there's some silver lining. You see marriage
1:27:02
rates and birth rates have ticked up appreciably
1:27:06
just in recent quarters in China. Yeah, you can
1:27:11
read the news on that. You know, part of it is,
1:27:16
you know, it's... what happens when nations industrialize,
1:27:21
as it turns out. To be fair, that is not just
1:27:24
a Chinese problem. Europe is not doing any better.
1:27:27
Indeed. The government is taking all sorts of
1:27:33
measures. They're now literally handing out bonuses
1:27:37
to couples for having children. They're working
1:27:43
on this. They recognize it as a... big problem
1:27:46
like the engineering mindset is what got them
1:27:48
into this problem in the first place and they
1:27:50
think that the engineering mindset is what's
1:27:52
going to get them out of it but they're also
1:27:55
you know in the mean in the meantime it's funny
1:27:58
uh you hear a lot of people talking about uh
1:28:00
you know in the same breath uh a collapsing demographic
1:28:07
you know collapsing birth rate and the problem
1:28:09
of youth underemployment you hear them talking
1:28:12
about collapsing birth rates in china and uh
1:28:15
runaway automation like how china is is is over
1:28:20
automating its production i don't see how people
1:28:25
don't see knows how these these kind of fit together
1:28:29
and solve one another in in a sense right uh
1:28:33
i think that's not lost on on china's leadership
1:28:36
i think the demographic problem is serious though
1:28:39
i i think that it's funny i have i have a friend
1:28:43
i'm going to interview her for my podcast at
1:28:46
some point but her name is joan and she's an
1:28:49
american a chinese american like me who uh many
1:28:53
years ago went to china and has worked in television
1:28:55
for a long time she moved from beijing down to
1:28:58
shanghai i had drinks with her a couple months
1:29:00
ago she told me she's working on a sitcom right
1:29:05
now she's producing a sitcom and the premise
1:29:08
of the sitcom is uh the gender war in gen z in
1:29:12
china today and What she has noted, and everyone
1:29:17
I have talked to has borne this out. Every time
1:29:22
I lay hold of somebody in their early 20s, I
1:29:25
ask them about this. I ask them about the dating
1:29:28
situation. And they say, basically, all of us
1:29:33
were born in this one -child generation. All
1:29:35
the women were told by both their parents and
1:29:39
all four grandparents, in this world, you're
1:29:42
going to have to be 10 times better. You're going
1:29:45
to have to fight for everything. You are going
1:29:47
to have to be your best possible self all the
1:29:50
time because it's a grossly sexist, unfair world.
1:29:55
So fight, fight, fight. And all the men were
1:29:59
coddled and entitled and treated like the little
1:30:02
prince and had everything handed to them. And
1:30:05
many of them are, well, they're coddled and entitled
1:30:09
and they act like little princelings. Do you
1:30:14
think these strong, capable, independent women
1:30:17
are going to want to date these loser guys? Absolutely
1:30:21
not. Do you think that these guys are going to
1:30:24
want to date what they think of as these, you
1:30:26
know, like, you know, steroidal feminists who
1:30:29
are like man haters? Probably not. So there's
1:30:32
this, you know, full -blown battle of the sexes
1:30:35
raging right now. No wonder they're not marrying
1:30:37
and dating, right? So I think that... in a comic
1:30:42
way. And by the way, she's hired stand -up comics,
1:30:45
most of whom are returnees from abroad who now
1:30:48
live in Shanghai, as in her writing room. So
1:30:51
she's got all these comedic talents. So I really
1:30:54
look forward to the show. I think it'll be really
1:30:55
funny. There's a generational thing, angle to
1:31:00
it as well. So I think it's going to be a great
1:31:02
show. Well, how's this dynamic between Gen Z
1:31:06
genders playing out at universities then? There
1:31:09
must be... overwhelmed by female students if
1:31:12
the guys are indeed so confident. I think it's
1:31:17
everywhere in the world. If you look at the United
1:31:18
States right now, I think many universities,
1:31:22
it's like over 60 % female to male entering classes
1:31:28
in universities. Europe too. I think that's a
1:31:31
great thing. I can't imagine any downside to
1:31:35
that. You know, I feel a little bit sorry for
1:31:39
the women who maybe aren't going to be able to
1:31:43
couple up, but do they really want to anyway?
1:31:47
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, the big question
1:31:53
I'm asking, and I think that, you know, we're
1:31:55
looking at Japan all the time right now about
1:31:57
this because there's a huge population of Chinese
1:32:00
immigrants in Japan. It's causing all sorts of
1:32:03
issues. I have friends who lived in Osaka for
1:32:09
a long time who just sold their house there.
1:32:11
They said they can't take it anymore. It's bad.
1:32:15
I got to be honest. And if I'm feeling it as
1:32:18
a white guy, I cannot imagine how people from
1:32:20
other Asian countries are feeling, especially
1:32:23
from China and Korea. Because you hear it all
1:32:25
the time. And you know that the far right party,
1:32:29
Sunseto, has now... gained a lot of votes in
1:32:33
a shocking manner in the last election. So things
1:32:35
are not looking good. And I think it ties up,
1:32:37
it ties into demographics, you know. Right, right,
1:32:40
right, right. Japan is just not addressing its
1:32:42
root problems. That's why I also asked about
1:32:45
demographics. Right. So, I mean, where I was
1:32:47
going with this is, is China going to begin allowing
1:32:49
immigration? I don't know. They just opened up
1:32:53
a new category of visas for young foreign tech
1:32:56
talent, the K visa. So if you're somebody with
1:33:00
a STEM education from a good university, you
1:33:03
can come to China ostensibly to do entrepreneurial
1:33:09
activities. It's an interesting thing. How does
1:33:14
it work if you don't speak Chinese? Can you survive
1:33:16
in China? Hey, you know, we live in a world of
1:33:19
abundant artificial intelligence translators
1:33:21
now. I mean, it's going to be like next month
1:33:23
we're going to be able to stick something in
1:33:25
our ear and it'll be the Babel fish from, you
1:33:27
know, Douglas Adams, right? Yeah, when I went
1:33:33
back to Europe recently, I passed through. through
1:33:37
beijing and everybody was doing this to me you
1:33:39
know like saying something on an app and then
1:33:41
it translated straight to me like in the chinese
1:33:43
airport it was actually not a problem it works
1:33:46
pretty well yeah i by the way i've took took
1:33:48
up so much of your time this conversation flew
1:33:50
by last question a completely selfish one if
1:33:54
if i want to visit china what do you recommend
1:33:56
what should i do where should i go i mean go
1:33:58
to first tier cities for sure but also get up
1:34:01
you know go to uh So I think there's basically
1:34:05
three things you want to see in China. You want
1:34:06
to see hyper -modern first -tier cities. You
1:34:09
also want to see deeply interesting historical
1:34:12
places. And the third is you want to see beautiful
1:34:15
nature, right? Yeah. Also party. Maybe like a
1:34:19
party. So for Beijing, it ticks two of those
1:34:25
boxes really well. So Beijing, you can, you know,
1:34:28
three of them if you're including partying now.
1:34:32
you know beijing is a marvelous night nightlife
1:34:35
scene but you know rich intellectual conversations
1:34:38
uh fascinating historical sites and you know
1:34:43
it's a gleaming first year city but if you really
1:34:45
want to be blown away go to shenzhen for you
1:34:48
know for the technology or hangzhou uh or and
1:34:52
then shanghai you can't miss for you know sian
1:34:56
for for the more sort of pure historical experience
1:34:59
and then nothing beats like Sichuan province
1:35:04
and Yunnan province in the southwest for the
1:35:07
spectacular nature. Mountains? I'm a mountain
1:35:11
goat coming from Slovenia. Yeah, absolutely.
1:35:13
So Yunnan province for mountains. That's where
1:35:15
I spent a month this summer in the mountains
1:35:17
there. You'll love it. Where exactly did you
1:35:21
say? Sorry again. Yunnan. Y -U -N -N -A -N. Okay.
1:35:26
Please go. And if you need more specific recommendations,
1:35:30
I'm more than happy. Thank you so much. I'll
1:35:32
send you a postcard from you. Zaza, man. That
1:35:35
was a lot of fun. Yeah, likewise. Thank you so
1:35:38
much for taking the time. Sorry it was a little
1:35:40
bit over. I do apologize. Hope you'll forgive
1:35:43
me. By the way, Seneca podcast available on all
1:35:47
platforms everywhere, right? That's right. That's
1:35:49
right. And check out the sub stack with a lot
1:35:52
of my essays and there's lots of good stuff on
1:35:55
there. Transcript to the podcast, all that good
1:35:57
stuff. Kaiser. Once again, thank you. Thank you
1:36:00
so much for listening. Please subscribe to the
1:36:02
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