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Debunking Western myths about China · UK Column Radio

0:38
I often call you Scott in China. I think I'm going to change that
0:41
to Austrian Scott. I quite like the sound of that
0:44
and the lines, the lines quite nicely with the sub stack.
0:47
None. So Austrian Scott, thank you for
0:51
joining me in the chances again. Well, I mean, there, there are a
1:09
lot of, there are quite a few sources out there of, of people
1:15
inside China trying to communicate to a Western
1:18
audience a more, let's say realistic view of China than
1:23
what you typically get from, well, certainly Western media,
1:26
but actually it's most of what you get on Western social media.
1:31
We also have a Chinese language production team.
1:35
So we actually most of our content we produce for China,
1:37
inside China, but for the Western audience, every now and
1:40
then we do do some of a few things.
1:43
And I think that as with any country, China has all sorts of
1:48
problems and some things go well and some things go less well.
1:52
And one of our goals that we set ourselves is to try and
1:58
interpret what's going on in China from the perspective of
2:01
the Austrian School of Economics, which is somewhat
2:05
known in China, but they're not very many people that are
2:07
reporting from that perspective. And the Austrian School of
2:10
Economics is kind of a toolbox more than anything else, helping
2:13
you to use economics to understand what's going on.
2:17
And we try and do that for applying to China with a focus
2:21
on, let's say, more our focus on the economy.
2:23
But of course, the economy is interconnected with all sorts of
2:26
other things. But inevitably, you know, trying
2:29
to communicate these what the reality in China to Western
2:34
audience means that we also have to spend some time, as you often
2:39
say, debunking myths, debunking propaganda is being spread in
2:44
mostly Western social media, not so much the official media,
2:47
because the official media is a little bit more careful.
2:49
But social media, you tend to get a lot of pure propaganda.
2:53
And I think that's, it's a delicate thing because I don't
2:59
want to create the impression that we're just, that's our, our
3:01
sole mission is to debunk Western propaganda and say that,
3:04
you know, everything in China is all rosy.
3:05
I think that's also one of the things that that you, you
3:08
appreciate, which not many people do.
3:10
And is that we try and we try and deliver sort of a more
3:13
balanced view of China without, without saying it's perfect,
3:17
without any problems. On the contrary, it has lots of
3:20
problems. And, and that's one of the
3:22
topics we've talked about times before.
3:23
And that is that China is in that sense, it's really just a
3:26
normal country. In that sense, it has some
3:28
things that does well, some things that does less well.
3:31
It's all those are problems. And it's not, it's not the the
3:37
authoritarian dystopia that it's painted out to be, but there are
3:42
some definite authoritarian tendencies there.
3:44
It's not like that's that's all imagination either.
3:46
So I think that's, that's the kind of balanced view that we
3:50
try and try and transmit. However, as we both know, that's
3:55
that view is not appreciated by very many people.
3:58
People want to have you really all be on one side or the other.
4:01
And it's always amazing to me that people accuse you of being
4:04
a shill for the Chinese Communist Party because you
4:07
actually deliver a very balanced view, which is unlike most of
4:10
the people out there, right. And it's not really, it's not
4:14
really the same thing when you see, when you, when you
4:16
appreciate the the things that do go well and then at the same
4:20
time and then see the other side as well.
4:23
It's it's it's a puzzle to me how people don't notice it.
4:25
But I guess it's probably because a lot of the people that
4:28
do spend time attacking you probably do so because they are
4:33
being paid to do so. Maybe, maybe not.
4:35
But I get that impression. That was when I read various
4:38
posts, which may give me the impression that people are not
4:42
listening, they're not paying attention.
4:46
Yeah. So that's that.
4:48
So I mean, that's that's one of the reasons why I started read
4:53
evaluating my views on China. I just when I stumbled across
4:56
your stub, your sub stack a few years ago and I realized it sub
5:01
stack. What did I say?
5:03
It's. It's still morning.
5:08
Yeah, not that many more, although it could be more, it
5:10
could be fuller, but it's more. Yeah, one of the one of the
5:14
things that caught me about reading the articles that you
5:18
put out is that you weren't suggesting or haven't been
5:21
suggesting that China is utopia. And you're also not suggesting
5:27
that it's this totalitarian hellhole.
5:28
And I mean, if you if you if you look at Western media as a
5:32
whole, it is this totalitarian hellhole where everybody's got
5:35
social credit scoring and you can't do anything.
5:38
And and this is Great Wall. Well, you've sort.
5:42
Of had the message delivered? The people that live in terror
5:44
of the government, yes, Yeah. And the people, one of the
5:47
favorite phrases is that people are oppressed.
5:50
I can't remember if I told you I was at a cocktail party with
5:53
some in the USA while back. Well, not that long actually.
5:56
Just half a year ago. Hold on, hold on, hold on.
5:58
Just hold on. Let's just contextualize.
6:01
You're not actually in the US, you're living in China.
6:04
I'm actually in China. Yes, I'm in China.
6:05
Yeah, OK. Sorry.
6:06
Go on. Yeah, this, this party was the
6:09
high, high level political people.
6:12
And, you know, I was trying to do my typical thing of trying to
6:17
dispel some of the some of the myths.
6:20
And I think we talked, we got to the social credit system, which
6:24
this guy who allegedly has all these political connections,
6:28
well informed and he completely believes the story and he he
6:31
believes the whole thing. And then he asked me this quite
6:34
well, I won't go to that right now, but they have to say he
6:38
said, so do you think the Chinese people are oppressed?
6:43
And it was a kind of a difficult question, but I'd say in, in
6:46
many respects, certainly they feel much less oppressed than
6:48
the people in the US. And that was like, why that was
6:53
the question. That was that was too much for
6:55
him. But I can understand because
6:57
without the, without the information that you need to
6:59
understand that then that that doesn't make sense, right?
7:02
But certainly I would say that in general, people don't,
7:04
Chinese people don't feel particularly oppressed.
7:07
And that's just even that one statement is kind of a shock for
7:11
people that read too much Western social media.
7:14
I mean, you're in Shanghai right now and we are not using AVPN,
7:17
so there's no Great Firewall of China.
7:20
Well, that's not true. No, there is.
7:22
China does block some. That's that.
7:24
China does definitely block some sites, although they block less
7:27
and less. They used to block most of
7:29
western media, at least that was my impression.
7:32
But now, except for a few of the really bad ones like the New
7:35
York Times, the BBC, some of the main propaganda organs of the
7:40
West, most of the, most of the media is actually open.
7:43
So you look at, I think CNS is open even now.
7:46
And most of the regional newspapers you can reach,
7:51
they're a little bit less paranoid, I think about the
7:54
propaganda. But ultimately the issue is that
7:56
the Chinese government, and I'm quite sure of this, they just
8:00
feel like their propaganda systems are no match for the
8:02
Western ones. And that's also kind of a little
8:05
bit difficult for, for a lot of Westerners to get their, their,
8:08
their hands around or their, their head around that this idea
8:11
that the reason they might be blocking things is not because
8:14
they're afraid of people getting on the truth.
8:15
It's because they're afraid that they, they won't be able to
8:19
match the Western propaganda systems.
8:22
And actually, I have to say, even though I don't agree with
8:25
their approach, I think it's paternalistic and silly and, and
8:27
self defeating in the end. But in that sense, they are
8:30
right. Their, their propaganda systems
8:32
are worse than the Western ones. There's just no doubt about it.
8:35
Their propaganda organs are very clumsy and most Chinese don't, I
8:41
can't say they don't pay very much attention, but they still
8:44
pay a lot less attention than Westerners do to their own
8:46
propaganda systems. They're much more, much less in
8:49
tune with what is in the Chinese media.
8:52
I mean, most people don't don't watch television in China.
8:57
The newspapers have practically disappeared.
9:00
So most people get their information completely from the
9:02
Internet. And the government's censorship
9:06
systems, and maybe we'll talk about this in a bit, are not
9:09
very effective. They didn't try, they definitely
9:12
try and censor things and, and they try and block things they
9:15
don't, they think are make them look bad, but they're not very
9:17
good at it. So in that sense, I, I, I know
9:20
where they're, I understand where they're coming from, put
9:22
it that way, which is not to, which is not to justify their,
9:25
their decision. When somebody starts rethinking
9:30
their views on China, I suppose the obvious starting point is
9:33
trying to re establish what the CCP or the CPC means and what
9:39
its relation to China actually is.
9:42
Well, that's kind of a, it is a sensitive talk about social
9:45
media because you'll, you can really see if people on social
9:48
media, particularly on X, they refer to the CCP, then you can
9:53
kind of, you can usually guess where they're getting their
9:56
information from. Because that's not the official
9:59
term that's used to describe the Communist Party, which is the
10:02
Communist Party of China, CPC, not the Chinese Communist Party,
10:06
CCP. That's a Western term.
10:09
Not that it really makes that much difference, but it is kind
10:12
of a hint at where they're getting information from.
10:14
Because you have to know that there are these very well funded
10:19
propaganda factories in the West.
10:21
And there's particularly this 1X account called Song Ping Ank
10:27
that produces, I'm sure they must have 20304050.
10:32
Thus far, I think they have somewhere around 4 or 500,000
10:37
videos that they've shared that are also basically 99% of them
10:43
were either fake or completely twisted so that their content is
10:49
has no relationship. Their alleged content has no
10:51
relationship with what they're what, what is really being
10:53
shown. So they'll show you a video and
10:56
they'll, they'll explain it in a way that is makes no sense.
10:59
So for example, they had a, they had a video once they were a
11:02
couple years ago, they, they showed a video of a fence and
11:06
they said it was to keep people out from escaping out of China.
11:10
And they showed people on the fence.
11:12
But actually what it was showing was the opposite.
11:14
It's defense there is to keep people from coming into China.
11:18
So they just turned it completely around, right?
11:21
And then, but if you don't, if you're not used to that,
11:23
expecting that, then they get away with it, right?
11:25
They, they're showing you a real video, but they're giving you
11:28
the completely inaccurate explanation of it.
11:32
That said, I must say a number of them are completely fake,
11:35
like a lot of the ones that refer to the social credit
11:38
system, so-called. They're completely fake in the
11:41
sense they're showing you from this absolute relationship with
11:44
what what they're talking about is ultimately, this is the
11:46
social credit system. And they might show you, for
11:50
example, somebody's credit score on their phone for a normal
11:58
credit score, like most countries have.
11:59
China has them as well. And they tell this is the, this
12:02
is the social credit. It's of course incorrect.
12:06
But my favorite ones are the ones where they show people
12:08
crossing the street and they say, if you jaywalk, then then
12:12
there's the voiceover that claims this, right?
12:14
Then, then you're, they show a picture of the, of the person on
12:18
a big screen there. And this is persons they found
12:20
you through the face recognition.
12:22
And then they say you automatically get fined so on so
12:25
much and it gets deducted from your WeChat account, which would
12:28
be really incredibly sophisticated.
12:30
But this is of course complete fantasy.
12:33
But if people would know, you know, they get they, they get
12:35
away with it, right? And the people, of course,
12:36
anytime soon as anybody comes to China and me, do they realize
12:39
that that stuff is not true. But if you don't know and you
12:42
and you and you are here sort of predisposed, you have been fed
12:44
this, this, this idea for the past 10 years that China's
12:49
totalitarian dystopia or the government surveils everything
12:53
and controls everything and is extremely capable of dealing
12:56
with all this data, then you believe it, right?
13:00
We all know it's that it's that bias.
13:03
I believed it. It's understandable.
13:05
I mean, you, you've had this prop, this propaganda that has
13:09
been constantly delivered since 2008.
13:12
That's when it started. And you know, with 2008 to now
13:16
or 2025, it's, that's a long time for some people.
13:19
It's all of their lifetimes, their adult lifetimes.
13:22
They've, they've had that from the since, since they, they
13:24
began to try and understand the world.
13:27
They've heard that. And so if you deliver anything
13:29
along those lines, they think, well, that's what I've heard so
13:31
many times. It must be true.
13:33
It's understandable, but that's the that's the that's the
13:36
miracle of propaganda. And that's something the Chinese
13:38
government is completely incapable of delivering that
13:42
type of long term campaign. They just don't have that.
13:44
They just don't have that level of sophistication or even
13:47
perspective to deliver that type of long term type of propaganda
13:52
plan. Not that they don't try, but
13:54
that's way beyond their scope of what they're capable of.
13:59
I know you've dealt with this question a number of times, but
14:02
Scott, it keeps coming up. So let's just premise the rest
14:05
of the conversation on this. The Communist Party of China,
14:08
the word communist, this gets everybody every time.
14:11
And it, it happened again with me the last few days.
14:14
Ah, but they have the word communist.
14:16
They're commies. Well, yeah, yeah.
14:17
It's like it's we, as we often say, it's like you think just
14:20
because the Democratic Party of of in the United States calls
14:24
themselves Democratic, that they are Democrats, whatever that
14:28
means. I mean, it's just a name, right?
14:31
And I think that once if you compare it the situation in
14:34
other places, you'll realize that's exactly what it is.
14:38
North Korea also says Democratic.
14:41
It's nice that they're democratic, right?
14:42
In all the countries in Eastern Europe, they also call
14:45
themselves democratic, right? So whatever that means.
14:48
But I mean, I think on objective standards, if you were if the
14:52
differentiations between communist organization of
14:56
society and let's say a capitalist organization, which
15:00
is not the exact opposites, but just for the sake of argument,
15:03
we'll pretend it is. Well then I'd say I think it's
15:06
one can quite objectively say that China is less, is more
15:10
capitalist and less communist than certainly any country in
15:13
the West by far. And that's just really in terms
15:18
of the, the role of the state in society, which is the level of
15:23
control that it has and the level of competition in China
15:27
that you have in most industries is far, far more intense than in
15:31
the West. And you also literally you have
15:34
China accumulates much, much more capital than any any other
15:38
Western country. It's a huge capital accumulation
15:41
machine, which is really the, the essence of capitalism.
15:43
People often forget that. And so despite all this falls
15:46
and China has a lot of waste, right?
15:48
There's a lot of bad investment out there, but at the end of the
15:52
day, it's still the amount of capital being accumulated is
15:55
enormous. And if you look at the sad
15:58
situation in places like the United States, for example, if
16:02
there's any capital being committed at all, it's not much.
16:05
I mean, there is real investment there, but when you subtract out
16:09
the the the replacement factor, what needs to be replaced, how
16:13
much is on the net really going into new investment and
16:17
productive capital in the USI guess it's probably not too
16:19
high. OK, so let's just quickly hover
16:24
around that for a second opening businesses doing business in
16:27
China. Again, one of the tropes is
16:31
everything is controlled by the by the Chinese government.
16:35
Right. Well, actually let me that, that
16:37
reminds me of a story that we, we just mentioned prior to this
16:40
discussion. And that is the story of the
16:43
Smithfield Company or when I raised that to you, it's a, it's
16:47
a American company that specialized in the, the swine
16:53
raising industry. And I believe in the US they
16:55
have like an 80% of the, the, the pig production.
17:01
And that company was bought something like 15 years ago,
17:06
maybe not quite that. I can't remember these that it's
17:07
something like that by a Hong Kong with a Hong Kong based
17:12
company. That company was originally a
17:19
state-run Chinese company back in the day 1995, but eventually
17:25
privatized. And at the time when it when it
17:29
acquired Smithfield and I'll get a minute to explain why how I'm
17:32
getting this. It was actually I think
17:34
controlled by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, they invested in
17:37
it and this is about Smithfield and if they still own Smithfield
17:42
now eventually Goldman Sachs cashed out.
17:44
They went public in Hong Kong. Now it seems to be even the most
17:47
part controlled by its leading managers.
17:49
Think they have about 40% of the shares.
17:53
But if you listen to the reporting about this company in
17:56
the US, there's this constant discussion of how the Chinese
17:59
own all of our farmland. They're buying up all of our
18:01
farmland. And just recently there was
18:02
this, there was a piece by that RFK Junior did talking about
18:06
this and he specifically mentioned this example of
18:08
Smithfield. He said yes.
18:10
And they, they control 80% of the of the pig production in the
18:12
US and they all controls land and it's owned by the Chinese,
18:15
right? The China owned by China.
18:17
I can't remember if he said China or if he said by the
18:19
Chinese, but that's so typical is that all China is binded of
18:23
China owns. It's not China.
18:25
It's a Hong Kong listed company that partially belongs to
18:27
BlackRock, right? It's so this is so typical.
18:32
And then, you know, when we talk about the thing with China, is
18:34
the topic of the discussion or anything related to China that
18:36
this is oh, the Chinese bought or the Chinese owner or China
18:40
owns. But no, it's just some person or
18:43
some Chinese company. It's not the same thing as the
18:46
government, right? I mean, maybe the government in
18:49
some cases has some share of it, but at the end of the day, most
18:51
companies, so most of the productive companies in China
18:54
are privately run. The figure is roughly 20.
18:58
No, it's roughly 75%. That's of the of the value
19:02
adequate in China comes from privately run companies,
19:05
including foreign investment companies.
19:08
So 25% is comes from the state, but they're producing almost
19:13
none of the new jobs, none of the very little of the export.
19:17
Basically, they're, they tend to be state monopolies or very,
19:21
very large heavy industry monoliths, like all steel, for
19:26
example, British and steel or in the telecom industry.
19:28
So those, yes, they're the state is heavily, heavily present, but
19:31
they're not the ones that are driving the economy.
19:33
And it just went, as we all know that wouldn't, that wouldn't
19:36
work, right? It wouldn't work.
19:39
And people, it's so funny because you see people often on
19:41
the right in the West talking about the this talking about
19:44
China, the danger of China and so on.
19:47
And it seems like they, they're you'd think that they would
19:51
understand that, that if, if things were really as they seem
19:55
to imagine that the state were running everything, it would
19:58
never work. It would be a disaster.
20:00
It would be exactly what happened in China 4050 years ago
20:03
when the whole economy collapsed.
20:04
So yes, that that's what happened.
20:05
The state was running everything and it was a disaster.
20:09
And all the use of all the capital, people were starving.
20:12
It doesn't work and everybody knows it doesn't work.
20:14
So the funniest basis of funny thing that people imagine?
20:17
That could possibly work. And certainly that that that
20:20
they somehow managed to imagine that China with this this setup
20:24
that they seem to believe in or the state runs everything,
20:28
actually managed to dominate most of the industry in the
20:30
world and most, most sectors of the economy in the world are
20:34
dominated by Chinese exporters. How could that be possible?
20:37
Is it always because they pay subsidies?
20:41
No, you cannot. You cannot come to dominate the
20:43
world's economy by paying tariffs and tariffs or tariffs
20:48
or whatever. But no, you have the only way
20:51
you can get this, by being competitive.
20:52
You can't become the competitive by being run by the state.
20:55
The state is absolute way beyond its scope of handling anything
20:59
like that. Yeah, as I was saying, one of
21:01
the triggers for me is why is China always the target of the
21:06
Western industrial complex? Is there industrial complex or
21:12
is there is is the the political elite the political?
21:16
OK, yeah, politically that's good enough.
21:21
I, I mean, I'm not, I, I'm not Privy to their conversations,
21:24
but I would, I would, I think we can all make a guess that it's
21:28
for good reasons in the sense that they are afraid of China as
21:32
a competitor. I think that certainly is the
21:37
logical explanation. And there's that, that that's a
21:40
reasonable fear. But as Trump himself said back
21:46
in 2016, you know, he said that we have China and the US have a
21:50
have a bad deal. But I don't blame the Chinese
21:53
for it. It was mutual.
21:55
I didn't use exactly those exact words, but that's pretty much
21:57
what it boiled down to. I mean, it was that this whole
22:00
setup they've been running for the last 25 years with if
22:03
China's been allowed to accumulate massive export
22:08
surpluses and the US and and Western Europe to an extent have
22:12
deindustrialized. That was completely agreed on a
22:16
high level between the leadership of China and the
22:19
West. I mean, they were both in on it.
22:21
It could not have happened without complete collusion on
22:25
both sides. They all had to be on in on it.
22:28
And I don't, I don't, my personal opinion, as you
22:31
probably recall, is that it's not a very good deal for it's
22:33
neither a good deal for China nor for the rest of the world.
22:36
Why should China be dominating all of these industries?
22:39
Why can't their the play a little bit, a little bit more
22:42
even and give companies in some other countries a chance to
22:46
compete? I but I don't think it's you
22:49
can, you can't blame that all in China either.
22:50
It's really, it was both sides that were that were in on the
22:53
steel. And where we are now, it is
22:55
we're in a difficult situation because because of the economies
23:00
of scale in so many industries, it is very, very difficult for
23:04
Western companies to compete with China.
23:08
And but we have this bizarre situation where China in so many
23:11
areas is producing everything for the entire world.
23:15
And it's, it can keep doing that and and in return, it's
23:18
accumulated ever larger amounts of debt, right.
23:22
The rest of the world owes China.
23:24
I don't see what's in it for China.
23:26
I think that that it would be a much better deal to may even the
23:31
playing field a bit, not with tariffs, but just by adjusting
23:33
the exchange rate and giving the Western companies a little bit
23:39
better chance. But our government doesn't want
23:42
to do that. So so there we are.
23:47
But but you were you were alluding to the fact that the
23:49
Chinese government is not actually all that brilliant.
23:52
They make a lot of mistakes and bad judgement calls.
23:56
I yeah, I'd say that's definitely one of them in my
23:58
opinion. And because they, what they're
24:00
doing is they're trying to, they're trying to harken back to
24:05
their, their wishful thinking of a planned economy.
24:08
And they, they, they see that China is, there's a well, first
24:16
of all, the, the, the government is running a huge deficit.
24:20
And the reason that one of the reasons they're doing that is
24:22
because they are not cutting taxes, because companies are not
24:26
investing and, or they are investing, but they're investing
24:29
less than they, they, they wouldn't in a real, in a real,
24:34
let's say, balanced economy. And the reason for that
24:41
ultimately is because the Chinese government is still
24:43
interfering too much, at least that's my opinion.
24:46
They're still trying to favor certain sectors.
24:50
And mostly what they're doing is they're, they're forcing A
24:54
unrealistic exchange rate on the economy.
24:56
So if they were to allow the exchange rate to compare to a
24:59
normal level, that's which I'd say it has to be at half of
25:01
where we are now, then there would be some adjustment.
25:05
And yes, OK, some of the Chinese Expo industries would drop off a
25:08
little bit. But then there would be other
25:10
competitions. You could things would become
25:12
much more cheaper and much cheaper to import.
25:14
We could import many more services from the West, not only
25:17
product all the services and things would have a way of
25:22
balancing themselves out. But if the government insists
25:24
and saying, OK, what, so we have all these unemployed people and
25:27
what are we going to do? And let's let's subsidized the
25:29
electric car industry, right? But to then the electric cars it
25:33
grows and grows and grows, but then produces too much, right.
25:36
So this is all the problem with central planning.
25:38
I don't create the wrong impression to to give the idea
25:41
that that China's central planet centrally planning everything.
25:44
They aren't. But but the one that sectors
25:47
they do try and centrally plan almost all basically create what
25:51
in Austria in terms we would call malinvestment.
25:53
They're they're putting too much money in the sector and as a
25:55
result, the in the electric car and in the car industry in
25:58
general now prices in China are half the level they are outside
26:02
of China. You get the exact same car here
26:04
for the half of what you get in the rest of it.
26:06
Not only electric cars, but even even petrol driven cars.
26:10
It's because the competition is so intense here.
26:13
So everybody's losing money, right?
26:15
It's just, it's, it's, it's really, it's not a good
26:18
solution, right? It's all because the government
26:20
is, is, has tried to push that sector.
26:22
So it hurts the, it hurts the competition in the West, but
26:25
also hurts China. It's nobody, nobody's profiting
26:27
from this. So they should just, if the
26:29
Austrian perspective, they should just let things go and
26:32
the market will sort things out. They'll find useful things to
26:35
do. But right now all these plants
26:37
are occupied producing cars and people are occupied.
26:40
Free the people, free the plants, and they'll find
26:42
something more productive to do, something that's profitable,
26:45
right? That's the Austrian perspective.
26:48
And I think at some point the government's going to do going
26:50
to do wise nap to this, but they're not quite there yet.
26:54
Yeah, In South Africa we have a massive influx of Chinese cars
27:01
and they're a lot better priced than than the, let's say,
27:07
European cause. In fact, I think it was Volvo
27:10
that put out a plea to our government a few months ago
27:14
asking to put penalties on Chinese car imports.
27:17
Really. But don't forget, Volvo is
27:19
Chinese, Volvo is. Chinese then?
27:23
Then maybe it wasn't Volvo, but it was a European manufacturer.
27:26
I forget now who it was, I don't know.
27:27
Volvo is Chinese, Is that true? Yes, it was bought by China, but
27:31
they're one of our big customers, I know.
27:33
So yes. I didn't know that.
27:36
That's fascinating. But anyway, the point I was
27:38
making is that the old trope of Chinese goods being cheap junk
27:44
is gone. I mean, Chinese calls are are
27:47
incredible. They're incredible.
27:48
My next call will be China, hands down.
27:50
It is true. You're, you're right.
27:52
And, and, and so there some of the parts of the world, no doubt
27:55
in China as well. We also benefit from this from
27:57
the, the, the intensive competition and you know,
28:00
quality goes up, prices go down. But I'm just saying, at the end
28:04
of the day, those that would, that those funds, probably those
28:09
resources could be used elsewhere better.
28:12
There's too much, too many resources going into that
28:15
industry. But yeah, of course, yeah, we
28:16
all find that. We all probably all benefit from
28:18
it. Yeah, the cars are wonderful.
28:19
And the, and, and you know, I used to long ago, I used to work
28:22
for Mercedes-Benz. And we back in the day, we
28:26
Mercedes-Benz, we had our own strengths, but we really look to
28:28
Toyota as the example of how to produce things economically and
28:33
be sort of cutting edge in terms of quality management.
28:35
And that's now been taken over completely by China.
28:38
And even now Mercedes-Benz is planning to use in the future,
28:40
it's planning to use Chinese built engines for art for
28:43
everything. You mentioned Mercedes-Benz,
28:46
they were one of the worst performing cars in South Africa
28:50
in terms of sales, and it's Audi, not Volvo.
28:52
Does Audi that that? Yeah, they contacted the
28:55
government. Ridiculous though.
28:58
I mean just make it. I mean the rest of the profits
29:01
from and it is true. I mean they they are very
29:04
efficient and they are like you say, I mean in terms of quality,
29:08
in terms of the feature set, it's hard to beat, that's true.
29:13
There is censorship in China, there's censorship everywhere,
29:16
there's censorship across Europe, in the UK even.
29:19
I mean, look what's going on now in the UK.
29:22
Yeah, I mean, I'm not in the UK, so I'm always hesitant to judge
29:24
places that where I'm not personally and because I don't
29:27
know how much I'm getting is propaganda and how much is that
29:29
accurate. But it's certainly, it sounds
29:31
pretty shocking when you read the numbers of allegedly several
29:37
1000 people in prison for comments on social media.
29:41
I think in China that would be unimaginable.
29:44
Just as a point of comparison, I'm no big fan of Chinese
29:50
censorship policy. In fact, as you probably know,
29:52
I've ridiculed it many times because I think it's ridiculous.
29:57
That's the only word that comes to mind.
29:59
But while it's ridiculous, it's not particularly totalitarian.
30:02
It's very rare for people to go to prison for something.
30:05
They were on social media here. It's almost unheard of.
30:07
I, I can think of a few examples I know of.
30:10
But really, these people were people that just kept at it.
30:13
And the government would tell them like, oh, we're going to
30:15
please cool it, cool it, cool it.
30:17
And then and then like the ones that are parading on the street
30:19
demonstrating. And so eventually, if you keep
30:22
pushing them, eventually, yes, they will, but they will put you
30:24
in prison. But you have to work really hard
30:27
at it because they're just, it's not part of the Chinese system.
30:29
So what typically happens here, if they, you write something
30:34
they don't like, then, well, first of all, the most likely
30:36
thing is not just delete it, if they even noticed it at all.
30:39
But I mean, there are so many billions of comments all the
30:42
time. Most of the stuff never gets
30:44
noticed at all anyway. But if, even if there's
30:46
something that that that gets noticed, first of all, they're
30:50
likely to delete it. But if you keep doing it over
30:52
and over again, the things that really irritate them, then
30:53
eventually you might get a call. What they typically do is
30:58
they'll call your employer or your parents and they'll say you
31:02
know, XYZ If the person is, let's say under 30 or so is, you
31:09
know, a little over over overdoing it.
31:12
Tell him to cool it over 30, more likely to come to his
31:17
inmate, more likely to go to his employer.
31:19
We actually gotten calls like that before one of our well,
31:22
actually, actually actually I only know of two cases.
31:26
One I can think of here in Shanghai where one of our
31:28
employees talking about he was writing stuff about something
31:30
about the Philippines and the situation there with them.
31:35
And there was, I don't know, in that case, he was written
31:38
something they didn't like. So they written a message on
31:41
multiple occasions. So they asked us to have a
31:43
discussion with him and tell him be cool.
31:45
That's kind of typical. This other possibility is that
31:50
if you, they might actually call you to give a statement to the
31:53
police. And so then the police call you
31:56
out and they say, yeah, well, you said stuff, you know, it's
31:59
difficult. Why don't you come down and have
32:00
a talk with us? That's also happens.
32:03
I know several things like that, but it's quite civilized.
32:06
I'm not mostly I'm not supporting this policy.
32:08
But they don't, you don't come in like in the US, you don't
32:11
have people coming in at 5:00 AM with the SWAT team to raid your
32:15
house, breaking down your door. That just doesn't happen.
32:17
They just call you and they say, well, you know, you come to the
32:20
police. They didn't get a statement,
32:22
which is rather this device that said, of course, that as I
32:25
mentioned earlier, a lot of the the restrictions are, are
32:27
ridiculous. Like my favorite example is
32:29
you're not allowed to mention the name of the great ruler, the
32:32
the party secretary, dental secretary, President Paddock.
32:35
You can't mention his name and you can't even elude to him with
32:39
references. It's not it's because only the
32:41
official media is allowed to do that.
32:44
I mean, that's that's just ridiculous.
32:45
Why? That's the reason.
32:49
I don't know it's I'm not Privy to their conversations, but it's
32:55
just one of their rules, right? And even the police, even the
32:57
police think it's stupid, right? So like I, I know the case
33:00
someone they were in a, in a private group and they chat
33:03
group and they were talking about, they were alluding to him
33:05
by reference. And then as like the honored one
33:08
or something like that. And they got called the police
33:11
and the police thought the whole thing was poor silly.
33:12
Anyway, they said, why don't you just write that you'll never do
33:15
it so it won't do it again. And that's over, right?
33:18
And it's both positive and negative.
33:20
You can't speak about him. Yeah, you can't and praise him,
33:26
right? That's it's ridiculous.
33:28
I mean, no other word to describe it, right?
33:32
And everybody thinks it's ridiculous, right?
33:35
So I'm sure that in the UK you don't have that right.
33:39
So, so you can't say it's all, it's all black or white.
33:41
So in the UK you can talk, I'm sure you can talk about Starmer
33:44
all you want. Well, maybe you can't, but you
33:47
can probably at least get away with mentioning his name.
33:49
But here you can't. So in that sense, China is much
33:51
less free than the UK. But probably in the level, let's
33:54
say in the civilized approach towards censorship, I'd say
33:57
China wins hands down. And there are also interesting
34:03
topics that are very different in sort of Western countries.
34:07
You you can't, for example, in most Western countries question
34:11
the Holocaust or even, as Trump wanted to do recently, criticize
34:15
Israel. He wanted to criminalize those.
34:17
He said he wants to criminalize anybody who who criticizes
34:21
Israel. If, if, if, if those are things
34:25
that you find someone finds, let's say, relevant to discuss,
34:30
then China's a good place to do that because you will never get
34:34
arrested here with that. And Chinese social media is full
34:39
of such disguise. However, one once again, once
34:43
again, I mean, once again, like this, for example, one of the
34:47
things that I would say about the current situation in the
34:49
Middle East is that the Chinese government has done absolutely
34:53
nothing in terms of deeds to back up its words.
34:58
And I would say that's worthy of substantial criticism.
35:01
But you won't find that in China's social media.
35:04
You can't protest either like the Chinese government doesn't
35:06
like people. Protesting.
35:08
They don't like people protesting in the street.
35:10
They really don't like that. So if you really want to get
35:12
yourself in trouble, then you go protest in the street.
35:15
So it's difficult to be a political cartoonist in China.
35:21
Yeah, you can. Well, there are a lot of
35:23
cartoons. In fact, there's some really
35:24
good ones that work for Global Times.
35:25
They're they're they're they're outlet.
35:27
They make a lot of really good cartoons ridiculing the West,
35:33
but you can't ridicule things related to China.
35:36
That's true. So once again, I'm not a fan of
35:40
that. I'm not, I'm not trying to, I'm
35:41
not trying to defend that system at all.
35:44
I'm just saying if you, if you do do an objective comparison
35:48
with other countries that are also practicing various forms of
35:50
censorship, China doesn't come off all, all too bad.
35:53
I'd say on average, the US is still the country with the least
35:57
amount of censorship that I'm, that I'm aware of where you
36:01
really do the most. But in the US office, if you
36:02
talk about forbidden topics, then the danger, of course, is
36:06
that you face a loss of income and that you will be ostracized
36:11
or, you know, deed taken off various social media sites and
36:15
try to kind of do the same thing in a way, except that obviously,
36:17
once again, like you mentioned, the topics are different
36:20
forbidden. But if you, if you send too
36:22
often, for example, you can get your, your WeChat account can be
36:27
prevented from making comments. Or in the worst case you can
36:31
actually your WeChat account can get completely frozen and yes,
36:35
you have to open up a new one, which case you lose all your
36:37
contacts, but. You call that the Singaporean
36:42
route, didn't you? No, that was the Singaporean
36:47
model that was really referring to.
36:49
That's one approach that Chinese takes towards keeping stopping
36:54
people from saying things they don't like, and that is by
36:56
finding companies. There was that case that we
36:59
reported about a couple of years ago where this comedy production
37:03
company, one of their top comedians, had made some joke
37:06
which was taken to be insulting to the army, and they fined them
37:10
almost $2,000,000 for this joke and then banned them from
37:16
appearing for a month or so. I think that was the This is
37:19
Singapore universe because this is Singapore kind of I think
37:22
they were kind of pioneers in that area of trying to suppress
37:26
political opposition by basically finding people out of
37:28
existence. They're just enormous fines.
37:32
The ability to OK, OK, I get it. I get it.
37:33
They were like, well, they wouldn't imprison them, but they
37:35
just make it economically to to the price too high.
37:40
So China does use that approach as well, but more for companies
37:44
like that for individuals, not so much for individuals.
37:47
It's just like I said what I said story I told you before.
37:51
I think the undercurrent so far is that is that China is a, is a
37:54
normal country. It's not special.
37:55
It's not unusually different to any other country.
37:59
It has its own challenges and it's good as good things and bad
38:01
things. The government makes good
38:03
decisions and makes bad decisions like every other
38:05
country. Another bad decision was the
38:08
COVID response in 2020. Yeah, I think and that's
38:13
certainly true. It was, I think their initial
38:17
response didn't work out as well, well at all.
38:20
But to be fair, I think if we go back and look at the record, we
38:24
can see that what China did in February of 2020 was exactly
38:30
what was written in that lockstep scenario that the
38:33
Rockefeller Foundation put out in in 2010.
38:37
And they obviously had that in their drawers, and they pulled
38:41
it out of the drawer and just did exactly what was written
38:43
there. And they did that for about two
38:47
months. And then somebody said this is
38:50
not working and we can't keep doing this.
38:52
And then they changed course. So like also the whole thing
38:55
with the ventilators was obviously not working.
38:59
And it took them about four to six weeks to figure that out.
39:04
And of course, the amazing was by the time that China had
39:07
figured it out that this ventilator thing wasn't working,
39:12
that was when New York was saying we have to buy 500,000
39:15
ventilators, right? So the West went whole hog at
39:20
the moment when China actually already figured out this was not
39:22
working at all. And also the whole lockdown
39:24
thing was not, it was not sustainable, right?
39:27
So the, and they, they pretty quickly figured that out.
39:30
So then they went to a much more localized approach, which in the
39:34
end also ended up being unsustainable, but it was
39:35
certainly much more sustainable than their their initial
39:37
approach, which was the one they practiced in places like New
39:40
Zealand, for example, where they actually locked down the whole
39:43
country for long periods of time, which is getting
39:46
incredible to believe that any, anybody could be so stupid as to
39:48
believe that would actually work.
39:50
But it's like they were you, you look at what's going on, How can
39:54
they be so dense and not realize this is not going to work?
39:56
Right. Well, at least China realized
39:58
that was not sustainable. So the other so they stopped and
40:00
they went to a very, very localized and sometimes
40:02
localized down the point of the individual like block area.
40:06
They said it will quarantine just this individual block and
40:08
that's it. And then we won't the economy
40:10
would collapse. You can't do that.
40:14
Later on, they, I think they, they also made a really the, the
40:17
one of the most stupid thing was that they did was they didn't
40:20
realize. They didn't, Well, they did
40:21
realize, but the central government refused to accept
40:24
this whole quarantine approach was not going to work anyway, no
40:27
matter what. Even the more, the more focused
40:29
quarantine approach they use is also going to be ultimately a
40:31
failure. And it was clear by even the
40:36
beginning of 2022 that was not going to work.
40:39
And they just the, the, the central leadership in Beijing
40:42
refused to accept the obvious, but eventually reality overcame
40:46
them, as we know in 2022. And they they gave in and.
40:50
But yeah, Scott, Scott, come on, we all know the Chinese
40:54
government welded people's doors shut.
40:57
Right, That was one. That's a very, that's a good
41:00
example because that's a great example of the, the, the, the
41:04
effectiveness of propaganda. And it really it, it's a, it's a
41:07
good example of the concept of, of, of generalization.
41:12
I mean, I don't know if that even happened at all.
41:14
It's possible maybe it did happen somewhere that somebody
41:17
was welded in, which is almost impossible to leave, but maybe
41:20
it did happen. But if it did happen, it, it was
41:24
a massive violation of the fire, fire regulations.
41:28
And you'd have to be insanely that that would, that would,
41:32
that would, that would be sustainable and certainly never
41:34
happened on a large scale. And probably if it was actually
41:37
happened, whoever did it was probably disciplined for it
41:40
because it's crazy. It's insane, right?
41:43
Another good example is an even better one.
41:46
In fact, is the it's a story about the the pets being being
41:53
killed. That was one of the other
41:54
favorites that went around WW in social media for for probably
41:57
more than years. Yes, this the Chinese are
41:59
killing all the all the house pets.
42:02
Well, that story actually did that went back.
42:04
There was a piece of truth, a brain of truth, and that it
42:08
actually did happen once. In fact, it was here in Shanghai
42:10
and some crazy official did actually apparently kill some
42:14
dog and it appeared pretty quickly after that in the
42:19
newspaper and the the government attitude was this this guy lost
42:25
it and this is I was not acceptable.
42:28
We can't have that. But so it was actually in
42:31
internally in China, it was over pretty quickly.
42:33
It was recognized, reported on. No, this is something officially
42:37
going overboard, but in the Western social media and not the
42:40
mainstream media, but the social media that became what's that
42:45
word called? What do you call that in
42:46
English? When it's just that it gets
42:48
repeated over and over and over and over and over again.
42:52
And then it was all of this very general state, like the Chinese
42:54
are killing all the house pets is really was going back to one
42:57
incident, right? And that is it was generalized
43:00
and people in their own sphere. They're they're, I think most
43:05
people are aware of this issue of generalization, but when it's
43:08
something from China far away that has this or this terrible
43:10
reputation of the government controlling everything, then
43:14
people are more likely to believe it, even though it's
43:16
just a typical example of of over.
43:18
Generalization. What's another example of over
43:23
generalization within the Chinese context?
43:27
Cryptocurrency. I'm trying to think now if, if
43:30
there is a there's an overlap there because that's a big topic
43:33
at the moment with with the US and stable coins.
43:36
I'd say that's another that's an example of the Chinese
43:42
government's inability to face reality and to let's say their
43:48
ambition in terms of control is much higher than their, their,
43:51
their ability. So the cryptocurrency industry
43:57
was really centered in China for many years until 2017.
44:02
And still even today, many of the largest exchanges in the
44:05
world of Chinese, for example, finance is, is still one one of
44:09
the that's probably still officially the the largest,
44:11
which is it was usually originally based here in
44:13
Shanghai. And then in 2017, the government
44:16
decided they didn't like cryptocurrency anymore because
44:18
they felt it was it was infringing on their control of
44:23
financial flows, which is kind of true.
44:26
But instead of trying to regulate the industry,
44:28
eventually they decided to just ban it, which I'd say it was a
44:35
really big mistake because now did they destroy a bunch of
44:37
their really good companies or or hurt them significantly?
44:40
But then they actually made it impossible for them to work with
44:45
the exchanges to deal with, for example, fraud.
44:49
And we have a big problem all around the world, but certainly
44:52
in China we also have a big problem with fraud to be
44:54
defrauding elderly. And then when they, when the
44:58
fraudsters want to go along with that money, they, they typically
45:02
launder it into stable, into USDUSDT stable funds, which is
45:05
kind of the, the number one black market currency both in
45:09
China and all across Southeast Asia.
45:11
So in the old days, what would happen is the police would just
45:13
go to the major exchange and say, please help us, we have
45:16
this case black money, whatever crime, please help us out and
45:19
deal with it. But now they can't do that
45:21
because it's all illegal. So now they have no, they have
45:23
the police have no recourse. There's no official recourse.
45:25
Sometimes there, there's some, you know, they're unofficially,
45:28
they say, oh, we know this person in such and such town is
45:31
like the local money change and he'll do it.
45:32
And then maybe the police know the guy and they'll work some
45:35
deal with him in the, you know, back back office.
45:39
But it's, it's makes it much more difficult to deal with.
45:42
And that's that's I think it's a good example of of refusing,
45:45
refusing to face up to the reality that this is going to
45:48
exist whether you permit it or not.
45:49
You might as well come up with a system that allows you to
45:53
actually work with the people in, in the industry instead of
45:55
just, you know, pretending it doesn't exist.
45:59
So once again, there, I guess you could say governments in
46:02
general make that mistake because we what we intended, we,
46:05
we, our intention was good, right?
46:07
Well, don't, but you didn't look at the result.
46:10
The results is bad because it doesn't matter what your
46:13
intention for that, You know, you in particular just going out
46:16
right and banning things, that's rarely leads to good result.
46:19
Same thing goes with the education industry where they a
46:21
couple years ago the government said, oh, the children haven't
46:23
studied too much. It's too much work and it's too
46:26
expensive for the parents. They keep sending their kids to
46:28
these external schools to, you know, get them ahead in school.
46:33
So the government basically banned the whole tutoring
46:35
industry overnight, which is crazy, right?
46:38
And so you destroyed a whole bunch of a whole bunch of of,
46:40
of, of jobs. Didn't completely destroy the
46:44
companies. Some of the companies survive,
46:45
but still, it was a big, it was a big blow to them.
46:47
But did did the tutoring industry disappear?
46:49
No, no, no, I kept going. And of course, the Chinese are
46:52
not going to stop tutoring their kids.
46:53
Are you kidding? The, the idea that anybody could
46:56
have believed that they would actually ever work was, is, is
46:58
ludicrous. Chinese are the most education
47:01
oriented people in the world. They're not going to stop
47:03
tutoring their kids. So what happened?
47:05
Well, the prices went up. So what happened to the people
47:09
that were a little bit poor? The family's a little bit poor.
47:11
They got edged out of the market, so they couldn't afford
47:13
anymore. That was the result.
47:15
It wasn't, it wasn't that the kids had less, less pressure or
47:18
the parents got to save some more money.
47:20
No, no, the parents had to spend more money now.
47:22
So instead of looking at the results, they all our intentions
47:25
were good. So of course, as anybody could
47:27
have expected, a year or two later, the government, you know,
47:29
we said well, OK, yeah, we have our parents that never.
47:32
But I think, Scott, that's the that's the other generalization
47:37
that I was referring to earlier is that the the Chinese
47:40
government is this well oiled machine that is always ahead of
47:42
the curve. It's it's.
47:44
Exactly right. And they're not at all they're
47:46
they're not at all. And and I'll give you another
47:48
example. We mentioned that earlier that,
47:49
that this recent Tantrae case with the, the lead poisoning.
47:54
So there you have a typical example.
47:55
There's all these these kids from this elementary, you know,
47:57
it's actually kindergarten private 200 plus kids show up
48:02
with some sort of POI symptoms of poisoning.
48:05
Don't know what it is. Go to the local hospital.
48:08
Local hospital says that they don't know what it is, what's
48:11
going on. But actually they we found out,
48:13
right? They probably didn't know what
48:15
was going on, but they didn't want to say.
48:17
And so some parents said, well, we don't believe you.
48:19
And so they took their kids to other hospitals in other big
48:22
cities, Tianjin, I think. And Xian, this is in western
48:27
China, in Tianjin, which is way out in the Goonies mid sized
48:31
city. And then the the hospitals in
48:33
the big cities said, yeah, they have lead poisoning, right?
48:35
And so basically the government tried to cover it up.
48:39
And then they came up with this ludicrous story that the school
48:43
was mixing in lead paint with this, with the food to make it
48:48
more shiny or colorful, which is, it's so ludicrous.
48:52
I can't, I don't know who thought of that story, but who
48:55
could believe that? I mean, it's not water soluble.
48:57
I mean, it's, it's just, it's a, it's a preposterous story.
49:01
The truth seems to be that what's really going on is they
49:04
have a lead zinc, a lead zinc factory in the town and it's on
49:09
the, on the, the balance of the river.
49:11
And that they've been poisoning the, they've been contaminating
49:13
the water tail with lead. And what the school did was
49:17
because it was a privately owned school.
49:19
And so the school, because they ran it for profit, they sank
49:22
their own well instead of paying the high water rates.
49:25
And so they took water from their own well.
49:27
And that's how people, that's, that's how the kids all got
49:30
poisoned. But of course they couldn't
49:32
reveal, the government couldn't allow that to come out because
49:34
that would reveal the whole water table was contaminated.
49:36
And why is the water they were contaminated?
49:37
Because they didn't obey the environmental regulations.
49:40
That's that prohibited this plant from being erected next to
49:44
the river. So they tried to cover the whole
49:47
thing up and try to suppress the discussion so completely, but it
49:49
all failed and it all came out and now everybody in the country
49:53
knows, right? And so now they look really
49:55
stupid. Not only they come with this
49:56
really stupid story that is so preposterous to like, like how
50:00
could anybody, how could they be so stupid?
50:02
Anybody would actually believe that with the paint, right?
50:05
And then they're, they're trying to cover up they're, they
50:08
actually, they actually coerced the hospital into covering up
50:13
the truth and not telling the parents what was going on, which
50:15
is itself a crime, right. And so probably the end result,
50:18
what typically happen in case like this, they'll probably can
50:21
the entire leadership of the all of the city and they'll all lose
50:24
their, their, their career and the party because of this.
50:28
So the government makes themselves look stupid, but
50:31
there is a correction mechanism and there's like a seated
50:35
feedback method in the works. So it's not like there's like,
50:37
so yes, the government does some stupid things, but there is a
50:40
kind of a feedback this is no works and it kind of comes out
50:43
and works just on the end. But of course, the only reason
50:45
this feedback mechanism works is because their whole idea, their
50:50
whole totalitarian concept of the government can only doesn't
50:53
work, right? If it did, then there would be
50:56
no Fagin feedback mechanism. But because it doesn't work,
50:59
there is and it does work, right.
51:01
So it's a good example of, of how, yes, they have
51:05
authoritarian tendencies and maybe that's an idealized world.
51:09
They can control everything, but they don't.
51:11
And, and because there is no social credit system, people are
51:15
not worried about writing things the government doesn't like and
51:17
say, they say, oh, the government is, is tolerating,
51:20
for example, this lead poisoning.
51:22
Well, there is no social credit system.
51:23
So they don't, they don't, people don't worry about that
51:26
sort of thing. They just write what they write,
51:27
whatever they think. Maybe if they write on their, if
51:30
they write, if they write on their, their, you know, their,
51:33
their blog, whatever. The government down with the
51:35
government. Government should be kicked out
51:37
of office. Well, that wouldn't go over
51:38
well, right? But if they just complain about
51:40
the lead poisoning, nobody says no happened.
51:42
To that, the idea of a social credit system is obviously quite
51:46
nuanced. I think every country has it to
51:47
some degree. Even here, if I'm applying for a
51:50
car loan or a home loan, they do a credit check on you there that
51:53
that is a type of social credit system.
51:57
To do some ways it's been sold in the West, right.
51:59
In the West, it's been sold is this concept of, you know,
52:02
whether you're whether you're politically correct, right.
52:05
And that's, I mean, that does exist to sort of in every
52:08
country because there are ways of, of discovering whether
52:11
you're politically correct and that can influence your career
52:13
and so on. But it's much more indirect.
52:16
Like so if you apply for a job typically in the West as well,
52:19
as far as far as I understand, they'll look up your social
52:22
media posts. And now even the US government's
52:26
come out and said anybody that says anything bad about Israel
52:28
or something is you will not get admitted to the United States,
52:30
right. That's you got to watch out.
52:33
But I, I'd say compared to what goes on in the West, China is
52:37
probably much less systematic in doing that.
52:41
Maybe because you're kind of so many people, they just don't,
52:43
they don't have the resources to try and do that on the scale
52:46
that that seems to be going on in the UK.
52:49
Certainly I say seems because I one thing I don't know, I'm not
52:53
in the UK, I'd say I, I don't want to judge that, but it
52:55
certainly seems like that level of supervision or surveillance
52:59
is going on there. Social media is much more
53:01
intense than in China. Am I wrong?
53:07
No, I don't think you're wrong, but if you watch some of these
53:11
fear porn documentaries that have come out over the last few
53:14
years, the social credit score that shows you these aerial
53:17
shots of each Chinese citizen with the squares.
53:20
You know, yeah, Little, little. Boxes.
53:23
Yeah, well, I think I tell you, it's this, it's this Twitter
53:25
channel, this this X channel called song being on the mixes,
53:29
the videos, yeah. I mean, basically you're not
53:35
going to get penalized because you buy meat.
53:38
No, no. And it's really not for
53:40
jaywalking. People jaywalk all the time and
53:44
nobody, nobody notices. And certainly there's no record
53:47
of it. Every single time, Scott, I do a
53:50
conversation like this, I always get somebody saying yes, but
53:54
look at this YouTube channel. There's some guy called.
53:59
Or serpent, Serpent, which is Serpent South Africa, Zod
54:05
Africa. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:09
He lived there for for 12 or 15 years and.
54:12
Those two, those two guys, they do well, I mean, I, I, I guess
54:16
they're either being paid or maybe it's just through the
54:19
YouTube because YouTube promotes them so, so heavily.
54:22
I'm sure they get a lot of monetization from YouTube, but
54:27
yeah, they seem to have made a career out of that.
54:30
What can I say? But.
54:31
I mean, are they're telling the truth or they are they're
54:33
propagandizing the truth or what?
54:36
I don't watch much of the production, I have to say.
54:39
I have to confess, In the old days, a couple of years ago, I
54:43
didn't watch a few. But just for research purposes,
54:47
yeah, I'd say it's pretty much all fantasy.
54:49
I mean, they don't live in China anymore because they were, I
54:52
think they would have difficulties if they were to try
54:54
to come back. I don't think they would be
54:56
letting our guy get a visa. But they've been gone now for
54:59
over 10 years. So.
55:02
But these people are really lowlife.
55:03
I mean, one of their videos they said, yeah, Chinese don't love
55:07
their children. I mean, stuff like that.
55:09
And this is, this is like from a guy that's married to a Chinese
55:11
woman, right? I mean, I don't know, Lowlife is
55:17
the only word that comes to my mind from people like that.
55:21
And the point is, is that people should go, shouldn't they, and
55:25
go see for themselves. Yeah, definitely.
55:26
I mean, particularly from the West, it's typically a shock for
55:29
most people because they've never been in such a futuristic
55:33
place really. And certainly and people, some
55:35
people say, oh, it's just a big city.
55:37
No, it's not. China looks like this all over
55:38
the whole country. It's a beautifully paved roads
55:43
and high speed trains and shiny metros all over the country.
55:47
Sometimes you could have to wonder if the government's
55:49
investment is really, it's not overdoing in a bit, but in terms
55:52
of the basic infrastructure, it's very good throughout the
55:55
country. And, you know, because China is
55:57
at the cutting edge of so many industries.
55:59
Well, like the one we talked about, the electric car
56:01
industry. Yeah.
56:03
I mean, it's just you have a level of technology in society
56:06
that is unmatched anywhere else in the world and certainly in
56:09
society in China really works, right.
56:11
And it's particularly in a lot of Western countries which where
56:15
things don't work and even, let's say places like South
56:19
Africa where many things don't work.
56:22
Yeah, it's, I think it is a shock to see that how things,
56:27
how well things work in China. And it is, it is a superficial
56:30
impression to a certain extent because there are things that
56:33
don't work in China. You don't see those immediately,
56:35
right? So don't get me wrong.
56:36
But it is good to have that, that, that comparison.
56:39
And, you know, and it's not all, it's not all on China's side.
56:45
You know, we don't have, for example, the right to carry arms
56:47
here. We don't.
56:48
And you can't go hunting here, which you guys can do there.
56:50
So it's you have to sort of take the, you know, take the good,
56:53
good side of it. But yeah, people should
56:56
definitely come and see for themselves.
56:59
And it's seeing is believing, as the saying goes, right?
57:03
You can't really, you can't get it the same way from a distance.
57:06
And people it's I had a friend of mine that was thinking about
57:12
coming here, but she says she was so afraid because here
57:15
people, people so rarely use cash anymore.
57:17
And she didn't like concept of using her phone to pay for
57:19
things. Well, I mean, if that's if
57:22
that's a really if that's a principle you want to, you know,
57:24
you want to fall on you and that's then then that you want
57:27
to make that allow it to decide where you go on in, in the
57:30
world. And, you know, so be it.
57:31
But yeah, it's part of the deal. Well, actually just on that, a
57:37
lot of people also misunderstand how these things work in
57:40
different countries. In South Africa, it's not a good
57:42
idea to carry cash. It's it's, it's a dangerous
57:46
country. Carrying cash is a terrible
57:48
idea. Yeah.
57:50
Well, here you don't have that Problem, of course, is we have
57:52
almost no crime or we have, no, there's no public theft of
57:57
anything really. So you don't have that issue at
58:01
all. It's just people.
58:02
People pay things with their phone for reasons of
58:05
convenience, but it's been in China.
58:08
There's some things that pay with cash and those might be
58:10
large transactions, but small transactions all, all by phone,
58:15
but not because not for fuzz of fear.
58:16
It's just as easy in it. I mean, I've been for a long
58:19
time. I would still carry some cash as
58:20
well if I needed. You know, man, you never know
58:22
when you minded. But I have to admit, I even two
58:25
or three years ago, I, I kind of gave up on that.
58:27
And it's just all you need is a phone and it's really it's, it's
58:31
phone base. It's not by facial recognition.
58:33
There are a few places where you can pay by face if you signed up
58:37
for that feature with one of the server payment providers, but
58:41
it's pretty rare. A couple of years ago people I
58:45
think did it for for for for kicks, a couple of a couple of
58:48
stores, but it seems to be completely disappeared now.
58:51
I don't. I don't see it at all anymore.
58:54
I did experience facial recognition technology when I
58:56
was in Hong Kong though. Doing what?
59:01
Yeah, well, for example at the airport.
59:03
Oh yeah, well, that's all over the West too.
59:05
In the US now, if you leave whenever you get on a plane,
59:07
they all do facial recognition now to get on a plane.
59:10
I don't know where they have a copy of my friend's face from.
59:12
I'd like to know, but they do here in China.
59:16
We don't have facial recognition for the for, for at the airport
59:19
that I know of. But yeah, I mean, there, there
59:22
are systems in, in China is a lot of cameras.
59:24
And that's a long story as to why that that happened, the
59:26
whole terrorism thing. But but yeah, in China, if you
59:29
if you're on The Wanted list, eventually they will catch you
59:33
through via facial recognition. It's true.
59:36
And that's also probably one of the reasons why crime crime is
59:38
still low. Yeah, we can't come in for
59:41
landing because you mentioned cameras and somebody's going to
59:44
ask about that so quickly. Tell me a bit more about that.
59:46
Why are there so many cameras? Because there was a state of
59:49
terrorism back in what was it 2008 to 2014 roughly, and the
59:55
usual suspects. I think we can be pretty sure
59:58
we're behind that. I'm talking about people outside
1:00:00
of China. That were supplying that
1:00:03
organizing that they were mostly terrorists from Xinjiang from
1:00:07
the from the western part of China and they blew up train
1:00:14
stations and marketplaces and stuff and and the Chinese
1:00:18
government, the war we got to do something to stop this.
1:00:21
And so that's that was really what what what pushed to it go
1:00:24
take it off. And so they put up facial
1:00:27
recognitions all, all around the country to stop the terrorism.
1:00:29
And that was, and well, they did, they succeeded.
1:00:31
I'm not sure whether it was it worth or not.
1:00:33
I don't know. But I'd say if you asked an
1:00:36
average Chinese, do they mind the Super, the, the
1:00:39
surveillance? I'd say most people don't
1:00:42
because you can see the obvious advantages because it's so the,
1:00:47
it's so difficult to get away with the crime.
1:00:48
This is committed in public because of the, of the
1:00:51
surveillance. Even even smaller things.
1:00:53
For example, I, I had a couple of twice last year, I had run
1:00:59
insurance with scooter drivers and then the call the police and
1:01:06
the police said, OK, well, we'll get the video right from
1:01:08
whatever it is, you know, nearby to saw, saw what happened then.
1:01:12
And then they can use the video to just to make an assessment,
1:01:14
which is handy, right? So they won one case and I think
1:01:18
technically it was maybe my fault.
1:01:20
But then the policeman said, but the guy was obviously speeding,
1:01:24
he was driving too fast. So you can't say it was all your
1:01:26
fault. So at the end of the day, it was
1:01:27
like, you know, OK, never mind. So that's handy, right?
1:01:31
So I think most people are not, don't see that as something
1:01:33
negative. But that's also because the
1:01:35
government doesn't use it to as far as people's at least people
1:01:39
don't have the impression government is easy to track
1:01:41
them. And I know for a fact the
1:01:42
government for the most part has no idea where people are.
1:01:44
But that's also something that's very hard for people in the West
1:01:46
to imagine that there are hundreds of millions of Chinese
1:01:49
living in cities where they're not registered and the
1:01:53
government has no idea where they live, where they live and
1:01:55
they don't actually care. They don't, they don't even try
1:01:57
and track these people. And we know that for a fact
1:02:01
because there's lots of evidence for this.
1:02:02
The government doesn't know. But if the if you do get on the
1:02:04
on The Wanted list, they try and tracking it, then they use it.
1:02:08
So that's, that's the difference.
1:02:10
But people don't perceive the government's tracking them
1:02:12
because they know from multiple examples in their lives, the
1:02:14
government has no idea where they are.
1:02:17
So they don't have that, that let's say that paranoia that
1:02:21
people associate in the West or the government's tracking me and
1:02:24
they know, they know that as far as people's experience is that
1:02:28
they what they do use the cameras for is see the track
1:02:31
criminals or to figure out what happened in case of an accident.
1:02:34
That's how most people interact with the cameras.
1:02:39
OK, looking at the time, how can I follow your work?
1:02:44
Well, yeah, I will share a couple of this.
1:02:46
As I mentioned earlier, we, you know, we do have a lot of
1:02:50
production in Chinese as well, but we also do some things for
1:02:54
the Western, Western market. And one of the projects that
1:02:59
we've been working on for a while now is a project called
1:03:02
Quantum Intel website is Quantum Intel dot me.
1:03:06
And that's actually most for the Western market itself.
1:03:09
Independent media provide provide a platform for
1:03:12
independent media. So you can find independent
1:03:14
media, what independent media is talking about in all these
1:03:17
different areas around all around the world.
1:03:19
So like for example, you can check out UK columns.
1:03:23
We have a library in that. The UK column is in there as
1:03:26
well. I think I looked up the UK
1:03:27
column today and I think U column is over 1000 entries
1:03:31
actually. So you can actually go to the UK
1:03:33
column and page in our on our website.
1:03:40
And I think the UK column is 933-O.
1:03:42
That's the feed number. And then you can actually do a
1:03:46
search. For example, you can see, let's
1:03:47
say you look up for example censorship, you want to know
1:03:51
what what UK column is, has had say about censorship in the last
1:03:54
couple of years. And I looked it up today and UK
1:03:57
column has 12 different episodes about censorship in the last
1:04:01
three years and you can find out what they are.
1:04:04
So it's kind of a handy thing. But you could also look up and
1:04:06
see what people are talking about in other countries, in
1:04:10
other language zones. And so it's also really
1:04:12
interesting to look up what other countries are not talking
1:04:14
about. So, for example, a couple of
1:04:16
years ago, we, some people, some listeners may recall there was a
1:04:23
really hot podcast put out by Tiger Carlson they did with
1:04:27
Darryl Cooper. And it was sort of the talk of
1:04:30
the country in the USI don't know about the UK, but it was
1:04:33
some sensitive topics. And, and there's a lot of, there
1:04:37
are a lot of articles about him. But if you looked at Darryl in
1:04:40
the German press or the German independent media or in the
1:04:43
French media, you would discover nothing.
1:04:45
He was completely blocked out. So it's actually quite
1:04:48
interesting to see what's not being discussed.
1:04:50
But because you can do that content search through the
1:04:52
platform, you can tell you can find that out.
1:04:54
And we also have a translation function.
1:04:56
So you're not too comfortable reading German, then it will it
1:04:58
will translate it for you. So that's also kind of candid.
1:05:00
So that's one thing you can you can check out.
1:05:03
And of course, you can also check out our Austrian China sub
1:05:06
stack, which is Austrian China, Austrian with an N that's from
1:05:10
the country Austria, Austrian, Austrian china.substock.com.
1:05:16
What's the quantum URL again? Quantum Intel.
1:05:20
Dot ME. So it's all quantum like, like
1:05:22
quantum physics and Intel, like intelligence. dot ME.
1:05:28
And if you, if you enter 933-O there you'll see at the top on
1:05:31
on search for that and you'll find that's the, that's the UK
1:05:34
column, the main UK column fee. Although you you also search for
1:05:38
UK column as well, but that's just the abbreviation.
1:05:42
Austrian Scott, it is always a pleasure chatting to you.
1:05:44
Thank you for joining me in the trenches.
1:05:46
Thank you, Durham.