Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Eurasia Builds While North America Bargains: Russia, China, Trade Corridors, and the New World Order

Transcript

Eurasia Builds While North America Bargains: Russia, China, Trade Corridors, and the New World Order · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, good morning.
• 0:01
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:03
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:04
  You are listening to Damn Radio.
• 0:07
  Good stuff, eh?
• 0:09
  I got quite a bit to talk about
• 0:10
  today.
• 0:10
  I got a plan.
• 0:11
  I got a plan.
• 0:12
  But you know how plans are.
• 0:13
  Best laid plans of mice and men.
• 0:15
  Can't decide today whether I'm the mouse or
• 0:17
  the man.
• 0:17
  But anyway, we are free to take calls
• 0:20
  today.
• 0:20
  5-7-3-7-4-6-8-0
• 0:22
  -2-0.
• 0:23
  Sometimes I even answer the phone and sometimes
• 0:26
  not.
• 0:27
  But we're coming to you live from the
• 0:28
  Lake Ozark Real Estate of the Art Studio.
• 0:31
  And I'm not even going to dig right
• 0:34
  into any real news.
• 0:35
  I'm going to just jump into some commentary.
• 0:41
  Let's see.
• 0:43
  You know, they got Joe Biden's kid up
• 0:45
  there talking about.
• 0:46
  They got him as a public figure now.
• 0:49
  Oh, my God.
• 0:50
  I thought we got rid of that name.
• 0:52
  I got to turn these TVs off.
• 0:54
  I can't do it.
• 0:55
  I can't do it.
• 0:56
  They've got to be turned off whilst I'm
• 0:57
  trying to be organized.
• 0:58
  But ladies and gentlemen, ladles and jelly spoons,
• 1:01
  I've come before you to sit behind you
• 1:03
  and tell you something I know nothing about.
• 1:06
  Next Tuesday will be Good Friday and there
• 1:09
  will be a father's meeting for mothers only.
• 1:12
  Admission is free, so please pay at the
• 1:14
  door.
• 1:14
  You can have a seat on me or
• 1:16
  please sit on the floor.
• 1:18
  Anyway, that was a Boy Scout thing from
• 1:20
  a million years ago.
• 1:21
  I don't know why that just came to
• 1:22
  mind, but it did.
• 1:23
  And there's an ending to it.
• 1:24
  But it starts with ladles and jelly spoons.
• 1:27
  At any rate today, we're going to step
• 1:30
  back from the old daily headlines and take
• 1:33
  a long, hard look at power and the
• 1:37
  structure of power in the world and how
• 1:39
  that power is going to shape the future.
• 1:44
  So everybody knows me.
• 1:45
  I take the international flavor because here on
• 1:48
  International Flavor, the truth just tastes better.
• 1:51
  So I'm going to give you the truth.
• 1:52
  You can do with it what you like.
• 1:54
  You don't have to agree with me.
• 1:56
  You can even argue with me.
• 1:58
  I enjoy that.
• 1:58
  I like a good argument.
• 1:59
  I like a good jousting session, a brain
• 2:03
  joust as they call it.
• 2:05
  But think about this.
• 2:06
  I'm on the one side.
• 2:08
  Now I'm comparing here a little bit of
• 2:11
  Putin, Xi Jinping today and yesterday and Trump
• 2:17
  and Xi Jinping over the weekend.
• 2:20
  Okay, they're very, very similar.
• 2:21
  So every year Trump goes and visits Xi
• 2:24
  Jinping for a couple of days.
• 2:25
  Every year Xi Jinping goes and visits Putin.
• 2:29
  I believe Xi Jinping, I'm going to read
• 2:30
  you what he said about Russia when they
• 2:32
  came in.
• 2:33
  And I believe he said it's been 25
• 2:35
  years running.
• 2:36
  And I know it's been at least 10
• 2:39
  to 12 because I went through that yesterday.
• 2:41
  But I believe he said in his speech,
• 2:44
  I was only listening to it in passing.
• 2:47
  So I mean in the background.
• 2:49
  So sometimes you miss things like if you're
• 2:51
  driving in your car or something.
• 2:52
  But I listened to him and it was
• 2:54
  the Russian translation of him.
• 2:56
  So it was given in Chinese, translated to
• 2:58
  Russian and I'm listening to it in Russian
• 3:00
  and I'm translating it to English for you
• 3:02
  today.
• 3:03
  So at any rate, that is, I want
• 3:06
  to start with the comparison of the two
• 3:08
  approaches to the world.
• 3:10
  Okay.
• 3:10
  And then we're going to go through the
• 3:13
  events and what occurred and what is occurring
• 3:16
  even now as we speak and what's been
• 3:19
  going on for the last 10 to 25
• 3:22
  years.
• 3:23
  Okay.
• 3:24
  So Russia, China, two states, for all of
• 3:30
  their differences, they're locked arm in arm to
• 3:34
  reshape infrastructure, trade and currency flow.
• 3:39
  They're building bridges, pipelines, ports, railways, creating entire
• 3:44
  corridors of power all the way across Eurasia.
• 3:47
  On the other side, we have the United
• 3:49
  States, Canada and Mexico.
• 3:51
  Three democracies of varying levels with deep trade
• 3:56
  ties, but more focused on tariffs, outsourcing, you
• 4:00
  know, how do I get it to cheapest?
• 4:02
  Then I'm building a strategic corridor that people
• 4:04
  can use forever.
• 4:05
  Remember NAFTA?
• 4:07
  Whatever happened to that?
• 4:08
  Now they have something else.
• 4:09
  I forget what it's called.
• 4:10
  Mexico, Canada, America, MCA.
• 4:12
  I can't remember what the agreement is, but
• 4:14
  it's still only peripheral.
• 4:18
  It's nothing infrastructure related.
• 4:20
  So today we're going to compare the models
• 4:22
  of governance, how nations build, how they plan
• 4:25
  and what it means when a lot of
• 4:27
  people focus on short, well, like America, we
• 4:30
  focus on short-term deals.
• 4:31
  What are you giving me today to propagandize
• 4:34
  for me?
• 4:35
  Okay.
• 4:35
  Like all the investors that went to China,
• 4:38
  you know, with the Trumpster last week.
• 4:41
  Private investing, private only.
• 4:44
  While others are laying down steel infrastructure for
• 4:48
  the next century.
• 4:50
  So and we're going to focus on what
• 4:52
  Russia and China are constructing, how North America
• 4:55
  is moving or not moving in that regard
• 4:58
  and ultimately what it means for the world
• 5:00
  order we're all going to be living in
• 5:02
  in the future.
• 5:03
  Our children are going to live in a
• 5:05
  world order not dominated completely by one hegemonic
• 5:10
  empire.
• 5:11
  The world's changing.
• 5:12
  Okay.
• 5:13
  So stick with me because by the time
• 5:14
  I wrap this up, we're going to pull
• 5:16
  back to a mile high view of how
• 5:18
  power is shifting under our very feet.
• 5:21
  Okay.
• 5:22
  And so what I'd like to do is
• 5:26
  start with the actual speech, the transcript of
• 5:31
  the speech.
• 5:32
  Now this is a translation.
• 5:34
  And so, you know, Chinese has various forms
• 5:37
  and the Russian has, I would give these
• 5:41
  translations a 95% accuracy rate for getting
• 5:45
  the ideas of these gentlemen, these esteemed gentlemen
• 5:48
  across.
• 5:49
  Okay.
• 5:50
  Here's Xi Jinping.
• 5:52
  I'm very pleased to meet with you together
• 5:54
  with President Putin.
• 5:56
  President Putin is visiting China for the 25th
• 6:00
  time.
• 6:02
  That fact, the Xi Jinping talking, that fact
• 6:04
  alone testifies to the high level and special
• 6:07
  character of China-Russia relations.
• 6:11
  I would like to warmly welcome President Putin
• 6:13
  and all of our Russian colleagues.
• 6:15
  Just now, President Putin and I held in
• 6:18
  -depth, friendly, productive talks.
• 6:21
  We conducted strategic dialogue across a broad range
• 6:24
  of our most important subjects.
• 6:27
  That's not what he said with Trump.
• 6:29
  We signed a joint statement by China and
• 6:31
  Russia on further strengthening our comprehensive partnership and
• 6:36
  strategic cooperation and on strengthening relations of good
• 6:40
  neighborliness, friendship and cooperation.
• 6:43
  In our presence, a substantial package of documents
• 6:46
  on bilateral cooperation was concluded.
• 6:50
  A joint declaration will be published.
• 6:53
  Now this is important line here, will be
• 6:56
  published on the formation of a multipolar world
• 7:01
  and international relations of a new type.
• 7:05
  This is Xi Jinping, by the way.
• 7:07
  This year marks the 30th anniversary of the
• 7:11
  establishment of the China-Russia partnership and strategic
• 7:14
  cooperation.
• 7:16
  Over 31 years, our relations, tempered by wind
• 7:19
  and rain and following the demands of times,
• 7:22
  have risen to new heights.
• 7:24
  They are now at a historical peak of
• 7:26
  comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation in a new
• 7:30
  era.
• 7:31
  They recognize this, boys and girls.
• 7:33
  They are rightly considered a model of a
• 7:36
  new type of relation between major powers.
• 7:39
  This year marks the 25 years since the
• 7:42
  signing of the Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship
• 7:45
  and Cooperation between China and Russia.
• 7:48
  For many years, our countries have consistently adhered
• 7:51
  to the principles fixed in that treaty, non
• 7:54
  -alignment, non-confrontation, and not being directed against
• 7:59
  third parties.
• 8:02
  Firmly guided by the spirit of mutual respect,
• 8:04
  equality, honesty, fairness, and mutually beneficial cooperation, you'll
• 8:09
  hear that term a lot from China, mutually
• 8:11
  beneficial cooperation.
• 8:13
  Our countries make a significant contribution to defending
• 8:17
  international justice and forming international relations of a
• 8:21
  new type.
• 8:22
  We play the role of a key constant
• 8:24
  amid a large-scale transformation unseen in a
• 8:29
  century.
• 8:29
  This is a big speech.
• 8:32
  Dear friends, under the joint strategic guidance of
• 8:35
  President Putin and myself, China-Russia relations have
• 8:38
  reached a new frontier.
• 8:41
  Both sides must follow the trend of the
• 8:44
  modern era toward peace, development, cooperation, and universal
• 8:49
  benefit, and seek higher quality development of relations
• 8:53
  between China and Russia.
• 8:55
  First, we must strengthen high quality political mutual
• 8:59
  trust and strategic support for each other.
• 9:03
  Political mutual trust is the brightest future of
• 9:05
  China-Russia relations.
• 9:08
  It is established as a basic goal and
• 9:10
  principle in the Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship,
• 9:14
  Cooperation, whose renewal President Putin and I have
• 9:18
  already jointly decided upon.
• 9:21
  They're continuing it.
• 9:23
  It is important to continue what has been
• 9:25
  started and to open new horizons and further
• 9:28
  to firmly support one another on issues affecting
• 9:30
  each other's core interest and key concerns.
• 9:34
  We must maintain close strategic dialogue and contacts
• 9:38
  at various levels and continuously strengthen political mutual
• 9:41
  trust between our countries.
• 9:44
  That's number one.
• 9:46
  Second, we must give additional momentum to high
• 9:49
  quality mutual beneficial cooperation and move hand-in
• 9:52
  -hand toward national development and prosperity.
• 9:55
  He's talking about infrastructure.
• 9:59
  A little coffee there.
• 10:00
  In recent years, we have constantly been impressed
• 10:03
  by the breakthrough development and major results of
• 10:06
  multifaceted bilateral cooperation.
• 10:09
  The bilateral volume of trade has exceeded $200
• 10:13
  billion for the third consecutive year.
• 10:16
  Despite very difficult external conditions, trade turnover for
• 10:20
  January for April of this year grew by
• 10:23
  approximately 20 percent, which was achieved with great
• 10:27
  difficulty.
• 10:29
  We should make use of this favorable momentum,
• 10:33
  strengthened cooperation in linking China's long-term development
• 10:37
  program with Russia's national development goals through 2030,
• 10:42
  effectively using the stable role of cooperation in
• 10:46
  energy and connectivity, actively cultivating new drivers in
• 10:50
  the field of the digital economy, artificial intelligence,
• 10:54
  technological innovation, and promote large-scale mutual beneficial
• 10:59
  cooperation both in level and quality for the
• 11:03
  benefit of national development and prosperity for both
• 11:06
  countries and more infrastructure.
• 11:09
  And I'm going to get to that here
• 11:10
  in a minute.
• 11:10
  Third, we must promote high-quality communication and
• 11:14
  contacts between our citizens.
• 11:16
  They both have no visa requirement between their
• 11:20
  countries anymore.
• 11:21
  Now, their countries have 4,000 kilometers of
• 11:25
  border between Russia and China, and we'll get
• 11:30
  to that in just a minute.
• 11:32
  So we lay a solid foundation for China
• 11:35
  -Russia friendship from generation to generation thanks to
• 11:38
  the growth of the China-Russia relationship.
• 11:41
  Bilateral culture and humanitarian ties are now even
• 11:45
  closer, and cooperation in education, culture, tourism, and
• 11:50
  sports is developing at full speed.
• 11:52
  China-Russia friendship is finding more and more
• 11:55
  support among young people, and our people are
• 11:58
  becoming closer and understanding each other better.
• 12:01
  President Putin and I have decided to hold
• 12:03
  this year and next the years of China
• 12:06
  -Russia cooperation in education.
• 12:08
  This will be the 10th such interstate project,
• 12:12
  which President Putin and I will open together
• 12:14
  immediately after this meeting.
• 12:16
  In the context of the years of cooperation
• 12:18
  in education, it is necessary to continue expanding
• 12:22
  bilateral student exchanges, deepen the ties between universities
• 12:27
  and research platforms, achieve more practical results in
• 12:30
  talent development and joint scientific research, and create
• 12:33
  more favorable conditions for the progressive development of
• 12:37
  China-Russia relations.
• 12:39
  Fourth, we must develop high-quality international cooperation
• 12:43
  and reform and improve global governance.
• 12:47
  Now, this is a kick in the teeth
• 12:49
  right here.
• 12:49
  The world is very unsettled.
• 12:52
  The damage caused by unilateral action and hegemony
• 12:56
  is excessive.
• 12:58
  This is a punch in the face to
• 13:00
  America.
• 13:01
  And there is a threat of a return
• 13:04
  to law of the jungle.
• 13:06
  In this connection, I've put forward the concept
• 13:09
  of a community with shared future for mankind
• 13:12
  and for global initiatives, which enjoy broad support
• 13:16
  from the international community, including Russia.
• 13:20
  As permanent members of the UN Security Council,
• 13:24
  China and Russia will resolutely fulfill their duty
• 13:27
  as responsible world powers to defend the authority
• 13:31
  of the United Nations and international justice, to
• 13:34
  oppose all manifestations of unilateralism and hegemony, who's
• 13:40
  that pointed at, and resist attempts to turn
• 13:43
  history backward.
• 13:45
  Above all, we oppose provocative actions aimed at
• 13:49
  denying the result of the Second World War
• 13:52
  and reviving signs of fascism and militarism.
• 13:57
  This is Europe punching the face to Europe
• 13:59
  too, America too, but Europe and Ukraine.
• 14:02
  We are ready to work shoulder to shoulder
• 14:05
  to form a more just and rational system
• 14:08
  of global governance.
• 14:11
  For the common good and in step with
• 14:13
  the times, the great cause of China-Russia
• 14:15
  friendship, which corresponds to the current view of
• 14:19
  history and the demands of the age, will
• 14:21
  certainly move forward confidently, steadily, irresistibly reaching ever
• 14:26
  new and brilliant achievements.
• 14:28
  Thank you for your attention.
• 14:30
  That is not what Donald Trump got last
• 14:34
  week.
• 14:34
  He got, don't touch Taiwan, anything else we're
• 14:38
  able to chat about.
• 14:40
  You know, quit what you're doing and, you
• 14:43
  know, you want to make some money, send
• 14:45
  in your money makers.
• 14:47
  He brought them all with them.
• 14:49
  Here, here, here, have a deal.
• 14:50
  You get your victory.
• 14:52
  Didn't sound like, I mean, everybody's talking about
• 14:55
  the nothing burger of Donald Trump and flying
• 14:57
  to China and how not much came of
• 15:00
  it.
• 15:01
  Yeah, okay.
• 15:02
  You got some business deals.
• 15:04
  All right, great.
• 15:05
  Did you talk anything about what's going on
• 15:07
  in the world and how to resolve world
• 15:09
  problems?
• 15:09
  No, because you're the only the only person
• 15:14
  able to solve them.
• 15:15
  You don't need anybody else.
• 15:17
  You need people to fall in line behind
• 15:19
  the bullies.
• 15:20
  That's it.
• 15:21
  And the world isn't that way any longer.
• 15:24
  And I believe this is the the opening
• 15:27
  of that.
• 15:27
  Now, sorry, Vladimir Putin gave a statement right
• 15:31
  after that joint session.
• 15:34
  And he said, dear Chairman Xi Jinping, ladies,
• 15:37
  gentlemen, friends, first of all, I would like
• 15:39
  to sincerely thank our friend, Chairman of the
• 15:41
  People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, and all
• 15:44
  our Chinese colleagues for the warm, cordial reception
• 15:47
  extended to the Russian delegation.
• 15:49
  This official visit is taking place in an
• 15:52
  anniversary year for Russia-Chinese relations.
• 15:55
  Twenty-five years ago, the most important interstate
• 15:58
  treaty of good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation was
• 16:01
  concluded.
• 16:02
  It laid a solid foundation for comprehensive development
• 16:05
  of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between our
• 16:09
  two countries.
• 16:11
  Today, Russia-China relations have truly reached an
• 16:15
  unprecedented level and continue to develop.
• 16:18
  At the same time, our relations are self
• 16:21
  -sufficient.
• 16:22
  They do not depend on the current global
• 16:24
  system and serve as a model for how
• 16:27
  relations between countries and people should be built
• 16:31
  in the present era.
• 16:32
  As for today's negotiations, they took place in
• 16:35
  a traditionally warm, comradely and constructive atmosphere.
• 16:40
  We discussed in detail all key areas of
• 16:42
  bilateral cooperation.
• 16:44
  The joint statement signed as a result of
• 16:46
  the talks identifies the priority areas of our
• 16:49
  cooperation.
• 16:51
  A very substantial package of intergovernmental, interdepartmental and
• 16:55
  corporate documents were also concluded, around 40 in
• 16:59
  total.
• 17:00
  Some of them were signed here.
• 17:02
  Many of them aim at further deepening economic
• 17:05
  cooperation.
• 17:07
  I emphasize that Russia and China are important
• 17:09
  trade partners for one another.
• 17:11
  In 2025, trade turnover reached $240 billion.
• 17:16
  The structure expanded, including through goods with high
• 17:19
  added value.
• 17:21
  The growth of mutual trade is significantly facilitated
• 17:25
  by modern enterprises in Russia and China and
• 17:28
  by coordinated steps to shift settlements between them
• 17:35
  and between our countries as a whole in
• 17:40
  our national currency.
• 17:42
  This has had serious importance.
• 17:45
  As a result, practically all Russia-Chinese export
• 17:50
  -import operations are carried out in the ruble
• 17:53
  and the yuan.
• 17:54
  In essence, we have built a stable system
• 17:57
  of mutual trade protected from external influence and
• 18:02
  negative trends in global markets.
• 18:05
  Now, that is huge.
• 18:09
  No more dollars, which everybody has to use
• 18:11
  to trade because they want the dollar.
• 18:13
  That's not what China's doing.
• 18:15
  They're doing this with a lot of countries.
• 18:18
  They have their own settlement platforms.
• 18:19
  They're having their own people do it.
• 18:21
  Russia's doing the same.
• 18:23
  Our days of funding our growth by external
• 18:29
  people's efforts and dollars being invested or held
• 18:33
  in dollars, that's dying.
• 18:36
  It might take a while, but it's speeding
• 18:38
  up.
• 18:38
  And it is speeding up.
• 18:40
  So in essence, we've built a stable system
• 18:43
  of mutual trade protected from external influence and
• 18:47
  from negative trends in global markets.
• 18:50
  That's an important sentence.
• 18:52
  So I note that Russia and China, this
• 18:55
  is Putin again, that Russia and China are
• 18:57
  actively cooperating in the field of energy.
• 19:00
  Our country is one of the largest exporters
• 19:02
  to the People's Republic of China of oil
• 19:05
  and natural gas, including liquefied natural gas and
• 19:09
  coal.
• 19:10
  We are, of course, prepared to continue reliably
• 19:13
  ensuring uninterrupted supply of all these types of
• 19:16
  fuel to the rapidly growing Chinese market.
• 19:20
  Our high technology company, Rosatom, is operating successfully
• 19:25
  in the Chinese market.
• 19:27
  At the Tiananmen nuclear power plant and the
• 19:30
  Zhudapu nuclear power plant, construction of Russian-designed
• 19:35
  power units is being completed.
• 19:38
  Their implementation will make a noticeable contribution to
• 19:42
  supplying the Chinese economy with energy and will
• 19:45
  help supply Chinese enterprise and households with inexpensive,
• 19:49
  clean energy, which is very important.
• 19:52
  There's great potential for cooperation in renewable energy,
• 19:56
  in particular for implementing joint projects in low
• 19:59
  -carbon generation.
• 20:01
  The issue of mutual recognition of Russian and
• 20:03
  Chinese environmental certificates for electricity generation is being
• 20:07
  worked through, and corresponding memorandum was concluded as
• 20:11
  part of our visit.
• 20:12
  We are also talking about strengthening partnership in
• 20:16
  the field of critical elements and metals necessary
• 20:19
  for broader implementation of green technology.
• 20:23
  Overall, Russia and China are energetically developing industrial
• 20:27
  cooperation, creating new joint value-added chains and
• 20:31
  introducing advanced technology and innovation.
• 20:36
  I will also mention that in Moscow and
• 20:39
  in a number of Russian regions, production of
• 20:41
  Chinese-brand automobiles has been established.
• 20:44
  And by the way, I've ridden in them,
• 20:46
  and these are fantastic vehicles, and they are
• 20:50
  inexpensive.
• 20:51
  And they are equal to or better than
• 20:54
  the vehicles that we're getting here at a
• 20:58
  fourth or a third of the price.
• 21:01
  It's crazy.
• 21:02
  At the Chevrolet plant in, where was it,
• 21:05
  Uzbekistan?
• 21:06
  Kyrgyzstan?
• 21:07
  I can't remember.
• 21:08
  But you could get a Chevy vehicle similar
• 21:11
  to, well, a sedan size, a large sedan,
• 21:17
  not a tiny one, and you could get
• 21:18
  it for $6,000, brand new.
• 21:21
  Large-scale projects are being implemented in nonferrous
• 21:24
  metallurgy, chemical industry, pulp and paper industries, biotech,
• 21:28
  pharmaceutical, aircraft manufacturing, space exploration, and in many
• 21:32
  other knowledge-intensive sectors.
• 21:35
  Our countries are jointly engaged in developing trans
• 21:38
  -Eurasian transport and logistics routes.
• 21:41
  As a result, not only the volume, but
• 21:43
  also the speed of cargo and passenger transportation
• 21:46
  between China and Russia continues to grow.
• 21:49
  The capacity of border crossing is increasing.
• 21:52
  Many of them operate around the clock, and
• 21:54
  new logistic hubs are being created.
• 21:56
  Russia is modernizing key railway lines in the
• 21:59
  east, such as the Trans-Siberian Railway, and
• 22:03
  I want to go.
• 22:04
  I sent away my passport today to get
• 22:06
  my Russian visa installed in it.
• 22:08
  They made me go get a new one
• 22:10
  because I didn't have any stamps left, any
• 22:11
  places to put my Russian visa.
• 22:14
  So that was sent off.
• 22:16
  I had to go get a new passport
• 22:17
  to get it done because I sent it
• 22:19
  to the Russian consulate, and they wouldn't take
• 22:21
  my passport because there weren't any pages left
• 22:23
  to stamp.
• 22:24
  I travel a lot, and so they said,
• 22:28
  well, we can't use this one.
• 22:29
  You've got to get more pages.
• 22:30
  And they used to be able to get
• 22:31
  more pages put in your passport, and I
• 22:33
  still had three, four years left on that
• 22:35
  passport.
• 22:36
  I've only had it for five years, and
• 22:37
  it was full.
• 22:38
  So I got a bigger, fatter passport this
• 22:40
  time.
• 22:40
  Russia is modernizing key railway lines, such as
• 22:43
  Trans-Siberia and the Baikal-Amur Main Line.
• 22:46
  Those are awesome freaking projects.
• 22:49
  Infrastructure of trans-Arctic transport is being consistently
• 22:53
  expanded, including the main artery, the Northern Sea
• 22:57
  Route.
• 22:57
  One of the most important components of Russia
• 22:59
  -Chinese friendship is humanitarian cooperation.
• 23:02
  Our people show sincere interest in each other's
• 23:04
  history, art, spiritual value.
• 23:07
  Cultural, scientific, and youth exchanges are intensifying.
• 23:11
  Mutual tourist flows are growing.
• 23:12
  This is supported by the mutual visa-free
• 23:15
  travel regime, introduction of which was initiated by
• 23:19
  Mr. Xi Jinping during our visit to Beijing
• 23:22
  last year.
• 23:23
  We supported this proposal, and positive results are
• 23:26
  evident.
• 23:27
  In 2025, more than 2 million Russians arrived
• 23:30
  in China, and more than 1 million Chinese
• 23:33
  citizens visited Russia.
• 23:35
  After the successful holding of the Cross Year
• 23:37
  of Culture, Russia and China are launching new
• 23:40
  large interstate humanitarian projects, for example, Russia-China
• 23:44
  Year of Education.
• 23:45
  Together with Chairman Xi Jinping, as has already
• 23:48
  been said, we will take part in the
• 23:50
  opening ceremony for this year.
• 23:52
  The Cross Year program includes hundreds of different
• 23:55
  events, conferences, seminars, concerts, exhibitions, and master classes,
• 23:59
  Olympics, and competitions.
• 24:01
  The first of them have already taken place
• 24:02
  and have attracted considerable attention from students and
• 24:05
  educators in Russia and in China.
• 24:07
  Our countries are also actively cooperating in the
• 24:11
  field of sports.
• 24:12
  A bright star in the event will undoubtedly
• 24:15
  be the 10th Russia-China Summer Games, which
• 24:18
  began this weekend in Kaliningrad.
• 24:21
  This is an excellent opportunity for many talented
• 24:23
  athletes to make themselves known.
• 24:25
  And, of course, cooperation through mass media of
• 24:28
  Russia and China contributes to the further strengthening
• 24:30
  of our friendship, trust, mutual understanding between our
• 24:33
  states and people.
• 24:34
  In 2026, the 70th anniversary of the partnership
• 24:37
  between ITAR-TASS and China official Xinhua News
• 24:42
  Agency will be marked.
• 24:44
  On this occasion, here in Beijing, a photo
• 24:46
  exhibition has been organized dedicated to the history
• 24:49
  of Russia-China relationships.
• 24:51
  Chairman Xi Jinping and I exchanged views on
• 24:53
  current international issues, and as a result, a
• 24:56
  joint declaration was adopted confirming the commonality of
• 24:59
  our countries' principled approaches.
• 25:02
  The main point is Russia and China are
• 25:04
  committed to independent, sovereign foreign policy.
• 25:07
  They act in close strategic coordination, play an
• 25:10
  important stabilizing role in the world stage.
• 25:12
  We work together in the name of peace
• 25:14
  and universal prosperity.
• 25:16
  It is precisely in this logic that Moscow
• 25:19
  and Beijing jointly speak in defense of international
• 25:23
  law and the provisions of the UN Charter
• 25:25
  in their full scope, entirety, and interconnectivity.
• 25:29
  We cooperate effectively through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
• 25:34
  BRICS, and other international structures, making significant contribution
• 25:38
  to solving urgent global and regional problems.
• 25:42
  Russia supports the priority of China's chairmanship this
• 25:46
  year in APEC.
• 25:47
  For our part, we will provide all necessary
• 25:50
  assistance in their implementation.
• 25:52
  I am confident that the summit of this
• 25:54
  association in Shenzhen will be productive.
• 25:58
  Of course, we will continue to closely coordinate
• 26:00
  positions in such multilateral format as the Group
• 26:04
  of 20, WTO, World Bank, and IMF, as
• 26:08
  well as the New Development Bank, that's the
• 26:10
  bank for BRICS, which they fund, the two
• 26:13
  of them.
• 26:14
  We intend to assist in linking integration processes
• 26:17
  with the Eurasian Economic Union and China's Belt
• 26:21
  and Road Initiative with the prospect of forming
• 26:24
  a greater Eurasian partnership.
• 26:27
  Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the program of
• 26:29
  our visit is very full.
• 26:31
  Chairman Xi Jinping and I have several important
• 26:34
  events ahead of us, but already now I
• 26:36
  would like to sincerely thank my friend, Mr.
• 26:39
  Xi Jinping, and all our Chinese colleagues for
• 26:42
  their hospitality and the excellent organization of our
• 26:45
  mutual work.
• 26:46
  I am confident that this visit and these
• 26:48
  negotiations will serve the further strengthening of Russia
• 26:51
  -Chinese friendship and will contribute to the well
• 26:54
  -being and prosperity of our people.
• 26:57
  Thank you for your attention.
• 26:58
  Okay, so the core message is not friendship.
• 27:02
  It's institutional alignment.
• 27:05
  So the important thing is both of these
• 27:06
  leaders are saying China and Russia, they're not
• 27:09
  saying we're just friends.
• 27:11
  That's surface.
• 27:12
  The deeper message is that they are describing
• 27:14
  a durable, political, economic, technological, monetary, educational, energy,
• 27:21
  logistics, and diplomatic architecture.
• 27:24
  So in plain English, this is parallel operating
• 27:28
  systems in the world affairs.
• 27:32
  Xi says the relationship is a new model
• 27:34
  for how major power relationships should work.
• 27:36
  Non-alignment, non-confrontation, and not directed at
• 27:40
  third parties.
• 27:41
  This is carefully chosen language.
• 27:43
  It is China saying this is not NATO.
• 27:47
  This is not anti-West military block.
• 27:50
  But functionally, the structure does much of what
• 27:53
  a block does.
• 27:54
  It coordinates their position, shields both sides from
• 27:56
  West pressure, moves trade into a national currency
• 27:59
  so they don't have to rely on outside
• 28:02
  influences like the dollar or the World Bank.
• 28:05
  They build alternative transportation corridors and create institutional
• 28:09
  habits that make partnership between the two of
• 28:11
  them very hard to break.
• 28:14
  So Putin's statement is more concrete and operational.
• 28:18
  Xi gives the grand architecture, the bird's eye
• 28:21
  view.
• 28:21
  Putin gives the machinery, the trade turnover, the
• 28:24
  ruble-yuan sediments, energy, Ross Adam, railways, Arctic
• 28:27
  routes, Chinese automobiles, critical minerals, bricks, SEO, APEC,
• 28:31
  new development bank, and belt and road integration.
• 28:34
  That matters.
• 28:36
  Xi is laying out the doctrine, and Putin
• 28:37
  is listing what the hardware is, and they're
• 28:39
  building it.
• 28:41
  Xi's most important phrase, what did he say?
• 28:44
  A key constant is what he described this
• 28:47
  as.
• 28:50
  Xi is telling the world that Russia is
• 28:52
  not an isolated country waiting to be brought
• 28:55
  back into a Western system.
• 28:57
  He's saying Russia is one of the pillars
• 28:59
  of a new system being built outside of
• 29:04
  the control of Washington, the West, NATO, Europe.
• 29:09
  That's the heart of it.
• 29:10
  The money point, rubles and yuan aren't symbolic
• 29:14
  anymore.
• 29:15
  It's not, geez, this is crap, but we're
• 29:19
  going to have to do it, otherwise we
• 29:20
  can't trade.
• 29:21
  No, no, no, they've created their own structure.
• 29:24
  Putin's statement that all Russia-Chinese export-import
• 29:28
  operations are carried out in rubles and yuan
• 29:30
  is the most consequential part of his part
• 29:33
  of the speech.
• 29:34
  This isn't about avoiding the dollar for the
• 29:37
  sake of political theater.
• 29:38
  It's about sanctions resistance, banking continuity, supply chain
• 29:43
  predictability, and reducing exposure to Western political and
• 29:49
  financial choke points.
• 29:51
  The U.S. built much of its post
• 29:53
  -war leverage, not simply through military alliances, but
• 29:58
  through financial plumbing.
• 29:59
  They created the plumbing system.
• 30:02
  They created the background dollar settlements, everything international.
• 30:06
  Bretton Woods, IMF, World Bank, International Monetary Fund
• 30:13
  as a political statement telling people you can't
• 30:19
  have a loan from the IMF unless you
• 30:21
  do X.
• 30:23
  That's not what China's doing.
• 30:24
  That isn't what Russia's doing.
• 30:25
  They aren't making these preconditions.
• 30:28
  If they don't want to deal with you,
• 30:29
  they just won't.
• 30:30
  But if you want to borrow money from
• 30:32
  them to have a mutually acceptable, mutually beneficial,
• 30:38
  as Xi Jinping put it, organization, contact us.
• 30:41
  We'll work with you.
• 30:42
  And we won't tell you what you have
• 30:44
  to do internally and you have to change
• 30:47
  your whole system just to lick our rear
• 30:51
  ends.
• 30:52
  You can come in and continue to work
• 30:56
  as you see fit.
• 30:57
  And we'll invest in your belts and roads,
• 30:59
  and we'll give you the money to do
• 31:01
  so.
• 31:01
  But we want profit.
• 31:03
  We want to be part of it.
• 31:05
  And that's what belts and roads has been
• 31:07
  doing.
• 31:07
  So Putin says their trade system is protected
• 31:10
  from external influence.
• 31:12
  Translation, Washington can impose costs and sanctions, but
• 31:17
  it can't assume it controls them anymore.
• 31:20
  So the energy message, Russia is China's strategic
• 31:23
  rear base.
• 31:24
  Putin emphasized that.
• 31:25
  On the strategic map, that's a big deal.
• 31:27
  China needs secure input.
• 31:29
  Russia needs secure market.
• 31:31
  Western sanctions push Russia towards this faster and
• 31:35
  to the east faster, but the logic existed
• 31:38
  long ago.
• 31:40
  Ross Adam is also important.
• 31:42
  Ross Adam is building things in India, China,
• 31:46
  Mongolia, Pakistan.
• 31:48
  Russian engineers are highly sought after, and their
• 31:51
  nuclear power is second to none.
• 31:55
  And they're building everything else everywhere.
• 31:58
  Logistics, the real map is Eurasia and the
• 32:01
  Arctic.
• 32:01
  Putin talks about the Trans-Siberian Railway, Baikal
• 32:05
  Amur Mainline, border crossings, logistics, and the Trans
• 32:08
  -Arctic Corridor, and the Northern Sea Route.
• 32:12
  This is the physical geography of multipolarity.
• 32:16
  The Western maritime system has depended on choke
• 32:19
  points.
• 32:20
  We're seeing it now.
• 32:21
  Suez, Malacca, Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, and the
• 32:25
  insurance finance structure supported only through Lloyd's of
• 32:29
  London, supporting ocean trade.
• 32:31
  Well, not only, but they guide you toward,
• 32:33
  they won't let your ship dock at their
• 32:35
  port without Western insurance.
• 32:37
  Russia, China aren't doing that anymore.
• 32:39
  Not between each other.
• 32:42
  This does not mean the North Sea Route
• 32:44
  replaces global shipping tomorrow.
• 32:46
  It doesn't mean that.
• 32:47
  But the strategic intention is obvious.
• 32:49
  Create redundancies.
• 32:51
  Great powers don't need a perfect alternative.
• 32:53
  They need enough alternatives to stop being blackmailed
• 32:56
  into one route, one bank, or one naval
• 32:59
  power.
• 33:00
  So culture and education are being used as
• 33:02
  strategic glue on top of that.
• 33:04
  World War II language, anti-hegemony tied to
• 33:07
  anti-fascism.
• 33:09
  What did Xi Jinping say about opposing attempts
• 33:12
  to deny the results of World War II?
• 33:15
  That was a big statement.
• 33:17
  Are aimed at several audiences at once.
• 33:19
  They speak to Russia's historical memory, China, their
• 33:23
  wartime memory, against the same time period against
• 33:27
  Japanese militarism.
• 33:29
  And the present day dispute of how history
• 33:31
  is used in Europe, in the West, and
• 33:35
  what they say about it now.
• 33:37
  This connects our legal diplomatic argument to historic
• 33:41
  legitimacy.
• 33:42
  Russia and China aren't saying we oppose US
• 33:45
  dominance.
• 33:46
  They're saying the post-war order has been
• 33:49
  distorted by the very powers that claim to
• 33:52
  defend it.
• 33:53
  That's powerful.
• 33:55
  Whether you accept it or not, it flips
• 33:57
  the Western narrative.
• 33:58
  The West says Russia and China are trying
• 34:02
  to blow up the system.
• 34:03
  Russia and China say no.
• 34:05
  The West has been the revisionist because it
• 34:07
  rewrites the UN Charter into a rules based
• 34:10
  orders controlled only by the club of a
• 34:14
  few, by the US and a couple of
• 34:16
  globalist elites.
• 34:17
  UN Charter point is a legal core frame.
• 34:21
  Both of them talked about it.
• 34:22
  The Western people, you know, it's full scope
• 34:26
  entirety and interconnection is legal and deliberate.
• 34:30
  Russia and China have long argued that the
• 34:32
  West selectively talks about international law when it's
• 34:37
  convenient and bypasses it when it's not convenient.
• 34:41
  The phrase full scope means sovereignty, no interference,
• 34:45
  equality between states, security council authority, territorial integrity,
• 34:50
  and self-determination don't get to be cherry
• 34:52
  picked.
• 34:54
  The West is going to say, well, Russia
• 34:56
  violated Ukraine sovereignty.
• 34:58
  All right.
• 34:59
  What did the US do in Venezuela?
• 35:02
  What did the US and Israel do in
• 35:04
  Iran and many other places?
• 35:07
  But we never worry about those things.
• 35:09
  The UN does and Russia and China have
• 35:11
  been consistently anti this sort of thing as
• 35:14
  have many other countries.
• 35:15
  But it doesn't do you any good because
• 35:17
  those systems are strongly dominated by West and
• 35:21
  have been forever.
• 35:22
  So that's the debate.
• 35:24
  You know, the West destroyed the old rules
• 35:26
  in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, NATO expansionism.
• 35:32
  That's the debate.
• 35:34
  You know, Putin isn't making a casual moral
• 35:37
  argument.
• 35:37
  He's placing Russia and China in a legal
• 35:40
  framework and accusing the West of being the
• 35:42
  party that abandoned that framework.
• 35:45
  That's what they're saying.
• 35:47
  So the real strategic message to the West
• 35:50
  is this.
• 35:53
  Sanctions did not isolate Russia.
• 35:56
  They accelerated Russia's integration with China.
• 36:01
  Pressure didn't split Moscow and Beijing.
• 36:05
  It hardened that relationship.
• 36:08
  Dollar dominance hasn't been destroyed, but it's been
• 36:12
  made less universal.
• 36:14
  Optional.
• 36:15
  It's optional.
• 36:17
  You can trade.
• 36:18
  Russia has its own settlement system now.
• 36:21
  So does China.
• 36:23
  And they're using it in a lot of
• 36:24
  trade and a lot of companies are going
• 36:26
  this way.
• 36:27
  And that's the irony.
• 36:29
  NATO pressure in Europe and US pressure in
• 36:32
  Asia have produced the very strategic alignment American
• 36:36
  planners claim they want to prevent.
• 36:40
  Isn't that ironic?
• 36:41
  Isn't it ironic?
• 36:42
  Don't you think?
• 36:43
  Maybe I'll have to look that up.
• 36:43
  The United States spent decades warning against a
• 36:47
  hostile Eurasian consolidation.
• 36:50
  Then its own sanctions, military expansion, and ideological
• 36:53
  diplomacy, which wasn't existence, but democracy, we need
• 36:59
  democracy, helped make that consolidation more rational for
• 37:03
  both China and Russia.
• 37:05
  Washington wanted to make Russia and China smaller.
• 37:09
  Instead, it's helped make Eurasia more organized.
• 37:15
  That's what I say.
• 37:16
  So this is a strong, major strategic movement.
• 37:21
  This isn't one pipeline, one trade deal, one
• 37:24
  summit.
• 37:25
  Its speeches cover political trust, trade, national currency
• 37:29
  settlements, energy, nuclear power, critical minerals, railways, Arctic
• 37:33
  routes, industrial production, education, tourism, sports, media, BRICS,
• 37:38
  SEO, APEC, and the WTO, World Bank, IMF,
• 37:41
  New Development Bank, EAEU, Belt and Road initiatives,
• 37:46
  all of which are working positively in this
• 37:50
  structure.
• 37:51
  So, you know, the trade numbers are impressive,
• 37:54
  but the quality is still there.
• 37:56
  Are they still moving into high value production?
• 37:58
  That's where they're trying to go.
• 38:00
  The partnership is real.
• 38:02
  Whether it becomes a balanced strategic cooperation and
• 38:05
  structure where China gains larger industrial advantage still
• 38:09
  remains to be seen.
• 38:11
  The West is going to say that this
• 38:12
  is an authoritarian alignment built around anti-American
• 38:16
  grievances, sanctions evasion, and revisionist foreign policy, where
• 38:21
  they don't bow to the West anymore.
• 38:23
  They're going to say multipolar is a polite
• 38:26
  rapper for weakening institutions that constrain great power
• 38:32
  aggression.
• 38:32
  But everybody says the great power aggression isn't
• 38:36
  Russia and China.
• 38:37
  It's America and NATO.
• 38:39
  And they argue that China is using Russia
• 38:41
  as a discounted resource base, avoiding the full
• 38:44
  costs of alliance.
• 38:48
  I don't know.
• 38:49
  We shall see.
• 38:50
  So, I tell you what, I wanted to
• 38:53
  go into there after this.
• 38:56
  Well, first, I'm going to try to find
• 38:58
  that because I want to take a break
• 38:59
  and get...
• 39:01
  Isn't it ironic?
• 39:06
  I forget who sings that.
• 39:07
  It's like rain.
• 39:09
  Alanis Morissette, that's her.
• 39:12
  And so I think we're going to take
• 39:14
  a little mini break and play this for
• 39:18
  you.
• 39:19
  If it's really though, this is the video
• 39:22
  we want here.
• 39:23
  Let's see.
• 39:23
  And I'm taking a break.
• 39:25
  I'll see you in a minute.
• 39:26
  Here we are back at last.
• 39:30
  And now I wanted to go into part
• 39:32
  two.
• 39:33
  Part two is an important part.
• 39:36
  It's almost as important as part one.
• 39:38
  That gave you the backdrop, where we are.
• 39:42
  Hold on.
• 39:43
  Now I want to get to a list
• 39:46
  of projects.
• 39:47
  So, I said that there's a 4,000
• 39:50
  kilometer border between Russia and China.
• 39:58
  And I want to translate that as the
• 40:02
  America...
• 40:03
  It's longer, but not by a whole lot.
• 40:06
  America, Canada border in kilometers and
• 40:16
  miles.
• 40:16
  That's what we're going to find out.
• 40:18
  I meant to find that out before.
• 40:19
  5,525 miles.
• 40:25
  That's 8,891 kilometers.
• 40:30
  So, that's about double the length.
• 40:34
  But it's still a sizable chunk of border
• 40:38
  between Russia and China.
• 40:42
  That's still substantial.
• 40:44
  And over the past decade, speeding up recently,
• 40:50
  there have been significant turns to the east.
• 40:55
  Russian markets were typically tied more toward the
• 41:05
  west.
• 41:06
  But the logistics map of Eurasia and the
• 41:09
  Arctic, this is real for Russia.
• 41:12
  Putin talking about the Trans-Siberian Railway, Baikal
• 41:15
  Amur Main Line.
• 41:16
  One of my dreams is to go over
• 41:18
  and ride the Trans-Siberian Railway.
• 41:20
  What was the one with the Orient Express?
• 41:26
  Agatha Christie, maybe?
• 41:28
  And murder on the Orient Express or something.
• 41:30
  It's like the longest one.
• 41:32
  And I've talked about going and doing it.
• 41:35
  And for me, these are things in life
• 41:38
  that are extremely important, is going and seeing
• 41:41
  how other cultures live and do things and
• 41:43
  see things.
• 41:44
  And maybe that's why I see things a
• 41:46
  little differently than the typical.
• 41:49
  But Russia and China are talking logistics, heavy
• 41:52
  duty.
• 41:53
  And their systems are different.
• 41:54
  So, they can actually pull it off.
• 41:56
  When Xi Jinping and Donald Trump sit in
• 42:00
  a room, all they can talk about is
• 42:03
  capitalism and turning...
• 42:05
  I made a big deal.
• 42:07
  Trump can invite all these big deal guys
• 42:09
  and the big deal guys can make money
• 42:10
  and line their own pockets, which is great.
• 42:13
  That money will trickle down.
• 42:14
  There's no problem like that.
• 42:16
  But the advertising is different.
• 42:17
  Look what we did.
• 42:18
  We did some good for you.
• 42:20
  How many jets do you need?
• 42:22
  I mean, you could argue that Xi Jinping
• 42:25
  and Putin are the, what do you call
• 42:27
  it?
• 42:28
  The conglomeration of all forms of this.
• 42:31
  And I'm not saying their forms of government
• 42:33
  are better than ours.
• 42:33
  I'm saying that there are some positives that
• 42:35
  we just cannot duplicate here.
• 42:39
  I mean, if Xi Jinping and Donald Trump
• 42:41
  get together and go, all right, we're going
• 42:43
  to create an infrastructure project.
• 42:45
  We want China to invest their belts and
• 42:48
  roads into somebody.
• 42:50
  You invest and pay for, please, a multi
• 42:53
  -billion dollar rail system that'll, high-speed rail
• 42:57
  that'll take people and goods across America in
• 43:01
  hours instead of days.
• 43:05
  We cannot do that in America.
• 43:08
  We cannot do it.
• 43:10
  Every state argues their own little portion of
• 43:13
  it and has to divvy it up and
• 43:15
  do.
• 43:15
  I've talked about that before.
• 43:17
  And so the West talked about, we believe
• 43:21
  in military power.
• 43:23
  That's it.
• 43:23
  We control it.
• 43:25
  And if we control it, we control who
• 43:27
  it's good for and who it's not.
• 43:29
  Trump wanted to go over and tell China,
• 43:31
  look, we need help in the Hormuz.
• 43:33
  We want you to tell Iran what to
• 43:34
  do.
• 43:35
  And China's going, that's against our normal foreign
• 43:38
  policy.
• 43:38
  We don't interfere with other people.
• 43:40
  And you guys interfered.
• 43:41
  You stirred this up.
• 43:43
  The Hormuz is not ours.
• 43:46
  We will deal with whatever the sovereign people
• 43:48
  running that strait are doing.
• 43:50
  This is what they say, more consistently than
• 43:54
  ever.
• 43:55
  They say, we don't dictate what happens between
• 43:58
  two countries, bilateral, because none of you follow
• 44:02
  the UN Charter anyway.
• 44:04
  You don't.
• 44:05
  If you followed the UN Charter, you wouldn't
• 44:07
  have just indiscriminately gone in with Israel and
• 44:11
  bombed Iran.
• 44:12
  You'd have gotten a UN Security Council, not
• 44:15
  approval, but something.
• 44:17
  You have to do the same thing if
• 44:18
  you're going to kidnap a guy you don't
• 44:22
  like in another country and steal his oil.
• 44:25
  Everybody goes, that's what it was for.
• 44:27
  We had to steal the oil.
• 44:28
  Why?
• 44:30
  Because you don't want to negotiate a deal.
• 44:34
  You just want to take it.
• 44:36
  We have different systems.
• 44:40
  We have to use military force to force
• 44:42
  people to say, no, no, no, we're the
• 44:43
  policemen of the world.
• 44:45
  The rest of the world doesn't like that,
• 44:47
  nor do they want it anymore.
• 44:48
  We're getting resistance to that in the Middle
• 44:51
  East right now.
• 44:54
  Africa?
• 44:55
  I think they're gone.
• 44:57
  I think they've left us.
• 44:59
  They're China, Russia oriented.
• 45:01
  Forget it.
• 45:01
  South America would be if it wasn't for
• 45:04
  people being afraid of their leaders getting stolen.
• 45:07
  And the only reason Trump did that, you
• 45:10
  hear the lowbrowers going, oh, geez, he needed
• 45:15
  to do that.
• 45:15
  Take that oil.
• 45:16
  Why?
• 45:18
  Why?
• 45:19
  Because you don't want to buy it?
• 45:20
  Because you don't like that he's going to.
• 45:22
  It sure as hell wasn't narco-terrorism.
• 45:24
  What happened to that?
• 45:26
  Anyway, that's not where I wanted to go
• 45:28
  today.
• 45:29
  But think about this.
• 45:30
  World War II language, anti-hegemony tied to
• 45:33
  anti-fascism.
• 45:34
  These are big points, right?
• 45:37
  So after that, I wanted to talk about
• 45:40
  this isn't just about China and Russia getting
• 45:43
  along.
• 45:44
  This is the construction of a non-dollar,
• 45:48
  non-Western, land-based Eurasian trade machine.
• 45:54
  The important point isn't one bridge, one rail
• 45:57
  tunnel, one pipeline, one port.
• 45:59
  The important point is that all these projects
• 46:02
  connect into the same strategic system.
• 46:07
  Energy, food, rail, road, ports, tourism, industrial cooperation,
• 46:11
  education, science, national currency settlement, diplomatic alignment, and
• 46:16
  non-interference in each other's countries.
• 46:19
  Putin's statement says Russia and China build a
• 46:22
  trade system where practically everything is carried out
• 46:25
  in ruble and yuan.
• 46:27
  They're insulated, and it's getting bigger and bigger.
• 46:31
  And the cars that are being sold in
• 46:34
  Russia today are not the cars they were
• 46:37
  five, ten years ago.
• 46:39
  And a Chinese luxury car, tell you what,
• 46:43
  it's, if not better than, certainly comparable to
• 46:47
  your BMWs and your, what do you call
• 46:54
  it, Mercedes-Benz and your higher-end cars.
• 46:58
  They are nice, I'll tell you that.
• 47:01
  Putin says that they built a system.
• 47:04
  Now there's some physical stuff that I'd like
• 47:08
  to talk about.
• 47:09
  Their bilateral trade is over $200 billion for
• 47:12
  three years in a row.
• 47:14
  Now, just between January and March of this
• 47:18
  year, it's $85.2 billion.
• 47:22
  So they're looking at a 20% increase
• 47:24
  year on year, and it's getting bigger.
• 47:27
  Chinese customs figures reported by TASS are a
• 47:29
  little bit lower.
• 47:30
  The actual paperwork is less, but it says
• 47:33
  in 2025, it was 2.28, or I'm
• 47:36
  sorry, 228 billion.
• 47:39
  But in 2026, it shows a 240 billion
• 47:45
  pace.
• 47:46
  With 61, it's up 14.8%, not 20
• 47:50
  year on year.
• 47:52
  January to March, they say $61.25 billion.
• 47:57
  So whether you use Moscow's rounded political numbers
• 48:01
  or Beijing's customs records, the point's the same
• 48:04
  thing.
• 48:05
  Russia-China trade is structurally above 200 billion
• 48:08
  a year and headed toward 300, and it's
• 48:10
  growing again in 2026.
• 48:13
  So dollar exclusion becomes even more important.
• 48:16
  So they have phased out Western currency.
• 48:19
  That's true.
• 48:20
  And China is an industrial giant.
• 48:24
  Russia's resource, energy, military, Arctic land corridor giant.
• 48:29
  IMF-based 2026 projections put China at 20
• 48:33
  .85 trillion nominal GDP.
• 48:37
  And China's projected is about, if you look
• 48:41
  at PPP, purchase parity, they're at 44.3
• 48:47
  trillion, and Russia's at 7.53 trillion, meaning
• 48:50
  together, they're a huge part of the world
• 48:55
  base.
• 48:55
  It puts Russia at number four, China at
• 48:58
  number one, America's number two, and I believe
• 49:01
  it's Canada's number three.
• 49:02
  That's what I believe.
• 49:03
  But I could be off on the Canada,
• 49:04
  it might be India, on purchase power parity.
• 49:10
  So let's look at some of the projects
• 49:12
  that are going across.
• 49:13
  And I seriously want to get over there.
• 49:15
  So I followed the Chinese-Kazakhstan border when
• 49:18
  I was over there for a day, we
• 49:20
  were driving somewhere.
• 49:21
  It's empty.
• 49:22
  There's nothing there.
• 49:24
  They can walk across each other's borders in
• 49:26
  Kazakhstan, and they can do the same thing
• 49:29
  in Russia.
• 49:29
  Now they've been, you know, there's protections over
• 49:33
  there, but they can just walk across the
• 49:35
  border.
• 49:35
  Now, nobody does, why would you?
• 49:37
  But, you know, their peoples are somewhat integrated.
• 49:42
  It used to be like it was in
• 49:43
  America.
• 49:44
  I mean, there's no fence, there's no concertina
• 49:48
  wire, you know, it doesn't exist.
• 49:51
  But it used to be that there was,
• 49:53
  you know, carefulness between the Soviet Union and
• 49:58
  China, you know, for sure, the People's Republic,
• 50:01
  they were, you know, they didn't, and they
• 50:03
  had their share of conflict over the years,
• 50:05
  nothing too dramatic, but they did have something.
• 50:08
  So now, what do they have?
• 50:09
  They have the Tongjiang-Nizhny Leninskoye railway bridge.
• 50:15
  It's the first railway bridge ever built between
• 50:18
  Russia and China across the Amur Heilongjiang River,
• 50:23
  linking Tongjiang in Heilong province with Nizhny Leninskoye,
• 50:30
  that's lower Lenin, in Russia's Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
• 50:36
  The hard numbers of that.
• 50:38
  So, this bridge has a maximum throughput of
• 50:41
  20 million tons a year.
• 50:44
  It cuts transport distance for Chinese goods into
• 50:48
  Russia by 1500 kilometers.
• 50:51
  China Railway reports giving a similar design capacity
• 50:55
  figure of 21 million metric tons annually, and
• 50:59
  the main bridge spans 2215 meters.
• 51:03
  This is the railway spine of the Eastern
• 51:06
  Corridor.
• 51:07
  It moves coal, iron ore, timber, industrial cargo,
• 51:11
  and eventually much, much more.
• 51:13
  Rail is bulk capable, weather resistant, cheaper than
• 51:18
  truck, and easier to scale.
• 51:21
  The border is no longer a symbolic frontier.
• 51:25
  It's a conveyor belt.
• 51:26
  So, Tongjiang isn't just a bridge.
• 51:29
  It means the Amur River stops being a
• 51:32
  wall and becomes a railway artery.
• 51:35
  Let's talk about the grain terminal in the
• 51:37
  same area.
• 51:38
  This is a grain terminal at Tongjiang-Nizhny
• 51:41
  Leninskoye crossing designed to move Russian wheat, corn,
• 51:44
  soybeans into Russia.
• 51:47
  15 billion ruble project, 160 million dollars tied
• 51:52
  to Russian grain export into China.
• 51:54
  This is Russia's eastern agricultural export, heavy farming
• 51:58
  over there, into a China faced supply chain.
• 52:02
  It's not about just selling grain.
• 52:04
  It's about giving Russian agriculture a direct eastern
• 52:07
  outlet.
• 52:09
  No dependence on the Black Sea or Baltic
• 52:11
  Sea export, and it's far closer.
• 52:14
  It's much, much right there.
• 52:16
  You're at least 1,500 miles closer.
• 52:20
  So, food security is national security.
• 52:24
  Russia isn't selling China gas and oil only.
• 52:26
  It's giving grain into China's pantries.
• 52:31
  Let's talk about oil and gas in Tongjiang,
• 52:36
  same place.
• 52:38
  So, China's Xinhuan Company is appointed the general
• 52:42
  contractor for a new cross-border oil and
• 52:45
  gas terminal at the same place.
• 52:48
  So, this is not yet finished, but the
• 52:53
  rail bridge plus the terminal bridge plus this
• 52:56
  is a multi-commodity export system.
• 52:59
  When one crossing handles grain, energy, minerals, and
• 53:02
  rail cargo, it's no longer just a border
• 53:05
  outpost, you know, for people to intermittently.
• 53:08
  It's a serious economic lifeline, organ of the
• 53:13
  state.
• 53:17
  Good coffee.
• 53:19
  Okay.
• 53:19
  Here's another one.
• 53:21
  The Haihe-Blagoveshchensk highway bridge, the first permanent
• 53:29
  road bridge between Russia and China, connects Blagoveshchensk
• 53:34
  in Russia with Haihe in China, also across
• 53:37
  the river.
• 53:39
  So, the bridge opened for freight traffic in
• 53:42
  2022 and passenger vehicles on January 2nd, 2025.
• 53:47
  200 trucks a day crossed in 2024, and
• 53:51
  now more than 170,000 vehicles crossing in
• 53:56
  July of last year.
• 53:59
  Xinhua People's Daily Report confirms this corridor has
• 54:03
  seen a huge surge in trade and movement.
• 54:06
  Haihe's 2024 import-export value was 31.35
• 54:11
  billion yuan, or about $4.32 billion, up
• 54:16
  19%, while passenger volume surged two and a
• 54:21
  half times during that same time.
• 54:24
  Rail moves the empire's freight.
• 54:27
  Road moves the people.
• 54:28
  Once the people start moving, the borders begin
• 54:31
  to disappear.
• 54:32
  So, the cross-border cable car, they have
• 54:35
  a cross-border cable car at the same
• 54:37
  place.
• 54:37
  Reporting Russia's pivot to Asia puts the project
• 54:43
  at 13.2 billion rubles, or about $164
• 54:47
  million.
• 54:48
  The cable spans a kilometer, crosses 70 meters
• 54:52
  above the river, takes two and a half
• 54:55
  minutes one way.
• 54:56
  It has 6,800 passengers per day in
• 54:59
  each direction, or about two and a half
• 55:01
  million people per year each way.
• 55:05
  This isn't about freight.
• 55:06
  It's about human normalization.
• 55:09
  No visa required.
• 55:11
  You don't have to write letters like I
• 55:13
  just did to get to go to Russia
• 55:14
  and send away your passport so somebody can
• 55:17
  put a stamp on it and send it
• 55:18
  back.
• 55:18
  Take two weeks, you know, to get that
• 55:20
  thing back under the greatest of scenarios.
• 55:23
  That's what it's going to be for me
• 55:24
  to get my passport back.
• 55:26
  But they have visa-free travel, just like
• 55:28
  getting your American passport and heading to most
• 55:31
  countries, although a lot of them are in
• 55:33
  the U.S. used to be the number
• 55:34
  one passport in the world to have.
• 55:36
  It's not anymore.
• 55:37
  We're about number 10 or 11, last I
• 55:40
  heard, in visas, the number of places you
• 55:44
  can go without a visa.
• 55:46
  So, but now you can go to China
• 55:48
  without a visa on an American passport, but
• 55:50
  no more than 30 days.
• 55:52
  You get a 30-day entry exit, no
• 55:53
  visa required.
• 55:54
  You can travel on your passport.
• 55:57
  So ordinary citizens go on this cable car.
• 55:59
  They're just crossing for, you know, whatever.
• 56:01
  I'm going to spend the day in China,
• 56:03
  or I'm going to spend the day in
• 56:04
  Russia.
• 56:04
  And they get to go back and forth
• 56:06
  between sister cities, which they basically before just
• 56:09
  looked across the river at each other.
• 56:10
  But now they're having a $164 million project
• 56:14
  and connecting all kinds of money.
• 56:16
  Here's another one.
• 56:17
  Pashkova-Jilin Bridge, a planned new road bridge
• 56:21
  across the Amur River and going to connect
• 56:24
  Pashkova in Russia's autonomous oblast for Jews with
• 56:28
  Jiayin in China.
• 56:29
  This is another one.
• 56:30
  So there's four or five of these that
• 56:31
  are being built or are finished or are
• 56:34
  under construction.
• 56:36
  Hard numbers.
• 56:37
  Project announced in October.
• 56:38
  The bridge is going to be more than
• 56:40
  a kilometer long, Russian section about 700 meters,
• 56:43
  and roughly 600 meters of access roads.
• 56:47
  So this is a third new crossing in
• 56:49
  the Amur in this concentrated build-out.
• 56:52
  So strategy is redundancy.
• 56:54
  One bridge is a project.
• 56:55
  Three bridges in the same frontier zone is
• 56:58
  strategy.
• 56:59
  If one crossing is congested, damaged, restricted, or
• 57:03
  weather-effective, traffic can shift the other direction.
• 57:07
  So one bridge is convenience.
• 57:09
  And there's going to be four, well, there's
• 57:10
  actually already four, in various stages of construction
• 57:13
  or two of them are already done and
• 57:16
  two are under refurbishment or being completed.
• 57:19
  So here's the, I can't pronounce these words,
• 57:23
  Sufenya Railway Tunnel and Rail Upgrade.
• 57:26
  So a new railway tunnel at Sufenya in
• 57:29
  Heilongjiang province is replacing a very old bottleneck
• 57:34
  infrastructure near the Russia-China rail frontier.
• 57:39
  So this tunnel was built before World War
• 57:42
  I for rail.
• 57:44
  So it's 100 years old.
• 57:46
  So the new upgrade to this is replacing
• 57:48
  very old bottlenecked rail structure near the Russia
• 57:52
  -China rail frontier.
• 57:54
  Hing Hua reported that the 602-meter tunnel
• 57:59
  that links Russia and China began construction in
• 58:05
  May of 2024 and was completed in May
• 58:07
  of 2025.
• 58:09
  The railway is designed for 120-kilometer-an
• 58:12
  -hour operation, basically 70, 80 miles an hour,
• 58:16
  70, I guess that would be.
• 58:18
  Earlier, Hing Hua reported that the tunnel would
• 58:20
  replace three old tunnels that have been in
• 58:22
  service for 120 years and that Suifenhe handles
• 58:27
  900 China-Europe freight train trips and 88
• 58:33
  ,000 transport annually.
• 58:37
  So strategically, this little boring project that has
• 58:41
  been 120 years old and replacing some very
• 58:45
  old tunnels, the old tunnels were throttling how
• 58:49
  much they could get there.
• 58:50
  The new tunnels with increased speed, reliability, and
• 58:54
  volume, the practical effect is turning a 1900s
• 58:57
  era crossing into a modern corridor for Eurasian
• 59:01
  rail freight.
• 59:03
  So cool bridges get the photographs, but a
• 59:06
  tunnel fixes bottlenecks.
• 59:07
  And so the bottleneck being removed is there.
• 59:11
  Power of Siberia won.
• 59:13
  Hard numbers, Power of Siberia.
• 59:15
  Reuters says that Gazprom supplied 38.8 billion
• 59:21
  cubic meters of gas to China through Power
• 59:23
  of Siberia in 2025, exceeding the contractual obligation
• 59:29
  of 38 billion.
• 59:31
  Reuters also reports that the line is the
• 59:35
  China-Russia gas line link at that scale,
• 59:39
  and it is central to the broader energy
• 59:41
  relationship.
• 59:42
  This is the first big proof of concept.
• 59:45
  Russia supplies China by land.
• 59:48
  China gets gas not dependent on maritime routes,
• 59:52
  not on LNG choke points or US-controlled
• 59:57
  sea lanes.
• 59:59
  We cannot control China through energy any longer.
• 1:00:04
  Russia gets long-term, and this is what
• 1:00:06
  China's doing through Russian nuclear, through Russian, and
• 1:00:10
  China's got some pretty damn smart people themselves,
• 1:00:13
  by the way.
• 1:00:14
  Both of them have three times as many
• 1:00:16
  engineers as we do.
• 1:00:18
  They have huge numbers of engineers, far more
• 1:00:21
  than we have in America, and they are
• 1:00:23
  building, building, building infrastructure everywhere.
• 1:00:27
  The planet revolves around what's going on in
• 1:00:30
  this area of the world.
• 1:00:32
  So Power of Siberia 1 was the energy
• 1:00:35
  handshake that's the beginnings of their artery.
• 1:00:40
  There's another pipeline.
• 1:00:43
  There's Power of Siberia 2.
• 1:00:45
  There's an oil line that are coming in
• 1:00:47
  there.
• 1:00:48
  So there's another one called the Far Eastern
• 1:00:50
  gas route, Sakhalin to China, Sakhalin Islands to
• 1:00:53
  China pipeline.
• 1:00:54
  What this is, it's a second pipeline.
• 1:00:57
  It brings gas from Sakhalin Islands to Russia's
• 1:01:00
  Far East, or from Russia's Far East into
• 1:01:02
  Northeastern China.
• 1:01:05
  It's expected to start flowing in January 2027.
• 1:01:10
  Reuters reports that Russia planned gas deliveries to
• 1:01:14
  China are rising by 2027 with additional volumes
• 1:01:18
  coming through projects including the Far Eastern route.
• 1:01:22
  Oxford Institute likewise describes the Far Eastern route
• 1:01:26
  as being operational in early 2027, which will
• 1:01:30
  increase their ability by another 10 to 12
• 1:01:36
  cubic meters, billion cubic meters per year.
• 1:01:41
  So this route matters because it's geographically separate
• 1:01:44
  from Power of Siberia 1.
• 1:01:46
  It adds more redundancy and another land adjacent
• 1:01:51
  energy source close to the northeast industrial base
• 1:01:55
  all over China.
• 1:01:57
  It ties the Sakhalin Islands and Russian Far
• 1:01:59
  East tight into China's energy orbit.
• 1:02:02
  So the the Far Eastern route isn't just
• 1:02:05
  more gas.
• 1:02:05
  It's giving Russia and China another energy door
• 1:02:08
  that the U.S. Navy cannot close.
• 1:02:13
  Power of Siberia 2.
• 1:02:15
  This one is where they signed that agreement.
• 1:02:18
  This is one that goes through Mongolia that
• 1:02:19
  is going to bring gas from Russia's Western
• 1:02:21
  Siberian and Yamal resource into China.
• 1:02:24
  The proposed capacity is 50.
• 1:02:27
  This is double the other.
• 1:02:28
  Well, it's it would it would double the
• 1:02:31
  other two, meaning it's between the two.
• 1:02:34
  It's the same volume.
• 1:02:35
  So this Power of Siberia 2 is twice
• 1:02:37
  as the same size as both of those
• 1:02:39
  put together.
• 1:02:40
  So Reuters says Russia and China reached a
• 1:02:43
  general agreement, including route and construction, but that
• 1:02:46
  key details are waiting on Mongolia.
• 1:02:49
  And they said they settled that.
• 1:02:52
  So the energy sector report says that legally
• 1:02:55
  binding memorandum, but the commercially decisive pieces are
• 1:02:58
  waiting on Mongolia.
• 1:03:00
  So this is the big one.
• 1:03:03
  If it gets completed, Power of Siberia 2
• 1:03:05
  is going to redirect gas from Western Siberian
• 1:03:08
  fields that historically served Europe through Ukraine, by
• 1:03:15
  the way.
• 1:03:16
  So it's the clearest physical symbol of Russia's
• 1:03:19
  post-Europe energy pivot.
• 1:03:22
  China's got lots of leverage.
• 1:03:24
  It can negotiate on the price because Russia
• 1:03:26
  needs the outlet more than China needs the
• 1:03:29
  exact pipeline.
• 1:03:30
  But Power of Siberia 2 is the ghost
• 1:03:33
  of Nord Stream.
• 1:03:35
  You know, we blew up Nord Stream or
• 1:03:38
  somebody did on our behalf.
• 1:03:40
  So there's another place, Zadarubina, grain and port
• 1:03:44
  expansion or Russian Far East port and grain
• 1:03:47
  export platform aimed at Eastern markets.
• 1:03:50
  Hard numbers, 33.5 million tons a year,
• 1:03:54
  91,000 tons of ships.
• 1:03:58
  And that's the first 10,000 ton corn
• 1:04:00
  shipment from Zadarubina has already taken place.
• 1:04:05
  So Zadarubina is about maritime fleets, but it's
• 1:04:09
  an Eastern maritime outlet.
• 1:04:11
  It allows Russian grain to get into Asian
• 1:04:14
  markets without relying on the Black Sea or
• 1:04:17
  the Baltic Sea.
• 1:04:19
  So because those have some European pressure, have
• 1:04:22
  war risk, have sanctions, insurance problems and choke
• 1:04:26
  points that are controlled by the West.
• 1:04:29
  So Zadarubina is the grain version of the
• 1:04:32
  energy pivot.
• 1:04:33
  We talked about before Trans-Siberian Railway and
• 1:04:36
  Baikal Amur mainline modernization.
• 1:04:39
  What this is Russia's modernization of the core
• 1:04:42
  eastbound rail arteries of the Trans-Siberian Railway
• 1:04:44
  and the Baikal Amur mainlines.
• 1:04:46
  And their trains aren't bad anyway.
• 1:04:49
  I've ridden on their trains quite a few
• 1:04:51
  times and it's a pleasure.
• 1:04:54
  It's not like, I don't know if you've
• 1:04:56
  ever taken the train in America.
• 1:05:02
  It's ancient, let's put it that way.
• 1:05:09
  But in Russia, not so.
• 1:05:12
  They're far more reasonable and nice.
• 1:05:16
  I haven't done China yet, but I'm hoping
• 1:05:17
  to get to do that before I kick
• 1:05:19
  the bucket.
• 1:05:20
  So Putin identified these lines in his speech
• 1:05:25
  and modernized to increase cargo, passenger flow between
• 1:05:31
  Russia and China.
• 1:05:32
  The bridge and terminals only matter if the
• 1:05:34
  inland rail articles can feed them.
• 1:05:36
  Trans-Siberian and the Baikal Amur line, those
• 1:05:41
  upgrades are our backbones.
• 1:05:43
  They connect Russian industrial, mining, agriculture and energy
• 1:05:47
  far away to the Chinese border and Pacific
• 1:05:51
  facing ports.
• 1:05:52
  So fixing these cross-country structures in Russia,
• 1:05:59
  which are already in decent shape, but they're
• 1:06:00
  going to upgrade them.
• 1:06:02
  And I think there was talk about taking
• 1:06:05
  the rail.
• 1:06:06
  There's different rail sizes between some countries over
• 1:06:13
  there through Mongolia, through Iran.
• 1:06:15
  Some of those things they were talking about
• 1:06:17
  and they want to have them all match.
• 1:06:19
  So they're pulling them up and getting them
• 1:06:22
  to go that way.
• 1:06:24
  Let's see.
• 1:06:25
  The North Sea Route, trans-Arctic transport.
• 1:06:28
  This is Russia's Arctic shipping corridor, including the
• 1:06:31
  North Sea Route.
• 1:06:32
  These numbers are going up too.
• 1:06:35
  Russian LNG shipments from the Arctic and Far
• 1:06:37
  East, including Yamal LNG, Arctic LNG, Sakhalin-2
• 1:06:41
  and shipments increasingly using the Northern Sea Route.
• 1:06:45
  That is the Arctic piece of the same
• 1:06:47
  puzzle.
• 1:06:47
  Russia wants a northern maritime corridor to reduce
• 1:06:50
  dependence of its own on the Suez, Malacca,
• 1:06:53
  Western networks and insurance.
• 1:06:55
  China wants alternative routes into Europe and the
• 1:06:58
  Arctic resource zone.
• 1:06:59
  It's long term, ice dependent, and expensive, but
• 1:07:03
  strategically obvious.
• 1:07:05
  So the Arctic isn't just scenery anymore.
• 1:07:08
  It's a trade road and Trumpster recognized it.
• 1:07:11
  That's why he was talking about steel and
• 1:07:12
  Greenland.
• 1:07:13
  Ross Atom, these Tiananmen and Zhudapu, I don't
• 1:07:20
  know how to say it, nuclear power plants,
• 1:07:22
  is the Russian design nuclear power units built
• 1:07:25
  or completed in Chinese Tiananmen and Zhudapu nuclear
• 1:07:31
  power plants.
• 1:07:32
  Ross Atom is successfully operating in China and
• 1:07:36
  Russian design power units are being completed.
• 1:07:38
  So strategically, this is a big deal.
• 1:07:40
  Nuclear power is marriage because you got maintenance
• 1:07:43
  obligations.
• 1:07:44
  You know, this is a far bigger deal.
• 1:07:46
  Critical minerals.
• 1:07:47
  They talked about metals, green technology.
• 1:07:50
  This is the green transition.
• 1:07:52
  Transition is geopolitical, electric vehicles, batteries, grid systems,
• 1:07:56
  turbines, advanced manufacturing, all need minerals and metal.
• 1:07:59
  Russia has resource depth.
• 1:08:01
  China has refining manufacturing industrial.
• 1:08:03
  Together, they can challenge Western attempts to control
• 1:08:06
  this supply chain.
• 1:08:09
  Chinese automobiles in Russia.
• 1:08:11
  This is a big deal.
• 1:08:13
  When Western companies left Russia, they just basically
• 1:08:18
  shut down their factories.
• 1:08:20
  Volkswagen left.
• 1:08:21
  So what did Russia do?
• 1:08:22
  They sold the factories to China.
• 1:08:24
  I reported that to you before.
• 1:08:26
  And China is now producing vehicles on places
• 1:08:28
  that we're just getting.
• 1:08:29
  And Russia seized them, said, hell with it.
• 1:08:31
  We'll take them.
• 1:08:32
  And then they sold them to China, said,
• 1:08:34
  do you want to invest here?
• 1:08:35
  We'll take your cars.
• 1:08:36
  And they did.
• 1:08:36
  They came over, reworked all the all the
• 1:08:39
  infrastructure.
• 1:08:40
  And these places will never you know, everybody
• 1:08:43
  thought, oh, geez, Russia will come begging for
• 1:08:46
  us to come back.
• 1:08:47
  They don't give a crap.
• 1:08:48
  The cars, the cars in China are arguably
• 1:08:51
  better anyway.
• 1:08:52
  And so they started producing VWs with Chinese
• 1:08:58
  manufacturer instead, say VW plants, Chevy plants that
• 1:09:02
  when they left and they can't buy them
• 1:09:04
  back, they had to walk away from that
• 1:09:05
  money.
• 1:09:06
  And, you know, same thing that happened with
• 1:09:09
  Starbucks, which is now Star Coffee and the
• 1:09:11
  same thing that with McDonald's, which is now
• 1:09:13
  вкусный точка.
• 1:09:15
  And it's it's crazy.
• 1:09:19
  Aviation, space, biotech, pharmaceuticals, chemical, pulp and paper,
• 1:09:22
  metallurgy.
• 1:09:23
  Putin talked about that.
• 1:09:24
  These are big deals.
• 1:09:25
  Digital economy, also a big deal.
• 1:09:27
  A.I., a big deal.
• 1:09:29
  They're all working together.
• 1:09:30
  Technological innovations between schools, BRICS, SEO, APEC, WTO,
• 1:09:35
  IMF, World Bank, New Development Bank.
• 1:09:37
  These are all bridges, banks, moving leverage, diplomatic
• 1:09:41
  blocks provide the legitimacy.
• 1:09:43
  This is I tell you what, when Xi
• 1:09:46
  Jinping and Vladimir Putin talk about a multipolar
• 1:09:48
  world, they aren't just making a speech.
• 1:09:50
  They're describing the infrastructure beneath it.
• 1:09:53
  Look at their border.
• 1:09:54
  The first China railway crossing bridge at Qingyang,
• 1:09:57
  the Blagoveshchensk road project, the Pashkova-Jayan crossing,
• 1:10:03
  cross-border cable cars, new rail tunnels, the
• 1:10:07
  steel, concrete, rail, gas, grain, customs, ports, currency
• 1:10:10
  settlements.
• 1:10:11
  So and here's the part that we should
• 1:10:14
  be paying attention to here.
• 1:10:17
  This entire system is paid for outside the
• 1:10:22
  dollar.
• 1:10:24
  Practically all China-Russia export imports are handled
• 1:10:29
  in the ruble or the yuan.
• 1:10:33
  Tell you what, China is a large economic
• 1:10:36
  partner.
• 1:10:37
  It's not a perfect system, but tell you
• 1:10:41
  what, it is a certainly a very big
• 1:10:45
  deal.
• 1:10:46
  Then I want to talk a little bit
• 1:10:48
  about China doing this for themselves.
• 1:10:50
  So what China and Russia are building isn't
• 1:10:52
  just one project.
• 1:10:53
  It's a trade organism with three connected parts.
• 1:10:56
  And part of it is based on the
• 1:10:58
  fact that these countries think long term.
• 1:11:02
  America thinks in a term of a president's
• 1:11:05
  tenure in office, four years.
• 1:11:07
  Then we start all over.
• 1:11:09
  We go backwards.
• 1:11:10
  We tear up crap when we do.
• 1:11:12
  And they cancel whatever that pipeline was called
• 1:11:17
  that was going to run from Canada to
• 1:11:18
  Mexico.
• 1:11:19
  They get rid of it or run from
• 1:11:20
  Canada to the Gulf.
• 1:11:27
  And those things, Biden came into office, said,
• 1:11:30
  nope, not anymore, 10 billion, wiped out.
• 1:11:33
  Nope, sorry, I don't like it.
• 1:11:36
  You've got to protect some animal or whatever,
• 1:11:39
  so screw you, done.
• 1:11:40
  And those people just lost the money and
• 1:11:42
  it's not coming back.
• 1:11:44
  So China, Russia, land corridor, sea corridor, money
• 1:11:48
  corridor, rail corridor, tunnels, everything.
• 1:11:52
  So let's talk about this other enormous project
• 1:11:55
  going on in China right now.
• 1:11:59
  The Yangtze Port Project and how it fits
• 1:12:02
  into this system.
• 1:12:03
  The Yangtze Deepwater Port is a seaside equivalent
• 1:12:07
  of the Russia-China border projects.
• 1:12:09
  The Russia-China materials talk about bridges, tunnels,
• 1:12:12
  terminals, pipelines, logistics, turning old frontier into an
• 1:12:17
  active trade artery.
• 1:12:19
  So China is doing the same thing at
• 1:12:21
  sea, solving a physical bottleneck of its own
• 1:12:24
  so that trade can scale beyond the limits
• 1:12:26
  of old infrastructure.
• 1:12:28
  Shanghai was already a world-class port, but
• 1:12:31
  it's constrained by silt from the Yangtze Kaiyang
• 1:12:36
  River, river full of fish.
• 1:12:40
  No, I'm sorry.
• 1:12:41
  And it's shallow, it's crowded, and there's another
• 1:12:45
  river, the crowded Huangpu River.
• 1:12:48
  Bridges are too low for the largest ships
• 1:12:50
  to get through.
• 1:12:51
  Channels are too narrow for the large container
• 1:12:54
  vessels.
• 1:12:55
  The largest ships need deeper water.
• 1:12:58
  They need more than 15 meters.
• 1:13:00
  And Shanghai's old port structure cannot handle the
• 1:13:04
  new maritime realities.
• 1:13:05
  So China is building the Yangtze Port, 32
• 1:13:11
  kilometers offshore, where the water is deep enough
• 1:13:16
  for a new generation of mega container ships.
• 1:13:19
  So it's a 20 kilometer port, 50 berths,
• 1:13:25
  25 million containers a year at a price
• 1:13:30
  tag of $18 billion.
• 1:13:33
  So the first lesson, China isn't waiting for
• 1:13:37
  its old port to fail.
• 1:13:39
  It's built around the bottleneck.
• 1:13:42
  This is what China and Russia are doing
• 1:13:44
  with currency, land logistics, these bridges, these pathways.
• 1:13:48
  They aren't seeking Western system for permission to
• 1:13:51
  do it.
• 1:13:52
  They're just building around them.
• 1:13:54
  The modern data shows that this scale is
• 1:13:57
  enormous.
• 1:13:59
  Shanghai is the world's busiest container port for
• 1:14:01
  the 16th straight year in 2025.
• 1:14:05
  Annual container throughput is 55.06 million, I
• 1:14:13
  forget what this nomenclature is, TEU, transportation units,
• 1:14:17
  but I can't remember what it is.
• 1:14:18
  Yangtze alone accounted for 52% of Shanghai's
• 1:14:22
  total volume.
• 1:14:24
  And the Yangtze deep water port area is
• 1:14:27
  growing 10.4% year on year.
• 1:14:30
  So Yangtze is not just old engineering documentary,
• 1:14:34
  it's the physical model for China's larger strategy,
• 1:14:37
  identifying choke points, building around them, scaling the
• 1:14:41
  replacement, and then making the world use the
• 1:14:43
  new route.
• 1:14:44
  This connects into the Russia-China border projects,
• 1:14:48
  moving commodities and industrial imports into China and
• 1:14:51
  Chinese goods into Russia and Eurasia.
• 1:14:53
  The upside of this is that there's more
• 1:14:58
  than a dozen projects going on between Russia
• 1:15:01
  and China.
• 1:15:02
  Three new and more.
• 1:15:03
  We can't get one between us and Canada.
• 1:15:06
  We can't get anything done.
• 1:15:09
  We argue about idiocy, and this will happen
• 1:15:12
  for four years and somebody else will come
• 1:15:15
  in, and then we'll argue for another four
• 1:15:17
  years about an animal that might be interfering
• 1:15:19
  with it.
• 1:15:20
  Meanwhile, we can't get anything done internally because
• 1:15:24
  states all have their own.
• 1:15:26
  I mean, we have limits in what we
• 1:15:28
  are allowed to do in our own country.
• 1:15:31
  So at any rate, Yangtze is the ocean
• 1:15:34
  -facing side of the same machinery, create, build
• 1:15:38
  it, and they will come.
• 1:15:39
  Remember that?
• 1:15:40
  Build it and they will come.
• 1:15:43
  And what they're doing is they're building an
• 1:15:45
  infrastructure that is being used all over the
• 1:15:49
  place.
• 1:15:50
  Russia supplies strategic bulk oil, gas, coal, grain,
• 1:15:54
  timber, metal, nuclear technology, Arctic asset, military industrial
• 1:15:58
  strength, and China supplies industrial platforms, factories, ports,
• 1:16:03
  cranes, ships, logistic systems, digital payment rail, manufacturing
• 1:16:08
  scale, and export capacity.
• 1:16:11
  The border infrastructure feeds the Chinese and Russian
• 1:16:14
  machines by land.
• 1:16:17
  Yangtze projects China's output by sea.
• 1:16:20
  The yuan is increasingly settling the transaction.
• 1:16:26
  That's the triangle.
• 1:16:29
  The Russia-China border projects are the inland
• 1:16:32
  arteries.
• 1:16:33
  Yangtze is the opening lungs.
• 1:16:36
  The yuan is their new blood, and the
• 1:16:39
  dollar is no longer guaranteed, and the Western
• 1:16:42
  -dominated IMF and World Bank are no longer
• 1:16:45
  guaranteed to be the heart of the system.
• 1:16:49
  So Putin's statement, he said that all Russia
• 1:16:54
  -Chinese import operations are conducted in the ruble
• 1:16:57
  and the yuan.
• 1:16:59
  Reuters reported on May 2026, May 19, that
• 1:17:03
  Yuri Ushakov said practically all payments of roughly
• 1:17:07
  $240 billion Russia-China trade are made, and
• 1:17:11
  they're shielded from Western sanctions.
• 1:17:13
  That's $240 billion that Western banks aren't getting.
• 1:17:18
  That's the biggest point.
• 1:17:19
  It's not just physical.
• 1:17:21
  It's monetary.
• 1:17:22
  A bridge paid through a dollar system is
• 1:17:24
  still partly exposed to Washington.
• 1:17:27
  These bridges and everything being financed and built
• 1:17:30
  through them are not being financed by the
• 1:17:33
  dollar, not remotely.
• 1:17:36
  China has the cash, and China's getting rid
• 1:17:38
  of U.S. debt.
• 1:17:40
  So's Japan, the biggest people.
• 1:17:42
  We're trying to force people to buy our
• 1:17:44
  debt.
• 1:17:45
  Russia isn't even at 17% debt.
• 1:17:48
  They're the lowest debtor of a major country
• 1:17:50
  in the world.
• 1:17:52
  They have no debt.
• 1:17:53
  Russia's cash-based for the most part.
• 1:17:57
  I heard an interesting argument on that on
• 1:17:58
  a show the other day, where an economist
• 1:18:01
  was saying that they should, because the state
• 1:18:03
  debt to Russia is debt to itself.
• 1:18:06
  Russia's loaning itself money.
• 1:18:09
  So their debt isn't real either, because the
• 1:18:13
  debt is the government loaning the government money.
• 1:18:16
  That'd be like the king loaning the king
• 1:18:18
  money.
• 1:18:18
  This is what's happening.
• 1:18:19
  So it's an interesting thought, and they were
• 1:18:21
  saying we should sell that debt to the
• 1:18:22
  West, because then they would give us a
• 1:18:25
  higher interest rate, and we could pay off
• 1:18:28
  the debt.
• 1:18:29
  How do we put that?
• 1:18:30
  Then all we'd have to do is pay
• 1:18:32
  the interest.
• 1:18:32
  We don't pay the debt, because we sell
• 1:18:33
  the debt.
• 1:18:34
  And I thought that was an interesting concept,
• 1:18:36
  but I haven't researched it at all.
• 1:18:38
  It was just a cool concept.
• 1:18:40
  So the biggest point is infrastructure is monetary
• 1:18:42
  and physical.
• 1:18:45
  So that's a distinction.
• 1:18:47
  The yuan isn't replacing the dollar.
• 1:18:50
  The IMF data shows that the amount that
• 1:18:54
  they're using is still only about two percent
• 1:18:56
  of the global economy.
• 1:18:58
  Global foreign reserves in quarter four 2025, the
• 1:19:02
  dollar is at 56 percent.
• 1:19:04
  So not the dollar is dead.
• 1:19:07
  That's somebody looking for clickbait, but the dollar
• 1:19:10
  is still the world's main reserve currency.
• 1:19:14
  But trade corridors that China controls, the yuan
• 1:19:18
  is increasingly usable.
• 1:19:20
  People are taking the yuan as payment all
• 1:19:24
  over the world, and through China's payment system,
• 1:19:27
  through Russia's payment system, through the Russia-China
• 1:19:30
  corridor.
• 1:19:32
  That's accurate.
• 1:19:33
  You know, that's what's happening.
• 1:19:35
  So China's cross-border international payment system, SIPS,
• 1:19:40
  C-I-P-S, is the payment infrastructure
• 1:19:42
  beyond the yuan.
• 1:19:44
  It is not a full replacement for SWIFT.
• 1:19:47
  SWIFT is a global messaging network.
• 1:19:49
  SIPS is focused on clearing and settling yuan,
• 1:19:52
  but SIPS give China a financial rail for
• 1:19:54
  trade that doesn't have to be dollar centered.
• 1:19:58
  You know, SIPS was launched in 2015 to
• 1:20:01
  support yuan internationalization, and then in 2024, its
• 1:20:05
  volume rose 43 percent to 175.49 trillion
• 1:20:11
  yuan, or 24.45 trillion dollars.
• 1:20:17
  That's a lot, and transactions have tripled since
• 1:20:21
  2020.
• 1:20:22
  So their current site says there's 194 direct
• 1:20:26
  participants and 1,597 indirect participants as of
• 1:20:31
  May 19, 2026, with a business volume of
• 1:20:35
  180 trillion dollars in 2025.
• 1:20:40
  Big stuff.
• 1:20:42
  These are some big things.
• 1:20:47
  So I tell you what, I like it.
• 1:20:53
  So let's talk a little bit about the
• 1:20:54
  North American problem, and we don't have much
• 1:20:56
  problem, but North America has enormous trade.
• 1:20:59
  USMCA is supposed to undergrid nearly 2 trillion
• 1:21:02
  in regional goods and services, according to the
• 1:21:04
  U.S. Mexico has 872 billion in goods
• 1:21:08
  trade with the U.S. in 2025.
• 1:21:10
  U.S. imports from Mexico are 539 billion.
• 1:21:13
  The U.S. goods deficit with Mexico has
• 1:21:15
  risen to 196 billion.
• 1:21:17
  Mexico's leading exports to the U.S. are
• 1:21:19
  vehicles, machinery, electric machinery, medical devices, all the
• 1:21:23
  technology we threw out of the country down
• 1:21:26
  to there.
• 1:21:27
  So the U.S. isn't just losing trade,
• 1:21:29
  it has built an integrated North American production
• 1:21:32
  system, but the trouble is much of the
• 1:21:34
  system uses Mexico as a low-cost manufacturing,
• 1:21:37
  while the U.S. remains the high consumption
• 1:21:39
  market.
• 1:21:40
  Mexico has been one of the largest beneficiaries
• 1:21:42
  of this de facto manufacturing hub, and 80
• 1:21:49
  % of Mexican exports go to the U
• 1:21:51
  .S., and Mexico is the most important U
• 1:21:55
  .S. trading partner since 2023.
• 1:21:57
  U.S. says it wants manufacturing back, but
• 1:21:59
  the practical system keeps encouraging manufacturing to move
• 1:22:03
  where labor is cheaper.
• 1:22:05
  That isn't betrayal by Mexico, it's predictable result
• 1:22:09
  of the rules we wrote.
• 1:22:10
  A casino shouldn't act surprised that people gamble,
• 1:22:14
  you know, like we do.
• 1:22:17
  With Canada, the picture is equally revealing.
• 1:22:20
  Trade between the U.S. and Canada is
• 1:22:22
  719 billion in 2025.
• 1:22:25
  U.S. exports to Canada were down 3%.
• 1:22:27
  Statistics Canada says Canada's exports to the U
• 1:22:32
  .S. fell in 2025, and the share of
• 1:22:34
  Canadian exports going to the U.S. dropped
• 1:22:36
  from 75% to 71% between 2024
• 1:22:39
  and 2025.
• 1:22:41
  There's no, to be fair, North America has
• 1:22:44
  built a few things.
• 1:22:45
  The Gordie Howe International Bridge, you heard about
• 1:22:47
  that argument a little while ago, right?
• 1:22:50
  Its official site still describes it as a
• 1:22:53
  landmark infrastructure project, but now it's, you know,
• 1:22:58
  proving my larger point.
• 1:23:00
  We have one major bridge, slow, complicated, payments
• 1:23:04
  not working, you know, none of it.
• 1:23:06
  Now there's arguments, and China and Russia are
• 1:23:09
  discussing multiple bridges, tunnels, pipelines, terminals, routes as
• 1:23:14
  one strategic direction.
• 1:23:15
  The North American model can build.
• 1:23:18
  It usually does it like a committee, though.
• 1:23:21
  China builds like a state.
• 1:23:22
  Russia builds like a state when it, you
• 1:23:24
  know, has the right partner.
• 1:23:27
  And so this is it.
• 1:23:29
  Yuan, ruble, all of this is a very,
• 1:23:31
  very big deal.
• 1:23:33
  So let's take a hundred-year, mile-high
• 1:23:36
  view of this.
• 1:23:37
  We began with Xi and Putin in their
• 1:23:39
  statement.
• 1:23:39
  The real subject is much larger than one
• 1:23:41
  press conference.
• 1:23:42
  We look at the architecture of the world
• 1:23:45
  being rebuilt beneath the surface, and they're building
• 1:23:48
  a system.
• 1:23:49
  The Russia-China border is a frontier that
• 1:23:52
  once represented suspicion, Cold War separation, now converted
• 1:23:57
  into an economic hub.
• 1:23:59
  They're going to see growth like we saw
• 1:24:01
  between Mexico, America, and Canada, and this is
• 1:24:06
  the fastest-growing area of the world.
• 1:24:13
  The first half of the 20th century destroyed
• 1:24:15
  the old imperial world order.
• 1:24:18
  World War I broke up European empires.
• 1:24:20
  World War II finished that job.
• 1:24:23
  Out of the ruins came the American system,
• 1:24:25
  Bretton Woods, dollar, World Bank, IMF, and now
• 1:24:29
  we're watching that, you know, the cracks of
• 1:24:32
  that system.
• 1:24:34
  Well, we'll continue some of that possibly tomorrow.
• 1:24:38
  Today's the biggest day in radio.
• 1:24:40
  Hope you continue to listen to damn radio
• 1:24:44
  for today.
• 1:24:45
  Big Wednesday.
• 1:24:47
  And join me again tomorrow on International Flavor,
• 1:24:49
  where the truth just tastes better.
• 1:24:53
  Thanks for joining me, and I hope you
• 1:24:56
  have a super duper, what is today, Wednesday.
• 1:25:02
  Thanks for joining.