Latest / UK Column Radio / The Untold Story of China's Rise: Mao, Deng & the Chinese Miracle | Silk and Steel

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The Untold Story of China's Rise: Mao, Deng & the Chinese Miracle | Silk and Steel · UK Column Radio

0:00
Speaker 1: Today the Chinese Century. Hey everyone, I'm Jason Smith, originally
0:04
Speaker 1: from sunny California, now living in beautiful Beijing. Joining us
0:08
Speaker 1: today again is Carl jaw, a Sichwan born Chinese American
0:11
Speaker 1: political commentator and host of the Silk and Steel podcast.
0:17
Speaker 1: Raised between China and the United States with education at Caltech,
0:22
Speaker 1: Carl out now lives in Bali, where he likes to
0:24
Speaker 1: go surfing and wear cool shirts. Welcome to the Bridge
0:28
Speaker 1: to China.
0:30
Speaker 2: Hi, Jason, Thank you for inviting me.
0:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm delighted to have you on. I noticed that
0:34
Speaker 1: you did a lot of content about contemporary Chinese history,
0:39
Speaker 1: let's call it twentieth century Chinese history, and I wanted
0:43
Speaker 1: you to come on our show and inform some of
0:45
Speaker 1: our fans a little bit about that kind of stuff.
0:48
Speaker 1: So you covered Mao Dung and other issues, and I
0:52
Speaker 1: actually one of the things I found most fascinating was
0:54
Speaker 1: you talk about how the Communist Party was able to
0:56
Speaker 1: grow in Dome Bay because the Japanese controlled the cities
1:00
Speaker 1: and some of the transportation lines that were uninterested in
1:03
Speaker 1: the countryside, and so communism and the Communist Party of
1:07
Speaker 1: China was able to flourish there. I found that really interesting.
1:11
Speaker 1: Could you tell us how that kind of grew? How
1:13
Speaker 1: did the party succeed in growing? It's such a really
1:16
Speaker 1: tumultuous time.
1:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. What people need to understand is a context because
1:23
Speaker 2: before the Japanese invasion, China was in what's known as
1:28
Speaker 2: the warlords period, So different parts of China, different regions
1:32
Speaker 2: were controlled by local warlords. Now, in nineteen twenty seven
1:38
Speaker 2: twenty eight ish Juan kaishs KMT government nominally became the
1:44
Speaker 2: government of China. As seen, all the regional warlords pledged
1:48
Speaker 2: their allegiance to the Nanijen government. But on the local level,
1:53
Speaker 2: you know, the warlords still ruled. They have their own army,
1:56
Speaker 2: to collect their own taxes, they run their own government.
2:00
Speaker 2: What what the Japanese invasion did? Uh, it destroyed a
2:04
Speaker 2: lot of the well displays, a lot of those Chinese
2:09
Speaker 2: warlord regime in northern China. And uh as I mentioned
2:13
Speaker 2: that the Japanese were interested to see the major cities
2:17
Speaker 2: and transportation line connecting them. Uh. This left a huge
2:22
Speaker 2: power vacuum in the countryside because at this time the
2:25
Speaker 2: warlord region have already collapsed. Uh. But the Japanese haven't
2:30
Speaker 2: sent people to to like the local villages. Yet so
2:34
Speaker 2: this is a time when uh, the n their mouths directive,
2:39
Speaker 2: the Communists they send in. They start to cross Yellow
2:43
Speaker 2: River with the Communist Red Army, you know, one one
2:48
Speaker 2: the very you know, no, very fascinating. They they had
2:52
Speaker 2: to adjust their strategy because they realized, you know, they
2:55
Speaker 2: don't have the strength to take on the Japanese Imperial
2:58
Speaker 2: Army head. Uh, you know, the power of differential is
3:02
Speaker 2: too great. So what they did is they start breaking
3:06
Speaker 2: up these communist units into into platoon sizes and and
3:12
Speaker 2: allow them to infiltrate behind the enemy lines. And what
3:16
Speaker 2: they did is they go to the village level and
3:19
Speaker 2: they start to establish government there. You know, they will
3:23
Speaker 2: have they will send them so you know, like instead
3:26
Speaker 2: of saying like a three thousand unit uh the Communist army,
3:31
Speaker 2: they will break it up into maybe units of hundreds
3:35
Speaker 2: or sometimes a dozen, and they will go to a
3:38
Speaker 2: village where like right now, at that time, it was
3:40
Speaker 2: total chaos because because you know, the law and order
3:44
Speaker 2: was breaking down and and nobody knows who is who's
3:49
Speaker 2: who is in charge. So the Communists government came in
3:52
Speaker 2: and say, hey, we're here, we're the government now. We're
3:55
Speaker 2: going to help you to establish rule and order and
4:01
Speaker 2: and and a lot of a lot of youth. Of course,
4:03
Speaker 2: they are very nationalistic. They're all looking for leadership to resist
4:08
Speaker 2: the Japanese invasion, and the Communists were able to fill
4:13
Speaker 2: that vacuum. So what what ended up happening is soon
4:17
Speaker 2: while the Japanese occupy the major cities, the major port
4:21
Speaker 2: and all the all the real lines, all the countryside
4:25
Speaker 2: in between, the Communists start to establish their base. Now
4:30
Speaker 2: eventually the Japanese with their UH this with their collaborader
4:36
Speaker 2: were able to, you know, come, we will come to
4:39
Speaker 2: the countryside to collect taxes. So what happened is what
4:43
Speaker 2: the communists ran like basically a shadow government, a parallel government.
4:46
Speaker 2: When the Japanese army come, you know, like they will
4:49
Speaker 2: force the locals to to to to supply them with
4:54
Speaker 2: food or whatever. And then at night the Communists will
4:57
Speaker 2: come and they will hold court. They will try they
5:00
Speaker 2: will try all the collaborators and and then they they
5:04
Speaker 2: will collect taxes. So so now essentially this this contested
5:11
Speaker 2: UH much of the northern China because much of the
5:14
Speaker 2: population and then still live in the countryside. Much as
5:18
Speaker 2: much of the country was still very a Gregarian. So
5:21
Speaker 2: so this this allowed the Communists to set to establish
5:26
Speaker 2: their foothold in much of northern China, not just Don't By,
5:30
Speaker 2: but much of much of northern China north of the
5:33
Speaker 2: uh Hawaii River. And and so that that's why by
5:39
Speaker 2: the time of the Japanese surrender, and also there the
5:44
Speaker 2: japan ran into a manpower problem. After the Pacific War started,
5:49
Speaker 2: a lot of the elite Japanese troops, they were drawn
5:52
Speaker 2: down from China and they were sent to Southeast Asia,
5:56
Speaker 2: to the Philippines to fight in the Pacific Islands. And
6:00
Speaker 2: instead they're replaced with like old and and they're young,
6:05
Speaker 2: you know, like the in the late war, they were
6:09
Speaker 2: starting sending teenagers and like like fifty sixty year olds
6:14
Speaker 2: to to to stab the Japanese Imperial army. So that
6:18
Speaker 2: also allowed the Communists to establish firm control on the countryside.
6:23
Speaker 2: So by the time approaching the Japanese surrender in August
6:28
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, most of the Japanese forces they're only
6:33
Speaker 2: hold up in few strategically important cities and in the
6:39
Speaker 2: countryside they may have hold up like the county seats
6:44
Speaker 2: or a couple fortifications, right and and so this is
6:48
Speaker 2: why when the japan finally surrendered, there was a race
6:54
Speaker 2: between the communist side and the KMT government to accept
6:59
Speaker 2: the Japanese sren The race was on because the communists
7:03
Speaker 2: were a lot closer. They are already in the Japanese
7:06
Speaker 2: occupy zone. They just need to march into the cities
7:08
Speaker 2: and accept the Japanese surrender. Whereas much of the Juan
7:12
Speaker 2: Kai came t army, they were cornered up in the
7:15
Speaker 2: southwestern China in like suits, one tone in non etctera,
7:20
Speaker 2: so the race was on. Juan Kai. Schif first issued
7:23
Speaker 2: an order to the remaining Japanese in China said don't surrender,
7:28
Speaker 2: just a communist wait. Tell us to get there. And
7:32
Speaker 2: the United States also did its help a part of help,
7:35
Speaker 2: so they sent the Seventh Fleet to China. The Seventh
7:39
Speaker 2: League established their headquarter in the present day Chindao, so
7:45
Speaker 2: for a couple of years, Shinda was the US Seventh
7:48
Speaker 2: Fleet headquarter. US sent about seventy thousand servicemen to China
7:53
Speaker 2: ostensible under what's called Operation Beleaguer. So ostensibly the goal
7:58
Speaker 2: was to evacuate the Japanese Imperial Army and the Japanese
8:02
Speaker 2: civilians back to Japanese homeland. But other less stated aim
8:10
Speaker 2: was to help transport Jiang Kai Ches KMT troops to
8:15
Speaker 2: go to the other occupy Japanese occupy zones to take
8:18
Speaker 2: control so they don't fall into the hands of the communists.
8:22
Speaker 2: So the race was on, you know, the the KMT
8:25
Speaker 2: troops were boarding American Navy ships in Hong Kong and
8:29
Speaker 2: they've been shipped all the way to northern China. Uh
8:33
Speaker 2: So US marines secured the ports of Tanging and also
8:38
Speaker 2: Beijing to wait for the for the KMT arrival. And
8:43
Speaker 2: and this is where how the Chinese Civil War started,
8:47
Speaker 2: because then the Communists start to come into conflict with
8:51
Speaker 2: the KMT troops moving in. What the Communists try to do,
8:55
Speaker 2: they try to cut off the rail lines, you know,
8:59
Speaker 2: like just try to cut off the rail lines so
9:01
Speaker 2: that the KMT troops can't be shipped on rail and
9:06
Speaker 2: then so they have to either be flew in on
9:09
Speaker 2: the US Air Force or they have to be shipped
9:12
Speaker 2: in on the US Navy ships. So by that time,
9:15
Speaker 2: by the start of the Chinese Civil War, the Communists
9:19
Speaker 2: already have they already could mobilize a million troops, you know,
9:24
Speaker 2: because of the control of Chinese countryside, whereas the KMT
9:28
Speaker 2: at the time had about four million troops. So that's
9:32
Speaker 2: that led finally led to the Chinese Civil War.
9:37
Speaker 1: You know, I was watching some history on this in
9:39
Speaker 1: preparation for this interview, and what was fascinating to me
9:42
Speaker 1: is it looks like there's an enormous amount of gear
9:46
Speaker 1: that we firstly the United States was supplying to the KMT,
9:50
Speaker 1: and then eventually it was falling into the CPC's hands.
9:53
Speaker 1: And when they retook Beijing, the Communists had the largest
9:57
Speaker 1: you know, armory that China had ever had marching into Beijing.
10:02
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about how that
10:04
Speaker 1: conflict played out?
10:06
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So, so what happened is, uh, the Communists
10:10
Speaker 2: they didn't have much because they didn't they didn't have
10:12
Speaker 2: an industrial base, right, they didn't control any industrial base.
10:15
Speaker 2: Their their equipment mostly came from the capture Japanese equipments
10:20
Speaker 2: and also from during the japan handover from from capture
10:25
Speaker 2: Japanese arsenals. So one one is through the Japanese equipment.
10:33
Speaker 2: Is particularly after the Soviet launched the August Storm invasion
10:38
Speaker 2: of Manchuria when one million Soviet Red army bore across
10:42
Speaker 2: the border to crush the Japanese quandom army that was
10:45
Speaker 2: occupying Manchuria. And they also the Soviet also had help
10:49
Speaker 2: because uh they had a detachment of the Chinese Communists
10:54
Speaker 2: acting as their guide. These were the Communists gorillas who
10:57
Speaker 2: were fighting the Gorilla warfare Inventura before nineteen forty before
11:02
Speaker 2: like nineteen forty forty forty one, and eventually they were
11:07
Speaker 2: forced to retrieve in retreat inside Soviet Union. Among their
11:11
Speaker 2: member was one Korean guy called Kim Yosung. You know,
11:16
Speaker 2: Kim Yo Sung at that time was a commander of
11:19
Speaker 2: the Chinese Communists gurolla fighting in Maturia. Because at the
11:23
Speaker 2: time there were a lot of ethnic Korean migrants from
11:26
Speaker 2: the Korean Peninsula to Dombey. Kim Yo San's family was
11:30
Speaker 2: one of them. And so these Chinese Communists when the
11:35
Speaker 2: Soviet Red Army came in nineteen forty five, they served
11:38
Speaker 2: as a guide, local guide, to guide the spearhead of
11:41
Speaker 2: the Red Army advance. And when the Soviet Army took
11:45
Speaker 2: over all Manchuria, they have no interest of running Chinese cities,
11:50
Speaker 2: you know, managing Chinese cities, so they just handed over
11:53
Speaker 2: to the Communists that came with them. So essentially that
11:57
Speaker 2: allowed the Communists to control a lot of almost the
12:00
Speaker 2: entire Manchuria at the time. And and then Uh they
12:05
Speaker 2: those communists then send telegraph to the headquarters in Yenna
12:09
Speaker 2: and to tell ma please come, we have the control
12:13
Speaker 2: of Nigeria. So at that time, the MAO was actually
12:18
Speaker 2: away in tung Jin Uh for peace negotiation with Shanghai
12:22
Speaker 2: shed so Usauchi who stayed behind in Yanga, and he
12:26
Speaker 2: called a meeting and he made the decision to send
12:29
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand communist troops from all over northern China
12:33
Speaker 2: to Manchuria. Many of them march over land, Uh, you know,
12:37
Speaker 2: some of them marched from Uh from southern China from Jiuangsu.
12:42
Speaker 2: You know, they crossed half half of China on foot.
12:46
Speaker 2: So they were able to inter Manchuria while it was
12:49
Speaker 2: still under Soviet occupation. And then then a couple of
12:53
Speaker 2: things happened was that Uh. Initially, the Soviet and Juan
12:58
Speaker 2: Kai Shid they signed the Sino so Be a Friendship
13:00
Speaker 2: Agreement in nineteen forty five, which means the Soviet they
13:05
Speaker 2: tried to adopt a neutral stance in the Chinese Civil War.
13:09
Speaker 2: They try not to help the communists too much, so
13:12
Speaker 2: they didn't allow the Communists to access all the Japanese
13:15
Speaker 2: arsenals and all that. And then comes Americans, because Americans
13:21
Speaker 2: were shipping all this KMT troops up north, and one
13:25
Speaker 2: of the most important port for the Soviet Union was
13:30
Speaker 2: Port author you know, which Thezarist Russia previously controlled before
13:35
Speaker 2: the Russo Japanese War in nineteen o five. So the
13:39
Speaker 2: Soviet they wanted to keep the control of the Port
13:42
Speaker 2: author and they want to keep Americans out of Donbay.
13:46
Speaker 2: But when America they see a seventh fleet just there
13:49
Speaker 2: a park right across from them on the you know,
13:53
Speaker 2: because if you look at Doddie and Hindao, they're not
13:55
Speaker 2: that far from each other, right, And when they see
13:58
Speaker 2: that the American open shop just across the water from them,
14:02
Speaker 2: and the American ships were sending bowloads of KMT troops
14:06
Speaker 2: to northern China, including to Manchuria. Soviet decided thought that okay,
14:11
Speaker 2: that was that was crossing a line. They didn't want
14:15
Speaker 2: American influence to come to Donbe So then they started
14:20
Speaker 2: to give support to the Communists or were coming into
14:22
Speaker 2: Manchuria and say oh, you see all these Japanese arsenals,
14:26
Speaker 2: go help yourself. And so the Communists were initially was
14:31
Speaker 2: able to arm themselves with all these leftover Japanese weapons
14:35
Speaker 2: that was left over in Manchuria. Now on other sides,
14:39
Speaker 2: Americans were supplying Jiang Kai Chez army. So a lot
14:43
Speaker 2: of these weapons American supply was actually originally supposed to
14:47
Speaker 2: be part of the land lease agreement as part of
14:51
Speaker 2: the you know, to supply China during World War Two,
14:55
Speaker 2: but ninety percent of that weapons did not make their
14:59
Speaker 2: way to China because at that time, you know China,
15:02
Speaker 2: Japan occupied China's coast the only way and Japan also
15:07
Speaker 2: occupied Burma. You know, they cut off the Burma road.
15:10
Speaker 2: So the only way to supply China was through the
15:13
Speaker 2: what's called the Himalayan Hump. So so the the Americans
15:17
Speaker 2: will fly in from their air bases in Northeast India
15:20
Speaker 2: across the Himalayan Foothill into Unite into Quimin do air
15:24
Speaker 2: drop and air air shipments. And so it's only only
15:28
Speaker 2: about ten percent of the land least greb and American
15:32
Speaker 2: weapon made it through to China during the war.
15:35
Speaker 3: So after the war cuddenly the ports are open, and
15:39
Speaker 3: all these weapons that originally intended to Chin for China
15:42
Speaker 3: to fight the Japanese certainly were made available and released.
15:46
Speaker 2: To jiang Kai sheet to fight the Communist uh. And
15:51
Speaker 2: then you know a lot of these uh uh, these
15:55
Speaker 2: American equipped came to units were sent to Manchuria to
16:00
Speaker 2: fight the Communist You know, this is this sparked the
16:04
Speaker 2: Chinese Civil War, and you know, as war the tide
16:10
Speaker 2: of the war start to turn. You know, when those
16:12
Speaker 2: KMT especially when those KMT units in northern China and
16:17
Speaker 2: in Dombe in Manchuria, we're getting annihilated. The Communists come
16:22
Speaker 2: to possess not only the Japanese weapon but also a
16:25
Speaker 2: lot of American weapons. So that's that's how it came about. Wow.
16:31
Speaker 1: So the CPC and it came to power in nineteen
16:34
Speaker 1: forty nine, establishing the People's Republic of China October one
16:38
Speaker 1: in Beijing. I mean, China had been through a lot
16:42
Speaker 1: this period prior to this date, it is called the
16:45
Speaker 1: Century of Humiliation. What had it been facing and what
16:49
Speaker 1: course of action was necessary to take by the new
16:52
Speaker 1: government in order to like.
16:54
Speaker 2: You know, bring any kind of stability. Well, first thing
16:58
Speaker 2: is just to establish control because you know, since the
17:02
Speaker 2: collapse of the Chin Imperial Dynasty, China was in chaos.
17:06
Speaker 2: You know, like I said, the Republic of China under
17:11
Speaker 2: km T had a nominal control of China, but at
17:14
Speaker 2: the ground there's still various warlords was in power. So
17:19
Speaker 2: you know, first is to get rid of those people.
17:25
Speaker 2: But before that, the Communists had to win over the
17:30
Speaker 2: majority of the people, which at the time were peasants.
17:33
Speaker 2: You know, like even in the nineteen even up to
17:36
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, eighty percent of the Chinese population still living
17:40
Speaker 2: in the countryside. That number must be way higher in
17:43
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine, nineteen forty five. So one way the
17:48
Speaker 2: Communists did to win over the populace to their site
17:51
Speaker 2: in the Chinese Civil War is to land reform. They said, okay, well,
17:56
Speaker 2: you know all these large landowners, landlords, they hold all
18:01
Speaker 2: these lands and then deprive the rest of you uh
18:06
Speaker 2: of of uh of land to work on, so you
18:08
Speaker 2: have to become tenant farmers for generations. Well guess what,
18:11
Speaker 2: We're gonna take away their land and redistribute them. So
18:15
Speaker 2: this is how they want popular support because they're they're
18:19
Speaker 2: you know, massive of poor peasants without land and now
18:23
Speaker 2: they have something to fight for. Now, now there's a
18:26
Speaker 2: reason they would support the Communists because it's a KMT
18:29
Speaker 2: come back. Their land will be taken away. And so
18:33
Speaker 2: that that is uh. That that is how the Communists
18:36
Speaker 2: won over the peasantry during the Chinese Civil War and
18:40
Speaker 2: and then when the Communists took over the country. Uh.
18:43
Speaker 2: Another thing they did is banning of the Opian trade,
18:46
Speaker 2: both the you know Opian like a lot of opiate
18:50
Speaker 2: addicts were told, okay, you have to quit cold Turkey
18:55
Speaker 2: because we're gonna cut off the supply. And up to
18:59
Speaker 2: that point, I know, was the largest opian growing region
19:03
Speaker 2: in the world. So for people who might not know, uh,
19:07
Speaker 2: opium was imported. Goods used to be as a medicine,
19:12
Speaker 2: you know, as an as stas Asia and stuff. But
19:15
Speaker 2: British British made British start doing massive importation of Indian
19:21
Speaker 2: opian into China prior to Opian War in order to
19:26
Speaker 2: balance the trade because they were they were running trade
19:29
Speaker 2: deficit with China. So every year there's a lot of
19:32
Speaker 2: silver were flowing into China. So the British decided, you
19:35
Speaker 2: know what, the only way we're going to make this
19:39
Speaker 2: work is if we pedal drugs to the Chinese. So
19:42
Speaker 2: so that's what they did. They they they they planted
19:46
Speaker 2: opium on a massive scale in India and they had
19:49
Speaker 2: for an opium monopoly. That forced the Indian opian grower
19:53
Speaker 2: sell opium to the British East India Company and then
19:57
Speaker 2: they would sell to resell it to the different British
20:02
Speaker 2: merchant to smuggle into China, and that caused a huge problem.
20:07
Speaker 2: You know, the Opium War was fought to legalize opium
20:11
Speaker 2: trade in China so the British can can freely sell
20:15
Speaker 2: opium inside China. And there was it wasn't one opim war.
20:19
Speaker 2: There were two opium wars, right the first Opium War,
20:22
Speaker 2: British got Hong Kong and got China to agree to
20:26
Speaker 2: open more ports for trade. But at that time opium
20:30
Speaker 2: trade was still kind of in a legally gray area,
20:33
Speaker 2: kind of like don't ask, don't tell. But the British
20:36
Speaker 2: were satisfied because they didn't fully legalize the opium trade.
20:40
Speaker 2: So they fought a second Opian War in the eighteen sixtyes,
20:43
Speaker 2: so that that forced the Chin government to fully legalize
20:47
Speaker 2: opian trade. And after that, you know, by some estimate
20:51
Speaker 2: estimate of some Western missionary like forty percent of the
20:55
Speaker 2: Chinese adult male in some parts of the country are
20:59
Speaker 2: addicted to opium, and it was a huge social and
21:03
Speaker 2: economic problem. And then the Qin dynasty official thought, okay, well,
21:08
Speaker 2: if we can outlaw opium trade, because the British will will, well,
21:14
Speaker 2: Woa will send their downboats. Well, the best we can
21:19
Speaker 2: do then is let's grow opium ourselves, you know, so
21:22
Speaker 2: we don't have to import foreign opium. So they allowed
21:26
Speaker 2: full legalization of opium cultivation. So a lot of opium
21:30
Speaker 2: will grow in southwestern China like nine is one, and
21:35
Speaker 2: then the opium will be loaded on the boat sailed
21:38
Speaker 2: down to yang Su River. And and so by the
21:41
Speaker 2: turn of the century, by the early twentieth century, China,
21:45
Speaker 2: Chinese China or not only start supplying opium to all
21:49
Speaker 2: the addicts within China, it started to export opium. And
21:55
Speaker 2: then this is when, uh, you know, advanced advancements in
21:59
Speaker 2: chemistry allow people to refine morphine from opim and and
22:05
Speaker 2: and to to make heroin, and then to make heroin
22:08
Speaker 2: and so uh. The the the Chinese mafia gang Green
22:14
Speaker 2: Gang that was based in Shanghai. They hire some European
22:18
Speaker 2: and American chemists to set up shop in Shanghai to
22:22
Speaker 2: to make uh to refine opium into heroin, and then
22:26
Speaker 2: they exported heroin to the United States and Europe, and
22:31
Speaker 2: that trade was only cut off by World War Two,
22:34
Speaker 2: you know, when Japan came out and took over, because
22:37
Speaker 2: Japan wanted the opian trade for themselves. That's one of
22:41
Speaker 2: the major ways Japan finances war is through sales of opium.
22:45
Speaker 2: So they want to monopolize the opian trade inside China
22:49
Speaker 2: and and and use that to finance the Japanese wormishing,
22:54
Speaker 2: so so so. So the opian egiction was a huge
22:58
Speaker 2: problem in China nineteen forty nine, and the Communist government said, Okay,
23:03
Speaker 2: we're gonna get rid of it. All the growing regions,
23:06
Speaker 2: We're gonna get rid of the opium plantations. Everybody needs
23:11
Speaker 2: to now plant like actual grain which will feed people,
23:16
Speaker 2: and the opian addict. I'm sorry, you have to go
23:19
Speaker 2: cold Turkey. So they did that within five years, and
23:24
Speaker 2: that actually created a huge supply shock in the world
23:27
Speaker 2: market because you know, the opium trade resume after the
23:32
Speaker 2: opian heroin trade resume after the Japanese surrender, and suddenly
23:37
Speaker 2: when the Communists took power in China to stopped the
23:41
Speaker 2: outflow of opium front China, you create a huge supply shock,
23:45
Speaker 2: and that at that point also Ran also got into
23:49
Speaker 2: the act that Uron also start banging opim. So suddenly
23:54
Speaker 2: all the addict all across the world is a scrambling
24:00
Speaker 2: for sources. So at this time CIA did their part
24:06
Speaker 2: to help. So so they work with a remnant of
24:09
Speaker 2: KMT Army who escaped from mainland China, not to Taiwan,
24:13
Speaker 2: but through southwest into Memmar. They establishing a base in
24:18
Speaker 2: northern Memmar. The area the borders Memmar, Laos and Thailand
24:25
Speaker 2: today called it's known as Golden Triangle. So this KMT
24:29
Speaker 2: remnant army start cultivating opian in northern Memmr. So Golden
24:34
Speaker 2: Triangle for a time up to the nineteen nineties, up
24:38
Speaker 2: to the Afghan War, Golden Triangle produced ninety percent of
24:44
Speaker 2: the world's heroin opian you know, all that all that
24:47
Speaker 2: good goodness. You know, for some odd reason, when when
24:52
Speaker 2: America moved into Afghanistan, then Afghanistan took that also became
24:58
Speaker 2: a major opian growing region. I don't know how that happened,
25:01
Speaker 2: but anyway, so so this but but what with the
25:05
Speaker 2: mainland China itself, Uh, the opium was stopped. The opium
25:10
Speaker 2: epidemic was was stopped by by decree and it was
25:15
Speaker 2: done very effectively. And another thing that they had to do
25:19
Speaker 2: was they realized that we need to industrialize. You know,
25:22
Speaker 2: one more reason China keep on getting beaten because China
25:26
Speaker 2: failed to industrialize. So in this way, they had a
25:30
Speaker 2: lot of help from the Soviet Union, the Soviet in
25:34
Speaker 2: the early fifties, there was a period of Sino Soviet
25:37
Speaker 2: honeymoon period. So Soviet did a lot of technological transfer.
25:41
Speaker 2: They sent a lot of engineers to come with blueprints
25:44
Speaker 2: for factories, for for for building infrastructure bridges, you know,
25:50
Speaker 2: like there was no bridge across the Yangsu River between
25:53
Speaker 2: nineteen before nineteen forty nine. So the first bridge across
25:57
Speaker 2: the Yangsu River, uh, that was with the help we
26:01
Speaker 2: was a Soviet engineers. They designed a bridge to span
26:05
Speaker 2: the Yangsu River. So there was a huge rebuilding of
26:09
Speaker 2: infrastructure and also industrialization. This is the first round of
26:13
Speaker 2: industrialization in China. No, thanks for the Silviet assistance. And
26:21
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm rambling a bit, I forgot
26:25
Speaker 2: your original question.
26:27
Speaker 1: No, you were addressing the question. The question is how
26:29
Speaker 1: did you know because it's China is a gigantic country,
26:35
Speaker 1: and for a new government to just suddenly take over
26:39
Speaker 1: October first, nineteen forty nine, I'm interested in how it
26:42
Speaker 1: was able to establish, you know, a nationwide semblance of
26:47
Speaker 1: order and government. So you're talking about there's a basic
26:50
Speaker 1: infrastructure help that came coming from the USSR, that they
26:54
Speaker 1: ended drug use and drug growing, that they were trying
26:57
Speaker 1: to grow wheat that were redistributed land. But I have
27:01
Speaker 1: more questions. For example, I went to this village in
27:03
Speaker 1: shang A sorry Shandong called Shansa and Rushan, and I
27:08
Speaker 1: first my first time in twenty twelve, I encountered these
27:11
Speaker 1: little homes that are shaped basically like a very large
27:15
Speaker 1: shoe box with three rooms, and there are these raised
27:19
Speaker 1: platforms in the two rooms on the outside where it
27:21
Speaker 1: gets hot because there's cooking that happens in the center
27:24
Speaker 1: room and heats up these outside rooms.
27:26
Speaker 2: I was told by the.
27:27
Speaker 1: Locals that the nineteen fifties, the party just ran through
27:31
Speaker 1: the countryside building identical homes exactly like this. And I
27:35
Speaker 1: was wondering a little bit about what did the CPC do.
27:39
Speaker 2: To establish order?
27:41
Speaker 1: And you know, how did they start governing a country
27:44
Speaker 1: the size of China, which is one of the largest
27:46
Speaker 1: countries in the entire world. And you know, for example,
27:50
Speaker 1: what is a shoeless doctor. I mean, what were these
27:52
Speaker 1: programs that were initially rolled out by the party to
27:57
Speaker 1: create order.
27:59
Speaker 2: Well, they have to do everything right, the communists. They
28:03
Speaker 2: did gain basic experience of governing the country when they
28:07
Speaker 2: had to when they established a shadow government in northern
28:11
Speaker 2: China during the Japanese occupation. So they already know how
28:14
Speaker 2: to run a village, how to mobilize a village, the
28:18
Speaker 2: people in the village, and they just you know, brought
28:22
Speaker 2: that to on a larger scale. And another thing they
28:25
Speaker 2: had to tackle was literacy. You know, ninety percent of
28:28
Speaker 2: the people in China were illiterate. Ninety percent of people
28:32
Speaker 2: were illiterate, they couldn't read or write. So one of
28:36
Speaker 2: the major way was done to tackle illiteracy is you know,
28:41
Speaker 2: opening schools, opening schools and provide education. And another thing,
28:49
Speaker 2: a lot of the old temples were turned over into
28:52
Speaker 2: schooled were changed to schools at that time. And another
28:58
Speaker 2: thing they did was they even tried to experiment with
29:02
Speaker 2: the language itself. This is when they invented pinion, which
29:06
Speaker 2: is romanization. Of the Chinese using Roman alphabet, and and
29:12
Speaker 2: you know, there was even some people at at one
29:15
Speaker 2: point even proposed to kind of replace the Chinese characters
29:19
Speaker 2: with tiniva that that that never took off, but there
29:22
Speaker 2: was there was also a effort to simplify the Chinese
29:27
Speaker 2: characters from the traditional form into a simplified form that
29:32
Speaker 2: they thought process that was going to help to promote
29:36
Speaker 2: literacy among the masses. So they went through the first
29:39
Speaker 2: round of the simplification of all the Chinese characters, and
29:43
Speaker 2: then they also started to promote pinion hani opinion as
29:49
Speaker 2: a way to spell out the character with By the way,
29:53
Speaker 2: I learned pinion when I was in elementary school in
29:57
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties China. At that time, I thought it was
29:59
Speaker 2: you like, why do I need to learn this stuff?
30:02
Speaker 2: I already know my characters. You just need to tell
30:05
Speaker 2: me what that character sounds like. I don't need to
30:08
Speaker 2: I don't need to spend the time to spell out
30:11
Speaker 2: what that character sounds like. Uh. But then during the
30:15
Speaker 2: Internet age, and that's when my first time I have
30:19
Speaker 2: to use my opinion skills because now like on a
30:22
Speaker 2: wizzy wig keyboard, that's just how most Chinese today, you know,
30:27
Speaker 2: use to do online input the typing pinion to spell
30:31
Speaker 2: out the world, and then the software will show a
30:34
Speaker 2: list of Chinese character to pick from. So this is
30:36
Speaker 2: how how the internet age the that that solved another
30:41
Speaker 2: big problem with China because with printing, well, you know
30:47
Speaker 2: in the West, when when you have Gutenburg, it's done.
30:50
Speaker 2: You know, you just have English, you have what twenty
30:53
Speaker 2: six letters and you just rearrange them and you can
30:56
Speaker 2: you can do a printing press. But imagine to do
30:58
Speaker 2: this in China, you have to make a character. You
31:01
Speaker 2: have like tens of thousands of characters, and then you
31:04
Speaker 2: have to change them every time you print something. It
31:06
Speaker 2: was a it was a major pain in the butt. Uh.
31:09
Speaker 2: So that pro that issue was resolved with digitization in
31:14
Speaker 2: the modern times when uh with in combination with the
31:18
Speaker 2: hont your opinion, Now now you can just you know,
31:21
Speaker 2: we start through software. So now you just type in
31:24
Speaker 2: pinion and then they will spell out. They will they
31:27
Speaker 2: will create the Chinese character for YouTube. At least that's
31:30
Speaker 2: most of youngins. You know, some some there there are
31:32
Speaker 2: some different programs for the old people to to to
31:35
Speaker 2: to write.
31:36
Speaker 1: But some people very rarely they're on their phone and
31:39
Speaker 1: they'll actually write the character and then the software will
31:43
Speaker 1: analyze it and produce the correct you know, equivalent.
31:46
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So anyway, so but but one
31:50
Speaker 2: of the issues they have to tackle is urbanization and
31:54
Speaker 2: uh and industrialization. You know, China needed industry, especially heavy industry,
32:01
Speaker 2: because at that time, China had very little industry. So
32:06
Speaker 2: in fact, during the Chinese Civil War, majority ninety percent
32:10
Speaker 2: of the Chinese industry was in Manchuria because that's the
32:14
Speaker 2: area of Japan had heavily invested in. Because Japan was
32:18
Speaker 2: trying to turn Manchuria into their second homeland. There was
32:22
Speaker 2: a large scale Japanese migration into that region, so they
32:25
Speaker 2: tried to build build Manchuria for the Japanese. So they
32:28
Speaker 2: actually invested a lot into building Manchuria infrastructure. So inteen
32:32
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, you know, Manchuria hold like like ninety
32:37
Speaker 2: percent of the electricity production in China, like ninety percent
32:40
Speaker 2: of the steel production. So what when the Communists took over,
32:46
Speaker 2: they tried to promote industrialization across China, and they had
32:52
Speaker 2: the Silviet help, but still they what they lacked was
32:56
Speaker 2: capital and that that's a problem. Where does the capital
33:00
Speaker 2: and besides This was when China was under block because
33:05
Speaker 2: United States had the China under a blockade, and also
33:09
Speaker 2: the KMT government on Taiwan also had the rest of
33:12
Speaker 2: China under a blockade. You know, Jiuan Kai Chi's government
33:16
Speaker 2: signa executive order in nineteen forty eight to blockade all
33:20
Speaker 2: the Communists held areas, all the coastlines, and so that
33:24
Speaker 2: came in. That blockade lasted through decades. So people would
33:29
Speaker 2: not believe it today, but the first time a chin
33:33
Speaker 2: like Taiwan straight was a no go zone for mainland
33:37
Speaker 2: Chinese ship for a very very long time. The first
33:40
Speaker 2: time Chinese warships sailed through Taiwan straight was in nineteen
33:45
Speaker 2: seventy five. And yes, and the first time a commercial
33:51
Speaker 2: Chinese ship to sail through the Taiwan straight, guess one
33:54
Speaker 2: was nineteen nineties. It was nineteen nineties because for a
33:58
Speaker 2: long time with the main was under black a buy
34:02
Speaker 2: American and the Taiwanese authority and and so so one
34:07
Speaker 2: of the problems with industrialization is how do you get
34:10
Speaker 2: the capital. So this was a result by uh UH
34:16
Speaker 2: through collectivisation system. So they the government will buy the
34:23
Speaker 2: grains from the farmers under unified set price and and
34:28
Speaker 2: then what happened is then the government can use a
34:33
Speaker 2: profit to support industrialization in the cities to to to
34:38
Speaker 2: to buy factory equipment and all that, all that stuff,
34:43
Speaker 2: and and but then that that also created a problem
34:46
Speaker 2: because then a lot of the far a lot of
34:48
Speaker 2: the peasant boys start to rush into cities because at
34:51
Speaker 2: the time they're also establishing like the welfare state inside
34:55
Speaker 2: the cities. Like a lot of the people who work
34:58
Speaker 2: in the factory back then had what's so iron rights ball,
35:01
Speaker 2: like cradle to grave warfare system. Like you basically you
35:05
Speaker 2: can work in the factory until we retire, and the
35:09
Speaker 2: factory will provide you with health free health care, free
35:12
Speaker 2: education for your children, and and and and housing. Factory
35:17
Speaker 2: factory work, where you work, they will provide you with housing.
35:22
Speaker 2: But but then, of course I attracted a lot of
35:25
Speaker 2: people from countryside to come through the cities. You know,
35:27
Speaker 2: the cities have everything. But that very soon they realized,
35:32
Speaker 2: the state realized they don't have the resources to provide
35:35
Speaker 2: that for everyone, right, so most of the people have
35:39
Speaker 2: to stay on the farms, you know, make crops. So
35:42
Speaker 2: this is when they establish the resident permit system CUCO system,
35:47
Speaker 2: which by the way is being abolished this year. This
35:51
Speaker 2: this year, they finally got rid of that. So so
35:54
Speaker 2: at that time there was a two tier system they use,
35:58
Speaker 2: so the farmers produce were able to support industrialization effort
36:04
Speaker 2: in the cities in the urban area and support the
36:07
Speaker 2: welfare state for the urban dwellers. But that did spark
36:11
Speaker 2: off the first a round of industrializations. So by nineteen
36:16
Speaker 2: seventy eight when Denshall Pin open up the economy through
36:20
Speaker 2: the Open and Reform period, China already have an industrial base.
36:25
Speaker 2: They already have an educated populace, you know, like most
36:28
Speaker 2: of them, it has a very highly literate population with
36:34
Speaker 2: basic knowledge of industrialization, and that enabled economic take off
36:40
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties, nineties and beyond. So there is
36:46
Speaker 2: like a there's a continuity from mal Era to the
36:50
Speaker 2: den era. What the mal Era did was building the
36:52
Speaker 2: foundation is educate the people, raising the literacy, raising the
36:58
Speaker 2: life expectancy. One of the things people find very surprising
37:03
Speaker 2: is they saw the Chinese life expectancy shot up actually
37:08
Speaker 2: during the Cultural Revolution era, and people didn't understand that.
37:11
Speaker 2: So what really so what really happened is life expectancy
37:16
Speaker 2: is calculated for all people, including infants, and China had
37:22
Speaker 2: a very high infant mortality rate. That's why, like if
37:28
Speaker 2: you look at the average life expectancy for the Chinese
37:31
Speaker 2: person in the nineteen forties, it was like thirty nine
37:35
Speaker 2: or something like thirties. But it didn't make sense. But
37:38
Speaker 2: that's because a lot of a lot of children, they
37:41
Speaker 2: don't even make it through their infant stage. You know,
37:44
Speaker 2: there was a lot of high infant mortality. So during
37:47
Speaker 2: Cultural Revolution, what Mau did is they created these what's
37:52
Speaker 2: so called barefoot doctors, so the people with basic medical training,
37:56
Speaker 2: they will be sent to the countryside to provide based
38:00
Speaker 2: medical services to the people who did not previously have them.
38:04
Speaker 2: That greatly reduced infant mortality. And that fact that Longe
38:11
Speaker 2: raised the Chinese life expectancy because you know, like now
38:15
Speaker 2: you're not you are not dying in cradle, you know,
38:18
Speaker 2: and and and so so this is how how they
38:22
Speaker 2: the Chinese life expendency was raised dramatically. That by great
38:27
Speaker 2: reduction of infantmortality by providing basic medical services to you know,
38:32
Speaker 2: the pregnant women, uh in remote countryside. You know, my my,
38:38
Speaker 2: my mom, my mom. She was trained as a nurse
38:42
Speaker 2: and when she graduated nursing school when she was like
38:44
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one or something. She was sent it was
38:48
Speaker 2: during cultural revolution. She was actually sent to the Tibetan
38:53
Speaker 2: region of Suzwan. So her and her fellow UH nursing
38:57
Speaker 2: school graduate they set up a high altitude clinic to
39:01
Speaker 2: serve the the yakers in the region, you know, who
39:05
Speaker 2: otherwise didn't have access to medical services. So so that
39:09
Speaker 2: that's how this but that was just my personal score
39:13
Speaker 2: that that same METO was apply across China and this
39:18
Speaker 2: is how the you know, they were able to raise
39:21
Speaker 2: the life expectancy so dramatically in the mal can I
39:25
Speaker 2: just ask.
39:25
Speaker 1: One question, go ahead, your mom had shoes, presumably, right, Yeah, So.
39:31
Speaker 2: My question is why are they called barefoot doctors. I
39:35
Speaker 2: have to look it up. Actually, I'm not sure why.
39:38
Speaker 2: I'm not sure why. It's comf.
39:41
Speaker 1: I want to switch gears a little bit. I want
39:43
Speaker 1: to ask about the Tazara Railway. In the late nineteen sixties,
39:47
Speaker 1: mau Zedoon decided that it would be a good idea
39:50
Speaker 1: to help African countries build a railway. And this is
39:54
Speaker 1: a time when China is itself, you know, just as
39:57
Speaker 1: poor as many African countries. So what was the thinking
40:01
Speaker 1: in terms of China's desire to help build infrastructure in Africa.
40:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, a Mao was a believer in exporting revolution. You know,
40:14
Speaker 2: he he is a believer in the world revolution. And
40:17
Speaker 2: he supported revolution movement all across the world, including anti
40:22
Speaker 2: colonial struggles in Africa. And and so Tanzara reil way.
40:28
Speaker 2: This it happened because uh to connect Tanzania uh and
40:35
Speaker 2: uh and and I believe Zambia, yeah and and and
40:39
Speaker 2: the reason for that time there was a South African
40:44
Speaker 2: government that was still doing the period apartheid. And then
40:48
Speaker 2: there's also the Rhodesia which is modern day Zimbabwe that
40:53
Speaker 2: was also under the white small minority rule. Right. So,
40:57
Speaker 2: so so Zambia was landlocked. They don't have access the
41:02
Speaker 2: lost access through UH ports through South Africa to export
41:07
Speaker 2: their major export. Uh you know, their major commodity, which
41:11
Speaker 2: is copper. Uh So they needed a different route to
41:14
Speaker 2: export their their their their their their their their goods
41:18
Speaker 2: which is copper. And Tanzania, which also recently became independent
41:24
Speaker 2: sits on the East African coast, provided that outlet, you know,
41:29
Speaker 2: a port. But they but they need to connect them
41:33
Speaker 2: with the railroad. So this is where China come in.
41:36
Speaker 2: The China provide financing and they provided labor and uh
41:41
Speaker 2: it was down free of charge right as a as
41:44
Speaker 2: a as a assistance to the fellow uh. You know,
41:49
Speaker 2: the African comrades were struggling to to to gain their
41:53
Speaker 2: independence UH that include economic indep independence from the colonial governments.
42:00
Speaker 2: Uh So, so that that that built the basis for
42:05
Speaker 2: the modern China Africa interaction. Because you know this history.
42:12
Speaker 2: This is something that the people in the West sometimes
42:15
Speaker 2: don't understand because they tend to look at the lens
42:19
Speaker 2: through their own history, which is through colonial exploitation. So
42:25
Speaker 2: they would call China the neo colonialists in Africa. Now,
42:29
Speaker 2: China had a long history of interaction with the African
42:33
Speaker 2: people and and and and and Tazara Railway, which is
42:37
Speaker 2: the beginning and because of all the good will that
42:40
Speaker 2: was established during that time uh uh and and China
42:45
Speaker 2: also supported, for examples, UH Zimbabwe's independent struggle, you know,
42:51
Speaker 2: to overthrow the white rule in Rhodesia. That's why Zimbabwe
42:54
Speaker 2: also had a good relationship with with China. And this
42:58
Speaker 2: this this patterns we peeded throughout Africa. So so today
43:05
Speaker 2: China was able to catch in on that good will
43:10
Speaker 2: to so to speak to you know, to continue to
43:13
Speaker 2: provide infrastructure to the global south nations, particularly in Africa,
43:18
Speaker 2: but in a win win situation where you know, like
43:22
Speaker 2: would China helped build the infrastructure, but that also allows
43:27
Speaker 2: the Chinese goods to come in to trade for African commodities.
43:32
Speaker 2: You know.
43:32
Speaker 1: That's yeah, yeah, we just have the I think it
43:35
Speaker 1: was just last month or the month before the implementation
43:39
Speaker 1: of zero tariffs for fifty three out of fifty four
43:42
Speaker 1: African countries into China who have diplomatic relations with the PRC.
43:47
Speaker 2: The only only African nation that did not get the
43:50
Speaker 2: zero terraff treatment is because it did not have diplomatic
43:55
Speaker 2: relationship with China. It was mainly China. Had he recognized
43:58
Speaker 2: the region on taiwans that that's the only reason, right.
44:02
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned the continuity that during the mal period,
44:06
Speaker 1: the pre dungk period, the CPC formed the foundation for China,
44:11
Speaker 1: and then there's continuity of growth up till and after
44:15
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. But in nineteen seventy eight dung shopping
44:18
Speaker 1: began what we call reform and opening up. Could you
44:21
Speaker 1: explain what was that process?
44:24
Speaker 2: How was it received.
44:26
Speaker 1: What changes did it cause in China's economy?
44:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in nineteen seventy eight, you know, China was
44:36
Speaker 2: still very desperately poor. You know, I was born in
44:38
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six. I can tell you all about the
44:42
Speaker 2: tie when everything was ration. You know you need a
44:45
Speaker 2: ration Please tell us.
44:46
Speaker 1: I want to hear about it.
44:47
Speaker 2: Did you need ration in nineteen eighties? You still need
44:51
Speaker 2: ration papers to buy basic goods like cooking, oil, meat, rice, clothes,
45:01
Speaker 2: basically everything. Everything you need a rawship paper for. It's
45:04
Speaker 2: not good just to have money, you need the rationship
45:06
Speaker 2: paper for. And uh my because at that time in
45:11
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, I was a growing teenager, was only a
45:15
Speaker 2: teenager in my family. So I actually have the most
45:18
Speaker 2: allotment of rice in my family. My auntie will always
45:22
Speaker 2: send me to the right station because then you know,
45:24
Speaker 2: I get to carry like twenty kilos of rice home,
45:28
Speaker 2: but I have to go there and show my ration paper.
45:31
Speaker 2: And and this is because there was a broad shortage
45:37
Speaker 2: but a lot of goods, not just capital goods, but
45:40
Speaker 2: just every day commodities. You know. One reason is the
45:45
Speaker 2: first phase of industrialization. Uh that happening in China was
45:49
Speaker 2: focused in heavy industries, you know, building steel plans, power plants,
45:55
Speaker 2: stuff that China lack, but not a lot of investment
45:59
Speaker 2: into like manufacturing like shirts and shoes and stuff like that.
46:06
Speaker 2: And at that time, China had to import almost everything.
46:10
Speaker 2: Like China acted like a like a regular you know,
46:13
Speaker 2: global salce country exported rock commodity. China was a cude
46:19
Speaker 2: oil exporter up to net oil exporter. Until nineteen nineties.
46:24
Speaker 2: China would export crude oil to Japan. But China didn't
46:28
Speaker 2: have refining capacity to manufacturing petro chemicals, so he actually
46:34
Speaker 2: imported more expensive refined petroleum product like diesel, jeft fuel,
46:40
Speaker 2: fertilizers right, and he imported even machine tools like tractors, transistor, radio, TV,
46:53
Speaker 2: refrigerator like my I remember in the in in nineteen eighties,
47:00
Speaker 2: like my dad was already or it was already a
47:03
Speaker 2: post doc in the United States. He will send some
47:05
Speaker 2: money back and we will you know, at that time,
47:09
Speaker 2: we have to take them. So they do have places
47:13
Speaker 2: called friendship stores that would they will sell imported foreign goods,
47:19
Speaker 2: but it's only available if you have hard currency. If
47:22
Speaker 2: you have foreign currency, like you can't just go with
47:26
Speaker 2: the R and B and buy it. Uh, you have to.
47:28
Speaker 2: So the only way you get that is is they
47:32
Speaker 2: have to Everything is controlled. So when my mom received
47:36
Speaker 2: the US dollar, he has to go to the bank
47:38
Speaker 2: to turn cash in the US dollar into R and B.
47:41
Speaker 2: But in doing so she will get receive a something
47:45
Speaker 2: called the foreign exchange certificate. With a foreign exchange certificate
47:50
Speaker 2: that will entitle her then to go to this foreignd
47:53
Speaker 2: ship store to buy imported foreign goods. So we we
47:58
Speaker 2: were able to buy a japan Is color TV and
48:01
Speaker 2: Japanese refrigerator, not because we were unpatriotic Chinese citizens, because
48:07
Speaker 2: China did not produce color TV and refrigerator until like
48:12
Speaker 2: like late nineteen eighties. I think the first refrigerator in
48:15
Speaker 2: China was made in nineteen eighty six, right, so we
48:18
Speaker 2: got ours just a little like a couple of years
48:21
Speaker 2: before that. So at that time, everything is not made
48:26
Speaker 2: in China. Everything has to be imported into China. And
48:31
Speaker 2: another thing is so one thing that the under Mao
48:38
Speaker 2: era is agriculture was collectivized. You know. So initially during
48:43
Speaker 2: the Chinese Civil Wars, the land were redistributed to the
48:46
Speaker 2: to the peasants. But then during the early nineteen fifties,
48:51
Speaker 2: that land was collectivized into into collectives and the land
48:55
Speaker 2: belonged to the state, not to individual families. So what
48:58
Speaker 2: happened is eighteen seventies, Uh, there's a village in I
49:03
Speaker 2: think it's in Anhui. There they're going through hard times.
49:09
Speaker 2: You know, the harvest numbers are failing. So the locals,
49:13
Speaker 2: the farmers, they got together. They decided to come up
49:17
Speaker 2: with this called responsibility system. They were going to divide
49:20
Speaker 2: the land of the collective to each families and make
49:23
Speaker 2: each family responsible. Like at that time, it was kind
49:27
Speaker 2: of a taboo, right because they're going against official policy
49:31
Speaker 2: of collectivisation, so they have to keep hush hush. So
49:35
Speaker 2: everybody you know, like like drew a blood from their
49:38
Speaker 2: thumb and put their bloody thumb print on a contract.
49:43
Speaker 2: They all agreed to keep it hush hush and like
49:46
Speaker 2: to keep this so so, but it turns out to
49:50
Speaker 2: be a great success with the household responsibility system is
49:54
Speaker 2: that the farmers now incentivized to produce more because they
49:59
Speaker 2: get to more of what they produce. When the Communist
50:04
Speaker 2: party official discovered this, they thought, wow, that's a great idea.
50:11
Speaker 2: Let's let's make it let's make it a thing. So
50:15
Speaker 2: that's when they promoted the household responsibility system. So instead
50:19
Speaker 2: of the old collectives, now all the land there, all
50:23
Speaker 2: the land is still state owned, but they will be
50:25
Speaker 2: handed back to individual families under what's called the household
50:29
Speaker 2: responsibility system. So this whatever the land grow now is
50:36
Speaker 2: belong to the it's the responsibility of the family. And
50:40
Speaker 2: then well, they still have to sell a portion of
50:43
Speaker 2: their produce to the state, but what's left over is
50:46
Speaker 2: for them to decide. And another thing, the reason why
50:50
Speaker 2: we need ration paper to buy everything. Before you have
50:53
Speaker 2: to buy at government store into even by meat, you'd
50:56
Speaker 2: go to the government run meat stores. After they had
51:00
Speaker 2: household responsibility system, they had what's called the town or
51:05
Speaker 2: free market literally free market, uh, basically farmers market. So
51:09
Speaker 2: the farmers now are allowed to take their fresh produce
51:13
Speaker 2: directly into the cities to sell to the city dweller. Before,
51:17
Speaker 2: like they have to go through the states, have to
51:19
Speaker 2: sell to the to the state collective and then collective
51:23
Speaker 2: and take that to some department in the state and
51:25
Speaker 2: sell at the government disney store. Now the farmers they
51:28
Speaker 2: can grow, they can keep a larger portion of their
51:32
Speaker 2: produce on their land and then they can sell directly
51:35
Speaker 2: there they're produced directly, and that just raised the farm productivity.
51:41
Speaker 2: The farm productivity literally double and triple during nineteen eighties
51:46
Speaker 2: under this new household responsibility system, so that that was
51:50
Speaker 2: a big shot to the to the economic growth. And
51:53
Speaker 2: now the farmers have money, they have disposable incomes, and
51:57
Speaker 2: and and and and then they thought, okay, well, let's uh,
52:02
Speaker 2: we can we can also try experiment in other things.
52:04
Speaker 2: This is what people don't understand about the outside war.
52:08
Speaker 2: Don't stand up the Chinese communist parties, they are actually
52:13
Speaker 2: very open to experimentation. So they thought, okay, we have
52:17
Speaker 2: cities like sen Zen right across the border from Hong Kong.
52:21
Speaker 2: You know, we can leverage its physical proximity to Hong
52:25
Speaker 2: Kong to attract our oversea capital and and to develop
52:30
Speaker 2: to introduce market economy. And at that time they weren't
52:34
Speaker 2: sure to do this across the whole China. So they decide, okay,
52:38
Speaker 2: we'll mark special economic zones like sen Zen, Zhuhai and
52:43
Speaker 2: some couple of other cities. So it's a it's kind
52:46
Speaker 2: of a controlled experiment, right because at that time, you
52:51
Speaker 2: can you can't freely go to sen Zen. You know
52:53
Speaker 2: sen Zen, they had they had they had fences around
52:57
Speaker 2: sin Zen. You can you need permit to travel to
52:59
Speaker 2: sence in right, Yeah, and but so so the idea
53:02
Speaker 2: is that that experiment will be contained. If it failed, okay,
53:06
Speaker 2: we'll just cut it off. The experiment we discovering experiment.
53:11
Speaker 2: But the experiment at Centsing was a wild success. And
53:15
Speaker 2: that's when they decide, okay, okay, it's a success. Now
53:19
Speaker 2: we can roll roll it across the same center model
53:22
Speaker 2: across China. And that's how they start to introduce market
53:26
Speaker 2: economy inside China, you know, the College socialist market economy,
53:31
Speaker 2: which means maintain the state control at the commanding heights
53:35
Speaker 2: of the economy in finance, in energy, but to allow
53:43
Speaker 2: private enterprise also to flourish. Well, that makes a lot
53:49
Speaker 2: of sense.
53:49
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are really curious about China,
53:52
Speaker 1: how China developed, but also today you know, because if
53:55
Speaker 1: you look at the developed economy, it's like the United States,
53:58
Speaker 1: Great Britain and so forth, they are not doing as
54:01
Speaker 1: well as China is doing. I mean, I don't mean
54:04
Speaker 1: to flash forward so quickly because I still want to
54:06
Speaker 1: come back. But you are someone who understands how China's
54:10
Speaker 1: economy today works. And my question for you is, you know, firstly,
54:14
Speaker 1: I want to come back around to develop developing nations
54:17
Speaker 1: and what they can learn from China later. But what
54:19
Speaker 1: can develop nations like the United States, Canada, Great Britain
54:23
Speaker 1: and Australia. What can they learn from China's economic model?
54:26
Speaker 1: Why is China doing so well well?
54:31
Speaker 2: The China's model might be a little bit hard to
54:38
Speaker 2: like copy and paste, you know, because you function under
54:41
Speaker 2: a different political system, but their aspects of China's success
54:45
Speaker 2: that can serve us. Example, you know, one of the
54:48
Speaker 2: things is just invest in your infrastructure, invest in your education,
54:53
Speaker 2: you know, invest in your own population. That's what China did.
54:56
Speaker 2: This is something that the United States could take too hard,
54:59
Speaker 2: because that's exactly what the United States is not doing
55:02
Speaker 2: right now. It's it's it has giving up on American population,
55:08
Speaker 2: right like it's giving up on they're investing, improving their educations,
55:13
Speaker 2: giving up on improving infrastructure. Now it's all about trying
55:18
Speaker 2: to funnel money to the top. So Elon Musk can
55:21
Speaker 2: be the Troy in there. I mean like that, but
55:25
Speaker 2: but that's you know, like I I don't know how
55:28
Speaker 2: what change needs to be made in the United States
55:31
Speaker 2: to to to alter that pack. But I mean, just
55:33
Speaker 2: some simple stuff. Invest in your people. Don't don't waste
55:36
Speaker 2: money on on like global war, you know, like like
55:41
Speaker 2: because that only benefit a very small group of arms
55:44
Speaker 2: manufacturers and then their lobbyist. It does not benefits average Americans.
55:50
Speaker 2: But you know that's for for some reason that that is,
55:54
Speaker 2: that is you know, us is so set on that path.
55:58
Speaker 2: I think it will take a CRISI is for any
56:02
Speaker 2: kind of change to happen. Well, clearly the.
56:05
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighties weren't just a panacea, because I understand in
56:08
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties in China there was an economic
56:12
Speaker 1: crisis of some kind. Actually I don't really understand what happened.
56:15
Speaker 1: So firstly, I have a couple of questions are going
56:19
Speaker 1: to try to combine into one. China took loans from
56:23
Speaker 1: international institutions like the World Bank, but countries around the
56:27
Speaker 1: world at the same time were doing so in failing.
56:30
Speaker 1: What did China do differently at this time during reform
56:34
Speaker 1: and opening up to allow it to succeed where a
56:37
Speaker 1: lot of other developing nations were not able to succeed
56:39
Speaker 1: by taking loans from these same international institutions, and what
56:43
Speaker 1: were the processes, like whereby China changed and what did
56:47
Speaker 1: it do with all this FDI Where did it go?
56:50
Speaker 1: Were the especially economic zones places where workers were exploited?
56:54
Speaker 2: I mean what happened? Well, first of all, China they
56:59
Speaker 2: are open to exp orientation and they're open to ideas.
57:02
Speaker 2: They don't put all their eggs in one basket. So
57:05
Speaker 2: when they take loans from IMF from World Bank, because
57:09
Speaker 2: that's the source of funding, but they also have other
57:12
Speaker 2: sources of funding, so im F on World Bank is
57:14
Speaker 2: not the main or the only source of funding for China.
57:19
Speaker 2: The initial Chinese boom was actually sparked off by the
57:24
Speaker 2: investment from the oversea Chinese. You know, this is something
57:28
Speaker 2: that people need to understand. Like people like today, a
57:31
Speaker 2: lot of Americans, especially Americans, like, oh, we made China rich.
57:35
Speaker 2: You know, we we we made China rich, made China. No, no, no,
57:39
Speaker 2: Like in the nineteen eighties, there were very few multinationals
57:43
Speaker 2: came to China to invest. You know, mostly it was
57:46
Speaker 2: overseas Chinese capital from Hong Kong, from Taiwan, from Southeast
57:51
Speaker 2: Asia that that flow into because all these regions they
57:56
Speaker 2: also was already quite integrated with American UH, with American
58:03
Speaker 2: led global economic model, where you know, like the United
58:08
Speaker 2: States started to offsource manufacturing in the late in the
58:12
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies right to to you know, first
58:15
Speaker 2: two places like UH, Japan, Korea, UH, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
58:23
Speaker 2: uh and and all these areas. So so now then
58:27
Speaker 2: what happened was China started to open up, and suddenly UH, UH,
58:32
Speaker 2: these overseas Chinese capital they see, wow, China offered much
58:36
Speaker 2: cheaper land, much cheaper labor, very educated labor force, and
58:43
Speaker 2: so they start to come in. UH. And China's idea
58:48
Speaker 2: at that time was if you build it, they will come.
58:50
Speaker 2: And they did come and and a lot of them,
58:53
Speaker 2: these factories who originally built for you know, for example,
58:57
Speaker 2: were built toys and shoes, you know, for for American consumers.
59:01
Speaker 2: They start to shift their operation from Taiwan, from Hong Kong, UH,
59:06
Speaker 2: from Singapore, fun, from all these places to China because
59:09
Speaker 2: because that's the labor is cheaper, the land is cheaper,
59:13
Speaker 2: and it just it just makes sense. It's and it's
59:16
Speaker 2: it's a very short distance away, and there's very little
59:21
Speaker 2: UH and there's also a cultural, physical, and cultural proximity.
59:26
Speaker 2: So also this this is the first wave of investment
59:30
Speaker 2: coming into China to jump start the Chinese economy, which
59:34
Speaker 2: was capital start and China did take im from World
59:38
Speaker 2: Bank loans mostly in developing infrastructure. Right. So, so like
59:43
Speaker 2: when we talk about loans and debt, people need to
59:46
Speaker 2: remember there's good debt and there's bad debt. Right. The
59:48
Speaker 2: good debt is if you take the debt to to
59:51
Speaker 2: go to college, right to to to to improve your education,
59:56
Speaker 2: or to to to improve your infrastructure, that's good debt
59:59
Speaker 2: because you will get some return long term investment. But
1:00:04
Speaker 2: we're bad debt is if you take the loan and
1:00:07
Speaker 2: you buy teav you buy consumer, you buy a fancy car,
1:00:11
Speaker 2: by a yacht, that's bad debt to pay back. Right.
1:00:15
Speaker 2: So so so China, first, first of all, they use
1:00:18
Speaker 2: their loans wisely. Uh. They use it to improve prove
1:00:22
Speaker 2: their infrastructure. When when all these infrastructure were built up,
1:00:27
Speaker 2: it also helped to retain all these capitals that were
1:00:31
Speaker 2: coming in and it just made everything so much easier.
1:00:34
Speaker 2: Now they develop all these economic clusters where uh, you know,
1:00:39
Speaker 2: for example, to build Jones in China, you have within
1:00:44
Speaker 2: very short distance. You have all the Jones supplier, all
1:00:46
Speaker 2: the parts, engines, everything like they're all clustered together. And
1:00:51
Speaker 2: and that is this is why China is very hard
1:00:55
Speaker 2: to displace, even though the Chinese wage growth has far
1:01:00
Speaker 2: outpaced its neighborhood, you know, because in American and European
1:01:05
Speaker 2: mind they still think Chinese success is based on cheap labor.
1:01:08
Speaker 2: But it's not true, because Chinese hourly wage has now
1:01:14
Speaker 2: far stripped that of Vietnam or India, but those factories
1:01:19
Speaker 2: still haven't left. You know, the Chinese supply chain is
1:01:23
Speaker 2: still very much there in place because other things other
1:01:27
Speaker 2: than the labor costs, you know, and and because China
1:01:31
Speaker 2: they built a complete supply chain there. And this this
1:01:35
Speaker 2: took a long time to build up. You know, took decades,
1:01:39
Speaker 2: decades to build up these infrastructure, to build up these ecosystems,
1:01:44
Speaker 2: and this was done. I think you need a little
1:01:49
Speaker 2: bit long term plan first of all. Uh, this is
1:01:52
Speaker 2: this is why it's kind of hard to do in
1:01:53
Speaker 2: places like the United States, where there's an election in
1:01:56
Speaker 2: every four years, and you know, the Polus he gets
1:02:00
Speaker 2: thrown out of the window. You know, like like what
1:02:02
Speaker 2: when when Donald Trump's gets say and you throw he
1:02:04
Speaker 2: tore up the jcp LA agreement with you wrong, right,
1:02:07
Speaker 2: And and so it's kind of hard to business expects stability, right.
1:02:14
Speaker 2: The thing they really hate is is volatility, you know,
1:02:19
Speaker 2: because it's hard to make business investments decisions when you
1:02:23
Speaker 2: don't you're facing with an uncertain political situation. So so China,
1:02:28
Speaker 2: in comparison, is quite politically stable for the last uh
1:02:33
Speaker 2: forty forty years. And and and you know, I might
1:02:38
Speaker 2: I might be rambling again, So stop me anytime.
1:02:41
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I just want to we don't have
1:02:44
Speaker 1: we're over time, but I still want to make five
1:02:46
Speaker 1: more minutes because I want to ask at least one
1:02:48
Speaker 1: more question of the twenty questions I had left. I
1:02:50
Speaker 1: guess we'll just have to keep having you back.
1:02:53
Speaker 2: I was.
1:02:53
Speaker 1: I've been reading a lot of poverty alleviation books. This
1:02:55
Speaker 1: book actually corrects the idea that China raised eight hundred
1:02:59
Speaker 1: million people out of poverty, because that uses a twenty
1:03:02
Speaker 1: eleven statistic and reverse engineers back to nineteen eighty and
1:03:06
Speaker 1: says there were three hundred million people or two hundred
1:03:08
Speaker 1: and fifty million people in extreme poverty or abject poverty
1:03:12
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight, but still raising two hundred and
1:03:16
Speaker 1: fifty million people out of poverty while China's population was
1:03:19
Speaker 1: still increasing and continuously raising that achievement by increasing the
1:03:24
Speaker 1: poverty line and adding what is it called to guarantees
1:03:29
Speaker 1: and it's basically food and clothing and housing are guaranteed
1:03:33
Speaker 1: and medical. So they made it even more difficult as
1:03:37
Speaker 1: they progressively eliminated poverty. And apparently, you know, ninety nine
1:03:41
Speaker 1: point ninety eight percent of abject poverty was erased by
1:03:44
Speaker 1: twenty twenty.
1:03:44
Speaker 2: So how you know, don't show.
1:03:46
Speaker 1: Ping talks about some people need to get rich first,
1:03:49
Speaker 1: So could you tell us about nineteen seventy eight, you know,
1:03:53
Speaker 1: the decision to open up to start using the market economy,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: and then how the process turned into well, let's help
1:04:02
Speaker 1: the poorest people, because I think that is what the
1:04:05
Speaker 1: world wants to know, especially the developing world. They look
1:04:08
Speaker 1: to China they say, wow, how did they erase poverty?
1:04:11
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a miracle. It's sometimes it's called
1:04:14
Speaker 1: the Chinese miracle. What was this process?
1:04:17
Speaker 2: Like? Yeah, I mean in nineteen seventy nine, everybody was poor.
1:04:21
Speaker 2: Everybody was equally poorb well, and so some people are
1:04:23
Speaker 2: more poor than others. You know, they're you know, like
1:04:26
Speaker 2: I said, there was an urban and rural divide. Rural
1:04:30
Speaker 2: areas much more poor than urban areas. Uh. And and
1:04:34
Speaker 2: even in nineteen eighties, eighty percent of the Chinese populations
1:04:37
Speaker 2: still live on the countryside. So there was there are
1:04:40
Speaker 2: there are inequalities in China even back then. But what
1:04:45
Speaker 2: what uh? You know when de Chapin said, you know,
1:04:48
Speaker 2: let some people get rich first, because there was a
1:04:52
Speaker 2: at that time, there was a fear if if the
1:04:54
Speaker 2: market market economy were allowed to come into China, you
1:05:00
Speaker 2: will create a vast gulf of inequality, you know, back
1:05:04
Speaker 2: to the pre communist states. But Benjapins just say, okay,
1:05:09
Speaker 2: let's let's let's not worry about that right now. Let's
1:05:11
Speaker 2: just let's just raise the living standard. Uh. Let's let's
1:05:16
Speaker 2: just raise the overall living standard for everybody. If some
1:05:19
Speaker 2: people get rich, so be it. Then that did that
1:05:24
Speaker 2: did change?
1:05:25
Speaker 1: Uh?
1:05:26
Speaker 2: In the twenty tens and twenty twenties. Is you know
1:05:31
Speaker 2: one thing that Chinese government is done is they eliminated
1:05:35
Speaker 2: the taxes, the taxes on the farmers, which is the
1:05:39
Speaker 2: first through thousands of Chinese history, the first time they
1:05:43
Speaker 2: eliminated the taxes on the farmers. And because this is
1:05:46
Speaker 2: a recognition of all the sacrifices of the Chinese farmers
1:05:51
Speaker 2: have done, especially in the early era of Chinese modernization,
1:05:55
Speaker 2: when the farmers were subsidizing the urban industrial demand. And
1:06:01
Speaker 2: so right now, like they got rid of the farm taxes,
1:06:05
Speaker 2: and they also now they're trying to rebuild kind of
1:06:12
Speaker 2: the social welfare system for the people, because in the
1:06:17
Speaker 2: male era, there was a social welfare system for the
1:06:20
Speaker 2: urban factory workers. It's true, but again that was built upon,
1:06:25
Speaker 2: like I said, sacrifice. All the vast majority of the
1:06:28
Speaker 2: population were farmers. And then in nineteen seventh upter nineteen
1:06:32
Speaker 2: seventeen a that model become unsustainable. And then in nineteen
1:06:38
Speaker 2: nineties when they start massive privatization, you know that again
1:06:43
Speaker 2: it kind of shattered the iron rice ball of a
1:06:46
Speaker 2: lot of the urban factory workers. What they're doing right
1:06:52
Speaker 2: now in the twenty tenth and twenty twenty is kind
1:06:56
Speaker 2: of readdress some of the issue that was created, you know,
1:07:00
Speaker 2: along the policies of open and reform is to to
1:07:07
Speaker 2: you know, to come we come to you know, because
1:07:10
Speaker 2: because China is not always everything is hunky dories. There's
1:07:14
Speaker 2: a lot of problems. The Chinese leaders are constantly firefighting,
1:07:17
Speaker 2: constantly trying to address dress problems. You know. One of
1:07:21
Speaker 2: the issues, for example, is environmental issue is just like
1:07:25
Speaker 2: the issue of inequality that was introduced by the market reform,
1:07:29
Speaker 2: uh you know, like because the drive during the eighties, nineties,
1:07:33
Speaker 2: early two thousand was awful economic growth, so at oftentimes
1:07:39
Speaker 2: that expenses all the environmental degradation, you know, like they're
1:07:43
Speaker 2: building factories everywhere, and and and then by the twenty tens,
1:07:49
Speaker 2: this is when certainly when she under Sheijin pain, focus
1:07:53
Speaker 2: is now put on let's let's improve the environment, like
1:07:56
Speaker 2: the air, we really need to clean up the air
1:07:58
Speaker 2: in Beijing. And that that did they did, they were
1:08:03
Speaker 2: they were doing that very successfully. Like the Beijing air
1:08:06
Speaker 2: today is like leap and bounds better than you know
1:08:11
Speaker 2: than when he was back in the twenty twenty years ago.
1:08:15
Speaker 2: And and you can't see that when people a lot
1:08:17
Speaker 2: of traveler who come to China in twenty twenty six,
1:08:20
Speaker 2: they're like, oh wow, the city's clean, you know. And
1:08:23
Speaker 2: and that didn't happen overnight, you know, in the China
1:08:27
Speaker 2: was still pretty a lot of places still pretty dirty
1:08:30
Speaker 2: back in nineteen eighties when I grew up, but it
1:08:33
Speaker 2: got cleaned up and again it's now they're trying to
1:08:38
Speaker 2: readdress many issues that was created along the way of
1:08:42
Speaker 2: pursuing economic growth to pursue a more sustainable balance growth.
1:08:49
Speaker 1: Wow, we're gonna have to keep having you on the show.
1:08:52
Speaker 1: You clearly have. You know so much about China history, development, geopolitics,
1:08:58
Speaker 1: and economics.
1:09:00
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
1:09:00
Speaker 1: Where would you like people to find you online?
1:09:03
Speaker 2: Well, I am a prothic ship poster on x you can.
1:09:09
Speaker 2: You can find me there for shitting giggles. My handle
1:09:12
Speaker 2: is just carl Za. I do have a YouTube channel
1:09:15
Speaker 2: also under the handle carl Za and I for the
1:09:20
Speaker 2: history buffs for the people more interesting in Chinese history.
1:09:23
Speaker 2: I am doing a chronological retelling of Chinese history from
1:09:28
Speaker 2: beginning on my Patreon site Silk and Steal podcast. Currently,
1:09:34
Speaker 2: I'm at around the year two o nine BC when
1:09:39
Speaker 2: the rebellion broke out against the Chain Dynasty, the first
1:09:43
Speaker 2: recorded peasant rebellion in Chinese history. I'm like right deep
1:09:48
Speaker 2: into it right now. So if that's your cup of tea,
1:09:51
Speaker 2: go to Patreon search for Silk and Steal podcasts. And
1:09:55
Speaker 2: give me a follow there. Thank you so much for
1:09:58
Speaker 2: your time, Carl ja uh, thank you, jose