Latest / UK Column Radio / Jerm Goes to China - Beyond the Propaganda (Part 1)

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Jerm Goes to China - Beyond the Propaganda (Part 1) · UK Column Radio

• 0:25
  Oh, This is a chicken and fried.
• 1:12
  Rice. Yeah, that's just rice.
• 1:14
  That's just just white rice. Thing about this whole thing,
• 1:16
  yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's 31 RMB each people.
• 1:20
  So total we pay like 63, it's like 31 something, 31 point .5.
• 1:27
  Also comes to my phone. Yeah, it's, it's, there's 63
• 1:30
  total. It wasn't.
• 1:30
  It wasn't expensive. What is this?
• 1:32
  It's not that's egg. It's a it's a steamed egg.
• 1:35
  So what do you do with it? So you just, you just just drink
• 1:38
  it. It's it's.
• 1:39
  Steam. You can do that or you can do it
• 1:41
  by yourself. Yeah, it's very different.
• 1:43
  It's a steam egg is just they they add a little bit of water
• 1:47
  and then you steam it and usually they make it a little
• 1:52
  bit salty. Let me see if it's a Yeah.
• 1:55
  No, it's pretty good. I like it.
• 1:58
  So this is the Chinese fast food.
• 2:00
  We are going to the most rural part of China well.
• 2:09
  I, I think, I think it's not just the most, I think it's the
• 2:13
  most remote part of China because it's, we literally have
• 2:17
  to drive 11 hours cutting through the desert to reach this
• 2:22
  place. It's how isolated that place is.
• 2:24
  It's in the middle of the desert.
• 2:26
  It's always this village. We.
• 2:28
  Got to order something to drink. We did.
• 2:31
  This was actually probably cheaper than buying Chinese food
• 2:34
  back home. How do you do the SO?
• 2:39
  They actually, I look it up this chain, it's a chain they got
• 2:44
  fine in 2020 for false advertisement by claiming to use
• 2:48
  eggs exclusively was exclusively supplied from top Chinese
• 2:54
  leaders like Xi Jinping. They claim they're using the the
• 2:59
  same egg supplier that's supplied exclusively to Xi
• 3:02
  Jinping. And that was a lot.
• 3:04
  Yeah, it was false advertisement, so they got
• 3:06
  fined. I heard that you aren't allowed
• 3:07
  to speak about it in public. No, you can't.
• 3:09
  Say. Of course you can say his name,
• 3:11
  but what happened is on social media, on Chinese social media
• 3:17
  like Weibo, which is equivalent over Twitter.
• 3:22
  If you write out his name, what happened is that that if you
• 3:28
  write out his name, what happened is your post will
• 3:32
  automatic. They will automatically turn
• 3:34
  your comment off. So you guys still post it.
• 3:38
  People can see it, but nobody can comment on it because this
• 3:41
  is the the the media company do that because they don't want to
• 3:45
  get in trouble, you know, if somebody talking shit.
• 3:49
  But you can't speak about them what you can't?
• 3:51
  You can you. Can you can.
• 3:53
  Yeah, you can speak like nobody care if you just.
• 3:57
  It's a private conversation. It's like this.
• 3:59
  It's a private conversation. Nobody cares.
• 4:01
  But not on TV. Yeah, now if you go on social
• 4:06
  media, if the post goes viral, then that's a different.
• 4:10
  Voice. If you have no followers, you
• 4:12
  have very few followers. Nobody see.
• 4:15
  Very few people see your post and then they also don't care.
• 4:18
  Well, what if it's positive? You know what they just don't
• 4:21
  want the they don't want anything.
• 4:25
  They they don't want anything to go viral that, you know they're
• 4:30
  not responsible for. So then This is why there was a
• 4:41
  time, maybe it's 15 years ago, you can say whatever you want,
• 4:45
  want Weibo. But that has changed now you can
• 4:52
  Weibo is now becoming more like geared towards entertainment,
• 4:56
  like people following celebrities and stuff.
• 4:59
  So now, now the young people are migrating to Darwin with the
• 5:03
  Chinese version of TikTok, or I should say TikTok was the
• 5:09
  international version of the Wing because the Wing came first
• 5:14
  and then they made an international.
• 5:16
  Version but now America is America still a lot to use.
• 5:19
  Tick tock. Yeah, Trump said he was going to
• 5:25
  the US. Congress passed a law to ban it
• 5:29
  unless they sell. Tick tock for American
• 5:32
  ownership. But Trump keep on extending,
• 5:35
  extending the deadline by 90 days and after 90 days he keep
• 5:39
  on extending it. And I think now he's going to
• 5:45
  extend it for another 90 days, so.
• 5:46
  Who do you think is more powerful, Trump or Xi Jinping?
• 5:50
  Who's to think more? What?
• 5:51
  More powerful? More powerful.
• 5:54
  I don't think Xi Jinping because.
• 5:56
  Use the better chess player. I don't, I don't think either
• 6:00
  play chess. To be honest, I don't think
• 6:03
  either play chess. Why?
• 6:08
  Because if she didn't even play chess, he would be playing the
• 6:11
  Chinese chess. It's a different version of
• 6:13
  chess. It's a.
• 6:15
  It's a. It's.
• 6:16
  Chess with Chinese qualities. Or it's it's it's it's yes,
• 6:21
  chess with Chinese characteristic.
• 6:23
  But. I think it's derivative of
• 6:25
  chess, but it's the Chinese version of it.
• 6:29
  Like instead of like, you know how the chess piece is all
• 6:32
  carved with like Queens, Bishop and all that, the Chinese chest
• 6:36
  it just everyone it's a wrong disc with Chinese character on
• 6:40
  it. So so you just have to recognise
• 6:44
  the character. Like you have to be literate to
• 6:50
  be able to play. Speaking of literature, just
• 6:56
  tell me what you're saying to me today.
• 6:57
  About. The the access to the Internet.
• 7:01
  So right now both both you and I, we're in Shanghai and we can
• 7:05
  access the worldwide Internet. Yeah, so.
• 7:11
  There was a time, there was a time when all American apps were
• 7:15
  accessible. That was before 2000 O 8, like
• 7:20
  before 2000 O 8, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, you name it.
• 7:25
  And so all you can all access inside China, but 2000 O 8 was a
• 7:31
  time when Americans started weaponizing Facebook against
• 7:35
  Iran in the so called green Revolution.
• 7:39
  And that's also when there's an incident in Xinjiang happened.
• 7:45
  There's a race riot that happened in Urumqi, the capital
• 7:49
  of Xinjiang, where we're going back in 2000 O 8.
• 7:52
  And one contributor contributing factor to that was some diaspora
• 7:58
  group were using Facebook to spreading a lot of disinflow.
• 8:03
  They were telling people that we were women in in Guam.
• 8:07
  So working in factories are getting attacked, getting raped.
• 8:11
  And, and so that got a lot of people back home very angry and
• 8:15
  they staged a big protest in front of the provincial
• 8:20
  government in Urumqi, in Xinjiang.
• 8:24
  But that, that protest got out of control and people, because
• 8:30
  the, the, the provincial building was protected by police
• 8:34
  and stuff, because the people, instead of storming the, the
• 8:37
  provincial government building, they, they dispersed, went
• 8:41
  inside, dispersed around the neighbourhood and it turned into
• 8:44
  an ethnic riot. They started targeting anybody
• 8:47
  who is Han, who's non Uyghur, so.
• 8:51
  Han is the majority. The majority Han is everybody.
• 8:54
  Most people you see here? Yeah, most people in the eastern
• 8:57
  China and and so in Xinjiang, the ethnic balance is about
• 9:04
  5050. If you look at somebody, can you
• 9:08
  see if at Han or not? So most of them, so 90% of the
• 9:19
  people in China are hot, right? Super majority, 90% of the
• 9:23
  people and among the other 8%, I would say 8% of the people
• 9:29
  physically they're not you can't really tell them apart because
• 9:32
  they're all E Asians, right? Just different.
• 9:35
  If they're not wearing their ethnic costumes, you would not
• 9:38
  be able to tell, right? Even say like a Mongol guy and
• 9:43
  the Han guy, you probably wouldn't be able to tell.
• 9:46
  But the Uyghurs are physically different because they look more
• 9:51
  Central Asian and that like, and I can tell you there's a whole
• 9:54
  spectrum of people who look like Jenny to people who look like
• 9:59
  you. So they they cover let me look
• 10:02
  like me. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:03
  I don't even look like African. No, no, no.
• 10:05
  I'm just talking about people that look.
• 10:07
  Like I look more like a Pakistani or a Moroccan.
• 10:10
  Yeah, I'm just talking about like there are people in
• 10:12
  Xinjiang that look like you, but there are also people that look
• 10:16
  just like Jenny, right? So, so because we were people,
• 10:18
  they just have a whole spectrum of looks because that that area
• 10:22
  used to be the crossroad of Silk Road, crossroad melting of
• 10:26
  culture. So.
• 10:27
  But they do have their own language, a different language
• 10:31
  they speak. You can't understand them.
• 10:32
  I would not be able to like, OK, I actually I didn't understand
• 10:38
  Shanghainese either. When, when when Jenny was
• 10:41
  speaking with other Jenny in the office where speaking
• 10:45
  Shanghainese, I didn't understand that either.
• 10:47
  But that's, that's still considered like Han language,
• 10:51
  even though both Mandarin and Shanghainese are still like
• 10:56
  Shanghainese is still considered part of the Han big group,
• 10:59
  right? Even though our language is not
• 11:02
  mutually intelligible. But but Uyghur language is more
• 11:07
  like Turkic. It's more, it's closer to
• 11:09
  Turkish. Like I somebody told me Turkish
• 11:15
  and Uyghur, they can understand maybe 40%, forty to 60% of each
• 11:19
  other without learning, you know, so, so anyway, so their
• 11:23
  language is more different. Their looks is more Central
• 11:26
  Asian. So they look like like people
• 11:30
  from Uzbekistan, for example, to me.
• 11:32
  Everybody, yeah, just looks the same.
• 11:34
  You, you will see a difference when we go to Xinjiang here.
• 11:37
  Yeah, here in the East China, most people look the same.
• 11:43
  Maybe. So Xinjiang is A and it's
• 11:47
  remote, and it's politically sensitive.
• 11:49
  Yeah, and also their religion they're they're Muslim majority
• 11:52
  people, right. So that's religion is different
• 11:55
  because most people on people are non.
• 11:58
  Muslims with the apparent quote unquote genocide is happening,
• 12:03
  right, right, right with the quote unquote concentration
• 12:05
  camps. Yeah, Yeah.
• 12:06
  Well. We will see.
• 12:07
  We will see. So I I I think we should talk to
• 12:12
  locals. You know, I'm not.
• 12:14
  I know one of the women who's this?
• 12:21
  Hello the. China thing is now active.
• 12:24
  Download Cindy how mobile apps your account.
• 12:27
  It's an ad free 5G upgrade. Check your MSN for the link.
• 12:33
  Thanks. What?
• 12:36
  What is active? Oh, look, here we go.
• 12:40
  So this is the top of beer Juice.
• 12:42
  Yeah. Oh, that's good.
• 12:49
  I've no idea what that is. It's yeah.
• 12:51
  I don't know how is it saying in English.
• 12:54
  Wait a minute. I have an app, Let's Go that
• 12:57
  that can read it. Let's see.
• 12:58
  Let's see. No, that's just the that's the
• 13:02
  character of this, of this place.
• 13:04
  Or is that just? It just means maternal uncle.
• 13:07
  That's a yeah, that's a loco of the store.
• 13:11
  It just means maternal uncle. Yeah, there it says uncle.
• 13:14
  Yeah, yeah, there it says. Be particular about rice.
• 13:19
  Just eat the old lady. So yeah, so now Yangzhou is
• 13:25
  means the old uncle Yangzhou is there in this particular area,
• 13:33
  Shanghai Yangzhou means maternal uncle but but you know the.
• 13:40
  So it says it be particular about Russ.
• 13:43
  Just just eat the old lady. Yeah, it's not quite there yet
• 13:52
  lady. Now 'cause their, their, their,
• 13:55
  the the store name is Laodongjia, which means old
• 13:58
  uncle, old or old maternal uncle.
• 14:00
  So after 2000 O 8. Because China felt like US is
• 14:07
  weaponizing social media as a way to do colour revolutions and
• 14:12
  and and sabotage other government.
• 14:16
  That's when they banned it 2000 O 8 July 2008 after the race
• 14:22
  riot in Ulunji. That's when Facebook, YouTube,
• 14:26
  Twitter, all that ban and that's a side product of the ban of
• 14:35
  American social media. That's when that gives a chance
• 14:38
  for the Chinese domestic social media to grow.
• 14:42
  So everything you see like WeChat came after that, WeChat,
• 14:47
  Ali Alipay, all these Chinese apps develop as a result of the
• 14:53
  banning of the American apps. And in the beginning a lot of
• 14:58
  the Chinese apps, they're kind of just copycat of the Western
• 15:03
  app, but then they start to develop their own.
• 15:05
  So like WeChat actually originally they developed on QQ.
• 15:09
  I don't know if you know QQ it's, but QQ is kind of
• 15:12
  developed on like AOL chat, you know, like, and now QQ got very
• 15:18
  popular in China and then Tencent made their own version
• 15:22
  of QQ as they call it WeChat. But then when WeChat became
• 15:26
  popular, they started to integrate, start building WeChat
• 15:30
  as a platform so they can integrate with other online
• 15:34
  apps. So basically you don't, you
• 15:36
  never need to leave WeChat. You can use WeChat to pay.
• 15:39
  You can use WeChat to open other.
• 15:40
  Apps you don't want to do with X.
• 15:43
  Where did he get the idea? He get the idea.
• 15:46
  No, no, no, no. Chinese people stole American
• 15:49
  ideas. Yes, yes, but but that's what
• 15:53
  the Americans tech Bros wanted to do for a long time.
• 15:57
  They wanted to create a super chat like super app like WeChat
• 16:01
  and and or Alipay, but they weren't very they weren't that
• 16:05
  successful look. Just on that Internet censorship
• 16:11
  thing, I mean, it's kind of difficult to wrap it around when
• 16:15
  you don't come here and and actually experience living in
• 16:21
  China, I suppose. Yeah.
• 16:25
  So on the one hand, people are going to say, yeah, but it's
• 16:30
  controlling your access information, right?
• 16:33
  It is. It is controlling access
• 16:34
  information, but it's kind of not because AVPN is not banned
• 16:38
  and everybody uses a VVVN. Well, everybody who is smart
• 16:42
  enough to know how to install it, yeah, even even the
• 16:46
  government uses VPNs. Yeah.
• 16:48
  So we create a threshold so the the feeling is OK.
• 16:52
  So then people might weaponize, you know, Americans, they might
• 16:57
  weaponize social media to affect young people.
• 17:01
  But if you're smart enough to use VPN, you might be less
• 17:04
  susceptible to. But that's the point there,
• 17:07
  yeah. So the whole, the whole, if I'm
• 17:11
  understanding correctly, the whole point of censoring Western
• 17:17
  Internet is to preserve Chinese culture and traditions and
• 17:22
  customs and heritage? Because if you look at, not
• 17:25
  exactly. That's not exactly preserve
• 17:28
  called Chinese culture because it's it's basically to prevent
• 17:33
  colour revolution using social media.
• 17:35
  That's it. That's all it is, yeah.
• 17:39
  It's degenerates, it's immoral, it's people celebrating the
• 17:44
  death of Charlie Kirk. I mean, it's, it's, it's, as
• 17:47
  Jordan Peterson said, it's bringing out sociopathic
• 17:50
  behaviour. Although that's more social
• 17:52
  media to be fair. That's our social media.
• 17:55
  But except in China, they do the state do restrict, they do put
• 18:01
  restriction around that. So like you can, if you, you can
• 18:07
  be a polarising figure like Charlie Kirk and be blown up
• 18:12
  like the way he is on Chinese social media, because the
• 18:16
  Chinese government would have clamped down on you long before
• 18:19
  that. They would not allow somebody
• 18:22
  who's a polarising figure to gain like millions and millions
• 18:26
  of followers and, and have that reach.
• 18:29
  That's, that's, that's the difference.
• 18:31
  That's the difference. Because they will.
• 18:34
  I I know this because at one time I had like 5 million
• 18:38
  followers on Weibo. I got censored so many times
• 18:42
  yeah yeah, eventually I just got my com just got suspended
• 18:45
  because I was skirting around too close to the sensitive
• 18:49
  topics, you know, because I like to make smart ass Alec comments
• 18:53
  like how I'm criticising United States.
• 18:55
  You know, you could imagine I was doing similar things in
• 18:58
  China, but I got I got blocked for that.
• 19:03
  So there is censorship. I mean, like, I don't like
• 19:05
  censorship, but there is censorship in China and but.
• 19:09
  There is, but there's also. I mean, it's weird.
• 19:13
  I don't, I don't agree. With that, I would not, I would
• 19:15
  not be able to make a living the way I'm doing right now in
• 19:20
  Chinese social media. I don't think I would either.
• 19:21
  Yeah, yeah. Because because like I like the
• 19:26
  I will be pushing against the envelope too much.
• 19:28
  Yeah, yeah, I think me too find you though, I mean, a lot of the
• 19:31
  topics that you can't speak about in Europe or the US you
• 19:34
  can speak freely about here. So for example, if we wanted to,
• 19:39
  we could chat about the Holocaust and we and we can we
• 19:42
  can openly discuss whether or not Hitler was a good man or
• 19:44
  not. We can openly discuss whether or
• 19:46
  not the Holocaust was a hoax or not.
• 19:48
  Now even just saying that, yeah, you can't.
• 19:51
  You can't even say that in. Europe, yeah, Yep.
• 19:56
  And I'm. Not I'm, I'm not even saying if
• 19:58
  any of that stuff is true or not.
• 20:00
  Yeah, I'm simply bringing up. That's the talking point.
• 20:04
  That will land you in gaol in Germany.
• 20:06
  That will that will get you violating some laws in Germany.
• 20:11
  I do understand the the the desire to preserve or protect
• 20:17
  one's particular. This is essentially a
• 20:19
  civilization, I think. It's not just a country, it's a
• 20:23
  civilization. Sure.
• 20:27
  But I think protecting that was secondary.
• 20:30
  I think the, the, the, the primary concern, the initial
• 20:34
  reason for cracking down on Western social media is because
• 20:39
  they are worried that American Internet platform will be used
• 20:43
  for will be weaponized for sabotage.
• 20:46
  That's a that's a real reason they got they got banned.
• 20:51
  And I mean the Chinese government because effectively
• 20:53
  doesn't like two things. It doesn't because you don't
• 20:55
  like protests. Yeah, it doesn't like protests.
• 20:58
  It doesn't not not like public protest.
• 21:01
  Like, OK, OK, so there are a lot of protests in China.
• 21:05
  Like, you know, for example, a lot of protests, people protest
• 21:08
  against developers, particularly as there's a lot of shady, you
• 21:14
  know, real estate developers and there's a lot of protests like
• 21:18
  these kind of localised protests.
• 21:22
  Government can't let that go that that doesn't matter.
• 21:25
  But they, what they don't want, the protest is kind of the
• 21:28
  national protest around say a particular issue that could be
• 21:37
  turned into a colour revolution type of like regime change type
• 21:41
  of scenario. That's what they don't want.
• 21:43
  And and we ask what's funny. We see that happening all over
• 21:46
  the place, we see those colour revolutions occurring and
• 21:52
  they're almost always not internally triggered.
• 21:56
  Well, I, I don't know. I don't know if that's true.
• 21:59
  I think there's. What, what?
• 22:01
  What is going on in Hong Kong was certainly foreign influence.
• 22:04
  That's definitely foreign influence, but I think there's
• 22:06
  also a lot of thing was developing locally in Hong Kong
• 22:12
  created the condition because one of the condition was a lot
• 22:17
  of the Hong Kong youth, they were getting left behind by the
• 22:21
  economic development. They're kind of like the youth
• 22:23
  in the West, right? They they, they can no longer
• 22:26
  afford to have housing because housing means Hong Kong is super
• 22:30
  expensive and their economic prospect wasn't like going up
• 22:36
  and up like before and. Hang on, hang on.
• 22:39
  Did you just do this? Call Mark, but but we're in
• 22:44
  China, we can do it so so in but like very typical, they blame on
• 22:56
  mainlanders. They blame on mainlanders for
• 22:59
  job competition in the job market.
• 23:01
  For example, they're blaming mainlanders flooding, flooding
• 23:04
  into China, Hong Kong to take their resources.
• 23:07
  So it's kind of a Hong Kong nationalism, but of course that
• 23:11
  got weaponized when the protests got underway.
• 23:14
  This is why it's very polarising.
• 23:17
  A lot of mainlander, they could not support the Hong Kong
• 23:20
  protest because the Hong Kong protest is about them.
• 23:24
  They did really didn't like the Mainlander, like people who were
• 23:26
  caught speaking standard Mandarin in Hong Kong, they were
• 23:29
  getting beaten up, right. So there was a very bad period.
• 23:33
  And so, yeah, so I mean, they're definitely, there's a very
• 23:37
  radical element of the Hong Kong.
• 23:40
  When the Hong Kong protest started, it was largely
• 23:43
  peaceful, but then there was a very small group of their
• 23:47
  radicals that really push the envelope on pushing it toward
• 23:51
  violence. And like a lot of political
• 23:54
  movement, you don't a lot of time, you just need a very small
• 23:58
  group of people to push the boundary to shift the overtown
• 24:01
  window. That's what happened in Hong
• 24:02
  Kong. So that those group, small group
• 24:06
  of people definitely were Western back, got back from
• 24:12
  foreign influence, no doubt. So in a way they kind of
• 24:15
  hijacked the whole protest, but there were some internal
• 24:19
  conditions that created the the protests.
• 24:21
  Not before the the crackdown on the Internet, no.
• 24:24
  No, that, that, that. So that's 20.
• 24:27
  That's 2019 20/19/2019 So so the crackdown on the Internet
• 24:31
  happened on mainland China, didn't happen in Hong Kong
• 24:34
  because Hong Kong functioned under the one country 2 system,
• 24:38
  that which means Hong Kong is part of China after 1997, but
• 24:42
  Hong Kong continue to run under its own system.
• 24:45
  This is why even people from Shanghai, if they want to travel
• 24:48
  to Hong Kong, they need to get a, they need to get a, a special
• 24:51
  visa. But I'm going to because people
• 24:52
  sometimes argue this. If I say I've been to Hong Kong,
• 24:56
  can I say I've been to China? Yeah, you can.
• 24:58
  But you say you can say I haven't been to the mainland
• 25:01
  China, but you have been to China.
• 25:03
  Yeah, Hong Kong. You have been to Hong Kong, part
• 25:05
  of China, but it's not the mainland China.
• 25:08
  Shanghai is. Shanghai is mainland China.
• 25:10
  Yeah, people do make that difference.
• 25:12
  So, so, so there's mainland China and there's Hong Kong and
• 25:15
  there's Taiwan. You know, they're all different.
• 25:17
  They're all different and they all function under different
• 25:20
  systems. Hong Kong, because when Hong
• 25:23
  Kong was returned to China in 19, before Hong Kong returned to
• 25:30
  China, then Xiaoping promised that he will leave the Hong Kong
• 25:33
  system alone for 50 years, 50 years, no change to the Hong
• 25:38
  Kong system. So how many years across now
• 25:40
  it's. 19, it's less. It's 3030.
• 25:43
  Less than 30 years, right? 1997 to now it's almost 30
• 25:48
  years, not yet 30 years. Do you think they're getting
• 25:52
  good us? What are they?
• 25:54
  Are they dealing with us? I mean, there's still 20 years
• 25:56
  to go, but the idea is, I think the idea at that time is that
• 26:02
  mainland China itself will change so much at the end of the
• 26:05
  50 years, there will be no difference.
• 26:08
  I think in a way that is true because in 1990s or in 1980s
• 26:15
  Hong Kong, if you compare Hong Kong's economy to the entire
• 26:19
  economy of mainland China, it's like 25%.
• 26:24
  It's like a huge portion. And same, same, same thing with
• 26:26
  Taiwan. But right now Hong Kong is just
• 26:29
  a very small percentage of the overall Chinese economy because
• 26:34
  that's how much the Chinese economy has grown.
• 26:36
  Like like what we saw today at the at the Vong, right?
• 26:40
  You saw all these buildings where it used to be all farm
• 26:43
  lands in 1990s. Now it's all like big all rice
• 26:46
  buildings. It's incredible.
• 26:48
  Yeah, I I think I told you that story before when I was close.
• 26:52
  We used to have a food. Coupon.
• 26:54
  Yeah, the ration we had still had used ration to buy rice, to
• 26:58
  buy soy sauce, to buy oil, to buy meat.
• 27:02
  That was 1980. That wasn't that long ago.
• 27:04
  That was 40 years ago within my lifetime, right?
• 27:07
  And that was when when it was hard living here.
• 27:12
  Yeah, that was when everyone was looking to get out.
• 27:14
  Because I remember in 1980s, everybody was looking to get
• 27:18
  out, not they don't even care which country.
• 27:20
  So like any foreign country is better because at that time,
• 27:24
  objectively around all the neighbours of China, the only
• 27:27
  country that's poorer than China at that time was only three
• 27:30
  countries, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
• 27:33
  And that's because those three countries just came out of war.
• 27:36
  So every, every country, even Myanmar was richer than than
• 27:40
  China back then. Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines,
• 27:43
  they're all richer than China back then.
• 27:45
  Remarkable happens that led to China's huge prosperity.
• 27:50
  That's that's communism. Right, That's, that's, that's a,
• 27:54
  that's a socialism is Chinese characteristic.
• 27:57
  That's what then Chopin said, He said, you know, socialism is not
• 28:00
  poverty, right? Socialism is not poverty.
• 28:04
  If we cannot provide for our people, then how can we show
• 28:08
  that socialism is superior to the capitalist system call?
• 28:12
  We, we saw today when we were walking around the city, it's
• 28:15
  just poverty everywhere. I mean, they are just electric
• 28:18
  cars and McDonald's new technology that's not even
• 28:23
  available yet in the West. I mean, that's just communism
• 28:26
  right there. That's, well, it's what's
• 28:30
  communism, what's see, what's what communism is.
• 28:33
  It should be about abundance. I think China has created
• 28:36
  abundance. I think, I think they are making
• 28:40
  into more progress into even more abundance.
• 28:43
  You know this is what the West would call we're overcapacity,
• 28:46
  right? By the way, we also saw Tesla.
• 28:49
  We did. We did.
• 28:50
  So it's an it's an American cop, Yes, that's 50% made in China.
• 28:55
  Yeah, more than 50% of Tesla is made in Shanghai, here in
• 28:59
  Shanghai. Let's not tell the Americans.
• 29:04
  I think some Americans know. So what Elon Musk?
• 29:08
  Tesla actually only started making profit after he moved the
• 29:13
  Giga factory to Shanghai when his Shanghai Gigafactory start
• 29:17
  producing and and and China itself is a big market for Tesla
• 29:22
  itself. It's like I forgot the numbers.
• 29:25
  Around like 30%. Thirty to 40% of Tesla is also
• 29:28
  sold here. But I mean, there are a lot of
• 29:29
  electric cars here. We saw BYD, Xiaomi, Xiaomi.
• 29:33
  Xiaomi, Huawei and Huawei. Huawei.
• 29:35
  Which I always thought only made cell phones and.
• 29:38
  Laptops. Yeah, yeah, of course they now
• 29:40
  make cars. Yeah.
• 29:41
  And I sent in one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the things
• 29:45
  are. And those cars are not even
• 29:46
  available outside of China, you know.
• 29:49
  Yeah. But you know what, China don't
• 29:51
  even say they're communist. I mean, they're don't say
• 29:54
  they're society is communist. They're saying they're building
• 29:58
  the primary stage of socialism, which means they're not even
• 30:01
  socialists yet. They're they're, they're
• 30:03
  building towards socialism. They're building towards the
• 30:06
  basic level of socialism. But that's what's so funny
• 30:09
  though. It's also silly, like one word
• 30:14
  to define everything. Like it's just so.
• 30:17
  It's so myopic. This is what I come to realise.
• 30:20
  Like it doesn't matter actually what these words mean.
• 30:22
  People like it's especially Americans, they, they get so
• 30:26
  caught up in oh, but those are commies.
• 30:28
  Oh, those are socialists. Oh, these are libertarians.
• 30:31
  None of that stuff matters. Just just look around you.
• 30:34
  Like literally just come to China.
• 30:37
  I agree. And just look.
• 30:38
  Just look. I agree.
• 30:39
  See I think what happened is China has moved to a post
• 30:45
  ideological phase, especially after cultural revolution.
• 30:48
  Before Cultural Revolution during Mall China, China was
• 30:51
  very ideological. Very crystal ideological.
• 30:54
  When China has moved beyond ideology, America today is way
• 30:59
  more ideological than China. I mean, everything in the States
• 31:02
  is about, it's about personality cult.
• 31:05
  It is. It's Trump.
• 31:06
  It is or it's or it's or it's Kamala Harris or it's Charlie
• 31:10
  Kirk or it's. It's always a single, single
• 31:13
  figures who are so divisive. It's, it's a marriage of
• 31:16
  celebrity culture and the toxic Internet culture and celebrity
• 31:23
  worship. And then it's, yeah, it's, it's,
• 31:26
  it's a very American thing. I guess this is how you get ATV
• 31:30
  reality TV shows as the president of the United States.
• 31:35
  I mean, because, you know, because that's, that's the way
• 31:38
  we're moving. The thing is, I think he caught
• 31:40
  everybody by surprise though, because during the Trump's first
• 31:43
  election, everybody laughed at the idea.
• 31:46
  That's why the mainstream media was giving him all this free air
• 31:49
  time because they thought it was a hilarious idea if Trump runs
• 31:53
  for president and and and Hillary Clinton back then was
• 31:58
  also supporting the idea that Trump run because she thinks she
• 32:01
  can easily crush. But you saw CN, NS polling, they
• 32:04
  said Hillary was going to win by 97 percent or not whatever, 97.
• 32:09
  Percent Trump landslide. Landslide victory.
• 32:12
  But at the same time, I mean, that's all farce.
• 32:14
  I mean, the presidents are essentially still middle
• 32:17
  management. I mean, there's still, which is
• 32:19
  interesting, what you were saying today about the banking
• 32:21
  sector in China and how the government doesn't allow the
• 32:25
  banking sector to interfere in the politics.
• 32:27
  So so so. Because the government controls
• 32:29
  the banking sector in China, whereas in US everything is
• 32:34
  financialized. The economy is financialized,
• 32:36
  but it's the bankers who controls the politics, right?
• 32:40
  Because the Wall Street Bros have a tremendous amount of
• 32:44
  political influence they have. More power than Trump?
• 32:46
  Of course, of course. And and whereas China, that just
• 32:50
  didn't happen because all the banks are controlled by the
• 32:53
  state. So the state holds ultimate
• 32:55
  power. And also they have This is why
• 32:59
  they can put a leash on people like Jack Ma, right?
• 33:03
  And and because. Because I mean, who?
• 33:05
  Who was he, effectively? Jack Ma is the owner of Alibaba.
• 33:09
  So Ali Pay, Ali Pay, which we use is from Alibaba, right?
• 33:13
  And what happened with Jack, Jack Ma is he was moving.
• 33:18
  The reason a crackdown on Jack Ma is actually he's trying to
• 33:21
  move me into finance because he was trying to leverage Alibaba,
• 33:28
  which is already a giant commerce giant.
• 33:32
  He's trying to move into finance by like some people, you know,
• 33:37
  you can already use Alipay to pay for stuff he's trying to get
• 33:41
  into, like the loans and credits and stuff like that.
• 33:44
  You know, like the, the real social credit is Alipay, Alipay,
• 33:49
  Sesame Credit, right? And so but that that's when the
• 33:53
  Chinese government step on the brake because they don't want
• 33:58
  billionaires like Jack Ma to control finance.
• 34:01
  They want the government to control the financial industry.
• 34:04
  They so they're very strict about that, the government.
• 34:07
  So they allowed him to become a billionaire.
• 34:09
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:10
  And that's fine. I mean, that's fine.
• 34:11
  That other shop we saw today? Pop Mart.
• 34:13
  Pop Mart so. He became a billionaire.
• 34:15
  The Pop. Owner of Pop Mart is the latest
• 34:17
  billionaire. As as but as long as he doesn't
• 34:20
  try and get into. Influence the politics.
• 34:23
  Influence the politics. Right.
• 34:24
  Yeah, cannot. So, So in United, the US is a
• 34:27
  country where money rules everything.
• 34:29
  So the money controls the politics.
• 34:32
  But here in China, it's a state controls the money class.
• 34:37
  They don't let capitalist class to get out of the control.
• 34:41
  So, so Jack, so that it should get rich.
• 34:43
  If you want, you can get rich, but you cannot try to influence
• 34:47
  government policy like like the way billionaires in the United
• 34:50
  States do, by like funding lobby groups and.
• 34:53
  You can't do that, Jeff. See Charlie Kirk, one of the
• 34:58
  reasons he was so so influential is because Turning Point USA is
• 35:02
  one of the most well funded group in media operation in
• 35:08
  United States. That he has a lot of billionaire
• 35:10
  factors who fund his operation like that would not be allowed
• 35:15
  in China like like in China that's unknown.
• 35:18
  This is this is we're circling back towards the control right.
• 35:21
  So China is not allowing there's our restrictions in China.
• 35:27
  They would not allow a figure like Charlie Kirk to emerge
• 35:30
  because they they don't want again, they don't want like a
• 35:35
  force, especially a group of billionaires to be able to by
• 35:40
  creating a a a influencer podcaster to influence national
• 35:44
  politics. What about Joe Rogan also?
• 35:47
  Yeah, Joe Rogan would not would not be exist in China either.
• 35:51
  Yeah, unless only if he only talks about entertainment.
• 35:55
  It's OK. You know you can be an
• 35:56
  entertainment influencer in China, but not a political
• 35:59
  podcaster. So basically, basically just
• 36:03
  stay away from trying to influence the political
• 36:08
  trajectory. Of of of China, then you're
• 36:11
  fine. Then you can, you can, you can
• 36:13
  be rich. You can be be left alone to
• 36:16
  pursue you your billions and you can.
• 36:18
  Own all your private. Properties.
• 36:19
  You can own all your private properties as long as you try
• 36:22
  not to change the political structure.
• 36:24
  Structure or the political future of China so shall.
• 36:29
  We go get a drink. OK, sure, let's go.
• 36:58
  We're in Shanghai. Is this Eminem playing?
• 37:02
  We're we're listening to Eminem in Shanghai.
• 37:07
  Welcome to socialism. Communism.
• 37:10
  Do you get it right? That's right.
• 37:12
  Sorry. So now we're much more in the
• 37:16
  shot. Look at that.
• 37:17
  See. Oh, that's much better.
• 37:20
  Dude look how weird that that manga is.
• 37:23
  That's the Korean Chin Chung man.
• 37:25
  It's it's it's. It's so.
• 37:27
  Creepy. It's it's funny actually.
• 37:30
  I I would recommend it coming. Into This Bar made me realise
• 37:34
  that we're listening to Western music.
• 37:35
  Yes, and then a Jack in this anime play in the background.
• 37:40
  Feeds into what you were saying earlier about the censorship not
• 37:43
  necessarily being about trying to stop.
• 37:45
  Western influence. Exactly, Exactly.
• 37:48
  It's never about stops necessarily stopping the Western
• 37:51
  influence. It's stopping trying to stop the
• 37:53
  Western political influence. It's not about stopping Western
• 37:56
  cultural influence. I think that's that's the
• 37:59
  difference because I don't think they're really worried about say
• 38:02
  like somehow corruption of the Western culture, because I mean,
• 38:07
  the Chinese culture is pretty strong.
• 38:09
  It didn't. They don't really need to worry
• 38:12
  about somehow it's going to fall prey to the Western corrupting
• 38:16
  influence. But if we're if Chinese culture
• 38:20
  is pretty strong, then it implies that the Chinese
• 38:25
  government is not if they're worried about protests and
• 38:28
  uprisings and colour revolutions.
• 38:31
  They have to worry about that because they see what happened
• 38:35
  around them. Especially you have to remember
• 38:37
  this generation of Chinese leaders, they grew up around,
• 38:41
  they saw, they witnessed the collapse of Soviet Union, they
• 38:45
  saw the collapse of all the Eastern Bloc, right?
• 38:48
  And they count themselves as lucky that China didn't go down
• 38:52
  the same path because for, and and this is this goes for a lot
• 38:56
  of Chinese intellectuals also because back in 1989, there was
• 39:01
  wide popular support for the student protest or sympathy for
• 39:05
  the student protest back then. But then few years later, a lot
• 39:09
  of people saw what actually happened in the post Soviet
• 39:14
  collapse Russia. And people thought, holy crap,
• 39:18
  we're glad China didn't go down that that same path because what
• 39:22
  they saw was shock therapy. They saw, you know, the Russian
• 39:26
  life expectancy get dropped like it's even though it lost no war.
• 39:31
  Soviet Union was didn't lose any real war.
• 39:34
  It just lost the Cold War. And but they have went through a
• 39:39
  catastrophe. It couldn't a society collapse
• 39:42
  that didn't really come back until, you know, Putin became
• 39:46
  the president. And and so so when when, when a
• 39:49
  lot of Chinese people saw that they're like, we dodged a we
• 39:53
  dodged a bullet there. And so that they worried that
• 39:59
  there will be China will be subverted the same way using
• 40:02
  colour revolution, you know, regime change operations by
• 40:10
  especially United States weaponizing the American social
• 40:14
  media platform. Like Facebook, Like, like and.
• 40:17
  We saw that with the American election.
• 40:21
  How was it? Who was it now that group that
• 40:28
  used Facebook to try and swing American vote?
• 40:32
  But but but but germs. Yes.
• 40:34
  We all know that's the Russian, Russian and Chinese operation.
• 40:38
  It was Russia in. Russian and Chinese Operation
• 40:41
  Russia. Interfered.
• 40:42
  Yeah. Cambridge Analytica.
• 40:45
  Yeah. Oh, right.
• 40:46
  Right, right, right. So I mean, that was a big thing.
• 40:48
  And I think Zuckerberg was hold in front of Congress.
• 40:51
  Yeah, the whole thing, right. So so that that doesn't happen
• 40:55
  in China because nobody votes. I am a fan of not voting by the
• 41:00
  way. I never voted.
• 41:02
  I, I, I'm, I'm giving you straight.
• 41:04
  I have been AUS citizens for decades.
• 41:07
  I was eligible to vote for the Bush, not the, the, yeah, the
• 41:13
  Bush Gore election. That's what I have to get
• 41:16
  really. I did not vote.
• 41:18
  I did not vote. I did not vote that election.
• 41:20
  I did not vote any election after that.
• 41:23
  All these quote unquote terrorist attacks occurring on
• 41:28
  American soul, but that doesn't happen in China.
• 41:31
  Well, there's terrorist attack. I mean, there were terrorist
• 41:34
  attacks in China. You just didn't hear about it.
• 41:36
  There were terrorist attacks. In win, win, lost.
• 41:39
  So, so that was around 2014, 2014, 2015 ish.
• 41:44
  That's when there was a spate of terrorist attacks in Tiananmen
• 41:48
  Square of all places. There was a car.
• 41:51
  Really. We were terrorists.
• 41:53
  They drove a car through the car, ploughing through the
• 41:56
  crowds in Tiananmen Square. So you you never even hear about
• 42:00
  that. But but who triggered that?
• 42:02
  Where did it come from? Well, this is a little bit long
• 42:06
  topic. You know, this goes back to 2000
• 42:09
  O 8 Urumqi riot, Urumqi being the capital of Xinjiang
• 42:16
  Autonomous Region. And like like again, that 2000 O
• 42:20
  8 Ulunchi riot, Chinese government suspect it was
• 42:25
  sparked by the we were diaspora groups using Facebook to spread
• 42:31
  disinformation to incite people to protest in the Xinjiang
• 42:39
  capital, Ulunchi, and that that protest got out of control.
• 42:43
  And then it turns to a race riot, an ethnic riot.
• 42:47
  People start, you know, singling out anyone who is not Uyghur,
• 42:51
  but particularly who's ethnic Khan for attack. 200 people were
• 42:56
  killed, 200 people were killed, 2000 people were injured.
• 42:59
  Gee, and this is in a place without guns.
• 43:03
  This was done with knives. You know, it was knives and
• 43:06
  sticks. So, so, and this was a big that
• 43:09
  led to the security crackdown in Xinjiang.
• 43:12
  And that also led to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube getting banned
• 43:16
  from China. But that's when the Western
• 43:19
  social media get that's when the grey firewall came up and and.
• 43:24
  And you know what, now that I think about it, when I sorry
• 43:29
  earlier when I said that it was about preserving Chinese
• 43:33
  culture. If it if it were about that,
• 43:35
  then it wouldn't have been free access before 2008.
• 43:41
  True, true. Yeah, true.
• 43:43
  And and if it's about that, we wouldn't be listening to Western
• 43:47
  music here in Shanghai in 2025. Openly using VPNs and otherwise
• 43:51
  around. Yeah, Yeah.
• 43:53
  I mean, like, because this does not present a threat.
• 43:57
  Chinese government doesn't think Western cultural music
• 44:01
  influences a threat. Yeah.
• 44:03
  Right. This is OK, This is just pop
• 44:06
  culture. And in any event, Chinese pop
• 44:09
  culture is huge. Anyway, it is getting it is
• 44:12
  getting it's own. It's especially I think
• 44:17
  everything come from economic foundation.
• 44:19
  Once Chinese economy started to grow too strong, the Chinese pop
• 44:24
  culture itself started to grow. You know, it might have some
• 44:28
  Western influence, but it's starting to incorporate into
• 44:33
  making its own thing. I think that's what happened,
• 44:35
  you know all. Right.
• 44:36
  So yes, yes, the thing that I think I'm struggling to wrap my
• 44:40
  head around. So intrinsically I'm opposed to
• 44:48
  governments. Intrinsically, it's my sort of
• 44:52
  libertarian anarchist back story.
• 44:57
  But having said that, I don't classify myself as any of those
• 45:00
  things because they're just labels and they don't mean
• 45:02
  anything. I just don't like the idea of
• 45:05
  illegitimate authority. OK.
• 45:07
  However, I do live in a society back home that is exceptionally
• 45:13
  violent and everything's broken and very little works and in
• 45:19
  many ways it's a good thing because it forces people to
• 45:23
  become self reliant and independent.
• 45:26
  I now have a child. I see where you're going with
• 45:29
  this. And once you have a child and
• 45:31
  you have now a full complete family, your outlook changes of
• 45:36
  course. Entirely.
• 45:37
  Yeah, I have two. I have two kids, Yeah.
• 45:38
  So I understand what you're saying.
• 45:40
  So now it it's no longer about fighting for no government.
• 45:45
  Sorry, it's about fighting for your children future.
• 45:47
  It's now about my family, yeah. And suddenly my family's safety
• 45:52
  matters. And so now there's more to fight
• 45:55
  for. Yep.
• 45:56
  And then I think so Which hills am I willing to die on now?
• 46:01
  OK. So am I willing to concede some
• 46:05
  government control so that I know that my child and my wife
• 46:10
  are safe, right? Yeah.
• 46:13
  In Shanghai, it's safe, right? It's safe.
• 46:15
  Yeah. So we can walk out in the street
• 46:18
  right now and say, perfect. We we were riding bicycles.
• 46:21
  Bicycles. Through now in South Africa,
• 46:24
  yeah, at my time anyway. It's dangerous, Yeah, it's very
• 46:28
  dangerous depending on where you are, but particularly in the
• 46:31
  city centres. It's like, it's no, like
• 46:33
  Johannesburg city centre, no go zone.
• 46:36
  And I'm now sitting with this tug of war when I'm balancing,
• 46:39
  OK, how much am I willing to concede?
• 46:43
  You know what I mean? So I, I understand where you
• 46:45
  come from. I, I will tell you from the
• 46:48
  other perspective, You know, I think a lot of youth, Chinese
• 46:52
  youth, they, they like what the government is doing in terms of
• 46:58
  pushing for progress in society. Yeah, but a lot of time what
• 47:01
  they don't like is too much control, right?
• 47:05
  Like too much censorship. You know, sometimes they, they
• 47:09
  do enjoy when they go to West western outside of China, they
• 47:13
  do find a degree of freedom in, in, in, in terms of like they
• 47:18
  can almost say whatever they want.
• 47:20
  You know, they don't have to be worried about they're getting
• 47:23
  censor, even though that is changing now in the West because
• 47:26
  now there's more censorship on social media.
• 47:29
  You know, now the West is actually moving closer to China
• 47:32
  on that front. You know, my biggest gripe about
• 47:35
  China personally used to be censorship like too much.
• 47:38
  Like I feel like they could loosen up a little bit.
• 47:41
  Yes, but but even like a lot of the people in China, they might
• 47:45
  say, OK, yeah, we agrees there might be too much censorship,
• 47:48
  but they think it's a necessary evil to to kind of prevent the
• 47:54
  kind of the colour revolution regime change kind of sabotage
• 47:59
  that could call me in with a free flow of information.
• 48:04
  That's what those people are are are are are worried about.
• 48:07
  I, I, on the other hand, I think China is, has established a
• 48:13
  strong position that they can afford to loosen up a little
• 48:17
  bit. You know, I didn't say advocate
• 48:19
  completely destroy the, dismantle the firewall or
• 48:22
  whatever. I just just like, you know, open
• 48:26
  up a little bit, give it a little bit more leeway in, in
• 48:30
  like stuff like not just social media, but also like in film, in
• 48:34
  television and stuff. Don't I'm, I'm fundamentally I'm
• 48:39
  a Taoist. I I like live and let live,
• 48:43
  right? It's not that I'm, but it's not
• 48:45
  that I'm against all government control.
• 48:48
  I think, you know, it's a, there's a legit trade off
• 48:51
  between security and, and, and, and, and, and there's a legit
• 48:57
  trade off for giving up certain degree of control for safety.
• 49:03
  That's what we have been talk talking about, right?
• 49:05
  I I recognise that, but I also think government could afford a
• 49:11
  little bit more leeway. I think that will I do think
• 49:14
  that will happen once China grows stronger visa the United
• 49:18
  States, because right now US cultural hegemony is still quite
• 49:21
  strong all over the globe. You have to admit that.
• 49:24
  What is it though? I mean, what is what is
• 49:25
  American? Culture by by what?
• 49:27
  By what I mean is you feel you saw what happened with Charlie
• 49:30
  Kurt. Yeah, you have European
• 49:34
  Parliament holding a moment of silence.
• 49:36
  Why exactly why like Charlie Kurt is not even American
• 49:42
  politicians, right? These, these people, this is a
• 49:45
  performance, this the European you politicians are putting up
• 49:48
  performative ass kissing, right? It's, it's basically they know
• 49:53
  because Charlie Kirk is a friend of Trump.
• 49:55
  So they're trying to. They're doing their It's their
• 49:58
  way of kissing Trump's ass. And of course, let's also not
• 50:01
  forget Netanyahu being the 1st to send his condolences.
• 50:06
  Before everyone else. I mean, let's not say anymore.
• 50:11
  Right. So there are, there are limits
• 50:15
  on freedom of speech in the West.
• 50:17
  There are certain areas you cannot go.
• 50:20
  But I mean, Speaking of that, I mean, one of the big criticisms
• 50:24
  that this country gets is mass surveillance.
• 50:28
  Yeah. You know, I mean, is huge in the
• 50:33
  West. I mean, they they're literally
• 50:36
  surveying everything and everyone.
• 50:39
  Trump's Stargate, well, it's all about mass surveillance using
• 50:47
  Starlink, using all the central databases in the US, But it's
• 50:51
  all about gathering personal data.
• 50:55
  So when people point fingers at China saying, yeah, but look at
• 50:58
  all those cameras here in China, OK, sure.
• 51:01
  You might not see as many cameras in the States or in the
• 51:03
  UK, but they're. Watching you, there are a lot of
• 51:07
  cameras in UK, but I think the difference is difference is
• 51:10
  despite all the cameras in UK or New York, Americans and British
• 51:15
  are not any safer. The cameras just hasn't like
• 51:19
  really made like made it the public any safer, right?
• 51:25
  The whole point of the mass surveillance, at least the
• 51:30
  official line, is, oh, this is for your safety.
• 51:33
  But that hasn't that's that's not the case in New York.
• 51:36
  But I mean, it's still very violent.
• 51:38
  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 51:40
  China is. Exceptionally safe, yes.
• 51:44
  And some people think it's because of the surveillance,
• 51:47
  it's because of the camera cameras.
• 51:49
  It's because the cameras make people modify their behaviour.
• 51:52
  That's why we actually see people waiting for the red light
• 51:57
  instead of jaywalking today. So you were telling me earlier
• 52:01
  today that's just you say 10 years ago these people would
• 52:06
  just walk across the road. Yeah, yeah, they will.
• 52:09
  It's, it's like the, the, the signal light signal is more like
• 52:13
  a suggestion back then, but now, now behaviour is changing and,
• 52:19
  and some people attribute that to the prevalence of cameras.
• 52:23
  And a lot of people do think, you know, you have talked to
• 52:27
  people, Chinese people today from Shanghai and it did, I
• 52:31
  didn't get the sense that they were, they think that the, the
• 52:34
  prevalence of camera were bad. They.
• 52:37
  No, no. And it's not really in your face
• 52:41
  either, right? I guess that's.
• 52:43
  The point of of. It is everywhere, but I don't
• 52:45
  think, like, I don't get the sense that Chinese people here
• 52:48
  are bothered by it. No, but I mean absolutely.
• 52:51
  A couple of times today, hey, we saw people riding motorbikes
• 52:55
  without helmets. Without helmet, yeah, there's,
• 52:57
  there's always rebels, right there's.
• 52:59
  So I mean, it's a camera's not everywhere and this is a
• 53:02
  totalitarian state and those guys are going to get shot next
• 53:04
  week. I've got firing squad.
• 53:07
  Right, Yeah. I mean, there's, there's always
• 53:09
  going to be ultimately. What happens?
• 53:11
  I just get a fine. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:13
  I mean, like I, I stay so I'm on Chinese social media, Dwayne,
• 53:18
  right. Recently, I keep on seeing those
• 53:21
  videos. They're like meant to be public
• 53:23
  safety videos, right? But you will see like a woman
• 53:27
  who's walking across the zebra walk the, the, the, the
• 53:31
  crosswalks and he, she's looking straight, not looking to the
• 53:36
  side because Chinese, by Chinese law, the pedestrian have the
• 53:40
  right of way when they're walking on the crosswalk.
• 53:43
  And then you saw a car just plough through her and this
• 53:46
  obviously the drivers fault, right?
• 53:51
  But when I look at the comment, a lot of people saying why is
• 53:55
  she not looking around? Like why is she not looking out
• 53:58
  for her own safety when she's crossing the street?
• 54:01
  She should be responsible. But I think the reason she fell
• 54:05
  safe is because because of cameras, because of cameras.
• 54:10
  Now there's cameras for footage on everything.
• 54:12
  But of course The thing is she is kind of gambling with her
• 54:16
  life. Is some driver looking on the
• 54:18
  phone or something and grand the lights or flows through her
• 54:23
  anyway like like what happened? So I'm still looking at the
• 54:26
  cartoon when I wonder if I can critique my camera to.
• 54:30
  Let's see if we can zoom into that quickly.
• 54:35
  So Germ is getting the first time exposure to Japanese anime
• 54:41
  three young Xinjiang. That's no, that's just a drawing
• 54:44
  style. It's just a drawing style.
• 54:46
  They made it purposely like a child's drawing.
• 54:54
  That's better. So.
• 54:55
  So in many ways, this is what I'm saying by Shanghai is the
• 55:00
  most western city of mainland China.
• 55:03
  But it's nibbles because it's very Chinese to me.
• 55:06
  It is, it is very Chinese to you, yes.
• 55:08
  But to, to the Chinese eyes, this is very Western, this is
• 55:11
  very Borgy, Western Borgy lifestyle.
• 55:14
  See, See in China there's at least a trade off.
• 55:17
  There's a trade off between surveillance and public safety.
• 55:21
  I think the problem in the West is there's surveillance but
• 55:24
  there's no public safety. It's just surveillance.
• 55:27
  It's just surveillance. I think that's a problem.
• 55:31
  You're not even getting the tangible benefits.
• 55:34
  You mentioned earlier something about No, it wasn't you.
• 55:38
  I think we're chatting to Jenny. No.
• 55:41
  Was it Jenny? Who was it now?
• 55:42
  Oh, it was Jenny talking about her kid going to private school.
• 55:46
  Westerners don't understand that China also has private
• 55:52
  everything. It has a private sector.
• 55:56
  Yeah. And it's not entirely controlled
• 55:58
  by the government that people think.
• 56:00
  Yeah, yeah, they she because she works at, she has a good job.
• 56:05
  So, you know, she works a good job in Shanghai.
• 56:08
  So she can't afford to send her kids to International School.
• 56:11
  Yeah, right. Where they learn something
• 56:13
  different from the public schools.
• 56:14
  Yeah, and in fact, she's learned her kids are learning 3
• 56:17
  languages, Chinese, French and English.
• 56:20
  Yeah, so, but she's paying a lot for it of.
• 56:23
  Course sure, but profit scooting into it is more expensive.
• 56:27
  People, when people talk about China in the West, they're not
• 56:29
  really talking about China. Said like this real thing that
• 56:32
  exists. They're talking about an idea.
• 56:34
  They're talking about idea in their head, they're talking
• 56:36
  about, they're really thinking, they're talking about like a
• 56:39
  foil to their own society's problems.
• 56:43
  And a lot of times it's just projection.
• 56:45
  They're projecting their own worst fears about their own
• 56:47
  society onto this place, imaginary place.
• 56:50
  They call it China. I mean, you can own property in
• 56:53
  China. That's the funniest thing.
• 56:54
  And and this there's a meme that people always forget and I don't
• 56:59
  know where there's maybe you know more than I do, but that
• 57:02
  there's a famous story of that that house, the owner didn't
• 57:05
  want to move so they built a Rd. Around his house, yes.
• 57:10
  There's a name name for it in Chinese called nail house
• 57:13
  because they stick out like a nail.
• 57:15
  They're called nail houses. So it probably probably didn't
• 57:18
  exist, they would have just removed it out.
• 57:20
  Of course, of course. And in fact, I actually, I
• 57:23
  experienced A cultural shock when I find out from my American
• 57:26
  colleagues back in 2000, there's something called eminent domain
• 57:30
  in US, which government can invoke eminent domain by taking
• 57:35
  away your property because they say, OK, we've got to build this
• 57:37
  critical infrastructure like a bridge or Rd through your house,
• 57:41
  through your property. There is.
• 57:43
  A weird There is a weird Chinese law around poverty.
• 57:48
  And by the way, I think this applies across the world.
• 57:50
  I don't think it's only Chinese, but like in South Africa, and I
• 57:54
  think it's the same. You have your private property,
• 57:57
  but it only goes to a certain. Depth.
• 57:58
  Yes, yes, the land is is belong to the state.
• 58:01
  And a certain heights also. Above yeah, the land on on which
• 58:06
  your the house is built belong to the state, but you can own
• 58:08
  the house. So that's but but and also
• 58:13
  supposedly you can only own the house for like 70 years, but
• 58:19
  nobody knows what happens. But hasn't happened yet.
• 58:21
  Hasn't happened yet, but, but in that meantime, when you own the
• 58:25
  house, you don't pay property tax, you do not pay annual
• 58:30
  property tax, and. Communists.
• 58:34
  Yeah, so and and and most Chinese, they don't even pay
• 58:37
  income tax. Like the income tax only applies
• 58:40
  to Chinese people who make a lot of lot of lot of.
• 58:43
  So now what you're saying the average person around here
• 58:46
  doesn't doesn't pay some tax? Yeah.
• 58:49
  But the reason reason for that is because Chinese government
• 58:53
  actually controls a lot of critical property.
• 58:57
  Like they control the banks, they control the banks, so and
• 59:01
  they control the energy sector, they control all the oil
• 59:04
  companies. So they can afford not to
• 59:07
  collect property tax or income tax because they all have all
• 59:11
  these assets already. And then also technically all
• 59:14
  the land belong to the state. Technically.
• 59:17
  Technically, yeah, but. That would need to.
• 59:19
  So then technically they would need to come in with some sort
• 59:21
  of machine to lift up the land underneath your house and lift
• 59:25
  it. So, so, so so, so.
• 59:26
  They do have the rules. So for example, the houses in
• 59:31
  the rural areas, the people who live on the farm, they can build
• 59:36
  their house, build houses on their own land, right?
• 59:39
  But they're not allowed to sell those houses to people from the
• 59:43
  city. So they, they would.
• 59:45
  What they don't want is rich people from the city, from
• 59:48
  Shanghai, for example, go like buy cheap land in the
• 59:51
  countryside for the farmers and then build mansions there
• 59:56
  because they want the farmers, You know, if something happened,
• 1:00:00
  if they like, say, COVID or whatever, they still have a
• 1:00:03
  place to return to. On their on their home, on the
• 1:00:07
  farms, that's not like their safety net.
• 1:00:09
  That's their safety net. So that that's the, the the
• 1:00:12
  houses on the farm. They can trade between the
• 1:00:15
  members of the village. They can sell, buy and sell
• 1:00:18
  between members of village, but they cannot be sold to the
• 1:00:21
  outsiders, Anyone who's outside the village.
• 1:00:24
  That's that's, that's that's a rule.
• 1:00:28
  But, but, but, but city dwellers, a lot of city dwellers
• 1:00:30
  who do want to live in the countryside to experience
• 1:00:33
  Country Life. They can sign long term leases
• 1:00:36
  with the villagers, But you know, they're still kind of
• 1:00:40
  dispute when there's a problem. A lot of time the problem arises
• 1:00:43
  when, like the well, the villagers want to change terms
• 1:00:48
  and then there's a there's a problem arguing how the contract
• 1:00:52
  is going to be enforced. But because the the fundamental
• 1:00:57
  problem is the city dweller that cannot own property in the
• 1:01:00
  countryside, that's to protect the the people from the
• 1:01:04
  countryside do not get bought out by by rich people.
• 1:01:08
  So I mean, how, how did China grow so rapidly?
• 1:01:18
  Well, I think China was fortuitous.
• 1:01:21
  It was. It was.
• 1:01:24
  It just so happened when Reagan, then Bush, then Clinton were
• 1:01:32
  pushing for all this neo liberal policy in the United States, you
• 1:01:36
  know, hollowing out the manufacturing, sending all the
• 1:01:40
  manufacturing to East Asia. It just so happened at that time
• 1:01:43
  China opened up. Because.
• 1:01:46
  The, the moving of manufacturing outside the West, that happened
• 1:01:50
  in the 70s, that happened before China opened up.
• 1:01:53
  You know, it was moving to places like Korea, you know,
• 1:01:57
  Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, other other Asian
• 1:02:03
  countries. But when China opened up,
• 1:02:05
  everything went to China because why?
• 1:02:08
  Because China has a huge population at that time.
• 1:02:11
  The labour, Chinese labour is really cheap, but not just
• 1:02:15
  cheap. Chinese labour were well
• 1:02:18
  educated, they're well educated, but most of the Chinese were
• 1:02:21
  literate, right? So it's easy to train them to,
• 1:02:26
  to, to, to, to for technical, more technical jobs.
• 1:02:29
  And, and they started, I think I just, This is why I don't think
• 1:02:34
  the Chinese experience is Chinese experience will be
• 1:02:37
  easily replicated elsewhere, even in a massive country like
• 1:02:42
  India. Because India right now, if you
• 1:02:44
  look at the literacy rate, it's just not comfortable to where
• 1:02:48
  China was back in 1970s eighties when they first opened up.
• 1:02:52
  You know, the, the, the, the literal literacy rate in China
• 1:02:56
  was way higher. This is actually a legacy of
• 1:02:59
  communism because one thing the communist government do same.
• 1:03:04
  Soviet they also. Yeah, one thing the communists
• 1:03:06
  do very well is to raise the literacy rate.
• 1:03:09
  And if you look, Cuba, Cuban economy might not do so well
• 1:03:13
  because the tensions, but the literacy rate is one of the
• 1:03:16
  highest in Latin America, right? So, So when Deng Xiaoping
• 1:03:21
  decided to open up the economy, he opened the economy up with a
• 1:03:25
  massive deep labour pool, well educated and cheap.
• 1:03:30
  And that's why all the multinational decided to move
• 1:03:33
  their operations. And yes, what's also fascinating
• 1:03:35
  about what you're saying? I mean, clearly China is going
• 1:03:40
  to be the most powerful economy in the world soon.
• 1:03:44
  I think it already is. I think it already is, because
• 1:03:47
  if you look at no no. No coal coal, but there was a
• 1:03:49
  tweet today that said that one of the ports was empty.
• 1:03:53
  So the Chinese economy is tanking.
• 1:03:55
  It is tanking, but it's still the most powerful economy in the
• 1:03:58
  world. But no, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm,
• 1:04:00
  I'm. I will tell you why because
• 1:04:03
  according to the the most like the IMF or World Bank estimate
• 1:04:09
  based on power purchase parity term, Chinese economy is already
• 1:04:13
  25% larger than the US economy. But I think that even that
• 1:04:17
  underestimates the Chinese economy.
• 1:04:19
  Why? Because if you look at the
• 1:04:22
  electricity as consumption, Chinese electric consumption is
• 1:04:25
  twice the amount of electricity consumption in United States.
• 1:04:30
  If you look at totally. Because there are a lot more
• 1:04:31
  people. True.
• 1:04:35
  But when we talk about economy, we're talking about the
• 1:04:37
  aggregate, right? Chinese per capita is not.
• 1:04:42
  It's still very far from catching up to the United
• 1:04:45
  States. But Chinese per capita does not
• 1:04:47
  need because China has four times the population in the
• 1:04:51
  United States. Even if a Chinese per capita
• 1:04:55
  reaches 50% of United States, Chinese economy will already be
• 1:05:00
  twice the size of United States, right?
• 1:05:03
  Like if they if they reach the same level per capita as United
• 1:05:07
  States, then Chinese economy will be 4 times.
• 1:05:09
  But but, but we're not, we're not talking about that.
• 1:05:11
  We're talking about just aggregate Chinese economy,
• 1:05:15
  because Chinese car market is almost twice the size of US car
• 1:05:21
  market. Like I, I saw a number,
• 1:05:24
  something like 35 million or 38 million cars get sold in China a
• 1:05:30
  year. And that's huge.
• 1:05:32
  Yeah. And and and and in those terms,
• 1:05:34
  Chinese economy is almost twice the the size of U.S. economy.
• 1:05:38
  So with that in mind, it's it's, it's understandable why Chinese
• 1:05:42
  people would be OK then with the strong Chinese government.
• 1:05:47
  Why? Because.
• 1:05:50
  They're doing well. They're doing well.
• 1:05:52
  Yes, I agree. It's.
• 1:05:53
  Safe. There's a lot of prosperity.
• 1:05:56
  I think that will go for any government though I think any,
• 1:06:00
  any, any people would be OK with the government.
• 1:06:02
  So they are doing well. I'll.
• 1:06:03
  Give an example. In South Africa, our government
• 1:06:05
  is completely ineffective. It's in, it's incapable of
• 1:06:09
  governance, it's useless. Yeah, it's highly corrupt.
• 1:06:12
  So then you can understand why people would end up with an anti
• 1:06:15
  government sentiment, yes? Yes, same thing, United States.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, same thing in the United States.
• 1:06:20
  That's. But if it's working well, then
• 1:06:21
  suddenly you go, you know what it's yeah, it's all right.
• 1:06:25
  I'm OK with the trade offs. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  I think that's exactly it. I think that's.
• 1:06:29
  Exactly. Because because you're safe, you
• 1:06:30
  can earn a lot of money. You can buy anything you want to
• 1:06:33
  Yan China, like anything. Yeah, if you have money, sure,
• 1:06:36
  Yeah. But I mean, you can buy Apple
• 1:06:39
  products, Yep, this McDonald's, Yep, there's a lot of waste and
• 1:06:43
  stuff. There's even people playing with
• 1:06:45
  Western board games over there. Yeah, making a noise with.
• 1:06:49
  The boys drinking Western drinks?
• 1:06:51
  Yeah, listening to Western music.
• 1:06:53
  Right. We just heard Eminem again.
• 1:06:54
  Yeah, but that is also testament to the influence of the West.
• 1:07:02
  Yeah, yeah, America has a has still a superpower in soft
• 1:07:06
  power, in soft power, no doubt. I mean, American soft power is
• 1:07:09
  still unrivalled, right? But but having said that, soft
• 1:07:13
  power is a lagging indicator. It's, it's, it's not a leading
• 1:07:18
  indicator. What is the leading indicator?
• 1:07:20
  Because if you look at the British, even today, British
• 1:07:23
  accent still commence a premium in the United States.
• 1:07:26
  You know how many centuries after US already became
• 1:07:30
  independent of the British Empire?
• 1:07:32
  Today, if you go to US and you, you have a posh British accent,
• 1:07:36
  people are automatically assume your IPO is like 2020 points
• 1:07:41
  higher, right? So, so, so, so I think soft
• 1:07:46
  power, US soft power is probably going to be with us for our
• 1:07:50
  lifetime. But not necessarily the US
• 1:07:54
  dollar. Yeah, that's a, that's a that's
• 1:07:57
  that's a whole different story because U.S. government is doing
• 1:08:00
  everything he can to sabotage it by continue to pay money.
• 1:08:06
  We know that Trump just wants multipolarity.
• 1:08:10
  He wants multiple countries competing with different
• 1:08:14
  currencies. This is why he's imposing 30%
• 1:08:16
  tariffs on China and and just about the whole world.
• 1:08:20
  This is why he's threatening wars all over the place.
• 1:08:22
  This is why the US has what almost what, 900 military bases
• 1:08:27
  outside. Of the US that's why he called
• 1:08:29
  Brexit anti American outrage. Yes, most most of the US
• 1:08:33
  military bases outside of the US are intent around China and
• 1:08:39
  Russia. It's, it's, but you know what?
• 1:08:41
  Why they're there. They're there to protect the
• 1:08:44
  freedom of navigation, the freedom of an aggregation in
• 1:08:47
  South China Sea. It's a very important sea lane
• 1:08:50
  for China. So what U.S.
• 1:08:52
  Navy is actually doing is protecting the very important
• 1:08:55
  sea lanes for China. From China.
• 1:08:58
  They're making China great again.
• 1:08:59
  Yes, yes, that's what. And then meanwhile.
• 1:09:04
  China has a grand total of 1 military base.
• 1:09:07
  I think outside of T in Djibouti, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:12
  Oh no. But hang on, it's not about the
• 1:09:14
  military bases either. It's not about the it's it's
• 1:09:17
  about the fact that China is infiltrating via economics.
• 1:09:21
  By building ports. By by building high speed rail
• 1:09:24
  in Africa. They take care of Africa by
• 1:09:26
  building a better transport system for us.
• 1:09:29
  No, but you see Paul, it's not about the trains are good.
• 1:09:33
  Yeah. It's about the fact that it's a
• 1:09:35
  debt trap. It's a debt trap.
• 1:09:38
  It's a debt trap, yeah. I'd rather I'd rather have a
• 1:09:42
  debt trap for for a service than for just a corrupt government.
• 1:09:47
  So like for example, I'd rather the South African government
• 1:09:52
  allow Chinese infrastructure to be built in South Africa then to
• 1:09:56
  simply borrow money from the IMF.
• 1:09:58
  I mean, so, so there's good debts and bad debts, right?
• 1:10:01
  The good debts is if you borrow to pay for education or you, you
• 1:10:07
  borrow money to, to build infrastructure, bad debt since
• 1:10:12
  you, you borrow to buy a Lamborghini, right?
• 1:10:16
  Because that, that's liability. And, and by right now, I think
• 1:10:20
  the problem in United States is more people are borrowing money
• 1:10:23
  to buy, buy things they can't really afford, right?
• 1:10:27
  And and then I don't. Think it's a good idea that
• 1:10:28
  countries borrow money anyway. But if you are, if you are
• 1:10:32
  building an infrastructure like high speed rail or, or, or
• 1:10:36
  better, better technology or something, at least you taking
• 1:10:39
  something in return exactly. As opposed to simply getting 500
• 1:10:43
  billion U.S. dollars from the IMF or the World Bank or
• 1:10:45
  whatever and going, OK, So what? What's happening to that money
• 1:10:48
  though? Because at least with, at least
• 1:10:50
  with, at least with Chinese infrastructure you see
• 1:10:53
  something. But but, but Jeremy, cheers.
• 1:10:55
  The United States is investing $500 billion in the Stargate
• 1:11:00
  project. So we're going to build all
• 1:11:03
  these data centres all over the all over the country, and it's
• 1:11:08
  going to power the AI revolution.
• 1:11:10
  And then United States will build Skynet and terminate it
• 1:11:14
  first and China will be screwed. That's a plan.
• 1:11:18
  That's the plan. That's a plan.
• 1:11:21
  Yes, okay. I mean, literally that is the
• 1:11:26
  plan for the AI, for the AI group.
• 1:11:29
  I mean, that's that got to be the biggest bubble.
• 1:11:32
  Look, I've interviewed a few people who argue that Trump is
• 1:11:34
  keen on a competitive world because he understands that
• 1:11:39
  America can't dominate forever. But have you ever seen Trump?
• 1:11:43
  I don't think he's all about equal power around the world.
• 1:11:47
  I don't think he's about competition around the world.
• 1:11:50
  He wants America to dominate. Yeah, I think people should
• 1:11:54
  listen to what Trump actually said.
• 1:11:57
  I mean, he says he said to make American.
• 1:11:59
  I know he take 5. DJs 25 DJs I mean, I remember
• 1:12:04
  2011, Trump, Trump spoke somewhere saying how he's going
• 1:12:07
  to quote unquote, stop China. I think the American
• 1:12:10
  establishment for decades has been opposed to, I mean,
• 1:12:13
  Kissinger visited now. OK, you know about.
• 1:12:19
  That. Yeah, that was back in 1970.
• 1:12:23
  Already, then, the US was scared of Chinese growth.
• 1:12:26
  No, I wouldn't say that, because back then they were still
• 1:12:30
  playing the China card against Soviet Union, right?
• 1:12:32
  The whole whole reason Kissinger visited China is to exploit the
• 1:12:37
  Sino Soviet split so they can play China card against Soviet
• 1:12:41
  Union, which they did very successfully by the way.
• 1:12:44
  You know, Soviet Union did clap in the Cold War.
• 1:12:48
  China played its part. China actually supported United
• 1:12:51
  States in the war against Soviet in Afghanistan.
• 1:12:54
  CIA had a listening station in Xinjiang where we're going, by
• 1:12:59
  the way, I don't think it exists anymore, but it used to in the
• 1:13:02
  1980s to listen to the Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan next
• 1:13:07
  door. And CIA actually bought a lot of
• 1:13:12
  Chinese made weapons because they matched the Soviet weapons,
• 1:13:16
  because so they bought a lot of Chinese made weapons to supply
• 1:13:20
  Afghan mujahideens. And they were transported from
• 1:13:23
  Xinjiang across border to Pakistan.
• 1:13:28
  Chinese mules, the source from Xinjiang.
• 1:13:32
  Yeah, Because this is a great story because initially it's
• 1:13:36
  some American senators idea to supply Tennessee mules to Afghan
• 1:13:41
  Mujahideen. But the Afghan climate is so
• 1:13:44
  harsh, all these American mules put in packet and they die in
• 1:13:49
  mass. So in the end they went to
• 1:13:52
  China, Xinjiang next door, to spot hundreds of thousands of
• 1:14:00
  mules and donkeys to send to Afghanistan to carry weapons and
• 1:14:05
  ammunition. So Afghan Mujahideen, it's a
• 1:14:09
  great story. It's a great story, but it's
• 1:14:11
  true because back then that was the largest CIA operation before
• 1:14:16
  the Syrian war. So the Afghanistan operation
• 1:14:20
  called the Operation Cyclone was the largest CIA operation before
• 1:14:27
  Obama's Syrian war effort called the Operation Timber Sycamore.
• 1:14:33
  So. I heard that Gladio was the
• 1:14:36
  largest CIA operation. That might be that might be that
• 1:14:42
  may be because because Gladio is still hush hush right and it's
• 1:14:45
  still. Operational and it involves
• 1:14:48
  other players like the Vatican and and and Italian mafia so.
• 1:14:56
  Funny thing you bring up, Gladio, because what's happening
• 1:14:59
  in United States is reminding me of the year of the Late, right?
• 1:15:05
  Like, like, I mean, with all these political assassinations
• 1:15:09
  right now going on, the part of. I mean, I mean, Trump was the
• 1:15:16
  theatrical I vote. Anyway, see I.
• 1:15:23
  Mean he came up and they were all perfectly posed for that
• 1:15:26
  photo and he's first in the edge and the flag.
• 1:15:29
  Behind him, The the, the, the, the, the, the.
• 1:15:32
  The thing with Trump is he's a perfect candidate for plausible
• 1:15:37
  deniability in everything, right?
• 1:15:39
  Because because, because Trump say all kind of crazy things.
• 1:15:42
  You're like, OK, there's no way. There's no way this guy is not
• 1:15:45
  serious. But but then again, you you
• 1:15:49
  don't he he. Yeah, like he could be playing
• 1:15:52
  55 dimensional chats. Right.
• 1:15:54
  You know, you know, you know that Trump is serious because he
• 1:15:57
  writes all of his tweets in uppercase letters.
• 1:16:00
  That's true. He's always shouting.
• 1:16:01
  Yeah, that's how you know, serious.
• 1:16:05
  And it uses 7 exclamation marks. Anyway, but but for all Trumps
• 1:16:14
  effort, I still think Trump is still my president, is still my
• 1:16:19
  president because he is the best president for China at this
• 1:16:24
  moment. I can't think of anyone else.
• 1:16:28
  He has made sure that that China's rise will be
• 1:16:32
  unstoppable. For now, I wouldn't want to live
• 1:16:35
  here. But that's a cultural thing.
• 1:16:37
  Yeah. I I like living, you know, in,
• 1:16:40
  in my African. Mess.
• 1:16:42
  I can't see that. But this, this feeds into a
• 1:16:48
  comment that you made earlier. I don't know if we were
• 1:16:50
  recording or if we were just walking somewhere, but you said
• 1:16:53
  the world is extremely big and societies all over the world
• 1:16:59
  operate. Very differently.
• 1:17:02
  There is no. There isn't a formula, Yeah.
• 1:17:04
  So in other words, if something works well in Russia, it doesn't
• 1:17:09
  mean that it will translate to junk out of the.
• 1:17:12
  US so by the way, but you get. What I'm saying?
• 1:17:15
  Yeah, this is actually what China had been saying for the
• 1:17:17
  longest time. They actually said Chinese model
• 1:17:21
  is not exportable model because Chinese model is uniquely suited
• 1:17:26
  to China's own circumstance, right?
• 1:17:30
  But the argument is that there's no, because at the same time,
• 1:17:35
  United States is trying to export what they call universal
• 1:17:38
  values to everyone else, including whatever is current,
• 1:17:42
  whatever is hot in the United States, whatever social issue in
• 1:17:47
  US, they try to impose it to the rest of the world, Right.
• 1:17:51
  But China's argument is like, hey, we're different, Everyone
• 1:17:54
  is different. Everyone should be allowed to
• 1:17:56
  pursue their own path of development.
• 1:17:59
  It's, you know, you, there should be no one, one size fits
• 1:18:03
  all type of deal. So I think multipolarity, I
• 1:18:08
  think more closely match what China is describing of the
• 1:18:15
  world. The Chinas worldview is like the
• 1:18:18
  world is very complex. It's very, very, very like it's
• 1:18:22
  not. There's no you can't.
• 1:18:24
  You can't just shape everyone, turning everyone into Americans,
• 1:18:28
  right? There's not like, I don't know
• 1:18:31
  if you remember the movie Full Metal Jacket when the Sergeant
• 1:18:36
  says inside every goop there's American dying to get out.
• 1:18:40
  I think that's still the American mentality.
• 1:18:43
  I still think that's American mentality today.
• 1:18:45
  But the, the Chinese way of saying is like, look, no,
• 1:18:50
  there's there's no American inside, you know.
• 1:18:52
  Yeah. And I mean, and I think it's
• 1:18:53
  also important to to realise that one size does not fit all
• 1:18:58
  the the country is doing very, very well.
• 1:19:00
  There's no doubt about it. So in other words, nuance
• 1:19:04
  matters. Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  And, and the other thing also that China is not this
• 1:19:09
  totalitarian hellhole, but it's also not utopia.
• 1:19:12
  It's it's it's own. Country, it's a normal.
• 1:19:14
  It's a normal country with its own.
• 1:19:16
  Own unique set of problems and unique set of correct solutions.
• 1:19:21
  Yeah, it's got its own pros and cons.
• 1:19:24
  I wouldn't want to live here because I am very, quite unquote
• 1:19:30
  controversial. So it doesn't.
• 1:19:32
  The system doesn't work. And as a political cartoonist, I
• 1:19:34
  wouldn't do very well. Yeah.
• 1:19:35
  Exactly. The excessive regulation.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah, me neither. I don't like it.
• 1:19:42
  Me neither. Which is why I wouldn't live
• 1:19:43
  here, but dude, it works. No it is working.
• 1:19:50
  Having said that, when you're now running bicycles today I saw
• 1:19:53
  no regulation on those roads. Jeez, I thought, I thought I was
• 1:19:56
  going to get knocked over. So I, I come from Indonesia.
• 1:20:03
  So this, this, that was nothing, you know, I came from Bali.
• 1:20:07
  So that was Bali is a jungle. This is very nice.
• 1:20:12
  What? You know what we saw on the on
• 1:20:14
  the Shanghai Rd, that was nothing.
• 1:20:16
  You're Chinese. Would you ever come back to
• 1:20:17
  China? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:19
  I mean, I, I, I, I'd love to come.
• 1:20:21
  So OK, I'll give you my shift of my views back.
• 1:20:25
  So back when I came back to visit in 2120, ten at that time
• 1:20:31
  I thought, you know, China is a great place to visit, but I
• 1:20:34
  would not want to live here because the pollution is
• 1:20:36
  horrible. And at that time, Shanghai, I
• 1:20:39
  can cut the air with a butter knife.
• 1:20:42
  It was all bad it. Looks much better now, yeah.
• 1:20:43
  Much better. One of the one of the reason is
• 1:20:47
  the adoption of EVs electric cars.
• 1:20:51
  There's a lot of electric cars. There's a lot of, it's very
• 1:20:53
  quiet, extremely quiet. It's very quiet.
• 1:20:55
  So many cars, so many electric scooters, but it's very quiet on
• 1:20:58
  the road and it's cutting down the pollution and, and and so
• 1:21:03
  after I came back in 2019, I suddenly realised, wow, this
• 1:21:07
  country really cleaned up. This is actually a place I could
• 1:21:10
  find myself live here because now the, it's just much nicer.
• 1:21:14
  Now there's much, lot more infrastructures, a lot more
• 1:21:18
  convenient, right? Like today, like we can just use
• 1:21:21
  our phones, scan a barcode on a, on a, on a rideshare bike, and
• 1:21:27
  then we can go anywhere, right? And and that's that's super
• 1:21:29
  convenient. And super cheap.
• 1:21:31
  And super cheap. Yeah, super.
• 1:21:34
  Even though with the level of development China has, China
• 1:21:38
  still remain very affordable. Hang on now.
• 1:21:40
  Now. So we rode bicycles today and it
• 1:21:45
  was less than one U.S. dollar. Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  So for 1st 15 minutes it's 1.5 Chinese RMB, right, which?
• 1:21:52
  Is less than a, which is less than a dollar.
• 1:21:54
  It's. Much less than a dollar.
• 1:21:56
  It's like 1/7 of a dollar. Yeah.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah. So it's it's it's the Chinese
• 1:22:03
  people here have it pretty good. I mean, I can see, you know why
• 1:22:06
  they're mostly content? Because they taste.
• 1:22:09
  Well, I mean, I got us food earlier and it came to less than
• 1:22:17
  in my own currency. It came to less than I think
• 1:22:22
  maybe even a single item of food back home.
• 1:22:25
  It depends. OK, it depends on what I'm
• 1:22:26
  comparing to. But it point is, it was cheap.
• 1:22:30
  Yeah, it wasn't expensive. Yeah, the food was cheap too,
• 1:22:34
  right? That's what I'm talking about.
• 1:22:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we had was, I think that's
• 1:22:37
  kind of the food that average working class Chinese person
• 1:22:42
  would have for meal perhaps is like.
• 1:22:43
  And it didn't. It didn't come.
• 1:22:45
  I mean, you called it fast food, but it certainly wasn't.
• 1:22:48
  Unhealthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that.
• 1:22:50
  Egg and it had rice. Yep.
• 1:22:51
  And and vegetables and vegetables.
• 1:22:54
  And it's not like it was like a burger in the fries, right,
• 1:22:58
  Right. This another thing that I have
• 1:23:01
  noticed very few fat woman. Yeah.
• 1:23:04
  People walk a lot. I don't know if you notice
• 1:23:07
  people walk up. And ride bicycles.
• 1:23:09
  And ride bicycles, yeah. But still.
• 1:23:12
  Yeah, I mean it's. Significantly thinner than the
• 1:23:15
  US. Yeah, I think it's a combination
• 1:23:18
  of both genetics, diet and the fact that they just move more.
• 1:23:23
  They're just, they just move more like US.
• 1:23:25
  Everybody drive everywhere. Yeah, yeah, Even in Indonesia,
• 1:23:28
  like everybody get on our motorbike to go like small
• 1:23:32
  distances because. But the simple fact is there's
• 1:23:36
  no infrastructure for walking. They do a lot of places don't
• 1:23:40
  build, bother to build sidewalks.
• 1:23:42
  Even here in Shanghai, the city is very walkable.
• 1:23:45
  You can walk anywhere. And, and one of the funniest
• 1:23:48
  things that I heard today was being Tannedier stranded upon
• 1:23:52
  Don't, don't, don't. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:54
  Don't tan. Yeah, no, no, no tan.
• 1:23:55
  So, so China, this is this is your very traditional
• 1:24:00
  aesthetics, so. Trying to be as pale as
• 1:24:03
  possible. Because in in China,
• 1:24:05
  traditionally in tan means you are a farmer working in the
• 1:24:10
  field, exposing yourself in the sun.
• 1:24:12
  You are a peasant, you know, if you're an aristocrat, you don't
• 1:24:16
  go in the sun. You know, that's why you
• 1:24:18
  preserve your pale skin, Very pale skin.
• 1:24:20
  Yeah, exactly. So that's that kind kind of a
• 1:24:23
  traditional preference for paleness still still persists.
• 1:24:26
  Yeah. So they don't, they don't
• 1:24:27
  understand tanning in my. But, but now I'm, as I'm getting
• 1:24:31
  older, I'm starting to understand because I I serve.
• 1:24:35
  So when I expose myself to the sun, I do notice I age a lot
• 1:24:38
  more. You know, This is why a lot of
• 1:24:40
  Chinese women, they continue to look good even in their 40s.
• 1:24:44
  Chinese women are beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:45
  They, they, they take care of themselves.
• 1:24:47
  They also take care of them. All right, my drink's finished.
• 1:24:50
  Yeah, me too.