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China Derangement Syndrome Prevents The West from Seeing Reality | Silk and Steel · UK Column Radio

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Silk and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Steel Podcast. I'm your host Carl Za. Today I have
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a very special guest to my show. He is known
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: as Han Fates, a prolific writer at Asia Times who
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: write about China, about Western perception of China and Chinese
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: interns action with a wider world but for the people
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: who are in the know. He also have another Internet
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: persona a k a. Doggy on X But Doggie is dead.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Doggie just recently died a little bit too, so it's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a blue bear, right, blue bear.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so somewhere around here, I have to say I
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: love your writing.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I love your writing as Humphins on Asia Times, but
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I love even better your ex persona doggy a blue bit.
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  Speaker 2: Gets misbehaviors and must be the gentleman scholar.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, so we you know, for your accent you are
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: obviously Chinese American.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: And my phone just my, my, my, my camera just
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  Speaker 1: decide to shut itself off, okay, and and we so
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: how what would you like to talk about? I mean,
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  Speaker 1: there's so many topics we can we can pick on
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  Speaker 1: because I think right now, United States and on the
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  Speaker 1: broader sense of the Western elite have what I call
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the China derangement syndrome.
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  Speaker 2: They always go.
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  Speaker 1: China, China, China, and they will blame China and everything.
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  Speaker 1: I recently saw a ridiculous article that said, you know
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  Speaker 1: it was China's fall is China's followed that that draw
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  Speaker 1: the China's weakness, that draw lower United States?
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  Speaker 2: Was I wrong? Just fully nonsense, that's that's uh. So
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  Speaker 2: you know, hun Faced writes about a lot of stuff,
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  Speaker 2: but one kind of theme, many things, but one theme
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  Speaker 2: that uh that I think it's a real way the
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  Speaker 2: world runs, and world economy of the world runs, except
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: and then, but economists of the bus have completely rejected
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: classical economics, whereas actually China is operating under classical economics.
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  Speaker 2: So this whole economy of the world that we had
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  Speaker 2: been dealing with for the past you know, thirty forty
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  Speaker 2: years since since Kissinger and not Kissinger Nixon went off
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  Speaker 2: the gold standard in the seventies was this weird Lucas
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: paradox economy where poorer economies were lending money to rich
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  Speaker 2: customers to buy their way. So everybody talks about you know,
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  Speaker 2: the Asian miracle, Japan miracle, uh, Korean miracle, and in
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  Speaker 2: China was a big one that stepped in and it
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  Speaker 2: was supposed to be you know, these Asian countries, you know,
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  Speaker 2: took advantage of this system and became rich. That is
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  Speaker 2: to me so far off the mark. What these Asian
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: countries did was they did the only development path available
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  Speaker 2: to them. Because of the Lucas paradox, where flows from
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  Speaker 2: poor to rich, the only thing you could do was
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: tighten your belts, save as much as you can, lend
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  Speaker 2: out your money to rich customers and make you know,
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  Speaker 2: some make revenues and collect capital as as became earnings
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  Speaker 2: little by excruciating, bit by exclusiating bit over decades. So
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  Speaker 2: you had decades of sweats up economies in Asia before you,
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  Speaker 2: little by little, climb up the technology ladder, and then
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  Speaker 2: over a period of decades you find Asia where it is.
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  Speaker 1: Is this because I mean, I mean, is this because
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  Speaker 1: they have to accumulate the capital? I mean the whole
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  Speaker 1: Lucas paradox is. You know, supposedly the capital should flow
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  Speaker 1: from rich country to the poor country, right from the
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  Speaker 1: capitals you actually flow from like the words, there's plentiful
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  Speaker 1: of capital flow to the capital. There's there's much demand
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  Speaker 1: for it, that's a classical economics, you know, Adam Smith,
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  Speaker 1: except but Lucas paradox is, yeah, yeah, maybe we needn't
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  Speaker 1: need to break it down for like my audience who
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  Speaker 1: may not be like trained economics, may not be trained economists.
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  Speaker 2: So so the locals paradox it should be capital flows
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  Speaker 2: from rich to poor where the rich countries already have
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  Speaker 2: their companies that are you're making money, and then all
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  Speaker 2: the low hanging fruit has been picked, and therefore additional
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  Speaker 2: capital will tend to, you know, if all the laws
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  Speaker 2: of economics are correct, will tend to flow from rich
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  Speaker 2: country to a poor country or to a poor or
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  Speaker 2: lesser developed country. And that worked for a while when England,
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: you know, when the Great Britain invested a lot in
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  Speaker 2: the US in eighteen hundreds and then stopped working in
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  Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies after the US went of the gold standard.
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  Speaker 2: So there are many reasons why I stopped working, but
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  Speaker 2: one of the major ones is the rich country, especially
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  Speaker 2: the US, Canada, Australia, they started to trade assets for good.
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  Speaker 2: So the big globalization trade since the nineteen seventies is
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  Speaker 2: one big assets for good trade, and it's legitimate. You
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  Speaker 2: can't say it's not legitimate. What it is is countries
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  Speaker 2: that have an extra, you know, a preponderance of assets.
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  Speaker 2: You know, this whole US is one giant, fat bird
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  Speaker 2: of a country to coast, lots of real estate, lots
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  Speaker 2: of companies that are worth a lot. You got you know,
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  Speaker 2: the the the treasury bills are worth a lot. You
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  Speaker 2: know of the great credit for the US government. So
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  Speaker 2: it became a assets for good trade. So in the
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  Speaker 2: past thirty forty fifty years, this assets for good trade
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  Speaker 2: is what globalization has been. Exactly. Now, now we have
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  Speaker 2: run into the situation where the Lucas paradox is finally
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  Speaker 2: reversing itself. It's not reversing itself because all of a sudden,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the US, UK and all these rich countries are suddenly
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  Speaker 2: investing in the global selt. No, it's reversing itself because
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  Speaker 2: China became rich. China is now becoming that rich economy
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  Speaker 2: that gets to invest in poorer economies, which it is
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  Speaker 2: doing and trying to do as much as as much
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  Speaker 2: as it can. So when you look at like last year,
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  Speaker 2: everybody flipped out because China's trade surplus is one point
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  Speaker 2: two trillion, and then oh my god, you know, taking
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  Speaker 2: all the markets. Well, first of all that one point
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  Speaker 2: two trillion. The export to the US has popped out
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  Speaker 2: like about four or five years ago and has been
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: has been stagnant or even going down. Export to Europe
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  Speaker 2: has also more or less been plot code for for
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  Speaker 2: you know, four or five years. All the growth from China,
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  Speaker 2: all the export growth from China is export growth to
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  Speaker 2: the Global South, and that's exactly what it should be,
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  Speaker 2: because that is China lending money to the global South
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  Speaker 2: in the in the Dalton Road, you know, b our
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  Speaker 2: items and then that much is used to buy Chinese
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  Speaker 2: capital goods. And the biggest thing last year was solar panels.
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  Speaker 2: Solar panel exports of Africa to Pakistan, to you know,
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  Speaker 2: keep all over the world. South America just went through
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  Speaker 2: the roof. And the bri engagement last year was double
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  Speaker 2: its records. A lot of you said br is dead,
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  Speaker 2: you know, that was a theme for about two or
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: three years, but actually, you know, it were just checking
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  Speaker 2: along yet a little low for COVID, and it had
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  Speaker 2: a record year in two thousand and four and in
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  Speaker 2: twenty twenty four and two on twenty five they had
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  Speaker 2: a new record, which is double the twenty twenty four record.
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  Speaker 2: So this is it's mostly energy products and energy infrastructure.
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  Speaker 2: So finally the world can run on the real economy.
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  Speaker 2: And the real economy is you have some rich country,
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  Speaker 2: namely China, will be exporting capital goods to poorer countries
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  Speaker 2: to build up infrastructure so that they can be real
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  Speaker 2: and really participate in the global market. And then how
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  Speaker 2: it's financed. What's financed by China. It's financed by capital
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  Speaker 2: uploads in China. So now.
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  Speaker 1: Let me let me pretend I'm a you know, China watcher.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I'll give the China watchers argument. How is what China
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  Speaker 1: doing different from say, IMF and World Bank?
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  Speaker 2: How is that.
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  Speaker 1: Difference up from the Western exploitation of the global south?
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  Speaker 1: You know, is it not just neo colonialism?
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  Speaker 2: One China this has more money, So World Bank and
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  Speaker 2: IMF it just just just doesn't have that much. And
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  Speaker 2: mostly because the Western economies run huge current account deficits,
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  Speaker 2: so you're running a huge current count deestnit by math,
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  Speaker 2: you need to suck in capital from the world. So
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  Speaker 2: all this, all these loans that come from the IMF,
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  Speaker 2: the World Bank, it's just it's just window dressing. Mathematically speaking,
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  Speaker 2: the West cannot buy math because they run kernenthp deficits
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  Speaker 2: invest in the global suce. That's just that's, you know,
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  Speaker 2: a mathematical identity. So one is that the IMF and
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  Speaker 2: the World Bank just don't have that much money to
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  Speaker 2: invest to lend out. And two they just lend out
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  Speaker 2: money and most of it in the past has been healthcare,
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  Speaker 2: some education projects, or to shore up a company's failing depth.
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  Speaker 2: It's already gotten into emergency and then the iom math
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  Speaker 2: will step in, whereas China the loans are given up
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  Speaker 2: to bill something and that something could be roads, dams, railroads,
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  Speaker 2: solar power projects, you know, electricity grids. So that's that's
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  Speaker 2: that's the key difference.
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  Speaker 1: Now. You know, traditionally the Western countries, they they their
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  Speaker 1: involvement in the global souse, particularly in Africa and Latin America,
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  Speaker 1: mostly in extraction, right. And and you know there's I
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  Speaker 1: remember seeing like a mean graph where like Africa is
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  Speaker 1: basically a hoping dug and all the gold get transferred
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  Speaker 1: to France, right, which actually happens because you know, like
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  Speaker 1: they have the system called the Central African francs that
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  Speaker 1: that's actually the currency being used on in the former
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  Speaker 1: French colonies and all the reserve in gold is actually
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  Speaker 1: hold in in France. Now, but what is how Now
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  Speaker 1: again I'm playing Devil's Africa. What is China's what? What's
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  Speaker 1: China doing that's different? How is how is China different
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  Speaker 1: from all these European countries that have been practicing these China.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so China, it is trying to get African resources
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  Speaker 2: as well. So let's not let's not be around. But
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  Speaker 2: you know, Africa, a lot of these uh, these developing
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  Speaker 2: economies Global South, that's all they have to trade at
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  Speaker 2: this moment because they have not have not yet built
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  Speaker 2: up the education system, they are not yet industrialized, they
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  Speaker 2: don't have the infrastructure in place to have any kind
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  Speaker 2: of other economy besides resource extraction. So what the old
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  Speaker 2: development model is, and I used to be an aid
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  Speaker 2: worker in Africa, what the old development model is is
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  Speaker 2: the rich countries will go into African country or for example,
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  Speaker 2: and say, well, you are totally corrupt in a basket case,
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  Speaker 2: and to industrialize your country will take one hundred billion
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  Speaker 2: dollars which you do not have. So why don't we
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  Speaker 2: send some peace corps round here and do And do
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  Speaker 2: you know village handicraft projects and micro you know, my credit.
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  Speaker 2: All of that amounts to just window dressing in a
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  Speaker 2: whole lot of nothing. The new development model is China
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  Speaker 2: goes into one of these countries and says, oh, you're
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  Speaker 2: totally corrupt and you're a basket case. But because China's
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  Speaker 2: manufacturing so efficient, it only costs you fifty billion dollars
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  Speaker 2: to industrialize, to build out your roads, your infrastructure, your schools,
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  Speaker 2: and your hospitals, and that that amount of money, it
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  Speaker 2: doesn't matter how poorly you're governed, or it matters much less,
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  Speaker 2: and therefore China will bloodily lend you that money. So
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  Speaker 2: the idea is that the West never had any intentions
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  Speaker 2: of flooding Africa or the global South with capital. Not
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  Speaker 2: only that the West needs capital, its model is built
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  Speaker 2: on current account deficits and then sucking in all of
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  Speaker 2: you know, the petro dollars and also you know agents
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  Speaker 2: exports and export dollars. So it's actually on the back
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  Speaker 2: of its head it's fighting Africa for capital flows from
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  Speaker 2: petrol states and you know productive Asia.
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  Speaker 1: So and we know that actually happens in practice because
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  Speaker 1: a lot of African elite they do stacks there you've
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: gotten gains in the French or Swiss banks and and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, same same, same with a whole petro
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  Speaker 1: dollar recycling back of the dollar surplus back into the
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  Speaker 1: U S. Treasuries and US real estate or stock market,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so so in so, you know, when the
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  Speaker 2: Western country they look at Africa and they say, let's
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  Speaker 2: try to develop it. They come up with this huge bill,
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  Speaker 2: you know, because that's let's say, for instance, hundred billion dollars.
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  Speaker 2: And they said, you're too corrupt and you're too much
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  Speaker 2: of a basty case. So let's just do some window
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  Speaker 2: dressing Peace Corps volunteer, uh, you know, micro finance, you know,
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  Speaker 2: just just these window dressing aid projects. China's Belton Road
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  Speaker 2: is completely different. They look at it and they say, okay,
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  Speaker 2: we can cut that bill, not from not one hundred
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  Speaker 2: million dollars, we can cut that down to fifty billion dollars.
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  Speaker 2: At fifty billion dollars. Ah, okay, you know it can
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: be it can absorb a lot of mismanagement. So you know,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: at fifty billion dollars, you can industrialize a lot of
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  Speaker 2: the global South. When that bill, when that cost is
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: half what it takes you know, the Western world to
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: do so. And because of that, and then you because
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: China runs huge current count surpluses, that's where that money
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: comes from. Not only that's what where that money comes from,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: but the whole you know, manufacturing and industrial economy of
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: China can produce all those capital goods that the global
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: South needs, from solar panels to dams and roads and
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: railways and and cars. Because the first, you know, the
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: first ten cars on the road are capital bits. They're
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: used for the businesses you know that drive around to
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  Speaker 2: run the economy. You know, only after you get past
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: you know, carpentration of ten twenty percent, then it starts
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  Speaker 2: being consumer products.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, I mean I actually I know a personal and
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  Speaker 1: adult story. I know somebody who just graduated fresh out
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of college in London and he went into those Western
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: ap projects to teach Africans how to practice agriculture.
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  Speaker 2: I was very skeptical and at some point like.
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  Speaker 1: The African African has been doing agriculture for thousands of years.
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  Speaker 1: What do you of fresh college grads know anything about
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  Speaker 1: African agriculture that you have actually something useful to you.
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  Speaker 2: All of this is also a reason why the West
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  Speaker 2: or the US, especially the industrialized, because since the nineteen seventies,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: since they went on to Nixon took the US off
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: the gold standards. This whole assets for goods trade that
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: the US has been running on since Nixon went off
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: the gold standard in the seventies, has the industrialized in
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: US as well, because what you have is all of
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the US, all of the upper middle class people Wall
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Street to lawyers, to consultants, real estate agents. Their job
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: essentially is the package US assets to trade for Asian goods.
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  Speaker 2: So and all of their compensation is tied to the
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: value of those assets. And those assets are valuable, not
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: quite because people are highly skilled and made them, but
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: because America is America. America is two great oceans, you know,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: fruited plains from sea to shining sea. So what you
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: have is the US has been running on a combination
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of Dutch disease in Bonmo's law, so Dutch disease is
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: in the Netherlands, when they discovered natural gas in the
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, very quickly all the capital went to
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: the natural gas space and they d industrialized. Their currency
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: went up, and the Netherlands for like about a decade
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: or so had somewhat of a you know, recession, even
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: though they discovered natural gas. It's it's that's what they
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: call it, Dutch disease. Same thing with the US, although
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: it's not selling like one product, it's not selling one
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: commodity like oil or or natural gas. The US is
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: selling everything. The US is, you know, its whole economy
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: is based on what you can package together, what you
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: can securitize and sell. So already in the nineteen fifties
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: and sixties, almost all US companies is owned by Americans.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Now about a third of the stock market in the
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: US is owned by foreigners. So little by little, the
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: US is maintaining it's high compensation, high consumption, high standard
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: living by selling down, little by little over the years
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: its assets. So the only jobs, high paying jobs that
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: remain in the US are people who package these assets
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: for sale, such as the you know, the Wall Street
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: big law firms, consulting companies, or you have people who
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: are like Apple Computer who maintain some little bit of
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the fun job, you know, the design, the the the
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: uh engineering in the US, and then all the sweaty
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: bow really hard work is outsourced to China or India
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: or whatever. So so this whole trade of that of
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: the Lucas paradox where uh you know, and and then
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: it's it's China lending the US money to buy these products,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: and the lending it then the assets wind up in
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: China's hand in terms of treasuries or stocks or bonds
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: or real estate. Americans live very well. Part of Americans
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: who are in this, you know, who get to trade
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: these assets, and others are the skilled. So you're pretty
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: much trading. Uh you know, you want leisure. A lot
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: of Americans want leisure, so and they don't really want
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: to work hard in a factory and be all sweaty,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: probably even though they claim they do. Reindustrialization will be
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: really hard because it will require that the US stop
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: this assets for goods trade. And once you stop this
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: assets for good trade, then compensation for pet bros. And
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Wall Street and lawyers and consultants will start approaching the
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: compensation level for you know, a process engineer in so
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: and so.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: But behind me it's the wait wait, wait wait. The
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: US is rich and powerful is because US possessed the
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: special innovative spirits. It's always pushed the frontier of science
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and technology. Whereas China, the Chinese they're just bugman's who
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: only thing they know how to do is grind, grind,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and be strivers. Right this, this is what you read
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: on social media nowadays. They say like Asian strivers, they
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: scrind away like like mindless bugman or robots, and that's
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: what they are designed to do. Whereas the United States
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: we have possessed bountiful of talent. You know, that's innovative spirit.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: That's the magic that can can make a zero to one,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: that the leap of zero to one, oh man, like
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: you see that. That kind of talks very common on
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the social media. It's because America suggests a special magic,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: right yeah, the special magic, if you readly look down
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: into it is not there anymore.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: You know, in any metric you can think of from
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: from you know, college papers, university research patterns, China is
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: multiple times. And then what you really find is that
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the real hard work is not the designer in Cupertino,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: California that rounded the edges the corners of the Apple iPhone.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: The real hard work are the process engineers in Senzo
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: who grind out those millions of iPhones a year. And
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: you know that because of downward compatibility. In China, all
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: those companies made their own phone sooner or later, as
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: in Shaomi's or Hallways, Opols, DeVos and Apple cannot repeat
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: the manufacturing process in the US. If it was such
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: a low value add anybody can do business and the
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: lowest part of the smile curve, supposedly, then it should
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: be very easy to replicate the manufacturing. But that's actually
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: the hardest part to replicate is the manufacturing. That's exactly
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: why it was outsourced because of Dutch disease and Bambo's law,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: where it's so because you're already making so much money
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: selling stuff, by securitizing assets and selling it overseas, that
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: you only keep the super fun, super high paid something
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: you know, distorted jobs such as rounding out the corner
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: of your iPhone and calling that great design. You know.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk has bought this up multiple times that design
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: in a product is a rounding error of the engineering
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: that goes into manufacturing. The real work is in manufacturing.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: So I used to be an engineer, and there's always
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: professional tension between design engineers and manufacturing engineers, and the
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: manufacturing engineers always win because there was downward compatibility. They
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: can do the work of the design engineers, but the
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: design engineers cannot do the work of the process engineers,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: of the manufacturing engineers. So ultimately the process engineers manufacturing
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: made the call because we can't make it, there's no
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: point in having it designed.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: But fads wait, wait, wait, but okay, see I gotta
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I gotta stop.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: You again because you're coming up. Okay, I'm fads. Wait wait.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So the argument people make is that Americans, yes, we
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: do the fun stuff, but we also do the zero
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to one leap. The example is space X is Tesla,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: you know, Ela, musk And whereas people in East Asia,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you know, China, Korea, Japan, what do they get for
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: all their grinding away they what they get is people
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: are miserable. There's high depression, high suicide rate. You know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: their birth rate is falling off the cliff. While Americans,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you know, we have the perfect work live balance. We
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: play hard and work hard too, which I don't I
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: personally do not agree.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: I think Europe actually.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Has much better work life balance in the United States.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: But that that is a prevalent take on the internet,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: on the on the American platform X particular, right, they
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: say Okay, all these all these grind, all these such
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: grinding Asian strivers, all they get is depression and birth
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: rate falling off the cliff. While like case, you're humming along, Goldie.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of truth to that, you know, there's
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of truth to be said for that, because
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: for Asia to climb up in the past, you know,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: three or four decades, you've had three or four decades
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: of tightening belt, you know, but pretty much only only
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Asia can do this. It's pretty much the only development
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: model offered to Asia because there was no capital flowing
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: from the Yeah, so agent did suffer all these years,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: but what you got out of it is you built
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: up your capital base. You did get rich. And then
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: what is happening in the West is they're living on
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: battle time. The US is living on all timers, and uh,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: it's selling off its assets to live large today. It's uh,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: it's that it's going up and be more and more
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: of its assets is held by foreigners because it has to.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So as in the US realized as well, Now you're
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: de industrialized. At some point, there's gonna be nothing left.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: So there's an argument, Yeah, there's an argument that China
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: does one to many very well, you know what they can.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: They can scale quickly to commercialize a product, to commodify something,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: but they are not good at phones doing zero to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: one to to invent something completely new. You know, they
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: use like space at X right elon Musk keep pioneered
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the whole whole uh uh a thing, and and Chinese
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: is just copy the copy and copy and copy. So
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: so the argument is that as long as the United
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: States maintain its innovative edge over China, you'll be fine.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if they can do that. But the
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: what it has turned out is the US is only
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: ahead and a handful of industries, a handful of verticals.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: China has had everything else. And the US also has
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: a very a very bad habit of thinking that it's
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: the one that invented something when in fact it was not.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: For example, people will say that Google invented you know,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: pay drink for search, but in fact it was Robin
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Lee whose ranked decks Google quote unquote copied office. You know,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say they copied off
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: of I say they innovated on top of rank decks.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Robin Lee of BOYD do actually beat them to it.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: People will say that that Tesla or Elon musk EV's
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Teslas came to China and you know, invented the EV
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: industry in China, which is completely ridiculous because by then
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: China was already making two and a half million evs
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: than Tesla was only making two hundred thousand. It was
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: going bankrupt. It came to China because only China couldn't
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: manufacture EV's. But the way it's stressed up in the press,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: it seems like it was Elon musk who invented Chinese
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: EV industry, but it was in fact China which rescued Tesla.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: And there's Chinese engineers trying to go through all of
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: the rest of Tesla's factories all of the world to
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: try to fix them because the only one that's economical
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: right now is Changha. So there's all these examples where
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: the West will believe that invented something when in fact
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: the actual innovation, the actual thing that made it happen,
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: was in China. And you'll see more and more examples
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: of this. You know, DGI invented drones, all these things
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: where the West will say, oh, you know, batteries and
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: electric vehicles and solar they're all invented in the US. Well,
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: now they were not. Somebody in the UN had this idea,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: you know, a few that you know, decades ago, but
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: the idea never got in once the big boy showed up.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: They were only able to participate in the very beginning
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: of the discussion. When the big boy showed up to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: make things work. You know, they were they were cats aside.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: So it's it's it's if you keep thinking that you
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: will be the one that will invent everything, well, if
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: you can't hold down to it, if you can go zero,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: you know, zero to one, but you can't go from
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: one to affinity, it doesn't matter. So you know, I
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: can't reject that just because just because there's too many
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: examples where people in the West think they invented something
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: when all they were doing is doing it just you know, you.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Know where about where does that leave the wet So?
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So where does that leave the United States? Where can't
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: go from here?
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Well, if you ask me that you should be a
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: team park, you know, have your Cowboys and your NASCAR,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: the n b A, in your in your NFL, and
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: uh have great resorts if you want to be you
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: know innovative, then then you you better learn your maths.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, just look at uh just look at the
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: dire straits of American math and science education. They don't
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: want it. I mean, if he asked me, they don't
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: want to be at the forefront of technology. If they
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: might say they want to be, but they don't. You know,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: people hate that.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: People hate that when you tell them they have to
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: work harder, that that's how what what's his what's his face?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Uh rama? Uh uh? Who's yeah? Yeah he brown gas
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: that was the name. Uh yeah. When Brown absently tells
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: white people and shuffle state, Yeah, he killed career. He
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: was killed his whole bullom career.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: After that speech, when he told the white people to
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: work harder, they're like, no, no.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Right, and we can remain number one by you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: playing football and eating cheezberers. I mean, come on, people,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: if if the if the US wants to remain a
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: tech leader, and it's it's just cannot, it just cannot,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: just because China is way too many people working too hard,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: graduating you know, almost seven times as many engineers and
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: computer science students per year as the US.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: And they're not having kids, they're not having kids. So
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: so in a couple of generations, a chef.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: And I was just class. There's an America went by default.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: It's uh, all of the people see from now to
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: the year twenty fifty. Between now the year twenty fifty,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: the number of STEM workforce, the size of STEM workforce
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: in China will almost triple. All those people have already
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: been born. So it's after that that we've got a problem.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Now after that we got a problem. It's a problem
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: to be solved in fifty to one hundred years. I
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: don't know if I'm confident in any kind of forecast
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: in fifty to one hundred years. There is a huge
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: drop in the birth rate from around twenty sixteen till today.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Part of it is due to just in that time
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: China putting it. You know, China used to have five
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: percent of the people you know about twenty five years
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: ago when out to university. Now it's about seventy percent
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: go on to some form of higher education. About half
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: the seventy percent go on to four year programs, another
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: half going to two year associate level programs. So all
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: of that in the past few years, in the past
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: decade or so, has reduced has delayed family formation. So
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I suspect some of those numbers, some of those births
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: come back in the uh, you know, five six years,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: you know, five to ten years down the line, as
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: you are seeing in South Korea already. Last year South
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Korea had a pick up in this portray because South
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Korea was doing education maxine, just like China, where everybody
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: and their uncle was grabbed and shoved into universities and
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: or graduate school. So you know, and that, yeah, it's
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: a problem. It's a problem that two thousand and fifty
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: and beyond that, I'll start worrying about it. That's fair,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: that's fair.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Any any other topic you'd like to cover.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: The only little topic which is way too huge that
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: could be for another call is it probably will save
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: this for another call or some other day. But because
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: we already covered quite a bit today is whenever we
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: hear in the news and the world's second largest economy,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: China did X, Y Z, let's wrap it up. It's
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: the other topic that it's always on my mind is
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: whenever I hear people talk about the world's second largest county,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: China doing X, Y and Z, I think that does
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: all kinds of damage to the Western Mont because China
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: has been low balling its GDP for decades. It is
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: not the second largest county. It is not even close
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: to being the second largest conomy. On my calculations, China's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: economy on a real basis is two to three times
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: that of the US, so it's already bigger. So for
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Americans are still living as if China is in the
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: second place, that's a dangerous place to be at. That's
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: a really dangerous place to be at. And that is
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: one reason why America hasn't taken.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, great that that was a great preview for our
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: next topic of interest. But for people who want to
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: follow you hant faced, where should they go? Well, I
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: didn't go to Asia Times and go under the author
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: search on faces, you can.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Follow blue Bear, which is blue Bear Monkey at X
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: because Doggie is dearly departed then taken out and put
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: down for or misbehaving.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I for one, highly recommend following the blue Bear on
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: X because I, as as much as I enjoy hant
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Faces writing on Asia Times, I find the blue Bear
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: much more enjoyable personality to follow.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Great fun it's acquired some people.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so thanks again for making the time to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: speak to us, and despite our technical difficulties, yeah for sure.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Uh and everyone else tuning in. Thank you for listening
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Until next time, Bye bye,