Kitbag Conversations - Episode 32: Whore of the Orient

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a good Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year season. We are back this week to talk about the lady herself, the Peoples Republic of China. I am joined by Sino Talk (@sino_talk) and Expeditionary Intelligence Group (@expint.v1) and we focus on China's activity domestically, in Africa and lightly touch on Central and South America. I hope you enjoy. 

Hello everybody and welcome back. It's been about two months now and now that we're in the new year, we're going to start rolling back into the podcast, other stuff within the page, we'll talk about that in the back end. But this week, we're really going to talk a lot about China and Asia, Africa, probably lightly touch on what the Chinese activities are doing inside Central and South America. And so before we go getting ahead of ourselves, I just want to introduce these two guests we have today.

So there's Sino Talk and Expeditionary Intelligence. And so I'm sure you've seen them running around on Instagram, making very, very dial in analytical posts about activities in Africa or the capabilities of the Chinese Communist Party, military, these kind of things. So before we go any further, if you guys want to introduce yourselves. Yeah, my name is Sino Talk. As Croton stated, my main focus is China-related topics, but also touch upon Asia-Pacific issues as well.

But time to time, just to broaden the scope. Yeah, my background is studied extensively within China and also have some academic and private sector intelligence and dealing with issues regarding China. Too easy. I mean, I definitely want to touch on your living situation in China at another point in this. What about you, Expeditionary, how are you doing today? Doing good, man, it's good to finally be on here and paying attention to your podcast

for a while. A little bit about me, I spend some time in private intelligence, but I mainly, with our page, we kind of do things all around the globe, but we specialize mostly in Africa. You'll probably see more detailed analysis just based in Africa, because that's where I spend most of my time as far as in the private sector. So we, like I said, we basically cover everything globally. We try to do flash news analysis, and we're also rolling out our own podcast. Yeah.

I'm really excited to have you guys on today, because I mean, we're here to talk about China, so let's just get into it. So everyone's seen for a while now, there's always these rumors of the Chinese invading Taiwan, and even though they partially mobilized their guys when Nancy Pelosi went there last fall, it didn't really seem like they were able to essentially muster up their combat forces and throw them on ships and then send them over to Taiwan. And some of them, like Al-Khanas, too, I talked to him about that, and he was mainly pointing out the logistical issues that the Chinese have within their own military.

And if you want to go big picture, they base theirs on the Soviets, and the Russians base theirs on the Soviets, and their logistics don't work. And so in terms of political ramifications, after not being able to muster up the forces essentially, what do you think the home front looks like within the CCP? I think the home front within the CCP regarding the the departure deployment of forces, the PLA, you have to understand the context of what Xi wanted to do. He wasn't really trying to deploy them to show as a means to get ready to invade.

Xi deployed them as, for two reasons, one as a sign of as a sole force. That kind of goes hand in hand with their deployment of the shooting of missiles and the deployment of both PLA Navy vessels and fighter jets all around the island. They understand that they have major logistical issues. That's one thing about the PLA is that they actually focus more so about the logistical issues, the logistics operations as opposed to the Soviet model. They understand that you have to have good logistical supply lines to conduct a people's war.

It goes all the way back to whenever Mao, the Mao's timeframe, whenever they were fighting the Japanese, the Imperial Japanese forces and also the Nationalist forces on the Chiangkai Shack, but regarding the recent war in Ukraine, I think that was another thing that validated their thinking and their revolutionizing their logistical trains and the logistics of the PLA and the creation of the joint support source and the fact that they see that Russia is literally sucking at logistics, that they can't really supply their troops with even the basic needs of a military, food ammunition, equipment to include stocks. They kind of see that as a validation of what they see as them focusing on logistics, but

also they know they have a long way to go, not only logistics, but also command and control when you're talking about an invasion of Taiwan. I think, and this is just from my perspective, from studying the PLA, I think the bigger focus or the bigger shortcoming for them is the lack of C2 when it comes to a joint operation because make no mistake, it's going to be a joint operation for the PLA. It's going to involve 50, if not more, percent of their forces just to be able to launch an effective invasion. For the listeners out there, C2 means command and control.

You can always hit me up in the DMs if you have any questions about abbreviations and acronyms and these kind of things. Going back to your point about Taiwan being more of a dry run than anything else, one thing I did notice is when, number one, I haven't really seen anything regarding their amphibious capabilities with Marines or anything like that, or even if they have Marines that are capable of hopping on a landing craft and going 100 miles east. It came to that rumor where, oh, President Xi has been detained, the government's going to throw a coup, and there's internal fighting within the government.

That couple with the Chinese population living under three years now of COVID restrictions and cities like Shanghai and Beijing are completely locked down, I'm always interested to look at how the people are going to react to these things because if the US lost in Afghanistan and there's this real big heavily armed insurgent group to the west, I'm sure they don't want the Uyghurs or anything to get any ideas, so I think China has a very big problem on their hand, and so they're kind of taking it piecemeal and just using, like, yeah, like you said, the Russians in Ukraine is an example of what not to do. Yeah, so regarding the PLA's amphibious capabilities, they actually do have relatively robust capability.

It's really two parts. They do have a Marine Corps, People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps, that's modeled. Well, we're beginning to see it become, to reflect more Western Marine Corps models, aka the US Marine Corps, but they actually have been conducting a lot of training, increasing their training. You kind of see some quality increases in training, you know, like, instead of the Soviet scripted scenario, this is, you're going to take this beach head and it's going to have 500 people, you're just going to take it. There's no, like, there's no, like, we do or anything like that. It's not like, it's not like how we would do it.

You know, we would have hot washes, we would have, like, we'll pause training just to, just to, we'll pause training just to make sure, hey, this is what happened, this is what we could do better. This is what occurred, this is what we could do better. These are the things that we kind of sucked at. These are the things we did good. But another aspect, and I don't really see a lot of people focusing upon this or even knowing that, knowing this is that they have the ground force, their army actually has six brigades. It used to be three divisions of amphibious mechanized forces. Those divisions would be the ones tasked to invade Taiwan, or now brigades, those six brigades, I just say, would be tasked to be the main focus or the main

effort in any invasion of Taiwan. The PLA, like the Marine Corps will have a significant, we'll have a significant play or a significant, we'll have a significant part in it, but it's going to be mainly an army focused main effort. And you're not seeing anything regarding, like, Chinese war games and how those run, because I think it would be safe to assume that every time they have a war game, quote unquote, they come back to Beijing and go, hey, we took Taiwan in eight days and we say in zero casualties, it was great. Dave, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think that type of thinking, not for just the Chinese itself, but more of the Americans, the Taiwanese and the Japanese and

everyone in the region, probably think of the Chinese performing that way where it's all scripted and they always win and they never take casualties. But that's a topic for another time. But when it comes to say like American analysts or something is like, no, you can't really just think that way because the Chinese continue to change and their tactics and doctrine and everything. And so just getting that narrow focus and going, yeah, this is how they're going to do it is not ideal. Yeah, like they've, they understand that they need more realistic training. They've actually have tried to actually have set up like their version of NTC, the National Training Center, like in out of four, out of four, organically, and Cali, they actually set up their equivalent

and they have an offer, a dedicated offer. That's pretty much training along US Army and US Marine Corps doctrine. A lot of people wonder how, you know, China Watchers or China analysts can make that assumption. Well, just look at the uniforms they're wearing. They, if they're talking, if they're going to be utilizing more US Army tactics doctrine, they're going to be wearing multi-gam or something close to it. If they're going out, if they're going to do a war game involving the opera as Marines, they're going to wear this or more pad. You don't really see them with woodlands for some reason. I don't know why, but you don't ever see that. It's very rare that they would wear woodlands. They will always stick to deserts.

And not only that, but they even forced the opera to eat with spoons and forks and knives instead of chopsticks and other spoons. Yeah, it's very interesting whenever you get to see it and actually see the photos and stuff like that, the commentaries. Yeah. Regarding the, regarding how CCP, how CCP is run by Xi and how the people would look at it, they, it would depend. They know that Xi is not dumb when it comes to an invasion, making the decision to invade Taiwan. And he knows that he effectively only has one chance to do it, to pull it off. And the reason why is because, you know, every time, you know, like to see a center for strategic

intelligence studies, CSIS, that war game, they actually pointed out that them losing actually leads to a destabilization of CCP rule. I would venture, I would venture farther. I would actually venture that them losing a Taiwan, a batter of Taiwan will cause them to ultimately lose power. Because you have to understand that one of the main things that the CCP has, that it uses to maintain power is its promise to the Chinese people to make China great again, to make them, to the Chinese, the great Chinese rejuvenation, the Chinese dream, the world. They, and it's all based upon naturalism that, yeah, the economy may suck. That was also another

pillar that the CCP actually, you realized, actually came up with after Tiananmen Square, that if you let us, if you surrender all your rights, quit, quit, quit these notions of democracy and human rights, we will make you rich. We will bring you common prosperity. Now this, now that the economy is not doing so well, the only thing that they have left is that they can give the CCP, the CCP can give their, the people is naturalism. They believe in China. Now earlier, you touched on it briefly about the training situation, about how, you know, Chinese soldiers, they haven't fought, they have never won a war. And the last war they fought was against

the, the Vietnamese in the 70s, you know, and that didn't go very well for them either. And so, yeah, they can have this big robust military with all these interesting brigades and all these doctrinal reforms. But I really want to touch on the African situation, because there has been a lot of Chinese soldiers being sent as like peacekeepers or humanitarians to like Djibouti or something like that to test out the Chinese ability to kind of reach out and touch something. And then just, you know, that whole topic. And so, you know, kind of shifting conversation towards the accent where that seems to be his main focus is like, what does that look like? Have you seen anything like that? So personally, a little bit of background,

what you got to remember is that not only is, are they kind of going in as peacekeepers, but China has also surpassed most of the other nations as far as being Africa's largest trade partner. And additionally, Africa is their second largest importer of natural resources, such as cobalt, crude oil, even lithium in some cases from some of the smaller deposits and precious metals. So that gives China a lot of interest. And it seems to be that most of their interest is in East Africa. Me and Sina talk actually touched on this a little bit in our podcast that we did together that in Djibouti, you have a port that the Chinese PLA can use as a resupply point. That's only a few miles away from the United States base. So they're definitely upping their

presence in Africa. It seems to be like they're almost following suit to Russia. But instead of security assistance, they are replacing that with humanitarian assistance. You've been seeing a lot of like East Africa, like the DRC, like you said earlier, Mali, and a few others where they've really kicked it up. But it seems like their main focus is investment points. And that's what really is driving it. To me, it seems like it's not as much a diplomatic or military strategy as much as it is an economic one. And the same can be said for South America, more specifically Mexico. If I could chime in. You actually do see some deployments of Chinese private military companies within Africa. The Africans are main focus or

African Central Asia is all their main focus. Since the BRI, they have so much BRI investments within those two regions, but they also haven't known to go into South America as well. Smaller deployments, but still the same. From what little like OSINT reporting that's out there on the Chinese social media is that it's the lackluster at best and poorly, poor performance at worst. No, for sure. I would agree with that. And that's kind of where I was going with that, is that if you're comparing Russia to China as far as their security presence and what they give an assistance in Africa, Russia has a much larger footprint in that sector. Whereas the Chinese seem to be going in more on a humanitarian, with humanitarian goals, quote unquote, whereas

Russia instead is full on with, we're going to come in, we're going to deploy Wagner Group, and we're going to supply security assistance to your nation in exchange for, say, precious metal licensing or something like that. Exactly. And so when it looks at, or if you look at the humanitarian angle or the Belt and Road Initiative, it's almost like the Chinese went the Donald Trump method where you don't need to buy the house, you just need to buy the doorway or something like that. And so it gets a local economy is dependent on Chinese infrastructure, Chinese, essentially Chinese people that are showing up to help populate these little areas that they're investing in. And then there is relatively little discussed on top of the

talking about their investments in Africa and whatnot. And so if you're looking at it from the social media point of view, the Chinese don't really talk about it a lot. But you know who does? The Africans who live there. And going back to the nationalism topic where the Chinese essentially look at anyone who's not Han Chinese is subhuman or something like that. And so they go to these African villages and I've talked to these Africans that hit me up through the Instagram saying like, Oh, the Chinese are here and they're very mean. And all they do is steal our stuff and they bully us and they call his names and they're like, but after the government's essentially sold out the land for the Chinese, they're stuck. And so they just got to deal with it.

No, absolutely. I would agree with that 100%. In West Africa, you see a large push for most of these nations to kind of go against the French and European partners for the same reasons, you know, public opinion says that these people are mean, we don't like them, whatever, but the government has sold the land. So they're kind of just stuck with it. And they got to deal with it. But now they are kind of seeing the error in their ways. And now they're trying to shift their relations more into with Moscow, Beijing, they're pretty much doing anything they can to change the status quo of what's been for the past, you know, yeah, exactly. So I mean, they're trying to basically quote unquote break away from the colonizers, whereas you speak to a lot of the African populists

and things like that, they they honestly don't mind the the European partners compared as much as their Chinese and Russian counterparts. So it's really interesting to see that the dynamic and how even though the government is doing one thing, the populace is on a completely separate page. And I think that's what actually keys into a lot of the instability in a lot of these African regions. And especially on the Russia topic, where, say in Mali, for the Western Africa, where the French have been playing around for a long time. And so they had that political falling out between, you know, Paris and all these regional governments. And so the Wagner groups gets invited in, they're like, where they at? Yeah, I'll go take care of them. Child soldiers,

I can do that. And so they're doing the job that the locals want taken care of, like, child soldiers are not an easy thing to discuss. But it's like Wagner doesn't care as long as they're getting paid, they're going to clean it up. And so it's really helping out the local populace go like, yeah, the insurgents are gone, we can actually live a life now and try to figure it out instead of living with it like they have been for so long. And so yeah, we see the the French leave and the Brits leave and no one really wants to play around with the Americans right now. So I mean, hey, what's stopping them from the Chinese from just doing whatever they wanted? No, that's an interesting take because, you know, the Americans kind of more lean,

in my opinion, or at least from what I've picked up on is that the Americans more lean towards East Africa places like Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, while Russia is very focused on the Sahel. And just like earlier, about a month, two months ago, Wagner group is now within Burkina Faso seems like they're mirroring almost the exact same security policy that Molly Molly has taken on. And what these the differences from what I can see is that it's only further worsening their economic mismanagement, because whenever they bring in Wagner, these countries that don't particularly have large cash sums end up giving up a good amount of like natural resources and payment like mining licensing. So the day that Burkina Faso had announced the Wagner group was

going to come in, or I'm sorry, a couple days after they had announced that Wagner group was going to come in or that they were in talks with Wagner group, we saw that they had given up licensure to an iron and gold deposit, a rather large one at that, to Russia's Nord Gold, which we haven't been able to draw a direct connection between Nord Gold and Wagner group. But both being owned by such prominent Russian oligarchs, it's fair to say that there's definitely some type of social connection to where they're washing each other's hands. And beyond that, it is Wagner group's MO to if you can't pay me in cash, then pay me in your gold oil or iron. So again, it's just feeding into that economic mismanagement crisis that most of these countries are facing, especially Burkina

Faso, because they don't really have many, being such a landlocked country, they don't have many economic exports that they can really manage. I mean, they're trying to make their agricultural sectors a little bit more competitive. But all in all, their bread and butter would be the natural resources that they can extract from their country. And I think a lot of that has to do with that economic mismanagement has a lot to do with why they're on such an accelerated rate to, you know, a lot of people would say they are failed state, but they're not quite there yet, according to a lot of like official databases, I would even personally say that they're a failed state. But that economic mismanagement, I think, is what really is feeding into that. And China's

right there behind everybody else trying to grab just as much of those natural resources as the U.S., as Russia, as, you know, whomever you want to throw on the list. And real quick, oh, yeah, I want to make one quick point on the Wagner situation, because I mean, this is more focused towards the Chinese. But when it comes to like every village that Wagner goes to unsupervised, there's usually like, not chill things happening with like rapes and murders and these things. And the local people go to the government say like, hey, we need help, these guys are not helping us out. Like, yeah, they're getting rid of the insurgents, but they're also burning all of our stuff down. And the government goes, yeah, let me let me look into this. And

then nothing happens. And so it's almost like a self looking ice cream cone of like, oh, well, they just they stabilize the region, but to stabilize the local populace, so then they got to be invited back in to stabilize the region. And so it's kind of like a win win for Wagner. And yeah, when they the money runs out, all they have to do is say, yeah, give me your goal. And then it just keeps going overflows into the next state. Yeah, I was gonna say, they always have this this pinpoint perfect timing of leaving wherever they're operating. And right before it just completely collapses in on itself. And a lot of people don't draw the connection that maybe that Wagner group was an attributing factor.

And I say that widely just sarcastically, because we all know that exactly what you're saying when they go into a region, they quote unquote, stabilize it, but destabilize it to where they can continuously keep extracting these nations and states for more basically holding them ransom and extorting them. They're just easy contractors like if you're trying to build a road, why do it good? So you could just get called back to fix it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, regarding the Chinese and their investments or their activities regarding in Africa, you have to understand one level is diplomatic. They've some of those countries had really good relationships with China since

they received independence from their colonial masters, whether it be Great Britain, UK, Portugal or Belgium. And you used to see throughout you continue to see this, that whenever the Chinese were going to an area, this is solely humanitarian, solely like those nothing like it's them trying to be trying to do good things. They actually live with the people like they don't they're not like either not like USAID or the UK and French equivalents where they stay there for like two to three hours and then go back to like their hotel or their camp. That is like that's guarded by host nation or PMC contractors.

You see that and for a long time that actually won them the hearts and minds of the local African population because they used to always point this out to the Western diplomats that say, well, whenever they ask, hey, why do you like the Chinese so much as opposed to us? They always point out, well, the Chinese treat us with respect and actually live with us as opposed to being there like tourists. I'm really glad you brought that up because I was actually wanting to counter the point of where some locals yes are kind of against China and say that they're being mean or whatever. But I've read quite a bit of surveys that kind of confirm what you're putting out there that like the and these are these surveys are actually run by a lot of UK,

French, and a couple other European partner companies, but that the African populace actually does speak quite favorably about China as far as those things are concerned. It's usually whenever the BRI project is involved, that's whenever you see the negative publicity and out. Yeah, so I know in Zambia, they had a major, they had a major project, I think a lunar mine, if I'm not mistaken, that it just the that was the site of like three days of intense rioting. You had, I want to say one or two Chinese managers were actually killed by them. And one of the chief complaints was again extraditionary

kind of touched upon this, I think you as well Kato and that how they were essentially treated like slaves. I mean, they were treated like slaves. They not only that, but they were promised jobs, training, the setup programs to where the people would actually go in and learn how to manage these mines, to learn how to manage, operate these mines. But you didn't see that on the ground, you just seen the, you already see Chinese people or Chinese managers operating. Yeah, you'll see like an African there saddering him, but he was just there more as show as a showpiece, essentially, like they've, yeah, they weren't really training them. And that's kind of on par to how China conducts its BRI investments, whether it be

infrastructure or mines or anything like that. What have you, and I haven't, this might just be me just not reading into it enough, but I think a lot of people forget that in South Africa, South of like the Democratic Congo and Tanzania and Mozambique and Angola and Zambia and Zimbabwe and all these states that there was a proxy war between the Soviets, the Chinese, the South Africans, the Rhodesians, the Cubans, like that was such a very hot topic in the local tribes. We're going, well, do we support or do we get our support from Moscow or do we get it from Beijing? And then at that point, there was internal division within the local village leaders going like, well, the Chinese are here, but the Cubans are across the street,

and we're trying to get liberated from Rhodesia. But there's the outside factors that we're pressing down. This is more of like a history lesson, anything else. But have you seen anything on that today, like reflecting of that past intervention? Yeah, you kind of do see it in Mozambique and, actually, you kind of see it in Angola and to a lesser extent, Zambabwe and Mozambique, less, even less so in Mozambique. The reason why is because the Africans in Angola, the PLA actually supplied a good part of the Insurgent Forces with equipment. Yeah, the Soviets did, were in the country like supplying, also like their advisors, they also like

supplying with equipment, but the lion's shirt was coming from China. Did the Russians like that? No, because at that time, they had, they kind of, they saw each other at enemies, but they kind of, I think what it was is that they've understood that our greater enemy is capitalist South, South Africa to the South. Not only that, but the Cubans who were actually were kind of the mediators between the two, since they were also there, as you pointed out, and they were actually played one of the largest roles within that conflict, if you, in terms of all three sides. I want to say the Cubans actually fought the South African Air Force, like actually did dogfights with them between them.

And in Zamb, yeah, I want to say, I want to say it was, I want to say they did, it was either that or they taught them, they actually taught the Angolan Air Force how to operate these machineries, how to operate the, how to operate the equipment. Not only that, but the Cubans also taught the Angolans and the insurgents forces how to utilize not only man-pads, but also sand systems. I want to say they captured, the South Africans captured like an SA-8, the mobile sand system, and which that was promptly relocated to the United States for study. Yeah, and then with Zimbabwe, that was purely a PLA, that was purely PLA, because they believed, they actually looked at Mao's doctrine, the Maoist doctrine.

So you just, so you seen them being arms supplied by the PLA, you did see some, you did see some advisors from the Soviet Union, but the Chinese played a bigger part in that one. And again, like in Mozambique, you've seen the same thing as in Angola. All three sides were there, and it was kind of reflective of Angola again, like all three sides, the Chinese, Russians, and Cubans were there. The Cubans were the mediators between the Russians and Chinese because they didn't like each other. And it was such an under-discussed topic. It's always like, yeah, the apartheid and Rhodesia, but then you're like, you're missing two-thirds of the story.

Yeah, I mean, to kind of touch on the Russian, touch a little bit more. While their footprint was light, you kind of have to remember that the whole reason why the Russians were there in general, even as an advising role, was mainly to try to build up relations within Africa at the time to hedge against the United States. Because a lot of what they were doing during that time in Africa was mainly with the goal of basically like, who's going to get there first as far as, you know, having the largest footprint in Africa. So. Interesting. Yeah, I want to, I guess, kind of pivot this over towards this Mexican topic with the Chinese. But yeah, the Russian footprint, it's not like they ever really left. And it's,

especially if you're looking at like the decolonization of Africa and these things and how the Western Europeans who own these countries essentially were down upon, you're like, yeah, I mean, the Russians were equally as imperialistic. It's just, I guess, more of a lesser discussed topic. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, if you want to compare the, how the Soviet slash Russians, their conduct in Africa, I mean, I don't know, I don't know if expeditionary would agree with me or not. But I would honestly compare them to the how the Belgian treated Congo. Yeah, the Congo in the late 1800s. Yeah, we pulled the second took a huge L with that one. No, I agree 100% with that one.

It's, you're spot on with that. And like shifting to Mexico, Mexico, they're South America in general, but going more towards Mexico thing you got to remember about Mexico is that it wasn't necessarily Chinese military or diplomacy. There was a large amount of Chinese migrants in Mexico. And honestly, even at the time, the Mexican government treated them like absolute garbage. And I mean, you can demo later really, if you guys follow them, they, they really hit it a lot, a lot tighter. That's also somebody that I previously worked for. So I got to get a lot of background on this. So it was a very large migrant population of Chinese in within Mexico. And that's what's kind of helped China build their, their footprint within Mexico. And then

going back to like natural resources and things like that, you know, a few years ago, the largest lithium deposit that has been discovered so far has been in Mexico. It's actually in, I believe, Sonora, if I remember correctly. But the Mexican government treated the Chinese at the time, like absolute garbage. And honestly, the Chinese are, are what kind of gave way to Mexican cartels getting into the obium trade. Because when the Chinese came across, they began opening these dens and all this other, all these other things that kind of normalized the practice of opium within like Mexico. So it's really interesting to see how China has shifted and kind of built off of that. I mean, now there's a massive pharmaceutical

trade between China and Mexico that's kind of being done in the shadows. It's not necessarily, they're not necessarily overtly doing it, but they're also not punishing pharmaceutical, Chinese pharmaceutical companies that are, that are sending chemical precursors into Mexico. And not only that, but they're also not stopping any of these pharmaceutical scientists from teaching these cartels how to use these precursors, how to build off of them and how to basically run a business off of these precursors. Yeah. I mean, the, that intersection between, you know, the cartels and the Chinese regarding the opium trade is always interesting because in many ways,

it's almost like the Chinese government is paying back, well, paying back the Western government, Western governments, the West, aka the US for the opium wars. It's, yeah, the Chinese advisors show up, they're like, believe me, I know opium. We could talk about this. Yeah, like, like, yeah, because like one, and I make that connection because of one statement by the foreign ministry, or I don't know, I forget who, but it was with the foreign ministry. And it stated, we believe that the US should look internally for the, for the solution instead of looking externally. And when I heard that and read it, I just kind of compared or my, my thoughts went back to the leathers that the Chinese officials sent to Queen Victoria,

during the disputes that led up to the opium, the force opium war. And I was just thinking that's oddly similar language to what they used, that, to what the British used in a rebuttal. No, I, that's a really good point. And something that I kind of wanted to bring up to with that connection is, and you may be able to elaborate this on a little bit further, Sino talk. And, and this kind of borders fiction, just, just a little bit. But a lot of, and this may just be a US opinion, but I have heard from other people from other parts of the world that kind of tend to agree with it as well, that it's, it's kind of a long game for China.

It's, you know, if they are basically teaching these cartels and teaching these criminal organizations how to funnel this poison into the US, that it's, it's, it's a long game. Like we can, they can cause social discourse because of, you know, I mean, look at today with how much fentanyl poisoning we have in the US based off of just, you know, kids partying or whatever. And they go out to get a little bit of, of coke and it's got just a way overdose of, of fentanyl in it and it's just slowly destroying. It's just creating a whole new issue within the US that they have to pay more attention to than anything else because they need to keep their domestic control. Well, the Chinese also believe in the,

like you said, they play the long game and they understand that America runs in four years, maybe two if you want to consider midterms. So they were like, oh, we just have to wait them out where it's the US goes to Afghanistan's playing around in China's backyard for 20 years, and then we announce we're leaving. They're like, cool. All right, they're out of the picture. So, and that the more you can, I guess, pull these, the TikTok card and social media and social discourse and everything, but the more and more directionally ambiguous that the US is kind of heading in, the Chinese could just take advantage of it. And so yeah, I mean, attack the local, if I was the Chinese, you know, attack the local civilians, the the average Americans.

So the government has to start redirecting its focus from like, oh, let's go take out in certain groups in Africa to, hey, why is Los Angeles, you know, dying off? What's going on here? So no, I agree to an extent to what both you and Expedury talked about, regarding the long game, but you also understand that while they can play a long game, I would also point out that sometimes they are just as capable of making really, really out of the blue decisions that come out of left field. The best example of that is how she did away with COVID, the COVID policy. There was plans for the policy to actually be drawn down in stages,

with the end goal of it actually being completely gone. The country can be completely reopened on mid-March or by mid-March. This year? This year, yes. They've, but due to the protests and other factors, the economic, the societal, and again, the Chinese protest by the Chinese people, he just, he knew that something had to give. He, and so he made the brash decision to, okay, you can have your freedom back, but you can have, but you will also get, you will have an epic outbreak. Well, when it came to the handling of the COVID lockdowns and everything, where it was, you were seeing these very dystopian images of the Chinese local police walking down the street

and like checking goldfish for COVID and just like going into the weeds of every single aspect of society, and the people were getting pretty fed up with it. Yeah, they, yeah, one of the major things that occurred, one of the major things about that was how, as you pointed out, dystopian rules were, because at certain points, they didn't really have enough time to even prepare to get food. Like these lockdown orders from like the municipal authorities said, yeah, we're going to lock it down and like, by like eight, eight o'clock local time, and it could be like 655 whenever the alert goes out. Not only that, just a mere fact that you had these people,

you know, committing suicide or dying due to starvation that, now, I will point out that this, those zero COVID, you kind of saw it actually be effective against against COVID, but those were the strains that were not as infectious as Fombercron. And I say that as a person who hates giving praise to the CCP, but I have to give it to, I have to give credit to where it's due. It was only until, it was only whenever you've seen Omicron came upon the scene that you did see these massive increases in infections. You did see these massive, extremely dracododian lockdowns occur, most notably in Shanghai. And I point out, and I like to point out,

Shanghai is because that's their economic capital, financial capital. Not only that, but that's, it's their biggest port in terms of like them exporting stuff. You've seen them literally drop the hammer. As a matter of fact, she's new premier. I forgot his name. He was actually in power at that time. And I kind of touched upon how, I touched upon this on one of the papers I wrote for Lethal Minds, the fact that you kind of see this power dynamic between the local bureaucracy and also the CCP bureaucrats. But you have to understand, within all the way down to the village level, they usually have two parts, two structures, a CCP dominated, a CCP one, and a purely government

one that we would be familiar with. Now, most times, whenever people, whenever it is like a major event or a major situation, like the Shanghai lockdown was handled, it's usually the government officials, not the CCP bureaucrats that take the fall. And you kind of, and you did see this with that specific person, but more so because that was, he was a part of Xi's power base. Another notable example of this is Li Ke Chong. A lot of people don't know this, is that Li Ke Chong was actually supposed to be, she's supposed to actually take Xi's spot. He was supposed to be the, you know, the general secretary. But due to the due to the, due to the, due to an outbreak of HIV within children in the non-province,

that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, it was mainly, it was mainly with children, but it affected the entire province. And that's one of the most populous provinces of China, if not the most. And, you know, as many, as I liked, and I pointed out that many times the CCP will shield their officials, this was one of those times when even the CCP kind of said that we can't really help them. Because the, yeah, because there was just too much, too much heat, if it will. And so that's how Xi came into power. Yeah, those, there's always that a trying to true method where they're like, yeah, I mean, he was, he was from an aristocrat background, but wanted to give that up and work his own way up.

And it was a Rex to riches story, but it's not even true at all. But yeah, she is a very funny individual. But yeah, oh, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, we're coming up to about an hour here. And, you know, expeditionary Intel had to jump off. So if there's any, like, I guess, closing topics, you want to discuss real quick. I mean, I guess, I mean, since you did bring up out, she's he being kind of like to portray himself as like, this raggedoricious story type person. I mean, I could touch upon that if you want. It's very interesting. Please. Yeah. So contrary to what he said, that notion that some people believe, he's actually a part of the pension class.

Like his father is one of the founders of China of the PRC. You can actually see him in some of the photos with Mao during the during him during his proclamation of the PRC or new China. Where he can actually kind of say that he came from bags and riches was there in the cultural revolution when his when his dad was kicked out of the Communist Party rather brutally, I should say, by the Red Guards. I they beat him mercilessly. And she actually was sent out to the to the to the hinterlands of China to to learn how to work like the rule, full population of the farmers.

And then only that. But he applied to the CCP membership multiple times. We honestly don't know how many times because some people say six, some people say eight, some people say seven, some people actually say nine. And it's one of those things in which, you know, it showcases she's tenacity and not give up, but then also like his tenacity just to double down. And you kind of see him in the Academy of the Arts situation. Yeah, yeah, he he yeah. This was one of the times where she I think he kind of realized that he needed he figured out the benefit of the power structure or a power base, because we suspect his dad, because by that time, his dad was also restored to

restored as a member of the CCP. And there's been speculation that he may have gotten into the CCP because of his dad. Yeah. And so when he comes out saying like, oh, it's a rags to rich story. And I made no connections to get where I'm at today. It's like, yeah, and Putin's, you know, grandfather survived the purge. All right. Like it's it's such a funny topic. Oh, yeah. Like you the I'll be to be completely honest, the only the last leader who can say that they had a rags to riches story was Deng Xiaoping. And maybe join life, but not not join life, but a junction in maybe if you really want to broaden your way, broaden what you would consider rags to riches.

Yeah, but I mean, these established deep states there in China, it's, you just can't get some, you know, peasant farmer from a Uyghur tribe and be like, no, you're the chairman. It's not how it works. No, it's not. But no, it's, it's very fascinating that the dynamics of domestic politics. It's like, hey, man, it's been a, it's been a really fun conversation. I know it's kind of bounced around all over the other guy had to jump off. But yeah, this China topic is always so funny to talk about because once you think you kind of haven't pinned down, you're like, oh, then they zig and zag and it all changes. And it's, yeah, and I'm very interested to see what they have going on here in the future, because they say they need Taiwan by 2049. And that's not

invasion by 2049. That's complete incorporation. So it means they would have to take about a generation to pass by the local populace, which means they would have to probably do it within the next five years. And if you talk to someone like all con S2, he's like, it's going to happen. It's just not if, but when. So it's, it is very fun. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things in which I, they have red lines to where cheap Xi Jinping can like the side, but then also the mere fact that Xi Jinping has that rationale of like, I'm, it's my destiny to, you know, become the great regimen over China or at least lead a groundwork. And I think that's what I could see him trying

to invade where he just, you know, gets up. He likes how the peer, he likes how the peer, peer LA are hitting or, you know, they're hitting all the, hitting all the good metrics. He thinks that, you know, he, we're able to do it. And then, you know, he gives them the order to begin preparations or invade, because it's going to take six months to prepare, to adequately prepare for them for an invasion. Oh yeah. I mean, and then everyone saw the Russians building up for nine months. And then they made it seem like, oh, they showed up overnight, but you're like, cool. Well, now the whole world's going, hey, China, if I see a bunch of ships kind of show up in the same area, what's going on, big guy? Yeah. Well, not only ships, but, you know,

if you see like them, like recalling or recreationing civilian, uh, logistic ships, especially the roll on, roll off, uh, partnerships. Yeah. That's like method. Exactly. Like that's the biggest indicator that, that they have that that, uh, that we have that, Hey, something's happening because they have been known to train in, um, in utilizing them as first wave transports. Mm hmm. Yeah. Just to soak up some bullets and see how the time when these we react. Not, not so much react. It's just because they know they're going to need them. Like they just, they know that they would, they know they're going to need like every ship that

can, that's capable of launching like a tank, like their amphibious tanks or any, any type of amphibious, uh, starcraft. And so they'll, they'll be like, okay, cool. Like let's just take this one random roll on, roll off ship that's usually servicing, you know, Hanan or Hainan. Um, let's, let's take this one. You know, let's, let's go take this one that, you know, does that transfers cargo like in the Bohai Gulf. You're in it too. Congratulations. But you're all, uh, part of the PLAN now. Yeah. Mass conscription, but yeah. All right, man. Yep. I'm going to have to jump off here, but yeah, really appreciate you coming on. It's been a fun topic. Fun kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. It was fun for me. I appreciate, um, coming on and

actually doing podcasts, actually, um, getting to enjoy them. Yeah. They're pretty fun. I mean, I remember the first one I did, I was like, what am I doing? And then I started my own. I was like, oh man, I have to have more questions than, that's interesting as a response. So yeah, I know. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to pause this if you want to chitchat a little more on the back end. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. All right. Sounds good.